Maybe they should start testing their powers before they need them in life-or-death situations.

And, is she hearing this right? They send people without powers out to fight monsters? She knows that people sometimes went to war much younger in the past, but that was on Earth. If they don't have powers what's the point?

"How often do people without powers fight monsters?"

"Last time I checked about 30 people have powers in the tribe so I think on average every 2 days?"

Huh.

Huh.

That's... really not how she would have expected it to work. 

Things here operate by different rules, and she doesn't know them.

She needs to be enormously more cautious than she would have been on Earth. 

No one on the planet will be able to point her at where she should direct her caution, because they're iron-age and haven't invented government.

If they don't have government, and there's only a few people with powers, and no one knows how dangerous they can get...

"Is it bad manners to ask about people's powers?"

"Um.. Not particularly? Many people boast about them openly and the others probably wouldn't mind sharing. Especially if you can help them with new ideas using their powers."

That's familiar.

They act like little children.

"Could you describe the thirty powers in the tribe?"

If there's only thirty, she should know them all.

"Um.. I haven't been here long and I only heard most of them in passing. Off the top of my head you have: the wood kinetisits, that's 2, the Ebru metal kineticist for 3, the chief has, super strength durability and gets really angry which let's him ignore pain. We're at 4. I'm not sure on my powers but I make 5. 5 more recieve blessings from Reshma, kind of like me but their's change day to day. For 11 we have the titan who is uncannily good with a sword, super fast, and super durable. The aegis is ridiculously hard to hurt, I haven't seen him take so much as a scratch. That makes 12. The remaining 13 members of the apex are all various forms of strength, durability, technique, and minor stuff like lighting their blades on fire. So for 28 we have 3 people who can like... talk to flora. I came to the understanding that they just project whatever their real powers are onto the plants. At 30 we have a set of twins who are inhumanly good at singing and dancing. Let's see.. I remember various other minor spell casters but I don't recall how many exactly and last but not least we have somebody who has the ability to craft explosives out of nothing."

She doesn't have anything to write that down on, and it was kind of light on the details (sing and dance? talk to plants? receive blessings from Reshma? (...she hasn't seen any plants so far, but good news if this planet has them. Well, that was possibly inferable from the O2 she's breathing?)), so she doesn't think they'll stick in her mind very well.

And none of those powers had numbers attached to them, though she can perhaps infer from "The Aegis" never being scratched that the others have been? Which would be useful if she knew what they'd fought.

Tomorrow she's going to talk to everyone who wants to talk about their powers. There are few enough of them that she can get details, and it'd be dumb not to know all the details she can about the people with powers.

"Thanks for answering."

"Of course. I might be able to provide a write-up in more detail tomorrow. For tonight would you mind helping me test the limit of 2-3 of my weaker protective powers? Weaker as in about the same level as lighting your sword on fire. At that level we shouldn't need safety facilities to test the powers."

What's the polite way of saying "I'd sooner chew glass."

Seren is so far removed from having remotely the right mindset to approach this type of thing that Owl sees no easy way to correct her.

Owl could say "I don't know what you mean by 'about the same level as lighting your sword on fire' because a) that is ridiculously underspecified (are you burning the sword? or are you creating fire in its vicinity? if the latter, how hot is the fire in its vicinity?) and b) I'm guessing that your other powers which are 'on that level' aren't eg outputting the same number of watts." 

She could ask Seren to precisely detail the two or three weaker powers that she wants to test, in as much detail as Seren knows, and then decide whether Owl knows enough to safely help test them.

But... if Seren is the type of person who would would propose this in the first place, and not immediately see what she's doing wrong, she's going to do something stupid at some point, in some way that Owl hasn't anticipated, and Owl very much does not want to be caught in the blast radius.

"Can you describe the powers you're testing in more detail?"

"Umm, no. When I feel for my powers I just get a vague sense of each one. I can tell them apart from each other as well their general power level. I can tell whether the spell is protective, offensive, or neither. The heal spell I have registers as protective. Out of the one's I'd like to test we have two protective powers that are 1 "stage" below the healing magic. And the last is a protective power that is on the same level of the healing magic. The healing magic is capable of healing an otherwise life threatening injury via touch, when channeled for an additonal 2 seconds it becomes ranged up to 30 feet and the healing so far has restored every injury the person had, and the 6 second channel will do it in a burst around me that will heal each person a random amount somewhere between minor stab and tooth through the carotid artery."

It's like Seren's deliberately trying to give Owl nothing useful.

It takes a moment of thought to find a question that might possibly allow her to extract some bare glimmer of relevant information.

"Tell me about the first time you used your healing power, leaving nothing out."

"Oh ok... so, I was here in my wagon when I heard a commotion outside. I opened my door to see what the commotion was and saw a group of some 18 people standing in a circle. I asked what was going on and they opened the circle a little to let me see what was going on. On the ground lay a child who had fallen while playing on the top of a different wagon. Before you ask children are in fact discouraged from doing this but many do it anyway. The child's leg had a massive gash and they were bleeding very badly. Someone was pressing a cloth against his leg and someone else was having him drink water. I just remember thinking that I wish I could help and when I did I felt access to a specific one of the spells that I can now sense. Instinctually I placed my hand onto his shoulder and it began to glow a soft white light. His body knit itself back together and besides the blood there was no evidence that the wound existed. After that I began to sense the rest of my spells, almost like I got another sense in my body. I could recognize the heal spell as the one I used and used it several more times experimenting around with it and found it could do the things that I've told you."

Alright, that's useful. 

Owl doesn't know how the healing power works, but at least now she knows as much as Seren knows. If she were Seren she'd be trying to find a test subject (cached answer, if they can't make a brainless human, is "animal test subject," but... seems cruel) that's fine with having it used on them a lot (someone with their own healing?) so she could further narrow down what it does. 

She's not Seren, though, and is rapidly running out of patience for the interaction even without trying to make suggestions and defend them.

"Thanks. Now, could you tell me exactly how testing your powers will play out, as you imagine it?"

"Um, I will reach out and tug on one of the spells to activate it and you will help to make observations as to what happens. It's hard to say when I don't know what the spell will do but if it does something like make my skin stronger you could help me test how much stronger?"

"...Have you tested your healing power on broken bones? Delicate organs?"

"Well, I'm not sure what the difference would be. If it's capable of understanding the complex workings of human skin and muscle tissue enough to leave them as perfectly as they were then it shouldn't have trouble with bones or organs, but no I haven't tested."

Maybe you should test that instead of assuming.

Wait.

Oh no.

"Have you ever tested your healing power on yourself."

"I did use it to fix a papercut I got earlier."

Jacqueline hasn't cut herself on paper since well before she got her powers and attendant durability.

Convenient that Seren has, though...

...For some reason that feels like a lie to her. It'd be a stupid thing to lie about, but people sometimes tell stupid lies...

...Owl's worried that she came across too strong, too dismissive, and now Seren is saying whatever came to mind to push against that.

And if Owl calls her on it, what. Well, she's not even sure that Seren's lying, and if she isn't - ugh.

And if Seren is, then she has to double down because people always double down when they're called on their lies.

Does the "goddess" take requests?

Next time she's hit by a bus and wakes up on an alien world, she'd like one with less talking-to-people, please.