It is pitch black.

You are likely to be eaten by a grue.

Let there be light!!!

Which is to say: Tanya is busy dodging in unpredictable directions at three gees and she does not immediately stop doing it just because she suddenly cannot see any threat. This promptly makes her collide with something, which her shield can absorb but leaves her dizzy for a moment. And the light's intensity is more suited to the daytime sky than a dark enclosed space, and it takes her another half-second to turn it way down. Her reflexes are still stuck on 'middle of a dogfight', which means she's on a hair's trigger to shoot something as soon as she finds something vaguely enemy-like to shoot. Not her men, but all their mana signatures are gone? - no, something must be wrong with her detector but that means she has to rely on visual cues to shoot things -

What can she see?

She is in a cave about twenty feet across in most dimensions but blobby enough that it would be challenging to find the specific places at which it's that distance if you got out a tape measure to prove it. There is some kind of creepy cave animal on the ceiling!

How did she end up in a cave??? At least that explains why she can't sense any magic, rock and earth will block detection beyond ten meters or so, but still. What?

Can she hear anything? ...is there even an exit from this cave? (She is flying and does not really care which way is down as long as she can get out of here.)

If she listens carefully she can hear dripping water, the creepy cave animal softly adjusting position like it's thinking about jumping on her, and maybe faint echoes of other things farther off. There are actually two directions she could take out of this cave. Five if she can shrink.

Tanya is admittedly pretty Small but she definitely cannot shrink.

She considers calling out but - this whole thing was enemy action? Or... it happened during enemy action, or something? She doesn't understand what's going on, at all. But she needs the light, which will already draw attention to her anyway if the cave is otherwise pitch dark -

...she'll explore for ten minutes first. (Ten minutes of flight can cover a lot of ground but she'll be moving too slowly and cautiously to really take advantage of that.) She can use her orb's recording to reconstruct her path later - in theory, she's really not trained in this, the closest equivalent is buildings but she'd be much better at remembering the rooms of a building - anyway. There's nothing to be gained from waiting here. And she does not want to think about what just happened until she knows more, because -

...she's scared. This hasn't happened to her in a long time - fights are dangerous, of course, but they feel different. She can deal with it, of course, she just isn't inclined to stop and try to think her way out of the situation.

What lies down this randomly chosen path? She can fly soundlessly and tune down the light but can't turn it off entirely.

(She makes distance from the animal and otherwise ignores it. Animals are not on the top of her mind right now.)

The randomly chosen path contains:

- a variety of sparse but weird cave animals, including a giant millipede, some kind of ooze that is only an "animal" based on how it moves away from the light, and some bats who presumably exit to the surface when they want to do that out of that shaft there that she cannot fit through
- various cave mineral formations
- some bones that might have been a human's maybe
- and...

- this purple humanoid!

Insects can get that large? not important right now! Tanya has no special affinity for knowledge about animals and is going to ignore them.

The bones are a great sign for there being an exit she can use although caves can famously be very hard to get into.

- oh, there's someone here! No magic (so not immediately dangerous). No light source of their own, but not obviously trying to stay hidden either... Something's weird about their skin color and the shape of their head but Tanya's light source and vision really aren't calibrated for these conditions, she's throwing crazy shadows everywhere as she flies. They could be an enemy agent, and they can see her or at least her light but - not immediately doing anything about it that Tanya can see or hear? Better to approach them than to flee. (This flashes through her mind almost nonverbally in a few seconds.)

"Hello?"

The person says something! And makes a gesture! Neither is recognizable as anything Tanya knows linguistically.

Tanya doesn't recognize the language but that was a flare of magic! Which she also doesn't recognize!! It - doesn't seem to be coming from an orb? And had no obvious effect?? 

...even low-rank mages are rare. This is definitely not a coincidence. She doesn't know what happened, how she got here or why, and the other woman might be an enemy agent. She could be transmitting their conversation over radio, leading more soldiers to Tanya. Except - why give herself away? What did the magic do? 

Tanya is in uniform, armed, and visibly using magic. She can flee and hope the caves have another exit. She can't attack without confirming that this is an enemy, but she could interrogate a civilian... if they had a shared language. Whatever the woman just said wasn't in Ildoan or (probably) Dacian, but Ildoa is full of people from Magna Rumeli. Tanya doesn't know Elinika and the Balkans have languages even weirder than that. Well, 'hello' is pretty international; it's Tanya's own fault for not addressing her more clearly.

She doesn't point her gun at the woman, but only because she doesn't need it to kill an (unshielded) combatant and not threatening her might preserve option value.

"Do you speak Ildoan?" she tries in that language. If that doesn't work, she has - Germanian, Francois, English, some Russy... Lebadonian? Very rudimentary Ispagnan?

Purple person points at her mouth and shakes her head, but then points at her ear - it's pointy - and nods.

It is weirdly pointy focus. "You understand a little but don't speak it? Which one -" she'll go over the languages again, more slowly this time.

