The woman known and feared by many in Namira as the "Scourge of the Yellow Wastes" was impressively still as she and I teleported to the outpost I had told her about. She was as still as a statue while my power washed over her once more, this time not negatively or defensively, but rather warmly and gently.

I took this time, this moment of peace and stillness, to study the general. She stood about seventeen meters tall, an incredible height that made her taller than some of the buildings in the city she ambitiously sought to conquer and rule over. She had bronze-colored skin, a tone that I had learned during these last two months wasn't natural to the giants who dwelled in the Infernian desert. She must have acquired her complexion fighting. I mused.

She was dressed in silky, somewhat formal, clothing but she carried herself with the grace of a practiced warrior and hadn't asked if she could go change so I quickly realized she meant to battle in her current outfit. I'm not the judgemental type. She can wear whatever she wishes. I thought, grinning at no one in particular. I took this chance to idly use identify on her.

[Name: Ayla Syah

Class: Berserker, Handy Demolisher, Level 15

Species: Desert Giant

Faction: The Untamed Wastes

Alignment: Lawful Evil (Source of law: Namira)

Personal Vice: Pride

Status: Healthy, excited]

Hmm... I should learn more. I thought, before requesting additional information by politely messaging my old friend, the system.

[New Varied Knowledge Alert:

Handy Demolisher Speciality:

Handy Demolishers are a type of berserker who tears apart buildings with their bare hands. These brutal creatures fly into a rage that causes their strength to swell incredibly and they throw themselves into enemy fortifications intending to rip them apart brick by brick. Damage done to them is significantly reduced and their attacks against buildings do maximum damage. When they enter into a state of rage their hands glow a dark shade of red.

The Untamed Wastes Faction:

Desert giants from the so-called untamed wastes hail from frontier communities and they are a disconnected, often violent lot. The only time in history these warriors have been united was under the flag of Ayla Syah, an incredible general who sought to take the city of Namira from a sultan in the age before Suti came to power. Syah sought to build an empire of desert giants that united all of the giants in the desert.]

Oh, nice. I thought, happy to have another warrior person on my side. I'd be able to make her even more potent with the power of my blessings when the time came for her fight.

I really should exploit those more... I thought, amused by how rare it's been to date for me to use an ability that was probably pretty fundamental to the old gods.

While en-route to our destination I opted to go ahead and shrink myself down. I transformed myself, shrinking down to her still incredible height, and taking on the form of Quinn so that she could build familiarity with it.

It was at that point that we arrived where we were heading: not far from a desert giant outpost situated far away from the city of Namira.

It took a second for Ayla to react to the abrupt change of scenery. One moment she was safe in my fairly unoccupied and uninhabited dungeon, and the next she was standing in the desert, for the first time in centuries. I grinned and waited for her to react to the sudden change.

She almost leaped out of her skin when she became aware of the shift. I watched her eyes go wide for a moment and heard her heart rate spike. I chuckled, audibly. "Sorry about teleporting you here without alerting you. It was just faster this way." I explained sincerely, my eyes studying her form. She was again shocked when she looked at my new form, but not as dramatically this time.

"Wait... you could just do that without my permission?" She asked, mildly alarmed. I looked at her and nodded.

"Yes, I can. I can teleport anyone from any place to any other place. I created the portal earlier because I knew it would be easier to get you in front of me if you came willingly." I told her, honestly. She looked at me, scowling, but then cooled her frustration after about a minute of visual, facial, frustration. I waited for her to cool off before I did what I did next.

When Ayla's annoyance died down, I rose a hand to the air. I called forth some of the creatures under my control and watched as the called beings responded to my magic: twenty-four fairly ordinary sandmen became visible blips on my radar, even before they physically appeared. They were conjured into being in front of Ayla and I, but they actually surged dramatically out of the sand that stood between us and the outpost in the distance.

They produced eerie noises as they pulled themselves out of the desert as if they had been created from it. They hadn't been. These were merely creatures created by the "me" who lived in "our" realm and could create creatures without limits. And unlike past creations to date, there was nothing out of the ordinary about these sandmen, they were effectively cannon-fodder monsters I had wanted created to help showcase my power to Ayla.

