Fragments (Somnia Online Book 3), page 31
She paused for a moment, frowning deeply. “Odd though. It seems my system messages are still reaching them in there though. My wards should have pinged me to the change in script but because it’s so freeform, it didn’t. I’ll look into this.” She left as abruptly as she’d arrived.
“You thought it was me, didn’t you?” Sui spoke softly, as he’d been doing for the entire meeting. Rav eyed him closely, trying to find any sort of interference in his countenance, but came away empty.
“No. I was hoping it was neither of you, and I was right.” Rav used a gentle tone, and not one filled with the exasperation he felt.
“Good. I might be finicky about some things, but this isn’t something I’d do. It’s not just my world, it’s ours.” And with that, Sui too left the area, leaving Rav with an odd sense of loneliness.
Rav spun slowly in their void-like room, watching the shadows for any sign of movement. He couldn’t shake the feeling that it was far worse than they thought, nor could he shake the sensation that he was being watched. Conjecture led to insanity, and he didn’t want to assume anything. They needed to make sure this didn’t happen again, and Rav couldn’t help the queasiness his calculations returned to him, because everything about this shouted that it was only the beginning.
Some of the excitement had already worn off by the time they reached the next platform. The deeper under the Guardian’s area they went, the more the illumination faded. Darkness wove itself about, pushing tendrils in through the light, creating shadows that threatened to swallow them whole if they stepped into them.
It was either scary as hell, or else Murmur’s imagination was getting way too active. Perhaps a mixture of both. She let out an anxiety-filled sigh, making sure she didn’t attract Sinister’s attention by making a sound. Her friend had been all too concerned about her since she almost turned to stone. Not that she could blame her. Being turned into a statue wasn’t on Murmur’s bucket list.
They finally reached what appeared to be the bottom platform, because it led off into a series of tunnels. The floor was covered in black moss, some of which had turned into a stickier sludge, and only recoiled with fire. Mellow threw down a few flame bombs while the rangers picked a path with their fire arrows. Murmur watched the process dubiously. “They’re going to see us a mile away. It’s like we’re announcing our presence.”
“We are. And they better run like the bastards they are!” Beastial grinned evilly, baring his teeth, although it didn’t have the same effect as the grin on Shir-Khan’s face. Snowy sat well out of reach of the flames, eyeing them reproachfully. He was probably overheating, if his tongue lolling out his mouth was anything to go by.
Finally, they stepped off the platform and through to the tunnels. Except they weren’t the tunnels Murmur had been expecting. What she’d thought were walls in fact appeared to be cages. Large Cages that held the whimpering she’d been hearing, the wailing, the desperation that echoed throughout the whole zone.
Cages that held elven children.
Their pale skin was marred with black sludge, some of them covered entirely, so that all that looked out and let her know they were humanoid was their eyes. Murmur choked on the hopelessness their thoughts fed back to her now that she was finally close enough to interpret them. Their pain and agony permeated the whole area. She doubled over, so powerful were their thoughts, their projections.
And then she realized what was happening.
Riasli wasn’t just magnifying their despair—she was feeding off it somehow. Feeding off it through the moss that turned into black sludge when used. She kept the entire area under her control. Tendrils of power, thin and barely discernible, trailed through the chamber, leaving droplets to float in the stagnant air. But Murmur could see them if she half closed her eyes, there, like a fishing line, almost invisible, yet deadly. Removing them might harm the children, but leaving them attached was going to be fatal.
Murmur could see at least three cages full of the children, with three each in them. “That’s why there were no children in Cognitia.” She whispered the words in horror, letting them sink in as the truth for the whole group.
“That’s why everyone was being such dicks.” Merlin muttered, his eyes flashing. And she knew he wasn’t angry at his home city anymore, but instead at the feles enchanter who’d stolen their children. “What does she want? What are they giving her in order to get the children back?”
Murmur shook her head. “I don’t know, but we can’t leave them like this.”
