ORIGIN

A mountain sparrow, fungus woven all through its cells, was perched on the Drone's shoulder. Jinyi had brought it along because he thought it made him look very trustworthy--maybe even mystical, if the observer was feeling superstitious. After all, if he was friendly enough that this little bird could sit on his shoulder without fear of harm, then why shouldn't everyone else trust him, too?

That was the idea, at least.

Tilting his head upward to look at a group of Carollers singing away on the ledges on the wall, Jinyi tugged open a cloth pouch filled with Dontas. (He'd forgone the classic biodegradable packaging for something less likely to crinkle at inopportune moments for this particular trip, though the pouch would certainly have to be washed thoroughly to get all the chip dust out later.) He reached a hand inside and crushed several chips into pale, sparkling crumbs, and scattered them on the mossy stone.

Then he focused his magic, and slowly approached the wall where the Carollers were singing. They eyed him warily, but did not fly away yet--evidently, they felt more than safe thanks to the height of their perch and the fact that Jinyi looked nothing like a predator. He stopped just ten yards from the nearest Caroller, and called to it with mind and magic: Come, fly down, I have chips for you to eat. They are tasty and nutritious! Come taste them, and tell all your friends if you like them!

Of course, whether it would like them wasn't really a question at all. Most people liked the delicious pretzels that gave you a warm fuzzy feeling when you ate them, and even if, by some miracle, this Caroller didn't, he'd make it call the others over anyway. But Jinyi really thought they would like it. It was free food, after all, and very tasty, and who wouldn't want the chance to become part of Mother's family?

He smiled and fed some more small crumbs to his mountain sparrow companion as the first Caroller trilled to the others. They came, one by one, drawn by the promise of free food and emboldened by the fact that Jinyi had not made any move to harm the first.

The chromatophores on the Drone's face rippled with a pleased pale pink, and he scattered out another handful of chip crumbs for the birds to eat.

When he was confident that the temptation of delicious magical chips outweighed the bird's fear, Jinyi let the first spell fall away. Pisces was cold, like Ursa, and humid, which he was fairly sure was conducive to the growth of mold-like fungi. It would be a good place to plant Mother's fungus; the moss and lichen growing on the damp rock here could sustain it, and small fish collected from the ponds whenever someone had time would be an easy source of additional nutrition.

His fingers brushed over a patch of mud at the base of a small hill. Here, he thought, and pushed his Ordered magic into the ground. A fuzzy white patch spread over the mud. Jinyi scraped moss and lichen from the nearby rock and covered the fungus loosely with it, to hide it from sight as it fed on the material and grew.

This was only a beginning; it would take much longer for the little patch of fuzz to grow as rampant as the Ursa Node. But patience was a virtue, after all, and the servants of Order should be nothing but virtuous.

Jinyi brushed the dirt from his hands and approached a shallow pool of water, likely left over from one of the heavy rainstorms that had become more and more common lately. A small number of purple starscales swam in it. They swam with shocking speed and agility, but the Drone did not even attempt to catch them by hand. He'd probably just end up looking like a clown, achieving nothing and getting his clothes wet in the process.

Instead, he reached out with magic, seizing the mind of a starscale with his own. A second later, it leapt out of the pool seemingly of its own volition, flopping and gasping on the mossy rock where it had landed. Jinyi had intended for it to jump straight into his hands, but perhaps his control had not been precise enough--or maybe some trace of self-preservation had fought against the magic, but not hard enough to save it in the end.

Jinyi stilled the fish with his magic, then took it in his hands and strode back to the new patch of fungus he'd grown. He bent down, considering--then focused his magic again, forming a shovel-like apparatus out of chitin on one hand and making the edges as sharp as he could.

He was still inexperienced at magic compared to the masters and transcendent magic-users in the caves, though, and the shovel-knife did not turn out to be so good at being a knife. The Drone managed to kill the fish and hack it into three pieces before finally giving up. He'd wanted to divide it into smaller pieces, but with the shovel-knife's poor condition, it probably wasn't happening.

He simply moved on to the third step: burying the fish in the soil where Mother's fungus grew. As it decomposed, it would enrich the soil here, providing nutrients for the white mass to feed upon. As good a start for a node as any, and he could come back from time to time to add new 'fertilizer'.

It occurred to him, as he was burying the last piece, that perhaps he should accelerate the decomposition process a little. The fungus would surely grow better, faster, if it could feed directly on the fish instead of having to extend its hyphae into the surrounding soil to leech away nutrients as it rotted. Shaking his head at himself for not having thought of it earlier, Jinyi reached for his magic and pushed Order's fungus onto the fish chunk. The white fuzz bloomed on its surface, rapidly multiplying until the slimy meat was covered with fungus.

He scraped a shallow hole in the mud and lichen and laid this piece there, covering its edges with a loose layer of mossy dirt. He did not want to bury it completely, in case it cut off the air to the mold or something like that--Jinyi wasn't quite sure how magical biology worked. Then, he rose to his feet once more and rinsed his hand of fish-slime in a shallow pool.

It wasn't much. It was certainly not as obvious as a chaos beast's destructive rampage, or as eye-catching as Mother's new creations, soon to be unveiled. But it would aid in Order's relentless march, and that was what mattered.

exit