The mention of that name makes Horan snap up to look at Taharqi's back with a whine and makes Raziya breathe in so quickly she nearly chokes on her food. She starts coughing, her eyes filling with tears, but she's still looking at him. "I—that name—" she says in between breaths.

"It's their god," Taharqi explains. "I think. I... did not know him, before."

Tintin looks dubious, though somewhat disturbed by the paired reaction. "I have never encountered a real god," he says. "Do you have... some evidence of these gods, other than the word of their priests? And, um, drug-induced hallucinations."

Now Raziya and Taharqi look at Tintin with bemused looks on their faces. "You mean... other than the miracles at their altars? I have heard that sufficiently pious people can summon avatars of their gods but not actually seen one, per se."

"What form do these miracles take? - to be clear, I do have some evidence that the laws of reality as I know them are not the same as I have always imagined, so I'm not dismissing these gods out of hand in the same way I would be had I not teleported across the galaxy a few hours ago. I am simply an empiricist."

"You seem to be from rather farther away than I thought," Taharqi says, frowning.

"You've never seen any miracles?" asks Raziya. "Are you a follower of Crom?"

"I am from farther away than anyone you have ever met or could ever meet," Tintin says with a little bow. "If you could walk on air, you could walk without stopping for longer than the world has existed and not get halfway to the place where I stood twelve hours ago. I have no idea who Crom is. All of the gods I have ever heard of were either made up by someone to give themselves power over the people who believed them, or, in one case, aliens with powers that the people who worshipped them didn't understand."

"—I have never heard that word before and I somehow understood it," says Taharqi. "'Aliens'."

"-huh. That's... not my translation software..."

He fiddles with his right wrist, which glows orange for a moment, and says "Can you still understand me?"

"Yes."

Raziya nods in agreement.

"Very strange. I suppose I can save some of the battery power that would otherwise be spent on translation; now it will last a few hundred more years after my death."

Horan is now close enough to them that he can look around Taharqi at the rest of their food. He is not the cleanest of eaters, but he looks downright ravenously at it.

Taharqi continues to studiously ignore him.

"Anyway, I am pretty sure the gods are not made up. I believe Set's most basic miracle is turning branches into snakes, all you need is a shrine to him, branches, and some blood."

"That does sound difficult to fake," Tintin concedes. "Alright. And I suppose I will have offended this hyena god terribly by stealing his sacrifices, and he will now be out for my blood?"

"I have never heard of gods personally going after anyone."

"There's stories, though," says Raziya. "Curses, and chosen people going after those who have angered the gods."

"I think his chosen people will be after me anyway, I did fling them across their own arena. And threaten to break their legs."

"Not chosen," Horan says, and when both Taharqi and Raziya look at him he flinches and takes a step back.

"If those hyena people weren't his chosen, who is?"

Horan shakes his head and looks down at the ground without saying anything more.

"It's okay," Tintin says. "Sorry. You're doing very well."

Horan looks suspicious at that but decides to finally join their little not-quite-a-circle.

"With all this magic of yours," says Taharqi, "I am sure some werehyenas will not pose any problems."