...huh. She expected being eaten by mals to be more painful. 

It sure doesn't seem like "being eaten by mals" is what's happening right now! 

She's in a forest. It's green and shady, and she's lying on soft grass with a pleasantly cool breeze blowing over the exposed parts of her skin. Birds are chirping in the trees somewhere, not birdcalls she's ever heard before. 

Oh wow that's the most greenery she's ever seen in one place in her life. 

—most importantly, her anklet that vibrates when there are mals close by has stopped doing that. Okay, good, back to staring. 

(It's months since she's been outside, but even before that, she grew up in a city in a hot desert climate. She's seen trees, but she's never been in a forest.)

The forest goes right on existing around her. Most of the trees in the vicinity look old and well-established, with broad, gnarled trunks and wide spreading branches. Dappled sunlight reaches down through their shade. 

A small, nondescript brown bird flutters from one tree to another. Closer by, dotted throughout the grass, are patches of flowers. Nothing at all is trying to kill her. 

Which is...really worrying, actually. Saira hasn't been outside with nothing trying to eat her since she was too young to form long-term memories. 

Also, everything about this is suspiciously pleasant, while being completely unlike anything she's experienced before, and she has no idea how she got here when the last thing she remembers is running away from mals in shop class. The Scholomance doesn't have any forests in it and the only way out of the Scholomance is graduating, which she would definitely remember doing. 

Did she get attacked by a psychic mal? Maybe this is a hallucination, or a dream, or it's a real forest but she's lost at least four years of memories? Does she have a way she can test any of those? 

She digs her fingernails as hard as she can into the meat of her opposite hand. It hurts, and gives her a tiny trickle of mana in the process. That seems like evidence that she's not dreaming and at least some of her senses can probably be trusted. Alright, good. Next. 

What would be observably different about the world if she was missing years of memories? Well, mostly her.

She looks down at herself. 

She's wearing the same clothes she remembers wearing a minute ago, the same outfit she came in with at induction. Running shoes, a size up in case her feet haven't finished growing, filled out with an extra pair of socks for now. Baggy cargo pants turned up at the bottom, with the pockets swapped out for finely-woven nets so nothing can hide in them. Enchanted anklet—she reaches down to double-check—still around her ankle, and still quiet. A plain long-sleeved shirt in sage green, also a size too big for her, with a jacket over it that has her ammi's protective embroidery on the collar and cuffs and her own efforts reaching halfway up the right sleeve, exactly where she remembers leaving off in her mana-building efforts last night. 

Saira would be very surprised if she ever wore any pieces of this outfit again after graduation, let alone the whole thing. Which makes it extremely unlikely that she's graduated and forgotten about it. 

What possibilities are left? Probably that she's hallucinating and at least some, possibly all, of her senses are not to be trusted. If she was dreaming, she probably wouldn't have made it through that whole detailed chain of reasoning without either noticing some clue that she was dreaming or waking herself up. 

She tries wanting to wake up, just in case, on the principle that it's quick, easy, and there's no way it can make anything worse. (This is a nice dream but she prefers to be oriented to reality and believing correct things about whether she is in a forest—) 

Nothing happens.

She knows an Arabic warding spell against psychic mals. It might or might not work when she can't trust any of her senses, but it's worth trying anyway, on the same principle. She casts it. It feels like it worked, it's draining mana, but nothing happens. She drops it. 

This is very confusing and Saira would like to know what is going on. Almost certainly what's going on is that she's in the gullet of a psychic mal and there's nothing more she can do to avoid being eaten and digested, but she would still rather know that than not. 

She continues, to all observations, to be in a lovely temperate forest on a pleasant spring day!

She's been sitting still long enough that a black-and-orange butterfly flutters down and lands on her knee. 

Yeep! Fluttery thing! She scrambles away! 

...oh. It was just a butterfly. She's fine. Good thing she didn't waste any mana on it. 

Startled by Saira's abrupt movement, the butterfly flies away. Nothing else visibly reacts to her startlement. 

Saira thinks she might be out of things she can do to save herself if she's trapped by a psychic mal. If she's trapped by a psychic mal, she's basically dead at this point.

If she's not trapped, "just" hallucinating, that's a very dangerous situation to be in, but, again, she can only do things about it to the extent that any of her senses are still at all reliable. But one thing she could try to do is get out of range of whatever is making her hallucinate. Walking around when she can't see or hear the mals coming for her isn't much more dangerous than sitting still when she can't see or hear the mals coming for her. 

If she's somehow been transported to a patch of forest somewhere...then there are probably things she should be doing, to find water and food and shelter. It would be great if she knew anything about wilderness survival, but most things are more likely to work than "sit here waiting to die". 

So that's one possible world where nothing she does matters, and two where getting up and walking is more helpful than sitting still. She...doesn't actually need to calculate the probabilities for each world. The obvious thing to do, given this information, is to get up, pick a direction, and start walking in it while keeping watch for mals. 

Do any of these directions look more promising than any other? 

It looks like the trees maybe thin out not too far thataway! 

Oh, that does look promising! (In universes where her senses are providing any data about the world.) Thataway she goes. Slowly and cautiously, and half-expecting to bump into a table or a wall with every step. 

She does not bump into any obstacles that aren't clearly visible! And no mals attack her! 

But, uh. How does Saira feel about the promisingness of...clifftops.

