The hum of the train's engine was the only sound in the room. Sev was lost in thought. Ixoryn seemed too busy absorbing everything he'd been told—he'd barely said a word after Sev explained the situation to him. Instead, he sank into himself, and spoke only to ask where they were going.

Tinsel—who had also heard the same explanation, given Sev hadn't been able to think of a good excuse to not tell him—was similarly and uncharacteristically silent. A slight flicker of its light told him that it was feeling distressed by the information, but little more than that.

Sev didn't blame either of them.

It didn't help that Derivan's news about the Enkiros anchor made things worse. When Sev had first learned that Vex had brought back their missing Prime Kingdom, right down to its anchors... he'd felt hope. When he'd learned that those anchors were on the verge of destruction, just as they had been before they lost the kingdom—well, that hope had been very quickly snuffed out.

He'd been through all the options. Bringing back each Prime Kingdom with a Grand Anchor as they were lost, and then repairing each Prime Anchor with the reality shards that they'd learned could help the system sustain itself. It seemed like such a good idea on paper. Both the system and magic itself couldn't battle against the Void alone, so perhaps with both of its strengths put together, they'd be able to rebuild the world they once had.

On paper was the key part of that thought. The practical truth of the matter was that reality shards were few and far between. Helg had used up the majority of Teque's store of it, and the creation of new ones, while possible, didn't happen fast enough for them to keep the anchors maintained indefinitely.

It didn't help that the cost to maintain each anchor was increasing. Even Misa's reality anchor was requiring more and more reality shards, and the rate at which it decayed grew by the day. She never spoke of it, but Sev knew she thought about it—he caught her constantly checking her system whenever she thought no one was looking, staring at the invisible bar that was slowly ticking down.

He wanted the Grand Anchors to change things. There was every chance that they could. If they were capable of restoring things from the Void—things that should, in theory, have been erased forever—then they were surely capable of simple maintenance. He just needed to get all three of them together so he could examine how they worked in close proximity, with hosts to boost their capabilities.

He clung to that hope. Vex hadn't been able to sustain Enkiros alone with his Grand Anchor. Maybe he didn't know how yet, or maybe it simply wasn't possible until all three Grand Anchors were active. The universe did, technically, require all three to function—it made sense that a single Grand Anchor alone wouldn't be able to sustain things. It could only prop up one of three pillars.

Sev was shaken out of his thoughts as the door to the cabin hissed open and the Conductor strode in. "Tickets, please," the Conductor said politely.

"Here." Sev dumped the armful of tickets he'd picked out of the mud at the end of the last station onto the table. The Conductor stared at Sev, and then at the pile of tickets on the table.

He carefully, questioningly reached out and took three. Sev shook his head. "Take all of them," he said.

"Really?" the Conductor sounded surprised. "But... you are aware you can trade these? For more prizes. Later, at the final station."

He had not, in fact, been aware of that. "It doesn't matter," Sev said, shaking his head. "We're not here for rewards. Prizes. Whatever you call them. We need to get to the Prime Anchor."

The Conductor observed him for a moment. Was he being evaluated? Sev shifted uncomfortably under the mechanical gaze. "I am unfamiliar with the term," the Conductor said.

"The dungeon core," Sev said. It was close enough to the right explanation. There would be a path from the dungeon core down to the Prime Anchor.

"I see." The Conductor processed this statement for a moment, then began to feed the tickets into the slot on his chest; a slight whirr emerged from his components as ticket after ticket began to... almost flow into him. Sev thought he caught a glimpse of the ticket turning into liquid as it poured into the slot, but he couldn't be sure.

He was beginning to sense more coming from the Conductor, too. Like it was absorbing something from the tickets, gaining something from them. He gained more substance with every ticket that went into the slot, and Sev thought he felt a glimpse of divine power, even, flickering dimly within the automaton.

What was the Conductor, anyway? He was a part of the dungeon's mechanics, clearly, but the Anderstahl dungeon had been extraordinarily intentional with every one of its mechanics so far. There had to be something that the Conductor represented. He was more than he seemed, that much was certain—even Misa had said as much.

Once half the tickets had been absorbed, the Conductor paused again. "Is the dungeon core your only destination?" he asked, his tone once more polite and indifferent—yet this time, Sev got the distinct impression that he was hiding something.Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

"No," Sev said slowly. "We're also looking for the Vault."

The Conductor wouldn't have any reason to know what a Grand Anchor was, any more than he knew what a Prime Anchor was—but there was a chance he would know where the Vault was.

"I see," the Conductor said again. He stood there for a moment, completely still, then gathered the rest of the tickets into his arms. "I will return shortly. Please give me a moment."

Sev blinked, then stared after the Conductor as he left.

"Was that interaction kinda weird to anyone else?" he asked.

