I shrieked, falling over as I tried to spin to face whoever had spoken. My eyes tracked up to meet the speaker, and then widened in terror as a giant stepped forth from the ferns on the roadside. He was easily fifteen feet tall, and in his hand he held an enormous cudgel. His stride was purposeful, his gaze looking into my own with concern.

Wait what? Concern? The dissonance of his appearance with his expression calmed my fear. Oh, he wasn't fifteen feet tall, he was maybe six and a half feet tall. He was not carrying a cudgel, he was carrying a stereotypical wizards staff.

“Are you okay?” He asked again, absentmindedly brushing his shortish blond hair out of his eyes.

With an effort of will I forced my mouth to speak, “Uh, um. I didn’t. Um”

I could feel my blush spreading across my face and down my neck. That was a lie. About the speaking thing I mean, not the blush. My eyes tracked him as he carefully approached, crouching a few meters away. He wore an expression that said he was equal parts amused and concerned by my antics.

“I’m sorry. Uh, yeah I’m okay. Well, I’m not okay. I’m really hungry and thirsty and I’ve been walking on this stupid endless road for hours,” I finally say, my eyes tearing up as the pent up frustrations of my playtime threatened to well up.

His very blue eyes softened further in sympathy. He was handsome, and to my surprise, not human. He had ears that tapered to a delicate point. They were very short compared to mine, which were almost a foot long from base to tip.

“Here, drink this, and eat this,” he said producing a waterskin from thin air and handing it to me, while from his other hand he offered me a hunk of bread.

Clutching at the container and momentarily forgetting about the bread, I brought it to my lips too fast and bashed my face with it. Still not used to this body. Being more careful with my second attempt, I drank from the skin with desperation. I vaguely remembered something about pacing yourself when you were rehydrating after a long time without water, and so I forced myself to stop. I smiled at him tentatively and took the bread, munching on it cautiously while he watched. When I finished I gave him a relieved smile, he nodded with a little amused smirk.

“Thank you so much,” I said to my saviour, “You’re a player right? Do npc’s have an inventory like us? Also why are you out here in the middle of wherever this is?”

He chuckled lightly at my outburst and I felt myself redden further.

“Yeah I’m a player, my in game name is Colourless, but it'll probably be easier to call me Col or something. I don’t know about Npcs either, and as for what I’m doing here,” He shot me a dazzling smile that I swear I knew from somewhere, “I’m saving damsels in distress.”

I kind of gaped at him for a bit at that, before I found my words again, “Um. Thank you. Do you, Can you…? Where are we? I spawned in the woods like 6 hours back that way and I’ve been lost ever since.”

“Wow that’s a long way away. Most people are spawning nearer the town around here. Want me to take you there?” He asked, eyebrows raised.

“Yeah, please. I want the comforts of any sort of civilisation so badly right now,” I said, nodding vigorously.

“Alight, I was just heading in from exploring anyway. By the way, why don’t you have your own supplies and stuff? Doesn’t look like you even have a weapon,” Colourless asked as he got up.

Pointing in a diagonal away from the road, he indicated where we were headed and I scrambled up to follow him, still clutching the waterskin.

“Well. I may have forgotten to save some points for gear during character creation,” I said, lowering my head in embarrassment.

“Wait… but your clothes?” He looked at me with a bit of intensity in his eyes now.

“I… Well. I spawned in naked,” as I spoke my confession I slipped into an abashed mumble.

“Oh.” he said, growing a bit heated in the cheeks himself.

“I found them. In a ruin,” I blurted.

“Found what?”

“My clothes.”

“Ah.”

We walked in silence through the dark forest, neither of us trying to break the awkward silence. I walked beside him thinking of just how awkward and embarrassed I felt, when I noticed something I should be feeling, but that I was missing. I felt no attraction to him. He’s really attractive too, I could tell when I looked at him, and he was my type to a tee. Athletic without being overly brawny, charming and teasing, tall with striking eyes. Yet when I thought of his face leaning down to kiss me, or what he would look like without a shirt on, I felt nothing. He was definitely still nice to look at, and I felt it influencing me to befriend him, but that was it.

I was a little freaked out now. I had only just come to terms with the fact that I was gay, and had a crush on my best friend to boot, and yet now the image of Colourless, nor Jeremy elicited any response from me. Oh no, had my goddess stopped my ability to feel attraction now that I was a priestess? I hope not. Thinking about it in terms of what she’d done, I calmed down with the knowledge that this would all be gone when I logged off. I was still very disconcerted with how much control the game had over our minds. I walked in silence beside Colourless for a while, stewing in my own questions.

