The assembly hall's mirrored ceiling glittered with the multicoloured illusory dancers of light from the Illusionist's spell. He had to be lowish tier because he recast it regularly and now that it was approaching midnight and since he had been in his cups, the illuminated dancers were looking less and less undressed and doing things that public illusions should not do.

Any other assembly or any other ball and I would have leaned over conspiratorially to my fellow wallflower Joceline and pointed it out, but today Joceline stood awkwardly over at the other side of the ballroom where all the other eighteen year-olds stood in the Random Funneling Circle. She looked terrified in her hand-me-down patched quilted armour, bearing rudimentary weapons, and wearing a pack full of probably rations and water. She and the rest of my peers were petrified like you could expect from Mid Stock.

The Mid Stock appeared totally different from the other circle full of kitted out High Stock. I had never seen so many volunteers in my life. There had to be two double handfuls or more of them. Half of those folk were dancing and drinking as if they were not standing in a circle that a Summoner was casting upon the floor in the design of The Funnel Stock Circle. Or the Sure Thing Circle. While the High Stock flirted and laughed with one another, I could see that they were mostly geared out with the basics they would need to survive. They didn't seem to care whatsoever about what was about to happen. Of these faces, only two were Low Stock. That woman and a man looked petrified and I wondered just for a moment what had been their crime to make the punishment be this.

Outside the two circles -- which took up a significant part of the dance floor -- people milled about and some were trying to do a country dance while also being quite aware of the distance between their feet and the currently inert summoning circles.

"Mitka dear. Why do you not go out and say goodbye to your little friends?" My mother purred in her overly syrupy voice. "Or go and join the dance. See. Your sister is there out dancing. Can you not step out from this wall at least once?"

"I am good here, Mama." I said as quietly as I could without causing her to ask me to speak up and speak louder.

She sighed dramatically. "Mitka, you need not hide you know. Everyone here is aware you are Exempt. Don't let it ruin your prospects for a partner. This is the biggest ball of the year and it's nearly over."

I glanced at Joceline to see that my friend was almost in tears. The Summoner had already cast that circle since it was the most complicated. Joceline and my other peers had been standing in it for three hours now. I wanted to hide in another room, or leave, but I knew I couldn't. Just because I was Exempt, didn't mean I could just rub that in their faces. I had to be here. I had to watch and see and be eternally grateful that I wasn't them.

It had only cost me a father.

"Mama. Can I just stand here please?"

My mother, bless her, did not argue further. "Oh, all right. But please at least stand straight when the summoning begins. I don't want our neighbours to think you're ungrateful." She stared at me balefully until I nodded to her and then she swept away with only one more theatric sigh at me.

She knew that I was a hopeless case compared to my sister and my brother. The twins were out dancing, reveling. They were older, true, and had no worries about this event like I did. Their peers who were Stocked were dead for almost two years. But even then, they had almost zero reaction to the Stocking that year. They had always embraced their Exempt status.

I could not do that. Wait. No. That's not entirely true. I did embrace it when I was little. Back when my mother hung the moons and stars and I repeated everything she said as if it were a spell scroll. I was a right shit about being Exempt — parroting the almost religious fervour of my mother — until I smartened up. By then, it was already too late. I was fixed as the kid nobody wanted to be friends with who happened to have a lucky break because her father offed himself in the Funnel.

Now, I know that I didn't earn any of it. That I did not have to stand in that summoning circle with my peers only because of a man I never even met who died eighteen years ago who also happened to be my father.

I was just lucky that Joceline had been as friendly and kind as she was or I would have had no friends. Poor Joceline. Poor everybody. Why did it have to be this way? My one, true friend could be going to her death and I would not even be in the running to replace her.

I felt shame like I had never felt shame before, but I would look on and I would pray for all of them. I would remember, even when most people lost interest in the daily updates. I would be thankful for all of their sacrifices.

Having made that vow to myself, I felt nauseous as the quintet of musicians brought the song to an end. It was time. The Summoner had finished his work slowly, cutting it close to the cut off. He had a very serious, very solemn look on his face as befitted the Funnel Eve Ball of even my small podunk hometown. No doubt he could be making circles in bigger towns, but he had been sent here along with the representative of the Crown who was just climbing up the dais to stand at the lectern. She looked extremely regal with her hair trussed up in an elaborate headdress that over accentuated her high forehead. For the Crown Representative, she was very young, but that did not signify because she likely had a Class and some kind of nobility rank.

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

"Denizens of Vole Grove. I am Lady Grace, Astrologer First Tier, and Royal Representative of the King. I have been tasked with tonight's Funnel Stocking." She spoke imperiously and down her nose at us country bumpkins.

