- in the middle of a lonely snow-covered field, with a string of leafless trees to guard it from the road, and no one else is in sight. 

No one except Kevin will be able to see it, but at the moment they land - or within a second or two of it, anyway - there's a sudden blaze of light from the horizon. It does not go on to coalesce into a mushroom cloud, though; it just fades, surprisingly rapidly. 

Another few seconds after that, the roar of sound reaches them. The ground shakes. 

And then, suddenly, everything is very quiet and very still. 

Are they out? Are they safe? Are they free? Are they--oh fuck, Annisa.

"Damn!"

She's an adult now, right? That means she's allowed to cry. Except she seems to have forgotten how.

"Guys? . . . This isn't the induction point."

Abigail puts a gentle hand on Annisa's shoulder. "Is it safe to take the shield down?" 

"I think so. It's a forest somewhere. I don't see any mals. But I don't know what made the ground shake."

Franklin untangles himself from the spell and opens his eyes. "Annisa--"

He wasn't good enough. They built their whole strategy around his ability to protect them and he wasn't good enough and now Annisa's dead and he will never get to be a person who succeeded at the one important thing and she'll never get to be anything.

Oh fuck, Annisa's dead. He's still too scared for anything to feel real, and the bizarre surroundings aren't helping him convince himself to change that.

This is what Abigail has always been good at: keeping her friends sane. She knows when they need encouragement, a shoulder to cry on, a long-hoarded snack token.

"We're not done yet," she says, because it's what they need to hear right now, because it's true. "No emotions until we're back in Boston."

She wants to be done, she wants to rest, she wants to stop being this she wants to be what her squadmates need and get as many as she can home safe. Her face solidifies back into its familiar mask. "Driving the tank's more mana than its worth. We should set out on foot, look for a road. Kevin, how much daylight does it look like we've got?"

She should pop the hatch and throw Annisa's body out. They might need to sleep in here tonight if they don't find civilization, and they don't need a corpse in here with them. Annisa would mock her for hesitating.

It appears to be either earlyish morning or late afternoon - hard to guess which, without knowing which direction is east versus west, but the pale wintry-sparkling-blue of the sky hints at morning. 

There are, in the distance, sudden hoofbeats. 

Kevin has the hatch open and relays this to the others.

Okay that's an actual good reason not to heave a body out the hatch right this second; there might be humans riding the horses and if they look like harmless teenagers it'll be easier to get directions. What cover story should they use, the tank doesn't look like it could be the remains of a plane crash--

"Let's get out and go meet them. We can say we're lost hikers and get out of explaining the tank if we're fast enough."

They have to do something and this is something; everyone piles out of the tank and starts jogging. They strongly resemble lost hikers: their clothes are practical but torn and none of them has showered in the last week. 

They're able to make it past the row of trees half-screening off the road before the horse reaches them. It's a beautiful white horse, though somewhat...sooty, and perhaps slightly scorched? 

The girl riding it looks to be about freshman-age. She's wearing heavy winter clothing, mostly leather and fur, all of it very much worse for wear, and a cloak that might once have been white but is definitely not white anymore. Her hair is pulled back into a matted, windswept braid. There's a cut on her forehead, dried blood down the side of her face, and a nasty bruise on her cheek, and she's clutching the reins and staring straight ahead with a stunned, wooden expression. 

The horse stops. 

The girl's dark eyes almost but not quite focus on the group of them. She blinks, squints a little, with the air of someone who is confused but mostly isn't processing what's in front of her. 

Open hands, relaxed posture, relieved smile, every line of her body is a lie, "Hello! Do you speak English? We are lost!"

What. 

:Chosen, I'm here. It's all right. Just - try to focus -: 

Nope. She cannot. She absolutely cannot handle one single more inexplicable mysterious problem right now. 

Jisa stares blankly at the cluster of young adults - practically still children, really, though they look at least a few years older than her. Stef's age, give or take.

She doesn't recognize the style of their clothing, which is also very inappropriate for the weather, and she didn't understand whatever the girl in the lead just said at all. It still takes her a long few seconds of blinking at them before she thinks to tap her ear apologetically. "Do you speak Valdemaran?" she tries, then thinks better of it and switches to Rethwellani, "- do you understand me now?" 

Double nope. Marcy looks at Franklin in case one of those was ancient Egyptian, but he's staring blankly. She tries again in variously broken and accented French, German, Spanish, Mandarin, Korean, Japanese, modern Greek, ancient Greek, Latin, Igbo, Akkadian, and Sumerian.

Jisa's head hurts and she is TOO TIRED FOR THIS.

:Enara, did you–:

:Sorry, love, I didn't get any of that either. ...It's definitely multiple different languages, which is - something - even Van doesn't...:

She trails off. 

Doesn't, or didn't no she is not thinking about that right now. :I can try Mindspeaking them, I guess?: Seriously, what are they wearing? She's never even seen those fabrics. 

A push of quiet mental reassurance. :Let me, love, it's easier for us and I don't have a reaction-headache:

Enara turns and fixes her large blue eyes on the group, and addresses all of them. :I'm sorry to startle you this way, we apparently don't speak any of the same languages. I'm Enara and this is Jisa. Are you lost?: Pause, as she takes in their general disheveled appearance. :Are any of you injured?: 

Oh thank fuck they landed on a wizard, she can just explain everything. She tries to think her answer loudly as she says it and hopes the girl--what the fuck is a wizard girl that young doing without her parents?--can read her thoughts.

"We just graduated from the Scholomance. We're not injured but we didn't come out where we should have, we're from Boston."  Annisa is dead and Marcy feels like a dead pharaoh hiding behind a metal copy of her own face neither of those is an injury. "We're very lost. Where are we? Where are your adults?"

(Kevin grunts in pain and the other three all twitch to look at him, but it's just the vision potion wearing off and leaving him with a splitting headache like it always does.)

What in all hells. Is the 'Scholomance' something like White Winds? Where is 'Boston' and how did they end up here - if it had been a Gate surely she would have felt it - maybe not if it happened at the exact same moment as the....whatever it was...back at the Palace. 

(A Final Strike. Van's. It almost has to be that, except that if it were then she wouldn't be alive. The confusion has nowhere to go so it bounces around in her head, emptily.) 

...She will try not to be insulted about the 'too young to be without her parents' bit; she is young, though she's mostly used to not getting that reaction anymore, since she graduated from the Mindhealers' Collegium and got her Whites.