Somnia Online by K.T. Hanna (reading strategies book txt) 📕

his face was only visible because his mouth was open, revealing sharp white teeth and a mouth as red as blood. Even his eyes were red like a freshly opened donor bag.

Welcome. His voice boomed across the surface, whooshing up to them like a battering ram of fear. It leaked into Murmur’s bones, and she pushed at it with her barrier, protecting the entire raid from the onslaught of emotion it appeared Michael had a hold of.

That wasn’t imposing her will; it was preventing their opponent from imposing his own. Belius nodded at her, reinforcing her shield with his own.

Michael frowned. “Ah. Enchanters. My least favorite class, wasting my most prized accomplishment.”

He stood up and walked down one of the five stone steps that led up to his black throne. With a simple wave of his hand, something slammed down behind them. Murmur glanced behind her to see a massive iron gate reaching up as tall as the walls went and further.

“Now.” He paused, smiling again. The pitch-black skin he sported felt like a black hole about to swallow them all up. He was nothingness come to capture them all. Murmur squared her jaw, determined not to let him.

He raised an eyebrow like he could hear her thoughts and flashed an insolent grin. “You have no choice, you know. Everything I’ve done, everything you’ve done, it was all to lead you here. And here, I will steal your power and take your lives.”

Michael’s presence was overwhelming. It wasn’t quite the darkness of night, more like a sense of utter emptiness. A solid black hole. Wings folded neatly behind him when he moved, but appeared to be made out of some thin, durable metal instead of flesh. A tungsten monstrosity, somehow alive.

When he sprang up from his throne and extended his wings, her suspicions were confirmed. They were metal, and their fringes were sharp. Getting close to him would prove challenging. The fangs that protruded were also metal, but more of a shiny hematite than the tungsten of his body. They were sharp and dangerous implements of pain. His fingernails extended to claws that resembled forged daggers, and his hooved feet no longer appeared cloven, but more like they were made out of ice skate blades.

With a challenging roar, he leapt toward them.

 

Right then, Murmur wasn’t sure she should have said anything to the other guild leaders. Michael was strong and damned adept at keeping his thoughts and emotions to himself. Not to mention his ability to exert his own influence over them. She could feel the constant pressure he placed on the shielding. And his resistances to her own spells drove her batty.

Still, though, she had so much to concentrate on just to make sure the shielding didn’t drain her MA too fast.

Devlish clashed with the wannabe titan, that tower shield the only thing that saved the lacerta. She saw Telvar flinch at the impact and knew somehow that the dragon was coming up with something. Maybe dread knights weren’t the ideal tank for this fight. Considering they knew nothing about it, Murmur had no fucking clue.

Snowy dashed in and out in a flurry of attacks she couldn’t follow, like he’d scaled his abilities up a notch. She didn’t even pretend to understand how he was what he was anymore; she was just glad he liked having her around.

Michael, it seemed, didn’t have timed abilities. They hadn’t yet reached a point where she could see if he had percentage-based abilities, but they’d already been fighting him for two minutes and had only dented his health by three percent.

She frowned, noting that no one had called out his weaknesses, and refused to believe that might mean he had none.

Just then, Ishwa called out. “Water. Best chance I have is with water.”

Interested, Murmur eyed the massive beast gleefully flailing at Devlish’s shield. The huge tower shield had some pretty nasty dings in it now, and Murmur knew it was one of his more recent acquisitions. With Michael’s health moving so slowly, would they even have the gear to outlast him?

She glanced at her wolf and the complete and utter rage in his eyes. It was rare Snowy showed actual emotions. It made her want to know what he was thinking all the more. The raid members were already fighting with everything they had. She noted the rangers switched to ice spells, since they obviously couldn’t arrow water, and the bards used water and ice boosters, everyone had changed their amplifications spells and buffs.

Still, Michael’s health might have gone down faster, but it was so miniscule.

And when he hit ninety-five percent, he turned and locked eyes with Murmur.

“You,” he called out, pointing to her. “Stop blocking my fun!”

And then he raised himself up in the air on his two massive pairs of red wings and cackled like he belonged in a movie as the evil antagonist. But that was where her amusement stopped.

He roared up to the sky, outstretched arms toward the clouds, and he pulled down lightning. Or at least something very similar to it. Small thunderbolts struck all around the ground in a rain of destruction, upending cobblestones left and right, showering rocky debris everywhere.

Etriad screamed as his leg was pinned with one to the ground, and only Dansyn’s quick thinking pulled the mage out of the way of another. Cardishan got nailed through the shoulder, and Masha took one to the hip.

The damage over time was high, but a short duration at least. The healers barely managed to keep those hit alive. But at least now they knew one of his spells. Michael didn’t appear to be out of any type of playbook. He was his own character, completely subverted to his own wiles.

Murmur gulped, glancing at the destruction a few feet from where she’d been standing. If Snowy hadn’t bowled her over, she’d have been pinned. That wolf saved her life more than she could count.

Michael laughed, descending to land on the ground. Murmur wondered why he