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Emiko looked around the new research outpost. It was fairly small by Starlight's standards but it could be expanded later if necessary. The station was a mere 2 kilometers in diameter and only the same amount wide making for an inner surface of about 12 square kilometers. For now it was mostly park land and some small farms. There was constant soft illumination through the transparent siding of the station's outer ring from the silver mist outside and fusion powered lights provided brighter illumination on a daily cycle. The strange mist didn't seem to be affected by gravity and was close to uniform in every direction they'd sent probes out for at least a few million kilometers. A magecrafter had come through and determined that the mist was probably harmless but none of them were currently available for follow-up tests so at least for now the team here would be relying on resonators and good old-fashioned physics.
"Are these fundamental substances? That's an awful lot of substances. Also, how do you have biological humans if you don't have Earth, Fire, Air, and Water?"
"Well, it depends on what you call fundamental. All of those substances I mentioned are made of three other substances and two of those substances are made of another six substances. In total we consider there to be eighteen typical fundamental substances that are present in every plane we've visited and a great many more that are only present in some planes."
"I'm pretty curious, but those numbers don't sound familiar to me, so probably there's no Sylvan translation for the names of the substances. How are you speaking Sylvan, anyway?"
"We have magic that automatically learns the languages known by everyone who gets close to us. I can try to explain particle physics if you'd like. That's what we call the study of the eighteen fundamental substances."
"That does sound good to do at some point. Would you like to look over my dictionary first, though? As long as I don't let go of it my bubble should continue to go around it."
"Sure, would you prefer me to reach into your bubble or to have you turn pages for me. I should be able to memorize it about as fast as you can turn pages."
"I'm fine with you touching the book when I hold it out, but reach into the bubble carefully, it might interact weirdly with you though it probably won't. I can flip the pages if there are problems, and that's a good memorization speed, nice."
She tentatively reaches her hand through the bubble to see if it does anything unfortunate.
"Oh good, it seems whatever your bubble does isn't harmful to me. Can you hold the dictionary out for me?"
Emiko carefully but quickly pages through the dictionary, barely pausing between pages. "Alright, that should be good. It'll take a bit longer for all that to get integrated into our magic but in the meantime I should be able to lookup specific words when I need to."
"Good for you! I also have a holy text of Immonhiel on me, if you haven't heard of the four elements you probably haven't heard of her either. I'm not trying to tell you to worship her specifically, just, you might be interested in more books. It's in Chraiqun, which you are also free to borrow from me with translation spells."
"Yup, you've got it. Pretty powerful translation magic if it doesn't feel like much and you can borrow multiple languages at once." Griffie replies in Chraiqun.
"I know it's great. It's one of my favorite bits of magic. What kind of being is Immonhiel? It seems like this language classes her as a god but that term is translating into a words in languages I'm more familiar with that are very ambiguous."
"Immonhiel is a lesser deity of medicine. Her divine realm is located in the Upper Planes, because she is in the coalition of Celestial deities. The Upper Planes are a lot of very connected planes, you usually can walk in a straight line between two places you're trying to go without worrying about details of Gates, because one of the things that being a Celestial deity is about is letting people in your plane go where they want to go. Immonhiel can make her most devoted followers proper clerics?"
"That's fascinating. So unpacking my understanding of your words the Upper Planes are a place people can go to and from? Also deities can grant non-deity people the ability to use specific magics?"
"Then yes I'd be interested in reading that book. Before we go too much further like this though would you like to move to a nicer environment? There's gravity and plants and such on the outer ring. Given that you're made of fundamentally different substances I don't think there's any significant risk of biological cross infection."
"I do like gravity, and seeing your alien plants sounds interesting, so sure, that works for me."
"Alright, this way then." She pulls herself closer to the wall then along the corridor. After a short while they get to a point where there's a pair of circular rings easily big enough to move through. The part of the corridor on the other side is rotating slowly relative to the one they're in. (One rotation every twenty-one minutes) Emiko waits a bit on the other side of the transition looking back to make sure Griffith can get through without trouble.
Emiko continues on. After a short distance later when Emiko open a door and enters into a somewhat larger room. She floats to the opposite side of the room. There's also another door on the side of the room that connects the one Emiko is on to the one they entered from. "You'll want to be close to this surface and grab a hold. It'll become the floor when gravity starts being a thing."