"Why is this city seed violet?" Lisa asked. She and Bath were hovering over the new city seed, accordingly named Violet Hold, and observing the surroundings. From this height, they could see the planet's exit gate resting on a distant outcropping of stone.

Bath shrugged. "It's the best color for this environment."

Lisa sighed exasperatedly. "Don't you know why, though? It's your city seed."

Bath's expression grew slightly more serious. "I wasn't here to see it grow," he began. "I can easily tell you what the violet color does--the ways that violet suits this environment better than the color green--but I can't definitively tell you why the city seed settled on violet."

Lisa squirmed. "You're talking about it like it's making conscious decisions." But it was just a plant...it didn't have a shell, and thus couldn't, in her opinion, be considered intelligent life.

"I imbued each of the seeds with information," he explained, raising and cupping his hand, as though intending to form a seed from the air around them. "My intentions, conditional responses, and other things that are difficult to articulate." He paused, realizing that he needed a better way to explain. "The city seeds are like primitive children. They can only think by forming attachments with sapients and tapping into their minds; the rest of their lives ruled by the automatic responses that I've programmed into them."

Lisa nodded slowly. She'd interacted with dragonleaf enough times to recognize that the plant fronds had a way of communicating that couldn't be wholly unintelligent. For instance, at the beginning of COTD, the fronds had only been activated after people thought their conception of a dragon at them. Now that she thought about it, she almost couldn't believe that had worked. There are so many different types of dragons, after all...

She looked over to see Bath giving her a warm smile. "What?" she asked, raising an eyebrow.

"I asked the city seed why it turned itself violet," he replied, still smiling.

"Wait, you asked it why? I thought you just said you couldn't know why it became violet unless you were here to see it grow in person."

"That's assuming I just read the city seed's DNA and fully understood its fixed structure." He sighed wistfully. "Which is easy, but...It's impossible to perfectly know the past from the present," he said, looking at Lisa.

"It is?" Lisa asked.

Bath nodded.

"Why not?" Lisa was genuinely curious. For instance, if she really knew everything there was to know about the city seed, wouldn't she be able to represent it as a mathematical system? Just as the city seed would move forward and time, she could use the created system to extrapolate backward. Assuming she knew everything there was to know about it, which was a claim only Bath could make. But in theory...shouldn't Bath, then, be able to figure it out?

"You just can't," he replied, eyes narrowing. He looked off over the slate-gray ocean. "I've tried before," he continued, "and I've never been right." Then he chuckled. "Of course, in this case, there was never any need. The easiest solution of all was just to ask."

Although unsatisfied with Bath's answer, Lisa decided to let the topic go for now. I'll have to do more research on this later. "What did the city seed tell you?"

"It thought that violet would be beautiful," he stated. "Isn't that interesting?"

Lisa recoiled slightly. "What do you mean?" How could the plant have become violet for such a reason? Did the plant actually have a sense of aesthetics?

"Seems like the conditions on this planet, specifically the way that its clouds and soil absorb and reflect light, make a spectrum of colors from dark green to violet all viable plant colors, at least as far as the city seed is concerned. Actually, I should probably look into the exact composition of the clouds--" he stopped, realizing that Lisa was waiting for him to come back from his tangent. "As city seeds are driven by instinct to create beautiful, sustainable sapient population centers, this one chose to become violet."

"...Does the city-seed have eyes, now?" she asked, incredulous. The violet did look absolutely stunning in contrast to the omnipresent gray and harsh yellow brush, and was most certainly an excellent choice on the city seed's part, but it was a plant! Why did it care?

"No, but I did give it memories of sight," Bath explained. "Conceptions of landscapes and different kinds of climate. I used these memories to aid it in creating aesthetically pleasing city seeds."

Lisa considered this for a moment. So, she thought, it didn't actually choose to make the city seed violet because of a human-like whim. It had been Bath's plant-programming (seriously, how did he do that?) all along.

"Bath," Lisa called out. "City seeds are really fricking cool."

"I know," he replied smugly, floating over to her side. Lisa wasted no time socking him on the arm and the two burst out into laughter.

"We should probably get going," Lisa muttered. "The arcs are ready to go." She could sense that all the people who had been chosen to go--most of the vanguard, aside from the standard contingent of quasies and a small group of mapmakers and archaeologists intrigued by the sites that they'd found--were aboard the arcs, their individual shells forming a large, shining, spherical amalgamation.

The group's collective shell shone blue with weariness but also burnt-yellow with excitement. With only two more planets left, she found herself in a similar state of mind: weary after a long trip, but also excited to complete the circuit between Earth's exit and entrance gates.

After all, from there, COTD would really begin to take off. They'd enter an age of expansion, and who knows where they would go from there?

---

The arcs entered the gate and appeared on its opposite side without much issue. Bath was the first off the arc, soon followed by Lisa. The two of them pulled ahead of the group, Lisa hitching a ride as Bath rocketed forward.

"We should've done this from the beginning," Lisa chortled. "This is way better than just sending Dean and a few others to establish a city seed."

"I think both ways are fine," Bath replied.

Though it was difficult to speak over the wind, Lisa couldn't let this opportunity go. "You're only saying that because you wanted to play with your new water slide," she retorted, laughing.

Bath tsked, but didn't say any words in his defense. This, of course, only made her giggles increase.

