Penny glanced around the unfamiliar train car and frowned.

  “I do not wish to sound ungrateful for whatever strange magic has stayed the hand of Death,” she began, “but what is this strange place and why does it smell so overwhelmingly of basilisk eggs?”

  “Basilisk eggs?” Seymour sniffed the air. “More like fermented black licorice, if you ask me.”

  “Naw, bro. That’s just the stank of a soul when it gets yeeted out of its body.”

  “Oh, well that tracks, since I just had mine sucked out of me after I was forced to give it to some weird ass shadow devil dude.” He turned to Penny. “Anyway, sorry about the smell. Guess it’s just me. I sold my soul.”

  The five of them—Seymour, Penny, Jerome, Glory, and Rodney the Teacher’s Pet—had all simply found themselves sitting inside this private sleeping cabin, presumably aboard the Midnight Express. The cabin contained two black, padded bench seats mounted to the walls across from one another that could fold down into a single, roughly queen-sized bed which would take up the entire space. A sliding, black metal door led out into a corridor that was lined on either side by still more of these sleeping cabins. On the wall opposite the door, a smallish rolltop desk had been bolted beneath a porthole-style window. And outside, beyond the pane, there didn’t appear to be a goddamn thing, only an endless sea of inky black.

  “Seymour.” Penny’s forehead creased with concern. “What do you mean you’ve sold your soul?”

  “I guess it’d be more accurate to say I traded it.”

  “I think it’s more like basic collateral,” Jerome explained, “same as when your bankroll peters out and you gotta buy into the pot using your car keys or your watch or whatever.”

  “It is abundantly obvious to me that you two take great pleasure in being as obtuse as possible, but if you could please postpone your hijinx until after you have clarified how it is that we have come to be riding within this strange conveyance when my most recent memory involves being run down by it.”

  “Sorry. Long story, short: I had to trade my soul to get us on the Midnight Express, and now we’re heading to Earth. But it’ll take a little while to get there, apparently. So we should probably get comfortable.”

  “How will you survive without a soul?”

  Jerome, who had been sitting with his prickly little legs swinging off the edge of the wall-mounted desk, climbed to his feet. “The good news is: all of Seymour’s demons have already been exorcised. Pretty convenient if you ask me, because Rivulon never would have wanted his soul if it was still inhabited.”

  “Rivulon?” Penny’s expression reflected the horror in her voice as she turned to scold Seymour. “You sold your everlasting soul to the God of Unraveling?”

  “I mean, yeah? What else was I supposed to do? He held all the cards and whatnot.”

  “But like I just said, it’s not as if my boy Seymour here needs a soul anymore, any-damn-way.” Jerome strolled over to the window and peered out at the nothingness. “At least not for a while, since he ain’t got no demons in there needing to be fed. Now, maybe, if another demon decides to move in at some point – then we’d need to look into finding him another soul. But until then, we cool.”

  “This is insanity.” Penny’s familiars flanked her, and both fluttered to show that they agreed with her analysis. “Surely you can’t just go around without any soul. It’s… it’s….”

  “It’s weirder than shit,” Seymour agreed. “But this Rivulon dude—”

  “The God of Unraveling,” she interrupted to elaborate, “who is tasked with ending realities and whose voice is said to inspire incurable madness.”

  “Yeah, him. Anyway, he agreed to go double-or-nothing with me.”

  Penny closed her eyes and shook her head disbelievingly. “Now just what does that mean?”

  “It means that I can have my soul back if I bring Rivulon two more to take its place.”

  “Do I want to know how you intend to obtain these souls?”

  “Wish I could tell you, but shit if I know. Guess we’ll cross that bridge if and when we get there.” Seymour shrugged. “But so yeah, basically we got smashed by the Midnight Express and we’d be worse than dead right now if I hadn’t made this deal. Apparently the train would have just turned us into fuel and we’d have been trapped onboard forever.”