Hypothetically. Asking for a friend.

Oh. Well, that's among the least useful reasons why the forest would look thinner in this direction. On the other hand, it has ruled out one of the possible directions to go in, which is still useful data, and she only wasted a minute or two walking this way, so it could be a lot worse. 

She goes the rest of the way up to the cliff edge—but not so close that she's in danger of falling—and looks out to see if there are any visible signs of civilisation, or anything else that might tell her where she is in worlds where the answer isn't "still in the nightmare boarding school". 

It's a clear day with only a few clouds, and she can see quite a long way from the clifftop.

Unfortunately, most of what she can see is more forest. A winged shape, probably some kind of large bird, is flying above the treetops. Away in the distance, she can see the towers of a city, with mountains beyond it, but it looks pretty far off, not really reasonable walking distance even if she finds a way down the cliff.

It seems worth taking a minute or two to see whether she can spot a path down the cliff, in case exploring in the other directions doesn't pan out and she has to come back here. 

There doesn't really seem to be an obvious way down anywhere nearby. Not for a fourteen-year-old with no rock-climbing experience and no climbing equipment, anyway; there are plenty of handholds and ledges if she wanted to scale it. 

When Saira looks up from figuring that out, the winged shape in the distance is quite a lot larger and closer! It's also definitely not a bird. 

ALLAH YAHFADNI THAT'S A DRAGON. 

(This is not really an update on the implausibility of the forest because it was already pretty implausible. It's still surprising, though, because even when logic says anything can happen because this is a hallucination, the human subconscious is really good at extrapolating patterns forward from past observations, and something incongruous with those past observations will still feel emotionally like more of a surprise.) 

Saira doesn't really know how you deal with dragons but probably getting away from the exposed cliff-edge and hiding behind a nice solid tree won't hurt. 

The dragon seems to be heading directly for her, or at least for the cliff. Once it's no longer directly between her and the sun, more of its features become clear: the batlike wings, the red scales. Its size is initially hard to pin down beyond "big"; she keeps revising her estimate upwards as it keeps turning out to be further away than she thought. 

Pretty soon, though, it gets close enough that she can see a comparatively-tiny human figure perched on its back. Yep, that's big. 

It swoops down, down, down...and lands at the bottom of the cliff. (It's still tall enough to look her in the eye.) 

—she ducks back behind the tree, heart pounding. 

A few moments pass, and then a tiny high-pitched voice—maybe a young child—calls out in a totally unfamiliar language from somewhere near the dragon. Their tone is chipper and not at all alarmed. 

...okay, what??? 

She peeks out again to see whether there's actually a small child about to get eaten by the dragon.

She can't see any small children! There's this little fuzzy red creature about the size of a baby or toddler, though, with massive ears and a tiny black button nose and a little fuzzy tail. It—they?—is walking on two legs and carrying a stick. 

The creature spots her and waves, calling out an incomprehensible greeting which incidentally confirms that they're the source of the voice she just heard. 

A woman in a white hooded robe, who must be the figure Saira saw on the dragon's back, is stepping carefully from the dragon's shoulders to the clifftop. In her arms is an ornate black chest, which she's holding like its contents are precious and breakable. 

As Saira watches, she turns and bows to the dragon, speaking to it in what sounds like yet another unfamiliar language. 

Oh no, how many new languages is she going to have to learn—wait, but if she's not in school anymore then she doesn't have to...except she might, if she wants to talk to these people, actually...

The dragon dips its head in a return bow and flies away without eating anyone. 

The lady in white and her small companion start walking in Saira's direction. 

"Um, hi, do you speak English?" (If the answer is no she can repeat herself in four other languages, but English is usually the best bet with white people.) 

"Technically, no," the lady says with a smile, in what certainly sounds like English. "I have a spell that lets me speak and understand any language. I can cast it on you, if you like." 

She has WHAT! That's amazing! 

"—uh, how long does it last and what do you want in exchange?" 

"Oh, it's permanent, although of course I can undo it if you ever want it gone. You may find magic in this world works somewhat differently than you're used to! Welcome to the planet of Lore, by the way." 

Okay, sure, fantasy world with dragons has a different magic system, why not. 

"...thank you? So, what do you want for the translation spell." 

She smiles. "How about a small favour? We're a short walk from Oaklore Keep, the local knights' garrison, and I'd like you give Captain Rolith there a message from me." 

"Is there a path or something I can follow to find this keep?" 

"There is. Twilly and I can walk with you until we reach the path, and then our journeys will diverge." 

She starts leading the way deeper into the woods, still walking at a sedate pace so as not to jostle the chest she's carrying. 

"Then that doesn't sound too hard. Message for the captain...is there only one captain or do I need to remember his name? And, actually, who am I saying the message is from?" 

She giggles, but not meanly. "Rolith is the only Captain stationed at Oaklore Keep, although you might do well to try and remember his name anyway. And I am Lady Celestia." 

Saira nods. "Lady Celestia has a message for Captain Rolith," she repeats, trying to commit the names to memory. "Alright, what's the message?" 

"First, I should cast the spell on you. If I may?" 

At Saira's nod, she raises one hand and speaks a few words. A stream of golden light leaves her hand and curls around Saira's head, splitting into three to enter her ears and mouth. (It feels like air and tastes like sunlight.) 

