Village elder Nemaris had a humble abode.
It was perhaps a house built as a statement, that the village elder wasn't better than anybody else. Still, that statement made for quite cramped quarters whenever an intertribal meeting was being held. The elders of the other four villages sat present, bumping knees along the north wall of the house while Cas wobbled in slime form ahead of them. Nemaris was the youngest man there, the other elders looking generally like the type, and he seemed quite a bit more deferential in their presence than she was used to. Age was quite the bit of status in this village. Even girls that were one year apart reffered to one another with respectful titles, needless to say of the elders. So, it was quite the signal of importance, when the Fari elder declined to speak first. "The Sage has more important things to say, let's not waste time with formalities."
Cas was thankful for his practicality, and generally stood in the background while Nemaris did most of the talking.
The negotiations were routine and everyone was quite in agreement about everything. Mainly, they were about manpower allocations and a general agreement to support Cas should she ever call upon their help for something regarding the Oasis.
Still, the Fari elder was a crafty man despite his age. His eyes had never strayed too far from the talking slime during the entirety of the meeting, and it was only near the end of the proceedings, during a lull in the conversation, that he surprised her with a question.
"Sakkari, Nemaris says that you have a plan to save the Oasis."
Nemaris had said no such thing, of course, but the Fari elder had seen and heard much over the course of his life. He'd met many grifters and heard the lies they told, and he knew that such people -- vain and prideful -- were quick to agree to anything that allowed them to preen.
Fortunately, Cas was a different type of liar. She was a liar that had to make reports to a doctoral board, and she knew the value of admitting ignorance. Though, the words this language provided her to speak with such tact was sometimes lacking. Still, she didn't drop her professional habit as she crawled forward onto center stage and addressed the audience.
"I haven't discerned the exact cause of the drought, yet. I'm certain the waters can be returned, however."
The elder laughed a jovial laugh. "You're a tricky one, Sage. You at least know how to sound honest."
"Pardon?" Cas laughed.
"Oh, it's no bad thing to lie for a good cause," the elder quoted a proverb. "Even a good man hides his knife in the desert. Besides, a thief can't honestly complain about another thief. We're all lying to the rest of the people, after all." At this the rest of the elders took on a nervous countenance.
"The people are on the verge of losing their minds, Elder," Nemaris retorted. "It's best to calm them while the Sage discovers a solution."
"Perhaps," the Fari elder nodded slightly. "Still, the water is draining, and the people will believe their eyes more than our words if things go as they are."
Cas broke in. "I'm learning more each day, and the more I learn, the more hopeful I'm getting."
"Is that so?" The Fari elder wasn't dismissive, but it was clear he didn't find her hedging inspiring.
"My life is at stake here, too," Cas reminded them. "I'm not despairing."
A twinkle came to the man's eye. He'd never been so talktative in years! He realized this as he retorted: "Oh? What have you to worry? Legends say that a Sakkari can live as long as there's the night air to revive it."
"I've heard of that legend," Cas answered, adding simply: "I'm not keen to find out!"
The elder, perhaps the only one comfortable in the room, broke out into laughter. "Ahaha!" slapping his knee he rose up into a proper sitting stance. "I say, you're at least worth investing in. Are we all agreed?" The question came powerfully, though the answers were a bit more lukewarm. "Call upon Nemaris, and we will do anything we can to help your project."
"Actually," Cas interjected, "there is something you can do for me right now." At their curious looks, she continued: "I have work to do in the Oasis. I'd like you to ask all the villagers to stay away from it for the next week."
Curious looks were abound, and the replies came plainly. "Hmm," the Fari elder considered. "Nemaris, one of your herd calves died in the Oasis yesterday, did it not?"
"Stillborn, elder," Nemaris answered.
"Then it should be a simple enough matter. Elder Kota -- " the Fari elder raised a hand to preempt one of the other elders. "I understand that your town is far from the Oasis, and that your well has already dried. I'll allow your people to use my towns well for the week."
Elder Kota bowed. "You grace us with your generosity."
