It's extremely dark. Dark enough that Cam can't see much of anything at all, other than some scattered sources of green light too faint to properly discern until his eyes get more used to the darkness. The way some of them move is suggestive of bioluminescent bugs, though, and there is a small amount of buzzing and chattering that dies down after a few seconds.

It's also pretty cold. Not air conditioning cold, nor the Arctic cold, more like a kind of not-quite-damp cold of a basement without any water leaks.

...what has he got in the way of language updates.

Wow that's, uh, got a much more complicated answer than that question usually gets, actually! There's this language that looks like a cross of English, Chinese, Spanish, and Arabic, proficiently but not natively fluent, and that seems to be the only normal language. But it does kind of feel like he got something else? It's just not something that actually uses any of the senses he's equipped with. Like, he could totally communicate if he performed this ineffable action with an organ he does not possess, or this other ineffable action with this other organ he does not possess, and if the former organ detected some kind of stimuli he would be able to interpret it as language probably, while the latter does not receive data (they're sort of like his vocal cords). Possibly he could use his eyes to interpret something that were produced by the latter organ, if his eyes were very different?

Weird.

"Hello?" he tries in the speakable language.

His eyes are getting used to the darkness, those are definitely bugs. Not yet quite used enough to determine which bugs, but some of them look larger than any natural bioluminescent bugs he's aware of from the light alone. Also, there's some buzzing and chittering in response to his voice, but not much, and some of the bugs scatter, but much fewer than one might normally expect.

He's not a huge fan of bugs but he clearly has been summoned by Some Kind Of Space Alien Apparently. Can he see the circle?

If he waits a bit longer so his eyes are even more used to it the bioluminescence turns out to be enough to let him see smudges that are faintly wet but not more than that, certainly not enough to actually read the circle.

Also some of those bugs are the size of medium-sized dogs. And have scorpion-like stingers.

Yes well he doesn't really like that but he's indestructible and! also! space alien! so he's going to resist the temptation to try to kick the scorpions to death at this time. Eeugh though.

Okay, if he can't read the circle and the alien won't say hello, he will try: making stuff. Cuppa coffee?

Nah.

(Also: they're not scorpions! For one, they're bioluminescent. For two, they have wings, and some are flying. So, more like flying glowing scorpions.)

He Doesn't Like That BUT SPACE ALIEN.

Puff of air? Drop of water? "Hellooooo?"

Buzz buzz chitter no go.

"I can't actually speak the other stuff that came with this summons, it relies on anatomy I don't have and can't make!" he volunteers.

Some bugs fly away that-a-way. Some buzz and chitter. None of them produce words, though.

Can he leave the circle or is he in for a more boring time than bonsaiing.

He can leave his circle!

"I'm gonna... walk around a bit... and I will try not to step on any of you and/or your pets and/or your children and/or your space alien relationship for which I have no words," he says, "and that will be lots easier if you do not startle me or like touch me or anything, I am liable to fall over if those things happen, it's a thing that happens sometimes to people with two legs."

Buzz.

He picks a direction and starts walking, very slowly, one step at a time, seeking to avoid stepping and/or falling on any space bugs.

The few space bugs that might've been in his way obligingly step/scurry/fly off, some looking more purposeful in that than the others.

"If you can't pronounce this language, it has a writing system, and you managed the circle," he remarks, a few steps along.

He seems to be going down a corridor or something and it has fewer bugs than the place he showed up at, so if they buzz they're not sufficiently numerous here for it to be noticeable. But what is noticeable is that wherever he's going is even colder than where he came from, with a hint of air movement. Also, the ground seems very uneven, more like natural formation than artificial construction.

Who knows what artificial constructions might appeal to SPACE BUGS. Though then again who knows what natural formations might also appeal to space bugs, so. He goes very very slow.

Colder, colder, colder, that's some natural light over there, and there's... sand? That's sand, under his feet. More and more sand, actually, and, hey, don't deserts get super cold at night, actually.

There's the exit.

Does Cam want to guess what that looks like?

Is it... a desert? Possibly one full of space bugs? Maybe space bug architecture?

It's a desert, and it has nnnno discernible architecture. The constellations aren't recognisable, either. And it's not full of space bugs, but there's bioluminescent dots here and there, flying in the distance, possible to tell apart from stars by their colour and movement. Also, there are four moons visible in the sky, too.

Cam is not amazing at stellar navigation. He notices that Orion's not up and that's about it. The reasons he has for thinking this might be Space are unrelated to the stars. The moons are a big fucking hint, though!

"Nice place you've got here," he comments to the nearest large bug.

