Diamond Pantheon

You reach the "shelter" of the pile of rocks, but quickly realize it is home to a vast pride of dire lions. The rocks jut up at strange angles, and many are flecked with diamond material. The lions inhabit caves and canyons, or just loaf about on the sunny stone. Sometimes they leap across a gully to land on stones further away. It's no longer cold here, except deep within the caves.

Well in that case I think it is reasonable for me to head deep into the caves.

The caves stretch into the earth, though not so vast a network as in the Mines. You encounter packs of lions roaming about in the cavern. Stones float in midair at various heights above the cavern floor. You crawl down the side of the cliff and notice the bottom of the cavern is awash in a shallow sea of blood.

The tick descends and tastes the blood at the bottom.

Naturally.

It doesn't taste right. It does not seem to match any particular species. But it is truly blood and not some lookalike - you reason that many species are represented in this pool.

The cavern continues, turning into a patchwork of daylit caverns with veldtgrass growing in it, and dark caverns, each pooled with blood.

I will continue through the cavern, scuttling through the shadows when I can find them, and occasionally tasting the blood.

The blood fades away for now. A patchwork of farms, some abandoned by mortals, others tended by minor gods (or their servants).




You enter a nice orchard. There you meet Ida the Old, keeper of the apples of youth, who can never benefit of her own gift.
She has two of the apples of youth, which are 99% nectar. She places them on a golden balance scale. There are a thousand walnuts on the other pan.
Then she lets a few drops of the precious nectar fall onto your tongue. The apples are now 98% nectar. Ida scoops all the walnuts off the scale with her wrinkled hands and passes you ten times as many, so you now have 10,000 walnuts.
“I have given you two gifts already. One more I will give, a diamond egg, if you humor me. If you do not succeed, I will rescind all my gifts.”
She places the same two apples on the scale pan again.
How many walnuts will you place on the pan?

I place exactly 989.89 walnuts upon the pan.

I forgot to give you an attempts number. We'll go with three attempts.

Ida shakes her head. "You may try again."

I place 9800 upon the pan.