C.J. Carella's Website

@Fey Dreams Productions, LLC. All Rights reserved.

Coming out in November 2021!

1: It Was Supposed to be a Game!

"Are you in or are you out?"

"I'm in, I guess," Caitlin Sera said with a sigh. "And only because I have no life."

Her second semester in college was turning out to be a disappointment. She'd always been an overachiever, so she'd crammed as many courses and electives as she could fit into her schedule when she started. After being forced to drop two classes, she'd realized that trying to do everything at once might not be the smart thing to do, and her second semester course load had been more realistic. Still, she'd barely done much other than study, do the minimum amount of jogging that she could live with, and occasionally play a video game or two.

What about a social life, you might ask? Zero social life. A brief fling during the first semester had ended badly. She'd made friends with her roommate because she was literally there, and with two other girls in her Intro to American History course by virtue of their sitting next to her. Going out and seeing people would have to wait until her sophomore year. Maybe until her junior year. Too much to do before that.

Take that Saturday, for example. She'd spent the day studying for Monday's test and her brain was oversaturated. Time to take a breather. But going out to drink was a no-no; she'd wake up with a hangover and be useless all day Sunday. She needed to at least do one last quick read of the material sometime Sunday to be ready for the test. Her choices were watching some streaming show or movie – none of the new releases looked good – or joining her roommate Evie in a bout of online gaming.

"If I get addicted to this game I will never let you hear the end of it," she warned Evie, who was cuddled on their second-hand couch, her laptop perched on her knees.

Caitlin had no substance abuse problems – well, maybe for certain snacks, but no controlled substances – but had been known to get a little too involved in some games. Fantasy MMORPGs in particular. It'd gotten bad enough that her grades started to suffer during senior year in high school, and she ended up quitting them cold turkey. But she'd grown up a lot since then. Back in high school she had been painfully shy, happier in the company of books and games than being around people. She'd gotten better. She could handle playing for a few hours before going to sleep and studying the next day. She thought. She hoped.

"What game is it?" she asked her roommate.

"Eternal Journey Online. It went live yesterday."

Caitlin's mood lifted. She'd tried the demo that had been making the rounds around the web, and it had impressed her. The graphics were okay, and the interface was nothing to write home about, but the demo's mini-adventure had left her wanting more. She felt actually excited to play, forgetting her worries and immersing herself in a world of magic and adventure. Definitely a better way to spend her Saturday night than clicking through movies on Amazon Prime, trying to find something worthwhile to watch. She turned on her laptop with a grin on her face.

A few minutes later, she'd downloaded the game client, launched it, and gone into character creation. It was all pretty standard stuff: distribute points on Attributes like Strength, Constitution, and Intelligence, pick a character class – she went for a fancy one: Bravo, a sort of fighter-rogue mix – and then design the appearance of her character, which she creatively named Caitlin. Caitlin Strange, just to add a little something to it. She probably would only play the character for a few hours tonight and then either abandon the game or start over with a new character; that was how she rolled.

She decided to make Caitlin 2.0. as beautiful as possible. The opposite of herself, in other words. Her mother was the beautiful one. Caitlin had taken after her father in the looks department, and Robert Sera was many things, but conventionally attractive wasn’t one of them. He'd still managed to land two beautiful wives (Mom was Number Two) because of qualities that didn't have anything to do with his looks.

Long story short, her father was the toughest, most dangerous human being she'd ever known or even heard of, a former MCMAP (Marine Corps Martial Arts Program) instructor and veteran who never talked about what he had done overseas. Caitlin didn't know the details but could read between the lines: his work had involved shooting people and blowing stuff up on missions that never made the news. Her dad was tough but nobody's idea of handsome, and Caitlin had inherited his lantern jaw and hawklike nose. She exercised regularly but was never happy with her body. Might as well have fun pretending to be a total hottie.

She gave the game Caitlin long red hair and green eyes, made her five foot seven, and adjusted her measurements to near anime levels. There. She'd probably attract a bunch of simps and creepers, but if it got too bad she'd just delete Caitlin 2.0. and make a different character.

