CALEN

  The moment after his attempt at surrender stretched just a little too long while Calen's head buzzed with mana.

  For some reason, cycling the energy through his skull slowed the progression of the venom. He took that as a sign that it was spreading through his bloodstream, and had reached his head, regardless of Emma's efforts to fix the tissue damage in his leg.

  They had run out of ways to stall death, until the door had been nudged open by the scaled and skirted figure that was still holding a knife to his throat.

  "Speak your words normally," The alien finally hummed out, just a little bit raspy. "I'm trying to help you. Helping people who pretend to be stupid is harder, and you seem like you need my efforts right now."

  The words pressed themselves through Calen's ears and into his brain, plucking and sewing the meaning together just a few fractions of a second after the sounds reached him. The reverberating effect was nauseating.

  Or maybe that was a side effect of the monster venom.

  Calen's eyes wandered to Emma, nearly doubled over in pain a few feet away in the tiny space. He didn't quite manage to shake his head before she went ahead and said it out loud anyway.

  "Strange way of showing it." Emma drawled out from in between her teeth, barely hanging on.

  Her words stretched, exaggerated. Almost as if she were speaking in slow motion.

  Calen felt his pulse thud in his ears. Em had just taken a really bad knock to the head. If she had brain damage—

  The very end of the alien's whiplike tail twitched, but they seemed otherwise unaffected by the accusation.

  "You don't get to ambush me in my home and complain I fought back," Came the slow, deliberate reply, winding its way into his brain. "The monsters bit him, yes?"

  Calen nodded and pointed to his leg as the hovering bolt of fire disappeared, and the clawed hand that had been cradling it pointed to him.

  Hopefully whoever this was meant 'home' in the general sense, and didn't actually live here, in this building. They had kind of made a mess of things.

  Well, more of a mess than there had been when they arrived.

  And they hadn't even managed to fix Calen's leg all the way. He could practically feel his heartbeat slowing, the steady thuds coming further and further apart despite his flailing efforts to manage the mana he had.

  "Up and down with your head means yes to you as well?" Calen's brain assembled words out of the half-lyrical hums of the question.

  "Yes," Calen mimicked their captor, putting mana through his throat where he imagined his voice box to be as he spoke, and nodding again to reinforce the idea. He continued a little more desperately through sluggish lips. "Heart slowing. Venom is spreading."

  The scaly alien flinched, and for a moment Calen thought he had done something wrong.

  "Do it by listening instead. Mana in your ears," The alien said, seemingly unworried by Calen's impending death. "With the mouth is rude, or for emergencies."

  Dying from a monster bite seemed like an emergency to Calen, but their scaly rescuer had already known what was going on. The obviously necrotizing flesh on his leg was a bit of a giveaway, despite Emma's best efforts. Calen was so busy mentally chalking up another win on the 'magic is real here' tally when he heard 'mana' that he almost forgot to reply.

  Almost. Maybe-dying from a monster bite was taking up a lot of his focus.

  "Okay," Calen said as normally as he could. "So when does the helping start?"

  The orange splotches at the corners of the lizard-person's mouth deepened, and their tail twitched again. Calen almost imagined he could hear the annoyance in their tone as he listened in.

  "When I know your partner won't attempt to strangle me again." The words crept into Calen's brain despite the fact that he was already trying to listen.

  Emma's head wasn't buzzing with mana yet. She either hadn't figured out the trick, or wasn't bothering, and the green-scaled fighter in front of them could see that. Or they were guessing right.

  Em looked rattled enough that it wasn't a hard guess to make.

  "Sister," Emma finally rejoined the conversation, missing the point entirely. "Not partner."

  Calen could have sworn the alien rolled its eyes before holding out a clawed hand. Somewhere during the exchange, the knife had returned to its sheathe. In its place was an object Calen's mind identified purely by sight.

  A slightly cloudy glass bottle with a narrow neck, filled with red, lightly bubbling liquid, stoppered with wax and a tiny chunk of evenly cut cork.

  There was no way to know for sure that it was a healing potion without asking, but Calen would have bet a finger or two on it right now. Especially considering the way it fuzzed when he looked for mana.

  "Is that a health potion?" Calen asked.

  Better to be sure. No matter how much he really needed it to be true right now. His lips dragged their way through the question.

  Vertically slit pupils locked onto his face, and the alien dipped their chin for a moment. Maybe that was a nod. The cork was pried up with a claw, and fragments of the wax crumbled into his lap.

  The long, scaly face in front of him turned back to Emma.

