The Loop carriage accelerated for much longer than I thought was possible or necessary, but at last the force pushing me into my plush white chair let up. I'd taken a window seat but had made the error of choosing one on the right side of the carriage. That forced me to turn my head to look out, but there was not much to see. The lighting within the carriage barely lit up the smooth curved wall as we whipped past. If there were any visible features, they were hidden by our incredible speed.
"How fast are we going?" I had to shout to be heard over the ongoing rapidly pulsing sound.
"It's nearly a hundred kilometers to Titan Hub Gold, and we'll be there in under twenty minutes," Punnt yelled back.
Something close to three hundred kilometers per hour. That was far in excess of any speed I'd reached before. "Wow! Why is it so loud?" I also wanted to know how we were moving, but decided to ask one question at a time. The latter question was mystifying, but the former was of immediate concern.
"I can answer that," Scaff shouted eagerly. "We're basically being pulled along by countless aether boosted artificial magestones. That's oversimplified but it's the same basic principle! It's optimised for forward linear force, so in that way it's like an aetherrailer."
While that was meant as an explanation for the noise, it answered both my questions very succinctly. "Ah, got it," I replied, nodding in case I wasn't heard. "There's no danger from the magical fields, is there?"
"Nah, that's all isolated in a separate tunnel above us. The carriages are towed, not propelled directly," Scaff further explained.
"Does it run on wheels?" I asked. I expected it must be, since no surface could be smooth enough to slide along. "It must have some seriously amazing bearings."
"Nope! No wheels, no bearings!" Scaff seemed very pleased to have the privilege of reporting that news.
This information was enough of a shock that I turned away from the window and leaned forward to hear and be heard better. "Then how?"
"It all floats!"
"Floats in what? Liquid?" That made even less sense, but perhaps this was the beginning of my encounter with the oddness of the Titans.
"Sorry, poor choice of words. I mean it's suspended by upwards magically induced forces."
"Ohhh, I get it. I think." I could at least envisage what it entailed, though I wasn't well-versed enough in the intricacies of magic to know what arrangement of magestones and aethercoils producing bursts of magic would work to shape the required forces. And it all had to be precise and exact in both time and magnitude, or the resulting motion would be either ineffective, dangerous, or plain deadly. "So no wheels, no bearings, no sliding. No drag at all apart from the air."
"You'd think!" Scaff said with no less enthusiasm. "But a lot of the air is pumped out of the tube, which gets rid of a lot of that drag too."
"Amazing!" I replied in kind. The enthusiasm was infectious. "But it seems like a lot to move just a handful of people between locations. Why are the Titans in such a hurry?"
Scaff's answer was a mere shrug.
"Actually, the other carriage looked close to full," Swipe put in from behind me. "Seems they left this one empty for visitors."
"That makes sense!" Punnt yelled from across the aisle, which was slightly further from me than Swipe. "They're expecting us at this time."
"Did you see..." Scaff started to ask Swipe, but stopped as jur's expression turned to pain.
"Enough yelling!" Punnt yelled. "Sorry, should have brought the helmets for ventril!"
That put a damper on the conversation for the rest of the trip. I tried pulling out my scryer to communicate via text messages, but either the tunnel or the powerful magic above us prevented it from communicating with the hive, and thus cut it off from other scryers. I could have tried connecting scryers together with wires, or even overridden its magical remote communications hexes to talk to other scryers directly, but I decided to wait instead. I wondered how the Titans put up with travelling with this level of awful noise. It was not conducive to reasoned thought, much less group discussion.
The Titans' train continue barrelling onward through the seemingly endless tunnel. Given that it was called the Loop, it might not actually have an end. I wanted to ask whether there were any junctions or spur lines, so I made a note on my scryer to bring that up later. After that was taken care of I spent the remainder of the trip watching Scaff, Punnt and Broth amuse themselves with a game that consisted entirely of making hand signals at one another.
Everyone noticed when the carriage began to lose speed. It didn't take long, though it was far more gentle than the initial accceleration. We slid into the station at a sedate pace, and came to a complete stop in the middle of a tube with a transparent top half. It was no different from the one from which we'd departed not so many minutes before.
