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

“I got another in the last dungeon but hadn’t used it yet, didn’t feel like I needed to.”

Mur didn’t take her eyes from the path leading out of the massive circular space they stood in. Something was stopping her from letting the raid forge ahead. Not just the way the quest response was worded, but the way the ground trembled ever so slightly. “You feel it now?”

“In my bones, Mur.” Devlish moved his shield into place. This one shone with a golden undertone, heavy rocks of blue and emerald coloring adorned the surface, creating what appeared to be a barrier spell.

She could definitely appreciate equipment upgrades.

Masha appeared at her elbow suddenly, and Murmur flinched involuntarily.

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.” He seemed genuinely concerned.

“It’s nothing. I just wasn’t expecting you to be there. Like, at all.” How did she tell someone she’d known and played around for a couple of years that she’d been scared he’d come to stab her in the back because she thought he was under a type of spell or something conjured by the rogue who wanted her dead? Exactly, so she didn’t say anything.

“I wanted to say—I’ve been feeling off, and I may have come across as not quite myself.” He seemed a bit sheepish, like he was trying to remember exactly what he’d done and couldn’t. “So if I offended you, I do apologize.”

Murmur blinked at him. Had he even been in control of his own feelings at the time? Considering how he’d acted, how Jinna had acted—and the rest of them—maybe not. Maybe it really wasn’t just Jirald somehow infecting feelings that already existed. Maybe it completely fabricated them. She flashed her best locus smile at the cleric. “It’s all good. We’re fine. Was there something else?”

Masha hesitated, his eyes glancing back at his group in the raid. “Jirald…he’s acting pretty ill, ever since we zoned into the prison. He’s speaking less, not on his DPS game, and frankly, he looks pale. Paler than his locus shell usually does, I mean.”

Murmur realized he’d hesitated because Jirald wasn’t exactly her favorite person. “Keep an eye on him, and don’t let him overdo it. You probably know him best. We can’t really swap out, but if we need to, we do have the…NPCs with us.” She was lucky she’d caught herself. She almost said Ais, although artificial intelligence was always responsible for different levels of NPCs.

Masha smiled, the usual smile his cleric wore in all games ever. Easy going, nice…the same and usual Masha. So what the fuck had happened in the previous few dungeons, and what the hell did it have to do with Jirald suddenly getting sick? Because those two things together were just too much of a coincidence. Since they didn’t exist in the first place, she was going to have to figure out what had happened.

But there wasn’t time for that. Not when a loud scream of anger tore through the circular area. The wind, like a tornado, tugged at them and pushed several of the more unprepared raiders down to the ground. The wind spiraled up and out of circle of pillars, picking up debris and dirt along with it. When it cleared, when it was gone, Murmur spied a dark spot at the top of the left pillar closest to the exiting path. Those ones were taller than the rest by maybe a few feet, but it was difficult to tell from down here.

Robes billowed in the wind, like a supreme wizard high upon his mountain. Then the figure stepped off the columns and practically floated all the way down. Not directly down, but on a diagonal, aiming for where Elastitan had activated his portal.

As he got closer, the wizard’s robes were noticeably more elaborate than anything their raid force was wearing. And the hood hid everything, especially at the angle the wizard stood at.

When he finally landed, Murmur noticed that this robed figure was maybe eight or nine feet tall. Much bigger than the rest of them yet humanoid in form. She pursed her lips as the whole raid backed away from him. Groaning sounds emanated from him, guttural and painful. Like just moving caused him agony. Murmur watched him slowly curl his arms away from his sides like there were no bones in his limbs.

She gasped as he unfurled stretched to be a few inches taller than she’d originally thought and as the strange lighting in the prison caught his face. At once stage she thought this man might have been a dark elf from the way patches of purple-tinted skin clung to its face here and there, with normal patches mixed in like skin had been torn from bodies and sewn together. The eyes, though—they were eyes she could have sworn she’d seen before. Eyes because of their malice that she wouldn’t soon forget.

Even with the hood hanging mostly around his face, with his face obscured by patchwork flesh and the hood that wouldn’t push back, she’d seen that face before. Murmur knew the man that stood in front of her. From when he’d stormed into her bedroom after she finally got out of the bloody capsule.

Their opponent was James.

 

QUEST

You have encountered a particularly volatile specimen of a magically mutated elf warlock, only found right here, in this very dungeon.

Awaken the human within to return to himself and free the Jamesnegon from its circle of torment.

Murmur didn’t even have to think twice before accepting the quest. She didn’t care how much of a douche he’d been; she didn’t even care how much hell he’d given her mother. He was a human, morphed however the fuck they’d managed to morph him into the character he’d created.

Hell, she hadn’t ever seen a warlock before this. He was larger than any other player species she’d seen in the game so far, so elongating him like that had to be some sort of mutation. Pain must be racing through his body.

All of those sensations firing through the