It was dark when I returned to the oasis, the trees bending as a phantom wind surged through the air with my arrival. In the cool night they had set up awnings and bedrolls, but many simply chose to rest in the grass, staring up. The skies were mirrored on the surface of the waters, shifting as slow ripples stirred beneath and made the bright stars shiver in their beds.

The chimes rang.

Capturing the mandril would let me work on learning about the limitation Abyssal powers. My guests could give me the rough lay of the surrounding lands. I had weapons to work with.

And the moon was high in the sky, nearly full.

Blessing of the Open Sky.

Granted by the goddess of hope and bright days, the Blessing allows you to reach beyond the usual limits of a dungeon core, spreading your ethereal Mana through open air without suffering dispersal and allowing you to grow above ground.

Blessing of the Lunar Augur.

Granted by the goddess of cold logic and foresight, the Blessing allows you to glimpse the world through the Pale Beyond, gaining visions of past and future. You may only use this power under the full moon.

I’d be able to finally use my second blessing before the barrier degraded again.

I just didn’t trust my enemy to wait that long.

Even if I waited patiently, built my defenses, survived - it would never be enough. At some point I would need to win once and for all. Today, I needed to break through the encirclement of my territory. Tomorrow, I would need to find a way to bind Arak or kill the wolf inside him. For the first one at least I had a vague semblance of a plan.

I needed to get into the caves, or barring that, dig my own damn way out. A route to cut under the enemy forces without detection. The Redmouth Canyon or the goblin caves both seemed to lead into a subterranean layer, but both routes down were full of creeping horrors, labyrinths with no easy route through and no promise of an escape.

I began to dig. Working outwards from the central shaft of the drowning pit where Lazarus stood guard over my core, I made a side-tunnel that curved upwards, above the water, into a small cavern where numerous pillars lifted up the low dome of the ceiling. Glowing lichen spread across the rock filled the subterranean space with a dim light, patches of wisp-thin mushroom stalk providing food to eat.

I seeded the small life of the desert there. Beetles with emerald-bright wings and curving horns, mantis who shifted from meditative stillness to deadly bursts of motion, sand-colored ants who marched together and fought with volleys of acidic spittle.

There was an idea that had occurred to me. Usually I worked with what fate sent my way, whatever creatures caught my attention. Today, I would try something new. There was nowhere to hide in that tiny cavern. Plenty of food, plenty of space, but never any rest. A gauntlet for them to prove themselves against.

I created a trio of black scorpions to judge the trial. Into them I poured as much Mana as their simple bodies could take, giving them rock-encrusted armor, then a band of thin tube-shaped hairs just below the base of their sting, each tipped with luminous glow-spots. The hairs were sensitive enough to catch even the hint of motion in the still, dark air. There would be no escape and no rest.

They wouldn’t need to sleep, after the Mana reinforced their minds and circulatory systems. Their instincts were pure murder. For three days they’d relentlessly chase everything that lived in their territory, and the creatures could only prove their worth by staying ahead, by using whatever intellect and cunning they had to escape being caught. In three days I would take the survivors and remake them.

It was a cruel method, but I needed a scout that could survive for days on end evading and dodging its way through the caves to find me a route out-

Which.

Was already assuming one existed.

It was a gamble I felt I had to take. There was a now-familiar sense of pressure as I watched the divine protection’s lifespan tick down, another day turning over as midnight passed.

I lifted my attention back to the surface world.

On the shore of the oasis, someone was trying to get my attention. The old stoneskin man who’d played the turtle shell lyre for Kahlim’s story sat there, legs folded with a book across his thighs, smoking a pipe made of horn. Another stoneskin’s horn, by the looks of it.

His body showed scars and weathering, his face decorated by thin, twisting horns that reminded me of briars, making a ring above the top of his skull, and with two thicker horns extending from his chin and turning to meet each other. Three of his fingers ended in bronze-capped stubs.

I made the wind twist in a slow spiral, churning the waters beneath.

“Great spirit of the oasis, I am Ahdlat.” He began, dipping his head in the universal show of respect.

“I’ve really had enough of honorifics today.” The distasteful affair with the goblins was still fresh, and if I’d seen anything, it was how hollow titles and praise could be.

“Then what do I call you?” The sign Adhlat made was for a guest who didn’t wish to offend.

“Oasis will be fine.”

He nodded, slowly. “Oasis, then. Not a djinn or a spirit such as I’ve ever met, to forgo titles. And your powers are strange too. You said you could make life from sky and earth."

“Yes- I’ll show you tomorrow. But it’s tiresome to do, and I really need to rest.” Actually, sleep was the last thing on my mind. I just needed to be left alone for long enough to think. Visitors were fine, guests more than welcome, the song and brightness they brought helping to ease my worries- but I’d lost the better part of a day on dealing with mortals in one way or another.

“Apologies for keeping you from your rest, then. But I had a story I wished to share.” His hands took the book with such gentle care that I was drawn in despite myself. The tome was simple, wrapped in a sackcloth binding with heavy pages of worn-down goatskin velum, but he held it like a holy artifact. One page after the other turned.

“This is a book of things we’ve forgotten. Too many things, all lost to places beneath the earth or above the sky, eaten by hungry fire, drowned by weeping seas... Half of us forget how to tell stories, and half of us tell the wrong ones...”

“I loved the stories my father told me, of things that used to be. You make me think of this one-”

He turned to a page about a garden in the sky, growing suns and moons. Great birds would steal them away to line their nests, along with the golden hair of the gardener, and so she enlisted the help of a shining djinn to lead them on a chase until they were so lost they could never return.

“But this one, this one was my favorite.”

He stopped an illustration of a long, sleek thing like a horse, but with a lower body made of drifting tendrils and long ribbons of feather expanding from the edges of its eyes and the top of its skull. Eagle’s talons replaced the forelegs, and it moved on a landscape of cloud.

“This is a sky-eater. I’m told they really did exist once, and brought rain across the earth as they passed. These days I doubt there are any left outside old books like these. But…” He looked up, making the sign for a ridiculous, extravagant request, then quickly, the one for laughing at oneself. “If you would humor this old man, if it would be in your power…”

I sent a wind through the book’s pages, making them turn. I’d already read everything within, Mana-sense licking over one page then the next, and growing more and more curious. It was nothing but a book of fairytales, but at the same time-

They were stories of how the world used to be. Of the Gods in their strength, of the great cities still unbroken. It was a history disguised in children’s stories.

I felt the tiniest wisp of divinity clinging to the pages. Sunk into the bindings making sure they never rotted away. This book wasn't an accident or a fabrication. Somewhere, long ago, some lonely god had chosen to preserve a fragment of the old this way.

The sky-eaters were real.

“You want me to make one for you.” Lift my hand and pull an extinct species out of myth, into the real. I wish I had that kind of grace in shaping flesh. Even if I could make the crude form, I’d have no way of knowing how to cultivate the Mana-flame without binding myself to their Schema.

“For everyone.” He replied. “This dry old earth misses them, I think. There is not as much as rain as there was when I was child, and much less than when my father was young.”

Still. It appealed to me. It was a lunatic request, and the old man was clearly ready for disappointment.

“I can promise nothing, but I’ll try.” I agreed, and while his face stayed emotionless, he clutched the book to his chest and bowed down till his head touched the grass.

“You’ll have to tell me more about them…”