"It's not like we were in a rush," he grumbled, rolling his eyes. "Dean and the others got the job done in a few hours."

That was true. "But then why are we speeding so much now?" Lisa wondered. They really were like missiles as they shot across the sky. Lisa would've been torn apart by their speed without her enhancements.

"Mm...I have a feeling," he said. "I only started feeling it after arriving on Fiendstrom, but I feel like we've spent too long away."

Lisa understood where he was coming from. "It's been less than two months, but considering how long COTD has been around..."

"...Who's to say how much things have changed in our absence?" Bath concluded.

"Everything's probably fine," Lisa assuaged. "They don't need our constant guidance. They have Lepochim--"

Bath snorted.

"They also have the quasies like Nevis, then," Lisa finished. "Besides, even though you're skeptical about Lepochim's capacity to get anything done, he definitely whipped the kursi into shape and did a decent job administering Basalith. There's no way he'd just let Earth go to shit that quickly."

"Even so..." Bath trailed off, his eyes picking up something in the distance. He slowed the two of them down so that they could clearly see the massive ruin below.

Lisa inhaled sharply. The two of them remained silent, Lisa's arms wrapped tightly around a draconic Bath's arm.

"The verdora named this planet," she murmured. "Amethyn." While it was gibberish in English, in a precursor language to verdoran standard, the word meant Extinction. "Remember?"

"I'm surprised we haven't seen more evidence of of the planet's namesake," Bath replied. "Probably because we've been going too fast."

"Probably."

They continued to look on, committing the scene to memory.

"How many are there?" Lisa asked.

"I'm still counting," Bath said, as though that alone was an answer. In a way, it was: the crystallized bodies seemed innumerable.

"Have you read the records that the verdora left on this place?" Lisa asked, her voice quiet.

"Yeah. Pretty terrible, isn't it?"

She gave Bath a searching look. "You can protect us from something like this, right?"

His feathered face swiveled around so that his maw touched her back. "I should be able to."

The remnants of a once a city lay below. Thousands of people littered its streets and corners. They weren't people, obviously, but Lisa couldn't tell the difference with them all encased in a layer of white crystal.

"How do you think they died?" Lisa asked.

"Their deaths would've been slow and excruciating until the crystal covered their spines, and even then, they would still feel pain in whatever part of their upper bodies remained. Most of them probably died from suffocation: The crystal would've torn their lungs to shreds and prevented them from oxygenating blood long before it ever reached their hearts."

Lisa shuddered involuntarily. The verdora claimed it had been some kind of superweapon, though their results had been inconclusive. The end result of said weapon's use, however, was crystal clear: extinction.

Now that they had slowed down to take a look at the city, Lisa's eyes began to move on to the immediate surrounding area. There she began to spot crystallized trees and animals and even a giant, white-crusted flower.

The planet wasn't completely devoid of life, however. Small bushes of green and thick grass covered the ground, clearly taking advantage of the planet's allegedly excellent soil and climatic conditions.

This new growth didn't surprise her: this planet had supposedly developed, reached its peak, and wiped its lifeforms out all before the verdora built their first city. After the passage of millions of years, it would be strange if new primitive life had failed to take root.

"I bet this place is going to make an excellent colony," Lisa observed, turning away. "We should keep going."

Bath once more began to pump his wings, accelerating on to the planned site of the city seed.

"I can't believe that these sapients triggered the destruction of their entire planet," Lisa muttered, her thoughts almost lost to the wind. "It's depressing." It was more than just "depressing," though she lacked the words to adequately describe the tragedy of Amethyn. She wondered how many civilizations had reached a similar end in the grand scheme of things.

"That's why I stepped in," Bath replied. "You humans were setting the Earth up for an early mass extinction."

Lisa blinked. That's right, she realized. Bath has lived through things like this before. "It wouldn't have been like this," she argued. "Maybe we would've nuked things to oblivion, but I doubt the age of humanity would've ended with the total death of Earth's multicellular life."

Bath shrugged. "The signs were all there. While I can't know what would have happened without my interference, I think humanity would've messed things up worse than you think. Without using nukes," he added.

They remained silent for the rest of the flight. As they approached their target, Bath slowed down and began his descent. The two of them landed on a vast field with rippling, green grass. Lisa breathed in the freshness of the air, closing her eyes.

"This place is beautiful," she remarked.

"Use your echolocation," Bath rumbled, suddenly absent from her side. Lisa snapped to attention, realizing that something was amiss. She sent out a sonic click, quickly processing the return echo. A tunnel? she murmured to herself, darting forward. Hidden in the grass was, apparently, a hole leading into a tunnel. Lisa's angle hadn't allowed her to discern anything else.

She ran to Bath's side, unsurprised to find him peering over the edge of a gaping black hole surrounded by grass. He shot her a knowing look as she approached and quickly shifted forms, reappearing as a human. He stood side by side with Lisa, his carmine cape streaming out gently behind him and touching the backs of her calves.

"I wonder what we'll find in this tunnel," he murmured. "Based on what we've seen so far, large, mysterious tunnels lead to trouble."

"Well," Lisa began, "it's a good thing that we're the ones who went ahead."

Bath flashed her a grin as he prepared to jump over the hole's rim. "Let's hope this trouble is as fun as the last."