"Is that all?" the Fari elder looked around. "Well... in that case, I believe it's best to allow Elder Nemaris to adjourn the meeting. Although, I do question," he turned a keen glance onto Cas, "what sort of work is so important that you require such secrecy."
Cas answered with blunt simplicity: "Work that will save the villages."
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Cas hung from a tree in the Oasis, messin' around.
No, she didn't lie about the important work... Kari was doing all of that.
"Uhm... take larger steps, Kari!" she advised from the tree tops. Sixty feet below, Kari, a hemp bag in hand, was walking in a spiral pattern across sand. Stopping every five paces, she took a small, clay jar out of her bag, filled it with sand, and closed it with a lid before placing it down where she'd taken the sample.
Cas, meanwhile, was playing with her new body.
It wasn't a body per se. Rather, it was just a form that Cas molded her body into. Harden had advanced enough that she could create truly hard parts of her body. From there, it was a simple matter to create rods, and cartilage, and joints, and to put those all together into an entire skeleton. At first, she'd started off simply, creating a wire-frame skeleton where every joint was a ball joint. But, eventually, cross referencing her memories of her own body, watching the details as she transformed into her human form, she started getting more accurate.
The 26 joints of her foot, all their articulations and interactions she'd memorized, and she'd learned enough about their interaction to create a simplified foot and ankle system that she could actually run on! Her knee, she'd sculpted and observed down to the angle of every ridge and locket. Her hips, were much the same. The spine, she allowed some more simplifications for... after all, did you really need thirty something vertebrae? And her hands... well, who needed hands, really.
Yes, Cas had gotten lazy near the end, but the end result of her laziness was a form she'd memorized well enough to make a skill out of it.
Golem
The skill appeared under a new section of her character sheet called "bodies", and it appeared in real life as a horror.
Short, slimy and transparent, It was perpetually hunched for the sake of maintaining balance. Inside of its gelatenous body, bones and muscles could be seen twitching discordantly, and solid, armor plating covered the outside of its chest in place of a rib-cage. It's head was a simple cube of armor with two holes punched out for its eyes.
It's arms were just noodles of slime-stalk material.
In truth, there was no stat where the true human form didn't come out looking better.
However... this form came with the advantage of still being a slime. And, sixty feet up the side of a ninety foot palm tree... that was quite the advantage indeed. Cas, hugging the trunk with both legs, reached a stalk hand up, and up, and up, until -- plop! Cas slapped it onto a spot of trunk fifteen feet above her. Throwing her second stalk up there, colling them together into a lasso around the trunk, she shifted her legs, standing feet first on the trunk and walked up the side.
It was slow going, and much strain was put on her stalk arms, with Cas having to dissolve her chest armor to bolster them with harden. Still...It was walking pace, and that took her to the treetop in seconds.
The trees were a sort of natural wind breaker for the Oasis. Near the center, the only hint of wind would have been the quiet howl of wind that streamed across the outside sands. The treetops, however, were a different story entirely.
Legs wrapped tightly around the shaking stem of a palm-tree, Cas wobbled as the fan-like stem drooped under her weight and caught the wind like a sail, shaking in rolling waves that threatened to buck Cas off into a rapid descent. Reaching up an arm, Cas caught the stem of an outlying branch above her.
She no longer felt any anxiety on account of heights or great falls, so it was quite a surprise to Cas to discover that -- underneath all that vertigo and terror -- being at such heights could actually feel quite peaceful and safe. So far above the rest of the world, distance shrunk every obstacle and danger into an abstract picture of itself. The sand looked smooth, and the wind felt nice against her body. It reminded her of when she'd first arrived here with the Zanzibat, clutching onto the things jaws and running through the air on borrowed wings. It was a shame she hadn't enjoyed that brief flight more, it wasn't like she'd get the opportunity to fly in this... world... again.
Cas's brain frizzed against itself as the words crashed against the sensible parts of herself.
Stretching her stalks out further, Cas wrapped them several times around the trunk of the giant leaf above her, pulling herself up to stand on the shady branch below. It was springy, bouncing several times whenever she shifted her weight against it. It would make for a good enough spring board she decided. Sticking her feet to it, she unraveled her arm-stalks. Quickly, she lengthened her shoulder joint into a curved, perpendicular staff of bone.
