First Day 02:31 am, somewhere on Himaeya

“This… doesn’t look like it’ll lead to a railway station,” Bell murmured as they walked among the trees. The stars bloomed bright in the cloudless sky, a soft warm breeze nudging the leaves.

Dema shrugged, checking her crumpled notes by illuminating them with her bracelet. She absentmindedly hopped over a small stream, landing barefoot in a puddle of water. Theora kept getting distracted — Dema was wearing a t-shirt, a dress jacket, and blue mini shorts, legs on full display. Her so-called ‘train ride outfit’.

Since their return from the moon, a year had passed in which Theora didn’t wake much. She’d chopped down Treeka and taken care of her for a few years around the time dilation device, but otherwise, she’d napped.

Now Theora was wearing a magically-reinforced new outfit, hand-tailored for her by Treeka. A striped, navy-blue vest over a white blouse, with high-waist tight pants. She was putting up a ponytail more often nowadays, and her hair had grown quite a bit too. Or, more accurately — Theora had stopped keeping it short by power of will. Now with new clothes and an official girlfriend, Theora was ready to try something new.

After a while, they found a sign post at the edge of a clearing. “The Campanella,” Treeka read off it in a murmur as she shuffled along on the mossbed in her new pot. Theora was carrying her long, trying to let the more open side of the canopy face where they were walking so Treeka could see out of her pot properly. She was confined to a much smaller miniature spirit body now.

“Yeah!” Dema cheered and jumping toward the clearing. She let out a short “Wha!” when a street light flickered on to greet her, illuminating part of an overgrown track in the grass.

One by one, more street lamps went on with unsteady light, spotting countless insects whirling around in the air like windcaught dust.

“I’ve never seen anything like that,” Treeka murmured.

“They had lamps like this in the Protan city on the moon!” Dema explained. “And in Hallmark. Though yeah, you haven’t been to either…”

It was still rare to see them deep in an uninhabited forest like this. Suddenly, another street lamp fired up behind them, revealing an old transit shelter made of wood planks. Bell stepped closer, her body shedding light on the inside, where she found a paper pinned to the wood.

“Says the train will arrive in thirty minutes,” she mused, scratching her temple with a tendril. “This is confusing. Ah… wait, no, it says the train arrives thirty minutes after we buy tickets.”

Theora frowned. Buying tickets? What for? She looked around, and another street light flicked on a few paces behind the shelter, right above a ticket machine. She inspected it for a while, trying to make sense of all the little displays and information boxes. It was made mostly of metal, with luxurious wooden adornments and mechanisms. “Wants us to put in a destination,” she mused and then began putting the letters for ‘Fragment of Time’ into a little typewriter. She added that they needed four tickets, but the machine folded an error message into the display, saying, ‘only three passengers found’.

“But we’re four!” Dema protested, looking around with a pout. She even pointlessly counted everyone on her fingers. “Yep, four. Who is it not counting?”

“Maybe it doesn’t count me,” Theora offered. “I might be difficult to recognise as a person from the outside.”

Dema waved a hand dismissively and pressed the ‘Confirm’ button. “Let’s just get three then and see what happens!”

The machine explained that the payment — whatever it was — would be collected on the train. Soon after they accepted, the device set off to print the tickets. They were made of heavyweight coarse paper with smudged ink printing out their names and destination. Dema stuffed them into her breast pocket with little regard for their structural integrity. Then, they waited. The sun began to dawn, fog formed above the grass, the wind stopped. Finally, in the distance, they heard a machine roaring.

An overwhelming conglomeration of tin and black steel, the locomotive dragged after it a total of six two-story railway carriages as the wheels squealed at the breaks. Thick smoke bellowed out of the chimney into the sky. The wide carriage windows on the upper part of the train cast light on the surroundings, with the occasional ceiling lamp catching Theora’s gaze.

Finally, screeching, the train came to a halt with a door lining up perfectly to Theora’s feet. It clicked open and rolled to the side, revealing a pale figure lit from behind. As she stepped out, her long, rose-coloured hair slipped over her shoulder across a sundress of gleaming crimson red. She straightened it out with a little tug on the frilly hem, hands in white gloves, her red heels clacking over the steps. She stood out like a stain of Dema’s blood against the foggy night and gritty train.

“You are our new passengers?” she asked in a friendly but distant voice, stepping out with an easy gait. “If so, I’m Raquina. I’m here to validate your tickets.”

“Yeah!” Dema said. “Campanella’s the train, right? Here.”

The inspector received the tickets with a polite nod, flipping through the sheets. She fidgeted her pearl earring for a moment, before saying, “Alright, three tickets to the next ‘Fragment of Time’. Is that right?”

“Yeah, but like, we’re actually four people,” Dema said, pointing at each person, including herself. “Like, we need four tickets, right?”

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Raquina’s eyes fluttered in confused blinks as she followed Dema’s showing, and eventually her eyes rested on Treeka. “Your tree is a passenger?”

“Her name’s Treeka!” Dema supplied with a nod. “Is she the one who wasn’t recognised? Can’t she join?”

“I swear,” Treeka started, “if you leave me behind again, I will—”

“Yeah!” Dema agreed with an enthusiastic nod. “Yeah, we’re gonna take her.”

