Unfortunately for him, rather than civilisation, what he spots when he gets high enough is a thick thorny vine emerging from the thick foliage, pointy end approaching him at alarming speeds.

That is a very alarming speed! That is a speed that is too fast for him to set the vine on fire immediately!

Fortunately, he's high-tier. This thing can't do much more damage to him than a few well-aimed arrows. If it grapples him, though, that'll be a nightmare.

It seems smart enough to go for the wings, actually, and it is soon followed by two—no, five similar ones, including two with bases approximately twice as thick as Haruk... himself... is, and together they are in fact trying to grapple.

Shit.

Haruk is good at concentrating on magic under pressure. Even so, being crushed by massive thorny tendrils is not the best time to be casting.

He activates the tattoo on his chest, instead. Suddenly, a shell of air between five and ten feet around him bursts into searing flame. Not flame like a wood fire - more like an incandescent nuclear furnace.

The flames evaporate after a few seconds, leaving only the scorching air behind. Before any more vines can materialize, Haruk folds his wings and drops like a stone.

The vines around him instantly turn to dust, as expected, but this evil jungle seems to have no shortage of them as another four of them shoot up again. They do try to intercept him, but...

...this time they're stopped by something else. Something, or someone, seems to have cast some instant spell that materialised a sort of energy barrier around him except it had no will check involved at all and also now he is floating inside said energy barrier and unable to really... get out of it. An energy tether is linking said barrier to its unseen source beneath the canopy, and the vines that are trying to get to him seem completely unable to penetrate the energy barrier, or even shake it.

He is now being slowly levitated down towards the barrier's source.

...that's... concerning.

Haruk is concerned.

Haruk will not currently express his concern, because it is probably better to be closer to the mysterious magic-user in case he has to stab them. He will float down towards them.

The vines eventually give up and retreat into the evil jungle, and once he's below the canopy once more he can more properly see where the weird spell is coming from. There seems to be a square hole on the forest ground, just about large enough that two humans could jump into it at the same time and not hit each other, and its area is covered by a similar energy barrier to the one currently encasing him. It's dark enough inside, or the hole goes deep enough underground, that he can't actually see what the real actual genuine source of the spell is, only that it is something inside said hole.

He continues his inexorable path towards it.

...he's going to try a Dispel Magic on the barrier once he's close enough to the ground.

It flickers! For like a tenth of a second. Seems like rather than being a single sustained spell it is being... constantly renewed? Or something?

Well, that's... bizarre. He could cast an antimagic field, if he had a scroll of antimagic field, and if it wouldn't be very inconvenient, and if he weren't already in the hole. As it is he'll just stay where he is.

Once he's past the hole, an... illusion? of some sort? seems to materialise where the hole was, looking from this side like it's the underside of the first three inches of dirt of a regular nondescript patch of forest ground. There wasn't much light coming in through the hole anyway, what with the thick foliage, but now the only light sources are the energy barrier itself and wherever he's being dragged too farther down, and soon the barrier's light is not enough to illuminate the way above and the heavens are in darkness.

Just like home.

Yeah, it's homey. His darkvision activates, and he grimaces at the monochrome. It's useful, but it always makes him think of living out his first seventy years in the dark.

Once he's properly in the hole and all, his pace accelerates substantially, and he soon finds the end to the tunnel he's going down...

...opening to a fairly spacious cavern filled with the strangest contraptions. Various machines made of stone and metal occupy the space, all of them carved with veins that glow light blue or red. The source of his prison seems to be, itself, one such device: an object about three to four times as tall as he is, with a long pointy end from which the energy tether is coming.

And a small creature is seated atop it, wearing a helmet and seemingly piloting the machine and by extension Haruk's path. In fact, the place is crowded with those small creatures, most reminiscent of goblins but very very much not being goblins, themselves. Their heads are flatter and they have long floppy ears, but their skin colours hit much different ranges than those of goblins, too.

Many of them stop whatever they're doing (which mostly seems to be operating the machines, talking to each other, writing things down, or looking at various plant-like creatures floating in jars around the place) to gawk at him for a few seconds before getting back to their duties. Only the creature operating the machine and a couple of others who seem to carry the air of importance of "overseers" keep watching him.

Well.

"Hi!" he says. He's smiling nonthreateningly. His words sound, to anyone listening, like their native language. "Thank you for saving me."

The creatures... do not reply at all.

But they do react. One of the likely-overseers turns to the other and says, "Note it down, creature seems capable of speech and threat assessment." His descent continues, slow once again now that it's fiddlier, and he seems to be in the process of being sent to... a cage. Of some sort. Also covered by an energy field.

"Oh, good. Love to be a creature," Haruk mutters. Louder, he says "I don't suppose you'd be interested in releasing me, now that you've saved me. Or at least refraining from vivisecting me."

One of them snickers at the question but they don't deign to answer.

Caaaarefully lowered into the cage and then, plink, the energy field surrounding him is gone.

"Are those plant-creatures other kidnapped sentients?" he wonders. "Or are they monsters you've created to unleash on an unsuspecting et cetera?"

They still don't deign to answer! The one who was piloting the machine hops down from her (?) seat and then walks over to a device next to said cage, followed by the two higher-ups. Various lights start flashing in his direction and she reads something off some screen on the machine. "Signature most similar to humans," she says, "but the creature seems much older. Unknown magic all over its body and possessions, doesn't fit any of the five known facets."

    "Fascinating," says the one who was told to write stuff down as he writes more stuff down.

