Max was moved. One second, he was standing on the grass next to his brother and sister, and the next he wasn’t.
The floor was a blinding, glossy shade of white that emanated light, and he found his eyes drawn to it.
Max looked around frantically. All around him, people started to appear in the room. Not warp, or apparate, but appear. There was no ceremony. No sound. No towering circles of light. Just people in places where they hadn’t been seconds ago.
Cries of confusion filled the hall. Men and women shouted. Children cried. Beside him, a young woman appeared sideways, inches off the floor, and faceplanted into it.
She immediately puked all over the floor, and the light from the floor turned a vile shade of brown. She looked around the room and caught her breath. She held her hand in front of her face and waved it. She poked herself in the side and started to cry.
A strong stench of liquor filled the air and Max couldn’t help but remember his foster-father. He turned away in disgust.
The room really did seem to go on forever, and as far as his eyes could see, people were showing up.
He knelt to the ground and reached for the floor with his hand. Or at least he tried to. A sharp burst of pain exploded up his arm, and like a tidal wave, the recollection of everything that had happened returned to him.
He lurched to his feet and more pain in his back caused him to flinch. He hobbled around the room as quickly as he could, searching for Ryan and Leah.
“Ryan! Leah!” he shouted, but his words faded into a chaos unlike any he’d ever seen. And Max knew chaos. Everyone was acting the same as him, frantic and disorganized, searching for someone or something.
A man, likely just as confused as everyone else bumped into Max’s back, sending him tumbling to the ground. Max caught the man shouting out a name as he kept running, though he couldn’t make it out.
He took a deep breath, and then a tiny blue box appeared in front of his face. It only said the word, “BOO!”
Startled shouts echoed through the hall. Max held his hand out and waved it through the box, but it passed straight through, only briefly displacing some of the letters.
Many of the people around him did the same, and Max imagined they were all seeing the same thing he was. He tried poking at the box, but nothing changed.
“What the fuck is going on?” a deeper voice, from an older man called out. It was the first thing he’d heard clearly since arriving. And it was exactly what he was thinking.
“It’s about time someone asked,” a high-pitched voice replied. High in the sky, where everyone would be able to see them, a figure floated. A long black coat billowed around them, though there was no wind in the room.
“My name is Y—” they started.
More shouting erupted all around the room. Many of the older voices started demanding answers, and many just screamed out in anger.
The figure above moved sharply, descending closer to the ground. Max could make out long, jet black hair tossing around her head. They looked down sharply, and Max felt fear. A visceral fear that nearly made his heart stop… That made him wish his heart would stop.
The room went silent. Completely silent. Max swallowed, and the fear receded.
The figure cleared their throat, “I’m suppose I should have seen this coming. There are far too many in this room for this to work.” They raised a hand.
Max’s heart sank. He wasn’t sure why, but a horrible feeling overcame him. He clamped his eyes shut and braced himself. Then a snap reverberated through the room.
“That’s better!” the voice said, much closer.
Max slowly opened his eyes and saw that he stood in a room with only ten other people. The figure, he realized, looked to be a middle-aged woman, and stood on the ground across from him. Directly across. Max locked eyes with her, and they were softer than he would have guessed.
She smiled at him. “That was far too many people,” she said, satisfied.
“W- What did you do with everyone else?” a voice called from behind, and he immediately turned. The drunk girl from before was seated on the ground and her eyes were bloodshot. Her hands were pressed into her temple, though she looked up at the woman.
“Ah!” she said. “Of course you’re worried about that. No need to worry. Everyone’s okay… I think. I’m only a clone of that body you saw before. We just moved everyone into smaller groups. That was a real mess earlier, no?”
“Listen lady, I’m going to need some answers,” a bigger man said, and he stepped towards the woman. “And I’m going to need them now.” She was much smaller than Max had realized, several inches shorter than the man.
The lady frowned but looked past him. “As I was saying… Or I suppose that I haven’t gotten that far… As I meant to say, you’re no longer on earth. Right now, you’re on a bridge to another planet. That giant star that appeared in your sky… that’s where we are.”
This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.
The room was silent. And the man laughed.
“Alright, I’ve had enough of this. Send us all home,” he said. He tried to grab the woman. NO! Max wanted to shout. But he didn’t. Just the memory of the fear she’d made him feel kept him silent.
She raised her hands and snapped a finger. The man disappeared. Poof. Gone. Many of the people in the room shrieked, and some started weeping.
“Oh please!” the woman rubbed her face, exasperated. “I didn’t kill him. I just sent him to another room. Let him be another clone’s problem. Am I right?”
Max’s mouth fell open.
“How do we know you didn’t kill him?” the drunk girl asked.
“You don’t,” the woman said. “Until I can get you all off this bridge, you have no choice but to trust me. I’m the only one who knows what’s going on here anyways. So just shut up and listen. Or I will actually kill the next person to interrupt me.”
She smiled, but this was a fake smile. Like the type of smile his foster-father used to give to the child services people whenever they came.
“Like I was saying, we’re all on a star bridge. And this star bridge is going to take you all to Glisea, the only other planet in your solar grouping that has sustained sentient life. How exciting?”
