:Chosen, love, they're not here to assassinate him! I'm reading them and I know you are too. They don't know he exists, or that he's here, or any of what just happened: 

:People don't have to know it, to be pawns: 

And then another white horse is riding toward them across the snow-blanketed grounds. The man riding it is definitely an adult; he looks something over forty. Less battered and exhausted than the girl, but - definitely tired, and stressed. 

He's a strong enough Mindspeaker not to bother relaying via Delian. :Welcome to Haven. I'm Herald Tantras. You can follow me: 

(Jisa, in response to one of the teenagers asking if they can help, just wordlessly shakes her head.)

They follow Herald Tantras. It's slowly starting to sink in for Kevin that whatever else is happening, they graduated. Annisa is dead but the rest of them are going to live, the worst absolutely has to be behind them, whatever insanity is going on cannot possibly be more dangerous than what they've already survived. It doesn't mean they're safe, and it doesn't mean they can trust these bizarrely powerful people, but--they did this one thing.

Four out of five. They've all imagined various scenarios, trying to come to grips with them all in advance. He's not sure whether he successfully came to grips with this one or if he's just too busy being confused by the talking horse and the portal and everyone's weird clothes. 

Tran is also pretty confused by the mage-students' clothes! They're taking this remarkably calmly, though.

...Maybe because according to their surface thoughts, their mage-school has some kind of horrifically dangerous graduation rite that they were half-expecting to kill them? Why? 

One thing at a time. :I'd like if you could tell me a little more about where you're from: he says, slipping down from Delian's saddle in order to walk beside them. He'll be less intimidating, that way. :What's near 'Boston'? Where is your school, relative to it?: 

"Boston is in the United States. The Scholomance is in the Void, so it's harder for mals to get in." How do they not know that? Some countries don't get nearly enough slots but she thought everyone knew about it. Maybe they call it a different name?

Their school is WHERE. 

The 'mals' concept in her thoughts - Pelagirs creatures, maybe? Is the 'United States' in the Pelagirs, somewhere deep enough that even the Tayledras haven't yet explored it? The concept of home, in her thoughts, is at least sort of vaguely akin to a Vale. Maybe. ...Could the Star-Eyed, or a different god, possibly have another band of followers, somewhere, and have granted this group a miraculous kind of magic to build schools in the bloody Void, instead of Heartstones? 

- this can be discussed later. Unfortunately, it does slightly increase his worries about Jisa's theory, that a Gate thrown off target could be a god's assassination scheme... 

:Thank you: he tells her, noncommittally, and they keep walking. 

"Can we borrow a phone as soon as possible, please? We need to call our parents and tell them we're alive." Mental image of an underground tunnel, full of adults waiting anxiously for their children to come back, hope shifting steadily to despair as five ten fifteen thirty minutes go by . . .

Oh no. These poor children. 

:We definitely want to help you get word back to your families about where you are! I - think we may use a different style of artifacts for communication, though, I - don't recognize the one you're thinking of. I don't know if we can target our standard communication-spell to someone who doesn't know it and who none of us have met: And the bigger problem there is how they have exactly zero mages in any condition to cast, right now. 

"I've met them, can I trade for it? What language is it in? Also what country is this, I know you said the city is Haven but I don't recognize it." This doesn't surprise her; if it's too remote to get any Scholomance slots at all she'll be lucky if she's heard of the country.

:Valdemar. Our neighbours are Rethwellan, Karse, Hardorn, and -: wince, :Iftel. If that helps at all. - Jisa, could you teach her the spell, do you think?: 

Why are there more things. :I guess I can try. I - could use something for my headache first: 

She should have learned more geography! She doesn't recognize any of those countries and a series of sidelong glances confirms that none of the others do either and they're all going to look like provincial Americans. "Thanks. We'll need help getting to the nearest airport" everywhere has airports, right? "but it can wait until everything is okay here."

"I have a spell that dulls pain? If it's magically caused pain I'd need to power it up until it makes your tactile and proprioceptive senses fuzzy but for a regular headache it should work fine."

