One moment I was coordinating my Nothic and the next I wasn’t doing much of anything.
< Mana 2,118/6,284 >
A meteor crashed into the humans’ camp with the force of an intercontinental ballistic missile. Dirt and rocks shot up hundreds of meters into the sky as whatever it was bounced and flew into my forest. Trees shattered into splinters as I struggled not to black out due to the huge soul contained within the meteor. In barely a second the object flew through my entire first floor and slammed into one of my enhanced trees and stopped cold.
< Mana 2,792/6,284 >
A huge wave of mana flooded my core and I shuddered. Or tried to. Under the effect of the colossal soul, I couldn’t even twitch. Pain wracked me as cilia all over my domain ripped and tore from the object’s passage. Mana flooded in, but I could tell that the power difference between the soul and I was destroying the efficiency of the transfer. I was only absorbing a fraction of a percent of the mana. The rest was damaging my cilia.
Warning: HEY ASSHOLE. STOP PUTTING MY BOOK ON AMAZON!
Dazed, I glanced at the meteor but could only stare in amazement at the unassuming naked human male who sat at the base of one of my enhanced trees. Despite clearly cosplaying an astrological phenomenon, he was unharmed and even giggling as if he had just heard the best joke ever.
He shook his head violently, flapping his lips in a raspberry before he jumped twenty feet into the air and landed in a relaxed slouch.
< Mana 3,233/6,284 >
“Invigorating!” he exclaimed, performing a pirouette that made his junk jiggle grotesquely. “And entirely uncalled for! Although...there was a dart somewhere around here...”
That seemed to excite him for a reason I couldn’t fathom. He did a little jig while looking around, a lopsided grin on his face, and gasped with both hands over his mouth as he saw the tree he crashed into.
“Oh, you are a beaut!” He exclaimed, blurring to the tree and caressing the visible dent in the ultratough, level-enhanced bark. Then he froze like a statue, and over a minute, the left side of his smile rose into an eerie grin. He danced back and twirled again, pausing as he turned to face the tree with both arms open wide.
“Time to do some sketchy shit. Do da, do da!” He sang out and skipped up to the tree. Without further preamble, an intense pulse of golden light surrounded the man. With a girly moan, he ripped my beautiful cultivated oak out of the earth.
“Hope I get away with it. Oh! Da do da, day!”
The man skipped again, moving as if he wasn’t holding a quarter million kilo tree in his hands, and heaved. The tree rocketed through the canopy like a javelin. The force of the acceleration ripped the branches and leaves off the trunk and ignited the outer bark. I felt the soul of my little one fade as its body flew westward and out of my domain.
The mysterious man craned his neck and shaded his eyes as he looked after his missile with the same lopsided grin as before.
“Oooh! That’s going to hit! Let us peruse the damage, eh boys?” He turned to a fern and patted one of its leaves with a belly laugh.
He slammed his fists together and a burst of blue particles erupted out of the collision. The particles orbited around him, once, twice then slammed inward as the body of the man vanished into thin air. His soul told a different story. Instead of vanishing, it shifted into a higher dimension, compressing and increasing in density to a frankly ridiculous degree. After a momentary pause, it shot after the missile he had launched and tore a hole through my domain as my cilia in the extraplanar space couldn’t handle the speed and density.
< Mana 3,944/6,284 >
...
Ow, ow, oww...
----------------------------------------
A wave of expletives rose around Gella as she lay stunned on her back. Dirt and debris covered her from whatever had just hit the camp. Chaos was everywhere as people tried unsuccessfully to organize.
Lucky that I was visiting Kellar, the thought rose unbidden to Gella’s mind as she saw the utter devastation that had befallen the southern side of the camp. Several hands grabbed her by the shoulders and Kellar’s familiar face appeared in her vision. She blinked at him, trying to understand the words he was saying through the ringing in her ears.
“...now. Can...do...?”
“What?” Gella blinked at the man in confusion. Kellar let out a deep sigh and then slapped Gella, none too gently, on the cheek. She flinched back, and despite the fact Kellar was holding back, he was still a tier-four human. One who’s physical strength far exceeded Gella’s own. The anger that bubbled up did wonders to push back the haze shrouding her mind.
“What was that for!” Gella scrambled to her feet, stepping back and holding an affronted hand on her red cheek.
“Good, you are alright,” Kellar said, brushing off his pants as he stood. “We are leaving now, can you do it?”