"Oh, I wasn't expecting it to be pretty! Is it working?" 

"Yep! Twillies can understand you now!" the small red ?person? contributes. 

Saira is a 14-year-old girl and is not immune to the Cute. 

"Hi! What...are you?" 

"I'm Twilly and I'm a moglin!" 

"What's—" a moglin, Saira starts asking, but cuts herself off when there's a loud CRASH of breaking branches in the undergrowth nearby. 

Something big and clumsy approaches, crashing and smashing its way through the bushes and even toppling a small tree. 

Bellowing, it pushes its way out into the open space they're standing in, and they can see its shape clearly. It resembles a giant grey gorilla with elephant ears and tusks, and it's clearly pissed off about something. 

"Oh noes! A gorillaphant! Don't worry, ladies, I'll protect you!" 

Twilly rushes forward and brandishes his tiny stick. 

MAL. BIG MAL. 

Run—no, there's a cliff. Shield spell—won't hold for long but there's a stronger wizard right there—okay, yes, shield spell. She starts chanting in Hindi. 

The gorillaphant swipes out with one massive paw, not even seeming to feel the impact when it knocks Twilly flying.

Twilly sails through the air and lands in a heap. "Oww..." 

Lady Celestia...is not taking the decisive action Saira would expect from an older and more powerful wizard. 

"I—I didn't foresee this," she says shakily, stumbling a few steps backwards and clutching the box closer to her chest. "Combat isn't my speciality..." 

"Combat isn't your speciality? Surely you have something you can hit it with! I'm a freshman, I only have one attack spell and it's not even that good—" 

"...I can shield the three of us while you hit it?" 

She waves a hand and a glowing, translucent white bubble springs up around them, fading almost to invisibility after the first flash of light. 

OKAY THEN. Somehow it's on her to take out this mal! 

She takes a deep breath, points at the gorilla-elephant thing's head, and says the incantation for the Persian freezing spell that's the only sort of decent combat spell she knows.

The gorillaphant's head and a small area around it experiences a precipitious drop in temperature: ice crystals form on its fur, skin, and exposed mucous membranes as the air around its head drops below freezing. A larger radius around that area correspondingly heats up as the heat is shunted outwards, which will probably be painful if it survives long enough to feel pain. 

The gorillaphant bellows in pain through a suddenly ice-choked throat and staggers backwards, blinded. 

Unfortunately, stumbling backwards moves it out of the effect radius. Saira drops the spell and re-casts it, trying to aim for the head again—if she can get its brain cold enough she can just straight up kill it that way—

It's flailing about erratically in its panic, throwing her aim off. She gets a chunk of arm and shoulder, eliciting another pained bellow.

It lashes out blindly with the uninjured arm, but hits nothing. 

Twilly, who seems to have bounced back fine from being thrown through the air, dashes forwards to bonk the gorillaphant in the leg with his stick while it's on the retreat! 

What is he doing, he's tiny and that stick is basically useless against something this size—

Ugh, no, she needs to focus. She aims carefully, waiting for a moment when the gorillaphant isn't lurching about quite so much...

...and freeze. 

Letting out one final groan, it topples to the ground with a THUD. 

"Wowzers! That was really cool!" 

"...was that a pun in your language as well?" 

"Huh?" 

Twilly tilts his head, one ear going up while the other one flops down. 

Lady Celestia composes herself. 

"Thank you for your assistance. I apologise that I could not be of more help myself."

"There's a good chance I'm the one it wanted to eat, so, I was saving my own skin as much as yours." She almost says 'it's fine' and reconsiders. "—if you could give me some mana we can call it even, I'm almost out and I would prefer not to be walking through the woods almost out of mana." 

A wry smile. "This is, once again, a place where our magic systems find different things easy and hard. I don't know how to give you my own mana directly, but I have some mana potions and I'm happy to give you one." 

She reaches under her cloak and pulls out a small, rounded glass bottle sealed with a cork. The liquid inside is a deep blue. 

"I recommend you drink it all at once—the preservation enchantments break when it's uncorked, and they lose potency very quickly if not drunk." 

"Dooooes it have any ingredients that come from animals. Or, uh, people." 

"No, the potion base is plant-based and the reagents for the alchemical infusion are all minerals. Health potions should be fine, too, if you find yourself in need of one of those. They involve more plant-based reagents but still no animals." 

"Okay, thank you." 

In that case...sure, she'll try the 'mana potion'. A sip first, and then the rest if it seems to work. 

When she uncorks it, the potion fizzes and smells like blueberries. It tastes like blueberries, too, and does indeed seem to give her mana when she drinks it. Drinking the whole thing refills about three-quarters of her maximum capacity, considerably more than she expended on the fight. 

"Wow! Thank you!" Oh that feels so much better. They can keep walking through the woods and she won't even jump at every rustle of leaves, only, like, a third of them. 

"...I think before the mal attack you were about to tell me your message for Captain, uh, Rolith?" She really owes this lady that favour at this point. 

"Ah, yes, so I was. The message is simply that Twilly and I are taking the shortcut through the woods, and won't be stopping at the keep." 

"You're taking the shortcut through the woods and you won't be stopping at the keep. Got it." 

"Precisely so."

She points through the trees. "Our ways diverge here, but the path to Oaklore Keep is just up ahead. When you reach it, turn right, and you should come to the keep fairly soon." 

