Wow. For real though. I had flashbacks to the time one of these monstrosities rolled over me but still didn’t fear the roaring worm as it arrived at the train station. Made out entirely of metal with glass window, the train looked mysterious from the first glance which was why Hannah and I struggled with entering it right away.
The others had no such problems though which was why we collected all of our courage and finally stepped into the first compartment of the train.
Breathing out tense, I looked through the luxurious cart which looked like a large carriage with multiple rows of seats, all empty for whatever reason. Further back though, behind two closed doors, I could see around thirty young humans sitting and talking loudly with each other.
“Why are they on the train to Solaris?” Schwarz asked, quickly seating himself as a mysterious sound resounded through the wagon.
“I don’t know. But I’m going to ask them.” I said and walked towards them as the train picked up speed quickly, letting me fall over nearly.
“Arrival at the gateway hub in ten minutes. Please take a seat.” Ignoring the strange voice, I carried on towards the second and last wagon of the train and entered it quickly through the glass door which actually lead to a small gap in between the wagons, covered only by a flexible yet sturdy material. Opening the other door as well, I was quickly met by the shouting of several teenagers around thirteen years old. Smiling brightly, I faced the adult to my left and held onto a metallic pole.
“Hi. May I ask why you are travelling with such a group?” I asked while looking over to the mess these kids made.
“This is for their angel training, Milady. They are currently on a trip to visit different world and broaden their horizon.” Angel training? I couldn’t see any wings, but maybe they only got them when they succeeded.
“Oh? So they are going to serve the gods in the future?” I asked a bit interested and eyed the bottles of water to her side with interest.
“If they succeed it will be their greatest honour.” So these kids were already a lost cause. Good to know.
“I see. Do you have a bottle of water to spare for me? I’m really thirsty and our group completely forgot to take something with us.” I admitted pleadingly and smiled bitterly.
“Sure. Here you go.” She said and gave me a glass bottle filled with sparkling water right away.
“Thank you so much.” I said and bowed a little to express my deepest gratitude.
“May the gods be with you.” She said while smiling brightly. Forcing myself to smile, I repeated after her and turned around, walking back the way I came from. After stepping through the glass doors once more, I noticed how the train accelerated and conveniently tripped over, smashing the glass bottle to pieces on the floor.
“Oh no … I muttered quietly and knelt down while picking up a single fitting shard unnoticed. “I’m going to notify the coachman.” I said and stood up once more while smiling wryly.
“I’m sure they can take care of that later. We will go through the portal in several minutes.” Sofie said, but I was having none of that. Staggering through the wagon, I knocked against the next door after attempting to open it once and looked at Hannah helplessly. She merely shrugged her shoulders, not knowing how to open that door at all, but luckily a person clad in a black suit opened the door for me.
“Is that the cockpit? I always wanted to be in one!” I said quietly and pressed myself past the coachman right away.
“Mam, I sadly cannot allow you to be in here.” He said while I looked at all the mysterious levers and buttons with great interest. I was indeed tempted to push a few of them, but chose against doing so in the end.
“Oh please. I’m Askatesh’s friend!” I mumbled with seemed to change things right away. He closed the door behind himself and bowed deeply in front of me.
“I am deeply sorry for my behaviour.” He said honestly and also a bit scared.
“Don’t worry about that. Rather, shouldn’t you steer this machine?” I asked and pointed at the chair right away.
“At once … there isn’t much to do though.” He said, sat down on it and pressed a few buttons seemingly at random.
Quickly, I let the sharp glass shard slide out of my sleeve and pressed it against his throat quickly. A bit of blood escaped from the little wound I made and he opened his eyes wide, clearly surprised by my actions.
“This train is on a false route. You need to get me to Solaris.”
“… the tracks are closed there. It’s impossible.” He admitted which was apparently the truth, or whatever he perceived as the truth.
“This thing here can open portals, right? Can’t you just change the destination of whatever track you are on?” I asked, finally looking out of the window to see us driving on a singular track leading towards a huge wall I had never seen before. A multitude of tracks went into the wall, seemingly ending at a ninety degree angle on the rough surface of it.
