Totally void of usable nutrients, that's how!

What the fuck.

The smear of parched earth between his fingers holds no answers.

Well. The group's not gonna like what they're gonna have to do to survive, probably, but they'll dislike it less than dying. Before he goes back to share the bad news, he pokes the water to see if it contains anything inimical to life.

Nope. Some minerals, but nothing toxic or toxically concentrated.

What the fuck, none of this makes sense.

He starts trudging back to the group.

The landscape remains super dead. No birds, no insects. Occasional broken and dessicated tree stumps, some so caked with dirt that they could pass for rocks at a glance.

He will check every fucking tree stump he sees in case one of them has anything else useful to tell him.

They all died of the same ultimate causes, in varying proportions: lack of water and barrenness of soil. The soil is indeed both dry and barren.

But there is a lake right there this makes no sense.

And yet!

Fffffffuuuu---

Fine.

He stomps back to the group.

Luvei intercepts him before he can walk in on the elves doing elf things.

Right. Good. Well, it's apparently going to be very necessary for elves to do elf things, because the soil contains zero nutrition and if they want to not starve in the time it takes to gestate at least one egg with enough Strider blood to teleport and raise the kid to the point where he or she can get them all out of here they're going to need to harvest the corpse for as much plant-usable nutrient as possible and be impeccably efficient with their waste.

They may turn out to be in slightly more luck than that.

About an hour after they arrived, a small humanoid figure wearing a backpack much too big for him becomes visible in the distance, approaching them from the direction of the lake.

The elves have all well and finished doing their elf things by this point, and Aduva's the first to spot him. "That's either good, because he knows how to survive here without arguable cannibalism, or bad, because we have another mouth to feed."

The distant figure waves.

Aduva waves back. This is highly visible on account of her being a few inches over seven feet tall.

Yeah, that sure is a thing!

Walk walk. Walk walk walk.

He calls a cheery greeting in an unfamiliar language as soon as he's in earshot.

...Well, that's hardly a surprise. She taps her chest. "Aduva."

He taps his own chest and says, "Tiro!"

"I, Aduva. I am Aduva. You, Tiro. You are Tiro."

"I am Tiro. You are Aduva." He looks around at everyone else and adds, "You are...?"

"Amalta."

"Kaleith."