Chp.1: A month later

When Haku woke up he was greeted by the warm sunlight that penetrated the cave that had become his home. He stretched out happily, knowing that meant it was going to be a good day. Well, not that it could have been otherwise, since she couldn't remember there having been a single cloudy day since they'd set foot in that desert, and Thul Oasis was part of the desert. As a result, it's not like he could have expected to wake up to find it was pouring with rain.

He walked out of the cave and lay down on a rock; the light that penetrated through the branches of the trees was very little, but it was still enough to let him take a nice sunbath. Even though the dragons didn't need to, since they weren't like lizards that would go into hypothermia in the absence of sunlight and heat, it was still very pleasant for them. Sunbathing made them relax and gave them a sort of energy boost. The newcomers used beverages like coffee to get the most activity in the morning, dragons used sunlight instead. As already mentioned it was not an essential necessity (since even without it their motor and mental skills would have been at their best), but it was very pleasant and relaxing.

As he sunbathed he looked at the cave in which he had slept, and in which most of his siblings were still sleeping. It was the largest cave they had managed to find in the whole oasis and it was a gigantic hole formed by limestone rock inside a small hillock. It was large enough to house all seventeen dragons, so they made it their home. In reality, they didn't mind sleeping outdoors much, since they didn't feel cold or hot and could find a comfortable place to sleep anywhere, but they still preferred to have a roof over their heads in anticipation of a possible sandstorm. They had brought some mosses and herbs into it to make very comfortable beds, and that was all they needed to live. If they were hungry they ate what they had in the dimensional bags and if they were thirsty they went to the lake and drank all the water they wanted. And if they wanted to meet their friends or, in Haku's case, their allies... then they just had to go to the village.

It had now been a month since they'd arrived at the Thul Oasis, and everyone was more or less settled. The beastmen had built a large village (more of a small town actually) on the edge of the lake, not far from the cave where the dragons had settled. The initial plan was to build everything using wood taken from the ships they had broken up, but it soon became apparent that there wasn't enough for everyone; they could have cut down the trees in the oasis, but Haku knew how important they were to keep the ecosystem stable and therefore protect all of them from desert sandstorms, so he had opted for something better: build houses with bricks and use wood only for scaffolding and roofs. They could have used the clay that formed in the lake to create these bricks... but since Haku had an earth spirit at his service, he had decided to use another material: sand. After all, in a desert it was the easiest thing to find. Therefore he ordered Inpu to make solid bricks using sand. The spirit had carried out the order and using a mixture of sand and water had created a material similar to that of shells, but with a strength equal to cement-based mortar. In practice, the result had been very solid bricks which had become the basis for the construction of houses and buildings. And so the new village had been built, which the beastmen had called 'Iluvanar', or 'freedom' in their language.

Following Haku's advice, the beastmen had created their village occupying as little space as possible throughout the oasis, so as to avoid interfering with the natural balance. The end result had been a small city that had the shape of a crescent that ran from the edge of the lake and into the forest. No trees had been cut: houses had been built around them, and none had been tall enough to interfere with the vines that caught the sand or the strange flying frogs that scattered the seeds. In this way, the natural balance would remain stable. However, there was always the problem of the fruits filled with sand, which the beastmen had solved in an ingenious way: all the roofs had in fact been built diagonally and nets had been placed under them. When a fruit fell off, it simply rolled off the roofs and ended up in these nets, without risking harming anyone. Then, periodically, some beastmen collected them and scattered them throughout the rest of the oasis, so that the quadrupeds that fed on them didn't see their food sources diminish.

Speaking of those quadrupeds, the beastmen had given them a name: they had called them 'mantabungal', which in their language meant 'thick hair'. The other animals of the oasis had also received names: the proboscis predators of the mantabungal had been called 'swanvalley', meaning 'proboscis of death', the giant anteaters had been baptized 'kori', which meant 'paddle', due to the their strange tail, the flying frogs were called 'lamhigyn', or 'amphibian wings', and finally the big fish in the lake had been baptized 'mastopogon', or 'breast beard', after their strange bump under the throat.

In short, at first glance, everything seemed to be going well: the beastmen had settled down and built their homes, and now they could live in them without worries. Right?

No. Not at all.

The beastmen still had to solve the biggest and most pressing problem, namely that of food. Their supplies were not infinite. They needed to start growing plants and raising animals. But sadly, it wasn't that simple. If they wanted to keep the ecosystem of the oasis stable, then they could not afford to cultivate inside it, or the space stolen from other life forms would have been too great and this would have caused the collapse of the whole food chain, which would have also resulted in the total disappearance of all defenses against sandstorms. From Haku's point of view, the smartest thing to do would have been to build a canal to drain the lake water towards the outside of the oasis, so as to create cultivable fields there and thus avoid any interference with the ecosystem of the oasis. However, many of the beastmen leaders weren't of the same opinion.