"Understand understand understand," she repeats. "Don't speak. Comprehend Languages," she adds, slowly and clearly as though this might be recognizable when nothing else she isn't directly parroting is. (No magic flare this time.)

She understands Germanian? Or - she might have chosen it because Tanya is Germanian and she doesn't actually want to talk? Tanya still has no idea what language those last few words are in, but at least the woman clearly isn't mute.

Tanya doesn't want to introduce herself by name, because her name is known in certain quarters and this person might not be an enemy yet, but she doesn't have an alibi picked out, it's never come up before. "Please call me - Maria," a name which exists in every European language. "I'm an officer of the Germanian army," which anyone can tell by looking at her. "Can you show me the way out of these caves?" Asking where she might work even across languages, admitting she doesn't know where she is is the dangerous part.

"Belmarniss," puts in the purple woman when it's names time. And - slow headshake, at the question.

"Can't, or won't? Or - did you not understand me? Outside. Exit. Leave. Go away."

"Understand," repeats Belmarniss. "Can't."

"...because you're not allowed to? Who do you work for?" She could be simply lying to stall, but it amounts to the same thing. "Government, army - corporation -"

"...allowed. Can't."

"Why?" - this is leading nowhere. 

Tanya is, in fact, allowed to compel her to help, assuming she's an Ildoan civilian, but if she refuses to help then Tanya is - well, she's theoretically allowed to arrest her, which would be worse than useless right now!

"Who else is in this cave? Which way is the exit?" She has a compass and maybe the woman does do, if she spends time in caves. "Can you - draw me directions, I have paper -" she'll get a pencil and paper out of her backpack. By feel, so she can keep her eyes on 'Belmarniss'. What language could that be a name in? Is the woman really understanding everything she says, people can usually speak at least a little in a language they understand that well!

"Uh..." Handwobble.

Handwobble is not a no, what can she do given paper and pencil?

Here's a small notebook with a thin hard cover so you can write in it in flight. There are a few pages full of cramped handwriting that Tanya will stop Belmarniss from trying to read. Here's the next blank page.

Belmarniss in fact glances at the handwriting but doesn't make herself hard to divert.

She has a convention for drawing cave systems on two-dimensional paper! Hopefully it comes across tolerably well when she labels elevations in a neat stack with one symbol per in the upper left hand corner and then marks caves with them and gives caves that are above other caves matching symbols to indicate where they connect or don't as the case may be. In any case she will do a simplified map of the area, with a big star as a You Are Here - she points at it and gestures around the cave they're in - and the city in its seven-marked-altitudes glory over there, and you see how all of this is a cave system and none of it is a ladder up to the place with weather and stuff? Yes? "Noctimar," she explains.

And then on the next page she will draw something that looks much saner! A surface map! Less detailed and not just because the format requires less finagling to be remotely usable. And she'll name stuff on it, and she'll point straight up at the ceiling. "Taldor."

That's an enormously complicated cave system! No wonder she couldn't just give instructions. Or show her out, it probably takes hours on foot. Is this person a professional speleologist? She definitely doesn't look equipped for it but maybe she has a base camp nearby? (But why was she in the dark? And her clothes look weird - not important.)

...Tanya dutifully tries to follow the map and she thinks she understands it. At least, well enough to understand that she doesn't understand how the cave map connects to 'Taldor'. She can't recognize the surface map but maybe it's very local or something, there's no scale, and anyway the important thing is that it's on the surface. 

"Thank you, that looks very useful. Where is the exit from the caves to... Taldor?"

Handwobble handwobble dotted line coming off from these city outskirts thisaway?

She can't not know where the exit is. No matter how you love caves this is still the most important thing to know about them!

"I don't understand why you won't - can't - draw the exit. ...I can pay you a few lire to guide me out?" She's lucky she has any on her; currency isn't exactly standard equipment and her actual equipment isn't hers to trade away. 

"Can't," repeats Belmarniss.

Ugh.

"Is there anyone else in these caves?" People wouldn't go down here without backup, right?

Nod, but like, a kind of hesitant nod.

"You're not sure?" Tanya guesses. "Because the caves are so big, and there might be other people here, but you came alone?"

Headshake headshake.

Thaaat... probably means 'no' as in 'yes, I'm not sure'? 

Tanya can try to follow the map and come back if she fails to find anything. But if the map is at all accurate, this cave system is very intimidating and even if Tanya could find her way back here some hours later, there's no guarantee she could find Belmarniss. And she still has no idea how she got here, whether she needs to fear enemy action or what form it might take, whether Belmarniss is an enemy agent or an honestly confused civilian... 

If she finds a sufficiently large empty space she could start collapsing the ceiling until she reaches the surface - definitely not a good idea, building demolitions are not the same as cavern collapses tens or hundreds of meters underground. A move of desperation, to be considered in case she runs out of water and has no better options. ...but it won't come to that, because she can follow Belmarniss who presumably has supplies even if she doesn't intend to leave the caves any time soon. And it will give her time to think.

"What was the magic you used earlier?" She's not sure what else to ask but they both know the other is a mage, so - it might shed some light. 

"Comprehend Languages."