Its head tracks him - 

And then it surges forwards.

In theory he should be capable of stopping it with a force pearl, in practice he’s never actually tried targeting one in high-stress conditions -

He turns into a rapid-flying little insect, flits towards the ceiling, might make him easier to squish but he’s likely to be squished anyways if he does nothing -

It angles its head up, opens its mouth - 

The world is suspiciously green, and gravity is suspiciously strong.

He’s briefly disoriented.

And then he’s somewhere else.

There's a bench beneath him. It's daylight, but thin and weak and not entirely there. The place looks industrial, but the buildings are low-rise and unfamiliar.

There is also now a dog trying to jump in his lap. The dog looks drawn, like the not-hound, but is otherwise apparently a perfectly normal small beagle. 

This isn’t really how he anticipated his evening going.

... he lets the dog onto his lap, pets it for a little while, and then stands up, with - it? him? her? - in his arms. Absent-minded ear-scritches continue.

He looks around at his surroundings, exasperatedly, in search of further detail.

The place seems to be a receiving area such as for flyers or teleporters, or perhaps an empty loading area for goods, or a holding area for large beings or crowds or items. It's difficult to tell. The place is empty and largely featureless, the buildings surrounding it forming a solid wall relieved only by the lines between sets - and an iron gate on one end, next to a door with a glass window.

That sure is an obvious setup.

He closes his eyes, briefly, lets out a quiet sigh, continues supplying scritches to the weird dog thing that’s probably somehow related to the substantially more terrifying not-a-dog thing...

And he approaches the door and the gate, of course. Nothing else bears doing.

The dog is very happy about the scritches! He wriggles a bit as Shaitiren approaches the gate - not enough to dislodge himself, but enough to be moderately awkward.

The gate leads to a short alleyway, which seems to open into a wider, lit area. The door leads into the building to the alleyway's left.

Well, he could turn into a bird and fly over the gate, but he couldn’t carry the dog that way, could he. And the dog seems both potentially important, and undeserving of being stranded.

He tries to open the door.

It opens easily to reveal a room, devoid of any obvious magic. It seems to be an office - there's two desks, a safe, thick leather-bound books above the safe, assorted piles of more books and papers, and a tremendous number of mechanical knick-knacks on the desk opposite him, beneath a window with the blinds drawn. The light's off. There's no dust, and it looks like whoever just stepped out.

The dog seems to really want to get down and explore. There's a possibility of smells here!

This is SO FUCKING BIZARRE -

He continues declining to panic, sets the dog down - gently, delicately, like they might be made out of horrible explosives - and un-blinds the window. 

Smells!!!

(The window reveals a massive courtyard beyond - apparently the same one past the tunnel. Numerous doors lead off it, some of them loading bays, most closed, a few cracked open odd amounts. The air is thin and the sky is blandly blue and there's no wildlife whatsoever.)

Great.

He turns into a bird, flits out of the room, makes a sharp turn, and flits over the gate, into the larger, better lit area. The dog can probably handle herself for two minutes.

It hasn't really changed from the view in the office. It still looks like somebody just stole the architecture mid-second and left the people and things in it behind.

He lets out a little bird sigh, and flies back to the room and the dog.

Scritch, scritch, the murder of fifteen minutes rifling through the papers and books for anything of interest...

The dog accepts scratches, then wanders off, and comes back with something in her mouth.

She found an interesting! Person, look at the interesting! (It's hers though, no take only look. Throw is maybe acceptable. But no take!)

Books seem like a dead end. Damn it.

What can he discern about the interesting object without attempting to pry it from her jaws?

It's sort of oblong and kind of dirty and vaguely organically colored.

(The books are indeed mostly either illegible or blank.)

... he doesn’t have a ton of room in his pocket dimension - maybe as much as he’d have in a bag of luggage - but that’s enough for a few miscellaneous comestibles.

He pulls out a strip of salmon jerky.

Food is definitely worth giving the person the interesting! She'll happily make the trade.

Great.

What... is ‘the interesting’, exactly?

It's a cylinder, under all that dirt. Not wood, but something textured just like it enough to feel weird. Heavy and solid, with the weight evenly distributed. Looks like it was dug up out of somewhere. There's little lines, which feel even enough to be possibly decoration - or seams. 

It... could be some sort of canister?

He tries opening it, since he doesn’t have anything much more useful to do. Might submit to unscrewing, might have some little crag or nubbin that’d let him pop it open with the right application of pressure...

(He could try spelling it open with a dash of thaumaturgy, but sensible Ruwiens are raised on a steady diet of storybooks, as children, and one of those storybook’s most prominent moral lessons is ‘don’t try casting spells in unknown environmental conditions’. It probably wouldn’t go horribly wrong in some unfortunately ironic way, but excessive caution often served better than insufficient caution, regardless. A lack of sufficient caution, after all, was why he was currently in a weird magical alternative dimension, socializing with an eldritch dog-thing.)

It's difficult to open, with a trick to it, but it will eventually click and let him pull it into sections.

There's a scroll inside the cylinder, old and crackly and with no visible writing from where it's rolled up.