The buildings were higher than my expectations for the isekai genre, which is a statement as non-descriptive as they get. They were twice the height of the Newfoundland, at the very least. Despite the fact that the walls were chiseled and the materials probably didn’t include the builder’s shit, I immediately recognized the function of the tall, chimney like architecture. An important detail that clued me in was that around each building were a series of channels into which drops of water leaked from nearly-closed faucets.

It all pointed out to natural air conditioning systems.

“It’s either giant termites or desert hippies. And I don’t know which one I prefer,” I mumbled.

Ahead, down the sandstone surface that could be called road, there was an oasis. It had no palms nor Arabian belly dancers. That meant no coconuts. Of either variety.

A short man or woman or goblin covered in drapes of light colors came out of one of the buildings.

“Welcome to the town, traveler. Leave the water in the oasis, please, and we shall be grateful,” said the person with a tired, low voice. I couldn’t identify the gender from it.

I raised an eyebrow.

“How many barely legal slaves can I get for this much water?”

“Excuse me? What are slaves?”

That confirmed it: under the drapes, there was a desert hippie.

The sun was going down, and we were still inside the newfie.

“Mariana, park this thing, I am going to talk with… what’s your name?”

“Hazlumaladovirantami,” they answered.

I descended from the water dog and inspected the thing’s face closely.

It was approximately male.

Then a tall woman came out of the same building. She wore a black veil and an eye patch of the same color. Her skin tone was Chocolate Labrador.

She slapped the man on the back of the head and he went inside crying like a hungry Mariana.

“Excuse my son, he is retarded,” she said with a voice that would have been perfect to sing poems.

“This lady is the wrong color for me…” I mumbled.

Mariana crashed the Newfoundland into one of the buildings, splashing water-waterdog in all directions.

“Parked!” she barked.

“Excuse my pet, she shares the condition.”

“So, Walter, murderer, he who baths in the blood of the homeless, elfist, Rosas’ little Unitarian twink, what brings you here?” she said, with a smile that reminded to that of an Akita Inu before it goes for your throat.

“Mind reader?” I said, crossing my arms.

“Four point five inches.”

“Ah, an all-seer.” I pointed at her patch. “Well, half-seer.”

“HelloIamMarianaAndILikeSticks!”

“Hello Mariana,” she changed her expression to a soft one and caressed the head of the biggest war criminal among us.

“We need a place to stay, and information about a library lost amongst the sands.”

“As the leader of my people I, Phaela the Miserable, ask you to kindly continue your way. We don’t need rotten hearts like yours.”

Mariana started to drool.

“Mmhhh, rotten heart. Walter, cook me some heart.”

She ignored Mariana and walked up to my person. This woman was a few centimeters taller than me. Given her son was a total manlet, I could imagine why she was so miserable.

“Go away, and take your dog with you.”

“Will resorting to extreme violence make you or your people reveal to us where the fucking library is?” I said, deadpan.

“No, we will take it to the grave.”

“Good thing I am a necromancer. Mariana, attack.”

I turned to see Mariana squirming on the sandstone like an earthworm under the summer sun. “…I may be willing to undertake some menial quest in exchange for the information.”

She dismissed us with a hand gesture and headed back to the building with a gait inadequate for a seer or oracle. Where was the hip swaying?

“Mariana, take a crap in the oasis waters.”

Phaela the Miserable turned, looking at us with her eye wide open and her lips retracted in absolute disgust.

“You wouldn’t dare.”

Mariana happily hopped in the general direction of the Oasis.

Phaela pulled me from the chest-belts.

“Tell her to stop.”

“She can’t be stopped anymore,” I said, with my best overly-dramatic voice and countenance.

“We drink from there!”

“Such a shame. Maybe if you offered me some way to access the knowledge…”

“Fine! We may have a fetch quest for you two!”

Mariana turned in a u and came towards us like a fluffy lightning bolt, the shit order discarded in favor of a new objective of her interest.

“Fetch, fetch, fetch, fetch!” she chanted while she jumped around me.

“I despise you, Walter from Earth,” she spat.

“The feeling is mutual, Phaela from… wait, how is this planet called?”

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“The English name would be ‘Planet’.”

I snorted. “I would complain, but we named ours after dirt.”

I offered my hand. She didn’t stretch it.

