The mirage dispersed the moment the shade touched it.
Not dramatically. Not with the sound of breaking glass or a dramatic dissolution. It simply ceased to be a coherent entity, the superheated air that had given it form losing the temperature differential that sustained it, the crystalline particles dropping back into the sand without ceremony. One moment it was there, pressing its song against the edges of my makeshift shade structure. The next it was not.
HEAT MIRAGE LV.6 DISPERSED. PLUS 45 XP GAINED. ENVIRONMENTAL KNOWLEDGE INCREASED: DESERT SURVIVAL, NOVICE 3 OF 10.
No loot. No dramatic death animation. Just empty air and the Singing Towers producing their wind-tones in the sudden quiet, and me standing in a two-foot radius of improvised shade holding a sword planted in glass sand
