Somnia Online: Fragments - Chapter Twenty-Six (Patreon)

Mirror image

"Fuck, that hurt!" Merlin's voice sounded raspy and strained as he materialized right in front of Sinister once she'd resurrected him. Murmur felt the tension leak out of her shoulders, and hadn't realized quite how pent up she'd been. All she could think while watching him was that death shouldn't be permanent in here, and what if he hadn't been able to be res'd in the dungeon? So many things held on them all sticking together.

"Don't do that again." Sinister muttered, not looking at any of them. Her voice cracked on the last word, and Murmur realized it had shaken her up more than most things. She put her arm around Sin's shoulder, gently hugging her to her side without making her turn her head. Right now all Sin needed was support, not questions.

Still, watching one of her best friends get impaled by a huge stake through the upper left chest had been so real. Murmur gagged at the thought of the pain receptors, at the fact that he must have felt at least a portion of what it would truly be like. It left her with uncharitable feelings about how the game viewed mortality and how perhaps, allowing people to experience death and then revive might just make them impervious to the real dangers of pain and death.

Suddenly, she just needed to send her mom a message, to let her know it was all okay and that they were having fun in the game. Well, even if the latter was slightly stretched truth for the moment, it wasn't a complete lie. At least they were all playing the game together and adventuring, right?

Mom. Just checking in. Love you, and want you to know I'm not really mad anymore, just a little sad, a little scared, and a bit lonely. 

She blinked at the system warning she got across her eyes.

Your message could not be sent while you're in an unauthorized section of the game. Please note that until you exit your current location, all outside communication is not possible.

She pulled up her guild chat, trying not to panic as she checked it for activity. There was nothing there, at least not for the last few hours. The last thing said had been before they ever entered the ruins. Chills ran down her spine as she glanced at her friends, all of whom were still gathering themselves after Merlin's impaling. She didn't want to worry them and wasn't sure if they'd notice if she didn't say anything.

Had it only let them resurrect Merlin because they were in the zone? She chose not to alarm anyone. Since she'd not figured out what it was preventing her from sending a message, and she didn't want to alarm the others, Murmur kept quiet while everyone buffed each other and themselves. 

For all she knew, it was another glitch in her system, like the one that effected her faction updates that she'd never got an explanation for. This way she wasn't about to alarm the others for no good reason.

Jinna cloaked himself and moved slowly toward the opening where Merlin had been impaled. Murmur held her breath for a few moments, so worried was she about something nailing Jinna in the chest too. After about a minute, he crept back.

"It was a trap. You didn't see the tripplate because it was covered in sludge." Jinna shrugged uncomfortably. "To be honest, I don't think any of us would have seen it in this current state. But the corridor opens to a wider hall. I didn't look beyond that, or even travel into it. I feel like it's something we should do as a team."

Merlin nodded, his face pale, like he was still recovering from the death. "Yeah. I should have been more careful."

"We've all got perfect hindsight. Don't beat yourself up about it." Jinna's words were soothing in the creepily mana sucking sludge infected area. "I'll scout ahead for us so we can try to avoid any of this in the future."

They continued out, relief palpable as they were finally able to move out of the confines of the corridors. Murmur cringed as they passed the final cage of children, and she knew they couldn't retrieve them yet because they had no way to send them to safety. The eighteen odd kids they'd rescued should have made it out, but she had no guarantee they did, and no way to know until they figured out how to get out of here and enable the system to reach them again.

Because she had no doubt that right now they weren't in Somnia proper. There was something twisted about this zone, something unnatural. Well, insofar as anything in a fictional computer universe was natural anyway. 

"Mur? You're being extra quiet." Havoc spoke from her right hand side. She hadn't noticed he'd moved up next to her. She blinked at the hall around them, the smooth stones that made up the floor met seamlessly. She could feel the cool seep through to her feet even through the soles of her boots. Almost like a breeze was blowing through from under them.

"Yeah, I'm thinking." She muttered absent-mindedly hoping the inkling in the back of her mind was wrong. 

