Danny panicked and punched the woman in the face.

It wasn’t very gentlemanly of him, but he would reserve his manners for people not currently being possessed by a demonic entity. The woman’s head snapped back and she stumbled, but the chanting didn’t stop.

Danny’s mind raced. He had a split second to decide if he was going to use his magic, which would definitely kill the woman. There was part of him that was afraid and wanted to stop her chanting, but part of him didn’t want to blow up a young woman. It was a serious dilemma.

His moment of hesitation cost him his choice. The woman finished chanting and she grinned, blood running down her face from her now broken nose. Danny felt a foreboding feeling that made the hair on the back of his neck rise. He suddenly felt like he was trapped in a small box, the walls closing in around him.

“What did you-” Danny found himself feeling weak and short of breath, his legs wobbled and he dropped to his knees.

The woman with purple hair collapsed to the ground, unmoving. The sultry voice, seeming to speak from the air itself called out. “Capture him, my children, he will be a most delicious sacrifice.”

The 12 remaining youths surged to their feet, their faces filled with fanatic zeal. They pulled knives out from their clothes and set upon him. That made the decision easy for Danny. His body felt weak and his Mana responded slowly, but when it responded it came in force. Danny summoned a truly massive cannonball of mana and shot it toward the group. He felt his mana pool plummet uncharacteristically, which disorientated him. His mind was bombarded by a ringing sensation.

As he steadied his reeling mind he saw a knife stabbing down toward his shoulder. It was too late for him to respond properly, so he could only flinch as he felt the blade pierce into his shoulder. He roared in response to the pain and charged at the assailant. He picked the man up and slammed him down into the ground as hard as he could. The man’s head bounced off the concrete floor and he didn’t get up.

Danny stanced up, ready for the next attacker, but only found a destroyed building. It looked like a bomb had hit the place, there was a deep crater in the floor and half of the building was missing. There was no indication that 12 of the 13 youths had ever been there.

Danny looked at the knife plunged into his shoulder and winced, he didn’t know what to do about it. He looked down at the young man on the floor and felt nothing. He had confirmed that the group had been working with a demon, they had attacked him, there was no guilt in his mind. He took a deep breath and repeated it in his head. They had been working with a demon. They attacked me. I don’t feel guilty. He took another deep breath a let it sink in. The young man’s eyes were still open, staring up at the now-exposed sky.

“Fuck,” Danny muttered. He pulled a chair over and sat down. His body still felt weak and he knew there was something wrong with his mana pool. Over a third was missing and he could feel it coming back slowly. It was a very alien feeling for him. He took a deep breath and tried to focus on what was happening with his mana. He could feel some sort of contaminant within it. Did the demon curse me? He realised he’d definitely been debuffed and that was likely the spell the demon had been chanting.

“You alright, kid?” A familiar voice asked.

Danny opened his eyes and watched Smith nonchalantly stroll into the building through the massive hole he’d created. “The ADF are definitely going to ask questions about that explosion. You’re creating more work for me here.”

“Could have done it yourself.”

The man shrugged. “Wasn’t my job this time.” He looked around the room. “I’m guessing you got them all?”

Danny shrugged back. “Probably? I didn’t see what happened. I think I’ve been cursed. I was also stabbed.” He gestured to the knife in his shoulder, which was hurting less than he expected.

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

“I can see that. Curses are tricky business, particularly demonic ones. I wouldn’t have expected anyone in this group to be able to do anything like that though. They were pretty fresh, maybe able to change their appearances or summon an imp.”

“Yeah, one of them was possessed by something with a woman’s voice. She talked to me before chanting a spell. I didn’t stop her in time and now I feel like ass and my mana is all weird.”

Smith’s entire demeanour changed. “What?” He turned to Danny, his face serious.

“What?” Danny asked.

“Tell me what happened, in detail.”

Danny explained everything from start to finish, his ploy to get into the building included. He expected the man to laugh but his face remained stoic the entire time. The man didn’t speak for a bit after Danny finished, appearing to be deep in thought.

“Danny,” he eventually said. “This is bad.”

“Is it?”

“Yeah. I believe you just met the Old Hag, she’s one of the demons who has been making inroads into Madley through these groups. She’s a Mare, The Mare, her worshippers are known for their curses and hexes. If she’s interested in you then you have a serious problem.”

Danny didn’t respond. He let out a deep sigh. Can’t catch a break, can I?

Smith then searched through the building and found a number of disturbing items. Blood-soaked boards and tools, all covered in strange carvings. There was apparently a number of mutilated animal carcasses in another room that would have to be burnt as well. Smith gathered up the items and put them in a pile on the ground. He taught Danny the method of destroying things that had been tainted by Demonic mana. It was a slow process of using your own mana to break down the item. It took a lot of mana and twice as much time, but it destroyed the items thoroughly.

“All that mana can come in pretty handy,” Smith commented as he watched Danny make light work of the task. His copious amount of mana made the task a cakewalk for him.

“So, uh, my shoulder?”

“Oh yeah, forgot about that. Let’s get you to a doctor.”

“No healing magic?”

“Oh right, forgot we had healers in Madley now, that’ll make this easier.”

Smith then went about dousing the entire building in gasoline he had brought up from his car. The body of the youth was left where it was and buried, as what was left of the building burned down on top of it.

In no time Danny and Smith were back in the car and heading back to the city. “So what now?” Danny asked.

“I tell the big man that you crushed it. I’ll ask that you work with me, helping out with the growing demon business.”

“I’ll have to do that again?” Danny wasn’t sure he could stomach the business. He didn’t want to make work of murder.

“Yeah well, it’s that or he’ll want to make you work as a guard in the prison. I guarantee you’d rather be doing this.”

“Why?”

Smith shivered. “The guards are no better off than the prisoners in that place kid, the rift chews you up. Nobody comes out the same, prisoner or guard.”

“The rift? Madley mentioned something about rifts earlier, what’s the deal?”

Smith laughed. “That’s a whole conversation I couldn’t be assed having. You know, ask that daft woman in the academy. I’m sure she’s read every book about the rifts we’ve got.”

The rest of the car ride was silent. Danny nodded off at some point, the exhaustion having become too much. He was still half asleep up until Samanera pulled the knife out of his shoulder back at the Academy. That had woken him up like nothing else in the world could have. The man quickly chanted a spell and Danny watched as the flesh of his shoulder knitted itself back together. Retta was there as well, looking positively horrified.

Danny managed to convince her he was fine and that’d talk to her in the morning but for now, he desperately needed to get to bed. He made his way back to his new pad and crashed out on his blanket in no time. As he drifted back to sleep he began to be aware of a growingly familiar sensation.

There were about a dozen distinct presences now. Danny knew they were all beneath the city, spread out across the entire spawl. Just as he noticed them, they noticed him. There was something all too familiar, a deep feeling of connection between these presences and himself. As his mind drifted off he finally understood what it was.

It was the mana, they all had the same mana.