She had intended to turn and leave then, leaving Jinyi in his happiness while she tried to figure this out without the help she no longer wanted, but it never mattered what she wanted. Because as soon as has pleaded, begged her to let him help, that tickle in the back of her mind rooted her feet.

She was in no state to try and resist it. And she wanted to resist, despite never having done so, for a moment resentful of her own abilities. It occurred to her, in that moment, that it was ironic her own madness worked the way it did. In a way, it was a loss of autonomy. A loss of that which she despised the Hive for, and which she apparently had power from.

And now, she couldn't resist. She stopped dead in her tracks as the madness slammed into her like a stone wall and pushed her back. She turned, blinking, something gold and pink shimmering in the corners of her eye for a moment and then nodded. "Okay. If you want." Almost like she was being led along by a string, she stepped back towards Jinyi and sat down, turning her cheek up, where shards of the epidote were still visible. She was ever a servant of the caves - as she had wished to be.

@Jinyi

On a normal day, perhaps Jinyi would've been able to put two and two together and connected Wilder's oddly obliging behavior, after she'd initially intended to walk away, with her comments about not being in her right mind earlier. Now, though, when he was still bathing in the blissful joy of his attention falling on their interaction? Of being addressed by name?

Whatever hints that Wilder might've been affected by other esoteric forces flew right over Jinyi's head. He nodded understandingly; he was also feeling very friendly and agreeable. Many good things would happen to both of them today, like being gazed upon by a godlike entity (in both their cases) and having evil crystals removed from her body, in Wilder's case.

He reached for the wound on Wilder's face, steadying her head with one hand and picking at the epidote visibly sticking from her flesh with the apparatus attached to the other.

It was, he thought, not working very well.

Hm. What a shame to let him down after he'd so kindly wished the Drone good luck. A trickle of sadness wormed its way into the wash of beatific happiness still wreathing Jinyi's brain.

@Wilder im so sorry for everything that has happened in this thread and also to Wilder like ever

As the Drone picked at the stone shards on her cheek, her face screwed up in pain. "Ow," she hissed as the apparatus missed the stone shard and scraped along the skin instead, a bit more blood welling up from the fresh wound. She trembled in discomfort, but still noticed Jinyi looking downcast.

The sooner this was done, the sooner she could leave, and the sooner the madness would recede from her.

The next time he went in to try and pull a piece out, she grabbed a hold of it with her magic and shoved the epidote into his grasp, to make it seem as if he had done it, flinching with pain as the crystal snapped from its whole.

"Are you getting it?" she asked, innocently, trying not to cry.

@Jinyi

More epidote was pulling away from her stone and confusion and sorrow rippled through Wilder's mind. Why is she doing this? It was trying to help! She needed to let it stay so it could heal her, help her, remove all pain! Didn't it hurt so much to take it out of her?

The infection held on with its final strands, deep in her skin, but it was almost gone.

"Sorry!" Jinyi whispered at Wilder's hiss of pain. Though he managed to remove some epidote with his next attempt, it seemed that the shape he'd chosen for the surgical implement might not have been suitable enough for the task. It could break the epidote off, but he was hurting Wilder too much while doing it, especially when it missed its target.

He discarded the piece of epidote that had come out and concentrated on the apparatus. It shifted in shape, splitting into a tweezer-like shape and becoming longer and narrower at the end. He used this new, more precise shape to try to grasp and remove the remaining epidote in Wilder's wound without bumping or scraping her own flesh in the process. "It's almost done," he reassured.

@Wilder

The last shards resisted, as if holding desperately onto Wilder's flesh and gemstone, but eventually it faltered and Jinyi removed the last piece.

The black-green stone clinked to the ground and Wilder would hear something like a wordless wail in her ears before it abruptly cut out. The feelings and alien thoughts would quickly dissolve into nothing, leaving her free of the infection and the urges that came with it.

To be replaced by...something else.

Eyes were on them. Something...watching?

Their efforts had been noticed.

Despite it all, the last removal of the epidote was rather painless, all thing considered. For a moment, there was a harsher tugging feeling then before in her cheek and she cringed, expecting a worse pain then before, but then it broke off and emerged cleanly from her cheek.

She let out a breath she had been holding when at last the urges receded from her mind. She barely noticed anything else in her relief as she slumped to the ground, free of all of it at last. She didn't even care that her cheek was still oozing blood, all that mattered was it was gone now. Her mind was clearing.

"Thank you," she breathed, although it hurt to say. She didn't want to be indebted to a Drone, she didn't want anything to do with them, but alas...this was where her path had led. The madness, too, was receding - she had helped by allowing him to help. It was satisfied.

Everything hurt - her cheek, her heart, her head...she wanted to curl up and sleep but she forced herself to stay awake for now. She needed to get back to Noctua.

@Jinyi

At last the last vestiges of the epidote came away in his tweezers, and Jinyi sat back with a sigh of relief as he could finally relax his concentration. "You're welcome," he replied absently, wondering if he should do something about the blood smeared messily across Wilder's cheek, but then abruptly froze and snapped into alert again.

Something was watching them. He could feel the prickle on his chitin. And it wasn't Mother's loving gaze.

All the God just spoke to me and I just did surgery endorphins fell away to be replaced by a rush of stress chemicals as the Drone remembered that Polaris was never a good place to be. The images of those infected, dying Lessers loomed ominously in recent memory. Something resembling the grimacing emoji flashed onto his face as he stood rapidly. "I have to go," he hissed distractedly, as shimmering pink wings unfurled from his back and he shot into the air. Back to Ursa!!! Where the only eyes watching him would be Mother's again!!!!!

@Wilder exit, unless stopped

Jinyi's sudden leave was a surprise to Wilder. She hadn't really notice the...other thing, so caught up with feeling normal again. Well, as normal as she could ever be. She blinked, surprised as she stared at the spot Jinyi had been moments ago and looked up, shocked to see the wings of Hume spread out from his shoulders. Had he...had he been there? No, no she didn't remember him. She remembered the large one, the juggernaut, but not this one.

She stared after him and, before he got too far away, flicked her magic in his direction to check. Surely, he wasn't touched by Autonomy and she was correct in her assumption. She only felt the crystalline fractal of Order coming from the drone, as expected. She sighed, both relieved and disappointed. Personal bias didn't want a drone to have the power of Hume on their side, but the rest of he was sad that it had not touched another.

It was lonely sometimes.

She ruminated on it for a moment, thinking. On not just Jinyi but everything that had transpired during the day.

But then she felt something off. Something was wrong. She felt watched, noticed. Something was coming...

Her eyes went hazy as she looked, for what was on the way. The consequences of whatever had happened here. Had the thing behind whatever this crystal was noticed her somehow? Had she brought danger by removing it?

In the future, she saw...lessers. Lessers with the epidote bursting from their flanks, from their chests, from their faces, all running, surging through the caves. Hundreds. More. Tearing. Infecting. Holding onto gembound until they, too, fell to crystalline infection.

Black veins of epidote. On lessers. On greaters. On the walls, the floor, the Spire. Earth cracking beneath her feet, a black cat turning to look at her - not her, but her...

She wrenched herself out of her vision and scrambled to her feet. She trembled, knowing she didn't have long. They'd come looking.

Pink and gold wings sprouted from her back as she took off from the stones, flying towards the exit to Pisces. She needed to return to Noctua and recover before something worse happened. And something worse was going to happen. She knew it.

*exit