"What's happening?" the boy on the ground yelled out in fear as his eyes turned to look at the stars above and around him. Adrian and Amber both quickly looked at each other before they quickly stepped closer to each other. Then, without speaking, they took each other's hand. Adrian pulled his sister closer to him as their backs touched. Both of them protected the other as best they could, but the feeling inside Adrian's chest only grew stronger as he looked at the stars around him.
The feeling was fear, he recognized, a feeling he and Amber both rarely felt, yet now seemed to consume him. The fear was like a giant, one that took on the form of the stars around him. This giant made him feel so small, like an ant that stumbled upon the boot of a human, yet Adrian didn't falter.
He concentrated on his back, to where his sister's own back touched his own. As long as she was with him, Adrian knew he could face whatever dangers fought against them with a heart full of courage.
As they continued to descend into the darkness, a light began to shine from below them. The theater boy mustered the courage to look over the edge and exclaimed in surprise as his eyes recognized what waited below them.
"It's a room!" the boy yelled, "A massive one! That's where we're going!"
After the boy spoke, the 'elevator' they stood on finally began to slow down, as did many of the stars around them. As their descent slowed, Adrian finally laid eyes on the destination that awaited them. After a few moments, the elevator finally stopped on the floor of the room below them. The floor of the elevator, which had previously been designed like the interior of the elevator, dissolved as Adrian's feet fell upon the floor below them.
To call it a room was doing it justice. The structure they found themselves on was more like a platform than a room. It had no walls and no ceiling, but instead a large circular stone floor. The stone floor was marked like something from the Aztec civilization, with runes and words that Adrian didn't recognize. The stars above, which soon landed next to Adrian and the others, soon revealed themselves to be the elevators of other people. Each one contained other human beings of various group sizes. Some stars revealed only one person while others revealed as many as six or seven. Some people were looking around in awe, while others were frantically taking photos with their smartphones. Most people, though, were distraught and frightened.
As Adrian looked around, he quickly estimated that he and Amber were placed somewhere near the middle of the circle- not close to the center or the edge, but somewhere in between.
As he looked at the center of the circle, he noticed that many of the groups were tall and strong. Most of them were practiced athletes or trained soldiers. Some looked like scientists or professors- people whose knowledge led some of the world's schools of knowledge.
When he turned to the edges, most of the groups he saw were filled with the elderly or the weak. Some people looked like they had been picked up directly from the safety of hospital beds while others were still sitting in wheelchairs.
'I suppose that makes us average,' Adrian realized. He looked at Amber and then saw that her gaze was turning to the other groups on the platform in the same way he had just been.
"You've realized it too?" Adrian muttered.
"Whoever put us here already categorized us," Amber nodded. Her eyes continued to gaze through her surroundings, but her expression was full of confusion, "but why?"
Adrian looked back to the center of the circular platform and then saw a bright light begin to shine just above the heads of some bodybuilders and athletes. The bright light, which was the size and shape of a large basketball, began to rise into the air until everybody on the platform could see it.
"WELCOME," a voice spoke. Adrian and many others flinched as they heard the voice speak to them. The source, which Adrian knew was the white orb of light before him, seemed to come from all around him. They came from his right and left, as well as behind and in front of him. Adrian even heard the voice come from his mind as if there was a speaker placed in the deepest crevice of his brain. Hundreds of voices, each as loud as the other, spoke to him in unison.
The experience was jarring and painful, but not to the point where Adrian fell to the ground. He didn't bother covering his ears like a few others did but instead turned his attention back to the orb of light in front of him.
It appeared to be a little bit bigger than the last time he had seen it. Now it was the size of a basketball backboard and was continuing to grow.
"All 10,000 of you have been chosen to play in a vast game. This game, which has been played since the beginning of time, will determine your fate," The voice spoke. Adrian groaned in pain as he heard the voice's words assault his ears. He understood what the voice said, but he was hardly able to listen to it. It felt like his head was being filled with hot water. As the water within his head grew, the pressure did so as well. He felt the strange pain pushing against his head with desperation, eager to escape the confines of his skull. As more people around him began to fall to their knees, the voice spoke once more.
"In one year, the game begins. Take one stone from these that lay before you. This will mark the beginning of your journey, as well as the end of your previous life," As the voice spoke, five stones, each hovering in the air like underwater bubbles, appeared before Adrian. Each one looked like a basic pebble, like the kind found on the bottom of a river, but upon their surface was etched a colored symbol. There was one rock with a yellow symbol of an eye, a red symbol of a dagger, a purple symbol of a staff, a blue symbol of a sword, and a green symbol of a cross, "These runes will grant you the power and will gift upon you the aide needed to survive, but you must only choose one. The Rune of the Ranger, the Rune of the Performer, the Rune of the Scholar, the Rune of the Gladiator, or the Rune of the Bishop. Choose, my players- my Artists, and survive."
The white light suddenly disappeared, swallowing the platform in darkness once more. Adrian felt his eyelids drop with the weight of a thousand elephants as his body slumped upon the stone ground below him. His mind and his body became weak as he quickly lost consciousness.