So, the crystal was growing more crystals. And pretty quickly at that. On the upside, it was using a lot of the magic in its aura to do so, thinning it out and conversely giving me a greater foothold and better vision in the area.

The crystal, the main one floating in the centre of the area, had formed condensed tendrils of peculiarly pink magic emanating from its core and flowing toward the forming crystal structures. The skill with which it formed its power was enviable, but watching the strands weave complex crystals from simple rock didn't tell me anything of their purpose.

I thought about perhaps creating a signal or message, but even in its weakened state, the crystal's aura prevented me from forming a working in its territory. Even if I could, though, I wouldn't have known what to do. Form words in the ground? Draw its attention with pulses of magic? My control wasn't good enough to do either of those, and who knew if the thing could read in the first place.

I withdrew into my part of the cave and turned my attention back to the diminished garden. Now that I could replicate one of the plant's processes, perhaps I could intervene directly. I moved toward one of the feathery bushes littering the cave floor. They were one of the most common plants, besides the moss, that covered the ground. From a distance, it looked like purple grass, but up-close it revealed a miniature tree-like structure. A thick stem radiating horizontal branches, which in turn grew long, feathery leaves pointing straight upward.

I spent some time watching the hair-thin leaves filter magic from the air before moving in more. At first a little, but then, inspired by the crystal, I formed a larger tendril right from my own core, where my magic emanated from, and guided it toward the plant. Looking inside, I could see its internal mechanisms speed up, fuelled by overwhelming energy, and soon enough the plant started growing.

At first, it started glowing slightly in an arcane violet, as the magic grew denser and denser inside the plant, and it was struggling to process it. Then, explosively, its leaves grew taller, its branches broader and its roots hungrily dug into the ground, spreading to all sides. Saplings started sprouting along the lay of the plant's roots, spreading out into the scorched area my first experiment had decimated, and they spread the violet glow.

However, as the plants grew, my magic showed less and less effect. Even as I increased the density of my channelling, I couldn't keep up with the rapid growth of the plant.

I had to stop when I felt my awareness shrink and blur. I didn't want to fall unconscious again, not when there was the faint possibility that I might extinguish myself completely if I spent too much magic at once.

However, the plants didn't stop glowing, not entirely. The magic I'd used in growing them had stayed in the area, apparently expelled through the roots once used, and returned to the air where they absorbed it again. Some of it was drawn back to my core, but the plants definitely cycled more than they did before. Maybe I could use this to increase the density of my aura?

Satisfied, I looked at my work from above. A quarter of the destruction was now covered by new growth, and other plants and animals were taking advantage of it already. The moss was the fastest, probably fuelled by the remains of my magic, it quickly spread out under the cover of the feather trees. Insects, snails and lizard lions followed in quick succession, each preying on those that came before them. Though they didn't populate as quickly as the plants, instead simply spreading themselves more thinly.

I doubted I'd have to worry about the smaller insects, they would be breeding themselves up to regular numbers in a few days, I was sure. But the larger animals, the big beetles, the lizards and, I shudder to think of them, even the spiders would be slow to recover.

But perhaps I could help along there too.

After a quick search, I found a beetle nest. Not of the smaller variety, those living off of dead plants and animal faeces, but the large ones. These were about as large as my hand would have been. Their shells were jagged like the inside of a geode, and they glistened in the weak glow of the plants. As far as I could tell, they mainly subsisted by grazing on the feather tree’s feathers, which none of the other insects could reach. But that wasn’t important at the moment. The adults I couldn’t do much with, their auras would prevent me from working near them, much less inside.

It was their eggs thatI was after. I quickly discovered about three dozen of the small, milky-white balls in a moss-covered ditch, currently unguarded. The mother’s own magical aura would have prevented me from interfering, but she was currently grazing nearby, so I was free to work as I pleased.

