CALEN

  "I still don't see what you're worried about."

  Calen rolled his eyes at the assertion. He had backed off after the door had shut, reassuring himself that someone would be watching them way more closely if this was part of a weird ritual. Viran's apology and subsequent retreat had left his sister looking like she had just accidentally kicked a puppy into a blender.

  Em was going to be fine, she just needed a minute to stabilize. Even if stabilizing had looked a whole lot like robotically climbing into an almost-boiling tub of water with a knife in hand.

  Now, three-quarters of the way through dressing, she was displaying almost none of the lethargy she had even ten minutes earlier. The gentle, humming infusion of mana against Calen's skin as he lowered himself into the lukewarm water confirmed at least some of what was going on.

  Mana in the water had been a major factor in getting them up the hill last night, and now they were being marinated.

  Seasoned, even.

  Calen suppressed a shudder, and decided not to bring up that particular line of reasoning when Emma had just barely managed to stop freezing like a deer in the headlights when she saw Viran. He just needed to help her stay stable until it was time to leave.

  Hopefully they could get out of here after the week Dovin had promised them, get far far away before anyone learned much about them, and never have to worry about the half-crazy cannibal juggernaut with the obviously cursed sword ever again.

  "Em, the very first thing Mahira did when she got you alone was try to get you to describe—" Calen lowered his voice "—the reaction I'm not even going to name in this echoey room, because the Warden heard me say her title three hundred feet up a cliff while she was having another conversation."

  Emma rolled her eyes before wrinkling her nose in confusion at the obviously-a-loincloth that wouldn't quite tie correctly around her chest.

  She didn't seem to realize that Calen's pile of clothing had one too, or that neither Mirri nor anyone else with wings had displayed any sign of actually having those particular assets, just a vaguely similar torso shape.

  The muscles to flap those wings had to be somewhere.

  "She didn't know what she was asking. And these *people* are already helping us," Emma dismissed. "You're being paranoid."

  Calen let her make that mistake on her own, and pressed again at the important detail. The one that might get them killed, if Em was still functioning on plan 'get help from the first strangers we meet.'

  "And when we were lost in the woods, that almost made sense," Calen argued. "Now they're rolling out the red carpet instead of shoving us with the rest of the prisoners. I'm just saying we should be very careful what we tell them, because we don't know what happens when we stop being useful."

  And he was only so in-charge of the dangerous knowledge. An honorary B-plus in chemistry after finals got canceled only got you so far, at least compared to miss 'I got the AP Physics courses done over the summer so I could focus on my application essay.'

  Especially when she seemed intent on laying all their cards down right away.

  "So we should actually try to be useful, so that we're worth saving," Emma shot back, missing the point entirely. "Someone just died trying to keep us alive, and Dovin made you put a helmet on so you couldn't trip and break your skull, they're not going to turn around and throw us in a volcano. I give up, throw me my real underwear."

  She was pointing at the piles of mud-coated clothing that were just barely within Calen's reach.

  Calen sighed and obliged, fishing through his own pockets too before returning to the debate. The strange brass disk was balanced enough to flip, and almost the size of a quarter, but his muscle memory still felt 'off' somehow.

  And so had plummeting off that cliff, not that he had done much of that on Earth either.

  "Exactly, Em. Someone died over this," The ping of metal off his thumbnail got Emma's attention either way, and the ritual was soothing, even if it wasn't a coin. "What do they want from us more than they want to be alive?"

  The disk flew almost to the ceiling before it turned around, bouncing out of his waiting palm and skittered into the steadily cooling water with a plop.

  "She obviously wasn't planning on dying. And how am I supposed to know what the aliens want?" Emma scowled. "She said Isha would help us 'for faith alone.' We found Isha, and you saved her daughter's life on top of that. Let's go find out what they want us to do, and work from there."

  Calen scrabbled around the bottom of the tub with his fingers and tried not to prod at his spine after the reminder. His feet had been too numb to test whether he could wiggle his toes at the time, but he had a feeling he would have failed a mobility test or two for his first few seconds laying facedown in the mud.

  One of his vertebrae had still felt a little *too* flat on the wagon ride here, but the real giveaway was that it had rounded itself out in a buzz of mana over the next few minutes.

  He retrieved the disk and tried again, with a more moderate approach.

  "I'm just saying we should set down some limits before we go in there, so we're both on the same page about what to tell them, and about what we want." He angled the disk lower this time, and it still popped far above his head.

  A bit of a surge to his head let him catch the careening coin flat on his palm, slowing the world to a crawl. Time resumed its normal march with a gentle tug at the mana in his head, and Calen relaxed his shoulders.

  He could turn it off on purpose, instead of waiting for it to snap. That was one less problem to worry about.

  "Well duh. We're not splitting up." She said.

  The last time he had seen Emma in a dress was as Muse #3, before her growth spurt had left him behind forever. With the strange clothing and choppy bobcut she had given her now-sparse hair, and the oversized room behind her, she looked one olive wreath away from reprising the role.

