ORIGIN

"RIGHT." He ruffled his feathers, looking over the tunnel. And he talked to himself--he did that often; easier to concentrate his thoughts, to keep them from scattering, this way.

"Right, I shall need a spot that's ground-level--not everyone can fly; and not too far from Hydra's entrance... Wounded can't be moved that far, after all." He spread his wings, flying down the shallow slope. The tunnel was short, but broad enough for him to fly, though it took a moment of laboriously pounding the hot air with his wings to actually get airborne. And it wasn't big enough to soar, to circle. All he could do was eye the ground on approach, and hope he found somewhere all right. "Check for rats..." he reminded himself. Good for hunting and eating; bad for Gembound potentially resting wounded and unconscious. "-And perhaps not TOO close to the cave. Who's to say what monsters might come out?"

Doctor eyed the rock formations below, picking out a few that lay atop the sand but not too high; or rather, where the sand was not too thick over the stone beneath. "Sand in wounds, water, and working space is no good," he muttered. A few choice spots picked out by eye, he then extended out his magicka--testing, checking that he was alone, here.

He could sense nothing, but he couldn't be sure that wasn't just his magicka failing. It was likely--most places had bacterial growth of some kind. "This place is certainly hot and dry enough not to allow it, though. Let us hope. Better for infections not to fester."

He'd tested it with rats--damp places and infections didn't seem to mix well. He'd have to test it here, as well. But first--he settled on first one section of stone, and then another, muttering to himself about the pros and cons of each, before at last selecting one.

It was a slight upturn, a rocky shelf to one side of the downward-sweeping mouth into Hydra. From here, he could look down at the entrance, if he craned his head around the rock wall. The hidden nature of the spot would give him, he hoped, advance warning of any beasts encroaching from the desert cave; and the flatter rock protected it from being covered too thickly by the sand. Doctor busied himself sweeping it clean with his primaries, feathers rustling over the stone, but his mind still worked, all the while.

It'd be hard--not very, but taxing enough--for the sick or wounded to get up here. They would need to clamber up the tunnel a short distance, and then turn right, curving back around on a sharp slope toward his den. Anyone paralyzed or otherwise unable to walk or fly would likely need to just be treated in the tunnel mouth, but he was close enough, at least, that moving any supplies down would be quite the simple task. And he could hardly set up right in the tunnel mouth. "No; this is perfect. This will do," he said to himself, pleased.

His next task was to procure a couple of test subjects. He wanted to check bacterial proliferation here--he could control such things with his magic, but he could not do so constantly, and he wanted an idea of just how good or bad the cave would be for it.

Off to Canis he flew, then.

He circled the room of bones for a time, feathers trembling as air rushed between them. A (single) critical eye studied the bones, the fortresses, the boulders, watching constantly for any sign of movement. He wished--in a moment of wistful musing--that he had some sort of useful sense of smell, but he did not; he was limited to his single eye's worth of watchfulness.

When at last he spotted a likely area--not a rat, exactly, but a place littered with smaller bones, and half-enclosed by overhangs of rock--he swept down to land. His magicka reached out, extending his senses into the surreal.

Again, there seemed to be nothing here, and so he turned and lifted off again--oblivious to the trembling whiskers and staring eyes he'd left behind in the shadow of the stone.

Doctor flew onward, silent, tugging at his magicka. He wasn't sure why it wasn't working, but this did concern him a little; he needed that. He relied on it. It wasn't often that his mind rejected it so completely.

Or was something blocking it-?

He shook the thought away; there was no way to know, really, bar to leave Canis entirely and try again somewhere else. For now, he circled over toward the Fortresses, and simply tried again.

"Ahhhh," he crooned to himself. Now it was working. And now he could see a dozen little lives scurrying to and fro, or at least a dozen close concentrations of moving bacteria. He assumed that they were rats, but realistically, he supposed they could be spiders--he couldn't tell, from here.

Doctor's wings half-folded, and he banked, circling once to check the landscape. The fortresses seemed to be structures, with entrances; whether the rats were in them or beneath, he couldn't tell for certain. He aimed for one with a few smaller creatures in it, and landed, talons clicking on the rock, careful not to kick the bones. The larger cave rats could be a threat, if he wasn't careful, and he wasn't here for a fight--only for gathering up some test subjects.

"Two will do, I think," he breathed.

The vulture observed, for a moment, his single eye and his magical senses showing him clearly enough what to aim for. There were several rats about, but they had fallen still or scattered at his approach. Several lay silent in the fortress that he faced. He could send in a cloud of paralyzing bacteria, then; and then wait, and pace in to pick them up without danger.

Again Doctor gathered himself, concentrating.

He felt the magicka swell, felt the bacteria flowing forth in a slow crawl through the damp air of Canis. And then, he waited.

Two of the rats panicked and scurried out, and he made no move to stop them, though he did step back into the doorway once they'd gone. He couldn't let them all go, but fewer meant less danger for him, so long as at least the requisite two remained.

It took longer than he'd thought, and when they finally fell "still" it wasn't as still as he'd have liked. One very nearly bit him as he stepped inside, but he hopped back in time with a quiet oath.

