VIRAN

  The Arrivals didn't even bother dueling about Calen's behavior, which was nice of Emma. Or rude, if it was supposed to be her job to keep her brother from being rude.

  Trying to figure it out seemed like a good way to give himself a headache, so Viran decided to follow Mirri's instructions and teach Calen to swing a sword.

  The human even seemed enthusiastic about the training. He was asking a lot of questions, even if they weren't the right ones. Or even focused on swords at all.

  Calen kept asking about the types of magic he could encounter, and had an awful lot of guesses for someone who said there was no mana on Earth.

  "Teleporting, yes, mind control, no. Well, some people say it's what druids do with animals and monsters, but those people are wrong and stupid. Fix your middle cla— middle toes." Viran answered the latest round of questions.

  "Really? None at all? But teleporting is a thing?" Calen made sure Viran saw him point his feet at the pell before the next lunge.

  It looked good enough for Viran to just answer the questions about magic this time. At least, until Calen actually tried the technique.

  "An emergency thing, for the Immortals who can do it," Viran explained. "It takes a lot of power, so it's only a good idea to use it to run from someone you can't beat. If you ever get that strong in the first place. You're doing that wrong."

  It was the latest of many corrections. Calen kept swinging his sword in ways that made it useless for protecting himself.

  "Which part? Can your aunt do it? What about Dovin?" The human chattered too many questions to answer all at once. "Does it like, leave your clothes behind, or can you take stuff with you?"

  "You keep moving your body first when you lunge. And it depends on—"

  "—how much power you have available to use for it," Calen sounded like he was starting to understand things, finishing the sentence with Viran this time. "And I thought I was supposed to move my body, like a... chain, you said?"

  Viran shook his head. About the sword, not the magic.

  "I mean you keep starting with your face, and that's bad if you're not fighting a post. The other fighter gets to move their sword too. Or axe. Or teeth, if it's a monster." Viran said.

  "Can you show me what you mean by starting with my face? On the pole." Calen nervously tugged at the strap under his helmet to tighten it, like he thought Viran might get confused and hit *him* to demonstrate.

  "Sure." Viran looked around the pit, and found the grip of Calen's sword outstretched for the taking after he confirmed there were no other practice weapons nearby.

  The sparring pit was more cramped than Viran remembered, maybe because there were two people in it right now, and one of them was very delicate. Calen ended up sitting on the side of the steps while Viran took a stance further away from the target to have enough room to demonstrate.

  Mana buzzed distractingly through Calen's head as Viran straightened his elbow and took a half-step in the same moment, *then* leaned forward with his hips and torso to put his weight behind the weapon, a fraction of a second behind the first motion so that his whole body unfolded at once.

  It left him with his front knee bent, his back leg almost straight, and his snout never had the opportunity to be closer to his opponent than the sword.

  A dull crack interrupted the soft thump of impact, and dust rattled off the post even though Viran had moved at half-speed, trying not to break Calen's tool. The sword was fine, it had just slipped in between the coils of the rope and struck wood anyway.

  Viran left it there, releasing the weapon quickly so that Calen would know they weren't fighting. He had forgotten he wasn't supposed to be scary, and almost broken a training tool.

  The human was a little slack-jawed, watching the practice sword slip free of the training post.

  "Am I supposed to do that?"

  "Not exactly, just the things I did with my body. Sorry. I think I can fix it. But um, yeah," Viran propped Calen's practice sword out of the sand to lean against the steps, turning to the newly-made gap in the pell's wrapping. "Keep the whole weapon closer to your enemy than your face is, the whole time, and step in behind the point with your weight. The tool and the way you stand does the work when you attack, not your arms."

  Calen's practice swings had been the big wide sweeps that Mirri always sneered at as 'stage swordplay', which made Viran a lot more comfortable being the one to teach someone how to fight. It had been the perfect assurance that the Arrival had no idea what he was doing, so as long as Viran stuck to repeating Dovin's lessons without being scary about it, he was being helpful.

  "That was super cool," Calen didn't sound scared at all. "I thought you were gonna step with the other foot from that far away, but I guess you get a little more reach only using one hand."

  "Just a little. Our everything is also different sizes," Viran thought about trying a grin on as the gap he had created in the rope pushed closed easily, but caught himself when he realized the corners of Calen's mouth had already started to turn down. "You don't have a tail to balance with either, I can recover from doing that easier."

  "What do you mean, recover?" Calen struck the target almost properly this time. He was still moving too slowly, and his arms were too high, like he was aiming for an Immortal's throat.

