One more Saturday, dreamers around the world woke up from their Melan journey. The dreamers came from every country on Earth, every ethnic group, profession and age. Their reactions to their forced weekly sojourn into a fantasy world of adventure were as varied as life itself. Some loved it while others hated it with a passion. Perhaps the ones who suffered the most were those for whom it had been love at first sight with Mela. Every Saturday morning, they were forced to return to a so-called real life that might have felt better or worse in the past but now had become unbearable. Every minute away from Mela was worse than a distraction, it was prison, it was torture. If they ever learned about the coma that allowed Azgal to live in Mela 24/7, they would do something really stupid to try and emulate him.
Above all, they wished for the one thing they couldn’t have: A life on Earth that was nothing but an appendage to their real life, their Melan life.
Naoko Higuchi was the exception. Her whole life revolved around Mela, and when she woke up, she knew that Mela would be the only topic on her Saturday morning meeting. She opened the room-wide curtains and looked at the glorious Swiss Alps outside. Breathtaking. At least if you didn’t know the cloud cities of Saldar, the living pyramids of the Dhil steppes or the Empire’s forgotten library city, where a million people had been turned into diamond statues. But she knew them, just like she knew a hundred more places and creatures that Earth couldn’t rival. For Naoko had made deals with the priests of the God of Negation that gave her access to portals banned by every civilized nation. Thanks to the portals, she’d traveled through Mela so widely that she knew it better than a hundred explorers.
She was also one of the handful of people who knew that the accident that had left Juan Antonio in a coma was meant to kill him. The feeling of her hands on the BMW bike’s throttle as she accelerated into the old man had been carved in stone into her memory. Or so she thought during the following weeks, when she lived a thousand flashbacks to that moment. She’d also felt a guilt so deep and unexpected that she couldn’t even send a text message to confirm that the deed was done because her hands wouldn’t stop shaking for a week. No longer. She’d done much worse since.
The woman took a shower, dressed in simple white cotton clothes and opened the maximum security door that led to her rooms. Her quiet steps were the only sound in the large stone house, designed by Santiago Calatrava back when he was the darling of the architecture world. Its owner, a Fintech CEO known for his dedication to his work, had donated the house to Naoko in his will. He’d died of a heart attack in his sleep, officially. The truth was, he’d been a passenger on an Imperial galley heading for a summit with other sorcerors at Cheng’An when a chaos flux opened in the sky and harpies with poisoned claws attacked the ship.There were no survivors.
Naoko arrived at the living room with its wide glass wall, muted colors and Scandinavian design furniture. Her Inner Ring colleagues arrived one by one, six of them, each from their own wing of the house. They exchanged silent greetings and waited patiently for Gerfried to join them.
The man, a tall Swiss with a square jaw and orange thick-rimmed glasses, arrived a few minutes later, his brown hair still wet from the shower. He moved around the room distributing copies of the printed meeting agenda. Mela was his life too: His team coordinated the reports that hundreds of New Alliance members sent to leadership every Saturday morning. He carefully selected the handful of items that truly mattered, delivered them to the Inner Ring, left the room quietly, and checked that the counter-surveillance devices worked correctly. The mountain house was better protected from intrusion than a US embassy in a hostile country.
Naoko glanced at the documents and turned the pages slowly.
“Why is item 4 in the agenda?” she asked. “It’s local news.”
The moon-faced woman in front of her, barely old enough to drink in most countries, turned to item 4.
“A deserter from Madrid’s chapter? Are they asking for permission to eliminate him? Seems drastic.”
“I think that’s not it,” said a man with a Nigerian accent.
“You’re right,” said his brother sitting next to him. “It’s about the other man in the report, Francisco something. The deserter left to follow him and now they’ve both reappeared in Azgadal.”
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.
Naoko left the printed papers on the glass table.
“This is a waste of time,” she said. “Nobodies don’t last in Mela.”
“The deserter worked for us on several intelligence missions,” said the first brother. That got everyone’s attention. “And the man he’s following now, well, he’s been in Mela for just a couple of weeks, but somehow Azgal the black dragon gave him command of the defense of his city. One of our agents was there. He’d infiltrated the city to remove a priestess with too much knowledge about our activities in Mela and became trapped when thousands of orcs and zombies raided Azgadal. It was pretty gruesome, apparently, but the nobody and his deserter friend saved the day. They’re dangerous. I say we eliminate the problem before it becomes a problem.”
