Martin didn`t reply, so Fred looked around, checking his domain again. The kids were back, and Fred went to watch them happily. But something was wrong. The kids weren`t playing, or washing, or petting Shelley. All they were doing was harvesting in the garden, and running back out.

　　They looked terrible, and unhappy, and didn`t say a word to each other. And as Fred looked closer, he saw bruises and cuts on the children. And whip marks! A sudden rage brewed up within him, like the whole mountain would explode. Who did this to children?!?

　　Fred followed a group of the kids as they drug their full sacks out of the tunnel and into the muggy daylight. They set off southwest, moving along the slope, and they quickly came to the limit of Fred`s domain. So he dug. He dug a small tunnel in the ground, to follow them. The kids weren`t slow, but Fred had no problem keeping up; his whole mind was on this one task of following the kids. They ran for a while, and hit the forest after the first thousand spans.

　　After another two thousand spans, they finally arrived at what Fred assumed was home. There were other people there, adults, and a thatched hut. Fred couldn`t see much right now, so he set out to fix that. From the hut, he reached out his tunnels in all directions, trying to understand as much as possible. His sight quickly revealed an entire village among the trees, with about fifty simple huts of various sizes.

　　In the village, he saw about two hundred people, all the same poor, simple folk who were the first to come visit his domain, so long ago now (it seemed to him). But his vision kept filling in the blanks, and his rage only increased. Very few able-bodied men were in the village. In fact, the only big, well-fed men he saw were outsiders of some sort. They all wore matching blue vests, and had helmets and armor and swords and such. Fred counted a dozen of them, and it seemed every one was currently occupied in abusing and assaulting the townsfolk.

　　Some were beating the women. Some were whipping the children as they emptied the sacks they`d carried. Two were kicking an old man who couldn`t even stand. Fred didn`t even think; he just acted.

　　A huge hand, twice the size of the men, thrust out of the ground, and grabbed one of the blue vested bandits. The stoney hand, the avatar of Fred`s rage, crushed the man into a bloody sack of broken bones and ruined flesh, then threw it at another bandit, knocking the man ten spans away. Without pausing, Fred`s now bloody hand slid through the duff of the forest floor, spraying leaves in its wake, to grab and kill the rest of the invaders.

　　When all the visible bandits had been dealt with, Fred looked around again. He saw two bandits sleeping in a big hut near the center of the village. His hand of vengeance moved forward and simply slapped the whole hut into the earth. He drug the whole hut, invaders and all, down into the earth, making a hole ten spans wide. Then, while the shocked and motionless villagers watched, he abruptly filled the hole back in, leaving nothing but a clearing.

　　All was still. For a bit. Then the children started jumping and cheering. That`s what Fred wanted to see. But several other children started shouting, and running west into the woods while beckoning. It took a few moments for Fred to realize that the beckoning was for him, but then he dug a tunnel to follow.

　　The kids ran, leading him up the slope, past stone ridges and a visible trail. A few hundred spans later, the kids stopped quietly, and pointed ahead of them. Fred continued to dig in the direction they showed him, and soon came upon another of the blue-vests, sitting on a tree stump. Once again, Fred needed to know what was going on, so he dug in all directions.Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

　　His digging showed him another dozen of the bandits, all sitting around in front of a crack in the mountainside. As Fred explored through the ground further, he realized it was a mine, and over fifty of the poor townsfolk (all men) were inside the mine, digging and hauling dirt and rocks. They didn`t even have proper tools; they had only sticks and tattered sacks. The mine was filthy and wet, and looked like it could cave in at any time. Fred couldn`t even see what was so special about the rocks the humans were digging out. It was time to stop this.

　　Fred`s hand of vengeance leapt out of the rock of the mountain, and the children had a clear view of (what to them was clearly) the wrath of a god. None of the blue-vests survived the next ten seconds. Then Fred let go of the hand, leaving the stone shape looming motionless next to the mine entrance. He plunged into the mine, quickly shoring up the most unstable areas near the miners.

　　Wherever the miners were digging, he expanded the wall towards them, showing them that he was moving the earth, and also nudging them back towards the entrance. This wasn`t hard; none of the bandits had been brave enough to enter the mine. In quick order, the miners dropped what they were carrying and emerged into the daylight. They were greeted by happy children and horribly pummeled bodies with blue vests.

　　After hearing from the children, some of the men left, racing back to the village to see for themselves. The rest of the men, in shock and awe of what had just happened, gathered around the stone hand that Fred had left standing, and began worshiping it. Fred`s anger didn`t quickly abate. He went back to the village to look around some more.

　　There he saw a village slowly coming back to life. Everyone was very thin and weak and frightened. Fred assumed that the bandits had taken over the village for a while now, and wondered why the kids had only now seemed distressed enough for him to notice. Perhaps he hadn`t paid attention like he should have. He worried about this as he watched the humans.

　　As the men came back from the mine, many families grabbed and hugged each other, as if they hadn`t been allowed to for a long time. A few people were working together to drag the dead bodies out of the village, but others were simply desecrating and abusing the dead bandits, letting their pain and anger out on the bodies of their abusers. Fred couldn`t understand the language of the tribe, but everyone was crying, and Fred understood that.

　　Fred took a step back, thinking about where he was and what he was doing. He could still feel and see every part of his domain "back home". He could see that he`d extended his domain as a shallow, narrow tendril into the forest. He didn`t feel overextended or burdened. In fact, he felt like he should expand this new area in all directions. After all, the more he dug, the more he could see and do.

　　Way back in the new tower forts, Fred could see men exploring them, and Black Mamba (as usual) was out in front. He felt cheered by seeing her; she seemed the exact opposite of the men he`d just killed in his rage, and also the opposite of the poor, passive villagers he`d just saved. He wondered what (if anything) he could do to make their lives better, though he knew he`d already done a lot, and he also knew that they weren`t his first responsibility.

　　He thought about giving them good mining tools, but he still couldn`t see what the mine was good for, and in any case mining was always a hazardous job, and the villagers were obviously not miners by tradition. He then thought about building a big, strong castle for them, so they could stay protected behind the walls. But they weren`t prepared for that life, either, and Fred figured some armed force would covet the castle and take it away from them.

　　Then he thought about giving them more basic tools and weapons. That seemed like a good idea, and Fred realized that with a thought he could create copies of his treasure sprites inside the village, and pop them himself. He gave them dozens of fine bows, hundreds of excellent arrows, and fifty metal spears. He added a hundred axes, the kind that would chop wood well.

　　He also wondered where they were getting their water from, so he began the task of expanding his domain outward from their village (and back to his main domain). He carefully dug downward too, and was pretty quickly rewarded by finding an underground reservoir of water. "Perfect," Fred thought. He dug a vertical well, and (for good measure) he made an open wellhouse for it, protecting the well from the wind and elements.

　　Since it was now part of his domain, he also made a small patch of (what he thought of as) farmland, and planted lots of onions and potatoes in it. "Is that enough? Mebbe they`re all so thin because they only have onions and potatoes to eat." Fred wondered. He resolved to ask Jim about it.

　　Looking around again, that was all he could think of. So he left the village, digging a spread-out set of tunnels back towards his main domain, widening this new arm of his control.