“Don’t touch me, scum.”

It seemed I had finally found a woman that treated me in a way that would remind me of home. I, a mature adult, flipped the bird at her.

“Que te garche un oso.”[1]

“Come again? I don’t think I understand what you are saying.”

“I wished you wellbeing, prosperity, and protection against rabies.”

“Mariana isn’t rabid,” she noted, raising an eyebrow with certain haughtiness.

“She could be: the virus would have no brain to affect.”

“Fetch? Fetch? Fetch?”

Mariana’s IQ negative logarithm (In base ten) was raising dangerously closer to a hundred each second.

“What do we need to bring to you, then?”

“Water from the river of immortals. I am too valuable for my people to perish of old age. My curse brings wealth and fame to this godforsaken village.”

“Okay, we will need a waterskin. And…” I eyed Mariana. She was so happy awaiting for the fetch quest. “Does it work on dogs?”

“Are you asking me if you can store dogs on a waterskin?”

“Yes, because they are mostly water,” I said, and then awaited her response.

Silence remained a solid entity between us for a few seconds.

She squinted.

“You are mocking me, aren’t you?”

“I am just thinking that the needle doesn’t fall far from the cactus. Does the immortalizing water work on dogs?”

“Why would you want an immortal dog?” asked the mortal blonde bitch.

“I doubt if you do have a small remainder of a heart under those belts, or if you consider Mariana a weapon,” said the other bitch.

“Yes,” I answered without thinking it twice.

“You will die a virgin.”

“Is that a prophecy or an opinion?” I asked, chuckling.

She shrugged, took a cigar from her pocket, ignited it and started smoking. The cancer-grinding strumpet exhaled on my face. “A fact.”

“Can we fetch already?” said Mariana, looking at me, tail wagging, body trembling.

“Does it work on dogs or not?”

“Find it for yourself! Be thankful that I am even willing to leave my disgust for you aside long enough to negotiate.”

“Fine. Can we stay somewhere tonight? We will part with the morning light.”

“Somewhere? Yes, of course. Somewhere out of town.”

And she turned her back at me before getting lost into the building and closing the rocky door with a violence that was clearly intended for some moron. Probably an acquaintance of mine.

----------------------------------------

Before the night had fallen we were already away from the small town, and walking to were a weird mental quest-marker indicated. The hot sands beneath my feet —and her paws— would become a cold grave in just a few hours.

Mariana gradually fetched me random items one could find on the desert: tumbleweeds; desert roses made of useless gypsum; dead lizards; living lizards; a whole, four-meter-tall cactus; living, poisonous snakes I had to stomp on to kill; a dehydrated, blue catgirl corpse.

“This rigor-mortis-addicted gal is the closest I have been to starting a harem in this world. And she is a furry.”

“And dead,” added Mariana. Thanks, Mariana.

I reanimated the catgirl and she rose up like a malfunctioning or breakdancing robot. I handed her the tumbleweed and the dead lizard, ordering her to hug them tightly.

“Mariana, cast a fire spell just strong enough to ignite the weed and her robes.”

“Sodom and Gomorrah sounds good?”

“Listen, I am all for you nuking towns to grind experience, but no, just a bit of fire is enough. No dubiously moral cleansing of God’s enemies.”

I glanced at the moon. There she was, waning, with her health bar intact. Soon, we would fuck her up harder than a Viagra-ed Endymion.

The darkness was growing denser, enough for my eyes to give up on the task of guiding me away from active threats and cacti. Mariana waltzed in and out of the murk to recover miscellaneous items. Some of them flammable. She had not ignited the catfire yet.

“Mariana, It’s starting to get cold.”

“I belong to a double coated breed, don’t worry,” she disregarded my wellbeing as if I weren’t the one who bathed her as a puppy after her several (lost) fights with her own turds.

“I am feeling cold, Mariana. Cast some goddamn low-level fire spell to make a campfire out of the catgirl.”

“Do you need music to go with it? I can get my announcers to reproduce songs from Earth.”

“Ignite her and play Girl on Fire.”

Mariana turned 180 degrees with a jump and a fire whip erupted from her tail. With it, she set the tumbleweed ablaze and got a centimeter away from searing my arm.

As we advanced through the night and the German announcer tried in —hilarious— vain to hit the same notes as Alicia Keys, the flames lapped at the zombie and consumed her flesh. By the first hour she was already a walking pyre.

