"There are three more, though one of those we just know a name - 'Eternals'. They're the leadership of the 'Eternal Empire' and a distinct species. They are psionically powerful. That's all we have. Otherwise, we have Reapers and Mentarchs. Mentarchs are only found inside alien ships. They are Medium sized creatures consisting mostly of a very large brain and equipped with armor, a defensive force field, an integrated ranged weapon, and a number of long metal tentacles. They float. They are... Responsible for piloting and controlling alien ships, for the most part, using a specialized form of psionics. The same basic phenomenon, detectable with the same methods, but Mentarchs can only interface with a ship's control systems and mentally communicate with Psyons. They don't have any other psionic powers that we have ever observed. The reapers..." She pauses. "Are fairly gruesome, do you want details or a sanitized summary?"

"...I don't think I need it sanitized."

"The Reapers are Large insectoid units that reproduce parasitically at an extremely rapid pace. Their arms are equipped with muscled injectors that, when stabbing a creature, inject several live Reaper larvae into them. These larvae begin very rapidly consuming the creature from the inside out. It is reportedly extremely painful. When the injected target dies, they become a walking corpse that displays unusual strength and mindlessly attacks people. After about one to two hours depending on the body size of the victim, they... Burst, into one or more new Reapers. An unattended Reaper outbreak could potentially end a city in a day or two. They are shockingly fast and stronger than they look. If you think you can beat one in melee, you almost certainly can't. Overwhelming ranged firepower is the preferred method to deal with them, they don't have ranged attacks and they are not intelligent, they always display very simple behavior of attacking anything living except alien forces. No cunning or coordination or communication. We have... Not done experiments on any of this because of the obvious cruelty, this is all through... Observations and autopsies. We have reason to believe that Reapers are designed specifically to be horrifying as a terror weapon."

"I assume you don't have any data on whether the undead created in this way are vulnerable to the positive energy that heals the living. Is it possible to extract a larva from a target before death or are they always embedded in a vital area?"

"My uneducated guess would be that they are not vulnerable to positive energy. We have one recorded incident of surviving an injection; Her armor blunted the blow, leaving it injected shallowly in a leg, and then the larva died after a few rounds, we suspect helped along by the regenerative nanite injection that was also applied."

"...no one has had the opportunity to try cutting off their leg?"

"No. We don't typically have rapid limb removal apparatuses readily available on a battlefield. Except, facetiously, explosive weapons."

"I guess if you're so reliant on ranged weapons people aren't going to have swords available."

"The paradigm of warfare has been one of ranged weapons for a while on Earth. No modern soldier carries a sword for anything but ceremony, or a knife for anything but utility. Mostly."

"Should I be learning to use these things?"

"Plausibly, yes. I'm not sure when that would get approved. We're in the asking lots of questions phase now."

"Understood. I'm not as good a shot as I am with hand-to-hand but it sounds like the tactical considerations very much overwhelm personal fit, here."

"They do, for the most part. There is some personal fit. Highly accurate people can be trained as dedicated marksmen, strong people trained with heavier weapons, those with calm dispositions and higher will are given the destructive explosives, fast runners are sometimes made scouts, people with especially good reflexes, or toughness are considered for breaching squads. But as our saying goes, every soldier is a rifleman first."

Nod. "As with most things if I'm expecting it in the morning I can prepare spells for the situation."

"We're a little nervous about deliberately involving you in combat without a very clear chain of command and possibly formal admission into the Xenonauts. Coordinating medical services for you has fewer such reservations. We do want you here. But I want to note specifically that you are not a prisoner and have no obligations to our organization at this time. If you wish to depart, we'll discuss your options and commit to one without unreasonable delay. "

"I appreciate that. Using me as a medic might make perfect sense, deploying one cleric you may not be able to replace is a different matter than deploying a renewable supply of many."

"Hmm... The war generates about 200 recoverable casualties per day... And it's steadily escalating. And ordinary civilians have accidents or assaults at a rate that your thirty foot sphere can't possibly keep up with. But certainly you want to do what you can do, optimally. We could also consider selling space in channels or these other spells you mention for blindness or deafness - I know they can do many things, one thing at a time - and the resulting money donated to charitable causes of your choice. Or used for the war. We wouldn't turn down any possible help. It's also possible that one of your spells could be usefully combined with local capabilities in a way that creates an unexpected advantage. So the way I see it there are about five broad courses of action to consider. Military healing, civilian healing, civilian healing with an eye to profit, combat work - likely combat healing as prompt battlefield healing could save the day - and experiments to find exploits."

"My channels, the area-effect healing, are not selective, which makes them slightly tricky to manage in combat if anyone's closing the distance. Not impossible but there's a tradeoff there between efficiency, promptness, and accuracy."

"Are there other factors to consider regarding its effectiveness? Does it penetrate walls, smoke, water...?"

"Not walls, but yes smoke and water. If a well-aimed dart thrown from me to any part of any living creature would hit without traveling more than thirty feet they'll be included."

"A straight line? Or accounting for gravity in a dart throw? From any part of you to any part of a living creature? P'raps we can have you spread your arms and stick fingers and toes in. P'raps we build a specialized spherical chamber with an array of movable seats, beds, and arm-holes. How does it account for clothing? Would wearing sufficiently thick armor block it? Would it work if someone's hair was within range? How does it affect microscopic life? How does it affect plants? I realize you may not know all of these."

"A straight line. I believe any part suffices though I do need a hand free to touch my holy symbol. I believe the custom in churches that see a lot of throughput is to have a bridge with holes in the floor of it, and a gallery level above and around it as well as people on the ground floor. Armor and clothing don't block it. I think hair doesn't count but don't actually know. I... am not aware of there being microscopic life on my planet. It affects plant creatures but not normal plants."

"Building such a thing should be a matter of a week or two at most, if we can design plans that capture all the desiderata quickly... We consider it basic and obvious that microscopic life exists wherever complex life like plants or animals exist. We've determined that it does so for both us and the aliens - the medical spray we were discussing is technically a form of microscopic life. I have been asked if we can have doctors examine you and possibly take samples of saliva, blood, hair, and so on for analysis. There are methods of examining... The traits passed through bloodlines, and of manipulating or analyzing them. You can tell who is related to whom by approximately what degree of remove. The aliens can do more outlandish things like design entirely new traits and implement them across all children, which is how all their soldiers are so tough and loyal. They artificially designed toughness and loyalty... Anyway, our researchers wanted those samples in order to see if you are distantly related to humans from this planet, somehow, or not."

"On my planet there would be a lot of very concerning reasons to want those things and few to no benign ones."

"...Are there 'spells' that are advantaged by having samples of a person?"