Grim Tuesday

The blood-red, spike-covered locomotive vented steam in angry blasts as it wound up from the very depths of the Pit. Black smoke billowed through the steam, coal smoke that was laced with deadly particles of Nothing from the deep mines far below.

For over ten thousand years, the Pit had been dug deeper and deeper into the foundations of the House. Grim Tuesday’s miners sought workable deposits of Nothing, from which all things could be made. But if they found too much in one place or broke through to the endless abyss of Nothing, it would destroy them and much else besides, before the hole could be plugged and that particular shaft closed off.

There was also the constant danger of attack by Nithlings, the strange creatures that were born from Nothing. Sometimes Nithlings came as multitudes of lesser creatures, sometimes as a single, fearsome monster that would wreak enormous havoc until it was defeated, turned back or escaped into the Secondary Realms.

Despite the danger, the Pit grew ever deeper, and the shafts and tunnels that preceded it spread wider. The train was a relatively recent addition, a mere three hundred years old as time ran in the House. The train took only four days to travel from the bottom of the Pit up to the Far Reaches. There wasn’t much left of the Reaches, since the digging had eaten away much of Grim Tuesday’s original domain within the House.

Very few ordinary Denizens ever rode the train. Most had to walk, a journey of at least four months, following the service road next to the railway. The train was only for the Grim himself and his favoured servants. Its locomotive and carriages were razor-spiked all over to prevent hitchhikers, and the conductors used steam-guns on anyone who tried to get on. Even an almost immortal Denizen of the House would think twice about risking a blast of superheated steam. Recovery would take a long time and be extraordinarily painful.

Flying would be far faster than the train, but Grim Tuesday never wore wings himself and had forbidden them to everyone else. Wings attracted Nothing from all over the Pit. Sometimes they caused flying Nithlings to form. Other times, the flapping set off storms of Nothing that the Grim himself had to quell.

The train whistled seven times as it came to a screeching stop alongside the platform. Up Station had been built by Grim Tuesday himself, copied from a very grand station on some world in the Secondary Realms. It had once been a beautiful building of vaulting arches and pale stonework. But the coal smoke from the train and the Grim’s many forges and factories had stained the stones black. The pollution from Nothing had also eaten into every wall and arch, riddling the stone with tiny holes, like a worm-eaten wooden ship. The station only stayed up because Grim Tuesday constantly repaired it with the power of his Key.

Grim Tuesday held the Second Key to the Kingdom, the Key that he should have handed to a Rightful Heir ten thousand years ago but instead chose to keep, in defiance of the Will left by the Architect who had created the House and the Secondary Realms.