Around the room, many people started to stir. Nobody spoke.
“Glisea is a bit like some of the fantasy worlds you’ve read in stories. Think of the great Fantasy worlds, with dragons and wizards. A lot of the things you’ll see there should be familiar through that lens, but it will all be real. As for why this is happening now… honestly, I don’t fucking know.” She sighed.
“Basically, you’re here because two worlds, Earth and Glisea, were designated to merge many years in the future. That process was advanced. Severely. Your society was meant to be far more technologically advanced when this happened. And Glisea’s population was meant to be far smaller. They lack any real structure to the way things are done… so we were hoping for less of them.” She looked exasperated.
“Listen, they’re going to outweigh you in power a million-fold. The plan was that you’d all have some super-advanced technology to help even things up, but no. And when you get there, it’s going to be chaos. Because just like what happened to you, half of Glisea’s population is going to be relocated to Earth.”
Everyone in the room shouted. Max’s head spun. Ryan and Leah were far too young to defend themselves against whatever this psycho lady was going to send to earth. Hell, he was definitely too young to defend himself!
“If you’d let me finish, I was going to say that it shouldn’t be as bad as you think. The rate that Earthlings, that’s what we’re calling you by the way, gain power is going to accelerated, for the first five years of this merge. And your technology should be enough to buy your planet enough time to not be completely eradicated… maybe. “
“And in case that’s not enough, you have the blue box. It’s just a translation device, if I’m being honest. All it’s going to do is explain different things. But really, what you’re going to use it for is to understand how your powers work. I repeat, your powers do not come from the box. All the box does is tell you how they work. It’s got a personality too, for some reason. So have fun with that!”
That didn’t help at all. Max wanted to scream. What did she mean maybe? There couldn’t actually be a legitimate chance that Earth was destroyed.
Then she cupped her hand around her mouth and whispered, “But I’m going to kill a lot of really powerful things to find out why this is happening. You should have had at least a thousand more years. So, take solace in the fact that while your lives and solar grouping are being completely upended, I’m going to absolutely devastate the universe.” She smiled. “I don’t like being played for a fool.”
“You’re insane,” Max said, without thinking. And then his hands flew to his mouth.
The lady frowned.
“Shit, I didn’t mean it…” And then he thought of his younger siblings struggling to survive as dragons soared through Earth’s skies. “You know, I actually did mean it. I just didn’t mean to say it.”
Max blinked, and the woman was inches from his face. She rested a hand on her shoulder, and the blue box reappeared. It said, “That was dumb. Try apologizing. Like now!”
“Sorr-“ he started.
“Listen kid,” her words were sharp. “If you want to survive, learn to control what you say. Or don’t. Life’s more fun if you take risks. Either way, that was really dumb.”
She pressed a hand onto his forehead, and the people behind him gasped. The woman’s eyes turned black for a brief second, and Max felt a sharp tug in the back of his mind.
The woman smirked, “I just saw your entire life. Everything you’ve done up until now, I’ve seen it. Tough life, kid. But it’s nothing compared to what the people over in Glisea have been through. Or what you’re going to go through in the next five years. So take this as your first lesson: Don’t make mistakes like that in front of people like me.”
The blue box shook, and the pixels, or particles, that made it up started to glitch. The words changed, “CLASS FORCIBLY ASSIGNED: THREADER”.
The blue box expanded into a much larger interface:
“Max Thompson
Age: 19
Class: Threader (base)
Level: 1
Strength: 8
Dexterity: 13
Intelligence: 6
Vitality: 10
Health: 100/100
Mana: 60/60”
Confusion built in Max’s chest. He did not know what any of this meant. He could guess. He’d played video games before, but surely this couldn’t be real.
The woman spoke, and his attention was drawn to her.
“You’ve had a rough go with ropes and threads in your life. Now you’ll be bound to them for as long as you live. And because you don’t fully understand what just happened, I’ll spell it out for you. I just stole the most important decision you were ever going to make.”
“What the fuck did you just do?” Max shouted. Spit shot from his mouth and landed on her face. He did not care. Fury flowed through his veins. “You stole us from our planet and ripped us from our people. From our families! Because of you, there are two children alone on Earth. Two children with nowhere to go. They have been through enough without you and your bullshit. Then you go and decide my “class” for me, whatever the fuck that is. AND YOU’RE RIGHT! I hardly know what that means. So, congratulations! Is your deluded power trip over yet? Stop acting like you’re some god and show us how to get home. I have people to protect.”
Max panted. All of the other people in the room stared at him, open-mouthed. The woman stood, still only inches from his face, and Max noticed he was taller than her. He also realized that he did not feel taller than her, as she glared into his eyes.
“You’re right. I am not just some god. I am the only god that has it in their best interest to save your planet. And you just spit in my face,” She wiped the sweat from her face, and the glare in her eyes faded. “For what it’s worth, I could not send you back to Earth now that you’re here. But I warned you once what would happen if I was interrupted again. And I am a woman of my word.”
She raised her hand in the air.