All randomly chosen directions are about the same, so that seems valid. The way in which they are all about the same, though, is kind of curious; North Africa seems to have a lot more dimly visible distant ruins of megastructures than his history books and/or memory would suggest, and they certainly don't look anything like, say, Ancient Egyptian pyramids or anything like that.

...curiouser and curiouser.

Tintin course-corrects to go towards the nearest visible ruin. If it's inhabited, that lets him interface with people; if it isn't, he's got shelter and a place to sleep during the hot day.

Nearest visible ruin is perhaps an hour's walk north.

Tintin can walk that far; he was fully prepared to trudge through the sand all night. On he treks, weighing the pros and cons of fabricating himself a hermetic suit to keep the sand out of his shoes.

The hissing of a snake coming from over yonder to the west will probably be heard before he has finished weighing said pros and cons. If he looks, he will see a cobra! The head of the cobra is approximately the size of his torso and the rest of the snake's body is proportionally longer.

Tintin has a gun. He doesn't like shooting people, but a snake is not a people.

A nearly microscopic osmium flechette drills between the cobra's eyes at barely sublight speeds.

It dies with very little fanfare.

Tintin starts to move on, then thinks better of it and spends a few minutes with his omni-tool stripping the meat from the snake and generating a few coldpacks to pack it in. He doesn't know how much wildlife there is around here, and he's heard decent things about snake meat.

After some consideration, he also takes its venom glands. He doesn't know if this is a known species, and Professor Tournesol would never forgive him if he left potentially novel organic material to rot. 

Then he continues on. 

There are more snakes! Most of them are regular-sized and die even more easily. There are scorpions! Most of them are regular-sized although a few as big as a large dog show up and one about as tall as a horse, too.

All of them are rather violent and actively aggressive.

He doesn't bother butchering them after the first one; he's got enough meat already that it might spoil before he gets to it all. Idly, he revises his estimation that he's actually on Earth down a few notches. This is simply not a plausible quantity or size of venomous animals.

Fortunately, his pistol is not some antiquated slugthrower; the only practical limitation is on how many shots he can fire in quick succession before the heat dissipation system overloads. Perhaps not ideal in a military setting, where he might need to mow down serried ranks of troops, but it's more than sufficient for one reptile every few minutes. 

Reptiles and arachnids! Gotta remember the arachnids.

As he gets farther north, the lack of light pollution lets him discern that those ruins are in fact very probably inhabited; the shifting lights and shadows seem to indicate bonfires or campfires or some other sort of fires.

Excellent. Fire is not ideal as far as indicators of tech level go, but it's better than no fire.

He draws closer and closer. Does anyone come out to greet him?

Nope! No scouts that he can see or that show up to greet him.

He starts hearing the sound of drums.

Well, that's... a thing.

Tintin is beginning to have a sinking feeling about the people inhabiting this ruin. He runs a biotic barrier over his skin, casting a flickering blue glow over the closest few meters. Then he walks through the nearest archway.

"Halloa!" he says loudly. "I'm a bit lost."

There is an amphiteater with a large wooden podium in the center. There are three people, two men and one woman, lying unconscious on it, naked except for the hyena pelts covering some parts of their body including their faces, hands, and feet. A huge bonfire is lit in the center, sending white smoke into the heavens, and a man garbed in hyena furs wearing a wooden mask is chanting and moving in weird patterns around the fire to the sound of the drums. The podium is surrounded by other people in hyena furs but, additionally, there are also some... rather inhuman-seeming people, tall and with long ears and tails and hyena snouts and long claws and all that jazz.

Whatever ceremony they are holding, it does not stop on account of Tintin. However, some of the hyena-people as well as some humans carrying bows turn to look and... don't have the friendliest looks on their faces.

This seems like a bad.

"You all have five seconds to put down your primitive weapons and let these people go," Tintin says authoritatively. "After that, I will be forced to start breaking your legs."

"Just who do you think you are calling primitive?" snarls one of the non-hyena-people.

Speaking of primitive, here's three or four arrows shot in his direction as some other people with spears, swords, mauls, or (in the case of the hyena-people) claws start rushing at him.

Tintin jukes sharply to the left, not dignifying the question with a response. With a flowing motion like very rapid T'ai Chi, he casts a Singularity.

It's not an actual gravitational singularity. That would be hideously irresponsible, and more to the point, well beyond any biotic. It's an orb of warped space that alters gravity in its vicinity. Suddenly, the archers are lazily floating through the air, which is absolute hell on their inner ears. 

While they float, he goes through some more motions and releases a couple of smaller Throw fields. They zip forward and strike the two nearest hyena-people in their respective kneecaps, exploding with an amount of force between that of a sledgehammer and a pickup truck. They're calibrated to break bones and fling their targets across the room, but not to rip off limbs. 

...okay this is the kind of sorcery that means everyone except for the shaman needs to get to their feet and stop this intruder at once. The humans howl and yowl, animalistic sounds that a human throat shouldn't be able to naturally produce, and the hyena-people join in—more than just the ones there, there are apparently other people in other camps elsewhere that were not in the ceremony but who are replying with their own howls. The hyena-people scream when they are thrown off and flung, but their bones do not break; they are soon getting back to their feet.

"I would really prefer not to kill you!" he yells, backing up. He hits one of the hyena-people in the center of the throng with Stasis followed with another Throw, creating a massive kinetic blast as the fields interact and shred each other. The hyena-person is severely tenderized but hopefully not killed, and the humans around her are flung around like tenpins.

Hyena-person is very hardy and not killed. Humans who are flung... less certain. Being flung around is not good for humans, especially Iron Age humans with poor nutrition, and they do not all remain conscious after said flinging.

Hyena-people and Iron Age humans start converging on him, although slowly, and more of them start trying the arrows again. The drums start going faster as the shaman realises the ritual might not complete quickly enough if Tintin gets to them.

A couple of the arrows connect, causing an eye-hurting warp effect, and fall to the ground. Tintin is not visibly harmed.

His back touches the platform. He makes another motion, and the prisoners begin to float into the air.

"So sorry! Must run! We'll have to do this again sometime!" he says rapidly, as he takes one of the weightless prisoners over each shoulder and takes the last in a bridal carry. Then he starts sprinting away at top speed. Which, for Tintin, is very fast. Even when his aerodynamics are less than ideal.

Now the shaman stops the ritual and very, very slowly goes "What."

Then there is another howling sound, but this one doesn't come from anyone there. It comes from above, and around, from the air itself. It's outraged, and angry, but most of all it is deafeningly loud, and even the hyenas and humans have to take protection from it, which ironically only makes it easier for Tintin to run away.

One of the many nice things about being from space and also the future: cochlear stabilizer implants! Tintin does not have to take protection from the blast of sound, though he does stumble a bit.

What in God's green Hell was that, he does not say, because it is currently running away time and using his breath to swear would be suboptimal.

He will succeed at rescuing his rescues and fleeing the humans and hyena-people and whatever-in-God's-green-Hell that was! Most directions include desert but the north in particular includes the ruins of a really unreasonably tall and long wall of obsidian.

Perfect. He finds a bit where the wall has crumbled down to a more reasonable height, with plenty of massive blocks of rubble, and flings himself twenty feet up onto a decently sized piece of rubble. Then up to the next, and the next, and he's up over the wall floating down to the other side.

He sets the ex-prisoners down gently in the sand and sets his omni-tool to a general health checkup.

The three of them are unconscious and slightly battered, bruised, and cut, but not horribly so. One of the two men, the dark-skinned fully-shaven one, is in clearly better condition than the other two even at naked eye inspection: his nutrient levels are all top notch, he has no parasites or illnesses to speak of. The other man, very white with a very thick beard and a very Viking-like build, is physically fit but not as healthy, and has many lice in his hair and one intestinal parasite. The woman, dark-skinned but less so than the first man, definitely of a different ethnicity (though none of them are particularly perfect fits for any modern-day Earth ethnicities), seems like she has not been eating or sleeping well lately, and has the muscle tone of someone who does not do much manual labour.

All three of them have been drugged out by something his omni-tool has absolutely never seen, and white guy's got some weird shit going on in his brain.

They're also all three of them wearing identical bracelets of patterned leather with a large green oval gemstone on their left wrists. The bracelets look entirely decorative.

Preindustrial health problems, great. Tintin administers a mild deworming agent to the man with brain problems, but lacking knowledge of the drug they were administered, can't really do anything about that. Instead, while eating an energy bar to replenish calories lost in the fight, he examines the brain scan in some more detail, and compares it to Milou's downloaded medical library to see if it's recognizably something.

It's not recognisably something, no. What it is seems to be is extra activity around the cerebellum and interior parts of the brain coupled with reduced frontal lobe and interstitial neuronal activity.