It flies off.

"If there is something you want me to do or reason you want me to be here, you have thus far not successfully communicated it in any way," he tells the next nearest. "I remain ignorant on this matter. If there is neither communication nor something that looks like it might constitute an attempt at communication in the next few minutes I might just, like, fly away, explore."

Next nearest does not react to this in any way.

He waits for a few minutes, looking at the stars, and the moons. He turns around in place. Any lights on the ground in the distance? Or geography?

There's, call it psamography, there's sand dunes and more sand dunes. The cave he just walked out of doesn't stand out, and it would be extremely easy to lose it amidst the dunes if he walked for three minutes in any direction.

"I'd love to mark this place in some way in case it's important but I can't make anything right now, any chance that could change?"

There's no response for a few seconds, but then a swarm of bugs suddenly fly out of the cave all at once, up into the air, and it...

...forms an arrow pointing down, like in one of those old-timey highway motel billboards, bugs' lights blinking in and out alternatedly and all.

"That constitutes communication! Thanks!" He will... go back down into the cave? (Still very slow and careful.)

Nope, now there's an X of glowing bugs blocking the way, and the arrow becomes an exclamation mark.

"Oh, okay, I took the arrow to be directing me. Are you instead offering that the arrow will stay here for future reference?"

Checkmark symbol.

"For how long?"

The checkmark becomes a punctuation mark that apparently this language has that indicates uncertainty.

"...Okay. Uh, I don't know how long days are on this planet so I can't start proposing amounts of times very well. I'm only even guessing that days are a thing and that we're not tidally locked."

The bugs don't answer.

"Is there anything else we should maybe discuss before I go for a flight?"

X symbol.

"...okay, I'll go for an explore and come back if I see anything I wanna talk about or something?"

Checkmark.

"Okay. It has been fascinating to meet you, thank you for inviting me to your planet."

And he will get some space from the bugs lest they be annoyingly buffeted and take off.

Deserts at night are: fucking cold. Beautiful, picturesque, but really, really cold. 

One noteworthy thing, though, is that there are no plants that he can see. No cacti, no dead shrubbery, nothing at all. Just sand and the occasional rock.

It is really tempting to rain on this place. He should ask the bugs if he may pretty please. Maybe it blooms like whoa when it rains.

When he's sufficiently high he can see more desert in all directions. There don't seem to be any kinds of artificial structures nor light sources, other than the stars, the four moons, and the occasional bug. The constellations are definitely moving, though, so if this planet is tidally locked it's year duration is very very short.

Stranger things have probably happened, astronomically speaking.

When it's been long enough that he has a sense of how the moons are behaving he picks one to navigate by and a direction to navigate, and goes in a straight line in case that lets him find anything else.

After a bit he sees something in the horizon. At first the faint light looks like it could be dawn, but it eventually resolves to an enormous cloud of firefly-sized bugs, moving slowly as a swarm in the air higher than Cam is flying. From this distance, it looks almost like an aurora, the bugs too far to resolve into anything but gently swaying points of green light.

Oh, cool, he'll head that way and see what they're up to over there!

They seem to be mostly just... drifting? Migrating?

"Good evening!"

No response. Not a buzz or a change in luminosity or flight patterns.

Maybe they didn't get the newsletter or whatever, this bunch. He'll go around 'em.

There's a short rumbling from underground—

—and then a sandworm like in Dune or something the size of two schoolbuses jumps out from the sand like it's so much water with surprising speed and force, aiming for the bugs but in a trajectory that will easily intercept Cam. It has three jaws in a triangle and a scary number of teeth.

Yeep! He can fly but he's not an aerobat! He tries to get out of the way but that thing is big and there is a lot of way to get out of!

Yeah no. He manages to get out of the way enough to not be swallowed whole (which is more than can be said of seventy percent of the flying bugs trying desperately to escape), and plausibly the thing's mouth isn't actually large though to do that without difficulty, but it's not enough to avoid getting chomped.

And then gravity starts doing its job.

Cam is not, or at least not very, afraid of teeth. He's willing to grab onto teeth to try to climb out of this mouth rather than go down its throat and have a really tedious time of clawing his way through organ systems.

To the extent this thing has the ability to do so, it looks kinda confused by the fact that Cam didn't go crunch. Its jaws aren't all that mobile so the best it can do is try to open and snap them shut several times to see if that'll work. It's got sticky, slimy, corrosive saliva to help with that, though.

Sticky and slimy work on him normally! Corrosive is annoying but not going to be a big problem on the relevant scale. Kick kick grab flail!

