After Luna walked away with a guide of her own, Maggie turned to focus on me. A few of the people from the Blessed City had been drafted to help her clear some trees, as all areas suitable for farming had already been claimed by Maggie’s community.

  “If you could set something up over there? Maybe a little more solid than the Ice you used yesterday, these people need some stability in their lives,” Maggie asked, her voice completely casual, despite the rather outrageous request. “I’m sure you can manage, right?” she added, trying to goad me into accepting by using my own pride. For a moment, I considered acting petty in some way, simply because I resented the manipulation, but, at the end of the day, I had given my word to help. Plus, Luna was already hard at work and showing off her abilities. I could hardly let my daughter do all the work.

  “I’ll see what I can do,” I nodded, “Say, are there some rocky areas, or maybe an old quarry or cliffside in the area?” I asked, already considering my options.

  “I’ll have someone show you a rocky area. We considered using it to farm, but there’s just not enough soil and far too many rocks there,” she agreed, calling one of her people over.

  The guy didn’t seem to really know what was going on, but he happily guided me over to a hillside. There were some broken buildings in the area, signs of large houses from before the change, but that was about it. A few small trees, nothing special.

  Until I reached out with my Earth Magic, realising that the hillside was a barely covered cliff, where massive rocks had been covered with a thin layer of soil by the wind coming in from the east. A few trees had tried to anchor it, but people had built there, possibly causing additional erosion, and now, the soil would soon disappear on its own. Or it would have, if I weren’t there to use the rocks below.

  “Yeah, I can work with that,” I nodded, speaking mostly to myself, though the guy looked at me with a bit of confusion in his eyes.

  Ignoring him and ignoring his presence, I went to work. I didn’t care to carefully extract the rocks. Instead, I started tugging at the soil, pushing some aside as I manipulated the rocks below. It was hard work, but the large amount of readily available rock meant I didn’t have to conjure or pull up rock from deeper in the earth; I just had to reshape what was present.

  If this had been Ice, I could have done the entire process within half an hour. With rock, it took me longer, maybe two hours of constant and focused casting. My mind split, one half drawing more and more Astral Power into me, drinking deeply from the Astral River, the other half expending that Astral Power back into the world, using it to reshape the stones in the hillside.

  “What’s your progress?” Maggie asked, sounding a little anxious.

  “I’m almost done,” I told her, my voice rough with exhaustion and a little distant, as my mind was mostly occupied.

  “Good, the people are done eating and are looking for their shelter,” she prodded me, obviously hoping that I had the solution she needed.

  “Ask, and ye shall receive,” I replied, feeling a lot more confident now.

  With one last push of my magic, I caused the thin layer of soil I had left in place to drop away, making it look as if the hillside was collapsing. Then, after the dust settled a few seconds later, the hillside had been replaced with multiple large barns.

  “This should do it, right?” I asked, noticing just how many people had followed Maggie and were now staring in disbelief. A part of me wanted nothing but to disappear into the shadows, but, sadly, I needed to recover some Astral Power for that. For now, I was stuck here, being stared at.

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  “How did Luna do?” I asked, just to break the silence that had settled over the group after my earlier demonstration. It felt a little awkward that these people had been staring at me with wide, disbelieving eyes for over a minute. Given the sheer number of people who were surrounding me, it felt almost unreal, as if someone had magically silenced the group. But there was no magic at work here, at least not on the silenced people. Just pure incredulity and disbelief.

  “We haven’t checked yet,” Maggie replied, her voice sounding a little strangled, “Just heard a few trees come down, but that’s about it.”

  “We can head over there, and anyone who’s interested can check out your new accommodations,” I suggested. “I’ll return later to finish things. You know, add glass to the window and some enchantments for heat and ventilation. Oh, and install bathrooms of some sort,” I added, remembering how much work there still was to do. But, right now, I needed a bit of time to recover Astral Power, or I would simply fold, too exhausted to continue. Not quite what I had in mind.

  “Yes, that’s a good idea,” Maggie nodded, most of her wits recovered after the earlier shock. Maybe the realisation that these were only shells helped her cope, I wasn’t sure. Or she simply decided to roll with the punches; she wasn’t bad at that either.

  Together, we walked over to the area where Luna was working, and I was quite impressed with her progress. Her volunteers were hard at work. They had already knocked over a few trees, not a mean feat given that these trees were just as strengthened by the system as the people working on them were.

  Luna, on the other hand, was doing something entirely different. She was standing between two of them fallen trees, a hand on each trunk and showed that they hadn’t just knocked trees over, but she had already processed a few of them. The trees she had her hands on were decaying with a speed easily visible to the naked eye. It almost looked like one of those nature documentary montages, with a time-lapse of a tree's lifecycle. Only that this was the end of that cycle, and Luna was rapidly turning the massive pieces of wood into nutrients that seeped into the soil.

  “Mom, can you help me mix the soil? Maybe push the rocks deeper, or push them to the side? We don’t want all the nutrients at the top layer; we want them to be distributed a little, so the crops can thrive,” Luna asked, after noticing our approach.

  For a moment, I hesitated, gauging the recovery of my Astral Power. It had been some time since I had to do that, though we luckily weren’t engaged in combat at the moment.

  “I’ll see what I can do,” I promised, leaning against one of the trees at the edge of the clearing, letting my senses stretch down into the earth.

  I could immediately see that Luna was right; the soil was completely saturated with organic matter. Slowly, to keep the cost down, I started moving the soil gently, allowing the fresh organic compost to mix with soil from deeper layers of the ground, spreading the fertile blessing Luna was providing farther into the soil, so it would hopefully last longer. At the same time, I started to pull up stones, moving them to the side so this new field would have a nice boundary.

  “Well, seems like you have things in hand,” I told Luna, after I had recovered enough of my power to finish my own work. She was making good progress, though it was obvious she had a long way to go, simply because her job was much bigger than mine had been, especially with the required land recovery.

  “You have no idea just how insane the two of you are, right?” Maggie asked me, as we were walking away. She had watched Luna for a bit, occasionally shaking her head in disbelief, making me wonder how much she had been able to sense.

  “It depends, I guess,” I shrugged, “If you compare us to some low-level guy, sure, we are utterly insane. But you need to remember something,” I admonished her.

  “While we might not have the highest level in the world, I’d be rather surprised if you could find anyone who can match the scope of my arcane abilities. With those abilities come certain traits and titles, which add a tremendous amount of depth to my skills, allowing me to do things that would usually be impossible for anyone but a complete specialist.”

  “So, you are a magical jack of all trades, who is also a master of all trades?” she asked, her voice a little incredulous.

  “Somewhat, yes,” I agreed, “There might be an Earth Mage out there who could match what I did with the houses, but I wouldn’t bet on it.” I shrugged again, hoping that Maggie understood I was serious, not speaking in some sort of hyperbole. Though, at the end of the day, did it really matter for these people what other arcanists who might live on another continent could do? Here, they had me, and that should be the goal any local arcanist should aspire to become.

  Hopefully, they weren’t discouraged, thinking the path too arduous.