"Hi there. What can I do for you?"

She hisses in shock and walks backwards several steps.

"What the fuck? Where'd you come from? GUYS!"

Two others dressed similarly turn and stare.

"...ah, was this an accidental summoning? You've got to be careful about drawing on the floor."

"I didn't intend to summon you, uh, sir - spirit? I'll, uh-" She tosses the piece of chalk away as if it scalded her.

"Are you vulnerable to poison?" Another one asks urgently. "Our outfits mostly protect us but we don't have a spare."

"No, I'm indestructible, I'll be fine. And I'm a nice person so you guys will too but seriously don't draw on the floor."

"No more touching chalk, got it. I just... Felt bad that they didn't find the answer."

"We've already buried the poor soul who drew most of this."

(Every surface in the room save the ceiling is covered in notes and diagrams talking about magic and poison fungus.)

"What language is this?"

"Tradespeak, sir spirit. It's similar to old Nailic but it's a pidgin of that and Hessna."

The last one, silent so far, says, "Reminder, we're right on the edge of our range. We need to leave within... Fifty minutes."

"What happens in fifty minutes?"

"Onbu walks far enough away that our wings stop working."

"...who's Onbu and how do they remote-operate your wings?"

"...Who's Onbu? Onbu is... Onbu... A titan?"

"Maybe it was different in your time but most things don't really... Work, anymore, except for Onbu."

"I'm actually currently rolling with 'alternate universe' as a hypothesis over 'time travel'."

"If you say so. I have no idea how that would work. You're really personable for a spirit, most of them would just be kind of - wooo, don't cut down my tree or I'll kill you!"

"Spirits are to my knowledge not a thing in my alternate universe! I actually used to be a human, just not recently, but the change was not psychological in nature."

"Good for you. Indestructible is a good trait to have. I don't think we have anything with it back home, just HighestDurability*."

"The danger of drawing on the floor is summoning more things like you?"

*This is a compound word that is allowed by thr grammar of tradespeak, there's a rule for attaching amounts to traits.

"Yes. This one is used up but don't copy it or anything. It doesn't limit my behavior at all and only most people are trustworthy that way, and fewer of them per capita among those who answer circles."

"Should we destroy this place, just in case? We don't care about it, we have the only thing worth taking home already. Oh, we're scout team Mothwing, by the way. For now that's all we are. It's a scout thing. Moth one," the quiet one, "moth two," himself, the explanatory one, "moth three," the one who completed the circle.

"...maybe? I mean, it seems like kind of a pity but I guess if I ever want to know later what was here I can make a copy, unless it's magic or something what with this being an alternate universe."

"It'd be a lot of effort anyway."

"Welcome to the universe. We have Onbus, or at least the one, I think they're pretty neat. We also have the purple fungus plague which is less so."

"Have you got a decontam protocol so I can meet civilization? Without getting spores on anyone?"

"...We have a Poison Doctor on Onbu?"

"I'm not going to need a doctor. I'm sufficiently indestructible. But if spores land on me here it would presumably be polite to get them off me before I see what else there is to see around here besides purple mushrooms, yeah?"

"Oh, they mostly just kill people and spread on the air, no people or animals moving around required. Also they're everywhere enough it doesn't really matter."

"You cannot possibly spend your entire lives in those hazmat suits."

"There are clear areas. And Onbu is safe! Mostly! We keep its back clear of spores, and there are antidotes from the doctor."

"Right. The thing I am asking about is your process for keeping Onbu clear of spores. An I incorrect in assuming that I might need to take a shower or something before visiting there?"

"No. Spores don't spread on new people coming to Onbu, or on returning scouts. They spread mostly by parasites and by floating on the wind. Each viable spore is like, this big," a clenched fist. "So if you don't have any fist sized purple objects on you, you're good."

"Oh, okay. ... Why the suits then."

"Well, they're Scout suits. They let us do scout things. Like fly, go without sleep, and not get poisoned out here."

"But you're confident I will not poison anybody landing in your hometown. Okay."