Having neither the time, nor patience for constructing a new set of joints, Cas settled for a hack job. The six-foot cross of bone ran across her shoulder like a giant kite set. From it, stretching down to her knees, a thick blanket of slime material -- hardened into a leathery consistency -- hung like the wings of a flying squirrel.
Allready, the slight wind billowed them open and forced Cas to grip her feet harder to stay on.
Cas wasn't expecting a full flight of course, not necessarily even a proper glide. But, with two sets of parachutes at her side, she certainty felt confident and adventurous enough to spring lightly off her feet and catch the coming wind with a whoop!
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Kari had always been of the opinion that Cas was a grumpy person.
Always short with her, perpetually 'busy' with seemingly pointless tasks, Cas never seemed to be in any sort of mood that could entertain entertainment.
Kari very much missed that old Cas, because now she was the one that had to do the pointless tasks. Waking up that morning, Kari had been handed a bag full of jars, and told that the lives of hundreds were at stake unless she collected sand well enough. When Kari complained, Cas told her to think of it as a game. What kind of game was that!?
Not wanting to destroy the Oasis, however, Kari simply continued with scrupulous intensity, walking five paces, squatting down, taking a measured cup of sand, and placing it in a jar exactly where she'd found it before taking another five steps. As the work went on, Kari felt herself less and less amused with the happiness of others, and she found herself understanding the old Cas more and more.
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Cas, when she'd first arrived had been friendly, sociable, and eager to talk. Kari placed another jar down with shaking fingers, wondering if she didn't put too much sand into that one. She'd become a lot quieter lately, though, and Kari was sorry to have ever blamed her. The welfare of others was a heavy burden to carry.
She'd have to apologize to Cas, later, Kari concluded. She'd never really appreciated how much responsibility Cas was bearing until now, and how much angst-
"Wahhhhhh!"
Cas's voice ran like a disco-light as she tumbled straight down and crashed into the hissing sand, throwing a dust cloud onto the carefully prepared jars Kari had set out for her.
In the end, Kari decided against making amends.
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The red coloring that suffused her interior, made the false muscles into a macabre simulacrum of meat. Cas's figure was hunched and crooked, and it walked with an awkward gait. Her face was a featureless box of false bone with two dark circles for eyes. Occasionally, in the right light, a subtle glint could be discerned from their dark interior. Even her mouth was grotesque, a simple line that ran across her belly, connected to an umbilical chord that mixed in amongst the crisscross of false muscle to connect to a a primitive lung.
Currently, that figure was sat on the edge of the Oasis.
"Next," Cas held out her left stalk, into which Kari placed a jar. Cas's legs were gone, having been transformed into a rectangular plate that she was currently using as a make-shift tabletop. Flicking her left stalk, a splash of sand fell onto her 'lap'. Her right stalk, the end having been transformed into a massive magnifying glass... flexed with unnatural precision as she scanned over the tabletop.
Seeing the sand particles had settled, she ever so slightly softened the rectangle of slime material. The sand, being so much heavier, sunk. The slimes were left floating among a hostile environment, and Cas's eyes -- which saw them as distinctive glimmers in the light -- had an easy time of the count.
Twenty three in that batch. Looking up at her notepad, she scribbled the information for jar 23-C.
"Next," she held out her hand, waiting a second too long before repeating the demand, looking up from her workspace for the first time.
Kari was looking away from her, hands cupping her face. "Can you please just turn back into a human." The request was spoken softly.
Cas looked down at herself as if in surprise. It wasn't surprise at Kari's words, but at the fact that it had taken her this long to realize this. Corpse carrier or not, the girl was still a child, and Cas doubted she was much used to seeing walking skeletons about, unlike Cas who's childhood binge of walking dead movies might have prepared her for such a thing.
"Oh, I'm sorry. I actually kind of need to stay in this form for this," Cas explained. "How about this, though?" she asked, hardening her exterior, obscuring her interior with the deep-red flush that now colored her skin.
Kari, looking back, only shook her head.
