"Very well." She stands and beckons the servants along. "Outside then." The three of them depart, and the Keres returns alone ten minutes later.

"Ready for a voyage to another world, then?"

"Do show the way."

She gestures, dramatically - 

And a black portal, oval, sized for a human, appears in midair before them.

"Be my guest. I'll need to be the last through, though, I do believe."

"Into the unknown, then." Eliana steps through.

The Keres follows.

And Hisame brings up the rear.

They're in an alleyway, buildings made of brick, metal bleeding into them from the steel grey wall sealing off one end. The alleyway is clean, scrupulously so, except for a trail of foul-smelling black oil leading down and away from the steel wall - the Keres will recognize it as gasoline. It's night, though there's a yellow glow reflecting off thick clouds over their heads and winding around the buildings.

"What is it with us and alleyways?"

"They're convenient if you don't want to be seen, I suppose."

She pulls out an array of sensor-type powers, looking to find out if there are any threats in their immediate vicinity, physical and temporal.

Eliana examines the metal wall.

The wall is made of steel, maybe, thick plates with regular overlaps and massive rivets. It was clearly industrially made - no human hand could have formed this. 

Whatever is behind that wall - which seems to stretch into the clouds - is fuck off nope. As in, the Keres does not have a power that does not immediately start screaming when looking at it. Temporally, the nope isn't encroaching on them. It's moderately connected, clinging like static, to the trail of oil, but touching the oil probably isn't dangerous.

There's an echo of the nope just past the open end of the alleyway. Not exactly a threat, but definitely something the powers are having to squint at sideways to see.

"I would avoid touching that, were I you."

She pulls her hand back.

"There is something behind there that might truly threaten us," she says to Hisame.

She valiantly resists the urge to poke it with a stick. She's not alone, after all, and might get her girlfriend and friend in trouble. 

"Then perhaps we should find a local to question about it."

The Keres looks for the direction of the nearest people, their number, and emotional disposition, and relays this information.

Someone outside the alley, singular, the oily feel hovering around her. She's starting to walk away at a brisk pace. She's nervous, almost scared.

People in the houses, mostly sleeping or having normal nighttime emotions, though there's a pall of worry over this area of the city. Most people aren't in rooms alone.

There's no one on the street nearest them except the oil-woman.

"It seems there's only one obvious target, then."

"Well, hopefully she'll be rather entertaining..."

Onwards?

Out of the alley and after her. Once she's in view, the Keres teleports in a flash of light to directly in front of her, leaving the others to cut off rearward escape routes.

"A moment, please. We have some questions for you."

She's drenched in oil, is the most obvious thing about her, hair shining with it, splattered across her face like blood, hands dripping.

She doesn't seem at all startled by the other's movements, or worried by the pincer closing around her. (There's a pervasive sense of panic deep in her breast. The Keres is not the cause of it in the slightest.)

"Train station's not around here, if you're looking to go back to the Void," she says, voice sharp.

The oil is now less dripping than curling like smoke.

...She swaps to a defensive array, with a more focused precog.

"And why," she asks, "Would I want to go back to the Void?"

"Humans don't usually teleport."

"But you don't know what the Void is, do you?"

"An astute observation. Tell me, what did you think I was?"

"Some people call them the fey. The things that board the trains through the Void. Person-shaped, usually. Fond of questions. No one can ever remember them, except the people they talked to, and no one remembers their faces."

"Whatever you are, I suspect you bleed like a human."

Her danger precog isn't pinging, so-

"No, I don't believe I do."