Aka Amy

"Damnit fuck Amy I need healing!" shouted Dorn.

He was our DPS and he was in trouble. And 'Amy' was my nickname, because in the heat of battle 'Amethyst' was too hard to remember apparently. I honestly didn't mind it though. If anything I kind of liked it.

I also appreciated my fellow players not giving me a hard time over my low voice. Likewise I never questioned any of them either. None of us sounded like you'd expect from looking at our characters, but that's why they called it role playing. And I did my best to imagine my voice sounded like it should, higher-pitched, feminine, and maybe a bit soft or melodic.

"On it," I replied as I pointed my staff at him and called upon the divine magic. Mystical golden light swirled around the leather-clad swordsman and his injuries miraculously healed.

It was just in time too, as another group of goblins came at him out of the darkness to our right. Dorn held a longsword in his right hand and a dagger in his left, and he swung, stabbed, and dodged as he did his best to handle the group of monsters.

We'd wandered into an ambush and gotten trapped in one of the dungeon corridors. Leah, our tank, was busy holding off the goblin hoard on our left. She was a tall strong brute of a woman, clad in plate armour and swinging a huge bastard sword with one hand while wielding her shield in the other.

Me and Kreff stayed in the middle where we could lend help in either direction. They were a non-binary half-elven archer, and of course I was the healer slash mage of the group.

When I wasn't healing my team-mates I'd cast offensive spells at the monsters, while Kreff used their longbow with deadly accuracy. The biggest problem at the moment was I was running low on mana and Kreff was down to their last six arrows.

Normally we'd make short work of goblins but these were some sort of enchanted high-level variant. They took a lot more damage than the regular kind, and there were just too damn many of them.

"This isn't working," Leah stated after another minute or two, and I could hear the worry in her voice. "I think we might be fucked."

Kreff warned, "Last four arrows folks. Then all I've got's a dagger."

Dorn said, "Ok idea! Kreff, Amy, you hold off the hoard for a second or two. Leah you come this way, use your shield like a ram and just steamroll through whatever tries to stop you. Amy and Kreff you follow her, then I'll fall in behind you and keep them off our ass as we run for it. We gotta get the fuck out of thissheklkdjfdzsssssssss-"

"Dorn?" I asked. "Leah, Kreff did you get that?"

There was nothing but silence in my headphones. Then I realized my character had stopped moving.

"Oh fuck!" I cursed. My computer had crashed or seized up or something. I tapped the keyboard, tried to open the game menu, nothing worked. Worst fucking time for a crash.

Before I could do anything else, the whole computer completely died. The screen went dark and I could hear the fan grinding to a halt. It was just totally dead.

"Damn it," I grumbled as I got to my feet. I leaned over to check the power bar, I figured the fuse popped or something. Then my bedroom lights went out.

I sighed, "Seriously?"

The place me and Mike shared was the top floor of an older house. The fusebox was in the basement and it was a royal pain in the ass to get to, especially in the dark. I stood there for a moment as I tried to decide if I wanted to go all the way down there to check the fuses, or if I should just go to bed and deal with it in the morning.

That's when I saw the light.

A little spark of golden light seemed to circle around me. For a second I thought it was some kind of firefly, but it wasn't flickering. Then there was another. Then more of them. In the space of two or three seconds I went from pissed off about the power failure to surprised and curious, to nearly panicking.

Whatever these little lights were they were starting to completely surround me. I tried to escape but they moved with me. I swatted at them but whatever they were, I couldn't seem to hit them.

My heart was pounding as I grabbed my phone. I didn't know who to call but I had to try calling for help. But my phone was as dead as the computer, it wouldn't respond.

Then my vision went blurry as the swirling golden light completely enveloped me, and everything went completely black.

For a moment I thought I was dead. Or unconscious and dreaming. Except I felt awake and alert, but I couldn't see or feel anything. Like nothing, I couldn't even feel my body.

A moment later the blackness faded, and I found myself standing in an apartment. It wasn't mine though, I'd never seen the place before in my life.

I glanced around nervously, but what I saw just made me even more confused.

I was standing inside some kind of circle, there were strange symbols marked out on the floor in what looked like salt. The only light came from seven white candles arranged around me. Beyond the circle was a small living-room. The furniture was all shoved up against the wall to my left, there was a flat-screen TV on the wall behind me, and to my right was a little hallway that led to the kitchen and the front door.

Kneeling on a cushion on the floor in front of me was an attractive redhead. She was wearing a white nightgown, and staring at me with a look of confusion on her face.

And in the ultimate humiliation, I realized my pants and boxers had slipped down for some reason. They were in a heap on the floor around my ankles.

I started to ask, "What the -"

The words died in my throat as soon as I heard my voice. It wasn't mine. It was soft and higher-pitched than my voice, and it sounded unmistakably feminine.

And that's the moment where I actually blacked out.

• • • • •

I'd been chanting the words for at least five or six minutes and I was just about ready to give up, when I saw the first spark of magic. A flicker, a little point of golden light formed and started spinning around inside the circle.

Within seconds it was joined by more and more of them, until there was a whole column of swirling golden light.

My heart was racing with excitement as I continued chanting the words over and over. I felt a surge of something, and the swirling light flared then faded.

And there She was!

