Missing her mobile was the least of Hallie’s problems. She found herself in another world. She knew that because unearthly objects surrounded her in an unearthly room. When she pulled the curtain open, and stepped onto the balcony, the vista was not just strange but unconventional by human standards. If that did not cement her opinion, then the flock of birds that landed on the balustrade, welcoming her with their singsong note, with bright plumages changing colours with the notes of their songs, did.

Finding oneself, without a preamble, in a strange environment, let alone a strange world, would have been a daunting experience for most humans. But as Aria often remarked, both subtly and directly, Hallie wasn’t normal by any stretch. Her fist balled and Hallie punched the empty air with a small shout of exuberance.

Great, I got isekai’d. Those were her first thought.

Then, the second thought intruded. Or transmigrated into some lame novel. Or dumped into an otome game.

This is the point where Hallie should worry about returning to earth. There must be something — a driving force — to motivate her in to getting back to her life in Cologne. Hallie scoffed at the irony of it.

Barely a year had passed since she took the new position in Germany, moved across and managed to settle in a small forty square metre apartment on the outskirts of Bergisch Gladbach. Maybe that could serve as her motivating factor. Get back to her old apartment before Thursday so she can bring the garbage out in time.

There could have been better incentives, like a little brother’s root canal extraction or grandma’s student loan to be paid, but the truth was, Hallie had no one. Not even a pestering cat that would wake her in the middle of the night to clean fur ball vomits, or demand meals at regular intervals.

Hallie had earned a bit of cash from minor gigs, saved enough to buy her apartment. She made sure her utility bills were paid for the next two to three years. Her work might send her the customary emails a few times before sending the legally required termination notice. No one would even realise her missing.

Way back, there was Aria, her best friend, and she kissed the first alien to crash on earth, rather passionately and in front of a worldwide broadcast, before Aria and her wife fucked off into space in their massive les-off orgy. And Hallie was alone. Again.

A knock, too polite, yet loud enough to gather her attention, came from the door.

The moment of truth had come. Now, I would know for certain if I am a princess or a destined hero of this world. Hallie braced herself with as much anticipation as apprehension.

The door slowly opened, revealing a face, definitely not human. Plain skin, dry like a withered bloom, slight pinkish hue with a lot of furrows in places where the skin folded over, greeted Hallie. Body and face hairless. The being reminded her of a naked mole-rat in a bipedal form.

“Holy Maiden,” said the woman with what could only pass as a sign of reverence. “I am a humble Eraskine servant of His Grace.”

Hallie donned a congenial smile. She was mature enough not to suspect people just because their appearance was different. Or judge them. Well, perhaps, maybe for the exception of the naked mole-rat thought. That was the first impression, and that, did not count.

“Apologise Maiden, but your manner of arrival at Aermire was unforeseen. Hence, we were unprepared.” She pushed a tray inside the room. “Please accept these simple clothes we have procured for you. Dame Commander Faeyth will soon escort you to meet His Grace.”

Even from the distance, just letting her eyes travel, Hallie could infer the lavishness of the offered clothes. She closed the distance and ran her fingers along the seams of a brilliant blue dress with silvery embroidery.

“Would you require assistance in changing, Maiden?” The Eraskine servant indicated to a space in the room, separated by a divider hosting a full-length mirror.

“No.” The tone came out stronger than Hallie anticipated. “I am perfectly capable of functioning. Please inform Dame Commander Faeyth that I shall be shortly ready.”

Hallie watched the servant leave and gave a quick sigh of relief. Her sweatshirt and jogging pants were soon discarded. This was where, Hallie knew from contemporary literary written by men for the consumption of men, that she should look at the mirror, relishing slowly in her feminine charms. Only disappointment in the form of cellulite on her ass stared back at her.

Then, though she did not mean to, her sight accidentally got tangled in the sharp scar running from the left midriff till her waist. It filled her with a sense of apprehensive unease. If the dimpled flesh on her thighs and butt were a pinprick, this was a nail driven through her soul.

Hallie thought it was a birth mark. She was young then. When she grew, being acutely aware of her foster families changing very often, she associated the scar with a neglect and discard from her birth. Then, as an adult, Hallie researched its true nature. A surgical procedure carried out at birth was the answer she found. The exact realisation gave birth to bleak thoughts.