  "Welcome to Tenashki, Sister," It said. "You can't run like that. Drink half, or you're horde food."

  The bottle stopped, halfway between them, clutched in curled claws like something precious. The scaly alien seemed almost wary to be offering the help, which made sense, given Em had tried to strangle them less than a minute ago.

  Calen silently willed Emma to not rock the boat right now. She was wild-eyed, shrinking back from the extended hand like it was holding poison.

  "Emma. My name is Emma, not sister," She finally gasped. "And him first, if it's really medicine. You can save him too, right?"

  Emma tried to cross her arms, but mostly ended up flinching and holding up half-balled fists by the end of it. She was obviously hurting more than she wanted to show with every labored breath.

  "Em, take the medicine and be nice to the—"

  "Mirri." Calen's brain didn't translate the cluster of syllables, so it must be a name.

  Their new acquaintance cut Calen off, deliberately dumping a few drops of the potion into a torn-up patch of their shoulder, directly into an open wound. Tiny, needle-like teeth were revealed as their lips crept upwards to hiss out the next words.

  "This is for mending bones and torn skin. He gets a stronger one to replace flesh and blood, because of the necrosis," Mirri took her sweet time explaining while Calen's heart thudded erratically in his chest. "So you're first. See? It's safe."

  The exposed green scales on the alien's shoulder dripped with red while the flesh bubbled. A tiny iron bead squeezed its way out of one of the rents, clacking sharply against the floor and bouncing once or twice before it rolled to a red-stained stop.

  Apparently Mirri had been the one to get shot outside during the fighting.

  Calen could see Emma doing the math, trying to catch up with actually having to believe in magic, not being eaten right now, and the actual, partially-bulletproof extraterrestrial sitting in this weird closet with them, all at once.

  He was having some trouble of his own with it.

  "Expensive too. I can keep it, if you want to keep hurting, but if you can't run, you won't see sunset," Mirri prodded, slow and deliberate. "It will take time to work, and we go soon or we all die."

  The buzzing in Calen's head snapped with a twinge, and Emma practically snatched at the bottle at the same moment. She chugged half of it in a single gulp and stared at the ceiling after she swallowed it, like she was waiting to implode, or burst into flames.

  A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  "His next." Emma demanded.

  Mirri ignored her.

  "Sit or lay, it will—"

  Emma grunted and collapsed to her knees. A clawed hand retrieved the glass bottle before it could spill. Calen heard something crackle, and then Emma whimpered, gasping on her hands and knees before rolling over, flat on her back.

  A deeper red bottle was produced while Calen gripped at the strange brass disk in his pocket so hard he thought he might break a bone of his own.

  "Your turn." Mirri instructed him as she popped the second cork.

  Calen held his breath, barely focused on the potion as his hand sluggishly reached for the bottle. The alien let out a raspy cough through the smoke, fluttering the wings on their back to stir the air.

  Emma had rolled onto her back, and didn't seem to be dying. Her breathing was getting stronger, hitching less.

  "Half?" Calen asked hesitantly. His heart was back to fluttering at a breakneck pace, beating ineffectually against his ribs.

  The stranger in front of him shook their head, side to side. Emma was gasping on the floor, sweat beading her brow, but still aware enough to be looking.

  "No. Whole thing. It will burn your throat going down, do not spit any of it," Came the instructions. Mirri's eyes narrowed. "That one was very expensive, and you are very much going to die without it."

  Calen nodded and threw the mouthful of liquid to the back of his throat before he could second-guess himself, trying to think happy thoughts.

  It did burn his throat, but not a magical, buzzing burn like the heating box, or the pricking in his head earlier. It was the mundane burn of strong alcohol.

  Then came the prickling, and it was everywhere, like he had sat wrong on a leg and circulation was returning, but across his entire body. The sensation was strangest in his chest, but the concentration around his vital organs was almost comforting.

  Either it was an incredibly fast, painful poison, or they were being told the truth, and Calen had really needed the help.

  His leg wasn't screaming with pain anymore, which was promising. The sensation was more of a dull moan up his nerves.

  Mirri's right palm was outstretched in front of him, so when his throat was cleared, Calen grasped it, and introduced himself.

  "Hi, I'm Calen." He said, shaking the hand in front of him.

  Mirri's wrist tensed oddly when he grabbed at it, but they let him move it up and down a few times, and didn't dig those nasty-looking hooked claws into his flesh, so Calen chalked that up as a win.

  The empty glass bottle was removed from his other hand when he released the handshake, and the alien stood up and away.