This side of the wall, there is a chilly wind coming from the west, wetter than it should by rights be in the desert; but then again, further north the sands soon make way to some packed earth and eventually grass, so it's not desert forever.

Tintin will fabricate a thin but highly insulating blanket from some of his omni-gel and drape it over his patients(?), then get to work fabricating that suit he was thinking of making earlier. Now that he knows there are unreasonably sturdy hyena-people around who want to rip him to pieces, it seems more important.

His patients(?) do not stir, and no hyena-people, hyenas, humans, or any other kinds of animals will disturb him while he does this.

Tintin did not expect to be trip-sitting tonight, but it's not the worst way to spend a few hours. He has his omni monitoring the erstwhile sacrifices while he works out the specs and fabricates the pieces.

He strips and starts pulling on the suit, shivering. Damn, it's cold in this desert.

Deserts tend to get freezing cold at night and this one is no exception. As if to punctuate this, there's another one of those cold wet breezes.

Fortunately, once he's in the suit he's practically immune to Earthly temperature extremes. He can still lose heat through his head, but the rest of him is perfectly warm.

Also, it flatters his figure very nicely.

He settles in with an audiobook to wait until either his charges start to wake up or something else happens, such as it having been long enough that he needs to set up an IV drip for them.

It'll be a bit past sunrise before the first of his charges starts stirring, the man with the strange brain activity. He furrows his brows as a ray of sunlight hits his face, and raises a hand to cover his eyes.

Tintin is sitting in a chair fabricated from thin but unreasonably sturdy strands of plastic. He gets to his feet, then crouches by the man.

"Hello! Are you feeling alright?"

The man's eyes open abruptly and he yelps, a high loud sound of startlement only matched in suddenness and intensity by how quickly he jumps away from Tintin.

"Whoa, there. I won't hurt you. Unless you try to hurt me first, I suppose, but even then I'd probably just try to drive you off, not hurt you for the sake of it."

The man... whines might be the word for it, or screams. He is half-crouching, his eyes wide open, and he looks ready to bolt, looking around for exit strategies. He does not respond using language.

Tintin backs off. If this man wants to run off into the wilderness, it is not actually Tintin's job to stop him.

He does not immediately do this. The fact that Tintin isn't attacking or anything is at least mildly reassuring, even if everything is... weird and confusing and scary. He remembers being scared but he doesn't remember of what and maybe it was this person so maybe he should run, he has no friends here, but he has no friends anywhere either, where would he go...

The man lets out a long, thin, low whine from the back of his throat, like a dog who is very unhappy about something.

Tintin slowly reaches into his bag and pulls out a cookie wrapped in plastic. He unwraps it, breaks off a piece, pops it in his mouth, and offers the rest to the frightened man.

He takes one tentative step towards Tintin.

Tintin does not move.

He will keep taking slow tentative steps, almost never blinking, the low whine only pausing for breaths, until he's within arm's length of the cookie.

Tintin smiles, slowly, measuredly, and without showing any teeth.

No teeth is good, yeah. He slowly stretches one arm towards the cookie...

...the woman groans as she starts to wait up...

...he grabs the cookie and bolts to hide behind a boulder nearby.

He turns to look at her. "Hello! Feeling better?" he asks, hoping that guy's problem was his brain and not the drugs, because that would get old quickly.

The woman's eyes don't open in surprise like the man's had. She groans again and shields them from the sun with her right hand, then veeeeeeeeeery slowly opens one of them to blearily look at Tintin. She looks rather unfocused, and doesn't immediately reply.

Bleary is better than feral! Tintin's seen worse drug reactions! Tintin will continue to be friendly and nonthreatening until she's more conscious, how about that.

The woman shuts her eye again and groans a third time before trying to sit up. It takes her a couple of tries but eventually she manages to slump up and forward, drawing her legs in for some more support and pressing the heels of her hands into her eyeballs.

She stays there, motionless and quiet, for long enough that the feral man pokes his head out from behind the boulder, cookie crumbs all over his scraggly beard.

Tintin passes his omni-tool over her forehead, applying a thin layer of medi-gel, which should absorb through her skin and help the headache after a couple of minutes.

After a couple of minutes, he clears his throat. "Feeling better?" he repeats.

She flinches at the touch—she hadn't noticed him approaching—but relaxes after a bit and does seem to gradually improve in condition over those two minutes. "I—" she says, then starts coughing, throat and mouth extremely dry. "Yes," she croaks, eyes still shut.

Tintin, feeling a bit stupid, wordlessly hands her a glass bottle of lukewarm water from his backpack. It's got a bit of citric acid in it to make it taste less like lukewarm water, but she probably doesn't need the help. (He should set up a condenser at some point today to refill his water supply. His right hand lights up as he types up a reminder in his calendar.)

The woman wordlessly accepts it and gulps down the water very quickly. "Thank you," she says, a bit less hoarse, then clears her throat and repeats, "Thank you."

She looks around to properly take in her surroundings and understand what's going on. The feral man has hidden behind the boulder once more, so she doesn't see him, but her gaze pauses at the now-much-more-visible grass in the distance (and in particular the even-more-distant-like-days-away-by-horse-distant snowy mountains to the north), then at the remaining unconscious person, and then finally at Tintin himself. "Who are you? Where are we? What... happened?"

Tintin bows. "Valentin Saint-Martin. I have, frankly, no idea where we are except 'away from the hyena cultists'. I was hoping you could tell me a bit of what happened, I arrived somewhat in the middle. When I arrived you were drugged and laid out on an altar surrounded by said hyena cultists, and I doubt their intentions were good. So I tossed them around a bit, and took you and your two compatriots with me as I made a tactical retreat."

"...two?" she asks, looking at the single other person lying there.

"Yyyyyes. The other one has had some difficulty adjusting, and is currently hiding behind a rock. Please don't startle him."

She holds the heel of one hand against her forehead and frowns. "We were... I was... ambushed. Is the other man a Shemite? The one hiding behind a rock? —my name is Raziya, by the way."

"He might be - I'm not familiar with the local ethnic divisions, I'm... not from the area." He gestures broadly at his clothing. "It's nice to meet you, Raziya."

"What did he look like?"

"Long white beard. Pale skin like mine, maybe a bit paler. His facial features were more like mine than like yours. Big muscles."

"Not him, then," she sighs. "I was camping with a man, here—he tried to fight our ambushers. I hoped he was alive, but if he wasn't there then he's probably dead."

"I'm sorry. And you don't know this other gentleman?" He nods at the still-unconscious man with the darker skin.

She shakes her head. "They gave me... something to drink, it tasted foul, and then I was gone... There were visions," she adds, as if she's just remembered them. "It was... strange. A large animal... not a hyena but also at the same time it was a hyena, but it was also... an owl and a wolf and a tiger and an elephant... and it spoke to me." She shivers and hugs herself. "It knew my name."

"Hallucinations can be very disturbing," Tintin nods. "I've been drugged more than a few times myself, and it's rarely pleasant."

He shakes his head. "Are you from this area? Where are we, in the most general sense?"

"The... Exiled Lands. Since I'm not dead." She looks up at the wall, then at the grassy highlands. "I don't know anything else, though, I didn't know there were parts of it that... weren't desert."

"The Exiled Lands. Huh. And - stop me if you've heard of any of the following - Turians, Salarians, Asari, the Systems Alliance, mass effect, the Citadel Council, electricity..."

She just stares at him, blinking.

"Fantastic," Tintin sighs. "-oh, another consideration I had not considered: indoor plumbing? Running water?"

"—what, like rivers?"

"Like a very small river in your home. For the convenience of the homeowner. No? No. Well, it could be worse; I could be on Khar'shan. - actually Khar'shan has running water and electricity and I might be able to foment a revolution or something, which would be fun, this just sucks." He shakes his head vigorously. "No, no, I must think positively. Are there civilizations in the Exiled Lands?"

"Like... countries? I'm not sure how big it is here, there are tribes and things... I heard of pirates and I thought that was ridiculous because who would be pirates in a desert? But if there are places that aren't deserts then maybe there's oceans, too. Maybe this place is way bigger than I thought. Um, there's tribes of Darfari cannibals?"

"Pirates and cannibals. Grand. - why are they called the Exiled Lands?"

"It's where people who are exiled from their countries are sent. ...I don't know which countries, I know Kush and Shem and Stygia and Darfar and Cimmeria and... I think there are others."

Time for the other guy to start groaning as he wakes up!

"Excuse me for a moment?"

Tintin goes over to apply medi-gel, provide a water bottle, and -

He slaps his forehead. "Raziya, you must be terribly hungry. I've got some meat in my pack, I'll set it to roasting." He removes the snake meat from his pack, salts it lightly, then uproots a scrubby bush and turns it into a small, very smoky cookfire while the other guy gets his bearings.

