We did not want to look out of place, so we stood at the back of the line and tried to work out what was happening. It didn’t take long for me to understand that this was where we were supposed to pay for our admission on the train. However, before paying, everyone seemed to be presenting a document to the elderly man, which he then inspected and returned.

When we were second in line, I managed to overhear what they were saying, but this didn’t turn out to be helpful at all. The only words they exchanged were greetings at the beginning of their transaction and at the end of it. Luckily, there was nobody behind us, so I did not have to worry about making anyone wait or standing out too much in front of a crowd.

“Hello, Sir,” I said in a steady voice, trying to sound as though I had done this many times before.

“Hello, Miss,” replied the elderly man with a smile.

Name : Jake Cooper

Race : Human

Class : Fighter

Level : 11

I noticed he was wearing a pair of glasses, which made his brown eyes seem larger. His clothes were gray and looked like they had been made for temperatures lower than the ones Ferrumheim was experiencing today.

“Identification please,” the man said.

“I… I’m not sure what that is, Sir,” I replied, probably looking as confused as I was feeling. “This is the first time that we’ve traveled south by ourselves.”

“I see,” the man said, in a less friendly manner now. “Since you’re not from Guldan and this is your first time on a train, I should inform you about a few things. Is it just the two of you?”

“Yes, Sir,” Kai responded, before I could open my mouth and I saw the older man’s smile once more. He took a small piece of paper from a drawer in his desk and proceeded to read from it. “Guldan stands as the pioneer of humankind in the future of liberation from deities. We do not approve the use of magic, but rather lean on our own engineering ingenuity.”

“Okay,” I said, awkwardly.

“What this means, Miss,” he said and looked at Kai once more, “and young Mister, is anything magical will be strictly monitored as it is forbidden in Guldan.”

“We understand,” I said, and I looked at Kai as well. “Right?”

“Yes, Sir,” Kai agreed.

“Good. I suppose you do not carry Guldan currency with you?” he asked. “What kind of money do you have?”

“Standard Leka An money, Sir,” I replied.

“That will do,” he replied, and produced two papers from his desk’s top drawer.

After paying for the tickets, we were prompted to use the exit behind him and were immediately faced with the train.

“The train leaves in an hour,” the old man shouted from the inside of the building behind us.

“Thank you!” I replied, leaning toward the corridor where his voice had come from, and then turning back to Kai. “Shall we jump on?”

“Yes, I can’t wait to see how it looks on the inside!” he replied enthusiastically, and we walked up a small set of steps leading to the entrance of the train.

The train’s interior looked a lot better than its outside. Far from the huge dark metal of the exterior, it consisted of little rooms connected with narrow outdoor corridors. Each room had windows on both sides as well as a few chairs and tables fixed on the floor.

For every six or seven rooms there was a small bar of sorts. Once we’d walked through all of the thirty-two rooms, we returned back to the first one, which was still empty. We decided we should find a table in this room as it looked like there was only one corridor leading into the next one, rather than one on either end, meaning we could more easily monitor the space.

We chose to sit on a table with just two chairs so that we wouldn’t be joined by any strangers. But in fact, every single one of the people arriving after us boarded the train and moved further down the row of rooms.

Pretty soon, we understood the reason why, as we saw a young man open a small door on the side of the corridor linking our room with the next one. I didn’t know what was in that room but I didn’t think the man worked on the train since he wasn’t wearing a uniform and looked like any other passenger.

Not two minutes after he left by the same door and returned to his room, we understood that the entrance actually led to a toilet, which was probably the reason most people didn’t want to sit where we were.

“Should we look for another table?” Kai asked, his face hidden in his robe up to his nose.

“Nobody’s going to take notice of us if we stay here,” I said, and pulled one of the windows down. “Let’s hope some fresh air will make our trip bearable.”

“And not too cold,” Kai said, as a cool breeze entered our room.

Neither of us were wearing any of our protections against the elements so we were affected by heat and cold much more than the average person, as we were not used to the changes. Since magic was explicitly forbidden on the train, I made sure to throw every magical item we had down the stairs of our chest. The chest, of course, was a major magic item itself but there was nothing I could do about it save for keeping it closed and only using it in its mundane form.

As we were looking at the river through our window, we heard a soft thump on the roof of our compartment. We didn’t have time to pay it too much heed as immediately after that, the old man who had admitted us boarded the train himself. He nodded at us and continued down the corridor leading to the rest of the rooms.

I leaned toward the center of our room, not leaving my chair, and saw that he was walking through each of the rooms, presumably checking if all of the passengers were alright ahead of our departure.

My line of sight was interrupted when a teenager boarded the train and turned right like every other passenger. However, instead of entering the next room, he went into the toilet and closed the door behind him though he forgot to lock it.

Deciding to use the time a little more constructively, we took out the pirate map we had been using to navigate ourselves so far and tried to determine how long it would take us to reach Tankara. This was impossible without knowing the speed of the vehicle, and ultimately we decided that we would just have to wait and see.

Some minutes later, I saw the old man return and head for the toilet door. I was about to tell him that it was occupied, when he opened it with his left hand, peeked in and then made his way back through our room and off the train. I thought it was odd that he did not see the teenager in there, but guessed that he must have left while we were distracted by the map.

Soon after, I heard a high-pitched whistle being blown and a hissing that sounded like water falling in a pit of fire. It was so loud that I hurried to close the window in an effort to block the noise.

Next thing I knew, the whole train was moving, leisurely at first but slowly picking up pace. It took me a while before I stopped feeling nauseous from the motion and being so close to the toilet did not help at all. The notion of moving while sitting still was very different to riding a horse or sailing in a ship during a storm.

Once more, opening the window helped, and just as I was ready to stand up and go to the toilet to close the door that was now swinging open with the movement of the train, the teenager that I thought was long gone, came out of the small room and walked into ours. He took a quick glance at the map spread out on our table and smiled at both of us.