[https://i.imgur.com/4gzRSG9.png]

Divine Protection - Abyssal creatures of [Silver] or above are restricted.

Protection will weaken in

28 Days : 11 Hours : 43 Minutes : 04 Seconds

We landed together on a stub of ancient wall. The desert was littered with bits of old houses, held together by scrawny little yellow vines that had crawled between the brickwork and sealed it all together even as the mortar eroded. The sand piled up against one side, forming a miniature dune.

I’d gotten used to bird-minds. They were bright, curious, and most of all visual. Many animals were burdened with dull sight, seeing a storm of grays and whites only good for spotting motion, with hearing and sense of smell making up the difference. Birds had keen eyes, and I could see the world laid out before us as we flew.

This one, I’d made for a special purpose.

[https://i.imgur.com/4gzRSG9.png]

Obol Hoopoe

[ Unranked ]

Kingdom Animalia

Age - 22 Days

Physique - Unranked

Arcana - Unranked

Psyche - Bronze

Diet - Ferrous Metals

Biome - Savanna

Cycle - Diurnal Storing hints of metal in its bright headcrest, this clever bird hunts for tiny scraps of rusted metal in the sands, biting through them with its suprisingly powerful beak. A hunter of shiny things and little treasures, it has a fanciful nature. Born from the Oasis Dungeon.

Notable Features - Keen hearing, Mana-synthesis organs (lightning), mineral consumption.

The hoopoe flexed a hidden muscle, and the ridge of fluff on its head snapped open like a fan, forming a crown of peach-colored feathers banded with white and black. A tiny electrical current crackled through the individual hairs of each feather, sparking as it lept, and a tiny magnetic pulse swept the sand. It snagged on something below, something metallic.

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We hopped down and pecked a corroded coin free of the sand. Nothing special. We’d found countless ratty little treasures on our expeditions, and a few things worth keeping. I let the little bird eat, its blunt beak cracking the metal into crumbling flakes of rust and metal and chewing them down. Its mind was fluttery, free-wheeling. It would happily distract itself with its own clawed toes, or burst into impromptu song, but most of all, the little hoopoe was very prone to falling in love. Or at least into wild and brief fits of infatuation.

Mostly with inanimate objects. Or its own reflection.

Today it was in love with a bit of luminous algae we’d found growing on a rock formation. Every few minutes it would pretend to have seen something in the corner of its eye, and send us wheeling back over the stones. I let it. There was something charming, almost intoxicating, in the vicarious joy I felt as its heart fluttered and trembled, its mind composing dizzy little chirps of poetry. It felt like holding a butterfly in my hand.

But I kept drawing it back out to search for more hidden treasures. There were things beneath, things my own senses couldn’t dig out. The ‘threads’ of Mana that spread through my domain were adept at sensing anything under the open sky but even a few inches of solid earth brought them short.

We were hunting for ruins.

I’d already found some promising spaces in the earth. In addition to its electromagnetic frills, the hoopoe had a kind of echolocation that served to ‘knock’ for hollow spaces. In our orbit through the desert’s easten side we’d identified a half-dozen small pockets of buried space, likely basements that survived the collapse of the house above, and three major areas that could easily be caverns. Shine-Catch had told me about the web of caverns beneath the desert, and I was looking for a way to explore them.

One that didn’t involve bulldozing through her tribe, preferably.

The sun dripped lower in the sky. With a last pass over the shiny rocks, my host’s mind bursting up with flowery poetry, I turned us towards the edge of the desert.

The closer we came to the edge of the domain the more I could feel the sourness in the air, the stagnant clouds of dark Mana collecting. Nothing twitched in the grasses of the savanna bordering the desert. Nothing stirred or moved below.

An absolute dead-zone had been created around the edges of my territory, at outer limits of the divine protection.

We were under siege. The enemy had arrived silently, and none of my creatures could sense them as they hid at the boundary’s edge, but the total silence of life and the presence of foreign Mana were evidence enough.

Only…

In the far distance, I could see movement. Coming from the horizon, rendered small and speckish by the distance, a crowd was slowly moving in along a beaten trail.

My hoopoe paused, wheeling in the sky, watching as they came closer and closer. A caravan. Feathered, bipedal reptiles pulled the reigns of overstuffed wagons, their enormous clawed feet ripping up the ground as they padded forward. The people who walked ahead wore long loose robes and had their hair cut short under bands of cloth, in every way dressed for the desert except for the masks that hung over their faces.

Those masks- there was something eerily familiar about the brightly painted masks they wore. Short wooden tusks extended from the mouths, but otherwise the features were exaggerated human ones, with big smiles and wide eyes. Horns lifted from above their scarves, made of rock.

They didn’t look human underneath those clothes.

I hesitated.

They were the first visitors I’d had who might be able to hold a conversation. They were also, possibly, servants of Arak. In a very short time I’d know for sure when they hit the dead zone and his siege troops either devoured them - or let them pass.

I held steady for a moment before turning back towards the Oasis. There was just barely time to deliver a warning, and put my own forces on the march. If we made good time we’d be there in time to help defend them.

Or to walk into a trap.