The monsters rose several meters out of the deserts, their sandy forms producing a distinct sound of sand flowing from one place to another. Watching them rise was like watching an invisible hand scoop up a bunch of sand, pile it together, and then breathe life into the resulting heap of sand. It was a strange, arcane process, and I grinned as I watched it happen.

The process took about half a minute from beginning to end. Once it was over the creatures idly faced the outpost and didn't turn to face us. I looked over at Ayla and began to speak.

"So... how do you want to do this? Do you want to participate in the battle, or do you just want to let them run rampant?" I asked her out of curiosity. I watched her turn to gaze at me attentively after I began to speak, and when I was done talking she considered my words for a second.

"I'd rather watch them. I want to see their might, first hand. I've only ever fought against these things. Never with them." She said, explaining her justification. I nodded at her, understanding her point of view, and then turned to my created minions.

"Go forth little ones. Go forth and kill the creatures manning the outpost. All but one. Let one live so that they may spread the word of your actions here." I told my sand-servants. And then I placed a hand on Ayla's shoulder. The sandmen nodded, a subtle action, and then they began to surge forth in unison, forming two huge waves of sand, urged on towards the guards who had the terrible fortune of being stationed here.

I grabbed Ayla's shoulder, squeezing lightly on it to secure her, and then I took off with her at my side, freeing myself of gravity. "If you wish to see the action, we'll see it." I told her, a smile on my face. As we lifted off of the ground we became translucent, see-through, to ensure our foes didn't spot us as they unknowingly entering into the fight of their lives. I ignored her protests and professed annoyance.

We weren't far from the outpost, even though we were out of eyeshot of it. Ayla and I ascended quickly, reaching a max height of thirty-five meters in the air and from there we watched as a pair of waves of sand rushed towards the outpost.

In a matter of seconds, the waves of sand battered the outpost, slamming into the sandstone wall that protected the place from intruders. This produced a loud sound which reverberated throughout the outpost, a complex structure that was over half a kilometer wide, with a single wall surrounding it on all sides that was over fifty meters wall, positively enormous by non-giant standards and quite tall by giant-standards.

Both Ayla and I grinned when we heard shocked giants utter cuss-words at the thunderous noise that had rocked part of their base. And we grinned wider when we watched the two waves that rocked the outpost become one massive pile of sand, a mobile, animated, and angry pile of sand.

Sandmen are... smarter than I thought. I mused to myself as the massive, and angry, pile of sand decided to collaborate and take down the wall that protected the desert giants, rather than try to selfishly climb over each other to sneak into the fortress.

While the giants were arming themselves and preparing to rush towards where the source of the sound that had awoken them, the gigantic pile of sand steadily grew bigger by feeding on the sand of the desert.

Its fists were growing especially noticeably, and after half a minute of quietly feeding on nearby sand, the thing rose a single massive fist into the air. The fist was colossal, and stood in the air, defying gravity rather ominously. Both Ayla and I looked on in interest, curious as to what would happen next. As if we didn't understand physics. The fist hung there for a second, before being pulled by gravity towards the wall, and slamming into it.

The weight of the sand crumpled the sandstone used to build the wall, decimating a portion of the wall by flattening it into nothingness. The sound the blow produced was deafening. The eerie monster, formed of two dozen smaller monsters, silently observed its handiwork for a second. And then the thing let out a monstrous roar and proceeded to speed through the fallen wall and into the outpost.

As the thing surged through the opening it had created with its fist, the massive monster split into its original form: many, far smaller, monsters. The frighteningly large blob of sand became a sea of sand that was less tall but far wider. The sand-beings spread out quickly, pushing each other onward and outward until they completely covered an area a few dozen meters long. And then the speediest of their enemies appeared in the distance.

The guards who guarded this outpost were clad in basic armor, nothing particularly special or strong, and those of them who rushed out to meet their odd attackers rushed forth with bows drawn and in a few cases, arrows nocked. "Sandmen..." One of them muttered, fear audible in his voice.

