Repeaters and refraction explain a lot. The remaining slow down of light - if you factor those effects out, feels a bit magical. The effect isn't as big as on Pratchett's Disc World, but the air actually slows down the light. And fiber does too.

Disc World wiki:

Light is so oddly affected by magic, as it passes into the Disc's atmosphere, it actually slows down from millions to hundreds of miles an hour. One odd effect of this is that the Disc has time zones, when, as a flat world, it shouldn't. Another effect is that, as reported in Thud!, the red- and blue-shifting of light becomes noticeable when travelling at speeds of merely a hundred and twenty miles per hour.