  “Just like that dork Oscar Rusk,” Jerome added without turning away from the window and the abyss beyond it.

  “The way blood magic works is really pretty simple.” Jerome had resumed his seat upon the table, with his cute little cactus legs swinging off the edge. “It’s magic, but instead of mana I use blood.”

  Seymour and Penny each sat opposite one another on the black-cushioned benches. She had set herself to the task of unloading loot from Glory, and his attention was woefully divided between his talkative cactus and the riches Penny continued to unpack.

  They had time to kill. According to Rivulon, the trip to Earth would take more than two days. To pass the hours, Seymour had decided to interrogate his suddenly chatty succulent – and Jerome was happy to oblige. Now that he owned a set of vocal cords, shutting him up had become next to impossible. And meanwhile, Penny had altered Glory’s form and it felt like she was pulling treasures from the gullet of a creature that might have been right there in the cabin with them, invisible except for the hollow of its mouth.

  “Right now, I have a potential volume of up to three units,” Jerome continued.

  “About that,” Seymour asked, “can you tell me more precisely what a unit amounts to? I know it’s blood, but how much, exactly?”

  “One unit is equal to the potential volume I had when we first met. When I was a newborn. To use one of your Earth measurements, it’s about two pints.”

  “How do you know about Earth measurements?”

  “We’re blood brothers, baby bro. I know everything you do.”

  “Then shouldn’t I already know everything you do, too?”

  “Yeah that’s pretty weird. And kinda messed up.” Jerome nodded his thumb-shaped head, which was still little more than a green nub with a black dimple of a mouth and two azure ovals which he’d manifested to serve as vestigial eyes. A narrow row of spines formed a mohawk atop the nub. “Guess a dude’s just gotta have a few secrets.”

  “Alright, well, that’s not fair. But let’s say we set it aside for the moment. Can you explain to me what makes you grow? Like, what’s the process behind that?”

  “You bet. So I need to become completely engorged, like I am right now. And then once I’m at full volume, I can consume the blood to evolve myself up a stage.”

  “And what does that mean, exactly?”

  “Well, first off I double in size. Sometimes I gain new spells. But the thing to keep in mind is that I’m always hollowed out after I bump up to the next level. My blood pool gets completely emptied, meaning I can’t do any magic shit until I get some more blood in me.” He paused a beat before continuing, voice suddenly husky with something not unlike sexual desire. “Everything always comes back to that. I need blood. Lots of it.”

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  “Sweet mercy,” Penny whispered.

  Despite her perfect timing, she wasn’t reacting to Jerome’s lust for blood. Instead, she had just drawn an opulent scepter out of Glory’s dimensional mouth. The shaft was made from some sort of kaleidoscopic resin and at the top sat an ornate flower bulb with pistils made from thousands of perfectly clear crystals.

  “I think those might be freakin’ diamonds,” Seymour muttered. Penny held the scepter out for him to look at more closely and his jaw hung open.

  “And speaking of blood,” Jerome continued, unimpressed by Penny’s score. “We need to find some way to capture one of those shapeshifting plant monsters alive.”

  “I’m sorry,” Seymour said, shaking his head to clear out the dollar signs which Penny’s scepter had planted there. “Why would we want to do that?”

  “To have a supply of its sweet ass malleable blood on hand. I’ll need to keep at least one unit in my reservoir at all times if I’m gonna continue rocking this cute little body, and baby bro – I’m keeping the body.” He climbed to his feet on the rolltop desk and looked himself over approvingly. “Come to think of it, we should probably start collecting as many exotic creatures as we can find so we can tap them for whatever weird effects their blood might give us.”

  “We’re not going to start a monster zoo just so you can drink blood from a variety of monsters.”

  “Why not?”

  “Hot damn,” Penny exclaimed as she put on her jeweler’s loupe to examine a red gemstone that was easily the size of her fist.

