the lightning rail station is a massive collection of shops and shops and eateries and more shops and also you can catch a train there i guess
everyone showed up on time and ready to go but leali brought two surprises with her
one was a gigantic steamer trunk full of crystals storing a terrible amount of magical energy in what i've been assured is a perfectly stable manner
the other was "rakela mitelemnamaril" a colorful khorvaran fond of jewelry and swords
i pictured the lightning rail as more like the steam engine trains back home but that's because i failed to take into account how they overdo everything here
take that concept but scale it up by four in each direction so i'm not even exaggerating when i say that each car is the size of a large house
there is a single car specifically for our group and it has eight sleeping rooms and a modest kitchen and a dining table and and and and how can this actually be a train car
somehow when it's moving it doesn't really feel like it even when the track curves so you have to look out the windows to get any sense of motion
but i can tell when it's running because every time it passes over a "conductor stone" there's a bass thump like the top popping off of a grain silo (long story) and there's a surge of magic that rattles my teeth
i'll never complain about the sound of a steam engine ever again
last time leali attempted to make this trip she only had rakela and ploughshare to help
they were attacked by bandits and had to turn back
i really hope those bandits don't try anything on this trip because i have got some serious words for them about what they did to those beautiful outer plates i made for ploughshare
and by words i mean spells to hold them in place while i yell at them
and then repel them from the train at high velocity
as i've already mentioned in the past i am not all that fond of violence and i really hope to avoid it as much as possible
but i'm certainly capable of it and if they threaten any of us i will uncork such a keg of white-hot unicorn fury that they will be begging to be sent back in time so they can pre-emptively apologize to ploughshare for even just having thought of raising weapons against them
i hope for those cretins' sake that they stay away
back to more pleasant conversation
leali is obsessed with draconic prophecy so we got her talking
relic asked her whether she'd ever heard of a forged having a dragonmark and she said she hadn't but nothing in the prophecy says it couldn't happen which we already sort of knew
she explained that there are twelve major types of dragonmarks and a loose thirteenth category of "aberrant" marks
i showed her my brand of destiny and explained that pretty much every pony has a unique one and apparently that throws several of her theories out the window
i'm really beginning to think there's a more fundamental difference between khorvaire and the everglow than just the general level of empathy or lack of it
after seven hours of travel we stopped in "wroat" overnight
there was a barker going on about all the shopping opportunities in a nearby city called "galethspyre"
according to zer' he was under the psionic equivalent of a puppet spell so he could do his barker thing perfectly and on automatic which is disturbing enough that i'm not even going to discuss it further
we tried to stay at the "capitol inn" but it wasn't exactly a quiet night
it turns out that zer' is being tracked by psionic types called "inspired" who have some sort of blood feud with his people and a couple of them were looking to ambush him overnight which they did
but we were ready
readyish
okay so the others were ready and medya and i were a little starved for sleep but when some crazed biped with glowing eyes starts throwing energy blades at your pal you wake up quick
the rest of the group had a hard time actually connecting with their attacks but once they managed it the "inspired" just sort of... emptied
i don't have a better word for it
the glow left their eyes and it didn't feel like there had even been anyone in there
apparently the inspired just grow these bodies to ride around in and then skip out once they're done
still not sure how to feel about that
oh and i wasn't just singing to my horn this whole time
there was a second one of them on the way in so i set a sort of magical glue trap for them
they figured out the odds were against them and turned tail so i'm calling that a clear victory
and did i mention that the whole time we were fighting in the lobby rakela was busy foalsitting leali who was too drunk to notice the energy blade throwing and other such minor commotion
fun times
anyhow we got back on the train because those beds are just fine honestly and rakela feels it'll be safer for all involved (even those of us she's not paid enough to worry about)
at least we got most of a night's sleep
and now we're munching on baked goods and heading to "hatheril junction" so it's all good so far
forward it is right?