Olivia's projected senses cannot discern anything beyond the World Gate. The environment on the other side seems to be pitch black.

Pitch black, pitch silent, no magic. Alright then, time to step across. She whispers Glow, lighting the silver dragonfly holding up her hair. A magical light, this will not just illuminate but reveal anything invisible or hidden within its reach. 

The other side of the gate is a nondescript rectangular corridor. It appears to be made entirely from concrete. A plain square grid pattern covers the floor, walls, and ceiling. A couple hundred feet ahead of her, the corridor intersects with another corridor and ends. The second corridor continues perpendicular to this one.

It's very quiet.

Olivia pulls down the Gate, brushes away the lingering traces of magic with prestidigitation, and floats smoothly and silently to the junction, just barely above the floor.

The junction's right turn leads down an identical looking corridor. It goes further than her light can reach. The junction's left turn leads down a nearly identical looking corridor, but far off in the distance, past where her light can reach, there's another light. Behind her is the corridor she came from, which continues into darkness behind her.

She turns towards the light, and continues. Quietly, she chants and gestures for a Commune, to get a sense for the landscape. Unfortunately, she can't yet push this spell far enough to give her a map, but she can get an audiovisual feed and brief description for the most relevant details of each: terrain, permanent or residual magic, useful resources and/or shops, animals, ordinary people, and unusual people within a quarter mile of her location.

From her current location, within her commune range:

• The terrain is entirely part of what must be a huge building. It's full of tunnels and rooms and nonsensical constructions with no clear purpose. Everything is almost perfectly aligned at right angles. Human buildings usually have many more imperfections than this. Near the end of her range, the building gives way to open air. Strange pipes and cables extend out a couple dozen feet past the sheer wall of the building. She gets a flash of a metal grate where light streams in—the light at the end of this tunnel.
• There is no permanent or residual magic of any kind.
• In terms of resources, there's a lot of metal in the air, along with some other nonmetallic elements. It's unclear what they are. They aren't visible to her normal senses. They aren't visible to her audiovisual feed. They seem to fill the air quite evenly throughout her range.
• There is one human currently within her range, close to the end of her range, above her and near the edge of the building. He's a scruffy man with blonde hair and a short beard, dressed in traveler's clothes with lots of pockets. There are no other living creatures within her range.
• There are no usual creatures in the area, though with only one creature, there's no comparison point from which unusuality could be determined.

The complete lack of, say, insects is honestly more unnerving than the silence. She's not sure what to make of the airborne metal, besides being glad she's not exposed to breathing it (and concerned for the one person she caught in range). She speeds up, heading for the grate. When she gets there, she gestures a Forge Metal to let her slide the bars of the grate out of her way, and then back. She's tempted to gather up the airborne metal, but without knowing when or how it got there, she refrains. Instead, she pops open her pocketspace, pulls out a thin bar of steel, and shapes it into a ring around one of the bars of the grate, a delicate feather hanging downwards from it. A marker, so she can find her way back here should she need to.

Next: time to Navigate to the current location of the single (other) living creature anywhere around her. Instead of drawing down a charge, she casts the weaker version that is within her unassisted ability; the directions that fill her mind are, if not physically, then at least magically possible.

The grate is at the edge of the building. The other side is a dropoff into the abyss below.

In the distance, thousands of skyscrapers hang impossibly from the ceiling, which is a vast construction of concrete and metal and other unknown materials. The inverted sky is covered in a layer of white clouds. A perfectly uniform bright light streams through them from below. Up and to her left, in the distance, near where her spell points, is an outdoor stairwell, like the kind you would find in an apartment building, except it goes on for hundreds of levels.

A light breeze flows through the air. She can hear distant sounds but they are too far away and too quiet to be understandable.

Holding onto the grate, she flips Aspect of the Seagull into Aspect of the Goose, giving her more speed and height under her magical wings at the expense of being able to rescue someone else falling as quickly. Doesn't do her any good if she falls! After a moments thought she drops Aspect of the Chameleon in favor of restoring the Seagull; blending into the background is beyond useless with a bright glow stuck to the top of her head. 

She secures her marker, leaving no seam in the steel, and pushes off from the building. Up, up, and not very far away, nor very fast; she's protected from wind resistance like this but the same is not true of anyone near her. At the same time, she reduces the speed factor on her Haste to nearly nothing, matching her own timestream with the world to prepare for a face to face interaction. Last but not least, Tongues, targeted at the language the man speaks, or does he speak more than one?

The man is located in a corridor near the stairwell. It has open gaps in the walls. He speaks one language. He shouts when he sees her approach. 

