We emerged into blissful sunshine, the opening in the ground closing up behind us as though it had never been there at all. After hours of creeping on our hands and knees through the darkness, trying to avoid those horrible dog-sized scorpions, and finding out that we were now living in an RPG game, and would be for the rest of our lives, and leveling ourselves up at the so-called Shrine of Initiation, we were finally released into a crisp day in late autumn.

I eyed the land around us with suspicion. I had chosen Acuity as one my main skills when I had leveled up, and chose Eagle Eye as the skill specialization, so I was eager to test it out. Now that I was no longer trapped in a pitch-black cave and actually had some distances to look at, I was taking advantage.

The view was literally breathtaking. As in, so awesome I forgot to breathe for a moment, not merely kinda cool. We came up out of the ground in a lightly wooded area. It gave the impression of an abandoned farm, especially with the abandoned farmhouse and rotted-out fence I could see in the distance. What startled me was the fact that I could see the farmhouse as clearly as if it were five meters away, and it was easily a hundred. I could see every brick of the broken remains of the chimney, I could see where the nails held the rotten boards of the fence together, I could even see the tiny insects going to town on the wood. To the north, I could see the shapes of massive buildings sticking up from the horizon, indicating a huge city. Judging by the smell of the air, we were near the coast, probably just a few kilometers to the east. The world around me was so huge and so full of detail, and so beautiful. For a moment, I was happy just to be alive.

“Where are we now?” said Arturo. I was annoyed at having my appreciation of our surroundings interrupted so quickly. I was about to tell him that he was seeing the same thing I was, when I realized that was actually not true.

“How should I know? I just got here too.” I answered.

“Well, you have super-vision don't you? Is there anyone around?”

“No, its pretty empty around here. We should probably head for that city.”

Arturo looked around. “What city?”

I rolled my eyes and pointed. It was weird to have to point out something like that. To me, it was right there. It was like having to point out where the moon is.

Arturo squinted. “Oh yeah, there's a huge building over there. I can just see it through the trees.” There were dozens of smaller building poking up around it, but I decided not to show off too much.

“You okay, Dahl? I called to Dahlia, who was staring awestruck at our surrounding much as I had. Her eyes had also massively improved when we had reached the Shrine of Initiation. She had been blind since birth, and thanks to the Shrine's “Heal” function, she now had eyes that worked just fine, although, we had seen in the caves that being able to see and being accustomed to sight were different things.

“Just...trying to get used to all this. Its not really what I was expecting.”

“What were you expecting?” asked Arturo.

“I didn't think it was going to feel so...invasive. Like, the world is supposed to be outside you, but now it feels like it's shoving itself into me.” she was opening and closing her eyes, as though the strain of seeing everything was too much for her.

Arturo snickered.

“Shut up.” said Dahlia, turning her head left and right. “And everything is moving all the time! It's disorienting.”

In the dark caves we had spent the last several hours crawling through, Dahlia had been able to move and keep up with us just fine. Hell, she had been able to notice when the scorpions were sneaking up on us a couple of times that I had missed them. It had been so dark in there that the ability to see basically meant nothing anyway. Out here, though, I was beginning to wonder if she would be able to handle herself. Arturo and I had always been very protective of Dahlia growing up, as is only natural for older siblings, and doubly so when your little sister has a disability. In this world, we were expecting to deal with “nightmarish horrors” as the intro message at the shrine had so delicately put it. This sunny meadow didn't have an especially nightmarish vibe, but I had to take a warning like that seriously. It's why I was glad I had a bow.

The bow had been the only treasure item we had found in the rocky labyrinth. I'm sure there were others; we weren't in there long enough to explore the whole place. I had used it to kill three scorpions, which is why I decided to focus on archery for my character build. I had my attribute points mainly into Constitution and Dexterity, with one into Wisdom for the bonus to Awareness. Now my eyes and ears were keen enough that I doubt anything can sneak up on me now, and my arrows are so accurate that anything that tried would die almost immediately.

“Since we have a moment to ourselves here, we should figure out how we're going about this. I have super-vision and bow skills, so what did you two pick up?”

“I got a bunch of Diplomacy and Leadership skills, and I have one cleric spell. It should come in handy if we get tied up or imprisoned somehow.” said Dahlia.

“Diplomacy and Leadership? Who the hell do you imagine is going to let you boss them around?” asked Arturo.