“That’s not possible. It automatically activates the magical circle which is responsible for the gateway, but it cannot create one in its own.” So the problem was that we could never reach the gateway, not that we couldn’t activate it.
“I see. Set up everything so that we are on the one right next to Solaris. Is that doable?” I asked with a cruel grin on my lips.
“Yes!” He said and pushed a few buttons once more until we abruptly changed course to go on a vastly different track. “Everything has been programmed. We will arrive in the Woodlands in a few minutes!” He said and I leaned forwards over his shoulder to grab his chin and force him to look into my eyes.
“Is that the truth?” I asked nicely and stared into his brown eyes.
“Yes!” He said truthfully and breathed out a bit relaxed as I let go of his chin.
“Thank you.” I said and rammed the glass shard into his chin from below. It went through his mouth into his brain, ending his life before he had the chance to scream. Letting go of it before the sweet nectar of life got onto my hands, I made sure he properly sat in his chair and turned around to walk out of the cockpit leisurely. Smiling at Sofie and the others, I closed the door behind me innocently and sat down right next to Hannah on the window seat. We were behind all the others which meant I was free to do whatever I needed to to.
Closing my eyes, I focused on the space in front of us and quickly felt how death concentrated on a space a few kilometres further away from us. As quick as I could, I dispersed all that energy even though it tries to resist at first and made sure to unlock the portal by erasing every bit of death around the area. Next, I used Aska’s work to fuel my own.
At first, it was a small dark shadow floating to our left which made everyone feel like dying right away.
“We are under attack!” Hannah screamed, not knowing what I was attempting to do, but still going along with it.
“Please do not unfasten your seatbelt while we pass through the gateway.” The strange voice said which couldn’t come at a better time. With hurry, I fumbled with the string like things until Hannah helped me out and I could focus on my creation once more.
The small shadow turned into a little dragon rapidly, flapping it wings by our side until it was around the size as this wagon.
“A dragon?” Schwarz screamed in front of me, fiddling with his seatbelt which didn’t unlock at all.
And then as we were mere hundred metres in front of the wall of gateways, I let the deathly dragon grab onto the first compartment consisting of our wagon and the one where the dead coachman rested. At the last possible second where I could barely feel the wrong warp gate activating, the dragon threw us over to the right, derailing the train in the process. We tilted to the side right away and basically flew a bit sideways, but luckily, the train caught onto the unlocked warp gate and activated it quickly. All of our stuff flew thorough the air excluding my precious backpack I had firmly between my legs.
For a split second, I could feel the train flying through the air until I head the screeching sounds of the rails hitting the underside of the train again. We slid across them for several metres and from my window, I saw the activated gateway.
Dissolving my dragon in a split second, a shock went through the whole train as the nose of the train hit the right side of the portal and didn’t fit in right away. Part of it was probably blown off from the impact while the rest of the first wagon slid through it ramming into the left side of the portal with its back end.
The wagon which had it the worst was probably the one right behind us though. It must have slammed sideways into the sturdy wall, killing everyone within in a matter of milliseconds. And truthfully, I didn’t even feel a hint of remorse for them. They had chosen their side. A side which was antagonistic to mine.
But I didn’t even have much time to think about that as we suddenly found ourselves on a beautiful meadow illuminated by the beautiful moonlight. The sad thing was though that we were still travelling at incredible speed which meant we basically crashed onto the ground and directly tipped over to the side in a rolling motion. My vision spun rapidly as the train rolled for several hundred metres, glass shards and a multitude of items flying around along with the dirt entering the wagon.
Girly screams resounded through the wagon, probably from either Sofie or Louis even though I guessed it would be the latter. But I honestly found the whole experience as quite thrilling and fun. Rolling around in this things was the right kind of danger I always loved to be in. As such, I was quite bummed out as we slowly stopped on our heads, but still didn’t complain as Hannah puked to my side.
Suddenly, a green light appeared in the middle of the compartment, giving off a feeling that tickled me a bit, but didn’t do anything else to me. Hannah to my side though had the only scratch on her left cheek healed rapidly and as such, I had no more questions what this thing was.
