Artyom collapsed in his bed. He’d taken off the heatscar spider silk armor and put away the weapon he was carrying and wore nothing but large boxers and a white t-shirt. Being a member of the executive council had its perks, namely the stately room and magically near-infinite thread count in his bedsheets. It was like sleeping on a cloud. Sure, Artyom didn’t exactly do much except cast a single spell on his mission, but he had spent an inordinate amount of effort preparing for it. He wouldn’t let any of his soldiers come in harm’s way for a mission so simple on the action-front.

He tried to fall asleep, but then remembered all of the combat stimulants he took before the mission and gave up on the notion. Three shots of espresso on an empty stomach will do that to you. He crawled out of bed, the heavenly fabric beckoning him back, but failing to influence his iron will.

Artyom’s room could be considered strangely decorated. Most people would have a mix of furniture and decorations, but Artyom had a very spartan living arrangement, with just the bed, a table, and two chairs. That, and an entire wall full of picture frames. Artyom walked over to it and began to peruse them. They all contained pictures of him standing next to other people. Each of these people was different in how they looked and were dressed, but they all had something in common. They were all Earthers.

Artyom reminisced about all of the people he had helped during his time in the Terran Defense League. Most of them were in missions to Gilded Worlds, the second to worst type of World out there. They were Worlds where common decency were generally seen as a weakness, and where wickedness was the most common way of life. Of course, there would be a very nice window dressing applied to it all, so the worst of the World wouldn’t be visible unless you shined a light at it. You don’t even need a high power floodlight either, the metaphorical equivalent of a dinky flashlight would work just as well. Most of the Earthers who got summoned there either spent all their time fighting uphill political battles against their own supposed allies, or were taken advantage of by whoever summoned them. King Reggie was an example of the latter.

Artyom wasn’t always able to arrive as early as he needed to to save the day like with his last mission. That same World had a group of summoned Earthers wandering about still, but he wasn’t part of the mission to rescue them. Whoever was in charge of that, Artyom just hoped they would be able to finish up quickly for the sake of whoever was summoned.

He was looking for a space to add a picture of him and Kai when he was interrupted by the ringing of his phone. It was a light, metal contraption more akin to a flip-phone than a modern smartphone. It played the chirp of a Gold River Warbler as its ringtone. The World that sound was from had many birds with amazing songs, but the Gold River Warbler’s was the most beautiful of them all, according to Artyom.

“Artyom here,” he answered.

“This is dispatch, we’re ready to assign you your next mission. Please make your way to meeting room 69 for further instructions.” They hung up. The voice on the other end was male and robotic, not betraying a hint of emotion. There were dozens of meeting rooms in TOAL headquarters, of which room 69 wasn’t listed in the official directory. Many thought it was because most of TOAL was made up of young adults with a crude sense of humor who would never be able to take missions seriously if that’s where they were assigned them. The real reason was that those rumors would make a great cover for a secret meeting room for higher-ranking members to discuss sensitive information. Being one of the founding members of TOAL, Artyom of course had knowledge of and access to it himself.

After a relatively short walk, the use of two secret passageways, and a magical biometric scan, he made his way into meeting room number 69. Waiting inside was the man on the phone, a short and nerdy-looking sort with thick-rimmed glasses and curly orange hair. The bags under his eyes didn’t betray his sharp, calculating gaze.

“Gus!” exclaimed Artyom, as he approached the man. “How are you?”

“Keep it down, Artyom. Do you want to give away the location of this room?” said Gus in reply.

“Are you for real? You know very well that this place has so many sound wards, you wouldn’t be able to hear a nuke going off from outside. You even set them up yourself!”

“It’s still not worth taking the risk,” replied Gus. Paranoia was his middle name. Of course, he kept retorting to that joke with “it isn’t paranoia if they’re really out to get you.”

“Whatever, I’ll entertain you just this once,” said Artyom, for probably the 50th time. “So what kind of mission needs us to meet here? Am I headed to a Grimdark World? It’s been a long time.”

“Nope. It’s to a Fairytale World, actually.”

