The ground is made of asphalt, and there are iron fences to either side. In front of them is a street bustling with people, cars, and trucks. The sun is completely obscured by the city's skyline, but it seems to be dusk. Tall towers of steel and glass stretch towards the sky. On a nearby hill, there appears to be a stone castle; in the other direction is a metal spire, easily twice the height of every other building.

A manhole cover in the alleyway is emblazoned with "TORONTO HYDRO-ELECTRIC SYSTEM".

That doesn't really help Concordia, since it's not in Imperial.

She recognizes the general class of place where they are — it looks fairly similar to her home city, if with taller buildings — but a lot of the details are ... strange. The clothing, for one thing. She's used to a lot more skirts and robes than seem to be in evidence.

Probably the most startling things are the giant metal carriages. They don't look like war-machines, but she's having trouble guessing what else they might be.

"Are you okay?" she asks the girl.

Emily is perfectly familiar with Earth cities — she went down to Boston with her parent to see the science museum last year — but she's substantially less used to narrowly avoiding sudden danger, and it turns out to be more disorienting than it seems when it's written on the page.

She sits up. The cityscape is ... not what she was expecting. Normally, when you're teleported, you should end up somewhere magical. Unless this is urban fantasy? Or ...

She looks at the teleporter, in her long blue skirt and ruffled shirt. Maybe she's a magical girl? Emily doesn't really read manga, though.

"I'm alright," she replies. "If the monster can follow you, though, we need to raise the alarm and be ready for it."

Concordia nods.

"Right," she agrees. Except ... she landed among barbarians last time, and she's (presumably) only gotten further afield since then.

She pulls herself to her feet, and reaches a hand out for the girl as well. Better to be upright and mobile. And then she performs the right mental motion, and ...

Novice unstructured characteristic divination scaffold: SELECT * FROM people WHERE language = Imperial

Emily lights up, but no-one else does. Moments later, a man approaches. He's unsteady on his feet, and looks around nervously.

"Say, are your parents around here?" he slurs. The smell of alcohol is clear on his breath. "Kids like you should be care-- the hell is that?"

He stared at a point in space behind the pair, terror dawning on his face. A Chasm beast was coming into existence, the petals first, then its limbs. It was forming sluggishly, as though the world was rejecting it, but form it did.

The man rapidly forgets his previous impulse to take care of the children. He backs away slowly and then takes off in a run. "Help! There's a wolf or some shit! Zookeeper! Cops! Somebody! Help!"

The Chasm Beast snorts and shakes itself, as though amused by the man's cowardice. Then, slowly, with smoothly predatory movements, it turns its attention to Concordia.

Concordia realizes, in a moment of crystal clarity, that she will die running.

The only question is whether she drags the Beast to another series of locations, until she inevitably messes up the spell, or whether she runs from it here, and brings it into the city.

On the one hand, it will kill everyone. On the other hand ... this is a city, with thousands of people. Perhaps one of them is a mage that can kill it, even if barbarians are at a disadvantage without the benefit of His Imperial Majesty's education system.

Emily doesn't know why the magical girl isn't teleporting again, but maybe there's a time limit, or a cost, or something. But she's still holding her hand, and she knows her best bet of getting out of here is still to not let go.

"Run!" she screams, pulling her toward the street. And then, when she's gotten moving, "Help! Monster!"

Concordia jerks into motion, her feet thudding on the pavement. There must be someone here who can help.

Novice unstructured characteristic divination scaffold: SELECT * FROM people ORDER BY combatAbility DESC limit 1

Concordia's attention is magically drawn to a man wearing a dark blue uniform with a red-banded cap. He's already walking towards them with an authoritative stride. He looks like a city watchman, but he isn't carrying spear or sword, and if he has any armour under that uniform, it's very thin. When he hears her shouts, he breaks into a run, reaching for his belt.

On hearing some little kids shouting, Martinez starts to run. Sounds like there's some kind of animal, but a nasty one. Well-drilled hands the canister of OC spray from his belt, raising it to eye level as he approaches the alley.

The animal is not any Martinez has ever seen before, but adrenaline and training have taken over. He'll have time to question his reality later. As the creature approaches, he sends a long stream towards its face. He only succeeds in making it mad. The monster swipes at him, and he narrowly dodges. Its claws are the size of large knives. Martinez drops the pepper spray, and for the first time in the field, draws his firearm.

Martinez fires three shots. Three 9mm hollow-point bullets rip into the monster's body: at this distance, he can't miss. The monster keeps coming, and this time its claws connect. Martinez drops to the ground with a gasp, two long gashes across his torso. He's lucky: if not for his stab-proof vest, the Chasm Beast would have disembowelled him with a single stroke. As it stands, his wounds are very painful, but not immediately fatal.