"Okay, great. I'll...see you around, then?" 

She nods. 

"Until we meet again, Saira." 

Before Saira can say anything else, she turns and vanishes into the forest, Twilly scurrying at her heels. 

"—wait, how do you know my—" 

Aaaand she's gone. Nevermind. That probably counts as a point in the 'hallucination' column, though. 

Anyway. Onwards to Oaklore Keep. 

She sees the keep up ahead through the trees long before reaching it. Oaklore Keep is on a slight hill, built around a lone, giant tree even older and taller than the ones in the forest around it. 

The path she's on is a dirt track, wide enough for a cart, with grass growing in between the wheel ruts. It goes right up to the gates and turns right to continue on alongside the walls, although it looks like the road past the keep is blocked by a wooden barricade. There's an armoured man with a spear guarding the barricade, and another one guarding the gates. More are visible up on the walls. 

Banners hang from the gatehouse, red with a golden dragon's head. Carved into the stone arch above the gates is the symbol of a circle with a segment, maybe around 60 degrees, cut out at the bottom. 

She goes up to the guard at the gates. 

"Hi, I have a message for Captain Rolith. Could you please direct me to him?" 

The guard looks her up and down, expression unreadable behind the visor of his helmet. 

She looks old enough that he's not immediately wondering where her parents are or why she has a job, but very young to be travelling alone through the woods. Especially since she's not visibly armed or armoured, and not dressed like any of the kinds of adventurer he knows about, so she's probably a civilian, except that civilian girls don't tend to wear trousers. Maybe it's a foreign thing; she looks foreign and so do her clothes. 

She seems way too calm to have survived some kind of accident that killed the rest of her travelling party. If she's not some kind of foreign adventurer he definitely wants to know what her parents are doing letting her walk through the woods alone to deliver messages. 

...not that it's any of his business. His job is just determining whether she's safe to let into the keep. Neither a foreign adventurer nor a foreign civilian is especially likely to be working with the Darkwolf bandits, he supposes.

"Is the Captain expecting you?"

If she says yes, it's probably a lie; Rolith would have told the gate guards if he was expecting a messenger. 

"...no." 

Hmm. Technically he did decide that was the less suspicious answer. 

"What's the message?" 

"Are you Captain Rolith?"

"No. But if you tell me what the message is, I can decide whether it's worth letting him know about. He's a busy man." And if random civilians were allowed to bother him he'd be even busier. 

That sounds kind of reasonable, but she has a MISSION. "Lady Celestia told me to give the message to Captain Rolith, not to a random guard who says he'll maybe pass it on." 

"Hey! You're speaking to a Knight of the Pactagonal Table, young lady. Show some respect!" 

Oh no, an important person. Or at least someone who thinks he's important, which is worse in a lot of ways. 

"Sorry, sir, I'm not from around here and I didn't know." 

"Hmph. That's better. Now, what's this about Lady Celestia?" 

"That's who the message is from. White robes, silver hair...?" 

"I know who Lady Celestia is," he says, talking over her.

Ugh, if the message really is from her, it might be genuinely important. He sighs. "Alright, go on in. Captain Rolith is in the main courtyard just inside the gates—he's the one with the dragon-wing pauldrons and the massive hammer." 

He steps aside to let her go through the gates. 

"Thank you. ...what's a pauldron?" 

Siiiigh. "This bit." He bangs a gauntleted fist on the armour plate covering his shoulder. 

"Oh, the shoulder bit, okay. Thank you."

Through the gate! 

Beyond the gates is a muddy courtyard filled with the hubbub of people going back and forth: more armoured knights, yes, but ten times as many servants. This courtyard seems to be the centre of activity for the whole keep, with stables on one side, an armoury and barracks on another, and maids going back and forth to what smells like a kitchen somewhere through an archway to the right. Through it all, children—most of them several years younger than Saira—dart about carrying messages. 

A group of knights on horseback streams past Saira and out of the keep in a clatter of hooves, a chorus of odd barks following them from a kennel against the outer wall. The air smells like horse manure and some kind of unidentifiable animal musk. 

She hastily makes way for the horses. 

And then just sort of...stands there, in as out of the way a corner as she can manage. Can she spot anyone matching Captain Rolith's description? 

One of the few still points in the chaos is an older blond guy in fancier armour than everyone else, who's holding three conversations at once over on the far side of the courtyard. The shoulder pieces of his armour are sculpted and decorated to look like dragon wings, while still being basically normal-shoulder-piece shaped.

She can't see from here whether he has a massive hammer, but he's the only one visible with dragon-wing motifs on his armour. 

Oh, well, that seems pretty straightforward. She was worried he'd be harder to find. 

She starts making her way across the courtyard in his direction, going slow so as not to run into anyone or slip in the mud. 

Nobody pays her any attention. Possibly-Captain-Rolith snaps out some instructions to a servant boy and goes seamlessly back to the urgent discussion he's having with two harried-looking knights. 

Okay, it looks like step one is getting his attention.

"Excuse me? Captain Rolith?" she tries. When this doesn't get a response, she repeats herself louder.

Probably-Captain-Rolith breaks off his conversation to frown at her.

He knows better than to ask whether it's urgent. Everything is urgent these days; the important question is how urgent.

