"I'm sorry about the salty water!", Ahmose apologizes again. "I didn't know how to clean it up, I don't think the laundry spell can remove salt from the ground..."

He's sad about the man not having magic. Everyone should have magic in Heaven! He'd offer to teach him, but he's - probably not actually a good teacher of magic? It would be impolite to ask the man why he can't have magic. There's probably a good reason, not everyone is smart enough to learn and maybe that's still true even if you have an eternity in the afterlife.

"That's nothing on the time I was fighting this werewolf guy and we tore through half a supermarket. Nobody got hurt, it's eminently fixable, let's keep it that way for next time. Jasper, how are we getting to the house? I took the bus here."

[We can just walk?] Suggests the Puchuu.

"...Nah, I'm gonna fly us. It's already four o'clock. Ahmose, any objection to flying?"

They are so free and casual with magic! The afterlives are really amazingly rich, aren't they, he really hopes they're putting it to good use.

"Yes please - I mean no!! No objection."

"Hold on a sec so I can transform - see you tonight, babe!" She calls to the retreating jacket-guy, who smiles and waves.

She takes a deep breath. Then... Blushes, and sort of squirms a little, shifting her legs and hips side to side. Then she slams her hands on her hips and holds her head high, chest out. "By the will of my soul and the power of my blood."

She is doing a little dance, and is glowing extremely brightly. It looks like all her clothes are falling away, though you can't actually see anything because of the light. "In deepest darkness and brightest light, in driving snow and terrible blight! I will not give in where there is evil to be fought!"

By now, a new set of clothes have started appearing in outline, ribbons and the hem of a skirt becoming visible. Illusory sweet-smelling wind and swirls of black petals swirl around her. "This flower blooms with passion and might. Shining Black Lily, the flower of death guards the font of life!"

The light finishes with a final gust of wind, and now the same girl is dressed in a very fancy bright red dress that shows a good amount of skin, ruffled sleeves, with a frilly many-layered skirt dominated by black, that goes to mid-thigh. She's also wearing a shiny black cape that flutters in an unseen wind, fishnet leggings and black heeled boots, a silver brooch decorated like a skull surrounded by flowers at the lapel of the dress, and a silver-and-sapphire jeweled hood and veil covering her face.

It all looks very fancy, though the style is somewhere in between all three of wizardly and court-noble and harem-outfit. Only then does she draw some sort of large square plate (also skull-and-flower decorated) out of her backpack of holding, set it on the ground, and incant 'Lily Wind, Expand!'. The platform expands. She smiles (she now has black lipstick on, faintly discernable through the veil), and gestures towards the platform. "Our ride."

Is that. Was that. Another magic ritual?? Or maybe - no, Ahmose clearly Does Not Understand what is going on, probably because he is Officialy Not Splendid Enough to be a sorcerer and that looked more like a sorcerer thing than a wizard thing. Or maybe a bard thing, or -

- wait, maybe that's just what happens if you let women be wizards, they do it like that? Just as Osirian wizards insist on wearing robes and pointy hats, maybe when women are wizards they wear fancy dresses with skulls and flowers. And short skirts because Osirian men want women to wear long dresses, and attack women who dress immodestly, and so in Heaven where the women are wizards and the men are their magic-less husbands they dress the way they always wanted to in life?

He saw a flight being boarded in Sothis once. Money changed hands, the fat old wizard pulled out a carpet from his bag of holding and they were off with no more ceremony. Ahmose much prefers the version with a song and dance routine, and is having a little revelation about this fact.

...also oh no he drifted off thinking and people are waiting for him again!! He hurries onto the platform. 

"Uh, thank you very much!" Is there something he should hold on to?

(Haaah. Even weird teleported wizards think the transformation and outfit are over the top! Oh well. She's accepted it long ago. And it's still nice to be looked at... Just a bit embarassing, sometimes.)

There isn't anything to hold on to, but as soon as he steps on the platform he gets a sense of -surefootedness. As if he'd have to actually try to fall over.

The Puchuu jumps aboard too, and then they climb into the sky at a rapid pace.