  Seymour blinked several times like the sight of it had caused him to malfunction. His mouth worked but no words emerged for an awkwardly long moment as he oscillated between Penny and Jerome, unable to address either. Finally, he settled his attention back on the cactus.

  “Just no. We’re not starting a monster zoo for any reason, but especially not so you can siphon from our captive attractions.”

  “I bet Dan would be into it. It’d be a big draw, I’m telling you. Maybe we could even train ‘em up a little bit and start a monster circus!”

  “We’re getting distracted. You were explaining why you attacked Oscar Rusk and then we went off on this whole tangent about the mechanics of your blood stuff.”

  “Well it’s all connected, isn’t it? Rusk was the one assigned to manage the redhouse, so I recognized him and—”

  “I’m sorry, hold on,” Seymour interrupted, “what’s a redhouse?”

  “It’s a space set up to grow sanguine succulents like myself. It must be somewhere on this train.”

  “Oh, I get it. So like a greenhouse but red, because of the blood and whatnot.”

  “Yep,” Jerome nodded, “and Rusk had things humming right along. It was only a matter of time until he unleashed his plan, so you see I simply had to put a stop to it.”

  “And what was his plan?”

  “Not one-hundred percent sure. Couldn’t have been good, though. I mean it sure seems like he was working with Rivulon, right? And the dude was cultivating a couple dozen blood cacti – that’s real bad news.”

  “And that’s it?” Seymour couldn’t believe his ears. “You killed a man based on the fact that you assumed he was up to no good because he was keeping you and your siblings alive?”

  “Well, yeah. Look, I’m realistic, baby bro. My kind just isn’t much use to anyone who isn’t evil.” Jerome chuckled but saw Seymour frown and rushed to add, “present company excluded, of course. You’re totally one of the good guys.”

  “You have got to be kidding me,” Penny murmured absently, paying zero attention to the ongoing exchange between Seymour and Jerome as she turned a gem-encrusted dragon figurine over in her hands. The glittering of its many jewels reflected in her wide eyes.

  Seymour again found himself torn between two topics, wanting more than anything to join Penny in examining the loot but knowing his more immediate need was extracting whatever information he could get out of Jerome.

  “Okay,” he began, “you killed Rusk and stole his vocal cords because you knew he was going to do something evil.”

  “Well I took the cords because I wanted to communicate beyond kissy noises, but yeah, otherwise that’s mostly right.”

  “I don’t get the sense you’re lying about any of this, and I’d be able to tell, wouldn’t I?”

  “Yep, there’s no bullshitting between blood bros, baby broseph.”

  “There’s still something I’m not really getting, though. What does the Midnight Express have to do with any of this? With Rusk and Rivulon and the uh, redhouse or whatever.”

  “Oh that’s simple. Rusk’s soul was bound to the train, and he wanted yours to replace it.”

  “So you’re saying he was planning to steal my soul, but Rivulon stepped in first?”

  “Not exactly. Rusk didn’t want to keep your soul for himself. Like who knows what nasty magics Rivulon plans to power using your soul, but Rusk probably just wanted to give it to the train.” The tiny cactus man paced over to the roll-top portion of the desk and threw it up like he was lifting a garage door. “Still does, I’d bet.”

  Setting aside for a moment that Jerome had just made it sound like Rusk was somehow still alive, Seymour watched him pick around inside the desk, unsure what the little green claymation cactus man was after. At the same time, Penny was extracting a gold-bladed wakizashi from Glory’s dimensional space. Her eyes bulged as she closely examined the crystalline hilt which appeared to be filled with electric-blue liquid mana.

  “Okay, so say this is the train.” Jerome once again ignored Penny’s display and instead dragged a half-empty inkwell out of the rolltop and onto the desk’s work surface. The inkwell came up to his waist as he stood beside it. “Well a train needs a couple things to go from place to place, right?”

  “Um, sure.”

