"They sip the vial daily, not for ease, but to harden.
The draught burns, it festers, it roots a cancer where thought dares not tread.
They drink what the masses cannot hold, laugh at idleness, warp into shapes the world cannot name.
In the end, we are dealt the card we are given—such is the fate of a Philosopher."
The train wasn't just a train. It rolled out of the haze like a god cast down through the devil's ash. We never saw the whole shape, only the dust boiling around it, but you could feel the speed in your teeth.
The car—three others rattling behind me—felt more beast than machine. Think SS Jaguar 100 gone feral, only this thing breathed steam and rune-fire. Rube had tricked the coil boiler to light in thirty seconds flat. Spark rune on the firebox rim, accel runes screaming off the axles. Burn too long, they'd fry. Then you're dead weight.
Steering rune slips? You lock up mid-chase. Boiler governor jams? You're sitting on a bomb. Every pothole could crack a wheel if the binding rune faltered.
Crew's two: driver up front, runner with ink-stained hands scrambling to scrawl new glyphs before the old ones burned out. Without that, the beast dies. With it—hell, it runs like something outlawed by god.
The throttle lever slammed forward, runes sparking along the engine veins. The car screamed, metal tearing against the railbed, sparks flying like tracer fire.
Daemon leaned out of the roofless frame, wind shredding his hair. He smirked, teeth glinting.
"Aight… bet. Let's see if this bastard train can keep up."
Charmevolé didn't even glance at him. His hands were carved into the wheel, eyes locked on the steel maw of the train. Not a flicker of caution. Not a shred of care for the chaos trailing behind them.
The engine box pulsed, The rune-stone box in the engine bay pulsed once—then flared white-hot. The car jolted—speedometer needle trembling past the limit, steam hissing from every stressed joint.
Daemon's boots dug into the frame. The cargo door yawned ahead.
"Time to hop," he muttered, grinning like the world was a joke.
Charmevolé lashed a grappling hook toward the train's rear door. Rope flared with a binding rune, rope singing with every inch of stress.
Then the world slowed. Daemon launched, air dragging him like silk, twisting into the doorframe. Charmevolé's eyes didn't flinch—he was already calculating the next move.
From nowhere,another engine roared—a banshee scream cutting through the dust, a flaming car tore into the scene. The driver laughed maniacally, fire licking metal, wings of flame trailing behind.
"Ha! You see this?!" Daemon yelled over the roar, already inside the cargo car. "This motherfucker's burning and still racing us!"
The rival slammed into a rock, launched airborne, smashing Charmevolé's car. Door scattered, metal screaming. The Binding Rune shrieked and cracked, fire-blue electricity snapping into the night.
Charmevolé didn't flinch. His car was falling back, sliding on stress and failure, but he didn't give a fuck. The prize inside that train? That was all that mattered.
Daemon twisted inside the cargo hold, grin wide, shoulder pressing against steel.
"Yup. Bet. We're still alive. But this? This is ours, and I'm takin' it."
Charmevolé's voice cut through the chaos, low and deadly:
"Keep up, or die. I don't care which."
Daemon laughed, blood on his teeth.
"Neither do I."
The train roared ahead, fire trailing. Unknown drivers, burning engines, and shattered cars littered the path—but neither Daemon nor Charmevolé gave a single damn. It was them, the train, and the prize. Everything else was just smoke.
The car barreled into the black throat of the train, flames licking its metal skin, engine screaming, runes snapping along the hood. Daemon's bloodied hands clawed at the twisted railings, knuckles cracking, as sparks spat in every direction. The impact wasn't violent—it was wrongly smooth, as if the train had swallowed the car whole. No splintered metal, no shattered door—just smoke curling around him like a soft funnel, hiding everything.
He swung his legs, dragging himself onto the roof, the heat from the engine under his boots blistering the skin. Every step left a scarlet imprint across the metal, smoldering red against black steel. The night air whipped around him, ragged and thick with smoke. Blood ran down his temple, dripping into the dark abyss of the train.
Sixteen carriages stretched ahead. Moonlight slashed through the fog, reflecting off something grotesque—a shadow with skeletal wings, white and cross-like, red mucus drooling from places that shouldn't exist. Daemon froze, chest heaving, but felt only a calm numbness. The shape did not move. There was nothing to fear, only observation, before he descended into the smoke-choked interior, letting the shadows swallow him.
Behind him, the convoy screamed after the train. Four cars, engines keening, headlights stabbing fog like lances. On the nearest, Charmevolé sat perched atop the hood-windscreen, posture immaculate despite the chaos. His hands were clasped together—not praying, but measuring, calculating. One leg tapped the scorching metal of the engine, syncing with the knocking pistons. Steam hissed from his polished shoes each time he shifted weight. The edges of his coat flared with fire, tie loosened, first button undone, collar whipping like a banner.
The car tore through fuel at maximum speed, smoke streaming off the chassis, coiling around Charmevolé like a living cape. Crescent moonlight struck his hair, his shoulders, and the ends of his burning coat, making him look like a sovereign astride a beast of flame.
"Closer," he commanded.
