The vendor sold long strips of smoked eel with a lovely tangy mustard. I’d never had eel before, be it smoked, fried, raw, or any other way, but it was pretty good, and it was more than long enough for Kene and I to share.

Kene’s grandmother apparently asked to leave Dusk’s realm around then, and so Dusk waved her hand, and the witch ambled out.

“Grandmother,” Kene said, putting the chunk of eel he’d had down. “Are you feeling better?”

“Mostly, if most is toast and toast is elbows,” the old witch muttered, then squinted at Kene. “I’m going home.”

“Can you?” I asked. “We’re in–”

I was cut off by the witch leaping into the eye and melting into the form of a giant owl. It wasn’t as big as the huge falcon that had attacked Kene and I in the Idyll-Flume, but she still had a wingspan as large as one of the industrial metal prep tables at the bakery.

“Caw!” she said. “Wait. No. Hoot!”

Then she started flapping her wings and rose into the sky. That got a few odd looks from people on the street, and I turned to Kene.

“Will she be okay?” I asked.

“You don’t survive as long as she has without learning to survive,” Kene said as they sat and started snacking on the eel again. “M’ also pretty sure she’s got a low-grade version of immortality. But it’s not like any of us could have stopped her. If she wanted to leave, she would have left. The fact she announced it meant that she had enough of a mind to remember to tell us.”

We polished off the eel in silence, watching the street. During the time we’d been here, at least thirty people had entered or left the stairwell down that the eel vendor was in front of, so I pointed at it.

“What’s that?”

“No clue,” Kene said. “I basically rushed off the boat, then to the library, grabbed a few quick spells at the suggestion of the librarian, and then headed back.”

“Fair enough,” I said with a shrug. “I wouldn’t mind looking around.”

We headed down the stairs, and found ourselves in what almost looked like the terminals at the harbor. The signs in the air above directed us left for inter city, and right for intra city.

“Oh, I always mess those up,” I said with a groan.

“Inter city is between two cities,” someone grumbled as they pushed around us. I shrugged, and Kene and I headed right.

“I’ll need to visit the library to figure out what city the Beastgate Trial Trail is in,” I told Kene. “But want to look here for now? It’s not like we can travel out there so quickly. Probably.”

On the left side of the terminal there was a massive city map, and we looked around until we figured out where the library was. Kene, having rushed to it once already, was able to use his experience to orient us.

The library was located around a street called eldersap, and it had a small star marked on it, about a half a block north. Given our location was marked with a large star, I figured that it was likely that each of the stars was where these connected. There were different colored lines of thread linking the stars. The northern and southern streets seemed to have alternating red and blue lines, while the eastern and western had yellow and green.

What the lines actually were, I still wasn’t sure. A portal network was possible, but those were difficult and expensive to maintain, given that they required Arcanist level magic, and the constant movement of people had them. Outside of the Tower City, I didn’t know of anywhere that used portal travel as anything other than luxury transit.

Was this some sort of mass-flying tunnel?

Kene and I shifted away and deeper into the facility, where we finally spotted a platform that led out into a massive tunnel, carved out of the earth and reinforced with a white stone. It wasn’t marble, but I didn’t know what the stone was. It was covered in enchantments, though, a massive blazing source of winter magical power that sent a continuous gust of tempest energy spiraling in wind and more.

People would step, or in the case of one person I spotted – seated in a wheelchair with layers of bright red abenagation energy (not mana, energy) swirling around them – wheel off of the platform. As soon as someone was off the platform, the winds and warped gravity caught them, and they were sent rushing down the tunnel, headed north.

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

“Huh,” I said.

“I feel like brooms are more convenient when it comes to a personal level,” Kene mused. “But this is probably better for people who don’t have the enchanting skillet to fix one up themselves, the money to buy one, or the fortune to inherit one.”

“I wanna try it!” I said, and Kene gave me a nod. We stepped off the platform, and a moment later, the unmistakable feel of glacier dragon mana surrounded us. The mana infused into our bodies, the pressure flexed, and we began rocketing down the tunnel, pulled by the magic.

Interestingly, as we moved, I felt my mana regeneration sharply drop. It wasn’t a problem, exactly, given that I wasn’t in urgent need of recovering my mana, but the tunnel seemed to be draining everything that my spirit would have naturally produced in order to restore me.

That must have explained how they were able to power such a massive spell like this. While any passengers that didn’t have absurd mana regeneration, or else have an absurdly high potency of mana, would still be draining more power than they gave, with the sheer number of people riding, it would still be a noticeable offset.

