It started with mild turbulence, not bad, but enough to cause a few of the people that were awake to chuckle nervously. Then the shaking got rougher – the seatbelt signs flashed on with a soft ding. I stowed the book I had been trying to read (unsuccessfully) and buckled the belt around my waist. The flight attendant was coming down the aisle, gently waking people to let them know to put on their seat belts, when a sudden violent lurch caused him to rise off the floor  – I remember seeing his eyes widen in shock as he grasped at the nearest seats. I remember hearing him cry out as he hit the floor bodily.

Someone sitting several feet in front of me disappeared in a strange flash of light, and there was a sound, almost like the sound of a seal breaking, a strange pop! that would have been comical if the situation hadn’t been so dire. Someone else screamed. I stared at the spot where the person that disappeared had been, blinking, trying to comprehend what was happening.

The people that had been sleeping were starting to wake, there was a bustle of movement as seatbelts were buckled, confused voices cried out in concern, and a young child began wailing. “Mom!” I heard a young boy’s voice yell, as more screams and shouting filled the plane. The strange sound occurred a few more times (pop! pop!), and I could just make out flashes of light in the periphery of my vision.

Pop! It was like everything was swallowed in light. My head ached like it had when the plane had taken off, like it did on every airplane ride when the air pressure in my ears hadn’t equalized to the air pressure outside of my head. I felt my mouth open in a scream, but no sound escaped me – no air filled my lungs – there was nothing. I felt a building of immense pressure pushing against my body, like sitting in a vehicle and flooring the gas, only the pressure was growing… growing… growing to an uncomfortable intensity. I tried gripping the seat arms, but there was nothing there. The seat was gone. The seatbelt was gone. The plane…

And just as instantly, the light seemed to fade, matter seemed to incorporate around me, and my voice came back to me. As soon as I realized the sound that I was hearing was my own screaming, I stopped. I was sprawled on my hands and knees on a stone floor. I gasped, breathing hard from the stress of whatever the fuck had just happened.

I was in the middle of a glowing circle. Before I could make out the details of the symbols arranged around its edges, the light of it flared and vanished. I swallowed hard and looked around the room. Two other people were sprawled on the ground, also looking around in confusion. There were others in the room as well, wearing robes or dresses of various colors. Someone was cursing loudly, shouting, “Shit! Shit!”

“What happened? Where’s the fourth?”

“We lost them!”

“What do you mean ‘we lost them’? How can that happen? It’s never failed before!”

I focused on the people on the floor. One was a woman, her wavy auburn hair pulled back in a ponytail and a baseball cap obscuring her face, though something about her seemed familiar. She was wearing a loose hoody and black leggings, and designer sneakers. The other person was much younger – a girl, thin framed and small in stature, with very dark brown skin, the whites of her shocked eyes standing out starkly. She wore a t-shirt and jeans, and a light jacket, and her hair was shaved short, like she had been bald but was letting it grow back in. They both looked as equally confused as I felt.

“But the spell didn’t fail completely. I think the last Grace also made it into our world. They just didn’t make it here.”

I turned my attention to the people that surrounded us. There was a mix of men and women and the ones that were doing the most talking had migrated toward a fourth unoccupied area of the floor, where a circle still appeared to be glowing. “I’m not sure how much longer I can hold this,” one of them said. He was a young man, almost nondescript in appearance except for a puckered circular scar that marred his right cheek. He stood over the circle, his hands spread and emanating a glow that pulsed in time with the glow of the circle. With every pulse, the light of the glow faded.

“If there was a fault in the spell, I don’t think it was in the circle,” another man said, an older man, with long white hair pulled back into loose braids.  He looked up at the younger man maintaining the circle and nodded to him. The younger man let his arms drop – the light dissipated, seeming to lift into the air as it disappeared.

A silence encompassed the room. “Have we failed then? How do we even find it?” a woman with straight, chin length jet black hair and very dark skin asked.

The old man turned to look at me and the other two on the floor. “We may need them for that.”

An uncomfortable silence settled into the room as everyone turned to stare at us.

“What the fuck!?” the younger girl said suddenly, loudly, echoing the only thing ringing in my head so eloquently that I had to suppress a sudden urge to laugh.

