Three gods and a mortal man sat in an empty train car discussing.

They were beings made of golden light or cosmic dust, had seen countless epochs, and transcended boundaries with prayer and worship. They created a world without war, poverty, and illness, and yet, still hogged the armrests like greedy little children.

Luka, the human, adjusted in his seat, pressing his body up against the window. He could feel a crick in his neck forming, but the rhythmic jolts of the train soothed his drowning mind. The gravity of the situation was… well… divine, after all.

“I still can’t believe it,” Goddess Tippy said, her ‘skin’ pulsating like a phoenix’s heartbeat. “Our Little Luka’s big day! Who’d have thought the park would draw a crowd like this?”

Her brother, God Rion, nodded in agreement, the clouds that made up his head shimmering with metallic dust. “I figured he’d come in, design some new process for engineering, and retire like the rest. Explore the world, I say! It’s not every day you World Walk!”

“I thought he would have gone mad day one,” the third and oldest god said.

Luka tore his eyes from the window and glared at the man made of countless stars. He squinted when the god made himself “brighter,” purposefully washing the cabin in a supernova.

It’s just a few minutes longer, Luka reminded himself.

“I heard that!” the old man growled.

“Stay out of my head! I thought we’d been through that? Or do I have to revoke your High Priest’s season tickets?”

Goddess Tippy and God Rion stifled their laughter, but they burst out when God Neb’s radiance dimmed as he slumped in his seat.

“I’m out of here, good luck Little Luka,” Neb said cagily, fading from reality.

The sibling gods likewise faded, their laughter remained for a few long, painfully long, moments.

Reveling in the added leg space, Luka kicked his feet up and leaned back. Idly, he rolled his artifact ring around his finger, its crude metal cool. As much as he wished to blame the knots in his stomach on the gods, he couldn’t. Not when he could hear the quiet roar of the crowd down the tracks.

He cracked an eye open, tracing the self-driving train down the bending railway. He could see the park’s entrance behind the orange forest, the emberwood trees as beautiful as the day he arrived in this world. Briefly, he considered adding a few tuffs of green to the area before squashing the thought—the dryads would go ballistic if he didn’t ask first.

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Sighing, Luka adjusted his top hat and his deep-blue patterned vest. He stood from his seat and slipped his velvet jacket on and pinned two small spinning gears to his collar, startling when the train blared its welcoming whistle. His hands darted to his ears, and with a reflex of magic, the train’s volume dropped a few dozen decibels, leveling out at still incredibly loud, but not deafeningly so.

“This is why I wanted another week, Tram. To iron-out the imperfections,” he muttered to himself, the empty train car echoing his words.

The bells in the train station chimed, their tolls almost lost to the excited crowd. Luka didn’t dare look, instead he took deep breaths. The train’s brakes screeched, easing perfectly into the loading bay.

At least the dampener glyphs worked, he thought to himself, snatching up his golden cane. He hated the cane, thinking it was nothing more than a paperweight. But that was the life he lived, one of eccentric. He had to keep up with appearances, after all.

With his palm firmly on the opulent paperweight, Luka stepped out of the car, igniting the fuses of countless hidden fireworks. As he meandered to the walkway overlooking the turnstiles, he slammed his cane into the cobblestone, magically augmenting several things at once.

First, he removed sound from the area, silencing the cheering crowd. Next, he amplified the clank from his feet and cane, causing each step to bolster his approach. He deepened the shadows and lightened the sun, highlighting his awaiting pedestal like a spotlight. And finally, he duplicated himself, filling the sky with a giant version of his tacky suit and uneasy stomach.

I’ve done this dozens of times before, he reminded himself, no reason to feel it now…

He trailed off when he saw the crowd.

Mayor Tram wasn’t wrong about her expectations—it seemed everyone from Sneerhome and the local provinces had come. This grand opening was shaping up to be an order of magnitude larger than their previous soft openings.

He looked over the crowd, spotting park regulars and season pass holders from the sea of unfamiliar faces. The Mayor stood out like a shark, and Franky and Eve like clownfish. The orcish siblings rode their dire-mounts, a wolf and an emu respectively. But standing next to them was Luka’s own mount, a dire-wolf named Leo.

The butterflies in his stomach disappeared—his friends, his family. The people who made this dream a reality.

Above, the sky darkened to night—a little help from God Neb—and the fireworks exploded. Brilliant bursts of color lit up the heavens, blooming into emberwood trees and life-like creatures. Pegasi soared in herds, unicorns bowed their horns, sea-serpents dove and leapt from rolling waves. Splendor and echoing spirals filled the backdrop, thunderclaps of glittering trails fell away.

Luka threw back his arms, opening his chest out wide—giant Luka in the sky did the same. He subtly augmented the area again, silencing the fireworks show while allowing the crowd to rekindle their volume. They, however, remained transfixed, all eyes on the World Walker.

With a hint of voice-magic, Luka started his “big” speech.

“Welcome to World Walker Park!”

And with that, the park opened.