"Can it wait a few minutes?"

"... I think so?" Lady Celestia would have mentioned if this message was that time-sensitive, probably.

"Great." 

He turns back to his conversation about which areas of the forest these knights have scouted for possible bandit hideouts. 

Ooookay. What...is she supposed to do now.

Does she just stand here like she's in a queue to talk to this guy? It's not as though she has anywhere better to be, per se, but this courtyard is loud and busy and smelly and she would rather not be here any longer than necessary. 

She has a feeling she'll lose her place in the queue if she leaves, though, so she keeps standing there looking incredibly uncomfortable and waiting for Captain Rolith to get back to her. 

Maybe a minute passes before another knight rushes up to Rolith. 

"Captain! We need to do something about these vermin—"

"Report." 

Hmm. What kind of vermin problem is serious enough to get the captain involved when he's already busy dealing with at least three other problems? Something more like mals than rats or bugs, maybe? Saira listens in a bit more intentionally. 

"...scouts ran into a group of scavengers in the woods near the Keep, and tracked them back to that bridge—you remember, Captain, the one they were repairing? Well, seems like they finished it, and now they've got a highway over to our side of the cliffs!" 

"And ten to one the vermin have it rigged to blow if we dare to cross it to root them out at the source," Rolith muses. "There might be a way to use that, though; perhaps if we can trigger the explosives ourselves...?"

He diverts a passing servant to fetch someone called Sir Vivor. 

What kind of vermin repair bridges and rig explosives?

—oh no, oh no, they're talking about people—

Saira doesn't like this dream anymore. She wants to wake up. 

Failing that, she wants to help those people. But what can she do? The knights won't even let her deliver a message; they probably won't listen to her about their enemies being people. They probably know that already and just don't care. She doesn't have enough information here to know how to start fixing this. 

...what she does have is a translation spell that will let her talk to anyone she meets. Maybe she could go and talk to some of the "vermin"? She could even offer to take a message from the knights, which would also give her more information about how they view the situation. 

While Saira was thinking, Rolith pivoted to a completely different conversation with some servants about supply logistics and the food stores in the keep. He's now quizzing them about what they'll run out of first if "the current situation" goes on for another month. (The answer is apparently flour, "although it depends how much damage there's been to the garden".) 

Well, that's also somewhat concerning. It doesn't sound like a pressing emergency, though. She mostly tunes them out and starts workshopping what she's going to say to Captain Rolith once it's her turn. 

The supplies conversation is interrupted by Sir Vivor showing up and drawing Rolith back into the discussion about the "vermin". He shows no signs of remembering Saira's existence any time soon.

How long is she prepared to wait? 

She doesn't exactly have a reliable method of timekeeping available, but he said a few minutes and it's been a few minutes. She'll...try to jump in when this conversation ends? And in the meantime eavesdrop some more to try and get more context on the "vermin". 

The knights are frustrated that they haven't been able to pin down where in "the ruins" the vermin have their lair (or lairs; Sir Vivor thinks there could be more than one nest). They're debating whether to blow up the bridge so the vermin can't use it or set an ambush for the next raiding party that crosses it.

Rolith points out that they can always blow up the bridge later, whereas they can't use it for an ambush after blowing it up. That seems to settle that argument, and they move on to discussing the logistics of an ambush. 

What can she contribute here? Saira doesn't have any particular skill at blowing up bridges, and she doesn't think her basic make-and-mend spells would be up to the task of repairing one. Could she find a hidden lair that a keep full of knights hasn't been able to track down? Maybe, but she doesn't want to count on it. She might just have to wander around the ruins not looking like a knight, and see if anyone wants to talk to her. 

She's reasonably confident that she can defend herself against mundane explosions, especially if she can get her hands on more mana potions, and it doesn't sound like the "vermin" have magic. So this plan seems relatively safe unless there are dangers she doesn't know about...which there almost certainly are. She's been in this world less than a day. 

"Captain Rolith, sir!" 

Ugh, did she miss her chance to jump in again?

At Rolith's nod, the newly-arrived knight launches into his report. 

"I have the latest reports on the hydra situation, captain. Bad news: judging by the latest sightings from our patrols, it's still actively hunting in the region around the bridge. Good news: there haven't been any new attacks on people since we closed off the bridge and stopped wheeling wagons of food directly over its lair. Bad news again: we still haven't found a way into its lair." 

"So the situation is stable for now, good." That puts it above most of the other ongoing crises. "Keep searching for a back way into its lair, but I'll send to the capital for water-breathing potions in case there isn't one. I want that bridge back in operation within the month." 

"Yes, sir!"

They have a hydra problem? Wait, no, don't get distracted, this could be her opening to jump in. 

"Captain Rolith? Do you have a moment to hear my message now?" 

Hmm? Oh, right, this girl. How long has she been waiting...? Eh, he can probably spare her a few minutes. 

"What's the message?" 

Deep breath. 

"Lady Celestia sent me to tell you that she and Twilly are taking a shortcut through the woods, and won't be stopping at the keep." 

The moment she says Lady Celestia's name, she has Rolith's full attention. This is more focused than she's seen him be on any one thing so far. 

"What?! Lady Celestia sent you? You should have led with that!" 

His face pales as he takes in the content of the message. "...she isn't going to stop at the keep? The forest is crawling with bandits that are looking for her. The Priestess is in grave danger—we must go after her! Can you show me which way she went?" 