"Ahhh!"

"Hello!" she calls. "I am a stranger here and I mean no harm." She slides through one of the gaps and lands lightly on the floor.

Turtle, grant me patience, she thinks, and patience settles into her. She shows nothing but calm and peacefulness as she waits for him to respond.

"Oh! Hello!" His shock seems momentary. "I am Kumoi. I'm traveling with Yaki. What's your name?"

"I am Olivia, traveling alone."

This is the barest, most superficial truth: she is alone, physically speaking. But Olivia's "alone" includes Nate, keeping watch from within her thoughts and behind her eyes. Includes the multiple friends only a mental motion away, ready with advice and company should she want any. Includes her magic, not exactly a person in its own right but very much alive, her support and her responsibility both. 

Olivia would rather not get into a description of all that with a stranger, actually, especially not as a matter of initial introduction. 

"Good to meet you. I've never met someone who can fly before! You should come with me. We found a place where the Builders don't come. It wasn't easy, this whole area's a growth sector, so the Builders are pretty active. That's what Yaki said, at least."

"Sure! Thank you for the invitation. What are the Builders, if you don't mind explaining?"

He starts walking down the hallway. "Ah, you've not had the misfortune of meeting them? You must be from far away indeed. The Builders build things. All these buildings were built by the Builders." He gestures out at the inverted skyline. "They're unpredictable and take many forms, large and small. If you're in their way when they're building something, you'll get crushed! Or smashed, or torn apart, or something like that. It's bad news to see one nearby. I think our camp should last a while, though. There's a large Builder in the distance, on the other side of this tower, but it moves slowly."

"Thanks for the warning. I'm not as easy to crush as I look, and I'll be careful. Is that why this building is so empty, because it's new?"

"These buildings are almost all empty, as far as I know. Not enough people around to fill 'em. I mean, look at how many there are! I was born in Akima, which is a long ways from here, and all of us together wouldn't be able to fill even this one tower. Though, it's been a long time since I've been there. Regardless, the Builders are active, which is more bad news. Yaki told me that there are other worse machines out here too. If there are other people out in this place, I don't know 'em. Well, except for you, now. We hoped to find many more people, but we haven't. The situation is unfortunate."

"That's too bad. Do you know why the Builders came here instead of staying where they were, or going somewhere else?"

"I don't know why the Builders do what they do. I don't think even Yaki knows that. They've been around since long before I was born, though. Long before Yaki was born, and she's extremely old. She's been alive since before the founding of Akima! But her body is breaking down. That's why we set out. To find something that can fix her. But she's only gotten worse on the journey and recently she completely stopped moving."

"Oh no! I'm so sorry to hear that. Depending on what the matter is, I might be able to help? Is she still alive?"

That's more hedging than Olivia would usually do, but "breaking down" and "stopped moving" aren't exactly clear descriptions of a biological injury or illness. Except maybe old age? If old age is the problem Olivia is qualified to deal with it, but if there's something weirder going on she doesn't want to make promises.

"I think the matter is just that she's old. Lots of stuff breaks down over time if you don't repair it. She's not injured. She's still alive, I talked to her earlier."

"Then I can likely heal her, yes. And I'm glad I met you in time to do so."

"Yes, it's goo—"

A loud and distant boom interrupts their conversation. The tower rumbles and shakes. A blast of air from above flows past the openings in the wall and blows Kumoi's hair about.

Haste: back up to max time dilation. She pops a green star from her Starsign pattern, letting a plan come to her as if she had more than enough time to think and refine it.

Healing Hands, as bright as it can go, and the briefest of grasps on Kumoi's hand to pass control of the spell to him. Then she Aspects an Ox, for brute strength, and Navigate, this time pulling from her limited pool of higher power castings, for the fastest route to Kumoi and Yaki's camp, yes really she means fastest.

All that took less than a tenth of a second.

Unfortunately Gate is out of commission, still recovering from the rift between worlds. She scoops Kumoi up and flies, hurtling along the directions that Navigate provides, weaving in and out of reality at (effectively) 41 miles per second.

It takes her a little over 50 milliseconds to reach the camp. It wasn't particularly far away. She lands in a room full of strange plants. They look like hybrids of potatoes and cacti without spikes. They're being grown hydroponically.

It stands to reason that they would need a food supply at camp, yes. It'd be reassuring if Olivia weren't in a tearing hurry because of the possible imminent explosion. (Or possibly all of the exploding already happened. She can't know for sure.) She sets Kumoi down briefly. 