  Calen shoved aside middle school memories and focused on the now as best he could.

  "As a bare minimum," He agreed. "And no playing Prometheus. We're not describing the bombs, or teaching them how any tech works until we know what the limits are. Magic seems like a huge force multiplier, even the little stuff could turn out awful if they mismanage it, and we can't un-share information."

  The muse knelt to wrestle with the footwear while Calen got another coin toss in. He got the acceleration wrong, closing his hand too early. The brass bounced off his knuckles.

  He was still missing something. Gravity was definitely lower, but—

  This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

  "We have to trade them something, Calen," Emma said exasperatedly while he fished around again. "What if we're not the only ones dealing with radiation exposure, and they need to know stuff about how to treat radiation sickness without convenient potions? We're right next to someone with obvious authority, this is the best way to help anyone else who wasn't as lucky as we were."

  Em's options had been leading roles with all the accompanying drama, or 'Tree #1' from the first year of high school onwards, and the pressure of academics had quickly pushed her to pick 'neither'. Saving the world was busy work, and the application process had been competitive.

  A theater credit wouldn't have made up for any weakness it caused elsewhere, so their lives had diverged another inch, and Calen had learned to change costumes faster as the program continued to empty out over the next three years.

  Which had meant knowing how to put all of them on.

  The rush of air against Calen's gums was less quiet than he would have liked as he sucked air past his teeth and watched Emma quietly struggle, but she was right.

  Leaving people from earth who *hadn't* dropped the bombs to melt from the consequences wasn't technically their responsibility, but a little information might go a long way.

  As long as they didn't go too far.

  "Fine, information specifically to help other people from Earth." Calen agreed. "If they ask for more, we talk about it together before we blab about any important details. Front strap counterclockwise, back strap clockwise, alternating layers." Calen instructed her as she struggled with the second sandal.

  He rinsed the grit out of his hair while Emma worked at the footwear. The splash of water against his head didn't stretch his perception of time, so the unnaturally long pause was all Em.

  His hair was definitely starting to fall out. Slower than Em's had, but the follicles were just as dead.

  "Fine," She finally said. "But these people are part of a bigger organization, and I want their help finding mom and dad."

  Calen un-grit his teeth before replying, and levered himself up out of the tub. The detritus that had accumulated in the tepid water made the idea that he was still getting cleaner questionable.

  "Deal, but—" He held up a finger to forestall her next demand, trying to make sure he was phrasing this correctly.

  This one wasn't worth fighting. Either they had come too, or they hadn't, but not all the neighbors had shown up in the woods around them. The odds were...

  Calen didn't know enough about what had happened to figure out the odds. They didn't matter. He just needed to make sure Em didn't get them reeled in like a fish on a line for that one promise.

  Or another. He had seen the look on her face when Dovin had mentioned the shield was *hers* now. A little bit of shock, and that exact same glimmer of anticipation in her eyes she had gotten seeing the thick envelope on top of the med bag when she opened that box.

  Like there was a light at the end of the tunnel, after months of misery, and all she had to do to make it worth it was let someone with authority steer her around.

  "But what?" Emma asked. "What is more important to you than—"

  "We need to figure out whether they're going to let us leave, and what the rest of the world looks like, so we know where to go," He said, trying not to slosh water everywhere while Emma handed him the thick cloth she had used as a towel. "Ideally somewhere with no cannibals, where we won't end up abducted over whatever is up with your hands."

  Emma's eyes narrowed, and Calen almost thought he had made a mistake, until she said the smartest thing she had managed throughout the entire conversation.

  "Magic. We need to know how magic works," She said. "We're staying as safe as they let us until we know how to do magic safely, so that your head doesn't randomly explode when you bump it."

  Calen's chest warmed at the acknowledgment, until Emma followed it up with the dumbest thing she had managed so far. He let it slide, and took a minute to dry himself before replying.

  He was pretty sure she was overselling the danger about his head, but she wasn't all the way wrong. A little more information would be nice.

  "If they're willing to teach us magic, yes. No exploding heads, and we figure out what they want from your hands, so we can give it a reasonable try before we go. Unless it involves being sacrificed to a volcano." He agreed, flipping the coin again.

  Ideally helping out the Warden's daughter came with magic lessons, but he would settle for a sack of gold and directions to civilization if it got his sister away from whatever expectations were tied to that big heavy chunk of steel.

  "Paranoid," Emma chastised him. "There's no volcano in sight, and we don't even know whether we want to leave."

  Calen paused with his mouth half-open, checking his words as the brass disk pinged against the floor. Emma was waiting expectantly by the time it wobbled to a stop by the door.

  "Em, you can't even look at half of them without flinching," he said carefully. "I appreciate the brave face, but we're definitely getting the hell out of here as soon as possible. How else are we going to find mom and dad?"

