240 meters puts him right at the edge of the massive ruined military compound. He can see quite a few of the bird-like monsters taking to the air.

And Dimension Door again, in the same direction.

Reed lands and casts Invisibility on himself again, then grabs the silver mirror from his backpack and is about to start Scrying his party, when he realizes his invisibility will run out way sooner than one hour, and he should not risk having to stop it before it's ready.

Well, time to wait and see if the birds keep chasing him.

The birds are scattering in a search pattern right now. About a dozen of them not fireball'd. He can't see what all the groundbound foes are up to.

Should he get further? He doesn't want to go too far, makes finding his friends harder. On the other hand, he can Scry and Message them with coordinates, and he can't do that if the monsters get to him. He would probably revive, but he doesn't want to bet against them having poisons.

The issue is that Scry and Dimdoor trade off against each other, and he would much rather not burn all his magic on just getting away, especially if he needs to get back.

He's going to wait a bit. He can deal with a few birds. He's running a bit low on spells, but he can always overpower a Dimdoor and cast it like a 5th circle, even though that's even more expensive.

Seeing as he is invisible, the birds do not find him.

Hey, hey, are you there yet~? I think whatever set off some big nasty is going to be interesting. Also, we need to deal with it.

(Give me the power to teleport if you really want me there faster, Grandma. I'm already running. Sheesh.)

When it doesn't seem there's an immediate danger, he starts Mending his robe, while keeping his eyes open to possible attacks. If something happens in the ten minutes, he can just catch it again and try again when things are quieter.

He still has some magic available, but it's not a whole lot, he should try to find shelter for the night soon. He's going to miss the Rope Trick soooo much.

The black-ashy monsters seem to be sticking to their compound. The birds take up roost on the old walls.

(The kitsune who has been dispatched to investigate is still perhaps a couple of hours away even at a dead run, even with the shortcut effect of the Spirit World. This is deep wilderness.)

Nothing interrupts him.

Ok, everything's fine, time to Scry. Hopefully he doesn't get interrupted.

It's going to take an hour, unfortunately.

It failed? But he has the lock of hair and he know Qhor and the only way it could realistically fail if he's...

On another plane.

Ooooooh crap.

He is still in a jungle. Occasionally, he hears something moving in the underbrush or the trees. Nothing attacks him except ordinary insects, though, at this time.

Well, as much as he hates to he'll have to skip the Scry to his wife, he's running really low on his reserves today.

He'll get to Mend his robe and rest for a bit.

So. He's on another plane, separated from his friends, who he just failed to contact. He could do the Scry again, but he's running really low and should probably keep his reserves for emergencies.

He'll need to rest, but he has no party to sleep in turns and this place is clearly unsafe.

He needs a good plan. Therefore: what would Qhor do?

First thing: he can walk while he thinks, so he should do that, to get further away from the Big Baddie Bad of Badness. If he can find a safe place, or at least a safe-ish one he could rest and regain his magic. It's only halfway through the day, but he's used to his sleep schedule being just... weird, from all the adventuring.

He has plenty of food, but he's pants at hunting and foraging. Well, unless he can see some game, but he's not counting on that.

The ideal thing would be to find a village, but he has no clue where he is, for all he knows he could be on the Plane Of Jungles And Shadow Baddies, and be the only human there.

Qhor could ask for a Plane Shift, but he doesn't have a tuning fork to wherever "here" is. He could... probably ask Sir Misroi to Raise him and then kill him again but he would rather Not That, if possible. The less he interacts with that dude the better. Plus there's no guarantee on where he'd land, he would probably need to make the way to the forest on his own and... uuuuugh, this suuucks.

Realistically he's going to be stuck here for a while, and what's probably going to happen is that his friends are going to find Misroi's wife, the Darklord is going to Raise them all and then they'll finally be able to travel home, the Mist willing.

After about half an hour of walking through untracked jungle, something that looks sort of alarmingly monster-like, if less... Gooey? Flaky? Yips at him from a tree branch. Then it says something. In yet another bit of incomprehensible language.

"What the heck is that?"

Reed is trying to be intimidating, but he's not going to attack first. Just because something looks like a monster doesn't mean it is a monster.

Also, he's really low on magic.

She leaps and turns mid fall.

"Tamamo, help me out here. I don't have the patience to play charades. And I smell curse on him."

Boop!

Reed feels a sensation not unlike a dog licking his hand. Also, he understands what she just said, now.

"Oh hello there you... foxy lady."

That's the weeeeirdest spell he's ever felt cast on him. He didn't even know you could cast Share Language from a distance, and it has never felt like someone licking him.

"I don't think I've been cursed? I feel fine! I've been hit with a ray of fire, but I'm kinda blasé about flames. I should tell you about that time I set myself on fire. Intentionally."

"But I'm forgetting my manners here. My name is Reed, Reed de Book. A pleasure to meet you."

He bows to her.

She smirks. "You can call me Vee. If I could be pleased as a result of meeting you, that would be delightful. And, no, curse is what we call the whole... Category of baddies, Otherworlder. The goddess of foxes says you woke up a big one. What was it like? Shot fire?"

"Is it that evident that I come from another plane?"

"Yupp, shot something that resembled a Scorching Ray but was less powerful and also looked violet? It burned like fire nonetheless. I found it less than a klick away, in that direction." He points, quite precisely, at where he came from.

"It had quite an impressive array of shadowy friends, less powerful, that he could command in some language I don't speak. I think I shook them off, haven't seen one in a while."

"Nope, it's not, but you just confirmed it for me~" she singsongs. "Okay, yeah, that sounds like a Cryptid. Intelligent curse. Worst sort of enemy, smart ones. Hmm... What was the place like? Curses form at sites of great resentment or tragedy."

"There was this building, apparently made completely of metal. It wasn't magical at all, so not a wizard's tower. I took a look to check whether my friends were inside - they're not, by the way, they're probably back where I came from - and almost got overrun by the less intelligent ones, shadow spiders, shadow zombies. I can easily dispatch each of them, but not all of them. I Flew up to look around, and saw the big one emerge from the compound. They seemed to be attracted by both magic and noise. Oh, and the big one didn't catch on fire despite not looking particularly nimble, so it can probably resist it or might even be immune, knowing my luck."

"Metal building sounds like an old Tirran Empire garrison of some sort. A Cryptid that can corral lesser curses more effectively than usual, and that talks, and fired a beam of light, and might be immune to fire. That's definitely not everything it can do, they always have, like, half a dozen things. Okay, the big guy is going to be exceedingly nasty, alright? I don't want to fight it alone or with you. Unless you're some sort of mythic hero one step down from a demigod, we'd die, and leave it free to roam around causing havoc until someone else takes up the quest to defeat it."