"Lets start with color-changing berrybush. How long are you willing to wait for it?"

"A few days would be... Acceptable. A few weeks would be annoying. I was planning to work on the dead city while you worked on the plant. Should I bring you along for a few minutes to see if I'm removing it correctly?"

"Color-changing berrybush will take less than week, two days if you only take a single plant, but that can go up to a dozen potted bushes if you wait for another day. I have a guest room if you are concerned with where you are staying. And bringing me along for a test run would be a good idea."

"I don't need to sleep, if I can get coffee. I'll take a dozen potted bushes over the single plant. How hard will it be to raise new ones?"

"I'm getting jealous of your fairiness. And the plant I'm going to use as a base is pretty adaptable, low maintenance, and is a great apartment plant if you like the overly sweet smell, which can be get rid off if you want."

"Might as well leave the smell. I can fly us over to the dead city now, let's test whether I can actually scrap it."

"Okay, just a moment..." Temple stores some of his supplies. "Done."

"Brace yourself for vertigo."

And then they are high above the surface, speeding towards the dead city faster than any bird could.

Temple is somewhere between vertigo and joy.

The chasm that devides the village and the dead city is wide, maybe hundreds feet and goes down into a pitch-black darkness. When they are about half-way through the chasm... something changes in the air itself, it feels stale and still, even while they move this fast, a sensation crawls over Nick's skin that is hard to ignore. Temple's joy stops, he shivers but not from cold.

The city architecture is pretty regular and organized, but the place is very definitely empty, looking more like a stone model of a city than an actual city.

"Try to sink it down a few miles? God, I hate this feeling."

It makes his skin crawl. "I can only push so much at once."

Still, he forces a sizable block down at barely subsonic speeds.

The blocks make the expected sounds of uncountable tons of earth and stone tearing off, several buildings tople but that is hardly a problem. It sinks, sinks, and sinks...

...The wrongness is not gone, but it is definitely ameliorating. Temple turns his eyes skyward.

"The stars are already returning!" Temple says pointing up.

"Great, it's working. I should just do that for the entire Dead City? ...How many people will be grateful I'm trashing the place?"

"Honestly, easily on the scale of hundreds of millions? This thing is a huge disaster, not many deaths lately but relocation is a major problem."

"Glad I can do something good on a big scale. Any chance I could get more than one or two plants out of this? Or learn the magic, can I do that?"

He's so excited he's forgetting to be sarcastic.

"Honestly? You can get a dozen. Can't promise I can make those all that fast but I can get some contacts to help with that. I need to know you for a bit longer before considering teaching you magic, it would require some adaptations anyway. I think you can't spend a lot of lifeforce."

"I'd think excising your world-cancer is a good demonstration of character, but I haven't volunteered to teach you summoning, fair. I'll just put you back at your house and get started on this, then."

Temple might be a little afraid of giving a lifeforce based magic to a person with that kind of lifeforce. Not that he is going to comment that.

"Thanks! I will be researching and contacting people... and we completely forgot to introduce each other. I'm Temple Grayward."

"Nick, and I don't have a last name, sorry." He starts flying back to where he came.

"I'm called Temple, I can relate."

Temple is asked to be left on the terrace and informs Nick that he can just come in when he needs a break.

"I'll keep that in mind, thanks."

And he whooshes off and starts sinking large sections of the dead city. It makes a terrible clatter and noise. He miiiight be having fun with the chance to be destructive on a large scale.

The dead city passively sinks into the darkness and the wrongness crawling on his skin diminishes progressively, the place continues being devoid of life no matter where he goes. For a long time there is no change in color with the exception of a red-blue kite hanging from a roof.

If Nick does this long enough he might eventually find the edge of the dead city, hundreds feets of dead forest. A tall and majestic oak literally crumbles and falls while he is watching. Blocky buildings slowly rise from the ground.

The dead forest is, apparently, infected. It'll have to go too. He does this after making sure no people are in the affected area, of course.

Not a single soul. Not even animals, if Nick looks over to the other side of Chasm he might catch sight of a person or two, all passing by, most consistently avoiding towards the other side of the chasm.

When the dying forest goes down Nick is hit by something... hail? No, glowing crystals with lights that fizz out quickly.

Those can stop hitting him, thank you very much. He is a fairy and doesn't have to let things hit him.

He skirts along the spreading edge, dropping infected areas before they spread further. He makes a full circuit around the border of the thing to make sure.

He doesn't complete circuit even after several hours.

Once he finds an infected area on the other side of the chasm, small but easily identifiable by the half-risen stone house near a circle of dead trees.