" -- what the hell is this," breathes the young woman seeing what was supposed to be a static 'make sure nothing explodes' test of a teleportation anchor turn out to be anything but static.

A - surely not a droid - and a seemingly-insensate woman, dressed in black robes, with a coppery cylinder clipped to her belt, appearing from nowhere?  Not in the parameters.

But then, there's a piece of Void in the works.  It clearly wasn't properly excluded from the parameters.  She should have known better, but there are only so many rules she can make.

...At least it's not exploding?

But first she is turning it off.  Before anyone else shows up.

She slams the emergency stop button, and runes around the edges of the room light up in ghostly blues and empty blackness, killing and dispersing the magic.  A singular brightness burns off the Voidstuff, as well - that, she had to install special.

...The people are still there.  Fuck.

The room that hosts this interaction is made of generic stonework - solid slabs, carved with various glyphs.  Some of them are still lit up, and probably causing the purplish flare of some sort of shield over an observation window.  Other notable features include the emergency console (behind the shield), and a glyph-etched pile of metal that has just fallen apart with a clatter for lack of its animating force.

Deskyl hasn't quite managed to topple forward onto her face in the commotion, and by the time Alicia looks back to her it's not even obvious that that's partly because DZ grabbed her from behind. Instead she's in a ready stance, tracking Alicia warily with her eyes and keeping herself firmly between her and the droid.

There is a moment, as Alicia prepares an analysis spell (a faint gleam in her eyes, easy to miss), and makes not-a-threat gestures (hands away from anything, not meeting her counterpart's eyes), where she thinks this might be, if not truly normal, at least a Villarosan-issue snafu.

The results (after some rather bemused prodding) showing baryonic matter - fuck, if it had been anyone but her they wouldn't have known - put a stop to that dream.

"...Well, isn't this just grand.  Excuse me, can you understand me?"

Deskyl's eyes narrow as Alicia gathers magic for the spell, and she tenses considerably when it's cast; she doesn't particularly relax afterward.

She gestures annoyedly at her ears in response to the question.

...She...

Reconsiders casting a spell to do glowy letters, and pulls out a sheet of paper, scribbling on it and holding it up to the window/shield briefly before realizing that she should probably pass it through the door because it's not like she has a very thick pencil even if she wrote large enough that technically it should be legible from a distance at the size she wrote it.

Once she's realized this, the problem of how to deliver it manifests.

She promptly (and exasperatedly) facepalms, and makes the glowy letters anyway.

Sorry!  Um.  Can you read this?

Deskyl glares at the letters for a moment before signing to DZ; the droid peeks out from behind her and then signs something into her hand. She doesn't otherwise answer.

Something occurs to the young woman, who promptly blanches, dread and worry filling the room.  The writing promptly vanishes, and Alicia casts a much more Visually Obvious spell than her prior work, with circles and shapes and graphs? that...presumably correspond to things.

When she lets go of it (and braces herself on the console with a sigh of relief,) she waves a hand at more glowy writing.

I still don't know if you can read this, but if you can: good news, you can breathe the magic not-your-air.  At least, I'm pretty sure that's what I'm seeing.  I'm kind of kludging things together, here, this is an unprecedented situation.  There's not exactly supposed to be - any matter like yours - around here, the physics doesn't really support it.

Deskyl signs to DZ again - stay close - and steps forward to try the door.

...Okay, she's a little bit nervous about that.  But.  If it comes to a fight for some horribly stupid reason, she's pretty sure she could win.

She opens the door.  Better to be helpful than not.

Deskyl comes through the door - Alicia might notice that it becomes considerably lighter in her hand as she does, as if someone else was helping hold it open - and pauses to let DZ come through and take a protected position on the other side before stepping back to get a more reasonable amount of space between herself and Alicia.

She has to mundanely check the sightlines and exit routes; her Force senses aren't completely nonfunctional but the local physics situation is disorienting.

It's a well-balanced door, ma'am.  But she does notice.

More importantly, that physics seems to be taking notice of her, and especially her Force use, entwining itself with her efforts like it was meant to work that way the whole time.

...It wasn't, but now that she's thinking about it, it's not like the relevant (pseudo)axis isn't kind of like the Force...

But picking that apart can come later.

What on earth was this woman fleeing?

...As it was undoubtedly partly my doing that you have ended up here of all places - there are surely ones better suited - I find that I cannot escape from assuming a duty of care.  To that end I would like to know what, or who, you were fleeing.  In case it tries to find you again and I need to blast it to smithereens.

Meanwhile, as far as Deskyl is able to determine the sightlines and exit routes are as follows:

She has arrived in a small outbuilding; there is simply nothing more to it than the door she just walked through (the person who keeps writing at her has let her maintain space by standing right next to it, though still on the 'outside' of the space Deskyl arrived in), a small 'console', marked with more glyphs, and a door that leads - out, somewhere.  It feels cold, outside, say her senses, before getting tangled up in something that gives them nonsense data.

She can get through that door if she needs to, she thinks. And nobody else is around.

She has no idea what to expect with the local magic, and she doesn't like that. In particular she has no idea whether Alicia will be able to detect her reading her mind to help DZ learn the language, or how she'll react if she does.

Well, there's one obvious solution to that problem, if it's a problem she has. At home this wouldn't work, Alicia is clearly not Force-sensitive, but who knows, here. Deskyl closes her eyes and reaches out telepathically. Can you hear me?

...Apparently, yes.  I've never really practiced -- her thoughts break off, as she notices just how frayed the spirit making contact with hers is -- and you shouldn't be pushing, right now!  You feel half dead!  And not like you're relevantly Force-null!

Pictograms it is!

"Fucking wish I knew aurebesh - but then, it's not going to be English either, is it -"

Alright.

She can make this work.  Especially if any other vocabulary made it across in the Spirit-mediated surprise telepathy.  At least she's used 'yes'...

One Generic Human Female Icon, with tiara, arrow pointing at Alicia.  One Generic Human Female Icon, with yellow eyes, pointing at Deskyl.  One ...C3PO face..., pointing at the droid.

Wipe the board, start anew.

This time set them in the workroom - the floor plan should be obvious enough.  Tiara Face shown leaving the workroom, from her current position in the corner, and coming back.  Yellow Eyes Face and Not C3PO, together, staying here.

Tiara Face giving - data slate / book - to Not C3PO.  Not C3PO 'scanning' data slate / book.  Tiara Face thinking Not C3PO happy, question mark.  Not C3PO thinking of data slate/book, then Tiara Face talking, question mark.

New line, Tiara Face speaking to Not C3PO speaking to Yellow Eyes Face, question mark.

Wait for input.

She does not like that her vulnerable state is that obvious, but the woman is right, she'll regret it even more later if she pushes now.

Not that that's going to stop her from answering. She can learn your language and translate, yeah. Two or three books or a dictionary, and she'll need to hear a few sentences to pick up the spoken part.

She nods, and heads off to go get some books before her unexpected guest can strain herself more.

This will take slightly longer than Alicia was expecting, because she is going to have to explain why there are now two additional lifesigns registering in the workroom she said was just a precaution because this was going to be a static test that wasn't going to test actually teleporting.

...The first rule of Void magic is to expect the unexpected and she clearly messed that up, so now she has involuntary dimensional travellers that probably count as refugees, given the state they were in when they showed up.  She'll handle it.  She needs to get books to the translator.

She will, of course, be kept informed of events as they continue.

...Yes, she knows.

Anyway.  Five minutes later, she's back with some books.

...Would it be appropriate to approach her unexpected guest's personal space, to hand them over?