The first difficulty was deciphering which of their many parts did what. Their physiology was far more mundane than that of the plants, utilizing magic only to tiny degrees. I’d have to carefully weave my magic to work alongside their natural processes and hasten them along, instead of simply pumping them full of raw power. So, I set out to study the cosmos of their bodies, peering deep into their tissues to observe their tiniest building blocks in action. Once I had a grasp of how their cells split, how they fed on the yolk and transformed it into more of themselves, I began my working.

It was delicate and difficult work at first, but it quickly got easier. It seemed like once I had a basic understanding of the matter, I only needed to will it to happen, and the magic automatically conformed itself to my understanding.

After perhaps an hour, and some more impromptu anatomy lessons, two dozen fully formed beetles emerged from their eggs. The rest had fallen casualty to some errors on my part, but that was the price of progress. Hungrily, the little beetles clambered up the next feather tree and began devouring the leaves. It seemed their quick growth had resulted in a large appetite, which was understandable. Though, I wondered if I had to stop here.

The baby beetle’s auras appeared far weaker than their mother’s at first glance. And first, I thought this was simply due to them being still young, but then I realized their auras were just as strong, if smaller. It was just that they were almost indistinguishable from my own. The beetles were, on some fundamental level, part of me now, and that meant I was free to work on them as I pleased.

I continued my previous work, adapting it to fit their now fully formed bodies, and watched them mature in a matter of hours. They were ravenous, in that time, devouring two whole feather trees and an uncountable number of mites, smails and pill bugs, but afterwards they were finished and fully functioning adults.

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I hesitated.

Was this right? Something inside myself told me that I was interfering with life on a level no mortal was meant to. I was interfering directly with the work of the gods. “Blasphemy”, an unknown voice called out from my lost memories. “Verily, the Avatar of Frohnwerk spoke thus: ‘Thou shalt not dare to fashion life as the divine doth, for in such audacity, thou dost mar their sacred creation.’”

The voice was familiar, even though I couldn’t remember having ever heard it before. However, could it really be wrong to right my mistakes? All I was doing was hasten life along its natural path, fixing what I destroyed before. And anyway, what else was I supposed to do down here, simply bemoan my fate while my mind rotted away? No, if the gods wanted me to stop, the could come down here and tell me themselves.

Angrily, I looked around for my next subject. Having pushed the beetle population to an acceptable level, I’d have to work on their predators next. The spiders. I shuddered, mentally. Well, maybe I should push the other prey species up first. The snails and the lizards. Oh, and there were some frogs too, though they had remained mostly underwater during and after the catastrophe, so like the rest of the pond life, they were doing fine. But maybe I should check up on them just to make sure.

Finding a clutch of snail eggs proved easy, and I was able to work on them despite some adults being close by. Their aura was truly minimal, and they were surprisingly easy to work on. They soaked up my magic like sponges, probably due to them feeding on magic like the plants did. However, they absorbed it through large, purple fins sprouting on their backs. They actually looked quite pretty, like fleshy flowers, especially once the young ones hatched and I started hastening them to adults. Their fins glowed during the process, and like the plants, they kept glowing slightly once I was done.

The Lizards, on the other hand, were more difficult to work with. Despite them too absorbing magic through their mane, they didn’t feed on it. Instead, they somehow used it to escape their predators, like I’d seen before. They were able to somehow become intangible for brief periods of time. Their anatomy, too, was much more complex than that of the insects or molluscs. But, with a few hours of study, I was reasonably certain I could use my magic on them without doing too much harm. The problem was finding an unoccupied nest, because the Lizard’s aura was definitely strong enough to scatter any working I might attempt.

The solution turned out to be relatively easy. With some idle experimentation, I found out that I was able to steer the creatures I had raised by expending some of my will. So, I looked for a nest with a particularly hungry-looking lizard mom, finding one in a crack in the cave wall. With a few commands, a chain of snails started slowly moving her way and up the wall. She fell for the bait and, one snail after another, chomped her way out of the nest and down to the ground.

