He could not help himself.

Not that he'd necessarily have been against reviving the stone, to begin with: he always felt bad for them, these lost gems, the ones that gently thrummed with lost, forgotten life. It was just...

...Well, this wasn't a good place for it. Or a good time.

The caves were, generally speaking, in turmoil. Today was chaotic, and tomorrow was uncertain, the threads of Order winding sinister straight threads through a tapestry that had been, on the one hand, beautifully natural but steeped at its edges in blackening Chaos. He could see that all, now: see it clear as day, sense the magic radiating from each of these stones, and the strange new sort from his own.

So he fretted, mostly. He helped those that he could, and then he came and grew his plants and cleared off as much fungus as he could manage, and moved on. Right now he was doing just that: his best, pushed to drive away Order so that he could help, help, HELP, this stone. And like the drones serving Order with mindless obedience, or the beasts lost to their Chaotic urges, Oliver could do nothing but obey this compulsion:

Help.

This stone needed help. Therefore: he would help it.

He had no choice in the matter, really.

But first-...

He had work to do. Compulsion or not, he could not bring a life into a place as tainted as this.

He tried to summon up his magic--a new tactic firmly in his mind--and... nothing happened. He waited a moment, and then tried again, focusing on the memory of the sounds of falling rain, of droplets splashing fat across the rock before trickling away into the moss and leaves.

Ahh--here.

It came, a gentle drizzle, one that it took great effort to focus into anything more. Even so, it was not the rushing downpour he had hoped for.

Regardless, it left pools of standing water, puddles that--well, he could work with it. The point was that each gradual wash of droplets brought with it any white threads of Mother's fungus that had taken root here, sliding it down into the resulting pools.

Oliver went to work, meanwhile, physically tearing down more as the light rain went on, his drive and focus almost horribly pinpoint.

Perhaps he could not have stopped had he wanted to.

Oliver worked for nigh on an hour. Mostly, he let the rain do it, though it took longer than he'd have liked. That said, it wasn't like he'd abandoned his grove; he'd come often, tearing away the fungus threatening the overgrown garden he'd helped flourish between the old bone-and-stone walls. So it was more... clean-up than true renovation, really.

Still, once he had it all in puddles, he settled in to finish his task: purifying the water in which the threads of ghastly white now sat, floating like old, stinking hair.

A surge of magic pressed outward from him like a wave, sparkling through the water; the fungus rippled, dispersed, and vanished altogether. Within moments he had pure water, a grove uncorrupted: a perfect place to hatch a child.

Perhaps Mother's minions would be watching; maybe they'd even slip in here, trying to spread the fungus once again. But for now, Oliver did his best to ensure nothing was watching before scuttling in among his own tree roots, drawing out the little Citrine he had found, and nestling it out of sight.

Well out of sight.

For a moment, his claws gently cradling the stone, he remembered its previous owner. Or--what he'd seen of them. Their remains, more accurately. They seemed like the sort that Teosar would know, and maybe--on the other claw--Vargas and the other Masters. There had been three: the Citrine, an Emerald, and a Tanzanite. Others had taken the other two--not that it mattered; they would be new creatures, and would not remember one another. (Which, if you asked Oliver, was a damned shame.)

The Tanzanite--Purple--(Oliver remembered, turning the Citrine in his hands) had belonged to a huge deer-like skeleton that had been curved protectively around the other two. Immense size, branching antlers, fangs--it had been impressive. The second had been slender, yet clearly carnivorous, its shining emerald among the spines that pointed back along its vertebrate, white and gleaming scales like fish or dragon skin left behind. This, though--the Citrine--had belonged to what Oliver imagined had been a leader. Maybe it was just the fact that the stone looked like a little crown atop the stranger's head. But it had been sat between the others, its lithe form--somewhere between a mouse and a kangaroo--silent but regal in death. All three had, Oliver believed, been rebels: locked or hidden away in the caves far beneath Lacerta, protected by traps and pitfalls, but then dead and long-forgotten.

Well-... no more. It wasn't that he could remember them; he'd never known them. But he simply could not leave it as it had been.

It would, at the very least, bear life again.

It would be a child.

"There you go," he murmured gently. A flush and spark of magic from his fingertips, from the onyx at his toe (once green-streaked black, now threaded more and more heavily by the day with magenta and with gold)--and he felt it take, the Citrine again imbued with magic.

With life.

He pulled back, watching it for a long moment. He smiled, softly, then; and covered it with damp leaves, hiding it from sight.

He'd remain here, now, mostly. He'd watch it grow, guarding and protecting it, keeping his grove as free of the fungus as he could. He'd try not to draw attention--but he'd watch, in turn, for incursion here. It'd be dangerous, but... doable, he thought.

Oliver would just need to be careful, that was all. And maybe sleep with one eye open.

exit Oliver