The young woman looked at the papers inquisitively.
“Wasn’t a dragon part of the previous alliance?” she asked. “An Italian guy, maybe? Spanish?”
“That’s not relevant to the discussion!” Naoko’s belligerent voice took everyone by surprise and shattered the room’s calm atmosphere.
“You’re not wrong, Martha. Okeli and I met him once,” said one of the Nigerian men. His brother nodded across the room. “He lived with other dragons. Yes, I remember he loved being a dragon, who wouldn’t, but he died a long time ago. Excuse her curiosity, Naoko. She doesn’t know you were close to that man.”
Naoko spoke at the young woman with hostility.
“This is the weekly meeting of the New Alliance’s Inner Ring, not a quiz about Melan trivia. Our concerns lie in the future, people. In 50 weeks, to be exact. And matters like this are a distraction from our true mission. Tell Madrid to scare these guys. We don’t have resources to waste on an elimination here on Terra, so threats will have to do. But it’s nonsense, you see? It’s like that summit you’re all attending in Cheng’An next week.”
“You’re not coming?” Okeli asked. “They say the Emperor is acting strangely.”
Naoko shook her head.
“You have fun in the capital if you like but I’m sick and tired of delaying the important work. Everyone in this room has known for a long time that we need to focus on the borders of Mela, find out what’s going on there, how it relates to Terra. But we’ve grown soft, my friends. Soft. You’d rather party in cosmopolitan Cheng’An than get dirty with explorers in the heart of Faerie’s deep forest. Don’t take it the wrong way. All of you have sacrificed so much. But saving the lives of six billion people demands total commitment, so I’ll be taking on this mission immediately. I’m off to the borders of Mela even if it costs me my life.”
----------------------------------------
Fran walked down Madrid’s street eating a chocolate ice-cream. The summer heat felt more unpleasant than ever. It was a shock after a week in Azgadal’s mild Nordic summer, with its mountains and the cooling effect of its lake. Too hot, definitely.
He strolled with a huge smile on his face, happier than he’d felt in ages. Saving a city from bloodthirsty orcs will do that to you even if it’s just in a video game. But it wasn’t, it was real, and he could feel the changes that it had effected in him. In the morning, after breakfast with his parents, Fran had decided to kill some time before meeting Bertrán and the others. He’d played Paradox’s new strategy game, their latest and most complex, the one that every review was calling the Dark Souls of strategy. And he had to quit after just two hours. It was too easy. He knew he could play in this game’s hardest difficulty setting and boredom would be the only real threat. It hadn’t been that way before. Although he’d always been good at strategy games, he’d never been extraordinary like this. But what you do in Mela, you bring back to Earth, right? He had, he truly had.
He spotted Sancho and Bertrán in the distance. The others were chatting next to them. Such an odd group. He hadn’t even memorized their names yet. Hadn’t even asked what their Melan identities were. But now he couldn’t wait, because he was sure that all of them had exciting stories to tell. Joy, adventure, and something new every day, that’s what Mela meant to him. Fortunately, he had Bertrán to remind him that Mela might also be the greatest threat that humanity had ever faced.
Fran waved at the group as he approached and Sancho responded in kind. He was excited to tell them about the adventure he’d been planning with the lion man: Exploring the borders of Mela. Finding out how they related to the dreams and to the countdown from 52 weeks. Saving Earth, maybe.
A part of him was aware that he could die. Mela was no game. But it was no curse either. It was a blessing.
He could die. He would struggle. Despite all that, Fran was ready to risk his life and also to develop his abilities beyond the uncanny by exploring that world of fantasy with his friends. When he closed his eyes, he saw glimpses of a future where he led human armies against swarms of nightmare creatures. He knew it was real. And it all happened on Earth, he was certain of that.
Fran wasn’t scared of leading others into battle anymore, but he also knew that he wasn’t ready. He needed a dozen more Battles of Azgadal to get there, and he was willing to risk death to become the leader that humanity would need a year from now.
Fran swore to himself that, when the time came, he’d be ready to defend Earth.