Chapter 1 - The Shadow
If you ask me what word that would pop up at the top of my mind when I regained consciousness, it'd be: What?
I laid there on an imaginary floor, or some very transparent glass floor of sort, surrounded by only one color, black.
I tried to quickly sit up but when I did that, my head suddenly felt pain, like someone just slammed down a sledgehammer on my head. I quickly winced and put my hand on my aching head.
Ow!
It took a while before the pain subsided. Why did this happen? Where am I? And why am I wearing a peasant's clothes? Questions kept popping up one after another once I took a glance at my clothes.
Apparently, my clothes got mysteriously changed into the kind of clothes you would see from one of those commoners from those medieval games: a ragged cloth shirt with baggy brown leather pants. As for why this happened, I didn't have any clue as this question was added to one of the unanswered questions that piled up in my head.
But thinking of how my clothes got mysteriously changed and me being here won't get me anywhere. I glanced around my surroundings but, with another surprised shock slapped to my face, I could see other bodies laying there unconsciously with the same clothes of mine.
At that moment, a girl with long light blue hair that went all the way from her waist woke up from her sleep and also did what I did which was wincing from pain and putting her hand on her head.
Our eyes met and blurted out what was in our mind.
"Jacob?"
"Frost?"
I thought that hair and face looked similar to someone I knew. It was actually Frosty, a friend of mine in our group of Minecraft players. I didn't take notice of what her skin in that game actually looked like but now with a very realistic illustration of how her skin would look like in real life, only one word could describe her: Beautiful.
Her skin was jade white and her eyes were a beautiful shade of blue complimenting her silky light blue hair. She had a cute face also which exuded an aura of innocence from her making her even more of a sight to behold. Putting aside the fact that she was wearing commoner clothes, her beauty would make any man break their necks whenever she passes by.
But something was definitely off from what she looked like before.
"Wait... when were you a kid?"
Before I was about to say what was on my mind when I saw her petite appearance, her cute and innocent voice cut off what I was about to say and after speaking her words, she quickly clovered her mouth with her tiny hands and her eyes bulging wide like she just saw a ghost.
"What are you tal-"
Soon after, I followed what Frost just did but I didn't cover my mouth. Instead I looked at my own hands. I didn't notice at first but they were disturbingly small. I tried closing and opening my hands. These were my hands, that was a fact, but when did they became small.
"Ahhh!"
Not long after the shocking discovery, a scream was heard from behind me. I quickly turned around to see a boy sitting down looking at his own trembling hands with a look of fear. I quickly recognized the boy as Dylan, also one of my friends in our group.
As to why I thought that was Dylan, Dylan's skin had black hair with streaks of red and had eyes with a shade of red. But from his and Frost's appearance, another question popped up in my mind.
Why do they look like their avatars?
I can't tell if what I look like right now was the same with my Minecraft avatar since I had no means of seeing myself like a mirror or anything that casts a reflection.
From Dylan's sudden scream, everyone woke up from their sleep and all of them looked very familiar with their bodies also being that of a kid. One by one, looks of surprise and shock was plastered all over their faces. With everyone waking up, the total of people now numbered to 8
A hand tugged on the back of my shirt. I turned my head to see Frost looked at me with worry and anxiousness in her eyes.
With everyone around having looks of fear and some even shouting for anyone from this dark world, I was the only one with a collected look. I couldn't blame them, this was very terrifying waking up to a very dark void with the body of a 10 year old. Any person put in a same situation, their reactions would be the same.
Strangely, I and a few were just standing there pondering on what happened here.
A boy with glasses started to walk towards me. This boy's name, or his username in the game, was thatonedood but we usually call him Dood. He had black hair and on his face was a calm like this situation didn't even faze him.
"Any guess on why we're here?" Dood asked me when he stood in front of me.
I looked down and stared towards the black abyss under us as I tried to recall what was the last thing I did before this.
A sudden name flashed across my train of thought.
"WorldHistorian?"
"That was also my guess. Remember when Historian killed Stealth and no matter what method we tried to call him out he wouldn't answer. Then after that all of us were being hunted down one by one by that creep."
"Yeah, that was very weird and random..." I replied.
But there was also one detail that disturbed me.
"Now that I thought about it. Even the exit button wouldn't work. Like it was just there as a picture and was never a button."
As we were discussing, another one joined in, a girl with black hair and her eyes were slightly squinted.
"I tried turning the PC off but after that, the last thing I remembered was a sudden headache. I can still feel that headache. Ouch."
Kyoshi, the girl that joined in, massaged her head as she told us what she remembered after trying to exit the game.
As we stood there recalling what happened to us before we went unconscious, I looked up trying my hardest to piece everything to together and find a plausible answer to everything but to my surprise, I saw a lone note slowly floating downwards to us.
"Guys, look up."
I quickly caught the attention of everyone and they also looked up at the same time.
A lone note that appeared out of thin air was floating downwards, a very weird situation. From looking at it carefully, I could just see that there was some sort of writing on it or maybe a drawn picture.
After a while the note landed between the three of us. Everyone walked towards us to see what was on the mysterious note. We huddled together in a circle and looked at the note. One of us read the note:
Welcome to Ruxomar
-WorldHistorian
Ruxomar?
Right after the reading of the note, we suddenly felt that the floor was now non-existent and that we were falling down towards the dark abyss.
...
In the dark lands of the Deep Dark, a black castle stood mightily in the center of a city.
Inside this black castle, a shadowy figure can be seen sitting lazily with his chin resting on hands on his throne wearing a black cloak.
Beside this shadowy figure, a man was standing from his left.
"Are you sure with your decision, my lord?"
The man broke the eerie silence as he asked the shadowy figure.
"My children have already left. The world has already been rebuilt. I need something to amuse me since the heroes have already light."
The shadowy figure devilishly grinned as he thought of what would happen in the future.
4
