Perspective: Elias Vardas

  Setting: Nexlify office break room, 9:28 PM PST – April 9, 2025

  As we stood before the jagged black oval on Pine Street, the portal’s edges writhed like a living wound, purple-black distortions bleeding into the air, spitting sparks of white and gold. It wasn’t just a doorway, it was a tear, a gash in reality that hummed with a low, bone-rattling thrum, like a distant engine. The air around it shimmered, heavy with a metallic tang that stung my nose, and faint wisps of mana curled off it, dissolving into the drizzle-soaked Seattle night. I half-expected to see stars or some cosmic void beyond, but as Dennis stepped through, the surface rippled like oil, swallowing him whole, and I caught a glimpse of something else, a warped reflection of the city, twisted and wrong.

  I followed, my drones buzzing at my shoulders, and the world flipped. Stepping through felt like plunging into cold syrup. My skin prickled, mana surging in my chest, then a lurch as gravity snapped back. I stumbled onto solid ground, boots crunching on a surface that looked like asphalt but glittered faintly, flecked with iridescent shards like crushed glass. Towering skyscrapers loomed, but their steel frames were gnarled, organic, pulsing with veins of dark purple that oozed a faint glow. The sky churned, a bruised swirl of violet and black, streaked with jagged bolts of silent lightning that cast everything in a sickly sheen. Street lights flickered, their bulbs replaced by clusters of glowing orbs that pulsed like eyes, watching us. A familiar 4th Avenue stretched out ahead, the skeletal husk of Pike Place tilting in the distance. It was wrong, a nightmare stitched from the bones of our world and drowned in rot.

  A chittering roar from thousands of Void Mantises, their black-purple shells glinting as they swarmed across the warped cityscape. My HUD pinged, mana ticking down as my drones synced to the [Relay Station] Marcus had rigged. In the distance, a hulking silhouette loomed atop a twisted mass of metal and earth. The Queen Mantis, her carapace a glossy obsidian, segmented wings twitching, flanked by a dozen warriors. These were not like the ones attacking Seattle, they were taller, thicker, their scythe-arms crackling with energy. She wasn’t just big; she radiated menace, her presence warping the air like heat off pavement, a beacon drawing the swarm.

  “Numbers are insane,” I muttered, voice tight as TJ crouched beside me, rifle ready. “Thousands, easy. Queen’s got guards too, larger, maybe ten feet tall.”

  Marcus awoke in our ears, connection with the real world established through the relay, “I have video and audio coming in. Hold tight, I’m running a full scan of the area with the relay. We need to know what we’re dealing with before we move deeper.”

  Marcus went quiet in my ear as the rest of us spread out and took cover behind blackened burned out cars and debris. Rubble, waning fires and broken steel littered the ground all around us, as if a massive explosion threw everything away from the portal. “Marcus, there is a lot of damage around us, are you seeing this on the cameras?” I asked, needing a break from the overwhelming world around me.

  “Yeah Eli, I am. I am also running thermal, radio and microwave scans. The area around you is cold, registering 10 to 12 C. The bugs are warmer, but not by much. The queen is hitting 20 to 30 C with a thermal gradient extending from her body to a portal approximately 5 km southeast of your location.”

  “She’s connected to another portal?” Alicia complained, “I thought those people said coming in stops the portal.”

  Lisa looked at Michael, who shrugged, “They were wrong?” he answered. “We didn’t have time to talk with them before we came here, but there were definitely no more bugs after they went in.”

  TJ lowers her rifle slightly, her eyes narrowing. “Talk to me, Marcus. What’re you seeing?”

  “The Mantises are emitting an energy signature in the microwave range. The Queen’s signature is slightly higher, around 15 GHz, which is also higher than the environment’s background radiation, sitting at about 10 GHz. I think they are native to this place; their energy profiles are too closely matched to the ambient radiation to be anything else.”

  “So the Queen and the Mantises are part of this environment’s ecosystem. That makes sense, their biology, or whatever passes for it, would be tuned to this place’s physics. Are you measuring their mana?”

  Marcus nods, even though the team can’t see him, his voice growing more animated. “Exactly, Eli. The relay’s picking up Mana signatures from them, and they’re in the microwave frequency range. 2.5 to 8 GHz for the Mantises, 15 GHz for the Queen. But here’s the kicker, our Mana signatures—yours, mine, everyone’s—are in a higher spectrum, around 30 to 40 GHz.”

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  Alicia, her voice thoughtful. “So their Mana is different from ours? Like, it’s not System Mana? Is it something else, something tied to this place?”

  Marcus pauses, then says, “Their Mana is native to this environment, just like they are. It’s darker, heavier, more chaotic. I’d agree it’s a different type of Mana altogether, one that’s fueling this whole nightmare. We should totally name it.”

  Dennis was grinning like a kid, twirling his [Mana Channeling Bat], “How ‘bout [Void Mana]? Fits the vibe. Creepy, chaotic, and these bugs are definitely from some nightmare. Plus, it sounds badass.”