"Men! Fear not these things. We are the front-line of defense against such... a horrific force." Another shouted, his voice loud and powerful. He was behind a handful of guards, but his bow was raised, aimed, and had an arrow nocked already. That guard, in particular, was roaring to go and let loose the nocked arrow he had prepared a second after he finished speaking.

The arrow was released, producing a twang and sailed through the air for a split second before it slammed into one of the sand-monsters I had conjured. Impressively, the sandman was actually staggered by the blow, hinting at its force, but it was still only a single sandman that was slightly delayed.

The rest of the small horde of sand-creatures still surged towards the gathered guards, like a sort of waterless and malevolent tsunami.

The monsters fell on the force with a dreadful amount of cold fury. They swarmed over themselves in order to rush towards the closest guards.

When one of them reached the guard who had run the closest towards the horde, the thing reached out and punched the bow-using giant with a single, thick fist of sand. The blow nailed the guard in the face, and he was sent reeling back, only for the sandman to grab his leg and make him trip.

The thing then summoned tremendous force and pulled him into its monstrous and violent body with terrifying speed and ease. As it did so the guard began to scream even as he fought for his life, trying to grab something on the floor of the outpost which would make it harder for the sandman to devour him, his voice youthful and filled with a pained horror.

To their credit, the other guards weren't distracted by fear or by compassion, and instead, the massacre began with the giants behaving pragmatically and coldly dispassionately.

The giants backed up reasonably quickly all while using their own weapons to try and slow down sandmen that approached too closely. They shot out arrows at a commendable pace, while trying to inch away from the horde of monsters that drew ever nearer to them. Eventually, reinforcements for the giants finally appeared, taking what felt like an eternity to do so.

Nearly half a minute had passed since the first giant to fire an arrow at the gathered horde had bravely done so. At this point, only the three giants who had gotten as close as possible to the sandmen had actually fallen to them, and so the majority of the thirty giants who populated this outpost before today were still alive and well.

The reinforcements shouted encouragement and praise of their peers while speedily preparing their own weapons to aid in combating an unstoppable, sandy, tide that promised only death. Ayla and I watched this with interest.

The massacre was proceeding as I had envisioned it proceeding. Giants were dying at the hands of one of their desert foes, a particularly hated sort of creature known as a sandman. Or in this case, a small horde of them. This was the sort of event that would produce a horrendous trauma in whoever survived it.

The unstoppable, almost fluid, horde pushed and pushed through a surprising number of arrows, hungrily towards their enemies. Arrows slammed into them, one after another, and though they may have caused a sandman to stumble, none of them appeared to do any real harm to the monstrous mod that moved towards them.

The sandmen were loud, producing eerie and inhumane noises. They grunted and growled as they crept closer and closer to the guards who valiantly stood up to them, stood up to death. The terrifying things roared in anger whenever they got stymied by a heavy arrow hammering them.

The giant guards were loud too. They shouted encouragement towards each other. They muttered words of camaraderie, professions of brotherly love, and even sang to stave off feelings of fear that crept up on them idly, and surged whenever a friend of theirs met a gruesome end at the hands of the mob.

In time, a number of the most aggressive and speediest sandmen were bloodstained, the rivers of sand that made up their bodies beginning to absorb vast enough quantities of blood that they became visibly recognizable to the guards.

"Focus on the ones with blood covering them!" One guard shouted. He was ignored by his peers, and no one had the time needed to ridicule him for shouting something so obvious at them.

A few minutes after the battle began, when things were beginning to wind down, I snatched up the memories of the remaining guards. This, of course, caused them to slow down for a moment. Which was enough time for the ones closest to the sandy pack of monsters to be overrun and murdered by my inhumane fey.

I was prompted to do this both to ensure that I had an accurate understanding of the layout of this outpost and to uncover why there appeared to have been no guards stationed along the wall that my horde came in and assaulted originally. If I had done nothing, and the opportunity to learn why this was the case slipped away, I would have kicked myself.

Over the course of the last three minutes, the battle began to speed up. This was because over half of the guards were now being little more than mangled bodies. With half of the guards gone, there was far less cover fire than before. This naturally led to the horde of sandmen being able to more speedily devour more and more of the guards, while facing less and less resistance.