Fine.

A few mystic passes, a few untranslatable words. Detect Thoughts. Are the plants people.

...uh...

......mu?

The plants themselves don't seem to be individuals in the traditional sense, but they seem to have a loose connection to each other and to—something else. Something that is very definitely a person, and who is very definitely watching everything that is going on in this cave with interest through the plant-creatures' eyes.

And minds.

Something that is now paying close attention to Haruk in particular.

Good! Cool! Great! Love that!

It is suddenly significantly more important that Haruk get the fuck out of here. "I'm gonna ask you guys one more time to let me go before this gets really ugly," he says rapidly.

"It was just using some of its foreign magic," the technician says. "Sorry I didn't detect it earlier, it was such a weird... These readings are very strange."

    "Hey, uh, did your new specimen do something?" a technician elsewhere in the room asks, furrowing their eyebrows at readings from one of the plant-creatures. "This one got all agitated now."

        "This one did, too," says a third technician.

"Permission to knock this one out," Haruk's personal attendant asks of the two higher-ups.

            They talk to each other for a rushed couple of seconds then the more senior one says, "Permission granted."

He's not confident enough in his read on the area he landed in for a Teleport. He's not confident enough in his estimate of his current depth beneath the forest floor for a Dimension Door. This is unfortunate.

For the little gremlin-people, at least.

Quickened Glitterdust. Invisibility.

With a word and a quick gesture, the cluster of gremlin-people outside Haruk's cage are abruptly covered in glowing sand. It gets everywhere, but especially their eyes. Closing them doesn't help; the light source is inside of their eyelids. They're horribly, agonizingly blinded. At least, for the next minute.

With another few words and gestures, Haruk becomes invisible.

They start screaming.

And whatever intelligence is behind the plant-creatures seems to decide this is a great time to act, and the creatures start beating against points of the stone structure of their cages that seem to be, from the way they start bending and denting, weak spots. Clearly they were only being kept there because they wanted to be.

"Terminate the subject!" the main guy says. "Terminate the subject! Abort the experiment!"

Various of the gremlin-people rush to comply, but the plant-creatures are getting free of their own cages very quickly.

Great. He... actually doesn't want to be responsible for everyone here dying, even if they are evil science gremlins. What can he do about that.

Well.

Black Tentacles. Suddenly, the lab is filled with writhing, inky-black appendages, each of which seizes the nearest gremlin or plant and holds them in place. If they don't struggle, it's quite gentle. If they do... well, broken bones will heal.

They're struggling! The plant-creatures more successfully than the gremlins. The plant-creatures are very resilient, actually; denser than regular plants, even, with layers upon layers of plant matter compressed into their vaguely humanoid shapes by magic, they pack a punch.

An alarm starts blaring around the facility, and a voice starts coming from various sound boxes around it: "This facility is now undergoing cleansing protocol gamma due to unexpected release. Please stay calm. This facility is now undergoing cleansing protocol gamma due to..."

    "Protocol gamma?" one of the evil science gremlins that is not currently resisting the black tentacles very much asks. "Isn't that the one where they kill everyone?"

        "Yes, you son of a bookah, did you not pay attention to the training?" replies someone else.

    "I don't wanna die! I have a report due next week and I'm not done with it!!!!!"

Oh for fuck's sake. Dimension Door.

"How do I turn it off?" Haruk asks the lead gremlin, whom he is now standing next to. "I can disintegrate up to ten thousand cubic feet of nonliving matter or melt almost anything into slag, if that helps."

"I—you can't turn it off, bookah!" says lead gremlin. "It's externally activated—" The doors into this chamber all shut simultaneously, thick metal slabs covering all exits. "We're doomed!!!"

("This facility is now undergoing cleansing protocol gamma due to unexpected release. Please stay calm.")

    "If you can disintegrate stuff," the non-lead technician next to him says, "disintegrate the doors and let us flee!"

Oh look one of the plant creatures just got free of a tentacle and is making a beeline for an ententacled gremlin, easy pickings.

Scorching Ray. The plant is no longer doing that.

"Ugh. Fine. If you continue to do this shit I will find you and burn you, understand?"

Without waiting for an answer, he disintegrates the door. The gremlin-holding tentacles deposit their gremlins on the floor and melt away. "Leave!" he shouts. "And make better life choices!"

They don't need to be told twice, here's a throng of fleeing gremlins. And just in time, too, as the temperature starts rising rapidly inside that chamber.

...well that's mildly uncomfortable. Haruk sighs and walks out, leaving the entangled plants to char. (They didn't have individual minds. It's fine.)

As the temperature rises, a weird noxious gas starts also being released inside the chamber. And also lighting, there's now lighting coming from places. And now actual flamethrowers. And weird energy things.

It seems to want to be really thorough with its "cleansing protocol".

Well, he's no longer in there. The noxious gas is... probably not going to be very effectively contained by the disintegrated doors, though. He picks up the pace a bit, which is to say he starts flying. (He flies quite fast.)

The tunnels spit him and his... new friends... out through an opening on a cliff. The facility starts imploding as they leave, but he also hears... a voice. In his head.

"We will be seeing you soon," the voice says, dripping with amusement.

And just outside the cave, watching the fleeing throng of evil science gremlins and looking profoundly befuddled, is a motley group including two regular-looking humans (although one of them is wearing what looks like rags except they have spikes and fire, only his face exposed), one disproportionately large human, one feline person with horns, and one member of the same species as the evil gremlins.

aaaaaa psychic headvoice??? Bad. Dislike.

