For a few seconds I couldn’t quite get my eyes to focus, and I felt slightly nauseous. Once it cleared, I looked around with great interest, but felt slightly disappointed at the sight of a plain white room. The floor looked like concrete but felt slightly flexible, the way a well constructed wooden floor does. There was one door to the room and Roger ushered us towards it and out into a corridor.
He led us down the corridor, past a number of closed doors and then stopped in front of one that was indistinguishable, to me, from any of the others we had passed. I thought that all the unrelieved white could get depressingly old very fast.
After a pause of a couple of seconds, the door opened and Roger entered. I was directly behind him and followed him docilely into the room.
This room was identical to the one that we had arrived in except for ten ranks of institutional looking chairs all facing one blank wall. Roger instructed us all to sit, moved to the front of the room and waited patiently until John, Steven, Desrae and I had taken seats. With a glance at Roger, Ben, Gill and Rob turned and left the room.
"OK," Roger started, "You have arrived. Very briefly, what is going to happen now is that you are going to start you in-processing immediately. I just wanted to say a brief goodbye and wish you well. I hope to see at least some of you when you graduate from here." He then sketched a vague salute and exited the room.
I felt this was a little abrupt, but for some reason it didn’t worry me too much. The four of us sat and waited passively for a while. I had no idea how much time passed, as I had no watch and there was nothing in the room to indicate the passage of time.
We were all startled by the sound of the door opening. I had almost drowsed off in my chair. I watched as two people entered the room. They were both extremely tall, at least a foot taller than me, and they moved with an unnatural seeming grace. Almost as if they were dancing or ice-skating instead of walking. They moved to the front of the room, stopped there and looked at us. The man checked something in his hand, which looked as if it could be an oversize PDA of some sort, then looked up at us again. The woman next to him kept her head down with her eyes on whatever it was that she held in her hand, and didn’t look at us at all.
"Good Morning." It was the man. "Welcome to War World. I am known as Marek and this is Shiyla."
His voice was fluid and melodious. The closest I could come to describing the accent was that of someone who was a native Mandarin speaker, but not quite. As he spoke, I noticed that his ears had a slight peak to them.
"I am not of your race. We are known as the Sidhe. We are the facilitators and managers of War World."
That clicked for me. Elves.
"We know that there are a lot of legends and myths about us on the world you come from. There is probably the odd kernal of truth in what you have heard, but I suggest that you forget that and pay attention to the facts as they are revealed to you here, as this is the only reality that you have to concern yourselves with.
"We have done a preliminary scan of each of you while you waited and we need to explain a few things before we begin your processing. You have been subject to a mild form of magic since you first made contact with your sponsors. This magic has suppressed your curiousity and fear so that all that you had to consider was the basic decision to come to War World and nothing else. Some of you might have realised that you were exceptionally drowsy. This is a side effect of the magic, and an indication of your resistance to its effects. It is the first indicator of whether you will have some talent of your own here and of your potential for an aptitude to become a War Brother.
"Are there any questions?"
Suddenly, it felt as if a veil had been removed from my mind. I realised that the magic must have been lifted as a plethora of questions crashed into my head. All the questions that I should have asked Roger and all the things that he had evaded answering returned full force to clamour for attention.
While I was reeling from this onslaught, Steven started freaking out next to me, screaming and shouting at Marek. Somehow hearing him go off like that made me calm down somewhat.
Marek just waited for Steven to run down, then asked "Was there a question in that somewhere that I missed?"
Steven seemed nonplussed at the lack of reaction to his tirade and look around at the rest of us; looking for support I suppose. After a few seconds, he slumped back into his chair and mumbled "I s’pose not. Was just a shock."
"Any one else?" Marek asked, giving each of us a long look.
I sat quietly turning over everything that had lead to this point, and eventually decided that it probably made sense just to go with the flow for now and see where it lead. I did ask "Can we ask questions later?"
"Yes. The best answers to questions though are the ones that you experience for yourselves. We have a lot of experience with newcomers, and we find this to be a universal truth. Now, if we can proceed. All our initial scans of you are positive, there are no problems that we can see..."
"Umm Excuse me?" John put up his hand.
"Yes?"
"I, umm, Gill knew that I was umm.- ill and uh - that I have..." John seemed unable to complete his question.
"Yes. We know. That isn’t a problem." Marek answered and proceeded to explain, "The next step in the process is for you to get treated. Please follow me."
Marek turned and walked out of the door with Shiyla close behind him. We all rushed to follow.
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