A New Beginning In A Mana Apocalypse

From the peak the brown stone extended up at a forty five degree angle in four directions. At the "base" of the pyramid I could see large openings in the side of the pyramid. I couldn"t make out what was in those openings because despite the peak of the pyramid floating over the former location of the stadium several miles to the east of my current location, the openings in the "base" of the pyramid floated to the west of me.

After staring at the immense structure in awe for a while I finally turned my attention to my surroundings. My s.p.a.ce barrier was gone, despite its lose the crowd around me hadn"t moved. Everyone had collapsed just as I had. In fact I was the first to wake up. I frowned and remembered that we had all been exposed to a great deal of crazed mana. Whenever that happened many changed into twisted.

I moved through the crowd quickly touching everyone one by one to check their conditions. As I had feared there were a lot of people who had began to mutate. I kept track of the numbers as I drained a bit of mana from each of those who were beginning to mutate. When I was finished and everyone was beginning to awaken instead of mutate, I had a devastating percentage. Eighty percent of the people who hadn"t awakened were mutating with only five percent of the other twenty awakening. I knew it couldn"t be considered a universal percentage for the rest of the world, but I was sure the actual figure of those affected by the crazed mana whether it was good or bad, wouldn"t be far off.

Father had said it would only be between twenty to twenty five percent of the world would be affected, yet he hadn"t taken in account what the world leaders had done. Those missiles seemed to have caused the third energy wave to come earlier than it was supposed to, while also made it significantly worse.

I considered what I needed to do, I didn"t want to just leave everyone lying here vulnerable, but I was starting to worry about my girls. If almost eighty percent of the world"s population had mutated then they could be in danger soon. While they were awakened already Grace"s family, Arnold"s girlfriend and her family, Momma, Kelly, and many in Michael"s group were not. Many of them were likely to mutate.

"Daryl?" Megan called for me weakly.

"I"m alright!" I replied to her immediately. "How about you?"

"Tired." she grumbled in my mind. "A lot of my brother"s people started to mutate."

Fear coursed through my body.

"Don"t worry honey, Grace and Calidia handled it already." she told me.

"How?" I asked confused.

"Grace"s mana core rose to four stars, and Calidia"s went back up to a silver and rose up a rank higher than what she was before meeting us, making her a five. Now they can help people who are mutating like you do." she told me.

Relief surged through me hearing that. I had been the only one who could help for so long that I had mistakenly began to think I was the only one who could do it. Learning that Grace and Calidia could now, made me feel better as there was now someone else to share the burden with.

"That"s good." I replied.

"Are you coming back soon?" she asked.

"I have to figure out what to do with everyone here. That and something weird is happening here." I told her.

"Alright, I will tell the others, just make sure you stay safe." she told me sounding even more tired than before.

"Get some rest Megan, I love you." I told her.

Megan was silent for a few moments. "I love you too." she sent back.

I smiled then looked around again. I found Derek in the group and moved over to him. He was laying beside that pretty officer the twins had been discussing earlier. It seemed like he had tried to shield her with his body. I had a feeling the twins would be pleased when I told them about it later. Derek had been one of the few who was naturally awakening while the lady was mutating, now both of them were forming their mana cores. Derek was a purple like the twins while the lady was a blue. Oddly enough Derek core was the highest tier of everyone in the crowd while only three others besides the lady officer had blue cores forming.

I also searched for Marshal and Rosa and wasn"t surprised to find them in a similar situation where Marshal seemed to have tried to shield Rosa with his body. I wondered how Rebecca would react and decided not to tell her. Even if she could expect it I didn"t think she needed anyone to twist the knife. I knew my own feelings, I didn"t want her to get back together with Marshal but tattling on his actions with Rosa would just make her sour and me look bad.

As I waited for everyone to regain consciousness I heard a loud rumbling sound. I frowned uncertain what the sound could be. Besides the fact that the base had long since been abandoned so the only people who were there should be those around me who were the last to leave. I didn"t think there would be many things that were able to survive this close to ground zero. As such there shouldn"t be any danger to them at the moment.

Looking around I couldn"t find the source of the sound. Glancing to the east I caught sight of the peak of the pyramid then followed it up to the openings in the side of the pyramid at its "base". While I couldn"t see into the openings I could confirm that something was happening up there. A few moments later a white mist began to flow out of the pyramid. I frowned at the sight of the mist remembering the yellow mist that was the crazed mana. Unlike the yellow mist the white mist quickly dissipated into the air, yet as it did so I felt that the mana in the air around me was slowly starting to thicken. It wasn"t much, and I could only notice it because I was thinking about it. Yet on the positive side it seemed the same as the normal ambient mana rather than the crazed mana from the energy waves.