By dint of her own volition, Hallie liberated herself from the harrowing spiral of emotions. She donned the azure dress, the weight of embroidery lining the hems and edges pulled the material down, giving her a perfect fit. The cut was simple and yet elegant enough to provide her regalness. If she were to judge, the softness of the fabric lay somewhere between velvet and spandex. Without further delay, she marched out of the room.

Hallie expected the Eraskine servant to wait outside her door but instead found herself face to face with an armoured being.

“Holy Maiden, I am Dame Commander Taebitha Faeyth of the Order of Hallowed Deliverance.”

The stentorian voice of someone used to delivering commands toned to an acceptable level was the first thing Hallie noticed before she raised her head to look at the female knight.

Dame Commander Taebitha Faeyth stood a full head and a half taller than Hallie, with a face covered with a lustrous double coat of fine grey hair, marked with tiny playful white and dark patches around the temples. She found big, round amber eyes on the face, staring back at her.

Hallie composed herself with a brief clearing of throat. “Please call me Hallie.” She gave an ice-breaker laugh, the sort reserved for interns and reception staff. “Holy Maiden sounds awkwardly stiff.”

“Very agreeable.” The knight leaned closer to Hallie with contorted mirth sizzling in her eyes. Hallie could smell bergamot, sandalwood and a host of other strange but distinctly earthly aroma. “But His excellency and His grace are staunch traditionalist, so just between the two of us, lets keep it. Holy Maiden.” Then she sealed it with a wink.

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Hallie immediately knew she had found a kindred soul. Dame Commander Taebitha Faeyth was someone used to the perils and pestilence of middle-level management.

“I was told to allow you proper rest,” said Taebitha. “His Grace is performing the Service. I could lead you.”

“I would very well love to attend the Service,” said Hallie with feigned enthusiasm. The faster I get the quest, the better. She rolled her eyes internally.

The Dame Commander led Hallie through an ornate hall with coloured and tempered glass, throwing an alternate shade of green and yellow light. Hallie noted the attuned way in which Dame Commander Taebitha Faeyth moved in her armour. Her strong legs, despite the sabatons and boots, moved with effortless grace. The heels of her armoured boots and the way she moved in them would have put every victoria’s secret model doing a catwalk to shame. Though, if Hallie had to pick, it was the way she carried herself, a combination of elegant grace and lethal prowl, as if she felt comfortable in waltzing through a ball as well as ravaging through a battlefield.

Only when Taebitha Faeyth escorted her to the main hall had Hallie realised that she was in a cathedral. A flock of most fantastic beings, of unimaginable form and beauty, stood, or seated in the rows, with another being presiding over them on a raised altar.

“The sins of the ancestors get passed on to the descendants.” The person standing on the altar — who Hallie presumed as His Grace, a bishop, if her knowledge of titles did not fail her — was clad in a striking silvery gown with heavy golden embellishments.

“The callous acts of our ancestors deemed them to live a lowly life in this realm. But we were not abandoned. Hope and guidance were provided by Caeletis.”

Nice background lore, you got running there. I am a bit of a lore crafter, myself. Hallie gave the Norman Osborn meme smile, but the meaning was lost in the different world. The Bishop returned the gesture with a smile crafted to be benevolent.

“Unwavering faith shall be rewarded. Even as those who seek to taint our resolve from reaching towards the Empyreans, the Seraphims, in their infinite compassion, have not abandoned us.” The Eraskine Bishop gave a small nod, a genuinely disarming smile on his plain face, at Hallie.

All the elements are falling into place. Now, he will give the quest, like slaying a Dark Lord or Dragon Lord, or Dark Dragon Lord.

“When they delivered us through the Oracles of Volaholde, the prophecy of the Holy Maiden’s arrival, we rejoiced. Who among us would have thought that the Seraphims will see us, lowly Aermire, as the first place the Holy Maiden would choose to manifest?”

Yeah, about that, me neither. Hallie smirked.

“It is the tiniest of water drops that gather to become a squall, and it is the smallest of our appreciation that would help the Holy Maiden fulfil her destiny.” The Eraskine male tilted his neck, ever so slightly, and gestured towards Hallie.

Hallie would have loved to throw her head back and cackle. Yeah, right. Fulfilling destiny. Let’s go with that.

