CALEN

  Viran finished pounding the fencepost into the ground, leaving the hammer in the corner and making space for practice to begin.

  Calen's fingers drummed out a simple beat on the handle of his 'sword' as he waited for Dovin to finish examining the post, shoving at it as if he expected Calen to be able to rip it out of the ground with the tiny stick in his hand.

  The weapon facsimile was simple, easily recognizable, and had a thin round 'crossguard' above the handle that was more than a little beat up, so at least Calen knew this was how they actually trained people.

  It didn't stop the tiny voice of doubt in the back of his head from pointing out that it still wasn't a real weapon, for all of Dovin's dramatics when their options had been presented.

  It was a stick, and Calen already knew how to swing a stick around. The faster he showed some basic competence, the faster they could get to the 'learning to use magic' part of things.

  Checking his head revealed that he wasn't accidentally trickling mana into his brain stem, Dovin really was just taking that long with the dummy.

  Finally, they were ready to start.

  "Alright kid," Dovin dusted his pristine palms against each other and leaned up against the wall. "Show me your stance and we'll make corrections from there."

  Calen's hands overlapped awkwardly on the grip, but he bent his knees a little, and held the 'weapon' out in front of him. The point started to waver a bit as Dovin silently studied him.

  "Good enough?" He asked.

  "Widen your stance. Keep your middle toes pointed at your opponent." Dovin disregarded the fact that he was the only one in the pit with dinosaur feet.

  A bit of shuffling later, Calen's arms formed a triangle with his torso, still extending the sword outward. He had to un-bend his knees a bit, but he managed to get his feet a little further apart while keeping them pointed at the post.

  "No. Stop," Dovin stepped off the wall, jabbing the practice staff at the ground where he wanted Calen's feet. "I said widen your stance, not stand like a target dummy. One foot stays forward, the other back."

  Calen went *back* to his original stance, and slid his front foot forward, shaking a bit of sand loose from his buried foot. He had given up on keeping the grit out of the open-wrapped sandals about halfway through his walk up the beach with Emma.

  "Stop waving that thing around like a wand, and keep your feet straight." The hazing continued.

  "My feet are—" Calen looked down and made some corrections. "—mostly straight." He finished, looking back up to find the tip of a sparring weapon brushing up against his chin.

  Dovin had an arm slung around the post while he extended the staff past Calen's sword.

  "And your opponent has killed you, because you're busy looking down in a fight," The dragonborn lazily withdrew. "If you learn one useful thing this week, make it holding a proper stance without having to look down every time you take a step."

  "And how exactly was I supposed to stop that?" Calen let the scowl out freely.

  If this guy was going to keep pushing until he found the limit, better to set it early. None of this was even fighting instructions, he was just being told how to stand. If they started marching drills before Calen actually got to swing the weapon, he would know for sure it was about obedience, not learning to fight.

  "By keeping your eyes up, to start." Dovin's staff turned a lazy circle in his palm as the dragonborn paced out from behind the wooden post.

  "You're still twice my size and haven't actually taught me to swing mine yet." Calen reminded him, keeping his eyes up and tracking the twirling stick.

  He liked his kneecaps a little too much to risk looking away from the moving weapon, and didn't trust his ability to escape Dovin's reach if this turned into a more kinetic lesson on self-defense. Taking the hit would be a better idea than starting a real fight, but getting some sort of guard up would be an ideal show of competence.

  If Dovin actually took a swing at him for 'training' purposes, of course.

  "Knowing the strike is coming is step one. And an opponent only double your size is better odds than you should expect on Avarea," Dovin traced Calen's silhouette without ever lifting the staff above his own shoulders, driving the point home without actually touching him. "Monsters are a team effort, but against other sapients, that means you're going to lack reach, and spend most of your time on defense."

  "You're telling me I should have picked the spear for more reach." Calen surmised.

  "No, but it's good you thought about your options this time. You didn't, when you picked up the most difficult weapon to learn to use," Dovin waved a claw at the stick in Calen's hand. "Now tell me the reason you didn't pick the spear."

  Calen opened his mouth to say something glib, but Dovin wasn't done.

  "Take your time thinking about it, and tell me the real one the first time, please," Amber eyes narrowed. "You might have all day, but I don't."

