The terror of Slough wore off rather quickly.  With the marauding goddess gone, as far as the Rottenbone was concerned, all was well in the world.  As powerfully as ever, the Deepwood throbbed with life.  While Slough rested, fatigued by her unwitting use of godly power, a Deepwood sloth began to sing.  Its long, low tones echoed through the trees, filling each branch with a simple but moving tune.  A troupe of Slate Apes passed Slough by on their daily journey for fruit, and the youngest of the bunch stopped to watch the deer, fascinated.  Slough stared back until the ape’s mother shuffled over to grab it and pull it onto her back, and just like that the troupe was gone.  After several minutes, the Rottenbone became aware that a fallen bough only a few feet away from her was in fact a Bushy Arborgator, but the predator paid no attention to the ghoul nearby.

Before too long, Slough started walking.  Moving slowly and methodically to ease her pain, she allowed her instincts to guide her –though she had no choice- closer to the center of the forest.  Oblivious of what she sought, she loped until she came upon a sunlit patch in the otherwise murky ground.  A familiar presence drew her gaze, so she turned her skeletal face toward a lone figure, strange and unearthly in appearance, asleep on the branch of a tree.  A few moments passed while she stared before she turned back the way she came.  In her wake, however, an azure bluet bloomed, tiny but pretty in the haven of sunlight.

There was no telling how much time passed.  To Slough, it might have as well been hours.  Nothing interesting happened until a new, weird creature appeared in the Deepwood, one altogether more bizarre than the slimiest Violet Slug or the most vivid Rainbow Silky.  Slough paused in her feeding to follow the bulbous, flitting thing with her head.  Like a dust mote it ducked and circled, but it appeared to be pink and winged, held up by a process suspiciously like life rather than some errant wind.  When it had Slough’s full attention, its array of mouths opened, and in a medium of impulse it communicated to the decaying deer the wishes of the distant All-Beauty.  Then it flapped off, and Slough felt it appropriate to honor wishes.  Drawn to a point far away, beyond the edges of her vibrant home, she moved at a brisk pace.  When she came to the edge of the basin, which by now featured plantlife all its own, she walked into a nearest tree as if it were the most normal thing in the world, and reappeared on a branch hundreds of feet above, a short jump away from the surface.  Slough hopped nimbly from the huge branch onto the earth, giving a short cry at the agony of impact, but soon straightened up.  Before her stretched an endless and featureless expanse.  Grass from the Deepwood had spread out some way, but beyond it and a few scattered trees of thoroughly unremarkable size, nothing interrupted to barren waste.

Then Slough started to run.

Despite her everpresent hurt, she moved with the certain elegance one discerns in a functional natural system, and as she left the grass behind more sprouted beneath her feet.  New plants, bulkier, greener, and without leaves, erupted from the soil.  The intermediate between tree and cactus, they would colonize the region between the forest Slough left behind and the desert she would encounter on the way to the Fractal Sea.  Thorny bushes emerged from the earth, and from between the brambles came new, hardier creatures.  Tortoises, scorpions, rabbits, lizards, peccaries, and more dotted the scrubland.  The power of life beat mightily in Slough as her own heart, but for now no true might eked from the essence of life she left behind.  A rather unsatisfactory scrubland took hold, but in time nature would resurge and create an expansive habitat all its own.  Even now, though, unique forms of life took hold.  [url=http://img03.deviantart.net/e620/i/2015/182/4/a/caecuraptor_redux_by_katepfeilschiefter-d8zl05v.jpg]Fleet-footed Manglers[/url] raced across the savannah-to-be like blurs, hunting [url=http://img02.deviantart.net/406c/i/2012/056/3/a/bull_black_tongue_by_katepfeilschiefter-d4qym5i.jpg]Pearskin Cattle[/url] and avoiding gargantuan [url=http://pre15.deviantart.net/5d2d/th/pre/f/2016/042/0/3/glb_by_davesrightmind-d9m2cwm.jpg]Brush Beasts[/url], from whom Toun might take notes on the concept of ‘giant’.

As Slough advanced, her influence waned.  Less life energy poured from her, and by the time the climate became too hot and arid to sustain the same kind of ecosystem as that she left behind, her power was spent.  Nevertheless, the Rottenbone trekked on through the sandy waste, compelled by her own wild volition to seek the Fractal Sea.  The desert through which she traveled offered only one thing of interest: a six-armed being of porcelain white.  Slough went around it.

[hider=Rottenbone Slough, Not in Kansas Anymore]
-Slough happened upon the sleeping avatar of Ull’Yang, and a tiny flower grew to commemorate the meeting
-The freaky message creature from Jvan arrived and did its thing, and Slough began on her quest.
-On the way to the Fractal Sea, Slough unwittingly seeded a barren land into a scrubland, which will develop into a proper and awesome Savannah, worthy of its own name and creation sheet, once she gets Might
-She encountered one of Toun’s giants in the desert beyond the scrubland and went around it.
-Slough is about 3/5 of the way to the Fractal Sea.[/hider]