“Remind me to never take a train again.” Hannah mumbled, already pressing into the red button of her seatbelt. Following suit, I directly fell down and cushioned the impact using my hands while Hannah fell down much more elegantly.
“Everyone alright?” I asked as the others fell down one by one.
“Yeah … my head is spinning though.” Schwarz admitted, slowly standing up in the dirt and stumbling towards my sword.
“I’m going to check on the wagon behind us …” Looking backwards, I noticed that the end of the wagon was completely missing and turned around right away. “I’m going to check on the coachman.” I corrected myself and stumbled towards the front where I found half the cockpit completely missing and his corpse thrown out of the train, laying a tens of metres away from me.
“Did he … oh.” Sofie said, storming into the cockpit worried.
“Let’s get away from here. I don’t know what else this train will do to us.” I admitted and hopped out of its nose quickly.
“Hannah, can you get me my backpack?” I shouted back into the wagon and smiled brightly as she handed my still unopened backpack over. Rummaging through it a little while, I quickly found my compass and thought about Albert. Putting the backpack on my shoulders I looked in the direction of the needle for a little bit until I went over to the others who needed to calm down at the edge of a nearby forest.
“That was … way too close for comfort.” Schwarz said, shaking his head to get the dirt out of his hairs.
“There were kids in the other carriage.” Sofie added driven to tears which was why I hugged her comfortingly right away.
“We have to focus. We will mourn later but before that, we need to make sure that the weapon we found is put to use.” I said sternly and looked each and everyone in the eyes.
“Right … we have to make sure their deaths weren’t for naught.” Ellie said which may sound a bit cruel, but she had killed so many dungeon monsters already and was still on adrenaline which stopped her from calming down and thinking about the kids too deeply.
“O- … okay.” And finally, Sofie relented as well. Standing up, she quickly followed my lead until we found a rather wide street and Hannah took over, leading us away from the wreckage that some traveler would find in the future.
All in all, my plan worked out perfectly in the end. Derailing a train … was surprisingly fun in its own way. Maybe I was too quick in stopping Alberts progress with his inventions.
Wow. For real though. I had flashbacks to the time one of these monstrosities rolled over me but still didn’t fear the roaring worm as it arrived at the train station. Made out entirely of metal with glass window, the train looked mysterious from the first glance which was why Hannah and I struggled with entering it right away.
The others had no such problems though which was why we collected all of our courage and finally stepped into the first compartment of the train.
Breathing out tense, I looked through the luxurious cart which looked like a large carriage with multiple rows of seats, all empty for whatever reason. Further back though, behind two closed doors, I could see around thirty young humans sitting and talking loudly with each other.
“Why are they on the train to Solaris?” Schwarz asked, quickly seating himself as a mysterious sound resounded through the wagon.
“I don’t know. But I’m going to ask them.” I said and walked towards them as the train picked up speed quickly, letting me fall over nearly.
“Arrival at the gateway hub in ten minutes. Please take a seat.” Ignoring the strange voice, I carried on towards the second and last wagon of the train and entered it quickly through the glass door which actually lead to a small gap in between the wagons, covered only by a flexible yet sturdy material. Opening the other door as well, I was quickly met by the shouting of several teenagers around thirteen years old. Smiling brightly, I faced the adult to my left and held onto a metallic pole.
“Hi. May I ask why you are travelling with such a group?” I asked while looking over to the mess these kids made.
“This is for their angel training, Milady. They are currently on a trip to visit different world and broaden their horizon.” Angel training? I couldn’t see any wings, but maybe they only got them when they succeeded.
“Oh? So they are going to serve the gods in the future?” I asked a bit interested and eyed the bottles of water to her side with interest.
“If they succeed it will be their greatest honour.” So these kids were already a lost cause. Good to know.
“I see. Do you have a bottle of water to spare for me? I’m really thirsty and our group completely forgot to take something with us.” I admitted pleadingly and smiled bitterly.
“Sure. Here you go.” She said and gave me a glass bottle filled with sparkling water right away.
“Thank you so much.” I said and bowed a little to express my deepest gratitude.
