Charles glared at the message in front of his eyes, barely withholding the urge to scream.

Congratulations, your multi-part quest to:

1. Create or help create 50 or more towns on your current continent.

2. Create or help create additional towns throughout the rest of the world.

Has now been completed. Unfortunately, the original God involved with the reward is no longer available at this time. Please contact your nearest friendly Necromancer at your convenience to schedule a consultation for an alternative solution.

He and Kira had been working themselves ragged building these cursed towns. Putting up with all these ungrateful people and now he had to deal with Gaia having fun at his expense! He swiped the message closed and just let the scream rip, scaring all the people nearby.

Moments earlier, they had been ecstatic, wanting to thank him for giving them a safe place again. Now, they weren’t sure he was even stable, not that any of them could be considered stable anymore. However, none of them screamed at the sky.

Well, at least not since the first week or two. Those who had succumbed to those weak urges had generally been the ones who died the fastest.

“What’s wrong?” Kira asked, pulling his head down so he could look at her. “I’m assuming you got a message of some kind. What did it say?”

“We finished the quest; this was the fiftieth town that we needed. However, Bob is still unavailable to fulfill the conditions of the reward. It said that I needed to contact James to schedule a consultation for an alternative solution.” He told her emptily, his head falling to rest on her shoulder. “I’m done. Let’s just go back to the space station. Your mom should be expanding it today anyway. We can ferry Sierra and the kids she’s bringing along up.”

“That sounds fine. Let’s go.”

A short trip through one of his doors later had them back on the space station. Charles waved to everyone halfheartedly and headed to their apartment with his final destination being the bed. He needed some time to just mope, and nothing helped bring him out of a funk more than sleeping.

Unfortunately, he got waylaid in the living room by Myri and Silvi, who were sitting at the small coffee table. They were in the middle of creating characters for some Tabletop RPG they had discovered in the shared inventory.

“Oh, Charles is here, we can just ask him what this means!” Myri bounced up off the floor and hurried to show her paper to him. “What does ‘Modifier’ mean? The book we found keeps using stupid words, that makes no sense. I just want to play my character already!”

Silvi gave him a helpless look and shook her head, her expression growing concerned as she took in his demeanor.

Charles shut his eyes tight, fighting back the knee-jerk response that would have destroyed the little girl. Just because he was having a bad day didn’t mean he needed to take it out on others, especially not someone like her.

He sighed after a moment, feeling the tension leave his body. “Let me look at what the book says first. It’s been a long time since I last created a character for one of these games.”

“What happened?” Silvi whispered to him after he had explained how to finish creating their characters to them.

“I finished the town creation quest today, and pretty much got nothing to show for it. Bob is still MIA, so I have to depend on Gaia, but I have to go through James to even do that. It’s just…” He slumped back against the couch, his head lolling back.

“It feels like I’ve been putting up with all this crap for no reason, I guess. I just needed some time alone to put my head back on straight when you two waylaid me.” He patted both their heads, letting her know he was alright with the distraction.

“I wouldn’t say it was for no reason. You helped save a lot of people with the creation of all those towns.”

“Yeah, and I saw plenty of things that I will never be able to unsee. That’s the part of the stories people always tend to gloss over in their fanciful stories. How the heroes they idolize are always driven to drinking and drugs to forget the things they’ve seen or been forced to do.” He swept a hand over his face. “It’s just… I was doing all of this so I could finish bringing my family back together.”

“I know, I’m sorry.” She hugged his side, touching at the connection between their souls in an effort to share his pain.

“You don’t need to do that,” He muttered.

“I know, but you’re hurting, and I’m here.”

“Are we going to play? Are you going to create a character too? Ooh, can we make one for Kira at the same time?” Myri burst out, interrupting the moment, as she shoved her now completed character sheet into his face.

“I don’t think your math adds up right in a couple of places, sweetie, but other than that, you did a great job.”

She pulled it back and looked at where he had pointed doubtfully. “But won’t she be weaker if I do it your way?”

“In the beginning, sure, but she’ll grow stronger.”

Myri frowned and squinted at him, seeming sure that he was messing with her. “Humph. Fine. But if she dies, I’m going to be mad!”

He chuckled and helped her fix the egregious math errors. They would need to get the little girl back in school at some point in the near future. She was seven. So that meant she should be in what, first or second grade? He couldn’t remember.

Just spending time with the two girls had already improved his mood tremendously. By the time Kira walked in a few minutes later, he was almost back to normal.

He handed her a character sheet. “Come on, apparently, we are playing a campaign with the girls. They even got your mom and dad to act as Gamemasters for it.”

“I know. I just came from speaking with them. You should have seen how happy dad was at the idea of running one of these. He hasn’t done one since I was a little girl.” She sat down at the small table and quickly went through the process of making her character. “Feeling better?”

“Yeah, apparently I just needed to get out of my own head for a while.”

She snorted. “I could have told you that.”

“Why don’t the two of you head on over to your grandparent’s apartment with your pages and have them look everything over? We’ll be right behind you once Kira finishes making her character.” Charles nudged the two girls towards the door.

“That’s the first time I think you’ve actually called mom and dad their grandparents.” Kira had stopped writing, and the dice lay forgotten on the tabletop.

“I know, but your parents already consider the girls, well, Myri, mostly as their granddaughters. Silvi is taking them a little longer, simply because they know her more as Alli instead of the vulnerable girl she’s become. I wanted to see if they would say anything or object. Consider it me indoctrinating the idea into their vulnerable psyches.” He wiggled his fingers at her in a mockery of mysticism.

She rolled her eyes at his antics. “You’re sweet.” Kira delivered a quick kiss to his lips and then got back to creating her character. It was quick enough that Charles almost missed the blush that crept into her cheeks. “By the way, mom said they finished the expansion of the station today and added two more improved dorms. I’m sure you missed them on your way in.”

He had indeed. He hadn’t exactly been looking around when they stepped through the doorway. “That gives us four of the improved dorms now. That should be plenty for Sierra and her menagerie of kids, along with the rest of the Coopers.”

“More than plenty. We still haven’t filled up the second one. Her complaint was always more about physical space, which has also been corrected. They added a large gym and playing area off to the side of the main area. There is even space for a workshop or two. I think they have one of them earmarked for Scott and your sister’s use for when they get built.”

“Sounds like we’re finally ready to start moving more people up here.”

“Yup, how about tonight? After we play with the girls for a little while and have had dinner. Then we can go down and start transferring everyone up.”

“I guess I’ll see if James is around while we’re down there as well. Maybe we’ll get lucky. I got the message today, and it was obviously personalized by her. He might be waiting for me like a good little skeleton.”

She scrawled out the word ‘skeleton’ from her page and glared at him. “Hush, I’m trying to finish this, and you keep distracting me.”

“Me?” Charles demanded in pretend innocence. “I wasn’t the one who started talking before she had finished writing everything down.”

“Argh, you can be so frustrating sometimes!” She smacked the pen down. “There, that’s everything. Let’s go before my character ends up getting named ‘Skeletrix’ or something stupid like that.”

“Well, that sounds slightly-“

“Don’t you dare say it!” She helped him to his feet and pushed him out the door before he could say anything stupid.