"Sure," Devero says. He sits down right there on the path, crossing his legs comfortably. "I was a-- test pilot, of sorts. There are machines on my world, called exos--" He pauses. How to explain an augmentative exoskeleton to someone from, essentially, the Bronze Age?

"Remember when you told me about Talos?" he says finally, after recalling that conversation himself. "Imagine something like that, a being made of metal, but instead of magic animating it, there's a person inside who tells it where to go and what to do. That's-- sssort of-- what I mean. And mine was a model that we would try out new parts or new techniques for operating it, to see if we could make something better than the exos already in production."