It was quite impressive how quickly the otherwise nearly mundane woman could move when thinking that her child might be threatened. While I didn’t use Observe to confirm her level, the rest of my senses could give me an estimation that she was below level twenty and a lot closer to ten than twenty, meaning she was just about as weak as she had been before the change. And yet, she managed to get to her child before I reached it, even though we had started a lot closer. Granted, neither Luna nor I had actually tried to get to the child all that fast and took our time, still, the alacrity with which she had moved was impressive.

The child was still bawling as the mother gently, but frantically, tried to ascertain the boy’s physical state, not that she could do all that much.

“Do you need help?” I asked, keeping my voice deliberately calm and trying to project a gentle, maybe even caring or nurturing, aura. I wasn’t certain how successful that particular attempt was; the woman didn’t seem to calm down as I had hoped, but she also didn’t appear to be panicking.

“What?” the woman briefly glanced at me before focusing back on the bawling child, “What can you do to help?” she asked, apparently accepting that I might be able to do things she couldn’t, or maybe she had noticed that the arm of her boy looked a little… off. Not quite as straight as an arm was supposed to look.

“May I?” I reached out to touch the boy, my movement unhurried, giving the woman ample time to stop me if she so desired.

“Just help him,” her voice was almost pleading now, possibly because she realised that a broken arm could be quite bad and, if the boy was unlucky, lead to serious complications later in life.

“First, let’s take care of the dirt,” I started to narrate what I was doing as my Earth Magic easily pulled the dirt, grime and dust off the boy, and even his clothing, leaving him almost as pristine as if he had just taken a bath, the accumulated stuff dropping to the ground a few steps away.

“Now, his physical condition,” I gently touched a path of bare skin near the boy’s neck, “The various cuts, some of those might get infected if we aren’t careful,” I explained and, with a brief flare of my Blood Magic, the cuts sealed, the blood on the boy’s skin disappearing in the process. “But the real problem is the arm, I’m afraid one of the bones is broken. This might take a moment and feel quite strange, child,” I warned the boy, who had forgotten that he had been bawling just moments before, the magic obviously distracting his thoughts from the pain he had been feeling. Additionally, I had dampened his perception of pain quite a bit; Mind Magic was quite the anaesthetic if I wished it to be, leaving the child to stare at me with a mix of disbelief and wonder. After all, I had just cleaned him up, though he might not care about that, while also making the pain go away.

Closing my eyes for a moment, before letting them open again, now blazing with Overflow as I pushed my Blood Magic in a way it normally wouldn’t go, using additional power to cover the inefficiency of this particular use. The small bump on the child’s arm disappeared, while the boy made a strange, slightly strangled noise, not quite a cry, not quite a moan, just a weird noise. A part of me wondered how the sensation of having my magic fuse his bone back together felt, or for me to shift around his bones, but I didn’t think asking would get a useful response. The boy simply lacked the experience to meaningfully relate what he felt. Hel, even I would probably be unable to translate some weird, arcane sensation into something another person who related to magic differently than I did could understand.

“Now, that looks a great deal better, right?” I asked, after checking the boy again and letting his perception of pain return to normal. A part of me considered whether I should introduce a lingering sensation of pain, one that faded as the pain from a broken arm would have, as pain could be an excellent teacher all by itself. In this case, the lesson would have been to be more cautious and not run around like a hyperactive fool, though I wasn’t sure if it would be wise. It would likely help the boy in the long run, but short-term, it might harm my image in the eyes of his mother.

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“Are you an angel? It doesn’t hurt any longer,” the boy stared at me, now with undisguised awe, while the mother had a similar expression on her face, though hers had a lot of gratitude added in.

I couldn’t help but chuckle a little at the idea that I might be angelic, even if I had managed to grow a pair of wings.

“No, I’m no angel,” I shook my head, “Just somebody able to help, a Traveller if you will,” I told him, briefly glancing at the boy’s mother. “Would you mind telling me about this community?” I asked her, curious what she might relate to me. Hopefully, it would be something I could use to get the people here to fight the Bitumen. Eventually, they likely would have to, unless they decided to leave their current homes and flee, likely travelling south or something like that.

“Sure,” the woman answered, her hands roaming over her child’s body, as if trying to make sure that every part of him was where it was supposed to be and that he remained healthy, despite the tumble, broken arm and strange woman with glowing eyes and hair doing something to him. A part of me wanted to be insulted, but a more realistic part was aware that mothers should worry about their children and want to make sure they are fine. Mine certainly did just that.

While the woman, whose name was Catherine, as I learned during our conversation, didn’t go into too much detail on the local situation, we were just standing in the middle of the path after all, not the most comfortable place for a long discussion, I learned enough to get a fair grasp of it.

Here, as it had probably happened in numerous other places, the locals had managed to gather together in the aftermath of the change and, thanks to the devastation of their homes, decided to make a go at it elsewhere, with a better geographical situation. The location of the town they had been living in had been chosen to work in a modern, civilised situation, not the primitive state they had been reduced to.

Among the survivors, a mix of local natives and, curiously, oilfield workers had formed the core of their new society; the two vastly different groups worked together to ensure the group’s survival. Among those, a somewhat elderly, but apparently highly respected, native who generally went by "Chief" had taken over a leadership role, ensuring that people were working together and had the necessary training. Why the guy had been called “Chief” before becoming their leader, I wasn’t sure and I wasn’t about to assume some tribal connection, just to make sure I wasn’t making an ass out of me.

When she mentioned oilfield workers, I realised that this might be what the Bitumen and the burned area had spawned from, the oilfields and the devastation caused by humans chasing the energy-dense substance might have left some sort of metaphysical stain on the area, or even a literal one.

If I remembered correctly, there had been an area in the Middle East before the change where the locals wanted to burn off some natural gas in a pit so they could drill for more oil, only to have that gas burn for decades with no sign of stopping. If something remotely similar had happened here, and the Astral River and magic were introduced into the mix, the result could easily be quite spectacular. And highly unpredictable, including the presence of the Bitumen and the mess they were causing.

Not that the root cause truly mattered. At the end of the night, why the Bitumen had come into existence and their reasons for burning the world were somewhat irrelevant. Their devastation needed to be stopped before they managed to taint the Astral River; it was that simple.

“Would you be able to introduce me to the Chief?” I asked, not quite sure how to phrase the request more politely.

“Sure, though he might be out hunting with a few others, I’m not sure about their rotations,” she agreed, pulling her son along as she started down the path, walking with purpose while leaving me to follow behind. After sharing a look with Luna, we did just that, curious about this “Chief”.