"She never listens, does she?" Beastial laughed, but it sounded forced. "We keep telling her to stop thinking."

"Shh." Murmur covered her lips with her pointer finger, signaling silence. It was there, on the tip of her brain, the idea she had trying to break out. "Be careful, there's a soft breeze coming up from the floor, between cracks I can't even see. And something about this is setting my skin on edge, it's familiar and nagging at me." 

"Oh." The break in that one syllable as Sinister uttered it was enough for Murmur to look up from where she studied the floor. She followed Sinister's gaze to where it was transfixed.

At the other end of the massive hall there appeared to be twelve shadowed figures. Murmur and the others stopped in their tracks, and the mobs in front of them just swayed in place. Some of them had loose clothing, which fluttered softly in the breeze that came up through the floor tiles. Murmur took a step forward, curious now, and watched as the shadowed figure directly opposite her did the same. Two more steps and its face came into the light.

Her face.

She froze. The other her stopped moving, still a good twenty feet away. She peered through the dim light at it, not understanding its purpose. Murmur lifted her right hand, and the mirror image lifted her left. She frowned, and cast invisibility on herself on a whim, watching as the other her did the same.

The others had joined her, fanned out in a line to either side, testing their reflections in the same way. She dropped invis, causing herself to appear across from her again. It was getting confusing in her head.

"Anyone got any ideas on what this is?" Devlish's tone reflected the rampant confusion running through Murmur's mind. 

"I'd hazard a guess and say they're mirror images meant to fight us." Havoc's sarcastic reply wasn't helping anything, but it seemed to be his defensive mechanism when he didn't know how else to react.

"Basically." Sinister began, a frown on her face. "We have to fight ourselves and come out on top? But how do we do that? I mean, does it have my inventory too? Can it access potions or my hidden abilities, or my expanded abilities? Will it have the same regeneration or is it a lesser version of myself."

Murmur raised an eyebrow at the very accurate musings of her friend.

"All excellent questions there, Sin. And may I answer that with a fucked if I know." Havoc's pet jangled at him, lending credence to Murmur's assumption that there was still a skeleton behind the death's robe it now wore. The necromancer sighed. "Sorry. Feeling a bit rattled."

"Rattled." Beastial seemed to be choking on something, and Murmur realized he was trying not to laugh. At the same time, she noticed that none of their mirror images were moving. Not even the beastmaster's. 

She frowned and forced a laugh, but the otherself remained still. 

"Mur, what the..." But Sin trailed off, watching her own shadow contemplatively. 

Murmur cast another spell, this time her Mana Tide and watched as it didn't move again. "I don't think buffs work on it. Rebuff everyone."

So they did, and their doubles stood, swaying ominously, but not moving their fingers in any way.

"Guess that answers that question, Sin. Got anymore." Beastial grinned at her and the blood mage rolled her eyes.

"So we start out with more mana, more hit points, more everything. They appear to be a base copy of us, so they won't have our more advanced abilities." Murmur hoped she sounded more confident about that observation than she felt. It felt too easy, far too easy. 

"They're not going to approach us if we don't approach them, you know." Veranol drawled the words out, sounding bored, or perhaps tired. 

"Because the rest of us decided to keep what we know a secret from you so you'd die and we could laugh about it." Havoc's sarcasm was on point, perhaps too on point. 

Murmur nudged him with her elbow, and lowered her voice even though she knew the words would echo. "What the hell is your problem right now?"

He ran a hand through his hair, and bit his lip, casting his eyes down and refused to look at her. "I'm not sure, I'm just on edge, and this dungeon doesn't seem like fun at all. I didn't expect a ... trap to be so realistic."

Ah, there it was. Merlin's in-game death had seemed so real, and so brutal, and downright unavoidable it was giving Havoc a minor panic attack. "It's okay, he's fine. We're all fine, and now we know to be much more careful."

"It's not that, Mur. What if it had been..." But he let the words dangle and looked away again, anger rolling off him in waves. 

Except it wasn't difficult to fill in the blanks and everyone there knew it, everyone had heard.