"I'm already in," Evie told her. "You coming along?"

"Almost ready."

After selecting her weapons and equipment – a pair of short swords, a dagger, basic leather armor and some supplies – she clicked the 'Play' button.

And everything went dark.

Caitlin blinked as the lights – some kind of light that was much brighter than the single lamp in her dorm room – came back on. She wasn't sitting down by her laptop anymore. She was floating. Naked. She was floating naked! Caitlin tried to move and discovered that she was paralyzed, her arms held rigidly by her sides, legs stuck together, like a soldier standing at attention. A few years back, she'd gone through a phase of night terrors, times when she'd desperately wanted to move, to turn on the nightstand light, to scream, but all she could do was lie there. This was very much like it, and it took her several seconds to suppress a surge of panic and look around herself. Her eyes, she soon found out, could move and focus on the sights around her.

The bubble surrounding her was transparent, and through it she could see dozens other floating spheres. They all had people in it. Men and women, all naked. And among them were humanoids who looked like… well, like fantasy creatures. The bubble to her left held a green-skinned man with pointy ears and wizened face who had to be a goblin; one a couple of spots ahead contained an impossibly broad-shouldered man with inhumanly long arms and bluish skin. Like an orc, maybe.

This is crazy. I must have stroked out and my last neurons are firing off random images on their way to oblivion.

Caitlin blinked furiously, hoping the nightmare would go away, but instead she and the rest of the naked floaters began to move. She realized that they were in a tunnel of some kind, a circular tube wide enough to fit three or four human-sized bubbles side by side. She and the other bubble captives were moving through it, heading towards a large chamber at the end. Everything looked and felt too real to be a hallucination.

What is this?

Alien abduction. Had to be. The real world didn't have floating transparent bubbles that moved without any apparent machinery or cables pulling them around. Her eyes darted back and forth, and she realized the other people in the bubbles were doing the same, blinking and looking around themselves, desperately searching for a way out. She met the glances of the people on her left and right and saw the same befuddled terror she was feeling.

This can't be real!

The thought repeated itself over and over as she and the rest of the bubble people continued moving forward toward – what? All she could see past the bubbles ahead of her were flickering lights in the distance, kind of like what you would see during a lightning storm, except the light was red rather than white. The bubbles paused their advance for a moment. Someone began to scream, a sound that sent a chill through her. The shriek stopped abruptly and the bubbles began moving again. The same thing happened over and over again. Every few moments, someone started screaming in terror or pain, but only for a second or so. The screams always came to a sudden end.

Fear ran through her like a freezing current, making her heart pound like a galloping horse. She desperately tried to move, to no avail. Even through her panic, she noticed a pattern to the movement around her. The bubble procession would stop for a second, then begin to move a little. Stop. Flickering red lights and short-lived screams. Move a little again. More lights and screams. The process repeated itself, steadily, like some kind of assembly line. Except she was sure they weren't assembling anything at the end of the line, but rather the opposite.

 She was in a slaughter chute. That was the only thing she could think of. She and the other bubble people were waiting in line to be killed.

2: Act or Die!

Tears ran down her face. For several seconds, panic took over. She couldn't move, but on the inside she was screaming in uncontrolled terror. The line kept doing its thing. Move. Stop. Lights and screams. Move again. The tunnel had narrowed down until it was one bubble wide. There were maybe six bubbles ahead of her. Six more stops and then it would be her turn.

Observe. Orient. Decide. Act.

Dad had taught her that. Told her that in dangerous situations, you often only had seconds to act and you had to make the most out of them. That was the OODA loop. Observe: acquire as much information as you can in the time available. Orient: figure out what possible courses of action are possible – run, hide, fight, negotiate. Decide: Pick one. Act was self-explanatory. In a fight, the guy who went from Observe to Act first often won by making his move while the enemy was still in an earlier step of the OODA loop. Caitlin had never been in a fight, but she'd taken the lesson to heart. She forced herself to start her own OODA loop before it was her turn.

