Ti Remaining: 37 Days, 05 Hours, 55 Minutes. (Status: Critical. The storm is 2 minutes away. Speed is essential.) Location: The Rust Wastes (Approaching the Serpent’s Throat).
Arthur pulled the lever.
He didn’t slide it with the grace of a pilot. He grabbed the iron handle with both hands, braced his boot against the dashboard, and yanked it back until the tal locking-pin snapped.
[System Warning: Boiler Pressure Exceeded.]
[System Warning: Mana Injectors Open.]
[Consultant Note: I hope you tightened the bolts.]
The reaction wasn’t instantaneous. For a split second, there was a vacuum of sound—a mont where the engine seed to inhale, sucking all the air out of the cabin. The pistons hesitated. The heavy steel wheels stuttered on the tracks.
"Did it stall?" Zack squeaked, his hands white-knuckled on the grab-bar.
"No," Arthur gritted his teeth, gripping the steering wheel so hard the leather creaked. "It’s mixing."
Under the hood, alchemy was happening. A canister of Alchemical Accelerant (refined from volatile fire-salts) was injected directly into the combustion chamber. Simultaneously, the Thunder-Lizard Core dumped its reserve of raw magic into the steam lines.
Physical fire t magical energy.
CRACK-BOOM.
The Iron Horse didn’t just accelerate; it convulsed.
The force of the combustion slamd everyone back into their seats. The tal fra of the vehicle groaned, a terrifying sound of rivets stretching to their yield point. The coffee mug on the dashboard beca a projectile, smashing into the rear bulkhead and showering Julian with cold, oily caffeine.
"Velocity!" Arthur shouted, his voice straining against the G-force crushing his chest.
Zack tried to read the gauge, but his glasses had slid down his nose. He pushed them up with a trembling finger. "Ninety! Ninety-five! One hundred! We just broke the century mark!"
The cabin began to vibrate violently. It wasn’t the rhythmic clack-clack of earlier. This was a high-frequency shudder that blurred their vision. The bolts holding the armor plating rattled like teeth in a skull.
HISSSSSSS.
A jet of white, scalding steam erupted from the floorboard near Arthur’s feet.
"Gasket!" Arthur scread, lifting his legs to avoid being boiled. "The pressure blew the flange on the intake valve!"
The cabin instantly filled with hot, wet fog. Visibility dropped to zero. The temperature spiked.
"We’re losing compression!" Arthur yelled, coughing in the steam. "If that pressure drops, we lose speed! If we lose speed, the storm eats us!"
"I can’t see!" Vivian shouted from the back. She was coughing, waving her hand to clear the steam. "It’s boiling in here!"
"Julian!" Arthur barked. "Shield! Now!"
"I am a sniper, not a plumber!" Julian wheezed, covering his face with his sleeve.
"Put a kinetic barrier over the leak!" Arthur ordered. "Seal the pipe! Use your mana!"
Julian scrambled forward, his eyes watering from the heat. He extended a hand toward the hissing rupture in the floor. "Aegis Minor!"
A small, translucent hexagon of violet light appeared over the burst pipe. Julian pressed down, straining. The barrier acted like a magical lid, clamping over the steam jet. The hissing stopped. The pressure gauge stabilized.
"Hold it!" Arthur commanded. "Do not let go! You are the gasket now!"
"This is undignified," Julian muttered, crouched on the floor, holding a glowing shield over a rusted pipe while vibrating at 100 mph. "I am a Noble. I am holding a pipe."
"Storm proximity!" Arthur demanded, wiping condensation off the inside of the windshield.
Zack looked at the Rear Periscope Screen. The image on the frosted glass was terrifying. The storm wasn’t just a cloud anymore. It was a wall. A vertical tsunami of purple energy and swirling dust that stretched from the ground to the stratosphere.
As Arthur watched the rearview mirror, he saw the tracks behind them disappearing. The storm wasn’t just blowing sand over them; the massive atmospheric pressure drop was ripping the iron rails out of the ground. Huge steel beams were being sucked up into the vortex, twisting like wet noodles.