  "It doesn't tip me over to extend that far," Viran paced over to the sunny corner of the pit at the bottom of the steps, which gave him a view of Calen from the side as the Arrival changed up his distance from the target. "If all your weight is in front of your hips, moving back takes longer, and keeps you in danger. You have to be a little off balance to lunge, but if you go too off balance, you're just falling down in front of something that wants to eat you."

  That seemed to give the Arrival pause, but it only took a second from Viran's perspective. The Arrival had surged mana through his head while he thought, so it was likely closer to two seconds for his mind before Viran got a reply.

  "Okay, so it's about controlling your own inertia." Calen liked to repeat what Viran was saying to check that he had understood things correctly.

  The habit had been confusing at first, but it had already saved them a lot more time than it had wasted. Or would have wasted, if Calen had actually tried to throw a strike at full speed with his first understanding of Viran's instructions on gripping his sword with two hands while he lunged.

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  The Arrival had a regenerative factor, but a broken wrist would still have ended training for the day.

  "And arranging your body behind the strike so you can't just get shoved out of the way." Viran agreed, idly wondering what 'inertia' meant.

  Calen seemed to think he was understanding, and he had started doing the part Viran was talking about correctly, so it must be close enough to what he had meant to leave alone. He looked almost ready to learn about the other two cuts.

  Almost. Dovin would get annoyed if Viran only did half the work of teaching Calen the correct way to stab things.

  "Keep your elbows below your neck, even if you need to get closer," Viran stopped the Arrival before he could waste more energy. "They need to line up with your back, or your shoulders stop helping."

  "Getting close to stuff that wants to eat me isn't exactly my goal." Calen groused.

  Viran considered what he was seeing. The Arrival's reach *was* shorter than it needed to be, gripping the practice weapon with two hands, but his arms didn't quite look up to carrying a shield anyway.

  Maybe there was something wrong with the tool he had chosen.

  "You might need a longer sword, then. Or longer arms." Viran tried to add a joke to the advice.

  Calen didn't laugh, but he at least looked thoughtful, instead of angry.

  The question he asked next sent a thrum of panic through Viran's chest, though.

  "How long did it take you to get that size? Mirri said six months ago you were her height? No, her current height." Calen mumbled. His eyes widened, seeming to measure Viran as he looked up. "Holy shit, how big is she gonna get? Isha-sized, or is she just catching up to you for now?"

  This was bad. And not something Viran should answer, but leaving Calen with no warning would be worse. Mirri was already worried enough about how poorly the Arrivals had understood what they were doing when their channels had been formed. She would understand if Viran let Calen use her as an example to learn about mana, right?

  Maybe things like this were why Dovin was always grumbling that he should have been a priest.

  "Not nearly as big as me for centuries, she's a mage. I... you shouldn't do what I did," Viran's hand grasped at the empty skin on his belt, squeezing and finding no water to demonstrate the problem with. He had gone through all his reserves. "There were costs. Costs I still have to deal with."

  "What kind of costs? Magically imposed, or... continuous?" Calen had completely taken his helmet off to listen, leaning an elbow on the butt of his sword, so he was at least paying attention to Viran's warning, even if he was still asking like he was considering doing it anyway.

  "Some people are going to be angry at me, but that's not why you shouldn't do it," Viran skipped the details that wouldn't matter to Calen and got to the part that might, so the Arrival wouldn't do anything stupid and make it Viran's fault. "And it made my mana control worse. Auntie helped anyway, because she was worried, but it has a chance of working. You would just be doing something stupid, so she would tell you to stop, and things would be a little worse because you tried. Maybe a lot worse, if you didn't stop in time, or weren't ready to act all the way like an Immortal afterwards."

  Viran wasn't sure which one of them he was talking about by the time he got to the end of explaining. Or why he was so out of breath.

  He was sure why the silence was so empty after a few more seconds.

  "So going for size isn't a good idea right now if I want to be a wizard." Calen seemed to realize he wasn't doing the practice anymore, picking up and rotating his weapon through the air when they made eye contact.

  Viran waited until he heard wood strike the pell before he answered.

  "No. Bigger isn't always better," Viran agreed. "People get scared more, and you're easier to hit if someone wants to hurt you."

  Calen got quieter after that, only asking questions about using a sword.

  Viran showed him how to do a pushing cut properly after the human tried to swing the sword like a club at waist level. The Arrival even handed over his practice weapon without being asked when he was ready.

  After that, Calen managed to figure out how to do a pulling cut without a demonstration. Viran only needed to make minor corrections to his stance, so that was mostly silent.

  "Isn't all this kind of useless anyway?" Calen dragged the 'blade' of his practice weapon back from its contact along the side of the post, a motion that would have spilled the guts out of an exposed abdomen. "Won't a real sword just bounce off someone with durability like yours?"

  Which of course made Viran think about how his body would have fared against the strike even a year ago, and shudder a little.