Observe. She still couldn't see what was happening to the people ahead of her. She knew whatever it was involved a flickering of red light and then screaming. She couldn't scream right now; neither could anybody else in the bubbles. Which meant that the victims were being released from their paralysis for at least long enough to scream. Maybe long enough to do something else? Fight, perhaps, or try to escape.

Dad had taught her how to fight dirty. There were no fair fights; that had been his first lesson to her. Her most likely attackers would be male, larger and stronger than her. To counteract that, she had to be quick and vicious. She'd practiced the moves, gone through hundreds of hours of practice, but she hadn't been sure she'd ever be able to thrust a finger into someone's eye or deliver a palm strike with every ounce of strength on their weak spots – side of the neck, nerve clusters in the lower body, or other soft-tissue targets. Doing it on the dojo her father taught at had been one thing, but to really hurt someone? The idea made her vaguely ill.

Caitlin wanted to live, however. And she discovered that she also wanted whoever was at the other end of the tunnel to feel some of the pain they were inflicting on their victims. She was probably going to die, but if she could poke some bastard's eye out before they killed her, she would at least get a small bit of revenge. And if she got the upper hand…

"I think we've found a suitable candidate."

"Perhaps. Get on with it."

Two voices, both female, echoed inside her head. It wasn't as weird as being trapped inside a floating bubble, but still not something she was used to. One of the voices addressed her.

"Caitlin Sera, we can give you the means to fight your tormentor. I must warn you, however, that the odds are very much against you. We are unable to intervene directly. Not until it is too late for you and your fellow Eternals. Will you accept our help?"

Eternals? That had been the term for PCs – player characters – from the game she'd started to play when all this insanity had begun.

"You have no time to worry about such things. Your turn is almost at hand."

Caitlin looked up and saw that there were only three bubbles ahead of her. Beyond them she finally could see that the tunnel opened up into a large circular room with stone walls. Letters or pictographs she couldn't identify covered the walls, surrounded by dozens of drawings depicting everything from humans to beasts to bizarre hybrids of both. The style reminded her of stuff she had studied in ancient history classes.

In the center of the room was a gigantic woman, at least twice the size of the people in the floating bubbles. Her black hair was done up in thick braids decorated with colorful beads and golden rings interwoven into her hair. She threw her head back and laughed while the limp body of her latest victim dropped to the ground. The corpse hit the ground and disappeared in a puff of smoke as the next bubble came to a stop in front of her.

The killer wasn't human, Caitlin realized as her own bubble moved closer; she was third in line now. The gigantic woman had a pair of black batlike wings growing behind her back and her smile revealed a row of pointy teeth, more fitting for the mouth of a shark than a human being's. The monster reached for the next victim, a black girl. The bubble surrounding the girl disappeared as the bat-winged killer grabbed her with one of her huge hands and lifted the thrashing and screaming victim until they were face to face.

A glowing sphere appeared between the monstrous woman's eyes. It had the deep red hue of fresh blood and pulsed in a steady rhythm as if it had a heartbeat. A beam of red light erupted from the sphere and transfixed the poor girl's forehead. The victim stopped screaming and merely convulsed for a few seconds while the light from the sphere seemed to suck the very life out of her. The girl's body shriveled away as if all her fluids had been removed. Her blood. That creature was some sort of vampire! A few moments later, the victim's lifeless body dropped to the ground and exploded into dust like an ancient mummy. Now it was a human guy's turn. The goblin would die after him. And Caitlin would be next.

Ohmygod, can you help the little green guy too?

"We can only help one of you. The Goblin is paralyzed with fright and refuses to accept what is happening. Strengthening him will accomplish nothing."

"Strengthening her will accomplish nothing," the second voice broke in. "You will only feed Amashilama more power."

"We have to try."

First Voice isn't very nice, but Second Voice is a total a-hole, Caitlin thought.