“May the gods be with you.” She said while smiling brightly. Forcing myself to smile, I repeated after her and turned around, walking back the way I came from. After stepping through the glass doors once more, I noticed how the train accelerated and conveniently tripped over, smashing the glass bottle to pieces on the floor.
“Oh no … I muttered quietly and knelt down while picking up a single fitting shard unnoticed. “I’m going to notify the coachman.” I said and stood up once more while smiling wryly.
“I’m sure they can take care of that later. We will go through the portal in several minutes.” Sofie said, but I was having none of that. Staggering through the wagon, I knocked against the next door after attempting to open it once and looked at Hannah helplessly. She merely shrugged her shoulders, not knowing how to open that door at all, but luckily a person clad in a black suit opened the door for me.
“Is that the cockpit? I always wanted to be in one!” I said quietly and pressed myself past the coachman right away.
“Mam, I sadly cannot allow you to be in here.” He said while I looked at all the mysterious levers and buttons with great interest. I was indeed tempted to push a few of them, but chose against doing so in the end.
“Oh please. I’m Askatesh’s friend!” I mumbled with seemed to change things right away. He closed the door behind himself and bowed deeply in front of me.
“I am deeply sorry for my behaviour.” He said honestly and also a bit scared.
“Don’t worry about that. Rather, shouldn’t you steer this machine?” I asked and pointed at the chair right away.
“At once … there isn’t much to do though.” He said, sat down on it and pressed a few buttons seemingly at random.
Quickly, I let the sharp glass shard slide out of my sleeve and pressed it against his throat quickly. A bit of blood escaped from the little wound I made and he opened his eyes wide, clearly surprised by my actions.
“This train is on a false route. You need to get me to Solaris.”
“… the tracks are closed there. It’s impossible.” He admitted which was apparently the truth, or whatever he perceived as the truth.
“This thing here can open portals, right? Can’t you just change the destination of whatever track you are on?” I asked, finally looking out of the window to see us driving on a singular track leading towards a huge wall I had never seen before. A multitude of tracks went into the wall, seemingly ending at a ninety degree angle on the rough surface of it.
“That’s not possible. It automatically activates the magical circle which is responsible for the gateway, but it cannot create one in its own.” So the problem was that we could never reach the gateway, not that we couldn’t activate it.
“I see. Set up everything so that we are on the one right next to Solaris. Is that doable?” I asked with a cruel grin on my lips.
“Yes!” He said and pushed a few buttons once more until we abruptly changed course to go on a vastly different track. “Everything has been programmed. We will arrive in the Woodlands in a few minutes!” He said and I leaned forwards over his shoulder to grab his chin and force him to look into my eyes.
“Is that the truth?” I asked nicely and stared into his brown eyes.
“Yes!” He said truthfully and breathed out a bit relaxed as I let go of his chin.
“Thank you.” I said and rammed the glass shard into his chin from below. It went through his mouth into his brain, ending his life before he had the chance to scream. Letting go of it before the sweet nectar of life got onto my hands, I made sure he properly sat in his chair and turned around to walk out of the cockpit leisurely. Smiling at Sofie and the others, I closed the door behind me innocently and sat down right next to Hannah on the window seat. We were behind all the others which meant I was free to do whatever I needed to to.
Closing my eyes, I focused on the space in front of us and quickly felt how death concentrated on a space a few kilometres further away from us. As quick as I could, I dispersed all that energy even though it tries to resist at first and made sure to unlock the portal by erasing every bit of death around the area. Next, I used Aska’s work to fuel my own.
At first, it was a small dark shadow floating to our left which made everyone feel like dying right away.
“We are under attack!” Hannah screamed, not knowing what I was attempting to do, but still going along with it.
“Please do not unfasten your seatbelt while we pass through the gateway.” The strange voice said which couldn’t come at a better time. With hurry, I fumbled with the string like things until Hannah helped me out and I could focus on my creation once more.
The small shadow turned into a little dragon rapidly, flapping it wings by our side until it was around the size as this wagon.
“A dragon?” Schwarz screamed in front of me, fiddling with his seatbelt which didn’t unlock at all.