The old man blinked and smiled. “I believe our guests are going to be full of questions, understandably.” He held a hand out to the girl. “We’ll be glad to get you situated and explain everything as thoroughly as we can.” She eyed his hand suspiciously for a moment before sighing as dramatically as only a teenager can manage and accepting the help up.  He then gestured toward the door. “These three will take you somewhere comfortable and do their best to answer your questions. This is Raella, Greyjon and Chase.” The dark woman that had spoken before gave a stiff nod as he said Raella, and turned to lead the way out of the room. A burly bald man with grey eyes did an awkward wave at Greyjon and waited to see that we would follow her, while a plump younger woman with curly red hair stepped forward at Chase and did a full curtsy.

“Hello, please follow me,” Chase said, reaching out a hand to tug at my sleeve. I followed, and could see that the other two followed behind me. Glancing back, I could see that Greyjon trailed after us.

Continuing after Raella, we exited the room and started down a staircase that looped in a gentle spiral, occasionally opening onto spacious landings and doorways set on our right-hand side. I realized shortly that we were in a tower. About five floors down from where we started, they turned and led us into the room – it opened into another spacious landing, where a low table and some cushiony chairs were set, almost like a living room or common space. Further in was a brief hallway that split the remaining space of the tower into two separate private rooms. Raella gestured toward the chairs, and Chase flopped down onto a couch. She patted the seat next to her and smiled broadly up at me.

Feeling like it would be awkward to ignore the obvious invitation, I sat down next to her. The other young girl plopped down next to me. The woman wearing the baseball cap chose an armchair to sit in. “Whoa,” I heard the girl from my world breathe silently to herself. Glancing up, I saw that she was staring at the woman who had pulled her baseball cap off. And looking over I could see what had garnered that reaction.

The woman was Peyton Hobbs. I gritted my teeth to keep myself from staring in slack jawed fascination.

Peyton Hobbs. A-List actress and blockbuster darling, a bombshell beauty that tops Most Beautiful Woman lists. She was especially popular with geeks, being an outspoken gamer herself who always sought out starring roles in movies based on comics or video games. Whenever someone called her hard to work with, it would usually be revealed that it was because she had a desire to be respectful to the source material – otherwise she was always lauded as generous and kind. Although a lot of her social media was full of work out videos and pictures of her food or dog, she also posted videos showing off her gaming PC build, and occasionally did game streams for charity.

There were a lot of guys that complained that she was the epitome of fake gamer girls, but she had once called the concept out with such grace that it was hard not to be a fan of her. Had she been on the plane? I wracked my brain trying to think if I had noticed the woman in the baseball cap at any point while waiting in the airport or boarding the plane.

Peyton had heard the “whoa” and glanced up to smile sheepishly at us now that her identity was outed. I realized I was maybe staring a bit too hard, and purposefully turned my head to turn my focus away from her. As a result, I could see that Greyjon had chosen to stand, leaning against the entrance to the room, his muscular arms crossed. I felt a bit stifled as I realized he was guarding the only visible exit. Regardless of their intentions, they had us here for a reason and we weren’t free to leave.

“You’re Peyton Hobbs,” the girl next to me said. “I’m such a huge fan!” I glanced over at her, thinking that her voice was also familiar, and realized that I recognized her as well.

“And you review video games online, don’t you?” Peyton said, her natural Australian accent was very soft and almost hard to place, but she usually did American accents in movies so the effect was still a little jarring. As she spoke, more recognition clicked. Although not as massively famous as our other companion, the younger girl was AlphaSaint, an online video game reviewer and streamer.

As Peyton finished speaking, AlphaSaint practically squealed. “You know who I am?” Peyton nodded, almost shyly, and the younger girl responded with, “You can call me Lexie!”

“Oh, the two of you know each other?” Chase asked, leaning forward. As she did, I noticed the points of her ears sticking out from her hair. I glanced briefly at Raella and Greyjon as well, and realized they also had pointed ears.

A strange suspicion began to tick in my brain. I glanced around the room again, taking in the detail of the surroundings. The dust that had gathered on a corner table, the roughness of the stone walls. I rubbed my hands against my jeans, feeling the texture of the fabric, ran a finger over the slight fault in the stitching near the knee that always annoyed me about this particular pair of pants. Could I be in a game of some sort? Was I really here at all? Could it really just be coincidence that there was an internet game reviewer and an actress that almost specialized in nerdy roles in a place where we were apparently summoned magically to a tower by elves (or at least, pointy eared elf substitutes)? I frowned at the floor for a moment, trying to absorb everything that was happening.

Then I shook my head and glanced up at Greyjon, leaning nonchalantly against the exit. If it wasn’t a game… not taking it seriously enough could be bad.