“I mean—” Raquina swallowed and tilted her head. “I mean, she can definitely join. This isn’t about whether she can board, it’s about whether she is considered to take up fuel. She wants to go to the same destination as you all?”

“Mhm, yeah!” Dema beamed, first at the inspector, then at Treeka. “We can take you with us!”

Treeka pouted and looked to the side, but otherwise didn’t react.

Raquina pushed a hair strand behind her ear, looking slightly strained. “We would never reject passengers. You don’t have to worry about that.”

“Even if they can’t pay the fee?” Bell asked. “The billboard didn’t say what the ‘payment’ was.”

Raquina cleared her throat. “The payment is something everyone can provide without suffering personal losses or inconveniences. Don’t worry about that. That said — before you can board the train, we will need to complete a few formalities, if that’s alright. I shall guide you through that process.” Raquina pointed to the shelter in the fog behind them. “Take a seat if you please, it might take a moment.”

“Wha… Really?” Dema went. “What do you need?”

Raquina’s smile didn’t waver. “First off — before you can board the train, you will be required to submit a full list of your abilities and powers.”

“What?” Bell asked, her voice slightly apprehensive. Her tendrils tensed with her. “Why?”

With a turn, Raquina gestured to the train. “The Campanella is an incredibly potent machine, but as such, also fragile. It constructs its own reality with incredibly potent self-defence systems that are required for its magic to function properly.”

“And…?” Treeka looked confused. “Why does that mean we need to list our abilities?”

Raquina searched for a moment before finding the source of the voice and then looked down at Treeka’s pot. “To make sure the train can harbour you.”

As Bell still looked confused, Theora supplied in a low voice, “They’ll make sure that on the train, we will be possible.”

Dema shifted in place, and Theora tried not to pull a grimace. They’d recently experienced those very constraints first-hand. If anything, this told Theora she had to be incredibly wary here. She wouldn’t let Dema die again.

“Ah.” Bell looked at Raquina awkwardly, then nodded. “Yes. We can write out Skill sheets and… Wait, what happens if we learn new abilities on the train?”

Raquina raised her eyebrows and waved her hand toward Bell, as if the answer was obvious. When Bell tilted her head, Raquina went on to explain, “Then you’ll have to declare your ability to create new Skills to the train, of course. That way, you will retain that power onboard.” Raquina took a short breath, tugging a strand of pink hair behind her ear. “Let me stress again that the list needs to be complete in order to guarantee your safety. That said, sadly the train can’t create abilities for you. If you declare you can fly even though you can’t, the train won’t magically enable you to.”

Theora’s heart sank.

“Furthermore,” Raquina continued, “this destination — ‘Fragment of Time’ — is not currently known by the train, so it needs to compute a route. That might take a moment.”

That moment stretched into about three hours until they managed to finish the formalities — Dema’s sheet especially took a while to write out, because the abilities all needed to be explained. Eventually, Raquina found herself with a pile of documents in hand, looking quite satisfied. She went inside for a few minutes, but when she returned, she did so with a smile that was slightly more forced than before. She looked from person to person until she finally gazed at Theora.

“Now… for your chosen destination…” Raquina cleared her throat. “The train calculated a maximum travel time of… of fifteen years. Of course it’s just a worse-case scenario — if the train garners enough fuel, it will arrive earlier. But we need to ensure proper communication — you need to be aware of the consequences of your endeavour.” She knew Dema, Bell and Treeka to be very long-lived due to the stat sheets, but her worry upon seeing Theora, who appeared mostly human, was obvious. “Staying on the train for fifteen years means that by the time you leave, you could be a middle-aged woman. Do you understand?”

Theora opened her mouth to respond, but her brain failed to supply her with words to speak. Wasn’t she already a middle-aged woman?

“Are you okay, darling?” the inspector asked, and Theora managed a nod.

“Yes. Fifteen years is fine. I will manage.”

With a commiserating smile, the inspector finally validated Theora’s ticket. “You must be going somewhere truly far away. Please know that our staff will do our best to support you whenever you need anything.”

Theora nodded and heard a little ‘hmph’ from Treeka’s pot. She was still pouting because she didn’t ‘count’, whatever that meant.

“There we go,” Raquina said after validating the other tickets too. “Any questions remaining?”

“Yes, I have one,” Bell said, looking a bit nervous. “You said those fifteen years are the maximum travel time. How long would you expect the ride to last, on average…? Because while I could spend fifteen years aboard, I’ll be cut off from the System, so…”

So she couldn’t advance her Level. That girl was still thinking about her progression.

“Well,” Raquina said with a hum, “as I mentioned, it depends on how much fuel we get.”

“So what’s the fuel?” Dema asked. “Any way to help? I got lots of mana.”

“No, it’s not mana.” Raquina cleared her throat again. She fidgeted with her bright red dress. “Truth be told, it’s a bit embarrassing to say. We have other staff members who are a lot more… enthusiastic about sharing that little tidbit and what it means for your stay.” She sighed. “But, well, it’s not a secret, and since you ask… This train runs on praise. The happier the passengers, the faster it will go.”

“Oh, damn.” Dema scratched her head. “That’s some peculiar magic.”

“Yeah, well.” Raquina stepped up the stairs leading to the entry, then gestured them to follow. She gave them another smile, this time putting a lot more effort into it. “Either way — with this, I can now welcome you aboard!”