The other guy goes through similar motions to Raziya's, also looking and sounding extremely groggy and hungover. The feral dude sticks his head out from behind the rock again to watch what the new sound is, and after determining it is not a threat he returns to his hiding spot.

Other guy's first words might be a bit surprising, though: "Of fucking course they have mind control drugs."

"Mind control drugs?" Tintin asks. "That's concerning. I'm concerned. Would you like to elaborate."

He raises a hand in a "please wait a moment" gesture and starts drinking from the water bottle.

Tintin will certainly accept this.

"My name is Valentin Saint-Martin, by the way," he mentions as the man drinks. "I am very foreign, and deciding what to do now that I'm stuck here."

The man finally lowers the bottle and says, "Thank you. I am Taharqi, not at all foreign, and very grateful for the rescue." He looks up at Tintin as he offers the bottle back, then blinks when he notices Raziya there. She raises a hand in greeting and he nods. "Mind control drugs, the werehyenas have some ritual and the drugs are meant to turn you into their... thralls. —fuck I bet the Darfari have some, too. Fuck."

"Then - then I'm very glad I rescued you. Can the ones who have already been turned be saved somehow?"

Tintin makes a mental note to be less careful about killing the hyena-people, and more careful about hurting their human pets.

"I don't know, hopefully we wait it out and they flush it all out over time? If that doesn't work we can kill them and hope when they get back they are alright—"

    "Come back?" asks Raziya.

"—right, I don't really know why it works for me, do I..."

    "What are you talking about?"

"Sorry, ugh, my head is still fuzzy." He slumps forward to rest his head on his hands.

"Are you saying that - you've come back from the dead?"

"A couple of times, yeah." He lifts his left hand—no, left wrist, the gem glows a bit as he moves around. "Pretty sure it's the bracelet. I can do it, my housemate can do it, I have never met anyone else who can."

    "You have a house? Here?" asks Raziya in wonder.

"Yeah, Sendhei and I built it."

    "—your housemate is called Sendhei? Stygian? What did he get exiled for?"

"Unlawful unsupervised fornication."

    "What a coincidence."

"So this is less of a religious belief, more of an actual magical power," Tintin clarifies. "I am very far from home."

He takes a moment to rotate the snake meat, and removes his third, penultimate bottle of water to leave in the sand by the madman's hiding-rock.

"Definitely actual magical power, I don't think any of the gods had anything to do with it."

    "Set might have—"

"Set is an asshole who does not care about any of us. Not that that matters, if any gods have their eyes on these blighted lands it will be the likes of Yog." Raziya shivers at that name. "What did you mean by coincidence?"

    "I was a concubine of the Stygian pharaoh," she says, "and I was exiled for having sex with one of his dancers, a man named Sendhei, unlawfully and unsupervisedly."

"The Stygian pharaoh should jump into a pit of scorpions," Taharqi opines.

"That is quite a coincidence. And I fully agree. Some crimes should be punished; adultery is not one of them."

"The problem was not the adultery, it was doing it while he wasn't around. Any of his concubines can only have sex with other people with his consent which usually only happened when he was watching."

"Equally charming," Tintin opines. "-should we perhaps reconvene at Taharqi's house? If you'll have us," he asks Taharqi.

"Of course." He looks at the wall, then up north at the highlands. "It's about five to six days to the south by horse, if we are where we think we are.."

    "You knew about this place before?"

"Yeah, I was actually captured by the werehyenas on my way back south from hereabouts. I told my horse to get back on her own when I noticed we were pretty surrounded, so hopefully she's still alive."

(The feral dude shows up again for a second just to grab his water before hiding behind the rock once more.)

"...should we bring our feral friend?" Tintin asks. "He's likely to be fairly high-maintenance, but he might be useful in our studies of the... mind control drug."

"Do you have some extra horses hidden somewhere or are we going to have to actually walk back? Walking our feral friend back might be harder than just knocking him out and tying him up, depending on just how feral he is."

"I do not have a horse," Tintin says. "If I had a spare eezo core I could make a very light motorcycle out of the omni-gel in my pack; unfortunately, I don't, so we will probably have to walk. That being the case, I suppose we'll have to leave him behind. We can raid their camp at some point if we want indoctrinated subjects."

He starts deconstructing his chair and pouring it back into the omni-gel canister.

"You sure said very many words, there," says Taharqi, raising an eyebrow and grinning slightly. "If he is acting like a werehyena's thrall, we might be able to actually just convince him to come with us."

"Omni-gel is something I can make things out of, like chairs; an eezo core is a power source; a motorcycle is a self-propelled vehicle. If you think it's a good idea, I'm happy to try."

He pours the last of the chair into the canister, re-seals it, and starts decompiling the blanket he put over Taharqi and Raziya. Halfway through, he removes the snake meat from the fire. "Giant snake meat, anyone?"

    "Meat," says Raziya, her head snapping so fast towards it you can almost hear her neck crack.

"Give me a few pieces? Small ones, I want to give them to our feral friend."

"Of course." Tintin fabs three plates and two forks, and doles out snake meat. Moderate portions for himself and Raziya, several small pieces for Taharqi.

He has a bite. Unexciting, but not half bad; it flakes like fish, with the more solid flavor of white meat. He wonders idly if there are lemon trees in this desert. Probably not, right? Probably not.

Taharqi grabs them and walks over to the boulder, slowly, crouching low. Feral Friend sticks his head out once again and yips when he sees the other man so close, then starts growling. "I'm a friend," he says, in a low voice, not making eye contact with the man, looking somewhere between the ground and the man's chest. "I have food. I think you can understand me, yeah? They can still talk. So you can probably still talk, too." He stops walking then slowly holds out his hands to show the man the meat, then once again slowly lowers them and places a single piece on the ground. He withdraws his hands but does not back off, and stays where he is, not looking at the man and not moving.

Tintin observes this process.

Feral Friend starts growling at the back of his throat as he looks between the food and Taharqi, but Taharqi does not move or raise his eyes. He takes a step towards the meat, still growling, and yips when Taharqi says, "It's okay. Focus on the food. You can understand me. I know you don't think I'm in your pack, but we are the closest thing you have to a pack right now. You gotta stick with us to survive." The man had stopped growling after a few words, and now he whines a bit and takes another step towards Taharqi. "I am going to take a step back, and I am going to place more food here," he announces slowly. "I will place food all the way over to where we are, but you can run away whenever you want. You shouldn't, though. I know you are confused, but we are not the ones you should be afraid of. You will be fine." And with that he starts taking some very soft, very slow, very small steps back, creating a trail of food, and the other man just keeps watching.

Once Taharqi is far enough, he crawls over to the first morsel of meat, takes it, and eats it, watching Taharqi intently all the while. Taharqi still does not stand back up, or look at the man, and just waits patiently.

(Raziya is absolutely ignoring anything going on over there to focus on her food.)

"You're very good at this - talking-down - thing," Tintin says agreeably.

He doesn't turn to look over his shoulder at Valentin or acknowledge him verbally, but he does smile at the ground.

    The man takes another step towards the next morsel of food, grabs it, sniffs it, and eats it. His brows furrow in concentration while he chews, and after he swallows he opens his mouth and says, "Ho... Ho........ Horan. Ho. Ran."

"Ho... ran," Taharqi repeats. "Is that your name? Horan?"

    He still looks like he's having a lot of trouble concentrating, but he nods. "Ho... ran. Ee... Y..." He whines and shuts his eyes and then moans in a much more humanlike sounds. "Horan," he says one more time.

Raziya looked up at them when Horan spoke, and is now watching, too.

Tintin nods slowly. Does it hurt him to speak, or to think, he wonders.

"I am going to eat, now," says Taharqi, "but I will leave this food here for you. We have more. We have plenty for all of us. You can get your pieces of meat here, and take them with you, or you can join us. It is up to you." Horan looks at the meat when Taharqi speaks, and then Taharqi puts the rest of the meat on the ground, takes a few steps back, then sits and turns around so that his back is to Horan. He releases a breath, then turns up to look at Valentin and grin, now that his teeth are no longer visible to the Feral Friend.

Tintin smiles back, though since he's more visible to Horan he refrains from showing teeth. "Good show," he murmurs.

"Thank you," he murmurs back.

    "Where'd you learn that?" Raziya asks with her mouth full.

"Here and there," he replies, vaguely enough. "He can understand us, the other thralls of the Dogs of the Desert can, too. But whatever they gave us... made us more like hyenas. Or, made him more like a hyena, it failed to work for us. I wonder why."

Horan himself seems to be having trouble actually understanding the murmured conversation—too many words, too low a volume, too confusing—but he's making progress towards them and grabbing the meat trail Taharqi left for him.

"I interrupted the ritual in the middle," Tintin mentions. "It's possible they had already injected him with something else, before I arrived, and were waiting on the two of you for... some reason."