  TJ cracked a grin, “I like it. [Void Mana]. That means these monsters and their portals are [Void] too. We’re fighting the [Void], plain and simple. Good to have a name for the enemy.”

  “Since she is channeling the mana into those tendrils,” I said, pointing at the Queen, “The Queen must be using [Void Mana] to keep the portal open. That means she is either countering the System’s Mana field, or she is feeding it. That’s why her signature’s higher, she’s the anchor, the cornerstone. We take her out, the portal collapses, and the Void loses its foothold.”

  Lisa, twirling a shard of ice between her fingers, her tone teasing but curious. “So we’re the System’s warriors, huh? Fighting the big bad Void with our fancy high-frequency Mana? I can get behind that. But what’s with the Queen’s tendrils, those things are creepy as hell.”

  Marcus steadied his voice as he cross-referenced the scans cascading across his computer screens, “The tendrils are how she is channeling her energy into the portal, keeping it stable. The relay’s feed shows them between 15 and 23.5 GHz, and the thermal scans show a heat gradient following the tendrils. She’s the power source, no question. We cut her off, the portal’s done.”

  Michael chuckled to himself and turned to TJ, “Guess that makes her the Void’s queen bee. We chop her down, the hive falls apart. I’m ready to swing when you are, TJ.”

  TJ repositioned her rifle slightly, using her scope to survey the battlefield, “We are limited in what we can do unless we get that swarm of bugs away from her. For now, they seem intent on getting through that portal opening, so that gives us time. Now, we need an opportunity. If we had a way to direct fire over them, mix it up with anti personnel and smoke, claymores and mines, we could envelop and destroy.” TJ began.

  “I may have an answer to that.” Marcus replied, “I can create an [Aether Fabricator]. It’s like a mobile 3d printer I can load blueprints into. Hey Eli, remember that gun-bot idea you had? I made a blueprint, but I can modify it to lob mortars. Coding the bots to switch between anti personnel, mining and smoke will take about 10 minutes. I will need more time to fabricate the bombs though.”

  “I can task my aerial drones to monitor and harass while we hold position here.” I said, flicking commands to my drones. Seconds later they shot after the Mantis groups nearby, biting into their flanks and attacking any bug they saw. The diversion moved the roving bugs away from the team and back to the main swarm, but stopped short when they hit my 1km range limit. Grunting in frustration, I brought the tiny machines back, searching for new targets. “I have to get more range soon.”

  Planning the assault

  TJ lowered her rifle and sat against the blackened bus she took cover behind, “Here’s the plan. We repositioned 1 kilometer from the queen. There are a couple of buildings about 300 meters from her position that look damaged; we could bring them down with the bombs, crushing the bugs.”

  Dennis whistled, his grin wide. “Damn TJ, that is badass. Marcus you better be saving these video feeds, we are gonna be so famous after this!”

  TJ stared daggers at Dennis until he stopped laughing, her voice hard as steel. “This is not a joke Nguyen, we will probably die doing this.” The chill in her tone matching the cold air. “We have to lure them here. That means we set up overlapping fire positions. Two teams, 200 meters apart, leapfrogging each other as the bugs get halfway to them. You have to move fast and control your fire, no full auto. The forward team will be downrange from you, remember that. Do not shoot your teammate.”

  She let that last order hang in the air, her gaze sweeping over us. After a moment, she continued, “We’ll lure the swarm 700 meters west from the portal to a set of damaged buildings. The last 100 meters of that street will be the kill zone. Team 1 is Dennis, Coogy, and the dog-sentry. Team 2 is Eli, your drones, and Lisa. Team 2 covers Team 1’s retreat 200 meters behind when the bugs get close. Flip roles, rinse and repeat. Call for smoke if they get too close. The bots will set [Mana Mines] every 20 meters between the buildings and side roads. We need to keep the swarm inside the kill box, or this doesn’t work. We put half the [Mana Bombs] in each building, rigged to explode the front supports so they fall onto the street, crushing the swarm. That’ll cut them off from the Queen and pull them back from the portal. Our final fallback position will be 200 meters southwest of the Queen, 100 meters north of the kill box. Any questions?”

  Marcus replied, “I will pre-position the bots at the fallback location. They can shoot 10 rounds before they have to reload. The fabricator can handle that. I’ll stagger their attack patterns so we can keep the pressure on the bugs, but once they figure out where they are, those bots won’t last, they are thin as paper. The turrets and mortar bots should be able to hold off the swarm while we focus on the queen.” Marcus answered

  “Fair enough.” TJ responded, “Once we trap and crush the bugs, team 3 will attack the queen, that’s me, Michael and Alicia. When those buildings fall, we hit as hard as we can. Dennis, Coogy, Eli, Lisa and any remaining bots and drones, will circle around the kill box and get to the queen. Marcus, have the bots rain smoke and anti-personnel over the remaining bug clusters. I have a feeling what’s left of the swarm will turn tail and attack us the moment the queen is threatened. The moment the queen is down, Eli you send drones to us, pick up the stone and we all get the fuck out of here. ”

  System’s quest timer blinked: 28:47 remaining.