For a moment all I could do was stare in wonder at the woman who appeared standing in my circle. Then I started to notice all the details that told me something wasn't quite right.

She wasn't the tall powerful statuesque Goddess described in my grandmother's notes. Some things about her matched, but other things were wrong.

She had the same long silver hair, and it was hard to tell in the candle-light but her eyes looked purple like granny said in her journal. And the woman's skin appeared to be fair and flawless, that also matched what I'd read.

But this girl definitely wasn't tall or statuesque, she was shorter than me. I guessed she was maybe five-foot-two or five-three at most. And she looked about my age, somewhere in her early twenties.

Instead of holding a tall wooden staff in her hands, she was clutching a smartphone.

And rather than being clad in flowing white robes, she was wearing an oversized man's t-shirt, and nothing else. There were blue jeans and boxer shorts on the floor around her ankles though. Maybe the most surprising thing about her clothes was the U-of-T logo on her shirt.

She looked for all the world like she was halfway through getting into or out of her boyfriend's clothes when my ritual caught her by surprise.

I thought I was summoning a tall powerful Goddess from another realm, and instead I got a short cute coed from Toronto.

We stared at each other in shock.

She gulped, "What the?"

Her voice sounded pretty but she cut herself off as her eyes bulged even wider. The way she reacted I'd almost swear she was startled by the sound of her own words.

Then her eyes rolled back and she crumpled to a heap on the floor, knocking over four of the candles and smearing away half the circle.

There was a flare of golden light and the silver-haired girl was gone.

"Oh fuck!" I gasped as I hurried to grab the candles before they could start a fire.

I got them up off the floor and put them out, then turned on the overhead lights and put out the other three candles too. Then I stood there and stared at the smeared salt and spilled wax on my floor.

Pretty much none of that followed what granny wrote in her journal, and I had no idea what to make of the whole experience.

"What the fuck just happened?" I asked myself.

• • • • •

My head felt like it was full of cotton as I slowly drifted awake. My mouth was dry, I was hungry, and I almost felt hung-over.

Memories of last night gradually started to come back to me. I remembered spending the night gaming, then I remembered my computer crashing and the power going out. Luckily today was Saturday so I didn't need to be anywhere, I didn't have to worry about missing my alarm and being late for work.

Then I remembered that dream. It was weird, but it was kind of cool in a way. It was almost like magic from the game too, with the swirly golden lights. Or maybe it wasn't a dream, maybe I was hallucinating. I realized I probably hadn't eaten or drank anything in too long again. No wonder I was seeing things. I really needed to get some food in me.

I opened my eyes and sat up as I thought about coffee and said to myself, "I hope the power's back..."

My eyes bulged halfway out of my head and a shot of adrenaline went through me. Just like that dream, my voice wasn't my voice, I sounded like a girl! I looked down at myself and stared.

My t-shirt was stretched across my chest, a large pair of boobs were clearly outlined under the fabric. The tee was loose everywhere else, the short sleeves reached my elbows and the shoulders were hanging off me. My legs were smooth, shapely, and hairless. My arms were slim. My hands and feet were small, my fingers delicate, my toes were cute.

My jeans and boxers were in a bunch at the foot of the bed. I reached up and pulled some of my long hair into view. It was a pure silver colour.

"Holy fuck," I whispered.

There was a mirror on the inside of my closet door, and I jumped out of bed to dash to the closet. I almost tripped over my own feet trying to get to it, my body wasn't moving right. Gravity felt off, my hips and legs moved differently, and the weight of my boobs was confusing me.

I stumbled to the closet, opened the door then stared at the mirror.

Looking back at me was... I was my character from the game. I was Amethyst. I was a cute girl with silver hair and violet eyes. I stood staring at myself in shock for a full minute.

"What the fuck happened to me?" I asked myself as I continued staring at my reflection. "How is this even possible?"

Eventually I remembered that dream again, except I was starting to suspect it wasn't a dream after all. I remembered seeing a pretty redhead kneeling outside the circle. I knew she had to be responsible, or at least involved somehow. I wished there was some way I could get in touch with her, but I had no idea who she was.

I was still staring at the mirror a minute or so later when my phone started ringing. I shuffled back to my bed and found it under the blankets. I didn't recognize the number, it was from out of town somewhere.

Normally I'd ignore strange numbers, but I was still sort of dazed from discovering I was my game character and I swiped to answer before I knew what I was doing. I held the phone up and asked, "Hello?"

After a brief pause, an unfamiliar woman's voice responded, "Um, sorry if this is sounds strange but do you have silver hair and purple eyes?"

I blinked a couple times then asked nervously, "It's you isn't it? The redhead in the white nightgown?"

"Yes," she replied.

That was about the point where I decided I must be losing my mind. I had no idea how she got my number, though I didn't know what happened after I blacked out.

I took a few seconds to try and sort myself out, then asked "Who are you? What did you do to me? And why?"

"My name is Theresa," she replied. "But folks call me Tess. And you are?"

I gulped and my mind raced. I didn't want to tell her my guy name. I hated it, it never felt like me, and anyways it wouldn't fit how I looked at the moment.

After a deep breath, I sort of braced myself then stated "I'm Amethyst."

Then a moment later I added, "Friends call me Amy."