  “First, we need tracks.” A long, quill-like spine suddenly grew from the end of Jerome’s right arm-nub. He dipped it in the ink and drew a pair of parallel lines upon the desk which ran through the well, representing the tracks. “And then it needs some sort of fuel to make its engine go. The rest of the ink inside the well there, that’s the fuel.”

  “I’m not sure I understand why any of this matters.”

  “I’m getting to it.” The spine he’d been using as a writing quill retracted back inside, leaving only a freckle of ink as proof it had ever existed. “It’s the same stuff, you see? The tracks and the fuel.”

  “I touched the tracks. They just felt like regular old metal.”

  “That’s how a soul feels outside its body.”

  “Wait, are you saying Rusk somehow removed someone’s soul and turned it into metal to make tracks for a magical train? Then why was he still trapped here?”

  “Nope, that’s not it. What I’m saying is that those tracks are made from Rusk’s own soul, the same soul that is still fueling the train right now. He’s trapped there until he can find some other loser to take his place.”

  “And so that’s it? Oscar Rusk never actually gave a shit about helping me find a way back to Earth, he just wanted to steal my soul so he could get off the train himself.”

  “Yep, sure looks that way.” Jerome explained, “any soul weaker than one belonging to an adept-rank magic-user will be incapable of resisting the train’s hunger. Like Rusk – he’s its prisoner. But someone adept-rank or higher can not only overcome the train’s will – he can make it his own. That’s how Rivulon drives it. He’s a God, which is actually a much higher rank than adept, even.”

  “If he’s so powerful, then why does he even need Rusk?”

  “He’s a God.”

  “Yeah, and?”

  “And that means he ain’t got a soul, duh. So he needs Rusk’s to fuel the train and lay down tracks.”

  “Oh. Well I didn’t know that.” Seymour paused to think. “How long can it go on? Like, how long can a soul fuel a magic train?”

  “Forever, souls are infinite.”

  “And that’s what Oscar Rusk was trying to do, then. He wanted me to take his place, possibly forever. He wanted to turn me into Rivulon’s slave.”

  “Yes indeedy. You’d have been trapped on the train, and no doubt forced to maintain the redhouse – wherever it is. For all of eternity. Just like Rusk was.”

  “And you killed him, so how does that work?”

  “Well I could only kill his body, right? I ain’t no soul sucker.”

  “So the soul keeps on living even when its body dies? What for? Is reincarnation real?”

  “Naw, it ain’t like that. You gotta start thinking of souls as a resource. They ain’t people; a soul don’t make you who you are. That’s how come you didn’t drop dead when you signed that contract with Rivulon. Souls are like a block of clay. Or like currency, for some beings, and like mana, for others.” He cocked his cactus-head quizzically. “I guess, in some ways, souls are a lot like blood.”

  “And sometimes, a soul can just be a set of train tracks.” Seymour shook his head and sighed. The conversation had started to seriously exhaust him. “I’m not sure any of this really matters all that much right now. Like, whatever game Rivulon is playing, we’re just pawns in it. But we’re alive – that’s what counts. And we’re going to Earth, which is wild. I really didn’t expect to be heading back already.”

  “Yeah, the thing to take away from all of this is that you’re now moving in the same circles as a celestial-ranked dragon and the God of Unraveling. And you ain’t cut out for that, baby broseph. So if you’re gonna keep bumping up against beings of incomprehensible power, then you’re gonna need to get a lot more powerful yourself, or you’re gonna have a real bad time.” Jerome stood behind the inkwell he’d used in his earlier demonstration like it was a lectern and he was leading a rally. “You’ve got to fill out your power set, and then you’ve got to rank everything up to adept, and then you can’t stop there. You’ve got to push up into Master, and maybe even beyond. And to do that, you’re gonna need catalysts, of course. And there’s only two ways to get those: you either take ‘em off the bodies of boss monsters, or you hunt up enough treasure to buy ‘em.”

  And as if on cue, Penny whistled admiringly as she retrieved a length of braided, golden rope as thick as her wrist from the hollow of the dimensional mouth.