  The dragonborn leaned his back against the wall with the slightest hint of a grin across his maw while Calen tried to parse the seemingly contradictory instructions. Dovin didn't hurry him along at all, seemingly content to chill in the shady pit all morning while Calen justified his choice.

  Calen wasn't willing to fall for that trap. If learning to fight was on offer, Dovin could waste someone else's day waiting. He surged mana through his head, slowing time to a crawl while he thought back about it, and gave his answer.

  "It does one thing really well, but reach is all it has." Calen took a breath, and Dovin gestured for him to continue. "I missed the snake in the tower once, and got the weapon taken from me by an animal. I want more options than just the very end of a stick that anyone can grab, or bash out of the way."

  He could sit there and list out theoretical ways to swing a blade around all day, but those were the reasons he had dismissed the spear almost immediately. And swords were cooler, but that seemed like the kind of answer that would get a spear shoved into his hands.

  Dovin's gaze was impassive for a moment.

  "Alright. Slip that into your belt, you're going to draw it," The dragonborn let out a sigh. "And stop surging your head."

  He seemed more resigned than insistent about that last bit, so Calen was going to ignore him until someone actually bothered telling him why it was a bad idea. In specific terms, not just 'vulnerability.'

  "That's it?" Calen asked warily. "Or am I watching for something else while I do this?"

  "No, I'm also going to instruct you on some basic guards, and you're going to practice holding them after a draw," Dovin leaned the staff against the wall, which drained most of the tension out of Calen's shoulders. "But drawing your weapon is the first step to defending yourself once a fight becomes inevitable, so that is how we will start."

  Keeping an eye out proved useless for the rest of the lesson. Dovin never went back to using the staff to make a point. Instead, he seemed utterly insistent on using numbers to teach Calen about swordplay, which was its own kind of torture.

  Drawing his 'weapon' from his belt and ending with his hand above his shoulder wasn't 'drawing the sword', it was 'taking position one,' and Calen was supposed to hold his arm there, pointing the stick at his 'opponent' for a slow count to thirty before he re-'sheathed' it.

  The still-unarmed wooden post seemed sufficiently intimidated, but every time the tip of Calen's 'sword' wavered, Dovin made him start over. Accidentally twisting his feet off-target during the draw, or shifting his stance too much while he held it up also merited a restart. Calen was to remain 'fully on point' the entire time he held the position.

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  Success was met with another call of "one." At least, until he met his taskmaster's lofty standards a second time in a row.

  "'Two' like position two? Or are you counting?" Calen asked, wary for another trick.

  "I haven't taught you position two. Yet," Dovin managed to make the last word sound like a threat. "Stop stalling."

  Resigned to more of this even if he succeeded, Calen lifted his 'sword' with aching arms once more.

  Silently. He had a feeling that asking how high they were going to count would raise the number.

  The number ended up being—

  "Seven," Dovin had not stopped grinning when Calen had begun to sweat. If anything, the scaly bastard had started to enjoy the torture even more. "Draw to position one and await instructions."

  Wiping his brow in between repetitions was allowed, but drying his palm on his clothes after smearing it across his forehead was also a good idea. The light chill that hung over the sun-deprived pit had been annoying at first, but now it was possibly the only blessing keeping Calen's grip from slipping constantly.

  Hearing "One" instead of "Six" after a fumbling reset had almost broken his spirit ten minutes earlier, but failing to continue simply would have meant he had to hear it again when he restarted.

  "Lock your wrist and elbow, and rotate only your shoulder until your arm and weapon are level with it." Dovin instructed once Calen had assumed position one.

  Calen obliged, and a couple of minor corrections later, the mythical position two had materialized, stressing a slightly different set of muscles.

  It was just as hellish as position one after the first forty seconds. Calen was half-fearful that failure would prompt a return to position one in addition to resetting the count, but after Dovin counted to four and the total collapse of Calen's arm, Dovin called a break.

  From the practice, but apparently not from the needling.

  "So how did you defend yourself from threats on Earth with those noodly things?" The goldscale asked as Calen set his helmet on the steps. The air flowing over his head chilled the thin layer of clinging moisture that had accumulated during the training, which was a much-needed balm. "You had guards, or did you just carry shot and powder everywhere?"