“What! Do...Wait now?” Gella exclaimed, her bruised cheek forgotten. “I thought you said you’d wait for at least another couple months because...you know. The Captain.”
“Yes, but it is not every day that the Goddess, blessed be her name, sends the Jester himself to save you. The captain is formidable, but the Jester will occupy him while we leave in the chaos. Are you in?”
“Uhm, yeah, uh sure. I’m in.”
“Good, go distract the captain. Keep his attention to the east and south,” Kellar said. Before he could leave, he paused and turned back to Gella with a gentle smile. “We are forever in your debt Gellamine Mier. If you ever need a home, you are always welcome with us.”
----------------------------------------
I sent a curt command to my minions to retreat from Rockwood as I nursed my wounds. I could sense it was similarly injured, but not nearly to the extent I was. Practically all my cilia were damaged. The massive influx of mana had been a boon and a half, but it would take hours to reach full health again.
Instead of repairing every fiber individually — the thought of which I didn’t want to even consider — I opted for the faster but less efficient route. Using the same method I had used the previous day to separate myself from Rockwood so I could level up, I culled the damaged fibers and pulled their material inward. The extra mass I directed to repair and strengthen the less damaged strands. It hurt doing it this way, but the process was semi-automatic and I would be fully healed in an hour. The only drawback was that it would take a day or two to recover back to my original density. That being said, I hadn’t found a particular use for density so I wasn’t too miffed about the situation.
Rockwood though had stopped its inexorable advance, likely focusing inwards on repairs. Despite being farther than I from the crash site, it appeared to have opted to repair its injuries the long and slow way. That allowed me to send my minions back to the front and chip away at its domain while it was occupied. Unlike its method of expanding in every direction in the hopes of crushing me, I didn’t bother doing anything of the sort. Instead, I had triangulated the center point of its sphere of expansion and come to the simple — if disappointing — conclusion that the center point was likely where its core was housed. Then it was a simple matter to drill a narrow but deep tunnel directly into its side.
I hadn’t lost any minions and my progress was rapid. Despite being slightly weaker than it, I kept my Nothic close together in a dense ball that lasered anything that approached. This way, I had discovered Rockwood's other creatures, but none were strong or coordinated enough to survive more than a couple of seconds under the synchronized gaze of twenty Nothic and Betsy. Betsy reveled in the action, cheering every time she and her kin converted another Terror Dog, Gemstone Ankou, or either of the stone spider-like creatures that Rockwood spawned into slime on the stone floor.
I was happy with the progress so I allowed myself to think about the strange arrival — and immediate departure — of the naked man. He was the highest tier human I had seen so far, and by a significant margin. If I had to guess the guy was at least tier seven, if not higher. I honestly had no way of knowing since the guy had practically torn me a new one just waltzing into my outer domain. All my previous methods of determining tier — such as aura size and mana output — were null and void since the man was of such a high tier that I couldn’t even properly absorb his mana output.
It also frustrated me deeply that he had come in and killed one of my trees. It was so unfair. The little sapling hadn’t done anything to him, and on a whim, the guy had killed the poor baby without a thought in the world. It angered me that I wasn’t strong enough to protect my trees from such threats. That their lives were so cheap that all my creatures and their natural defenses were helpless in the face of one ridiculous clown of a man. I wrote myself a little note reminding myself to build some kind of superweapon to deter such threats when I got the chance.
I wasn’t the only one who was vexed with the new arrival. The Captain had arrived with a small retinue towards the uprooted grave of my tree. I paid half a mind to their conversation as I directed my minions and learned a few interesting pieces of information. The meteor man went by the name of Jester, and there was a significant battle with a rogue monster west of us. Some kind of sea serpent had risen out of the ocean and the highest tier humans in the area were fighting it back.
Suddenly there was this big kerfuffle and a whole lot of shouting. That drew my full attention and I saw the Captain holding Gella in an arm lock. Gella was back! I hadn’t noticed, though the flinty glint in Arcturus’ eyes and Miranda’s disappointed shouting made me think that the girl wished she wasn’t there right about now. Despite her disadvantaged position, Gella shouted right back at her mom in an impassioned pleading tone that drew on my heartstrings. Something about slaves having rights which was nice. Christina stood nearby and pipped up every once in a while in a supporting manner.
You go girls! I hope you win the argument.
