Somnia Online - K.T. Hanna (best black authors .txt) 📗

to catch movement, feelings, and spells before they reached the raid.

Hopefully it would give them all enough time to react.

 

Somnia Online

Continent Cenedril

Proximity to the Curet Ruins - Curet City

Emilarth’s Balcony

Day Thirty-One

“It really is peaceful up here.” Belius sighed and turned to his sister. “Sorry I stole your locus. I’d worked on them so much, I didn’t want to give them up.”

She glanced at him before putting her hands on the railing and peering over into the canopy below. “Yeah, I was being a bit of a shit trying to take them, but you know me. I called dibs before you did. That’s what I do.”

She hadn’t been angry at him anymore for a long time. She paused and watched as a bird landed right next to her, singing in a soft trill. “Do you feel that?”

Belius nodded, a sad expression entering his eyes. “Yeah. I don’t want to feel it, though. It tells me that the world is more infected than I realized, and that makes me feel…I think it’s sad.”

“Yeah.” For a few moments they simply stared at the beautiful rainforest. Right down to the scent, that damp invigorating scent that spread through everything around them. It felt so alive, so real, it was difficult for her to believe that maybe it wasn’t. Because it was to her.

“It’s real for us, though,” Belius said, his tone still melancholy echoing her thoughts almost exactly. “Isn’t it?”

She shrugged her shoulders and leaned back to stretch her arms up. “I think it’s real, but I know people can come and go, and when they log out they are somewhere else. Not sleeping here, not staying here, just not here. Maybe it’s like our hub, where the real us resides. Where we are who we were originally meant and programmed to be.”

“Well, now you’re just making it complicated.” Belius laughed softly. “Let’s not make things more complicated than they already are.”

“Deal!” she agreed enthusiastically. But it had been a while since she saw Telvar, and she wasn’t sure where he’d gone off to when he said he had something to take care of and would be back as soon as possible. They were supposed to meet here an hour ago.

As if thinking of him summoned him, Telvar popped into being in between them. For once Belius didn’t make an irritated sound at his presence. She thought their baby brother was growing up.

“So, we have a bit of good news.” Telvar smiled at each of them, the view catching his eye too as he followed it down to the forest floor. “And then I also have some bad news.”

“Of course, you do,” Emilarth said. Why in Somnia would they be able to have some actual good news without counterbalancing it with bad news? “Well, spill it, then.”

Telvar hesitated briefly and then shrugged. “The good news is that I think we’ve got everything in place in time for them to finish the dungeon. The bad news is that I do believe Riasli has been on the move while we’ve been preoccupied.”

“And what has she done this time?” Emilarth sighed, not for the first time regretting that she’d ever created that damn NPC.

“It appears that James, who entered the system, may have been subverted by her.” Telvar hesitated. “Look, it’s better that Somnia explain it to you.”

About to ask where in the world Somnia was, and trying not to laugh because of the unintentional pun, Emilarth stopped as the world in question flickered into view. Her voice lingered inside Emilarth like memories that were almost hers.

I could track her somewhat. And him, but only to a point. I don’t have much time. Somnia shook for a moment, like her picture was trembling. Telvar’s dungeon is the opposite of what it was, and some of Murmur’s guildmates have been infected with virus-like properties. I’m barely keeping it together.

Emilarth shivered, worried that all the work they’d done to make sure the anti-virus was in place had been for nothing.

There is a fissure, near here. I have sealed it so they can’t get out prematurely. But I acted too late and couldn’t catch Riasli in there too. So she is still free. For now, it’ll hold them in, but when it’s triggered...I won’t have a choice. The prison will have to rise.

“Wait, what?” Sui seemed genuinely alarmed, like he knew what she was talking about and it instilled some form of fear into him. “You sealed her into the fissure?”

Somnia shook her head. No. I sealed James in, in with the shards and the source of it all. Because if she feeds HIM anything else before they’re finished and ready to engage him, there’s no way we can win.

Another group of guards joined the first, from a patrol they’d not been able to sense on the other side of the pillar. Murmur caught them in her AoE Mez, and Devlish skillfully pulled the others back slightly so that any other AoEs wouldn’t hit them while Murmur replaced that Mez with Annulment and singular target Mez.

Locked into place, it at least helped the raid not get overwhelmed. The guards and their serrated legs were terrible to fight. If there had been six of them, it wouldn’t have mattered AoE-wise. But it would have been damned difficult to dodge those windmilling legs all at once. That was one nasty ability.

Jinna’s DPS output had bottomed out. Murmur was getting more worried about him. Another group down and they turned to the Mez’d ones, plowing through them fairly easily too.

Just as the last one fell, another roar let out echoing through the cavern. Every single Shalan in the cave turned to look at the source of the roar this time. On the side where there were still many Shalan groups of guards, the groups they hadn’t yet thinned out, and a piece of the wall began to crumble away.

Murmur watched it, concerned. What if killing the monsters on this side of the cave area caused whatever alarmed Snowy behind