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Somnus V - Chapter 34

Walter Ashforth scurried up to Kat as soon as she entered the courtroom. He was a short, skittish looking man that was just beginning to lose his hair. The attorney’s eyes darted back and forth at the tight cordon of Kat’s security as he leaned in close to her and began whispering urgently.

 “I have a settlement offer from VodCom, they’re willing to drop everything if you just repay the credits you got from them in the isotope sa-”

 “Absolutely not,” Kat cu...

Somnus V - Chapter 33

Kat shifted slightly as she looked in the mirror. The suit was perfectly tailored to fit her, but somehow it just didn’t look or feel right. She’d experimented with it earlier, and the clothier had done exactly as she asked, ensuring that Kat could move quickly and smoothly despite the formal outfit. There wasn’t anything wrong that she could point to, but the entire get up seemed unnatural to her.

 Whippoorwill slipped in behind her, wrapping her arms around Kat’s stomach ...

Somnus V - Chapter 32

Kat floated in the air, her eyes tightly closed. A fruit that vaguely resembled an apple hovered in front of her, bobbing slightly as she did her best to focus on both it and the entirety of her surroundings simultaneously.

The crunch of Kaleek biting into one of the apple fruits was the only warning she got before he whipped it at her with enough force to dent steel. Kat could the faintest whisper of a gravity field coming off of the fruit.

Instantly she grabbed hold of the invad...

Somnus V - Chapter 31

“Miss Debs!” Belle’s cheerful voice filled the conference room the moment her hologram activated. “How are you doing this morning? I’m assuming the lawyer I sent you arrived safely and in one piece?”

 “Walter Ashforth?” Kat asked. “He’s here. A little bit shaken up after the security teams went over him two to three times to make sure that he wasn’t bugged or compromised by stallesp technology.”

 “That’s good for him,” Belle replied, waving ...

Somnus V - Chapter 30

Kat floated upward, her hand resting gently on the side of the tower that marked the stairwell to the next floor. Below her, a giant snake lay curled around the building, sleeping quietly as it waited for a challenger to ascend.

 In the darkness below, Kaleek chattered away silently, once again abusing the power of Mass Telepathy to force Dorrik and her to pay attention to his every passing thought.

 “I’m pretty sure the deep sea krill harvest is going to be especial...

Somnus V - Chapter 29

Numbers seemed to swim together as Kat tried to make sense of the spreadsheet floating in the air in front of her. An analyst’s voice droned on, going over the unrest and increased prices caused by the decline in hybrid tech sales.

Kat didn’t need to be a genius to know that the figures weren’t great. Still, her division had been turning absurd profits for months. Even with the recent bouts of sabotage, they had so much money in reserve that Kat could simply shut her factories dow...

Somnus V - Chapter 28

The first thing she noticed was that even with her high reactions, it was hard to move at full speed through the maze of pillars. The second was that the tall alien had somehow produced a crossbow in each of their hands. Their twenty overly long fingers cradled the weapons, holding them in place and aiming the supposedly two handed weapons with ease.

 Kat’s eyes widened and she dove behind one of the pillars an eyeblink in front of a quarrel deflecting off of the stone right next...

Somnus V - Chapter 27

“It’s the stallesp,” Jaalin’s response was short and to the point. “Honestly, I don’t know why you even bother to ask those questions. ‘Someone with superhuman computational powers is influencing the financial markets of my underdeveloped world.’ The answer is always the stallesp. Even if they didn’t have a history of intervening illegally in your world’s ascendence and integration, it would clearly be the stallesp. They take to financial fraud like your desoph friend does...

Somnus V - Chapter 26

“We simply need more deuterium.” Kat tried to tune out the nasally voice of the scientist. “It helps that you’ve stopped wasting precious resources on crassly commercial pursuits, but you’ve still lowered the research and development allotment to little more than a trickle.”

 Kat kept herself from smiling at the man, barely. Unlike the more mundane corporate security and employees she had to deal with, there wasn’t any deference there. Willard was one of the best scie...

Somnus V - Chapter 25

“I cannot believe you Miss Kat,” Dorrik remarked, his body glowing gently purple as he darted to the side an eyeblink before a three pace tall bipedal tiger pounced on the space where he’d been.

 “A train heist without me?” He clicked his tongue, a gesture that Kat was sure he’d picked up on Earth at some point. “You know how much I enjoyed Jenny’s Bandida Secreta story arc. I would have been awash in delight at the mere idea, yet you left me behind, handling meetin...

