Rhen pulled at his neckline, trying to get a little bit of space between himself and the stifling black dress shirt.

“You look fine, stop it,” Arannet admonished, then ran a hand over her hair to smooth it down.

“Well, I’m glad I’m up to presentation standards, but I can’t breathe,” Rhen said from the corner of his mouth, as not to garner any additional attention from the travelers waiting around them.

They were waiting on the train platform for Artimus Prenistock, the guild appointed Nexus inspector. He would be the first person outside the dungeon company—and Arannet—to use the Nexus elevator. While Rhen had ridden in it twenty times or more without issue, he was still nervous. Those nerves took the shape of heavy breathing and a mild sweat that made the nice shirt cling under his arms. It didn’t help that it was gods forsaken hot out, despite it being well into autumn. Rhen would have to talk with the goddess or the Tree of Being about that…

Jakira slipped her hand into his. “Everything’ll be fine.”

There was a loud, three-horn-blast to the right and Rhen looked around the bend of thick trees to see the front of the train poke into view. Rhen pulled on his neckline again and grimaced. He imagined Artimus stepping off the train with a disgusted scowl on his face, and that he would have an enormous, well-groomed moustache he would twirl. He would say things like, “How quaint,” and then grumble under his breath.

The train hissed to a stop and Arannet held her very precise, hand-painted sign up. The mid-morning train was light with passengers getting off at Yu, and Rhen didn’t see anyone who matched his mental description of what he assumed Artimus would look like. The passengers loaded up without an Artimus approaching them.

They waited what felt like eternity. Finally, a slender older woman, probably in her sixties, decked out in green and brown leathers with two daggers on each hip stopped in front of them. She had silver hair braided over one shoulder all the way down to her hip, and well-worn delving boots that sported active syntials on either side.

“Mr. Rhen Zephitz,” she said, hand outstretched. “Artimus Prenistock.”

“How did you know?” Rhen asked, taking her hand.

“I’ve been eagerly watching the orbeye broadcast, and the sign was a clear indicator, too,” Artimus said with a smile, gesturing to Arannet.

“Oh. Right, of course.”

“Shall we be on our way?” She headed toward the dungeon without waiting for a reply.

Jakira raised her eyebrows at Rhen in surprise. He shrugged, and followed after the inspector.

“Do you have any questions?” Arannet asked, doing well to keep pace with the obviously experienced hiker that was Artimus.

“None. I read through your submissions and exceptions. I’ve also been watching the broadcast, as mentioned. This’ll be a quick in and out, I suspect, though I wish I could stay longer,” she said with a quirky grin.

Rhen wasn’t sure what to say to that.

“You can stay as long as you like, as long as you pass the inspection, of course,” Jakira said.

Artimus spun on her heel, her face deadly serious. “Is that a bribe?”

Jakira paled, turning a light shade of gray. “N—no Mrs. Prenistock. I, I,”

“I got you,” Artimus said with a laugh, then turned back to the path ahead.

They passed the Meeting Tree and she headed down the well-worn dungeon path as if she’d walked it a hundred times herself. There were no wandering monsters about, but every time a bird cawed too loudly, or there was a snap in the underbrush, Artimus’ hand went for a dagger. Rhen had been completely wrong about the inspector.

“You’ll want to get a street paved here, or some other way to make transportation easier, but that’s not a requirement for now,” Artimus commented after several minutes of quiet walking. “Maybe a small train loop, or a ferry.”

“A train might be a bit destructive for the area,” Rhen commented.

“You plan on keeping the forest intact?”

“As much of it as possible, for as long as possible. I’ve grown to like it, though I don’t see it much. And it deters salesmen…”

Artimus chortled. “Well, if your find is as paradisical as you’ve led on, I don’t think you can hold off becoming a vacation hub for long. You’ll need to grow, soon.”

The orbeye met them at the edge of town, and the delvers, who were pretending to work, all watched with wary gazes. Rhen tried to lead Artimus to the polished metal building that sat squat on top of the hill above the dungeon entrance, but she walked just a bit faster than him to keep the lead. Rhen chalked it up to excitement… she seemed like a fan of their work.