"—a ritual. Right. The drug itself only opens us up, that's... the drug itself does not control us, it just keeps us pliant so that Jhebbal Sag can get in."

    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," says Taharqi, and Raziya nods.

"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."

"It's not magic," Tintin says absently. "But yes, you're quite right, I'm just - worried that the other shoe might drop."

"You are the only one of us here wearing shoes." Or pretty much anything else, for that matter.

    "Worried that what?" asks Raziya between bites.

"I had noticed that," Tintin admits. "I can make you some shoes, if you like. Ah, it's a saying - worried that things will turn out to be worse than I had realized, somehow."

"If we are planning on walking all the way to my house, shoes will be a good idea, yes." Taharqi gets some more meat to offer to Horan, who has been staring suspiciously at all of it, and he gratefully scarfs it all down.

Shoes it is, then. They're more like sandals than enclosed shoes or boots: enough to protect their feet from the hot sand and rocks, without imprisoning their virgin feet and inevitably blistering. They're cushioned. The material might feel a little bit suspicious, to people who've never encountered plastics.

"Anything else? Hat or parasol for the sun? A sword, maybe?"

"You can make a sword of this material?" asks Taharqi, while Raziya puts her sandals on and Horan stares at his suspiciously. "And it actually cuts things?"

"I would be making the sword out of metal," Tintin clarifies. "I could actually make a plastic sword, it just wouldn't hold an edge very well. Better than a stick, but let's go with what works."

"And would this sword be useful at all with your arsenal of not-magic?"

"It's rarely a bad idea to have more people in the party who can fight. I can, actually, be overwhelmed. Potentially even by magic I know nothing about."

"If you can make a battle axe and maybe some good arrows and a bow plus the necessary bits to attach those to my person I am skilled in using them."

    "I can't fight. I can at most survive long enough to run," says Raziya, not sounding particularly regretful.

Horan has figured the sandals out and put them on, but he does not look happy about wearing them. Then again, he might just be generally unhappy.

"An axe! I can do that. Bow and arrows... let me see what I can do, it's not something I've got a design for but it shouldn't be impossible..."

The axe ends up having a sturdy plastic haft and a razor-sharp metal head. The bow is entirely plastic, as are the arrows, which taper to a narrow point. Each weapon has a little magnet that will stick it to a harness that Tintin also compiles for Taharqi, as does the little quiver for the arrows. "Can you give the bow a try and see how it handles? I can do a certain amount of adjustment, and if it turns out I just have no idea what goes into a good bow then I'll just decompile it and we'll stick with the axe."

Taharqi gets up and accepts the bow and one of the arrows. He balances both in his hands, then finds some tree in the distance and shoots at it. His eyebrows raise in surprise when he almost hits it.

"Make the string thicker and the bow itself heavier and less flexible but otherwise this is perfect. Your nonmagic material is way hardier than I would have expected."

"Excellent!"

Tintin decompiles the bow and compiles another, making the requested adjustments, then hands it over.

And with this one he hits the tree dead on. "...I might want to keep this after we get to my house."

"You're welcome to it, if it's an improvement. I can't make you fifty like it, but I doubt you need fifty like it."

"It's—not a strict improvement, over the one I have back home, but it's sideways. This one's longer," he elaborates, smoothly nocking another arrow and shooting while barely looking and hitting another tree twice as far away as the first one. "I haven't really made any longbows, here, haven't needed them, but since this one is free..." He shrugs, and smiles, before putting the bow back down and grabbing the axe to weigh it in his hands. Horen looks at it with more alarm than he did at the bow, but when Taharqi takes a few steps away for some practice swings the feral man returns to his food.

Tintin watches the practice swings appreciatively.

"Is nudity the standard here?" he thinks to ask. "The hyena cult wasn't, and I thought they'd stripped you to sacrifice, but..."

    "I wasn't unclothed before this," says Raziya, "but if my pelts and jewellery were not destroyed by them they probably still have it."

"I am not sure I understand in what sense you mean," says Taharqi, humming thoughtfully as he looks at his axe and changes his grip slightly before some more swings.

"My native culture wears clothing almost all the time. Nudity is reserved for bathing and sex. And clothing has to cover the genitals and breasts."

    "'Has to'? By... law or something?" asks Raziya.

Taharqi nods to himself and returns to their circle where she has finished eating and Horan seems to be mostly just lazily picking at his meat, now. "I think Nordheimers tend to wear a lot pretty often? I do not believe there are any laws about it, though."

"Yes, there's laws about how much you have to wear in public."

Tintin collects plates and forks to decompile.

This gets a fairly strong reaction out of Raziya, at least compared to her more recently-usual calm and complacency. "Wait, actually? What for?" she asks, sounding fairly outraged.

"Um. So, it turns out that when you only remove your clothing for sexual purposes for a thousand years, a strong association develops between nudity and sex, and public nudity becomes seen as - perverse? And unrelatedly, we have very strong norms about not letting children see any sexuality stronger than kissing. And public spaces have children in them."

He shrugs. "Honestly it's really much more of a codified cultural norm than anything anyone put thought into. I do think it's a bit stupid."

"Didn't you say you also bathe nude? And what about when it's very warm?"

"We bathe nude, but privately - remember I mentioned running water, the convenient water inside your home? We have private bathrooms for that. And the culture that originated this norm is from an area where it never got as warm as it does here, or I don't think it would have caught on before we had clothes like these -" he gestures at his suit "- which are comfortable in just about any temperature."

    "I don't like it," she grumbles.

"It does sound odd," Taharqi agrees. "This thing you are wearing is comfortable?" he asks, looking at Valentin and then directly at his crotch. It's not a sexual look—merely one of curiosity and confusion. "I thought it would be some not-magic armour of sorts but it doesn't look comfortable."

Tintin blushes slightly. "It's quite comfortable, yes - the inside is much softer than the outside, and it maintains a stable temperature. It's also armored, but I don't need a lot of plating - my barriers are pretty durable."

"Not-magic ones?" Taharqi guesses, looking up at Valentin's face again.

"How'd you guess."

"Just a hunch." He walks back over to their little camp and grabs the harnesses Tintin has made for his new weapons and puts them on.

The harness is just as comfortable as the sandals. The weapons snap onto it and hold firm, but if he pulls on them, they come off easily into his hand.

(Tintin is trying not to look at Taharqi's sensitive regions, which was easier before Taharqi looked at his and made it relevant.)

Taharqi's sensitive regions are very extensive and he makes no effort to contain or conceal them.

(In fact, unless Tintin is imagining things, he may be... showing off a bit, as he tries the harnesses on and figures them out.)

"So, shall we?"

Horan looks up from where he was crouched and not doing much of anything and furrows his brows.

(Tintin is probably imagining things. It's entirely likely that Taharqi just naturally moves... like that. Or maybe he's hitting on Raziya, that's much more plausible.)

"Yes, let's."

So they can gather up what little there is to gather and, with only a little bit of grumbling from Raziya and a little bit of gentle prodding from Taharqi in Horan's direction to ensure everything is fine and he is perfectly free to leave if he wants but Taharqi really thinks it is in his best interests to go with, they can start on their way.

Taharqi looks around, then at the wall, then at the sun, and then starts leading them east, where the vague silhouette of the ruins of enormous bridges can be made out in the distance.

Tintin is capable of walking great distances without complaint. He'll see what the walking atmosphere is like before dominating the conversation, how about.

"So why don't you tell us more about where you are from?" Taharqi suggests after they have found their stride. "Or if you have more questions about—I suppose I cannot speak for Horan and Raziya, but I would be happy to tell you anything about here that you would want to know."

"Ah, that's a hard choice - I'm a journalist, so I want to tell stories, but it's probably more urgent to find out about the society I find myself in here... What If I tell a quick story and then you give me... hmm, a geopolitical rundown? And then another story perhaps. So we're not spending all our time boring each other to death."

"We have many days of walking ahead of us, so that sounds fine by me."

    "I am curious about your... not-magic," admits Raziya, using the expression Taharqi coined as if it's a foreign word.

"Well, I can tell you more about that instead of telling you about my adventures on Ilium or Omega. So, not-magic - really, you're rolling a few concepts into one there. The first is technology, like clockwork or alchemy, but much more complicated. That's what this -" he flares his omni-tool "- is all about, is technology. That's what allows me to make things out of glass or metal or omni-gel. It's not magic because - well, you couldn't actually do the same thing with a forge or an alchemist's glassware, but it's mostly the same basic principles behind it: it's taking pieces of something, putting them together in certain ways, and then firing them solid. I'll probably need more metal at some point if I'm going to be doing a lot of that, I used up most of mine making Taharqi's battleaxe. I'm mostly good on omni-gel, it's very dense, and that's good because I've got no idea how I'd make more on this planet. -any questions before I move on?"

"'Planet'."

