"This is... unexpected" Haku murmured as he looked at the carcass in front of him.
After Serengal and Sarah had realized how absurd the body they had found was, they had decided that they couldn't continue to investigate alone; furthermore, they should warn the others of the danger should another of those giant scorpions deviate to approach the camp and attack someone. So they had gone to wake up Haku and inform him of what they had discovered. As soon as he knew Haku he had decided to go and check in person, accompanied by his siblings who were awake at that moment (namely Darbi, Corgorin and obviously Serengal); he had also sent Sarah to wake up Zamor (as close as they might be, he was pretty sure the lizardman would not take it well if a dragon entered his tent while he was sleeping), so that he too could see and decide what to do about it.
"It really looks like a fish" Zamor said as soon as he was in front of the carcass, holding up the remains to verify that what he was touching were really fins. "But let's not jump to conclusions. Maybe it's just an animal that looks like him..."
"I doubt it. Look" Haku said pointing at the ribs. "The ribcage is open. This is typical of animals that don't have lungs. And here..." and he pointed to a small piece of meat that was stuck to the neck. "...there are undoubtedly signs of gills. I don't know many animals that have such characteristics apart from fish"
Zamor grunted. "So it's really a fish... and a big one too. What can it be?". He began to carefully inspect the body for clues, but unfortunately there were very few signs left about the true nature of the fish. "The skull is mostly crushed and the body has been eaten, so I'm not sure I can identify it. Maybe if we can find the teeth we can..."
"Or we can just done this" Darbi said opening his jaws and tearing off a piece of the carcass, to then he chew it. He savored it thoroughly, then he swallowed it. "Mh. It's unlike any fish I've ever tasted. The bones are mostly composed of cartilage, and it doesn't have..."
Zamor had to summon all of his willpower not to vomit while Darbi spoke. "Did you really just eat rotten meat?" he asked with disgust.
"The meat hasn't gone that bad, we can tell by the smell" Haku said bored. "It's no longer good for you newcomers, but for us dragons it's still edible. So, a fish made mostly of cartilage... if I remember correctly, Maldor had mentioned something to me when she told me about ocean fish"
Even though the dragons had never been to the ocean, at least not yet, Maldor and Kotaru had managed to acquire some information about it thanks to the books of the Academy of Magic. According to these books, many oceanic fish, such as sharks, had skeletons primarily composed of cartilage. The fish they had found in the desert apparently seemed to share these characteristics.
"But we are still a long way from the nearest sea" Zamor pointed out. "How did an ocean fish get here?"
"I don't think it came here from the ocean. It seems more plausible to me that it adapted to living in these extreme conditions for some reason" Haku answered. After all, not even the most violent storm could have carried a fish from the ocean up there, and even if such a cataclysm had existed it surely would not have gone unnoticed by them, who instead had seen nothing but flat calm for days. "Where it comes from isn't important at the moment. What worries me is its size"
Zamor fully understood what Haku meant. Even though it was only a mostly skinless carcass, the fish was at least four meters long. And the scorpion that Serengal had killed was also three meters long. "To get that big they need to have a food source. Food and lots of water"
The fundamental rule common to all forms of life was that they needed energy. No energy, no life. The animals got this energy from the food they ingested. And another fundamental rule was that no life form could exist without water, or at least animals and plants. Neither food nor water could be found in a desert, so both Zamor and Haku had assumed that at most they would find very small creatures capable of conserving energy and water for long periods... but if that fish and that scorpion were grown to be that big, then that meant there had to be enough food and water somewhere to sustain them.
But that didn't make sense. Even though the Yuthia Desert hadn't been explored much and was constantly changing shape due to the movement of the dunes, the oases didn't exactly go unnoticed. If there were enough oases, or at least sources of water, to create a food chain capable of supporting such large animals, surely someone would have discovered it long ago. So where did they find the food and water they needed to feed themselves?
Haku reflected, then he looked at Serengal. "The scorpion you killed… you said it came from under the sand, right?"
His sister nodded. "It moved in the sand, as if it were swimming in it. And even the insects that were eating the carcass before our arrival as soon as they felt in danger disappeared into the sand"
"Mh. So apparently all the animals around here have their way to move in the sand" Haku murmured thoughtfully.
Zamor understood what the dragon was thinking. "Do you think the water is under the sand?"
"Well, technically we already knew it was there. After all, Thul Oasis exists. If it were just a pool of water, it would evaporate quickly in this arid climate. that the Thul Oasis is only the point where it rises to the surface" Haku replied. "I thought that this source of water was limited to the area around the Thul Oasis…but maybe I was wrong. Perhaps this complex water system extends throughout the desert, like hundreds and hundreds of rivers, it is simply trapped under tens of meters of sand. With enough water, life could thrive right beneath our feet… and some animals may have adapted to periodically abandon underground water sources and move into the sand in search of new prey"
Zamor rubbed his chin thoughtfully. That theory seemed plausible… and maybe even auspicious for them. "If that is indeed the case, then the desert should be full of water, we just can't see it. We need to check that now. Do you think you can dig down to it?"
