It had been a long time since Sev was last alone in a dungeon.

Properly alone, anyway. He'd been separated from his party before, but even then, they were always nearby. Now Derivan, Vex, and Misa were all basically on the other side of the continent—and while it wasn't impossible for Misa to get back into the dungeon, it was... inadvisable, at best. Sev wasn't planning to help her get back via her block-teleportation even if she wanted to; the first teleport had put enough strain on her.

Well, in theory, anyway. Calculating soulstrain wasn't exactly a well-developed science, considering how little of a problem it had been so far. The system used Shift to power its skills, and Misa's abilities were system-based, unlike the rest of them. Shift didn't put that much strain on the soul. But there were multiple compounding factors: the distance, Misa's tendency to use her skills in ways that were outside their intended usage, the barrier that was apparently blocking off all of Anderstahl...

...the perception bracelets that Vex had made for them, all the way back when they were negotiating with the Elyran nobles. Sev glanced down at the string tied around his wrist and at the little enchanted bead strung onto it. He couldn't deny that the enchantment had been useful, but the description Vex had gotten for it had described a hidden cost.

He was pretty sure he now knew what that hidden cost was. Soulstrain. Every usage of it to alter the perception of everyone else stretched the user's soul in ways it was never meant to be stretched.

Good thing they hadn't used it more frequently. Sev could only imagine the results of that would have been... bad.

"So!" Tinsel said. It still wasn't leaving him alone, not that Sev was complaining. He did wonder if there was a better way to refer to it in his head than, well, "it", but when he'd asked it had just insisted he keep referring to it that way. "Off to the next station, then?"

"Maybe." Sev glanced back at the field of soulbloom flowers. As far as he knew, this was the only remedy for soulstrain that existed. The coincidence of the dungeon producing these when the problem hadn't even been known before felt strange to him. Onyx working behind the scenes again, perhaps? Or someone else? "I feel like I should collect a few more of these, just in case I can't come back here."

"What do you mean?" Tinsel cocked its head. "We're always going to be here!"

Sev winced. He wasn't even sure if the stations stayed the same between delves—he was, in fact, pretty certain that they rotated, and that the dungeon phased them in and out all the time. He'd never seen Soulbloom Station before, after all. And that was before taking into consideration that the universe was ending.

But maybe that was a bit much to drop onto a light fixture given life.

"You never know what will happen," Sev said lightly instead. "What if the train breaks down?"

"Oh!" Tinsel didn't have eyes, but he could hear the way they widened in its voice anyway. It flickered thoughtfully, then hopped up on light-filament legs. "Then you should take me with you!"

Sev raised an eyebrow. "Why is that, exactly?"

"Well, I always wanted to see what the other stations are like," Tinsel said, not unreasonably. "And if the train breaks down, I won't be able to. So I should do it now while I get the chance! Plus you have extra tickets because your friend isn't here."

"Aren't you the one that gave me the tickets?" Sev asked, amused. "You could get one for yourself, if you wanted."

"It's not the same," Tinsel insisted. "Besides, I want to go on a train ride with a friend! You're a friend, aren't you?"

"I suppose." Sev let himself smile, to Tinsel's delight. "But you have to understand—I don't know what's coming. I might not be able to protect you. Some stations might be dangerous."

Most of them probably were, he thought to himself.

"Yeah, but I can't die!" Tinsel pointed out cheerfully. "Well, I mean, you could destroy my body. But that doesn't count. I just possess something else."

...It did have a point there.

"Fine," Sev said. He didn't even say it begrudgingly—he had to admit he'd appreciate having some company. It helped prevent him from dwelling too much on what was most likely happening with Misa and the others. Misa hadn't yet sent him an update, and he had no idea if it was due to the peculiarities of Soulbloom Station, or if she just hadn't had the time. He hoped Vex was alright. "Let's go, then," he added.

"All aboard!" Tinsel cheered, running ahead. Sev chuckled and followed after him—though not before grabbing all the remaining soulblooms Tinsel had picked and stuffing them into his pack.

Better to be safe, he decided. They did have several potions made already, but with the way things were going, there was every chance they'd need more.

The train ride with Tinsel was... awkward. Not because there was nothing to talk about, or nothing the two of them had in common—if anything, Tinsel was all too eager to share the details of his life in Soulbloom Station. And it was very eager to learn about life outside of the station as well; Sev had a little bit of difficulty with its enthusiasm, though he did find it endearing.

He just wished it would be endearing a little bit farther away from him. Like, by a couple more feet, at least.

Beside him, Tinsel kicked its legs against the table, apparently finding the movement of the train itself fascinating. It had a full plate in front of it—a plate that was piled high with all manner of lightbulbs and tiny, glowing bugs. Apparently the train adjusted its meals for its passengers, though Tinsel still didn't exactly have the mouth to consume any of it. It seemed content to just stare at the glowing plate in front of it.

Heck, maybe that was how it ate.

"Did you hear what the announcement said?" Tinsel asked. "The next station's called Ichoric Ascent. I wonder what it's like!"