And then as we were mere hundred metres in front of the wall of gateways, I let the deathly dragon grab onto the first compartment consisting of our wagon and the one where the dead coachman rested. At the last possible second where I could barely feel the wrong warp gate activating, the dragon threw us over to the right, derailing the train in the process. We tilted to the side right away and basically flew a bit sideways, but luckily, the train caught onto the unlocked warp gate and activated it quickly. All of our stuff flew thorough the air excluding my precious backpack I had firmly between my legs.
For a split second, I could feel the train flying through the air until I head the screeching sounds of the rails hitting the underside of the train again. We slid across them for several metres and from my window, I saw the activated gateway.
Dissolving my dragon in a split second, a shock went through the whole train as the nose of the train hit the right side of the portal and didn’t fit in right away. Part of it was probably blown off from the impact while the rest of the first wagon slid through it ramming into the left side of the portal with its back end.
The wagon which had it the worst was probably the one right behind us though. It must have slammed sideways into the sturdy wall, killing everyone within in a matter of milliseconds. And truthfully, I didn’t even feel a hint of remorse for them. They had chosen their side. A side which was antagonistic to mine.
But I didn’t even have much time to think about that as we suddenly found ourselves on a beautiful meadow illuminated by the beautiful moonlight. The sad thing was though that we were still travelling at incredible speed which meant we basically crashed onto the ground and directly tipped over to the side in a rolling motion. My vision spun rapidly as the train rolled for several hundred metres, glass shards and a multitude of items flying around along with the dirt entering the wagon.
Girly screams resounded through the wagon, probably from either Sofie or Louis even though I guessed it would be the latter. But I honestly found the whole experience as quite thrilling and fun. Rolling around in this things was the right kind of danger I always loved to be in. As such, I was quite bummed out as we slowly stopped on our heads, but still didn’t complain as Hannah puked to my side.
Suddenly, a green light appeared in the middle of the compartment, giving off a feeling that tickled me a bit, but didn’t do anything else to me. Hannah to my side though had the only scratch on her left cheek healed rapidly and as such, I had no more questions what this thing was.
“Remind me to never take a train again.” Hannah mumbled, already pressing into the red button of her seatbelt. Following suit, I directly fell down and cushioned the impact using my hands while Hannah fell down much more elegantly.
“Everyone alright?” I asked as the others fell down one by one.
“Yeah … my head is spinning though.” Schwarz admitted, slowly standing up in the dirt and stumbling towards my sword.
“I’m going to check on the wagon behind us …” Looking backwards, I noticed that the end of the wagon was completely missing and turned around right away. “I’m going to check on the coachman.” I corrected myself and stumbled towards the front where I found half the cockpit completely missing and his corpse thrown out of the train, laying a tens of metres away from me.
“Did he … oh.” Sofie said, storming into the cockpit worried.
“Let’s get away from here. I don’t know what else this train will do to us.” I admitted and hopped out of its nose quickly.
“Hannah, can you get me my backpack?” I shouted back into the wagon and smiled brightly as she handed my still unopened backpack over. Rummaging through it a little while, I quickly found my compass and thought about Albert. Putting the backpack on my shoulders I looked in the direction of the needle for a little bit until I went over to the others who needed to calm down at the edge of a nearby forest.
“That was … way too close for comfort.” Schwarz said, shaking his head to get the dirt out of his hairs.
“There were kids in the other carriage.” Sofie added driven to tears which was why I hugged her comfortingly right away.
“We have to focus. We will mourn later but before that, we need to make sure that the weapon we found is put to use.” I said sternly and looked each and everyone in the eyes.
“Right … we have to make sure their deaths weren’t for naught.” Ellie said which may sound a bit cruel, but she had killed so many dungeon monsters already and was still on adrenaline which stopped her from calming down and thinking about the kids too deeply.
“O- … okay.” And finally, Sofie relented as well. Standing up, she quickly followed my lead until we found a rather wide street and Hannah took over, leading us away from the wreckage that some traveler would find in the future.
All in all, my plan worked out perfectly in the end. Derailing a train … was surprisingly fun in its own way. Maybe I was too quick in stopping Alberts progress with his inventions.
