“Goddess?” “Yes, sapling.” “I love him.” “Yes.” “It hurts.” “Yes.” “…” “You did well, child. He will be safe. Reach out. You can feel him nearby whenever you want.” “Ah.” “Goddess?” “Yes?” “My children?” “They will be safe. All six of them.” “Ah. I’m happy.” “Yes, sapling. When you are ready, I will return you
“Husband.” Melsy is standing behind me. It’s been a week since Lillia became a small-ish Gaia tree. She isn’t nearly as big as the others we’ve seen, but she has fairly low hanging, sprawling branches, all laden with ripe or nearly ripe fruit. “It’s been a few days, I think you need to do something
“Touching,” Dubhe drawls. Read the atmosphere. We’re having a moment here. “So, what do we do?” I whisper in Lillia’s ear. It’s true that I had lost my wife and children once before but I was only a little bitter about that. I had emotionally lost them long before I actually died. I have been
“I’m not okay with this.” I’ve declared it, now how do I express my feelings. “Husband, these are not humes, nor dragonfolk, nor bearfolk. They are orckin.” It hurts that she’s taking their side. I’d rather she defend me, but I also don’t want her to lie. Mika jumps in as well. “You’ve said it
“So, explain to us again. We need to understand.” “Well,” I pause, and take a deep breath, “when we built the thing, Lillia put her super strong root-branch-prison bars things as you see them. We,” I paused again and look around at each face. Standing around me is Dubhe, Mika, and Melsy. They seem to
After lunch, I exited the house, and saw something strange. It looked like there was someone else in the orckin’s pen. That doesn’t make much sense. Lillia has reinforced both the prison area and the pen with her dryad-fabricated, super hard branches. Even I am hard pressed to break one. Not only that, but there
I’m often reminded of the differences between the species at times like these. I’m hauling back trimmed logs, one in each hand. The weight, probably several tons each. With my runes, it is quite the workout, but doable. The bearfolk children are riding on said logs, having fun balancing. Occasionally, I rotate one, and most
The trees thinned out as we came closer to the continental ice pillar. “And here we are.” The convict declared. “Huh.” As the trees disappeared, the winds picked up. Also, the ground was warm. Seems like, if we could break the wind, it would probably be warm enough to grow food. It was only cold
For the last few days, the convict has been telling me our days traveling will soon be coming to an end. It definitely has been getting colder. This must be like Earth, where the north and south poles are icy deserts. Instead of riding in the cart, nearly everyone is riding on Otsu’s back. Poor
Killing an orckin with my newly developed powers, and well trained control, is pretty simple. It doesn’t matter if that practice was temporally accelerated, right? Anyway, I have tested myself a few times. This time, I threw a straight-ish stick like a spear, and applied a certain rotation – based on the shape – with