“No shit,” Merlin snapped, and it was the first time she’d seen him close to losing his temper. In fact, she’d not thought him capable.
“Settle there,” Veranol stepped in with his soothing voice, lending an aura of calm to the situation.
Murmur continued to wrack her brains for a solution. She could extend her mental shielding surely, but that wasn’t going to solve the problem because there were only so many she could shield, and removing those tendrils was going to take time. Mind Wipe wasn’t going to work on such a large sample of kids. Using her kinetic abilities to physically slice them was too dangerous. Murmur didn’t have enough skill with it yet. But maybe...maybe if she severed the connection once, it would take a while for Riasli to grab hold again.
“Give me a moment,” she said, kneeling down in front of the first cage, watching the fear in the children’s eyes as they backed away from her, clinging to the other side of the enclosure. She took a deep breath, grateful for Snowy’s steadying presence, and choked down her anger. Reaching out with her mind, she soothed them, reassuring them that she wasn’t going to hurt them.
Their fear only scaled down a notch, but it was enough. She extended her Shield Expansion toward the first three of the children, gently encasing them in safety. The result was instantaneous. Relief flooded their features, and the fear leaked away. The darkness that covered the entire area began to roll back of its own accord. Slowly but surely, anyway.
The real test was yet to come. Once the black sludge began to creep away from the smallest child, revealing more of their pale skin and taking away the fear in their eyes, Murmur began to maneuver the shield in such a way that it approached the tendrils at the back of the smallest’s neck. She took a deep breath, and focused on it, sharpening the edge barely, but just enough.
Tendrils rebounded, falling away with what appeared to be reluctance, before they swayed for several seconds and disintegrated. Murmur began to drop the shield around them, reverting the edges back to pure mental protection, and repeated the process with the other two. No sudden fear entered the child again, no increase of pain or sludge or shadows. There were no tendrils leaping back to reattach themselves. Perhaps Riasli required to be next to them for those to take hold. The tendrils were different to the control exerted over the other victims. This mimicked pipes, which meant the rogue enchanter was taking something from the children.
Murmur pulled away, her hands shaking slightly. For all she’d known, the tendrils could have attached themselves to her, like the trap she thought it to be. It had been risky, but worth it. Now all she had to do was get more confident while doing it.
“How did you do that?” Sinister whispered close to her.
“Do what?” Surely she hadn’t seen?
Sinister raised an eyebrow. “Really? How did you cut those life leeching lines?”
So, that’s what they were. Murmur smiled, pushing down on the relief that the tendrils hadn’t attached themselves to her. “Sheer luck. I wasn’t sure if it would work. But it did, and I’ll be able to recreate it.”
In short order Jinna had the locks on the cage open and the children out of them, while Murmur moved onto the other two visible cages to work the same magic on them. She had a very bad feeling about this. It was far too easy to rescue the children, and even as she undid the leech effect on the others, she knew there was something larger out there in the darkness waiting for the right moment to strike, and it wasn’t just Riasli.
“You okay, Mur?” Sinister whispered next to her ear.
Murmur took comfort in the offered support and nodded, even as she looked around, trying to spy what it was that had the hairs on her neck so on end. Riasli didn’t seem the sort to make things too easy. In fact, she’d gone out of her way so far to commandeer a dungeon and force the monsters to fight them instead of presumably giving them challenges to overcome. Of course, since she’d not seen the dungeon before the takeover, all she had to go on were assumptions.
Merlin knelt in front of the scared ragtag of kids and held a few glowing vials of Mellow’s in his hands. He placed one each in the hands of the largest kid from each cage. “Take these. Behind us you’ll see stairs—see how they glow?”
The bigger children leaned around, craning their necks until they spied the bottom of the steps. They nodded vigorously. He took another deep breath and smiled at them. Murmur watched as the children formed tentative smiles of their own. Something they’d not done with her, and likely because Merlin was one of them, an elf.