They fly north, still east of the college. To the left are a lot of mixed brownstone and more modern buildings and a few green areas, then more standard glass and steel construction. Apartment towers, in the distance. To the right are suburbs and farmland.

Cars and busses are present, less so on campus. Lots of young people walking around, too. They have a fairly muted reaction to seeing her flying around. Interested and some gawking, but not awed.

"So, you must be pretty confused." Shining Black Lily comments. "Hopefully we can get you home- But if not, there's a lot of stuff you have to learn about here."

"That makes sense, I never expected to go to Heaven! Um. I never expected to go to any afterlife while alive. I guess that's what opening a portal to another plane means, but I thought I'd go to - the visitors' area of Aktun, probably, somewhere people actually go to. But I clearly don't know how to aim, so for a random other plane Heaven is actually pretty good!" Wait no that sounds ridiculously disparaging - "very good, I mean, it's really - incredible. The city, and everything." He feels like he could spend hours just looking at the view. The soaring towers glinting in the sunlight, the farm-plots laid out in geometric perfection.

Wait, they're still Interacting with him. "It's - possible I can't go home? I mean, I don't know if I can do it, but I just need to repeat what I did to get here. In reverse. A boat or raft for the river might help."

"And I'm very grateful for your help and your understanding, and I want to repay you if I can, I just don't know what I can do that you'd find valuable." There, he said it. He hasn't agreed to anything specific yet, it has to be safe, this is Heaven.

She looks completely confused.

"Wait, wait, wait. Back up. Heaven? This isn't heaven. What the ffffudge gave you that impression?"

He - gestures to the puchuu. "You said you... support good, and fight evil, and enforce justice, and prevent misuse of magic. And this is another plane, and I assumed you're an outsider. So I thought..." By process of elimination, if this isn't Heaven, and presumably it isn't Hell either, is this... Nirvana? He's not really clear on what goes on in Nirvana. It's probably not Elysium, though? Elysium has fewer cities in it, and more beer.

"No, none of those. This is the planet Earth. Of the, uh, material plane, I guess. I don't know much about portals or other worlds or anything."

Oh. Oh.

The second portal was meant to take him back to the Material Plane. And it did! But where plane shift has an error range of several hundred miles, his had one that reached another planet. How far is that, anyway?

Ahmose had read a book with a list of spells which said plane shift can take you anywhere on the other plane. And he'd laughed and thought, pull the other one, surely people can't just go anywhere without any limits. The world doesn't look the way it would look if people could go anywhere on any plane.

Well, it turns out Ahmose was right, but for a different reason. Going anywhere isn't a good thing, really, it's going somewhere that's the problem. Plane shift probably deserves its high circle, lots of smart wizards must have worked hard on it to make it not go to other planets. And here silly Ahmose thought he could compete with it, just by opening portals without knowing where they'd go. Better to stick to the ones he can see where to put.

He has to figure out targeting, though, or he can't go back home. Well, if he can go to Actual Heaven, or probably Axis, maybe someone there can help him for a price, and maybe he can find someone helpful even in a random place in Heaven. He can keep the portal back open this time while he searches.

...If these nice people let him, that is. Because. Um. He thought he landed in a rich afterlife where people can afford to casually help strangers. And it turns out he landed in - presumably still a rich place, because look at those towers, but more specifically in a university's garden, and there were unsurprisingly wizards at the university, and he's very grateful that they're helping him! But he's not, after all, in a place where random people help strangers with powerful magic for no recompense.

"The planet I'm from is called Golarion. I can draw you the shape of the continents, and maybe you can tell which one it is? If it's - anywhere near here, and you can point me to it, then maybe I can portal there directly. It would take a long time" (how much is a million seconds again?) "but at least I know how to do it."

"Or I can open a portal to the river-place again. Which might land somewhere else on that plane, I guess, and I don't know what plane that was. And I can look for people there who might be able to help me."

"If none of that works, then I guess I can - go to Abadar's, and tell them my story and offer to pay for normal plane shifts back home. Which I don't actually have money for, but I can sell them my portals." He hates that it's come to this and it's all his fault and if he has to sell now he'd get much less than he could have gotten at home, probably, since he values getting home and they'd be holding that over him...

