Strawberry's Descent

Petrov found the design the next morning, spread across Arista's workbench in its full, sleepless glory, and studied it with the same calm, methodical scrutiny he brought to every crisis by now.

"Two problems," he said, after a long moment. "Before we even get to the actual engineering of the thing."

"I'm listening."

"First, you can't forge a fifty-meter barrel as a single piece. Nobody can. Not even you, not even with adamantium. The thermal stress alone during cooling would warp it beyond usable tolerance long before you finished, and even if you somehow managed a perfect forge, the structural fatigue from repeated firing would find the weakest point in that single length and crack it eventually anyway." He tapped the sketch. "You need segments. Multiple separate barrel sections, forged individually, then joined."

Arista nodded slowly, already having half-suspected this during her sleepless research binge but not wanting to fully confront it until someone else said it out loud. "...Segmented barrel. Which means joints. Which means potential weak points at every single connection, right where I need the most structural integrity to survive repeated staged pressure releases."

"Precisely. You'll need the same trick you used at the metro's crossing station: concentrate your best material exactly at the failure points, not wasted uniformly across sections that don't need it. Adamantium reinforcement rings at every joint, probably. Regular steel or dwarven alloy for the bulk of each segment, adamantium specifically where two segments actually meet."

"...That I can do. That's basically the exact same logic as the pipeline joints, just scaled up and rotated ninety degrees." She was already sketching the joint reinforcement, grateful for a problem that at least mapped onto something she'd already solved before, even if the stakes were considerably higher this time. "What's the second problem?"

Petrov's expression shifted, something almost sympathetic in it now. "Timing. Your multi-chamber staged release only works if each chamber fires exactly when the projectile passes it, too early, and you're wasting pressure on empty barrel behind a rod that hasn't arrived yet. Too late, and you're pushing against a rod that's already decelerating, which does nothing but waste steam and potentially destabilize the shot entirely."

"...How precise are we talking?"

"At the velocities you're aiming for, over a fifty-meter barrel? Fractions of a second, compounding across every single chamber. Miss the timing on chamber one by even a little, and every subsequent chamber's timing is thrown off too, because the projectile's actual speed no longer matches your calculated speed."

Arista stared at the sketch, the sheer, compounding precision required finally landing properly. "...That's not a problem I can solve with clever material science. That's a problem I need actual, exact synchronization for. Mechanical triggers timed against projectile position, not just a rough estimate."

"Pressure-sensitive triggers, probably. Each chamber's release valve opens when it detects the pressure spike from the projectile physically passing that specific point in the barrel, self-timing, rather than pre-calculated and hoping the math holds. More forgiving of small variances in actual muzzle velocity than a fixed timer would be."

"...That's genuinely clever. I like that a lot better than trying to pre-calculate perfect timing and praying nothing deviates." She added it to the sketch, feeling the design solidify properly for the first time since the exhausted 3 a.m. version. "Okay. Segmented barrel, adamantium joint reinforcement, pressure-triggered sequential release instead of fixed timing. That's, actually, that might genuinely work."

Petrov nodded, satisfied, then glanced toward the mountainside sketch showing the proposed mounting location.

"...There is a third problem, actually. Somewhat more social than technical."

Arista followed his gaze to the mounting diagram, the Dwarven Republic's mountainside, clearly labeled, clearly someone else's territory.

"...Oh."

"You're proposing to build what is, functionally, an intercontinental-range weapon, capable of launching a five-meter adamantium-tipped harpoon at velocities that could probably punch through a mountain if aimed wrong, directly onto sovereign dwarven land." Petrov said it entirely deadpan, though something in his tone suggested he was rather enjoying watching her realize this. "Have you informed Gorthruk yet?"

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Arista's face went very slowly through several stages of dawning horror.

"...No."

"You should probably do that before you start pouring adamantium into barrel joints."

"I built an entire railway through their territory with proper negotiation every single time. I can't believe I just skipped straight to 'building a giant gun on their mountain' without saying anything." She was already standing, notebook clutched tight, half-panicked, half-resigned. "Okay. Okay, I need to go have a conversation that starts with 'hey, so, remember how you trust me with your mithril reserves—'"

"That's an excellent opening."

"—and ends with 'I'd like to build a weapon capable of killing a level two-hundred-and-fifty hydra on your sacred ancestral mountainside.'"

Petrov considered that for a moment. "I would perhaps workshop the phrasing before you actually say it out loud to him."

