She shakes her head. "This - this magic... Well, I have something urgent to do. Not worth the delay for something that only might help. Here's another two thousand, then. And I will be off after that."

"I hope your errand is Good."

"I believe it is more good than evil. Sometimes, that is the best one can do."

She waits for the Cure. Then goes over to the translator. He babbles something but she talks over him, standing over him menacingly.

"Him? I trust. He says things in certain ways, it's... I trust. But you, are a coward. You speak fear and hope as a language. I believe you know in your heart of hearts, that going to the shadowed masters for some reward is a foolish choice. They will disbelieve you. If they do believe you, they will pretend to care for you, and then kill you to silence you. It would be an idiot's death. I am trying to intimidate you, yes. It's how it's done, is it not? Remember this also, as you said it yourself: The Pumas keep grudges. I will leave messages. A description. If you get me captured by corporate interests, they will find you. They will determine whether you spoke of my presence here. If you did, they will remove one third of your skin. It takes several hours. You do not die from this. No, you die from infection several weeks later. That does not sound fun at all, does it? You understand? Good."

"Anything else before I leave, healer?"

"I cannot allow anyone to be taken for the thing you describe if he is with me."

"They will not be asking politely." She sighs. "I pray it does not come to that."

"I will pray this also, but She is busy, so we must also be."

She gets on her motorcycle and drives away.

He goes into the church to see if she's done anything awful to it.

There's a couple of bloodstains and a discarded bloody bandage. The glowing egg is sitting on the floor.

He sets about Prestidigitating the floor clean. And the bandage, he doesn't have another one around and it might one day be handy. It takes him a long time but he's been practicing.

"That's not sterile," his translator says of the bandage. "Not clean enough. Boiled in water maybe will get it there. Want to play chess instead? It kinda helps me calm down."

"I don't know if Prestidigitation makes a thing sterile or not," he says. "Maybe it would if I was better at it. But of course." Chess.

Two days later there is a huge firefight off in the distance in the middle of the night. Booms echo out over the desert. There is the faint orange glow of fire in the direction of Cinci's lights.

There's not a ton he can do about that from here but pray. He does try to gauge the distance to see if it might be worth going and checking for survivors once the fighting settles.

His translator guesses five to eight miles before hiding in the church.

That's at least two hours walking, in all this sand. Anyone who isn't stable will be dead by then. He sits up, in case anyone motors his way with an injured friend on a motorcycle.

The fight cools off rapidly when a dust storm rolls in a few hours later. A convoy of technicals and one APC with a blasted-open turret drive past his church but don't stop, pushing through the sand, a bit after.

Then presumably they don't need him or didn't hear the rumors.

He goes back to sleep.

Half a dozen people who have stopped by in the past show up over the course of the next day, for healing. One of them has spare radiator fluid and gas for sale, and his translator declares his intent to leave tomorrow.

"It's been surprisingly good hanging out here. Maybe I'll come back."

"You are welcome if you do."

Blai doesn't have any objects which take radiator fluid or gas. He'd like paper. He has very little sense of how much the currency is worth because so few of the things for sale are familiar but he might eventually be in the market for ruby dust.

He brings everybody into the church's channeling area, which doesn't have a ceiling yet but is at least the right shape, and stands in the middle to channel.

Some of these people can sell him paper. Or guns and ammo. Or nonperishable food and water. Or, in one case, a single land mine ostensibly disarmed and recovered from the battle site.

He does not want a land mine. He... will, actually, take a gun and some ammo for it, now that he's tried one out, since he doesn't have a ranged weapon of his own. He doesn't need water, he always has Create Water, but nonperishable food couldn't hurt anything.

The people waiting for the channel trade amongst themselves a bit, too. Someone buys the land mine. Someone else says he'll look into ruby dust and asks what sort of facilities he'd want to build if he were ordering them up.

Ultimately it would be nice to have a kitchen garden, if things will grow here with enough water, and maybe some furniture which isn't stone and can be moved around. He'll run out of salt for his created food eventually.