Somnus V - Chapter 24

“Who are you?” Kat couldn’t stop herself from blurting the question out. After a month or so of the woman shadowing her across Chiwaukee, she couldn’t help it.

 “I’m you, but I haven’t gone soft,” the woman sneered back. “You’ve lost your edge, Erinyes. I’ve been watching you at your fancy balls eating your expensive food. You’ve left the streets behind and become something less. Something weak.”

 Kat’s eyes narrowed. That answer wasn’t terr...

Somnus V - Chapter 23

Kat stood at the train station, a metal box full of parts in her hand. A pace to her right, Whippoorwill was sulking. Her hair was dyed chestnut, and rather than her usual cheap t-shirt and jeans, she was wearing heavy blue overalls, just like Kat.

 “Most people’s girlfriends take them to fancy restaurants or ballroom dancing when they go on dates,” Whip said, the fake face granted to her by Mirage barely moving as she spoke. Kat winced. It was hard to sync mouths with words ...

Somnus V - Chapter 22

“Are you sure this is a good time?” Emma asked hesitantly. “I can come back later. Really, it wouldn’t be a problem.”

 “Don’t worry about it,” Kat replied, sucking in deep breaths as she kept running around the small indoor track. Silently, she cranked up the gravity of her domain a little more. It was about at its limit, adding another gravity and a half to Earth’s natural pull.

 She rounded the corner where Emma was standing beside the track, sweat po...

Somnus V - Chapter 21

Kat sat on a large rock, munching on some sort of alien bread drizzled in honey. Kaleek lounged a pace or so away, his food long gone as he eyed up Kat’s meal. On another rock, five paces away, Toorvu and Stekat were talking quietly.chatting about something else.

 She wasn’t entirely sure what excuse Jaalin and her group were using to be present at their battle with the floor guardian. Obviously, there was something going on between Dorrik and the female lokkel, but neither of ...

Somnus V - Chapter 20

Kat materialized in the Tower of Somnus with a rush of motion. As soon as she regained control of her body she popped up, glancing around the squat stone building. Dorrik sat cross legged in the doorway, both of his swords resting gently on his lap.

 She exhaled in relief. There weren’t any stallesp around. Generally the Tower didn’t allow monsters to enter the waypoints, but that didn’t mean that hostile players couldn’t camp out in one, killing avatars as they entered the...

Somnus V - Chapter 19

Wind swished through the plains, sending ripples through the waist high grass. Some three hundred or so paces away, an animal that looked remarkably like a brontosaurus was placidly eating vegetation. Kat kept an eye on it. It hadn’t made any threatening moves as Kat and her team had walked past it, but the creature was simply too big for her to ignore.

 Kaleek on the other hand had managed to catch some sort of knee high lizard monster that usually ran around underneath the gras...

Somnus V - Chapter 18

A spear of ice zipped through the air, hammering itself halfway through the table. Before anyone could respond, the spell exploded. Luckily, Kat’s group was still under cover, but the same couldn’t be said for the rest of the bar.

 Glittering razors of ice shredded the common area. None of them were heavy enough to penetrate armor, so even a thin layer of wood, leather, or plastic was enough to protect someone, but most of the people in Neon Crash weren’t geared up for a gunf...

Somnus V - Chapter 17

Kat’s eyes were half closed as she sat at the dingy table. At some point, an enterprising individual had replaced its cheap plastic top with fake wood, but that had been years ago. Now, it was hard for her to make out the initials carved into its surface through the layer of food residue and spilled beer. The bar resolved these concerns about its cleanliness by dimming the lights to the point that it was hard for an ordinary person to see much more than the mug of cheap, narcotic-laced beer...

Somnus V - Chapter 16

Mana pulsed and Kat grunted, trying to hold the massive turtle in place with Crushing Grasp. Kaleek rode atop the monster’s back, using the gravity from Kat’s spell to hold himself tight as he raised his sword in a double handed grip.

 Purple energy condensed into dozens of needles before launching themselves into a constant stream at the monster’s side. Each individual shard of energy didn’t deal much damage, but the unending avalanche of Psi energy resembled a beam...

Somnus V - Chapter 15

 A dully glowing ruby cube, about the size of a large dog, hung in the air about a hundred paces ahead of Kat. It wasn’t clear whether it was the stone or something else, but the entire boss chamber was humming quietly.

 “That’s new,” Kat remarked, squinting at the strange object. Kaleek took a step toward it and the tone of the humming noise changed slightly, its pitch edging upward.

