What is Magic?

What is Magic? In stories it can be a useful tool to help provide food, shelter and warmth. It can be used to protect town’s and heal the injured. Someone who excels in the art of magic can make elemental servants using only existing material and a small push of magic to give life.

What is Magic? In stories it is sometimes a force that permeates the air allowing anyone with the knowledge the ability to use it, or at other times it is something that only some are born with allowing them to become the backbone of any society.

What is Magic? In stories it can be something, that is hidden and shunned, or something that is only discovered recently and enjoyed by the world’s populace. It can be both beautiful and horrendous, depending on the will of its user. This is what magic can be. In stories.

What is Magic? But our world isn’t a story is it. Is it? In our world there is no such thing as Magic everyone knows that. No Magic? So, when a town in the middle of nowhere just vanished, well no-one had any answers except for the crazies. Gone, without a trace. Because it couldn’t be Magic, that’s just silly.

Then over a month more towns began disappearing, and we began receiving a message from nowhere. The message said that other star faring races had placed humanity on Earth because of it’s natural magic drain, but that there were getting to be too many humans and the planet couldn’t keep up.

Humanity was feared by those who had the stars, far before the first Humans could think because we had more magic in one of us than some species do in a dozen. When it was accepted that the disappearing towns were, in fact because of out of control magic, measures were taken by the major nations of the world.

In under a month of the acceptance of magic and in fear that the Aliens would end our race if we were to keep living, a genocidal campaign had begun and from almost ten billion humans the number had been reduced to under two billion.

That’s when the rest of the message came through.

“We realise that being bereft of Magic until now will have major effects upon your race, but we are willing to offer tutelage to your people, should you show to us that you are not aggressive. Should you show any form of rejection then it will be in the best interest of the United Galaxies to end your species' existence immediately.”

Genocide had just been enacted upon the Earth’s own people by its people and showed the galaxies watching that we were not friendly. If we were willing to do this to our own people, what proof did they have we wouldn’t do so to theirs? For the safety of their people the strange Alien Council did what they had to do, they ordered the eradication of the Human species, and from the ground of the planet to the sky our world was turned to ashes by the combined arcane might of the Galaxies finest.

In under three months the total population of Humanity was cut down from almost ten billion to a paltry five thousand. The only survivors being those who disappeared with their towns before magic was accepted or during the genocide. Most of these pockets hadn’t found themselves on a different inhabitable planet though, instead they found themselves floating in space relying on those who learned magic quickly to keep the oxygen in the town.

I, though, had managed to make myself disappear before the genocide caught me, and with a pocket of air that I was managing to keep refreshed, found myself floating in space for almost a month after Earth was burned when I was found, not by a pocket of survivors, no that would be to good to be true, no, I was found by one of the Council members ships.