Catalyst wasted no time following the vision set forth by the stone. It was a familiar route. to get there. She travelled along the outskirts of Ursa, avoiding the worst of the mountains and their bone-piercing cold, until she felt the draft of heat entering the cave. Then it was a relatively easy trek, ignoring the streams of lava she had to acrobat her way through. The fact she'd been through this tunnel before, combined with the vision still ingrained in her memory, made the directions easy enough. And the pile even easier to find. It was an unassuming thing. A mundane treasury.

She'd never thought it gave off the idea that one of her siblings had died here. But then again, she didn't spend too much time thinking about every pile of rubble she'd come across. She set her clawed foot on the rocks, given a moment of mourning at how dull this would make her claws. She'd have to sharpen them back up after this.

As it turns out, clearing rubble was a lot of hard work. Hard work she'd underestimated. And finding a piece of clearstone within even more work. It didn't help that her claws were built for restraining or slicing prey, not pushing aside pieces of rubble. Catalyst had spent the better part of the day there. By the time she saw a glint of clear crystal, her feet felt numb and strained, her claws dull as the stones themselves, and hot breath left her in visible puffs. Relief flooded her, at the sight and Catalyst fell onto her haunches, exhausted. Even that had her muscles aching sorely.

Pebbles and rocks dug uncomfortably into her underside, and she would've rolled to a better spot had she not been so worn. After a short rest, regaining control of her jelly-like limbs, the raptor stuck her head into the rubble, feeling around with her teeth until she felt the smooth of glassy crystal, and not the rough texture of rock. She grasped it delicately, pulling it out cautiously, as if afraid biting too hard would break it into pieces.

To her relief it came out in one piece. She moved it from her teeth to her hands. Then, with a cautious eye, glanced around in short bird-like motions. Safe. Despite the protest of her muscles, Catalyst set off with the stone in hand. She carried it with her far from the tunnel, back to her hidden alcove Ursa, where she exhausted the last of her strength. She placed her blue killing claw onto the stone, and allowed the stone to siphon her magic. To give it new life.

Unsurprisingly, she had not much energy for the stone. But as her feeble stream entered it, far less than enough to revive it, the magic of the wishing stone overcame her. Its magicka flooded the stone along with hers, and she watched as the stone developed a soft glow. Beyond worn, Catalyst fell to her side. As soon as her eyes closed, she fell asleep instantly.

Oh, Mother was pleased with this one. Curiosity changed to fascination to even something like excitement as Catalyst dug out the stone. Whispers of knowledge came with encouragement: images of this great soldier fighting, falling, and praise for Catalyst's work all blended together.

The creature had been some ten feet long, gleaming a shining silver-white. It most resembled, perhaps, a millipede in that a rounded, segmented shell circled it--but it wrapped around the entire body, top to bottom. Three faintly-glowing orange eyes were positioned at the center of both the top and bottom of the shell, and the back and front of the body were identical: four shearing, perfectly symmetrical pincers.

Oddest of all, however, was the repeating nature of its body: the legs, six per side, seemed to almost be perfect duplicates of the body as a whole. Each was a small segmented limb perfectly proportional to the whole body, each again with three orange eyes at the top, and three at the bottom.

...And each of these legs had, in turn, twelve more, each with their own miniscule eyes--and so forth, until the limbs were so tiny they seemed more to be miniature tendrils than limbs.

This creature could move backward or forward, upside-down or upright (and really, there was no difference between the two). The Clearstone chunk had served as a cradling shell around the small brain perfectly at its center.

---

This stone has now been revived by Catalyst; a Nursery thread can be made, and the fate of the child is in Gortys's hands!

@Catalyst