He raises his gun, but the monster swings for his hand. The claws narrowly miss, but the paw hits him. His gun slides across the alleyway... stopping between Emily and Concordia.

... or not. If that was the strongest fighter here, then they're in trouble.

Emily has never fired a gun at a creature — and certainly never in a crowded urban environment.

But she has fired a gun.

Her parent took her out to the range last summer, and made sure she knew how to make a gun safe, and how to fire a simple pistol without hurting herself. She didn't like it. The loud bangs and the strange smells were overwhelming, and she didn't expect to ever use the knowledge again. But her parent said that if she ever did need to use a gun, she should know how.

She scrabbles for it with her free hand, bringing it up and quickly sighting along the barrel. Once she has the Beast in her sights, she puts her finger on the trigger and pulls.

She misses, of course, because one day of practice nine months ago is completely insufficient to actually hit anything.

Concordia bites her lip. She has to focus. None of these people know anything about the Chasm.

"It's immune to nonmagical weaponry!" she says, even as she tugs the girl to start running again. "Or — not immune, if you do enough damage, but it's much easier to hurt with magic."

Emily's ears are wringing and her wrist hurts. But at least she has some idea of what's going on. She's had her call to adventure, and now she's going to need some supernatural aid to survive this.

"So do — some magic," she gasps out. She's already starting to be out of breath, and that is probably not a good sign.

"I don't know any attack spells!" Concordia replies. "And that guy was the strongest fighter here."

She wracks her brain, trying to think about what to try next. She has exactly two spells, and she's tried both of them. If she were more like her mother, she would have instantly improvised a fireball or something, but she doesn't know any of the theory.

Maybe ...

That gun was a lot more accurate than the guns she's heard about coming out of the capital. The fighter fired three times and hit three times. At close range, yes, but her military science teacher said that a one-in-two chance of hitting was a sign of an unusually skilled marksman. Maybe her spell found the person who would be best in a fight in general, not a fight with a Beast in particular.

It's a slim hope, but her only other idea is trying to ram it with a metal carriage, which has as many as several problems with it, as plans go.

Novice unstructured characteristic divination scaffold: SELECT * FROM people ORDER BY magicalAbility DESC limit 3

Three people lit up to Concordia's senses. The first was herself, and the second was Emily. The third was a man sitting in the cab of a large white van, painted with an infinity symbol and the words "Canadian Blood Services". The gunshots had caused pedestrians and cars alike to flee, but the man was not moving. He was hiding behind the door, occasionally stealing a look through a window.

"That man!" she points. "He's a mage."

The girl stumbles, but she hauls her back upright and leads them in the direction of the man. Concordia still doesn't speak the language, and will need someone to translate.

"Tell him to hit it! Fire usually works."

If she had more time to think, she might be dubious about the idea that the Canadian Health Service employs wizards. She doesn't have time to think, though, because she is running. Emily skids around the van and yanks at the door.

"Monster, weak to magic, can teleport," she pants. There's a stitch in her side, but she tries to straighten up anyway. Maybe she can brace herself on the engine of the van and actually hit the monster. "Fire might work."

The door is locked, but Lucas rolls the window down and listens to Emily's warning. "But I don't have any... okay, clearly gotta figure something out." He turns to the back of the van and grabs a suitcase-sized defibrillator. "Does electricity count as fire? We can use this as a weapon. If not, I have a jerrycan in the back, but that sounds like a nightmare to fight with." He's clearly scared, but not panicked, and seems to take the presence of a monster as natural.

Of course he isn't panicking about the monster — he's clearly their supernatural aid, and possibly their threshold guardian.

"Is electricity fire?" she asks the teleporter.

Concordia struggles to recall whether that came up in her introductory elementalism class.

"... maybe? It's better than a sword, anyway," she replies, carefully peering around the engine block to see how close the Beast has gotten.

"We don't know," Emily tells the man. "But it's worth a shot."

She tries to steady herself against the hood and see if she can aim at the monster and buy them some time, but between the adrenaline and the shortness of breath, she can't be sure of hitting it instead of a bystander.

The man opens the door, holding the suitcase with both hands. He sets it down, opens it, and begins flipping switches. "I have to somehow bypass the safeties. Give me thirty seconds!"

The Chasm Beast does not seem content to wait, instead advancing menacingly.

Concordia looks between the foreign mage — clearly setting up some kind of lightning-artillery spell, based on his question — and the obviously-a-civilian girl failing to aim.

"Give me the gun — is it like a blunderbuss?"

"No," Emily answers her. "Not at all!"

If the teleporter's best point of reference for a semi-automatic handgun is "blunderbuss", there's no way she is going to be handling it safely. On the other hand, they're going to be eaten in less than 30 seconds.

She hands her the gun.

"Sight along the top and pull the trigger," she says. "You don't need to reset it between shots."