My Hands Shook as I Made the Cut — I Almost Ruined Everything
Part 2
My heart leaped into my throat as the lantern arm dropped.
The heavy plastic lantern was dragging the half-melted joint straight down toward the desk.
If it snapped off now, it would leave a jagged, stringy mess of melted plastic on her shoulder.
I dropped my tweezers.
I reached in with my bare, shaking fingers.
I pinched the tiny wrist, ignoring the sharp edge of the lantern biting into my skin.
I pushed the arm back up into the socket with a desperate shove.
The wet sprue glue squelched, seeping out of the seam.
I held it there, pinching it so hard my fingernails turned white.
I didn’t care if the glue got on my skin.
I didn’t care if my hands were shaking.
I just needed this bond to hold.
I held my breath, counting the seconds in my head.
Ten.
Twenty.
Thirty.
I slowly, carefully, peeled my fingers away from the miniature.
The arm stayed in place.
The lantern hung proudly in the air, defying gravity.
I slumped back in my chair, letting out a heavy sigh of relief.
I glanced over at my phone screen.
The chat was filling with cheering emojis and messages of support.
I laughed, a nervous, breathless sound.
I told the camera that I thought it had finally worked.
I picked up the rawhide face I had prepared earlier.
I carefully glued it onto the front of the neck joint.
Then came the antler mask, fitting perfectly over her eyes.
She was looking out toward the lantern, giving the whole figure a sense of dynamic movement.
She was gazing off into the terrifying darkness, ready to face whatever nightmare the game threw at us.
I was incredibly proud of how she was coming together.
She looked like a real character, not just a pile of detached plastic body parts.
I reached for the glorious, sweeping ponytail I had scavenged.
I was weirdly excited for this specific detail.
I thought having this badass survivor with a crazy mask and a massive ponytail was going to be amazing.
I dabbed a spot of glue on the back of her head.
I reached down to grab the ponytail with my tweezers.
And that was when I saw it.
Sitting on the cutting mat, completely untouched, was the flowing, dramatic cape I had specifically cut out for her.
My stomach completely dropped.
The cape was supposed to be sandwiched between the torso and the head.
I had completely forgotten to install it.
And I had just cemented her head onto her shoulders.
Could I really risk tearing the perfectly positioned head off just to attach the cape?
Part 3
Brenda sat completely still in the harsh, sterile glare of her halogen hobby lamp.
The rest of the apartment was swallowed by the quiet darkness of a late Tuesday night.
Dust motes danced in the cone of light, illuminated like tiny, chaotic stars.
On the green, self-healing cutting mat before her stood the nearly completed miniature.
It was a masterpiece of gray plastic, standing barely two inches tall.
The figure wielded a bone dagger in one hand and held a heavy lantern high with the other.
Her face was covered by a terrifying, scavenged antler mask.
But something was horribly, fundamentally wrong.
Brenda stared at the cutting mat, her eyes locking onto a specific, discarded piece of plastic.
It was the sweeping, dramatic cape she had spent ten minutes carefully clipping from the sprue.
She had spent another five minutes meticulously scraping away the mold lines with the back of her scalpel.
It was supposed to flow majestically from the survivor’s shoulders, adding bulk and motion to the silhouette.
Instead, it was sitting uselessly on the table.
She had completely forgotten to glue it on.
And the rawhide-armored head was already cemented firmly onto the neck joint.
A cold knot of dread formed in the pit of her stomach.
She had been so focused on getting the lantern arm to defy gravity that she had lost track of the assembly sequence.
The sprue glue was unforgiving.
Unlike superglue, which formed a brittle bond that could sometimes be snapped, sprue glue was a solvent.
It melted the two pieces of plastic together, fusing them at a molecular level.
Given enough time, the head and the torso would become a single, inseparable piece of plastic.
If she tried to force it off later, the plastic would tear, ruining the delicate details of the rawhide collar.
She glanced to her right, where her smartphone was mounted on an articulated arm.
The screen displayed the live chat of her painting stream.
The viewer count hovered at twenty-two.
It wasn’t a massive audience, but they were dedicated and observant.
Kisa, a regular viewer, had just typed a message commenting on how cool the antler mask looked.
Laughing Cat Mom had sent a string of fire emojis.
They had no idea that disaster had just struck.
