Danny stared blankly at Henrietta.
Henrietta’s fiery eyes pierced straight back into his.
This went on for a few minutes.
Danny took a deep breath.
“I was hospitalised the other week.” Danny started speaking. Retta looked a bit confused but didn’t interrupt him. “I was at work, a homeless shelter, one of the guys came back unwell that night. I heard sounds from his room and went to check on him. He came out of the room and knocked me over. He wasn’t himself anymore. He was like a zombie, spilling this glowing orange blood everywhere, some of it got on me.” Danny rolled up his sleeve, showing the burn that was still present on his bicep. “It did something to me, I ended up in hospital, but they couldn’t work out what was wrong with me. Then I woke up, completely fine, if not better than ever. I’m getting stronger, I’m fitter, and my mana looks like the stuff that guy had been bleeding.”
Retta’s eyebrows scrunched in thought. “Your mana looks like the blood of the zombie guy?”
“Yeah. There’s more of them as well. Down in the tunnels under Madley, these zombie things. I went down there, that’s how I ended up in trouble with crime stuff, it’s their turf.”
Retta began pacing around the room, clearly deep in thought. Danny didn’t interrupt her but instead started playing with his magic. He summoned some sand and began to shape it. He realised what he had been doing wrong back in his old bedroom. He had been using brute force to try and move the magical sand. Instead, he could do what chanting did, create a proper pathway between his mana pool and the sand. He could then use the pathway to create change in the magical sand. It was a simple thing but it made all the difference.
“Danny.” Retta pulled him from his playing around.
“Yo,” he replied.
“I have no idea what’s going on with you.”
“That makes the two of us then,” Danny said with a shrug. He was pretty over trying to work it all out at this point. “I don’t know why I’m like this, but I am.”
“This doesn’t make sense though. Madley wouldn’t let something like this happen in his city. If these zombies are just bleeding mana, they have to be getting picked up by the arrays throughout the city… He can’t not know about this.”
“He didn’t mention anything when I saw him.”
“That makes even less sense.”
The two of them stayed in silence for a while longer. Danny had no answers and it was looking like Retta didn’t have any either. The silence was eventually broken by someone knocking on the door of the training room. It was one of the workers that Retta constantly called up to cover for her. They had a familiar face accompanying them.
“Ms Borg, we’re starting the practical part of the day. I’ve got Lucas here to start practising the basic mana spells.” The worker gestured Lucas forward and the young man stepped into the room, brimming with confidence.
Retta let out a long sigh. “Okay, thanks. Lucas come over here, we’ll get started right away. Danny you should watch this, it might help you understand your position a little better.”
However Lucas interpreted her statement, it made him puff his chest out even more than it already was. He strode over confidently. “Awesome, I can’t wait to get started.”
Danny stayed silent and took as step back as Retta began teaching the young man how to begin creating a mana projectile. Lucas concentrated for a moment before a flash of blue mana appeared in the air before him. The mana wobbled and then disappeared. Danny could see that it didn’t have a stable enough form to properly materialise in the world.
Lucas panted, a bead of sweat running down his head. “Wow, that was hard. I couldn’t get the image in my head right. It just popped before I could feel it properly. Was that supposed to happen?”
A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
Retta stared at Danny as she started speaking. “That’s very normal. Actually, it was impressive that you could even manifest your mana at all. Keep practicing and I’m sure you’ll have it down in a day or two tops.”
Lucas turned to Danny. “How’s your practice going, man? I feel like I haven’t seen you in ages.”
It had been a few days, yeah. “Ah yeah, you know. It’s going alright.”
“Have you got the mana projectile down yet?” Lucas asked.
Danny paused. “Yeah, I do.” He summoned a small amount of mana in the shape of a ball and fired it off at the wall. He carefully controlled the amount of mana and the wall only glowed a soft yellow.
“That’s awesome man, I’ll have to work hard to catch up. What’s the colour on the walls mean?”
Henrietta stepped in, saving Danny from the awkwardness. “The tiles in here absorb mana. Green is a harmless amount of mana, yellow is harmful, orange is dangerous, and red is lethal.”
“Oh, so what happened the other day? The tiles were broken.” Lucas looked at Danny, slightly shocked.
Retta coughed. “Danny used too much mana in his spell, breaking the tiles, and the wall, and a few others.”
Lucas’ eyes widened. “How much mana would that take? I’m feeling it after failing that one spell.”
Retta looked over at Danny. “A lot of mana.” She then segued into working on refining the mental image of the mana projectile. She demonstrated by again summoning her own mana projectile, an ornate-looking arrow. “The clearer the image in your head the more mana-efficient the spell tends to be.”
Danny then tried to summon his own arrow, finding an ornate arrow easily appearing in his mind. The next step, manifesting it in the real world took no effort from him. In the next second, the arrow appeared in the air before him. Deciding to try something new, Danny tried to change the influence he had over the movement of the projectile. Don’t bullets spin? Does it make them faster? Or fly straighter? I can’t remember. Either way, Danny tried to make his new arrow spin as it flew forward.
The glowing orange arrow shot forward, spinning as it did so. Danny watched in wonder as the arrow collided with a tile on the wall. Instead of exploding and being absorbed by the tiles like his other projectiles had been previously, the arrow stayed solid for a moment. It drilled into the plate, disrupting the red glow it was emitting. The plate seemed to shut down and when the arrow finally dissipated, a hole was revealed.
“Oops. I think I broke it.”
Lucas looked shocked and Retta sighed before pulling out her phone. She made a short call and a man soon came into the room pushing a trolly. It was the man Retta had introduced as an engineer, Tedd or Todd. Danny couldn’t remember.
“Ahh, it’s mana-boy again. Of course.” The man inspected the plate Danny had hit, before pulling it from the wall to inspect it closer. He then looked up at Danny. “Did you do this with normal mana?”
“Uh, yeah?”
The man shook his head. “Crazy. I want nothing to do with it.” The man fitted a new tile in place of the old one and left just as quickly as he came.
Lucas was staring at Danny. Retta was sighing. Danny felt rather awkward.
“I’m going to go now, Thanks for the help today Retta, I’ll catch you later?” Danny shuffled towards the door.
“Sure, I’ll catch you at some point tonight,” Retta said, looking quite over the whole ordeal.
“Huh, why would you see each other tonight?” Lucas asked.
Danny turned and walked. He heard Retta explaining that Danny lived on the campus now as he left the room. He didn’t care to deal with the curiosity of the 20-year-old. Sorry Retta, that’s on you.
Danny wandered back to his room and hopped online, curious about the state of the world. Magic had been officially introduced to the world for almost a week now, surely it would have had some interesting impacts. Not being on social media platforms, Danny didn’t have access to the unfiltered stream of consciousness of the masses, so he started with the news.
Unsurprisingly, it was rather boring. Lots of statements from governments and global organisation like the UN about developing regulations and the like. It seemed like everyone was rushing to make sense of the world and make new rules now that people were going to be using magic. Danny was sure that it was important business but he couldn’t bring himself to care. The Australian government could make whatever laws it wanted, but Danny had a feeling that the city of Madley would be operating under its own set of rules.
The news was boring, so he got onto youtube, looking for more exciting content. It was still disappointing. Danny had to recognise that he was far beyond the curve right now. The average person was still learning what magic was, the most talented were in the same place as Lucas.
Your average youtuber had no magic to show off yet. It did seem like no wizards from the preexisting order were trying to make a name for themselves through the internet yet either. Danny wondered why that might be.