Ugh, what time is it? she thought to herself as she slowly opened her eyes. She reached over to the bedside table feeling around for the alarm clock shaped like Pacman and blinked a few times until the sleepy blurriness left her eyes. 10:38 read the digits in the dark LCD display that was inside Pacman's yellow plastic mouth. Melanie groaned as she put the alarm clock back on the table and sank her head back into the soft cream pillow closing her eyes. "Come on, get up" she thought to herself. Using all her effort she slowly pushed herself upright on the mattress. She let out a big yawn and stretched her arms before pulling away the soft chocolate brown duvet and swung her legs around to the side of the bed. Her black pyjama bottoms had rolled up in the night and were now looking like baggy shorts.
Slowly walking across the cream colored carped she pushed aside a pair of sun yellow curtains and peered through some wooden slats into the street below. No sign of a car in the driveway, that meant her husband had already taken off for work. Melanie didn't have a job herself, despite being home all day she did very little to keep her house. The floors needing hoovering, clothes around the base of the bed, washing up piling on the counters in the kitchen, and junk on almost every surface. She let out a dejected sigh as she looked around her at the mess. She really wasn't in the mood for tidying it all today, even though she promised herself last night she would try to make a start on it. Perhaps if I play for a little while I might feel like tidying up.
Slowly she stumbled out of the bedroom across a small landing and into a back room. The walls and carpet were all the same throughout the house, except for this room. It looked like it was once a room for a baby as some of the walls had wallpaper with pictures of pastel pink rabbits, purple owls and lollipops, red cherries and multicolored kites on a white background. Since moving into the house 5 years ago they never thought about redecorating the plain decor, so she tried to hide as much of the walls in this room with large posters of sci-fi movies, games and anime and shelves lined with various games and gaming consoles of all eras.
Wading through the obstacle course of computer chairs and empty boxes she made her way to a long black desk with several monitors lined up on it and a large PC case underneath the desk. There was tonnes of other hardware, empty cups and drinks cans, and random bits of junk strewn over the desk. It was lucky she still had enough space to be able to use her computer. Tapping on the keyboard stirred the PC into life and the monitors flickered displaying a Windows login screen. She pushed aside an office chair to enter her password on a black and grey mechanical keyboard. After a few seconds she was logged in, a few clicks later a loud fanfare was played through the speakers as a colourful animated screen with the words "SHADOWBRINGERS FINAL FANTASY XIV ONLINE" appeared across the middle of the screen. Another click and the screen was replaced by an animated blue window with a 3D model of a young girl in a red, black and white outfit with gold trimming, yellow eyes and a pink tail in the middle of the screen. Melanie highlighted the character name "M'leineya Leoh" at the top-right of the screen. For a moment a beautiful hand-drawn artwork filled the screen but then flicked back to the character selection window with a message in the middle of the screen.
"This World is currently full. Players in queue: 26."
Melanie let out a sigh and walked out of the back room into a small bathroom and closed the door behind her. Several minutes later she emerged from the bathroom looking more awakened and refreshed, her hair at the sides and the top of her tunic damp from having washed her face. She still hadn't brushed her hair yet which was starting to look a little matty at the back.
She walked back to her computer which had now logged her into the game and was playing an ethereal melody through the speakers. She pulled the office chair back in front of the table and sat down, then began typing on her computer. "[FC]<M'leineya Leoh> Hello everyone." appeared in green letters in a chat window at the bottom-left of her screen, which was promptly responded by others "Hi Mel!" "Does anyone need any help with anything?" she typed into the chat window, but it was met with silence. She sat back into her chair and let out a frustrated sigh. The past few weeks had been quiet in the game with very few of her friends logging on, today was no different. She craved for some action, even if it was revisiting an old raid dungeon or doing a treasure hunt with some of the maps she had been storing for weeks, just anything.
Leaning forward to her desk and taking hold of the mouse she navigated her character towards a tall object with the word "Summoning Stone" hovering above it and began navigating through various menus. She stared at the screen with a frustrated look. "God damnit, not again!" she hissed under her breath. She had been trying to sell items on the ingame market board for several days but some people had undercut her and now it was worth 1/10th of the price she originally set it at. This was the 5th time she had to adjust the price but now it was no longer worth trying to compete against the other players. Reluctantly she began right-clicking on all her auctions and cancelled them.
She barely finished what she was doing when a small window popped up on the screen, it was for a party invitation. She cancelled her interactions with the summoning stone and accepted the invite. "What's up?" she typed into the game chat. "Garlok in 5 mins" responded one of the players. Melanie clicked on a blue icon that brought up a window with various locations and selected "Wineport". The screen went blank and then changed to a small village of white buildings nestled against some rocky hills. Melanie mounted her character on a large golden bird known in the game as a Chocobo and picked a spot to park her character as she waited for the 5 minutes to pass. The area she was in called Eastern La Noscea was split into 2 parts. You could only get from one side to the other either by teleporting to one of the other Aetherytes, crossing via a ferry, or by riding into the next zone and reentering at another location. She hoped it would spawn on her side, it would often spawn to the very west of the map halfway down, and she was just less than 30 seconds away from it.