Tinsel spoke for the first time in a while. "A little," it said. It sounded a little less cheerful, but Sev was relieved to note that not all of the cheer had disappeared from its voice. "I dunno. It kinda seems like he wants to help, but he can't be open about it."

"I concur," Ixoryn said shortly, and then fell silent again.

"Yeah, that's kinda the impression I got," Sev said thoughtfully, looking at the cabin door that the Conductor had disappeared through. "You know, we never bothered exploring the rest of the train. Maybe we should—Whoa!"

The train lurched. Sev was thrown nearly facefirst into the table. Tinsel went flying entirely, though Ixoryn reached out and casually caught it before it could smash itself into the ceiling. Ixoryn himself was the only one of the three that seemed relatively unaffected by the sudden movement. He stayed utterly still, as if the laws of physics were a slight annoyance that he'd chosen to brush off for the moment.

"Okay," Sev said, catching his breath. "First of all, that's not fair."

Ixoryn didn't respond, but Sev could swear he saw the god give him a ghost of a smirk. It vanished as soon as it came, though, and Sev was left wondering if he'd just imagined it.

"Second," he continued, "what was that?"

As if on cue, the door to their cabin hissed open once again. The Conductor walked through, though Sev only really knew it was the Conductor due to the uniform he wore. He was otherwise completely changed in appearance. His outer shell appeared to be made of shimmering, golden liquid, and beneath that liquid swam traces of light.

And there was very much a divine presence here, though Sev wasn't certain he could attribute it to any specific god.

"Hey, uh," Sev said. "Weird question. But what are you, exactly?"

The Conductor cocked his head at him, then glanced at the god that was still sitting in the booth.

"I am the Conductor," he said. "And I am a guide. A navigator, if you will."

Ixoryn reacted to this. He sat up straight and narrowed his eyes, staring more closely at the Conductor. "What is your name?" he asked.

A long pause. When the Conductor answered the question, he was almost reluctant.

"...I prefer to be called the Conductor. But my name, if you must know, is Ixoryn."

Vex stared hesitantly at the storm of mana in front of him.

It wasn't that it intimidated him, although perhaps it should have. What shocked him was how he could feel the remnants of his original spell swirling within the chaos. He hadn't really expected anything of that spell to remain, but here it was; the lines of the Primordial Glyph in the sky all led to this.

A mana storm. The first of its kind that he'd ever seen. Lightning crackled at the edges of it, though it wasn't truly lightning; it was formed out of all sorts of mana aspects. One or two of them might have been actual lightning bolts. The others, as far as he could tell, were about as liable to turn their victims into frogs or drench them in gallons of water.

"So all I need to do is walk into the middle of that," he said. He could practically feel Misa's skepticism radiating from her. Derivan wasn't nearly as doubtful, but then the armor had always trusted what he said pretty much immediately.

"Are you sure?" Misa asked doubtfully. "That thing looks like it's going to try to kill you."

"It won't." Vex said the words with more confidence than he felt. "It should be just like any other spell I cast. It's my mana. The fireballs I throw don't burn me, so this mana storm isn't going to hurt me, either."

"Right," Misa said. She stared at the storm again. "And walking into the middle of it is going to do what again, exactly?"

"It's going to realign the spell." Vex sighed—he knew how ridiculous it sounded. The only reason he knew it would work was because the Grand Anchor within him resonated with its knowledge. This would work. It was how the mages of old would realign their broken spells. It was just happening on a much, much larger scale.

Most spells didn't go awry outside the spellcaster's body.

"Look, just trust me," Vex said. He slipped his hand out of Derivan's, then took a step forward, wincing a little as wind buffeted him from the force of the spell. He was not, unfortunately, immune to the physical effects of the mana storm—just the impact of the mana hitting him directly. "I know what I'm doing. We're at the core of the spell. This is the last thing we need to pull it all together."

"We trust you," Derivan said before Misa could respond. Misa huffed.

"Yeah, we do," she said reluctantly. Vex smiled at her—

—Misa disappeared and reappeared at his side, and Vex flinched as a rock burst into pieces next to his head, blocked only by Misa's mace. She grinned down at him.

"You still need us to look out for you, though," she told him.

"I guess I do," Vex admitted. "...Don't get too close, though."

"We will not," Derivan said. He came forward too, though he wasn't trying to block anything in particular from hitting Vex; he just wrapped the lizardkin in a tight hug. Vex noticed a few rocks pinging off of the armor's back. It was more incidental than anything, but it did still feel like Derivan was protecting him. He wasn't about to complain.

Vex took a deep breath and—with Misa and Derivan both providing backup in the form of shielding him against the debris picked up by the mana storm—walked into the center of said storm.

The moment he did, everything calm. He felt the mana above and around him come into alignment once more. For a single moment, the Primordial Glyph of Translation shone above them in the sky, as large as the kingdom of Enkiros itself.

Then the spell completed, and the streets around them burst to life.