Chapter 209: Devastation

Hi everyone! Apologies for the delay, some circumstances converged.. I'm still planning on posting two chapters this week per usual, but the second one will probably go online some time on Friday instead of tomorrow.

Either way.. time for today's chapter~

When Theora, Bell, and Treeka left the room, the corridor was empty. The train clattered along over its selfmade rails, ever so gently rocking the floor. Clouds billowed above, casting everything in soft shadow.

A while ago, Montaparte had called everyone on the train to the lounge to share the final results of her investigation. Theora, Bell, and Treeka had been urged to join — by Raquina, mostly, who urgently denoted the importance of bringing closure to the terrible incident. Theora had been able to decline the invitation, while Bell hid behind her. Theora’s shenanigans and the resulting reactions had impacted Bell quite a bit. Probably because, while Theora was immune to being thrown out, the same was much less likely to be true for Bell.

Not that Theora would let it happen.

For now, they enjoyed the temporary peace and quiet as they stole down the corridor and entered the engine carriage. They moved past the Lavish; then Bell tried to enter the control room at the front.

“It’s locked,” she said as her tentacles sizzled with acid against the metal door. “You do it.”

Theora gently pushed against it until the hinges gave way and the control room opened up before them.

Theora entered first, being greeted by a metal lattice forming a small platform overseeing the tall room — it encompassed both stories, not just the upper one like most other places on the train. Black steel stairs hugged the side of the room, leading down to metal plate flooring with thick bolts. The walls were littered with control mechanisms — valves, levers, tube clocks; gauges and small lights. The engine rumbled from both the front and back, with thin, barred windows showing the trails up ahead.

In the middle of it all stood a chair overseeing a large part of the steering apparatus. An inlay was filled with annotated maps, next to a plate magically showing imagery akin to a radar. 

Bell was already probing all of it. It looked like she was making sure not to actually change any of the settings, but other than that, she left no cupboard closed and no drawer undrawn. Within seconds she was producing maps from a shelf underneath the main desk, found a compartment in the flooring that contained spare parts, and had lifted herself up to inspect the upper walls, her tendrils radiating from her through the entire room.

Meanwhile, Theora placed Treeka down on the map inlay and then proceeded to stare at the machinery and gauges.

Technology had never been her strong suit.

Even after about fifteen minutes of staring and probing, she had no idea what she was even looking for. “Find anything?” she asked Bell, but Bell also only shrugged.

“Dearly missing my [Investigation]-Skill right now,” she murmured in dismay. “This looks like a normal steering room to me. Well, I’ve never seen anything so complex… but yeah. Not sure what we would be looking for here. Any ideas?”

Treeka let out a grumble; out of all of them, she was probably the one with the least experience with any sort of mechanism, having lived in a forest most of her life. “What exactly is it that we’re looking for again?”

“Some kind of secret,” Bell answered. “Something that Fentanyle wasn’t supposed to see. Something that would be grounds to have you kicked off the train if you so much as knew about it…”

Theora wracked her brain while staring around the place. She couldn’t say there was anything amiss here; nothing that she wouldn’t have expected from a place like this. But there wasn’t anything else in this carriage that Fentanyle could have seen… Had a crow of hers found something elsewhere after all? But Montaparte had searched everything already.

“This makes no sense,” Theora murmured. “We’re missing something. Something that Fentanyle could have seen.”

Bell floated around the room a bit longer, probing and inspecting, until her tendrils were touching almost every spot of the wall, filling it out to completion.

“I’m a little surprised, though,” Treeka said, looking around. “Like… you know, Dema’s house has mechanisms too, for the bath in the basement. She had to explain and show the layout to me so I don’t accidentally pierce anything as I grow with my roots.”

“Yeah?” Bell asked absently, still looking around. “What’s surprising?”

“Well,” Treeka continued, scratching her head, her little legs bouncing against the side of the pot as she sat. “I mean, just… the mechanisms are huge. The bath doesn’t take up all of the basement, but the pipes, the water containers, the storage for wood, the oven… You know, it’s not just the bath.”

