He laughs. "Congratulations! I didn't expect it to work quite so well."

"I'm having a little trouble with these forms, though," he admits. "And with deciding whether or not to join the, what was it, Wards. I don't suppose you have any advice?"

"Well, I'm already in, so I think any advice I give would be biased," he laughs. "But yeah, I think you should join. It's fun, and you feel like you're making a difference, like whatever reason we got these powers, we're using them for good."

"Reason?"

He shrugs. "Who knows why some people get them and others don't? Why these powers, why they work the way they do, and why we get them the way we do? We do the best we can with what we're given."

"I suppose," Ashras agrees. "I certainly feel like I should do something about those Endbringers while I'm here."

"We can definitely use an extra pair of hands! So, I'm curious, what do you actually do?"

"That's a very good question and I'm not at all sure how to answer it."

"Which only makes me more curious," he chuckles. "But it's alright if you don't want to answer. If you do join we'll kinda have to know to coordinate, though."

"The trouble is, in my planet I don't have unusual powers. I'm just another Aluvai. But here, well, there don't seem to be other Aluvai. And I haven't seen any hint that you have combat magic. So things that anyone at home would take for granted, here I have to find a way to explain from scratch."

He blinks. "Everyone there has powers? Well, that's... interesting." Pause. "This might be a little bit rude of me, but does everyone go through a trigger event?"

"No."

"I see. That's very different. And you say your powers are all very similar?"

"In theory, anyone can learn combat magic - actually, that's an interesting thing to test, now I think of it." He gets out his fire pin and demonstrates how it makes fire. "At home, I'd expect absolutely anybody to be able to light a fire pin on the first handful of tries with no previous instruction. Want to try it?"

He blinks but accepts the... fire pin. And tries to make fire, whatever the hell that means.

He laughs. "Okay, I get that combat magic involves pins that make fire," he says, giving it back. "What else does it entail?"

"Fire pins - and spark pins and force pins and so on, but those are less common because they're less useful - are the smallest feasible magic weapon design," he says. "Scaling them up increases their power; wands can throw small fireballs, staves can throw big ones. I don't know that anyone's found an upper limit, but after a certain point they get really impractical to move around."

"So, basically, you use very long things to cast destructive magic?"

"That about sums it up. But the very long things have to be made in particular designs. Luckily I know a thing or two about artificing."

"That's really peculiar. And does everyone have a tail where you're from?"

"Only Aluvai, and only some Aluvai at that. Aluvai are one type of human; the other type, Ceirene, look much like the humans of this planet."

"Do Aluvai without tails have powers?"

He laughs. "I mean, anyone can learn combat magic, tail or no."

Dauntless nods. "I see. That's an interesting place you're from."