You are no longer dead!

Instead of the stars, Sam saw in front of him a glowing blue box containing words and even punctuation. Looking both left and right, Sam instinctually tried to shake the box from his sight, however unlike a physical sign that could be looked around; the box remained in the forefront of his vision, similar to an after image from a very bright light.

Reaching out, Sam attempted to swat the box away. His hand however, travelled straight through, leaving it unchanged as it showed no reaction to him.

The blue box disappeared... and then returned, though the words were different.

Relinking soul with body... relinking... rel1nk1ng... [email protected] ERROR. FORIEGN SOUL DETECTED. RECONFIGURING!

Opening his mouth, Sam was about to exclaim to his surroundings how odd this blue phenomena was, when he was overcome by a sudden bout of nausea and stomach pain. Grabbing his stomach, he leaned sideways and proceeded to spew out a horrid mass brown onto the cold hard floor he was sitting on.

The blue box remained unchanged, and if it was sentient, did not appear to be offended at having Sam vomit through it. Nor did it react to the black and red specs from the hacking cough that followed.

In a thoroughly miserable existence, Sam could not stop himself from sinking into the mess that he had just made, as he curled into the foetal position on the floor, begging for his torment to stop. To go away.

Reconfiguration Complete. Rebooting.

Sam winced as he saw a bright flash and felt a small electric shock between his eyes, as though he had walked straight into a fly zapper. A couple of seconds after this, his pain began to ebb, as did his nausea. A few minutes wait later and he managed to sit back up.

Welcome to the realm of Vaelen.

You have NO NAME.

You have NO CLASS.

“Bit rude...” Sam thought in a daze.

Please proceed to your preferred temple to complete your reconfigurement.

The box then disappeared from view and Sam was left alone in his pile of muck.

“What. The. Fuck.” Sam exclaimed as he looked around. No more boxes appeared in his vision and all he could see was the dark alley around him. Unsure what to do, Sam did nothing. His brain was spending most of its power trying to process what had happened to it, leaving the rest of Sam somewhat catatonic.

The next sensation Sam could remember feeling was a cold breeze flowing around his neck, which made him instinctively hunker down to try and get some shelter. This was enough to snap him back to reality, as rather than the slightly warmer feeling he was instinctively hoping for, he instead got to feel the moist dampness of his clothes which had soaked up part of the mess he was still sitting in.

Utilising this disgust, Sam found the motivation to slowly roll over onto his knees and feet before shakily standing. He took several steps forward across the alley and held his hand out to brace himself against the cold stone wall opposite. Turning around, and with the help of the moonlight, Sam could just about see the spot he had been previously resting. There was a dark outline on the floor, not far from some square looking shapes, maybe crates, stacked beside the wall.

Taking a lungful of the cold night air, Sam continued to scan his immediate surroundings and looked up and down the alley. To his right, the alley seemed to get darker as the walls became narrower a short distance away, cutting off what little moonlight could find its way between the buildings. To his left the alley continued on for perhaps another ten meters before opening out onto a street. Its walls were much further apart than the narrow passageway he currently stood in. There was also a hint of colour, a slight orange flicker.

‘Ok...what now...’ Sam thought to himself, unsure of exactly what he should be doing. He hadn’t received any kind of manual when he fell out of the sky. He was unsure what exactly his purpose was, now that he had dropped into someone else’s body on a foreign world.

The thought he currently inhabited someone else’s flesh suit sent a shiver down his spine, completely unrelated to the cold. The idea just felt wrong in his mind and he felt flustered being in a strange place without even the comfort of his own body.

Using one of the hands that was available, he gently touched his forearm. He hoped to find a rough area about two inches long, a scar from when he rode a new bike into a fence on his eleventh birthday. There was no scar however, and though he hadn’t really been expecting to find one, he still felt disappointed.

“Ok focus... focus” Sam said to himself out loud, as he shook both his hands and head to try and dispel the weird thoughts and rising panic going through his mind. He took slow steady breaths as he put his back to the wall and slowly slid down until he was sitting again.

