Tilly woke up from a nightmare about a fight in a field of metal snakes. It was his Trek-ending fight that killed his whole party in their second year of the Trek. He sat up and looked around his dark room, his wife sleeping next to him. He slowly snuck out of the room using his bronze rank skills to not make a sound, letting his wife sleep soundly.
Tilly moved into his apartment’s small kitchen to a ritual kitchen table. With a slight push of his mana into the ritual circle, he heated a glass mug of water and threw some loose leaves into the cup.
It was the little morning rituals that gave Tilly his life’s enjoyment. He got very little peace outside of a few evenings with his wife and these early mornings before the sun rose.
He fished the loose leaves out of his tea and sipped the tea while the earliest signs of the sun peaking through the 74th-floor window. He was hard-pressed to actually see the sun through the other skyscrapers, and soon enough the sun would be too far right to see light on the horizon.
Tilly looked at his gear clock on the wall and thought it was late enough to put his guard uniform on. He geared up and snuck back into his room, kissed his sleeping lover’s cheek, and whispered, “See you tonight hun.”
It was normal for people to be commuting at this hour, so Tilly joined the people jumping from the sky scraper’s window with a leap.
His hair whipped behind him as he fell through the air, and moments before he hit the ground he used an essence ability from his trap essence and stopped the momentum and stored the kinetic energy.
Gently, he touched the ground and continued to sip his tea walking in the crowd to his post by the Tellen portal port hub.
Thirty minutes later, Tilly was standing by his post, helping a fresh Iron ranker get a temporary residency card.
From the portal from The City in the Sky to North Tips a janky cloud boat burst through at incredibly high speeds.
Tilly, with much experience in dealing with idiots, used a trap that he had previously set up to reverse the cloud boat’s momentum without losing any of the ship’s speed. The passengers in the small little boat were either screaming or vomiting in their quick appearance from the portal.
Tilly watched the ragged crew look over at his passive face while he gave a wave.
The boat went back through the portal at speed. The only evidence of its quick arrival and departure was a splash of puke that didn’t get caught in the trap.
Two minutes passed with Tilly helping the Iron rank youngster with directions to the new adventurer's outpost in the Tellen district.
A crew of four slowly stumbled through the portal. Three fresh iron rankers berating a high silver ranked adventurer.
It was an odd bunch. All three young ones had buzz cuts, and two of them were wearing white robes which had holes and dirt all over. The silver ranker was obviously near gold rank and was impeccable in his aura control. His aura projected that he had no idea what was going on, but he was terribly comfortable like everything was going according to plan.
“State your names and purpose for your arrival,” Tilly said while hiding a smile at their misfortunate entrance.
_______
Gabe stepped forward in front of the others with a guilty smile, scratching the back of his head. “Hiya, I’m just guiding these three to the starting adventurer's route on the Dragon’s side. Could we get three residence papers? Oh, and here’s mine.” Gabe pulled a square metal plate from a chest pocket and handed it to Tilly the guard clerk.
“Yours looks fine, just make sure you are gone within three days. You know the drill. As for these three.. come on up here with your left hands faced down.” Tilly called out.
Gabe said he would be right back and took off. The three lined up, with Galadriel taking the lead.
Tilly took the first hand and placed a circular stone on top of it before asking, “Are you here to do the Continental Trek?”
“Yeah.”
The stone glowed orange.
“Please state your name.”
“Galadriel Skywalker.”
The stone glowed pink. And Tilly gave her a look. “Why are you conflicted?”
“I umm…I just recently changed my name.” Galadriel blurted out quickly, hoping the others wouldn’t hear.
Tilly signed and replied, “Please state your birth name for a criminal record check, and then state your chosen name for future records.”
“…Gabby Dillard. Galadriel Skywalker.”
The stone shown orange. And then seared a small triangle on Galadriel’s hand.
“Sufficient. Next.”
Jean walked up next and then Freddy, and the stone only showed orange. Jean’s eyebrows rose when he heard Freddy give the full name, Fredrick Filamont.
Now that’s a hero’s name. Jean thought
Each of them walked away with a small brand and a thick piece of paper with their identifying Information. Curiously, the paper had several empty slots that read:
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Adventuring status:
Position:
Guild:
But Jean couldn’t pay attention to the details of a card when he was surrounded by hundreds of skyscrapers made out of solid seamless dark wood.
Jean stared up at the flying magically propelled vehicles and people, while the bustling happened all around him.
Freddy tapped Jean’s arm and said, “Hey, pay attention. Gabe’s back and we are going this way. There’s a train that we’re taking to get to the other side of the city.” And the two ran to catch up to Gabe and Galadriel who were speed-walking away from the deep city toward the outer edge of the city where the skyscrapers abruptly stopped piercing the sky.
Once they were out of the area around the dark portals, they saw that the bottom of each skyscraper had shops and restaurants. Jean wanted to stop everywhere and see everything but Freddy kept pulling him along, which suited Jean well. He could look around while his frenemy guided him.
After about thirty minutes of walking through the crowds, they found the train station.
The station looked normal enough, with a large dome building housing the massive lobby where people got tickets and boarded the singular train.
The force field beyond the train station was shocking. It looked like it walled off the whole city. On the other side of the invisible wall was a frosted wasteland of snow.
Jean looked along the force field and saw the sun setting almost out of sight to his far right.
Once again Freddy pulled him away from the sights, this time into the bright train station. The three youngers sat together while Gabe got train tokens for the bunch.
Together they were transfixed on the crowds of people, many of whom exuded intense power, and others couldn’t be sensed at all. Many of the people around were races unknown.