“We'll table that for now.” I interrupted, before Arturo could hurt Dahlia's feelings. “How about you? What did you upgrade? I think I can rule out diplomacy!”

“Check this shit out!” said Arturo, puffing himself and waggling his fingers like a stage magician. He gestured like he was pulling an invisible rope downward, and suddenly, a gigantic grizzly bear appeared nearby. Dahlia and I both jumped backward, before we realized it was just a trick. Arturo grinned while we gathered around to examine it. The bear looked pretty realistic, but I could tell it was fake because the fur didn't look right.

“Not bad, but most of the hair is just brown blurs.” I told Arturo. His stupid grin turned into an annoyed glare.

“I make a ten foot grizzly appear out of thin fucking air, and all you can do is criticize my technique? You try imagining every individual hair follicle!”

“Is that what that is? Its really cool.” said Dahlia dismissively. “But we can tell its not real. Its not even breathing.”

“Everybody is a goddamn critic. Making illusionary sounds is almost a whole different field. You gotta start somewhere. I have actual magic powers now. You could at least pretend to be happy for me.”

“It will be a good distraction if we get into a fight. Anything else you can do?” I asked. The grizzly bear faded out of existence.

“Illusion is what I specialized in, but I should be able to learn to do all kinds of shit. I just need to find some magic items and books to get my research going.” he said.

“You're going for a wizard build?” I asked.

Arturo narrowed his eyes. “Yeah. Got a problem with that?”

Dahlia and I took and breath and chanted in unison. “Neeeeerrrrrrrd!”

Arturo waited patiently for us to stop laughing. “I will fry you two with lightning bolts the second I figure out how.”

We eventually moved on. With no other major landmarks around and no idea where we were, we made our way toward the huge tower that was looming in the distance. The air was a little chilly, and I noticed that Arturo and Dahlia were shivering quite a bit. I had to remind myself that I had upgraded my Constitution, and that was probably why I was handling the weather better than they were. I kept scanning the horizon for movement. I began to feel a little creeped out by how quiet the place was. We passed dozens more abandoned farmhouses as we walked, all rotten and empty. Apart from small bugs, I didn't spot any animal life in the area at all. How was that possible? This place was practically wilderness. The buildings we passed looked like they had been abandoned for decades, maybe longer. This place should have deer and rabbits and shit everywhere by now. Even busy cities never ran out of rats and pigeons. I hadn't spotted so much as a mouse in hours, and I would see them if they were around. What gives?

I caught a hint of motion in the corner of my eye. My head shot over so fast that Arturo immediately froze. Dahlia walked past us, not seeming to have noticed.

“Dahlia, stop. I spotted something.”

Dahlia looked back at me, then tried to look in the direction I was looking. She was having trouble. Tricks like that were easy if you grew up sighted, but how do you learn how to look where someone else is looking?

There were three figures, just within sight. It took me a while to be certain there were three, since they kept moving in and out of sight among the trees. The trees were thin, but if you looked far enough, they filled you entire vision, always creating the illusion that you were in a clearing. The figures were walking through the forest, and they seemed to get steadily closer.

“What is it?” whispered Dahlia

“Somebody moving in the forest. I don't think they can see us, unless one of them has super-vision too. There's three of them. I can't make out any details at this distance.” I whispered to, even though there was basically no chance that they could hear us.

Do you think they're enemies?” asked Dahlia

I shrugged. “How should I know? I can just barely see them. Could be anything.”

“Maybe we should get closer.” said Arturo. “If they are enemies, we want to deal with them now instead of when night comes. And if they're just regular people, we might be able to ask them for directions.”

“Directions to what, exactly?” I asked. “The nearest pizza place?”

Dahlia snicked, but Arturo pressed on. “The nearest human settlement. We need a place to stay in this world that is sheltered from the elements, relatively free of monsters, and has access to resources that we need, such as food. We're going to be in trouble soon if we have to sleep outdoors.”

“Sleeping under the stars for a couple nights isn't going to kill us.” I admonished.

Arturo scoffed. “You don't know that. We were promised nightmarish horrors, and I don't want to deal with those when I'm trying to sleep. If this were Fallout, we'd have fought a half-dozen Mirelurks by now.”

“This isn't a game.” pointed out Dahlia. “We might actually die out here.”

