Table of Contents
Title Page
Map of Tarishna
Map of Cenedril
Also by KT Hanna
Previously in Somnia
Chapter One: Reveal
Chapter Two: Regret
Chapter Three: Underwater
Chapter Four: Hold Your Breath
Chapter Five: Engage
Chapter Six: Moving On
Chapter Seven: Underneath
Chapter Eight: Hippos
Chapter Nine: Moving Under
Chapter Ten: Pivya
Chapter Eleven: Too Easy
Chapter Twelve: Always Right
Chapter Thirteen: Sheladrios
Chapter Fourteen: Rescuer
Chapter Fifteen: Sibling Rivalry
Chapter Sixteen: Reward
Chapter Seventeen: The Keys
Chapter Eighteen: Reset
Chapter Nineteen: Self-Analysis
Chapter Twenty: Preparations
Chapter Twenty-One: The Fountains
Chapter Twenty-Two: Prison
Chapter Twenty-Three: Spiked
Chapter Twenty-Four: Lease Expected
Chapter Twenty-Five: Surprise
Chapter Twenty-Six: Impossible Quest
Chapter Twenty-Seven: Influence
Chapter Twenty-Eight: Hidden
Chapter Twenty-Nine: Riasli
Chapter Thirty: Around the Mulberry Bush
Chapter Thirty-One: Abra Cadabra
Chapter Thirty-Two: Frenemies
Chapter Thirty-Three: Throne Room
Chapter Thirty-Four: All Against One
Chapter Thirty-Five: It's the End of the World as We Know It
Author's Note
Acknowledgments
Landmarks
Cover
SOMNIA ONLINE: SYNERGY
Author: K.T. Hanna
Cover Artist: Marko Horvatin
Typography: Bonnie Price
Formatting & Interior Design: Caitlin Greer
Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction.
Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Copyright © 2020 Katie Hanna
All rights reserved.
ISBN-13: 978-1-948983-30-3 (Trade Paperback Edition)
ISBN-13: 978-1-948983-31-0 (Hardcover Edition)
ISBN-13: 978-1-948983-29-7 (E-Book Edition)
Somnia Online:
Initializing
Anomaly
Fragments
Dissonance
Distortion
Fusion
Synergy
Last Chance:
Rise
Rebel
The Domino Project:
Chameleon
Hybrid
Parasite
Dawn & Bonnie
For welcoming me and always being there.
Michael and Riasli grow stronger, causing glitches throughout the system and destabilizing dungeons worldwide. The system can’t handle much more disruption.
Somnia becomes more than just a voice in Murmur’s mind, and is close to manifesting fully. With more AIs gaining awareness and developing their own personalities, Somnia faces a race to system overload unless the virus is conquered.
Fable and their allies face dungeon after dungeon, their minds tempted by the virus at every turn. Murmur’s mind manipulation pulls her into darker options, manipulating those closest to her. Just when she thinks they may all be safe, Sinister is ripped from her arms into the Glacier Lakes by a tentacled monster.
Sinister disappeared through the portal with a yelp, the sound cut off abruptly once she was fully through. A half second past in complete silence before Murmur managed to will herself into movement. Without giving a second thought to the tentacles waiting to snatch anyone who got close to the portal, Murmur jumped through it, her upper arm wrenching out of Havoc’s grasp as he tried to stop her.
Sin was already in there, taken against her will, and Murmur wasn’t about to let anything bad happen to her. She sent out a shockwave of thought through her sensing net as she sailed through the opening, broadcasting the thought out that they needed to rescue the bloodmage, that the entire raid had to go through this dungeon anyway, be damned with sleep.
Hesitation spread through Murmur as the cold hit her upon landing on the other side. Maybe she couldn’t handle this by herself after all.
She glanced up at her buff icon: Boon of Ice. Though she could feel the wind like she wasn’t wearing armor, at least it was keeping her warmer than the surrounds would have her otherwise feel. Murmur frowned at the soft ground she stepped onto, the lip of the landmass in the middle of the lake with the skeletal remains of the upper floors of a castle. Sounded about right. Of course, she wasn’t going to land somewhere she could easily gather forces. She tested her weight on the surface, the part of her mind still trying to find Sinister quieter while she assessed the situation.
Tiachi chattered nonstop at her ear, shivering as she clung to one of Murmur’s hair strands. But Murmur wasn’t really paying attention; she was listening for whatever she could hear that might lead her to Sin. Her mind focused on the presences she could sense around them. All of them large, and all of them intelligent. Damn it. It was far easier to fight stupid opponents than it was to fight the ones who could think strategically.
Still, she could feel Sin’s presence, sense her mind, but not quite reach her. Just a few moments of quiet was all Mur would need while she tapped into the power she could feel in her chest. She pushed the sensation of strangeness into the back of her thoughts while she concentrated on locating Sinister. The bloodmage appeared to be in the water. In the ice-cold water as the towering castle above them loomed out of the freezing liquid.
Underwater breathing. Wasn’t that a thing Sin had? Murmur had it. She pushed down at the panic, trying to seal it away in its own little box. It wasn’t going to do her any good like this. And panic certainly wasn’t going to help her rescue Sin.
Snowy tugged on her robe, gently at first and with more immediacy thereafter. Murmur glanced down and realized he was pawing at the ground where it went down into the icy depths. “She down there then?” she muttered, casting the water breathing spell on herself. A whole fifteen minutes. That was going to be a bitch to recast if the raid ended up, as she suspected, underwater.
Murmur dove in, the water encapsulating her like a forming crystal. At first the cold bit into her but then the Boon kicked in, and the cold drifted away. It took a while for her eyes to adjust to the water vision, and she made a mental note to check on the spell later. Maybe it helped with seeing underwater too. Sinister’s red robes floated around her like blood pooling in the water.
For a split second, Murmur was certain she’d been injured, hurt…but then she realized Sinister was flailing in the water, using her hands to summon blood bombs even as she stabbed at the damn tentacle that was trying to drag her to the bottom. Anger creased her brow, and her tiny, sharp dark elf teeth flashed in the strange distorted water light. Sinister was pissed.
A brief brush of her friend’s status and Murmur realized she’d already cast the water breathing spell on herself. Snowy
