Chapter 2

It took some time for me to calm down, considering just how impossible it was that George was standing there whole again. It wasn’t a particularly small piece of flesh that had been blown away, after all, having been nearly baseball-sized. We went straight to the office to talk, and as far as we could tell this had to have been related to the event and the floating weapons. How it worked, we couldn’t even begin to guess, but it seemed like everything that had been physically wrong with us had been healed; my ankle, his calf, assorted scars that we had picked up over the years, all problems seemed to be completely gone.

We spent the rest of that week in a great mood. When Friday rolled around, Melissa even convinced George to take her dancing, which was something they hadn’t done since high school because of George’s leg.

That mood ended on Monday though. We woke up to the news of violet orbs having appeared all over the world. There didn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to them, other than their being concentrated in more populated areas, and basically anywhere that there was concrete. Some were inside buildings, some in parking lots, some were in the middle of a damned road. It took a couple of days, but it was quickly determined that all of these orbs were portals of some sort, and that the only ones who could use them were those who had been visited by glowing weapons the previous week. The military swiftly swooped in and began isolating each of these portals, declaring that they were dangerous, but some information still leaked out over the net.

The portals were definitely dangerous, according to that information. The places they took a person to were filled with various creatures, hostile creatures that would attack on site, and even when the military entered they suffered casualties clearing the areas. It seemed like the only things that could be used when there were your weapons. For example, you couldn’t just carry in an outside shield. The portals were far more effective than any movie theater imaginable at preventing outside items from entering. The weapon-holder could still enter, but the shield would be dropped at the portal entrance and not taken along.

Clothing worked just fine though, oddly enough. There were civilians who had entered and survived before the military cracked down and took over the known portals, and there were presumably still a few civilians who had access to portals that the military hadn’t found just yet that experimented and leaked information over the net ... which is a good thing, because the militaries of the world didn’t seem inclined to share ANY information.

From some online forums and chat groups, we learned that the creatures found within the portals varied from portal to portal, but that each individual portal always contained the same types of creatures following a “theme”. The creatures that had linked so far were spiders, ants and centipedes, all much larger than what you would find outside. The ants, for example, were rumored to be the same size as a golden retriever.

As more time went by, more information eventually leaked. Portals appeared to have a ten-day cooldown after being used, and individuals themselves also appeared to have a cooldown, being able to enter a portal every five days themselves. They appeared to have different “levels”, and once someone completed a level at the end of it they could choose to advance to the next level. The number of people who never left a portal continued to increase, and it was speculated that those were the ones who chose to advance to higher levels and weren’t able to handle the increased difficulty. It wasn’t long before laws were passed to make it illegal for civilians to enter the portals, or for civilians to not report the location of an “undiscovered” portal. Of course, just like all other laws, those laws had a tendency to be ignored by certain portions of the public. Not always the ones you might think either. For example, it seemed like at least once a week a church would get caught using a portal with some of their members. I was thankful that some people ignored those laws, however, because the information that leaked about the portals was of great interest to certain people within our gaming clan. Fireball claimed to have entered one, but no one really believed him. To the best of my knowledge no one in the clan had actually entered one, but the four of us who’d gotten together the day the weapons appeared had a tendency to scour the internet for new information throughout the day.

That is until about a month after the portals appeared, when Hurricane reached out through our clan chat server to set up a meeting. We all 4 lived in Florida, with Hurricane and Tempest being located in Orlando while George and I were in the Tampa area. With our need to be around the shop, both Hurricane and Tempest ended up making the drive to us for our meeting. We hadn’t met in person before, even though our gaming clan was relatively local, so we ended up picking a random chain restaurant and meeting there after work. Melissa came with us, of course. For one, it would be bad form to have her go home alone on a day when she was in our office. Secondly, and more importantly as far as she was concerned, as George’s biggest cheerleader she wanted to meet some of the people that we spent time with online. Melissa was a saint. Most wives wouldn’t put up with their husband essentially ignoring her for a couple of hours several nights each week, but she actively encouraged George to spend time with us knowing that gaming was an important destresser in his life.