  "Neither," Calen ignored the jab to choke a clump of spittle out of the back of his throat. He kicked sand over it before he sat down on the steps to massage his admittedly noodly arms. "We were more civilized than that. The only thing that might have killed me on a daily basis was tripping on my way down the front steps and hitting my head wrong."

  Or getting run over by a car, but he wasn't about to start describing internal combustion engines to people who still fought with sharp sticks. They might get mad if he couldn't build one for them.

  "Civilized, were you?" That was amusing enough to warrant a snort, for some reason. "How did that work out to all five billion of you ending up on—"

  They were still in the shade, so it was anger surging heat through Calen's extremities.

  "You have no idea what you're talking about," Calen interrupted. "And there were eleven billion of us, once upon a time."

  Still, there was that number again. Wildly consistent, but they either didn't know the actual population of Earth, or Dovin hadn't, before Calen had blurted it out.

  Not that eleven billion was an accurate number anymore either.

  "And you carried guns for warfare," Dovin's eyes slid over to Calen. "Or adults did, anyway."

  "Legally, I am an adult. On Earth," Calen corrected himself and shook off the distraction as Dovin gave an amused snort. "Most people didn't *need* guns. There were no monsters, and war didn't work like that. My society didn't need me to know how to fight, that was the military's job."

  "Right up until something went wrong, and the rest of you poor, unarmed souls fell victim to..." Dovin tilted his head. "What exactly was it you left yourself unable to kill before it bathed you in flames?"

  The accusation that Calen should have just 'defended himself' from the apocalypse, like five billion people were dead because they were *irresponsible* lit a fire on his tongue.

  "All of us being armed wouldn't have fixed things," He growled. Proliferation had been half the problem, not that regular people had managed it. Nations had been enough. "There was nothing someone like me could do once—"

  Calen, stopped, took a deep breath, and let it out slowly as he rubbed at his arm.

  So that was the game. Wear him down with exercise and taunts until he was ready to spill secrets about all the things humans on Earth had been capable of.

  Starting, of course, with the manaless apocalypse.

  "We were down to eight billion by that point," He said, garnering himself something that almost seemed like an annoyed look when Dovin realized he wasn't going to describe the apocalypse. "Do you think there's a third planet waiting for us? Because if not, stop asking how it happened."

  Dovin spent a few seconds examining Calen with just one eye, then chuffed like he thought something was funny.

  "What?" Calen demanded.

  "Alright kid," The dismissal was a trap, he just knew it, and sure enough, Dovin kept going. "I'll leave it alone for now. If—"

  "No," Calen interrupted him. "No if's, no maybes, not 'for now', you're not getting an answer until I know for sure there's no way to magically—"

  "If—" Dovin's voice was threaded with just the slightest bit of mana, echoing in the pit and silencing Calen before the dragonborn continued in a more normal tone. "—you tell me how long we should expect your people to still be alive in the wilderness, so we know when to stop risking our own looking for them, and start focusing on the monsters their corpses will have created."

  Calen looked down, and nudged a little more sand over the wet spot he had spat on earlier. Buying time to think.

  Dovin wasn't asking for the nukes this time, he wanted to know how much faith Calen had in people. That changed the calculus.

  It didn't change that the question was a problem he didn't know how to solve.

  "Three minutes without ox- air," Calen corrected himself. "Three days without water, three weeks without food. Those are the maximums. Were the maximums, on Earth. I don't know how much is different."

  Reciting the basics as a starting point didn't satisfy Dovin in the least.

  "That's not an answer that helps me make a decision." The dragonborn pointed out.

  "I know, man. I'm... that's a lot of pressure," Calen squirmed. The chill of sweat down his open-backed clothing was starting to settle uncomfortably on his shoulders. "I want to say just keep searching."

  "I wouldn't be able to listen to you. Let's try something else, a useful measure based on the threats we know about," Dovin suggested. "How long do you think it would be before anyone still standing has found the resources they need to fight off the Seraph Sickness and find civilization? A day? Three? Seven?"

