Return to Jorgaldur

When he opened his eyes, the effect of the sedatives still alleviated the pain and his fatigue hadn’t abandoned him. However, a sincere smile showed up on his lips when he noticed the warmth of the hand that was holding his, glimpsing a blurred face that his old eyes could no longer recognize.

“Little sister, don’t cry,” he whispered to the old woman who was sitting next to him and was holding his hand gently, refusing to let him go.

“Brother …,” she sobbed.

“Thank you for always being with me, and to everyone. I’ve had the best family I could ever dream of. But it’s time to leave,” he whispered with no strength left.

His sister, his nephews and nieces, and their children were there, saying goodbye to the person who had been an inspiration to them, a support, a friend. Someone to whom they had always been able to trust. Someone who had always been willing to reach out. Someone who had always welcomed them with open arms. Their dear uncle and brother.

He closed his eyes, ready to leave in peace. He didn’t have many regrets in his long life of almost ninety years. A good family, good friends, as well as a research job in the field of cell biology that he had been passionate about and had enjoyed with. And while he had made many mistakes, he understood them as a part of life, as part of the eternal cycle of learning.

Perhaps, he regretted not having met someone to fall in love, someone to marry and have children. But he had treated his nephews and nieces like his own sons and daughters. And he had been a second father to them.

He didn’t blame himself for not having tried harder in some of his relationships. For some reason, he hadn’t been able to love with all his heart, to open himself fully. And moving forward would have been a lie to them and to himself. He thought that, maybe, it had something to do with the fact he had never forgotten her, though it looked like a complete nonsense.

He would have laughed at himself if he had had the strength. There, at death’s door, when his strength barely allowed him to breathe, he remembered her.

“Why haven’t I forgotten her, even when she isn’t real? Why, even now, do I still remember a character from a game, an NPC?” he wondered.

Despite not being real, that dryad had left a deep mark in his soul, and he had never forgotten her. At that time, he became so obsessed, that many times he played the game just to talk to her, to an NPC. And for that same reason he decided to leave that MMO, that game in which he had invested long hours. He had understood that his attitude was sickly, that it was affecting him, that it wasn’t normal to obsess over a few bytes in the shape of a beautiful dryad.

He had been sorry to have to say goodbye to his teammates in the game, especially two of them, but he didn’t doubt that it had been the best decision. And although having been tempted to come back, he hadn’t given in his teen madness and he had been faithful of his decision. He was proud of it, despite not having forgotten her completely.

Barely feeling any pain, his breathing and heart stopped, leaving tears in the eyes of those who were with him, and being his last thought for Melia, the dryad that never existed in the imaginary world of Jorgaldur.

——————————————

“Still not dead?” he lamented.

He didn’t expect to wake up again and prolong his agony, so the words escaped him. However, instead of the whisper with which he was expecting, they came up strongly from his lungs.

He felt strange, since the pain that had been his inseparable companion in his last years had disappeared. He had gotten used to it and learned to ignore it, but always knowing that it was there, that it was waiting for a bad move to show its full strength. And the drowsiness of the drugs, that kept the pain at bay, was also missing.

Also, he found strange the feeling of the mattress that always tormented his punished skin, as soft as it were. Now he felt it hard, extremely hard, but it didn’t hurt.

Confused, he opened his eyes, but only found darkness, and a glimmer in the distance not strong enough to see his own hands.

He sat up carefully, trying to avoid the pain that this action usually brought. However, to his surprise, not only did he not feel pain, but his arms seemed to have regained the vigor of his youth.

“Am I dreaming or have I already died?” he wondered

It was a question he couldn’t answer sitting there, so he got up, enjoying the unexpected pleasure of feeling legs that responded again, of walking without fear of them giving out. It was as surprising as it was natural.

He walked blindly until the light grew brighter and allowed him to see strong hands that he didn’t recognize as his own, but that didn’t seem strange to him. He discovered that he was wearing a kind of plain tunic, which he was familiar with but didn’t quite recognize. And that he was wearing a kind of sandals that he didn’t remember as his. He was also surprised to have a body more robust than he had ever had and that, however, felt like his.

Finally, he reached the exit, being dazzled by the light that was striking directly in his eyes. He had to blink a few times before he started to get used to it and see beyond the hand that was trying to protect his retinas. And when he finally began to distinguish the landscape that stretched before him, he became speechless, confused, unable to accept what his eyes was showing him.

A path descended before him, leading to an esplanade covered by vegetation of more than one meter tall. There was a large ellipsoidal platform in the center, with two large columns at each end. The columns had been colonized by vines and two of them had lost part of their top, being the remains of stone around them the remembrance of what once were.

The platform was in turn covered with whitish stone tiles, many of which had been lifted and displaced by the vegetation that had made its way between them and, little by little, was reclaiming for itself what had once been a great immaculate square.

But it wasn’t those abandoned ruins what surprised him the most, nor the giant dome that covered the place and created an artificial sky. What left him speechless was recognizing the place clearly in his memory, a place that didn’t even exist: what had been the beginner’s area for the high humans in The Heroes of Jorgaldur.