The passenger entrance to the Darklight Corridor is easily missed. In Lumin Park, where morning light dapples the freshly swept walkways between well-tended beds of bright flowers, a gentle hill overlooks a little pond where flocks of geese float lazily honking. Atop this green hill sits a white-painted gazebo, which seems at a distance to be a perfect alcove to rest and to admire the scenery, but up close is only a decorative roof for the stairwell that leads down, down, deep into the earth below.

Like Lumin Park, the marble stairs are impeccably clean, illuminated in the bright blue glow of alchemic sconces placed at regular intervals on the walls. Occasionally there was a potted plant with cascades of flowers overhead, as if to remind the traveler of the beauty of sunlit life even as they descended toward a low hiss and rumble deep within.

The stairwell ended abruptly at a clean [url=https://www.artstation.com/artwork/286JLv]platform[/url], where stained-glass blue light glowed down from the arched ceiling, accented by the brassy shine of hanging chandeliers. The platform hummed with a low breathing noise like a peacefully sleeping dragon. It smelled like wet stone and charcoal and it was empty.

Or, nearly empty. On the far side of the platform stood a great mechanical [url=https://www.artstation.com/artwork/8lyGeE]contraption[/url]: four robotic legs held up a huge glass terrarium, within which a small ecosystem thrived. There were flowers and rocks and running water and flits of insects and a skitter of small creatures moving about within a great glass jar. Cloudy condensation partially hid the delicate tree that brightened the terrarium with pink flowery constellations. The walking terrarium sat silently alive next to its purple-draped handler.

The [url=https://www.artstation.com/artwork/48rzrq]old woman[/url] had spread a prettily woven blanket on the platform and now sat cross-legged upon it, staring meditatively down the dark rail corridor while she puffed occasionally on a bamboo pipe that swirled a musky smoke of incense all around her. Wisps of gray hair curled out of a heavy, fringed turban wrapped with purple and coral and teal. Her every movement rattled with the stones in her earrings and long necklaces. She was the only one on the platform, for now.

Upon the arrival of a stranger, she would turn her head with a wrinkled smile and sparkling eyes. [b]"Please forgive me if I don't get up to say hello: my knees are mad at me for the audacity of that stairwell. I'm Eudora Abby, apothecary and herbalist, but you can call me Yiya, everyone does. Are you here to help me with this confounded thing?"[/b] She gestured with the pipe over her shoulder at the stationary robotic terrarium. [b]"Come, sit, sit down! There's room on the blanket, I don't bite. Tell old Yiya your story, child, while we wait for this hunk of junk they call a train."[/b]