"It doesn't sound pleasant," Sev said. He had, in fact, heard the announcement, and was trying desperately not to think about it. Ichoric Ascent sounded like he had to climb his way up through a mountain of dangerously unsanitary organic material.

"But it might be interesting!" Tinsel said cheerfully. Sev wondered if there was anything that could get it down, or if it was bound to be this endlessly cheerful all the time. He didn't mind it. It was sort of a comfort, in a weird way.

"I suppose," Sev allowed.

The door to their cabin hissed open, and the Conductor strode in. Sev glanced up with interest—he looked... a little different from before? He couldn't tell exactly how, though. He wasn't dressed any differently; he was wearing the same immaculately-pressed suit. He was the same combination of wood and silver, and he was as expressionless as ever...

"Who's that?" Tinsel asked, swinging its legs.

Sev glanced down at Tinsel. "That's the Conductor," he said. "He takes our tickets to make sure we're allowed to go to the next station."

"Oh." Tinsel paused, then cocked its... well, its entire body. "What happens if we don't give him our tickets?"

"I have no idea," Sev said. The Conductor paused and tilted his head slightly, as if he could hear them, and Sev blinked. "...Let's not find out."

"Okay," Tinsel said, cheerful as ever.

Maybe it was the way he was walking that was different. There was something more lifelike about the way the Conductor moved—like he was a little more fluid, a little more organic. Gone was the stiffness of the joints, the telltale mechanical movement that he often saw in automatons and constructs like these.This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

"I am the Conductor," the Conductor said once again. The voice was a little smoother too, Sev noted—a slightly deeper baritone. He wondered what was changing. Misa's intuition had pinged on the Conductor as being important; this was almost certainly a part of it. Maybe the Conductor had something to do with how they were going to get into the final area of the dungeon. Or maybe he could give them backdoor access somehow? That seemed like something Misa would pick up on with an intuition-enhancing skill.

He'd been going through the dungeon conventionally so far, but if there was any chance he could skip...

"Tickets, please," the Conductor said patiently.

"Hold on," Sev said. "I've got a couple of questions, if that's alright."

"Tickets first." The Conductor's voice was firm, and there was an edge of steel in it that hadn't been there before—but it had not, Sev noticed, said no. Sev shrugged and handed over two of the golden tickets he'd acquired from Tinsel just a few hours before, and he saw the Conductor's shoulders relax a fraction as he fed them into the slot in its chest.

Interestingly, the silver in the Conductor's body changed as it processed the tickets, turning from chrome to gold; Sev felt the tiniest change in the air, so miniscule he almost wondered if he imagined it. There was some significance to that change, though what that significance was, he didn't yet know. Part of the dungeon's mechanics?

Tinsel didn't seem nearly as reserved when it came to asking questions. It was looking at the Conductor with fascination. "Do they taste good?" it asked curiously, reaching out to poke at the slot. "If I ate some tickets, would they turn me gold too?"

Sev winced and grabbed Tinsel's hand before it could start randomly prodding the poor Conductor. "Maybe don't start poking strangers without their permission," he said.

"They do not taste of anything," the Conductor said politely. He didn't seem to mind the brief faux pas, though Sev could've sworn he saw a brief, appreciative glance thrown his way. "But I require them to function, and so does the train. And I do not believe they would turn you gold, no."

Interesting. So the tickets were a form of food? He wondered if the dungeon had worked that into its local ecosystem, or if it was just an arbitrary requirement put into place. Maybe the tickets held a form of mana the Conductor could consume or something.

Well, since Tinsel had established the Conductor would respond to questions—

"How many stations are there, do you know?" Sev asked. "What if we want to go straight to the end?"

He felt a slight chill as the Conductor turned to him and examined him. "There are ten stations in total," he answered. Sev's heart sank—that was far too many stations. Doing them by himself, or even with Tinsel's help... there was no guarantee he'd be done in time to repair Anderstahl's Prime Anchor.

He didn't even know how much time he still had. What had Muchen and the others said? Something about how the anchor had days left, not months, if it couldn't be repaired. He had about a fistful of reality shards with him he was almost certain he could use to repair the anchor, but he needed to get to it first. With ten stations, accounting for the fact that some dungeons could take days to clear and the fact that there was travel time between each station, there was no guarantee at all that he'd reach the end of the dungeon in time.

"You cannot 'go straight to the end', as you put it," the Conductor added. "We do not have enough fuel. You must acquire tickets from each station."

Sev had assumed something like that was the case, but it still made him wince to hear it. "And how long does it usually take to get from one station to the next?"

"It depends on the station," the Conductor said. "Each station is farther than the last. Ichoric Ascent is another five hours away. The tenth station is two days of travel from the ninth."

Sev winced. He supposed that explained why the dungeon had made the train so... comfortable, though it seemed like an arbitrary enforced waiting time. Was there a reason for it? Maybe the dungeon was taking the time to build each station while the train 'traveled'.

He definitely wouldn't put that past a dungeon.

