Danny dreamt of the warehouse again. He was sitting across from the three men he had killed. They sat there and stared at him. He said nothing either. Danny then got up and approached the man he had blown up with his mana bullet. The man looked at Danny with the same passive expression he had spoken to him with. Danny tried to punch the man, but as his fist connected it had no effect on him. Danny desperately tried to beat the man, but nothing he did could move the man.
Danny snapped awake from the dream. This time he didn’t forget what had happened as he fell asleep. He could still feel it, feel them. The presences that had the same mana as him. It was an unnerving sensation, knowing where they were, knowing that they knew where he was. If he didn’t focus on the sensation then it would fade into the background but it wouldn’t leave.
Danny started his morning with a run, then made use of the Academy’s gym facilities. They had some boxing bags hung up that had clearly never been used, but that changed quickly. Danny was weakened, the curse not having been slept off like he had hoped. Though weakened, Danny still produced more power than he thought was humanly possible. The bags were cheap, sure, but they shouldn’t have been destroyed by a few minutes of being hit.
Danny got into the shower and finally let his thoughts come crashing in. More to process. The last 24 hours had been much like the last few days, and even more like the last few weeks; an ever-increasing series of hectic events that challenged everything he knew.
It’s all been a bit too much. Danny ended up sitting on the floor of the shower, he wasn’t paying rent or utilities, so wasting water wasn’t a concern. He sat there and thought. The crashing water helped his thoughts flow. The events of the last few days streamed through his mind as he tried to make sense of it all. He realised that far too much had happened for him to truly grasp. One of the few things he was able to gleam was the power dynamics of Madley.
Aldous Madley ruled the city, that much was obvious. He also seemed to have a significant degree of power over the wider wizard community, based on him being able to bring Henrietta from the States to his city, his ability to get away with killing all those talented wizards, and his own statements. Aldous Madley ran a prison within the city, a prison for wizards. He had a team of guards or wardens who would have to be powerful enough to contain these magical criminals. He also had other minions, at least Smith, but likely more.
It’s a military dictatorship. Danny could sum that up. This dictator was paranoid, like all dictators are, and didn’t want powerful wizards in his city that weren’t under his control. Danny could be certain now that Aldous would have killed him if it was any other time. Thankfully for Danny, these were strange times indeed. There was something big going on with the demons, for one. Then there was the True Wizard Consortium's decision to go public with magic, early, a controlled release before a chaotic mess unfolded.
What do I need to know? Danny ran it in his mind for a while. He needed to know what the relationship between the Consortium and Aldous Madley was. He recalled what Retta had said in the class and made some inferences. She had chosen very specific words to talk about the prison and its prisoners. The Consortium had a vested interest in the prison staying a prison, so Aldous likely got a lot of leeway from the higher-ups. That much was obvious when looking at the treatment of Retta. So, that rules out the Consortium helping out here.
Danny wasn’t content to work for Madley. He had made his decision the other night, no more being led around by others. He needed to create his own agenda and start working toward it. That raised a significant question. What do I want from all of this?
Danny sighed. That was a difficult question he had been grappling with for a while. Since his breakup with Anna, he had been lost. Hell, it had started earlier than that. When his coach had died he felt like he had lost all direction. The man had been like a father to him, more of a father than he had ever had. Kennedy had taken him and given his direction, taught him how to fight and how to be damn good at it. After had had passed Danny stopped fighting. He had started working for Anton just for the money, but once that fell apart he had decided to go to uni. He had chosen social work out of the vague feeling of wanting to help people, but that was it. It was the same for his job at the shelter. He felt like he had just been wandering from place to place.
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I just want to help people. It was simple, but it was all he had. So, how can I help people? Danny had a new question to sit with. The world was changing rapidly and he had no doubt that things were going to look very different moving forward. His first thought was of the group of other students he’d been lumped in with. They were likely going to be the needle movers in the near future. If the dictator lets them. Being honest with himself, Danny didn’t like the group. Other than Linh and Jack, he didn’t feel anything positive toward them all. Combined with a feeling of futility of still being under Madley’s thumb, that didn’t feel like the right direction to be heading.
If not rubbing shoulders with the future leaders of Madley, what else could he do to help people? The demon cults? It wasn’t hard for Danny to imagine the chaos that a bunch of demon worshippers could unleash on innocent people. Is that it then? I kill people to help other people? It didn’t sit entirely right with him, but he wasn’t sure what else he could do.
I can’t stop Madley, not now at least. That put another idea in his head. He didn’t have to be fully subservient to the dictator, but if he stuck his neck out too far, the man would take his head, literally. A plan began to form in his mind. If his potential was as legendary as people were telling him, then he just needed to buy himself the time to realise it.
There was a difference between being forced to serve and serving to fulfil his own purposes. This was it, it was loose and it was shaky, but he now had a direction in his mind. He was going to help people. It sounded childish, but it was a purpose. His high school teachers would rip into him for not making it a SMART goal, but it was enough for now. He was going to have to play the long game, but as long as he had his goal in mind he would be okay.
Another quote came to mind, this time he was pretty he knew the author. He who had a why can bear almost any how, Nietzsche. He’d seen it in a youtube video and had liked it. It made more sense to him now though.
He mustered the energy to get out of the shower and get dressed. Danny knew that he had to get more powerful and thankfully he had a pretty good idea of how to get there. He checked his phone for the time and realised he had a number of missed calls from his sister. He called her back.
“Danny! Where have you been? You haven’t answered since last night.” The worry in Belle’s voice made Danny’s stomach turn.
Danny made a split-second decision. “Sorry sis, I was really tired and just crashed out. What’s cooking with you?”
It didn’t take much coaxing to get his sister talking about the new class she had joined and all the gossip she had about it. It was very similar, if not identical, to the one in Madley. A bunch of bigwigs or their kids grouped together to get ahead of the curve. It made Danny realise that the Consortium was playing to their own agenda as well. His sister was stoked to be at the head of the pack though, still more talented than anyone else in the group. Danny managed to worm his way out of the call eventually and made his way to Retta’s office.
There was still a bit of time until the class was supposed to start and he thankfully found the woman in her office. She asked him to sit and made some coffee for the both of them, Once they were both comfortable she spoke. “So Danny, what’s been going on with you?”
Danny didn’t mince his words. He knew that the woman was in the same boat as him. He gave a rundown of his situation with Aldous Madley.
“Dear lord, it hasn’t let up for you lately has it?” The sympathy bled through the woman’s eyes and Danny had to look away.
“Yeah, no joke. But I’m not dead yet.”
“Neither am I, even if it feels that way sometimes. I want you to know that many of us aren’t here by choice. Even if this cursed city let wizards enter it before all this, it was an avoided place. Aldous Madley’s reputation is known far and wide. You’re either in Madley because you work for Aldous or because he deems you too dangerous not to be under his watch.”