Artyom paused and waited for Gus to laugh. “You’re joking, right?”

“I never joke. Especially when giving out information in room 69.”

Poor Gus, his own experience had robbed him of his sense of humor. He was originally summoned to a Gilded World himself and didn’t just manage to survive, but even thrive. His shrewdness for politics and magic, along with an unhealthy amount of paranoia, had allowed him to defeat the great evil he was brought there to fight without even lifting a weapon. When the nobles began to abuse the summoning ritual like King Reggie did, he was able to sabotage it, resulting in a spell that only acted as a beacon that warned of danger to the rest of the multiverse. This caused TOAL to come in and investigate, where they found and recruited Gus.

“Come on, it’s a Fairytale World! Even you could pop on over and kill whatever’s causing trouble there with your bare hands!” whined Artyom.

“Well, this isn’t a simple ‘kill the bad guy’ mission. You know how the R & D team has set up universal psychic scanners recently, right?”

“Yeah, are they malfunctioning? Or is the world they’re pointed at secretly Grimdark and you want me to confirm that?” The Universal Psychic Scanner, or UPS, was a device very recently invented by TOAL’s own Research and Development team. It was able to read the gestalt psychic consciousness of a universe to obtain more information about it. In english, that translates to being able to get a general idea of what everyone in a World thinks and feels. Originally, it was meant as an easier and safer way to determine the ranking of a World that wouldn’t require sending in people to check for themselves.

“No, it’s not Grimdark,” replied Gus. “The gestalt consciousness definitely reads as Fairytale, if relatively ‘quiet’ compared to other universes.”

“Quiet how? You can’t get a good reading on it? And you want me to figure out why?”

“That’s precisely it. The part about not being able to get a read on it. If you would let me finish the briefing, I’ll tell you.”

“Alright, sorry. Please continue,” said Artyom in a barely mocking tone. Luckily, Gus decided to ignore it and went on.

“The weird thing is that there are references to Earth and Earth culture coming from that World.” Gus waited a second, as if expecting Artyom to interrupt again. After seeing that he truly had his undivided attention this time, he continued. “And the weird part? There has been no trace of summoning rituals.”

Artyom’s eyes widened at that, but he remained silent. This truly was concerning.

“No portals, no summonings, but there are references to Earth and the telltale signs of a summoned hero. We don’t know if the two are connected, but if they are, then there’s a new way of pulling in Earthers that we don’t know about.”

“This is definitely serious, then.” That was all Artyom could really say in response. If there really was a new method of summoning Earthers, then TOAL would need to learn what it was so they could track it. If this method was used in a Gilded World or worse, countless Earthers could suffer before TOAL could do anything about it.

“I know you just got back from a mission,” began Gus. “So this isn’t going to be happening until tomorrow. Head over to portal room 7 at 8 am tomorrow on the dot. It’s scheduled to be undergoing routine maintenance, but there’ll really be a team of portal techs ready to send you over. Ones who know how to keep a secret.”

“Only one day of vacation? This is why TOAL should unionize,” said Artyom, his humor returned.

“I wanted to give you more so you would be at peak performance, but since it’s a Fairytale World, the rest of the executive council who are in on this wanted you to move sooner. That’s not to mention the urgency of the situation.”

Artyom nodded. “I guess that’s it, then. Anything else you’d like to add?”

“Honestly? There’s a lot of weird stuff going on here. I know everyone calls me paranoid, but most of that’s just planning ahead. Here, there’s a lot that doesn’t add up, what with how quiet this World is to the UPS and the unexpected Earther presence. It’s almost as if we weren’t supposed to find it. So be careful.”

Artyom nodded again. “Don’t worry, I will.”

He left the room from a separate exit that would make it look like he was leaving the nearby bathrooms. That way, a sour look on anyone’s face would be assumed to be due to what had come out, rather than what they heard. With a few hours and a single night before his next mission, Artyom needed to find a way to relax and get a good night’s sleep. The caffeine in his system would make that very difficult, but he knew a spell that could purge it all very quickly. It was a good thing he was already next to a bathroom.