Thinking about the energy waves I suddenly realized something, I couldn"t feel the impending crisis of another energy wave. Now that the third wave had pa.s.ses I a.s.sumed that I would be able to sense the fourth wave and judge from that feeling how much time we had left. Yet instead I felt nothing. As if there wasn"t going to be a fourth mana wave. I was excited for a moment before I realized that if almost eighty percent of the world became twisted then it didn"t matter if there would be another mana wave.

As my mind tried to muddle through the meaning behind the white mist and the chance that there wouldn"t be any more energy waves and what it all meant. Several people started to wake up. Marshal was first followed soon after by Derek then Rosa. As people began to awaken I wondered what they were going to do? Should I bring them with me? If I did where would I get enough supplies for everyone? My group and Michael"s were already a lot, while there were a couple hundred people here. Easily four times the number I was already responsible for.

"What the h.e.l.l is that? Marshal asked after catching sight of the inverted brown stone pyramid.

I shook my head and shrugged.

It took a few minutes for everyone to wake up, but only a few more minutes for Derek to get everyone under control. While I caught him glancing at the pyramid from time to time he didn"t make any comment about it as he organized everyone to check for injuries then check the planes to see if there were any supplies that survived. He was very efficient but they again he was a general. If he wasn"t able to do that much with a few hundred people I would think he was bad at his job.

As I waited for them to organize themselves I gazed at the pyramid. I had no idea where it had come from but I remembered the haze that had surrounded it as it appeared in the sky. As I thought about it now it reminded me of the fog like look I had seen when looking through the s.p.a.ce shield I had placed to protect us from the blast.

"Dimensional balancing between shield world and Great Realm completed." a voice suddenly spoke. Looking around I couldn"t see where the voice had come from.

"Commencing resuscitation, deploying guardian." the voice range out again.

Another loud grinding sound was heard. This time I looked straight towards the pyramid. I nearly fell over from shock as the peak split into four triangles and began to open like a flower bud. The huge stones that made up the peak swung away revealing a deep black hole into the pyramid. Without seeing what was in the hole I already felt a sense of dread and fear. Whatever was inside that hole was very bad news for me.

I didn"t have to wait in suspense for long. As soon as the hole had opened completely a large brown lizard head poked out of the then rushed the rest of the way our and coiled around the immense pyramid.

I stared at the immense brown scaled dragon with awe. It was an oriental style dragon with a long serpentine body and a pair of horns on its head four small legs with five talons on each that sent a shiver of fear through me. However it wasn"t its size, which was enormous as it was able to wrap around the already immense pyramid, but its eyes that scared me the most. Even from a distance I knew the dragon was looking straight at me when it looked in our direction. Matching its gaze I could feel an incredible power exuding from it. I had just had an incredible power up from the last mana wave, yet I was sure that no matter how hard I tried to fight I would have absolutely no chance in defeating it.

The dragon opened its mouth and let out a loud roar that nearly made me p.i.s.s myself. It shook itself on the pyramid causing a bunch of debris to fall down. I noticed something fall near me and bent down to see that it was. I found a dark brown scale a foot in diameter. I reached out and picked it up only to feel a great deal of power still residing in the scale. If a shed scale had so much energy then how powerful was the living beast?

"Daryl?" Derek called from behind me.

I turned to see the older man had organized everyone, but was looking up at the dragon worriedly. "We should leave."

I nodded in agreement. The dragon hadn"t done anything to threaten them, but its mere presence was a threat. I could see that many of the others had turned pale from fright.

With a thought I created a s.p.a.ce tunnel to the lobby of the hotel in Grand Junction. My s.p.a.ce ability had increased to four stars so I no longer worried about being able to move everyone.

Derek gave the order and soldiers led the way while the support staff followed as if a pack of starving wolves was chasing after them. Once everyone was through I took one last look at the dragon only to find it had moved without making any sound. The dragon"s head was so large it couldn"t have fit in the former stadium and it was hovering only a few hundred feet above me its head c.o.c.ked so its large golden eye was facing me. I shivered in fear staring up at the dragon. I didn"t dare move, I could dash for the s.p.a.ce tunnel but I feared that even closing the s.p.a.ce tunnel wouldn"t be able to save me if it got angry.

After staring at me for a few more moments the dragon turned away. With its attention off of me I felt relieved but didn"t hesitate to dash into the s.p.a.ce tunnel like a scared rabbit and close the tunnel behind me.