Truthfully, that cost me quite a lot of snails, but making new ones was easy enough. I just had to make sure I didn't spend my magic faster than I got it.

So, with the mother distracted, I set to studying the eggs. Luckily the basic processes seemed to be the same as with the other two species, and their anatomy was much more familiar, with the heart, lungs, bones and stomach all being where I would have expected them. The way they interacted with one another wasn't all too different from what I remembered from human anatomy, either, so I quickly got to work.

The process was getting easier every time I applied it, and the little lizards were developing splendidly as their mother returned to the nest. I quickly wrapped up the working as I noticed her approach, as not to damage the embryos with a sudden cut-off. I estimated I was about half done with them. Ordinarily, they'd still be in there for a few more days, but I intended on finishing them as soon as possible.

I mentally debated whether I should try and pull the same trick on another lizard nest, but decided against it. I didn't want to over-populate the cave, and it's not like I had any time pressure.

Diving into the ponds, I instead looked for some frog eggs to experiment with. I quickly found some, quite a lot of them actually, and with no parents in sight. Again, I studied their anatomy, and found it similar enough to that of the lizards. Again, I started channelling my magic into their bodies, to speed up their natural growth processes. Soon enough, I had a small pond overflowing with tadpoles.

I only ran into a snag when I tried quickening their growth into adults. The tadpoles grew, and grew and grew, but they didn't grow into frogs. They only became larger tadpoles, as they started consuming each other.

Some of them tried to escape the pond, fleeing their larger relatives, and only then did they start developing lungs and legs. Others simply puffed up with magic and started floating up out of the pond and into the air. Those developed lungs too, but they kept their fins and used them to steer through the air.

Well, so much for simply spending along natural processes. I hadn't produced a single frog, only a few land-living tadpoles, some balloon-like flying ones and a monstrous few still swimming in the pond.

And I had no idea why.

I'd probably have to study their development closely over the coming days to figure this out. I'd check in on the latter. For now, I turned back to the lizards. I prepared some more snails and sent it at the mother, which would probably be hungry again by now.

Another caravan of snails later, the mother returned to a fully hatched batch of baby lizards, with vividly glowing manes. There wasn't much food in the cave, and these little guys didn't seem all that keen ongoing outside yet, so I stopped there. And to be honest, I was still a little disturbed by my chaotic results from the tadpole experiments.

Either way, the little lizards would have to go the rest of the way themselves. I withdrew from the nest and observed my garden once again from above. The puffed-up tadpoles were floating like violet fireflies above a rapidly growing forest of feather trees. Bugs and snails and dozens of smaller insects termed under their canopies, and other plants were quickly moving in, attracted by the dense magic of my experiments. But there was still more to do. Two thirds of the cave were still nothing but scorched wasteland, and, I hated to admit it, I'd have to help the spiders along or my bugs and snails would ravage all that new growth entirely unchecked.

I supposed I could check on the crystal situation first, my garden could deal on its own for a few moments.

Curiously, the crystal's aura was denser again, despite it still channelling much of its magic into creating more crystals. Crystals which, by now, covered almost every part of its territory. They had grown rapidly, while I was busy helping my garden recover from the catastrophe that had spawned them. And, through the thick obfuscation on its aura, I could even detect some movement among the crystals.

Perhaps some of my creatures had got themselves lost in this crystal maze? Though that was unlikely. I hadn't seen a single snail or beetle dare to venture outside of the feather tree's canopies so far.

Concentrating my magic, I tried to force my aura into the other crystal's, trying to get a better look at whatever it was that moved there. I could feel my power draining from me, but it worked. I caught only one glimpse, I didn't dare spend more of my essence on this as I already felt my consciousness sliding away. But a single glimpse was enough. There, between the crystalline growths, I saw a spider. A crystalline spider with a rosy-pink glow, making its way into my territory.

I admit, that had me worried.