They made an odd pair as they marched down suburban lanes, Madelyn in business black that drooped down to her knees and Roy in a well fitted and worn hoodie. The days were humid and hot, cloistered under a blanket of fog, but the nights sapped the heat and the light with its tenebrous fangs.

Madelyn had taken point when they set out, but Roy was leading. Roy had given it little thought, at most he would have to pass her directions as they went. Then they came upon the first intersection and she’d somehow anticipated his turn, ripples trailing her legs in a relaxed curve.

Roy’s eyes bored into her back as they came upon the next intersection, at this point he could go straight and turn right at the next, or he could make an early right here and then make a left at the next followed by another right. A strange and erratic path, but his curiosity was piqued.

Twenty meters, ten meters, the ripples shifted and off went the prescient.

“How are you doing that!”

“Doing what?” she turned around, the suit twirling in her wake.

“You know what I mean, you’re pre-empting all my turns!” in retrospect it was probably, just ever so slightly silly to get worked up over this, but he had made his bed and he hadn’t had a dry bed to sleep in since some time ago.

“Idunno,” a shrug of her shoulders and the soft clack of too many spare magazines.

A moment of silence and they were past the next intersection, going straight ahead to take a left at the next instead.

“There it is again! Are you telepathic?” it made sense, in a world of pyromancers and geomancers, what’s to say a telepath was not in the cards, then again, “No, you can see the future! That’s why you were so accurate yesterday against the charging vineborns!”

They stopped and Madelyn lowered her head, bangs obscuring her eyes and raised collar masking her mouth, “Heh, impressive detective work Mr. Stone.”

Slowly the collar fell away and her manic grin carved itself upon his vision, teeth like bleached bone and corners like sickles. Sharp enough to pin him to the spot and rob the strength from his legs, it made so much sense, her house, the vineborn attack, the separation, this foray into the wilds, “N-no, this, this can’t be!”

He wasn’t gazing into the visage of a teenage girl, rather it was the abyss behind those two dark apertures.

His hand clutched his pitchfork in a death grip as it howled its last unholy premonition, “But has it occurred to you yet, Roy, that as a precog… this too is all according to plan!”

It was, wasn’t it, what was free will in the face of omniscience, what was hope when all the future was stacked and ordered by intellects that filled the void between desperate hydrogen lamps. All seven billion reduced to pawns on a cosmic chessboard.

“JK, JK, I increased my DEX stat which apparently gave me super senses so I can tell when you’re about to change direction by the ruffling of your clothes and the splashing of your feet against the water,” Roy wanted to die, he wanted to bury his face in the water and never get up, like all the other corpses obscured beneath, actually never mind that, “Oh, also did you know that you put more weight behind your left foot? Neat right?”

There was a brief silence, but in that timeless moment Roy felt the professional bond between two co-workers snap, irrevocably destroyed and its corpse desecrated by foul sorceries.

“Thanks, I’ll make sure to kick with my left,” he mumbled, it sounded like a good comeback in his mind.

“Anyhow, since you don’t feel comfortable with me taking the lead, why don’t we walk two abreast?” the smirk was fast, gone in the blink of an eye, or rather purposely timed to not coincide with his blink.

“Whatever. But, I’m kind of curious. You’re like, several levels above everyone else, and you say you have super senses, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone shoot a gun like you did yesterday, and well…” he trailed off, the question had been nagging at his mind for some time now, ever since he’d learned about Madelyn’s level and saw the scavengers in action.

The past week had been tough for him, an almost constant stream of desperate fights against the magical flora and fauna. He’d fought, he’d bled, and he had scrounged up perhaps some shred of confidence from the ‘level ups’ and the skills he had gained.

But now, that seemed so threadbare compared to Madelyn and the almost suicidal confidence she displayed, backed by ability well beyond his. What was it that they knew, that his mind, honed by years of virtual grinding, had failed to grasp.

“Ah, I see, so you’re after my secrets,” a sigh escaped her lips and her shoulders drooped, weighted by loss, “How dastardly of you to bring me out to the middle of nowhere so you can squeeze me for all I’m worth.”

Before he could throw out a retort she continued, “But alas, ‘tis a long and harrowing tale, might you be still interested?”

“I-I, just stop, it’s like seven in the morning okay?”

“Not a morning person? That’s fine, how about I give you the tee-el-dee-are?” she cleared her throat with a cough and smoothed down her suit.

“Now then, I presume you know about skills and attributes?” Roy nodded.

“And since you’ve leveled up a few times already I’m assuming you’ve distributed some attribute points and experienced the benefits?” another nod.