Farming in the sand? It was ridiculous. While in the long run they would probably have succeeded in making an area of ​​the desert suitable for this task, in the short run it would have been much better to make use of the fertile and plant-growing land of the oasis. Furthermore, cultivating outside the oasis meant facing new problems: to begin with, how to prevent plants from receiving an excessive amount of sunlight? In the oasis there were trees to shield the sun's rays, but outside? The plants would have been defenseless and would have fallen ill. Besides, if a sandstorm came, how would they defend the crop? These were just some of the objections that had been raised to that plan, and even though Haku had struggled to find a solution, many of the beastmen leaders were convinced that it was much more convenient to exploit the oasis rather than trying to farm outside; even if the dragon continued to reiterate to them the importance of keeping that fragile ecosystem stable, but they were sure that they could somehow replace the natural processes and keep the oasis alive even by stealing the land from native life forms.

Haku, at least for the moment, had managed to avoid this fate by firmly opposing it and using the excuse that they must first know perfectly the natural processes of the whole oasis. However, he knew that that technique wouldn't stop the beastmen leaders forever, and that sooner or later they would have to make a decision: they needed to grow food to become self-sufficient, and the supplies wouldn't last forever.

If only Zamor had the foresight to take command! When all the beastmen refugees had been rounded up, Haku had expected that the lizardman would take advantage of his position to proclaim himself the supreme leader of that rabble. And instead the idiot had decided to share the power with others, to leave the beastmen leaders the right to speak! If Zamor had been in charge, then everything would have been fine: the lizardman listened to Haku and would have done exactly what the dragon told him to do. Instead, now that all the bosses could oppose his decisions, Haku couldn't start any project before convincing everyone, or at least most of them. Which infuriated him, not so much because he had to deal with more people, but because these people had repeatedly demonstrated zero judgment. In an attempt to resolve the situation, Haku himself had repeatedly proposed to elect a supreme leader, so that his word would be law and any project he would have chosen would have been the valid one; obviously he planned to rig the election to make Zamor the boss and be able to control him. But the beastmen leaders were unwilling to give up what little power they possessed, and so they always refused. Haku had been tempted several times to tear his throat out with his teeth, but luckily he wasn't a dragon that let himself be dominated by emotions.

He really couldn't understand the newcomers way of thinking. Their main aim in such a situation should have been to get all the tools necessary to survive in the long run, and since discussing and voting the time needed for each decision was very long, it should have been obvious that the best choice was to choose a boss that could direct the progress of the whole village in the right direction. After all, it was one thing to have a family like Haku's, numbering just seventeen brothers and sisters, all of them related by blood and all of them with enough intelligence quotient to figure out what was best for them, and consequently even in the absence of a real leader would have been able to always keep on the right path; another account however was a population of several thousand people. Such a quantity needed a strong central figure who could control everything and who was trusted by everyone. In its absence, this population was destined to break up from the inside, piece by piece, until it would have completely collapsed and with it the whole village and probably also the ecosystem of the oasis. Haku couldn't allow this to happen, as it would have nullified months of hard work as well as any possibility of building a community where dragons could have friends among the newcomers, and consequently also any possibility of giving his brothers and sisters a life worthy of this name would have vanished.

Haku was starting to think that perhaps the best thing would have been to kill all the beastmen bosses against his plan. He could have faked an accident. Surely their subordinates would have elected other leaders, but they would have been more inexperienced, and therefore more easily would have followed the directives of the leaders who instead had remained alive and who were in favor of doing as Haku said... it would have been so easy, after all... maybe, actually, it wasn't a bad idea...

"Haku! So lucky, you're already awake!"

Haku turned his head slightly and saw Darbi approaching. He was coming from the direction where the village was. "Were you visiting your friends?"

"Actually, I never came back here yesterday evening. Brenno had proposed... forget it, I'd better avoid telling you about it for the sake of decency" Darbi replied with a slight embarrassment. "Anyway, Zamor asked me to come get you. A new meeting of the Council is about to begin"

Haku snorted. The meetings of the chiefs didn't have a precise date and hour, simply when someone wanted to convene them he sent for the others. This wasn't a problem for the beastmen since they all lived together in the same village, but it was a nuisance for Haku since he lived far away and it would take a long time for a messenger to reach him. That was probably what many chiefs were hoping for, as he would then be late and make a fool of himself. Haku wished that Isaac would make the communication device suitable for beastmen as soon as possible, but in the meantime he had to accept that situation. "Thank you, brother. I'll go right away... it's going to be another long day" he said, and then ran towards the village.