Brenda took a deep, trembling breath, the sharp chemical smell of the glue stinging her nostrils.
She had to make a decision immediately.
She could leave the cape off, accepting a compromised vision of her badass survivor.
Or she could risk everything and perform emergency surgery while the glue was still technically curing.
This wasn’t just any game, and these weren’t just any miniatures.
Kingdom Death was an obsession that had consumed her and her partner, Greg, for the better part of a year.
She still remembered the day the massive, jet-black box had arrived on their doorstep.
It was staggeringly heavy, weighing nearly seventeen pounds.
The matte black cardboard was completely devoid of text, adorned only with a subtle, glossy emblem.
When Greg had lifted the lid, the sheer volume of content inside had been overwhelming.
There were stacks of heavy cardstock boards, hundreds of oversized playing cards, and dozens of plastic sprues.
The sprues were intricate frames holding the disassembled pieces of nightmarish monsters and desperate survivors.
Brenda had never been a miniature hobbyist before.
She had always admired the painted figures she saw in local game stores, but she had never felt capable of creating them herself.
Her hands had a natural, persistent tremor.
It was a minor neurological quirk, harmless but annoying when trying to thread a needle or apply eyeliner.
The thought of assembling these microscopic pieces, let alone painting them, had seemed impossible.
But the world of the game had pulled her in with an undeniable gravity.
It was a world of absolute, oppressive darkness.
Humanity was not at the top of the food chain; they were barely surviving at the very bottom.
The lore of the game was as brutal as its mechanics.
Survivors awoke on a vast plain made entirely of stone faces, with no memories and nothing but a scrap of cloth.
They possessed ink-stained eyes that struggled to pierce the suffocating gloom.
The only source of light, and their only defense against the shadows, were the heavy lanterns they scavenged.
Every session of the game was an exercise in tension and resource management.
It was divided into three distinct phases.
The first was the settlement phase, where the survivors huddled around a pile of glowing lanterns.
They used the bones, hide, and organs harvested from monsters to craft crude weapons and armor.
They developed new philosophies and innovations, slowly dragging humanity out of the dark ages.
But every advancement came at a terrible cost.
The settlement events were determined by drawing cards, and the outcomes were rarely positive.
Plagues could sweep through the camp, killing off their best hunters.
Mysterious strangers could wander out of the darkness, offering powerful boons or devastating curses.
Even the act of expanding the population was fraught with peril.
Brenda vividly remembered the time they had chosen the ‘Survival of the Fittest’ principle for raising their children.
It meant rolling two ten-sided dice and taking the lowest result whenever a child was born.
Greg had argued that the statistical chance of failure was worth the permanent strength bonuses the children would receive.
Brenda had rolled the dice with a feeling of deep apprehension.
The black dice had clattered across the table, finally settling on a two and a one.
A one was the worst possible outcome.
Not only did the settlement lose the newborn, but the parents were driven mad by grief.
They fled into the darkness, never to be seen again, costing the settlement three precious lives in a single stroke.
That single roll had nearly ended their entire campaign.
It was a harsh lesson in the cruel mathematics of the game’s universe.
After the settlement phase came the hunt phase.
The survivors had to venture out into the unknown to track down a monster.
Their first target had been the White Lion.
It was a terrifying creature, a massive feline with terrifyingly human hands instead of paws.
The hunt was represented by moving a miniature across a board, flipping event cards along the way.
The darkness was actively hostile, slowly driving the characters insane before the fight even began.
They had stumbled upon the beast feeding on a grotesque carcass.
That initiated the showdown phase, the true core of the game.
The combat system was complex and unforgiving.
Every monster had a deck of artificial intelligence cards that dictated its actions.
The White Lion was aggressive and unpredictable.
It would swat survivors across the board, inflicting severe injuries.
Damage wasn’t just a reduction of hit points.
If a survivor took a heavy blow to the head, they might be permanently blinded or decapitated instantly.
A blow to the body could collapse a lung, permanently reducing their movement speed.
Brenda had controlled a survivor wielding a crude bone dart.
She had carefully positioned him in the tall grass, trying to strike from the blind spot.
But the dice had betrayed her once again.
She missed her attack, triggering a reaction from the lion.
It had charged across the board, grabbing her survivor with its human hands and dragging him into the darkness.