Oh hey new people.

"Hello! I hope you're less inclined than those little gremlin-people to kidnap and probably vivisect me. No offense, uh, not-proven-to-be-evil gremlin."

"Did you just call me gremlin?" asks the gremlin, who seems to be currently standing inside some sort of humanoid mechanical construct. She turns to one of the regular-looking humans, the male one. "Did he just call me a gremlin? I am not a gremlin!"

"We are not the Inquest," agrees said human. "Most asura are not anywhere near as zealous about vivisection as the Inquest are."

"Did you, ah," asks tall human, looking at the quickly-imploding lab, "do that?"

"Sorry. Asura, not gremlin, noted. Uh, I didn't do that, they did that. I don't think I'm able to do that. I'm mostly about laying waste to individuals and small groups of powerful enemies, not armies or large buildings. Smaller buildings can be negotiated. I did accidentally burn down a monastery once but it wasn't intentional and you really shouldn't make monasteries out of wood anyway."

"So," says the other human, "you're not from here, are you? You have a lot of magic on you that's... very, very different."

"Don't you think the wings and glowy eyes give him away? I think the wings give him away. I guess they could be fake. Bet they're not, though."

"The wings are very real! I am definitely not from around here! Um, do you happen to know what this plane is called, I'm from the Prime Material, Toril specifically, Faerûn more specifically than that."

"Ty...ria? Oh, oooh, are you from, like, across the Mists, one of those other worlds like the one the humans come from? That's so cool, can I run tests on you, I promise they're non-invasive and don't hurt and I'll only do the ones you're okay with!"

"That's... actually a surprisingly generous set of restrictions. Sure, we can talk about whatever divination you want to perform. Am I to assume from this that your civilization doesn't have interplanar travel."

"Well, that depends on what you mean! I heard the human gods used to let them go to their worlds, like, two hundred years ago, but they left so no deal. And if you wanna go anywhere else you gotta go through the Mists and that is hard as f—"

"Taimi!"

"—udge! Do you mean wherever you're from people know how to cross the Mists safely? With, like, destinations?"

"...the Mists... that sounds a bit like some conceptions of the Astral or Ethereal planes. We don't strictly have to go through one of the Transitive Planes like that, it's just convenient sometimes. But, like, if I were a bit stronger I could take a tuning fork and take one of you on a trip directly to the Elemental Plane of Fire."

"The what!!!"

"Maybe he just skips them altogether," suggests the blindfolded feline person. "Or something else weird's going on."

"The Mists are the space between worlds, as we understand it," says the female human. "Outside conventional time and space, a year can pass for you there with only a second passing here or vice-versa, or even stranger things like going back in time. Or, like they said, you can find other worlds, there."

"Yeah, there's temporal anomalies in the Transitive Planes sometimes, you have to be careful going through. It sounds like you guys have natural portals to one of the Transitives and you've got - some sort of cargo cult built up about it? Hmm. Do you project into these Mists when you dream, or do the spirits of the dead live there?"

A floating skull pops out of Haruk's back and starts floating over his shoulder. "Big furry guy, you've been there recently, right? It smells Ethereal to me."

"Yes, I have," says furry guy, folding his arms.

"Spirits of the dead's trickier. The humans go to their Underworld which is just another place. We go back to the Eternal Alchemy."

"We return to the spirits of the wild, and I think the sylvari go to the Dream of Dreams. Don't know what the furry guys get."

He shrugs. "We don't think about it much."

"So where are you getting all of those spirits from?" Bol asks. 

"Wherever they like to be," he grunts.

"How about we introduce and maybe start leading our new friends away from the destroyed Inquest lab and towards civilisation? I'm James Orland, Commander of the Pact."

"I'm Kasmeer and this is Taimi. The big burly one—"

"Hey!"

"—is Braham and the furry one is Rytlock."

"Haruk'chathrah, just call me Haruk. This is Bol. Don't mind if he says something incredibly rude, he's like that. It's nice to meet you all."

James, who seems to be the Commander of the Pact (are these people the Pact? who is the Pact? he seems leadery), turns and starts walking elsewhere, putting on a helmet/mask of further rags and fire, and everyone else seems to follow.

He looks at Bol. "So, what was that you were saying about the dead?"

"Oh, your boy Rytlock is full of ghosts so I thought these Mists of yours would be more like the Ethereal Plane than the Astral, but I'm starting to think they're more of a primordial soup of both than anything else, and that we're entirely outside the realm of my experience. Which is fun! Does mean we'll have the Hells of a time getting home, but it's not like he actually liked the place particularly. You should send a prayer Lathander's way, jabbuk, see if you can get a response. Probably not, but it'd be interesting if you did, right? Oh, and one for Eilistraee, I know you've had your differences but she's at least got a piece of her domain over here."

"Different gods, too. Not that I would expect them to be the same."

"Yeah. Lathander's the god of the sun, and healing, and general prosocial behavior in kind of a vague way? Haruk worships him primarily. And Eilistraee is the goddess of drow who aren't total bastards, drow being Haruk's species, but Haruk feels weird about her because his mum worshipped her despite being a total bastard."

"Yes, thank you Bol. Taimi mentioned your gods - left?"

Kasmeer shifts a bit as she walks, looking uncomfortable, but doesn't say anything.

"So," says Taimi, "as far as we can tell the human gods came from some other world and brought humans with them, hundreds of years ago. And about... is it two hundred and fifty? Two hundred and fifty years ago, they left. Shrines don't work anymore, can't visit the Underworld or the, what was Balthazar's place called again, the Fist... no..."