And if it was a game… why not play along?

I tuned back into the conversation, where Lexie had taken to explaining that Peyton was incredibly famed where we were from, and that she wasn’t as famous but had a couple million followers online, a number of people that still seemed to be boggling to Chase. Peyton, seeming embarrassed, turned to look at Raella, who had taken a seat in another armchair near her. “I believe we were going to get an explanation?” she asked.

Raella smiled. Now that I was looking her in the face for the first time as she spoke, I noticed that her eyes were a bright golden shade in color that stood out starkly against her deep skin tone. “Yes. The three of you… and the fourth, who is not here, are what we call the Graced. Chosen favorites of the old forgotten gods, avatars of their will, able to command divine magic.”

Lexie scoffed, and glanced around. “Are you sure you’ve got the right people? We’re just… human. Or at least I’ve never been able to use special powers, and I’ve totally tried.”

Chase smiled. “Oh, every time the Graced are summoned, they’re unaware of their abilities. We’ll train you! You’ll see as your powers develop. The summoning wouldn’t have brought you forth otherwise.”

I frowned. Maybe they hadn’t been on the plane then – it seemed unusual that all of the individuals they needed would have all been gathered in one place prior to their summoning. I wondered what had happened to the plane – had my being summoned here somehow caused it to crash? “So we’re the avatars of your gods? Which gods?” Lexie asked, sounding immediately convinced and enthusiastic.

“We’re not sure,” Raella said, seeming almost embarrassed to admit to a lack of knowledge. “The old texts refer to the Graces as such, but the gods haven’t touched our world in centuries, and their names have all been forgotten to time.”

“Then why summon us in the first place?” Peyton asked. She leaned back in her chair comfortably, one leg crossed over the other, resting her hands on her knee, displaying a level of poise that almost seemed supernatural given our strange situation.

Greyjon spoke this time, his voice low, like he was telling a ghost story. “We summon outworlders to reseal a great evil. Stories say that he was once a powerful mage, but that he managed to gain power rivaling the gods and unlocked the secret of immortality. He grew so cruel over time that it became necessary to seal him away… and so the gods selected individuals as the avatars of their will, and they performed that deed.”

“Unfortunately, when the gods left our world the divine magic powering the seal began to fade with time. It became necessary to find those that could act as their avatars to refresh the seal,” Raella continued, her tone very business like by comparison, sounding more like a person giving a university lecture. “The old scholars managed to figure out that it was best to recast the seal every 500 years or so. It was also discovered that outworlders summoned to our world were always capable of utilizing the proper divine magics, though the reason for why has also been lost. We do know that our own magics do nothing against the seal except degrade it faster.”

“That is why we’ve brought you here. You would be performing a great service for us… and for our entire world. You would truly be heroes,” Chase added.

I watched Lexie mouth the word ‘wow’ silently to herself, completely engrossed in the tale.

Peyton’s expression was calm, almost unimpressed. “Yes, a great service. And once that’s done, what happens to us? Do we get to go home?”

Chase and Greyjon both seemed very interested in the décor for a moment, but Raella’s chin lifted slightly and she looked directly at Peyton as she spoke. “You will live the remainder of your lives here.”

Peyton’s lips thinned as she narrowed her eyes at Raella. “I see,” she said.

“Wow. I don’t know if I hate that or love it,” Lexie said. She was bouncing her knee nervously as she stared at the floor. “But if we’ve got all our lives and magic, maybe we can find our way back? I mean… this is cool and all. But I really want to find out what happened to our plane.”

She had been on a plane too? “Were you both on a plane to Reno?” I asked.

Peyton’s eyes met mine, and then she looked to Lexie. Lexie’s eyes widened as she looked between us. Then Peyton nodded. “Yes… I was sleeping, but the turbulence was getting bad when I woke.”

“I live in Reno. My mom was on the plane,” Lexie said quietly. “And my younger brother.”

She looked a little forlorn. “Maybe the turbulence was caused by the spell and they got everything under control once we were away,” I said, attempting to sound reassuring. “I’m sure your family is fine. They’re probably worried sick about you though.”

She nodded thoughtfully before smiling at me, seeming to accept my reasoning wholeheartedly. “What was your name again, Mister?”

“Lucas. Lucas Kearney.” I glanced around the room briefly, a room filled with magic casting elves, a movie star, and an online celebrity. “I’m an accountant,” I added lamely.