"To all the High Stock, we thank you for your chosen sacrifice. You will always be remembered. For the Fallow Stock, your crimes have been judged heinous and you will die unremembered and unforgiven. For the Mid Stock, we pray for your luck and hope that you leave the summoning circle tonight to go on and live your lives without being claimed by the Funnel." She schooled her face in what had to be a well-practiced moue of concern. It was as false as the quasi-erotic light illusions glowing above us.

I really wished Joceline was here and not over there. Any other day, I would have said something snarky about the Lady Grace, and Joceline would have admonished me, but secretly been amused. She was nice, but she also had a sense of humour.

Lady Grace was still talking. I tuned her out and watched my friend shift nervously back and forth. She had been standing for hours while the circle was drawn. At least she wore the shoes I gifted her. I hoped they didn't hurt her feet.

Dread grew as the speech continued. Lady Grace had begun the Crown-sanctioned portion of her speech. It was a dry summary of the history of the Funnel. The exact one that some minion of the King came to say every year at this exact time. I tuned her out.

The countdown clock on the wall ticked away toward midnight. Ironic that it had been Joceline who fixed it when it had gone on the fritz after last year's Funnel Eve. It reminded me just how unfair it would be. If she got Stocked, we would lose someone capable of fixing things without needing a Class to do so. More than that, I'd lose my best friend.

I felt a pang of guilt because I was thinking about what I would lose, when she would lose way more than me.

"With only a minute to go." Lady Grace's voice boomed louder in an unnatural way. A spell? Maybe. I wasn't sure what an Astrologer was, but assumed it had to be some kind of spellcaster. It was hard to ignore her speaking now. She continued, "We all are blessed by what you have given to us all. We will all be better because of it. And now, it is time."

It wasn't time. It couldn't be time, right? I looked up at the clock and saw that it was. Only seconds ticked away toward midnight.

Joceline was forlornly waving to her parents. I couldn't bear to look at her parents and see their absolute despair. I focused on her. My prayers for her. She looked wrecked. Tears streamed down her face. She must have felt my eyes on her because she sought me out in our regular wall hangout and she gave me a little head shake. The one we did whenever my mother was at her most meddling. I laughed, despite that I was crying myself. I prayed. Please don't send Joceline down. Please.

The countdown clock struck midnight at the same time as the summoning circles glowed with intense bluish light. The elaborate symbols lit up, illuminating all the funnelstock from below.

Everything froze. The ballroom. The people. Even the cavorting illusory creatures in the ceiling.

There was the sensation of sliding down the riverbank in the middle of winter. I felt like I was about to hit the river ice and maybe it was not actually frozen thick enough to skid across. It wasn't. It cracked. I went through. Ice chilled my skin and arms and I was drenched by it all as I sunk down, down, down into the freezing dark.

Then I broke free of the downward pull so I kicked up and up toward the surface. With heaving effort, I surfaced and gasped for air as if I had forgotten how to breathe. This river was moving, pushing against me, and it was cold water. Above me was a large cavernous chamber. The river behind me led into darkness. Light glowed on one side that seemed to have people congregating there. I vaguely saw a ledge not too far away and began swimming toward it. I swam to the water's edge, the stupid ballgown my mother had bought for this occasion, well, it sure didn't help me with the swimming. It tangled in my legs and the little slippers I wore didn't help with the kicks.

When I got to the shallows, I dragged myself and my seriously heavy ballgown up onto the ledge and I lay there, water poured away and down my body as I breathed deeply trying to get my heart to stop pounding. The air stunk of dankness and mould which made breathing even harder. But I lay and stared at the stone ceiling above. The cavern echoed with voices.

A face came into my view. "Mitka?" Joceline asked me with a hint of terror. She looked down at me from standing. Rivulets of tears had left marks on her own cheeks, but she had already stopped crying. She looked afraid, but also a little bit relieved, then suddenly guilty about it.

"Joceline?" I asked in confusion.

"We're in the Funnel." She said. "You're in the Funnel. I thought you're Exempt?" It was a question tinged with terror.

"Yes, I'm Exempt." I said a little too harshly and then I added, "I'm supposed to be. Are you sure we're here?"

"Very sure." She looked behind her and I sat up while I followed her line of sight toward the other end of the cavern. There were all the High Stock. They were grouping up, comparing gear, or measuring sword lengths, what have you. The Fallow Stock couple were trying to untie each other's hands from their bindings.

I looked for the Mid Stock, the people I had grown up with. I couldn't see anyone.

"It's just me. And you." She said as if understanding what I was looking frantically for. "Oh and her." She jerked her thumb toward someone else. Someone dressed just as stupidly for the Funnel as me, if only in much more voluminous material and also with really unbelievably expensive looking jewels.

"I'm not even supposed to be here!" Lady Grace shrieked in fury, standing alone in the middle of the cavern, between us and the other Stock.

She looked as pissed as hell and absolutely like a target.