A Horizontal Ski Lift

She brought Beelzebub down a few days later, exactly as she'd promised herself she would, not for the builders' first walk, but for something quieter, more personal, just the two of them wandering through ruins that had waited centuries to be properly seen.

He studied the mermaid statue for a long time, human-passing form dwarfed beneath its ancient, weathered gaze, genuine wonder plain on his face in a way his usual theatrical composure rarely allowed.

"This is remarkable, Strawberry," he said finally, quiet. "Genuinely. I don't think I've seen you build anything quite this... reverent, before."

"It felt different," Arista admitted. "Everything else, I built because a problem needed solving. This one, I built because something beautiful deserved to actually be seen."

They walked in comfortable silence a while longer, until Beelzebub, studying the tunnel's mouth where it connected to the dome's interior, tilted his head thoughtfully.

"This tunnel," he said, "connects the shoreline to this location, correct?"

"That's the idea, yeah. Drainage, primarily, but people can walk it now that the water's gone."

"Would you consider connecting it further? To the Demon Realm, specifically." He said it carefully, watching her reaction. "Perhaps tying it into the existing railway network. An extension, rather than an entirely separate project."

Arista sat with that for a long moment, genuinely tempted by the idea, running the actual engineering through her head before answering.

"...I want to say yes," she said slowly, "but the tunnel's not built for that. It's ten kilometers of drainage passage, sized for foot traffic and water displacement, not rail cars or heavy freight. Widening it to railway standards would basically mean rebuilding the entire thing from scratch, and I don't think that's actually necessary for what you're describing."

"I see." Beelzebub's expression didn't shift, patient as always. "What would you propose instead?"

Arista considered the problem properly now, an idea already beginning to take shape beneath the quiet, reflective mood of the day.

"...Not a full connection. Something smaller. A continuous loop system, two large horizontal wheels, one at the shoreline entrance, one down here near the dome, with a long cable strung between them the entire tunnel's length." She sketched the idea in the air with her hands, working through it as she spoke. "Attach small carts to the cable at intervals, and the whole loop moves continuously, dragging passengers along in a slow, steady circuit, same basic principle as a ski lift, just laid horizontally instead of running up a mountainside."

Beelzebub considered that, intrigued. "People wouldn't need to walk the tunnel at all."

"Exactly. Step onto a cart at the shoreline entrance, ride the loop the whole ten kilometers, step off once you reach the dome side. No rail infrastructure needed, no heavy freight capacity, just steady, continuous passenger transport through a tunnel that's already there and already proven structurally sound." She grinned, the shape of the solution settling comfortably into place. "People would only need to climb up into the ruins themselves, once they arrive. The hard part, the actual travel: happens automatically."

"That is considerably more elegant than tearing apart an existing tunnel to accommodate a railway it was never designed for," Beelzebub said, genuine approval warming his tone. "Simpler, too, I imagine, to build."

"Considerably simpler. I'm not digging anything new, not widening anything existing. Just stringing cable between two wheels and building enough small carts to keep a steady flow of people moving through." Arista was already sketching mentally, cross-referencing the idea against everything she already knew about cable tension, wheel diameter, load distribution. "It wouldn't connect directly to the Demon Realm's own rail network, not literally. But it would give anyone standing at the shoreline, including anyone arriving via the existing railway, an easy, comfortable way to actually reach this place, without needing to walk the whole tunnel on foot."

Beelzebub studied the ancient ruins around them a final time, then looked back at her, something warm and genuinely pleased settling into his expression.

"A fine compromise," he said. "Build it, if you're willing. I imagine a great many people, myself included, would enjoy visiting this place properly, without ten kilometers of walking standing between them and the mermaid you're so fond of."

"...You want to visit Squishy specifically."

"He sounds delightful," Beelzebub said, entirely unbothered by the specific framing. "I would like to see the creature who apparently launched a puzzle cube onto a ship out of pure enthusiasm."

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

Arista laughed, already sketching the horizontal ski lift's basic mechanism in her notebook, the old, familiar restless energy of a new, achievable project settling comfortably alongside the quiet satisfaction of the one just finished.

The ten-kilometer drainage tunnel had, until this point, been exactly what its name implied, a functional, unglamorous pipe. Strong enough to handle pressure differential, wide enough for maintenance access, entirely undecorated, built purely to move air and water where they needed to go.

The moment Beelzebub asked for a comfortable way to bring visitors down to the Drowned Court, Arista looked at that same, plain tunnel and thought, why should a tunnel just be a tunnel?

The interior got a second life almost immediately.

Claire, reviewing the cable-and-wheel mechanism's basic layout, frowned slightly at the structural side of it. "...Frame engineering's not really my strength."