Freddy was the first to speak up after several minutes of ogling. “I got a notification that this is the Tellen District of North Tipsc and there are a few city rules. Basically, you don’t use offensive magic in public places. Unless of course, you want to be banished from the city.”
“What do you mean, a notification?” Jean Asked.
“It’s my… racial ability. I have a whole display that gives me text notifications and a hot bar and all that. Do you have anything like that?”
“Only a voice that I can ask questions. Sometimes it will tell me notifications… sorta.”
“Weird. Can you ask where we are? I wanna know what it’ll say.”
Jean tried, and thought, Where are we?
Benton’s Memorial Train Station.
“It said we are in the Benton’s Memorial Train Station. I guess it doesn’t give me information that I already know or something. It’s been weird to get used to. I almost don’t want to ask it things because it feels like I’m just thinking at myself.”
“Interesting. My ability seems more useful than yours too.” Freddy stated with some pity.
The crew continued to people watch until Gabe came with train tokens.
“Off we go again! We are just jumping on the next train. It goes in a loop and a train leaves every ten minutes, so let’s jump on it! Wooh!” Gabe guided them with a twinkle in his eye.
They pushed themselves through the crowd to get to the front of the line, receiving some dirty looks. Jean was grinning to himself the whole time, loving the city feel. Freddy and Galadriel were whispering and complaining to one another.
“Is Gabe real?” Freddy asked.
“Sadly, I think so.”
“Like, people aren’t that gung-ho in real life.”
“There’s always that one person I guess.” Galadriel shrugged but accidentally bumped someone’s face in the crowd. “Sorry.”
Ready to avoid the awkward glare of the lady, Galadriel made a push forward as the train came zooming in. About half the current passengers got off on the other side of the train while the crew squeezed onto the train.
It was about at this point that Jean started to realize once again, that almost everyone around was gorgeous. Jean couldn’t look away, literally. There were so many people shoulder to shoulder, that if Jean turned his face, he would just see another cute face. He made eye contact with a girl with a purple hue to her, just long enough to make it obvious that he was purposefully looking away into the back of some Leonid dude’s head.
The train engine car seemed to be steam-powered while the rest of the train was made of metal and glass. The ceiling and upper half of the walls were smooth glass, thankfully. Otherwise, Jean thought it would be outstandingly claustrophobic.
The train started to move quickly but everyone on the train just smashed together as it did.
Jean saw that each building was identical to the others. Each wooden skyscraper had the same design and height. There must have been thousands of them.
On the other side of the train was nothing except a flat expanse of ice. Jean thought he saw some people wandering out into the distance, but he couldn’t get a good look.
Ten minutes passed and they stopped.
Gabe pulled them to the side. “We aren’t getting off until our third stop.”
A booming voice came from the bay, “Crest Home brewery this way!” And then another, “Best metals in North Tips!” More advertisements came booming through, one after another until the train door slid closed.
The next exit seemed like the least busy, though still packed. There were not any advertisements, just a bunch of signs showing street names.
“Can you read those?” Jean asked while pointing at the signs.
“Yeah.” Galadriel answered, “Freddy can too. It’s a racial ability.”
“Oo, Lucky us.”
The doors closed and the train continued. During the ride, Jean realized that the sun was still on the horizon but directly across the plane.
We are actually on the north pole… The sun isn’t actually doing to rise.
“Hey Gabe, we are on top of the world, right?”
“Yup.”
“And the Trek starts up here?”
“Yup.”
“So we need to walk thousands of miles in the freezing cold.”
“Yup.”
“How?”
“Ahh, you know that amulet?” Gabe said while tapping his nose. Then he raised his eyebrows and gave Jean a knowing look.
“So…”
“Tut, tut. That’s enough about that for now.”
Jean just looked at Gabe like he was crazy and could do nothing else but shrug.
The third stop was just as packed as the rest, but had far more magical creatures. One in four beings was non-humanoid. or maybe non-bipedal?
The dome over this station was much larger and more cave like than the rest. Terrifyingly, a massive bronze-colored dragon perched over in a corner. It swung its head around following people going to and from.
Gabe looked over at Jean, “Where’s your squirrel?”
“He’s in my shirt right now.”
“Keep him there. Your life is on the line with that guardian here.”
They flowed out of the train following the traffic and made their way through the station. All of them were tense with the dragon gazing around.
They bumped and pushed, but stayed together until they got out of the station to reveal more heavily packed streets.
“Do the crowds ever end?” Galadriel asked with a loud voice.
“Nope. That’s the price of safety.” Gabe answered. “We are almost to the guild hall where you guys will register as Trekkers.”
The group trailed each other through the traffic until they got to an outer-edge building. It had the same construction as the rest, but it had a sign made of embers that read, “Dragon’s Home Iron Trekkers Guild.”
At that moment someone grabbed Jean’s arm and tried to jerk him towards an alley. Jean immediately pulled back and broke an old man’s hold on him. Jean took a step back and saw that it was an extremely old and emaciated man, with a large and fierce brand on his forehead. He was dirty, ugly, and covered in rags as clothing.
“Come this way.” The old man croaked while waving him to follow him into the alleyway. “Hurry before they find you.” He started to say while tears started to stream out of his wrinkled and ruined face. He motioned with a pulling wave that reminded Jean of Gollum from the Lord of the Rings movies.
Freddy ran up to Jean and grabbed his’s arm, “Come on ya’ oaf. Am I always going to have to hold your hand?” And Freddy pulled him into the building while Jean watched the old man disappear into the crowds.