The thing is squirming on the sand, not having dug down into it yet, and there's only so much the physics of its makeup can do when it's got no opposable thumbs nor the ability to really chew, so Cam is making progress, and will be able to escape if he keeps going and if the worm doesn't try to burrow. 

Unfortunately it seems to have realised this and is starting to try to do just that.

Fortunately (?) a second, much bigger worm, big enough that it could have swallowed Cam whole if it had been the one to attack, chooses this moment to show up from underground and bite off the middle third of the smaller worm in one go. This has the effect of making the smaller worm cease its activities altogether.

...can he scramble out of the dead maw before the new guy decides it wants dessert?

Yeah, he can. It seems entirely uninterested in the tiny morsel that is Cam when it's got a much better meal in the other worm.

Nature red in tooth and... they're worms so not claw... are his wings too gummed up to fly.

They sure are. 

Also, there's now a kid sitting atop a sand dune, appearing out of nowhere and laughing their ass off. They're a very weird kid, though, with white hair and slitted eyes and a thick, fleshy-looking scarf of sorts around their neck.

"......hello?"

"Hi!" they call back, grinning. "That was so much fun!"

"...was it." How amemable is this gunk to being groomed off his wings with some combination of his hands and sand.

Pretty amenable, it's not doing so good in the cold night.

"Yeah! We were totally right that it was a bad idea to try to eat you but it was fun to watch just how bad!"

"You coulda just asked me."

"Oh, we could've, but the us that ate you probably couldn't have, I don't think we knew how to talk. I'm actually not sure any us other than us can do it!"

They hop onto their feet, then two pairs of bug wings emerge from their back and carry them down the dune towards Cam.

"Some of... you... figured out how to write well enough to summon and turn into punctuation marks, that would also have worked."

"I think we were just trying to work out words. The us that wrote that wasn't the same us that tried to eat you but we weren't all that different, you know?"

"I do not know."

"No, your language isn't very good at us."

"Anyway, nice to meet you! Are you a demon?"

"I am a demon! My language, or do you mean the one we're speaking?"

"Yes!"

"Do you speak English?" he tries in English.

"Yes!" they reply in English. "But we only know it from watching videos from Old Earth, no one speaks it here," they continue in the other language. "Waow... multiple languages..." They take off and swirl around in the air in delight.

"So are you some kind of - hive mind situation, that's an English term for you -"

"Yeah! We are everything on the planet. Well, everything that was on the planet before humans and plants arrived. But the humans seem convinced that demons don't really exist so this is surprising!"

"Cool, do you know what year it is in the Gregorian calendar?"

"This planet's years are not the same length as Old Earth's. Let's see... If we convert, it's the year 2555? Yeah, that sounds right."

"Wow, my timeline with demons and stuff is only up to 2179. This one has, uh, farther-flung space colonization? What else?"

"Your timeline? Waow, are you from the past? Neat! We don't know what else."

There's starting to be light in the horizon, and this time it's not green.

"I think I'm not from the past! It'd be a pretty big deal to forget that demons exist!"

"Well, you're not from the present!"

"I just think something other than straightforward time travel is going on, it sounds like maybe we have at least two universes around and in one of them demons were publicized and in the other people eventually colonized wherever this is. I could make sure time is running normally at home if my summoner cares to know, but I, uh, don't know if that's you or not as these things go." Pick pick pick goo out of his wings and his hair and off his pants which he cannot trivially replace right now.

"Your summoner? What've they got to do with it?"

"They wrote some stuff into the circle about what I can make but they can let me make more." As far as he can tell his current ability to make things is nil but there could be exceptions he hasn't stumbled across and wasn't able to read in the dark.

"Ooh. What stuff can you make? ...could you make? If, you know, your summoner felt like letting you."

That's definitely the sun peeking over the horizon there.

"Arbitrary material objects. It is in fact good practice to not let strange demons you don't know totally loose with that, but I don't mean anybody any harm. I guess I would have done the worm some harm escaping if I'd been able but the other worm seems to have taken care of that for me?"

"Yeah, we did. Since that us were wrong, we ate us. If they were right, they might've eaten us instead, dunno." Shrug. "How do you make arbitrary material objects? Are you like plants?" The word translates as "plants" but has some... other connotations. Like they're not regular photosynthesising flora and instead can do many other things, but not that.

"...I'm not sure I'm familiar with the kind of plants around here. I haven't seen any yet. I can just make things by magic. Quite fast and as much as I want, when I'm at home and there's no summoner involved."

"Is your home an infinite dimension with infinite energy and many other beings like you that can use that infinite energy to create whatever form of matter they want?"

