All of us filed into the living room to watch the news. Since they the news about continued being attacks and sightings was being blocked I was curious as to what they were going to say. As we reached the room the same pretty blonde news anchor was on the screen sitting behind the news desk with the handsome man with slicked back black hair sitting beside her.
I sat in the chair I had been using while Megan hopped onto my lap. Michael glared at me as he sat on the couch with Karen and Courtney on either side of him but I ignored him. Arnold sat on a dining room chair while Marshal took the other recliner with Emily in his lap. Rebecca remained standing by her husband.
As the clock struck 4 pm the reporters prepared to start their report but at that moment we all felt a new wave of energy rush through the atmosphere. I might have only felt it briefly earlier but I still recognized the feeling. It was a bit different this time though. As I had already awakened my abilities I could feel what the mana was doing.
I had no idea why the energy wave was different than the ambient mana, but it was. The energy wave rushed into everyone as it passed by. I felt the mana rush into my inner space. I closed my eyes to see what was happening in my inner space.
With my eyes closed I could see my inner space. Once again there was a mist inside my inner space, I assumed it was the mana from the energy wave. It didn't behave like the mana that I had stored in my inner space earlier. Instead it felt like the crazed mana that I noticed in Marshal as he was mutating. I worried for a moment but the mana despite its agitated state was quickly being drawn into my abilities. I tried to interrupt and guide the mana where I wanted it to go but I had no control over the crazed mana at all. It went where it wanted no matter how I tried to guide it. As I watched my light and shadow abilities drew in a lot of mana then manifested as awakened abilities, then continued to draw in more mana. All of my current abilities were drawing in more mana, and as I watched the beast ability also manifested.
I had no idea how long the previous energy wave lasted, but this second wave seemed to last forever. My abilities guzzled up the mana like they had been starving for it. When the energy wave finally dissipated my inner space had a large change. My mana core had risen a level to have four glowing dots inside it, I think I will call them stars from now on. My space ability had risen to two stars, beast was at one star, mind was at two stars, body remained at one star, while plants awakened towards the end and was now one star like my beast ability. In the elemental Earth had awakened to one star at the very end while the other five abilities had risen to two stars. It was a drastic change, but one I was excited about.
Rather than taking the time to explore the new abilities and the changes to the old abilities I opened my eyes to see what was going on.
Megan was laid back onto my chest completely limp. Oddly I found it sexy as hell, but now wasn't the time for that. I concentrated on the mana flow in her body and was relieved to see that she was fine, though she had also gone through a power up. In fact her mana core had changed color from red to blue and gone up to two stars. Her body ability had risen to two stars while her mind ability had awakened. Elementally her air had risen to two stars while light, fire, and water had awakened. Fire even rose to two stars.
Looking around the room I could see that all of the awakened seemed to be laid out by the energy wave. Among them Arnold seemed to be reacting as well. Courtney, Karen, and Emily all seemed unaffected and were watching us worriedly.
Seeing me regain consciousness the girls looked at me with questions in their eyes.
"Level up." I told them.
I wrapped my arm around Megan and held her close for a moment as I turned my attention to the television. The woman seemed to be completely unaffected by the energy wave but her male counterpart seemed to be affected. When I saw his skin start to turn red I quickly moved out of my seat setting Megan in the seat then moved over and scooped Emily out of Marshals lap and pressed her little face into my chest. She didn't need to see what I was expecting to come.
The camera never changed to another angle or view as we all watched the male reporter's skin turn a darker red. The female reporter seemed smart enough, when she noticed the change in his skin color she took off running.
The camera captured everything as his skin became bright red then he stopped shaking. Moments later he sat up straight his eyes opening to reveal the black eyes I had seen on Rebecca. He glanced around for a moment getting his bearings then let out a loud angry bestial roar before rushing off screen. Moments later the camera was knocked over. It fell in such a way that we were able to see what was happening behind scenes. The female reported seemed to be long gone, but several security officers had appeared. None of them were caring real guns, just the taser equivalent, which was having no effect on the red being as he attacked the security guards with three sets of wires attached to him. In moments all three of the guards were dead. The first was punched in the head so hard his neck broke, the second had both of his arms ripped off, while the last had his throat ripped out by the red beings teeth. It was bloody and gory as hell.
While keeping Emily's face covered, I bent down to check on Arnold. He didn't seem to be changing colors but it wouldn't hurt to check. As I had hoped Arnold was fine, he had awakened a red core and several abilities. As I stood back up the others started to recover while Karen grabbed the remote and started to look for other news channels. She found another one quickly, they were already discussing the mutation that happened on the other news channel, not only that reports of new appearances of beings were starting to flood into the news station. The numbers of calls coming in was over ten times what it was after the first energy wave.
"You were right." Courtney commented coolly.
"I wish I wasn't." I told her with a frown.
"What?" Karen asked.
"There is more still coming." I told her.
"More?" Karen asked a frightened look on her face.
I nodded. "I think my feeling was warning me about the energy wave, the feeling changed as soon as the energy wave hit, it is still there though, just weaker than before." I replied.
"Weaker?" Karen asked. "Does that mean we have longer before the next energy wave?" she asked.
I shrugged. It was my guess but I had no idea.
I nudged Arnold with my foot. "Hey wake up." I told him.
"I am enjoying the moment." Arnold protested. Obviously he was excited to have abilities of his own. One of which had to be the body ability as he actually had muscles now.
I rolled my eyes then handed Emily over to Marshal when he reached out for her.
"It's alright sweetheart." Marshal tried to sooth her but she looked scared. Couldn't blame her though, over half of us had collapsed at the same time. Including both her parents.
"Hey." Courtney called out drawing our attention to her. She just pointed at the screen.
On the screen was another news channel, however it wasn't at the station but an at the scene reporter. The reporter was a pretty Asian woman with her hair in a bun wearing a pale blue women's suit. She was at the Cardinal's Stadium. Probably to cover a football game that was being played. I could see the two teams on the sides of the field, given the colors of the teams it looked like they were playing the Broncos. What drew our attention was the disturbance in the center of the field. It looked a jagged tear in the air that was pulled open while a misty gray fog floated out slowly.
I had never seen anything like it before, yet I knew exactly what it was.
"It's a gate." I said aloud.
"A gate?" Courtney asked.
"A dimensional gate that leads to wherever the energy waves are coming from." I elaborated.
"Does that mean mana is going to constantly pour into this world?" Michael asked.
I shrugged. "No idea, my space ability told me what it was, not how it worked." I replied.
As we all watched something came out of the gate. It wasn't very big, maybe the size of a large dog, its fur was dark gray, but it seemed to have a leathery patch on its chest that looked a lot like a chest plate of a darker gray color. What was frightening were its bright red eyes. I didn't want to run into one of those if I could help it. A moment later another one appeared beside the first, it was a little smaller than the first one but just as frightening.
Screaming erupted from the seating, I thought for a moment that the people were reacting to the monsters on the field, but when the camera panned over to the crowds I could see several mutated beings had appeared in the crowd and were having a field day attacking everyone near them.
Everything descended into pandemonium. More beings were appearing in the crowd, while even more of the gray dog like monsters showed up on the field creating a rather large pack.
A loud screech drew the camera to show a large bird had flown out of the gate, it had the body of a hawk but a long tail and was bright red with an enormous wingspan. I had nothing to gauge the size of the bird on but it was certainly bigger than any native birds of prey.
"What should we do?" Courtney asked her face pale from fright, her eyes locked onto Michael.
Michael continued to stare at the screen his own eyes wide with fear.