A quick lift with his hooked beak, a practiced slap, and he'd broken the backs of two of them. They wouldn't die from the damage, but nor would they be able to flee--a little trick he'd been practicing for quite some time, now.

He picked one up in his beak, by the tail, and the other in one foot, and--leaving the other rats twitching and staring in the shadows of the fort--he turned and took wing, again.

Soon enough he was back in Tunnel P, sweeping down toward his cleared area of rock. He lay his two rats down, and settled in beside them, gathering himself again.

Doctor settled his feathers into place, looking down with a detached sort of fondness at his two test subjects. Both cave rats lay paralyzed from broken backs, though one squeaked, teeth-bared, and scrabbled weakly with its forepaws. Doctor settled a clawed foot over this one. "Come now, my little friends; it won't last so long. A few days, perhaps! And think of how many others will benefit," he added cheerfully.

His beak-tip came down, tearing a jagged wound shallowly through the pelt and skin of this rat's flank and back. It screamed, shrilly, and Doctor set it aside.

The other he tore the leg of--not entirely off, but its left hind hock and haunch were shattered, twisted and torn, by a tug and a turn of his beak. With both wounds exposed to the open air, he then rocked back and again focused on his magicka.

It was a very basic bacteria--the sort that infested wounds throughout the cave, and made them fester. The magic was weak, but that mattered little--he simply took note of that, gauging how badly-infected each rat was.

"And now we will see how conducive this place is to the spread of infection," he informed the mindless rats. It would be good to know--if someone came in wounded--how quickly to expect the worsening of a wound, or how much effort to put into fully cleansing it. And to have a baseline, too; if the rats, for example, took a week for their infections to worsen, but a Gembound coming in from Hydra took a terrible down-turn in only a few hours, then Doctor would know that something else must be at play.

With this done, he turned his attention on to the rest of his little 'den.' Thus far it was only a shelf of rock: it was time to rectify that.

He looked over the little area of cave, considering, planning.

Water--he'd need a water source. He wished he had some sort of bowl or depression to use--or, barring that, the magicka to make one. But he didn't, and he was left examining the nearby rock. The best he could find was a shallow area on the rock above, and it was too high for a wounded creature to reach.

"Useful as a storage, perhaps," he muttered, "but little more. Perhaps one of the others knows magic to create a storage area. I do recall Desert speaking of a water source," he mused.

He'd also need some sort of covered area, for the wounded to rest out of the heat and light. Heat stroke was, he knew, a likely danger here--"need to do more testing, there," he muttered--and lastly, he'd need some sort of plant life very close by. Threads of plant-fiber for weaving terrible wounds closed would be a good idea, and some sort of sticks or branches for splinting breaks...

Doctor settled, drawing his magicka back into himself as he planned this all out, resting his powers for the moment.

It flowed back to him powerfully, and he paused in his thoughts to close his eye, revelling for a moment in the sense of cool rejuvenation that he felt rolling through his body.

Doctor spent the next few hours hard at work. He went back and forth from Canis, mostly; he'd found a garden, there, and as it looked carefully-tended (half-walled, even, by crumbled stands of bones) he only took precisely what he needed.

That included entirely uprooting a thick-branched bush, and tearing up some grasses. These he brought back to Tunnel P, and laid them there.

He then returned to Canis, where he spent some time picking over bones. It struck him that the overturned hollow of a skull would do well enough as a liquid receptacle, and he spent nearly an hour circling, picking the more domed skulls from piles and turning them over. Of the ones that were clean, or could be picked clean, he selected three. They were the most waterproof-looking, and ones that he could carry. As an afterthought, he half-filled two with soil as best he could from the little garden that he'd found, scraping it in and carrying each skull like a strange macabre basket back to Tunnel P.

He settled two down full of soil, and in these he planted--with cautious movements of his talons--the bush and the grass. He wasn't sure how well the plants would grow, here, particularly without someone to tend them magically, but it was worth a shot.

When they were settled, he set the other three skulls beside them--nestling them upside-down in the sand, preparing his magicka with deep and cautious breaths.

Water was always more difficult. And, undoubtedly, it'd evaporate away, given time; he'd need to refill it frequently. But it would be good to start a store--and the plants, now planted in their skulls-and-soil, would need dampening too. Doctor focused deeply on his magicka, hoping to draw forth the moisture from the air: to condense it, and to give himself and his questionable little garden a simple (if temporary) water source.

To his deep relief, he felt the magicka flooding forth--bolstered, perhaps, by his brief rest--and the sudden cooling of the air around him as the scarce moisture dutifully condensed. A moment later, beads of water began to condense in the skulls, and on the soil: and then it was a trickle, filling until each skull was a shimmering cup and the soil beneath the foliage was damp.

He released the magic with a pleased exhale.

"Excellent," he breathed, and settled back on the rock to rest.

He could add more touches later, more... personalization, more amenities--but for now, Doctor was set up exactly as he needed to be.

Now-... for science. The vulture turned to watch the rats; his real work was about to begin.