Elizabeth Wallace

They sounded the alarms for all on-station Jäger officers to get to battle stations. I rushed out of the door toward my car that held my Xcom suit and weaponry. Gunshots and screams immediately filled my ears out the door of the survey center. 

I overheard Dr. Kirk's announcement while running past the soldiers making their way to the explosion site. 

“Ladies and gentlemen, this is not a drill. I repeat, this is not a drill. All trainees, make your way to the safety bunkers close to your barracks.” He said over the loudspeakers.

 I unlocked my car, quickly pulled out my suit, and put it on while carrying my weapons case. Once the armor was entirely on me, I could feel the mana rush Into my muscle fibers and the cells of my body. I put in the contacts that came from my weapon case. My vision started to strain as the world went from pitch black to the thermal image you see from night vision goggles. Besides witnessing the body temperature of living beings, I could see the mana from both sides of the battle. 

Mana doesn’t look any different from most atoms or molecules. Still, how it moves and interacts with the world is vastly different. While running towards the explosion site, I saw the mana around me shake and then move away. I felt my instincts kicking in, and I dodged a blast of scalding hot water, which hit the building behind me, destroying it in the process. I landed on the ground a couple of meters away. 

I looked back in the direction of the blast and saw a humanoid shape creature wearing a squid mask while holding two neon red daggers in both hands. 

“Well, you seem like a feisty one.” They said, their voice muffled like they were speaking underwater. 

“Well, maybe that’s why men are scared of me.” I quipped while putting my head to the scanner of my weapon case. 

The sound of the unlocking case revealed a katana made from the tooth of the large sabretooth that attacked New York fifteen years ago. 

Mana flowed through my arms into the blade, giving a light green hue to the sword. I pointed the sword toward the monster and took an upward guard stance. Before I could move, the man disappeared, only leaving an afterimage, and reappeared at my side. A flash of neon red came into my view leaning back to avoid the swing. I brought my sword across his chest for a counterattack, but he blocked it with the other dagger. We both traded blows while moving across the Iron Turtle. My vision only focused on the monster’s blades as each swing left a red trail.

Once again, the atmospheric mana around us started vibrating again and moved toward his blades. A dark blue liquid formed on his daggers, and he swung at me, sending two large streaks of dark liquid toward me. I dodged out of the way of the dark liquid. After, I felt a burning sensation coming from the left side of my torso. 

“Well, the bug is injured.” The monster said he smiled clearly, even underneath his mask. 

Ren Vespean 

After Elizabeth asked me to watch Rachell, I couldn’t help but wonder what her specific concerns were. Rachell seems competent, and she has the second-highest output. I made my way to her room. I raised my hand to her door before an explosion went off. The house started to shake as I held onto the wall to stabilize myself. The same sirens I heard at the beginning of the day were blasting at max volume. 

I rushed to the nearest window hoping to find the source of the explosion. Looking out the window, I saw smoke from the field we had trained before. Men in black armor with horned helmets came out of the forest that connected the barrack to the field. 

Immediately men with rifles engaged the black knights; some bullets bounced off the armor while others pierced through it. The lights from the rifle fire allowed me to get a better look at the knights. All of them had grey skin with sharp teeth and pointy ears. 

The still-alive knights rushed towards guards, cutting the ones on the front lines. 

Racheal and others came out of their rooms. Their faces filled with either confusion or, in Racheal’s case, a stern convention. 

“Get your suits on now,” she said, voice commanding like her sisters. 

Everyone rushed back into their rooms. I quickly suited up and loaded my M4 rifle, focusing on my breathing. The rush of mana filled my brain and muscle fibers. I looked down at the base of my left arm. The small screen read forty-seven percent. I rushed out of my room as the lights on the barrack went out. I quickly aimed my rifle while moving toward the stairs. Something grabbed my shoulder; I whipped around, aiming my rifle at head level. 

“Jesus, friendly, friendly,” Racheal told me with one hand up and her face shocked at my actions. 

“Well, don’t scare me like that,” I responded, putting my rifle down. 

“I don’t appreciate having a barrel pointing in my face.” She whispered yelled while moving towards the stairs. Behind her, Diana was holding her sterling SMG. 

“Something is wrong, guys; why is the base under attack, and by who?” Diana asked as quietly as possible. 

“No, shit, something is wrong, and how should we know the answer?” Racheal responded, going down the stairs, “This is a great chance to prove ourselves.” 

“Don’t be so harsh; we don’t even know what’s attacking us,” I told her while following behind. 

“Dark elves, those bastards,” William said at the bottom of the stairs looking out the window. 

“The main question is, how did they get past the iron turtle’s defenses.” He continued moving towards a new window. 

“Brother, I am getting anxious; I want to kill one of them. They don’t look tough.” Hanz announced while holding a large machine gun from another window. 

“Well, that has to be the stupidest thing I heard today,” Rachell told Hanz before a loud crash came from the back of the barrack. 

We ducked behind some cover before aiming at a long hallway leading to the kitchen. I aimed down it for twenty minutes while my heart was pounding against my chest. 

An oversized dark elf came around the corner, a giant mace in his right hand. I turned towards Rachell, and she held a hand in the waiting gesture. 

Once, he passed the door that led into the living room. Rachel clenched her hand into a fist, and the hallway flashed with that burst of light. 