"Another planet? Inhabited alien planets? Gosh! I think I'll wanna visit, if I can... Though it's kind of weird that you're recognizably human, if you're from another planet... We only know Earth, as far as inhabited planets go. Portals, huh. Do you have to obey the speed of light? Jasper, what about you, what do you think of the portals? And 'Golarion'?"

[Unfortunately I don't know of any other inhabited planets in this plane! There are other planes accessible from Earth under certain conditions, but I've never heard of Abadar or Golarion. As for the portals, I need to see it in action to tell more!] Declares Jasper the Puchuu.

"I don't understand about the speed of light? It takes me a few seconds to open a portal... I'll show you when you ask me to." Aaaand here it comes, the actually smart people and formally taught wizards are going to look at his spell and figure out how to use it better and he won't be special anymore.

"The gods might have different names here? Abadar is the Lawful Neutral god of commerce, cities and travel. He likes people to trade freely and fairly to mutual profit. His holy symbol is the golden key, or the Golden Arches" - he makes a bent-cross sign with his hands. "And he lives in the city of Aktun in Axis, the Lawful Neutral afterlife."

"Huh."

Well, it's incredibly rude to say that someone's religion is fake.

"Light has a maximum speed... At least, when magic's not involved. It's insanely fast on human scales. Something like two hundred thousand miles per second. Actually I think magic might obey the speed of light too? I'm not sure. House is down there-"

She points towards part of the suburb and starts gently descending.

It makes sense that light has a speed - how could it not have a speed? - but Ahmose still doesn't see how that's relevant to his portals. Probably they have a good reason for asking about it that real wizards get taught in university.

"What gods are worshipped here?"

"I'm agnostic, man. There's magic all over the place, and any or all or none of it could be divine in origin, who knows? Even if someone named Jesus did do miracles and die on a cross to absolve people of evil, who's to say the guy was actually a god? Puchuu won't say anything substantive about it either."

"But - divine magic looks clearly different from arcane magic? At least, everyone says so back home." Everyone who can cast detect magic, that is. "And - if people get spells when they pray, those are divine, if they read them from a book that anyone can read" except him shut up, brain, "that's arcane wizard magic... probably? And then there are sorcerers but most mages are either wizards or clerics. Um. On Golarion, that is. Also, only clerics can heal or resurrect people."

"I don't do magic with books or by praying. I mean... You can write down information about techniques, but that doesn't sound like what you mean?" The panel comes in for a landing in the fenced backyard of one of the houses.

"We're here. Basement's reasonably warded, so any dangerous but not very dangerous tests can go there. So, when I do magic, I have this - well of energy inside me, and- Actually, it's a bit embarrassing. Let me think about how to explain. How do you do magic?"

"But then... what does the university do? How is magic taught without books?" Is she a sorcerer?

Then the rest of her questions hits him and Ahmose is mortified. He has no idea how he does magic and it's the most embarrassing fact about him. But he really can't see how to avoid this, and he kind of promised them an explanation of his portal spell, because just showing it without explaining anything isn't really fair. 

"I... don't know exactly how," he confesses. "I wasn't formally taught. I have just a little bit of magic, other than the portals. I asked the wizards at the temple of Nethys, god of magic, and they said I was probably a sorcerer, but that I couldn't ever become a better one because I wasn't splendid enough." Actually what they said was 'there are as many kinds of mage as there are mages' but he's pretty sure that was just exaggeration. "But they also said a cantrip couldn't make portals, so maybe they got the other part wrong, too. I didn't show them the portal spell, because I was trying to improve it so I could get more when I sold it. And one of the things I tried was to make portals to other planes, and that's how I ended up here."

"When I do magic it feels like - I have a sense for it? Like knowing I have an arm, and where it is, and how to move it somewhere else. I just know I can do some things, and how to do them, with the gestures and the words. So I can cast light, and mending, and the laundry spell." Only true wizards can pronounce the name for the laundry spell without stumbling, everyone else just calls it the laundry spell. "And the portals. They all feel the same to me."