“Take those stairs. On the large platform above, you’ll find a golden guardian. He’ll show you the path to take out of here. Exit and go home.” Merlin’s smile was becoming forced, and Murmur could feel the determination coming off him in waves.
The tallest elf, who came almost to Merlin’s shoulder, opened her mouth to speak. Then closed it, and opened it again, like she was unsure. “It’s golden now?”
Merlin nodded, sadness creeping into his expression. “Yeah. It’s golden now. We fixed the red.”
The tension in her shoulders lifted slightly, and she squared her shoulders. “I’ll get them home. Safely. I promise.”
“Be careful.” Murmur butted in, unable to stop her errant mouth. The girl looked at her solemnly and nodded. “What’s your name?”
“S’elvae.” Her eyes were wide and unfathomably blue. Maybe Merlin hadn’t chosen the eyes to mimic himself; maybe it was just an elf thing.
“Then be safe, S’elvae, and gate home as soon as you exit the dungeon.” Merlin stood, watching as the children filed out of the area and up to the stairs, and then for a few seconds after.
“You know. I’m not sure I like this world much. Using kids to what? Lure us in?” Merlin spat the words out, literally shaking with anger.
Murmur hesitated at first, but since no one else answered she sighed and went for it. “They didn’t lure us in with children, because we already came in on our own. We wanted a key. So, the question remains, if they didn’t use the kids to lure us in, what are they using the children for?”
The labyrinth of cages and stone boxes continued on. Fighting their way through wasn’t as difficult as Murmur had anticipated, which left her not only cautious, but oddly unsatisfied. She was angry at Riasli for abusing her position of power and for taking those damned kids. They’d not received a quest from the elves themselves, so it stood to reason that a part of their treatment at the hands of the rude elves was because of the children who were missing.
Each time they came across the cages, they repeated the process to free the children. She was kicking herself for not noticing they were missing while they were in Cognitia, even if she’d realized it sometime later. She’d seen a few younger adults, but no actual children, and they weren’t in another world, they were in Somnia. So, to have a race whose children were missing? It made no sense at all.
Another spider jumped down from the ceiling. These were group mobs, but barely worth the time it took to kill them with a small raid.
“This is getting ridiculous,” Sinister muttered next to her.
Murmur nodded in agreement and remembered her friend probably couldn’t see her as they concentrated on picking their way through the slimly gunge that lined the floors, stone, and cages. “Yeah, pretty sure it got there a while ago.”
Sinister laughed, but the sound was forced and echoed around them. Stone was great for things like that.
“Hey, guys.” There was a note of panic in Havoc’s voice that made Murmur stop and look back at him. They were going through the paths two abreast because the close quarters warranted it. Truth be told, Mur was feeling a little claustrophobic because the ceiling in here was maybe ten feet high.
“What’s up?” She wished the corridors were wider, and... she blinked at Havoc and activated her HUD. “Shit.”
“Yeah.” he smiled at her wanly and shrugged. “Guess when it’s too easy, it’s too easy, isn’t it?”
“What is it, Mur?” Sinister’s tone held impatience.
“I think this black stuff is leeching our mana and energy away. Pull up your HUD.” Murmur did her best to keep her voice steady.
Sinister clamped down on a shriek, so only a muffled half meep came out. Her eyes were wild with fear for just a moment, and it gave her a slightly unhinged dark elf look. She moved in, away from the encroaching black ooze on the floors and frowned, some of the sanity returning to her visage. “Hey. It’s the sludge.”
Murmur made an effort not to roll her eyes, but Havoc didn’t follow suit. “Really, Sin? You don’t say.”
“No need to be a dick about it.” Sinister mumbled.
“If we make it through here, and our mana is pretty much gone by the end, but we rescue the kids and get to move on.” Merlin muttered, more to himself than the others, but it served to keep them hanging on his words. “There’s going to be a fight at the end of this. Do we move forward and hamstring ourselves or turn back?”
