Danny woke up to the best news he’d received since he had been accepted into university. He was lucky enough to have been selected for the first cohort to be taught at the Madley Academy. He immediately texted his sister, sharing the good news. He had three days until the teaching started and he wasn’t sure what to do with himself until then.
For the first time since he’d first stepped into the ring, Danny was beginning to feel excited about something. He hadn’t had the opportunity to play many video games growing up, or read many books, but he was still familiar with plenty of media involving magic. The possibilities were endless in his mind. He found himself watching replays of the press conference, specifically the magic that Forbes had demonstrated.
There were thousands of videos trying to analyse what he had done, but every attempt was laughable when nobody had any idea how magic truly worked. That didn’t stop people from speculating though and Danny was more than happy to indulge. He was pulled from his mindless entertainment by a phone call from his boss.
“Hey, John,” Danny answered.
“Danny, how are ya?” A jovial voice replied.
“Yeah, I’m alright, pretty good actually. You?”
“Yeah, same as ever. I’m calling to ask if you’re available to cover a shift tonight, Luigi has gotten sick and can’t do the overnight.”
Danny replied without thinking, “Of course John, I’m there.”
“Thanks, Danny, you’re a lifesaver.” John hung up leaving Danny reeling with what he’d just done. Danny didn’t want to work right now, especially not an overnight. He couldn’t call John back though, that would just be rude after he’d already accepted. So Danny just frowned and tried to get some sleep in, he wouldn’t last an overnight shift if he stayed up for the rest of the day.
As the sun set Danny woke back up, grabbed some food, and threw on some warmer clothes. The shelter got deathly cold at night. He hopped on a bus and got to the shelter far earlier than his shift required, such was the perils of using public transport. He got buzzed into the building and made his way to the front office, finding Grant and Larry chatting away.
“Good to see you Danny, how are you?” Grant asked.
“Yeah good mate, good enough to be back here.”
“No rest for the wicked,” Larry said with a laugh.
“You’d know it, mate.”
Larry proceeded to show Danny the CCTV recording of the night Danny had been carted off. Claude was captured in his full horrific glory, glowing orange blood and all. “Police told us to keep quiet about it, said we’d get in trouble if it leaked. Something about an active investigation or something,” Larry commented.
“It’s freaky as hell, that’s what,” Grant said with a shudder, “turn it off, Larry.”
“You’re telling me, I was there,” Danny said as he stared at the video. Even as Larry swapped the screen back to the current cameras, Danny had burned the image into his mind. There was no denying it now, Claude was definitely in the same state as the guy he’d found down in the tunnels. What interested him was that the police seemed potentially aware, if this was part of an active investigation. Why hadn’t they contacted him?
The trio sat around chatting for a while before the proper handover was done and the duo got ready to leave for the night. “You sure you’re all good to stay here alone?” Larry asked.
Danny raised an eyebrow, “offering to stay the night?”
“God no,” Larry grinned, “just trying to be polite. This is when you say: yeah ‘course mate, and I leave.”
Stolen story; please report.
“Yeah ‘course mate,” Danny laughed.
“Have a good one,” Larry grinned as he and Grant left. Danny waved them off and focused on the shift reports from across the day. He went back and read the reports from the last few days as well, noting that quite a few guys had elected to leave the shelter, commonly citing not feeling safe after the incident with Danny. Of course, the rooms were quickly filled again, the shelter was always full.
A couple of guys came up to the office windows throughout the night, especially after it went around that Danny was back. Danny took a great deal of pride in how well he managed to form relationships with the guys who stayed at the shelter. As he explained to any students who came to do a work placement, volunteers, or new staff, just treating the guys like the humans they were did a lot of the heavy lifting. It was a shame, but the stigma around being homeless was very real and always present in these guys' lives. Treating them with the respect you’d show any other human being should have been a given, sadly it often wasn’t.
Other than the occasional conversation with the guys who didn’t sleep during the night, or letting in the rare guy who had a valid exemption from the 11 PM curfew, the night shift was usually pretty cruisey. Not much tended to happen and Danny usually used the time to work on assignments. Getting paid to study? An absolute win.
Danny didn’t bring his laptop tonight and definitely didn’t feel like working on anything uni-related. Instead, he hopped online on one of the work computers and made an exciting discovery. The True Wizard Consortium had begun releasing information about magic during the day. They claimed it was introductory information that would be covered in the public course, but wanted to disseminate it to the public early, especially to those on the waiting list for a course.
Danny didn’t care for the reason, he simply dove into the information with reckless abandon. He started with the very vague and brief history that the TWC provided about themselves and the state of magic in the world. The TWC used a system called European Elementalism, which was the culmination of thousands of years of work. It was the safest and most effective way to use mana to create magic, according to the True Wizards.
That immediately raised questions. It implied that there were other ways to use magic, unsafe ways to use magic. Danny dug through the documents for an explanation of what mana was, feeling like he already could guess. What he found was rather disappointing, the only explanation offered for mana was that it was a magical energy source that existed in inside people in a metaphysical location named the mana pool. It was the fuel for magic and was consumed in the creation of a spell. Something about the explanation felt incredibly lame to him, like he was reading ‘Electricity for Dummies’, or something even more dumbed down. He hoped he’d get a better explanation during the course.
Reading more, he found the True Wizard Consortium was the largest magical organisation in the world, with a presence in every country. There were no other groups mentioned, but again, the existence of one group implied the existence of others.
Unsafe magic and unnamed other factions? Something just isn’t sitting right. Danny couldn’t help but feel like a lot was going unmentioned, which made sense considering the rather small amount of information that had been released. Perhaps it was just deemed not important enough for the introductory stuff? That made sense in his head, so he shelved the thought for now.
His excitement grew when he read about some of the more actionable stuff that would be happening soon. Working with local governments the TWC would be running a program to measure people’s mana pools and elemental affinities. Those with any presenting talent would be offered further education beyond the introductory course. That made Danny excited. Looking into it, the programs would be stations set up around the city where people could just turn out and get measured. These stations would be opening tomorrow.
Danny immediately found the one that would be nearest to him and looked for the opening time. It would be opening literally as his shift ended. That sealed Danny’s plans for the following morning. With that, Danny could barely sit still for the remaining hours of his shift. As soon as 8 AM came around and two ladies came for their shifts Danny did a speedy handover and rushed out of the shelter with minimal chitchat.
His heart raced as he decided walking was too slow and began running toward where the station was supposed to be. As he got there he found that dozens of people were already lining up, with crowds making their way toward the growing line. Danny didn’t miss a beat and ran straight up to the line, overtaking many who made the mistake of casually walking. Danny practically hopped from foot to foot as the line slowly moved.
Whatever the measuring process was, it was done inside a pop-up tent, out of the view of the public. People went into the tent and came out with varying expressions. Confusion was the most common one.
Soon Danny was next in line to get measured. A tired-looking young woman in a warm jacket stood at the front of the line.
“Are you a wizard?” Danny couldn’t help but ask.
The woman shook her head. “Nope, just work for the city council.”