The portal spits him out in an alley. He'll be hit by the smell of human waste and rotting flesh, first, and then he'll have the chance to look around.

There are a couple dozen people camping in this alley, most of them with blankets but without tents. All of them are darker than he is, and most of them look up briefly and then away, ignoring him. One of them asks a question he will not understand; another waves in greeting. Outside the alleyway there's the rest of a city, loud and bustling and tremendously crowded. 

The people in the alley are hungry and dirty and cold. A few are sick. Several wear cloths in front of their noses and mouths. They are mostly not dying. One of them is dead, presumably the source of the rotting flesh smell.

There's a girl in this alley, maybe twelve or thirteen, who isn't camping out. She was in the process of hauling the dead body into her wheelbarrow, but now she's been distracted by the portal.

She walks up to Mahan, excited, and gestures at the spot where the portal was a moment ago. She asks him something in words he doesn't understand.

What an obnoxious place. He checks his necklace. No connection to the imperial standards means he's... not in the same universe? Not in the same time? One of those.

"Anyone here speak Hari? I'm a medical death mage, I can make it worth your while to explain this."

Nobody here seems to know what he's saying. A few of them are still watching, but they don't seem to have any idea what to do with him.

The girl sighs. She loads up the body into her wheelbarrow, sticks her fingers in her mouth and makes a somewhat complicated signal whistle, and then moves to the mouth of the alley. She motions for him to follow.

He follows. He looks around for signs of magic use. Clearly they don't know how to use death magic but are they this bad at all the others?

There are some things that a native of the city would recognize as magical. The buildings are almost all about five or six stories tall, but a few are much, much taller. A few of the signs in front of storefronts have text that wiggles and shifts confusedly when he looks at it; after a moment the text is replaced with a picture, this one a pair of scissors, this one a bottle, that one a loaf of bread. Most of the other signs were pictures to begin with. The girl leads him past a fountain, which is clean enough that several people are filling cups with the water. There are lots of people, everywhere. Many are obviously very poor, but some are doing fine, and a few of them are wearing clothes that look fairly expensive.

At some point a small animal scampers toward them and up the girl's back, perching daintily on her shoulder. It looks kind of like a lizard, and also like parts of it have been stitched together and don't quite fit right. It glares at Mahan. The girl snaps at it, and then it glares at him a little more subtly.

So they have just illusion magic. Illusion and force, maybe. And this town is majority-human, that's weird, but not weirder than being nowhere in the Empire.

"Hi, uh, funny thing, I can't tell if you're a person and I'm sure you can't understand me anyway but you look angry."

The lizard-thing does something that might be a weirdly hostile yawn, then curls up on top of the girl's head, still glaring.

The girl stops at a building with five stories. The sign in front has three labels - potted plant on top, eyeglasses in the middle, wheelbarrow on the bottom. She wheels her wheelbarrow in through a secondary door, then leads Mahan in through the normal entrance. 

The front of the shop is very small, just a couple chairs and a shelf of herbs and a wooden counter. The girl jumps the counter and disappears behind a curtain for a moment, motioning for Mahan to wait. There's a minute-long conversation with someone else in the back of the shop, and then the girl is back with a stone tablet. She says a few words and touches the tablet, and then -

" - is it working, can you understand me?"

That's actually pretty neat, maybe they're not just straightforwardly behind.

"Yeah, I understand you, does it go both ways? I'm lost but I have skills, I can make myself useful."

"Nice! Yeah, both ways. It's not gonna last very long, though, I don't have anything to power it. A few minutes. If you speak a language we have then I can find something else pretty quick, but you look like you're from way far away, so it might take a while. What's it called?"

"It doesn't last? Never mind, I speak Hari and understand North Essi and Ereli and a couple words of Lexori. I'm a medical death mage, I can kill diseases for pay or if you can't figure out how to explain your money to me I'll just do it for food and a private place to live. Also you smell like you don't have soap, soap is very useful, I can tell you how to make some."

"We have soap!" she laughs, scribbling down the names of the languages on a slate. "Don't have enough undertakers. Or healers. If you know healing magic I bet one of the orders would put you up and get you a shop so you can do business and stuff, at least if you healed some people for them in exchange. My aunt'll know all about who can help you with that, I can talk to her after we make sure we have everything else we need. Gonna ask at the college if anybody knows any of these languages, I've never heard of any of 'em. You need anything else in the immediate term, other than like, food and a place? I can get you food and a place."

"I need food and a place, what's your price?"

"I want to learn everything about your magic! But you won't be able to explain it all before the tablet stops working, so to start with you can heal people for my aunt. That OK?"

"Yeah, what's she offering for how much healing?"

"Reeeally don't think you're gonna be able to navigate the city on your own until we figure out a long-term translation fix, so I dunno how much good money is gonna do you right now. She can set you up with room and board until I fix the language thing, though. I can set you up a place to earn real money, but that's gonna take a little bit and I don't want you to starve or anything in the interim."

"That's fine for now. How much does she want for it? Will I need to be on call at all times? Do I get to sleep without interruptions?"

She raises her eyebrows. "They have to see what you can do first, right? If you can only do tiny little bits of healing then they'll just end up assigning you to something else, otherwise you should be fine. They let you work decent hours and sleep in the orders, yeah. Where are you from, even, can I get a country or a city name to look up?"

"Probably won't help but I'm from Har. I can kill most of the infectious diseases that are common there! You might have different kinds, though, what've you got?"

She writes it down. "So plague stuff? I'm sure Imrainai knows people who know more, I'll get one of them to talk to you when you can talk. I'm an apprentice undertaker. I know some stuff but half the time I have no idea what people're dying of - like, people call it stuff but I don't know what it is. I'm gonna know more when I've seen more bodies. I know the water's really bad here, though, I wouldn't drink from the fountains. - aw, man, I'm gonna have to cut the spell off in a bit, do you have any other questions you need answered right now?"

"I can fix the water," he says as fast as he can, "easier than fixing people. Besides that I just want to know where I am."

If the last part got cut off, well, it's the water that's important.

It's not cut off. " - wow, like, entirely? That'd be awesome. You're in the Co-Monarchy of Rainfold, in Alavast, in Kalt. If none of that sounds familiar then I dunno where you meant to be, but you're way off course. And - man yeah I gotta cut this off, sorry," she says, before taking her hand off the tablet. 

She takes a step back, looking suddenly very tired. She stands for a second and then ducks behind the curtain and throws up.

He waits right where he is, examining the herbs while she's... busy.

Is literally everyone here sick? It's starting to seem like it. Well, no way to find out yet.

She's back in a minute. Looks tired, but she seems OK other than that, and in any case doesn't seem worried about the situation. She puts the tablet back and yells something to whoever else is back there, then returns and hops the counter again, somewhat less exuberantly than before. The lizard thing scampers up her arm and perches on her shoulder, cooing softly. She motions for Mahan to follow her again.