"Fissure of Woe," says Kasmeer.

"That's it!" Taimi exclaims, snapping her fingers. "Can't go there. The human gods also gave them a lot of nice perks, like using multiple types of magic at the same time or resurrecting the dead. ...recent dead, mind you, body had to be fresh and all."

"Huh. Do you still have healing, at least, or did that go out the window with the rest of the divine magic? Just losing resurrection must have been awful on its own, you must have been scrambling..."

"Eh, only worked on humans anyway, not a big deal."

"We do still have healing, yes," says James before Taimi can further offend Kas. "We've been having some trouble recently with the concept of bringing back the dead, though, with a... ah... giant undead dragon having enough access to the various afterlives to reanimate anyone. He's dead now but people are in general still a bit soured on the topic."

"Well, good job killing him, anyway, I've never personally had to fight a dracolich but I've heard it's a bitch and a half. I don't really see why necromancy would sour people on resurrection, but I guess if you haven't had the latter in two hundred years it'd be pretty muddled."

"...whatever the word you just used was, it... underestimates the scale. There are six dragons in Tyria. Or were; five now that we've killed that one. It lifted a sunken country from the sea and reanimated all of its thousands of long-dead residents and was thought unkillable for two hundred and fifty years."

"Ah. Extra good job then!"

"Sorry, six dragons? There's six dragons I can think of in Neverwinter Wood. What the fuck kind of ecology are you working with here?"

"Well, different world, obviously."

"They are very, very large. As in, uh... around as large as this jungle, say."

"Okay, but that's worse. You understand how that's worse, right?"

"...so they're... less like our dragons and more like gods. No conventional reproduction, no death by old age, just a big bastard with unthinkable power and no morals."

Haruk squints at James. "You're planning on killing the rest of them, aren't you. I want in."

"Working on our second one right now," he says brightly. "Plant and, uh... mind... dragon, I don't know why those are its specialties I am just the tour guide."

"Some of our researchers suspect the whole reason the human gods left was because they thought they couldn't take the dragons on so they fled."

"They did not—"

"Hey, I'm just relaying research! Go complain in Rata Sum if you don't like their methodology!"

"...how many gods are we talking about here?"

"Also six! Used to be five but then turns out there was an exiled, secret sixth one and this one human and her friends killed him with the help of the others so she became a new god. She also left."

"Six gods. For an entire planet."

"No, just for the humans, weren't you paying attention?"

"Oh, sorry. How many did you Asura have?"

"We don't have gods, just humans and charr—the big furries—did. But then turns out the charr gods weren't gods after all, just very annoying fire elementals. Uh, I guess the norn—big guy there," gestures at Braham, "they have the spirits of the wild but those aren't really gods. How many of those was it again, Braham?"

"Uh... I don't think we know of them all. There's the four great ones, except... Jormag killed Raven."

"Okay, I'm going on the record to say that is not enough gods. I am going to put a considerable amount of effort into contacting Lathander, this place is in dire need of some divine intervention."

"There are hundreds of gods where we're from," Bol explains. "This prevents problems like ancient forgotten dragons ending the world."

Rytlock snorts. "I don't know what the gods were like where you're from but here I say good riddance."

"Don't pay attention to him, the charr are still sour on their old religion being false."

"Lathander, like Bol mentioned, embodies the sun and values healing and prosocial behavior, the kind of stuff that keeps civilization together. He'd probably contact Tyr, god of righteous battle and justice, and maybe Ilmater, god of withstanding suffering; they're his closest allies among the gods. They've got a score of lesser deities along those lines they could call in. And they really value people being happy and safe. They'd want to take care of your dragon problem and - make sure that your civilizations aren't riddled with corruption and injustice and persecution, or anything like that, and they'd probably send some evangelists to get worshippers because that helps them and their churches are a good thing to have around, but they wouldn't - demand worship, or try to conquer your nations, or anything like that. Just try to make things better."

Rytlock grunts but doesn't otherwise reply.

"I'm sure we'll take all the help we can get with the dragons."

"And, petitioning divine intervention aside, I'm very willing to set a dragon on fire."

"That might work best with Jormag. That's the ice dragon. Although maybe Mordremoth—plant and mind one, the one we're fighting right now—maybe that'll work on him too."

"It's metonymous, I can do things other than fire, that's just my best element."

"As a necromancer I'm afraid we just killed the dragon I had any sort of comparative advantage towards."

"...huh. I've never worked with a necromancer before, I don't think. I don't suppose you have some way of doing it here that doesn't involve... barely-controlled monstrosities fueled by the opposite of all that is good and holy?"

James blinks a couple of times. "Is... that how it goes, where you're from? Uh... They are fueled by lifeforce, either my own or absorbed lifeforce of my defeated foes? And very well-controlled. Also undead minions are only one part of the job, it's really more about using the lifeforce thing for various things."

"That does sound much tidier. Back home necromancy kind of sucks for a lot of reasons, if your corpse has been reanimated you can't be resurrected and for some reason you also can't go to your destined afterlife. Bad news all 'round."

"The way Zhaitan used to do it, your soul did get stuck with the body, yeah, but as soon as your reanimated self is destroyed you go back. The way we do it no souls are involved at all, and corpses are not strictly necessary, although that is a more recent invention and having a corpse around makes it easier."

