Hammer on steel sang like a newborn heartbeat across the Darshan capital. Sparks shot into the air as dwarven smiths crouched over incandescent rails, their beards singed by hot embers but their eyes aglow with passion. Human engineers worked at their side, measuring, marking, sketching, scratching chalk on boards and stone.
And standing tall in the midst of it all—cloak back over his shoulder, sleeves rolled up high—Sharath commanded the turmoil with the same attention to detail he used to bring to his laboratories.
"Place the tracks at three degrees here," he ordered, indicating where a curve dipped too sharply. "The engines can't pull steep inclines without stress. Marcel—bracing the supports with your alloy."
The Dwarven Emperor Marcel grunted, his granite-hard frame displacing surprisingly easily for a man of stone and steel. "Already done," he said, banging the glowing ingot against the bottom of the rail. Runes burst where his hammer hit, and the steel blazed with bluish stability.
The first rails of the world beyond history stretched out to the horizon. They were not yet extensive, no longer than a few dozen miles from the Darshan capital towards the mountains of the dwarves, but their building seemed like witnessing fate etch itself into the land's bones.
People stood on the half-built embankments, awed as giant machines—fearsome black monsters that blew smoke and fire—were built piece by piece. These were not like the delicate tricycles or balloons that Sharath had shown them before. These were giants. Iron carriages as thick as armor, wheels as tall as men, pistons as large as battering rams.
The world was becoming an age of iron.
The Secret Within
Something that none of the other empires was aware of, something even the elves and beastmen were not privy to, was that within the heart of Darsha itself, another web of tracks was in construction.
These rails did not go outwards but inwards—stretching cities, linking ports, and burrowing under mountains. They would hold the empire together more strongly than sinew and bone. Where caravans used to take weeks, trains would take hours. Grain would arrive in starving towns before famine could take hold. Troops could move across provinces quicker than any foe could respond.
Marcel stood alongside Sharath one night, both of them disguised to keep away from prying eyes, looking down at the underground rail tunnels burrowed below the palace.
"You're tempting the gods with such secrecy," Marcel growled, drinking from a flask of burning liquor. "If the others discover we construct within as well as between, they'll wail treason."
Sharath's eyes sparkled with the light of the torch. "They'll bawl no louder than they already do when they see my balloons ascend or my engines growl. Let them bawl. Progress will not tarry for politics."
The dwarf laughed. "Aye. A true son of industry, by the sound of it."
The two shook forearms, making their secret bond.
In the Shadows – Goblins' Theft
Far to the east, in smoke-black caverns reeking of sulfur, another was heard: the rattle and cough of pilfered engines.
The goblins had pilfered one of Sharath's tricycles at the great summit, sneaking it piece by piece through secret tunnels. They took it apart for months, poring over its every bolt and piston, writing runes in their own angular script across dirty parchment black with soot.
Initially, their efforts were unsuccessful. Engines blew up, burning flesh and leaving mangled corpses. Wheels went round loose, shattering legs. Crude oil flooded into clogged cylinders and burst into fire.
But goblins were nothing if not resolute.
One evening, far within the warrens, a goblin chieftain named Krall clicked his claws in victory as a fresh device wheezed, clanked, and then—miraculously—moved ahead. It was not Sharath's graceful tricycle. It was more hideous, smaller, a two-wheeled monstrosity with serrated metal teeth for gears and pipes puffing green smoke.
But it worked.
Krall screamed with joy, climbing up on the machine and staggering forward into the cave. His family screamed with victory, striking drums of bone and metal. The goblins had created their first engine-driven cycle.
There was still one issue: fuel. Crude oil was too thick, too gritty. Their engines gagged on it. They required refining—petroleum, kerosene, lighter oils.
And so, with plans as wicked as their knives, they turned to the Beastmen.
The Beastmen Refineries
Ronan of the Beastmen had not forgotten Sharath's silver-coin deal for barrels of crude. What had once appeared a useless black goop now shone with promise. His fields were full of rivers of the stuff—swamps bubbling, pits running over.
With stolen dwarven manuals from past wars and elven fire magic traded from roaming mages, the Beastmen started their first crude refineries. Iron pyramids rose in their grasslands, spewing smoke as oil was boiled, separated, distilled. The labor was crude, inefficient, but it yielded better than crude: lighter oils, tar, even early types of petroleum.
The goblins, as stealthy as darkness, made secret offers of alliance. They would steal the petroleum the Beastmen deemed worthless and offer gold, iron, and ruin as recompense. Ronan himself never signed the agreement—either he did not know, or he chose to ignore what lesser chieftains traded in darkness.
And thus the engines of the goblins thundered to life anew, their clunky two-wheelers racing through the darkness, raiders borne by them quicker than horses across the steppes. The world knew nothing yet.
The Elves and the Trees
But meanwhile, the elves had accepted Sharath's offer with a gravity that amazed even him. Along each corridor of rail proposed between realms, elven druids trod the paths, planting magical seeds in the earth.
Trees grew overnight, like a green border along the iron roads. The iron roads ran through tunnels of leaves, iron rails under an arch of branches weighed down with fruit.
"Your engines may nourish the body of the world," the Elven Queen said to Sharath next time they met, "but our trees will mend its lungs.
And within their own empire, the elves started something new: mandatory schooling. Schools were opened not just for the nobly-born, but for all children, elven or half-elven. And lanterns blazed at night in their halls, because "night studies" had been borrowed from Sharath's empire, where laborers who could not attend during the daylight now learned by moonlight.
There was a revolution of culture brewing, and it had been ignited not by war, but by glimpsing Darshan schools.
The First Engine Rolls
Finally, after months of toil, the first train was ready. Its iron mass lay across the capital's platform, steam spewing from its seams, runes softly luminescing down its sides. Citizens packed the square by tens of thousands, shoulder to shoulder.
Sharath ascended the ramp of the platform, robes now replaced by leather engineer's attire. His hands were smudged with soot, his hair slick with sweat. Before his people, he stood not as emperor but as builder.
"Today," he bellowed, his voice carried by magical amplifiers, "we do not just build a road. We open an age."
The crowd erupted.
He lifted his hand. The engine thundered in response, pistons slamming, steam blowing. Slowly, the huge train creaked forward, rolling along the tracks, picking up speed. Children cried out in wonder as the iron monster tore past, faster and still faster, until it disappeared beyond the city gates.
Sharath shut his eyes, and he saw for an instant the future: iron veins sprawling across continents, joining kingdoms together, transmitting commerce, troops, and ideas at rates unimaginable.
But he did not behold, not yet, the darkness-hulled two-wheelers racing through goblin sewers, fed on purloined oil, starved for war.