[center][h1][b][u]The Lifeblood[/u][/b][/h1][/center]

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Bright, blistering beams of sun fell down like rods thrust from the heavens onto the barren land. Although the Lifeblood couldn’t feel it, the heat in the air was oppressive nonetheless. Such a desolate land that had sprung up on the continent, so unlike all the soft places that had come before. The only places more viscous the Lifeblood itself had made, in a frenzy which had soon cooled. This place, surrounded by the grand creations of the Boar, was not ferocious or angry, but it was still harsh. The air shimmered in the sky and water fled as wind that failed to cool spiraled ever upwards into the large thermals that dotted the landscape.

Here, the loving Sun One’s blessings were brutal trials and her departure would swing the scale towards another extreme, one of frigid darkness. There was something enchanting about the whole thing, even if the Lifeblood was immune to being enchanted. The vast swirls of sandstone and harder granite seemed to call out to be filled. So it complied.

It started as it always did: small. The parched land was a challenge to craft for, as the ingredient that all creatures the Lifeblood had made before was so lacking, so it had to get creative. Under its guidance, a single dark green shoot broke through the ground. Thin and waxy, it was insulated from the heat. Instead of leaves or flowers, this new plant had nothing save a single bud at its tip, no longer than four inches and as wide around as a finger. The thing looked sad and small, barely like life, but the Lifeblood knew it could survive. Inside the small bud, it began working the finer details. Thread connected to thread and tendril wrapped around tendril, the lifeblood worked deep inside the bud, past moonrise and through the icy night. Before the next dawn broke, at the darkest part of the night, the Lifeblood finished.

In that darkest night, the bud exploded open. A fine tapestry of silver filament rolled out into the cool air, large and more intricate than any spider web, the shimmering silk spewed like a fountain from the measly stalk it came from, hanging in the air, prime to catch enough dew to sustain a plant thrice its size. As the sun rose, just before the morning dew could even think of burning off, the cascade was retracted. Rolling back into the bud, now distended with water. The Morning Silk began to move its liquid bounty towards its roots and the Lifeblood knew, it would be possible.

With a pulse, Morning Silk sprouted in all the places that could sustain it, in some places the buds were able to grow as tall as a man with whit canopies that touched the ground around them, but not all were so lucky. Regardless, the dark green buds add only the smallest amount of color to the red lands. Next, the Lifeblood made the hardiest grass it could, scraggly and grey but fierce and determined. Then it made olive-colored vines that crept across the ground, hiding their water in rock crevices and behind tough, brambly thickets. Small herbs, thin and waifish, that could only grow in caves and dark places, saving all their water and energy for a few precious minutes of sun at a specific time of day, making just enough energy to last another set of hours.

The land was still barren, sure, if you failed to look and see the boiling fungus, feeding on the iron in the rocks or the plants without roots that caught the wind in their single broad leaf as they roamed the desert in search of what they needed. So now the Lifeblood could go bigger. 

It started with the bugs: the hard-shelled beetles that scurried through the sand and the buzzing flies that flew above it, the swarming ants and the lazy grubs. It made the small moths that lived and laid their eggs in the bulbs of the Morning Silk, only to come out for that short time before dawn. It also made the bulbous green bug that rested on the tips of plants, sending out smells and offering a single tassel of silver, beckoning any unwitting prey to fly to close, expecting a taste of water and getting a swift end. It made the flat, ten-legged crawler that carried all its water hanging under its belly and the savage wasps that carry them off to their hive, helplessly kept as a water tank until they become an incubator.

It made the toxic scorpions who used their brutal pincers and deadly sting to protect the tiny frogs, no bigger than a kernel of corn, all because the frogs could always find the secret stores of water the scorpion needs to lay its eggs. Next it made the hot-footed gecko that dashed across the broiling ground during the day and its cousin, the cold-hearted lizard which slunk in to devour the geckos at night. It made the foul snakes that could kill with a bite and the other ones who can’t but try and play the part anyways. It made the legless lizard that tried to look like the vines and the ones that could leap from rocks and soar the thermals.

It made the warrens of mice that had a queen and the clouds of bats that had no colony. Three kinds of birds, two kinds of rabbit, and a single fox with ears bigger than its head were all the Lifeblood could make bigger than that. 

Without doing something new, that is.

