Josh found himself in a blank space. There was landscape curving all around him, but it was grey, shadowy and indistinct. In front of him was a tall column of light with a shape that hinted at the figure of a person, but without distinguishing features. There was something dream-like about the place, but he could somehow tell, utterly and without doubt, that he wasn’t dreaming.

His first thought was: the kidnappers got me.

His second thought was: Ben is going to go spare!

His third thought was: but I didn’t even get my graphics card.

And then his brain caught up with events, and he felt very afraid. This was more than just a weirdo abducting teens, or a serial killer, or a ring of human traffickers. It was as if he’d been kidnapped by aliens. He didn’t even have a frame of reference to describe what was happening to him.

“This one greets you,” the shining figure of light said, in a beautifully modulated androgenous voice. “Welcome to the land of the Six Spires.”

Six spires, Josh thought. The game company.

“Where the hell am I?” he asked.

“You are in a state of potential. Be ready, traveller, for a seed of greatness waits within you.”

“That doesn’t answer my question,” Josh said dryly, amazed that his voice sounded so calm. His heart was hammering in his chest. “Who are you?”

“This one is the Guardian.” It followed that explanation by repeating its welcome greeting, with exactly the same inflection in its voice that it had used previously. Was Josh talking to some kind of automated voice response system?

“How do I get home?” he asked.

In response, the Guardian gestured, and a window appeared in the air, like a futuristic floating semi-transparent computer screen.

“Please choose a profession to proceed to the world of the Six Spires,” it said.

The list scrolled when Josh looked at it, pausing whenever he focused on any one line, as if it was reacting not just to the direction of his eyes, but also to his level of concentration. He saw some of the classes he’d encountered in Spiralia—enchanter, knight, paladin, necromancer, ranger, warlock, wizard, witch. There were also a host of crafter classes, like butcher, brewer, cook, glassblower, and so on.

He ignored the menu, turned on his heel, and started walking in the opposite direction. After several minutes, the landscape hadn’t changed, the low hills just as far away as they had been moments ago, and the shining figure behind him with its menu of classes had either drifted with him, or he hadn’t been moving at all.

Whatever kind of reality or simulation he was in, it was designed to keep him in the centre with the class menu. This wasn’t something he could escape from physically. He stopped walking.

“What happens if I choose a class?” he asked.

“You will continue to your destiny, brave adventurer!” the Guadian said unhelpfully, and without a trace of irony. “The land of the Six Spires needs you.”

“And what happens if I don’t choose a class?”

A timer appeared beside the menu. There were five minutes on the clock, and it immediately began counting down.

“If you are unable to decide, a profession will be chosen for you.”

Josh hated being forced into a box like this. It felt like making a choice would be the first step to submitting to the authority of whoever—or whatever—had put him here. Don’t panic, he told himself. It wants you to panic, to not think too deeply about what was happening. Josh was going to use every second of those five minutes to wring as much information as he could from the Guardian.

At least he now had a frame of reference upon which to hang his expectations. He was in character creation for a world that operated like a computer game. A world with a system. It was even a game he knew.

It wasn’t as if he’d never fantasised about what it would be like to be transported into fantasy world based on a computer game. Of course he had. But usually he’d envisioned himself materialising with his max level character, all fully geared and statted up.

The other thing he didn’t like about this scenario was that he was limited to one character. Josh habitually played on multiple characters—he’d already created five in Spiralia Online.

He’d started with a ranger, since it was usually a good class for exploring, and was often versatile, with options for both ranged and melee fighting. In most games, rangers were able to wear medium armour, and had decent crowd control options from either traps or trick arrows, or both. Ranger was usually his first go-to class.

However, he’d found that the best class for exploring in Spiralia had actually been the paladin. It wasn’t an archetype that normally interested him, but the high defence bonuses and healing meant he could run through a spawn of high-level monsters and survive, where the ranger would have died. He'd also tried a wizard, a knight and a bard, but the ranger and the paladin were the ones he’d spent most time on.

He focused on the class menu, taking his time despite the timer counting away. There were a couple of oddities about the list. First, most of the classes were greyed out. Second, to the right of each class were two numbers. He paused at the section that had ranger in it.

Priest (15/15)

Printer (10/10)

Ranger (10/10)

Shaman (5/5)

Smith (50/50)

Soldier (100/100)

Sorcerer (5/5)

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Spinner (50/50)

Stonemason (15/15)

Tailor (50/50)

Tamer (15/15)

Toad Doctor (5/5)

Thief (5/5)

Weaver (50/50)

What on earth was a toad doctor? And why were there so many crafting classes when the players were supposed to be heroes?

“What do the numbers after the classes mean?” he asked.

“It is written that there can be no more than a thousand heroes,” the Guardian responded. “Thus, the professions are limited, so that all may be represented. Those you see before you have been fulfilled.”

Josh frowned as he unpacked that. The number on the right was the maximum number of slots of that class available, and the number on the left was the number of players who currently had that class. It meant there were five thieves out of a maximum of five, and fifty weavers out of a maximum of fifty.

Almost all the classes on the list were full. Had the game truly sucked in nearly a thousand people? Ben, what did you get me mixed up in, he thought. This was way, way bigger than even Ben had realised.

The timer was ticking down, and Josh needed to concentrate.

Limiting the amount of players who could take a class meant that whoever had set this system up hadn’t trusted their victims to choose a balanced distribution of classes when left to themselves.

That could mean the classes were wildly unbalanced in power. Josh scanned through the list again. Crafting classes ranged in rarity, with only ten printers or ice sculptors compared to fifty tailors or cooks. Did that mean that printer or ice sculptor was a better class, or just that their profession was more niche? Combat classes were even more exclusive. There were only five of each type of mage, yet fifteen rangers and priests.

