Fare-y Tales: The Wizard and the Yellow Disc

Absolute sorcery.

Once upon a time, in a subterranean kingdom far, far away (Zone 6, to be precise), commuting was a dark and tragic affair. The realm was ruled by the clack-whir-pop of the Magic Cardboard: a logistical catastrophe of operatic proportions. Daily, the citizens would queue-shuffle towards the iron gates like a colony of well-fed, anxious penguins, desperately smoothing out crinkled parchment before the mechanical beasts aggressively spat them back out.

In the year of our Lord 2002, I became a subterranean wizard.

The High Lords of Transport were quietly retrofitting the kingdom with mysterious yellow discs, and I was chosen for a secretive trial. I was handed an enchanted blue plastic rectangle. To the untrained eye of the ordinary peasant, my daily journey was pure magic. While the masses suffered the paper queues, I simply trammed my way to the iron beasts, casually flicked a leather pouch at the yellow circle, and watched the jaws part.

Passers-by would freeze, genuinely bewildered, assuming I possessed high-level telepathy or had made a dark pact with the railway spirits. I was entirely smug. Spectacularly elite. We didn’t even know the name of this artifact yet: whispers floated through the tunnels of the 'Pulse' or the 'Gem' stone. Eventually, the Elders settled on naming it after a bottom-feeding shellfish (classic kingdom poetry). My days as an exclusive, gate-gliding illusionist were numbered, as the magic was soon unleashed upon the masses.

Subterranean secrets, performing, exquisitely