The inner and outer doors slid open in turn. I noticed an airtight seal between the carriage and the tunnel wall was pushed into place, preventing air from rushing into the tunnel when the outer door opened. We each checked that we had all our belongings and filed out of the carriage. I found it comforting to know that passengers being reminded not to lose their property on trains was a universal feature of all societies.
As we spilled out into a cluster of bodies on the platform, I turned to see a larger pile-up forming in front of the doors to the carriage behind us. Swipe spoke over my shoulder. "Looks like a bunch of mages from other hives, coming to Titan Hub Gold from other stops."
"Yes, that's obvi—" I began.
Punnt interrupted, saying, "I don't think thall are all mages."
"Why do you sound surprised and spooked?" Scaff asked. "Of course there would be Titans here."
I ignored jum. I was looking for the Titans.
I'd grown used to seeing mages. Thall had quite a different look to the Pure I'd been familiar with for most of my life. With us, there were men and women, with shirts and trousers or dresses. Short hair or long. Men tended to be taller and were more likely to do regular heavy labour, though there was more variance in those traits to the others. As for body shape, women's clothes were designed to obscure our figures, so it was less of a determinant. The mages differed in every respect, though not in all ways for every individual. Hardly any mage hair or clothing styles would be familiar to one of my people, and most had entirely unnatural bright hair colours, with clothing highlights to match. The colours tended to indicate a mage's role, and I'd gradually learned that some physical features often correlated with the roles too. At a glance at each of the mages on the platform I could easily determine their role with a high degree of accuracy.
The Titans stood out, because they did not fall into mage roles. They were also not dressed into the familiar plain clothes of my people, the aging cloaks of the traders, or the animal skids and repurposed plundered items of the raiders. These people were something else entirely. Their clothes seemed to be composed of a dozen or more separate pieces. While the parts formed something which could be considered an outfit in totality, the individual pieces did not resemble any familiar articles of clothing. The fabric designs — if they were even fabric — were highly detailed bold designs on a small scale, yet were chaotic on a larger scale. The novelty of the clothes briefly drew my attention from the bodies within.
The Titans were perfect sculptures of humanity, even more than the actual sculptures in their Loop stations. I didn't really understand what I was seeing, but I somehow knew that the size and shape of every part of their bodies was specifically chosen to be exactly as it was. As I moved closer I could see that this quality was definitely true of their faces.
It was at that point in my musings that I realised I was walking towards the Titans. I stopped, unprepared to actually meet them.
Skids walked into my shoulder. "Hey! Why'd you stop, Charity?"
"Why did you start?"
"I... I'm not sure."
"Same," I said, nodding. "That's why I stopped."
"Oh," Skids said, understanding. We continued standing in place and observing the Titans.
As I looked upon the eerie beauty of these people, I felt their strangeness more and understood it less. Something had to be wrong with them, but nothing looked wrong with them. Nothing was wrong to such an unnatural degree that the lack of any visible wrongness simultaneously proved that nothing could be wrong while feeling dreadfully wrong. Once the word 'wrong' lost all meaning to me, I knew I could not cope with much more of this, whatever it was. I was on the verge of freaking out or breaking down.
I fell back on old lessons as a source of comfort and strength. "Great Maker, protect us," I prayed, keeping my voice to a barely audible murmur. "Be a beacon of light to guide us in the darkness, a mirror to reflect harm back on our foes, a lens to sharpen our minds against deception and a prism to divide truth from error. Let us see clearly now, with both eyes... open." I tripped up on the last couple of words, remembering what I was here to do. Did I have any right to petition the Great Maker for protection and clarity, when I was here specifically to replace my eye of glass with one forged from what I presumed would be deemed the most abominable magics?
"Looks like they're going," Skids said in a regular conversational voice.
I realised I'd taken my eye off the Titans and looked back to see what had developed. The passengers of the other carriage had sorted themselves into two separate groups. The Titans strode in step towards the stairs, while the mages followed more sedately.
"Shall we join up with the other group?" I asked Swipe, who was behind Skids and I with the rest of the team.
"We're in our riding clothes and need somewhere to change. Thall aren't," Swipe replied. "Does anyone know if the facilities are upstairs, or downstairs?"
"Up," Punnt said, pointing to the closest wall. "No doors down here."