  "That... The thing you call 'Seraph Sickness' also didn't work like that on Earth. It... we didn't have mana for healing, the damage was done, and you recovered or didn't based on that," Calen explained. "You were either dead in a week or two, or took months of careful treatment they won't get in the wilderness. I don't know how the magical healing actually works, or how much they'll get without potions."

  Bobcut or not, Em's pillow had been covered in short brown strands instead of long ones this morning. She could *still* be dying, just walking around waiting to fall over once her organs finished winding down. She had assumed that was what was happening yesterday. And the night before.

  If Calen hadn't regrown a chunk of his spine in the space of minutes yesterday, he would have been more worried about that outcome.

  As it was—

  "Most cases clear up within a week on Avarea. It's well-documented, and deaths past the first three days are rare without other complications," Dovin 'reassured' Calen. "We'll set the search timeline at five days, and focus down on the monsters after that. Sound fair, or am I missing something?"

  Five days sounded too short and too long at the same time. People could get lost for weeks, going off trails without a GPS for rescuers to pinpoint them.

  But that was on Earth. Lost hikers in the Rockies generally didn't have to deal with snakes longer than a city block slithering after them, or whatever other monsters might be crawling through the underbrush.

  "Deal." Calen told the ground, hoping he hadn't just made a mistake that condemned anyone.

  "Good, because that's what we set the search timeline at already," Dovin sounded far too cheery for someone talking about abandoning possibly thousands of people in a monster-infested wilderness. "Drink, and then break time's over. You're filling your own when we're done."

  A waterskin got pressed into Calen's hand after a bump at his elbow.

  Position three continued the clockwise trend, but Calen was allowed to bend his elbow just a little more. Position four involved bending it a *lot* more, and twisting his wrist a bit.

  After demonstrating 'passable competence' with all four guard positions, Dovin ran him through them one after the other.

  With sunlight finally creeping down the walls of the pit and sweat pouring off his shoulders, Calen dared to ask a question again.

  "So when do I learn to swing this thing?"

  "After lunch," Dovin pinched Calen's bicep with a thumb and forefinger, waggling the attached limb up and down to flop uselessly. "You're learning to defend yourself first, so that you don't automatically lose a fight to anything or anyone you can't disable in a single strike."

  Calen let his arm drop, too tired to argue. The reasoning even made sense.

  "Fair enough." He gasped out.

  "I'm glad you think so," Dovin sounded anything but sincere, but the instructions weren't done. "That circle you just demonstrated is your new warm-up routine, it should take you, oh, a quarter hour to complete now that you know all the steps."

  Alarm bells rang in the back of Calen's mind, even through the mild haze of muscle exhaustion clouding his focus.

  "Should?" He asked. "What if I mess up and have to start over?"

  Falling behind on lessons because he was busy 'mastering' the basics sounded like exactly the kind of thing that could be used to justify no longer bothering to teach him.

  His worries were unfounded. Or at least, misplaced.

  "Start over? And waste my time?" Dovin snorted. "You know what's expected of you, you'll make the corrections in the moment. Or die because you trained poorly. You should try to avoid that, it's a common habit of successful Immortals."

  The last sentence was dispensed in a tone that implied it was the aged wisdom of a sage, leaving Calen's jaw hanging open.

  He had just spent three hours learning a fifteen-minute exercise at this monster's whims, and Dovin was going to pretend that all the restarts had been optional.

  "You're a jerk." He said after a few moments.

  He wanted to say more, but he could *feel* the dragonborn's anticipation through those half-lidded eyes. This wasn't a debate he had any chance of winning, and Dovin might even enjoy the attempt.

  "I am a useful jerk with knowledge and skills my employer values, which is the best kind of jerk to be," Dovin's grin crept out from behind the waterskin as he took his own sip. "You should take notes. And fill your own waterskin while we're up here. A little extra mana will help with those aches."

  Calen was halfway to the lake when Dovin asked him why his sword wasn't in his belt, and sent him back to get it. Mirri trilled her amusement halfway through the exchange, apparently familiar with the routine.

  "Unbelievable." Calen muttered on his way back down the steps to retrieve his 'sword.'

  Acute Radiation Sickness, and can be used to gauge overall exposure, but they are rarely lethal in and of themselves below doses of 8 .