  "Test walking. I need a second to check on some others," Mirri said. "Then you two can explain why you crawled into a monster nest."

  Smoke swirled around sweeping skirts for a moment, and then it was just the two of them, and the sound of Emma breathing.

  The even tempo was a good sign, and also kind of a bad sign. At least she wasn't still hurt, or panicking. She had levered herself up to sit against the wooden shelves, staring vacantly through the open door.

  Calen turned his head, peeking out, and saw the scaly gray corpse in a slowly expanding puddle of blood. He shuffled over and waved his hand across the doorway, breaking Emma's line of sight.

  Her pupils contracted slowly as they focused, and tracked his hand almost normally. If she had a concussion, it wasn't a bad one.

  "How you feeling Em? I'm feeling better." Calen started.

  "The eyes weren't silver," Came the nonsensical reply. "The monsters had silver eyes. That one didn't. See? Did you see?"

  Babbling was bad. Em didn't do that.

  "The snakes?" He tried to steer her into a conversation. "Yeah, the snakes had—"

  "No. That one," Emma interrupted, pointing at the corpse. "Look at the eyes. It's got silver. That one didn't have silver. Didn't try to eat us."

  Calen swallowed the lump in his throat and leaned forwards, trusting his leg with a little weight as he shuffled over to his sister. It ached, but didn't collapse.

  "I don't think staring at the— at the body is going to help, Em," he tried again. "I believe you. But maybe we—"

  "I broke. One kick and I broke," Emma said. "I was off the ground. I thought I was gonna die. I thought you were gonna die. My head—"

  She was too busy spiraling.

  "You can afford to lose a few brain cells," he joked, trying levity. Literally anything, if it got her out of her own head right now. "Imagine if it was me?"

  The silence stretched for just a second too long as Emma failed to take the bait. There was a hissed conversation taking place outside, but it didn't have Calen's attention right now.

  "Calen I can feel it. In my head. The... the magic buzzing. I hurt my brain, and this is fixing it," Emma whispered, still staring at the corpse. "Right away. Calen magic is real and someone tried to eat us. Why is magic real here? Why are things like this if magic is real?"

  Calen didn't have any real answers for her questions, and sitting here trapped wasn't going to find them either.

  "Maybe we landed in a bad neighborhood?" He japed. "Come on, let's stand up and get out of here before they leave us behind. It sounds busy out there."

  Someone had mentioned cannibals and a willingness to leave them behind. He couldn't let Em stop moving.

  It took thirty more seconds to get standing, ten of them eaten up when Emma saw the blackened and purply portions of Calen's calf actually shrinking, bubbling and disappearing before their eyes to be replaced with healthy-looking flesh that didn't send jolts through his nerves when he poked it.

  The still-purple spots did scream in protest when he put weight on the leg, so Emma helped pick him up, and by that point, her eyes were totally off the corpse outside.

  Voices were mumbling, some of them in the same humming staccato Mirri had been using to speak, others more human-sounding, but still speaking an unfamiliar language. His ears almost caught some tone, when he tried surging mana through there, but a wave of lightheadedness dissuaded him from trying for now. Booted feet were scuffing the floor too, and Calen could see almost half a dozen figures moving around just from their narrow vantage through the doorway.

  Even standing, Emma still refused to budge towards the door. Calen was stuck leaning on her as his leg readjusted to being able to take weight.

  "Come on Em," He cajoled. "That wasn't Spanish, so you can't make me do all the translating during first contact."

  Mirri had said they would be food if they couldn't run, and Calen might not trust the lizard-people from planet Tenashki just yet, but they seemed like the best bet.

  Mostly because the knife had been taken away from his throat. You didn't heal people you were just going to turn around and kill later.

  He got a blank stare for his efforts. Then an only-mostly-blank stare.

  "First contact?" Emma asked, like she was turning the idea over in her head. "This was first contact. And we lived."

  Calen let himself grin a little as they stumbled out of the closet, looking around for Mr. Isaacson.

  "Yup. We found the little green men." He declared loudly, hoping to prompt a response from somewhere in the thinning haze.

  Air was huffed in a way that ruffled Calen's scalp from behind.

  "Wrong on two counts. I'll give you green. Mostly," Calen whipped his head around as Mirri spoke behind him. "But you're not allowed to call me little, looking like that."

  Their 'rescuer' was standing by the wall next to the door, leaned with an elbow wrapped around a spear taller than Calen was.

  It— she, Calen corrected himself— was also peering down her snout at Calen's forehead. Mirri's scales were almost entirely green, apart from the pale orange spots at the corners of her jaw, and some sections where they tinged lighter near the hollow of her throat.

