Chapter 3: 3: This Feels Strange

Everything felt strange. As my mind slowly began to slot itself back together, I had a question, what the hell had that goddess done to me. I felt very very strange. Sensation was coming back in tingling waves as each part of my body rebooted. I felt my leg jerk as I regained control of it, and suddenly I was spasming on the floor of the temple.

It felt like a while, but probably wasn’t actually very long before my body stopped randomly shuddering. When I was able to take stock of myself, I wished it hadn’t stopped. I was exquisitely aware of this body now. My skin was cold and soft. Laying there on the ground I could feel it in a visceral way I had not been able to before. When my hands, my tiny slender hands, reached up and touched my face, it felt much more real. No, real wasn’t the right word. 

When I’d touched my face before the goddess and her golden light, it had felt like I was touching my own face. My 16 year old male face. As my fingers roamed over my face now, it felt like this face, Syl’s face. There was no weird dissonance between what the game told my fingers to report and what it told my face to report.

Slowly I sent my fingers down my body, I held my shoulders next, then my forearms. The skin was oh so soft, and everything felt a little more sensitive, like my whole life I’d been wrapped in a thin layer of plastic and now suddenly I was not. When my arm grazed my chest, I gasped in shock. Whoa. I looked down, and saw my nipples were cold, and very much declaring that fact to the world.

Very cautiously, I placed a finger onto one of them through the fabric of my bra. That was interesting. There wasn’t a jolt of pleasure or anything like we are told about in erotic stories, but I could feel it so much more. It was…. Nice? Why was I enjoying these feelings and my new awareness of my Eilion body? I put my strange questions out of my mind as I focused on exploring what had changed. I could feel the width of my hips now, I had an awareness of this body and how it was positioned that I hadn’t even realised I was lacking until now.

I sat up and looked down at myself, and that was when my eyes landed on the thin fabric covering my crotch. Oh. My hand made a beeline for it, and when it arrived, I did not feel a hand on my old male plumbing, I felt a hand on my now very much real vagina. Oh-kay. I felt my mind try to surge in panic at my suddenly missing dick, and just as the panic was gaining traction, it was gone. I didn’t have to perform for anyone here, there was no one to laugh at me for losing the pillar of my manhood. In the place of my panic was yet another bizarre feeling. I felt, calm? Whole? It was like I had spent my entire life dulling and ignoring the feeling of being real, and now suddenly, in this virtual space, I was real and together for the first time.

I felt tears begin to build in my eyes, catching on my long eyelashes before breaking free and trailing down my face. I had so many emotions flowing through me, I was a storm, a cocktail. The bartender had decided to just throw everything in the shaker and whirl it around. Don’t tell my parents I know those things. I don’t want to be grounded. Shaking off the confused tears, I put my hand back to lever myself into a standing position. When my hand landed, it was on my long black hair, and the attempt to get up failed when my head was pulled back.

“Ow! Son of a bitch that hurt!” I cried out loud.

Note to self, do not pull my own hair. Successfully standing up this time, I wiped my eyes dry with the backs of my hands, taking care not to get the dirt from the floor in them. I was still reeling from my sudden new awareness of my body. I took a step forward, and almost immediately fell over again. Wow everything moves differently now! It’s not like the basic principle of walking has changed, but my mind is still getting used to the new hardware.

The next step is just as bad, but the one after it felt more stable. I spent a good fifteen minutes just learning to move my body around again, and I found myself coming back to the same question. What did she do to me? I’ll admit I feel great, but it’s still disconcerting that the game has that much control over me. Yet another reason to not play tank. I can’t imagine what it would be like to intentionally put yourself in harms way while feeling this realistic. With a shudder I turned my thoughts to more practical matters. What do I do next? Do I log out for the night? That seems like delaying the problem rather than fixing it. I bring up my character sheet and take a look.

My stats have not changed, but looking at my abilities I notice that I have a few that I didn’t select. There’s one here named Glamour of the Eilion, which tells me I can change my appearance for up to 8 hours. It warns me that the spell will cause me to become uncomfortable if I hold it for longer than 5. I also have a passive called Priestess of the Bright Sky. It gives me a buff to healing and a buff to radiant damage and all my abilities will now come up in the colours of my new patron, which appears to be sky blue and gold. Cool!

