They are humans! This one has been drinking the poisonous water!

"Wow, you're as far as I can tell exactly the same species as my home planet. That's inexplicable but makes this easier for me. Thank you. Aqueduct should be flowing clean water in an hour."

Healing subtle damage for someone other than himself is unfortunately well beyond his capabilities. Most colors of Lantern need a full medical degree per species to do healing.

"Thank you. Thank you so much."

"Happy to. No one deserves this."

And then he's zipping off, back to hang in the sky extending tendrils of red light into the aquifer to make it one that produces water healthy for humans.

This might be very visible, if the sky isn't too bright here. On purpose - he may not be powered by hope but he has sure as hell practiced inspiring it. Big magic-according-to-Clarke displays tend to help.

It looks like the person he scanned is spreading the word. A ragged cheer arises.

Nobody cheers like people who have been beaten down - by other people or by circumstance - and just got a real sign of hope.

As it often does, it makes his constructs falter a little.

But this still happened and it isn't fixed and he will not accept that - and they're back and working. And soon, it's done.

He can't go infinitely far, and the ground shifts slowly. But they're good for at least a decade, probably two or three before it gets to dangerous levels again.

He should go warn them of that. Let's zip over to a big concentration.

"Water's pure at the spring now. Should be flowing safe soon."

Applause!

"I will warn you, it's going to be pure for years - at least a decade - but not forever. The earth moves and cracks open up, so in a generation or two, you'll need to be careful again."

"And if there aren't any questions, I should probably go back to Gatesnest to work on how to make sure you get those decades."

Whooping and cheering and weeping!

He lifts into the air and waves, then zips off.

He's flagging, but not too tired yet... He'll stop at the tower hangout, see if anyone wants to get his attention.

The first mage woman he spoke to is there now, with

a friend.

"Hey, are you the space alien?"

"Yeah, that's me, just took a break fixing Zibaran's spring. I mostly go by Red Lantern."

"Good to meet you, Red Lantern. I hear you can do a lot of things but not directly get rid of the disappearance points or whisk us all to wherever you came from?"

"I haven't gone all-out trying to destroy one and my last test backfired kind of bad so I'm putting off that test a bit. I'm not that optimistic. And I am very thoroughly lost - I didn't get here entirely under my own power, and I have star charts good across my entire home galaxy and we're definitely not in it. So no, no easy whisking."

"Is there anywhere you can get to in the next, say, week, which has breathable air."

"Nowhere I know about. Given time I can map the stars nearby and find the ones with rocky planets and distinguishing the ones with air composition mostly like here isn't much harder, but... I'd have to get very lucky for it to be within a week. In a month, probably fifty-fifty."

"Can you give powers like yours to anyone else?"

"Yes, but unfortunately they will all also be powered by the pure element of anger and it's really hard to find people who can channel that productively. Training for promising candidates usually is six months. Crash course just for scouting planets would be faster, but... I'm not sure how much faster."

"Can you do anything in the vein of time travel. Can you call for help. Can you create matter ex nihilo."

"Not that I know of; not by any of my usual methods, but I should make an all-out attempt; yes, though very slowly, and I can do a reasonable facsimile for some types of matter by grabbing massive amounts from the outer solar system or another solar system."

"Okay. Short term problems are that we have stopped using magic including for lifesaving applications and recent war fallout has disrupted global trade and production and also there has been a fair amount of vengeful violence against mages though you have arrived during an ebb. Medium term problems are that we are losing air pressure and the gravity to keep it in place and the stability of the ground beneath our feet. Feeding the disappearance points should slow this problem down; adding matter to the world in places where it won't be instantly eaten should also help. Long term problems are that the magic system underlying our way of life apparently does this so if we could import some other magic that would be super awesome."

"If we can solve the crisis, I have - enough of a library to cover a planet - stored in my ring, and can get you technological uplift of - a couple centuries within this generation. Also train more Red Lanterns, and assuming it's possible to get home and back under my own power, the other five types of Lantern which are mostly much friendlier magic. Technically advanced technology, but as my homeworld says, get it sufficiently advanced and it's indistinguishable, and we can't make them except by using them, almost no one can."

"Short term - lifesaving and stopping violence without inflicting further violence are weak points. If people are willing to use gates given said violence I could get them spread around the planet rapidly, which might help for trade, and I can also do - road and canal repair, that kind of thing - very quickly."

"Trade is disrupted not only by the routes being wrecked - though there are roads and bridges and canals that could use fixing - but also lingering bad feeling over the war, people giving up on bothering because they expect to die, and various participants being dead of earthquakes or the war or whatever else."

"I'm no diplomat, or healer. For general fatalism - best I can do is be very showy about fixing things and give people reason for hope. I think it worked in Zibaran, but they're probably not the ones hit worst by the war. I do think it's justified hope - Lantern rings are called the most powerful tool in the universe, and I have the one that's mostly a weapon but I'm - bragging a little - the best Red Lantern alive at using it constructively, so I think buying lots of time is very possible."

"My plan to beat is to grab tons of rock cores from the asteroids, cut out the disappearance points and throw them away, and stick the masses of rock in their places. Someone said it would cause lots of big earthquakes, and they're probably right, but from my tests today I'm confident it would work."