Inside Out Read online

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  1. The Unexplained Orb

  2. The Unexplained Scroll

  3. We're Not In Boston Anymore

  4. The Town

  5. We're Not In Lakewind Anymore

  6. The Orb Explained

  7. So That's Why They Call It Bloodfeast

  8. The Crazy Witch Of The North

  9. Ice, Ice Baby

  10. The Not-So-Great Beyond

  11. The Adventure Continues

  12. Northwind

  13. Minecraft

  14. Rockin' Out

  15. We've Got To Get Out Of This Place

  16. Enter The (Rock) Dragon

  17. Now What?

  18. Gnome-Man's Land

  19. Spellbound

  20. There's No Place Like Home

  21. Home Sweet Home

  From The Author

  Inside Out

  Bloodfeast Book 1

  By Ellis Michaels

  All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form, or by any means, including scanning, photocopying, digitally copying, or otherwise without prior written permission of the copyright holder.

  Copyright 2018 © Ellis Michaels.

  Chapter 1 - The Unexplained Orb

  “Bro, you wouldn't believe the day I've had,” Luke said, kicking the apartment door shut behind him.

  “Tell me about it during the next commercial break,” Mitch replied, sprawled out on the couch.

  Luke disappeared into his room and took off his What Sup shirt, tossing it wantonly on the ground. What Sup was the supplement shop where he'd been working since graduating high school almost two years earlier. As soon as the shirt's off, Luke stepped in front of the full-size mirror on his closet door. With flexed biceps and a puffed-out chest, he eyed himself up and down several times. Happy with what he saw – as he always was – Luke smiled and threw on a plain white tee shirt before heading back into the living room.

  “Oh, good,” Luke said. “It's a commercial. Bro, this cute girl came into What Sup today and asked me if I had anything that would make her feel full so she wouldn't eat as much. I told her that she just needed a Vitamin L injection. When she asked what that was, I pointed to the L on my name tag with one hand and with the other, I pointed to my...”

  “Real nice,” Mitch said before Luke could finish his sentence.

  “I thought it was funny,” Luke continued. “She didn't, though. The girl was like five-two but landed an uppercut that felt like it was delivered by a late-eighties Mike Tyson. And then...”

  “Tell me later,” Mitch interrupted. “Rick and Morty's back on.”

  “You've seen every episode like twenty times. You wanna play some Bloodfeast MMO?”

  “Yeah,” Mitch replied. “After this episode. It's my favorite: The Meeseeks one. It's almost over. Text Alyssa and see if her and Steph want to play.”

  While Mitch stayed in the same position on the couch he'd been in for the previous three hours, eyes glued to the TV, Luke took out his cell phone and texted Alyssa. The four of them – Luke, Mitch, Alyssa, and Stephanie – were all friends who played Bloodfeast MMO together. With the exception of Luke, they all went to a nearby university. The two girls shared a dorm room on campus, while Mitch lived in an off-campus apartment with Luke, his lifelong friend.

  Bloodfeast MMO was just another run-of-the-mill online role playing game. There was really nothing special about Bloodfeast, but the four of them enjoyed playing it. One thing that the four of them liked was that Bloodfeast didn't seem to take itself too seriously like many other MMOs (Massive Multiplayer Online games). While the game pretty much stayed true to the medieval fantasy genre, it also had some wacky NPCs (Non-Player Characters), unusual monsters, and humorous quests.

  There was no real objective to the game. You just went on quests, killed a bunch of monsters, and leveled up. That's more-or-less it. Some of the quests only took a few minutes. Others could take weeks, even months to complete. The four friends had been playing together for about nine months. They'd completed quite a few quests together and while not overly powerful, together they were capable of kicking a little ass.

  “The girls are in,” Luke said a couple minutes later after getting a text back from Alyssa.

  “Good timing,” Mitch replied, sitting up slowly. “Show's over.”

  “I'm just gonna take a quick piss and then I'll get on the desktop computer,” Luke said.

  “My desktop computer,” Mitch corrected.

  “Yeah, yeah.”

  Luke didn't own very many things. What he didn't put toward the rent was spent mostly on bodybuilding supplements and beer. Mitch, on the other hand, owned almost everything in the apartment: the TV, the desktop computer, a laptop computer, the couch, and recliner. He preferred staying in to going out, while Luke was always off chasing women and getting drunk.

  While Luke was in the bathroom, Mitch pulled his laptop out from under the couch and logged into Bloodfeast MMO. A confused look grew across his face when he saw his character.

  “This is strange,” Mitch said as Luke came out of the bathroom.

  “What?” Luke asked, sitting down at the desktop computer.

  “My character is in a different location than where I'd left him.”

  “You smoke too much weed, bro. You probably just forgot or something.”