“Excellent, what about skills? Have you leveled any past novice five?”

“A few, I think. I see where you’re going, I gained an attribute point for every skill leveled to novice five, and a minor perk, I don’t have anything at novice ten though, so yeah, no major perks,” the points were beginning to connect, forming a vague image in Roy’s mind, how many levels could a skill gain, how many attribute points could then be derived?

“I’ll fill in the blanks then, from what I’ve seen the ‘novice’ section of the level is like a tier, after novice you have proficient, then skilled, then expert, and then master, I’m not sure if there’s anything above that. Each tier has ten levels and you receive an attribute point at levels five and ten in addition to the minor and major perks, clear so far?”

“Yeah,” she knew the existence of four tiers above novice, and judging by the span of time since they last met, he had to conclude that this knowledge was likely from personal experience.

“Maybe you’ve noticed that skill levels are mostly determined by your actual skill at the thing in question. I’m assuming when you picked up your pistol and fired off a few round your skills level shot up quite quickly.”

“Well, that was my first time picking up a gun so, I’m not so sure,” he thumbed the weapon holstered at his side and reminisced not so fondly of his first experience.

“But you’ve seen others fire a gun before, whether that be in a movie, a video game, or even a body cam. That some of those portrayals are inaccurate or superhuman is beside the point, when you picked up a gun you knew to point the muzzle where you wanted to fire,” Madelyn pulled her gun out from her coat and delivered a spectacularly dangerous flourish, “Think about it like this, what would have happened had you given your gun to say a… Arthurian knight?”

“What little third-hand knowledge you had must have been enough to merit a low novice rating,” the rotation of Madelyn’s gun came to an end and in the next instant she had settled into her stance, barrel pointed off towards the unknown, “Suffice it to say then that prior to this whole fiasco I was quite skilled with a wide palette of firearms, all I needed to realize my potential was to paint the streets blue with fungal viscera.”

Her index finger, pale and delicate like morning mist, settled against the trigger and Roy braced for the deafening crack that would shatter the silence, “BAM, fifty-three additional points in dexterity, and allow me to confirm your suspicions, every additional point in an attribute is more effective than the last.”

Roy felt the number settle with all the subtlety of fantasy monsters in rural Iowa, almost loud enough to drown out Madelyn’s onomatopoeia.

Fifty-three, what did the number even mean to someone who had never been anything but a mundane human? He had experienced seventeen constitution, with it his physiological discomforts had seemed to evaporate and even sleep had felt discretionary.

“What’s it like, with that much dexterity I mean,” something else tickled the tip of his tongue, a question, a hope, “What about the fog? Is it still… like this?”

She let the gun in her hand settle by her side and raised her head to face the east, there was a subtle tilt playing at the edges of her mouth that balanced the slight drop in her eyelids, “Is it still like this, he asks – but that’s not the eye of the matter is it. A quick deception, a slight of hand you’re not even conscious of making. The question ought to be, will it be like it was scant days ago.”

“See, I’ve Vision enough to pick out the corpses in the water, hearing enough to catch the screams mixed with the roars, and smell enough to pick out the steady onset of decay. You tell me Roy - is it still like this?” she finished.

The weight of the holster dragging at his belt, the coarse shaft of the weapon in his hands, the layer of grime that had stuck like a second skin, and his clothes - his mother compared clothing to a ‘personal advertising campaign,’ they weren’t doing a very good job if the only thing being sold was to himself.

Existentialism and a foggy street in rural Iowa, if the devil wore a suit it would probably be one a few sizes too big, just to spite the tailors.

“Okay,” it sounded just as lame in his mind, “let’s just go, okay?”

“Please, lead on, but before you do, know that I’m sensing movement, coming from the house behind you, light, but large. A strange combination,” her free hand reached for her second gun as she delivered the warning.

Roy pivoted, both hands gripped around his pitchfork and mind braced against panic. Madelyn was by far the better marksman so he would stick to playing keep away with his polearm, hopefully light would offset large and sharp would offset monster.

The seconds ticked by, the sound of his breathing harsh against the silence, until finally he could hear the faint splash of water as something steadily pressed against the edge of his vision.

“Forty-five degrees on your left, passing between the red brick and the fiber cement.”

Roy shifted his facing, about thirty meters away he could make out the shapes of two houses blurring into the expanse of fog. Perhaps one was an earthen red and the other whatever color ‘fiber cement’ was, but to Roy they were both a drab and indistinct gray, blotches of shade and tone a suggestion of other features.