"Yeah," Arista said, already heading for the door, notebook under one arm, the specific dread of an entirely new kind of negotiation settling over her. "Yeah, I probably should."

Gorthruk's initial reaction to the design took a full, silent minute to process, staring at the sketch, the fifty-meter segmented barrel, the adamantium-tipped harpoon, the mounting diagram planted squarely on the Republic's own mountainside.

"...You want to build this," he said slowly, "here."

"I know it's a lot to ask. I genuinely do." Arista had rehearsed the opening on the walk over, and it still came out considerably more nervous than she'd intended. "I need the mountain's structural mass to absorb the mounting recoil, and this is the closest stable rock formation to where I actually need to fire it. I wouldn't ask if I had a better option."

Gorthruk studied the sketch a moment longer, and then, slowly, something shifted in his expression, not alarm exactly, but a kind of calculating interest that made Arista's stomach drop before he'd even said a word.

"A weapon capable of this range. This power." He tapped the barrel's projected velocity figures. "If this works, and given your track record, I confess I would not bet against it: the Republic would hold something no other kingdom possesses. A defense unmatched by anything the Elven Court or the Human Kingdom could field, should war ever come to our borders again."

"...Right, about that." Arista winced, already knowing this conversation was about to get considerably harder than the engineering had been. "I'm not leaving it here. Once the hydra fight's done, assuming I survive it. I'm deconstructing the weapon entirely. Barrel, mount, all of it. It doesn't stay standing after."

Gorthruk's expression shifted again, something almost hurt beneath the careful dwarven composure. "...You don't trust us with it."

"It's not that. It's genuinely not that." Arista said it quickly, firmly, wanting to head off that particular misunderstanding before it took root. "I trust you specifically. I trust Gorthruk, the person, standing right in front of me. That's not the problem."

"Then what is."

"The power shift would be too great if this weapon actually works the way I'm designing it to." She set her notebook down, meeting his eyes directly, the same steady conviction she'd once used to argue down an entire dwarven council. "No country should have a weapon like this. Not the elves. Not the Dwarven Republic. Not even the Demon Realm, and Beelz is about as close to a friend as I've got in this entire game. It doesn't matter how much I trust the people holding it today. Rulers change. Alliances shift. A weapon this powerful, sitting permanently in any single kingdom's hands, is a temptation that outlasts whoever's currently making good decisions with it."

Gorthruk was quiet for a long moment, weighing that, the calculating interest slowly giving way to something more thoughtful.

"You built an entire continental railway on the principle of shared benefit," he said finally. "No single kingdom controlling the whole. Neutral ground at its center. And now you're telling me this weapon follows the same rule, built for one purpose, dismantled the moment that purpose is served, rather than kept as leverage."

"Yeah. Exactly that." Arista felt something ease in her chest at him actually following the logic instead of arguing against it. "I need it to survive a fight I genuinely didn't choose to have. That's the whole reason it exists. The second that fight's over, its reason for existing is over too. Keeping it around afterward isn't defense. It's just... a loaded threat sitting on someone's mountainside, waiting for the day someone decides to use it for something other than the reason it was built."

Gorthruk studied her for a long, considering moment, then let out a slow breath, something that might have been reluctant respect settling into his weathered features.

"...You could have built this in secret. Told no one. Fired it, fought your hydra, deconstructed it before anyone outside your immediate circle ever knew it existed."

"I could have. I thought about it, honestly, for about five minutes." Arista shrugged. "But you trusted me with mithril reserves I could've walked off with. You trusted me with a machine that opened your mountains to adamantium mining rights. I wasn't about to build the single most dangerous thing I've ever designed on your land without at least having the decency to explain exactly why, and exactly what happens to it after."

Gorthruk nodded slowly, extending a hand, the same gesture that had once sealed the machine sale, the pipeline agreement, the mithril reserves.

"Then build it," he said. "Openly, with the Republic's knowledge and, where needed, its assistance. And when the hydra falls—" his grip tightened briefly, sealing the promise "—we dismantle it together. In front of witnesses, if you'd like. So no one, on any side, ever wonders whether the weapon truly stopped existing."

Arista shook on it, feeling something steady settle into place alongside the fear she'd been carrying since the quest notification first appeared.

"...Witnesses," she agreed. "Yeah. That's a good idea, actually. Let's make it very, very public that this thing doesn't outlive its one job."

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