"One mile!" Zack scread. "It’s gaining! Arthur, the gravity!"
"I feel it!"
The vibrations in the cabin changed. The heavy thudding of the wheels beca lighter. Floaty. Arthur felt his stomach drop. His toolkit, which was sitting on the floor, began to hover. A wrench drifted past his ear.
"We’re losing weight," Arthur realized, fighting the wheel. "The storm’s low-pressure zone is creating a vacuum lift. We’re losing traction!"
The wheels were spinning faster, but they weren’t biting into the rails. They were skimming. The speedoter wavered.
"Vivian!" Arthur yelled. "We need downforce! Get to the turret!"
"You want to shoot the storm?" Vivian asked, grabbing the ladder as she floated upward in the micro-gravity.
"No! Physics!" Arthur ordered. "Reverse the turret! Point the barrels backward and fire! Use the recoil to push us down!"
Vivian scrambled into the gunner’s seat. She cranked the heavy iron traverse wheel, spinning the Rotary Cannon until it faced the rear of the train, directly at the oncoming storm.
"Firing!" Vivian yelled.
THUMP-THUMP-THUMP-THUMP.
The cannon roared. Heavy iron railroad spikes shot into the heart of the storm. They did nothing to the weather, but Newton’s Third Law took over. Every ti a spike launched at Mach 1, the recoil hamred the vehicle downward.
Thump. Down. Thump. Down.
The wheels slamd back onto the tracks. Traction returned. The speedoter climbed again. 105 mph. 110 mph.
"Two miles to the tunnel!" Zack called out. "We’re going to make it!"
Arthur squinted through the steam-streaked windshield. The high beams cut through the orange gloom. Ahead, the flatlands ended. The ground fell away into a deep, jagged fissure in the earth—a dried-up riverbed from the pre-war era.
Spanning the gap was a bridge. It was a skeletal structure of rusted iron lattice, looking fragile and brittle against the dark sky. It hadn’t been maintained in three hundred years. Several support struts were missing.
"Bridge!" Arthur warned. "Brace for impact!"
"Is it safe?" Julian asked, his voice shaking as he held the pipe.
"It was rated for 50 tons in the First Era," Arthur said, his eyes scanning the rust. "We weigh 15 tons. But we’re hitting it at double the rated speed."
"So?"
"So we’re going to hit it so fast we might be across before it realizes it’s supposed to collapse."
"That is not how structural engineering works!" Zack scread.
"It’s close enough," Arthur muttered.
They hit the bridge. CLANG-RATTLE-CRUNCH.
The sound was deafening. The rusted tracks scread as the heavy Iron Horse thundered over them. Arthur felt the bridge sway. The entire structure dipped under their weight, bowing dangerously. Behind them, the storm hit the start of the bridge.
The wooden ties vaporized. The iron girders twisted and were sucked up into the purple vortex. The bridge was disintegrating behind them.
"Don’t look back!" Arthur shouted. "Eyes front!"
He saw a gap. Fifty yards ahead, a section of the track was missing. A ten-foot hole where the rails had rusted away completely.
"Gap!" Arthur yelled. "Hold on!"
He didn’t brake. He couldn’t brake. If he braked, they fell. He floored it.
The Iron Horse hit the gap at 112 mph. For a split second, they were airborne. A ten-ton tank flying through the air over a canyon of death. The engine roared, the wheels spinning freely in the void.
CRASH.
They landed on the other side. The front wheels caught the rail. The suspension bottod out with a sickening tal crunch. The impact threw Arthur forward, his chest slamming into the steering wheel. Sparks showered from the undercarriage as the chassis scraped the tracks.
But they were moving. They were across.
"The tunnel!" Vivian scread from the turret. "It’s right there!"
Ahead, looming out of the darkness like the mouth of a giant stone beast, was the entrance to the Serpent’s Throat. It was a massive archway carved into the base of the Black Iron Mountains. The opening was jagged, frad by collapsed scaffolding.