They had managed to slay the beast, but her survivor had barely made it back to the settlement alive.
As they progressed, the monsters became even more bizarre and dangerous.
Their next target had been the Screaming Antelope.
It was a creature straight out of a nightmare.
It had the body of a muscular beast, but its underbelly split open to reveal a massive, toothy maw.
It didn’t just attack them; it tried to consume them whole.
The antelope would charge erratically around the board, trampling anything in its path.
It fed on the acanthus plants scattered across the terrain to heal its wounds.
Greg had developed a strategy involving a heavy bone club to knock the beast down.
Brenda had supported him with a rawhide whip, trying to control the monster’s movement.
The fight had been a grueling war of attrition.
Their survivors were exhausted, their armor broken and battered.
In the final rounds, Greg’s survivor had been swallowed by the creature’s gaping maw.
Brenda had to strike a perfect blow to sever the beast’s spine before Greg’s character was digested.
She had rolled a perfect ten, a critical hit that instantly ended the fight.
It was a moment of pure, unadulterated triumph.
They had celebrated with high fives over the blood-stained game board.
The rewards from that hunt had allowed them to craft the very armor she was now assembling.
The rawhide set offered excellent mobility and a crucial ability to avoid taking lethal blows.
The antler mask, carved from the antelope’s remains, granted the wearer a terrifying presence.
It was a physical manifestation of their hard-fought victories.
That was why this specific miniature meant so much to her.
It wasn’t just a generic game piece.
It was the embodiment of their shared narrative, a physical record of their survival.
The inventory system of the game was a puzzle in itself.
Each survivor had a three-by-three grid to hold their gear.
Weapons, armor, and accessories had to be arranged carefully.
Many items had colored affinities on their edges.
If you matched a red affinity on a bone sword with a red affinity on a piece of rawhide armor, it unlocked hidden abilities.
It was a brilliant, tactile mini-game that Greg absolutely loved.
He would spend hours arranging and rearranging his gear grids between hunts.
He would optimize his character for maximum damage output, completely ignoring defensive stats.
Brenda took a more holistic approach.
She preferred to build characters that could survive a devastating hit and run away to fight another day.
This philosophical difference often led to tense moments during the showdowns.
Greg’s survivor would charge in, dealing massive damage but leaving himself exposed.
Brenda’s survivor would then have to scramble to draw the monster’s attention before Greg was killed.
It was a chaotic, beautiful dance of strategy and luck.
And it made the miniature assembly even more meaningful.
The game encouraged players to build miniatures that accurately reflected their specific gear grid.
If your character was wearing rawhide armor and wielding a bone dagger, your miniature should look exactly like it.
That was why this current build was so critical.
It wasn’t just an aesthetic choice; it was a physical representation of Brenda’s favorite build.
The rawhide armor provided the agility she needed to dodge lethal blows.
The antler mask granted a stat boost that synergized perfectly with her evasive strategy.
And the bone dagger, while weak, allowed her to attack quickly and efficiently without exposing herself to counterattacks.
Every single piece of plastic she glued into place was a deliberate, tactical decision.
It was a physical manifestation of her survival strategy in a world that desperately wanted her dead.
She wanted to feel that connection when she moved the figure across the board.
She needed it to represent her choices perfectly.
That was why the missing cape was unacceptable.
The cape wasn’t just fabric; it represented a crucial piece of evasion gear that kept her character breathing.
The narrative was further cemented by the painting process.
When she had first started, she had been terrified of ruining the pristine gray plastic.
But she had watched dozens of hours of tutorials online.
She learned about thinning her paints with water, applying thin coats to preserve the microscopic details.
She learned about using washes, thin, ink-like paints that flowed into the recesses to create instant shadows.
She learned about drybrushing, a technique used to highlight raised edges and textures.
Her shaking hands had been a major hurdle, but she had adapted.
She learned to brace her wrists against the table edge.
She learned to hold her breath during the most critical strokes.
She found that the intense focus required actually helped to quiet the tremor in her hands.
Her most ambitious project had been the four starting survivors.
She wanted them to stand out on the dark, monochromatic game board.
She decided to use a technique called object source lighting, or OSL.
The idea was to paint the miniature as if the only source of light was the lantern they were holding.
It required a deep understanding of light placement and color theory.
She had chosen a different colored light for each of the four characters.