"Ah, excellent question. You know the stars, in the sky at night? Those are actually other suns, so far away that we can barely see them. There are so many of them, just in our own region of the universe, that you have probably not invented numbers that can count them. And many of them have their own planets, like Earth but different, within their orbits. And some of those planets can support life! And many of them do!"

"That sounds like magic," opines Raziya. "Going to, uh, other places like here? That aren't here."

"And yet it is not! The spaceship that I traveled in moved in - well, okay, it didn't move in the same way as one of the ships you know, it had a mass effect core and it could fly at several times the speed of light - don't ask, it's two millennia worth of physics and we really don't have time - but the movement itself is the same kind of movement as taking a ship from Stygia to Cimmeria. - I assume there's a sea route between Stygia and Cimmeria, if there isn't feel free to imagine countries with coastlines."

"Stygia does not have a coastline but you can take a boat down the river to the sea and then travel to Cimmeria."

    "Have you been there?"

"No, but I studied the maps. Before I was exiled."

    "Who were you?"

"I was leading a revolution in the Kingdom of Kush against the Chagas. But maybe I should leave the explanation of all of that to when Valentin ends his storytime."

Horan looks entirely bored by this conversation.

"Alright, where was I - so, making things is technology, but the way we travel between planets is a mix of that and the next thing I was going to bring up, the Mass Effect. How to explain it... essentially, there's a kind of rock that, if you put electricity through it, it changes how the world works around it. You can use it to generate energy and use that energy in technology, or to make things go faster than should be physically possible, or to make things lighter or heavier than they actually are. I have no chance of convincing you the Mass Effect isn't magic, do I. Trying to explain it without a twenty-second-century physics education halfway makes me think it is."

"At this point I am not entirely sure the distinctions you are making between what you call technology and what you call magic would make sense to me," says Taharqi, and Raziya nods.

"Magic is something that does not follow the laws of physics - something that can't be explained using the rules that we have found to govern the universe. Gravity, momentum, the speed of light. The Mass Effect bends the laws of physics, but - in a way that can be accounted for, you've put energy into a multiplier and you're getting more back. And it makes other rules make sense, rules that didn't make sense before we knew about the Mass Effect. But - teleporting a hundred thousand light years? Turning a stick into a snake?" He grapples with this for a moment. "It simply doesn't fit. You can't make it make sense."

He sighs. "Which doesn't mean that it doesn't happen; witness my being here. But it means something's different about this world from the one I'm used to. And that thing is what I'm calling magic."

"This translation magic is a trip," says Raziya. "'Momentum'," she repeats, in French, as clearly they don't have a word for it in whatever language they were originally speaking. "'Physics'. We don't have these words."

"Yes, I suspected as much. The distinction is... not as meaningful to you as it is to me, I know. But it exists, and I know that I am not doing the same thing that your wizards do. - ah, I was going to mention the third category of not-magic, biotics, which is essentially just Mass Effect created by a living being rather than by technology. When my mother was pregnant she was in an accident involving Element Zero, that not-magic crystal I mentioned. So I have small amounts of Element Zero inside my body and my brain, and I have a cybernetic implant, a biotic amp, at the base of my skull, which lets me use the Mass Effect by thinking and gesturing in certain ways."

He rubs his amp absently. He doesn't usually think about it; it's like wearing contact lenses, or having braces, or something. But mentioning it puts it on his mind.

"And you think the thing that brought you here was magic, not—physics?"

"If it was physics, then a lot of people are wrong about how physics work. Which is not impossible, of course."

"I don't think I know of any magic that does this sort of thing, instantaneous transportation."

"Well. More things in heaven and earth. - sorry, quote from a famous poet - I imagine if one world exists with magic then more might."

"Yeah, probably. You said—twenty-second century—"

"Uh, yes - I don't know if the event we count from has even happened yet or even would have happened in this world given how many things are different, have you heard of someone named Jesus Christ? Um, Yeshua of Nazareth, I think he was called sometimes?"

"No, I am not familiar with the name. Although it does sound—like it could be a name someone has. If that makes sense."

"More so than Valentin Saint-Martin, you mean."

He grins. "Yes."

He sketches a bow, then skips a bit to get back in marching order. "You can call me Tintin, if you like. It's the nickname I use when I'm among friends."

"...that is adorable," says Raziya.

"So I've been told! I had trouble pronouncing my own name as a young boy, so - Tintin. And it stuck."

"I do freely admit it is easier on the tongue. Tintin."

"So, about the geopolitics - you had some revelation to share, that you were coordinating a Kushite revolution? I remember there was a land called Kush on the Earth in my world, but by my time they were part of - was it Egypt? I think it was Egypt."

"We do not have a country called Egypt," says Taharqi, shaking his head. "But yes, I am from the Kingdom of Kush, south of here. If I have my mental map appropriately located, Stygia would border the Exiled Lands, and you would need to either cross it or go around it to get to Kush.

"My country has a strong ethnic division—the Chagas, descendants of old Stygian conquerors, are the ruling caste. The Gallahs are the majority and make up the commoner caste. I am Chagan, but—I joined the Gallah revolutionaries. They want a ruler of their own people, and I have... seen... what my people do to them. It is not right." He shakes his head again. "I became one of their leaders, and spearheaded an operation—but we were betrayed." He looks down at his feet and squeezes his hands into fists. "It was someone I trusted, it's my fault, I should have seen..." Sigh. "Many of my friends were executed. I was exiled, to serve as an example. A fate worse than mere execution, they said. Cowards. They nailed me to a cross and left me to die, of thirst or of whichever carrion animals first got to me." He lifts his palms up to look at them, and there are very faint scars marking where the nails must have been.

"Christ."

A shrug. "A man named Conan, Cimmerian if he was from anywhere, found me and freed me."

    "—wait I think that is who freed me, too."

"I have the impression he finds the idea of exile really distasteful and made this a habit. So I suppose we owe him our lives."

"Well. I'm certainly glad he did - how is there a meaningful population of exiles if 'exile' means 'exile and also crucifixion until agonizing death' -"

"It doesn't always, I believe we are more exception than rule."

"...better than the alternative, I suppose. I rarely enjoy shooting people, but I would rather like to shoot the people who do this."

Taharqi grins and Raziya nods very vehemently.

"Stygia and Kush are allies, at least ostensibly. What with the Kushite rulers being of Stygian descent and all. They have a pharaoh, usually just the firstborn son of the previous pharaoh but Set sometimes likes to choose someone else."

Tintin nods. "- in a literal sense, rather than 'the high priest and the pharaoh had a disagreement and the priest had him assassinated' - sorry, my brain still hasn't fully internalized the literal existence of gods."

"Well, as far as I have been able to tell it was literal but my level of information is not beyond being tricked. And the pharaoh is the high priest, so that particular scenario will not happen."

"Ah, the Henry VIII gambit. - king who made himself high priest of the local religion to consolidate his power and divorce his wife without clerical permission, mostly irrelevant, sorry."

Taharqi laughs. "I think pharaohs have been high priests for as long as they have been around but I am not sure of this."

"Seems plausible. Anyway, what else do I want to know - hmm, you wanted to overthrow the Chagas and bring power back to the Gallahs - Stygia is ruled by a despotic pharaoh - I imagine most places are not notably better than this, you mentioned Cimmeria and Shem and Darfar but if one of those is a politically stable utopia I'll be surprised."

"They are not. Darfar is also south of Stygia, to the east of Kush, while Shem and Cimmeria are both to the north of the Styx—if I am correct in where we are Shem should be to the west and south of here, while Cimmeria should be to the west and north. Darfar as a whole is... probably not an extremely nice place. They worship the Outer God, Yog, who is also called a demon even by the other gods, and he is the bloodthirstiest and most violent of them. At least of the gods I know of. He demands frequent human sacrifices, and commands cannibalistic rites in his honour." Raziya makes a queasy face, but does not seem surprised or like this is news. "I believe the country itself is more... civilised... than that would imply, but the local Darfari tribes are very often entirely taken to worship of Yog."

"...well, that's not good. What about Shem and Cimmeria, do you know any fun facts about them?"

"Shem used to be part of the Stygian Empire in ages past, but now they are a country only in name—they are mostly made up of loosely allied city-states or tribes. The eastern groups are usually more nomadic, but not entirely, and they tend to rotate around the rivers and oases of their lands. They have gotten pretty rich since the fall of the Empire because they border many different countries and serve as a trade hub of sorts for them all. They also have lots of mercenaries, out of necessity to protect their merchants, but it does give them a... reputation."

    "Where did you even learn all of that, I barely know the names of the countries around Stygia," wonders Raziya.

"Chagan upbringing," explains Taharqi, "plus the rebellion later required a lot of knowledge of the region. Many powers are interested in what will come out of these civil wars in Kush."

    "Even Cimmeria?"