"Wizards learn magic from books. In general, and specific spells. They charge a lot of money for letting other wizards copy their spells into their own spellbook. And every time they want to cast a spell, they need to read it in their book again. Or, well, they read their book in the morning, and then they can cast those spells later, but only a few times and only the ones they read. It's like they can only remember a few spells at a time, and when they cast them they forget again."

"Anyone can learn to be a wizard if they're smart enough, you don't have to be born with it or anything. Sorcerers are said to be born that way, but they only develop powers as adults and most sorcerers don't have sorcerer parents, so I don't know if it's actually true. And of course clerics are given magic by gods, who can choose anyone to be a cleric. I think." He feels extremely unqualified to be explaining magic, but he has actually practiced this with some of his neighbors who asked him about his time in the big city, so he delivers this without stopping or cringing.

"...No, the university doesn't teach magic. It teaches lots of things, especially engineering, which is like- Machines, computers, factories. That doesn't sound like what 'wizards' I know of do either, but there's a bunch of different traditions anyway. So who knows, really."

She hops off the platform as it settles down, the skirt bouncing higher for a moment with the motion. She motions him off of it, so she can shrink and backpack it again, then heads inside, unlocking the sliding glass back door with a key from a key ring. The house is pristine and moderately fancy, looking completely unused.

"That sounds similar to me actually? Jasper found me when I first started feeling magic and started teaching me. Apparently there's only a few spells that are pretty 'standard', and a lot of it, you have to kind of... Feel out? For my magic, at least. No books involved. So I bet we're both sorcerers, actually. It's like learning to ride a bike. You just kind of... Do it. But Jasper helps a lot." 

She bends at the knee, down to pet the Puchuu. It purrs under her hand. "They can make enchanted items that help shape magic! My scepter and outfit and brooch are like wearing training wheels. Or... Not quite. It's more... Intense? They're a little... Restricting? Like wearing a corset. And also make it easier to, uh... Churn emotions, to get more magic out. It's hard to describe. I can't do rituals transformed like this, but I'm a lot more powerful in other ways."

"I think some engineers are wizards. The greatest buildings and bridges and so on often have magic in them, to protect them or to help them stand up. There used to be a bridge across the sea that was made by a legendary wizard. Wizards are - the people who study magic and figure out how to do new things. Sorcerers can't really control what spells they have, and clerics only get new spells if the gods decide to give them."

"Using magic items makes sense! Every mage who can afford to wears magic items in Golarion, to get more power and for protection and sometimes just to cast spells from." Ahmose wonders what kind of animal a 'bike' is, and what 'training wheels' are and how you'd wear a wheel. He has a mental image of Shining Black Lily standing on horseback, holding two big wheels to the sides that she has to balance, and shuts it down hurriedly. 

He's heard before that sorcerers sometimes use emotion to cast magic. Or was it song-sorcerers? He has no idea how to do it, but maybe he should try - getting very emotional about his portals? Not where Lily can see him though!! - an idea for another day. 

"I don't think we really have wizards then. There's some people who try to scientifically study magic... Or magic related topics. But..." She glances at the Puchuu. "Anyway. The basement is right down there." She opens a door to a wooden stairwell, and flips a light switch on the wall as she goes. The basement is unfinished concrete with carved and painted runes and circles all around. "Once the protective wards are on, it's a pretty good containment area. There's a lot of safeties and support spells too, to keep us safe from any side effects or environmental stuff. The Puchuu have a bunch of places like this, for figuring out just how dangerous or useful things are."

(Jasper, too, follows her down, if he's worried about chaperoning.)

Chaperoning doesn't apply to wizard women!! That's, like, at least half the reason Osirian girls dream of growing up to be wizards before they tragically but inevitably grow out of it. 

Lily might not call herself a wizard but this laboratory would do any wizard's tower proud! (He assumes.)

"Would you like me to show you a normal portal first? One that goes somewhere else in the room. I've made lots of those and they never did anything unexpected."

[Yes, please! Let's start with the simplest things and work up in complexity. Shining Black Lily, please take a place on the siphon rune and channel.]

Shining Black Lily blushes but nods, and stands on one particular circle, closing her eyes and focusing. Puchuu darts around the room and prods different sections of the arcane runework. Bits of it start glowing.

[We are ready!]