Chapter 22

“Ladies and gentlemen, if I can have your attention,” Boyd called out.

He had waited until they all had a meal and had eaten at least half of it. He could see that most of the people were more aware and had settled down to some extent by then.

“I have some good news, some fantastical news and some not so good news,” he started.

He knew he now had their attention, so he went on. “To start with, if you look around, you will see that nearly all of the people in this room look as if they are between eighteen and thirty. It is not your imagination that you also appear as young as a third of your age before you came here.”

“You probably feel better than you did when you were last that age. If you had genetic diseases, cancers or missing parts or limbs, you don’t anymore. The toxic chemicals you had absorbed, the viruses or other diseases you had are also gone. That is the fantastic news.”

He let them babble for a moment and waved his hands to shoosh them.

“Now for some of the not so good news. While these people laboured hard to fix you, they didn’t do it out of the goodness of their hearts. They have a very legitimate reason to collect you all and remove you from the care facility that you were in.”

“While these people had ancestors who lived on Earth, some of their ancient ancestors were not from Earth. They are not strictly human, as you may define what a human is. Their race calls themselves the Therians. We would call them shapeshifters or changelings.”

Boyd gave a few moments to absorb these facts. He knew they would have to be repeated a few times before full comprehension would be achieved.

“So, some bad news for some. You are not on Earth anymore. You can never go back. This is now your world. You have travelled across space and time to get to this new world.”

Again, he stopped to let his words sink in.

“So why were you brought here, you ask? To put it simply, these people are a dying race. Their ancient ancestors did something we would consider terrible. They were worried that these people, the Therians, would breed them out of existence.”

“So, they genetically engineered them so that if they had more than two generations without at least one parent being from another race, they couldn’t produce children with someone like them.”

“When the Therians escaped Earth over two thousand years ago for us, they did bring some Gauls and other races with them. However, since then, they have bred out the other races. They were unaware of the problem until no more children were born.”

“In their desperation, they sought a solution. You, me, we were a solution that they could live with. They didn’t wish to take the young from Earth, so they took the old and unwanted. Us.”

“If that isn’t shocking enough, I have another shock for you. These people are not as technically advanced in the same way we are. The reason they haven’t got that far is that they have a different form of technology. They practice magic. I mean real magic, not hocus-pocus.”

Boyd blinked. He then reappeared on the other side of Hadi.

“Teleportation for those who have strong magic is a reality.”

Boyd made several utensils lift off the nearest table. He moved them over the heads of the seated people and deposited them on the next table.

“Telekinesis is also real. So is transmogrification,” he said.

He picked up a tray that was sitting on the counter behind him and had it move towards him. Once he had it in his hands, he mumbled a spell. The tray seemed to fold into a ball of silver and then reform as a set of candlesticks. He had the candlestick levitate over to the neared table with people sitting around it.

“Sorry it’s a bit rough, but I’ve only been a wizard for a couple of days.”

The room had been deadly quiet except for a couple of gasps while he performed his tricks. He knew some people would need a lot more convincing, but that would come later.

“Some of you are probably asking if you can do what I can. Simple answer, probably not. Apparently, only about one in two hundred and fifty people here can wield magic like I demonstrated. Why I can, we don’t know. I was just lucky, I guess.”

“In saying that, you will all be tested to see if you have any magical abilities. If you do, your situation will become very different to the rest of the people brought here.”

“Just so you know, they managed to bring four thousand nine hundred and ninety-five people from Earth. They have a population of nearly four million spread across six very large islands. As you can guess, some islands have greater populations than others.”

“The Island you are on at present, Tye Island, has about half of their population. So at least half of us will be settled here. The rest will be dispersed between the other Islands.”

“I have not been able to shake the powers to be from that solution. I have, however, made them change their plans to make you all slaves and to sell you to the highest bidder.”