  Horns and wings aside, she looked like a bipedal lizard-person of some kind. With the horns curving around the side of her helmet before looping downwards, the batlike wings she had folded tightly behind her torso, and the fire magic, Calen was starting to get the impression he knew where things were going.

  He just didn't have any gold to wave around, and didn't want to stereotype anyway.

  "Right. Thanks. Didn't want to assume just because of the skirt," Calen swallowed his nervousness, trying to get a handle on the situation. "The armor covers a lot. I'm human. And you're a..."

  "Dragonborn," She hummed out, confirming his suspicions. "Welcome to Tenashki. How did you two get in here?"

  "We needed somewhere to sleep," Emma blurted out. "Please don't be mad. There was blood everywhere when we got here. We didn't—"

  "Two?" Calen asked.

  That was a bad sign. Mr. Isaacson had been—

  "Hey! Are those ours?" Another voice, much less raspy, and speaking an entirely different language, wormed its way through Calen's skull.

  Emma flinched where she was holding him up as Mirri's spear dropped, point level, to face the armored man stumbling through the haze. The gauntleted hand flinched backwards when the weapon was brought to bear.

  Calen could only describe him as some sort of knight. He had a bronze helmet on, with a braided beard running down the front of his chest. Battered and dented plates of metal, also bronze, covered strategic areas on the man's chest, shoulders, and forearms, all of it layered over a thick-looking wool tunic and fastened with leather. The pommel of a sword stuck out of his belt, but the man kept his hands away from it, shrinking back from the threat.

  On second glance, the man was only about two thirds the size of his silhouette. He had Mr. Isaacson slung over his shoulder, the same way Emma was currently stooping a bit to support Calen. Another man, similarly armored, with his arm in a makeshift sling, was helping with Mr. Isaacson's other side.

  They all looked like they had seen better days. Mr. Isaacson coughed weakly, glassy-eyed.

  "You're a prisoner in need of protection yourself, trespassing the valley, and I've rendered aid. None of them are yours," Mirri hissed. "Stop retreating. You two are headed upstairs."

  Calen froze, halfway back through the doorway to the closet already.

  "If aid counts, then this one's ours," The 'knight' gruffly asserted. "You stepped right over him taking my surrender."

  Mirri's tail lashed, whipping past Calen's ankles almost close enough to feel. She seemed to examine Mr. Isaacson's vacant, confused gaze for a moment before replying.

  "Fine. You get to carry him then. We'll sort it out at Eastwatch."

  "Hey!" Emma protested. "That's not—"

  She went quiet all at once when another dragonborn lurched into the doorway, filling the frame and explaining the architectural quirks of the building all at once.

  "Those two?" The newest figure to enter the room hummed thoughtfully from up near the ceiling. "Get them upstairs. I'll tell Dovin."

  Calen waited for more from the only person in the room carrying a weapon made of steel, but there was nothing else directed at them. The maroon-scaled behemoth just waved their shining silver accoutrements at the other humans in the room, shepherding them outside towards an even larger crowd of people, most of them also human, and armored.

  The dragonborn seemed to be in charge regardless of the difference in number, standing in a loose semicircle.

  More than a few of the humans looked battered, confused, and scared, which made Calen feel a little better. If people with actual weapons and armor were scared, the twisting wriggle of fear weighing down his limbs was normal.

  Reasonable, even.

  "We'll explain upstairs." Mirri took the lapse in Emma's speech to hurry them along, motioning to the stairs. "We don't have a lot of time, and the Venatrix wants to see you two. Dovin probably does too."

  'Venatrix' sounded like a title, translating itself when Calen listened, but 'Dovin' was probably another name. Just a collection of syllables. He even had a fairly good guess who the Venatrix was, with nobody else in the room being nine feet tall.

  Calen lightly elbowed Emma when she opened her mouth, seemingly ready to argue.

  "Priorities," He muttered in her ear. "It sounds like getting left behind is a bad idea, and they're taking us all to the same place anyways."

  Unearthly screeching echoed up the hill from the woods outside. The noise felt deeper than when something had roared earlier, like it was vibrating Calen's bones to the marrow.

  He and Emma weren't the only ones to flinch. Several of the faces in the room sent nervous glances at the doorway.

  "Right," Emma said faintly. "Priorities."

  medicinal herbs, including the modern painkiller opium, and the practice of herbal medicine was not lost over time, continuing in Egypt and across Europe, especially throughout Greek and later Roman cultures.