If each player who got sucked in was intended to be a hero and saviour of Celespire, why were there so many crafting classes compared to the traditional combat archetypes?

There were three minutes left on the timer.

“What can tailors do?” Josh asked the Guardian, and got a useless explanation in reply. “Yes, I know they can sew clothes,” he said through gritted teeth. “Can they do anything special or magical?”

It turned out that tailors could use enchanted cloth to create garments of great power, or sew charms into clothing, and Josh reluctantly began to see how a crafting class might have some combat utility. If you could clothe yourself in magical items that would give you an edge. Cooks could produce a feast for heroes, imbuing diners with enhancements. Woodcarvers could craft amulets to keep away foul spirits, stonemasons could build guardian statues, brewers could brew ale that would keep an army marching for days without food.

There weren’t a lot of professions left. All the greyed-out ones had been taken, leaving only a few highlighted in bold.

“Show only available professions,” Josh said.

The list condensed.

Assassin (4/5)

Demon (0/1)

Plumassier (0/10)

There was one assassin slot available, one demon slot, and ten plumassier slots. He didn’t want to be either an assassin or a demon.

Two minutes left on the timer.

“What’s a plumassier?”

Apparently, it was someone who arranged feathers decoratively. Josh was totally unable to imagine how you would weaponize decorative feathers, unless you fletched them and stuck them to an arrow.

“Can they do magic?” he asked.

There was a pause, before the Guardian said, “All crafting professions have at least one magic ability.”

But the Guardian didn’t know what it was? Or was it blocked from saying?

“Why don’t you know?”

“This one has not seen a plumassier use a magic ability in times past.”

That implied the Guardian didn’t control the system, or have full knowledge of it. Who had created the system? That wasn’t relevant right now. It was something Josh would have to come back to later.

“You said you hadn’t seen a plumassier use a magic ability. Does that mean that people have chosen plumassier before but you’ve never seen them use magic, or that you’ve never seen one before?”

The guardian paused again. The pauses made Josh suspicious, since that seemed like something a sentient intelligence would do, not an automated system.

“Alas, the rare few who have chosen this profession in the past were lost to the mists.”

“What does that mean? Did they die?”

“They were lost to the lands of the Six Spires,” the Guardian repeated. “They are one with the mists, now.”

That sounded like a euphemism for death.

The inevitable conclusion was that the three options—assassin, demon and plumassier—weren’t the leftover classes after nine hundred and eighty-eight people had chosen from the list. They couldn’t be. Assassin would have been a popular class, and Josh was willing to bet all the assassin slots had been filled by the first fifty players. The fact that there was now a slot free meant players were exiting out of the game, or world, or whatever reality this was, leaving slots that could then be chosen by new players coming in.

Not exiting, he thought. Dying.

“Once I travel to the land of the Six Spires,” he said. “Is it possible for me to die?”

“All heroes are immortal,” the shining figure told him. “If you fall in combat, you will arise again.” It paused, and added, “Rarely are heroes lost forever.”

So there was something in the world that could kill heroes. It sounded like you could resurrect, just as in the game, but there were certain things that could kill you permanently.

He had one minute left on the timer.

Assassin, demon, or plumassier?

Josh didn’t want to be a demon, and plumassier sounded useless, so useless that the people who had taken it had permanently died. He felt hollow inside. The only thing left was assassin. But he wanted a class that could protect itself, and assassin was a horrible class for that. It was usually a glass cannon—insane burst damage but super squishy, all its meagre defences piled into evasion.

On the other hand assassin classes usually had good sneaking abilities. Maybe he could use it to hide from everything that wanted to kill him. Plus it was a class with only five slots, which probably meant it was good.

So assassin it was, then.

Even as he watched, however, the assassin count updated to (5/5), and it vanished from the available list.

That must mean he wasn’t the only other person choosing professions right now.

“You’ve kidnapped other people at the same time as me?” he asked. Ben was going to go absolutely nuts.

Demon (0/1)

Plumassier (0/10)

Even as Josh spoke, he stared at the demon class. It was suspicious that there was only one demon allowed. For a start, demon was a race, not a profession. Why was it in the professions list? Was it meant to be an antagonist? Would Josh find himself hunted or targeted if he chose it? What did it mean to be a demon? Would he change into something else? Would this game, world, whatever it was be able to affect his brain, manipulate his feelings, turn him into something else?

He was overthinking things, as usual. It hadn’t just been Josh sitting here agonising over class choice. What if there was a third person busy choosing? Someone else could take demon at any minute.

He knew how this was supposed to go. When you got abducted into a world with a game system, you were supposed to get some secretly overpowered trick or skill or class. Demon was obviously the thing he was supposed to choose.

Or maybe he was just being paranoid. The other nine hundred and ninety players had probably thought they were special too, yet a tenth of them had ended up taking the soldier class.

Still, Josh hesitated. He had fifteen seconds left.

And then demon was gone too, leaving just the ten plumassier slots.

“You kidnapped three people all at the same time?” he exclaimed. The Guardian didn’t reply.

Someone else was now on their way to being the super overpowered demonic antagonist. Josh wasn’t sure whether to feel relieved or not. The timer counted down to zero. The word Plumassier flashed bright on the list, chosen for him after all.

“Farewell, traveller!” the Guardian said. “May fortune find you!”

Josh may have been abducted but, as the grey landscape around him faded, his last thought was that at least the world he was being involuntarily whisked off to would be an idyllic and pretty fantasy world.