"No, and thus why I know less about it than the other countries around here." He looks at Tintin. "Cimmeria is pretty far, relatively speaking, and I was surprised to find Cimmerians around here. I am pretty certain they do not border the Exiled Lands. Their reputation is of being strong warriors and fiercely nationalistic, and the few Cimmerians I have met reinforce this notion, but I do not know much more than that."

"Good to know... so far Shem sounds like the least, uh, objectionable of the local nations."

"I like Kush," Taharqi says, shrugging.

"I'm sure it will be lovely once you have deposed the oppressive tyrants."

"That's the plan."

"Hmm... I had promised you all a story after the geopolitics, hadn't I? What would you like to hear about?"

"Well you only told us about your technology, there's still, like... everything else."

"So there is!"

Tintin launches into a story about an adventure he had alongside a starship captain (and occasional mercenary) of his acquaintance, Captain Haddock. Haddock had been contracted to smuggle goods into Citadel Space (the civilized portion of the galaxy) from the Terminus Systems (a lawless wasteland). It turned out, halfway through the mission, that the goods in question were illegal for good reason - barrels of a neurodegenerative drug, "red sand", commonly used by slavers to control their chattel. So, instead of making the delivery, they decided to entrap the buyers and the sellers and turn them in to the authorities, in the process breaking up a slaving ring.

The story is well constructed and well told. Tintin wrote it up for publication a long time ago, but he's told it more than once since then.

Taharqi and (occasionally) Raziya have questions about many of the concepts he references, and clearly don't really understand the distance scales involved, but they find it very interesting nonetheless.

Horan gets bored and just sort of scampers around.

"...and that was the Incident of the Red Desert," Tintin finishes. "One of my earlier adventures - I was only eighteen years old, just out of the army and still looking for a place in the world."

...he is a very small person.

"How old are you now?"

"Twenty-three. I have had an implausible number of adventures since."

"It does sound implausible," Taharqi agrees, eyeing Tintin. And unlike the last time his eyes paused around Tintin's... "package", so to speak, now it is definitely sexual. "I have lost track of the date," he says, casually, in a complete mismatch between tone of voice and the way his eyes are wandering, "but I think I have been in exile for five or six years now, so that would make me around twenty-six, maybe twenty-seven."

    Raziya's eyes go between Taharqi's eyes and Tintin's body and she snorts. "I think I'm twenty-five," she says.

        "Thirty-one," says Horan's rough voice, which makes both Taharqi's and Raziya's eyes snap to him. He only flinches a little at the sudden attention but doesn't lose his stride. Nor does he elaborate, though.

The way Taharqi is looking at him is significantly less plausibly deniable than his earlier comments! Tintin does not entirely know what to do with this. He's somewhat reminded of his almost-relationship with Chang, how the other boy had tried everything short of leaping on him and ripping his clothes off and he'd been too repressed to realize he'd meant it.

He's pretty sure he's not that repressed anymore. He thinks.

"How much longer are we going to march?" he asks instead of engaging with any of this. "Not trying to wheedle, just - set my expectations. Nightfall?"

"That would be my naive guess, yes," he says, eyes returning to Tintin with a bit less lusty intent than just now. "Unless we need to stop earlier for some reason, we will make better time the less often we do that."

"Of course. I'm looking forward to seeing your home, I wouldn't want to delay us getting there."

    "So... how long do you think we need to walk to get there?" asks Raziya, sounding a bit tentative and a bit like she is dreading the answer to that question.

"If we keep this pace and walk for most of the day, I think we will take about..." He pauses to think, then looks at the ruins in the distance and does some quick maths in his head. "About four days to reach the aqueduct passage and cross the wall to the river, and then another eight to ten downriver from there."

   Raziya whimpers when she hears that.

Tintin winces a bit as well.

"If I had any resources at all... I don't suppose there are oil fields near here."

"...oil fields?"

"Land where, when you dig into the sand, oil appears - often in a geyser. If I had a significant amount of oil, I might be able to make a primitive automobile or a motorcycle. It's one of the more accessible sources of fuel, without access to Element Zero."

"I don't think I have ever heard of that."

"Well, damn. I'll still have my omni-tool scanning for useful resources... I suppose we could make do with coal, not for the immediate problem but when it comes to getting this planet up to a decent standard of living... coal, though." He makes a face.

"What's wrong with coal? I know of a few coal mines along the way."

"Coal is - one of the worst things you can use for energy, on an industrial scale. It creates toxic waste, the smoke is horrible for people - if a global population uses coal for any significant length of time, the planet will be harmed irreparably. I don't know if this planet even has eezo, though, and in its absence there aren't a lot of great options. If we find plutonium, I'll be over the moon."

"Over the—that is such a strange expression and I understood it."

"This translation magic is endlessly delightful, yes. I wonder... this is a long shot, but do you know of any stones that cause sickness in people who are exposed to them for a long time? Not even eating or touching them, just being around them."

"There are places that exude corruption... but it affects you very quickly, you do not need to spend a long time around these places to start feeling the effects."

"Enough radioactive material could cause acute radiation sickness! You'll have to take me on a field trip sometime. I'll give you a suit like mine to resist the radiation, I'm sure you'd fill it out."

Was that too much. Tintin blushes just in case. 

"Fill it out...?"

"Um. You'd look good in it. Your muscles. And. Everything else."

this was a mistake

"Oh," says Taharqi, and Raziya bursts out laughing.

    "Do the two of you need some time for yourselves?"

"We are not stopping our walk for this, we'll have plenty of opportunity to spend time together at any planned stops for food or rest," says Taharqi firmly. He is eyeing Tintin with naked interest, though.

    "Oh, me and my, I think I hunger," says Raziya, putting a hand on her forehead. "Perhaps we should take a break now for food. And rest."

        Horan makes a very hyena-like laughing sound.

"Yes, yes, everyone get a good laugh," Tintin says, his cheeks and ears beet-red. "Because apparently I haven't gotten any better at flirting since college."

"Do you want to take a break for food and rest?" Taharqi asks, a half-smile forming on the corner of his mouth. "And then maybe you could learn a thing or two about our culture's understanding of clothes and the appropriate amount thereof."

Raziya seems torn between amused and slightly irritated. Amusement is winning out, though.

"Well - I could eat, certainly, I'm not exactly -"

The rest of Taharqi's statement catches up to him and he has a short but intense coughing fit. "I - um, here?"

"...well I suppose we could walk a little bit longer? I do not think the scenery is likely to change much, though, it is grass all along the way."

"I." He shakes himself slightly. "If we're going to - jump right into things - I'd prefer we do it... in private?"

It takes Taharqi a few seconds but then it clicks. "Oh, right, you said your, ah, people have something about sex and privacy?"

    "That's not that weird," says Raziya. "Many people prefer privacy."

"Hmm. Maybe I am ill-accustomed with Kush."

    "And the Exiled Lands, yes, where men live and mate like beasts," she sighs.

"You say that as if it was a bad thing."

    She raises an eyebrow at him. "You are going to need more than that to impress me."

"Oh, thank God, I thought I might have to explain the concept on my own. I'm not used to - performing for an audience."

His shoulders slump slightly. "Or, um, at all, really. So if you're looking for - someone who knows what he's doing..."

Now both of them are looking at him. "Wait, never? Not once?" And why, pray tell, does that excite Taharqi? He does not know, but he is honestly not complaining.

"...no. I haven't been - living under a rock - there've been opportunities - but. Nothing panned out."

Tintin does not notice that Taharqi is excited, because he is looking at his own feet. 

"I say we take our break now and get that sorted out," declares Taharqi.

    "Oh good my feet are actually killing me," says Raziya.

"You probably have something about inviting more people to join, too, right?" the Kushite asks of Tintin.

    "Who says I would want to?" she snaps.

"I said invite, you can refuse if you want. But I cannot say I would not enjoy the taste of you, too."

    "...hmpf."

"I... yes, I would rather not complicate matters, and besides that I'm not attracted to women so it'd definitely be for your sake more than mine."

"Oh, so you're like Sendhei."

    "I am pretty sure Sendhei is at least a little bit attracted to women."

"Well, to hear him tell it it was that or his own hand."

    "...not untrue," Raziya admits.

"Well, sure, I'm fine with that." He grins at Tintin. "And I am sure I have much to learn from you, nonetheless."

Tintin wonders if he should - kiss Taharqi, or take his suit off, or something. Instead of doing any of that, he stands there awkwardly and tries not to dissociate. 

Well since it seems that they are not walking anymore, and also it seems that Tintin is tying himself up in knots, Taharqi will step over to him to lift his chin up and kiss him.

...and his other hand is now getting firmly acquainted with Tintin's right buttock.

Oh! Oh, this is pleasant. 