"What if I just run along the train tracks?" Sev said, half-jokingly. The Conductor just stared at him for a long moment—long enough it began to make Sev somewhat uncomfortable. Apparently he'd never considered someone just trying to walk to the next station.

"It would take you far longer," he eventually said. "And you are not allowed to walk on the tracks."

"Will something happen to me if I do?"

A long pause. "No."

This was an unplanned scenario, apparently. "So I could, if I wanted to."

"It would be inefficient."

"You're not wrong there," Sev admitted, which made the Conductor relax slightly; apparently the golem had been genuinely worried Sev might decide to abandon the train entirely and just start running along the tracks.

It wasn't necessarily a bad idea, even—he would have considered it if he'd had Derivan here to pull open portals between each station, or Vex's magic to speed up their travel time. Misa's stamina could carry them between stations, too, he suspected. By himself, all he had that might improve his travel time were his Blessings, and his connection with the divine had been... quite sorely taxed by his use of [Divine Mantle].

Even with the soulbloom potions, it would take a while to recover, mostly because what he'd strained wasn't just his soul. The divine threads around him were stretched thin, and they wouldn't be repaired with just a potion; there was a reason gods very rarely visited the physical plane like this. It was costly in more ways than one.

"Do you have any other questions?" the Conductor asked.

"Yes," Sev decided after a moment. "If I said I wanted to get to the Prime Anchor, what would you tell me?"

There was another long pause here. The light blue that passed for the Conductor's eyes flickered briefly to red, alarming Sev, then went back to their original color. "I do not know what that is," the Conductor said carefully.

Sev picked up on the note of deception almost immediately. "You do," he said, narrowing his eyes slightly. "But you don't want to tell me."

"I cannot elaborate further."

"It's important," Sev emphasized. "The Prime Anchor is breaking down, and I need to fix it. If we leave it as it is—"

"I cannot elaborate further," the Conductor interrupted, and this time it said so with enough emphasis on cannot that Sev caught on to what it was saying. He frowned, scanning the Conductor from head to toe.

"Dungeon limitations," he muttered, half in realization. "You need more tickets?"

The Conductor tilted his head—not a confirmation, but perhaps as close to one as he could give. "I suspect you know how I would respond, were I able. Will that be all?" he asked.

"No," Sev said. He rummaged around in his pockets. Tinsel had given him about four of the golden tickets in total, rather than just two; he was starting to understand there might actually be a reason for that mechanic. "If I give these to you, will we be able to go farther? Or will you be able to tell me more?"

The Conductor stared at the additional tickets, and for a moment Sev thought he saw him start to reach out, as if he wanted to grab them but had to physically stop himself. He didn't answer Sev's question immediately. "...These are insufficient to skip a station," he said eventually. "But more will allow you to travel farther, yes."

How hadn't this been discovered before? He supposed it was rare that they ever had extra tickets to begin with—four were awarded for each station completion, and delve teams were typically groups of four, at least in Anderstahl. The dungeon scaled up the rewards if there were more delvers, but they very rarely had less, except for the occasional Platinum ranker going in solo, and those... well, they were very rarely interested in sharing the secrets they discovered.

"Alright," Sev said. "So there's no benefit if I give you these tickets now."

"No." The Conductor stared longingly at the tickets. Sev wondered if there was some underlying mechanic that this fueled—if there was a reason the Conductor seemed to want them so badly.

"...Well, you can have them anyway," he decided. "It's not like I have any use for them."

The Conductor swung his head over to stare at him so quickly Sev was almost afraid his head would fall off. "You are certain?"

"Yes?" Sev said, suddenly a lot less certain and a little thrown off. "Why not?"

"Thank you." The Conductor took the tickets from him like they were precious artifacts rather than thin sheets of gold. He slotted them into his chest, then gave Sev a bow. "We will arrive at Ichoric Ascent soon. Let me know if there is anything more I can do for you."

"Will do," Sev said. He offered the Conductor a smile—a smile that the Conductor, in turn, seemed to take very seriously—and then watched as it left before turning a puzzled gaze to Tinsel. "Was that strange to you at all?"

"What do you mean?" Tinsel asked. It bounced in its chair, entirely unconcerned by the conversation. "You were nice to him! It made him happy. Maybe other passengers haven't been so nice."

Sev frowned at that thought; he hoped that wasn't the case, but he knew how adventurers sometimes treated the people they assumed to be non-sapient within dungeons. "Maybe," he agreed.

He couldn't help but wonder, still, if there was something more to it than that. The Conductor had mentioned that it needed the tickets to function, after all.

Sev opened his system window, then glanced at the group chat for his adventuring party. There still hadn't been an update—and the more time passed, the more he couldn't help but worry.

"You better be okay, guys," he muttered, more to himself than anything.

Tinsel, sitting next to him, responded anyway. "I'm sure they'll be fine!" it said brightly.

Sev chuckled a little. It didn't even know who he was talking about, but he didn't mind the boundless optimism.

He couldn't deny it made this trip just a little bit easier. A little less lonely than it would have been otherwise.