50: Foggy

50: Foggy

Mum did not lead the way. She rushed right back out the door and into town without so much as a goodbye. I swear, every single person I was related to was ADHD as fuck.

In the absence of a proper adult to make our decisions, we opted to take the cautious approach and go the long way into the city so we could keep our Return Points near the tree. This decision was made in spite of Noah's grumbling about having little legs. He could be more than a little dramatic sometimes.

Although, not as dramatic as the fog that drifted through the forest like some invading, malignant disease. When we left our Return doors, it became clear that there really was an event happening. Tendrils of the ‘dramatic’ fog curled up around trees, shrubs, and stone boulders, leaving them slick with tainted dew.

“Let’s get moving. Keep within sight of each other,” Ethan ordered us in a hushed tone. “This fog is giving me more than just the creeps.”

Nods and murmurs of assent made the rounds of our group. We could all feel that there was magic in the deceptively gentle moisture in the air.

Using her high dexterity and strength, Elena leapt and swung her way up to the top of a sharp boulder that managed to peek its way up out of the tree cover. Large stones like this one were common in the forest, just another reminder of the region’s violent geological past. With the fog leaving its damp imprint on the stone, it was a treacherous climb, but our Rogue made it look easy.

Right as she reached the top an eerie, piercing howl began to wind up in the distance, sounding like some sort of deadly mosquito.

“Is that you?” I called up to her while also glancing over at Paisley to see if it was some of her magic.

“Dude, how would I even make a noise like that?” Elena called back down the rock. “No, it’s coming from over towards the city!”

“Whatever it is, we won’t figure it out with all this shit blocking the view,” Noah yelled. It was strange, but the fog seemed to snatch the volume from his words, making it sound almost conversational.

“Too true,” Elena agreed, and hopped down off the rock in a single graceful leap. Landing with a thump in the wet loam of the forest floor, she brushed her hands off and gestured onwards. “Let’s move.”

The fog seemed to close in tighter around us as we made our way towards the edge of the forest. We were cautious, while also keeping up a pace that would get us to the city sooner rather than later.

Each step we took seemed to push the fog away, but then it would swirl and circle back around, as if hungry to reclaim the land it had lost to our passage. Every few minutes, the whistling howl would tear apart the unearthly silence and we would freeze, waiting for something, anything to happen.

With each passing minute, the atmosphere wound itself tighter around our psyches. The usual chorus of birdsong and rustling leaves was replaced with an odd silence that gnawed at our nerves. The once-familiar woods now carried an impossible tension, a harbinger of impending violence that never materialised its promise.

Once, when I was young, my father took me down to the docks to watch the big cranes lifting cargo off the Great Lakes haulers. We were sitting in a park nearby when something happened. I never knew what caused the accident, because I wasn’t watching that particular crane, but when I set my tiny child’s eyes on it... A cargo container was swinging from a single woven steel cable about as thick as my forearm at the time. It looked so tiny from that distance, and it was singing with the tension it was under. It felt like hours passed while it tried desperately to hold onto its cargo. Then, it snapped with a sound like a gunshot, and the force of it almost cut another container in half. That moment of tension before the snap, that’s what it felt like to walk through the fog.

As soon as the head was separated from the body of the strange creature, it clicked, and I shouted triumphantly, “They’re mushrooms!”

“We know, Keiko!” Elena laughed as she gracefully evaded another creature's attack, moving like a deadly dancer as she slashed and parried. “Look at your notification feed!”

In Progress Team Combat Report:

Enemies Killed:

Fungal Goblin Simulacrum x5 (Exp 30)

Exp total: 150

My face heated, and I sheepishly moved to engage another one of the monsters. “Oops, my bad.”

The rogue just laughed again and vanished in a puff of smoke to stab down into the back of a Fungal Goblin that was trying and failing to load a sling with a stone. Once it and my one was dead, she reappeared beside me and kissed the side of my head, “You’re very cute.”

“I am a powerful and deadly fairy swordswoman!” I grumbled under my breath. If I’d said that louder, it would just add fuel to the fire. I knew when to shut up.

A vibrating metallic sound echoed out into the mist from within our group, riding a haunting melody that could only come from one person. Behind me, Paisley's fingers danced across her pan flute and she unleashed a series of grey knives that swamed through the air like seaborne predators. They flicked out and tore apart first one, then another, and another of the fungal horrors. Directing them with her music, she led them through to slaughter every single enemy within fifteen metres. She did all that, and slaughtering huge crowds of enemies wasn't even what she'd designed her build to do.

“Sorry guys,” she said. “It looks like they’re going to keep coming, so I think we should get our hoof on and book it to the city before something scarier arrives.”

“As if the scary shit isn’t in the city,” Noah replied. “Point taken, though. Standing in a field killing mushroom flavoured zombies by the dozen isn’t very productive.”

As if to punctuate his point, the hair-raising whistle-crack-thump we’d been hearing during the whole journey repeated yet again.

We got moving again, but I couldn’t help but reignite the conversation. “They’re a little more advanced than zombies. That one Elena killed was trying to use a sling.”

“Not very well,” she laughed. “I hope there’s more interesting enemies to fight up at the city or I’m going to be worried for the quality of this expansion.”

The banter continued, as did the idle killing of wandering mushroom goblins. It was like the whole region had been seeded with homicidal mushroom spores and fog. Oh, and a very terrifying noise. Couldn’t forget the noise. Oh boy, we were so going to regret our flippant attitude when we made it to the actual battle.