It was not a waste of time or effort.

It would actually save time in the long run.

It just made sense.

As Elijah neglected his true mission to find the dragon Primal Realm, he kept telling himself that what he was doing was a good use of his time. And he believed it. But his recent resolution to focus on the necessities still contributed to a subtle feeling of guilt that told him he should have long since moved on.

Not only had he spent weeks burning the corpses from Honolulu, but now, he’d found another distraction in the creation of another dolmen. In his defense, the idea had been in the back of his mind since the very beginning. His current mission was one of discovery. He just needed to find the Primal Realm so he could fully prepare for the hardships he’d need to endure before entering.

After all, none of them had been easy to reach. From Chimera Island being in the center of an eternal storm to the Elemental Maelstrom being surrounded by fire and ice and giants, they all required a certain degree of power just to reach the portals. Elijah needed to know what to expect, or he’d end up going into the Primal Realm unprepared. And when he inevitably returned, he didn’t want to be forced to once again endure the Ring of Fire. Another dolmen just made sense – especially since he’d discovered a ley line.

With that in mind, he continued to dig through the dunes. Already, he’d uncovered quite a lot of sandstone, most of which had been transported back to the area just outside the oasis. Not enough, though.

The problem was that, in the middle of a sandy desert, building materials just weren’t all that plentiful. He’d tried his hand at creating mud bricks, but there wasn’t enough clay in the area to support his needs. He had also tried to search for large outcroppings, but the closest he discovered was nearly an entire day’s flight from the oasis.

And that flight had been harried by wasp swarms. They let him be so long as he was on the ground, but the second he ascended more than a hundred feet, they attacked. They couldn’t kill him, but they were more than annoying – especially because they had a habit of injecting their disgusting eggs into his body.

His Mantle of Authority took care of that, and even if the wasps hatched – which had happened a couple of times – they were incapable of bursting free. But they were still painful, a fact which forced Elijah to stick to the dunes.

It also made quarrying stone from that outcropping unfeasible. There was no way he was going to spend three or four days, at best, for each trip.

That was when he’d remembered his introduction to geology, which told him that there was often sandstone beneath desert dunes. So, he’d taken that information to heart, returned to the oasis, and started digging in the surrounding area.

Even at the nadir between dunes, the sand was at least forty feet deep, but he’d eventually found bedrock. That was when he started the excavation process, which was more involved than he could have expected. In fact, it’d taken so long that he expected it would have been quicker just to quarry the stone from afar and tote it to the oasis.

It was also incredibly tedious, largely because of the sand’s propensity to constantly shift in the wind. Especially frustrating was when a haboob rolled in, whipping the sand into a frenzy that lasted for nearly a day. When the sandstorm had abated, Elijah was forced to start over.

But now that he was close to finishing the excavation, he felt that deep sense of satisfaction that came with any significant labor. He’d already carved nineteen huge hunks of sandstone free of the bedrock, and he only had one to go.

Was it overkill?

Probably.

But Elijah didn’t want to get deep into the construction process only to be forced to return to excavation. If that happened, it would definitely take the wind out of his sails.

So, he continued to carve into the sandstone until, at last, he’d separated an appropriately large block. Then, after transforming into the Shape of Thorn, he dragged the giant hunk of rock to the excavation site. Transporting the rock even a quarter of a mile was, in a word, frustrating – partially because of its enormous weight, but also due to the shifting nature of the intervening dunes.

But he managed it, eventually arriving at his chosen site.

There, he found the rest of his stones.

Each one was nearly forty feet long and almost ten feet wide. Often, he’d wondered about the limits of his strength, and in those pillars, he’d finally found it. Each one was at least three-hundred tons, and as such, they were far too heavy for him to lift. Thankfully, he could drag them, if only because he was able to take advantage of the decreased friction associated with sand.

And copious use of Savage Strength and the flared version of Heart of the Tempest.

If he kept it up, he might actually gain a point or two of strength from the labor, and for the first time in years.

But he hadn’t quarried such huge blocks just to test his power. Rather, he’d done so because building a dolmen in such an unstable location required some creative engineering. Elijah was no expert, but he suspected that if he’d used his usual method of driving the stones a few feet deep, there was no chance it would last.

His solution was to go much, much deeper.

Once, he’d seen a short documentary on the construction of the Burj Khalifa, and its design faced a similar problem that Elijah was forced to confront. Their answer was to drive nearly two hundred reinforced concrete piles deep underground. Upon that rested a concrete cap, which spread the enormous weight of the skyscraper across an area wider than a football field.

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Elijah had no intention of using a cap, largely because he didn't need it. What he did intend was to use some of those principles – at least as much as he remembered from that documentary he’d watched more than a decade ago – into his dolmen. The idea was much simpler. Instead of resting a foundation atop a bunch of piles, he would simply use extremely long pillars that would reach the bedrock nearly thirty feet below the surface.

That would make for a stable structure.

He hoped.

Only trial and error would confirm or deny that theory. Hopefully the former, but he was prepared for the latter as well.

In any case, he got to work. Digging a hole in the sand was, in a word, frustrating, but he managed it just the same.

After resting for a few minutes, Elijah rose and found the spot meant for the first pillar. He’d marked the structure’s intended layout with some odds and ends he had in his storage space. In this case, it was one of the stakes he’d taken from the war elf encampment. Somehow, he’d missed it when he’d discarded the other seemingly useless stakes.