Tintin kisses back, inexpertly but with good instincts and clear enthusiasm. The hand on his ass is unexpectedly pleasant. (Tintin has an ass that thoroughly belies his skinny frame. It's truly one of the wonders of nature.)

He doesn't return the favor; his hands end up somewhere around Taharqi's shoulderblades. 

Raziya... watches. Tintin said privacy but well she can enjoy herself while he doesn't go actually looking for it.

The hand Taharqi had initially used to lift Tintin's chin up can now make its way between their bodies to find Tintin's—well, presumably the suit Tintin is wearing will not be a very strong deterrent for an exploratory hand in most ways.

He can feel the outline of Tintin's bulge! Tintin lets out a little squeak.

"Should we - um -" Tintin looks around for cover.

There are occasional trees and shrubbery and boulders. Taharqi identifies the best-looking boulder there and grabs one of Tintin's hands to lead them there.

(Raziya pouts just a little bit at the end of the show. Horan is sitting on the ground and looked entirely too bored.)

Thank you Taharqi.

Once they're behind the rock, Tintin lets out a breath, and finds the button to unseal his suit, and - hesitates - and pushes it. The suit loosens, especially around the collar, and he shucks it in one motion. 

The first thing Taharqi will probably notice is that Tintin doesn't have balls. Not in the fashion of a eunuch, though - instead of an old scar, he has a glistening, pert-lipped pussy. 

Taharqi blinks, and stares a little.

His hard-on twitches.

"Well that is new," he says, sinking to his knees so he can examine it from closer up.

Tintin's cock is standard-issue, though very well formed: about seven inches, pale as the rest of him, a couple of well-placed freckles, foreskin tight around the head. His pussy is similarly aesthetically appealing. The cock sprouts where his clit would be, looking surprisingly natural. Tintin shivers at Taharqi's breath on his crotch.

"Should've warned you, but - it's hard to explain? I was born with female parts, but I'm male, and my people have tech that can fix that - but I didn't want it all the way, for... complicated emotional reasons? And anyway I like having both - they're very sensitive -"

"Are they," he breathes, lifting his right hand to envelop Tintin's cock and fiddle with the head. "I wonder just how sensitive," he says, humming a bit, before giving Tintin's entrance a soft, tentative lick.

Tintin gasps. "Oh - that's very, um, very nice -"

His pussy and his prick both drip more precum. Taharqi can get a good taste. 

Taharqi likes this. This is novel and interesting and different and really, really hot.

His licks become less tentative and he has to fumble a bit due to all the muscle memory—he is not used to eating pussy while jerking that same person off at the same time, but he can adapt from three(or more)somes of his memory and he's soon licking and kissing Tintin's pussy all over and inside while his hand keeps Tintin's cock busy. His left hand—he's gotta multitask, you see—finds Tintin's butt again and grabs it there, for now just to keep him close.

Tintin appreciates all of this very much. He's making a lot of desperate little high-pitched noises.

Tintin is adorable. This was a great decision.

Taharqi stops teasing and goes all in, stiffening his tongue and moving it inside Tintin, sometimes reaching the spot where Tintin's clitoris would be if he had one, and his hand gets pretty damn urgent. He decides that just holding onto Tintin's butt is not enough, so he moves his left hand to his pussy, to finger him and, most importantly, get his fingers as slick with Tintin's juices as he can. He is a man on a mission, and that mission involves fingering Tintin's asshole. So Taharqi leaves that hand there to keep fingering Tintin's pussy for now while his mouth goes up so he can suck Tintin's dick instead. He keeps using his right hand to jerk help the blowjob along, jerking him off in sync with the back and forth movements of his head as he doesn't even stop to tease Tintin's dick before taking it all into his mouth.

Tintin whimpers, and his cock twitches and pulses, but all that comes out is another, larger spurt of pre. "Ff - uh - more - please -"

Taharqi swallows all of the pre, and adds a finger—maybe two?—to Tintin's pussy. He pulls away and looks up at him. "You are incredibly hot," he breathes. "Are you like women, can you come many times, or should I hold back on getting you off until the end?"

"I - I can cum a l-lot of times."

"Wonderful," he says, and proceeds to deepthroat Tintin while fingerfucking him. He can fuck Tintin's ass later.

Tintin will get right back to making lots of noises, then, as he soaks Taharqi's hand with precum and drizzles more down his throat.

Gods, he really is extremely attractive. Taharqi keeps going, backing away from the deepthroat so he can reach a steadier rhythm with his mouth, pumping back and forth with his head and hand as he sucks and jerks Tintin. The lack of a clit is still throwing him a bit but he'll listen for what makes Tintin moan more and figure out the best fingering strategy from there.

...and later he's gonna fuck Tintin's pussy and that is going to be so incredibly hot, even though he's not touching himself his dick is still rock hard and dripping precum onto the ground at the thought of all the things he wants to do to this boy, at the noises he's making, at the delicious precum Tintin keeps giving him...

After his third drawn-out gasping moan, Tintin pants, "A-are you going to fuck me, then, or just - make me cum until I p-pass out from dehydration -"

—he pulls out and grins self-consciously. "I did not realise you were coming! Yes I would love to fuck you, I want to see what this delicious pussy of yours feels like around my dick."

Tintin grins broadly. "I didn't mean to pass judgment, it sounds like a lovely time, if you'd rather just worship me for a few hours -"

"...that's tempting! I am tempted! But we should not spend hours here, we still have to walk."

"Oh, I wasn't being serious."

He pauses, still breathing heavily.

"It is? Tempting?"

"Yes, very much so."

"Oh."

He licks his lips absently.

"That's... good to know. But right now, we've got plans." He hesitates. "Right?"

Taharqi gets to his feet, keeping his left hand on Tintin's crotch, lightly caressing Tintin's labia with his middle finger, and he looks right into Tintin's eyes. "The plans being," he says, and then he positions the tip of his dick right at Tintin's entrance while he uses his right thumb to trace circles around the tip of Tintin's cock. He doesn't complete his sentence, and just keeps looking at Tintin with a half-smile on his face.

"Yes. Quite."

He shivers as Taharqi teases him.

"I never knew this was... possible. Someone like you." And he pushes in, letting out a shivery breath at the same time. Tintin should probably be very happy that Taharqi was using his fingers earlier because he is... thicker than those fingers. "I'm rather happy we met."

Tintin gasps again as Taharqi enters him. "I - I think I agree."

So he can kiss Tintin again and grab Tintin's left thigh so he can support some of Tintin's weight; he's sufficiently taller that it's way less awkward for both of them if Tintin is riding him like that and the fact that that's super hot is just a bonus. And to help with that his other hand guides Tintin's arm up so he can wrap it around Taharqi's shoulders and neck for extra support.

Tintin will allow himself to be manhandled, which is also very hot. (He's trying not to make this weird, but he is not unconscious of the fact that he is being fucked up against a boulder by a man who is cultured and worldly in his own way but still untouched by the mores of galactic civilization. Tintin is not immune to early-twentieth-century porn tropes.)

And Tintin gets to be fucked against a boulder by a barbarian who is also moaning into his neck and occasionally biting said neck. Taharqi's hands are a bit too busy propping Tintin up so he can't play with Tintin's dick right there and then but he can hold their bodies close together and make sure he rubs Tintin's cock between their bodies while fucking his pussy.

When Taharqi bites his neck, Tintin moans, high and desperate, and his already tight cunt clenches almost painfully around Taharqi's cock. "Fuck - please -"

Oh he likes that does he. Good to know, that just means Taharqi gets to do more things Tintin likes. "Fuck you sound so hot when you moan like that," he growls, and now biting will be a more present element of fucking Tintin. Biting, and also a speedup of his thrusts into him, because he's actually rather close to coming, himself, after all of this. His eyes are squeezed shut and it's all he can do to keep thrusting and kissing and biting.

"Taharqi-"

Tintin manages to capture his partner's lips for a final, shuddering kiss. His mouth tastes sweet.

And if that didn't drive him over the edge, nothing would. He kisses back, fiercely, passionately, moaning into Tintin's lips as his hips lock into place and he shudders his loads into him, squeezing Tintin's body against his almost painfully tightly in his orgasm.

Tintin slumps in his arms.

"Well," he says after a moment's panting. "That was - thoroughly enjoyable."

Taharqi's body rumbles with his laughter as he rests his head on Tintin's shoulder and leans an arm against the boulder for some extra suppport while he winds down. His dick slides out of Tintin, slick with Tintin's juices, and twitches a bit as the last drops of his cum drip out. "Yes, it was. We should do it more. Maybe get Sendhei to join in when we get to my place, I think he would love fucking you."

"Oh, would he? - I don't think I fully understand your relationship to Sendhei. Is he your lover, your husband, your - friend with benefits?"

"Benefits," he chokes, pulling away from Tintin's shoulder with a grin. "We live together, he helps me take care of the house and the animals, we sometimes do things together like hunting or dancing or sex or dice games. I would say we are friends, yes."