Well it's not like he gave her much opportunity NOT THE TIME. Lady Celestia is in danger, apparently, there are higher priorities than arguing with the armoured knight about whose fault this is. 

"I can take you to where I last saw her, I think. It wasn't far from here." 

Rolith looks around at his...complete absence of knights to send on a rescue mission, actually, they're all busy. 

He hefts his warhammer onto his shoulder, and calls out to a passing servant, "You there! Go and tell Sir Preem he has command of the keep until I return." (The servant so addressed runs inside to presumably do that.) 

"Alright," he says, turning back to Saira. "Lead the way."

She can do that! Out of the gates, down the dirt track back the way she came, and then she came onto the track at...this bend? Probably this bend, there's a grassy path going off into the trees here right where she expects it to be. 

(Probability that this is a dream: decreasing. If this was a dream it would be either easier or impossible to find her way back. She's mostly not actively tracking her level of suspension of disbelief anymore, but this seems like a noteworthy update.) 

Meanwhile, Rolith is contemplating the probability that this is a trap of some kind. 

Points in favour: this is actually a really good way to convince him to leave the keep and follow a stranger into the woods without taking the time to gather a proper scouting party. The harmless-looking unarmed girl is clearly meant to get him to let his guard down and then lead him right into a bandit ambush. 

Points against: Lady Celestia was, in fact, supposed to be stopping by the keep today, and she has not, in fact, showed up. Even if the Darkwolf bandits managed to find out that she'd be passing through Oaklore Forest, it would stretch what he knows of their spying capabilities for them to know that Rolith had promised her a protective escort. One way they might have found out is if they've already captured Lady Celestia—in which case "captured by bandits" is actually right where he wants to be anyway. 

To Saira, he appears to be tramping along in silence, the same frown on his face that's been there basically the whole time. 

Suits her fine. 

"...I think it was around here." She stops and turns around, orienting herself how she'd have been walking the first time. "We came from that way, and I went this way towards the keep, and Lady Celestia and Twilly went...roughly that way." She waves her right hand back and forth in an arc; she's more confident about the general direction than the precise bearing. "I can't see the path they took, though." 

"Hmm." Rolith looks along the path in both directions, then sidles up to an unassuming shrub a few feet away and pushes it to the side with his hammer.

"Aha. Thought so. She meant that shortcut." 

There...might be a narrow trail there? Sort of? Certainly an adult human could fit between the trees and bushes if they wanted, and there are indications that animals have passed that way enough to wear the grass thin. 

Rolith starts off down the trail without waiting to see if Saira is following. 

She doesn't really consider not following. Even if it weren't for the long-ingrained instincts from her childhood telling her to stick with an adult when she's out and about, she wants to see where this new path goes and what's at the end of it. 

That's minor evidence in favour of "trap", but there continues to not be a lot he can do about that; he's hardly going to attack an unarmed civilian on suspicion alone. If she tries to stab him in the back he'll deal with that when it happens. If she succeeds at stabbing him in the back he'll quite frankly deserve it. 

Stomp stomp stomp through the undergrowth. If it wasn't for his friend being in danger and the possibility of an ambush the peace and quiet would be almost restful.

If it wasn't for her instincts still screaming at her that every rustle in the bushes and every tap of a branch against her skin is a mal trying to eat her, the peace and quiet would be almost restful. 

She tries to count her steps to keep track of how far they've come, in case something happens to Rolith and she has to find her way back by herself to get more help. 

That's probably the bandits Rolith mentioned! Sheeee's gonna freeze right here for now and try to figure out whether there's...actually anything she can usefully do to help Rolith other than staying out of the way and not alerting the bandits to his presence. Why didn't she think about this on the walk over, instead of stupid unhelpful things like counting how many steps they walked?

Now that they're not making noise of their own, the words come through clearer. 

"—I'll give you one more chance, priestess. Hand over the Black Dragon Box, and I'll kill you quickly." 

Aaaaa! What! That's not the sort of thing anyone says in real life! 

...oh, right, that's because she's still in hallucination fantasy land. But, accepting the premise of hallucination fantasy land being real enough that anything she does matters, Lady Celestia is being threatened with ?torture? and needs help, what can she do—

Well, what Rolith is doing is shouting, "Leave her alone!" and charging out to lay into the bandits with his warhammer. 

Saira doesn't have a warhammer. She has a clumsy little knife that she made in shop class and mostly uses to cut inanimate objects. 

...but she has more mana than she's had in months, and warding spells. Can she ward Rolith, or Celestia, or both? She stumbles forward to the edge of the clearing so she can get line of sight on them. 

Lady Celestia is sitting on the floor, her translucent shield bubble shimmering around her. The Black Dragon Box is on the ground a few feet away; she must have lost her grip on it, probably when she fell (or was pushed) to the ground. Twilly isn't immediately visible. 

A band of leather-clad thugs in face-concealing masks are fighting Rolith and losing, or in a few cases trying to batter down Lady Celestia's shield and failing. Most of them are armed with cudgels and similar, the medieval equivalent of a baseball bat with optional nails in it. They're not dressed perfectly identically, but there's a definite dress code and green-and-brown colour scheme.