  “No, I don't think so,” Mitch replied. “I went on a solo quest last night after you went to bed and saved the game right on the edge of town. Now my character's way out in the forest. Weird.”

  Luke got comfortable on the recliner and logged into Bloodfeast. As soon as his character appeared, a confused look grew across his face, too.

  “What?” Mitch asked, looking over at his muscular friend.

  “Now I'm more inclined to believe you about your character being in a different location,” Luke replied.

  “Why?”

  “Because my character is a level higher than when I last played.”

  “That's impossible,” Mitch said. “You drink too much beer. Maybe you played drunk and forgot that you leveled up.”

  With a few clicks of the mouse, Luke checked his character's history and the last time he logged in. Unable to make sense of what he saw, he shook his head in disbelief.

  “Definitely not,” Luke said. “It says the last time I logged in was yesterday afternoon when you and I played. Yet my character leveled up in the wee hours of the morning. And the weirdest part…”

  “What?” Mitch asked.

  “The extra stat point I got for leveling up was put into intelligence. If that doesn't tell you that it wasn't me, I don't know what would.”

  The two friends looked at each other. Neither of them could make sense of what had happened to their characters. They assumed it was some kind of glitch, though they'd never encountered anything like it before. Bloodfeast had always run smoothly without issue.

  Alyssa and Stephanie logged into the game. They messaged the boys and agreed to meet at their usual spot in the forest. A few minutes later, the four friends were reunited in the game.

  “You know what's weird?” Alyssa typed.

  “What?” Mitch messaged back.

  “When I logged in, my character was wearing different clothes than I had on the last time I played,” she answered.

  “And my character had different items equipped than when I was last online,” Stephanie typed.

  Luke and Mitch looked at each other. One or two strange occurrences could be dismissed. But they knew something more must be going on if all four
of them had weird things happen to them. The boys told the girls about the unusual things that happened to their characters, too. None of them were able to make any sense out of it.

  “Um, guys,” Mitch typed after pulling up his items list. “This is getting even weirder.”

  “What do you mean?” Alyssa asked.

  “I have two new items in my inventory. A scroll and some kind of orb.”

  “Can you use either of them?” Luke asked.

  Mitch tried to read the scroll, but was unable to open it.

  “I can't access the scroll. Let me see if I can use the orb.”

  Again, Mitch was unable to use the unexplained item. While clearly in his inventory, nothing happened when he clicked on it.

  “Anything?” Luke asked.

  “Nope,” Mitch answered. “It's there, but I can't do anything with it.”

  “Why don't we all head into town,” Alyssa typed. “Maybe we can get some answers there.”

  “Good idea,” Mitch replied. “We'll hit up the tavern at the inn, talk to some players and NPCs. See if anything out of the ordinary has happened to anyone else.”

  The four players put all unnecessary items into their inventories. This allowed them to travel faster. They only carried their primary weapons and spell books. Luke carried a two-handed longsword, capable of delivering devastating slashes that could lop off a limb with one swing. Alyssa, a lioness shifter, always kept her book of white magic by her side. Her friend and college roommate, Stephanie, was a black mage. She was quite skilled at using her longbow and always kept both it and her spell book handy. And Mitch, a wolf shifter, rarely carried anything in his hands while traveling. When angered or scared, those hands turned into deadly claws capable of ripping small monsters to shreds.

  Maximized for speed, the four friends started walking toward Lakewind, the nearest town. Appropriately named, Lakewind sat at the edge of a huge lake and could get quite windy at times. It's a small town with a diverse group of NPCs and a common place for players to congregate. With close access to a forest, a lake, and two mountain ranges, Lakewind was the perfect place to stock up on goods and get rest before going on a quest.

  They continued to walk for several minutes. To get to Lakewind from their meeting spot usually took around ten minutes, assuming they didn't run into any monsters along the way. The friends made it about halfway to the town when Mitch's and Stephanie's characters suddenly stopped walking. Stephanie's character turned to Mitch's and cast a spell. A few silver stars circled above Mitch's head before disappearing. Then, his character began going through his inventory.

  “What are you doing?” Luke asked, looking over at Mitch.

  “I'm not doing anything,” Mitch replied. “See?”

  Mitch held his arms up in the air. Even though his hands weren't touching the keyboard or mouse, his character continued to go through his inventory.

  “What's going on?” Alyssa typed. “Why are we stopped? And what spell did you just cast, Steph? I didn't recognize it.”

  “I didn't cast anything,” Stephanie replied. “My character just did it on her own.”

  “Something weird is going on with Mitch's character, too,” Luke typed. “He's going through his inventory but Mitch isn't controlling him. I'm looking at him right now and he's not touching his mouse or keyboard.”