We kept on walking until the first light. I was tired, my feet were sore, I shared political opinions about sand with Star Wars characters. Miserable, I was miserable. I pulled some charred jerky from the burnt copse that lay next to me and chewed on it. My descent into cannibalism any% was almost worrisome.

“It tastes like ashes and defeat.”

“Walter, look, books!” said Mariana.

I woke up from my delightful rest on the coarse dunes and rubbed my eyes. They emerged from the sands, and their pages disappeared after turning, appearing again on the other side. They were made of the material of the ground itself, and were all opening in our direction, not unlike gold diggers following a billionaire.

“Mariana, how many fire spells do you have?”

“A score of scores.”

“Can you not use a single one in presence of what I think are the Sandooks?”

Mariana understood my question perfectly. She then casted fireball and lesser fireball simultaneously, and thus, it wasn’t a single one.

The spells impacted in the ground, exploding and leaving glass craters behind. One spark reached a Sandook that screeched horribly and tried to close itself, but his pages were infinite. After a minute or so it started releasing thick, white smoke, and keep on calling for help as the other books slithered away.

I sighed.

“Mariana, you have just started a mass extinction.”

“Did I?”

“How many moles of carbon dioxide and water do you think a book with endless pages will release into the atmosphere?”

She remained pensive for a few seconds.

“We have a bigger problem, and it is that an eternal fire that’s big enough would consume all the available atmospheric oxygen to burn,” she commented.

“No, if the book has infinite pages, if it has infinite material between those pages, it is also feasible for it to contain an infinite amount of gaseous oxygen entrapped in them, maybe enough to sustain an incomplete combustion and spread the fire further inwards. Which leaves us even less time, because carbon monoxide is a bitch.”

“Hey! I devoted valuable mind power to this, don’t call poisonous gasses bitches.”

“So… you can choose to stop being dumb? Like, at will?”

Mariana nodded.

She summoned the water elemental and it ingested the book. Said book kept releasing smoke inside the newfie, making pearl like bubbles that quickly surfaced out of the back of the water dog. After a few tense instants, our friend ran out of HP and got absorbed into the Sandook.

“Maybe we did just cause the end of the world, Mariana. Do you have a plan?”

“Yes,” she said joyfully, and then her health dropped to zero, she went limp and a little skull appeared besides her name.

I wished to have a stick to poke her with.

“Fine, kill yourself. I’ll die soon anyway.”

Then I noticed she wasn’t breathing.

“Mar?”

I knelt beside her body and poked the cheek with my index finger.

“I will do the fetch quest alone. Fetch quest.”

She opened her eyes and started wagging her tail against the dune. Her HUD still showed her as dead.

“Feign death?”

“Yuppers,” said the miraculous Retriever that came back from the underworld after hearing a five-letter word.

“Say that word again and I am snuffing you for real.”

She stood, shook the death and sand off of her and remained there, looking at the burning book, tail wagging.

“Walter, I have an idea. A better one that does not avoid our accountability: All populated planets have teleportation points. Given the sandook is neutral toward us, I can teleport it away and let some alien civilization deal with the thing. But I will not do it out of my own volition. I need your order.”

“Genocide of non-people some light-years away to avoid fucking dying? That’s fine with me. And probably with Matu, as the aliens are not baptized and most likely, heretics. It’s a little hard to spread the gospel that far away.”

“Okay, you are the boss.”

A pentagram of light drew itself under the burning Sandook, and it started to shine brighter each second. After a moment, it emitted a sound comparable to a fart, and both Sandook and pentagram disappeared.

“Did it work?” I asked, approaching the partially melted sands to inspect it.

“Yes, the book is in another planet now. Back to being stupid.”

I started laughing at my own genius after that.

“Mariana, I had the best of ideas, jump and hug me with your forepaws from behind.”

“Yay, playtime!” she happily complied.

“Now, make your announcers play We Didn’t Start the Fire.”

As soon as the intro started playing, I began to dance the conga, with Mariana following. And like that, we pushed forward through the desert, calling forth the newfie now and then to rehydrate.

----------------------------------------

[1] I have to keep this footnote thing pg-13, so, let’s say, when a bear loves a desert-seer-bitch very very much…