...yeah.

"Anything I can do-"

"I wanted to heal them but I could only do one and it would have been so bright."

"Some of the Shadows might want to move them. Then we could get them healing - elemental or just regular -"

Sniffle. Nod.

"I'm sorry. I wish we could rescue you all into a world that doesn't have anything horrible."

The Shine goes and tracks all the remaining repositories of red children and tells the Shadows where they are.

"Biyan's going to drown in garbage, lots of people are going to die. I'm not saying we should try to deter them from rescuing tortured children. Just."

"Who's going to die, exactly?"

"The reds aren't going to keep working once the kids are free. They'll probably flee, Biyan'll probably kill them, Biyan won't be able to handle its pollution and everyone'll stop trade with them, someone'll overthrow the government internally or a neighbor'll conquer them -"

"Demonstrate ability, issue ultimatum?"

"You can maybe get the reds out but that doesn't solve Biyan's pollution problem."

"There ought to be some way to magically purify things. I mean, water, I can do water, so can Waters, but I mean something that will let people do stuff without freaking out."

"I don't think I understand the - thing that magic can do - well enough to guess. Can it vanish garbage or something -"

"...a Fire could burn it..."

"Can a Fire do, like, fire which avoids harming a person."

"Kind of. Their halos can be like that - like how they look like they're on fire but don't light up the carpet."

"The case could probably be made to some theologians that that suffices for decontamination, depending what exactly it does, but - there aren't many of you and you aren't going to want to do chores all the time..."

"Is handling garbage actually that complicated? I don't understand why training people takes so long."

"Garbage no - I mean, you have to learn to operate the trucks, but it's a weeklong course, not this - protracted tragedy - but maintaining the sewage systems has a lot to it and preparing bodies for burial does too and there's a lot of turnover because non-reds are likely to get too grossed out."

"If there were easier travel between worlds maybe they could hire humans, we're harder to gross out." Sigh.

"People would end up seeing them as reds, I worry. Still might be an improvement. Maybe if you're not decent to your humans they just wouldn't have kids at all."

"Maybe. And like, some humans are magic, watch out."

"If reds were magic people wouldn't treat them better, they'd just panic and massacre them. It might stop people from seeing the humans as red in the first place."

"And we could avoid the generational thing."

"Uh huh. Biyan might be far enough along in the transition that it won't be a catastrophe."