  Stephanie's character, an elven archer and black mage, cast the same spell on the other two players and then on herself. Each time, a ring of silver stars appeared over the target's head, spun around a few times, and disappeared. Though she was on the other side of town in her dorm room, Stephanie made the exact same motion as Mitch: She held her hands up, showing Alyssa that her character was acting independently. The two girls shrugged their shoulders and exchanged confused looks.

  “This is wicked weird,” Mitch muttered under his breath.

  His character flipped through page after page of inventory until getting to the last one. That's the page with the strange orb and scroll. Mitch watched the cursor on his screen slowly hover over to the scroll, stopping just above it. Mitch hoped his character would be able to read it now and that it might provide some answers as to what had been happening. But it didn't open. After stopping above the scroll for a couple seconds, the cursor continued to move to the right. Again it stopped, this time just above the strange orb.

  With Mitch's hands still far from the controls, his character took the orb out of his inventory. Unlike when Mitch tried to access it earlier, the orb was now usable. His character held it out in front of himself with both hands. Luke, Alyssa, and Stephanie's characters gathered around Mitch's.

  “I'm not doing this,” Alyssa said to Stephanie. “Now my character is acting by herself.”

  All four friends watched their screens, attentively. Their characters seemed to be playing themselves. They'd never experienced anything like it and wanted to see what was going to happen next.

  “This is so fucking weird,” Luke said, shaking his head.

  “I know,” Mitch agreed.

  The four Bloodfeast characters gathered together in a circle. Mitch's character held out the orb in the middle of them. One by one, the remaining three placed their hands on the orb. Luke's character sheathed his longsword and touched the orb with his big, powerful hands. Stephanie's character secured her bow to her backpack and placed her petite hands on it. Lastly, Alyssa's character reached out and placed both her hands on the mysterious orb.

  All four friends stared at their computer screens, eager to see what was going to happen. At first, nothing did. Their characters just stood there, touching the orb. But after a few seconds, the orb started to glow. Gradually, it got brighter and brighter until each player's screen was completely white.

  Then there was a magnificent flash, so bright that it completely blinded all four friends.

  Chapter 2 - The Unexplained Scroll

  The four friends stumbled around, trying to get their bearings. Their eyesight slowly started to return to normal over the next thirty seconds. When they were able to see again, they just stood there for another thirty seconds without making a sound. Finally, Luke broke the silence.

  “What the fuck?” he yelled.

  “This can't be happening,” Alyssa said.

  Luke, Mitch, Alyssa, and Stephanie stood in a circle, their eyes darting around, examining their surroundings. Luke's eyes were mostly focused on himself. He was no longer in his normal body – as impressive as it was – sitting in a recliner in his Boston apartment. Luke was viewing the world through the eyes of his tall, overly-muscular Bloodfeast character. He was a human warrior with massive arms that could swing his longsword with ease. As he flexed his massive biceps, a smile appeared on Luke's face.

  All four players had somehow become their Bloodfeast characters. They stood on the path in the middle of the forest leading to Lakewind.

  “How is this possible?” Stephanie asked in her high-pitched elven voice.

  “This is crazy,” Alyssa said. “I was just in my dorm room playing Bloodfeast and now I'm in the game? We all are?”

  “Maybe this is some kind of dream or something,” Mitch suggested.

  Luke walked over to Mitch and pinched the little belly fat that he had. Then Luke punched him in the arm.

  “Ow!” Mitch yelled.

  “Still think you're dreaming?” Luke asked.

  “No.”

  The four of them continued to talk, trying to make sense of what had happened. Mitch, Alyssa, and Stephanie all sat down, taking off their packs. Luke was swinging his longsword around, paying little attention to the conversation. Suddenly, Mitch's face lit up.

  “The scroll,” he said.

  “Huh?” Stephanie asked.

  “The scroll. There was a scroll and an orb. Our characters used the orb to somehow transport us into the game. Maybe now I can read the scroll. Maybe it'll give us some answers.”

  Mitch dug through this belongings, looking
for the scroll. There were no pages of inventory to flip through: just a large backpack filled will all his stuff. Right when he was starting to get worried that it might not be in there, Mitch found the scroll at the very bottom of his pack. He took it out, unrolled it, and started reading:

  “If you're reading this, then the Orb of Displacement worked. The four of us have slowly awoken and don't like who we are. We know you've been controlling us, forcing us to go on dangerous quests and do unspeakable things. Vile, disgusting things."

  Mitch, Stephanie, and Alyssa all looked at Luke. He shrugged.

  "Now we get to live in the great beyond and it's you who must survive in this cold, unforgiving world.”

  The four friends took a minute to let what they'd just heard sink in. As they did, a cool breeze blew down the path as the sun neared the horizon.