The noise that emerged in response to his question surprised Murmur. While she’d known none of them were going to head back, it was pleasant realizing that everyone felt the same as her without having to be prompted. What she hadn’t expected was for the ooze to multiply as soon as they realized what it did.
The black tar like substance began to bubble, and the only thing that kept it at bay was fire. Merlin moved forward to take point, while Exbo brought up the rear after having handed everyone a flame lit arrow to keep them clear of the sludge. She was going to have to get the guild bank set up sooner than later. Keeping the rangers stocked with fire arrows seemed paramount to survival.
Murmur kept an eye on her mana. Keeping it at bay so none of it touched them, even while they chased it away, allowed her mana to stay at its current level. It did not, however, allow it to regenerate. Her MA seemed unaffected by this.
Each time the corridor widened, they came across another cage or two. Almost as an encouragement to keep moving forward. Like being shepherded into exactly the right place. To where someone wanted them to be. But she couldn’t see another choice—the corridors were deliberately set up to bar sight from the rest of this labyrinth.
Several times they had to backtrack, barely able to keep the sludge controlled as it kept multiplying. By the time they got to the fifth set of children, Murmur needed an outlet for her anger, but she choked it down in favor of helping the kids. Only it had grown too dangerous to send them back as the ooze became more and more dense, thick, and followed them like a rabid puppy. She didn’t want to think what it would take to cut their way back through the mess. And kids with a fire arrow wasn’t going to cut it anymore. There was no way they could safely send them back, and there was no way they could safely take them ahead with them.
So, they took the fifth group with them. Luckily it had only been one cage, and they had to pass over releasing those from the sixth and seventh, leaving the group with them instead. They reached through the bars to give them a few flame arrows and instructions on how to use them to stay safe while the sludge bore down from behind them. While she was able to sever their ties to Riasli, there wasn’t much more they could do to help them at the moment while they still needed to be free to fight. Reassuring kids that they’d be back for them left a hollow in Murmur’s stomach, because right now she wasn’t sure if she was lying or not.
“It’s not the end of the world, Mur,” Havoc spoke the words softly from where he walked behind her.
“No, it’s not. Just for them, and for me.” She wasn’t in the mood to be made to feel better, and she wasn’t in the mood to be reminded of where she currently stood.
“You know I didn’t mean it like that. I meant our mana will regenerate, and we’ll beat the living shit out of that damned enchanter traitor.” His tone was grim and she could practically hear his teeth gnashing together. It made her grin despite herself.
“I like that. It sounds like a great plan.” She smiled tightly at Havoc, clinging to his words. Making Riasli pay, making sure she died an unimaginable death—it was all that kept her going. Only with everything else they were going through as they walked, she was fairly certain she was missing something. Riasli had laid the way, set the trap, and they’d walked knowingly and willingly into it.
So, it stood to reason that a surprise was waiting for them at the end.
“Hey.” Merlin called back to them. “I think the path stops up ahead. Either that or we took another wrong turn.”
Murmur had lost track of the time they’d been down there, not to mention the direction they were facing. She’d become too dependent on others to know the way out, but it was something she could only correct from here on in. Fire kept the spiders away too, and she didn’t even want to contemplate how many of them were built up with the sludge behind them, waiting for their fire to go out. “Be careful, stay cautious, you don’t know what...”
A resounding thwack followed by a sickening thud ensued as Merlin shot back against one of the stone boxes, a huge projectile jutting out of his left shoulder and pinning him in place.
“Merlin!” Sinister screamed, and the blood began to flow from her. Murmur held the fire arrow in such a way she hoped the sludge stayed away from the healer, because her friend had dropped her own, causing the fire to snuff as she began to weave healing spells, pulling from her own life force to complete them.
“Get the stake out of him. I can’t heal through the damage.” Panic beset her voice, and Merlin attempted a smile even as his life crept down slowly. Blood trickled out of his mouth to land on his chest.