Zachary, the stoic leader, was bathed in a warm, intense orange glow.
The orange light caught the edges of his cloth wraps, leaving his back cast in deep, purple shadows.
Lucy, the agile scout, was illuminated by a sickly, fluorescent yellow light.
The yellow tint made her skin look pale and desperate against the darkness.
Alister, the doomed pessimist, was cast in a haunting, ethereal cyan.
The blue light reflected sharply off his bone dagger, giving him a ghostly appearance.
The fourth survivor, whose name she always forgot, was painted in a harsh, neon pink.
The vibrant colors not only looked striking, but they served a practical purpose during gameplay.
When the board was crowded with monsters and terrain, the distinct colors made it easy to tell the survivors apart.
It was a triumph of both aesthetics and utility.
Her workspace was a testament to her dedication to the craft.
The green cutting mat was scarred with hundreds of tiny, white lines from her scalpel blades.
A wet palette, a specialized tool for keeping acrylic paints hydrated, sat to her left.
A collection of high-quality Kolinsky sable brushes rested in a ceramic holder.
A small, powerful exhaust fan was positioned nearby to pull away the toxic fumes of the glues and varnishes.
She had spent hundreds of dollars on specialized tools.
She had precision tweezers with needle-like points for handling microscopic pieces.
She had sanding twigs in various grits to smooth down the rough edges left by the clippers.
She even had a small pin vise, a tiny hand drill used for pinning heavy pieces together with brass wire.
The sprue glue she was currently using was a testament to her resourcefulness.
It was a trick she had learned from a veteran hobbyist on an online forum.
Instead of throwing away the empty plastic frames, she clipped them into tiny pieces.
She dropped the plastic shavings into a half-empty bottle of plastic cement.
The harsh chemicals melted the plastic, creating a thick, sticky slurry.
It was the perfect medium for joining parts that didn’t fit perfectly together.
The melted plastic filled the gaps, welding the pieces into a single, seamless object.
But its strength was also its greatest danger.
Once the chemical reaction started, it was incredibly difficult to stop.
And the clock was ticking on the survivor’s head.
Brenda shook her head, forcing herself to snap back to the present moment.
The memories of hunts and paint jobs were irrelevant right now.
She had a surgical emergency on her hands.
She picked up her scalpel, wrapping her fingers tightly around the textured grip.
She anchored her elbows firmly onto the edge of the desk.
She pressed her wrists together, locking her hands into a stable frame.
The tremor in her fingers subsided to a barely perceptible vibration.
She picked up the miniature by its base with her left hand.
She brought the tip of the scalpel blade up to the seam between the rawhide collar and the neck.
She didn’t try to pry it open immediately.
That would risk snapping the delicate plastic of the neck peg.
Instead, she applied a gentle, steady pressure, working the sharp edge into the microscopic gap.
She held her breath.
She twisted the blade a fraction of a degree.
The plastic emitted a tiny, sickening squeak.
The sprue glue had begun to cure, the outer edges turning rubbery and resistant.
She pushed harder, feeling the blade bite through the semi-solid plastic.
The pressure in her hands was immense.
If she slipped, the scalpel would slice right through the rawhide face she had so carefully selected.
A drop of sweat beaded on her forehead.
She twisted the blade again, a slightly larger rotation this time.
A sharp, definitive crack echoed in the silence of the room.
The tension vanished instantly.
The head popped off the neck joint, tumbling softly onto the cutting mat.
Brenda let out an explosive gasp of air, her lungs burning from holding her breath.
She dropped the scalpel and collapsed back into her chair.
Her hands were shaking violently now, the adrenaline rushing through her system.
She looked down at the cutting mat.
The head was completely undamaged.
The rawhide mask and the tiny, detailed ears were pristine.
The neck joint on the torso was a messy, stringy blob of half-melted plastic, but that didn’t matter.
The cape was designed to cover the entire collar area.
She had done it.
She had successfully performed the emergency surgery.
She didn’t waste any time celebrating.
She needed to finish the assembly before the remaining glue dried completely.
She picked up the sweeping, dramatic cape.
She applied a fresh, generous bead of sprue glue directly over the messy neck joint.
She pressed the cape down onto the shoulders.
The fit was slightly awkward due to the melted plastic, but the fresh glue acted as a lubricant.
