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 recall 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. Not as dramatic as the fog that drifted through the forest like some invading, malignant disease, though. Tendrils of it curled up around trees, shrubs, and stone boulders, leaving them slick with tainted dew.

“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.

An eerie, piercing howl began to wind up like some sort of deadly mosquito a few moments after she  reached the top.

“Is that you?” I called up to her while 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. Each step we took seemed to push the fog away, but 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 eerie 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.

Eventually, the woods thinned, and signs of civilization appeared. A stump where a farmer had poached some firewood from the forest, or a hunting lean-to. Then we reached the edge and stopped, trying to peer through the veil of fog out into the local farmlands surrounding Ardgour. The whole area felt dead, but in a living way. Nothing moving, but there were the faintest of sounds filtering through the fog to us.

I glanced at the rest of the party, who were clearly feeling the same unease. Paisley's eyes darted about, her fingers nervously gripping the pan flute hanging around her wrist. Ethan's brow furrowed as he muttered quiet incantations, placing a small, paranoid heal over time on the group. Noah, usually full of energy, remained uncharacteristically silent, his gaze focused and alert.

Leading the way out into the fields, he summoned and unfurled his wings to flutter softly up above the level of the crops. It was a good idea, and I followed suit. We continued to creep through fields and down dirt roads for almost ten minutes like that, with that same loud whining noise growing louder and more terrifying with each step.

On a road that would lead to one of the city gates now, I almost didn’t catch it. Out of the corner of my eye, something moved in the fog. Startled, I froze in place and peered into the depths, trying to make sense of the shifting shapes I could see. What was that ahead of us?

“Fuck!” Noah swore, and a gleaming shield of energy slammed into place beside Ethan right as a thick crossbow bolt was about to shish-kabob his neck.

Like a switch was flipped, the surrounding fog-laced wheat fields and hedgerows began to boil with movement, and things came at us.

Long and spindly, their forms seemed to be constructed from pale white flesh, their limbs elongated and grotesque, while their faces were that of goblins that’d become the focal point for a pair of dwarven blacksmith’s hammers coming together at high speed.

The monstrous creatures moved with unnatural speed. Pale white flesh blurred towards us, until a sudden, serrated whistle cut their charge like a wall had been thrown up. Gentle Paisley had left the stage. Now it was time for scary black witch Paisley.

With the time her stun gave us, Ethan shouted orders. “Melee, form a triangle around me and Pay!”

We moved quickly, drawing weapons and shifting into the defensive formation he’d called for. Paisley drew a deep breath and unwrapped her pan flute from her wrist, while Ethan's staff began to glow with a warm, golden light. Noah, Elena, and I drew weapons and braced, right as the monsters recovered from the stun. Judging by the length of time they were incapacitated, they had to be something undead. I knew the spell she’d used, and it only caused enemies to pause for a second, maybe two, otherwise.

The strange monstrosities lunged, and I shifted, meeting the dull, dead eyes of one that’d chosen me as a target.

“Oi!” Noah growled, and threw a pebble of pure magic at the creature. It pinged off the monster’s oddly shaped head, causing it to turn its attention onto the short tank.

With Noah now the focus of the creature, I took the opportunity to strike. My katana sliced through the air and found its mark, cutting the creature's elongated arm in two. It let out a guttural scream, but instead of blood, a strange black ichor oozed from the wound. What the fuck? It had no bones. It was entirely made of the weird white flesh, which was even whiter under the surface and made up of odd stringy threads. In true mindless monster fashion, it appeared to no longer care that it was missing an arm. Even the goblin that it vaguely resembled would have been upset over that.

I’d definitely seen something like this before, but my memories were drawing a blank. It’d been recent too… Shrugging internally, I put the conundrum to the back of my mind and pulsed energy into my blade until it hissed with fae power. Time to see if it enjoyed being diced like a vegetable.

I cut again, beheading it while it attempted to use a rock and its remaining hand to bash Noah’s head in. The little guy was barely even paying attention to that singular monster, considering he had four more with various improvised weapons trying to do the same thing. Having magical shields you could just throw up to occupy dumb monsters was honestly looking more and more meta.

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 Combat Report:

Enemies Killed:
Fungal Goblin Simulacrum (Exp 80), x1

Exp total: 80

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 ink-black darts that swam 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.

“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.

QuietValerie

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA ASHLYN INCOMING IN 5 DAYS.
Edit: Also, I've been going through a cyberpunk (the genre not the game) and like... I can't get enough of it. If only I had a story or two with that kind of theme I could write to work through this newest hyperfixation... ahhh well.