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

keep him up. Which left the healers a bit pressed to ensure the rest of the raid’s health was topped off. One of the things Murmur did not miss about healing was the stress.

The Spine Shot was the one thing she couldn’t peg on Htailog. It didn’t come back at sixty percent, or even fifty. It hit again at forty-five percent, and she took one of the spines to her left shoulder. The pain shocked through her system, biting clear through and cutting off movement of that arm. It felt like it was starting to rot from the inside out, like the poison was about to destroy her. But Sheladrios was there with his heal, because more than ninety seconds had passed.

The healing spell felt unlike anything she’d ever experienced before. Like a cleansing of the wound, of her very soul. If she looked, she thought scars on her real body had might even be gone when she logged out. Serenity overcame her, and she and the other members who’d felt its effects hunkered down to burn Htailog.

Their DPS boosted through sheer determination. Or at least, that sounded cool. A lot of that determination was helped by saying fuck it and using cooldowns. It was a good thing too, because they managed to avoid another Spine Shot. As soon as Htailog dropped, the other wall emitted furious roars that almost sounded like a loud squawk. It was high pitched enough that it hurt her ears. She wasn’t looking forward to what came out of that wall either.

Looting Htailog’s corpse, she grabbed the key and ran over to the turtle.

Sheladrios blinked slowly and spoke much like Murmur imagined a sloth might. “Thank you. Leg first, please.” He seemed old and tired, and perhaps wise too, but he’d not yet said much to establish the latter. She hurried, unlocking the massive metal loop around his legs, and tried to pry it off.

Risk batted her hands away and said. “I’ll do this. Sometimes strength in a character is a plus.” He offered her a very small grin before focusing on breaking the rusted ring apart. She heard it crack as she made her way back to the group and could feel the subtle vibrations that came from Sheladrios’s footsteps underneath the frantic beating of whatever was behind the other wall.

Finally, a hole appeared in the stone. A massive beak shoved itself through, pecking on the sides of the wall and ripping it apart. The beak had to be made of steel. She shuddered to contemplate letting that mouth get to any of them.

And as the wall came down completely with a massive kick of one of the bird’s legs, she realized it wasn’t just one mouth they’d have to avoid, but multiple.

The creature stood about fifteen feet tall but had three heads all bobbing around each other. One was grey, one red, and one black. Murmur tested her sensing net but got nothing from it but anger. A lot of anger. She frowned as Devlish cast Hatred on it and pulled its attention to himself. But only the red head stayed focused on him. The others kept wavering about, eyeing everyone in the raid. And she knew, deep down, that wasn’t a good thing.

Finally, she moved back to where Havoc and the healers stood, in the shadow of Sheladrios. He sat there like a giant statue, his age all too apparent to them all.

Kyriel the Mighty has let out a Disorientating Screech.

You have resisted Disorienting Screech due to your Mental Acuity.

Others have not been so lucky.

Murmur sighed and blanket removed all of the ill effects from her raid. That was going to eat into her mana pool pretty strongly.

“You may draw mana from me.” Sheladrios spoke softly behind her. Or at least, he probably thought it was soft, but his voice rumbled, and the whole raid heard him.

Murmur smiled a thank you, and concentrated on Kyriel. “Okay, birdie. Here we go,” she muttered in front of her, and Snowy’s mouth opened in a very wolfy smile as he darted in to hamstring the mob.

“Dodge the heads,” Devlish shouted out. “Kyriel has Beak Peck with the black one. And Laser Eyes with the grey one. Alternating stuns.”

So interrupts it was. “Karn, Jirald, Jinna, Devlish,” she called out. “On the black head.”

After a quick look around, she picked the others. “Risk, Rash, Merlin, Beastial: on the grey.” That should allow them all time for their stuns to reset with some margin of error allowed.

Her own stuns weren’t good as interrupts on large bosses. Melee stuns were much better for that. She watched as the stuns rotated themselves like well-oiled machines as the mages allowed blizzards and firestorms to come raining down on the huge bird. And she watched in fascination again as the rangers loosed their never-ending stream of arrows.

Games and their lack of obeying any normal sense of rules. Wasn’t that what made them magical?

The red head that Devlish fought against didn’t appear to have any abilities. Murmur frowned, because it had to, and given its coloring, she thought it might even be fire.

She spoke over guild instead of raid, needing to know. Dev, has it done anything yet?

Devlish: Not the red head. I still haven’t seen what it’s capable of. Maybe it’s just meant to distract me?

Veranol: That would be highly unusual if so. Keep an eye out.

Devlish: No shit, Ver.

Veranol: Sorry. That was a bit off…

Murmur kept her eyes trained on the red head, waiting for it to make a move.

But its focus was solely on the tank. That’s all it did, focus on him like it was stalking him, determined to kill him. The aura around him was filled with killing intent, like a bomb just waiting to go off.

Fuck. That had to be it, right? It was a bomb, and when they got to a certain point in the fight, or else a certain percentage of health, it was going to explode. Her gut tingled again in that irritating way