WANTED: FULL-SUPPORT PRIESTESS

Summary: The life of a typical college student turns upside down when a high priestess from the game accidentally ends up barging into his world because of an experiment gone wrong. An interdimensional story of friendship and realizations.

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Prologue: Ghost

High Priestess Celestine Edencourt,

This is to inform you with utmost regret that your request for transfer to the Geffenite Frontier has been denied by the Sanctuarian Council due to task prioritization. We know how eager you are to join in our thrusts against the forces of Glastheim but we also considered the fact that you are invaluable to your current post. After much deliberation, we find it best that you stay as Head Matron of the Dovin Orphanage.

Best Regards,
Cardinal Lorin Rimbaugh
High Seer, Sanctuarian Council

The morning rays coming through the small window sill of the wooden cabin spotlighted the dancing dust motes floating between the parchment and its recipient - a young lady in her late teens with flaxen locks that glinted with the sunlight and flushed skin highlighted by ornate crimson wardrobe that flowed down a very voluptuous shape of a goddess.

The high priestess leaned back on the wooden chair behind the fine-grained desk, gripping the parchment ever harder. The third time, she thought. How could they keep Sactuary's youngest ever High Priestess in a Payonese Orphanage just because her Grand General Crusader of a father forbids her to see any action more dangerous than changing diapers?

Celeste took a deep breath. A passing thought that need not be highlighted, the priestess said to herself as she watched a child running towards her office from the front window. Celeste smiled, gently folded the letter and slid it under her desk along with the other denied requests.

Another dog day morning at the orphanage.

"Matron Celeste! It's Jasn - the caves - we need your help!" shrieked a kid who looked more like a swamp abomination with his mud-crusted face from all the day's playing.

By the way the young boy said it, Celeste knew something was up. There was tensile truth in the boy's anxiousness. Maybe she was needed there after all. She took no time in darting out of her office as she was led by the boy into the darkness of the forest.

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Her deepest fear was confirmed when the boy stopped smacked dab in front of the Payonese cave and pointed towards it with a shaky finger. "We were playing in the caves when... when..."

The priestess needed not even hear it. The Payonese cave was unholy as it was structurally unstable. Perhaps its notoriety was the cause of many a child or childs at heart getting lured into the caves and meeting bad circumstances.

"Stay here," Celeste said as she took out a baroque heirloom arcwand from her side belt.

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A few meters into the cave and she already heard the lost boy's sobbing. She waved her wand across her face once and watched its opal centerpiece glow with white light. Like a torch, she used it to guide her way into the narrowing caverns.

She found the boy in no time, sobbing helplessly slumped beside a stalagmite.

"There you are, Jasn," Celeste said in a very calm, comforting undertone while reaching down with her left hand," your friends were looking for you at the lunch table."

The boy sniffled and looked up to the sunny expression of Celeste as highlighted by the glow of her staff. He grew a weak smile, nodding once, stifled by remnants of sobbing.

Then, a cold gust of air from behind the priestess gave her a split second chance to recognize thread. With one fell sweep of her arc wand, she demonstrated to whoever or whatever was behind her why she was given the title of High Priestess five years earlier than all her peers.

The ghoul never saw it coming. The radiant light of holiness pierced through the decaying flesh and turned bone to ash on contact. Jasn began to cry again as Celeste picked him up with one hand.

"We need to get out of this place."

The High Priestess turned to the exit but found it crawling with more zombies that exhumed themselves from the soft soil of the cavern. There was something about that scene that screamed at Celeste that it was not her day.

Finding herself out of options, she gave Jasn a blue gemstone and put him down to the ground. Celeste clasped her hands with her wand and uttered a gentle prayer. White light filled the cavern for a brief second, after which, she found herself alone among the ghouls.

"Now that I don't have anybody to worry about, shall we dance?" she said with an entertained expression.

Then happened something even she couldn't explain with all the knowledge of the Pronteran ministry. The arcwand slipped from the fingers that were gripping it and fell to the soft soil. Shocked and in disbelief, the High Priestess looked at her hands - translucent. She tried picking up the wand again but in vain. It was like she was turning into a ghost.

And perhaps, in the strangest kind of way, she already was.

Five seconds later, High Priestess Celestine Edencourt, Head Matron of the Payonese Orphanage, vanished from the world of Midgard.