"We heard that," First Voice said. "But I forgive your impudence. Do you accept our gift?"

Yes! Caitlin thought with every ounce of her will. Even a crap chance was better than no chance at all.

Caitlin felt something like an electrical current flow through her body. All her nerve endings tingled as if they were waking up. She still couldn't move, but she felt supercharged. Stronger.

"When the time comes, strike at her with your body or mind. You can hurt her greatly. If you are both brave and lucky, you may destroy her current vessel and condemn her to a millennia of suffering. Do your best."

It didn't sound like First Voice thought highly of her odds, either. Caitlin felt her bubble move forward once again. The goblin's time had come. Caitlin forced herself to watch the killing, trying to learn as much as she could about the monstrous woman. Observe. Orient.

The giantess was both beautiful and hideous. Her face was flawless and could have adorned the front cover of any fashion magazine, except for the rows of fangs that became visible when she opened her mouth, and bloodshot eyes that made her look like she'd been on one too many benders. But it was the glint in those eyes that made her truly ugly. They were cruel, insane eyes, and Caitlin saw savage glee in them as the woman grabbed the green-skinned little guy and pulled him closer. The process repeated itself. She took the victim up close and then a glowing sphere appeared between her eyes and shot out a red beam that turned the goblin into a dried-up husk.

If she shoots that beam at me I'm dead. Have to hit her before that happens.

A part of her – the negative, don't bother to try part that often surfaced at the worst times – whispered to her. Why even bother? Even if she managed to land a punch in one of the woman's oversized eyes, even if she managed to disable her for a few moments, what would that accomplish? The giantess was twice her size and likely stronger. Whatever First Voice had given her was unlikely to do anything more than annoy the monster.

Caitlin almost listened to that voice and gave up. But then she remembered her mother, who had always stood up for what she believed. And her father, whose words of advice resonated even now. Especially now.

She might die in the next few moments, but she wouldn't do it as a helpless victim. Even if all she did was to make that evil smile falter for a moment, that would be a victory of sorts.

The goblin's body – so much like a child's – dropped to the ground and broke apart like a broken piece of pottery. Caitlin's bubble moved forward, and as she approached an image appeared above the monster woman's head, a box that contained words and numbers:

Amashilama the Leech (Blood Goddess)

Level 60, Tier 7 Divine Entity

Health 275K Mana 345K Endurance 280K

Wait, is that a stat box? Like in a game?

Her shock at the unexpected sight almost cost Caitlin her life. Luckily, the woman – Amashilama – paused for a moment to savor her last kill and examine her next victim.

"You are pretty," she said in a language Caitlin had never heard but somehow understood. The goddess' voice had a depth and weight to it beyond mere sound. The words made Caitlin's body thrum like a guitar string being plucked. It was like standing in front of a speaker at an arena concert. "Such a waste of beauty. But I need your essence, Eternal. Come here, my pretty."

The bubble fell away and the giantess' hand closed around Caitlin's waist. Amashilama's grip was crushingly strong, wrenching a cry of pain from her. Caitlin clenched her teeth and concentrated on the plan. Punch the crazy bee in the eye, kick her in the throat, and play it by ear after that. She waited until the best moment, until the woman's eyes were within reach of her clenched right hand, and she struck, putting all the power she could into the blow and wishing that her feet were on solid ground so she could use the full weight of her body.

Amashilama jerked to one side instinctively and Caitlin's fist missed its target but instead struck the sphere in the goddess' forehead. Caitlin felt like she had punched a ball made out of thick gel that, despite its bright glow, felt cool to the touch. Her fist sank into the glowing sphere to the wrist, and the madwoman screeched in agony. The scream was so loud that it destroyed Caitlin's eardrums, driving spikes of pure agony into her head. Instinctively, she pulled away from the goddess. The glowing sphere was still stuck to her fist and it popped out of the woman's forehead, triggering another scream.