If the Lifeblood were like one of the gods that had shattered from it, one with a sense of flair, it would have puffed out its chest, taking in an enormous breath and, using its hands as a funnel, released an enormous gust of wind in the shape of a spear, something to dramatically carve away at the earth. But, the Lifeblood was not a god, just a force, albeit one of many boiling spirits waiting to break out. So it just released energy into the sandstone to get it’s job done.

Mimicking how it had made caves earlier, but this time using air, the Lifeblood tore into the stone land. Filling with all manner of tunnels and caverns and pits, all weathered smooth by the elements. A constant breeze blew through the cave system, generated by the vast difference in temperature between the underground and the air. This difference not only created the cycling of air, but also great updrafts around the deep vertical shafts that were the entrances to these catacombs beneath the desert. 

Before it got to the main event, the Lifeblood got to work populating these new sandstone tunnels. This side of the land was much cooler, meaning it could be damper. Not wet, mind you, but far from the painfully dry above world. The walls began to teem with new plant life under the Lifeblood’s influence. Strange bushes grew that coated the walls of the tunnels with leaves that spiraled out in a fractal and glowed a faint green as well as flowering grasses that blinked in the pale darkness, attracting the flitting, flickering fire flies that dwelled in the depths to pollinate them. The Lifeblood also made small, furry animals with long bushy tails and enormous eyes that glinted in the dark to run around eating the fruits of the small cave shrubs and whatever may fall into the chasms.

Now that the preamble had been done, the Lifeblood began to craft a beautiful thing. It took a shape that it had seen before, a graceful winged beast, smooth and elegant. The Lifeblood lightened it and rolled it out, like a baker kneading bread. It covered the smooth underside of the wings with hard bristles that could sand stone and grip hard to the ground. It gave the new creature two long frill-shaped whiskers rolling off its brow, like antennae or lavender ribbons, that could brush the ceiling of the tunnels and sense the slightest movements through the air or electricity. The animal’s color blushed as it lost the blacks and blues of its ocean cousin and turned a sandy yellow, bio-luminescent red motts flecked across its broad back. The Lifeblood gave it a thick tail, capped in a plume of colorful feathers that would act like rudder through the air.

The Lifeblood breathed the final spark of life into the new creature and the first of the Manunaki, the Desert Mantas, took flight out of the caves that would be their home, riding the updraft to soar high into the sky, quickly followed by many others of its kind. The graceful beasts wheeled in the air, singing deep songs that resonated through the air and echoed through the rocks. There in the sky they would gather water from the air using the many bristles along their underbellies which would be pushed along grooves in their body by the motions of flight to be collected in their mandibles. When the Manunaki return to their roosts in the caves, they’ll bring all the precious water and sky energy that makes the subterranean life possible.

Thus, the Lifeblood created two worlds in the almost barren red desert with the Manunaki as the bridge. But sitting there, watching the Mantas dance freely in the sky, another twinge shook its core. It was the same twinge that had resounded watching the very first birds. The twinge continued to throb inside of the Lifeblood, and it suddenly became aware of all the voices swirling around inside itself, growing stronger and trying to exert their will on the Lifeblood’s actions. For now, it was together, but the Lifeblood knew it would not be forever…

[hider=Summary]
The Lifeblood is in the newly created Blood Desert. Challenged by the harsh yet simple landscape, it goes into incredibly detailed and intricate work crafting the desert with something akin to care, although it is probably not the Lifeblood itself who is caring but rather one of the many Conceptuals it feel broiling around inside of itself, growing stronger by the day.

While filling the Blood Desert with life, the Lifeblood also carves vast tunnel and cavern networks in the sandstone, populating it with its own, bio-luminescent ecosystem. The Lifeblood also creates the Manunaki, or Desert Mantas, graceful beasts that live in the tunnels but also hunt water in the sky, being able to fly on the thermals. 
The presence of a Manunaki causes life to grow stronger and soothes agitation in beings that can worry. They can also carry a great deal of weight while they fly, assuming they remain in the enormous, hot updraftes of the Blood Desert.
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[hider=MP Breakdown]
Iternis:
Start MP: 4/5 
0-Create Ecosystem: Made all the life in the Blood Desert
0-Change Landscape: Created the Vast Sandstone Network
0-Create Ecosystem: Made all the life in the Caves
1-Create Extraordinary Species: Made the Manunaki

End MP: 3/5
2/5 for Mounts Port (Rockbirds and Manunaki)
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