She had watched over the gathered heads, nodding to each in turn and taking note. She was annoyed at the smaller turnout then she was expecting - where was the rest of the Chaos Forge? Where was the Oilstone? At least the dragon had shown up, although she'd cast him an alarmed look at first, calming down to a burning glare. He better NOT burn the whole forest down. She should have observed all of these a little more before putting any faith in them at all.

This was all a calculated risk. Her own leadership skills and commanding presence (and Artio's threat) against the free will of the gembound and their own abilities. She had faith enough, but now it was faltering.

Too late to back out, though.

"Very good," she'd rumbled after all was complete. "We'll start at the back of the cave and work our way forward. Any Lesser or Greater still stuck in the cave, then, can flee." The already-fled lessers would make this much easier, though, however the cat had done it (if she had really done it. She wasn't sure and it wasn't important enough right now to consider.)

The march, then, had begun, to their first target - the Eyes, where the fires would begin. She would ensure, personally, that the pools were not disturbed. They already had Artio breathing down their necks, the last thing they needed was her lover bursting out of the pools to kill them all.

Tectus took a guardian spot in front of the pool and nodded towards the infected trees before it. "We will burn from here out. The area around the eyes we will cleanse more carefully." She looked, again, over the gathered gembound, and nodded a second time towards the trees. "When you are ready, begin. Remember to burn carefully!" She would keep a hawk's watch on them, so that they did not turn this into a wild forest fire and get all of them killed.

@/Wilder (September, Rift, Huckleberry) @Shango (Dread, Pride) @Esther

This thread is open to anyone to join late, but please also post a short intro in the preparations thread!

Tectus's little helper still perched on her back, dark eyes watching as they slipped past the slick fungus to the back of the cave. No time like the present...

She'd wait for her Overseer's command, before attempting to return a message to them. "I am ready. I will be scanning the area for healthy plants, and then signal them so they can be avoided. Later I will move towards the cave entrance, to ensure we are not interrupted by our enemies," she calls out telepathically, before taking off into the air.

And while she might not be the fastest or the greatest, but she would do the job. Weaving past sheets of fungus and gnarled wood, Moros would beginning sifting through the infection.

Shango, for whatever reason, immediately attached himself to Moros. He seemed content to follow orders rather than to work things out for himself, and maybe it didn't matter that he was following the orders of an insect the size of his nose.

"Show me what to wet," he half-suggested, half-demanded, glancing about. Whatever the moth indicated should be preserved, he would try to rain on. Of course, it didn't really work that way. But Shango was experienced enough that he could do his best to keep rain stronger in some general areas, weaker in others. And a general dampness would help prevent fire from accidentally spreading, at least.

He set about his work in otherwise silent diligence, dutifully following along behind Moros with clouds forming all overhead, a patter of raindrops splashing on the leaves.

Dread took wing with a launch of powerful hind legs and a pump of leathery forelimbs. For a moment the thuds of his wingbeats were loud, but they quickly faded as he began to circle carefully around the trees. His caution wasn't just for fire--the trees here were tall, and he didn't want to smash into a trunk while flying.

The dragon inspected the treeline, and as rain began to fall around him, shook himself with irritation. He blinked water from flaming eyes, and after a moment picked out a section of canopy thickly webbed with white.

He slid into a low glide, black scales gleaming with rain, wings held motionless and partly folded. An inhale, and Dread was breathing a long stream of fire, a blaze of heat and light that crackled over and through the Hive's influence.

White mold caught flame and burned. Some was put out by the rain, but most of it smoldered, blackening, the webbing flammable enough compared to living leaves. Of course, plenty of plant matter burned, too--but Dread managed, for now, to keep it to the infested stuff.

A second short pass and blast of fire to hit the spots he'd missed, and he beat his wings again, rising from his glide to find his next target. An exultant, screeching roar marked his location, and a first successful strike.

Pride nodded to Tectus, his gaze cool but calm. He held no love for the Overseer, but this would be good work they did, either way. He hated having this beautiful garden of a cave filled with rancid mold, an ever-present danger to his foraging.

He made his way into the thick of the jungle, sparing a skyward glance as Dread took off, mentally urging the dragon not to do anything too dangerous or stupid. He did this not with magic, but just a personal thought, kept to himself. Then Pride focused on his own work.

He'd hold some of his magic back, by necessity, in case of emergency, he decided. I'll start with destroying it, but retain enough magicka in case someone's flames go out of control, or somebody is hurt. Not him, of course. He had enough control that his destruction wouldn't run rampant. At least, Pride thought so.

With that subsconcious arrogance in mind, he was perhaps not as cautious as he should have been, particularly when wielding such powerful magic. He turned, silver eyes crossing a patch of white mold clustered between two seemingly healthy trees, and directed this ball of fungus to simply combust, to become plasma, burning flame.