Caitlin's destroyed eardrums couldn't hear the second scream, but from the way the fanged mouth opened beyond human limits and her body shook as if she was in a wind tunnel, it must have been even louder. The giantess threw Caitlin down. She landed on a metal grating of some sort and felt several bones break under the impact. As she writhed in pain, a message written in black letters over a white background appeared in front of her eyes.

You have found: God Core (Tier Seven)

Do you wish to claim this Core? (Y/N)

Caitlin had been a gamer long enough not to waste time looking a gift horse in the mouth. Her mind said 'Yes.'

The giantess was leaning over her. Red smoke was pouring out of the hole in her forehead where the sphere had been housed, and she was reaching for Caitlin with a hand that had grown talons out of her fingers, talons the size of swords. Before the mad goddess could reach her, however, Caitlin claimed the God Core, whatever it was, and everything changed.

Amashilama screamed a third time. Caitlin still couldn't hear the words but she felt her entire body resonate with the impossibly loud sound. A moment later, the goddess exploded. Like literally exploded in a repulsive display of fire, guts, flesh and bone that washed over Caitlin. More energy coursed through her body, just like when First Voice had given her a 'gift,' but turned all the way to eleven. Caitlin felt like she was going to explode next.

The energy ball wasn't stuck to her hand anymore. It hovered over her face for a moment before flying forward and hitting her in the forehead. It didn't hurt at first; she felt the cool substance somehow go through her skull and stop somewhere behind her eyes. That's when the pain began. It felt like the sphere was burning through her brain, and jets of fire were rushing down from her head and incinerating every nerve ending in her body. She screamed uncontrollably.

"Well, that was unexpected," First Voice commented.

"She killed Amashilama! What have you done, you imbecile?"

Just before darkness overcame her, Caitlin heard First Voice speak in an apologetic tone.

"I was only trying to help."

3: Not a Dream – But Maybe a Nightmare

Caitlin woke up with a mild headache.

"Weirdest dream ever," she grumbled, her eyes firmly closed, and reached for her bedsheet and blanket. She was cold and tired; maybe she could sleep through the headache.

Her hands didn't find any bedsheets or blankets. In fact, she discovered as she squirmed around, she wasn't laying on her bed at all. She felt dirt under her, cold, hard and, well, dirty, and the shock made her sit up, eyes wide open, no longer feeling sleepy at all.

Open sky greeted her. The sun was up and the sky looked normal enough, although as Caitlin blinked she thought she caught glimpses of something beyond the blue, like stars or planets bright enough to be seen in daylight. She looked around her. She was lying on a patch of sandy soil under the shade of a palm tree. Which was weird, since she lived in Maine, where palm trees were rather thin on the ground. More trees were all around her, mixed in with clumps of thorny brushes she didn't recognize. It was also hot, at least eighty degrees.

It took her a moment before she noticed something else. There were things – images? – floating in the air in front of her. A little mailbox image with a question mark on top of it was blinking red. Another image shaped like a hat or helmet was next to it, and another that looked like a purse or backpack floated next to that. And no matter which way she turned her head, the images seemed to follow her, always up and to one side. It was as if her eyes were a computer screen and the little images were part of the display. Like in a game.

The weird dream she'd had before she woke up began to come back to her. Being trapped in a floating bubble. The murderous giant woman. In the dream, she had taken something from the crazy lady and then she had… what? Died? Exploded?

"It was just a dream," she said out loud and realized that her voice sounded different to her ears. A breeze whipped her hair into her eyes. Red hair. Which she didn't have. Ginger-itis was her mother's thing. She'd never even tried dyeing it that color. But she had created a character with red hair, hadn't she?

Several minutes and one brief but intense panic attack later, Caitlin accepted the fact that she was in the body of the character she had created for Eternal Journey Online. Furthermore, she was all but certain that she'd been in that body when she'd taken the Floating Bubble of Death ride. After pinching herself several times to no avail, she had to admit that she wasn't dreaming. Maybe she was having a full psychotic break, but she had to accept this bizarre reality.