What if it hadn't been Merlin that got impaled by that stake? What if it had been her?

#

Somnia Online
Firtulai Continent
Richnai Fortress - in a cavern beneath the fortress

Jirald wiped his arm across his forehead as adrenaline coursed through his veins. The difficulty level of the mobs in this place was above and beyond anything they'd encountered before, and it was exhilarating. It was even more difficult than fighting Fable had been, but at least this time they could mostly control the odds.

"You seem to be having fun." Masha observed as another of the rabid gnome miners fell to the ground, its little ears twitching.

"Fun is subjective." Jirald knew he was grinning widely, and likely not all that sanely. He also knew there was going to be a Shard in this place, and it drove him to new heights, to try harder and kill faster. The power Sidius promised was within his grasp, or at least some of it.

The power to make his mark, and to teach her a lesson. 

"It's disconcerting seeing my brethren massacred like this." Ishwa eyed the bodies of the pale green dwarves. "Guess that's what you get for drinking potions you shouldn't have touched."

Jirald chuckled, far more at home in a dungeon, stabbing shit from behind with a warrior tank who knew what the hell they were doing, than in a meeting hall talking non stop. Eslan main tanking was a godsend. He turned the mobs, he knew how to maneuver them and avoid shit on the ground while positioning their targets in such a way that the melee DPS didn't have to stand in shit if they had a brain.

A nagging thought emerged at the back of Jirald's mind. More like a pressure to continue, to delve deeper and complete his quest. He frowned, never liking to be told what to do, but at least this had a purpose to bring him more power, to make him stronger.

"That face right there." Masha broke Jirald out of his reverie. "That's the face of concentration with a bit of madness. Might not want to focus on the latter so much there, mate. It's what drives people away."

Jirald shrugged, intensifying his expression. "More loot for me then."

"Ever the optimist." Masha moved ahead, following Eslan through the corridors until they came to a stout wooden door, bound in iron. He frowned and the warrior turned to face him. 

Jirald watched as they discussed what to do, seething somewhat because it had usually been his place to plan this with the tank, to lead and keep the raid alive. Even if he grudgingly had to admit that Masha was suited to leading, that he lead with a strong hand and yet people seemed to like him -- it didn't change the fact that leading had been a point of pride for Jirald, but that his current behavior hadn't exactly led the members of the guild in this game to trust him. 

He could be charming, couldn't he? Hadn't he always been able to get his way, or had it been his position within the guild that got him the perceived respect he'd had?

Either way, at least Masha was helping him get to his goal. No one else had the quest and it wasn't sharable. The cleric motioned him over, and Jirald grinned as he picked the lock as silently as possible. It was entirely on the cards that there were enemies behind the large wooden door. This was the entrance to the keep and thus it stood to reason that there were going to be guards at a juncture like this. Doing that whole guarding thing.

Eslan opened the door to reveal exactly that. Three hulking gnome guards, about twice the size of a usual one, almost the same size as a human. They wore gleaming silver-blue colored armor and bore weapons made in the same hue. There was madness in their eyes, in the red lit gleam. 

Their bard had his hands full, as the only enchanter in the guild wasn't even twenty-five yet. Testing the waters they only took one mob at a time, area of effect spells were banned until they figured shit out. Just the way it always went. Find, test, and destroy. 

It fought like the dickens, faster than Jirald had thought gnomes capable of. Except Ishwa knew them, and had people positioned accordingly. Eslan took the hits, and all of the melee DPS, Jirald included made sure to interrupt any spell the guard began to cast, stopping it in its tracks. Frustration spread over the mob's face as its health dwindled. 

Jirald activated his backstab technique, lined up with the precise spot on the rear of the spin where he'd pierce through tendons and ribcage and reach the heart. Slamming his dagger in to the hilt in the mobs back, he scored not only a critical hit, but a vital one. The body stiffened, and then toppled to the ground, the last eight percent of its hitpoints disappearing instantly. 

Masha nodded at him. "Feeling better now?"

Jirald just grinned. "Dandy, Masha. Fucking dandy."

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