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The OmniWorld AdventuresSneak Preview
Seven Different Universes. A Million Chances To Die. One Way Out.
“Think The DaVinci Code set in a surreal and terrifying virtual world…”
—Bestselling author Ken Bennett
In the near future the ultimate gaming experience happens while you sleep.
OmniWorld is a shared dream state, fully immersive, and indistinguishable from reality… with multiple universes ranging from a wonderous medieval world to a futuristic spacefaring universe to a brutal land that recalls the Old West… In OmniWorld, your wildest dreams become reality.
25 year-old Justin Boone has been waiting his entire life for an adventure like this, but when he’s given early access to OmniWorld he’s catapaulted into a world of violence and peril, dark mysteries, and mind-bending puzzles…
Now he must face legendary monsters, murderous assassins, and other players bent on his destruction–as well as a diabolical AI game controller who has plans of its own…
As Justin battles through multiple worlds of adventure, he realizes that there’s a lot more at stake than just his life. If he can survive, he may discover the true nature of OmniWorld. But if he fails, his reality will unravel and his dreams will become nightmares…permanently.
Prologue
“All that we see or seem, is but a dream within a dream.”
—Edgar Allan Poe
The last hour of Iniya Kintala’s life went like this.
Her party had recently finished clearing the third and final level of the Temple of Xyurn, which was supposed to house a significant clue to the location of the artifact The Fellowship of Wood and Silence had been seeking for the past three months, the object of the world quest: the Shadow Lance. This last chamber was the throne room, and according to her sage Tolman, the clue should have been here.
But there were no signs of any clues. None at all. No scrolls, no journals, nothing etched into a wall, not even a gargoyle with a riddle.
“Check again,” Iniya said.
Tolman shook his head. “I checked my notes three times. This is the spot. It has to be. This is the only freaking throne room in here.”
“I wasn’t talking to you. I was talking to Wainwright.”
The scout had been wiping his short sword clean on a tapestry. But now he looked up. “You want me to inspect the whole room again?”
“Yes.”
“That will take another hour,” he whined.
“You have someplace else you’d rather be?”
“Matter of fact, yes. The Scarlet Pig is supposed to unveil its new brew tonight.”
Iniya sighed. “You guys think this is another dead end?”
“Seems like it.” Andi prodded the corpse of the gigantic centaur boss they had just dispatched. Black blood pooled around the corpse and reflected the light of their torches.
“What about the rest of you?” Iniya looked over at Callum, her enchanter, and Mariel, her healer, who were lounging around sitting on their backpacks. “Are we wasting our time here?”
They didn’t respond, and Iniya wondered if she was coming off as too much of a bitch. The memory of her last performance review from Lazarus was still fresh. He hadn’t described it as ‘bitchiness’ per se, but still…
“I never said we were wasting our time,” Wainwright muttered. “I just think your information might be wrong.”
Tolman’s eyes flashed. “It’s not. And I’m not. There should be something here. A treasure room with the next clues. My lore’s at 211.”
“So you keep reminding us,” Wainwright said.
“You have any skill over 200, bro? Huh?”
Andi walked over to the sage.
Iniya knew she and Wainwright were pretty close and the big warrior was kind of protective.
“My asshole detection is at 250 and it’s pinging like hell right now.” Andi gave Tolman a playful shove.
“Knock it off, guys,” Iniya said. “Executive decision. We search for thirty more minutes. All of us.”
Everyone grumbled, but they all reluctantly got to their feet.
The throne room was made of carved stone and was easily forty feet by forty feet. The only way in or out was through the double doors to the south. Close to the north wall was a dais upon which stood the throne itself, a blocky oversized seat made of metal that looked like it had come from a meteorite. It was square and tall with all sorts of sharp angles.
Andi called over to Callum. “Yo, perhaps you could light us up, so we’re not having to juggle torches while we look.”
“Uh, sure.” The enchanter looked around the room for a suitable target for his illumination spell. “What about on that pillar?”
“Whatever, dude.”
Callum spoke the incantation and gestured at the top of one of the half dozen floor-to-ceiling carved stone pillars that ringed the dais. A glowing sphere of light the size of a softball winked into existence and then floated through the air and attached itself to the top of one of the pillars. Callum spoke another word and glowing sphere grew to the size of a basketball and became so bright it was hard to look at.
“Better,” Andi said.
Everyone extinguished their torches and Mariel collected them all and wrapped them in a leather bundle. In addition to being their healer, she was the party’s torch-bearer, a job that no one ever wanted.
“Uh, do we want to keep these?” Mariel asked in her low, gravelly voice which never ceased to irritate Iniya. Vocal fry, it was called. Ugh. How could anyone talk like that?
“Yeah, we do,” Iniya said.
Now that there was some better light, they all spread out to search the room properly, although Iniya knew that Wainwright was the only one who had a decent inspect skill. The chances of anyone else finding anything were slim.
Suddenly, Iniya felt the floor rumble beneath her. A deep muffled sound echoed throughout the throne room, like some ancient creaking machinery set in motion.
“I just touched it…” Mariel said. She backed away from the throne which trembled, shedding dust and shards of black stone. The rumbling got louder as the throne sunk into the ground.
They all crowded around the hole in the middle of the dais. It was more of a pit or a shaft, six
