My immediate instinct for the hydra was to imbue it with Mana. Unfortunately, I'd probably fail to make much of a dent on the hundreds of years of growing it had to do, as the beast was currently a very large tortoise and nothing more. It hadn't even manifested a second head.

But.

I had yet to use the power of Evolution. Using it required the beast to condense a powerful inner Mana-flame, made not of my ethereal Mana, but the chaotic and varied life-Mana that came from living and fighting and, most of all, devouring other beasts.

Over half a century the hydra had accumulated quite a few kills.

A few more and I could collapse the flaring brightness of its Mana-flame into a new form, fundamentally changing its form. Ideally it would age on the spot, or simply settle into a faster-growing species.

I merely had to design an arena in which the creature could devour its fill. First off, I split the walls of the valley. Huge cracks echoed through the wasteland space within and as the echoes faded there was the clear chime of water. The once-sheer walls had been split apart by winding walkways, and at the far end, a single vein of watercryst shot through the red-orange stone like a vein of sky-blue. Water began to roll down, and I extended the shallow, spring-fed watering hole into a series of rocky basins streaked in their depths with deposits of colored salt. As they filled a terrace garden of pools formed, each a different metallic shade of vibrant rainbow.

From a variety of yellow fruiting vine I developed and seeded huge hanging gardens, giving them bright green berries that I laced with traces of stimulant borrowed from a poisonous beetle, using it in small enough doses it would only encourage aggression instead of causing heart failure. These erries grew in tightly clustered hanging pods, and I added to the plant a similar looking organ, a long strand of ropy vine covered in sticky spots of lurid green dew. Similar to the drowned man's hands I'd designed for my Oasis, it would latch on to anything it touched and slowly curl in to crush the life from its prey. With an extremely foul scent of rotten flesh, the small orange blooms of the vine would draw in countless insects on which to feed.

By now water was pouring through the first rows of pools, and the creatures frightened to their dens by the cracking of the cliffs could smell the moisture in the air.

I filled the ground with rattlesnakes, desert toads, with amphibians and reptiles of all natures. The largest of them looked like fat, loose-skinned dragons with horned heads, sporting long blunt claws for digging. The smallest included my scattertails, seeded here where they could grow - or die trying. Finally I placed molluscs along the rocks, snails and great embankments of hard-shelled sand limpets, who would feed by filtering the water. Most creatures beside the turtle wouldn't be able to crack their shells, so it would have a constant supply of food.

Over the lion's territory within the valley, I worked less change. A few trees brought up from the ground, a reinforcement of the spring with small veins of watercryst so their pool would slowly grow. Enough to let the mangy lions grow back to their forgotten pride.

My true goal was simply to build a sustainable habitat for my hydra. To this end I spent what Mana I could on reinforcing the beast's lacking qualities.

As the chellonian hydra stirred on its bed of sun-warmed stone, confused by the world crawling with accelerated growth, I slid into its mind. The thoughts of the beast were slow with torpor, slipping in and out of daydreams for tasty bugs and the heat of the sun, but I stirred at its hunger, pushing a faint spark of Mana into awakening the dormant instincts of a vast predator.

More of the work went into its body. To make up for its natural torpor, I gave it a long, sticky tongue of slick black gristle lashed with tiny curved barbs and a fleshy weight at the end. It could simply snap up bugs off the rocks, or stun larger prey with the surprising heft of a tongue-strike. To adapt its defenses, I ran a ridge of spines up its back where the bone plating of its intermingled with deposits of skycrist. Larger predators trying to strike or feast on it would receive a shock for their troubles, discouraging predatory birds from trying the usual shell-breaking tactics of seizing a tortoise and hauling it up to drop from a great height. A thin strand of conductive tissue ran from the great, flat-topped horn of crystal I placed on its head, giving it an appearance like an anvil, and through to its tongue. A single strike would now carry a vicious bite of electrical current.

Its beak was reinforced, becoming cruel, its jaws thickened with muscle and draped with leathery folds of skin that would serve as armor against attempts to strike its vulnerable neck. Its shell turned black as I hardened it and the whole beast took on a brutish, primordial appearance, a remnant from a deadly age.

It paused, craning its head slowly to look at itself.

Then it took another nap.

Frowning, I added one more thing to the den of reptiles and serpents. Bright, sleek birds with a row of reflective scales on their chest and long curved beaks made for chewing the stimulant berries, small channels within their beak allowing them to store the toxins.

I gave them a singular purpose in life. To harass the old tortoise-brained hydra into motion, constantly nipping at him with injections of the berry's aggravating toxin.

As I lifted my thoughts from the valley, satisfied, the first of their number landed on the hydra's shell. One eye opened, and flicked closed as it saw nothing but a bright little bird on its shell. The finch leaned down and gave him a swift, sharp nip on the ridge of his nostril, exploding up into the air in a flurry of wingbeats and vanishing before the pain even had time to register.

---

Tusk-Mouth sat and drank. His thirst tonight was great, and there wasn't enough as he emptied bowl after bowl of rough fermented wine made from fungal stalks and sweetbite-bugs. His warriors and servants were dismissed and he leaned against the wall of his cavern, the wall painted with scenes of his ancestors in glorious service to the gods; they'd lived a good life, his ancestors. Fighting and winning, fighting and losing, nothing but glory either way, given good spear and rich wine by the deities they served.

Who did the goblins serve now? Him, he supposed. He hated most of them. They were sunk into their own skin and so frightened of the world. The fear in their eyes was sickening. Like a tool with a broken handle they could no longer do what they were born to do.

There was a briny, fermented heat in his gut, working upwards to make his head light and dizzy. His thoughts were like a wheel tonight. They turned round and round, coming back to the same hate and grinding him down with every repetition.

His wine-bowl empty, he lifted the sack to pour another drink. Nothing. It hung in his hand, as skinny and empty and sad as one of his broken people.

Tusk-Mouth flung it aside, and sent the bowl clattering to the ground.

The spirit was trying to steal from him. Trying to crush his pride and make the tribe bend to its will. They would, too. For water and food they'd do anything. It was…

"Pathetic."

A hand offered him the bowl again, full of rich, dark-red wine. A man stood crouched before him, in a long and colorful cloak.

Tusk-Mouth should have reached for his knife. But the knowledge of what he should have done, would have done on any other day, was distant. The knife was from the spirit, an enemy. This was a friend, offering wine.

Although the thoughts seemed strange and alien to his mind, he knew they were true. He accepted the bowl and bowed his head wordlessly.

"Yes, your people did serve the gods once. It was a beautiful war they fought." The man rose and took a lyre from under his arm, putting his slim fingers to the strings. He stepped past Tusk-Mouth to stare up at the mural of red clay and white pastes that covered the cavern wall. "I will tell you the story of how your great ancestor, Fire-Glass, tricked a great beast into a labyrinth beneath the earth and sealed it away forever. Then you'll know what you must do…"

The stranger began to play, and while the beautiful song did not purge the fire from Tusk-Mouth's heart, the bitter embers were transformed, flaring up into something wickedly joyful, the bliss of knowing how he would at last destroy his enemy.