"...sounds more like conjuration than necromancy, if you don't even need a body. But I guess if you're using life force it's the closest thing. Anyway, it's good to know. And - I'm guessing you're an illusionist?" he says to Kasmeer. "Based on the sheer quantity of illusions you've got on you."

"The local name is mesmer, but yes," she says, curling the corner of her lips in a smile. "Although we also double as generally good with magic itself. I don't think most people who aren't mesmers, here, can tell what other people are by looking."

"So, illusionist-diviners, more or less. I will not underestimate how incredibly obnoxious you would be to fight. Or how useful it presumably is to have you on-side."

Her grin widens. "I do think we're pretty useful, if I can say so myself."

"...hmm, now I'm wondering - Bol, do you know if they've got any connection to Shadow here?" To Kasmeer: "The Shadow Plane's where our illusionists' scariest techniques come from, and it seems like a fun kind of innovation to share around."

"...not the usual Shadow, but... there's something. I think they've got their own."

"Shadow plane? Sounds necromantic more than anything..."

"Self-imposed limits! Superstitious nonsense!" Bol says sharply.

"What Bol is trying to say," Haruk says less sharply, "is that magic is magic. There are absolutely limits, but you don't actually know where the hard lines are until you try. And there's almost always a loophole somewhere. It's not always worth using, mind, but there is one."

"Oh, I don't mean it's not illusion, just that it seems to have aesthetics. I believe you it's illusion. Tell me more?"

Haruk begins explaining shadowcasting, with occasional interjections from Bol. The general concept seems to be that, first of all, the essence of the Plane of Shadow is incredibly malleable; and second of all, in Shadow all things are reflected, so the pattern of every spell already exists to twist into reality. It's very technical, and probably not in a form Kasmeer has encountered as such, but the outlines of it do seem to line up with Tyrian magical theory. More Orrian than Krytan in flavor, maybe.

Kasmeer... finds this all fascinating. And she has encountered ancient Orrian tomes that help bridge some of the gap!

Taimi may be no spellcaster but she's still asura and she can also further help bridge the gap and ask relevant questions.

"Okay but then," she asks eventually, "you do need to have access to this Shadow Plane, yes? A, a portal or a connection of something?"

"Well, that's where the spell construct comes in. It's no more or less difficult than conjuring a fireball from the Plane of Fire. - I suppose it's slightly more difficult, Shadow Conjuration's one circle higher."

"A what higher now?"

"That's what's weird about their magic!" Bol says abruptly. "It's not discrete!"

"...Oh. Where we're from... a spell is divided into one of ten circles of complexity. And you have to have a certain amount of personal power and whatever form of mental acuity you use to cast, in order to effectively learn a spell from one of those circles. Um, if I had to guess, I'd say you were... fifth circle? Based on your alignment aura. James and Kasmeer both, I dunno about Braham, Rytlock I'd say you were sixth circle if you used spells but as it is you're presumably just extremely good at killing things."

He snorts again. "Damn right I am."

"Rytlock, language!"

"Oh, come on, I can say damn."

"Taimi, language!"

James rolls his eyes fondly. "Spells here can be more or less complicated but usually you have more powerful versions of them as you get stronger so you can just... use those instead."

"Our spells scale with your power too, but the more complicated ones are still more potent and just - more useful, most of the time. I could cast Burning Hands, and that's more powerful than it was when I was learning sorcery because it can draw more power more efficiently, but Fireball covers a larger area, with more versatility, and it burns hotter too."

"Okay but back up," says Taimi who has just finished reeling, "what do you mean your magic's discrete? How can magic be discrete? Magic is just... magic."

"It's how magic naturally shakes out. ...on the Prime Material. In the same way that you can twist a shape around but it still has the same number of sides or dimensions - it's fundamentally topological, it's how complicated the spell-shape is when you're preparing it. Or when you're branding it into your mind, in the case of sorcerers."

"...Kas am I going crazy here or..."

"No that just made no sense you're right."

"So, what I'm hearing is that your form of arcana doesn't involve a university degree in topology. What does it involve instead?"

Magic!

So magic in Tyria is divided into four schools and a lot of aspects, sometimes also called elements. Before the human gods arrived, Taimi says in an entirely non-malicious way, anyone could wield any magic and it was a free-for-all.

Then they came, brought the humans along, taught them magic, and set them loose.

This has made many people very mad and has been widely regarded as a bad move.

After destroying half of Tyria in wars of conquest (even amongst themselves!!!), the human gods decided that maybe leaving every type of magic available for everyone to use is not such a great idea, so they split it.

Kasmeer is made somewhat uncomfortable by the account but more or less in the same way one is made uncomfortable when reminded that their ancestors committed atrocities. It is in fact the case that past humans destroyed a bunch of stuff with the magic the gods gifted them.

The four schools of magic are aggression, destruction, preservation, and denial, and after the gods performed a ritual that keyed local magic to a huge stone, sealed it with a sacrifice, and broke it in pieces, no one was able to use all four schools. Nowadays, usually when people are teenagers and deciding what they want to do or be, they pick three of them to lock themselves into, two major and one minor.

Eight of the possible ten are commonly used: necromancers are major preservation and destruction and minor denial, for instance, and the other common ones are mesmer, elementalist, ranger, thief (yes they share a word), engineer, warrior, and guardian.

"Also there's whatever Rytlock is right now but it seems to be working for him. That would be..." She squints at him. "Major preservation and destruction, minor aggression."

Snort.