“This is ridiculous!” He thought to himself “A new lease on life! I am alive!... Oh god seriously what the actual fuck!” Sam’s breathing intensified as he fell straight into a full blown panic attack, trying and failing to break himself free. The logical part of his mind found the experience quite novel, even as it tried reasoning with itself to stop this silly behaviour. He had never had one of these before, though admittedly he had never really had anything remotely traumatic happen to him either. At least until he was murdered in his past life.

The thought of his murder was oddly enough what calmed him down. He was murdered. He had met death and cheated him by jumping into that portal. ‘Not oblivion for Sam, no no, he got to live on. Lucky him.’

This raised the question for Sam however, of what exactly was his next step? The decision to jump off Death’s boat was not so much thought out, as it was a moment of panicked spontaneity. It had not even happened that long ago, but he still admonished his younger self for such a rash decision. What if there was no portal? What if he simply fell and kept falling for all eternity?

That didn’t happen though; instead he was sat in an alley, in the dark, on an alien planet. Not to mention that weird blue box that appeared out of nowhere.

Please proceed to your preferred temple to complete your reconfigurement.

“Jesus!” Sam exclaimed, trying to dodge back and hitting his head on the stone wall behind him. “Go away!” he half yelled, swiping at the box. Again, his hand passed straight through, however the box disappeared again soon after anyway.

“Ok... Ok... let’s think about this.” Sam mumbled to himself, steadying his breathing. “Boxes appearing out of the air, telling me things. Giving information. Pop up boxes? Was he in VR?” Sam had played enough games to see a similarity with the blue box and the UI of some of the video games that he had played at his spoilt cousin’s house.

“Log out!” he spoke aloud, directing his voice to the world. “Log out!” he repeated when nothing happened. When that still didn’t work, Sam tried grasping around his eyes and head, trying to lift off a headset that wasn’t there.

Giving up after a whole minute of looking utterly ridiculous, Sam concluded that unless his brain was jacked into the Matrix, he probably wasn’t playing a VR game. His thoughts returned to the pop up boxes and immediately after thinking about them:

Please proceed to your preferred temple to complete your reconfigurement.

There it was again. Sam read the message and a couple of seconds after he finished reading, the blue box disappeared again. “Was this a quest?” he thought to himself, this would make sense if he were in a game. Having a suspicion about when the blue boxes appeared. Sam consciously thought about the box and tried to will it to appear.

Please proceed to your preferred temple to complete your reconfigurement.

“That was it!” Sam thought, mentally congratulating himself on finding out how to summon the box. “If you think it, it will come!” Reading it once more, it again winked out of existence a couple of seconds after he finished. From what the box described, it didn’t seem like any kind of quest though. It seemed more like... an e-mail from I.T.? Though it did have the word temple in it so that was quite questy.

“Alright!” Sam spoke to himself once more, finding comfort in the words, and trying to ignore the sudden realisation that the voice was much deeper than it used to be. “Step one. Find a temple!” Standing up, Sam looked again up and down the alley before striding towards the end that opened onto the street. Once there he again looked up and down, his eyes spotting what caused that slight orange twinkle he had seen earlier. About 100 meters away, at a crossroads where the street met another, a flaming torch rested on top of a pole right in the streets centre.

Not seeing the irony of what he was doing, with regards to his recent experiences, Sam went towards the light.

As he was walking, Sam continued to glance all around him. There was no one else to be seen, something Sam was actually quite thankful for. Either side of him, the buildings loomed upwards in the night. They looked odd to Sam’s eyes in what little light was available to him. They did not appear to have any glass on them, nor any plastic frames or doors. It was all stone and wood.

Many of the buildings appeared a bit dilapidated as well. Several had shutters that were hanging off their hinges, others had holes in their walls and some had roof’s which appeared to be caved in. Other houses however, had a small glow that could be seen through some of the cracks between the shutters, along with smoke rising from a chimney or two, blacking out some of the stars behind them. Sam felt distinctively uncomfortable and began to hurry towards the torch ahead of him.