The elf tried to block the bullets but was pushed back by the hell storm. 

“Yeah!!!” Hanz yelled a smile plastered over his face before sending fire to the poor elf. 

The machine gun bullets ripped through the elf’s armor and body. Purple liquid splattered onto the floor and walls as the elf jumped into the living room. 

We quickly followed after him, William being the first to push him. I turned into the room just as a mace fell down onto William’s head, but he rolled out of the way and spun to the elf hiding near the door. 

With a quick burst from his shotgun, the head of the elf was gone leaving a pool of purple mush. 

The elf’s body went limp as I walked over to William.

“You good buddy,” I said, looking back and forth between him and the elf.

“Yea, I saw him in the corner of my eye, so I had some time.” He told me while loading a shell into the weapon. 

“We should probably move out and help the others,” Rachell suggests while stepping over the elf's corpse.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea. We have the advantage of staying here and protecting ourselves.” William countered 

“There are people out there risking their lives, and I don’t want to feel like I sat and did nothing.” She snapped back to William 

“Well, I’m not dying before I get sent on my first mission.” William spat back, 

His face looked the same as when he had talked with Hanz a couple minutes earlier. Rachell moved closer to William, her face bright red and her eyebrows scowling. But before she could say anything, the wall that led to the outside of the living room was destroyed, sending dust and rubble toward us. 

Diana and I aimed our weapons at the wide-open hole of the house. Hanz had grabbed William and was protecting him. Rachell was staring at the pile of debris. 

Her once angry expression quickly faded into worry. Looking at the rubble, I could feel my heart skip a few beats. In the wreckage was Elizabeth. 

Elizabeth Wallace 

Irritation filled my body after its words. How dare a monster so smugly call me a bug? I gritted my teeth as my mana output increased from fifty-five percent to sixty-five. 

With the rush of mana, my fatigue faded, and I could feel my feet become lighter. And my vision became sharper. The mana became more apparent. 

I closed the distance between the monster and me; from his stance, I could tell he was caught off guard by the increased speed. It stepped back, but I swung my blade down across its chest. Purple blood came out of the shallow wound of the monster. As we continued our dance to the death. We both parried, dodged, and landed attacks on each other.

A sharp burning sensation filled my senses with each cut he inflicted on me. It’s like having my skin branded with a hot iron. But his attacks were slowing down while mine increased with each percentage of mana I released. He swung his right dagger to no effect; I dodged underneath his swing and brought my sword to its neck. 

“This battle is over,” I told the monster. 

But the mana shook violently, yelling at me to move quickly. Before I could bring my sword across its neck, the mask opened up. Revealing a gray skin dark elf with white hair. 

His mouth opened wide and dislocated his jaw. Mana flooded into his mouth, the same dark blue liquid forming in his mouth. I stopped my momentum and stepped back, but he fired the liquid with a velocity to rip the ground from the sheer force. 

I channeled all my mana into protecting my body before the blast hit me, sending me a couple of kilometers away from the main base. With one move, my vision went black.

Ren Vespean 

I rushed over to Elizabeth checking her vitals, her pulse and breathing erratic; I can only assume it had to do with the cuts that turned the skin around it purple and were eating away like a parasite. 

“Dumbass, how dare you tell me to watch your sister if you can’t take care of yourself,” I shouted at her unconscious body

 But Rachell pushed me aside to check on her sister. I turned towards the rest of the group. Everyone seemed fine, besides the immeasurable amount of dust in the air. I ran towards Diana, a pressure that could only be described as having 50 male African elephants on top of me. 

A figure I can only assume to be a dark elf was walking towards the barracks with two neon daggers in both hands. The remainder of a supposed mask left a toothy smile plastered on his face. Sharp shark teeth lined his mouth.

 I quickly aimed my rifle at the man and shot him with three bursts. He disappeared from my line of sight and appeared right next to me. The next thing I knew, I lay on the ground, a red liquid surrounding my body. A sharp stinging sensation filled my chest, and my vision got darker. Sorry, sis, I guess I failed. 

Elizabeth Wallace

Screams, encompassed by a dark void. Could I already be dead, and is this the afterlife? I thought before a bright flash appeared in the corner of my eye and knocked me out of my trance. 

Grey mana particles sped toward a blob of the same dark purple mana that attacked me. I quickly opened my eyes after realizing what I was initially doing. My eyes adjusted to the light, and I found myself in the living room of the mansion that my sister’s squad was in. Looking around at the damage, Ren’s body was near an open hole that I assume I left after getting hit by that spell.

Blood surrounded and stained the floor around him, but I could tell from the mana that his wounds were healing. 

I got up from the rubble. My body screamed at me as the soreness of my mana and the poison fought each other for control over my body. Attempting to run outside was more of a limping hop. 

The dark elf was standing over Diana. The rest of the squad dumps rounds into him, but with no effect on the dark elf. 

I pushed more mana into my muscles again, my body protested, but I couldn’t let any squad member die. Breathing in and out. Golden mana burst out of my body into wild tentacles and attacked like a rabid beast. I looked down at my left forearm. 

The screen read 80 percent. This should be enough, I thought as I felt my eyes strain under pressure. 

Stepping off my right foot, I blitzed toward the dark elf. The ground crunched and broke from the force I used, and within a couple of seconds, I was behind the dark elf blade across his neck.