"It's an infinite dimension. I don't think I'd describe it as having infinite energy, the place isn't powering what we can do, we are just the sort of thing that can do that and also we live there."

"So... if you make something here... you're not getting power from that dimension to do it, or something? You're not, like, connected to it through an interdimensional portal kind of inside you?"

"Not as far as I know?"

"Can you telekinetically control the stuff you make? Can you unmake it?"

"No and no. - there's some technology that could act sort of like I was telekinetically controlling it, I guess, and I can, like, set things on fire."

"Huh. So you're kinda like plants but not really. Do you have some kind of energy you use up?"

"No."

"Huh! Neat.

"How would your summoner let you make stuff?"

"There's two ways. They can just let me do whatever I want at will, that's called snapping a binding. The other way is... whatever they wrote into the circle, which I couldn't read since it was dark."

"Unfortunately we're not telling us what we wrote in the circle. We know a bit, but the us who know more are hiding now.

"Can you make... water?"

"Sure! I've been tempted to make it rain here to see if the desert has any seeds waiting for a once-in-a-century storm or something."

"Oh, we don't have flora at all. All the water on this planet is suuuuuper underground, we have a ton of cave systems! It's where most of us live most of the time. We never let any humans explore them, though. Gotta keep the mystery. They don't even know about it." 

Pause. "Okay, some of them know about it from seismographs."

"Huh, there has to be, like, some atmospheric water vapor. Maybe not enough to ever form clouds but that one cave was open the surface and some of y'all did not look maximally watertight as organisms go, even without biting each other in half which certainly doesn't help with that. How do you stop humans from exploring caves?"

"We eat them!"

"I was sort of expecting you to say that but I was hoping you'd be less cheerful about it."

"It's not as fun as eating ourselves, we admit."

"It's fun to eat yourselves?"

"We learn many new things when we eat ourselves. Things that we already knew, and then more of us know."

"Is that your principal way of distributing knowledge within the hivemind? - if anybody eats, uh, enough, I'm not sure how much would be enough, of whatever subset counts as my summoner, I will probably vanish back home."

"Oh we don't think so. We're not individuals. If anyone's a summoner we all are, we think."

"...well, I have no idea how that will interact with the bindings situation but you could test it, if you wanted."

"How do we give you permission to make stuff?"

"If you want to snap the binding you might be able to do that just by intending to! If you don't want to do that or it doesn't work, you could try giving me a task and saying I can make stuff relevant to that task, that works for most likely bindings - I assume you cannot trivially get ahold of a copy of the circle for me to read now that the sun's up?" And hot. That's a hot sun.

"No, the bug guts are all smeared now. A task... We task you with making a glass of water? And in order to do that you can make a glass of water."

Glass of water?

Glass of water!

"There you go, that works!"

They fly in a circle and buzz happily before settling back down. "Yay!"

"Do you want to drink it or shall I?"

"Oh, this body is a fake holographic illusion on top of a bunch of bugs." To demonstrate this they disperse into a cloud of bugs and recoalesce two feet to the left. "You can have it."

Glug. "How do you do the holographic illusion, that's pretty neat."

"Bioluminescence and wings and stuff. It was neat to figure out. Mr. Knives helped us. He's one of the plants we mentioned."

"I think the relationship between the species you refer to and plants as I know them is small to nonexistent."

"What are plants as you know them? Flora? We don't have that at all! The humans lost all of it when they crashed onto this planet. Well, most of it. Then the rest of it died."

"What are they eating - and how are they planning to breathe long term, or do they have that completely mechanized -"

"Oh, we produce oxygen for them. ...well, for us, but they can breathe it just the same. They're eating what their plants make them!"

"Are their plants the energy-converter beings you thought I might resemble? I guess they sound nice to have."

"The humans would all have been dead decades ago without them and that would've been no fun."

"Do all of you like humans all right so long as they stay out of the caves?"

"Oh we don't mind them in the caves, we just don't want to make it easy for them. There's gotta be a challenge, you know?

"Some of us don't care for humans, though. Especially the ones that live pretty far. We're not sure if the us on the other side of the planet even know about the humans yet, or remember them most of the time."

"Y'all need the Internet."

"The internet is great! The humans don't have good enough infrastructure for it anymore but we're super excited for when they do. Assuming they don't all die."

"Well, I can fix that, if you wanna let me. Why would they all die?"

"They're consuming their plants at an unsustainable rate! So says Mr. Knives."

"That sucks! Do they not have birth control or are the plants just finite resources? Or are they being dumb, that's also possible."