For about half a minute, the group was dead silent. Then, Octavia began to point and wave her hands so enthusiastically that even Levi was caught by surprise.

"This is incredible! Can't you all see it?! It's serendipity in action! Duchowiesen's ever-changing fates wanted me and you to be here this day!" she shouted.

Waleria just raised her eyebrows in response. "Are you that sure?" she asked.

"I wasn't this sure about anything else in the last ten years!" Octavia said, dramatically sweeping her arms. "Point me at any other reason why I'd be here at this exact time and date, and you can win eight Friedenmarks!..."

"Well," Waleria said as she looked at Octavia, "imagine we agree. You might be right about the ever-changing fates. What then?"

"Please let me follow along on your quest," Octavia said. "For an academic like me, this is a one-in-a-million opportunity! If I can't find the Kingdom's remnants with the help of the heir, they're probably un-findable, and I'd like to know if that's true or not."

For a minute, Waleria thought about it. She realized more and more that she might get embroiled in All Of This for more than just two or three weekend days, and that definitely changed her considerations. Then, she turned to the other two as the museum-keepers watched on, and said:

"You know what, fine. I have a stronger and stronger feeling that we'll need all the help we can get. Even if we don't find much more, Octavia could probably tell us how to search for things the best. The sooner we get this over with, the better for me; I have trams to run."

Not ten minutes later, the group was already buying the tickets for another intercity electric train at the Spokojny Brzeg train station. Waleria looked at the tickets as the clerk handed them to her, then looked at Levi.

"You know, I never really thought much about the Ever-Changing Fates," she said. "Beyond the carpet-weaving-like model we learned in high school lessons on arcane and occult, I don't get how they work. At all."

"That might be for the better," Octavia said. "Trying to comprehend the actual truth of the universe makes my head spin, and I'm a trained professional. It's bizarre. Fractality of fate's threads, the breakdown of normality at the two-plus-n edges of the tapestry... I feel that even I'm going to get a headache if I really think about it."

After getting their tickets, the group went out to the town railway platform. Octavia and Levi sat down on a bench under one of the aspen trees to chat, and Waleria looked around as the three waited for their next train. She looked to the Constructivist station add-on, and a railing separating its end of the platform from an underpass that crossed the tracks without getting in the way. On the other side of the tracks, beyond the edge of the platform and the station fence, there was another Constuctivist building - a new department store facing the station. Waleria couldn't know it from her hour-long stay at the town, but that store was a co-operative started by Continental War veterans, and the most well-known of them was Franz, a beast-folk veteran blinded by a gas attack in the War, who was involved with Duchowiesen from the very start. Franz was one of the many mutineers during the Summer Revolutions who helped rally the soldiers to stop the War; he was a rising star of town and Landkreis politics in the post-War era, even briefly holding office on behalf of the Left Conservatives; after that, he went into business, and figured he would fare much better were he able to step down at any point, and leave his co-workers to run the store if he can't. His was a success story written in spite of tragedy, as with many Duchowieseners his age, and Franz would never let anyone belittle that fact.

In just 30 minutes, the intercity train that Waleria, Levi, and Octavia were waiting for had arrived; they stepped onboard with their luggage, and off they went to Ferienstadt Binnenstrand. It was another three-hour ride of about 200 kilometres, so they figured they'd best use it to their advantage. Waleria popped open her book and started reading about five minutes after the train left the Spokojny Brzeg station, while Levi and Octavia sat down opposite of her, and Levi poured out his research notes on the portion of the seat between them and the tray table between their and Waleria's seats. As the train made its way through a grove of pyramidal poplars, Octavia asked:

"So what do you have here?"

"Not a lot," Levi responded. "Most of it from your book." He paused, twiddled his ears and scratched his triangular nose, and glanced back at Octavia, with her narrow, tall ears and a relatively short, fluffy fiery-red tail. "My main discovery is that I found Waleria, and a couple of other potential descendants of the royal family." The two hunched over, and began poring over the notes and their own memories, trying to figure out possible extra details.