“All the more reason to play smart and find somewhere safe when we can.” said Arturo.

“All the more reason to not take take unnecessary risks.” I added. “Such as waltzing up to armed strangers in the woods.”

“They're armed?” asked Arturo, who didn't have a prayer of actually spotting them.

“Yeah, they're closer now. One has a sword, I keep seeing flashes from it. I think another has a spear, but it's hard to see.”

“They're getting closer? Have they spotted us?” asked Dahlia, still straining to see them.

“Doubt it. No point in waiting to find out. Let's move on.”

We continued toward the tower. I found myself glancing to the right more and more often, trying to get a better look at the other group. We passed a pile of old ruins that Arturo insisted had once been an amphitheater. He was way into architecture, so I guessed that he was right. Dahlia wanted to go take a closer look, but that seemed like too much of a risk to me.

Soon the city was close enough that Arturo and Dahlia could easily see it. It seemed to run all across the northern horizon and off into the west. We began to pass more and more wrecked buildings. It seemed like we were past the outlying farmsteads and into small outlying villages, like suburbs. Nothing looked like it had seen human activity for quite some time.

I still occasionally spotted flashes of what looked like a sword off in the east. Whoever they were, they were definitely getting closer, although now that there were more buildings to get in the way, it was harder to get a good look.

“This is creepy. Why don't they just attack us and get it over with?” said Arturo

“Why are you so worried? If they get close enough, I can just just shoot them. Range advantage is pretty decisive.” I answered.

“Are we just assuming that they're bad guys? We don't know anything about them.” said Dahlia.

“We aren't assuming anything. We're just too vulnerable right now to assume that they're not enemies.” I answered.

“Besides, we know they're armed. They could be bandits. You always get bandits early on these games.” asked Arturo.

“Maybe they just don't want to get eaten by monsters.” replied Dahlia. “Like us.”

We lost sight of mysterious group as we started moving into more built-up areas of the city (Well, I lost sight of them, anyway). Instead of springy grass, we were now stumbling over the broken and weed-choked remains of paved roads. Most of the buildings were just piles of wood that had been sitting in the rain and sun for who-knows-how-long, but there were the crumbling remains of towers and walls to indicate that we were leaving the the outskirts and entering the city proper. Arturo couldn't make up his mind as to whether the architecture seemed more Greco-Roman or Early Byzantine, although he admitted that these were very similar. What a fucking dork.

“This place is looking less and less like a good place to spend the night.” I commented.

“Yeah, no one's lived here in ages.” said Arturo. “Seems like like more a dungeon-style area than a hub of civilization. Maybe we should turn around.”

A low buzzing sound interrupted my thoughts as we crept through the ruined streets.

“Hey, you hear that?” I asked.

“What?” asked Arturo, without bothering to listen first.

“That buzz. Like a mosquito. You can't hear it?” I asked.

“I don't hear anything.” said Dahlia.

“Shit! Look over there!” I said, pointing off to the right. A couple blocks down the street, our three strangers were watching us. They were close enough now that I could make out their features. They looked like Asians. The one with a sword was a short, shirtless man with reddish skin, a bald spot on his head, and a bulging belly that hung over his waistline. The other man looked much younger, maybe only in his late teens, and was tall, pale, and skinny. He was holding the staff that I had initially mistaken for a spear. Behind the two, crouching behind a boulder, was an older woman ns a blue and red floral-print dress. They could clearly see us. The two armed ones were standing in plain sight, clearly watching us.

“What should we do?” asked Dahlia.

“Quiet.” I snapped at her. “Don't run, don't hide, don't make any sudden moves.”

“We don't want to seem aggressive, but we can't show fear.” added Arturo, drawing himself up to his full, unimpressive height.

The two men were talking. They seemed to be having an argument, or at least they both seemed angry about something. The older man was gesturing for the woman to come out of hiding. She said something that I couldn't catch, and the man made a dismissive gesture.

“Do you think they live around here?” asked Arturo in not quite a whisper.

I had to remind myself that Arturo was seeing a much blurrier version of what I was seeing. “No, the tall one has a Nike symbol on his shirt. I think these guys got here the same way we did.”

“Well why are we so worried then?” asked Dahlia. “They'd probably be cool if we just said hello.”

“I agree with Tabitha.” said Arturo. “If they're playing the game, they might not realize that we're not the bad guys. Or they might just be the kill-everything-in-sight-ask-questions-never kinda players. Let's just let them make the first move.”