"Yep! If you can fly at at least... What, three or four times as fast as walking on dirt? You could definitely follow us if you want to come see Onbu. No promises on getting to stay."

"Understandable. I can fly a lot faster than I walk and indeed also faster than most people can walk. I'd love to check it out. Did I remember to introduce myself? I'm Cam."

Huh, that's a really short name.

"Good to meet you, Cam. We'll tell you our names when we get back. I don't think there's anything else to do here, so we might as well go now."

"Which way?" he asks, spreading his wings.

The three scouts walk out of the closed room and then along a slightly dilapidated hallway, wood paneling bent with age and also purple mushrooms. The skirt around a particularly bulbous fuzzy blue-purple mound in a dilapidated dining room, then reach a shattered window. Outside is a forest of tall pale blue-purple stalks and fuzz, looming silently over the rest of the old manor.

One by one, they leap out of the second floor window, their backpacks FWUMPing out into large gliders that lift them high into the air as if, well, by magic. The trio ascends in wide spirals, looking to see if Cam follows.

Not by magic, but his wings do work.

The whole region is mountainous. The scouts ascend above most of the nearby mountains, and then turn east.

...There does seem to be a really huge six-legged thing off in the distance! It's walking ever so slowly, each full stride taking something like ten seconds to complete.

Wow. Living island bug. Wacky.

It's more mammalian in form, aside from the vast bulk upon its back and the structures atop a flat plateau there. The giant head droops low as if depressed.

The rest of the landscape is pretty bleak and empty. Patches of fungus are visible here and there on the ground. There's an old village on a mountaintop.

They'll be flying for a while, it's actually pretty far away.

Well, at least they're gaining on it. How much distance do the scouts need to fly, is it too much for airborne conversation to be feasible?

Their wingspan seems to be about fifteen feet and the speed is tolerably low, that's probably shouting-distance.

"How many people live aboard?"

"I think we have about three hundred sixty! And growing! My old village was dead, man. No hope, no future. Onbu's different."

"Was it literally dead or did it... walk around."

"It wasn't on an Onbu, it was ordinary houses. On an island. That didn't move. Ever since the Carpenters stopped visiting it's just been a steady decline. Uh, they kept the magic working in exchange for fish. For boats, and separating salt and fresh water, and growing healshrooms."

"Magic in my alternate universe is very different so most is that is lost on me. How does it work and who were the Carpenters?"

"If I knew how it worked, I would have stayed and tried to fix it. I mean, I have some ideas, but... You know? The Carpenters were the followers of some line of kings and queens, or something. They mostly feature in legends as idiots who had fabulous wealth but ruined everything by being greedy and stupid. And that's a really convenient story, hard to think that's how it really went."

"You say "you know" but in fact I truly and utterly do not know."

"Ehh... Making magic work apparently involves special scrolls and writing things on large keystones or obelisks. And then the shrines make everyone who does the right things and wears the right clothes and works in the right building get a Job, which gives you magic, it's- We have to be scouts, be really intense about it. Codenames! Hand signals! Marking trails, making maps! Or we lose the Scout job. And all the magic that comes with the Scout job. But I tried painting over the stuff in our island's shrine, and doing the rituals as best as old legends told them which was probably terrible, and it wasn't working at all, fewer and fewer people could get the Fishing job, and there was only one woman who still had Shipwright and she died of old age, and... Well, it's a lot harder to do well for yourself without jobs."

"There's magic for fishing?"

"There's a Fishing job. It makes your boat faster and let's you control nets."

"And jobs are not just... occupations, but rather roles with associated spellcasting perks?"

"Oh, yeah, there's jobs and then there's Jobs."

"What makes something a magical job?"

"That's the part I don't understand! Sorry!"

"How do you... tell... whether a job is magical or not and how to do the magic associated with it?"

"The big central obelisk on Onbu gives you vibes if you try to read it. That's how we know what things are Scouty, for example. I imagine the shrines did too once, before the Carpenters stopped visiting- They always rode Onbus, so probably Onbus are really magical."

