He waves hello when she emerges back into the main room of the underground complex. "So: magic! I don't know what death tolls or geneses are."

"...I guess if you've only got two species wherever you are you probably haven't had a genesis in long enough that you'd necessarily still have cultural consciousness of it. A genesis is when a new species starts. Death tolls are...that thing that happens when someone dies? Like when Dakker--my friend--died."

"That doesn't happen when someone dies wherever-I-am!"

"...Uh."

"Crap."

"My species does not have magic."

"Okay, I believe you. But I think that's less important right now than the possibility that my friend just died on virgin soil. Death tolls, on land that's never seen one before, cause geneses."

"..."

"Some period of time--I think a few days, maybe a week--after the death toll rings, the nearest population center--I don't know if we count, we wouldn't if there was a city nearby but I really doubt there is--starts seeing babies of the new species just suddenly appear. Not out of proportion to the number of adults available to take care of them--if we do count we'd probably not get an average of more than one a year, I think, at least to start with--but it doesn't stop until there's enough of them to form a stable gene pool."

"Uh," says Tiro. "...uh."

"I mean, this is assuming this is virgin soil--or was--which we don't know yet, but..."

"There's no city nearby," he says. "There's no... anything nearby."

"We can't just leave. If someone else comes by someday the genesis will resume and if they have no idea what's going on..."

Tiro nods.

"I'm sorry."

"I couldn't leave anyway," he says. "I don't know how."

"...How did you get here?"

"Magic," he says wryly.

"Fair enough. We were brought here by our dead friend, but if we really wanted to leave we could create at least one child with enough of his genes to inherit his species magic."

"...Uh," says Tiro.

"Elf magic, not necrophilia."

...He giggles.

"My sister--Amalta--is engaged to Kaleith. I think they'd be competent to rear a child even if they didn't have no choice because of the genesis. And Dakker gave his consent a long time ago that if it was for the good of the group his genes could be used posthumously."

"...why?"

"Because we were a group of civilians banding together for mutual protection and survival in a very nasty war zone."

"Oh."