"...huh. That's very much not how our magic works. We've got schools of magic - abjuration does protection and prevention, conjuration does summoning and creation and teleportation, divination does learning things, enchantment does mind stuff, evocation does energy manipulation, necromancy does poorly defined but generally unpleasant things involving negative energy, transmutation makes changes to creatures or things. And there's a couple of oddball spells that don't fit, but most of them are metamagic. And what you can cast depends on how you learned magic, but - not in nearly as systematic a way as it sounds like you've got, and anybody can use any school unless something weird's going on. Like, sorcerers and wizards, who learn magic through personal investment, cast different spells from clerics, who get their spells from the gods, and clerics cast different spells from druids, who get their spells from some kind of primordial nature spirit."

"We're almost there," James interrupts the conversation to say, and indeed if they pay attention they can hear faint sounds of... people, and machines. In the distance.

 "—sorry, please carry on."

Kasmeer giggles but turns back to Haruk. "So, um, yeah, we can learn to do any magic that's based on our major schools, and any magic that uses our minor school plus one or both of our majors. People mostly specialise in magic that use all three of their schools just because they tend to be more powerful but there are some things Braham and I could do the same, if we both forgo our minors."

"Wait, really? Like what?"

"Mesmers and guardians have denial and preservation as their major schools, so mostly barriers, shields, things that make magic not work..."

"Don't see many mesmers doing that."

Kasmeer smiles. "Well, no, but that's because our minor is aggression so we tend to go for barriers that explode or reflect things back. You know, to keep it fun."

"Bet I'd be an elementalist. Might pick up a couple of warrior tricks too, though, I've always found that taking out a sword is a good backup plan for if someone thinks you're useless without your magic."

"Bullshit," Bol says confidently. "If he's taken out his sword, something is terribly wrong and someone, probably him, is going to die."

"Thank you, Bol."

"...do, ah, sorcerers? not typically use swords where you're from?"

"I am quite good with a sword, thank you. It's just that, um, generally I am up against opponents for whom 'quite good with a sword' is approximately meaningless, and you need to be either 'able to call down a searing holocaust of flame' or 'extremely good with a heavily enchanted sword'."

"And you can't cast searing holocausts of flame with a sword?"

"I can... cast them with a sword in my hand... but that doesn't sound like what you mean? Arcane magic doesn't use a. Focus. Like that. Except in the very specific cases where it does."

"Oh! Well, I suppose it's possible to use magic without anything to focus it but I don't think anyone does it, it's much easier and better with a focus. And we also often inscribe specific spells onto our weapons to... Maybe I should preempt this, how many spells do you usually carry with you at a time?"

Mental math...

"Forty across the six circles I've got. Plus twelve cantrips. Um, cantrips are the eensiest spells and you can cast them as many times as you want, the other circles I've got... between seven and nine uses of each circle per day except my highest, which has five."

"...I really need to stop expecting things to be similar."

"You got that one right. You have limited uses of spells per day?"

"Yeah - it's not actually much of a limitation anymore, when I was just getting started adventuring it was more of a problem because I'd run out of Fireballs and have to throw Magic Missiles instead, but these days I can generally get by, it's rare that I need to burn through everything in one day."

"...I go through dozens of uses of various spells in a single fight."

"That's... uncommon... where I'm from? Generally if you're qualified to deal with an enemy, the fight will be over in a few minutes at most. I don't know if that indicates that you folks are worse at dealing out punishment or just that your enemies are better at soaking it. Maybe both?"

"Maybe we could check against a training dummy! We would probably need to compare you to an elementalist."

(The sounds of whatever encampment they are walking towards start becoming noticeably clearer, and the jungle starts becoming sparser.)

"I'm game."

(His wings twitch at the camp sounds. Safety in numbers!)

And a bit further there is indeed a camp there!

...it may not look like camps Haruk is used to.

It's not very well-hidden, even though it is placed in a somewhat defensible position between a couple of closely-spaced cliffs. "Inside", if it can be called that, is an open space with enormous iron pillars and awnings covering specific locations, as well as various makeshift iron tents and houses serving as barracks. A workshop is visible across the camp from them, with multiple people working on enormous metal contraptions of various sorts, and the center is taken by a tarp-covered open-plan mess hall.

The ways in and out of said camp do seem pretty fortified, though, if not with brick-and-mortar or anything so mundane: medium-high electrified fences, an open space between them that is covered by an energy field, and one enormous energy turret to either side of said entrance, both individually manned by people in light armour. There are also two other soldiers, again one to either side of the entrance, standing at attention holding rifles. Both of them are feline-people—charr—and both of them salute the group once they approach.

    "Commander!" one of them says while the other gestures in the direction of the forcefield, making is dim and vanish. "General Soulkeeper told us she wanted a word with you when you arrived."

"I'll go talk to her, thank you, Crusader Emberweld."

"What exactly is the utility of an iron tent," Haruk whispers to Taimi.

"Oh not much at all it was just what we had left to build stuff with after Mordremoth destroyed our entire airfleet and peppered the landscape with the hulks of every one of our airships," she whispers back.

"...but the forcefield generators were left intact?"

"No we built them from the wreckage, too."

"Huh. Excellent work then."

He's tempted to pat her on the head. He does not. Instead he follows the Commander.

The Commander pulls his helmet off, again, and the fire goes out once more when he does. With it tucked under his arm, he walks over to a charr who seems to be talking to three other soldiers about something important. He stops and stands at attention before getting to her, and when she notices him she finishes whatever she's saying then walks over to him.

