That....isn't any kind of magic she recognizes. But it wouldn't be, would it, if they're from somewhere so far away that they've never heard of Valdemar.

:That's enough: she sends when the pain is gone. It's not an unpleasant feeling, overall - her thoughts seem unaffected by the about-to-fall-asleep physical sensation - but it's a good thing she's sitting down. :Right. I - should try to teach you the communication-spell, I guess, first. It may not work, if it's out of range, but seems worth a try: 

And she starts trying to convey the instructions. 

...It's not a spell. Or not in any way that Marcy is familiar with, anyway. It's not an incantation. Jisa seems to, instead, be trying to convey how she needs to hold certain concepts in mind, and then - directly feel and shape mana to build up the necessary structure? 

"Uh. Is this spell supposed to be done through an artifice or something?" 

:Hmm? - You can, probably. I bet–:

She breaks off before she can slip up and mention Leareth. 

:- we don't have one, though, sorry. Is it too much power for you or something?: 

'Power' comes across as a concept that is...basically very similar to 'mana', but not quite the same.

"I--don't know how to cast directly without words? I didn't think it was possible." She tries to do the things Jisa is describing, but it's like trying to fold water.

:Huh. I'm a bit worried our training is - somehow different enough that I won't be able to teach you this spell at all -: 

Wait. Stop. 

Something is wrong. The fragments of confusion are bouncing around un-anchored in her head, and she keeps trying to wrestle them into a shape she recognizes and can work with, but - 

- but they don't fit, actually, and it keeps not fitting, over and over, and at some point she needs to....just stop. 

:- Er, I'm beginning to wonder if - something a lot weirder than your Gate going off target is happening, here. I - how odd do things look to you, here?: 

"Really really odd, actually! Nobody's keeping a lookout for mals and there's less technology than I thought most people had and I didn't think one person could do a gate like that and I don't know what continent we're on and we're starting to wonder if we're even still in 2022." That's probably very rude if they're actually in a very poor country, or on a secret island with a magical tradition so strong they've exterminated the local mals and think the Scholomance is pathetic, but she did ask.

:It's 810 by the Valdemaran calendar: Tran offers, for lack of any other contribution to make here. :But Karse and Rethwellan use their own calendars. ...The Cataclysm was about 1800 years ago, if that helps?: 

Jisa is starting to really doubt that will help! She's still stuck on thinking of more useful questions though! 

810? No! What, now what, what is she supposed to do from here, she knew what she was supposed to do and this isn't it and she's so lost.

"Are you using the Christian calendar? What's the Cataclysm?"

"Can I see a map of the world and where we are on it?"

:If you don't know about the Cataclysm: Jisa sends dully, :then - there goes my top theory for where you're from and why we've never heard of it: 

(The concepts that come across with 'the Cataclysm' are of immense magical devastation - the aftermath of some kind of war, two powerful mages and– something Jisa's thoughts steer away from. Two craters hundreds of miles across. Twisted, magically-deformed creatures, wild and dangerous...) 

:Tran: she adds. :Get a map. Now: 

Sure, map, he can do that. Where's the closest map. ...Maybe he can just run all the way to the central wing with the Heralds' archives, running is easier than thinking. 

:Anyway, our calendar is based on when Valdemar was founded. I - don't know what 'Christian' refers to: 

"If we're in the past, I might be able to get us back to the present. I could make something that puts us in stasis but we'd need to arrange for someone to come and get us out at the right time."

"If we're in the past we should warn everyone about all the things that are going to happen first! The mals getting worse and world wars and stuff."

:I'm so sorry: Jisa closes her eyes. There are other questions to ask, confusions to resolve, but she can't find the words, yet. What would Treven say. Focus on that. :I - you just survived something awful and you - deserve to go home. I'm sorry. But...you're safe here, and I promise that we'll do whatever we can to help: 

"Thank you." Abigail is mostly worried about Marcy. She pushed herself harder than any of them, the whole past four years but especially in the leadup to graduation. 

"It doesn't have to be sustainable," Marcy had said, at the end of another day of nothing but work on the tank. "I just have to get us out and then I can sleep for a week and cry on mom and dad. I can do it as long as we need me to because after that I can stop." And Abigail had agreed, because she wanted to live.

And now they're all looking at a future like a map with no lines on it, where anything seems possible except, somehow, the idea that they could ever rest. It's just going to be more of--something--forever. Their future has been getting shorter and shorter their whole lives, everything leading up to the day when they could stop fighting for survival and start figuring out how to live, but she doesn't know what that means, here. She can't seem to make one thought follow another, anymore, it's just that same thought over and over.

"We're going to figure something out," says Kevin, then adds "Even if we can't get home," because lying to yourself is one thing and lying to a squadmate is another. "We'll find something good to do and do that."

Marcy is not going to sob into Kevin's shoulder because there's a stranger watching and that would be showing weakness.

"If you don't want help do you want us to wait somewhere until you've solved whatever the emergency is?"

This particular stranger has receptive Empathy, and these kids don't shield at all, Jisa would be hard-pressed not to feel it even if she were actively trying not to. 

Sympathy isn't going to help. She might be years younger than these not-mages from some far-distant place and maybe a far-distant time, but she's been a Mindhealer long enough to have a fine-tuned sense for that. 

She takes a deep breath, and forces her own expression back into a neutral mask. (She's so tired.) 

:...Maybe. I don't think you can help, and I'm...afraid we have an - actually pretty serious, er, Kingdom-level security situation here, so I - can't explain too much: Until they know for sure that Leareth is safe and these kids weren't somehow sent here from THE FUTURE to assassinate Leareth. :I don't think you'll be in any danger here and if something does happen we can Gate you out–:

Not to k'Treva, which would always have been the first sanctuary to flee to, at any time before the last month. Jisa is NOT going to break down sobbing either. It won't help anything. 

:- we can Gate you out somewhere else: she finishes, more hesitantly. :I hope. I'm - sorry everything is so complicated: 

"I know we look really fucked up right now, but we're not--we're adults. We can protect ourselves. We don't want to be a drain on your resources. We won't try to get involved in stuff you don't want us to, but--we want to deal fairly." He really wishes Marcy was able to explain things right now. She's the one who's actually good at saying the right thing; he's just good at saying the wrong thing when it's better than nothing.

Jisa wishes Treven were here. There's....something she's not quite catching onto here, some piece of cultural subtext that she's stepping on wrong, and Treven would be able to figure it out and navigate it as gracefully as though he'd been navigating it his whole life. 

Treven, however, is instead having the worst day of his life five hundred miles away, throwing his considerable powers of diplomacy at the aftermath of the goddamned disaster. She MISSES him and this doesn't matter at all. 

:I understand. We'll just - I'll explain as soon as I can. In the meantime we can get you...food? A bath, if you want that? - Oh, and Tran is here with the map, I - er, I'm going to let him take that, I - need to go see to something: 

What she needs to go see to is Leareth, currently five doors down behind shields impassible even to her. And Melody. She needs her teacher, right now. ...Really, she needs her mother, but Shavri is alive and unconscious and stable and Jisa can go cry at her bedside once it's a more reasonable time for crying-at-bedside type activities. First she needs advice, from someone conscious to provide it. 

:Here's the map you wanted: Tran unfolds it and and spreads it out on the bed.