Plane shift can drop you up to five hundred miles from your intended destination.
This time they land in some woods, at sunset, near a remarkably flat and smooth path that looks like a lava flow or something.
"Nah, he's like five minutes away. And there aren't that many active vampires left in the city. Probably. They'd have to be pretty sneaky."
In his experience vampires are almost always sneaky! He doesn't say this. In his experience vampires are also not fought by little girls.
She still hasn't seen very much of what they're capable of, and was impressed with what she did see. They can probably fight their way out if the friend turns out to actually be an enemy, maybe even if the friend turns out to actually be a lot of enemies.
And there's no good way to ask about whether clerics of good gods are frowned upon here, or to convincingly establish that his isn't if they don't follow Abadar here - no, wait, there is.
"Is that a holy symbol?" he asks her, gesturing at the symbol that matches the one atop the Methodist temple.
"Oh. Yeah, it's a cross. Symbol of Christianity and convenient low-grade vampire repellent."
"Dominant religion hereabouts? 'We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and Earth, of all that is seen and unseen?' I guess you probably wouldn't have it in the same specific form wherever you're from."
"We tell stories of the gods that created the universe but in our stories there are two, and neither of them appoint clerics, these days, not in our world. - in our telling one was lawful and good, and the other lawless and evil, I'm curious how that goes in a story with only one of them -"
"We, uh, just have the good one. Like, there's also evil, it's just not god-tier evil."
"Huh. The spell I used to destroy those vampires, Channel Energy, is very common among clerics of good gods and good clerics of neutral gods, in our world. I was surprised you hadn't seen it."
"Oh. Magic is sort of... not widely known about, here. Or at least it's not widely known that it's real. I am not a magic expert. Not yet, anyway."
" - hm. I was going to say it couldn't be, because most of the government doesn't know magic is real, but actually if it works I'm not sure if it counts as unlicensed medical practice, and I think that's illegal?"
"And let me guess, he can't get a license because your government doesn't think magic is real?"
"Uh, he could go to medical school, but it's probably way more trouble than it's worth? Probably magic is just not regulated, but I'm not sure whether this is legally true or just, like, de facto true."
She waves. "Hi Alex! This is Fazil, Mahdi, and Hagan. They dusted three vampires and claim to be from another dimension."
"I heard!"
If they're lying they also know how to fool osanwë. That seems like a distinct possibility, though, with powerful magic users.
"I also hear you guys are looking for somewhere to spend the night."
"I have local money, yeah." Don't super want to show them our place.
"Probably makes the most sense for now. Do you guys have any ideas about how to get back to your world?"
" - we could bother someone and ask them to summon us but that'll be expensive and we're not presently in that much hurry to return? If we can find a way to support ourselves here I think we might just stay until I can do a plane shift myself."