Rhen smiled at their accomplishments. They’d made a few improvements to the orbeye broadcast station that sat adjacent to it, so it didn’t look like a complete mess up there. The elevator building looked polished and respectable, too, with tempered glass for the check-in station—currently unoccupied—and the beginnings of freestyle paintings on the flat sides.

Some of the kids of the delvers had made the first chalk drawings out of boredom, but Rhen had liked the idea so much, he commissioned some of the more artistically inclined delvers to do something more permanent. The current mural was the battle of Gigafish, with several huge cephaloshifter grappling the massive two-tailed monster.

Wyland waited just outside the elevator build to explain everything, but Artimus cut him off short. “I know, I know. Our engineers have double and triple checked everything. Let’s get down there.”

“Well, okay then,” Wyland said with a chuckle. “Gerald over here is always askin’ me about my designs and how they work. Nice change of pace.”

Rhen inhaled sharply at the strange look in Artimus’ eyes.

“How many names do you have, Mr. Zephitz?” she asked with a playful scowl.

Rhen blew out his cheeks and rolled his eyes exaggeratedly. “Too many. Everyone just calls out any old name to address me.”

They all laughed, lifting the strange tension.

Artimus, Arannet, and Jakira lead the way inside. Wyland stayed behind, holding Rhen back for a moment.

“I know who you are,” Wyland said with a troubled scowl. “I just get a little confused sometimes.”

Rhen patted Wyland’s shoulder, his heart aching. “I know.”

The orbeye flitted into Rhen’s periphery and he glared. It was another one of those moments he wished wasn’t broadcasted to everyone. The orbeye moved on, following Jakira.

“Is there anything we can do for you?” Rhen asked in a low voice.

Wyland’s scowl deepened. “There’s things I can do, things I can take for it, but it made my mind faster… too fast for workin’ on hard problems, if that makes sense.”

Rhen didn’t understand completely, but he nodded. “Will you tell me about Gerald sometime?”

Wyland smiled. “Yeah, sometime. Let’s go, sonny. Don’t want to keep that whip-crack inspector waiting!”

“I doubt she’ll wait,” Rhen said under his breath.

Wyland chuckled and hobbled his way inside. It was dark inside since the glass blocked much of the sunlight and they hadn’t installed lights yet, or anything really. The interior was somewhat modeled after the lobby for the civil affairs building, though completely unfurnished as of yet. There was space along the walls for two rows of twelve seats, which could fill two elevators. Eventually they’d expand it to four rows, and then six for their final design that would be able to accommodate about six-hundred passengers an hour—which was well over what Desedra managed.

The lobby branched off at one side, for the “Return” elevator to have go-between access to the “Departure” elevator, just in case someone left something behind and needed to interrupt the flow to go back. The design team, Arannet, and Rhen had all sat around a table for at least eight hours, thankfully broken up in four two-hour chunks, to try to think of everything the transport building might need to accommodate.

The group made their way through the short hallway that led back to the departure elevator and Artimus pushed the button to open the doors. The metal vault unlocked with several clicks and whirrs, then opened. Little drips of water fell from the ceiling of the portal, since the whole transportation tube was pressurized water—a last minute adjustment from Rend that helped immensely with the power problem.

It’d been a little harder finding an appropriate material to make the door seal, but deep in the rainforest chamber they’d discovered a tree with sap that when heated, could be formed into any shape and maintain pliability as well as having water resistance. It was as if, once again, the dungeon provided for Rhen.

Artimus stepped into the elevator and walked around the many seats of the spherical compartment. She pushed her weight from side to side and the flat, sliding platform moved a little with her. “Very interesting.”

“It’s so the seats’ll rotate independently of the orientation of the lift pod,” Wyland said. “Since it loops around at the bottom, didn’t want everyone to be haf’in to be upside down for the trip back!”

“Indeed.” Artimus nodded and sat down in one of the wide seats.

The arm rest of the chair rippled with blue anima, reflecting along her arm, down her body, and along her thigh. The light faded and the chair compressed to fit her shape. Two straps crisscross over her chest and hooked in at her hips, and then another wrapped over her waist, securing her.

“Oh!” she exclaimed as the straps clicked tight and secured her.

