Danny turned to Henrietta. “Could you help me make sense of what he just said?”

“SMUs, or Standard Mana Units are how we measure mana. The capacity and measurement of an SMU are complicated, but it’s what’s used globally. The average wizard has between 30 and 50 SMUs in their mana pool. That measurement device you almost broke when Zoryana measured you had a capacity of 150 SMUs.

“She said that the highest recorded amount of mana was two-thirds of that orb, right?” Danny asked.

“Yep, an eccentric fellow with about 100 SMUs. I meant it when I said that your mana pool was something only talked about in legends.”

Danny let that sink in. He hadn’t even felt slightly drained after filling that orb up. Perhaps 300 SMUs was a conservative estimate. Danny began to feel like he should start playing things closer to the chest. It was growing more apparent that whatever the norms were, he was far outside of them.

Henrietta then handed Danny the book she had been carrying, its title read: Earth Basics. “This is an entry-level grimoire for Earth Elementalism. You can read it in your own time, for now, open it up to the 15th page.”

Danny did as he was told and found a script on the page. Above the script was a paragraph that instructed him on what to imagine as he read the script. He looked at Henrietta, confused. “Magic is just reading lines?”

She laughed. “Yes and no. You must first picture the spell in your mind, then the incantation helps channel your mana into the image in your mind. The final word is the activation word, which acts as the trigger for the spell. People often combine movements into incantations to help remember them in a somatic form. Different things work for different people. It’s about finding your own style.”

Danny felt a little silly but decided to give it a try. The instructions told him to imagine earth, be that in the form of sand or dirt, imagine himself surrounded by it, and then imagine it coming into form around him. He pictured himself at the beach, with sand between his toes. He was standing in the dunes, only sand around him as far as he could see. He tried to hold the image as he awkwardly read the script.

“Oh mighty element of Earth, heed my call.

Oh mighty element of Earth, take my mana.

Oh mighty element of Earth, bring forth your might.

Arise!”

As he spoke Danny felt his body respond to his words, the mana within him mobilised and left him through his skin. Giant clouds of sand suddenly materialised around him. They unceremoniously appeared and fell to the ground, gradually disappearing as the grey tiles of the floor glowed green.

“That looked like it worked,” Henrietta called out from the other side of the room. Danny looked over and found the woman had retreated back to the doorway.

Danny watched as sand continued to appear, gradually forming a pile around him. He was making it quicker than the tiles could make it vanish. “How do I stop-” as he thought about it stopping, the sand stopped appearing and he felt his mana settle.

“It’s pretty intuitive, mostly based on feel,” Henrietta commented as she got closer.

“That script is seriously lame.” Danny felt more than awkward remembering the nonsense he had just mumbled.

Henrietta chuckled. “Yeah, the grimoire incantations are pretty cringey. The wording isn’t important, once you are familiar with the spell you can change it up. It’s more about creating a channel for your mana. Once you’re experienced enough, you can drop the words altogether.” She wordlessly summoned a blob of water next to her to demonstrate. “Though even after 20 years of practice, I can only wordlessly summon my element, I still have to chant any of my other spells. These things come intuitively to some, but not to others.

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“It looks like my hypothesis was correct though,” she said, looking at the piles of sand slowly disappearing around him. “European Elementalism focuses on maximising the efficiency of the conversion between mana and magic, allowing wizards to cast far more spells than previous schools of magic. This is what led to it becoming the dominant, and now only, school. I believe it is working in the opposite direction for you though. The spell acts as a constraint for your excessive mana, honing it into something more manageable.”

Her logic made sense to Danny and he nodded along. “What’s happening to the sand?”

“It’s not technically real sand. It’s a manifestation of mana. With time it would naturally dispel back into the ambient mana. These grey tiles actively absorb the mana, which is where the glow comes from.”

The two of them stood around for a while longer before Henrietta sent him home for the night. She let him keep the book. “Thanks, Henrietta,” he said as he was leaving.

“You can call me Retta, Danny. I have a feeling we’ll be spending a lot of time together over the coming weeks and it’s a long name.”

As Danny walked home, his mind wandered relentlessly. It had been another day of too much information for him to process properly. He had expected to learn a lot, but this was more than a lot. His class, the content, the fight he’d gotten into, all of it was so filled with information that his brain didn’t know where to start. As he began to feel overwhelmed Danny realised that he needed external help for this.

Where else could he turn when life got too overwhelming?

Danny soon found himself out the front of his old club. He had stopped by his place, grabbed his gear and got changed. He also picked up the key he wasn’t sure Mikey knew he had.

As Danny unlocked the door he was greeted by the smell of sweat and leather. It had so deeply permeated the building that no amount of cleaning would ever get rid of it. The club was blissfully empty. Danny had no idea what schedule classes ran on these days, Mikey had changed everything once he took over, causing the old guard to mostly move on.

Danny got right too it, starting the same way he had every night for over a decade. Skipping. Old Kennedy had always proclaimed the benefits of skipping: balance, fitness, and footwork. If anyone dared to challenge his assertions, founded or not, they’d find themselves skipping for the entire night. People didn’t usually question his methods for long.

Next was drills, Danny had his favourites. Coach had been old school, believing that the fundamentals were everything. In his eyes, there was no need for fancy tricks, combinations, or moves, everything boiled down to two simple things. Conditioning and mastering the basics. Even when the club moved toward kickboxing and MMA, Kennedy hadn’t changed his philosophy.

Danny had spent thousands of hours of his life practising the same drills and he wouldn’t change it for the world. He could still hear his old Coach yelling at him for getting small things wrong.

Next was bag work, this is what Danny had been waiting for. He set the round-timer up and threw on his gloves. Danny wanted to start light, working from a distance with straight punches, but something overcame him as soon as leather met leather. Danny fell into a trance, smashing away at the bag.

The world around him ceased to be, no longer was he in a MMA club, no longer was he worried about what was going on in his life. It was just him and the heavy bag. There were no breaks, and the bell for the rounds went unheard, eventually timing out completely.

Danny finally felt himself work up a sweat, but that only invigorated him further. The feeling of his shoulders growing worn and his feet growing heavy was blissful to him. His knuckles were barely conditioned these days and he felt the skin wear down to bone, but the stinging didn’t stop him. The sweat dripped into his eyes, stinging, yet again it didn’t stop him.

His body felt like a roaring fire, the weariness he felt only served to fuel the flame to burn brighter. He felt hot, but that was nothing new to him. He had trained through 40-degree Australian summers, a bit of heat was nothing to him.

His chosen heavy bag wasn’t holding up as well as him though. The leather started to give under the ceaseless assault. Finally, one brutal flurry proved too much and the bag tore open, spilling sand onto the floor. Danny was snapped out of his stupor.

“Jesus Christ Danny, what happened to you?”

Danny turned around and found Mikey filming him with his phone.

“Huh?” Danny looked down at his arms and saw that they were glowing. A dull orange pulsated from beneath his skin. His sweat was visibly evaporating off his skin.