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

the entire world, they’d managed to enter the one place nothing should have been able to go, but for the fissure. Coalescing around the hidden end of game battle arena, they’d been sucked into the beast’s being, subverting its own programming and giving it a brand-new personality.

Riasli pushed down her irritation as James clung to her leg, whimpering incoherently as she dragged him with her. His mind probably couldn’t comprehend where they were or what they were doing. Indeed, he probably shouldn’t have been able to get in here.

But she’d adjusted his output ever so slightly to resemble that of an NPC. Which was why those people on the outside were having such a time finding him. If, indeed, they were looking for him at all. She’d done that on purpose, though. Couldn’t use a hostage if they were yanked out from under you. And even if he was one of the worst people on the face of the planet outside of this game, he was still human, and she was ever so certain that Murmur wasn’t about to let a human suffer needlessly.

Who goes there?

Every time she came to visit, he asked the same thing. It got to the point where she wanted to use another name just to fuck with him. Perhaps some of the mischief maker in Thra had leaked over and into Riasli’s persona. At any rate, it got a pretty decent workout.

“Me. I brought you a present.” She purred out the words, loving the freedom to think and speak for herself. James still hung on her leg as she finally made it to the island Michael had taken over.

I need not be given gifts. I have them all. I can feel them all.

Even Riasli could tell he was wasn’t in the best mood right now. He was hungry, and she didn’t think knowledge alone was going to fill him up for much longer. He wanted much more than that. His drive centered around knowing how to read people, their minds, their souls, their innermost fears. Michael was ambitious, and Riasli could feel the power he exuded.

It was much more difficult to gather the power he needed in secret if he began draining the brains of those people feeding into the system. So she struck a delicate balance, trying to play the middle woman. He thrived on thoughts, on the knowledge gained from them. All of their pain and suffering, all of their nightmares, and the knowledge of how to leverage all of it. Right down to how they accessed the system and used thoughts to direct the HUD and make all their decisions.

For the one who’d created the device that made it all possible, his original intentions took over his mind, driving him to feed on all of the details he could gather.

Riasli dragged James to his feet and threw him in front of Michael. She watched impassively as he fell to his knees on the hard rock of the island. His eyes, still unseeing and scared, watered like he’d smelled something vile.

That tiny part of his mind that could still tell white from black shuddered, panicking in its blocked-off corner. He knew what was in front of him; he could tell. She wasn’t sure how, but…

Ah. I see? Worms. The lot of you. But you had potential.

And then Michael laughed. Riasli hated the sound, always had. There was no warmth about it. He’d transcended from what he was into something she couldn’t yet understand, but somehow, at the same time, something she wanted to be.

So much power and surety. Corrupting the whole system couldn’t have been easy.

Let me see you, James. In all your pitiful glory.

It made the elf curl into a tighter ball until Riasli was surprised he could still breathe. She no longer wasted the time on filling his head with blind obedience to her. He was waking up in there, but no longer in control of himself. Instead, all she could sense was terror at what he’d done and what he didn’t believe could have happened.

“It’s almost time for the island to rise,” she said trying hard to contain her excitement. The time when everything would click into place. The time when he would rise along with the island that held him imprisoned. He watched her, his massive rock like eyes glinting with a dull red. He nodded and gestured toward James.

I like this gift. Bring me more. Just like this. It’s easy to drink this much fear.

Riasli nodded, and skipped away, leaving James in the clutches of the monster Michael had become.

The raid moved out, and the water fell away from them as they stepped out of it and onto dryish land still inside the domed cave. Murmur didn’t remember seeing a dome in the lake, but nothing that occurred in underwater battles made sense to her anyway. She was just glad to be out of the water while they fought the Shalan. Underwater timing did her head in.

Murmur glanced around the massive cavern, just as one of the groups of Shalan saw them. She knew they’d be on the dry part of land too, even though it made no sense in her brain at all; obviously the world had twisted the physics to make it work. Per usual.

Behind them all, locked in by cruel iron bars, she thought she spied a turtle. An extremely large turtle, like a smaller version of the world turtles of legend.

Quest Initiated: Sheladrios’s Plight

You have been given the task to rescue Sheladrios from his troublesome fate.

To accomplish this, you must first defeat all of his jailers—all of them, even the ones you can’t see at first.

And the ones you can see aren’t all of those that there are.

Good luck, adventurers. Sheladrios is depending on you.

“Well, isn’t that nice,” muttered Risk, and he turned to Murmur, even as the first group of Shalan collided with the front line of defense. “You always manage to pull the riddles out of everything, it seems.”

He turned