“I can nail them from here if I need to. Up close, they would have the advantage. We don't have any close-range weapons. Dammit!”

“What?” asked Dahlia.

“That damn buzzing again.” I hissed. “You guys seriously don't hear that?”

“Is it coming from them?” asked Arturo. “If they're players, they might have magic too. They could be creating phantom sounds to distract us.”

“That's a stretch. It's not from them, it's coming from... the north-west.” I nocked an arrow while waiting for the sound to come again. I was really getting nervous now. I was certain that something was about to happen, but I couldn't figure out what. The two guys reacted to me immediately, raising their weapons and backing up behind the boulder. I didn't like this city. Everything was quiet and dead, and I couldn't see very far in any direction. I felt trapped.

The sound returned, much louder this time.

“Okay, now I know what you're talking about.” said Arturo. He seemed to have lost interest in the other group now.

“It sounds like a huge ceiling fan.” said Dahlia.

Then they arrived. The things looked like some mutant mash-up of apes and insects. They had been skimming the ground as they approached, using their insect-like wings to jump across the piles of rubble and stay out of sight. The first one that entered my vision was almost immediately skewered through the eye by my arrow. I hadn't even really thought about the motion. I now understood what the “Precision” skill, which I had placed my largest bonuses into, was worth. My hands did nothing except exactly what I wanted them to. I had been able to put an arrow through a moving target the size of a grapefruit with no more effort than I would use to scratch an itch. With almost no conscious thought, I reached back, plucked another arrow from the quiver, nocked it, and killed another attacking monster in less than a second. The entire motion was smooth and frictionless, like a mechanized assembly line.

The creatures kept on coming, however, and I had no chance of nailing all of them. I stopped firing briefly when a large spider suddenly appeared in the air above us. It hung suspended for a moment, blocking my view. It took me a second to realize that this was another of Arturo's holograms, and another second to realize that the attackers weren't falling for it. Oh, they tried biting into it with their creepy-looking hose-mouths, but once they passed through it they went right back to attacking us. Dahlia was crouching on the ground with her arms over her head, as the monsters piled in above her. One of them landed on her and began raking at her with its claws. I squeezed off three more shots, every one a bullseye, but I knew at this rate I was going to run out of arrows before we ran out of enemies. Arturo's spider vanished, replaced by a half-dozen huge, colorful butterflies. These seemed a far more effective distraction than the spider had been. More and more of the creatures filed the air, trying in vain to catch and kill the imaginary butterflies. As more slipped through the barrier, I abandoned shooting and began punching the things away from us instead. I've never thought of myself as a boxer, but I discovered that my “Precision” wasn't just good for the bow. You don't have to hit very hard if your punch always lands at just the right spot.

The butterflies vanished as Arturo disappeared behind the cloud buzzing wings. The creature's claws were like razors, and all three of us had open wounds now. Dahlia and Arturo screamed in pain and began desperately punching and slapping at the monsters. I almost gave up hope that we would survive, when I spotted the trio of strangers bearing down on us, weapons drawn. What Arturo had said about the possibility of another spellcaster ran through my mind. One of them did have a staff, after all.

Again, without conscious thought, I found myself nocking an arrow and leveling it on the skinny guy with the staff. If he was controlling these things, I might be able to end the fight with one...

“Don't!” Dahlia's voice came from behind me. The word hit me like a sledgehammer. I turned and fired at the creatures instead, then began kicking them away from Arturo and Dahlia. The two armed men finally reached us.

They began shredding the attackers. The older one with the sword (maybe a saber? Not sure.) somersaulted through the air, raining bisected bodies and severed limbs as he went. The skinny one began sweeping his staff through the air like a long club, launching three or four of the little monsters away with each blow.

The little things continued to rain down on us, but the strangers had turned the tide. Despite bleeding from multiple wounds, Arturo was now able to get back to his feet. As he performed his weird-looking gestures, the butterflies returned, further solidifying our advantage. The staff guy was able to keep them at a distance, and I emptied my remaining arrows into the cloud of wings and claws. The woman in the floral dress began making odd gestures as well. It happened so fast, I almost thought she was casting some kind of spell, before I realized that she was throwing knives. Several creatures fell dead with small wooden handles sticking out of their skulls.