The other three cars fanned outward, chains snapping from grappling hooks, latching to the rails. Sparks lit the night like veins of lightning. Charmevolé finally stood and took steps closer, each footprint he left where red and brilliant, a veil of smoke twisting around him rushing behind him as if it were a cape, coat tails ablaze, eyes steady, hands clasped, leg tapping in impatient rhythm against the searing steel.
It was time to leave the throne. The Throne of Rust and Ruin.
Charmevolé reached the end of the carriage, hand meeting smooth, cold steel where a door should have been. No seam, no handle, nothing. He scanned the length of the car. The metal looked pristine, impossibly undamaged. A cold dread settled in his gut. What in tarnation was going on?
Through the swirling night fog, a grey figure crouched on the roof of the last car. His form was a mute silhouette, a shadow carved from stillness, long black hair whipping violently in the moonlit gale. He coiled like a predator, every muscle tensed, ready to spring. From within that shroud of grey, two embers of molten red flared—the eyes. Predatory intent burned through them, pinning Charmevolé where he stood.
He was alone in this world.
Until two more eyes opened.
They weren't human. Vast, golden, vertical-slit eyes, ancient and aware, blinked in the darkness. The illusion shattered. The rumble beneath the train shifted into a guttural groan—the sound of a continent uncoiling. The carriage walls cracked; smooth steel peeled back to reveal shimmering, iridescent scales beneath. Charmevolé's tie, torn loose by the impossible wind, whipped past his face and vanished into the night.
The world tilted. The four anchored cars began to rise, carried upward as if by a colossal serpent raising its head.
Charmevolé stayed unshaken. One foot planted firmly on the cracking windscreen, the other bent high, resting on the headlight housing. The pose was absolute, arrogant, commanding—like a predator atop its kingdom. The wind of ascent tore at his tattered mantle, coat tails and collar whipping, but he remained motionless, hands joined in that calculating, bloating rhythm. Smoke from the engine rose in coils around him, like a living cape, curling over his shoulders, over his back, into the night.
The king atop the serpent revealed himself. Muted blue-grey skin drank the moonlight, red fissures pulsing beneath the surface like rivers of molten lava. The mantle clung in tatters, leaving his torso bare, sculpted, veins of light tracing the curves of muscle. His hair whipped in violent arcs, eyes blazing molten crimson bleeding into gold, pupils narrowing to slits that could pierce the stars.
He was not riding the storm. He was the storm. From the crown of the serpent,he looked down, the world trembling beneath him, and for a heartbeat, the stars themselves seemed to bend away from his gaze.
Charmevolé, perched atop the vertical hood, engine screaming beneath him, remained a sovereign of fire and steel. One leg high, one planted, cape of smoke and flame twisting in the gale, hands folde, legs in sync, surveying the impossible scene. The molten eyes of the serpent-king met him for a heartbeat—and in that glance, Charmevolé knew: this was no ordinary fight. This was standing atop chaos itself, and the world belonged to whoever could command it.
And from that height, above fire, smoke, and steel, with the four cars anchored around the serpent's colossal body, Charmevolé exhaled slowly, letting the aura of the moon, the wind, and the roaring engines feed him. The throne was no longer his to claim—it was time to see who would survive it.
Daemon pushed deeper into the burning haze. The air stung his throat, smoke rising in sheets that curled and folded like living things. He coughed once, squinting—then froze.
Through the red haze stood the Craig. Or what was left of it.
The rival's car sat ahead, its frame still burning, wheels buckled in molten iron. No driver. No screams. Just the shell, glowing like a funeral pyre left abandoned in the middle of nowhere.
Daemon crept past it, boots crunching on glass that wasn't there. Each step echoed wrong, as if the sound was swallowed before it reached his ears.
Then the smoke turned. Not drifting, not swaying—rushing. The whole cloud convulsed toward him, swallowing space. His chest lurched as gravity flipped; he staggered, arms windmilling. The world dropped out from under him.
He wasn't falling alone. The Craig groaned, metal shrieking as the burning wreck pitched with him, dragged downward by the invisible pull.
For a heartbeat, he thought it would crush him flat—until the narrow square of a vent snapped into view, like the train itself had coughed up an escape. He slammed through, metal tearing at his shoulders, the burning wreck screaming past overhead as he crashed into cold tile.
A bathroom. White porcelain, brass fittings. The silence was obscene after the roar.
Daemon spat, expecting soot. Nothing. His coat, his boots, even his hands—clean. Not a trace of smoke or blood. He scowled. "Weird."
He kicked the vent aside and slipped into the corridor. Rows of closed cabin doors stretched before him, all perfectly untouched. Too untouched.
An empty seat waited inside one. He slid in fast, casual, crossing his legs like he belonged there. Across the aisle, a young man looked up, panic twitching at his mouth. Daemon pulled his coat back just enough to let the pistol glint.
"Shhh. Don't even think it."
The man swallowed whatever he was about to say.
Daemon leaned back. That's when the waitress appeared—apron crisp, tray balanced, voice sharp as a bell.
"And what shall you be having, sir?"
Daemon's smile twitched. He drummed a finger against the hidden pistol, just once, and said,
"Surprise me."