After my constructs were dispersed, I realised just how interesting this area might be. Even from above, it had been difficult to determine how large it actually was. The smoke continued to obscure my constructs' vision until they got high enough to be above it, which was just about where the clouds sat, continuing to block said vision, so no luck there. However, even with the limited information I had managed to get, I was confident that this wasn’t just some small matter but something big. Maybe not as big as the Charland, but big nonetheless. And not contained like the Charland had been but out in the open, able to spread and burn, despite the fairly miserable weather these last few days and weeks. Usually, I would think that no wildfire would have a chance to spread with almost daily rain showers, soaking soil and vegetation alike, and yet, here we were. Confronted with an area where the ground itself was on fire, with strange goop-men running around spreading the flames.

If I weren’t already paranoid, I would almost certainly get that way by wondering why this happened right now. The fleeing animals we had encountered on the way here indicated that the fire was a recent addition, not something that was slowly spreading from elsewhere. If that were the case, the animals would have fled already, not waited until things became dire enough to have deer run alongside wolves without either party acting as if they were overly interested in the other. I could only imagine that behaviour like that was predicated on both parties realising that they all had much bigger things to worry about than where their next meal would come from or becoming said meal, namely, the massive fire spreading behind them, trying to consume them. Which, quite frankly, was utterly insane and scary, making me wonder if there was something worse than goop-men waiting in the clouds of smoke and ash. A part of me couldn’t wait to find out, while another, slightly less enthusiastic, part was dreading what we might find in there.

But while the question of what might be lurking within these ashen clouds was important, I was just as curious about why this happened now, while our group was in a position to investigate. Sure, it might be a coincidence, and it likely was nothing but one. However, I couldn’t help but wonder. What were the odds?

Thinking about these odds made me realise they might actually be fairly good. As in, the odds of us being the people to investigate, not anybody else. After all, we had seen the flames, or rather the smoke, from some hundred, maybe a hundred-and-fifty kilometres away, before altering our path so we would find out what made the smoke. In other words, it wasn’t as if the fire just happened to spring up right in our path like some sort of burning ambush; we had actively decided to go and figure this particular mess out.

Granted, that didn’t answer the question of why the fire started now, just why we were the ones sitting on this particular hillside, looking down into the mess of smoke, ash and burning ground. We were just nosy, maybe incurably so, which might mean we should get a cat or two, as a canary-in-the-coalmine, so we’d know when to back off because curiosity killed the cat.

However, we had something to figure out before considering getting that curiosity cat. Namely, what was the best way to explore this area safely, especially given that Sasha was, quite frankly, a lot weaker than the rest of us? Her one advantage was that her physical senses were excellent, though not on the same level as Silva's. However, just because she could sense things didn’t mean she was able to handle whatever she was sensing. Granted, that was a general truth, I had been able to faintly sense the connection between Lady Hecate, Luna and myself for a while, but I had no illusions about my ability to handle the Goddess. Maybe, one day in the far future, I might be able to get to the level She currently was on, but by the time I reached that level, She would have advanced even further.

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Pushing the question of how long it might take me to reach Lady Hecate’s level from my mind, I forcibly focused my thoughts back to the question of how to deal with this area. A part of me wondered if I should try to use my recently acquired spirit to influence the weather on a large scale, turning the rainy, drizzly weather into an outright flood, with rain pouring from the sky as if someone up there wanted to drown the world. It sounded amusing, though, as I had to admit to myself, I doubted it would be practical. Not only was the affected area a little too large, too spread-out, for me to extinguish it all at the same time, but there was also the problem that the fires here seemed to be quite unconcerned with the rain already, so would stronger rain change anything? Or would I simply exhaust myself while inviting retaliation from the goop-squad within the burning area, leaving me in a serious mess?

After a few minutes of consideration, I decided that there was nothing wrong with trying, as long as I took some sensible, and paranoid, precautions. The biggest one was not to try it in a vulnerable position, with the corollaries to not stick around to see if it worked and not exposing yourself coming right after that initial precaution.

That meant the best way to go about this would be to make camp first, as the attempt to drown this mess would wipe me out, then move some distance away from the camp, just in case the goop-squad came boiling out of their burning mess and tried to murder me while I was vulnerable. If that happened, a prepared route to escape, maybe with a few obstacles to slow down pursuers, would be worth the time needed to prepare it, especially as it didn’t look like the goop-squad was actually working fast. They were just slowly and steadily expanding the burning area, flinging their goop all over the place and setting it on fire. However, that exactly worked, even from afar, I could see that they were replacing the limbs they flung off as burning goop at a rapid pace, possibly by conjuring more goop to replace what they used. If so, there might be a core or something like that within them, a centre that controlled the goop around it and formed it into these humanoid facsimiles.

After explaining my plan to the others, we got to work. Setting up camp almost five kilometres away from the fire was a routine task, but preparing the position to work my magic was a little different, something I had never quite tried before. Sure, I had used ritual magic before, but mostly by remaining far out of range of those I planned to attack. Here, I just wasn’t sure how severe a reaction I might provoke, meaning I went all-out with the paranoia to the point that it would only be Lia who joined me at the ritual site. Luna, Silva and Sasha would be further back, protecting a fallback position, simply because Lia and I were able to escape from almost any situation thanks to our shared ability to shadow step. Doing so was just about the ultimate tool to escape, a tool none of the others could come close to matching. Hel, even just my wings were a way to escape out of tight spots, assuming these goop-slingers couldn’t just shoot me down like they did with my scrying constructs.

The next evening, as Lia and I moved over to the prepared position, I realised that the distance between our camp and the burning area had shrunk down to roughly four kilometres. That, if nothing else, drove home just how insanely dangerous the goop squad was. It looked like they could spread their burning territory by a kilometre a day without any real wind helping them, while mainly setting soaked ground on fire, while repeated showers added more water to it. What could they do in a dry area?

Would the only thing limiting the spread of fire be the speed at which these creatures could move, because, if so, it would be even more terrifying than the realisation just how much ground they covered already was, as it didn’t look like they were trying to move into the direction of our camp. They were simply expanding, by a kilometre a day in any direction I could observe.

Realising that, I gathered my power, let go of any hesitation, pushed away what little doubt I was feeling about the sheer scale I was trying to work on, and let the magic simply flow through me. From the Astral River, into my body, then into the bound spirit coiled around my arm before releasing it all into the atmosphere around and above me.

And the world answered my silent call.