“Lowt’s design, pretty cool, right?” Jakira asked as she took a seat. The chair scanned her body and shifted, opening a hole at the back that let her tail slide through, but then pulled it up under the chair and out of the way.

Wyland pressed the button to close the doors and begin the departure countdown. It was even darker in the pod, something they’d fix soon, but just the countdown glow lit up the space. They all took their seats and were strapped in. Rhen liked the way the belts secured him into the well grooved chair. It at least felt very safe, and he was promised by Lowt, Rend, and Wyland alike that it was. Riding in it now twenty-one times, he believed them.

There was a mechanical click-clack and the pod detached from the port. They entered the flow of the water with a jostle that had Artimus holding her straps harder. Low-gravity lightness filled Rhen’s stomach as they dropped the first few dozen feet, and then settled into the flow. The timer ticked down to seven minutes remaining.

“Know any good traveling songs that are seven minutes long?” Artimus asked.

Jakira tried her best tavern songs, but it just wasn’t the same without a pint of ale. Wyland prattled on for a bit about some of the design elements of the transport hub, and then Rhen talked a little about the operational expansion plans. The pod slowed and the floor rolled across the bottom of it. Rhen felt like he was getting pulled sideways, and then there was a jostling as the pod locked into the port at the bottom.

Artimus was first to unstrap herself and jump up for the door. They opened with a whir and cool, salty water dripped from overhead as they stepped into the reception area. The ceiling was the minimum twenty feet up, as required by the guild for the inspection tools to come. The walls were smooth Magnite-Lafite alloy that Rhen had crafted using the Control node, which had been hundreds of times faster than trying to build the panels the old-fashioned way.

The tunnel branched off toward the Return lane, and then toward the Nexus exit. The hall was blocked by empty guard infrastructure, and an anima scanner that rippled white across the wide opening. The anima scanner would prevent travelers from taking anything out of the Realm that they shouldn’t have, or bringing anything in other than themselves. But no one waited to check the early groups, and they passed through the scanner with little affirmative beeps.

On the other side of the scanner, the space opened to a massive blue dome supported by Magnite crossbars. The lights around the room projected against the corraphine barrier and lit up the little creatures that swam by. Silvish the size of his forearm, prismageysers a little bigger than that, head-sized crabs scuttling around the edges looking for treats, and even starfish making their climb across the surface of the corraphine. But beyond the dome Rhen could see the outline of a gigafish lazily drifting, thanks to his upgraded Caress of Night. Most travelers wouldn’t be able to see deep into the dark waters, and that was probably for the best.

At the center of the room on a raised platform stood the Nexus node, shimmering with soft purple light, inviting anyone to come take an adventure. The pulsing anima called to Rhen just as strongly as the first time he’d had goddess fruit. Though he couldn’t hear the whispers, he knew the realm wanted him to come explore the new dungeons, expand the anima growth of the Tree of Being, and strengthen the connection to this realm. He understood why the Guild was so ready to pass his dungeon off to someone else, since the risk of losing the connection was too great to leave in the hands of just one, inexperienced owner… But it was fine, they had accomplished their tasks in time, and soon enough the realms would have a strong link.

“Just incredible,” Artimus said with a soft exhale. She walked the perimeter of the massive dome, her fingers trailing over the Corraphine and metal supports. With a twist of a ring on her middle finger, Artimus brought up an anima display of silver text. She took a few measurements with tools Rhen had never seen that popped out of tiny enon pouches on her belt.

After about ten minutes of walking, measuring, marking information, and the occasional question directed at Wyland, Artimus stopped and clapped her hands together. “Let’s go see it, shall we?”

Rhen showed everyone up the steps to the Nexus node. On the ground around it were little X’s drawn in chalk indicating where the travelers should stand. For now, each traveler would touch the node to be transported, but soon, Wyland would make a more streamlined process with conduction rods all around the node that would let more people through at once.

Artimus put her hand on the smooth crystal, a glimmer of excitement in her aged eyes. “See you on the other side.”

In a burst of white, she dematerialized, her anima pulled into the node. Jakira disappeared next, then Arannet. Wyland gave him a little salute and disappeared too. Finally, Rhen accepted the fifty-anima cost, and was zipped into a beam of light off to Paradise.