"What the shit was that," says Belmarniss. "Is this job more complicated than advertised in some way?"

" - sure looks like it. Fuck."

He casts Sending. "In trouble, four unknown teleporters."

"We prepping to fight, run, or surrender?"

"If they're willing to burn three fifth-level spells getting here we can't fight. Mahdi has the scroll of Teleport."

"We have more people than that unless it's one helluva scroll anyway."

"We can't help them if we get captured.

You have Rope Trick?"

"No. I've got Tiny Hut but that doesn't really help."

"So we surrender.

- what do you suppose is keeping them."

"Some logistics failure on their end?" she suggests, putting her hands in the air.

"Very rude, making people stand around in the desert waiting to die or something."

"You have insurance too?" she wonders. "- hey, caravan folks, hands up, whoever just appeared is above our pay grade."

And they wait.

"Seriously kind of rude -"

And then the people appear again. Five of them this time, two wizards and two soldiers and an oddly dressed woman with grey hair.

"Hi, I'm - yikes, did they scare you? I asked how this would parse! He really should have specified if it'd parse as 'put your hands up and hold real still'! We're friendly!"

" - Prince Telcar?" says one of the soldiers standing behind her.

Then he kneels. 

The wizards and the other soldier kneel as well.

" - wait was this not even about me - what the hell -"

"- wait, what? Prince who? No, this wasn't about you, I'm her from an alternate universe and I asked how this would parse and was apparently badly misled."

"You're claiming you're me from an alternate uni- - uh, am I breaking a law not kneeling?"

He looks at the sky and makes a deeply unhappy incoherent noise.

"Technically no, it's a custom," says Fazil, who is kneeling and who looks very angry.

"What do you even mean you're me from an alternate universe?"

"There's four of us all mysteriously pulled from other universes. We have similar names and found you on the list of people with death insurance. Also matching personalities and parents - though not siblings, I'm the only one with a sibling so far unless you have one - other details too, clumsy, write stuff down all the time, that kind of thing -"

"So you were like 'let's send soldiers and uniformed wizards to descend on her at random' and not like, let's get someone to do a Sending about it -"