  "Me or your sister," Viran reminded him. "And durability only helps so much, I still got stabbed yesterday. Blades are thin, so there's not always enough mana ready to resist the force right where they hit, and swords are long so that the tip moves faster than a knife would when you swing them the same way."

  "So leverage still matters," Calen sounded like he had gone back to using his brain, or dug up something else he already knew to compare with what Viran was saying. "I was wondering about that, after yesterday. The Warlord had an... interesting-looking weapon that kind of seemed like it ignored those principles."

  The human hadn't really asked a question. Maybe they were just talking, now, instead of teaching.

  Viran decided to do a little of both.

  "A bad weapon is better than no weapon," Viran shrugged, trying not to reach for the piece of melted steel still hanging in his belt, or itch at his leg. Some of the replacement scales were peeling, and had been all day, but scraping them off in front of someone would be gross, and it might bleed a little. He could fix it later. "Impacts are better for depleting durability, but blades and points can still make you bleed before your reserves run dry. Emma washed that knife, right?"

  "Before she ate with it, yeah. Not that you can really eat stew with a knife, but she decided to slice her bread at lunch for some reason," Calen paused, eyeing the light in the sky. "Did Dovin say when we get real weapons? Full-sized ones."

  Dovin had warned Viran about this. Some Wards chafed about using practice weapons at first, especially adults with lots of durability who were used to using their own shoddy tools, and didn't realize how dangerous good bronze was when you sharpened it properly and weighted the tool to cut monster flesh.

  "Soon," The reassurance just narrowed Calen's eyes, which usually meant another question about the same thing was coming, so Viran hurried out a more detailed answer. "Sooner than me, Yarrun probably has bronze ready for you two. I need him to fix this, and give it a new haft. The squires wrecked it a little."

  Replying before the Arrival got around to repeating what he asked more rudely seemed to calm Calen. Viran would have to tell Mirri, so they could avoid making each other mad again.

  Calen's mind also seemed to be on conflict, judging by the way his eyes widened, but the fear in them wasn't directed at Viran, or the melted chunk of steel in his belt.

  "Oh god, I just realized Em's getting a real axe to carry around." Calen groaned.

  Viran felt a twinge of sympathy for the Arrival. Calen definitely wouldn't win any duels against his sister if they were both armed. Or both unarmed.

  Maybe that was why she hadn't bothered fighting her brother earlier. If they both knew the outcome, Calen wouldn't agree to important stakes, so there wouldn't be a point.

  But that wasn't Viran's business. And learning about Earth's gods sounded much more interesting.

  "Which one?" Viran asked.

  "Huh? I mean, I assumed she would just... get whatever axe was laying around." Calen mumbled, clearly misunderstanding.

  "It depends on what Yarrun has, but that's not what I meant. Which god?" Viran repeated himself.

  "Oh! It's uh, just an expression. Things got bad enough on Earth that I'm pretty sure there's nobody picking up the phone if I ring that line," Calen's eyebrows scrunched together, maybe shielding his eyes from the sun, which was disappearing over the lip of the sparring pit now. "Or maybe your gods did already. Who knows?"

  "Maybe Auntie. Being a high priestess makes her at least a little important to Mercy," Viran shrugged back. "Was a phone something you used to pray?"

  Some people liked to ring a bell when they filled an offering bowl, to let their god of choice know there was something there. Maybe people on Earth had done the same thing by strumming strings instead. Strings and bells, Calen had mentioned ringing too.

  That sounded like an interesting ritual to hear about, and Viran might be the first one on Avarea to learn about it.

  "I... I'm not sure I should tell you that, big guy," Calen paused, but Viran just nodded. Everyone was allowed to be private about their worship, as long as it didn't hurt anyone. "I just meant god, or gods, or whatever probably would have answered during the end of the world, if they were real. Or cared."

  Silence pressed in.

  He had made another mistake, reminding the Arrival of the tragedy that had ended his civilization. There had to be a way to salvage things, though. The human hadn't walked away yet, so maybe a distraction would work.

  "If whatever it was got billions of you, it was probably dangerous enough to hit a god by accident, right? Maybe Earth's gods are dead now, and once they decompose, the planet will have mana on it for whoever survived," Viran tried to cheer Calen up.

  That went a little wrong, somehow.

  Or worked too well, judging by the excited fountain of questions that bubbled out of the Arrival's mouth.

  earliest evidence of human religious practices center around burial customs that originated approximately 37,000 years ago. While the and the first evidence of human cremation predate these rituals, the painting of individual bones and skulls signify an organized element to the interring of the dead in eastern Europe, and the sites commonly included grave goods such as ivory, antlers, or shells.