One of the other mages — a hexmage, I deduced from the prominent violet arm tattoos and hair ties — glanced back at us. After a moment he stopped and looked back a second time.
I had a bad feeling about where this was headed.
An exchange of excited shouts brought the other, larger group of mages back from the foot of the stairs. I recognised the words 'Cheesy Goodness' and it didn't sound like the adulation of fans. Leaning closer to Skids, I whispered, "You've got your aetherrailer in your bag, right?"
"Of course," Skids whispered back.
Swipe pushed between us, putting she's self between the newcomers and the rest of the team. "It had better stay in your bag," she hissed to Skids as she passed.
"You're right, that is Swipe and the rest of the cheeses," a boisterous drone from the middle of the pack said, loud enough to be heard over the other voices. "A very happy Winterfest to yall."
"The same to yall," Swipe replied, but genuinely. "From what hive do you hail?"
"Yiwarra," dro said, not surprising me at all. "Most of us are."
I quickly counted heads and came to thirteen. This wasn't great for us.
"Any from Gulidang?" Swipe asked hopefully. If anyone who supported the team we'd helped win was present, then the situation wasn't quite so bad for us.
"Nah, I heard the Gulies and the Ganas aren't heading up this way until tomorrow."
"Ah," Swipe said, sounding as disappointed as I felt. "Since you know our names, may I have yours?"
"Spann Dro," dro said.
"And I'm Flips He," said the hexmage who'd first recognised us.
"Would you two please hurry this up?" said a carer on the edge of the group. "I don't have time for your petty chroma rivalries."
I felt some relief on hearing that. We might not be as heavily outnumbered as I'd thought.
"Take off if you want. See if I care," Flips snapped.
"You might get separated from the group."
Flips shrugged. "See previous answer."
"Yeah," Spann added. "If you don't want to be here, then you know how it feels for us."
Punnt stepped forward. "Not so keen on being here either? I think half of us are only here to keep the other half out of trouble. What about you two?"
"We lost a bet," Flips said, almost spitting out the words. "Thanks to you lot."
"Hey, cool it!" the carer said more harshly than before. "We're guests here, and I'm sure the Titans will end any fight you start. Now let's get a move on!"
Spann and Flips turned thall's backs and completely ignored our presence. It was very rude behaviour, but it was a significant improvement on what we'd all feared might happen.
"Sorry about thall," the carer said, shrugging helplessly as ra's acquaintances began scaling the stairs. "I'll try to keep them in line but you'd do well to keep an eye out for trouble. Oh, I'm Milli Ra."
"Thanks, Milli" Swipe said. "We'll be sure to keep that in mind."
The Titan travellers were now long gone, so we all hurried up the stairs as quickly as was safe. Cheesy Goodness received directions to the private facilities we needed from another set of tubular statues and we took turns at changing into nicer clothes.
"Looking good, Charity," Skids said as we regrouped. "The white shawl over the dark blue dress is a strong contrast. Where'd you get that idea?"
"My friend Kim wears a lot of shawls. She always claimed they were to keep the sun from burning her pale skin, but there was no chance of that regardless. She just liked wearing extra accessories to show off." I looked Skids' choice of outfit over before commenting, "Really, a black jacket and black trousers? It's all very... standard."
Skids made a show of shrugging, demonstrating how visible sa's arm muscles were within the jacket's closely fitted sleeves. "It was simple and I know it works for me. No need to stress about it."
"Come along, you two," Swipe said, reminding me that we had somewhere important to be. She was wearing a loose coverall in a lighter blue than my dress, and the sleeve flapped as she raised she's arm. "It's that way," she said, pointing along the tunnel. Unlike the one we'd first entered, this one ended in a doorway, not a blank wall. "The elevator goes to the surface, not to Titan Hub Gold."
"Makes sense," Skids said. "Not connecting the Loop station directly to the place it's servicing would be needlessly inconvenient."
The rest of us paid little attention as we were already walking. The double door slid apart as we drew close, revealing more plain tubular tunnel beyond it. It was a light grey rather than pure white, which dispite its mimimalism was a pleasant change of scenery. There were no side passages or stairways visible, but the tunnel was long enough that there could be some beyond our view.