For the first hour of the trip, things went as normal, with the placid atmosphere of Duchowiesen summer omnipresent across the land the train crossed. But if things were elementary all the way from beginning to end, it wouldn't be a heroic journey; and so, unbeknownst to our heroes, the first obstacle on their path was now present. As the train passed into a large town - or small city - of food and wood industries, and towards its enormous railyard with a comparatively small passenger platform, the train's intercom went on, and the train's driver said in a well-practiced Broadcast Inland accent:

"Attention passengers! Our train is delayed for at least 45 minutes due to a sudden conflict in scheduling on the Binnenstrand line. I was not told of a specific mundane or arcane reason for this conflict. We apologize for the inconvenience, and wish to assure you that long delays like this aren't our norm and we don't just brush them off. The buffet car will be offering a range of discounts, from 15 to 20 percent, on all items as a way of compensation. Thank you."

Waleria groaned at the news... and then she lowered the book and saw Levi and Octavia looking at one another with concern, their ears perked up.

"Do you think...?" Levi began a question.

"We can't say yet," Octavia replied. "Maybe this is malign interference by our mysterious caller, or maybe it's... just a normal delay. Those happen!"

"Right now, the best thing is to sit, wait, and observe," Levi said as he turned to Waleria and nodded towards her. "This situation will sort itself out, eventually, and by evening we'll be at Ferienstadt Binnenstrand. They should still be open then."

Waleria nodded and looked out into the train's window. Just from where they stood, she could see a grain silo, a mid-sized bakery plant (an industrial unit not typical for all regions of Duchowiesen, but relatively common on the Bountiful Plains and by the Inland Sea, thanks to their abundance of grains), and even a distillery a bit further away. The fences and outer walls of all these buildings were covered in murals and graffiti - some of them ordinary tags in chunky letters and street art characters, some being full murals extolling the virtues of industry, some referencing the running jokes of Duchowiesen society (there was even the omnipresent graffiti of a frog riding a unicycle!), some delving into the occult, and some just... odd, the pieces of truly surreal art even among all the graffiti styles just described. Waleria looked back to Levi and Octavia, and said:

"Hey, so I was pondering the industry of Duchowiesen right now, and I wonder."

"About what?" Levi asked.

"The mass production of housing," Waleria said. "It's... getting a bit crazy how much the construction companies can do in a short time, isn't it?"

"I actually have to agree," Octavia said. "I've seen entire city districts rise from nothing in the span of six or seven months. And they're good to live in! It seems almost equal to magic."

"The magic of engineering!" Levi responded. "My magazine once did an article on city construction services, and it impressed me just how well they have it all handled. It's already huge that they can produce buildings module-by-module in factories, and then stick them together in any combination, but the true miracle is their logistics. While excavator teams are making the foundation pit, the basement modules get shipped in on perfect schedule, and at the same time electric, water, sewage, and stove gas pipes are laid down. After the foundation is ready, they just stack panels or even full modules on top of one another, in thousands of combinations to make the project look unique. And they build wave by wave - after the foundations for a couple of buildings are done, the excavators move on to the next wave, while the tower cranes start the next phase of the first wave. The article we had mentioned a whole district built in four months, even though that was an intentional world record attempt... it's simply amazing what the construction industry can do these days."

"And the best part is the planning," Octavia added. "I've been to some of those new districts on academic trips, and they have grocery stores, schools, policlinics, even movie theaters and swimming pools placed strategically, parks and garden squares, and even free spaces left for any possible co-op or private business developments. Then, there are the decorations... so many variants of tile in so many colors, mosaics and murals, mix-and-match architectural flourishes, all carefully made in factories before the construction even starts."

"Yeah... and it's all on a countrywide scale," Levi summarized. "No wonder that the very notion of a housing shortage is deader than a ghost."

As the two talked about housing construction, Waleria greedily listened in on the details of it, and after Levi was done rambling, she leaned in over the tray table with his journalistic notes.

"Hey, I want to take a look at the notes too. Maybe three heads are even better than two," she said.

"Sure, knock yourself out!" Levi responded.

Another thirty minutes flew by as Waleria examined the notes alongside Levi and Octavia. She couldn't make sense of them just yet, but was feeling herself become drawn in to the adventure... and she was not sure if that was a good or a bad thing. In addition to her everyman's apprehension about embarking on an actual huge adventure across the country that might've awaited her, she began to feel that maybe she needed a reason to travel and see new places - just seeing the (by all accounts ordinary) murals on the fences and walls of the industrial town their train stopped at was already a refreshingly new experience. Then, at the previously-signposted time, the train began moving again, and the industrial town or city gave way to yet more new landscapes on the way to Ferienstadt Binnenstrand.