Deciding to ask a question that Col could help me with, I cleared my throat to gain his attention. My eyes widened a fraction as my character’s voice produced a soft feminine sound instead of the deeper rumbling I was used to as a guy. I reached up and ran my finger along the underside of my long ear, marvelling again at how different this all felt.

“Yeah?” Col asked and I turned to look up at him. Jeez he was tall. More than a foot and a half taller than me. He raised an eyebrow at my stare.

“Sorry… I wanted to ask what region we’re in. Like where we spawned and stuff. I have literally no idea where we are,” I spoke, finally getting the words out.

“Oh! We’re in the Kingdom of Adreinth. It's an elven kingdom on the Pelclae Plateau. This forest is the Elnedrith Forest, and the town we’re heading to is called Keldrin,” he told me.

“Well, that was... succinct,” I said with a bemused expression.

“Hey, you asked for information, I gave you information, “ he grinned.

I stared at him a bit, then rolled my eyes and placed them forward again.

We walked for a moment in silence again before he said in a thoughtful tone, “I know a guy who uses his words the same way you do. Not very confident about what he's going to say. You can see when he has something to say by the way he pumps himself up to speak. When he actually gets the words out you can see he’s got smarts, but has a hard time expressing it in any given direct. Good friend too, we’ve been friends for a while.”

Was I really like Cols friend? I thought hard about how I interacted with my own friends. A moment of introspection later and I concluded that yeah, I was a bit like that. It was kind of comforting to know there was another like me out there.

I was about to answer him when I heard a gentle snap behind and to the right. This time when I whirled to confront the noise I did not fall over. I was learning! Harder? Better. Faster. Stronger? Hmmm Well two parts of that quote don’t really fit me right now. Oh right, the scary noise.

With a combined screech of rage, three corrupted wood sprites leapt from the ferns and attacked us. With a little squeak I stumbled backward but sadly for the sprites, I had years of gaming under my belt and my reaction speeds had always been pretty good. My hand whipped up as I fell, and I discharged a sunlight shard into the attackers as they leapt towards us. While it was in flight, I allowed the shard to disintegrate into a cone of razor sharp light.

I didn’t get to see the results of my spell because as my foot went out behind me to arrest my fall, it landed on a small stone. The stone sent me into a spin and I lost sight of the enemy. This stone may have saved our lives. While those three were attacking us from the front, and Col was lighting them up with an eruption of flame from his staff, five more were rushing us from behind.

My left hand came into range on the five sprites first, and I let another shard rip forth from my fingers. I staggered to my side and on a whim, turned the stagger into a stomp, sending a shockwave of gold and azure light out. All the sprites that weren’t already dead burst into the flames of my goddess. I didn’t have time to revel in the destruction I’d caused, because I heard Col cry out in pain from nearby.

When I turned in his direction, I saw him lying on the ground, a deep cut stitched raggedly down his torso. Standing over him was a much larger wood-sprite like creature. It was on fire from both Col and my own spells, but it did not seem to be impressed by it. Reacting faster than I ever had before, I raised both hands, one pointed at Col, and one pointed at the creature. With a crackle of power, the hand pointed at Col lit him with a beam of blue-gold light, followed by the sound of a dizzying gust of wind.

With a pulse, my spell closed the wound on his chest, undoing the terrible gash. Simultaneously, the hand pointed at the dangerous corrupted wood thing let a shard fly forth. This time however I did not detonate it mid-flight, but rather let it embed itself into the creatures raised arm, stopping the coup de grace it was about to unleash on my new friend. With the shard embedded in it’s arm, I allowed the shard to erupt into crystals of light that almost tore the arm in half.

The creature’s scream curdled my stomach with its haunting and inhuman pain. Not even bothering to stand up, Col raised his staff and with little to no foreplay at all, unleashed an arcing bolt of lightning straight into the evil lump of wood’s chest. The beast erupted as chunks of charred wood spun off into the night and it collapsed to the ground.

I stood there gasping and panting as my adrenal glands ruled my body. My eyes wide and unblinking as I stared dumbly at the carnage around us. The brush was charred and burning where Col had torched it with his flamethrower spell, and bits of bark had been torn from the trees by my shards of sunlight. The corpses of our enemies say still on the ground burning lazily.