"We have to slow down!" Zack warned. "We can’t hit a turn at this speed! The centrifugal force will derail us!"
"If I slow down, the storm hits our tail!" Arthur argued. "We drift it!"
"You can’t drift a train!" Julian yelled.
"Watch !"
They rocketed toward the black maw of the tunnel. The storm was right on their bumper. Arthur could hear the sizzle of electricity. The rear paint was blistering from the mana-radiation.
The entrance rushed up to et them. Arthur slamd the ergency brake lever and cut the throttle simultaneously. The wheels locked. Sparks flew—a fountain of orange fire trailing behind them. The Iron Horse screeched, sliding sideways along the rails, kinetic energy fighting friction.
They slid into the darkness. Whoosh.
The rock walls swallowed them. Arthur didn’t stop. He kept sliding, deeper, deeper, until the purple glow of the storm faded from the rear view.
BOOM.
Outside, the storm smashed into the mountain face. The ground shook. Dust rained down from the tunnel ceiling. The noise was apocalyptic—a thunderclap that rattled their bones.
But the storm couldn’t get in. The mountain held.
...
The Iron Horse skidded to a halt. The engine sputtered, coughed once, and died. The boiler hissed, a long, dying exhale. Then, silence.
Absolute, crushing silence. The headlights flickered and went out. They were in total darkness.
For a long mont, nobody breathed. The only sound was the tick-tick-tick of cooling tal.
"Is everyone alive?" Arthur asked. His voice sounded small in the echo of the tunnel.
"I think so," Zack whispered.
"I am alive," Julian’s voice ca from the floor. "But I have cramps in my hand. Can I stop holding the pipe now?"
"Yes," Arthur sighed. "You can let go."
A soft pop as the magical shield dissipated. A final wisp of steam curled up.
Arthur fumbled in his pocket and pulled out a match. He struck it on the dashboard. The small fla flared up, illuminating their faces. They looked like coal miners. Their faces were sared with grease and soot. Their hair was wild. Their eyes were wide and shell-shocked.
Vivian climbed down from the turret. She looked at Arthur. She looked at the steam leaking from the pipe and the cracked windshield.
"That," Vivian whispered, a slow grin spreading across her dirty face, "was the coolest thing I have ever done."
Zack slumped back in his seat and began to hyperventilate. "I want to go ho. I want my library card. I want tea."
Arthur blew out the match. Darkness returned.
"Save your oxygen," Arthur said in the dark. "We aren’t out of this yet. We just entered the mountain."
He flipped a switch. The Ergency Interior Lights flickered on—dim, red bulbs that bathed the cabin in a submarine glow.
"Diagnostic," Arthur ordered, trying to sound professional, though his hands were shaking.
"Boiler pressure is zero," Zack read the gauge by the red light. "We blew the reserve."
"Water level?"
"Empty."
"Mana Core?"
"Overheated," Julian said, checking the readout. "It’s in thermal lockdown. It won’t restart for at least six hours."
Arthur leaned back, resting his head against the seat. "So we’re dead in the water," he summarized. "Stuck in a tunnel. Under a mountain. Halfway to the Empire."
"We’re alive," Vivian corrected, tapping her hamr against the wall. "And we have a hamr."
"And we have a train," Arthur added. "It just needs a pit stop."
He unbuckled his harness. His ribs ached where he had hit the wheel. "Zack, get the map. Julian, rest your mana. Vivian, guard the rear."
Arthur kicked the door open. It groaned, the hinges warped from the heat. He stepped out onto the rocky floor of the tunnel. The air was cool and slled of damp stone and bat guano.
He walked to the front of the Iron Horse and patted the scorching hot tal of the grill. The paint was stripped clean off the hood. The front bumper was twisted.
"Good girl," Arthur whispered to the machine.
He looked down the tunnel. The tracks continued into the blackness, winding deeper into the roots of the mountain.
"Sector 2," Arthur said to himself. "The Subterranean Line."
End of Chapter 55
User Comments
0 comments from readers