With minutes ticking by like grains of sand - god I should avoid sand metaphors, there’s enough of it outside without letting it into my brain - I set to work on my defenses. I needed to surround myself with a thriving landscape if I wanted to grow, death and life both. Life to draw in prey. Death to claim their souls.

I fed Mana into the grasses, making them spill up from the earth in abundance and forming a fertile ring of green around the water. I was finding my Mana could take almost any form, but it required concentration to shape into matter. With a little focus I could form a chunk of stone, gravel-sized, and creating water was easiest of all, but living matter came out in strange ways.

My first attempt to copy a lizard I spied crawling around a rock created a strange, brittle shell of skin that crumbled at the first gust of wind. I was so focused on copying the outwards appearance I’d neglected the organs.

The other lizards stared in horror at their apparent kin being torn to shreds, and skittered away, burrowing deep in the rocky valleys.

Feeding life that already existed was easier, and I could shape anything I gave my Mana to, slowly shifting their structure to make them stronger and more fit for survival. This also had its limits. Each creature had a tiny bit of Mana inside, which was an entirely different breed than my own. Where my Mana was ghostly and colorless theirs was bright and full of chaotic threads of rainbow.

The first time I fed a lizard too much of my own ‘ethereal’ Mana, it completely drowned and overwhelmed the ‘mortal’ Mana inside them.

The lizard let out a large, hiccuping cry, and dissolved into a pulpy mess of red meat with little bones sticking out. It was a bad day for lizards.

My next attempt was better. Careful not to overfeed the poor thing, I latched a thread of Mana to a spiny-throated lizard with a bright red tail. I’d seen already that they could sever their own limbs if a fox cub grabbed hold, sacrificing a small part of themselves in order to live another day.

I also noticed that this specimen had long, hooked spines on his limbs, with a ridge of the little barbs running down its spine to its tail. My senses extended through the outer skin and into the muscle below, so studying the mechanism that caused their tails to fall away was quite easy.

Then I reversed it.

It was such a simple, clever design that I was in agony waiting for something to actually attack the lizard so I could see it in action. Luckily, as more and more creatures flocked to the waters, tiny fights broke out all over. Predators chasing prey, or even normally quite calm creatures butting heads to fight for a place on the shore.

Soon enough, a brown-feathered little bird with a blunt red beak came hopping over the rocks towards the lizard. The reptile was already scurrying for a hole in the rock when the bird burst forward, wings expanding to steady it in the air as its talons reached out-

The tail exploded.

Those tiny spines where flung out in all directions, striking the bird painfully as the lizard darted down into its burrow. The poor creature let out a confused squawk and fell over, stunned.

As a proof of concept it worked beautifully. To reward my fine specimen I fed it Mana till its tail grew back, and made sure it was better than before.

Now, the red coloration was banded with vibrant yellow, and the spines were no longer hooked but short and thin, perfect for piercing skin. More and more spikes sprouted from its body as its scales hardened into armor, the creature swelling out with new muscles. I even gave it a rather colorful crest along its head, and split its tongue at the tip with a muscular kind of pincer, almost like Lazarus’ claw, so that it would excel at grabbing little insects.

Scattertail Lizard

[ Unranked ]

Kingdom Animalia

Age - 17 Days

Physique - Unranked Arcana - Null Psyche - Unranked Diet - Small Insects Biome - Desert Sands Cycle - Diurnal This small furtive creature lives in crevices among the rocks, surfacing to hunt for small insects such as sandmites. A powerhouse among the smaller creatures of the biome, it flaunts bright decorations and a predator’s build. Against larger creatures such as predatory birds, it possesses a unique line of defense, not merely severing its tail as a distraction but as an explosive weapon. Born from the Oasis Dungeon. Notable Features - Resistant to radiation, able to survive long periods without water, slow regeneration of limbs, detonating tail.

Satisfied, I turned my attention towards the waters. They were cool and quiet, almost too peaceful. Nothing but the great slumbering bulk of Lazarus below lived there. Which was somewhat sad.

I began to draw the crude slimy moss of the rocks out onto the waters, creating little islands around the edge of the pool. As I raised up columns of rough stone covered in algae, the spaces between became natural basins, shallows where I could seed my experiments. Already I was working on the moss. It was an interesting form of life precisely because it was so simple- where most creatures were composed of different cellular tissues, the moss was a colony of identical cells feeding till they split.

I merely had to give them a waxy outer tissue that allowed them to spread over water, and they began to cover the pool in a crawling layer of green. Continuing, feeling quite amused by how easily I could shape this simple life, I meddled in their reproduction. Now there was a small chance that the algae would create an abnormal cell when it split, a cell that would grow into a bright yellow blossom meant to drink sunlight and feed the rest of the colony. More importantly, they would be rich, succulent sources of energy for anything willing to delve into the water to feed on the algae-blooms.

Sweet-Flower Water Rot Colony

[ Unranked ]

Kingdom Protista

Age - 3 Days

Physique - Null Arcana - Null Psyche - Null

Diet - Photosynthesis

Biome - Watering Hole

Cycle - Diurnal A single-celled organism that binds to others of its type to form a living, communal mass, Water Rot can spread across entire lakes, feeding on sunlight and small dead matter. While often mistaken for a form of flora, its crude matter predates even simple plants such as grasses, representing an ancient ancestor that’s been able to persist through changing eras. Born from the Oasis Dungeon. Notable Features - Resistant to radiation, asexual cloning.

Hmm. Exploding lizards. Water-flowers. No, no. I wanted something better for myself.

There was an angry god out to kill me, and when you’ve been marked by the divine for death, I say, carry yourself with a little bravado. Put some swagger into your step, so you can at least leave a pretty corpse if nothing else.

From the center of the water I raised a pillar of pale blue stone, the color of sky. All around the foundations flowers grew in abundance, rising stalks of green topped by white bells bleeding fragrant pollens to the sky. I carved away, drawing the sweeps and folds of a silken robe, the grooved spaces filling in with moss so that the pillar seemed drenched in life, rising out of a verdant island in the center of the oasis.

I didn’t know who had created me, so I left the face blank, but gave it flowing hair, outstretched arms, a figure of mercy. Four more pillars rose - I was burning the last of my Mana here, little sparks of blue flame running along the edge of the stone as it grew in slow motion - and met overhead, forming a doubled archway.

The last thing I made was a bell of glass, hanging overhead. It swayed, a wind lifting, and the hauntingly clear sound rang out. A single sharp note filling the desert.

I thought of it as a challenge.

Divine Protection - Abyssal creatures above [Unranked] are restricted.

Protection will weaken to allow [Bronze] creatures in:

6 Days : 03 Hours : 09 Minutes : 47 Seconds