Whoever had lived here had had quite the stash of trinkets--but they'd never come to retrieve it. Perhaps they'd slept, for such a long time that their belongings had decayed. Or, more likely, they were dead. Hera wondered for a bitter moment why it was that it seemed only the assholes had made it from the ancient age to the modern one. Well, mostly--but the Divine wasn't doing too good, and Hera wasn't sure she'd call that making it. Aquarian was neutral at best.

Gently, she set down the rainbow-painted toy and wriggled her way out of the hidden alcove to make her way to the Cepheus entrance. With the little hiding-place's inhabitants long gone, she might as well make some use of it. She knew that the ancients who had ruled this cave had not been kind--and so it was all the more satisfying to steal scavenge perfectly not off-limits jewels from them. Finders keepers, losers weepers. Boy, she'd like to see some of those ancients weep.

Not that, hopefully, they'd ever find out. Especially that it was her doing the finding.

Embedded in the archway were a number of gemstones, shining bright past gaps in their long-accumulated dust. They came in many colors, shapes, sizes; most were smaller than a fist, though, with some as tiny as a small bird's eye.

Little stone figurines were wedged into the rock, as well--certainly an enterprising creature with strong enough leverage could pull them free. Many of these depicted a variety of alien creatures, and many were in turn studded with their own jewels. The overall effect was one of wealth and excess--and decay, given the dirt that coated some, and the gaps where others had already been pried free and taken as souvenirs.

@Hera

Hera examined the variety of jewels with a critical eye. Some were faceted, some smooth, and some in seemingly-random shapes. Her gaze fell on a glittering fiery-orange gem--that kind of matched the aesthetic she'd had going before her transformation, and she liked its brilliance. And oh! there was a smooth, pale green one. Some kind of jade, maybe, but it wasn't like Hera knew anything about the proper names of gemstones, being a three-year-old eagle and all. It could have been prehnite--heck, it could have been some random, complicated-sounding mineral that not a single person had ever heard of before its name got spat out of the random gem generator. Anyway, it was pretty, and that was all that mattered.

But there was another one she kind of liked! A pair of deep blue cabochons decorating the wings of an alien creature--a flower-shaped one that Hera might've identified as chrysoberyl if she was a old guy with a degree in mineralogy--you know what, that figurine was pretty cool, too! That was... how many limbs it had?

Hera glanced over the surroundings. Eh, no one was around. She had plenty of time to take whatever she wanted. The question was how many she'd be able to get before her talons started to hurt from prying them out. Which one to start with...? She really like those blue gems. The color--so rich!

The eagle wedged her talons around the gem, trying to wiggle and loosen it. This was, perhaps, a situation where gigantic murderclaws weren't the most helpful. But lack of precise dexterity aside, the cabochon did come loose into her claws without anything breaking. The most important part.

Next, the pastel green. This one was a little smaller and more irregularly shaped than the blue, and Hera worked it free more easily. Or maybe practice made perfect; who knew? She examined the two gems, turning them over with her beak and grimacing when they left behind streaks of dust.

After who knew how many cycles, these gems could use a bath. She took them in her talons and flapped to the river, dipping the gems in and shaking enthusiastically for maximum cleaning power. Luckily for Hera, she was not so clumsy as to drop the very things she was trying to clean. Both gems were shaken more or less dry, and set down beside the Cepheus entrance as Hera considered which one to take next.

A thought struck her as Hera reached for a particularly cool-looking lobster-centipede-deer-centaur-thing-with-tusks. These hadn't been alive at any point, had they?

She could imagine them doing it. Master Vargas and the Masked Merchant, ripping a gem free of a poor dead skeleton with sardonic grins and tossing them at whichever Gembound had been charged with making this. Suddenly, Hera wanted to punch someone. With a foot. Which, yes, that could be called a kick, but punch sounded better and more heroic to her mind's-ears.

Hera didn't have the magic to detect life, but maybe she could get lucky with a glimpse into the past instead of watching dust gather on rocks for millennia this time. Eyes narrowing slightly with concentration, she touched her beak to her favorite so far: the deep blue. You'd better not have been alive, she thought with an ironic sort of humor. I'd hate to be collecting parts of corpses in my treasure hoard.

The world spun--Cepheus fading--and Hera was back before the wall of stones. They were fresher, now--gleaming, shining, the light of the tunnel sending sparkling rainbows every which way, refracted off the fine decor.

A small group of creatures--mostly elf-like, though varying in shape and size and color--stood before the ornate archway. Several held notebooks. The one at the head--standing in the doorway, facing the rest--was speaking quietly. "...you can see, no expense was spared in the beautification of this cave, even at its entrance, and for good reason. While most of the workers are basic in nature, only the finest artists were brought here to..."

As they spoke, a delicate hand reached up, gesturing to the gemstones, to the figurines; and then the vision faded.


Cepheus returned in a rush, its voidlight washing away memories of the brighter colors of the tunnel beyond..

@Hera

Hera could have laughed when she heard the presenter speak. They'd gone to extra effort to make this place beautiful! And expense, too, whatever that meant! It made her feel even better about stealing from it. It looked so prissy and business-like--she wondered what its reaction would be to seeing Hera and the cave entrance in the present.

In a moment of brilliance akin to a person opening a new tab and promptly forgetting what they were going to search, Hera, upon returning to the present, promptly snatched for a reddish purple gemstone. She pried it free, and then realized just moments after: oops, she'd been looking for the answer to a specific morbid question, hadn't she?

A little more guiltily this time, Hera touched her beak once more to the deep blue gemstone. (Not her most recent acquisition; she hadn't washed it yet!) One more try, she decided, and then I'll consider myself to have done my due diligence in verifying its non-corpseishness.

Her magic must have been warmed up from the last spell, because it flowed powerfully this time. Hera blinked with pleasant surprise, but had no more time to react before Tunnel E melted away into the scenes of the past once more.

These stones had lain embedded in the archway for millennia; undoubtedly, if they had once been alive, picking those few years from the thousands of nothing that had followed would be difficult, at best.

What came now was an image of a short creature, shrouded in cloak and shaped imp-like, hammering a small black chisel into the wall. It was carefully shaping the hole into which the blue stone would eventually be slotted; the stone itself was laid across its lap as it worked.

Tap, tap, tap.

The sound was soft, a ringing echo of metal-on-stone, and behind it, the pale-petaled tree on Cepheus's gnoll shifted in the wind. It was a strangely peaceful scene, and for a long moment, all Hera would hear was that quiet tap, tap, tapping--a riveting and rhythmic calm, mesmerizing, until the image faded, and she once again returned to the present.

@Hera

Aaaaaand nothing! Nothing of note, anyway. As far as Hera was concerned now, she'd done her due diligence. These gems sure seemed like just normal gemstones, and she could take as many as she wanted. And if someone happened to detect magic on them later on?

Well, no one could blame Hera! Magic wasn't perfect, after all, and she hadn't seen any life in their past. Plus, there was no way she was going to let someone near her treasures to detect magic anyway. The hindsight spells had been more for her own conscience than anything.

One last shiny to add to her collection, and then it'd be too difficult to carry more. She pried free a fiery orange gem, this time, and dipped it and the purple in the river. Then she tucked each gem into the alcove she'd found--almost lovingly. She'd come back for these later.

exit Hera with a rough purple charoite, a faceted teardrop orange topaz, a polished blue sapphire, and a flower-shaped piece of green jade. yes i made the specific rocks up on the spot.