Anyway, I had just burst into a large chamber in my quest to have a face-to-face conversation with a certain gemstone.
“What in Hoth’s hairy bunghole!” a deep voice greeted my minions as Betsy rampaged into the chamber and took a huge bite out of Rockwood’s cilia.
“Hi monster!” Betsy giggled, turning all seven of her eyes on the three dwarfs staring in abject terror at her scintillating form. “Bye monster!”
Twenty-seven toxic green eyes turned onto the first of the three dwarves and he melted into a pile of goo. That snapped the remaining two out of their fugue and they screamed out defensive and movement skills that had them flying out of the chamber in seconds. I noticed once they had gone the pair of Terror Dog corpses and the forgotten bag half-full of Terror Dog spines that indicated they had been farming the dungeon for resources.
Betsy dear?
“Mama!” Betsy lumbered in place on her four squat legs. “I made more slime! Look how useful I am!”
Well done dear. Betsy preened at my words and took another huge bite out of Rockwood as if eager to make even more progress. Those were dwarves dear, not monsters.
“Oh,” Betsy deflated. “But they look the same as the other ones.”
I know dear, but do try to avoid bullying the humanoids. They don’t respawn like you or your kin.
“I’ll do my best!” Betsy turned back and began ripping into Rockwood with a new passion. All around her, my Nothic redoubled their enraged rending and within minutes I had subsumed all the way to the other end of the chamber. I ignored the tall ceiling and any side passages in favor of digging into the stone in a straight line toward where I calculated Rockwood’s core was. If I assumed it was the same size as myself, then I should reach the core in less than twelve hours.
As I did so I checked back on Tank who I had tasked with keeping Rockwood from encroaching on my tunnel. He had taken gladly to the task and seemed to enjoy learning how to move in the [Hyperbolic Menagerie]. The new upgrade had changed the Space on his floor in a very weird way. Even to me, it was hard to understand what was happening. From watching Tank, I concluded several key points about the upgrade.
First, my third floor was now larger. How much larger I had trouble calculating, but more space definitely fit within hyperbolic space compared to normal. Second, it took more than four right turns to get back to where you started. In addition, when walking in a circle, Tank more than once found himself facing a different direction from how he had started. It was a confoundingly disorienting effect that destroyed my sense of orientation when looking in.
Surprisingly, hyperbolic space was relatively normal when you were within it. Distant objects were exaggerated a tad, and distances were a little weird but otherwise walking down a tunnel led you down the tunnel. It was only when looking outside-in that my figurative stomach tied itself into knots. I would watch Tank walk down the tunnel and he would start rotating for no discernible reason. From his perspective he was walking down a curved tunnel, so adjusted accordingly, but I knew the tunnel was straight. It made him look like he was moonwalking and reminded me starkly of video game animation glitches where the character walk animation didn’t sync up with how fast they were moving.
The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.
It also had the effect of ruining the neat order in my castle, and I noted that I would have to reorder the castle to best take advantage of the new upgrade at a later date.
A huge detonation shook the area and Betsy wailed in pain as she and four other Nothic were flung back. I glanced over to see four dwarves covered from head to toe in glimmering golden armor. They strode down the tunnel and unleashed blasts of white energy and stone projectiles that forced my Nothic to retreat.
“Don’t give me any quartz, Ironfoot, I’m fuming! Fuming I say!” The first dwarf roared as he spun an ornate hammer and sent a blast down the tunnel that sent minions flying. He was distinct from the other fully armored dwarfs in that he had two ethereal horns curling out from the sides of his helmet. “You knew all this time that Rockwood was getting beat ta shit and your slate-brain thought it’d be a great idear ‘cause Stench liked how the sand tasted?”
“Wraithor—”
The lead dwarf interrupted his underlings with a voice that shook the tunnel and drowned out all dissent with its intensity. “What kind of blue-bellied, sack of cloudy quartz thinks that givin’ up our ancestral dungeon is a good idea for some rogue element that is aligned with chaos and dark of all elements? Honestly. To think you young ‘uns would sacrifice a gift from Hoth himself for a bit of sand. What would yer mothers say!”
He continued his tirade and I gently urged my minions to retreat as they blew skill after skill that mostly missed my horde. After a couple of seconds it became clear that they weren’t chasing my minions, but rather just throwing skills haphazardly to scare away the monsters for the time being.
