Danny felt a sense of existential dread wash over him. The more he thought about it the more correct it began to feel. He was pretty sure that for a moment there, just before his mana had resurrected him, he had been dead. He felt different now, even more different than he had begun to feel over the last few weeks. If previously he had felt that his mana pool had been this familiar entity that was sitting inside his body, it was now fully integrated.

He was distinctly aware that he no longer had what Henrietta or the textbooks would define as a mana pool. It was no longer this metaphysical entity that supplied him with a non-corporeal energy. It was now as real an entity as his blood, perhaps the same as his blood. It hummed through his body, energising him, supplying every part of him with boundless energy.

That brought him to a new sense that was now so apparent to him that it felt like any other of his senses. He could feel the mana around him. He could feel it in the demon corpse he was burning through and he could feel it faintly in the air around him. He could feel it as naturally as he could see or breathe. He could feel the mana of Smith and Tamm, still standing a distance away from him. He could feel it in the people scurrying around the area, cleaning. It stood out how devoid of mana the space around them was as well, it was an odd feeling.

His mana sense was not the only new feeling though. He had a crystal clear connection to the creatures that were hiding beneath Madley. If before he had vaguely been able to sense their location, now he knew them. He knew what they were, and they weren’t the zombies he had assumed them to be.

They certainly weren’t friendly either. They were violent beings, hunting each other down. They had rudimentary thoughts running through them that Danny could sense, and they were only of violence and hunting. A need to kill. Danny felt it within him too. There was a primal part of him that needed to hunt down these creatures, to slay them, to consume them. All of them, Danny included, felt this desire. No, not a desire, it was a carnal need.

Danny was able to wrestle his mind back from the need, but the other beings were completely lost in it, hunting each other down in the tunnels beneath the city. What the hell is going on? What is this? Danny felt like he had been given knowledge that he previously couldn’t comprehend and it scared him.

He wasn’t a human. Not entirely. Not anymore. He knew that with absolute certainty and it frightened him.

“Skala, let’s debrief,” Smith called out as he and Tamm walked over to Danny. Danny was pulled from his thoughts, feeling as though he still had a lot he needed to process.

“Yeah, sure. That was pretty wild.”

“We don’t know where the demonic mana the ritual would have generated is.” Tamm spoke in a fast tone that conveyed a no-nonsense attitude.

“Skala, this is Ester Tamm, head of surveillance and tech. Tamm, Danny Skala, who is turning out to be more and more of a powerhouse.” Smith said with a shake of his head, clearly exasperated by the woman’s attitude.

“Nice to meet-cha.” Danny offered a smile.

The woman just stared at him coldly before continuing. “We think the curse that was placed on you might have taken a significant portion of the demonic mana. Tell us what you felt.”

Danny described what he had felt, the complete inability to use his mana without it spreading the curse faster and the feverish weakness that had accompanied it. “But surely summoning that freaky demon used the mana?”

Smith shook his head. “That was only an imp, the weakest of demons. That would have only required a few people as a sacrifice, not the dozens we’ve found across the four sites.”

“Sorry, the weakest of demons? That thing was a monster.” Danny was shocked, what would a stronger demon be like?

“Just flesh and muscle. It has no magic of its own. An imp has a very limited impact.” Tamm answered.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

“Once you had your mana back, you made short work of it,” Smith added on. “If I didn’t have to focus on the scum running at me I would have dealt with it pretty easily.

“So, that leaves a lot of demonic mana that we can’t account for?” Danny asked.

“Precisely. The curse sounds bad, but I’m not sure it would have taken the remainder of the mana that would have been summoned.” Tamm replied.

That was rather disconcerting. If it didn’t take much mana to summon the kind of demon that had almost killed him, having a load of demonic mana missing was a pretty concerning issue. “Wait, if we killed all of the cultists, wouldn’t that mean there’s no one to use the mana?”

Smith grunted. “That’s the issue. We killed all of the cultists at the locations that pinged on the array, but there could be more hiding elsewhere. Case in point, the hundred we had no idea about here. If they’re not using mana and not communicating online with the other groups, we have no idea if they exist.”

“But, we can be confident they exist. A group of this size doesn’t just appear randomly. Smith told me that you met the Old Hag and that this ambush seemed to be focused on you.” Tamm locked her cold eyes onto Danny.

Danny towered over the woman, even if she was tall for her gender. Her stare still made the back of his neck turn cold though. Those piercing blue eyes scared him. There was a calculating ruthlessness resting beneath them. “Uh, yeah, I guess. I think she wants my mana as a sacrifice, or something.” Danny didn’t actually have a clue, but he felt like he needed to say something, anything to get the woman to stop staring at him.

Smith and Tamm started talking to each other about stuff related to the array, searching for the missing mana, and how to handle telling Madley about the incident. Danny had nothing to contribute so he stayed quiet, letting his mind wander. The pressing concern in his mind was his humanity.

He felt different now, but he still felt like himself. He still felt like Danny Skala, just now a far more magical Danny Skala. Danny realised that he needed to talk to his sister. He reached for his phone, only to realise that it wasn’t on him. He had no idea what had happened to it. He had brought it with him. It would have been in his pockets as everything unfolded, just like his wallet and keys. Ah, rats.

He began searching around the crater he had found himself in, only finding burning ground. His new mana sense gave him a pretty clear idea of what had happened. Traces of his mana had permeated the ground, though it was gradually dispersing and integrating with the ambient mana. It was his mana that had created the crater, pretty obviously having exploded. Well, that explains why I was naked. He had somehow detonated a large amount of mana with him as the centre.

It did not bode well for the things he had been carrying. Man, I’ve destroyed a lot of clothes lately.

Danny walked back over to Smith and Tamm, interrupting their discussion. “Yo, Smith. Can I borrow your phone?”

“Sure. Be careful with it.” The man threw his phone to Danny before turning back to Tamm.

Thankfully, Danny remembered his sister’s number.

“Hello, who is this?” A professional voice answered the phone.

“Yo, Belle, very professional.”

“Danny? Whose phone are you calling me from?”

“Uhh, a guy I work with. I might have, uh, broken? Mine. Yeah, oops.”

“Ah jeez Danny, what’s up?”

“I just wanted to talk to you Belle, hear your voice, yaknow?” Unbeknownst to him, tears had started to well in his eyes.

“Danny, you’re scaring me. What’s happened?” He could hear the genuine concern in his sister’s voice and that’s what broke the floodgates.

Tears began to stream down his face. “I don’t really know Belle. I can’t even say. I know they’ll listen to this call. It’s been a lot though-” Danny began to choke up. He had walked a distance away from anyone else, but he could feel that Tamm and Smith were looking at him.

“Danny…” Belle didn’t know what to say. “Do you want me to come to Madley? I can catch the next flight.”

“No.” The thought of Belle coming to the city was sobering. “You can’t come here. Never. This city should be avoided at all costs, no matter what.”

If Belle was curious, she didn’t ask. “How about you come here then, you know I always have a room for you, even if you’ve never come.”

“I can’t Belle. I can’t leave the city. They’ll kill me if I try.”

“Dammit Danny, what’s happened to you?”

Danny didn’t really know. It had all been rather chaotic the last few weeks.