If she had lost her mind, hopefully someone would find her and medicate her back to normalcy. But if she wasn't crazy, not dealing with what was happening to her might cost her life. She was certain that if she hadn't fought back against the goddess Amashilama, she would have died horribly. Somehow, she was her player character and she’d better accept it.

I guess I'm a ginger now. Deal with it.

It could have been worse. Caitlin was thankfully not naked when she woke up. She was wearing a knee-length wraparound tunic, belted at the waist, and a pair of knotted sandals. It wasn't much, but better than what she'd been – not – wearing during the Bubbles of Death experience.

Some experimentation led her to a number of discoveries. First, she could activate the floating images by thinking at them. The backpack icon opened up into an inventory display straight from a computer game, with slots where stuff could be stored. In her case, the stuff included a set of Worn Leather Armor, a pair of Shoddy Short Swords, a Light Short Bow with twelve Simple Arrows in a Simple Quiver, some food and water, and a single Minor Healing Potion that she had splurged on during character creation.

She soon figured out that she could 'equip' the stuff in her inventory simply by thinking of it. In a few minutes, she was wearing the leather armor over her tunic. It consisted of a corselet of boiled leather with metal studs, a skirt made of loose strips of leather with metal reinforcements that protected her upper legs, a pair of bracers, and a set of greaves that laced over her sandals and covered her shins.

The full set made her look cooler than the plain tunic, in her humble opinion. She didn't have any head protection, which bothered her a bit. Maybe noobs didn't get helmets. Caitlin took out her swords, a pair of serviceable blades about fourteen inches long, double-bladed and ending in wickedly sharp points. Good for cutting and stabbing. And despite the fact that she had only trained in unarmed combat, this body seemed to know just how to use the swords. A couple of tentative swings showed her that.

Well, duh, she told herself. When she had created her character, she had given her a pretty high skill in Swords (Paired Weapons). Those skills must have carried over, the same way Neo had learned Kung Fu in The Matrix. Maybe all of this was some sort of alien virtual reality and the real her was in a pod somewhere. She would worry about that later, though. She had a feeling that if she didn't get her bearings soon, bad things would happen. A need for weapons and armor suggested that violence was not an uncommon occurrence wherever she was. She thought about 'equipping' the short bow but decided to keep it in her inventory for now.

One of those floating icons must have her 'character sheet' with all her abilities, stats, and skills. She would check it out later, though. First, she decided to open the blinking red question-mark icon. Question marks usually indicated quests in games and so far everything here seemed to follow game rules.

When she 'clicked' on the question mark, two messages appeared in front of her. They were on flat white surfaces that floated in front of her eyes, easy to read even though it took her two rereads to make sense of them. One of the messages had her full Earth name on it, so she read it first:

Dear Caitlin Michelle Sera,

You have done something unprecedented in the history of the Realms. My fault entirely; I gave you the power to injure the goddess Amashilama and you sort of ran with it, managing to steal her God Core, the center of her strength and immortality. By removing it, you killed her permanently, or at least as permanently as a Hyper-Jungian Archetype can be destroyed. Even with my help, neither the removal of her Core nor her ensuing destruction should have been possible.

You should be dead. But here you are, alive and well.

I will not be able to communicate with you very often, or possibly not at all. My best advice to you is to not mention any of this to anybody. As a Tier 0 Greater Being, one of your first gifts is the ability to hide your true self from most forms of identification or scrutiny. Keep it that way, for the Realms are full of those who will try to exploit or destroy you. I have done what I can to protect you, in no small part because doing so protects me as well.

How you will progress on the Path to Power is an open question. It is unlikely that the normal character progression that beginning Eternals undergo is available to you. Look for notifications and portions of your character sheet that are marked with a *Secret* sign. They will provide you some guidance.

One last thing: Eternals can die and be Reincarnated a number of times before death becomes a final state. However, in your case there is a high likelyhood that the God Core inside you will try to resurrect Amashilama instead of you, in which case your mind will be eradicated. Try not to die!

Best,

Arbiter Triginta-Septem

"Well, crap!"