coldpyr0

Apologies for the nearly year long silence. I pretty much burned out at work with an increased workload and COVID. I've been writing or tweaking the story, and generally figuring out the next story arc I want to go with, in my free time. I'm going to start posting the chapters I am pretty much satisfied with to end this arc and set up the next one I have decided on, expect around two chapters a week I would say. Thanks for reading and enjoying the story. Feel free to ask questions or make suggestions in the comments!

I stepped out of my carriage into a busy square situated in an area of the mountain on the southwestern side that had been opened out to the forest just below it. Not too far away from me hovered a chain of rather round train cars, resting on top of a thick steel central track that was level with the ground here in the square but proceeded out into the open in a straight line above the trees, towards the Traisanian capital. We'd be expanding the total number of lines here and to other countries from there as agreements were reached, I wasn't letting them take much of the ownership or profits of this venture as it would be almost exclusively employing dwarven engineers and enchanters as maintenance and operation personal, each country would be allowed to staff the stations and take a cut of the ticket sales though.

My team of elite dwarven engineers and enchanters had finished the development and testing of an Ether-powered propulsion and levitation engine not very long ago, very similar to what would be called a mag-lev train back home. Except this system didn't require super-magnets or any real special materials outside of somewhat large Earth attributed gems. We were still tuning it, so it couldn't reach the same kinds of speeds yet but we would slowly get there over time.

The amazing thing about what my men and women had built was that each car had its own propulsion, meaning that all the cars in the chain contributed their power to the whole. We could reduce or increase the number of cars depending on the total expected passengers on any given day. We even had different class cars with different costs, the cheapest cars would be standing cars that could fit nearly 50 people comfortably with enough personal space for everyone. The best part is that a rider could upgrade their ticket to a better car if they elected to donate some of their personal Ether to the operation of the train, we would always have enough enchanters in place to power the whole thing of course but allowing them to keep extra Ether on hand for emergencies was never a bad idea and we gave people a discount on better seating as a result. A classic win-win.

I slowly climbed atop the stage just next to the lead car and looked out over the crowd, mostly consisting of the average dwarven citizen and a few high-level nobles from the nearby kingdoms that were free, interested, and speedy enough to arrive here after the notice. Most of them were likely interested in knowing how it worked after the talks we opened up with the notice to begin construction on other lines to and between interested countries. Of course, they would have to discuss border taxes and all of those annoying details between each other as we just provided the method and didn't much care how they dealt with each other's populations moving about. A plan was in the works to include stock cars as well once they had agreements in place for the large-scale movement of goods, this should help some of the more agriculturally poor regions with food or landlocked nations with fresh maritime products.

Once at the podium I waved to the nearby performers to end the festive music they were playing and cleared my throat for my speech. "I would like to welcome all my hardworking countrymen and women, along with our foreign visitors of noble or common descent, to the unveiling of the future. Soon, travel to distant regions will not be a harrowing adventure of adversity and peril. New products, services, or even friends will be a modest few hours away. Let us all welcome the first glimpse of the future with this grand opening of our ETHER CARAVAN COMPANY!" I spread my arms wide just as the crowd became energetic.