    "Commander, good to see those grubby Inquest didn't eat you."

"They were trying to eat him," he says, hiking a thumb in Haruk's direction.

    She looks at Haruk and—does something with her face that is like raising an eyebrow but not quite. "And who's our new friend, then?"

"He's from across the Mists!" says Taimi excitedly from atop her golem. "A whole other world!"

    "Exciting," says the charr in a deadpan before turning to Haruk again. "General Almorra Soulkeeper," she says, saluting by straightening her back and thumping her chest with a fist, the other arm folded behind her back and her tail held close to her body. "A friend of the Commander's is a friend of the Pact. It's an honour to meet you."

Haruk mimics the gesture, folding his wings rather than manipulate his nonexistent tail. "And the Pact has been very welcoming so far. Much more so than the Inquest. Uh, I did end up letting them go, sorry about that, it was that or they all got very unpleasantly destroyed with their secret base. ...I guess I could've tried to catch them on their way out but I didn't actually know that there were going to be people to hand them over to."

    She snorts. "Well, we don't really have a whole lot to do with them, here, they're Rata Sum jurisdication and prisoner transportation is not our main priority right now. But that seems like an interesting adventure, Commander, do you want to tell me all about it while your friends make Haruk comfortable here?"

"Of course, General." And with a wave the both of them go into one of the bigger metal tents over there for a proper war report.

"I do not envy his job," says Braham with a small smile. "Man's busy all the time."

"Pretty sure he likes it that way." He looks at Haruk, then. "Don't think we have any protocol for what to do when a helpful alien arrives. Or much protocol for anything, really, we're still scrambling after Mordremoth's attack and trying to find all of the crash survivors."

"...If there's anyone who you really need found as soon as possible, I can try to scry them. It takes an hour and it's not a guarantee, people can resist it, but - if someone's needed in a hurry."

"Wait, whoa, scry as in—you can find—"

"That'd be everyone. But we have some priorities. How much of it can you do? This is worth interrupting the Commander and the General for."

"I've got eight fourth-circle slots per day, but it's an hour each person."

"Can you do eight hours of it, then? The captains of each ship would be our best bets."

"...yeah, alright. Eight hours of scrying, my favorite." He sighs. "It's easiest if I have a detailed description and a personal possession for each person to be scried. Plus a reflective surface, but I've got a mirror for it."

He sticks his entire arm into his satchel, despite this being impossible, and pulls out a mirror only slightly larger than the mouth of the bag.

They're used to mesmer bags, it's not that surprising.

Rytlock leads them to the same place the Commander and the General went to, and he clears his throat, which clearly annoys the General.

    "Brimstone, what—"

"This man here says he can find people. As in, scry for them. Once per hour, eight hours a day."

    "—Commander I'm afraid I don't need your report that badly," she continues, turning to Haruk and beckoning him in.

James laughs and shakes his head. "It's fine. Finding people will be—wonderful."

"I'm glad."

Haruk so prefers when scrying is not his comparative advantage. This is going to be Not Fun.

"How costly is it?" wonders James, being at all capable of interpreting facial expressions.

"...I'm not going to complain, it looks like no one here is doing what they'd prefer. Some people find scrying meditative. I've... never been able to find the right state of mind. It's an hour of sitting in place, feeding an extremely precise amount of energy into a mirror and not being able to do anything more energetic than light conversation. Or in this case, eight hours of that. And it burns slots, so if someone attacks later I'll suffer for it. But you need these people found. So."

"...we are not so pressed for time that we—"

    "Yes, we are," says the General. "I'm sorry, I understand you are not under my chain of command so I have no claim to ordering you, but this would save us multiple days of search and rescue through areas of the Maguuma Jungle that no one has explored before, so I'm asking."

"I know. Tell me who to scry, if possible give me a possession of theirs, and I'll get on it."

They can start with the Pact Marshall Trahearne, and they're sure they can scrounge up something of his. A quick waypoint trip to the Grove and a frantic chat away has an old knife of his handed to Haruk.

Haruk holds the knife in one hand, sets the mirror before him, and begins the scry.

"Alright. I can talk throughout the process, but I do have to maintain concentration."

"Oh oh oh can I set up my scrying equipment while you do it?"

"Sure. Uh - out of my view, though, I shouldn't be looking at it too closely."

"Roger that!" she says, turning her golem around and driving it to fetch some other people to help her bring some equipment there. Behind him, out of sight.

Haruk keeps scrying quietly for about five more seconds, then says "So - should I call you James, or Commander Orland, or sir, or -"

James laughs and shakes his head. "James is fine. Everyone knows me as the Commander but I don't love being called it. Feels too formal."

    "We are in the same chain of command," says the General pointedly.

"Sure, but they have no such excuse," he replies, hiking a thumb in the direction of Rytlock & co. "They're just doing it to poke me."

"Oh, but how could we call you James in public like that, it would undermine your authority," says Kasmeer sweetly.

"Excellent. James it is. Anyway, James, um, I was wondering if you had any more questions. Since I'm going to be sitting here for a while. I could make do with a book or something, but as long as there are questions it seems more efficient to answer them."

"Wait wait wait did someone say questions because I have a ton of them," says Taimi, walking back into the metal tent they reserved for Haruk's scrying, followed by two other asura who start setting some stuff up. "Or are magic questions bad somehow, that'd be a bummer but I guess finding Marshall Trahearne is 'more important' or something."

"Magic questions are fine! What kind of magic questions do you have."