“Wow, that was intense,” said Col, still catching his own breath, “that was so cool though! you let off those spells like you were dancing! Man that fight couldn’t have lasted more than like ten seconds, and you healed me!”

“Dancing?” I asked, the excitement in his voice giving me a small grin of my own.

“Yeah, you like, blasted the ones in front, did that little spinny ballerina move and blasted the sneaky ones behind, then stomped and set them all on fire, then turned and saved my ass. It looked so cool!” He was beaming at me now.

I had no idea how to take that compliment, so I did the natural thing and looked down at my feet, shuffled them a bit, grinned and then went bright pink.

“That lightning spell was the highlight though! This game is amazing. I can’t believe I’m able to do this! You just shot lightning at something and blew it up!” I said back at him.

“Yeah,” he said with a cheeky grin, “it was pretty fucking cool wasn’t it.”

“Yup!” I nodded.

“I’m confused though, you were throwing out healing and damage spells. What archetype are you aiming to build?” he inquired.

“Uh, I want to be a healer, but I know how much it sucks to level as a healer from playing other games, so I picked a few cool looking damage abilities to make life easier on myself. I figure I’ll spec more into healing when I find a group,” I told him, sitting down to rest as we spoke.

He gave me a considering look for a moment before bringing a slightly more serious expression onto his face, “My group is actually looking for a healer, there’s four of us, we got three dps and a tank so far. At least that’s what we were going to all play when we spoke at school last.”

“Uhhhh.” I stalled, thinking.

“It’s okay if you don’t want to, we can-” he started, but I held up a hand to stall him.

“Just lemme think for a sec.” I told him.

I had wanted to heal for my friends, but they were going to be mad when I wasn’t playing tank. The idea of telling them I wasn’t doing what they wanted caused a sharp spike of anxiety to burst through my chest. Right, I’ll… I’ll tell them I spawned on the other side of the world and we’ll have to wait a long time before we can all play together. I’ll join Col’s group instead. He seemed nice, and he had flashy spells too. Yes. Good plan Syl. Sam? Syl.

“Yeah. I think that would be fun. I have a bunch of friends playing too but I think it will be a while before I find them.” It would be fun to hang out with new people too, I didn’t say.

He gave me a broad grin and motioned for us to stand up, “Awesome! That’s so great! Team set shit on fire and blow stuff up, lets go!”

“You’re a dork,” I giggled at him. Then I stopped. I had just giggled. Oh dear.

He looked at me funny due to my strange behaviour, but didn’t say anything, instead motioning for us to continue towards town. Crap, I’d forgotten its name already. Belton? No that was my art teacher from year ten. Keldrin. That was it.

We walked and chatted for another twenty or so minutes before we found a road. It was more of a cart track, two muddy ruts in the forest floor showing where a route had been somewhat cleared through the underbrush of the forest. When we arrived at the road, Col explained that the town was quite small, and was really just a large village that catered to adventurers like us who were starting out, blundering our way through the woods and hacking down anything that looked like a good fight. He was a funny guy, charming and good looking, well at least his character was good looking, and I again found myself a bit troubled by the way I wasn’t reacting to him charms.

When the town finally came into view, I was a bit giddy with excitement. This was a dream come true. I was actually adventuring in a new world with my charming and stalwart companion, walking into a quaint elven town after a time spent slaying monsters. The town looked really cool too. The town was built around and between the huge redwood trees. The inhabitants had not done any sculpting of the trees, living in harmony and singing like a lot of elf stereotypes were want to do.

No the elves of this place had shaped the place with saw, axe and chisel. The structures of the town had the quintessential delicate style that many games and movies portrayed, but with a roughness to it. Like they had made an attempt to honour the traditional styles, while simultaneously remaining realistic about the fact they were a small frontier town in the middle of a very hostile forest. It was charming and rustic and elegant and practical, all at the same time. I looooved it.

I turned to Col and told him so, “This place looks amazing Col! Oh my god!”

He gave me a grin and nodded sagely.

The walls of the town went from tree to tree, each tree sporting a sturdy looking platform high above. The walls themselves were made of carefully fitted beams of wood. The way it was put together reminded me of the spine of a ship. The beautifully smooth wood gently arching out to make it harder for attackers to climb the walls.

