Sophie's eyes blinked open only to find the wide and somehow disturbingly translucent eyes of an unfamiliar woman staring down at her.

“Oh!” The other woman pulled back suddenly as if startled by Sophie. “You're awake!”

Sophie sat up, her head spinning. She glanced around at her surroundings. She was sitting on the wooden floor in a dusty room with cushions scattered all over. It looked like animals had been chewing on them. She didn’t recognize a thing, and her head was pounding.

“Where am I?” she asked.

The last thing she remembered… She had been at a company event. They had closed out a large account and had been celebrating at a bar downtown. She pressed her fingers against her forehead in an attempt to soothe the pain there.

“You're in my shrine!” the woman said. “Don't you remember?”

Sophie started to shake her head, but immediately regretted it. She decided sitting very, very still was a much better option.

“No… not exactly…” she trailed off.

The other woman clapped her hands excitedly, but the sound had an oddly muted quality, and the more Sophie looked at the woman, the more she realized that something wasn't quite right here.

The woman appeared to be about Sophie's age with long blonde hair and cute features. But she didn't look quite… solid for lack of a better word. Looking at her gave Sophie the urge to rub her eyes. As if maybe her vision was affected by the hangover.

“I'm Elowen,” the woman said. “You promised to be my priestess last night.”

“I – Excuse me. A priestess?”

Was this some sort of kinky thing? Sophie had absolutely no recollection of meeting this woman, let alone promising her anything like that.

“Look,” Sophie began, as the other woman blinked at her expectantly. “I don't exactly know where I am right now or what I promised you but –”

Elowen cut in, already starting to pout. “You’re at my shrine! I already told you.”

Sophie shook her head then, forgetting her goal of sitting still, and her brain rattled around in her skull. “That doesn't help me at all. Can you tell me what happened last night?”

“You really don't remember?”

Elowen looked so sad that Sophie began to feel bad for the other woman. Of course. All signs pointed towards Sophie getting herself into trouble again after drinking too much. This was starting to become a bad habit…

“Nope.” Sophie sighed. “I really don’t.”

“Well, I was in the courtyard alone,” Elowen started. “And suddenly the portal started glowing! The portal hasn't worked for years. So naturally, I was excited –”

Sophie held up her hand. “Hold up. The… portal?”

Elowen nodded enthusiastically. “Yeah! Do you remember? You walked through it! Although now that I think about it, you seemed a little disoriented…”

Sophie risked another look around the room, and it looked – well, it looked abandoned for lack of a better word. She wondered briefly if she had been kidnapped by some sort of weird cult, but she wasn't tied up in any way and the girl in front of her seemed so sincere about the whole thing.

“Okay,” Sophie said. “Let’s go through this one more time. I walked through some sort of portal and ended up here.” She gestured to the room around her. “And then I promised to be your priestess. Does that sound about right?”

Elowen frowned and shook her head. “Well, not actually here. The portal is in the courtyard.”

“Right.” Sophie sighed. “Of course it is. Why don't you show it to me, then?”

Part of her wanted to test out whether or not any potential captors would actually let her leave, but she also wanted to survey her surroundings and determine if she was anywhere familiar. Perhaps if she was lucky, she was only a few blocks away from her usual bus stop. At this point, that seemed overly optimistic.

“Oh! That’s a wonderful idea!” Elowen replied.

And then she floated off the ground.

Sophie scrambled back, her stomach lurching terribly with the motion. “What –” she started. “Are you – No, wait – Am I dead?”

Elowen looked horrified at the very thought. “Oh, no, of course not. You're perfectly alive as far as I can tell. I could read your mana level if that would help reassure you.”

“My mana level?” Sophie had a sinking feeling that she was quite a bit further than she thought she was from home. “Okay, forgetting that for a second. What are you some sort of ghost then?”

Elowen looked positively hurt at the accusation. “A ghost! No, I am the spirit of the shrine.” She sniffed, crossing her arms. “I am a being created out of pure mana. I have always been like this. I’m no ordinary ghost.”

And that's when Sophie realized she had seriously fucked something up.

***

Sophie numbly allowed Elowen to lead her to the portal in the courtyard. They were in fact, at some sort of shrine – long abandoned judging by the weeds that choked the path into the dense forest.

Elowen showed Sophie to a place at the very edge of the courtyard where some sort of long, flat stone pieces that curved up at the ends formed a strange border. There was no portal to be seen.

“So you're saying I walked through this?” Sophie gestured to the space in between the boring-looking stone slabs, and then carefully tried stepping through them.

Nothing happened.

“It’s not active now,” Elowen insisted. “I don't know how you activated it, but last night it appeared for the first time in a very long time. Many, many seasons. And then you walked through it.”

“And then what?” Sophie kicked at one of the stones, and Elowen winced.

“Well, and then it died again. You seemed very confused. Judging by the way you're dressed, I'm guessing you're not from the village.”

Sophie had a feeling she wasn't even from the same reality.

“Nope,” Sophie agreed. This was starting to sound like something out of a video game or maybe a fantasy novel. “Not from the village alright.”

“That's not important.” Elowen insisted. “You don't necessarily have to be from the village to be my priestess. Although I am curious why you went so long without choosing a class. Had you planned to remain classless?”

The combination of Elowen’s clueless and downright confusing insistence on the whole priestess thing and the aftereffects of all of the alcohol Sophie drank last night were really starting to catch up with her in a bad way. “Look,” she said, trying not to completely lose her patience. “I don't know what I promised you exactly, but I don't even think I'm from the same reality as you, let alone whatever the nearby village is. Classes? Mana? What is this some sort of video game?”

“Video game?” Elowen sounded out the words, as if she had never heard the phrase before. “I'm not playing a game. I don't mean to trick you.” She seemed honestly confused. “But that's not right… What do you mean you're not from this reality? That can’t be true.”

“I don't know!” Sophie was starting to feel frustrated. “Can't you scan me or something?”

Elowen nodded. “I scanned you last night, but maybe I missed something. Here –” She held out her hands, translucent palms facing upward. “Let me scan you again.”

Sophie carefully held out her hands above Elowen’s own. She could see Elowen’s hands there, but she couldn’t sense them at all at first. Elowen closed her eyes, and Sophie might have felt a little more awkward about the whole situation had they not been in the middle of nowhere in possibly in some sort of wacko fantasy world.

And then Sophie felt something – a warm pressure, perhaps – but nothing like what she expected touching a ghost might feel like.

It gave her the creeps, nonetheless.

After a long moment, Elowen opened her eyes again and shook her head. “I don't know. I suppose I can tell there's something different about you. But your mana seems fine, albeit extremely underdeveloped. You’re only Level 1.”

“A level one?” Sophie repeated.

“Yes! You’re a Level 1 Shrine Priestess!” Elowen declared, as if that helped the situation at all. “I gave you the class last night.” She beamed proudly. “The first class I’ve given out in so many seasons! I’ve lost count!”

“But… What if I don't want to be a – a Shrine Priestess?”

The pout was back. “But you have to! You promised! If you don't do it, I'm going to fade away soon. I can’t find anyone else!”

Sophie wondered how true any of that was, but she wasn’t in the mood for arguing.

“Okay, okay,” Sophie said, holding up her hands. “Just calm down. Can I at least get some coffee or something? My head's killing me.”

“Coffee?” Elowen asked, making the same confused face that Sophie was already starting to dread.

“Surely you have coffee in this world!”

What kind of terrible fantasyland had she ended up in?