Hmm. When he encountered the monster it was summer and he was in Cheliax, which has more normal terrain elevation. Possibly he is dead and this is - Heaven? He wouldn't really have expected Heaven but it doesn't look like a city and Axis is supposed to be a city.

Also he kind of would have expected not to wake up in an afterlife wearing and holding all the same objects, that's strange but admittedly not something he had very specific forecasts for. Does he need the mace, is anything around?

There's some rustling in the tall grass, but it's just a small rodent that runs away when it notices him.

It's a bit past noon, by the angle of the sun. There's some variety in the coloration of the grass, if he's paying attention, fading from green to dark orange to a hint of purple. There are some large rocks and trees off in the distance. The field of view isn't great, though; he's in a bit of a hill valley right now.

He holsters the mace and, for lack of a better idea, follows the rodent's general direction.

If he follows it for a while, it'll take him over to its burrow by the roots of a tree, but conveniently this takes him within sight of a dirt path a way down the hill.

Well. it doesn't seem to want to invite him in or it would have a larger house. He steps onto the path and heads down that instead.

The path is wider up close than it appears from a distance. There are wheel tracks in the dirt, but no travelers in sight. If he picks a direction and continues down the way for a while, he'll eventually catch sight of city walls in the distance.

Even from afar, they're considerably tall—forty feet or so, and solid stone.

Wow. Is the city turtled up right now? There's no besieging army...

There isn't a military presence visible as he comes up on it, and the gates are open as he approaches, though he can make out the figures of guards.

Though—the defenses are clearly built for war, or something like it. The stone brick is well-maintained, but worn with signs of past battle, some sections newer than others. No arrowslits or apertures, curiously, and the same for the gates, which are doors of great solid metal, two carriage-widths wide.

That points toward Heaven. There are armies, in Heaven, and maybe they practice with fortifications sometimes, though he would have probably guessed that no such things would feature in interplanar warfare.

He approaches the gate open-handed.

It's apparent before he's close that the two guards at the gate aren't human.

They're reptilian humanoids, scales and claws and all, closest to lizardfolk but clearly not by their more pronounced skulls—dragonlike, they would insist if you asked—and closely humanlike body proportions. One of them has pale green scales, the other yellow. Armored, one holding a spear with a buckler on his other arm, the other with a sword sheathed and gesturing animatedly with his hands while he speaks.

They break from their conversation as Blai approaches, but the second doesn't draw his sword. Alert, but not suspicious.

The first says a few words in a language Blai doesn't speak.

"I only speak Chelish, Common Taldane, and," wow, he doesn't love admitting this in plausibly-Heaven, but, "Infernal."

Green-scales raises an eyebrow, clearly incredulous. He chatters something to yellow-scales. Yellow-scales shrugs.

Green asks a different question, this time enunciated slowly.

"I apologize, I don't recognize that language. Is there perhaps somewhere new arrivals are expected?"

Yeah, they have no idea what he's saying.

Green and Yellow exchange a few more rapid-fire sentences. Yellow laughs, while Green looks unimpressed. Yellow says something in an egging tone.

Green sighs and rummages in a pack at his waist to fish out and unfold a wrinkled bit of paper with official-looking script and an ink seal on it. He waggles it at Blai and says something in a questioning tone.

"I didn't prepare Comprehend Languages today." - actually all his prepared spells are still there, which probably should not be the case if he's dead, so maybe he's alive (which would also explain still having his gear), but that only widens the possibility-space for where he could be. "I can't read that script... can you read this one?" He pulls out the letter inviting him to the convention.

That's not any script he's ever seen, so the weird human probably hasn't been cursed to speak in tongues or something. Is this Drathian? He kind of thought Drathians would look more different. What's a Drathian doing here?

This is SO NOT HIS JOB but if he lets in some sort of crazy murder-human the Captain is going to kick his ass.

Green tells Yellow something. The latter rolls his eyes, but trundles off into the city.

Green points at the ground and says two words slowly.

...does it satisfy the lizardman if Blai peacefully sits on the ground?

...That works.

The guard will stand there uncomfortably, keeping an eye on Blai. If Blai cares to peek through the gates, he'll see—well, a city. The street is well-paved past the gates, and the buildings tending tall and of remarkably good construction. There are stores and such, and a trickle of foot traffic, with curious glances thrown at the strange human sat at the gate, but no one really stops to stare.

Most of them are the same reptilian species, in a small variety of colors, but there are also—Gnolls, if Blai recognizes them. Hyena-like humanoids, larger and half a head taller than most of the reptilians, which in turn are a modicum taller than the humans you see on Golarion.

It'll be a while before someone shows up.

It's surprising that gnolls make Heav- wait, no, he decided this probably wasn't Heaven. He will if necessary just sit here till he can ask for new spells, though if it's like, more than an hour, he will Prestidigitate himself a chess set and start playing against himself.

After a bit over half an hour, Yellow comes back with another... person... in tow.

His companion is a quasi-humanoid insect(?) monster(??) with four segmented arms, dark chitinous plating, and a carapace giving its thorax a slight hunch. Its head is that of an ant, with large mandibles, bulbous faceted eyes, and a pair of antennae. The arms are narrow and uncannily proportioned, yet end with eerily humanlike five-fingered hands; its two legs are six-jointed and wholly alien.

It's wearing a loincloth and a belt with sheathed blades as it skitters alongside Yellow.

"...hello."

The bug monster addresses him in the same language as the guards did—its pronunciation is remarkably unaccented relative to what Blai's already heard, given the presumable morphological differences between their voice apparatus. It manages to convey a tone of being mildly irate but not angry.

Well, he's not really sure what the bug is here for if it's not here to speak any of the languages he speaks. "I'm afraid I don't know that language. I only speak Chelish, Common Taldane, and Infernal."

It shakes its head at the other guards. Tries a few different languages, some of them quite radically different from any Blai knows and possibly not pronounceable by human tongue. (None of them are known on Golarion.)

He shakes his head at each one.