Strawberry's Descent

The tunnel was done. The rails were down, tested, inspected by more dwarven engineers than Arista could comfortably count. The stations stood finished at both ends, Beelz Station's warm, ember-lit platforms on one side, a modest but functional terminal deep beneath the Human Kingdom's capital on the other, connected to the surface above by a separate adjoining shaft, stairs winding up alongside a small, dedicated freight lift for anyone who preferred not to walk the climb. Everything, genuinely, everything, was ready.

Except the locomotive itself, which Arista had been quietly, deliberately saving for last.

She'd built the working prototype months ago, compound cylinders, tube boiler, everything her midnight research binge had taught her folded into a machine that actually ran, actually pulled real weight down real track at real speed. But a prototype wasn't the same as the first locomotive, the one that would actually carry the first passengers, the one whose name would end up on every schedule board and every piece of merchandise some enterprising demon would inevitably start selling within a week of opening day.

She stood in her workshop, considerably larger now than the cramped tutorial forge she'd started in, but still unmistakably hers, still cluttered with half-finished sketches and salvaged parts from a dozen previous projects, and looked at the finished frame waiting for its final details.

"Okay," she murmured, running a hand along the boiler casing. "Last pieces."

The nameplate came first: a simple brass plate, meant to sit just below the cab window, currently blank. She'd been putting off deciding what to actually stamp into it for longer than she'd admit to anyone, mostly because every option she'd considered felt either too grand or too small for what this machine actually represented.

"...Buzzy," she said finally, out loud, testing the shape of it. She thought of a throne room full of dust-shaking laughter, of a Lord of Hell making a fly pun before she'd even finished walking through the door, of a nickname she'd used entirely by accident and somehow ended up, apparently, fitting rather perfectly.

She grinned, already reaching for her stamping tools.

[Item Crafted: Nameplate — "Buzzy"]

The livery came next, deep, warm red bleeding into black along the boiler's length, echoing the same lava-glow aesthetic Petrov had designed for the tunnels themselves, so the locomotive itself would feel like an extension of the world it traveled through rather than something bolted on top of it. She worked slowly, carefully, none of her usual rushed enthusiasm, the way you handled something you actually wanted to get right rather than just functional.

Last came the small details nobody but her would probably ever notice, a tiny, engraved caltrop worked discreetly into the cab's interior trim, a nod to where all of this had technically started. A thin band of mithril inlaid along the control panel, more decorative than functional at this scale, but she couldn't resist it after everything mithril had ended up meaning to the project. And, tucked into a corner of the cab where only the engineer would ever see it, a small, hand-etched line:

For everyone who pedaled, cranked, dug, folded, and believed this was possible before it actually was.

She sat back when it was finished, surveying the whole machine properly for the first time, gleaming, red-black, unmistakably hers in every detail, from the compound cylinders down to the smallest hidden engraving.

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[Item Crafted: Steam Locomotive — "Buzzy" (Master Quality)][Blacksmithing XP +340][Blacksmithing Lv. 74 → Lv. 75][Achievement Unlocked: The First of Many]

Nettle found her there sometime later, still just looking at it, notebook forgotten on the workbench beside her for once.

"...You've been sitting here for an hour," Nettle said, leaning in the doorway. "I checked twice."

"Yeah." Arista didn't look away from the locomotive. "I think I just wanted to actually finish something slowly, for once. Everything else this year's been chaos and deadlines and Petrov's lists. This part I wanted to just... do properly."

Nettle stepped closer, studying the finished machine, the deep red livery, the brass nameplate catching the forge light, the small engraved caltrop tucked into the cab. "...Buzzy. Really."

"It fits."

"It absolutely fits," Nettle agreed, a small, genuine smile breaking through. "Beelz is going to see this and lose what little composure he has left."

"That's the plan." Arista finally stood, brushing off her hands, the particular satisfied ache of a job actually finished settling over her. "Opening day's in three days. I want to run her myself, first trip, before anyone else touches the controls."

"You've never actually driven a train."

"I've never actually done most of the things I've built either," Arista said, grinning, already climbing up into the cab to check the controls one final time. "Track record's pretty good so far."

Nettle watched her settle into the engineer's seat, hands resting on controls she'd designed herself, and for a moment, just a moment, looked less like she was bracing for chaos and more like she was simply, quietly proud.

"...Three days," she said. "Try not to break reality again before then."

"No promises," Arista called back, grinning. "But I'll definitely warn you if I remember to be worried myself."

"Before you go celebrate finishing your locomotive," Nettle said, tugging Arista's sleeve toward the courtyard outside the workshop, "come see what the guild's been doing while you were busy being sentimental about a train."

Outside, rows upon rows of finished benches sat stacked and ready for transport, simple, sturdy wooden frames, iron joints, exactly the kind of unglamorous, essential furniture a station platform actually needed but that Arista, buried in tunnels and locomotives and continental diplomacy, had never once thought to plan for herself.

"...Benches," Arista said, blinking at the sheer quantity of them. "You've been building station benches this whole time."

"Someone had to. You were busy being the visionary. Low-Key handled the unglamorous logistics, same as always." Nettle said it without complaint, clearly proud of the sheer, practical volume stacked before them. "Every platform along the network needs seating. Thousands of them, eventually, once the full ring's finished. We started mass-producing weeks ago."

Arista crouched down to inspect one closer, and it was only then, turning it over properly, that she noticed these weren't platform benches at all: too narrow, too padded, fitted with mounting brackets clearly meant to bolt into a train car's floor rather than stand freely on open stone.

"...Wait. These aren't for the platforms."

"No?" Nettle blinked. "Oh, no, sorry, these are the passenger seating. Interior benches, for inside the actual wagons. I thought I said that."

"You did not say that." Arista sat back on her heels, staring at the neat rows of padded seating stretching across the courtyard, each one still bearing that same small, precisely carved fly dead center in the backrest. "So every single person who ever rides this train—"

"—is going to sit directly against a little engraved fly, yes, every single trip, for as long as the network exists." Nettle said it with the specific, unbothered satisfaction of someone who had clearly already thought this all the way through and found the outcome entirely acceptable. "I actually think that's better than the platforms, honestly. Platform benches you glance at once and forget. This, you're pressed against for the entire ride. Constant, gentle, inescapable tribute."

Arista pressed both hands over her face, laughing despite herself. "You've turned every single seat on this entire continental railway into a shrine to Beelz's fly obsession."

"I prefer 'consistent branding.'"

"He is never going to stop making jokes about this."

"Good," Nettle said, already hefting another finished bench toward the waiting supply cart. "I'd be disappointed if he did."

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