“Mama...” Betsy poked at her leg with one of her eye stalks. “Look, mama. My leg broke.”
I glanced at her and saw that her front right leg had ripped right out of the rudimentary joint and was flopping loosely in the breeze. Oops. That wasn’t supposed to happen. I must have miscalculated the forces involved when reinforcing the joint. Luckily, I hadn’t bothered installing a full suite of nerves so Betsy felt no pain from the dislocation. I would have to bring her deeper to fix her though since that irate dwarf was fairly high level. The pinnacle of tier four if I had to guess.
If you come back to your chambers I can remove the leg and give you some new ones.
Betsy paused for a second and I saw her lower lip tremble as she looked with all her eyes at the mangled leg. “No mama. I don’t wanna go back. Look, I can fix it!”
Betsy placed her leg against the floor and gently leaned forward until the offending joint popped back into position with a sickening squelch. I winced, but without nerves, Betsy had no way of knowing how much damage she had just done to the cartilage.
Impressive. How did you do that?
“I put my leg on the ground then leaned over it and pushed down until I heard a click. Now it works!”
Well done, dear. Help your kin now, please. They are getting slaughtered.
“Ok!”
Betsy shot to her feet and rushed down the tunnel toward where the combat had escalated. One dwarf had fallen, and their body had been dragged back around the bend as the other three dwarves held back my Nothic. They spammed barrier skills and offensive casts on cooldown which wreaked havoc in my troops, but there was only so much they could do to stop my Nothic from inflicting steady damage over time on them.
Yellow-tinged pus oozed down the dwarves’ beards as even the leader struggled under the barrage. My units were dying fast since the head dwarf hit hard enough to one-shot my minions if he landed a blow. The tide was steadily shifting to the point where I wished I could call Tank up to help. I couldn’t interweave the territories of my different floors with the dwarves so close, so I would have to settle with my Nothic for now. The situation only became more frustrating as two dozen more dwarves flooded in and relieved the exhausted three who had been holding back my tide.
The dwarf reinforcements were weaker than the four original defenders, but not by much, and proved to be a resilient nut to crack as they rotated shield spells to absorb the bulk of my Nothic’s damage. To my amusement, a pack of Terror Dogs chose that moment to assault the dwarf formation from behind which caused all sorts of chaos. I didn’t bother capitalizing as I had a deeper dilemma to sort out.
I hadn’t expected the dwarves to interfere. The original information I had gleaned suggested that the dwarves would allow me and Rockwood to duke it out, but the head dwarf's words and actions implied otherwise. Rockwood was important to the dwarves and they wouldn’t just let me destroy the dungeon without a fight.
That was fine by me, honestly. I wasn’t super into the whole idea of killing dungeons myself. Besides, who was I to get in between a dwarf and his rock. There was just one teeny-weeny issue with backing off.
Rockwood was a brainless slime mold that refused to stop chewing on me.
I growled in frustration as my Nothic fought a tactical withdrawal. I could tunnel around, and if I was being honest, I was fast approaching the fourth tier myself. With trees, humans, and now dwarves moving inside my domain, I was gaining mana at an astronomical rate. In fact.
< Mana 6,284/6,284 >
< You cannot level up while in combat! >
And that was the other issue with letting Rockwood live. I refused to rip up my cilia every time I got enough mana for a level up. It hurt and was wasteful. Not to mention how it slowed down my expansion. I also couldn’t just retreat a kilometer or so, and let there be a distance between us. Such a strategy would work great for about a week before Rockwood would catch up and we would be back at square one.
With a grunt of effort, I shredded my outer cilia and my contact with Rockwood vanished.
< Mana 6,284/6,284 >
< You have leveled up! >
< You are now level 20! >
< Mana 0/7,328 >
I flicked open my upgrade interface in an attempt to take my mind off the frustrating dilemma with the dwarves.
Nihilic’s Bifurcation:
You can bifurcate your cilia up to your tier amount of times
You generate cilia 30% slower
Ugicywapih’s Transference:
Cure any affliction
Mana cost depends on the severity of the affliction
300 minute cooldown
Eye Of Horus:
You can see and manipulate souls
You cannot see the material plane
Before I even managed to finish reading, my interface glitched. Ethereal golden strands manifested from nowhere and latched onto the blue box. Hairline fractures appeared all over the interface as more and more golden strands stabbed into the box. I panicked, sending my cilia at the blue box, but my strands passed right through the mental manifestation.