An orange system message appeared in the chat window "You sense the presence of a powerful mark..." "S rank found >Eastern La Noscea (15.1 ,28.6 ) The Garlok" someone posted in party chat. "Hurry up, someone pulled it already!" Melanie frowned angrily and quickly she navigated her character to the location. She arrived just in time to see the large beast swarmed by dozens of other players. It was a tall red and gold manticore with huge wings. Quickly she dismounted her character but before she could engage the beast had already fallen onto the ground, its name above its head greyed out. Lots of shouts appeared in the chat "Inv for hunt" "Dead" "What?!! I just got here!" "Inv plz" "is it dead?" Melanie stared in disbelief. "I missed it." she typed in chat. "So did most of us" another responded. "You'd think whoever pulled it early didn't have hunt marks on their server." The party disbanded. Melanie pushed her mouse aside and thrust herself back into her chair in frustration. This was not a good start to the morning.
After taking a deep breath she leaned forward in her seat again, took hold of the mouse and clicked on the teleport icon. Seconds later her character arrived at one of the game's main hubs known as The Crystarium. She navigated her character to a tall crystal tower in the center of the city and upon entering it was standing in a circular blue room. There was one other character here standing in the middle of the room, he was an NPC with the name "Crystal Exarch" above his name. He was the same race she was with similar colored hair that had grey highlights at the ends and a grey pony tail at the back of his head. He had dark markings under his plain red eyes, a blue crystaline substance coated his neck and rose up across his left cheek almost touching the lower lid of his eye. His right arm was also covered in the same crystaline substance. He was dressed in a robe of red, black and white robes with gold decor held together with a large gold and white diamond clasp that stretched across his chest, and a black hood with gold edging. Another large glasp acted as a belt holding the robe together at his waist. His arms and legs were covered in leather wrappings that matched his sandals. On his back he carried a large gold staff with a large head carved into a pattern that closely resembled the ornate decoration of the entrance to the crystal tower and had 2 large white gems that matched the ones on his clothes.
Melanie smiled as she looked at the Crystal Exarch. She felt butterflies all around her whenever she looked at him. While she often kept reminding herself this was only a game and that the Crystal Exarch was just a fictional character she had to admit she still had a bit of a crush on him, but since he wasn't real it didn't really matter just as long as she didn't tell her husband about it so it didn't make him feel uncomfortable. Many times she thought it was ridiculous to have such an emotional connection with a fictional character in a game, but eventually she accepted that this was normal in the same ways people felt emotional connections with fictional characters on TV and that it was no different whether the person playing them existed in real life or not and that the feelings would eventually pass and fade away in time.
Suddenly her head started to spin lightly and everything began to feel distant. She grimaced as she placed her head into her hands waiting out the dizziness. She had seen a doctor about it several times but he couldn't find anything abnormal and suggested it might've been the onset of a stress related migraine and prescribed her a course of antidepressants, but they hadn't helped much if at all and just made her sleep more often. Today felt worse than normal, normally it would just be the dizziness but this time there was a noise in her head that sounded like a distant whisper. Melanie clutched her head with her hands and closed her eyes until the spinning stopped. The whispering started to dissipate and slowly the spinning stopped, leaving her with a thumping headache and loud ringing in her ears. She put her hands back down onto her lap and began to take in deep breaths. The episodes were becoming more frequent and lasting longer every time. She had thought several times about getting a second opinion from another doctor, maybe they could figure it all out and give her something that actually worked so she could be normal again.
She pulled herself up out of her chair and went to leave the room to go get herself a drink and some painkillers when suddenly her head started to spin again and forced her down onto her knees. Oh no not again. This time was even worse. The whispering was now more louder and audible. Everything started to go black as she felt the rest of her body crash to the floor. She tried to move but her body was completely immobilized, she couldn't even call out for help. Her body started to feel light as if she was floating and colourful streaks of light began to dance in front of her eyes. Melanie started to panic, this had never happened before and she was beginning to worry if she never recovered, what would her husband Tony think if he came home and saw her lying on the floor. Please God, don't let me die now. A sudden surge passed through her body as if she was being pulled away on a fast ride. Several other voices began racing past her but there was so many she couldn't tune out a single one to make out what they were saying, except for the one voice she heard many times before as a distant whisper which was now clearly speaking loudly to her. "Hear..." the voice spoke out in a deep and soft female tone, "Feel...Think..." The speed of which she was travelling at caused the streaks of light going past her to combine into a single bright light and then everything went black.