 “It looks fun,” he said cheerfully, playfully swinging his greatsword...

Somnus V - Chapter 14

Kat’s fists moved in a blur, hitting Heather’s metal arms with loud clunks. Gravity shifted along with each punch, pulling her hands toward Heather and increasing their speed ever so slightly.

Heather responded, shrugging off one of Kat’s punches with her left shoulder and launching a punch with her right arm. Instantly, Kat altered gravity, pulling Heather’s shoulder backward with about one G of force where her fist had connected with it.

Suddenly off balance, the securit...

Somnus V - Chapter 13

Crystals zipped past Kat, leaving trails of bubbles as they seemed to drill through the water. Kat felt like she was moving in slow motion as she twisted her body to the side. One glass dagger after another passed by her, moving ever slower as the water robbed them of momentum.

 Pseudopod swung through the water, moving much more gracefully than Kat herself as it knocked the last two blades off course. One final glance confirmed that there weren’t any more attacks coming, and Kat...

Somnus V - Chapter 12

Kat leaned her head to one side and then the other, limbering up whatever the Tower of Somnus used rather than muscles. Ahead of her was a long hallway, its walls made out of what appeared to be brass with lit braziers spaced out about every fifteen paces. Evidently, there was no handy guide or explanation as to how a challenger was supposed to complete their class evolution trial.

 It was strange to be in the Tower without the rest of her team, but apparently, that was normal for ...

Somnus V - Chapter 11

Sunlight poured down on the picnic area, and Kat leaned back on the wooden bench while her sister, Michelle, frolicked in the large fountain that filled up almost a third of the open space. Hans, the domesticated dire wolf that Kat had somehow adopted ran by chasing after a softball while Penelope, her mother, hovered over a nearby grill covered in sizzling hamburgers.

Dorrik yanked one of his hands backward, and a purple glow surrounded the softball, jerking it away from Hans and sendi...

Somnus V - Chapter 10

Kat opened her eyes, taking in the sights and sounds of the twelfth floor starting hall. Somewhat surprisingly, the stone building was more heavily populated than she was used to. Aliens of a dozen shapes and sizes worked at stalls selling everything from raw ingredients to custom made weapons and armor. Here and there, she even spotted stallesp avatars, a sure sign that the number of available starting points had narrowed on the floor.

 That was a peculiar feature of the Tower. On...

Somnus V - Chapter 9

“Thank you for attending my wedding,” Belle called out to the receding crowd. “Your presence today was welcome. Please be sure to attend my next wedding as well.”

Kat stood some ten or so paces to the side, watching the guests filtering out of the great hall. Other than guards and people that had business with the Donnst family, everyone was leaving the venue now that the celebrations had ended.

To her left, Emma was chattering away happily with Jasper’s gir...

Somnus V - Chapter 8

Kat glanced up as her limousine came to a stop in the armored car port. Guards stood everywhere. The part of her brain that was still an infiltrator couldn’t help but note and track their positions: five by the entrance to the fortified garage, two of them sporting visible cybernetics; four pairs of two patrolling through the parked cars; and eight protecting the doors to the building itself, including a pair in APEX armor.

 Whippoorwill’s elbow found her side, digging gently i...

Somnus V - Chapter 7

A sucker covered hand, about the size of Kat’s torso, whipsawed past her. Wind pulled at her armor as she ducked underneath the limb.

 Her instincts screamed, and Kat acted without looking, throwing herself to the side just in front of a leg slapping into the ground where she had just been standing.

 Water glittered in the blinding light of the floor guardian, tracing Kat’s Pseudopod as it snaked around her, jamming a knife into the monster’s leg and hanging on for...

Somnus 5 - Chapter 6

Steel glittered under foreign stars, stretching endlessly in every direction. Here and there silver domes and spires dotted the plains, marking the location of outposts and dungeons, but each and every one of them was leagues away. In between, the sticklike silhouettes of steel striders skated across the metallic fields hunting for any prey foolish enough to climb up out of the tunnels and caves that hid beneath everything.

 “Are you sure we can’t take down a strider?” Kaleek...

Somnus 5 - Chapter 5

The landscape glittered, flat polished iron as far as they eye could see, reflecting the light of unfamiliar skies and the twin moons overhead. Kat listened closely, but even in the far distance she couldn’t make out the distinctive metal on metal of a steel strider as one of the malevolent creatures skated across the level.

 “Finally,” Kaleek grumbled, shifting the backpack full of monster parts slightly, “almost back to civilization.”

 Up ahead, a silver dome...