My creation began in fire as flames of condensed Mana traced through the air to draw the structure of its innermost being. The organs were alive, even as they hung in the air like grisly fruit on the vine of nervous tissue and cartilage. They beat, they thrummed, and around them I wove the muscle. It made a crawling fleshy sound as it grew to engulf the basic membranes and sacks that held the beast’s various stomachs, livers, the needed machinery of life.
The spectacle was horrific, for the moment. The outline of the beast was a faint river of blue energy that wove through the air, indistinct for the moment, like a luminous smoke that billowed on the winds. Already it was clear it would be enormous.
In fact, it was going to be my largest creation yet, and I had to work fast. Every moment I wasted the innards and muscle required me to pour Mana into them to keep them alive while I worked. It was nowhere near as efficient was working from a Schema or a past creation’s diagrams, where I could simply pour Mana into the mental record, like casting from a mold. Everything had to be wrought by hand.
There were no bones, and precious little in the way of brains. The muscle fibres had a sickly cast to them, not the bright red of human flesh.
One by one, I finished the legs, bound in powerful muscle so the beast could drag itself through the desert. It would need thirteen stomachs simply to eat enough to stay alive, and the blood was precious stuff, drawing much of my Mana. Invertebrates struggled to survive with the paltry amount of oxygen in the air here - so I granted the beast several sets of gills, and powerful multichamber lungs to draw in as much as possible with each deep breath.
By now the shape was becoming clear. The long body, the countless legs. It hung suspended in the clouded energies that swirled over the body, traces of Mana being lost as I rushed to finish. There’d be barely anything left spare.
The shell was the last to form. I wanted something beautiful, not terrifying, and so I gave the beast’s segmented armor a lustrous turquoise-green cast etched with swirling lines of gold, reminiscent of a tree’s inner grain as they formed concentric loops and squiggles. Simply to make the beast capable of movement I had to absolutely drain my Mana, forging the armor as light and efficient as possible, then regaining some of the lost strength by forging it not into smooth plates, but hard, dull-tipped pyramids, endlessly repeating down its back.
The waters below were surging, ribbons of flame falling from the beast’s body as it hung suspended in the air above the oasis. I was losing control, my mental focus fading under the frantic demands of the work, the spiritual ache of controlling so much Mana at once, the fatigue of running down towards empty.
The last touches had to be completed. The blood was rich stuff, meant to both cool the body and carry as much oxygen as possible. By the time I was done it was nearly flammable. A hardback throne appeared on the final segment near the head, meant for the rider to steer by.
As for the face, a millipede’s ugly maw wouldn’t do. Instead I made a mask of bronze, shaped like a ram’s head with curling horns and six-fold eyes. It would mask the rather ugly mess below, and give the beast a half-familiar touch. The horns even provided a place to lash the reins too.
The swirling clouds of Mana faded and the flames died away, peeling from the beast as it keeled down slowly, settling across the ground with a heavy groan. It shifted and swayed, examining itself. The mind was friendly but somewhat slow - meant to be led on a happy existence of hard labor.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
The music had stopped. Even the children had stopped playing, although one of them was so eager to see the beast she was stumbling forward. Her mother caught her and pulled her back.
Kahlin stepped towards the beast, slowly at first, descending down the banks towards the pool. His hand reached out and stroked the iron mask.
It-
Well I’d tried to give it a goat’s voice. I’d forgotten how distressingly human a goat’s bleat could sound. The beast let out a wretched, high, squeaking bray as it surged forward to nuzzle its metal head against his fingers.
Thankfully, Kahlin laughed rather than fell back. It twisted around him, bumping at him with its horns, and as he grasped ahold of its side and swung himself aboard, the whole caravan was cheering or simply laughing in sheer, awed disbelief.
It was massive. The size of three of their wagons laid end to end, and it crawled with a growing momentum across the grass as it tested its new body.
“Spirit! It’s wonderful, but where’s the mouth? Don’t tell me it eats air?”
On this I chose to keep silent. No need to ruin the moment with messy truths.
It ate everything but air. I’d actually hidden numerous mouths on its underside, not wanting to ruin the creature’s amiable nature by showing the hideous quantities of food needed to keep that massive body moving. With small flexible tongues meant for digging up grass or snatching small animals, it would simply tear up the earth for sustenance as it crawled. Anything would do. To lower the strain on its stomachs it would devour stones as well, using them to grind, alternating between that and tradition digestion methods.
Heat had been the last problem to address. Even with the lightweight and resilient shell to keep the sun off its back, the sheer heat generated by so much flesh would literally melt almost any creature. To some extent simply expending more Mana could blunt the issue, but wasting my power on an ill-fitting design was a clumsy solution. I’d found a better way.
Inspired by the segmented armor I’d divided the creature up into interior chambers and given each portion the ability to hibernate separate from the whole, with only half the entire body being truly awake at any one time. This would leave parts of the body in cooled, inactive state, and the wash of blood through these sleeping segments would help sap away the heat. Then there were special glands that served to swallow stones captured in the belly and wash them in a thin, heat-efficient bile before spitting them out again, effectively dumping the warmth its massive body generated into stomach-polished stones it could litter in its wake.
[https://i.imgur.com/4gzRSG9.png]
Hecatoncrus
[ Bronze ]
Kingdom Animalia
Age - 0 Days
Physique - Silver
Arcana - Null
Psyche - Null
Diet - Omnivore
Biome - Arid Desert
Cycle - Hibernation
Made to carry great burdens across endless lands, the Hecantoncrus' stature and strange form belies a simple, happy spirit that delights in hard labor. Created as a gift, this placcid beast is in all ways an ideal servant with numerous adaptions to ease the weight of its own body, letting it walk for days on end without cease. Born of the Oasis Dungeon.
Notable Features - Sequenced partial hibernation.