"Huh..." Cas felt annoyed at her own impatience. "I'm almost done here anyway. Why don't you take a break?"
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It was a late night, and -- desert temperatures could turn rather chilly at night. Cas had been the one to insist they stay in the Oasis overnight, and Kari had been the one to complain about the cold, so of course Cas took it upon herself to play tent.
Cas sprung up into the shape of a simple pole-tent, thinning out her top to let the star-light shine through to the girl underneath. Currently, that girl was snoring, and Cas was scrolling over their findings.
Having transported herself into a region outside of the reach of the metric system, Cas found she had to get creative with her measurements, but otherwise she found her results to be incredibly consistent.
Running the numbers. She estimated that 2000 liters per day of slimes were coming into the system. Tracking the slimes, most usually ended up dissolving into the dew, feeding the trees, or just straight up becoming one with the lake. Cas, being large enough, now, to maintain some separation from the rest of the environment, had even sunk down to the bottom of the Oasis, looking for survivors... nada. Those few slimes that managed to survive long enough to get a water-resistant skin... well, similar story to the cave, they got munched up by the various bugs that called the Oasis home.
It was apparent that the slimes were bringing water to the system. Cas almost laughed at the absurdity of it. Here she'd been expecting ground water, and it turned out that two thousand liters of water was literally marching out of the desert to come to the Oasis. The slimes, desperate to get away from the desert, created their own deathtrap.
What was less funny, was that -- accounting for evaporation and human use -- the Oasis needed three thousand liters of new water per day to break even. At that rate, it should have dried up in a little less than three years, the fact that Cas was looking into this drought five years after it started implied that it was speeding up, and that it was likely to get worse...
Cas had so many answers figured out, but her mind was a greedy one that wanted so many more.
She'd had Kari lay out the Jars in a specific pattern, and she'd labeled each of the specific jars accordingly. Essentially, that allowed her to turn the excel data into a sort of map.
Don't get too excited, her character sheet didn't have any map features. Rather, she was forced to make a map manually in her notes, using letter combinations to define terrain like it was some kind of emoji. Cas felt slightly degraded by her work. This was the kind of bullshit she used to spring onto the unpaid interns!
Calming herself from the thought, she focused on the shitty map.
image [https://imgur.com/aAMyf95]image [https://i.imgur.com/aAMyf95.png]
xxxx xxxx xxxx xxxx xxxx xxxx xxx xxx xxx OOO xxxx xxxx xxxx xxx xxx xxx xx xxx xxx OOO N xxxx xxxx xxxx xxx xxx xxx xx xx OOO OOO O xxxx xxxx xxx xxx xxx xxx xx OOO OOO OOO R xxxx xxx xxx xxx xxx xxx xx xx OOO OOO T xxx xxx xxx xxx xxx xxx xx OOO OOO OOO H xxx xxx xxx xxx xxx xx xx x OOO OOO xxx xxx xxx xxx xxx xx xx OOO OOO OOO xxx xxx xxx xxx xx xx xx x OOO OOO xxx xx xx xx xx xx xx x x OOO
As was her habit, Cas designed the map so simply that an intern could've made it. Each square represented a area of land. The OOO's represented the borders of the Oasis, and the x's represented the density of slimes in the area. More x's, more slimes.
See? Simple.
Day one of studying slimes had shown Cas that slimes died in the sun. And the further they traveled through the desert, the more of them died before they could make it to the Oasis. This, of course, meant that they were coming from somewhere relatively close by. The only question was where. And, of course, that was where their sun allergy came in handy. See, it was Cas's hypothesis that the most slimes would survive on the most direct path between the Oasis and their birthing place.
That straight line was easy enough to see in the data. As Cas drew out the final blocks of the Oasis, a vague line of high slime-density had formed to the north-east.
Of course, the data gathered from so few samples was rough, and 'northeast' as a direction was pretty vague.
However, Cas did find herself unsurprised, as she extended an eye-stalk out from the top of the tent, pointed it to the north east, and saw -- rising high as if to blot out her vision -- the familiar face of the rock-spire which was the source of so many mysteries.