The exception is a young man, maybe college-aged, with a fancy-looking sword. He's dressed like the other bandits, in green and brown, but minus the mask and plus a purple cape. 

"The box! Get the box, you morons!" he's yelling.

Celestia and Rolith look like they're holding their own. What if she wards the box. 

Saira stops where she is, still mostly hidden by the trees, and starts chanting under her breath in Hindi. Doing this from across the clearing will be more of a mana drain, but less of one than holding a second ward over herself. 

As the ward comes up, it looks like the box is now inside a bubble of water or glass, except that it's stronger than either. 

It goes up just in time. Two bandits make a grab for the box at the same time and bounce off the bubble. 

"Huh?!" 

"The priestess did something—"

"—nah, she didn't cast that, I was watching her—" 

"—they've got another mage?!" 

Uh oh.

What if she stays very still and quiet and doesn't do any more magic! (She keeps feeding mana to the shield, though, obviously.) 

Several of the bandits look around to try and spot the hidden spellcaster. 

That means they took their eyes off the guy with the big hammer. 

BONK. 

"Casting spells from the shadows is no way to fight. Come out and face me properly, coward!" sword-and-cape guy shouts, turning to try and spot Saira. 

Actually, casting spells from the shadows is the best way to fight. Clearly this guy has never been to the Scholomance, where cowardice is better known as "survival". She's staying right where she is, thanks. 

"Give it up, Drakath. Most of your men are down, and you can't beat me without them to hide behind. You're not winning here today." 

"Who do you think you are, telling me what to do? Alteon's little lap tog, here to put me back in my place? I am your rightful king, you lout! Hand over the Black Dragon Box and I'll consider letting you keep your position when I take back my throne." 

Oh no did she accidentally involve herself in politics. That's not good. 

"Nice speech, but right now, Alteon is king, and I work for him. In the name of the king, I'm arresting you for banditry, highway robbery, and it sounds like we can add attempted treason to the list as well." 

Lady Celestia casts something that makes Rolith's hammer glow. He hefts it as he shifts back into a battle stance, preparing to fight Drakath and the other two remaining bandits. 

Saira still thinks the most useful thing she can do here is keep holding her shield over the Black Dragon Box. Rolith's fights so far have been over too fast for her to even have time to react, let alone figure out something helpful to do. She stays put, holds her shield, and builds a tiny trickle of mana by methodically tensing and relaxing every individual muscle in her body from head to toes. It's not keeping up with the expenditure, but it's better than nothing, and all of her better options involve more movement or more equipment. 

The fight is, indeed, over fairly quickly, although Drakath lasts longer than most of his men did.

Once it becomes obvious that he's not winning this fight, he throws a handful of dust in Rolith's eyes and scarpers. 

UM! Rolith said he was under arrest?? You can't just run away from being under arrest! Someone should stop him!

...should she be stopping him? But she's not an officer of the law around here, and she has no idea if it's legal locally for random foreigners to involve themselves in criminal arrests—aaand he's gone. 

Rolith scrubs dust out of his eyes and groans. 

"Are you alright, Priestess?" 

"Perfectly fine, thanks to you and Saira." The single bandit still standing fled when their leader did; the ones left in the clearing are lying on the ground unconscious or groaning. This battle seems decisively over. She lowers her protective ward and picks herself up, dusting off her white skirts. 

"And the Black Dragon Box is safe and sound. It should be alright to let the ward down now," she adds, directed over at Saira's hiding spot. 

...she lets the ward down. And comes out of hiding. 

"It's a good thing we got here in time to help." 

"Agreed. That could have been a lot worse." Rolith can't say what he'd like to say, which is WHAT THE HELL WERE YOU THINKING. 

"Priestess, please allow me to personally escort you the rest of the way through the forest. Those bandits might come back for another attempt if you continue alone." 

"Not quite alone; I do have Twilly—wait, where is Twilly?" 

That sounds like Twilly shouting something muffled and unintelligible from those bushes over there! 

On investigation, the muffled shouting is coming from a rotten tree stump with a pair of little fuzzy red legs sticking out of it. 

Does investigation reveal whether it's a monster tree stump that's trying to eat him, or just a regular tree stump that the bandits shoved him into or something? She doesn't want to get too near it if it's a monster tree stump that might decide a moglin was a great appetizer and now it wants a wizard for lunch.

It doesn't seem to be actively gnawing on him or anything. Twilly seems unhappy about his situation, but he's not screaming like someone who's being eaten alive. 

Just had to make sure. 

She pulls him out and sets him on his feet, a reasonable distance away from the stump just in case. 

"Are you alright?" 

"Yep, Twillies all good now. Thanks!" 

He heads over to check on Lady Celestia. 

She's retrieved the Black Dragon Box and is continuing her very polite argument with Captain Rolith about whether she needs an escort through the forest.

Her argument is that she knows the bandits won't be back because she has foresight, which is also how she knew Rolith and Saira would be on time to rescue her in the first place. 

Rolith's argument is that foresight isn't an excuse to take unnecessary risks, and what if the bandits are only going to stay away because she has an escort. And he maintains that them arriving on time was pure luck and could easily have gone the other way. 

"Look, priestess, even if you're right and the bandits have given up for now, what harm does it do to let me walk with you anyway?" 

