I began with the water. I could dissolve unliving matter down to thin traces of mana, ‘eating’ away at dirt and stone to deepen my pool. Through my connection to the Form of Water, that mana could be spun into cool, clear springwater, so as the basin widened I filled out the space to form a proper oasis. Rocks tumbled into the pool as I ate the ground from beneath them, and I unearthed all manner of wriggly wormy things as the soil they crawled in dissolved away.

Soon I’d expanded to the edges of the tower above’s shadow. Any further, and the sun would begin to eat away at the water, evaporating my work. It had taken two hours to get this far, and I kept looking back at the notification that had fused into my stats screen.

Time was slipping away.

But the world was changing just as fast.

Already, things were emerging from the desert, years of harsh adaptation leaving them sensitive to the faintest whiff of water in the air. Senses honed for hunting tiny pools of moisture nestled into rocky outcroppings were instantly aware of the change in the breeze, the way the wind was saturated with the memory of rain.

A fox with bleak gray fur and black paws came sneaking in, tasting the waters, holding herself with a frightened energy ready to vault away at the first signs of a trap. She didn’t trust this strange generosity.

I held Lazarus back, although he snapped his claws in disappointment. Lurking in the depths of the pool his mottled black shell made him a shadow in the water, undetectable, but the moment he moved he’d give himself away. The fox would be gone before he reached the surface.

This one, we let live.

The dark vulture that settled onto the rocks wasn’t so lucky. It descended, those black-clad wings beating up miniature whirlwinds in the dust as its great talons grasped hold of a rock. It was a clever old thing. Its face was bald and covered in rubbery folds of pinkish skin, with a flare of orange feathers around each eye, giving it the appearance of a mask.

It shuffled about for a moment, searching for predators in all direction except the one that mattered - down. It dipped its long neck low, and up burst Larazus, a claw gripping that long neck as the vulture’s wings exploded out to try and flee upwards. Too slow. The pinchers crushed down, seizing hold, and the flustered creature’s desperate struggles couldn’t lift it against the lobster’s weight. For a moment everything was obscured by the flurry of feathers, the wings making whipcrack sounds as they kicked against the air.

Weight and gravity won. Inch by inch, the vulture was pulled into the pool, and the waters frothed with the struggle below for a moment - before falling still.

It was an old creature. Years of life eked out as a scavenger had left it wary and wise. The one thing it wasn’t prepared for was a threat in the water, a threat it had never known. Experience couldn’t save it from something new.

As I fed off the spark of its soul - the strongest yet - I gave my respect. Through its memories I saw the world unfolded like a map, the endless and unmoving waves of sand like an ocean of red and ochre, crashing up against high mountains.

The desert wasn’t as endless as I feared. In the far distance there was a savanna, the earth becoming solid, able to sustain a landscape of yellow grass and thin, crooked trees. It was still a parched land, still a dying land, but the earth could still give life and the grasslands dug their roots in, keeping the soil from being blown away and turning to sand. A symbiosis.

Further still, there were the salt-plains. Craters filled in with crystallized salt, coming up in jagged little spires. Poison to all but a few strange creatures.

And-

There were people in the desert. Roaming caravans passing through. The buzzard remembered them as shadows on the sand, trudging dutifully west. They were going somewhere and came from somewhere, and so I knew the vagabond I’d met wouldn’t be the last.

The fox returned. This time she was followed.

A small band of cubs walked along in her shadow, bouncing on their scrawny legs and biting at one another playfully. One dangled from her jaws, held by the scruff of loose skin on its neck. The thing was the runt of the litter, its eyes shut, one limb ending in a scabbed over knuckle of broken flesh.

It was barely alive as she laid it down at the edge of the water, and nudged at it with her nose. The cub stirred a little, trying to clamber up, and fell down again. She nuzzled it again, but this time, the little lump of fur barely shifted.

All around her, the rest of the litter was in heaven. They hopped across the rocks and harried my lizards, grasping at tails with their wicked little teeth. They fought each other for the water, falling in and splashing about.

Lazarus was quite disappointed I didn’t let him eat any of the little ones. But I was a soft touch, and they were barely old enough for their souls to shine. I’d get nothing out of picking off weaklings.

But I might get something from sparing one.

A small channel cut across the ground as I ate the earth away, letting a finger-span of water pour slowly towards the broken runt of the litter. Mana flowed through the oasis, emanating from my core, and I concentrated mote after spiraling, firefly-like mote into the miniature pool that formed around him. Until the surface was shining bright, the glow lifting around the fox cub’s curled, tiny body.

The eyes opened, and it began to drink, slowly at first, but the more Mana-infused water it took in the more strength filled its frame.

I reached into its mind. There was more there than the simple intellects of the lizards and insects, a sharpness, a curiosity. Even now that it was coming back to life, the little fox was curious as to what it had found - this shining water that cured its wounds.

A real human mind, I would have spoken to in words. For the fox, the most I could do was pour in raw, powerful emotion.

Awe. Fear. Respect. When it looked up across the glimmering surface of the shaded water, the grass and stone I’d made my domain, it saw a godly presence.

His mother saw no such thing, but she knew this strange place had healed her wounded child. She licked at the scruff of his fur, affectionate, and settled down, watching him and her other children like a sphinx as they frollicked about.

It was good. I liked the feeling of activity, life, surrounding me. The sight of the desert creatures timidly approaching the waters, well, it may have made me feel a little god-like. Nothing wrong with a bit of ego stroking when you’re saving the world, no?