"Huh. Can anybody go have a look at your magic obelisk?"

"I think so yeah. They only let the, like, six guys who got Researcher write on it, though."

"Oh, writing on is is involved? What do they write?"

"It all looks like nonsense to me. Sometimes single words stick out, like 'wood' or 'mushrooms'."

They're visibly making progress- The Onbu seems a little bigger now.

"They don't explain it? Or can't?"

"They seem to be going with hunches that Researcher gives them and inventing stuff about it. Like, 'oh, obviously this represents the journey of energy as it flows through the farm and forms a dome'. Or maybe I'm just not very bright."

"... weird."

"Right?? But weird is a lot better than dead, which is what I'd probably be if there wasn't Onbu magic."

"They seem essential! At least, uh, now? People used to be able to live more places than that and now can't?"

"Because they relied on the Carpenters for magic, and don't have it anymore. Also because of the poison fungus."

"Are those things related?"

"Probably. Hey, what about you? What do summon people do when they're not summoned in some creepy old lab by accident?"

"Oh, I play the violin and read a lot of books and sometimes I spend a decade or three studying up on this or that academic topic or learning a language the long way. It's lovely but I've got nothing on at home that I can't drop to see about improving this place, it looks like it could use some help!"

"Oh yeah, we're just about muddling along but it's pretty scary reading the daily reports on Onbu's health and what we can and can't do about it."

"It's sick?"

"Accumulated injuries and stress. And parasites. And the fungus. And an Onbu-sized appetite!"

"What does it eat?"

"Mostly mushrooms! Also this one species of kelp. And fish if it can get them."

"The purple mushrooms, or are there Onbu amounts of another kind they haven't outcompeted yet?"

"Oh, yes, we grow them on its back. No, plague fungus would kill it really fast, a lot of our effort goes into this anti-toxin that helps him purge it, too. It. Not him. It's not supposed to have a gender, and I keep slipping up."

"Does it have opinions on its lack of gender or is it just a convention?"

"Uhhhhh... I don't understand the question."

"Why is it supposed to be an it? Who said so?"

"The old elder did before he died. Gesso. And it doesn't have any... Uh... Parts, so..."

"...where do they come from, then?"

"I dunno, man. If we had all the answers we wouldn't be scrounging around crumbling old manors..."

They're about a third of the way there. In the distance, a little ball of brown mush is thrown from a trebuchet, and Onbu's head twists around to catch it ponderously.

"Is it having a snack?"

"Yeah! That's the feeding trebuchet. It's really neat, right?"

"It's clever! Good thing it's a good catch."

"We used to run out ahead and spread processed mushrooms out on the ground as if they grew there and it'd graze, but that was a huge pain in the butt and a lot of them got wasted, stomped into the mud and dust or eaten by scavenger critters."

"Huh, you couldn't get the timing precise enough? I guess the catapult is probably better on that axis."

Can he conjure this Onbu from... a thousand years ago.

A thousand years ago this Onbu was half buried in an eroding mountain.

"It's a trebuchet, not a catapult. But yeah, they have the angle worked out just right and everything. Onbu knows the sound of it going off. He'll- It'll eat medicine that way too."

Ten thou? "How did anybody figure out how to diagnose and medicate it?"

"There's a Job that makes Onbu Scrolls, which people can use to learn things about Onbu."

Ten thousand years ago this Onbu was deeper in the mountain. And maybe smaller? Less developed?

"The information just comes from nowhere? Wow."

Oooh, fifty K?

Fifty thousand years ago it was definitely less developed and smaller. The long neck hadn't properly formed yet and the legs were short and stubby.

"Huh, what are you doing over there?"

"I can make stuff, and the stuff can be 'that Onbu, fifty thousand years ago" - it was littler then! And inside a mountain."

"Huh! Maybe they... Grow inside mountains somehow?"

"That's what it looks like!" Hundred K?

Nope.

Seventy-five?

Somewhat smaller than the 50k mark but in a way that implies it must have grown from nothing to this size pretty fast, if it did that at all.