  Waving the red flag almost seemed to firm her resolve, judging by the way she threw the pile of clothing at his chest.

  "I don't know, but we haven't asked yet, so no decisions," She said firmly. "Now put your skirt on."

  It was the avalanche of words that followed that told Calen she was faking the confidence.

  "Dovin said today was a rough patch, so if this is our best bet, I just need to get over it. Sutai said this place was worth fighting to get to because it was safe, we should hear them out if they want us to stay. And the dragonborn are going to be everywhere, right?" Emma paused for a shuddering breath. "I can look past the surface. Even if they're scary."

  The rambling gave him plenty of time to come up with a response, and demonstrate the proper way to tie a loincloth.

  At least, he was pretty sure he had done it right. Nothing was hanging out when he checked.

  "Okay fine, but if something starts to smell like sulfur, we bail," He grumbled when she was done. "And a skirt was good enough for Achilles."

  The ensemble hung loosely around his waist, and the loops of cloth encircling his midsection suggested that someone had forgotten to give them belts. Em had stuck her new dagger through one of the loops on her waist at a jaunty angle, so apparently they weren't hiding the weapon.

  "Deal. Come on Achilles, we've got people to meet." Emma said over a knock at the door.

  Calen took his sweet time patting himself dry and neatly wrapping the sandals up his calves. If Em wanted him to open the door, she could sit there and figure out *why* she was avoiding doing it herself. Maybe she would change her mind on her own, if he left her to think about it.

  The strands of leather weren't exactly what he had encountered backstage, and he realized fairly quickly that they were made to thread between his toes at two points instead of one, so he made do. He got stuck again trying to figure out where to go from there, until the he figured out that they were supposed to cross above his heel rather than below, as if he had a spur to accommodate.

  Em had gotten lucky that Mirri was wearing thick boots, judging by the way the leather heel had distinct slices carved through the back edge into the cork below.

  Another knock echoed as he stood up, mostly-satisfied with his work. It was neater than Em's attempt, she had just gotten frustrated and tied normal shoe knots.

  "Well?" She asked.

  "Ladies first," Calen plastered an annoying grin over his face and waved to the door. "You're practicing looking past the surface."

  Em wanted to dig her heels in, fine. Two could play at that game. The best way to get her to figure it out was to play along for as long as it wasn't dangerous. She would talk herself out of it soon, especially if it was Viran waiting.

  Watching the set of her brow as she squared her shoulders and marched herself to the door, Calen had almost a quarter second to wonder whether framing it as a challenge had been a mistake.

  Mirri was waiting, sans armor, in a lightly bloodied robe that matched their own borrowed clothing. Calen got to watch her pupils drift down to his sister's waist, and the hanging dagger. He suppressed a curse and stepped forward with his mouth half-open to get out in front of the issue.

  "Viran gave—" He started.

  "Where did *that* come from?" Mirri hissed, her glare pinning Calen in place over Emma's shoulder.

  One of Mirri's fingers had snapped out, the accusation jutting from her clawtip towards the little brass disk on the stones between them.

  The brass disk that was almost identical to the one Shiny had loaded into a slot on his bracers, after the waxed packet that smelled like sulfur.

  Silence hung in the air for a moment as Mirri's eyes darted their way around the room, catching on Emma's dagger once or twice more. The priestess was almost *more* intimidating without armor or a helmet, and the tiny trickle of mana Calen was feeding to his eyes showed him that the weapon at her back wasn't the only thing she was considering reaching for.

  The channels in her wrists were pulsing rapidly, but no mana had leapt from them.

  Yet.

  "That's... mine?" Calen tried, swallowing the lump in his throat. "I found it on the ground at the tower last night."

  Emma's eyes looked like dinner plates as she bent her knees to scoop up the helmets by the door, tucking hers under an arm while she eyed the standoff. They both knew how this ended if the dragonborn decided they were a real threat, and Emma wouldn't even have the advantage of surprise this time.

  Just a dull, borrowed knife that the sorceress had noticed and dismissed, with a few thousand stairs between them and the exit even if they won.

  Calen let a breath out when Mirri's channels calmed, and she released the grip on her own dagger.

  "My mother is ready for you." The priestess finally replied, spinning away without waiting for an answer.

  "C'mon Em," Calen said, keeping his eyes on the swaying weapon strapped to the small of Mirri's back as she stalked away. "We've got people to meet."

  Hopefully people that were about to offer them a pat on the back, a sack of gold, and directions to whatever passed for civilization on this planet.

  furcula, or 'wishbone', is the product of fused clavicle bones found in most birds and non-avian dinosaurs, and a crucial anchor for flight muscles in the chest, acting like a spring that stores energy.

  alectryomancy on the Italian Peninsula in approximately 400 BCE, wherein grain would be scattered over a grid of letters, and the order in which a chicken pecked at the kernels was used to identify thieves.