She wiggled the cape back and forth, seating it firmly against the back of the torso.
The edges of the plastic began to melt and fuse together.
Next, she applied a small dot of glue to the top of the cape’s collar.
She picked up the severed head with her tweezers.
She carefully aligned it with the collar, ensuring the antler mask was still looking toward the lantern.
She pressed the head down, holding it in place for a solid thirty seconds.
The bond took hold.
The miniature was whole again.
The cape flared out dynamically behind her, adding a sense of weight and motion to the figure.
The lantern arm still defied gravity, held high to push back the encroaching shadows.
The bone dagger arm was poised for a lethal strike.
She looked like a true veteran of the darkness, hardened by loss and ready for the next hunt.
Brenda finally reached for the last piece of the puzzle.
It was the glorious, sweeping ponytail she had scavenged from a different set of sprues.
She dabbed a microscopic speck of glue onto the back of the rawhide head.
She used the tweezers to place the ponytail, letting it drape naturally over the curve of the newly installed cape.
The assembly was finally, truly finished.
She set the figure down carefully, giving the glue ample time to set in peace.
Her mind wandered back to the game and what this survivor would face.
The next hunt on their campaign calendar was the fearsome Phoenix.
It was a monster of cosmic horror, a massive bird covered in human hands and faces.
It manipulated time itself, aging survivors to death in the middle of combat.
Greg had been terrified of facing it.
He had spent days analyzing the rulebook, looking for any possible advantage.
Brenda had been the one to insist they go for it.
She knew their settlement needed the rare resources the Phoenix provided.
They needed its feathers to craft better bows.
They needed its organs to trigger a specific innovation that would save their civilization from starvation.
She had built this miniature specifically for that impending battle.
The evasive gear, the bone dagger, the intimidating mask; it was all part of a master plan.
She visualized the figure moving across the stone face board.
She imagined it ducking under the sweeping talons of the monstrous bird.
She pictured the glowing lantern casting frantic shadows as the beast warped time around them.
This tiny piece of gray plastic was going to be the hero of their next session.
Or, it was going to die horribly on the first turn.
That was the beauty and the horror of the game.
You could spend hours preparing, painting, and strategizing, only to have a single bad dice roll ruin everything.
It taught you to let go of your attachments.
It taught you that survival was fleeting, but the stories you created along the way were permanent.
Brenda adjusted the neck of the halogen lamp, aiming the bright beam directly at the figure.
The light hit the gray plastic, carving out deep, cinematic shadows across the folds of the cape.
The antler mask cast a terrifying silhouette against the desk.
It looked incredible.
It looked exactly like the badass, unforgiving survivor she had envisioned in her mind.
She glanced over at her phone screen.
The stream chat was completely silent, the viewers having waited with bated breath through the entire ordeal.
She smiled and leaned toward the microphone.
She told them that the patient had survived the surgery.
A flurry of cheering emojis and congratulatory messages flooded the screen.
N squared commented that it was the most intense miniature assembly they had ever watched.
Brenda laughed, a genuine, joyful sound that echoed in the quiet apartment.
She felt a profound sense of satisfaction washing over her.
The process had been stressful.
Her hands were still vibrating slightly from the adrenaline and the fine motor exertion.
The smell of the sprue glue was giving her a mild headache.
But as she stared at the tiny, perfect warrior she had brought into existence, none of that mattered.
The world of Kingdom Death was a chaotic, punishing place where you had no control over your fate.
The real world often felt the same way, full of unexpected challenges and anxieties.
But here, at this desk, under this bright light, she was in total control.
She took disparate, meaningless pieces of plastic and forged them into something beautiful and narrative.
She overcame her physical limitations through sheer force of will and a little bit of chemical solvent.
She reached out and tapped the screen of her phone, ending the live broadcast.
She said a quiet goodnight to her small, dedicated community.
She stood up and stretched, her back popping audibly in the silence.
She turned off the halogen lamp.
The room was instantly swallowed by the absolute darkness.
But on the desk, the tiny survivor stood strong, her lantern held high, ready for whatever came next.
THE END
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Disclaimer
This story is a work of fiction inspired by real events. Names, characters, and details have been altered. Any resemblance is coincidental. The author and publisher disclaim accuracy, liability, and responsibility for interpretations or reliance. If you would like to share your story, please send it to [email protected].