"I guess you have summoning powers yourself and that's how you're doing that?"

"I wouldn't tend to call it summoning, the things don't exist before I make them." Can he pinpoint when the thing started existing with binary search, see if it has parents or was tectonically interesting around then or anything?

Do about three thousand people building a bunch of weird things on the mountain and then taking them down five years later count? Because that happened 82.4k years ago.

If it coincides with the Onbu starting to exist that definitely counts! What'd they build, does it look like they were injecting the mountain with an egg or something, or what?

They excavated a big cavern, built an Onbu skeleton and filled it with carefully constructed organs and rocks, then sealed everything up and left. The mountainside facilities were a base camp and manufacturing area. A lot of it is magic but material-replacement conjuring can get the shape of the magic things.

"Some people built a baby Onbu like they were sculpting it! And then it just developed in that mountain for thousands upon thousands of years!"

"--That's amazing! I have no idea where you would even start with something like that..."

"It took so long to grow I can't imagine how they developed the process or decided to invest in it!"

"Maybe it wasn't supposed to take however long? Maybe they were storing Onbus for later."

"I guess maybe even a little one could be useful for some things and they just didn't collect it when they'd meant to..."

"...Or they were going to grow it faster but got distracted. The medicine and food we give Onbu shouldn't really be enough to sate something that big, magic is very magic you know."

"I hadn't gotten around to speculating but might have imagined any number of things about its metabolism before resorting to 'just magic'. Magic is certainly a sufficient explanation, though."

"Not a detailed or useful one though."

"Indeed. I'll probably poke around with some more models but it's annoying to do it while flying."

"Flying is my favorite part of being a scout. But it is pretty hard to do anything else. My voice is getting tired, even!"

"Ah, I don't have that problem because I'm indestructible."

"How does a guy get in on that? The answer is 'they don't', I bet."

"They do, actually, but I think you might have to be from my universe or something, I've never heard of any of what you've got going on here and it's clearly been going on for millenia which would be plenty of time for the rumor mill."

"...I want to try if you'd let me. It, uh, it turns out I'm. Scared. Of dying."

"So the thing that happens in my universe is everybody gets an afterlife where they're indestructible, but if you summoned a daeva like me you become one - there's three species of us - and if you didn't, you're just a regular human except indestructible. Each species in its own afterlife. So if you want I guess you'd try performing a summoning, buuuuuut it's pretty weird that if summoning works here I've never heard of the place, so I'm concerned something weird might be going on."

"When everything about magic is weird not much seems especially weirder... I mean, what goes wrong? I summon a bad guy? It makes an all-consuming maelstrom of chaos magic? Something else?"

"Summoning a bad guy is a normal and manageable risk. I'm thinking something like, they can't go home afterwards, or something."

"Oh, that would suck. Especially on a non-volunteer. Another thing I want to know is how they made Onbu, so we can do it ourselves. Fix things up for the long term."

They're getting pretty close to Onbu now! You can pick out individuals moving on paths. The flat back is smaller than one might perhaps expect, but still, like, a large college campus in size. About a third of it is clearly inhabited, the rest is rocks or forest.

"I did not expect there to be so many rocks."

"I think Onbu's only... A couple years old? Uh, been inhabited that long I mean. I got here six months ago. And, you know, breaking rocks is a lot of effort."

"I guess it probably walked out of the mountain with some rocks on it but I'd sort of expect them to fall off before trees that big could grow from even the very slow walking."

"No, they're kinda stuck in the ground. Actually, more show up occasionally. They sort of... Slowly ooze up through the soil of his upper body. Magic, I guess."

"Huh. And they do this often enough that it's been visible in the short time he's been inhabited?"

"Look on the left there, between the feeding trebuchet and the bucket lift- See the little rocks? Those are new. The big ones everywhere else are old."

"Weird!"

"Weird? Yes. Amazing, also!"

The trio begin a descending-wards trajectory as they get closer.

"Where are we aiming to land?"