In his absent-minded casting, he instead caught the trunks of both trees, the deafening crack of wood and flare of resultant white fire quickly climbing their bark. He froze in horror, staring with one hoof held off the ground, mind momentarily blank. He'd only have a moment to stop what he had done. It is far too soon to have a Master angry with me.
His first strike, and it had potentially been a deadly one--for himself, at least. Though mercifully, Pride did not actually know this.

red deer img credit - dan seagrave

crickets and creatures will come in the night
keep my back from the reaper
who's hunting or running, you gotta decide

September looked up as the rain began to fall and nodded. Okay, that was good. If something went out of control, they already had a source of water to put it out. That was permission enough (the dragon helped too) to just let loose and start burning.

But he was not nearly as experienced as Dread, nor Shango, or really any of the other firestarters here probably. So his way of "letting loose" was to cough out a stream of fire that immediately sizzled out in the damp conditions. He frowned. That was embarrassing. And frustrating.

september

GRAY SOUL AND STATIC IN MY EYES

Huckleberry lurked at the edge of the group, the lack of Shiny's weight on his back at the forefront of his mind. And he could feel her own nerves from here - what if he got hurt? What if the fire went back and he never came back? What would she do without him? It was a question neither of them had ever asked each other - what would happen if one of them lost the other?

He didn't like thinking about it, so he shoved it to the back of his mind to keep the dread from overtaking his senses. There was work to be done.

The fire that was started was a little small - just a few licks of flame that caught on some of the mold and plant matter by the dragon, so instead of focusing on dampening an inferno, Huckleberry made to speed it up a little bit. Winds around them picked up, touching the flames on the leaves and carrying them further to the next patch of fungus. The glow of fire became stronger momentarily as the flames got a burst of energy from the wind, quickly dampened by the rain. He shivered as the magic died away, not realizing that he had been holding his breath. Nerves had made him think that maybe it wouldn't work, but they were safe for now.

TRY TO SEE THE FUTURE,
BUT I'M NOT SURE IF IT APPLIES

From her spot by the eyes, Tectus watched each of the participants fire up their magic - or try, at least. She barely flinched to the rain pattering against her hide and gave a nod to Bloodstone T-One. "Good idea. Please keep us informed."

They were all doing a good job, for now, of keeping the fire contained, but she noticed that there was really only...one fire, from the dragon's breath, and it was small. She glanced towards Pride and then to September (the latter of which gave her a disgruntled shrug) and rolled her eyes. "Okay, good job being careful but we don't want to be here all cycle. You can burn a little more then that."

She continued to play guardian and watcher - she'd stick here while they did their fires and continue to ensure they didn't overstep. Her muscles were tense, ready to leap forward and stop a spell in its place if it was necessary.

@Dread @Esther @Moros

Everyone is free to spam attempts or go into off-shoot threads to continue to flames - make sure if you go into other threads that you have someone with you that can dampen/control the fire!

Current Damage: 56

Dread wasn't with the group anymore.

He was airborne, so he was simply too fast to hang around and chat; his silhouette shot past at a low, slow glide, but even that was too swift to catch a word of anything.

He had been told, in some detail, what to hit and what not to. Pride hadn't heard the actual death threats of the Master but even if he had, it wouldn't have mattered to his advice. Dread, as a result, moved off on his own to enact his paid-for orders.

Mercenary in his focus and exalting in his flame, he rose higher, circling and peering closely at the ground below. For a long while he did nothing; only flew here and there, as if searching for something only he could see.

Eventually, he found it: a large swathe of forest nearly coated in white webbing. A place where there was no "collateral damage." Of course, flame could spread; but that was what others like Shango were here for. He was here to light shit up.

A second, screeching roar--now quite distant--followed his initial one some minutes prior. This one came with a rushing crackle of flame, and the sudden manifestation (and cascading tumble) of fiery meteors crashing down from above. A number of areas ignited, though they smoldered more than flamed. This might have been for the best, though; there wasn't much to put out. Dread rose higher, then circled back, eyeing his handiwork and looking for places that might be particularly thick in fungus that he might further destroy.

Shango glanced briefly at the crack of wood, then did a double-take, blinking.

"That was a TREE," he informed Pride, irritably. It was very clearly the wrong thing. They were meant to be destroying fungus. Or fungus-infected trees. Not the regular, literally garden-variety sort.

With a huff of irritation, the hybrid paced that way, a leap leading him into a low glide toward the stag's minor disaster.

A rumbling growl not unlike thunder announced his deep focus; then a blast of wind, wet with falling rain, swept through to at least put out the white flames that licked at the wood.

"Idiot," Shango muttered, with a savage glance Pride's way, before turning back toward the forested cave.