Save the cat.

Even if it looks like a nightmarish feline, with fingers instead of claws and metallic fur, save it.

Yes, I agree. But that will be later.

Now he’s just arrived and still doesn’t know anything.

The last images of Madrid blur before his drug-blurred eyes. Dense, dark vegetation covers his feet. It looks like smoke. And if it weren’t for the fact that the sage pipe has disappeared, he would swear that the smoke is coming from his fingers, giving shape to what surrounds him.

It is like that, in reality. Even if talking about reality in Oniria is not very lucid. But Diego Torres stretches out his arms, looks at his hands, still a little foggy, and is fully aware that he is dreaming.

So here I am, he thinks. In this green desolation. And there in the distance, that scarlet glow. Good. Flying, he thinks. That’s easy. His body loses density and soars. As easy as breathing. He rests one foot on the burnt bark of a tree, and flies off like Superman towards the antenna that promises to fulfil all his wishes.

Oniria, the new land of opportunity after the thaw, the chaos, the misery.

At his feet stretches the Dream Sphere like a miniature planet floating in a purple cosmos studded with balls of light. They are the other spheres of the Dream, oscillating, hermetic. All but one, yet to be explored. And that one, Tecnosol, dazzles him for an instant, spinning like a crazed sun contained by rings of liquid steel.

Below, the vegetation vibrates like a badly tuned television screen. A burnt forest in one frame, in the next, a wild coastline swarming with locusts, the Dark Castle, stone giants, bogs, a cemetery with too many dimensions…

But none of that matters now. Because it is his first lucid night in the Sphere where humans dream: the Palace of Desires. And that name, still unknown to him, fits perfectly with what he feels. A name that vibrates in the neurons of each and every one of the beings that come to her.

So she lets herself be drawn by the ‘scarlet call’, as she will later sum up what led her to The City, and flies in a straight line towards the tower. He sees it clearly.

A massive construction of jagged walls, curves and incomprehensible angles. Many of its sections are open-air, others have no roof or floor. There are waterfalls, bridges, gardens. It emits a strange reddish glow that most cannot even see, a constant flow of energy that resonates with the Sphere itself and swirls around the Dream Peak, where an indigo banner with three golden stars flutters.

There is a sound of breaking glass and Diego Torres begins to fall.

Too bad, there was so little left.

He was so desperate to get there that he didn’t notice his body unravelling into crimson threads, leaving a trail of grains of dreamlike aerena in his wake.

In Vigil, the sage pipe has crashed to the ground. His consciousness struggles to wake up. Maybe one more hit and all would be well. But he looks down at his hands, tugs at the threads escaping from his fingers, and dreams on.

It is barely a shadow falling on the rooftops of The City that stretches around the gigantic scarlet antenna. A random alleyway in a random city. A reddish vapour rises into the night crawling up the walls, and no one cares what happens in that alley.

Laughter. A metallic glow. Smells of fear. The rattle of two or three baseball bats on the wet cobblestones. A long howl. It could be Madrid. Another blind city of bricks dampened by loneliness and drunken piss. But in Madrid you can’t corner a creature like that in the alleys. A desperate howl. So beautiful and terrifying. That it stabs its blue pupils into you. All too human. As if it sees you, as if it knows you’re right there, watching from the shadows.

So, stop making excuses and save it.