What's more, there were seemingly lanes within the windstream. People closer to the wall were burning mana, releasing it out into the environment. The more mana they were releasing – as well as the denser it was – the faster they were moving. One person who was releasing mana dense enough to suggest she was nearing the peak of fourth gate shot past us like she’d been fired by a mana cannon.

I still didn’t think that would be enough to actually sustain the enchantments, especially since kids weren’t able to even provide a trickle of ungated mana, but it would absolutely reduce the strain on the power cores.

And?

It was fun.

Kene and I each began to release mana, and skate forwards, shifting closer to the wall so that we didn’t slam into anyone. Before we knew it, a platform rushed by us.

“Which one was that?!” I shouted over the rushing winds.

“No idea!” Kene laughed.

As we raced down, passing stop after stop, the tunnel began to split, a wedge that was glowing softly with impact cushioning spells splitting off. One of the tunnels had a bright yellow stripe over it, and the other a green one.

“Which way?”

“Gree… No, yellow!”

We had to rapidly shift lanes in order to get into the yellow line, and it slowly curled until we were rushing back the direction we’d come, but one street over.

I felt like two-way lanes, one heading each direction, like Mossford’s carriages, would have probably been more efficient, but it was possible there was another reason for the looping system.

Primes, I’d barely managed to enchant a cauldron. I should probably tone down the judgements about efficiency. The odds I’d ever be able to do this, even if I ascended to become a magus, was exactly zero.

As fun as racing around the tunnels was, we disembarked as we got closer to the library, only to check the map and see that we’d overshot it by nearly four blocks.

“That’s fine,” I said, shrugging. “It’s pretty, we can look around.”

“True enough,” Kene laughed, and we headed upstairs to walk around the city. I purchased one of the cups of mulled spiced wine, and we sipped from it.

It was a bit early for alcohol, and I’d never been a huge drinker, but it was a good tool to fight against the chilled winds.

The library was a medium sized stone building, much smaller than the massive castle in the capital of Mossford, but that was hardly shocking.

When I entered, however, it was a little more surprising. There was a massive map of the solar system, made of whirling brass. I focuses on Ddeaer, which was the size of a pumpkin. It was exquisitely detailed, with delicate stained glass shaping out the nations, while flat, hammered sheets formed the unclaimed lands, and the oceans were empty air that let me peer into the combination of enchanted gears that kept the planet rotating.

“Ah, interested in our exhibit?” came the voice of one of the librarians. I blinked, caught off guard. They must have had an exceptional veil – or no power – to have sliped past my senses

Kene, who had been examining the glass-giant – heh – Kyrbyr, jumped, caught even more flat footed than I was.

The librarian was tall, and muscular, built like a professional body sculptor, with a bright purple, neatly trimmed beard. Their nametag identified them as Rubi.

“The Mossford alliance may not have a leg in the lunar landing competition, but it’s fun to speculate,” Rubi said.

“Has there been any more news?” Kene asked. “We’ve been away from people for two weeks.”

“Nothing yet,” Rubi responded, scratching their beard. “Last I heard, the probes kept getting torn apart by the hyper-condensed solar and lunar mana out there.”

Kene nodded as if that made perfect sense, and I shrugged. If it was important, I’d hear more about it eventually.

“How can I help you two?” Rubi asked with a laid back smile.

“Where’s the beastgate?” I asked. “And how do I get there? What are the rules?”

“It’s in the northwest,” Rubi said. “You’ll want to take the sluice westward for about ten hours, then shift to the north track until you arrive in Puinen, probably about four days if you stop each day. As for the rules… No clue.”

“No clue? There aren't any records?” Kene asked.

“Only a hundred or so try it each year,” Rubi shrugged. “And each batch has different rules. You’ll like Puinen, though. Pretty place, loads of hiking. Cold, though, not like here.”

They said it seriously, too, as if this snowstorm of a town was as warm as a Redsummer Isles beach town.

“If you take the full month to complete the trail, you’ll end just in time for the unlit candle feast, and in such a lovely place, I’m sure you’ll enjoy it,” Rubi continued, completely ignoring the absurd comments about the weather.

Kene and I chatted with the older librarian for a while longer, before spending the night in Dusk, and embarking on the sluice – which was a terrible name for a flight based mass transit system – and headed west, before spending the night in Dusk once more and starting the ride northward, to the small town that hosted the Beastgate Trial Trail.