"Okay! So first, I wanna know about the other places you visited that are not your world. You said there's a lot of them? We only get the realms of the human gods here, if that, jury's still out on whether they're real or some human mass hallucination event two hundred years ago."

"Yeah! We are at least pretty sure that the other planes are not a mass hallucination, and if they were it wouldn't be human-exclusive. Planes are like - some of them are continuous with the Material Plane, like the Ethereal or Shadow, and that basically means any point on either will have a corresponding point on the other? Though not always adjacent to the other corresponding points. Some of them, the Inner and Outer Planes, are just... themselves. Like the Plane of Fire, or Baator." 

"That's nothing like how it works here. How do you open portals?"

"Generally you don't. Plane Shift transports you and others equal to about twice your top circle. You can cast a Gate that lasts... minutes double circle, I think? If you're one of the most powerful people in the world, that is."

"Wait, how can you... teleport... to another plane... Do you have leylines running through planes or...?"

"Just assume literally nothing works the same, it's gonna be easier for all of us. But also: you can teleport without leylines? Cool!"

"I have no idea what a leyline is, so yes! Ours is a conjuration effect - it's... kind of hard to explain why without dipping into the higher-dimensional stuff, but the mostly fake explanation is that everything else conjuration does, and a good chunk of the other schools, is actually just a sub-effect of teleportation."

"So, if this translation thingy is working... conjuration makes things appear out of thin air, but actually you take them from somewhere else, by teleporting, which you can just... do... somehow."

"I mean, yeah, it's a fundamental magical operation. Honestly more fundamental than most of them."

"Okay but, but, but. But! How can—how do things go from one place to another without, without—going through the places between them!!!!! That makes noooooo seeeeeeeense!"

"...yeah, in three dimensions. - imagine a line. You can't get from one point on the line to another without passing through the entire intervening length, right?"

She thinks she sees where this is going. "Right."

"The line's actually a circle. The circle's actually a sphere. The sphere is actually an incomprehensible geometric abstraction. There's shortcuts."

"...I think I understand..."

"I don't!" Kasmeer pipes in brightly.

"Okay so I get that you're simplifying stuff but there's different stuff that could be simplified that way. Are you saying, one, that stuff actually does cross some sort of space, it's just orthogonal to the three usual spatial dimensions we are used to accessing but actually our or your world is just a three-dimensional cartesian projection of the higher-dimensional hyperplane; two, that the magic can actually fold space into itself within the higher-dimensional manifold so that actually no hyperspace is crossed it just so happened that you managed to temporarily make two places be the same place; or three, something else entirely?"

"It's the Cartesian hyperplane thing - stuff does kind of travel through space, but it's doing so in the form of magic, and usually it's not a meaningful amount of space because you're traveling through the Astral Plane. Which... is barely a place, only magic can exist there and it doesn't really have time."

"Doesn't... have time. As in, as in, you travel through a, a, a spacelike distance with no time component?!"

"Yep!"

Taimi shrieks and very loud typing noises start coming out of her golem as she makes a bunch of holographic screens appear around her. "That makes no sense but it makes sense why doesn't our magic work like that! How many dimensions does the Astral Plane have? Do coordinates in it have a mapping to coordinates in the Material Plane? How do you get to the other planes?"

"...Taimi, are you sure that..."

"He said magic questions wouldn't distract him so I'm askin' until he contradicts me!"

"Oh, believe me, I'm maintaining concentration. That does mean I'm going to need questions one at a time, though."

She writes them down into her computer and asks them one at a time.

The number of dimensions possessed by the Astral Plane is hotly debated by people much more intelligent than Haruk! The mapping of coordinates between the Material and Astral is insanely complex and generally not useful because there's nothing in the Astral Plane except ambient magic! The Inner and Outer Planes are contained by the Astral in the same manner as the Prime Material, in such a way that only parts of them intersect with the Prime Material, and you can enter them via the Astral if you have a special tuning fork!

In this manner an hour's worth of questions are (mostly) answered and (almost invariably) raise further questions. Once an hour has passed, though, the mirror fogs over.

"Oh! This is the good bit," Haruk says. "Your Trahearne should show up in a few seconds."

The others did not stay around for the hour of magic grilling, and James in particular finally delivered his report to the General, but by the time the hour is almost up the tent has—well, everyone. Everyone Haruk met plus a couple of people he hasn't.

Trahearne is... in a plant.

His face is just barely visible through the translucent wall of a fleshy pod, which sways with unseen movement. 

    "Commander, tell me you have any idea what that is," pleads General Soulkeeper.

"I should not lie to my direct peers in the Pact."

    "Fuck."

"He's being moved somewhere. He's still alive, then, but that means Mordremoth has some use for him, if he wasn't just killed."

"Are the others—were they also captured?"

"One person per scry," James says, shaking his head. "Though I have a bad feeling about what we'll find with everyone else."

"...tell me who you need."

Eir Stegalkin—Braham's mother—was aboard one of the ships, and whatever fate befell her probably befell some other important and powerful people who were on the same ship. After her, they will need to check on the other ships' captains—if they survived at all, having even a rough idea of the terrain surrounding them could prove invaluable to actually finding them and rescuing them.

"Right. Taimi, if you'd stay and continue picking my brain it'd be much appreciated. The rest of you can go."

Hoo boy does she have questions. They can absolutely fill the time of several scryings!

And Haruk has answers for some of them, and acknowledges others as very good questions he doesn't really have an answer for, and once an hour, he reveals the location of another scrying target.