No Weapons

Bram found her at the forge, out of breath, genuinely alarmed in a way that immediately set Arista on edge.

"Straw—did you know a group of elven players is furious with you? Genuinely furious. Saying they're going to make you pay."

Arista set down her tools, blinking. "...What? Why?"

"Something about a promise. A Strawberry-made item, tied to when they started growing the forest for the dwarven conveyor belt fuel." Bram shrugged helplessly. "They're saying you owe them."

Arista sat with that for a long moment, the memory surfacing slowly, dusty and half-buried under years of railways, hydras, golems, and drowned cities.

"...Oh no."

"You remember?"

"I remember." She closed her eyes, the old agreement resurfacing properly now. "Back during the metro build. The conveyor belt system needed sustainable fuel, and instead of just clear-cutting forest the way the boat-builders later tried and failed to do near the Demi-Humans, I struck a deal with a group of elven players. They'd grow and manage a proper, renewable timber supply specifically for the conveyor system's fuel needs, instead of us just taking what already existed."

"...And the payment?"

"For every thirty-one hours logged working the forestry rotation, they'd earn one item, crafted personally by me." Arista pressed both hands over her face, the sheer scale of the oversight settling in properly now. "I set that deal up right at the start of the railway project. That was, that was years ago, Bram. I completely forgot. I got distracted by the hydra, then the golems, then the entire drowned city, and I never once circled back to actually check whether that agreement was still being honored."

Bram winced. "...How many hours are we talking?"

"I genuinely don't know. If they've kept the rotation running this whole time, continuously—" She did rough, horrified math in her head. "That could be dozens of items owed. Maybe more."

"...That would explain the anger."

"That would completely explain the anger," Arista agreed, already standing, already reaching for her notebook. "I made a promise and then just, stopped thinking about it, the second something shinier came along. That's exactly the kind of thing that erodes trust, and they'd be entirely right to be furious about it."

"So what's the plan?"

"The plan is I go find them, immediately, apologize properly, and figure out exactly how many hours they've actually logged since the deal started." Arista was already moving, notebook in hand, old restless energy now aimed squarely at fixing a mistake instead of solving a new engineering problem. "And then I make good on every single hour owed, personally, no matter how long it takes."

Bram fell into step beside her. "...Are you going to be able to actually deliver that many custom items?"

"I don't know yet," Arista admitted, honest. "But I made the promise. It's not their job to remind me. It's mine to actually keep it." She glanced at him, grim determination settling into her expression.

"Let's go find out exactly how badly I dropped this."

Stolen from NovelPhoenix, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

The elves had kept meticulous records, a proper ledger, every hour logged carefully across years of steady, patient forestry work, tallying out to a final, undeniable number.

Seventy-one items owed.

Arista stared at the total, genuine guilt settling deep in her chest. "...Seventy-one. Okay. I deserve every bit of that anger. Can I ask, though, why now? Why not track me down years ago, the moment the hours started piling up?"

The elf who'd presented the ledger considered the question, something weary rather than accusatory settling into his expression. "We discussed that, actually, at length, more than once. You were never exactly easy to find. Metro construction, then a zeppelin, then apparently an entire submarine, then some manner of ocean-crossing ship. Your reputation preceded you well enough that we assumed, reasonably, you'd circle back eventually, once whatever crisis currently held your attention finally resolved itself."

"...But there was a limit," Arista said quietly, already understanding.

"There was a limit," he confirmed. "Seventy-one items is considerably harder to overlook than seven. And frankly, watching an entire drowned city get discovered, mapped, and turned into a tourist attraction while our own agreement sat forgotten made the silence considerably harder to excuse as simple busyness."

One of the elves, ledger still in hand, stepped forward. "We've discussed what we'd want. A compound bow, for one of us. A sword, for another. Adamantium arrows, enough for a full quiver, for a third."

Arista felt her stomach drop the moment the word weapons landed, an old, unwelcome familiarity crawling up her spine, the specific, heavy weight of a title she'd never wanted, a fifty-meter railgun, a crater that had rattled Tabula Rosa's windows.

"...No weapons," she said, immediate, firmer than she'd meant to sound.

The elves exchanged glances, visibly ready to argue: until they caught the actual expression on her face, something considerably more serious than simple stubbornness, and the protest died before it fully formed.

They huddled instead, tight and immediate, the exact posture of a football team calling an audience-free play, murmuring quietly among themselves for a solid minute before breaking apart again.

The same elf who'd spoken first stepped forward once more, a different proposal ready this time.

"...Our villages sit twenty meters up, in the trees," he said. "When we first rolled Elven characters, climbing up and down felt novel. Charming, even. Exactly one afternoon's worth of charming." He gestured vaguely upward, toward the distant canopy where their homes actually sat. "After that, it's just tedious. Slow. Genuinely inconvenient, every single day, this whole time."

Arista listened, already sensing where this was heading, something considerably more comfortable settling back into her chest.

"If you can build something that lets us move in and out of the village easily," he continued, "without ruining the aesthetic our people actually care about, no visible machinery, nothing that clashes with the Elven Court's preferred sensibilities, the debt is settled. Fully. All seventy-one items, resolved with one solution instead of seventy-one separate objects."

Arista sat with that, genuine relief flooding through her at the shape of the actual request. "...You'd rather have convenient access to your own homes than seventy-one individual crafted items."

"We'd rather not spend the rest of this game's existence climbing tree branches every single morning," the elf said, dry. "The items were simply the payment we assumed you'd honor. This is what we actually want."

Arista felt the old, familiar restless spark reignite properly now, not the heavy, reluctant weight of weapon-crafting, but the genuine, engaging pull of an actual engineering puzzle, one with real constraints, real aesthetic sensitivity, real people counting on her to get it right.

"...I can work with that," she said, already turning the problem over in her head. "Something quiet, something that doesn't clash with the canopy, something that actually solves the tedium without turning your village into an industrial complex."

"That is precisely what we're asking for," the elf confirmed.

Arista extended a hand, the same gesture she'd used to seal a dozen previous agreements. "Deal. And genuinely, I'm sorry it took this long for me to even remember the original promise existed. That's on me, not on any of you."

The elf shook it, some of the earlier tension finally easing from his posture. "...Apology accepted. We'll consider the debt settled the moment we can actually reach our own front doors without climbing for it."

Arista grinned, already sketching rough ideas in her head, something elegant, something quiet, something that respected the trees instead of imposing on them.

"Give me some time," she said. "I think I know exactly where to start."