Before I could try anything else the golden strands slipped away and left my options...changed.
Corrupted Bifurcation:
You can bifurcate your cilia up to 4 times
Bifurcated cilia are fragile
You generate cilia 63% slower
Corrupted Transference:
Transfer any affliction on a sentient to yourself
1,293 minute cooldown
Submit Heretic:
Humans within your domain are aware of your connection to Deia
10% of mana gained is transferred to Deia
What...Hello? I poked at the interface but the options didn’t revert to what they should have been. I...I had no words. That damned goddess was meddling again. Sticking her grubby fingers where they didn’t belong and corrupting my upgrade options.
The original three options had been great. Nihilic’s Bifurcation allowed me to split my cilia into smaller strands which I could only assume would allow me to finetune how much mana I harvested from the sentients in my domain. Logically, if a thick, strong strand was able to harvest more mana by default, then a thin one would perform worse. That was something that I had been needing for a long while now. Already many of the humans struggled to stay in my domain for long periods, and it was a problem that would only get worse the more I leveled. If I was able to create a zone that behaved like a tier-one dungeon, perhaps I could even convince a whole town to just live within me for months if not years. Doing so would do wonders for my mana generation as I wouldn’t have to rely on high leveled individuals for everything. That wasn’t even mentioning how it guaranteed that I would never hurt any of my plants when [Eternal Spring] eventually petered off.
[Ugicywapih’s Transference] wasn’t as immediately relevant, but I knew Christina was suffering from Soul Burn and it would be amazing to be able to cure her. The real benefit of this upgrade was likely that it would supercharge my ability to perform soul surgery. If I could cure Soul Burn as soon as I caused it, there was a chance I could increase my soul-enhancing ritual's success rate from under 10% to 100%. With this, I could initiate extensive experiments on soul-enhancing crafts.
Lastly, the [Eye of Horus] provided a similar effect to [Ugicywapih’s Transference] through an entirely different mechanism. If I could see and manipulate souls directly, I wouldn’t have to rely on the brutal Dagger of Geas. My manipulation skills were unmatched, and I was confident that I would only need a little practice to perform the soul-enhancing surgery with perfect precision. The [Eye of Horus] had a slightly painful downside, but I was sure that I could adapt in time should I have gotten the upgrade.
The problem was. I wasn’t ever going to get any of those upgrades because of a certain meddling Goddess.
The three new options were objectively terrible. [Nihilic’s Bifurcation] had been shafted to near uselessness. Where before the 30% reduced cilia production rate on [Nihilic’s Bifurcation] was manageable, a 63% reduction was bordering on dangerous. With that, my expansion would slow to a crawl, and I would be in serious trouble if I ever encountered another dungeon with even a moderate ability to destroy my cilia. I also had no idea what ‘Bifurcated cilia are fragile’ entailed. I already knew that if a massively overleveled individual walked by, my cilia would tear as they tried extracting mana from them. If my cilia became ‘fragile’ what would happen the next time some random high-leveled human crash-landed in my domain?
[Corrupted Transference] was essentially useless as well. Instead of curing ailments, the skill now transferred them to me, so while I could heal Christina, I would be stuck with months of Soul Burn until I figured out some other way to heal the injury. The increased cooldown was such a silly additional downside that I couldn't help but scoff at it. It wasn't as if I would use the upgrade often enough to ever need to be worried about the cooldown in the first place.
The last option was the worst and a straight slap to the face. I wouldn’t have chosen it even if I had a choice. That goddess must be delusional if she thought that I would submit for a second to her after all she’s done to me.
The worst part of it all was that I couldn’t choose my skill upgrade. There was a small chance that whatever random number generator chose my upgrades settled on [Submit Heretic] and there was diddly squat I could do about it. It was exceedingly infuriating.
I looked away to calm my mind. My perceptions scanned over my dungeon. I used up my cooldowns and overall checked on the general health of everything. It calmed me. Gave me perspective, and buried the incessant niggle that was Rockwood’s chewing. As I did so I noticed the humans had gathered again.
All the slaves were arrayed in a line before a crude altar that Miranda had reinstated. There was plenty of shouting, and the soldier standing guard in a loose perimeter didn’t seem any happier than the slaves. Most had distasteful expressions though a few looked like they would be sick. Gella was there as well, clutching Christina’s hand as they both stood to the side with expressions of frustrated acceptance that bothered me.