Now, he wished he still had them, if only because they made good markers.

In any case, once he was in place, he dug a ten-foot wide and five-foot deep hole. It wasn’t perfect. The sand kept trying refill it. But he used a little water from his canteen to pack it down – at least temporarily.

Then, Elijah readied himself for the next step.

“This is going to be a bitch,” he muttered to himself as he stared at one of the giant stone pillars he’d excavated. In the Shape of Thorn, he had no issues getting a decent grip, and then he started dragging. The other end dug deep into the sand, but by that point, he was more than accustomed to that sort of work.

Once he’d reached the edge of the hole, he went to the other end.

For a few moments, he hesitated. Then, like a powerlifter readying himself for a world record-breaking attempt, he shook his arms out. Then, he got his grip, took a couple of rapid breaths, then lifted. The first foot was easy. The second, much more difficult. But eventually, he reached his full height.

He wasn’t finished, though.

After activating Savage Strength, then flaring Heart of the Tempest, Elijah snatched the pillar to his shoulders, then pressed it upward. He didn’t extend his arms. Instead, he only raised it enough to get under it. Once he could manage it, he walked forward.

Or that might have been a generous term for how he moved. More accurate would be to say he staggered in the appropriate direction. One step after another, his feet dug into the sand. But he didn’t stop.

When he reached the halfway point, the pillar started to shift. On the other end, the sand started to collapse as it slid into the hole Elijah had dug.

Back before the world had changed, the sandstone pillar would have broken apart under so much pressure. But the current incarnation of sandstone was far stronger than it would’ve been back then. So, it held itself together.

Elijah continued to walk it forward, slowly pushing it upright until it settled into place. It wobbled a bit in the wind, but the thing’s immense weight kept it from tipping over. For now. That wouldn’t last, though.

Knowing he was now on the clock, Elijah quickly dug another hole almost right on top of the last, then went to the next pillar. He repeated the process, settling it into place. Then the next. And the next after that. Over and over, he kept going until all eighteen were where they were meant to be.

He took a short break, where he ate a grove fruit and drank a couple of gallons of water.

“Moment of truth,” he muttered once he’d placed himself in the center of the would-be dolmen. It felt like he was standing in the middle of a sandstone forest.

He activated Domain of Vines, then Unchecked Growth.

However, unlike previous activations of the abilities, he didn’t let it go wild. Instead, he forced the vines into prices movements. They wrapped around the pillars, then dug deep into the sands beneath. The combination of the immense weight of those sandstone columns and the disturbed sand shifted them ever downward. With his vines, he continuously pushed the sand outward, effectively digging a hole into which the pillars descended.

Down and down.

He made it fifteen feet before Unchecked Growth gave out.

But it was enough to keep the pillars in place for the time being. More importantly, it was a proof of concept. His technique would work. Now, he just needed to wait a little less than a day before he could do it again. Hopefully, it would be the last.

As it turned out, it wasn’t.

A day later, he repeated the process, only to find himself stymied. Not by the technique itself, but rather, by the distances involved. At that depth, he could only reach half of the pillars at a time. Still, with those, he managed to sink them all the way to the bedrock.

The next day, he did the same with the other half.

And just like that, he’d solved the engineering problem. Now, he just needed to backfill the gaps and get to work on the actual dolmen.

The first part was simple, if tedious work, and it involved dumping tons of sand into those holes. The second was a different sort of labor. Still tedious, but it was a tedium to which he’d become accustomed. After all, he’d already created quite a few dolmens, and by that point, he was used to the process.

Carving the tenons and mortice holes went off without a hitch, though reducing the size of the above-ground pillars took nearly three days. More than once, he regretted using such oversized columns, but in the end, he had to admit that he very much appreciated the increased stability they afforded the structure.

Gradually, the dolmen took shape.

At some point, Elijah saw the mo’o watching from atop a nearby dune. Once again, it took the much smaller, gecko-like shape. But he could feel its power even from hundreds of feet away. He ignored it. If the creature meant him harm, it would have long since attacked. Rather, it just seemed curious – a state to which Elijah could easily relate.

Once the structure was established, Elijah got down to the business of solidifying the foundations. Doing so was wet and laborious work, because it involved constant use of Blessing of the Grove, combined with shoveling even more wet sand into the cavities left behind by erosion.

After three days, the ground felt almost like mud brick that had been baked by the hot sun.

More importantly, the structure was as stable as he could manage without a serious feat of engineering for which he had neither the equipment nor the expertise to see through to the end.

He hoped it would be good enough, though.

With that in mind and using his claws, Elijah got to work on the carvings. As usual, he let his instincts take the reins, and over the next week, he managed to carve something truly unique. At last, when he stepped back to admire his work, he couldn’t help but feel a deep sense of accomplishment.

The dolmen’s structure looked much like any of the others he’d created. Modeled after Stonehenge, it was a circle of nine trilithons. However, that was where the similarities ended.

The local sandstone was striated between red and pale white, a feature that Elijah had used during his carvings, which were meant to represent waves. It looked simple enough, almost abstract in its design. But when he stepped back to study it, he saw that the combination of the alternating colors of the sedimentary stone had combined with his carvings to create an illusion of movement.

It reminded him of the sun setting over the sea, casting the waves in reds and oranges.

He cast Roots of the World Tree, completing the dolmen. And when he saw the name in the notification, he couldn’t help but smile.

“The Circle of Lost Seas,” he read aloud. “Fitting.”