"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.

Yikes. He blasts that and several hundred feet around it.

He can fly much faster than he can drop things. When he wants to take a break it takes only minutes to return to Temple's house. Since he was invited to do so earlier, he walks right in, muttering, "That place is unnerving."

"You don't need to tell me! I can still feel it in my bones. How did it went?"

Temple's house is ecletically decorated and he is currently in his studio, with several charts and diagrams on the walls and desks.

"I think it's a lot bigger than I thought. It'll take weeks to clear properly, unless I contrive to have you summon more fairies and pay them whatever they want. Food, trinkets, copies of your magic plants."

"Weeks is good enough for me. The people here took the thing as a horrible fact of life. How likely is the plan to summon multiple fairies?"

"I'd have to check whether summoning even works properly here, it could be that getting me was a once-in-a-lifetime fluke. But if it works once, it probably works however many times you want it to. A small army of fairies could sink the dead city in days and be paid by the output of one particularly busy cupcake bakery. There's a risk of getting a jerk who figures out a loophole in their bindings, but if I'm careful with those it's a small risk I think."

"How do you stop a fairy if that is necessary? I can actually get an army-worth of food if that is what it takes. Do you want exclusivity for magic plants?"

"Exclusivity with magic plants would be nice, yes... You stop a fairy by unsummoning them, which you do by wanting them gone very hard until it takes."

"Good to know. I can't promise other won't design plants for themselves and this kind of work requires review by the High-Library of Magic even if is never used again, but they are amicable to special arragements if it is what it takes to destroy the dead city. Oh, sorry. Are you hungry? Or tired?"

"I don't need a guarantee of exclusivity, I just want the things you're making for me to be only for me. I'll be selling them soon enough, anyway. I could use something to eat, but I'd just as soon have lots of coffee or tea and get back to sinking the dead city instead of sleeping."

"Fair enough." Temple says and he leads Nick to his kitchen and presents offers of coffee and teas, including two kinds he never heard before, plus snacks.

He tries one of the new kinds. And eats snacks. And casually looks around the house, because it's actually pretty interesting to see new kinds of magic. "What other kinds of things does your magic make?"

The new kind is delicious. The home actually has signs of technology, from early 21th century. But everything is mixed with things that might be magic. There is an garishly blue cactus next to the small tv. The lights are crystals (quite similar to the ones that fell on Nick) and the lightswitches have arcane symbols on them. There is no visible ventilation system, but the air is comfortable and cool. There is a microwave siting right next to a wooden closet that works as a fridge. In hindsight, a lot of the decorative things might be magical, given that they are covered with symbols, but it's hard to tell what they do if they do anything at all.

"Besides what I already told? A variety of things, usually better than what plants can do, like shaping living things, ilusions, influence the weather, calming animals, creating portals. I'm a sorcerer and we have extra lifeforce and gifts and one of mine is the ability to create portals through water."

Temple demonstrates this ability, half emptying a plant vase into a pot and submerging his hand... which then exits through the vase, thumbs up.

The portals thing gets an eyebrow-raise and an appreciative whistle. "That's extremely cool. I'm used to higher technology than what you're using, and I have to wonder what you could make by combining higher tech with magic."