A Trickle of Soulfyre

Chapter 3 - Delay

There had to be some dark magic at play, something as insidious and powerful as Queen Rayn. Why else would Lyrani's train be delayed? She blinked as the announcer's airy voice faded out, leaving everyone on platform 3 to sink into chaos.

A dizzying dread pressed in around Lyrani. She clutched at the edge of her wooden seat to steady herself.

She had to be dreaming. If anything, this had to be a nightmare, conjured from the darkest depths of the Spirit Realm as punishment for the most atrocious crimes, but when Lyrani exchanged glances with the confused passengers around her, she realised this was really happening.

Lyrani's briefing was in less than two hours, and her train was delayed indefinitely. If she reached Yidelhorn later than she had planned, she'd be escorted to Vlitavia later as well. Lord Dundor wouldn't be impressed with her tardiness, but that was the least of her problems. Nash's life was at stake, and Lyrani was stuck here until her plans realigned themselves.

Lyrani fumbled in her backpack for her call crystal. The least she could do was call Nash to tell him about the unintentional change in plans. She tapped the gleaming surface of the deep blue stone.

"Nash Astor," she murmured, but the crystal's surface remained still and dark, the air above it mockingly empty of the one face she would give anything to see.

Her stomach twisted. The last time she'd had this inexplicable disconnection of her call crystal, Queen Rayn had been lurking nearby, obstructing Lyrani's investigation in every way her spectral form could.

She was gone, banished to the Spirit Realm and probably long wilted in the floral form she had assumed when she returned to the living, but any other enemy could step in to take her place. Lyrani had plenty of those, many who were dead, many she wouldn't trust to remain so.

A few seats down the row from where Lyrani sat, a goblin with a monocle and thinning white hair tutted. "I have been taking the train for two hundred years now, and never has it experienced technical difficulties." He turned to the banshee beside him, a slender figure in a tattered, discoloured dress with wild, tangled hair and a sallow face less wrinkled than the goblin's even though she must be far older than him. "You know, back in my day—"

The fairy behind the goblin let out a shrill shriek. "It's my sister's wedding! She's going to kill me if I'm late or—even worse—don't show. She has been planning the perfect day for nearly a year." They rested their round face in their hands. "And now I'm going to ruin it!" they wailed.

Lyrani stood. She couldn't listen to the delayed passengers whining about their misfortunes for however long it took to repair the train. Her nerves had already frayed nearly to nothing. The conversation with Morloy had done little to set her at ease. In fact, it had done the exact opposite.

She slung her rucksack across her shoulders. She needed something sweet to soak some sense into her. Her roving eyes fell on a charming storefront beneath a white and grey decorative striped awning.

Lyrani hadn't set foot in Carpe Diem since the agent who introduced her to the café was killed during a mission, but that had been over a year ago. Perhaps it was time to confront that part of Lyrani's past that she kept avoiding.

She smoothed her tunic and started towards the café, leaving the worried rumblings of her fellow passengers behind her. That did little to silence her own concerns.

Technical difficulties, the announcer had claimed, but Lyrani wasn't convinced. The trains were old, with battered cars and fraying seats. A malfunction wasn't impossible, but to Lyrani, it felt like something more. Like an omen of an ill-fated mission.

Or perhaps some unseen force was keeping Lyrani from Vlitavia longer than she needed to be. In a realm bruised by murder—some by her hand—restless spirits muddling with events in ways that seemed inexplicable to the living seemed as probable as a train breaking down due to a purely mechanical reason.