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“Gem, I am begging you. I am on my knees. Don’t make me do this.”
Zed actually was. He was currently quite literally on his knees in front of the nature elf, clasping his gloved hands together, looking close to tears.
This happened every year or so.
Zed was a Master-Smith, and a very young one at that. His skills were top notch, but considering he was from a tiny town in the middle of nowhere, it had taken a big break for him to showcase himself and gain the renown he now wielded.
That big break had come in the form of the Slayer. A mercenary who specialized exclusively in assassination requests, who had a perfect completion rate, and whose name scared lesser folks into hiding.
That mercenary had commissioned him, at the age of sixteen, to forge her a new broadsword.
Now, Zed was pretty proud of the job he’d done. The sword had been the best he possibly could’ve done back then.
But that had been nearly ten years ago.
“Nope! I like mine! Just a repair job, please!” Gem replied, and Zed dramatically dropped forward to plant his hands against the ground at her feet, still on his knees.
“Please let me just make you a new one! It would be so much better! I could do triple, no, quadruple the enchantments! Better materials too!”
“Nope, I like my sword!”
“I could make it shoot fire!”
“No thanks.”
“And lightning!”
“I’m good!”
“What about dual swords!? Huh? Huh? Two for the price of one?”
“Uh-uh!”
“I’ll make you a new one for free just please don’t make me fix that thing again!”
It was torture.
What Gem was doing was essentially handing a world-renowned artist his rudimentary scribbles from childhood and asking him to just touch up the colors a little bit.
“Fix it.” Gem just pulled her massive broadsword, the one Zed had forged when he was sixteen that had so many problems, oh stars Zed could see all the problems with it now, from her back and dropped it into his unwilling arms.
“This is cruel and unusual punishment! What did I ever do to you!?” Zed whined, sitting back onto his knees and hugging the sword like that might provide some sort of narrow comfort.
Gem huffed, folding her arms over her light leather armor laced over her cream-colored blouse. Her pastel green skirt fell over a white lace, like petticoats, with boots well worked and browned from crisscrossing the continent. “You made me the best sword ever! So fix it!”
“…but…”
“No.”
“…but I could…”
“No.”
“…it could be so much better…”
“I don’t care. Fix it.”
Zed let out a noise that crossed a whine with a sob and flopped backward, landing on his back on the ground and kicking his feet childishly a few times.
“Fine!”
“Aw, you’re the best!”
“But next year let me make you a new one!”
“No way!”
“AGH!”
Zed rocked back and then flung his feet forward to sit up, still clutching the sword to his chest. He glared up at Gem with the poutiest expression he could muster for a few more seconds before slouching his head to one side.
“…you love doing this to me, don’t you?”
“Only because you throw such a temper tantrum every time,” Gem replied with a giggle, and Zed grumbled something incoherent under his breath before he stood up. Eyes like amethyst trailed to the side, eventually landing upon raven-black feathers and flickering flames.
Tango and Gem’s avian were sitting on the back lip of Zed’s redstone wagon. The adventurers guild Zed was temping at, killing time until he needed to leave for his next commission, had a private forge on the outskirts of town where Zed had been working. He tended to live out of his redstone wagon most of the time anyway, it had a tiny house complete with a lopsided roof and a double hung window on the back. After Tango had mostly recovered from the water-burning incident at Lord Heath’s domain, he’d idly mentioned to Zed he found staying in the little redstone wagon house on their laid-out bedrolls to be more comfortable than the grand guest room the guild had put them up in.
Only when pressed, of course.
Zed tried to withhold a sigh, turning his attention onto Gem.
“So, when did you get the avian?”
“Actually, it was like a few weeks after I last saw you.”
“Huh, that so? What’s the deal, I thought you were a lone wolf.”
“I could say the same for you.” Gem replied, pastel green eyes darting once and back to Tango.
Zed chuckled with a wry smile. “Suppose you could…I dunno, I got so excited by seeing a blaze-born that I just kinda…bought him before I thought it through.”
“Ah, the typical Zedaph way.”
“Don’t say it like a bad thing!”
Gem giggled again, eyes sparking with mirth. She unfolded her arms and planted one hand against her hip. “So, where you headed now?”
Zed puffed up his chest, still hugging the massive broadsword he’d forged when he was young, and grinned. “Why, the Duke of the foothills domain has commissioned me! This is my big shot for the chance to forge for nobility!”
“Nobles, schmobles…don’t forget about the little people once you’re busy making pretty stuff for portraits, ok?” Gem immediately began to needle him, but that was just the way they’d been for a long time.
Zed didn’t see Gem that often. Maybe two or three times a year if their paths happened to cross. This time they’d gone almost an entire year without seeing each other. Yet despite all of that, Zed would count her as a reliable friend.
And having the Slayer as someone you could count on? Well, he wasn’t about to complain over that.
Even if it means fixing this awful sword again…
Zed could feel the frustrated tears stinging again already but powered through. He turned on his heel, one hand moving for his belt to pull out his forge-hammer, embossed with the shimmering crest of a Master-smith.
“You just gimme a one, two, three, and she’ll be good as new, Gem!”
“You’re the best, Zed!”
“You know it!”
And yeah, he was still going to pitch just as big of a fit the next time Gem made him repair this stupid sword…but in the end, it was all in good fun, he didn’t actually mind.
You know.
Not that much.
…Zed still ended up crying twice while repairing the massive broadsword, and when he tried to beg Gem yet again to let him make her a new one, she once more cheerfully turned him down flat.