"I went a long way falling between worlds." He rubs his head. "And learned half a hundred languages while I was at it, apparently. How d'you tell how dispensable a planet is?"

"I'll want to land in a few places around the globe and see if they're all, uh." He gestures expansively. "This won't find us, like, an island with people on it, say, and there clearly used to be life here so it's not ideal, but jumping at random could easily kill me or other scouts so I don't want to be too terribly picky. Anyway, it won't be destroyed immediately, it took a long time to get bad with ours, so if there's a tiny enclave somewhere they'll have lots of warning once we run into them."

"Hm."

He frowns absently at the puddle he's sitting in; it obediently dries up.

"...moving between worlds doesn't usually give you random magic powers, does it?"

"Well, uh, I haven't noticed any new ones."

"'Cause I definitely couldn't do this shit," he gestures with one hand and a rippling ball of water appears floating in midair, "before the interdimensional adventure." The water vanishes.

"It's pretty cool."

"Yeah." He glances down at himself. "Wish I could magically appear some clothes, though..."

No clothes appear to grant his wish.

"Can't help you there, sorry." He's wearing shorts with a little bag pinned to them, but only those, and otherwise covered in dried blood swirls and ash markings.

Maybe blood is fashionable where he's from.

"Oh, hey, what's your name? I'm Tias."

"Cor."

"Nice to meet you, I guess. It definitely beats lying at the bottom of a hill for another couple of hours."

He stands up and looks around. "Wow, this place is depressing."

"I know, right, the only way it could be better would be if it didn't even have a dead tree."

Snicker. "Don't get rid of the dead tree, it's scenic!"

"It's very scenic, just doesn't signify that there's no way there's ever been a native here."

"And you don't wanna wreck the place until you know. Yeah."

He squints up at the sky. "Huh, no sun-circle. I guess not every world has those."

"Sun-circle?"

"Yeah, you know—okay, I guess you don't—the circle the sun moves on—"

He gestures illustratively, and in the path of his hand a glowing golden hoop appears, with a glowing golden bead sliding along it; and inside of that, a silver hoop and silver bead; and inside of that, a... planet. At least, something resembling a planet. It's shaped like a partly-flattened sphere, or a very puffy pancake, and it's hollow - if you look in through the transparent oceans or the jagged gap that rings the outer edge, there's mountains and lakes and forests and rivers on the inner surface of the shell, and something green and tangly floating in the middle.

Tias blinks at it.

"...yeah, so, that's Suranse. And the sun-circle and moon-circle."

"Wow. I was assuming planets in general would be like mine, which, before its magical puncturing, was a solid sphere of rock that melted in the middle, going around a sun which was circle-free. I might have to figure out how to check that here in case there's less planet to eat than I expect."

"Huh. What other totally normal things do you not have? Healing wells? Winged people? Goats?"

"We have goats."

"Well at least you have goats. Wow, if I didn't have my wings to look forward to I'd go crazy—although I guess I wouldn't even know what I was missing, I dunno if that'd help—"

"What's the deal with the wings?"

"Oh - some people have wings, and they don't get old and they're much harder to kill than usual, and they have Spheres, which I have no idea how to explain. You get your wings when you, like, do something. Like winning a war, or saving the planet from aliens, or, I don't know... something impressive."

He pauses. A thought occurs to him.

"...you know, the trip here was bad enough I'm almost surprised just surviving it didn't—"

A blazing beam of white light surrounds him, lancing upward to pierce the sky. When it clears a few seconds later, he has wings, iridescent black feathers gleaming in the sunlight with undertones of red and gold.

"—count," he says, curving the wings around in front of him so he can touch his feathers disbelievingly. "Uh. Never mind, then, I guess."

"Congratulations."

"Thanks!" He folds his wings to his back, puts them away, brings them out again.