I waited until the last minute to intervene. And that was almost a mistake. When the number of guards present in the outpost numbered just three, I was almost too arrogant and watched as the sandmen surged forth like an ungodly blizzard of sand. In an instant, they overtook and killed two of the three remaining warriors. They had been just centimeters away from grabbing the last fellow when I teleported him out of the outpost.

That was when I unexpectedly received a notification.

[Feat Gained: Strategist (1)

Benefit: Your servants, soldiers, and worshipers are now slightly stronger and this benefit increases in potency in battles you don't participate in.

Method of acquisition: Aid in one battle without directly attacking any of your enemies, and oversee a battle without intentionally intervening wherein your forces win. The first condition was fulfilled in the battle for the fate of Golden-Gate, and the second condition was fulfilled just now.

Flavor text: Godly participation in battles is an unfair advantage. It's important that the forces of a god learn to be independent and self-sufficient. By learning to be an able-commander, as well as a scholar of battles, you can ensure your forces grow on their own.

Note: This is a tiered feat. By repeating the conditions which caused it to be gained in the first place you can gain greater and greater versions of it which amplifies the power of the benefit.]

Oh... that's nice! I thought, excitedly. I wonder if this is tied to the war domain... I questioned for a second. I was suddenly grateful that I hadn't used any blessings on the forces I had sent towards the outpost. It was while I was thinking about that, that I was suddenly struck with a sense of grand curiosity.

[Hey, system and the respective domains... how do I gain the next tier of influence over the hand-to-hand and magic subdomain and domain, respectively? I have the first tier of influence over hand-to-hand combat, and I am halfway to gaining the first tier of influence over the magic domain.] I asked the system.

While I was conversing with myself Ayla was studying the scene before her. She had a look of stunned awe on her face as she visually examined the wrecked remains of the outpost, covered in mobile piles of sand. Part of the reason for her shock was that a handful of the deceased guards' corpses were rapidly transforming into sand before her very eyes. And the oldest of those sandpiles were beginning to shudder and shake as if coming to life themselves.

I received an answer from the system, one that pleasantly surprised me, a few seconds after I asked it my question.

[Hello Althos. The hand-to-hand subdomain is willing to grant you the second-tier of influence over it if you just create a creature that is a monk, as a way to reward you for earning the monk class.]

A second later I received another message from the system. This message further cemented the reality that I was a triune being, three minds with a single, shared soul.

[The other you, the one in your realm has just done this, creating a dark-elf and gifting it with the monk class. Congratulations! You now possess the second tier of influence over the subdomain of hand-to-hand combat. That brings with it the ability to create a handful of creatures, mutate beings to have harder skin, and for your hand-to-hand skill to increase in battle, among other things. Your blessing has also undergone a considerable increase in potency.] It told me.

I grinned. And then I gained one more, fairly interesting message. This time about magic.

[The magic domain's request is also an accessible one. All it will take for you to gain the first tier of influence over magic is for you to study a potent artifact related to an advanced school of magic. The domain gave me permission to help you out, so I will remind you that abjuration is an advanced school of magic and I will say that the top of the Onyx Obelisk houses an appropriate artifact.] The system informed me, causing me to grin even wider. And it wasn't done yet.

[The domain of magic grants you considerable power with each tier of influence you gain over it. It's enhanced blessing is a considerable boost to anyone who receives it, it in combination with a few other domains and subdomains grants you the ability to gift creatures with classes both at birth and post-birth and you gain significant powers through it, even at the lowest tier of influence. Not to mention the new things you can create if you gain it... It's a lot. Remember: we reward curiosity.] The system told me, and I could hear a grin in the thing's voice. I decided to commit that simple fact to memory.

And with that, I turned to Ayla. "You have seen the sort of power I can wield indirectly. My direct power is considerably more mighty. I want your soul, and in exchange for it, all of your desires will be granted. What do you say? Do you accept?" I asked her, a confident, shit-eating smirk plastered on my face.

She studied me, her eyes filled with a dazzling array of emotions. And I watched as her mouth opened, an answer to my question already clear in her eyes.