We walked onward for a few minutes. I saw Skids growing increasingly nervous beside me. "Don't worry, it'll be fine," I said quietly, but it didn't have much effect on my friend's demeanor.
"What if—" sa began, but I cut that off before sa could build up any momentum.
"Don't. There's no point in worrying about what might happen, Skids. What happens, happens. This isn't a fight or a chroma game. There's no need to plan to win. There's nothing to win, or lose. Just some things to learn. And if you don't like what you learn, we'll go home and drink far too much Crystal Bop."
Skids attempted a weak grin. "Thanks, Charity."
We'd arrived at another set of doors. These were slower to open than the ones at the other end. Perhaps it was a security measure, or for drama. If it was the latter, I found the result disappointing. While the space beyond was vast, nothing in it looked particularly interesting.
That was perhaps a harsh initial judgement on my part. There were certainly many interesting people milling about. Some were mages and most were Titans, in a wide and wild variety of outfits. Some were similiar to the ones we'd first seen leaving the Loop carriage, and others were as different from them as day was from night. Some wore diaphonous gowns, while others were clad in something like a high quality refinement of chroma armour. From the light and easy way the latter group moved, the 'armour' seemed far more decorative than protective. I knew better than to discount its protective value, however. Looks were especially deceiving in this place.
The deceptiveness of looks was particularly on display before me, as everyone present appeared to be fascinated by absolutely nothing of note. Mages and Titans alike were circulating between booths and tables which I expected to have incredible wares on display. But there was nothing. I'd also expected to see Winterfest decorations galore. Against all sense, the entire warehouse-sized atrium was plain grey. There was more to see in my own austere bedroom back in the Wilison home. And yet everyone present acted completely entranced by all the nothing the Titans had put on offer.
"Uh... am I missing something?" asked Broth from behind me.
"The architecture is... mildly interesting, I guess," Scaff added. "This is not what I expected."
"Ah, new travellers, welcome," said an unfamiliar voice beside and below us. No, not below, but the speaker was very short. I looked down to see the shortest adult man I'd ever seen. He was as short as my youngest brother Chace, with extremely pale skin, short reddish hair, a kind smile, and wise green eyes. I could count on the fingers of my hand the number of people I knew with green eyes, and I wasn't sure whether these were natural or otherwise. Perhaps nothing about this man was natural. Perhaps everything was.
"Er, hello," I said in the absence of anyone else knowing what to say. "I'm Charity."
"And I am Elmadillo. Am I correct in thinking this is your first visit to a Titan installation?" His voice was deeper than I'd anticipated.
"Yes. Is that obvious?"
"Oh yes, it's quite obvious," he said without making me feel judged. "You have the look of people expecting to see something that isn't there. I can help you with that."
Swipe stepped forward to take charge. "Elmadillo, I'm Swipe She, and I'm... nominally responsible for this group. How can you help us?"
Elmadillo smiled and motioned us forward as if inviting us into a child's innocent conspiracy. "If you take a look at the other mages in this atrium, you may notice that each one is wearing a rather fine pair of glasses. These allow the wearer to see more than what is physically present. Think of the glasses like those primitive devices you call scryers. There is a vast wealth of information and decoration around us, but you lack the means to see it."
"The Titans aren't wearing any glasses," I noticed.
"Well spotted!" Elmadillo said, grinning more widely. "We don't need external means to see into the realm we've woven for ourselves. The glasses are for the benefit of our visitors who lack certain enhancements. And for our children."
"These glasses sound very valuable," Swipe said, implying that we wished to know if there would be any cost.
"Indeed they are, which is why they are only rented, not given."
"Rented," Swipe repeated. "And what form of payment do you take for this rental?"
"The thing that we value most," Elmadillo said. "Stories! In return for your own set of these glasses, simply tell me a few minutes of your personal history."
"Each of us? That will take a while," Swipe said, sounding dubious about the logistics.
"Don't worry!" our host said, pulling a fistfull of glasses out of a pouch on his belt. "You can go first, then I'll give each of you a pair with the understanding that you'll talk as we walk."
"As hidden costs go, a personal story doesn't seem too steep," Swipe said. "Is everyone fine with this?"
None of us offered any objections. It seemed more than reasonable to me.
"Alright then," Elmadillo said, rubbing his hands together. "Start talking."