Having finished reviewing my resources, I think about my next step, knowing what I do. I need to find a town in order to get some gear. Wait. Didn’t she say there might be some gear in the temple? She mentioned the left wing. I spin around, briefly getting my left and right confused like I always do. Correcting myself, I head towards the left wing. Wait no I was right the first time damn it. Okay, I’m tottering through the real left wing door now and down a long corridor.

The ceiling has seen better days in this area too and chunks of it lay scattered on the ground. It doesn’t take me long to locate something of interest, the temple isn’t as large as I originally thought it was. Stepping into what looks to have been a bedroom at some point, I see an old chest at the foot of a disintegrating bed. The chest itself appears to be in better condition. Probably the game messing with the natural way of things here, preserving the loot.

If I was in my real life body, I probably would have had to kneel down to open the chest, but at my current height that is not a problem. Cautiously I inspect the lock, checking for traps, but I can’t see anything. Probably wouldn’t recognise the signs anyway, oh well. Placing my hands at the base of the lid, I try and open it, and to my surprise it’s unlocked.

Inside there is some sort of dusty folded clothing. Lifting the first item out I discover it to be a short dress made of a sturdy grey fabric. On the chest is an embroidered glowing sun, it’s edges outlined in a fading blue glow. It looks pretty cool. It’s a dress, but it looks cool. I pull it over my head, briefling struggling with getting my arms into the short sleeves. It’s a bit too big for me, and I realise it may actually just be a tunic, not a dress. Well it’s a dress now!

Underneath the tunic-dress I find more pieces of clothing. A bunch of socks, a really big jacket, even bigger pants and some gauntlets. The jacket is made of a very thick material, like leather but with more flexibility. It’s also about a foot and a half too long for me. The gauntlets don’t fit me either, I can’t get my fingers into all the little finger sleeves at once. The socks are also absolutely enormous. They appear to be the type where you roll them up so you have this ring of rolled sock somewhere on your calf, but I have other ideas. They are now thigh high socks.

I put them on and rolled them all the way up my legs. They stopped just before my tunic at about mid thigh. Wow, I probably look really cute now. I wish I had a mirror. I want to wear the coat because my arms are still cold, but it’s just unrealistically long. It’s a cool looking coat too, it has the gold and blue sunburst on the back, as well as gold and blue thread stitched decoratively along the edges. I decide I will use the inventory system for the first time and while holding the jacket, think of putting it away in the inventory. Suddenly it dissolves into wisps of light. Hurray! There seems to be nothing but more socks and a few more tunics in the chest, but I grab them and store them anyway as spares. The gauntlets go into the inventory too.

Moving on, I search the rest of the little wing of the temple, happy to finally have clothing, even if I have to beat the dust out of it. I only found a few more intact chests, all of which contain more of the outfits, although some of them have robes instead of tunics and pants. The robes are way too big for me. My happiest finds are a small knife and some shoes that aren’t huge. They still don’t fit me, but they aren’t huge. The knife is fairly simple, made of bronze and is clearly more of an eating and convenience tool that something used for combat, still it’s better than nothing.

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With the knife in hand, I take a jacket out of my inventory. Not the one from the first chest, the guy who slept in that room must have been a giant. The one I’ve picked is a bit smaller, but it still trails along the ground. I’ve seen girls wearing jackets like the one I want to turn this into, and with that inspiration in mind, I slice the jacket as straight as I can at an inch and a half below the center of my waist. I now have a jacket that ends at my waist instead of the floor. I’ve purposefully left the extra inch and a half so that I can get a tailor to give it a hem, or whatever it’s called.

Having finished looting the left wing, I decide to visit the right wing. I don’t find much. The place has been crushed by a fallen redwood and there’s not much left. It’s basically just a pile of rubble. With a last look at that fateful brazier, I moved out through the main entrance. It was getting dark in the forest now, and I was beginning to worry I wouldn’t be able to see.I really wished I’d gotten the darkvision passive I saw.

Doing my best not to trip over in the failing light, I started my journey by following the road in the direction I had been travelling when I found the temple. No use backtracking after all. I’m finding it a lot harder to make progress this time. My new synergy with my game body is causing me to stumble every now and then too and the descending darkness and ill fitting shoes are not helping either.