"Alright, that's more or less comprehensible. I will think about it. I - don't know exactly what about the idea makes me anxious but there's something there."

Tintin is tired of being sticky. He waves his omni-tool over his crotch; it glows, and he's mostly clean again. (Omni-tool cleaning isn't as good as a decent shower, but it'll do in a pinch.) He gestures at Taharqi's cock. "Would you like me to..."

"—that is really cool. I don't know, the idea of walking around smelling of you sounds really appealing but that is one very handy tool."

"It's the same principle that lets it make things - on a basic level it's all just moving very tiny particles of stuff around."

He deactivates the tool and wriggles out of Taharqi's grip, landing lightly on the sand. Then he starts stepping into his suit.

Seems like Tintin has made the decision for him.

"I know you said being naked is very sexual in your society and I said it's not, here, but I would be lying if I said I didn't find the sight of you naked much prettier than that suit."

Tintin - hesitates.

"I'd have to make myself shoes. And - I'd get sand all over my legs." He blushes. "And. It'd make me desperately horny. Being naked in front of everyone."

Dick twitch. "Am I meant to be trying to downplay it or point out that I for one would not object to seeing you desperately horny?"

"I don't even know. It's - it's considered rude, to involve other people in sexual activities they haven't asked to be involved in. Such as by being naked in front of them and getting off on it."

He blinks twice. "I... don't think I would have considered seeing someone else do something sexual as being involved in it?"

Tintin shrugs. "Sexual ethics are complicated. And I haven't really studied them in depth, because I wasn't having any sex. But... I'd be uncomfortable, if someone from my home society was clearly enjoying me seeing them naked." He pauses. "I think? I'd... expect to be uncomfortable. Or embarrassed, at least, on their behalf."

"I... am not sure I understand but I'll trust you. You certainly do not have to do anything just because I would appreciate it. I am sure I will have more opportunities to appreciate you in the future."

"I just - I don't know where the feeling is coming from, really, apart from my acculturation, and... I don't like being - limited by things that don't matter in the context I'm in?"

He shakes his head, steps out of the suit, and packs it into his backpack. Then he manufactures himself a pair of 20th-century-style hiking boots and starts lacing them onto his feet. "I'm going to try it."

He doesn't really know why but this makes him feel like kissing Tintin.

But he doesn't really care, so once Tintin has his boots on he leans forward to do just that.

Tintin squeaks with happy surprise, then kisses him back.

"You are—" He pauses, and seems to consider his words for a couple of seconds. "I don't have an adjective. Really attractive, but that is not all." Shrug.

"Well. Thank you. You are also very attractive, and - in many ways also difficult to describe? You're very accommodating, which I mean as more of a compliment than it sounds."

Taharqi grins once more and bows a little. "I shall take it as intended. I think." He straightens up again. "—we should probably actually go eat food during this 'food and rest' break, though."

"Yes. And drink some water, sex is apparently very thirsty work."

He slings his backpack over his shoulders and heads back towards Raziya and Horan.

Horan has curled up into a ball and fallen asleep, apparently, and Raziya is sitting against a rock and staring at the sky. When she hears them walk back she is initially alarmed but calms back down when she recognises them. "Have your fun? You sure sounded like you did." But then her eyes drift down to Tintin's crotch and she blinks. "I think you're missing something, there. I thought eunuchs couldn't have sex."

Tintin blushes, but responds with a minimum of stuttering. "You've got it backwards - I never had balls in the first place, science gave me a prick. I can have sex fine, just can't impregnate someone. Or get pregnant, though that's for a different reason and I could fix it if I wanted."

"...you... were a girl and then not? But you don't have tits?"

"You could put it that way. And yes, I had them removed, not that there was much to remove."

Raziya squeezes her own (rather larger than "not much") breasts, a bit protectively. "Why?"

"...because I'm a man, and having breasts made me unhappy. If some kind of magic gave you a penis, I doubt you'd want to keep it."

"No, I like my pussy." She looks at Tintin's again and amends, "Without a dick. But why are you a man if you didn't have a dick and only got one later?"

"Complicated reasons! There are an astonishing number of ways that humans can be, due to a dizzying array of genetic and epigenetic factors, and one of those ways is 'identifying with a gender that doesn't match the physical sex of their body'. Some people are even born with bodies like mine is now! Some people don't want to be male or female! I met an asari once - a species that only comes in one biological sex, mostly corresponding to human females - who had gender confirmation surgery to make himself look male, despite the fact that his species didn't even have the concept of masculinity built into their neurology!"

    "Okay... So you're a man now..."

"Yes he is and we should eat and resume walking," says Taharqi.

    "Do we have too, my feet still hurt..."

"I suppose it depends on how many more days you want to add to our ten-to-twelve day journey," he replies, neutrally.

    "...hm."

Tintin removes a ration bar from his pack. It is putatively lemon-flavored. He tears into it, and drinks some of his remaining water. "I'm going to have to set the bottles to refill over the night," he mentions, "don't let me forget."

"I will remind you," says Taharqi. "Wake Horan up," he adds, to Raziya.

    She sighs and pokes him with a toe. He startles awake and yips and jumps back, but then he shakes his head quickly like he's shaking water off his hair and blinks at them. "Food?" she says, and he blinks at again then nods.

Tintin will distribute foodstuffs and the remaining water, being apparently the quartermaster.

Indeed he is.

At some point Horan's gaze rests on Tintin's genitals for a bit longer but Raziya says, "It's complicated," and that seems to be enough of a deterrent that he doesn't try to formulate any questions about it.

Good, good. Tintin is beginning to think that his nudity is not a mistake. It's not cooler than the encounter suit, but you do eventually get bored of constantly being the ideal human temperature all over your body.

-he sets his omni-tool to filter UV radiation in a field over his exposed skin. He's probably already going to have a mild sunburn from the fifteen minutes he didn't have it up, but there's no need to make it worse.

And soon enough they can resume their very, veeeery long trek.

Tintin will happily tell stories and occasionally eke out more information about life in the Exiled Lands from his compatriots until they stop for the night.

The Exiled Lands: mostly suck rather a lot! Taharqi has a rough map in his head, and he has actually seen a few different maps of varying accuracy including one that magically updates itself to reflect the underlying geography as it changes over time, so he can expand a little bit on some details. Apparently the Exiled Lands include a mountain chain (with its own volcano) up north, and a rainforest that eventually gives way to sea to the east. It's not very thoroughly inhabited, and most camps of people are, if not immediately hostile, at least very definitely not friendly. The werehyenas are one of the more numerous groups, having outposts around the central and northern parts of the desert, but there are also groups of exclusively-Darfari cannibals and even, he has heard, pirates.

    "So the pirates are real," says Raziya.

"Oh, yes. I have no idea what they want, though, they definitely do not limit themselves to the ocean."

    "...so aren't they just thieves?"

"Thieves that act like pirates and call us 'landmen'."

"Bizarre. Perhaps they crashed on a shore?"

"Nope, most if not all of them seem to be exiles, too."

"...exiled for piracy, one assumes?"

A shrug. "I have not encountered many of them in my travels, I don't know where they tend to congregate, and the few I did run into were not very friendly either."

"Well. I'm not sure if satisfying our curiosity is worth dealing with pirates - I've really had enough of them for a lifetime."

And if anyone asks about that, he's happy to extend into one of his stories of dealing with pirates.

Taharqi has a kind of... look... in his eyes, when Tintin tells his stories.

It's definitely not an unappreciative look.

Tintin notices this! He grins, continuing to describe a risky bit of gunplay.

Tintin's actually painfully attractive, it's kind of unfair. He continues being painfully attractive for the rest of the long walking day, regardless of whether he was right about getting desperately horny for being naked (he wasn't, to Taharqi's mix between disappointment and feelings of vindication).

And eventually it gets dark enough that Taharqi declares they should probably stop for the night.

Tintin helps set up camp.

"Should I go out hunting?" he asks Taharqi. "I've got more rations in my pack, but I'd like to keep them for if we get into combat and I need a few thousand calories in a few hours."

"That would be smart. I suppose I would be more hindrance than help if I came with?"

"No, not at all. I'm not used to tracking animals, and I'm only guessing but if you've survived in this place for long then I'd think you'd have a better grasp than I."

    "He's a Kushite," says Raziya, looking up from where she's found a seat and is stretching and massaging her legs. "I've heard they are born on horseback and left behind and only the ones that find meat and bring it back to their parents' house are allowed to live."

"I am pretty sure at least one of those things is not true," Taharqi says, but he's smiling.

"Then you can do everything difficult, and I shall hang behind and shoot dumb animals. An efficient allocation of talent."

"What do you shoot them... with... exactly?" Taharqi asks, checking that his bow is in fine condition.