At these words, Bell stopped. She turned to face Treeka, frowning. “Wait, you’re right. This carriage has the Lavish in the back, and the helm in the front. Then… where in the world is the engine?”

Theora considered Bell’s words. Back when they’d discussed how to proceed, Montaparte had used a particular phrase — she said it was ‘time to act’. In Montaparte’s case, that meant pretending. Pretending to convict a fake murderer of her crime.

In Theora’s case, it meant she had to stop pretending.

“Only one way to find out,” she murmured, and crossed the room to get to the wall leading towards the backside of the train. “Let’s tear down some walls.”

Bell swirled around. “Wait, what?”

But by then, Theora was already gently pushing her hand into the iron plating. She didn’t punch or tear or pull, she dove into the metal knowing it would give way, and not her. It screeched and yawned, complained in a deep wail as bolts popped and casing cracked.

“What are you doing?!” Bell asked, panicked. 

“We can’t let this chance go to waste,” Theora proclaimed as she rent the iron walls apart. Behind it lay… more metal. For now.

“Shouldn’t we—shouldn’t we ask the staff first, before we…”

Theora said, “We already asked.” And they’d been shoo’ed off. Treeka was watching the spectacle with unconcealed satisfaction, legs still dangling.

Theora had barely delved an arm’s-length in when she suddenly felt a presence emerge at the other side of the carriage. “Someone is coming,” she said as faint footsteps emanated from above. She removed her arms from the plating to turn to the entrance.

“So this is where you are,” Raquina’s voice rang out before her silhouette appeared in the light of the entry up above. “What in the world are you doing down here? What was all that noise?”

She couldn’t yet see what Theora had done right beneath her feet.

Bell quickly let herself to the ground, wrapping her tendrils back into a braid. Treeka seemed completely unfazed in comparison, just tilting her head in curiosity. Meanwhile, Theora was wondering how to respond, and eventually decided on just going with the truth. After all, this was likely their only shot at this, so she might as well try.

“We’re investigating what secret Fentanyle was kicked off the train for,” she explained. “We figured it might have to do with the engine carriage, because this is where she was ejected.”

Raquina blinked, then closed her eyes, letting out a long sigh. “I see.” She started climbing down the stairs, her heels clanking over the lattice, impressively without getting stuck. “So this is why you ran your little test earlier? You wanted to know how much effort it would take you to resist — if you were immune to the train’s defenses, or if you’d fare the same fate as that swarmy woman.”

Theora froze. That would have been a much better excuse to give Bell. “Yes,” she claimed, because it made her reasoning sound sounder. “I am immune,” she boasted in a monotone voice, “so you should tell us the truth.”

That would be somewhat easier than figuring things out by themselves, after all.

Raquina looked unimpressed, tired, worn out. But… she wasn’t leaving. So perhaps they had a chance with her. 

“How was Montaparte holding up?” Theora asked to keep the conversation going. 

“Ah… has she allied herself with you already?” Raquina tugged at her dress — it was a perfect fit, and yet she seemed to feel too tight in it. She bit her lips — standing at the feet of the stairs, not a single step taken onto the metal plating. Awkward, stiff.

When it came into her view, Raquina paid no mind to the wound opened by Theora.

“She came to us for help after she solved the fabricated case,” Bell said, shifting her body in front of the damage Theora had done, as if to conceal or distract from it. “She noticed discrepancies — the motive was too flimsy. Sure, on paper it looked decent, but it didn’t align with Kaylay’s behaviour. She wasn’t as desperate as you assumed she would be, was she?”

“She’s shown desperation before,” Raquina said in defense, but nodding at the same time. “It was a reasonable assumption that this would put her over the edge. But… perhaps she was exhausted. The caretaker says we should have given Rita more poison.”

Treeka gasped. “Poison? Does Dr. Alp know?”

“Of course not,” Raquina said with a scoff. “Entrichia, the caretaker, and I. We are the ones who signed the plan. Alp doesn’t care for train business and Ulber is too new.”

“So, why are you here?” Bell cut to the chase, and it seemed to catch Raquina by surprise. Her eyes whipped to Bell, a question in her gaze. “What?” Bell continued. “You knew Theora was missing, and you knew Theora is immune. Surely you weren’t hoping to dissuade us. Why are you here?”