Long had Hallie held her job in middle-level management to know how to become irreplaceable to an organisation. During her first job after graduation, Hallie wrote a piece of code to automate tasks between ticketing systems. Once she completed the proper documentation of how the tools worked, she found herself told that her services were no longer required. Hence, whenever Hallie took a new position, she made sure to code certain minor, yet crucial segment in obscure and exotic languages like Haskell or brainfuck. That is how one does not become redundant in an organisation.

The IT project manager who suddenly found herself in a new world, had no intention of completing this supposed destiny and not live in a nice furnished room inside the cathedral, without the nice set of clothes provided for free, no readily available servant to command, and not a Dame Commander to escort her. The current provisional situation suited her just fine.

Hallie got nudged towards the centre of the congregation. She stared at faces with round eyes, slitted eyes, feline eyes, reptilian eyes, more than two eyes, faces with no eyes, and eyes with no faces. And the hope radiated from all.

“Our Holy Maiden shall lead us to Ascension,” proclaimed the Bishop.

That sounds easy enough. Lead them to this place called Ascension. Earth has a place called Providence, so it was totally logical; this world would have a place called Ascension.

The Bishop’s next words made it less ambiguous and a lot more uncertain. “To our spiritual Ascension.”

Eh, what? Instructions not clear. What kind of quest is that? Hallie found everyone looking at her expectantly, as though she had all the answers to their problems.

Killing dragons. Rescuing people. Stopping an otherworldly horde, or an evil overlord, are perfectly valid quest. Even just killing things to watch stats in blue boxes go by was very tangible and precise, but lead us to spiritual Ascension can’t get any more vague.

Hallie had this distinct feeling that whatever was running this fiasco of portal fantasy had all their regular employees quit and now only the interns were left to run the business.

Hello? Excuse me? Anyone? System? Administrators? Isekai Police? Anyone? Tutorial not found.

“When the Seraphims led you from the Elysian world of Earth, they...”

“Wait, who led me here again?” Hallie started with the barrage of obviously postponed questions. “And how was I delivered here? Like what manner? Like appear out of thin air? Stumble out of a cave?”

“The Seraphims, Holy Maiden,” said the Bishop in the same manner of referring to a neighbour who drove her drunk ass from a party the previous night. “They guided you safely to us from the stars.”

From the stars.

This was no isekai, just plain and lame alien abduction.

Hallie was no longer certain if she should laugh or cry. Her situation was more akin to the girl who was left by her kidnappers at a sidewalk with a cotton candy. Just story of her life. Even her captors wouldn’t keep her long.

Back on earth, a few years ago, when genetic testing kits became affordable, Hallie tried those. Through the exhaustive database, she did connect with a lot of her extended family. Second cousins and third cousins, a bunch scattered all over the world. Every time she met someone new, they welcomed her with open arms, and gave her their promise to find her immediate family. They gave up after six months of repeated failure. Nowadays, all that Hallie received amounted to an occasional card, and usually forgotten, just like with her alien abductors.

“Holy Maiden, we the faithful of Aermire and the Order of Hallowed Deliverance pledge to stand beside you against your foes. We will stand by your side with unwavering devotion when the Archdemon would rise to hinder your noble goals.”

At least someone’s got the easy job. No need to hinder what cannot progress.

“Veracious is the words of the Seraphim. Soon the female demon shall arrive.”

Hallie’s ears responded to the word female more than the demon.

“Her body wrought in the flames of Zolara.”

I get it. She is hot, right? Hallie already smacked her lips.

“Her mere presence will overwhelm all, stripping will from souls and dedication from our hearts. She will try to force us to bend before her.”

Step on me, evil hot sexy lady. Hallie’s finger fidgeted with the edge of her sleeves.

“Paladins and Templars!! To arms, protect the Holy Maiden,” the shout came from Dame Commander Taebitha Faeyth before the explosion reached the cathedral.

As the dust settled, in the unnatural silence, a stillness devouring all tenacity and free will, the silhouette of Phaedra stirred.

Even before Phaedra’s form gathered sharpness, Hallie rushed towards the Menkaran.

The silence that permeated was shattered by the resounding echo of a slap, and then another followed.

“You are a fucking coward, Phaedra,” spat Hallie. She saw the skin of the Prime, immune to the cold of the space and the heat of a solar burst, now responded severely to her slap.