I’m nearing my first hour of walking when I hear a really odd creaking sound. It's like someone is rubbing two smooth sticks together and it thoroughly creeps me out. The forest has been pretty quiet since night fell, all the birds went to sleep and I was left with just the sighing of the wind. Fear begins to beat my heart like a drum, and I try desperately to see the source of the noise through the trees and ferns.

A loud crack sounds behind me as something steps on a branch. I give an embarrassingly girlish scream and spin on my heel, slamming my other foot down and activating my Circle of Dawn in the same motion. A wave of gold and blue light erupts from my foot, and there is a high pitched inhuman scream of rage and pain. Caught by my panicked attack, a creature about three feet tall and made of dead sticks and brush is now flailing wildly under the golden azure blaze that is eating away at it. I didn’t wait for the fire to end.

Stretching my hand out clumsily, I cast Sunlight Shard at point blank range, activating the scattershot as soon as I am able. The small creature is instantly turned to shreds, debris scattering in a deadly cone before me. I only barely got the creature within my shot with my wild aim, but it was enough to kill it. My combat log tells me it was called a corrupted woodland sprite.

As my panic subsides, it is replaced with glee. I killed my first mob! And you know, despite the whole wild panic thing, it was so cool! The Sunlight Shard ability was absolutely awesome, especially with my goddesses colourings on it. Keeping my eye on the dark surroundings of the forest, I let myself uncoil a bit from the brief fight I’d just had. Phew. Intense! Time to keep walking. As I trekked, I became aware of a new set of problems. I was tired, hungry and thirsty. This was not good. What on earth had I done to the game to deserve being dumped out here in the middle of nowhere?

It seemed like longer, but the timer said I had been walking for two hours now and I had killed four more corrupted woodland sprites. The last one had confirmed something for me, as well as pointing out a rather glaring weakness in my build. What had been confirmed for me was that pain in this game did hurt, it hurt quite a lot. Living the sheltered modern life that I had, I didn’t know what being clawed in the leg felt like, but if it was even more painful in real life I had vowed then and there to never find out.

The weakness in my build should have been obvious from the start. I had no way to directly heal myself properly. I was lucky my healy stomp move applied the heal over time to me as well as others. I would have been in serious trouble otherwise. It still took 5 minutes and a lot of stomping and tears to get things repaired fully. It was when I was replacing my torn and bloody sock that I saw the little blinking light in the corner of my vision. Hastily stowing my torn sock I whirled to get a good look at the light, only for it to expand into a notification in my vision.

‘Congratulations on reaching level two! You have been awarded 3 attribute points and one ability point! Spend them wisely adventurer!’

Huh. Cool! I quickly opened my character sheet and dumped all my attribute points into dexterity. I really really needed to dodge attacks coming my way. I haven't mentioned it yet, but my HP is appallingly low. Best to not get hit at all. Moving on to my abilities, I browsed my options. Interestingly, it seemed that my playstyle and actions had been noticed by the game. I had the option to skill into a variety of handy passives.

One that caught my eye immediately was Fitness, which promised to increase my general ability to move for extended periods of time. After all the walk I had done, I almost caved in at the chance to make my trek easier, but I held off until I could see the rest of my options. I had the option to increase my perception, as well as cold resistance.

I figured I could deal with those later however, as I needed to close that weakness in my build. I chose an ability I hadn’t seen before called Touch of Sunset, which healed the target by a significant amount, as well as cleansing one debuff. I had a feeling that ability was courtesy of my new priestess status.

Happy with my progress, continued my march down the road with a bounce in my step. That bounce lasted about five meters, when my stomach growled again. I wished in that moment that I had tried harder when my dad made the brief attempt to turn me into a manly man with fishing and hunting. I was going to die. Hungry, thirsty and alone. I was going to die. 

“What are you talking about Sam you wuss? I’m Syl now and I met a goddess and became her priestess today! I’m awesome! I found clothes too. Cute clothes! They were too big too, not cute when you found them, but you made them cute!” I spoke to myself in a quiet tone.

A part of me was quite worried about my wellbeing at this point, watching my strange split personality pep talk from a detached portion of my mind. I continued to talk softly to myself, probably just to hear my new voice.

This was interrupted by someone clearing their throat and asking, “Uh, are you okay?”

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