What in all hells is an 'airport'. 

Tran desperately wants, more than anything else, for this to be someone else's problem. He wishes he could stash these kids somewhere safe with a babysitter and some food and warm beds, deal with it in the morning. He misses Dara, desperately. Dara would know how to actually be reassuring to lost children whose parents probably think they're dead. 

Dara isn't here, though, and Tran is trying not to think about the fact that she, too, has to be having the worst day of her entire life. Dara isn't here and there's nothing he can do for her, or Treven, or any of the others still trapped up in the ruins of a battlefield in the far north. And it's tempting to ignore this random complication but it might not be random, and so he...has to be the adult, here...has to figure out what's going on... 

Leareth would probably know where these kids are from. He's not in any shape to be consulted, right now. Maybe in a candlemark. 

:I don't think we have an airport here: he sends, dully. 

Something is wrong. This doesn't make any sense and so they've got to be missing some key piece, here... 

Jisa's head hurts too much to think about it. :Sure, I'll try your pain spell: she tells the girl, gratefully. :Once we're inside and sitting down. We're almost there: 

She gestures ahead at a low stone building. It looks...not quite medieval, exactly, but definitely nothing near modern American architecture. Nothing they've seen on the walk so far looks like anything in America. 

They're in the middle of fucking nowhere. Also, being in a place they've never seen before for the first time in four years is really weird. He's used to hallways classrooms bedrooms bathrooms library cafeteria gym maintenance rooms shafts and that's it, and now there's trees and buildings and a sky that goes on forever in a totally different way from the void and every time he looks up it feels like he's going to fall into it. His sight lines in all directions are longer than they've been in years and it's actually hard to make his eyes focus that far out, let alone sweep the whole sphere for mals at a reasonable frequency.

(There aren't any mals. There hasn't been a sign of them, at all, despite being fully out in the open and the lack of any obvious wards or shields or protective spells, and the wizard girl and adult maybe-wizard man aren't scanning the way you would expect if they were worried about ambient mals, either. They're...definitely vigilant for something, but not that.) 

They reach the House of Healing. 

Tran leads them inside while Jisa dismounts and spends a moment leaning heavily on Enara's neck. :Let's grab this room for now: 

It's...a vaguely infirmary-looking room, though again, very obviously low-tech. There are no electric lights, only the sunlight from the window and some unlit candles in wall sconces. There's a narrow bed and two chairs. Tran hauls over two more chairs from the room next door. 

Jisa makes it in after them, only swaying on her feet a little, and half-collapses to sit on the side of the bed. :Right. I'd take that pain spell now: 

And she watches with mage-sight, because she's curious and incredibly confused and - how powerful are these kids, anyway - she's way too tired to check their Gift-potential directly but she can maybe gauge it any amount from their casting... 

"Okay. Just tell me when the pain stops."

They can't reach the school power sink, of course, and couldn't reach the main enclave sink even if their power-sharers had been retuned for it, but they have what's in the sharers and their own reserves and it's a bargain price for shelter in this weirdly safe not-enclave that looks like a relic from the age when mals could be paid off with milk.

She starts reciting poetry in French, the same four lines repeatedly, and Jisa's nerves get quieter and quieter until the pain is gone and it feels like she's wrapped in soft insulating cotton and her limbs have that ill-defined feeling of not being anywhere in particular that comes in the moments before falling asleep.

Kevin is starting to wonder if they have in fact gone back in time. Mals used to be rarer and less focused on wizards, and phones and airports used to not exist, and buildings used to be stone. He doesn't know enough mundane history to know when the first of those things changed, though, and if he asks what year it is they'll think he's insane or freak out or both. Instead he whispers in Marcy's ear.

"It's supposed to be impossible but it would explain a lot," she whispers back, and passes it onto Franklin.

That's very unlikely but it would be a thing that sucked! Franklin starts thinking about the spell that inspired the story of Snow White's glass coffin, and whether he could pull off something similar to put them in stasis until they got back to their correct time.