We passed through the gate without much fanfare, Col telling the guards that we were new adventurers returning from hunting in the forest. The guards were another strange mix of practical frontier life meets elven grace. Their armour was a mix of plain leather, with iron plates, but the cut and shape of everything showed an attempt by the crafter to call back to styles like those of the elves in lord of the rings.

I sighed happily. I had doubted if I was going to keep playing this game during my long hours of walking. Many times I had wanted to just log off and end the awful experience. The excitement of combat, meeting Colourless, more combat though… that had changed my mind. Seeing this amazing fantasy town in the flesh sealed the deal for me.

I loved this, and I wanted more. It also helped that this body I was playing in was a pleasure to pilot. Having gotten used to Syl and the way her muscles worked and moved over the past few hours, I was almost sorry I had to log off and go to school tomorrow. Back in my boring boy body. Bleh.

“Now that we’re in town we can trade friend requests. So, what do you say? Last change to ghost this weirdo loser in front of you.” Col asked looking down at me.

“Oh my god shush. Not even you believe that bullshit. You’re a badass lightning man! And yeah, let's be friends list official,” I said with a wink.

Wow what is up with me, I’m acting like a different person!
Col laughed and stared off into space for a second, probably looking at his menus to send me the request. I was right, with a small unobtrusive ping sound, I had a friend request from the player Colourless. I smashed that accept button like it was a ripe piggy bank. Well, except no one uses piggy banks anymore so maybe not? I don’t know, don’t judge me.

“Let me buy you some food, you’re probably still really hungry, that chunk of bread probably didn’t do much.” he said, motioning to a building that was emanating a lot of laughter and chatter into the street.

“Yes please, oh yes, yes please,” I said emphatically, “I’m so hungry.”

When we entered the Inn, we were greeted by a large room full of rowdy adventurers. From what I could hear they were all boasting about their various exploits during this first day of playing. Although it had been almost two ingame days since midday. Thinking of midday reminded me I still had school tomorrow. At least it would be friday, so the weekend could be spent gaming. Well apart from homework. Sad face.

We sat down at the end of a long table that had a group of eight or so adventurers loudly bantering on the other end, and my friend COLlared a harassed looking barboy. Get it. Col, Collared. I’m so sorry.

“Hey can you grab my friend and I a meal and some ale?” Asked Col.

“Sure, you want the venison stew or the steaks?” The boy I guessed was roughly 12, although you can’t tell with elves.

“I’ll have the stew thanks, and....?” Col turned to me and raised an eyebrow.

“Stew as well thanks,” I said to the boy shyly. The raucous atmosphere was wrapping me back up in my introvert bubble.

“Sure thing, be back with your ales soon and your meals a while after,” said the boy disinterestedly, already moving towards the kitchen door.

“So, you never actually told me your name. Your character profile says Sylanna, what do I call you? Anna?” Asked Col once the boy was gone.

“Oh! I’m so sorry! I forgot. Uh, you can call me Syl!” I said.

“Syl? Like Kaladin’s little fairy girl from the stormlight archive?” he asked with a widening smile.

“Yeah!” I exclaimed excitedly, “That is one of my favourite series, and I thought her character was super cool!”

“She was cool. I really liked pattern as well. I can’t wait for the last book to come out,” We were both grinning now at the mutual interest we’d discovered.

“No no, don’t say anymore! I’m only up to Oathbringer, don’t spoil it!” I said, my eyes widening in a plea to keep him silent.

“Sure, I won't spoil it, but how have you not read further, the books have been out for ages!”

“I don’t know I just keep getting distracted by things, I’ll probably get around to it at some point.”

The barboy arrived with both our meals and our ale at the same time, proving that he was a totally filthy liar, but we thanked him politely and turned to our meals.

“You know what would be cool, if they sold real world books in the game. How awesome would it be to just sit in a quiet corner of this town and read,” he smiled, “Reading in a fantasy world, about a different one.”

“That is like, actually a really cool idea! You should post on their forums about it!” I said around a mouthful of stew.

We ate the rest of the meal and talked each others ears off the whole time. I may not be attracted to this guy, but he was turning out to be one hell of a friend.

As we seperated to go to our rooms and log off, we promised to meet up as soon as possible and keep adventuring, with the ultimate goal of meeting up with his friends to form the party. When my head hit the pillow in the inn, it was with a huge smile. I felt great.