When we got to the restaurant, the three of us were the first to arrive. It wasn’t long before Tempest showed up though. Travis was tall and on the thin side, with shoulder-length blond hair and a pale complexion that fairly screamed that he didn’t spend enough time in the sun. He introduced himself as Travis Sears, and seemed happy to meet someone that wasn’t a gamer like us but also just treated us like people. You’d be surprised how many people just look at us funny or ask us why we don’t grow up. It’s an absurd question, when you think about it. I mean, George and I own our own business and employ 4 other people over and above ourselves, and partially employ Melissa, but when people find out that two mid-20s males play video games they get this look on their face like they suddenly found themselves dealing with children.

Hurricane arrived just a couple minutes later when we were still getting pleasantries out of the way, which just started them over. Her long brown hair was in a single braid that would’ve likely reached her waist if it hadn’t been gathered in a way that draped it over her shoulder so that it fell in the front of her body. She was short, perhaps 5’2” at the most, pretty as all get out, and more athletic-looking than one would expect from the average gamer. She introduced herself as Alicia Harrison and thanked us all for meeting with her, though she looked a little bit nervous with Melissa there.

We made it all the way through dinner without the subject of why Alicia wanted us all to meet up coming up, but when the waiter came with the checks Alicia slipped him a couple of bills and asked that not we not be disturbed, which set off a few warning bells.

“I know you all are wondering why I wanted us all to meet up, especially since this came up rather suddenly, but I appreciate your waiting until I brought it up. Y’all are much more polite than my own family,” she said while chuckling. “Two days ago I went to deliver some mail to my neighbor’s apartment that had been placed into my box by mistake, and he didn’t answer the door even though his vehicle was still parked in his parking space. I occasionally take care of his cat when he goes out of town, so I have a key to his apartment and let myself in. Aaron wasn’t anywhere to be found, but right in the middle of his bedroom was a portal.”

She waited out the gasps and questions from the table before continuing. “Aaron’s cat was just about out of food and water when I got there, and since he didn’t reach out to me to watch his cat I’d bet money he went into the portal. Judging from how little food and water poor Hunter had left, and how dirty the poor thing’s litter box was, I’m guessing Aaron’s been gone for at least 4 days, possibly more. As y’all know, with that kind of time frame, he’s probably not coming back.”

This time she was faced with mostly silence at the table, none of us really being sure how to address her neighbor being ‘probably dead’, outside of Melissa’s “I’m sorry for your loss, did you know him well?”

“Not really. We occasionally saw each other around the complex, he paid decently for me to take care of Hunter when he was out of town, but we didn’t hang out and didn’t talk very often, usually just a little bit before and after one of his business trips.

The reason I bring it up, and the reason I brought y’all here even though I don’t know how you especially are gonna react Melissa, is that I want the four of us to enter the portal when it unlocks.”

I had a feeling that was where this was going, but she still somehow managed to catch me off guard with her proposal. Travis and George seemed even more surprised than I was, but Melissa didn’t look surprised in the least, judging by her knowing smile.

“You’re aware of the danger, yes?” asked Melissa.

“I am, yes. I’ve been following the information that’s leaked just as closely as these guys. I know the death rates are around ten percent right now, and injury rates are even higher. I think we’d be in better shape than most of those entering portals right now, however.”

We were curious how she came to that conclusion, since most of those who had been entering were in the military and because of that were generally more physically capable than the average person. Alicia had a couple of theories supporting her belief, however, and I had to admit that they made sense. In our various discussions over the weeks since the Weapons appeared, we’d discussed so many things, and one of those things was our Weapons. I had ended up with my warhammer, George had woken up to a longsword and some type of shield, Alicia had received a composite longbow, and Travis had received a staff. None of us were a serious threat to break an IQ test, but Travis having a staff gave off some serious mage vibes, though we weren’t completely sure. Between the four of us we’d make a pretty balanced team, even if we didn’t have the full six-person squad that was the maximum allowed into a portal at one time.

On top of that, we had all been playing together in various team games over the years so we were already used to being together in high-pressure situations. Sure they weren’t truly life or death like a portal would be, but we weren’t strangers and had meshed pretty well in the various games we played.