Raquina stared for a second, for two. For ten. Then, she visibly deflated. Her hands let go of her dress. She pushed her hand through her hair, loosening the ties and opening it up. Then she paced to the front of the room and stared out the window. Tracks were being built and slotted into place by magic in satisfying clitter clatter motions.

She took a seat at the conductor’s stool, letting her arm fall down on the buttons of the settings board, and soon began absent-mindedly shifting gears, pulling levers, flipping switches. “I’ve been a member of the staff for a long time now,” she stated, not looking any of them in the eyes. 

Theora felt Bell activate a barrier in preparation. Raquina didn’t seem hostile right now, but pressing buttons on a heavy machine could mean one of two things — either Raquina was about to show them something of import, or she was planning to resist and defend the train. 

If Theora had a good idea on how to proceed, perhaps she might have stopped her. But the only alternative she saw at this point was pulling the train apart piece by piece.

“Even a long time ago,” Raquina continued while closing a valve, “when there was no staff and everyone was still open about how the train worked, people still travelled with it. They were fine with the way things worked. The nature of the train’s function — the special magic it runs on — didn’t stop them. But…” She turned to look at Treeka sitting in her pot on the armature. “They felt bad, seeing it all. Didn’t like it. Were unhappy. So a change was made — we know people will take the train anyway, so why do they have to know the details? It serves nothing. We decided to hide it all away.”

Raquina sought Theora’s gaze. She gave another one of her tired smiles.

“But I am sick of it,” she said, “and I can’t be like some other staffers who want to stay oblivious.” At that, Raquina got up, and gestured at herself. “So here I am.”

“You’ll come clean?” Treeka asked, standing up.

Raquina didn’t look at her. “We shouldn’t bring Treeka.”

“Why not?” Bell asked, hedging her tone.

“Because she never got a ticket,” Raquina said, making a sweeping gesture with her hand. “It’s not her problem.”

“Whatever you’re doing,” Treeka said, sounding alarmed, “I want to join. Don’t leave me behind.”

Theora nodded and went to pick up the pot, and Raquina let out another sigh, but didn’t seem willing to press the issue.

“So you want to know the secret that got Fentanyle kicked out? Well, I can’t say you haven’t been warned. You’ll regret knowing. And not only because of what the engine caretaker will attempt to do to you when he finds out.” She closed her eyes, pressing her fingers against them, and then pulled a last lever to her right.

Suddenly, a rumble drowned the engine sounds as the backside of the room split into little cubes by magic. One by one, they moved aside — including the hole torn-open by Theora. Soon, the magic revealed an unblemished, tall iron door.

It would have taken a while to find it, if it was concealed like that.

“So it’s… under the Lavish?” Bell asked, frowning. She found Theora’s gaze. 

“Have you ever wondered,” Raquina went on to say as she got up and paced to the door, “why we prefer taking on passengers from realities with carbon-based life?”

She opened the heavy door to let everyone into the next room — it was only half as tall as the control room, and a giant furnace made up the far wall, fire blazing within. To the left was a door that looked exactly like the one to the Lavish above.

“A second entry,” Raquina explained with a nod to it. However, this other door did not feature the same interface of a palm inlay; instead, it had a dial. “Were you perhaps curious why the Lavish has a bias toward showing a specific type of landscape… why you can only visit each place once?”

Raquina turned the dial a few times while speaking, threw one last look at them. 

“Show us,” Bell said in a calm and low voice.

Raquina opened the door. Behind it lay, as far as the eye could reach, nothing but mulched ground and smog and smoke.

“As you may have guessed by now, the train doesn’t actually run on praise.” She flipped through different places, all looking similar. One underwater, one with black marble. “It never ran on pity, either. It’s all a big fantasy to distract from the truth. There’s only one kind of magic the train runs on—”

Raquina dialled to a world with large machinery, enormous stacks of logs, sawdust littering ground, and a giant limestone pillar in the front — the pillar they’d just climbed a few days before. Treeka’s old home, razed.

“And that is devastation.”