The sounds were getting louder and he strained his eyes against the vague impression of space between brick and cement until he caught the waver of color as something passed around the corner.

“It’s in the open, two meters tall, built like a bodybuilder, no features, smooth white skin, doesn’t appear armed, and approaching at a leisurely pace,” Madelyn reported as the creature became more distinct from the houses in the background, her gun was at the ready but she held her fire, “I’m going to attempt first contact, wish me luck.”

Roy stood stock still for a second before her final words registered in his mind, “Wait, what?”

“Greetings fellow traveler, to what do I owe the pleasure of this meeting?” she announced, as the giant steadily approached.

“No! What are you doing? Stop!” he yelled as he put a few more paces between him and the monster, if he was going to fight, it would only be after Madelyn delivered a few probing shots, especially now that he couldn’t see the monster’s basic stats.

She levelled a cool stare at him as they pulled back, with a brisk walking pace that could easily match the speed of the monster, “Well, excuse me for establishing some basic rules of engagement. I thought it only reasonable that I try to trade words before I trade blows.”

A fair call, in retrospect had he jumped to conclusions and shot Gib-Hog on sight thing would not have ended well. Less convincing was the lumbering thing slowly plodding its way towards him. Like Madelyn had described, the thing towered over him and its skin had the appearance of white plastic.

It took another step and Roy’s eyes lingered on the thing, he could almost pick up the subtle play of shadows against its body, moving in ripples along its odd and bulging musculature “There’s something off about it, are those shadows on its body?”

“Houses, its body’s translucent,” she slowed and they formed a line about twenty meters from the creature, “I’m going to fire a probing shot, see how it reacts. If it charges we’ll split off, you take the left and I’ll take the right, we’ll form a V with it at the vertex, see if we can alternatively pull agro, sound good?”

He readied his stance again, he felt less tense after the idle banter, “You sure? I mean, can you hold up if it gets close?”

“I’ve thirty-three unassigned points if things go south, relax. If it proves too much to handle we’ll pull back, if you play hero, I’ll play hero, capish?”

“Got it,” two shots rang out in response and the creature’s body jerked back with each hit, light tendrils of smoke crept from the wounds for a brief second before pulling back, leaving little trace of the damage.

Its strides lengthened, but Roy was ready, his legs pumped in and out of the water as he jogged back and to the left, pitchfork pointed at the monster.

The creature took a few steps and then its body twisted like an elastic as it changed direction and its pillar like leg pulled free from the water to take a lumbering step towards Madelyn. Water and mud dripped from its appendage as it rose, before a hail of gunfire struck the thing. Each bullet loosened a burst of wispy tendrils, and as the rounds strafing across from its head to its furthest extremities its body jerked and shuddered as if it were dancing to the steady rhythm of the gunshots.

Then it was quiet except of the soft splutter of water as the thing dropped its raised leg back to the ground and it began to raise its next leg with a squelch. Roy had counted well over two dozen shots, yet the only evidence of their passing were the little eddies in the haze.

“Well, that was pathetic. I don’t fancy wasting any more bullets, you have any ingenious stratagems?” two clicks in quick succession and a pair of magazines slipped into her hands, caught between her ring and pinky, another swift motion in and out of her coat and two fresh magazines replaced the spent, just like a street magician.

Thank the blue screens their target was slow, even so they were quickly running out of roadway to back into and soon they would have to circle around the thing, the prospect of fighting over rough terrain held more than a few pitfalls.

“I’ll ah, hmm,” his eyes trailed the smooth surface of the creature, its soft slopes brought a memory to mind. He’d seen the creature before, or at least he had seen it yet not recognized it for what it was. Several days ago, when the goblins were escorting him to the grocer’s, hadn’t something white and rippling poking out from behind a second story window caught his attention? The goblins had said something then, called it a name he had quickly tucked away to the back of his mind, “swampmen.”

With a nod they pulled further apart and farther away from the creature, before doubling back from outside its reach to head east again.

Swampmen, what had the goblins said about swampmen? The goblins, they had been afraid when they caught sight of it, no that wasn’t it, more like displeased or worried. Sharp green faces creased at the sight, weapons shifting in their hands. The word came to him, “mage,” they didn’t have a mage with them.

The pieces begin to piece together, the creature was translucent, it was lighter then something of its size ought to be, and bullets hardly fazed it. Roy wanted to punch himself, if all his years with his head in fantasy land had taught him anything it was that these were clear signs of a creature which was not entirely of the physical plane, a creature resistant to physical damage, but vulnerable to the more esoteric arts.

Magic, he needed to throw magic at the problem.