Lidea only half-watched where ey was going, trusting the expert paving of city civil engineers to get em where ey needed to be. Further from the coast, the houses took on a peaked shape, forming high cavities for heat to float into. The oldest buildings were most likely local wood and river clay. Ey knew to look for that much after all this time traveling with Sunny. The rest was outside the confines of eir expertise. 

Maintaining a river town took a population of some degree, but humans in this part of the continent were disinclined toward bulking up into proper cities. Rugged individualism pushed them into clusters of homesteads, pretending to be independent from the urban center that gave them them the ability to live. 

Outside a stout town hall, a pedal bus was poised to launch, and they swung on board. The collective faire was adding a round of charge to the battery, and ey settled into one of the pedal seats. The age of the model showed in the grind of the drive belt as ey set eir feet to the wooden foot holds. They crawled forward, gently passing a combination of exhausted locals and uniformed laborers, all color- and style-coded for their position and affiliation.

The locals preferred a flowy, light-colored, knee-length tunic, belted with a beaded sash, embroidered vest on top to bring color and shape. Sometimes ankle-length dresses or ballooning pants but always flowing and draped. The official uniforms from the local Royalty built from that base, changing out a pleated skirt for the tunic and adding a structured jacket. Emissaries from the Connected Government, like the Corps of Engineers, were put in uniforms cut to the same patterns wood elves had been wearing for a couple of centuries. A shirt with a stand-up collar and simple structure, long and straight all the way through the hips, over boxy pants of various lengths. Eir own outfit was of a similar make, long asymmetric coat over linen leggings. At one point it had been a bloody maroon, but time had faded it into a threadbare dust-brown. Ey touched eir shoulder, suddenly unsure if ey had pinned eir embroidered epaulet in place, the thing that displayed her rank and station within eir given organization. Ey hadn’t. Ah well. 

Ey couldn’t see in her mind’s eyes what Sunny had chosen to wear today, but he most certainly wasn’t wearing any of his badges. 

The tram trundled past the post office, a butcher, a bakery, a wagon works, dry goods store, a cheesemonger, a second bakery. There were agreements in places like this to not compete directly with one another. In the absence of a proper patisserie, one of those establishments focused on sweeter or more delicate foods.

The ariesian agricultural agent had them get off in front of a hospital building, fat and squat even for three stories. The river shuddered at the bottom of a long, wide incline. It was plenty to keep the river from threatening the bottom floors of the hospital but not quite enough to save the trees in the back garden. A few had taken enough damage to the trunks to form large gashes, and all of them had lost some lower branches. These were already stacked up neatly.

As they approached down a side path, ey immediately understood why they had asked em to come. 

“Bidderbark tree is an interesting choice for a hospital garden,” ey said. 

“Yeah,” the ariesian replied. “Scholar Andiero asked the hospital admin, and they said it’s been here longer than any of them.” 

“Certainly big enough around for it.” 

A fae-child — tall and angular with tan skin, light hair, and pointed ears — met em at the edge of the path, holding out a hand for a shake. Ey took it, bracing for the weird flow of energy that would come through their bio-magical auras. Humans read like humans. Elves read like elves. No two cross-breeds, like eirself, read the same, their shape determined by whatever specific genetic ratios they came away with. 

Fae-children were the only uniformally balanced genetic blend of the two species, a self-propagating hybrid germinated at the nexus of two ancient population clusters. That perfection grated against eir comparatively piecemeal bio-magic field and caught itself on the ragged edges. 

Ey withstood the handshake long enough to not seem rude, then let emself be lead to the base of the tree in question. A massive gash leaked black-green xylem where debris had smashed a foot-wide hole in the widest part of the tree. Magic poured out, invisible syrup that formed a sticky pool at the base of the tree. It had the hollow of footsteps where anyone insensitive to magic would have walked through aimlessly. Ey hovered on the edge, considering its dimensions. 

Every world had a different magical density. Here, Correlan, leaned toward the denser side, but it had wild variances that weren’t nearly as common on other worlds. This particular patch of northeast Illuria was stable, so this amount of concentrated magic didn’t require more than a basic standard of care. On a higher-density world or area, ey would be struggling through some nausea, at minimum, in a situation like this.

Lidea’s short staff came out of a hip holster, and ey shook out a collapsible part in the interior. With the metal tip touched to the soil, ey used the differential in energy to trace the edge of the pooling magic in the dirt. 

“More than I realized,” Scholar Andiero chirped. “Do you have any experience in magi-horticulture?”

“I’m more of a physicist,” Lidea replied absently, still trying to sketch the rate and flow of the magic spill. This seemed like a lot of magic energy loss by pure volume alone. Ey gazed up through the branches of the tree looking for signs of sickness and decay. Nothing stood out immediately, but then…again…ey wasn’t an arborist.

“So what I’m thinking,” Andiero began. Lidea stopped her with a raised hand. 

Ey sunk eir staff into the soil between two roots, trying not to damage any of the tree as ey pushed deeper. Pulling in through the mineral cluster at the head of the staff, ey pulsed magic down into the dirt. A fractal diagram of magic blew up under eir feet, hiccuping around tree roots and rocks, fermented magic chunnels through the limestone groundwork. The tree wasn’t dying because it was maintaining it’s magic pressure by drawing up groundmagic to supplement what it brought in through its leaves. This wouldn’t be a problem if it was cycling it regularly back into the atmosphere. It wasn’t though; instead, slopping its homeostasis across the grass. 

But then again again, ey wasn’t an ecologist. 

Ey was just a weirdo who could change the frequency of magic and move it around.

Lidea pulled eir staff from the ground then back to Andiero.

“You need to watch for magic hollows when you’re working down here,” Lidea said starkly. Ey gestured at the tree. 

“What else do you need me for?”