Arriving at the crossroads, Sam happily walked up to the pole in front of him and grasped it. Counting his tiny journey from the alley as a minor win, the first of many he hoped in his new life. Looking up, he began to examine the torch. It was quite inefficient to use fire as a light source, Sam thought. 'Also how is it staying lit? Maybe there is a gas line in the pole? Hmm the pole is made of wood...'

Moving on, Sam looked down each of the streets branching off from the crossroads. In each path, he could see another torch after just fifty meters. Only the way behind him was lightless, and even appeared to be ominously black, as his night vision was ruined by the fire above him. He immediately ruled out going back. This left three potential paths to choose from, and Sam subconsciously raised one hand to rub the sides of his mouth, which he commonly did when thinking.

A vile smell assaulted him and he immediately looked down at his hand in disgust. In the light of the torch, Sam got a good look at the brown and disturbingly red substance smeared all over both of his palms. Unsure how he missed the smell before, now that he was aware of it he could smell nothing else.

Looking down at the rest of his body, his eyes opened wide in shock and concern at the state he was in. He wore a torn shirt, made from some thick and course looking material, along with a set of worn and shabby trousers. All of which was covered in vomit and what could be nothing else than dried, and not so dry in some places, blood.

Pulling up his shirt and without a care that he was still in public, even at night time, Sam quickly and methodically examined every inch of himself to check if there were any wounds. There was a large tear in the right side of his shirt, and after expecting the worst, Sam was pleasantly surprised to find that he had not a scratch on him. Only faint white lines which he could barely see in the torchlight, and also a peculiar white scar under his right arm.

A sharp voice, barked at him from the path to his left immediately put a stop to his examination, before he could continue with his legs. His head snapping to the direction he heard the voice. Sam could just make out several silhouettes appearing from beyond the torchlight, along with a sharp tap which marked their footfalls.

Unsure if he should be running, and unsure if he could, even if he wanted to, Sam stayed still and watched the figures get closer. As they entered the torchlight, Sam’s mouth hung agape as four men covered in metal plates and chainmail armour clinked and clanked their way towards him. Three of them had massive spears with axe heads on the end of them; the other carried a large sword across his back, with the hilt poking up above a shoulder.

The three men with the spear axes took up position around him, with their weapons down and pointing directly at him. Looking around, Sam was able to see their faces under matching helmets, which sloped down sharply from the centre of their heads. All three of them looked decidedly unhappy to see him, and were most certainly not about to welcome him to their quaint little town.

The same voice as before barked out another word at him and Sam spun around once more to face the last of the men. He was not wearing a helmet, but from the slightly shinier looking metal he was covered with, it was clear he was in charge. 'What language is that? French?' Sam thought before replying out loud.

“Umm... Hi.”

The leader did not reply and just glared.

“Je m'appelle...Sam?” he tried next. The leader snapped out a couple sentences, looking expectantly at Sam to answer.

“I’m sorry, I don’t understand...” Sam replied futilely, unsure how to proceed from here. It must not have been what the man was hoping for, as the frown on his face grew more prominent, and Sam noticed him grasping a large knife at his hip. The man uttered a few more sentences, the last one in a commanding tone, which must have been the reason the three other guards slowly started advancing on him.

“Whoa whoa” Sam let out; he raised his arms to try and deescalate the situation. His palms were held outwards to try and show he had no weapons, just like you were supposed to do with police, and hopefully medieval guards as well.

Apparently however, this was completely the wrong thing to do on this world. When Sam had finished raising his hands, he saw the leaders eyes widen in shock before diving to the ground at his side.

“Erm, what?” Sam uttered, completely baffled by what the man had just done. It was like he thought I was pointing a gun at him or something. Sam was still trying to work out what had just happened, when he felt something heavy and blunt crack into the back of his skull.