I felt ready.

Hours passed as the stoneskin admired their new beast, the children riding atop its back as it thundered out of the oasis on its hundredfold legs and out into the desert. As it road in looping paths, the goblins made their bitter goodbyes and left, heavy with food and water. Shine-Catch was left alone for a time, sulking in the shade, and for a moment I thought I should pause my work, speak with her.

But I allowed myself to be distracted. I was flush with one success and eager to claim another.

I drank in new Mana, feeding on the trial and toil of the wastes. Each time something struggled and died within that expanse I claimed the Mana-flame from its flesh.

The creation of the Hecatoncrus proved it to me; my strength was growing. Out in the desert, a thousand veins of ethereal Mana drank in the life of earth and sky, bringing it to me. More than that, my abilities of creation were becoming more refined with practice.

The enemy had walled me in, but I could still grow.

I had been born to bring life to the desert. Now, I carved my name into the earth. Trees rumbled and fell back, shifting in the soil as the ground writhed like a living thing, parting to make way. Water tumbled down new-cut channels I lined with stone to keep my gifts from being drunk up by the greedy sand. The sound was beautiful. A thousand thin chimes, the splash and splatter, little thrumming bubbles, the air was full of the pleasant noise of the riverside and the sparkling lights reflected on the water’s surface as it poured forward. Rivers were born, stretching out from my core.

Above, I held a flow of Mana like a stormcloud, draining down into my core to produce endless water.

By the time my efforts had exhausted me, I had made twin channels stretching out to two new pools, shallow lakes I dug down into the earth. The waters spread out wide, forming a great mirror that filled with the shades of the open sky above, the gold of the sun and the blue of heaven.

In time I would make three more, one connected to each pool then a final lake that connected those, forming an elongated diamond that captured an island of grass and trees at its center. For now it was enough to build two new areas that could flourish with life, and give myself a buffer.

I was confident the goblin tribe would come to me soon - and I wasn’t trusting enough to let them build beside my core.

Better yet, making water cost very little Mana unless I imbued it with healing powers. I still had plenty left to build with, and to seed life around the new watering holes; my immediate inspiration were the twin Goddesses. The beauty of the sky and the pale logic of the lunar surface.

The first lake was already a mirror to the open sky. From that heavenly water I raised patches of tall waterborne reeds that lifted their heads above the surface and flowered in white, fluffy blooms akin to cotton. Clouds seemed to billow on the surface of the lake and bend to the wind. Rain would come.

I had won my wager with Kahlin and the water-stone - actually I’d far overpaid, but I was happy enough to do so. Examining the crystal’s structure, I began to build. Each deposit I lay would drink magic from the earth and sky and release a crystal-pure water.

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

So I raised archways of stone from the lakebed, and thread deposits of impure watercryst across their underbellies like shimmering blue veins. Rain began to fall in veils beneath each arch, and strike the water below in a constant murmuring patter. On the far side stood tall hoodoo pillars of stormcloud grey, each topped by a circular eye hollowed out to let the sky through, and each ringed with fragments of skycryst that bled lightning into the water.

One side the dawn breaking through a morning shower, one a storm-filled night.

I grew luminous nightflowers atop the storming pillars, laying a base of moss to hold their roots in place. They had closed buds of transparent white, and would flower when the sun fell, opening their petals to release a starry glow and blanket the lake in their reflection like a sea of lanterns. On the morning side I was less subtle, and simply raised a huge bronze disk that would catch the sun in its daily rise and burn bright, casting its beams out through the archways and making rainbows appear in the constant rainfall. Drawn on the disk’s face with as much skill as I could muster was a scene of birds in flight, passing above a great river.

That was my first creation. Skyshower Lake.

The second was already drawing attention from the wildlife. I’d upset a burrough of young desert hares, and they came thrashing out as the water poured in, filling their homes with clear water and drifting sand caught up in the river’s expanse. I saw a familiar fox break from a nearby rock formation, leaping down to claim one unlucky rabbit in its jaws after a brief, flashing-fast chase.

The sight of the fox’s children poking their wide-eared heads up from among the rocky crag, watching their mother carry back the prey, was oddly calming. I’d almost forgotten healing the little kit, but there he was.

Turning back to my work, I apologized to the hares by lifting up raised burrows on the shore. Rather than seek a natural shape in my designs I forged the rabbit-houses like temples of bleak white stone, square-cut little buildings with rows of pillars to lift up a rooftop of turquoise stone. Soon the lakeshore seemed home to a hundred tiny gods with flopping ears and twitching noses. I turned the earth to a similar shade, until even the dust was a pristine alabaster. Beneath the lake was a sea of smoothed lunar stones.

At its core, I made a true temple rise. This one was a circular tower divided into two parts, a lower level made of pale lapis and turquoise, with open alcoves along the rim that bled out bright waterfalls. A bridge stretched from the base out to the land, a small door entering the hollow chamber within.

One day I’d have something to fill it with. A proper temple.

For now there was only the stairs leading up to the second floor where the walls fell away and were replaced by pillars holding up a square roof of silver. The center of the rooftop was open, so that the moon could be seen on a clear night, and I made a small basin where it would reflect.

As a final touch I made broken columns among the waters, the white marble carved in black letters. For lack of a better material I wrote the words of the old man’s book, fairytales and myths of the old world.

And then it was done. I made tall, straight trees with pale bark and ashen leaves sprout among the rabbit temples. I added more of the starflowers I’d seeded on the far lake, and it was complete.

Moon-Hare Lake.

For the moment I sank back. The meditative state of a core at rest didn’t place the consciousness into dreams, like the mortal sleep, but spread it thin across every hidden leyline of Mana that spanned the width of my domain. I ceased to think, but my mind became wide, receptive, able to feel the twitching of predatory insects in the sand and the slow languid grace of wolves stalking the wastes. As if I’d been scattered from a single being into the multitude.

In my dreams I watched the creatures of the desert come to drink the waters, to explore with fear and then wonder the landscape that had unfolded. Somewhere, deep in their ancestry, instincts were buried that told them that this, this green generosity, was how the world was meant to be.

And it was good.