She glanced toward Petrov. "...Marek?"

Petrov didn't look up from his own notes. "Marek."

Arista glanced between them. "...Who?"

"Materials engineer," Claire said. "Different building, mostly works on alloy fatigue and forming processes. If anyone's going to have an actual opinion on frame spacing and cable support structure, it's him."

"He is," Petrov added, already composing the message on his own tablet, "also going to have opinions regardless of whether we ask him for one. Prepare accordingly."

Marek arrived the following afternoon, unhurried, a rolled set of his own reference notes tucked under one arm.

He looked unfairly young.

Not boyish, exactly. Just annoyingly handsome in the way character creators tended to produce when someone had spent far too long adjusting jawlines and cheekbones. Dark horns curved neatly from his temples, his face sharp, clean, and vaguely theatrical.

Then he spoke.

His voice sounded like it had been smoking three packs a day since before Arista was born.

"What?"

Arista blinked.

"...Nothing."

He studied the sketch for a solid minute before saying anything else at all.

"...Explain the rings," he said, watching Arista sketch yet another addition to what had originally been a straightforward cable-and-wheel mechanism.

"Every few meters, along the whole ten-kilometer length, a hexagonal adamantium frame mounts flush against the tunnel wall." Arista tapped the sketch. "Not structural, the tunnel itself already holds fine without them. Purely for the mounting hardware."

"...What mounting hardware?"

"A central attachment plate for the cable line. A pulley housing, adamantium bearings, keeps the whole ski-lift cable running smooth the entire distance. Maintenance hooks, in case anything ever needs servicing mid-tunnel. Small inspection platforms, just wide enough to stand on. And—" she added, almost as an afterthought, though her grin suggested it was anything but "—luminescent ore strips, running along both sides of each frame."

Marek studied the growing sketch, something dry settling into his expression, the specific look of a man already sensing exactly where this was headed. "...You designed a functional transport mechanism. And then decided it needed to look like it belonged to an ancient civilization."

"...Maybe," Arista admitted, entirely unrepentant.

"None of that was structurally necessary."

"None of it needed to be. That's not the point." Arista held up the sketch properly, tracing the repeating pattern down the tunnel's length, hexagon, light, pulley, hexagon, light, pulley, each frame identical, each one glowing softly along its edges. "It's going to somewhere genuinely spectacular. A drowned mermaid capital, mermaid ruins, an actual ancient civilization's architecture. If people are riding a cable cart the whole way there, I want the journey itself to feel like it's building toward something, not just... functional darkness for ten straight kilometers."

Marek considered the sketch a while longer, something in his expression softening despite the practical objection he'd started with. "...It does echo the dome, actually. The hexagon shape, the repetition."

"That's exactly the idea," Arista said, pleased she'd caught it. "The dome's got thirty-six thousand hexagonal panels, this rhythm of precision and repetition running through the entire structure. I wanted the tunnel to speak the same visual language. Same shape, same discipline, so the whole approach feels like one continuous piece instead of a plain pipe leading to something beautiful."

"...You've designed a transportation installation," Marek said slowly, "and then decided it needed to look like it belonged to an ancient civilization."

"He's going to an ancient civilization," Arista said, grinning, entirely unbothered by the repetition of her own logic being handed back to her. "It should feel a little bit impressive."

Marek sighed, though there was no real argument left in it, already pulling out his own notes to help calculate the frame spacing and pulley load requirements. "...Fine. Hexagonal frames, luminescent lighting, maintenance access, the whole aesthetic package. How many total?"

Arista did the quick math, dividing the tunnel's length by the frame interval. "A few hundred, give or take. Nothing like the dome's scale, thankfully."

"Small mercies," Marek said, already sketching the frame's actual mounting specifications. "At least this one won't take another three months of manufacturing."

"No," Arista agreed, already picturing the finished tunnel in her mind, a long, glowing procession of hexagonal light leading steadily toward the Drowned Court, transforming what had once been pure function into something that actually felt like part of the journey. "This one, we can build fast. And it's going to look incredible."

She caught herself studying him a moment longer than the conversation strictly required, curiosity finally winning out.

"...Why did you choose this appearance?"

"Why is your hair pink?"

"Not the point here."

"I saw a chance to make myself look like when I was young, so I took it."

"With horns?"

"Got a problem with that?"

"No. No, no."

Marek grunted.

"I don't like you, Pinky."

He gathered his notes and left without further ceremony, the gamertag hovering briefly above his head as he turned, Prettier_IRL, entirely unbothered by whatever anyone else made of it.

Arista looked at Petrov, who'd been quietly reviewing production numbers nearby the entire time.

"...Prettier in real life?"

"Absolutely not."