He was tall, with short dark hair, black eyes and held himself with confidence.

Name : Darr Matur

Race : Light Elf/Human

Class : Rogue

Level : 19

“Thank you, me kin,” he said and flicked a skull-shaped earring on his left side. “Ye’re not from ‘round here?”

“Is it that obvious?” I asked, not wanting to answer any more questions than was absolutely necessary.

“Ye’re pirates yet ye’ve paid for tickets,” he said, as he took a seat on a chair opposite of us. “That makes it pretty obvious I’d reckon.”

I smiled at him, but didn’t answer and returned to looking at the map, at which point I realized it was because of the map that he thought we were pirates.

“Don’t be like that, me kin,” he said, putting his booted legs on the table in front of him. “Where do ye come from? Where do ye go?”

“We’re from around Yubna, my kin,” I said and turned around to face him since there was no way of avoiding him.

“And we’re heading to Fjalhun, ya?” Kai said in a way that was eerily similar to how Jaha, the innkeeper talked. “What about you, my kin?”

“I figured ye’re coming from around those parts,” the young man replied. “Yer tongue gave it away. I meself was born and raised around Tankara. Darr is the name.”

“And I am Magaer, ya?” Kai replied, staying in character.

“My name is Brie,” I said, and I waited for him to continue the conversation, should he have wished to do so.

“Seeing how ye’re not from around these parts,” he said, and tilted his head slightly, “I hope ye’re not smuggling any magical items into Tankara, are ye?”

I wasn’t going to answer him at all, but Kai’s reaction—immediately turning his head to face me with eyes wide open, pretty much gave it away.

“No need to hide yer business, me kin,” Darr said. “I meself regularly push items around Tankara. Ye’d be surprised to find how much magic items fetch in a place where they’re illegal.”

“What more is there to know then?” I asked, frustrated that this pirate, this scum of the earth, thought he had us all figured out.

“Tankara is the capital of the engineering world,” he began, as he produced an apple from one of the large pockets of his pants. “These nullifying beacons here, are nothing compared to those used in Tankara. And don’t forget about the magic-identifiers.”

“Magic-identifiers?” Kai asked.

“Ye sure are amateurs,” Darr snorted, really getting on my nerves. “Identifiers do what the name suggests. They identify magic items and then they start screaming so loud ye might as well cut yer ears off. Unless ye have one of these.”

He took a bite from the apple and threw a coin onto our table. It was nothing more than a regular coin having a skull and bones on it in place of the regular inscriptions. When I picked it up however, I got the notification for what it really was.

Item : Coin of Magic Concealment

Type : Magic Item

Durability : 50/50

Grade : E Grade

Weight : 8st.

Description : A gold coin whose only purpose is to mask magic items on a 5ft. radius around it. Magic identifying spells or items will not register anything inside its concealment bubble.

“This is a magic concealer,” he explained. “Should ye have one of those, ye could just place it in yer pocket and all magic items five steps around ye would be as safe as water in the sea.”

“And I suppose you’re willing to sell us such an item?” I asked, in a mockingly polite tone.

“Don’t mind if I do,” he said, taking his boots off the table, and leaning forward with four fingers raised to indicate his price.

“And how do we know this is working as it should?” Kai asked.

“Brie, Magaer,” he said, in a way that seemed like he was genuinely offended. “Taking money from me kin is fair game. Deceiving them is not. I don’t know how muddied yer blood is around Yubna, but in these parts, we take care of our own.”

I looked over at Kai and he nodded. I was almost sure nothing coming out of this Darr fellow’s mouth was true, but we couldn’t afford to take the chance. I handed him the gold he asked for and put the concealer coin in one of my pockets.

“Pleasure doing business with ye,” he said, as he walked toward the corridor leading to the next room. “The smell will only get worse, me kin.”

His parting words oddly made me feel a little more confident that we hadn’t been conned into buying the coin, though one could never be sure with people like him. Regardless, there was nothing we could really do about it now without an identifier to test it. So instead of fretting, I decided to focus on the map and see whether, with the train now moving, we could determine how long we would need to reach Tankara.

To our disappointment, pretty soon afterward, we entered the bowels of the mountain I had seen the train lines head toward. The low light emitted by the lamps of our room was not enough for us to estimate how fast we were traveling, or our relative location and direction. Having nothing to work with, we were forced once again just to sit at our table and wait until we emerged on the other side of the mountains.

***

It took us almost four hours and several short naps before the light of the now setting sun peered through our windows again. At this point, we didn’t even bother to look at our map or calculate how much time we had left before reaching Tankara, as the map showed clearly that it would be soon after exiting the mountains.

Sure enough, the train started decelerating right before it entered another dark tunnel, until it finally stopped on a platform on the other side of the underground passage. It was similar to the one in Ferrumheim, only this one was missing the river. The doors of the train opened and people rushed toward our room to get off the train.

Not wanting to have any more contact with people than we absolutely needed to, I picked up our chest, Kai his little bag, and we exited the train first. We were now standing on a large metal platform which, for some reason, was several stories higher than the ground. The train here actually sat on elevated iron tracks above clouds of steam, between which I could sometimes see people walking. It was frightening and amazing at the same time.

We didn’t know where to go from that point on, so we simply followed the other people who were now exiting the train, pretending we were simply stretching our legs as we waited for them to pass us. As we followed them, we reached a large foyer that felt more like a palace taken out of a tale rather than simply the place where a train would stop so people could get on and off.

In the middle of the hall, there was a structure that looked like the middle of a completely white tree, emerging from the ground and its branches just starting to spread upward and outward. But no tree could ever have been so perfect, its branches tangling around each other with such ease and symmetry. Each of them climbed up and split into two, and then again and again until it covered the whole ceiling. It was a wondrous thing to see.

“Myriam,” I heard Kai say, as he pulled up his robe’s sleeve and showed me his bare hand. “My skin is turning gold.”

I was horrified to see his arm already had several golden spots. This magnificent tree was much more than a beautiful structure. It was a giant magic-nullifier.

“We have to get out of this place,” I said, and I pulled down his sleeve with one hand and grabbed his arm with the other. “Fast!”