Chapter One

  A little gem that was entirely out of place instinctively felt that something was wrong. Instead of the loving embrace of stone and the warmth of the earth there was wood, water, and wind. It struggled, looking to escape the unknown, but could not find a way to get back to the environment it knew. Eventually, it gave up and started to absorb what was available to it. All the mana it had never absorbed before started to rush in with surprising vigor. The absorption continued for quite a while, giving the gem green, white, and blue sections in great contrast to its previous reddish brown. Before it was done, the new sections actually outgrew the brown leaving it as only a small part of the whole.

   With this done, the gem had enough power to start feeling its surrounding. The first thing it noticed was that instead of the dull and mouldable area of its previous home, it was actually inside a living being. This greatly limited its ability to spread its own mana out, so instead of scouting out its surroundings it started to claim the tree as its own. The tree was much larger than the gem, but it had no will to fight back. After a few weeks of slow and steady progress, the tree became a part of the gem, and the gem's mana could flow freely throughout its new domain. This made it easy to finally see the world outside of the tree.

  To the gems' surprise, there were already creatures on it. There were multiple bee hives living among its branches. The first hive took a few days to gain full control of, with the gem taking control of a random bee as soon as it finished the previous one. Eventually, it encountered a stronger bee, one with both more will and power than the rest of its kin. To the gems surprise, once it took over that bee, the rest of the bees accepted the its control without any contest. After that it was able to take control of the other two bee hives in less than a day. With its first creatures claimed, it restarted its examination of the world outside of its body.

  The gem found that it was embedded into a tree that was growing out of a small island. Three sides were surrounded by raging water, and directly in front of the island a waterfall dropped far enough that the bottom could not be sensed. After finding this, the gem started to explore in the only direction it could: straight down. The ground was made of an extremely hard rock that had lustrous streaks of blue and small grey crystals spread throughout. After finding this, the gem didn’t waste a second and started following its instincts.

  It started to make a territory of its own. Compacting stone made the rock go from tough to neigh unbreakable. With no concept of time or overwork it kept pushing, compacting, and throwing mana at the walls until the room was large enough. After that the gem opened the room to the outside world. There was a not inconsiderable outflow of mana, but luckily, it seemed no one was around to sense it. Unaware that it had just survived its second truly dangerous experience in its life, the gem continued on happily.

   Now, instead of making a room, the gem started to encourage life to grow in its territory. Moss started to grow everywhere. It wasn’t much, but each bit provided it with a tiny bit of mana to help its growth. Once the first room was filled to the brim work immediatly began on making its second room. It was almost done shaping it when it suddenly sensed a new life in its domain. It paused its work and examined the creature. It seemed to be struggling out of water, so for the first time in its life the gem hurried. It made a small tunnel from its uninhabited room to the river, and let water flood it. After that, it made a tunnel for fish to slide down until it was in the room and swimming happily. The gem felt relief that it had managed to acquire a new inhabitant and started to work on fixing its now flooded floor when it was interrupted again.

  There were more fish showing up in its domain, but this time they came in numbers. Thousands of fish were shooting out of the top of the waterfall, and many of them landed on its territory. The gem funneled them all down until it had a floor entirely full of fish. It took a second to appreciate its new residents, befores moving on to taming them. It took quite a while due to the sheer number of them, but it managed to claim all of them before setting about fixing their new home. It moved up the holes leading to the river so new water only came in during rain, and made deep pools interconnected by shallow channels throughout the entire room. After that the gem finished off the room by helping plants flourish. Moss and ferns grew on most solid surfaces while seaweed and other algaes grew inside the pond. Eventually the room was complete and work shifted to making another floor.

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  The gem created a shallow tunnel down, and once it felt it had gone far enough it compacted the walls to make its newest room. This one was extremely similar to the room above; just made to create enough space for the fish. As the gem was putting on the finishing touches, it felt an intruder far larger than any it had experienced before. It quickly shifted its focus, and found a massive bear approaching its tree. The gem sent many of its bees to swarm the bear, but that didn’t even distract it. The bear climbed straight up the tree, using its thick hide to ignore the bees, and stole honey from one of the gem’s hives. After that the bear started sniffing and followed its nose into the gem’s cave. It completely ignored the first floor and was quickly at the ponds. The gem directed the fish to attack the bear, and the fish flung themselves out of the water at full speed to try and fulfill that command. The bear simply grabbed enough fish to gorge itself and ate its fill before meandering through the gems territory and back onto the island. Once there it settled down on a sunny rock, and went to sleep.

  Frustrated by this failure, the gem started pumping mana into its creatures. Unaware of how to direct their growth, the mana simply increased the natural attributes of the creatures it ran through. The bees got tougher and longer stingers and the fish got stronger muscles and harder heads. Before too long, the gem started to run out of mana so it went back to perfecting its latest room. It got absorbed in that, and continued to work on it until the bear attacked once more.

  The bear ignored all of the gem's defenses again, so the gem started strengthening its creatures again. This cycle continued for months, with the gem strengthening its creatures after every attack, and then focusing on expanding its territory once it started to run low on mana. Eventually though, something different happened. When the bear came to get its daily honey and fish the gem realized it no longer felt any threat from it. Surprised, the gem examined the bear closely and found that it was already inundated with the gem’s mana. This time, instead of sending out its bees to stop the bear, it started to claim it. Normally, the bear would be far to large for the gem, but with it already full of friendly mana the gem gained its newest and most powerful creature without any struggle at all

  Despite being the gems largest gain, the bear was not the only benefit the gem got during its struggle against the bear. The gem acquired other new creatures and plants as well. By making tunnels into the river it acquired two new fish. A predator that lived off of the other fish, and a bottom feeder that kept the pools clean. The gem also realized that in its first room, and anywhere on its island, it could grow a large variety of plants. Flowers, bushes and even a few small trees had started to flourish under the little gems ministrations. The last noteworthy addition was a nest of singing birds. They had bright orange breasts and royal blue heads that drew the eye as much as their songs. So far they haven’t been able to add any combat power, but they have already been extremely useful by bringing in new plants from far outside of the range the gem can gather materials from on its own

  Now that the bear was the gem's ally instead of its enemy, there was a chance to examine it more closely. The gem found a number of surprises, the most important being that the reason it could never stop the bear was because despite being stolen, the gems mana strengthened the bear just like it strengthened the creatures under its control. The effect was smaller, and the bear had stolen a lot of honey and fish, but it was still a surprise to the gem. Alongside that, the gem also discovered that the bear brought another creature with it. There were ticks hiding within the bear's fur. The gem could feel the discomfort these caused the bear, so it quickly claimed them and forced them to leave the bear.

  With its curiosity about its newest inhabitant assuaged, the gem got back down to business. It continued building rooms and filling them with its fish and fauna until it encountered a small open space. In its efforts to expand downwards, the gem had stumbled upon a natural cave. Instead of the rock it was used to, the front of the cave was blocked by the waterfall the island sat atop. Excited by this new development, the gem halted its plans to grow vertically, and took advantage of the horizontal space available to it. It did this by using its new lightsource to grow many of its recently discovered plants. After that the gem turned its attention inward, and started to expand into the base of the mountain.