Danny wandered a little upon reaching the landing before a woman poked her head out of a doorway. “Danny? In here please.”

Danny followed the woman into the room and found himself in a spacious study filled with wooden furniture that looked older than he was. In the centre of the room was a large orb on a podium of sorts. Extending out from the orb was a series of metal arms that connected into other, smaller, orbs. It wasn’t hard for Danny to guess what it was.

“Hello Danny, it’s a pleasure to meet you.” Danny turned and looked at the woman, he recognised her voice from the phone. She was a tall lady, almost as tall as himself, dressed in a cream turtleneck, Burberry skirt, and a long tan overcoat. While she was very pretty, the only word resounding through Danny’s head was nerd. All of the wizards are nerds. “Uh thanks, nice to meet you as well…?”

“Zoryana Kovalenko, head of testing and measurement here in Madley.” The woman flashed a radiant smile that made Danny feel a little bit warmer inside.

“Sounds like an important role.”

The woman waved her hand. “Hardly. It’s a new role, there was never a need for a position like this in Madley until recently.”

“Not much measurement to do down here?” Danny probed.

“No, Madley never was one for letting new wizards into his city.” The woman said with a heavy sigh. “Times have changed though.”

Danny found the way she talked about the city like it was a person a little odd, but let it slide. It was a guess, but judging by her slight accent and name, it could have been a cultural thing. He felt no need to press. “So, what do I need to do?”

The woman seemed to snap out of a melancholy thought and pulled out a tablet. “I was having a look at what the clerk put down in your report. Orange, glowing, mana?” Danny nodded. “And old Jeremy had to cut the measurement short… hmm…” The woman tapped her finger against her lips, deep in thought. She then wandered over to the orb in the middle of the room. She ran her hand across the surface of the orb and intricate carvings appeared across it.

“What does orange mana mean? Is that normal?” Danny shot his shot.

Zoryana nodded, focused on the orb. She touched one of the lines that had appeared on the orb and dragged it across the orb, changing the pattern. “Normal?” She continued to tinker with the orb. “Yes and no. non-standard colouration usually signifies it comes from a unique formation. Having orange mana suggests you have a sizeable mana pool, which is not common, no.”

The woman turned to look at him, her eyes were sharp and clinical, like she was looking at her next research project. “But glowing? That certainly is unusual.”

“Unusual?” Danny gulped, both because of the woman’s intense stare and the implications of the word.

The woman nodded again, refocusing on playing with the patterns etched across the orb. “Quite. While mana doesn’t have a set appearance or colour, per se, we usually see it follow set conventions. Blue is the most common colour, but other colours aren’t unusual. Effects, such as glowing, are far less common though, usually indicating a unique property present in the mana.”

The woman stepped away from the orb and gestured Danny towards it. “Hopefully a property we will be able to identify. If you will.”

Danny stepped forward and considered not touching the orb. He did not doubt that the colour of his mana looking the same as the stuff leaking out of Claude and the tunnel zombie was no simple coincidence. He wasn’t sure he had the choice to refuse though, Zoryana looked very invested in whatever was about to happen. He took a deep breath and touched the orb.

The draining sensation was more intense than the last orb, but not uncomfortable. He watched as the orb turned from clear to cloudy, then began to turn the familiar orange with its ever-present glow.

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“That’s a very orange orange, fascinating.”

The orb kept taking his mana and showed no signs of stopping. Zoryana’s expression went from surprised to shocked as the orb kept filling with orange, eventually becoming full. The orange then began to grow denser. Zoryana broke out into a cold sweat. “Danny, how are you feeling?”

Danny thought about it, other than the odd draining sensation, he didn’t feel anything. “Fine? Nothing unusual.”

“You’re fine to continue?” The woman sounded confused.

“Yeah, totally.” Danny said with a shrug. Her unease was beginning to bother him, but other than that he felt fine. He watched as the colour in the orb grew denser and the glow from his mana became brighter. The intricate carvings that covered the orb became visible again, then slowly began bulging away from the orb, and the crystal surface of the orb began to distort along with the carvings.

Danny turned and saw that the woman was staring at the orb with rapt attention. “Uh, Zoryana?”

“Курва. Take your hand off the orb, Danny.” Zoryana shook her head. “I’ve never seen or heard anything like this.” She approached the orb and looked into it with wonder in her eyes.

“So, that wasn’t supposed to happen?”

The woman laughed, the sound soothing to Danny’s ears. “No Danny, not at all. The average person’s mana could fill perhaps a third of this orb, the most I’ve ever heard of someone filling this model was a little over two-thirds, and that monstrous amount is the highest recording we have. This… This is extraordinary. Of course, we were expecting to see some strange things pop up once the entire world was measured, especially here in Madley, but this? I’m not sure the even Madlian effect can account for this.”

Danny soaked in everything she was saying, picking out the key details. He had a lot more mana than your average person and there was something unique about the city he was living in. While part of Danny was excited that he seemed to have an extraordinary trait, he was mainly filled with apprehension.

Zorayana was focused on fiddling with the carvings on the orb, eventually touching something that must have been a release valve of some sort, as the glowing mana began to travel along the metal arms toward the smaller orbs. The orbs all quickly filled, turning blue, red, brown, and white, respectively. This got a raised eyebrow from Zoryana. The colours of the orbs seemed to have traces of orange streaking through them. “How fascinating.”

The tall woman stepped toward the orbs and began playing with the carvings on them. Danny watched the orbs themselves, noticing the brown orb was more dense looking than the other three. Zoryana didn’t say anything for a while, continuing to mess with the orbs' magical wiring. Danny’s attention eventually waned and he began looking around the room.

“Well, Danny, I’m afraid I have more questions than we started with, but I can offer some answers.” Zoryana finally turned back to him. “You have an exceptionally large mana pool, that’s for certain, something entirely unseen before. You have a remarkable affinity for most of the elements, but your affinity for the earth element is slightly more than the other three.”

Danny nodded his head, processing everything for a while. “What does that mean for me, practically?”

Zoryana tapped her lip for a moment before locking eyes with him. “You are destined for great things.” Her eyes were cold and seemed to peer into his very soul.

“That’s- uh,” Danny stumbled over his words before Zoryana burst into laughter.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I couldn’t help it.” She wiped years from her eyes. “You should have seen your face.”

Danny resisted the urge to frown and let the woman slowly get a hold of herself. “I’m not sure honestly. You’ll be able to cast a lot of spells, definitely. You should probably learn earth-based magic, but with your affinities, you could choose whatever you like. Most wizards I’ve met have an average affinity in just the one element, at best.” The woman paused in thought. “You’ll be offered a place in the advanced courses that we’ll be running, that’s for sure.”

“Oh cool. I guess.” Danny wasn’t sure what to say. Danny had been expecting more tests or measurements, or perhaps to be studied. Maybe his mana wasn’t as interesting as her words had suggested. Danny then looked at the large orb of dense orange mana. “Do I get that back?”

“Back? Do you want to die? Though perhaps you’d be fine…”

“Huh? Die?” Danny was taken aback. ”I felt like I got it back from the other test I did.”

Zoryana raised an eyebrow. “Oh, that must have been because Jeremy dumped the mana from the orbs. A person's mana will try to return to them if it is left unused or uncontained. It can be rather dangerous, especially in large quantities, so we tend to leave it to slowly drain into the world. It usually disperses out into the natural mana field with time.”

“Why?” Danny couldn’t help but ask.

“If too much mana rushes back into your mana pool too quickly, it can burst.”

“That sounds bad.”

Zoryana nodded. “Rather lethal, actually.”

Danny looked at the large orb containing his mana and shuddered.