"I could, but it would take me hours. The sand is too brittle, to dig a hole that deep I'd have to create a crater hundreds of meters wide" Haku replied. "Maybe I have a better idea. Go get Isaac"
The mage arrived a few minutes later, and he looked like he didn't even understand why he'd been awakened. Haku and Zamor quickly explained their intentions, and when they were done Isaac seemed more interested. "So, you want me to perform a water magic to check if there is water underground?"
Water magic was the magic that used water as the primary tool of spells. However, using it in a desert was a bad idea. In fact, water magic was based on collecting the water already present in the environment using mana and concentrating it in a single point; obviously there was also the possibility of transforming sand into water, but this would have required an enormous expenditure of energy. So using water magic in a desert wasn't exactly a brilliant thought... but it could prove if there really was water underground. "You need to flow your mana underground as much as possible and collect whatever you find. Can you do that?" Haku asked him.
Isaac shrugged. "What do you take me for, a fourth-rate mage? Of course I can do something that simple" he replied, then he raised his hand and spoke the simplest spell he could think of. For a moment nothing happened, then suddenly the sand darkened, as if it were wet, and then jets of water shot out of it and condensed into a ball in Isaac's hand. The ball grew to the size of a human head, and if Isaac hadn't interrupted the spell it probably would have grown much larger.
Zamor was ecstatic. "Holy shit, there really is a lot of water underground!" he exclaimed. "How much can you extract?"
Isaac made a quick calculation. He had Maldor to thank for discovering the formula that allowed him to calculate magic, because it made everything so much easier for him. "Using this same spell, I can extract at least a hundred liters a day. It's a fairly easy magic, I can easily teach it to the other mages in our group"
Zamor's smile widened. That was great news: now they had less fear of running out of water! Sure, they would continue to ration it, but at least they could drink more of it than they do now. This would have greatly decreased the risk of dehydration. "So, there is water underground. And as far as we can see, there are animals. And where there are animals…"
"... there's also food" Haku anticipated him, fully understanding the lizardman's thought. "The animals that live here and whatever they eat must be perfectly adapted to the conditions of the desert. If we can find out which of them are edible, capture some and raise them, establish a food source capable of sustaining the entire community in the long run would be much easier than we originally planned"
Establishing a functioning food chain from scratch in a desert, even with plenty of water available, would have been extremely difficult and with no guarantee of success; that was why Haku had set himself up for eventual failure by asking Sisna to use 'The spider' to provide him with more food sources than they already had. After all, the plants would have had to take root in a foreign land and the animals would have had to get used to a completely different climate and environment from the one in which they usually lived. But if instead there already existed animals and plants capable of thriving in those conditions, and indeed that they could reach considerable dimensions... then if they had managed to cultivate and domesticate them the chances of success would have been much higher. And the chances of finding edible food weren't low at all: sure, Zamor and the other beastmen wouldn't have eaten scorpions or insects very willingly, but as far as fish were concerned, they wouldn't have disdained them at all. With a little luck, they might also find other good-to-eat animals that would allow them to vary their diets.
However, for all the benefits, there was also a possible danger. "Do you think there are animals capable of posing a risk to us?" he asked Haku.
The dragon snorted. "Personally, I'm not sure. I doubt that there are animals that are too big, given that we are in a desert anyway and even if there were a complex underground water system, resources would still be limited. But on the other hand, precisely because we are in a desert with limited resources there is a chance that every animal here has adapted to be as deadly as possible. It would not surprise me to find that every living creature here is a perfect hunting and killing machine. And since they have never met those of my or of your kind, they have no reason to fear us"
In the lands inhabited by newcomers, regardless of their race, animals had learned to avoid them for thousands of generations, since they knew how dangerous they were. But the animals that lived in the desert had never met the newcomers, save for a few sporadic explorers, and therefore had not learned to fear them. Therefore, if there were indeed many predators in that desert, it was likely that they wouldn't have seen the huge group of beastmen as anything other than a walking feast.
Zamor thought about it. Haku's words made sense. "I'm going to improve the security" he said. "We are still thousands, and we are not easy prey. I doubt that any animal will try to attack us. It is more likely that they will follow us and wait for someone to fall behind. And even if they try to attack us head-on, we are always ready for a fight"
"We'll become more cautious too" Haku told him. "When we get to the Thul Oasis and have everyone safe, then we will start exploring this underground water system and looking for animals to raise. Until then, we will avoid disturbing what we don't know"
Zamor nodded. "Let's hope that 'what we don't know' thinks the same way as you"