"Especially since that'd be exactly what would happen if the spell didn't work at all!"

"Does that mean you'd better get back home and tell everybody right away?"

"Ideally. I was planning, if I survived the landing, to pretty much immediately use my own blood to refresh the markings - can't be dry - since I don't have a way to bring significant cargo - and then go home. It's convenient I landed near you, since there are more opportunities afforded thereby."

"...Opportunities like what?"

"I'm pretty sure I could target where you came from, knowing now it exists. It might be a good place to park refugees temporarily to give scouts more time, even if it's not a good long-term plan, and I bet mages can help with your aliens problem if it's as described. Knowing what, generally, these books contain is helpful even if you don't feel like translating more; gives whoever else a head start. Plus you scanned a ways around and now I'm more confident than I was before that this planet is otherwise not inhabited."

"Huh. ...What happens if you try to get to my world and you can't, though?"

"Uh, range of outcomes from 'I land somewhere random again' to 'I disappear'? Which is why I want to go home first."

"I'd be kind of annoyed if you died," he remarks. "You're all right."

"I have the impression that this is high praise."

He giggles. "Well, I can't think of anybody else I like that much!"

"Thanks!"

"Why blood, anyway? Like is that actually how the magic works?"

"Yep. Blood and ash. It's usually sheep blood, can't make a habit of using your own. Vacuum is useful too but hard to make."

"Can't make a habit of using your own because...? Not enough of it for all the painting you want to do?"

"Yeah. People who do only really casual magic and don't want to pay for sheep access will use their own - well, did, everybody's trying to cut out nonessentials now - and I would have used it in this case so I didn't have to bring anything but myself and some ash to reapply if mine got smudged, but if you do lots of magic you'd be in pretty bad shape trying to run it on your own blood."

"Huh. ...and what do you mean, 'vacuum'—?"

"Nothingness-not-even-air. We have it around our planet above the air if you go high enough and can produce it in small amounts in containers on the surface."

"Oh, weird. Either we don't have that around Suranse or nobody's ever flown far enough to find it. Seems like it'd be kind of hard to paint with, though."

"Yeah, you don't paint with it, you place containers among blood and ash markings."

He nods.

"What's next for you?"

"Seeing if I can bully the wasteland into growing plants, probably."

"With your thing or the paint thing? What can the paint thing do?"

"My thing. Although apparently the paint thing's good for plants? It, like... makes stuff, as far as I can tell. You paint your magic lines and a thing appears. It might do other stuff, I didn't read far enough to tell."

"Pity the fiends got 'em. This does make me think there might be somebody ungotten by fiends who may have managed to restart somewhere, though."