I could almost feel the despair radiating out of the twenty-odd collared humans as a white-robed priest — I hadn’t bothered learning the name of — orated some long speech to the assembly. Every couple minutes, the priest pulled out a thick vellum sheet and handed it to Miranda who tucked the sheet away with a nod, before returning her attention to a pentagram glowing dully beneath the crude altar.
Something nasty was happening here, I could feel it in my bones, but I couldn’t bring myself to care. It just seemed so small. Some humans would suffer, or die, or both, but what did it matter? There were so many of them, and every day I became more convinced that they were all NPCs who the game developers were too lazy to make unique assets for. I didn’t used to have trouble telling people apart, but Earth humans must have more distinctive features since all these people looked the same to me.
Oh, I knew I could go out there and try to stop whatever was happening. Maybe get my Treants to attack, or get Christina to say something, but why should I? These people worshiped Deia. They were my enemies by definition. If anything, I should be happy that they were killing each other off. Fewer foot soldiers for that damned Goddess. The slaves had pulled the short end of the stick but sucks to suck. This world was messed up, and I was getting stiffed along with everyone else.
It was a goddamn waste of life, but whatever.
----------------------------------------
Gella couldn’t believe things had turned out so badly. She had tried her hardest to distract the captain, but he had caught on somehow and rushed back to camp. In a timeframe far too short, he had organized the Guards and rounded up the fleeing slaves. Without access to skills, the slaves didn’t have a chance to escape.
Gella winced as her mother’s words rang hollow in her head over and over again.
The punishment for an escaped slave is death.
Her mom’s expression at that moment had seared itself into her brain. The thin veneer of politeness barely hid the frustrated stress-induced rage hidden beneath. Gella had known her mother was not used to being ignored, but up until now, she hadn’t internalized it.
Miranda had tried for days to get the dungeon’s attention. She had asked it, begged it, used skills within it, and even sacrificed human soul fragments to it, but nothing had worked. The dungeon refused to even lay its vast attention on her, let alone allow her a glimpse into how it had managed to elevate Gella past the first tier without having to break a dungeon core.
And so with the slaves already slated for death by that foul priest, Gella could hardly look away as her mom took their papers from the white-robed man.
No dungeon can refuse a whole soul, and these slaves are already dead.
Goddess knew, her mom was under a lot of pressure from the Council of the White Lotus. The Council expected results, and soon. Gella knew this. She had seen the stacks of missives overflowing off her mom’s desk. How her mom spent late nights clutching her temples as she planned and replanned possible strategies, before scrapping them all. Gella understood it all, but there was bound to be a better way! It was inhumane to use the slaves like this. They deserved better and it ignored the biggest asset they had in solving this problem.
Gella turned her gaze on Christina who stared at the atrocity about to be committed with a stormy scowl that marred her beautiful features. The last few days with Christina had been some of the best in her life in more ways than one. Throughout them all, she had noticed something that she hadn’t mentioned. Christina spoke to something when Gella wasn’t looking. She did it in a friendly way, usually with a hint of exasperation, but always gently. Gella had let the issue lie as she had been sucked into the slave issue, but in the back of her mind, she couldn’t help but think that Christina spoke with the dungeon.
Fantasies disproved years ago. If you thought for a moment you wouldn’t waste my time with such drivel!
But Miranda had been adamant when Gella had brought it up to her in desperate confidence. Christina couldn't speak with the dungeon in the way that Gella described. At best, Christina was speaking to herself. At worst, she had gone mad. Gella was sure Christina wasn’t insane. This situation was, and she didn’t know what to do to fix it.
With a desperate cry, Gella rushed forward, leaving her stalwart protector behind, and collapsed before the kneeling Kellar.
“I’m sorry. I’m so so sorry,” she whispered, barely holding back her tears for the man she barely knew, yet cared for. “I didn’t m-mean for it to end like this. I-I tried to slow the cap—”
“Shh,” Kellar’s gentle scarred hand rose to cup her cheek. He raised her to face him and brushed away a thick tear with his rough thumb. “You did good kid. We gambled and it didn’t pay off, yes? What can you do? We are at peace with it.”
“But it’s not fair.” Gella sniffled, leaning into the large man’s touch. “It’s not fair.”