It will delay him getting back to Oaklore Keep by an hour, which will put him an hour behind on dealing with all of his ongoing crises. But he's undoubtedly aware of that and taking it into account, and the longer they stand here arguing about it, the more she's delaying him on top of that. 

"I suppose you're right. Lead on, then, good Captain. Saira, would you like to come with us as well?" 

"If that's alright? I don't have any other plans, and I'm not sure I know the way back to Oaklore Keep from here on my own." 

"When we reach the ferry crossing, you can decide whether you'd like to come with me, or return to Oaklore Keep with Captain Rolith," Lady Celestia assures her. "Until then, we'll all walk together." 

As they walk, Rolith has some questions for Saira.

"So, I take it you're some foreign kind of mage? I didn't recognise that spell you cast on the box." 

"...I guess I am, yes. I'm not used to thinking of myself as foreign." She'd lived in Pakistan all her life until the Scholomance, where nobody is more foreign than anyone else, at least in theory. "We usually call ourselves wizards."

(She's still speaking English; she briefly switched to Urdu when she first got to Oaklore, but it was too weird hearing native-level Urdu coming out of white faces, so she switched back. Her English is good enough that it shouldn't make a difference, except that depending on how the translation spell works, she might be coming through with a foreign-sounding accent.)

"I've never heard of wizards! You must be a long way from home." 

"...yeah, pretty far. I don't think the name of the place would mean anything to you." 

Saira wishes she knew whether it's a good idea to tell people she's from another world. Are they going to think she's crazy or does this sort of thing happen every Tuesday? Can she feasibly pretend to be from another continent without getting caught out or are they too globalized for that? On Earth, if she wound up in rural France and spoke the language, she could probably convince the first five mundies she met that she was from a made-up small Middle Eastern country they hadn't heard of, but she doesn't think it would take all that long to run into someone who would expect to have heard of it if it was real. And, unlike in that example, she doesn't know the names of any real countries around here. 

"Try me?" If he hasn't heard of it, he can remember the name to ask Maya about when he gets back to the keep. 

Aaaaahhhhh. 

"Pakistan. But I really don't think you'll be able to find it on a map." How about she doesn't clarify whether that's a country or a city for now. Unless he asks. 

"You were right; I've never heard of it." Pakistan. He attempts to commit it to memory for later. 

"What brought you to Greenguard? Did you come here with your family?" The tone is still casual: this is small talk, rather than an interrogation, or at least he's pretending so. 

OK, but he is some kind of local law enforcement. She just saw him try to arrest someone. (The widespread police corruption in Pakistan is overall fairly convenient for wizards, since bribing the police to look the other way is a cheap and easy way of dealing with them. But it hasn't left Saira with a particularly high opinion of law enforcement.) 

...Saira doesn't have a script for persuading policemen that her parents know where she is and are fine with her being out on her own, because they weren't fine with that and so she was never in that situation. 

"Um. That's personal and I'd rather not talk about it with a strange man I only just met." 

Rolith chuckles. "You know, that's actually pretty fair. I'll leave you be." 

In the resulting shuffle of the marching order, Lady Celestia effortlessly contrives to end up walking next to Saira. 

"I imagine you have questions. I may not be able to answer all of them, but I'll do my best." 

Oh she has SO many questions. 

"...how did you know my name earlier? I never introduced myself."

"I have some ability to see the future. I knew you would be on that clifftop before we met you, as well as a few other things about you, such as your name and the fact that you're from another world."

She's speaking too quietly for Rolith to overhear right now. 

"Your instinct to keep that to yourself is a good one, I think. I would not advise lying about your origins, but I would counsel discretion. If the wrong person found out about your magic and its implications..." 

Wow that's kind of ominous.

"Um, can you be...any more specific about the threats I should be looking out for, there? Or is that not how your future sight works?" 

She shakes her head. "My foresight is far from complete—and the more I act to change the future, the less clearly I see it. If I warn you against one threat, another might emerge that I cannot predict." 

"That makes sense. Is there anything you can safely tell me about the future? Or should I stick to questions you don't need foresight for?"

She considers for a moment. "...I knew you were coming. I saw our meeting on the clifftop before it happened, and I knew your name and that you were the person I was supposed to meet. That's not usual, even for me; I don't get visions about just anyone. That, alone, tells me that you have a great destiny ahead of you." 

What do you even say to that.

"...thank...you...?"

"I will, of course, give you as much help as I can. You are welcome to visit me in Sunbreeze Grove any time you like." With a conspiratorial smile, she adds, "One of the more pleasant uses of foresight is to arrange my calendar so that I can be at home for visitors—if I want to be." 

That sort of magic use would be far too frivolous at home. Saira is going to have to adjust to that. 

"Would now be a good time for a visit? I don't really have...anywhere else to be. Or know what other places there are, beyond Oaklore Keep." 

"If you want my advice, I think you would find Oaklore Keep an excellent place to start getting your bearings. There's a Loremaster stationed there, Maya, who will be delighted to tell you everything you could ever need to know about this region's history and geography. ...that's not foresight, it's just knowing her. But my guess is that you'll get on brilliantly." 

"Thanks for the advice; I guess I'll do that." When someone with knowledge of the future gives you advice, even if they're not using magic to do it, you take it seriously unless you have a compelling reason to think you know better. 

"Is there etiquette I should know about interacting with knights, if I'm going back to the keep? I don't think I've been doing very well at that so far."