Is Yaki visible?

Yaki is not in this room. There's a door, which is currently shut.

Haste, on Kumoi, then Message to establish communication at the speed of thought.

Message should have identified Yaki as another possible target, but Kumoi is the only valid target. That's very concerning, actually, but Olivia is executing on a plan right now.

There was a big explosion and I'm worried this building isn't safe anymore. I've sped us up so we have a little time to get clear. Where's Yaki?

It will likely take Kumoi a moment to catch up to that, so in the meantime Olivia crosses the room, knocks twice on the door, and opens it.

Kumoi screams and looks around in shock. "You can teleport?"

There is no response to her knocking. The door opens to a four-way junction. Light streams in from window-shaped holes in the walls.

"I can teleport, but this time I carried you and flew very quickly," Olivia says. "I know, it's pretty weird. Where's Yaki?"

Kumoi might notice at this point that his hands are glowing and they are very, very bright. If he had been injured, he isn't anymore.

"I don't see how you could move so fast! It does not seem possible." He holds up his hands and inspects them. "What's up with my hands?" He pauses. "Oh, right, Yaki. She's in the room over there." He gestures at the door to the right.

Door to the right! Olivia again knocks and opens the door. (Yaki, if she's home, will perceive those events as simultaneous.)

This room appears to be a workshop of some sort. Dozens of components for humanoid robots (arms, hands, legs, heads, et cetera) are scattered about the room. In the center, there's a chair, within which seats a motionless robot. It has hair and eyes and skin, which look quite realistic, and it is wearing clothing, but it is very obviously not human, nor is it powered on.

There are no living things here, as far as she can tell.

Kumoi follows Olivia inside and walks over to the robot. "Yaki! This is Olivia. She's here to heal you!"

There is no response.

"Yes, yes, I know. Listen, there was a big explosion. We need to be leaving soon, but this woman has a teleporter, so it won't be too hard on you."

There is no response.

Oh. That's not a living woman or a living robot. That's not someone who was alive recently enough (if ever) that Olivia could do anything to resurrect her. 

"I'm so sorry," Olivia says, "but she's too far gone for me to help."

"Oh." He pauses for a while.

"Well, do you want to figure out what that big explosion was? The Builders don't destroy things, at least not on purpose, so I doubt it was one of 'em. I can start packing up my stuff, if you want."

"Sounds like a plan."

That was much too easy? Olivia is starting to worry about what's behind Kumoi's cheerful face. She hadn't expected him to be willing to leave "Yaki" behind at all, whether or not she had ever really existed. 

And now she's curious. If Yaki died here, maybe even if not, her spirit might still be reachable. She's not willing to disturb Kumoi again, but she is, she supposes, willing to ask Yaki herself.

Olivia crouches beside the robot, begins to chant very softly. "Yaki, friend of Kumoi? Companion of Kumoi? Come, if you are willing, come, if you are able, come, if you remember him; he remembers you. By my strength in magic, speak and he will hear you, touch, and he will feel you. Yaki, friend of Kumoi, return to the world of the living for a time, if you are willing." She has a name, and an image; a loved one, and perhaps a gravesite. By these things are the ghosts of the dead conjured.

If "Yaki" never lived, or if she is tethered more than ten thousand miles away, or if she simply refuses, Olivia's spell will fail, and that will be that. But Olivia hopes.

Nothing happens.

Unfortunate, but that was always the likeliest outcome. 

Olivia's instincts are telling her they need to be mobile, and she can't carry Kumoi again. Nor can she gate again, even within a world, until that cantrip is recovered from the world gate.

So that means asking for help; she has the right summoning spell tucked into another pendant.

Phantom Steed. (And Haste, and adding the new arrival into the Message link she has with Kumoi.)

The first sign of something happening is a light mist thickening in the area. Out of the middle of it there flies a small bird. For most people it might look like it flew out of the mist, but Olivia's senses (and prior experience) warned her when it appeared in the middle of the mist, flying in from another of those mostly nonexistent spaces Navigate guided her through.

Alice was the one who made this particular pendant. Alice's sense of humor sometimes shows. Her transport is a bird roughly the size of her head.

The voice that echoes from it is by far the most imposing aspect of the entire production. "YOU HAVE CALLED ME TO A NEW PLACE. WHAT DO YOU KNOW OF THESE LANDS? WHAT CONTRACT DO YOU HAVE FOR ME THIS TIME?"

"May I ask your name, honored steed?"

"I know very little of these lands, if I am honest, having come just recently myself. I have seen no trace of magic besides my own, and little that lives. I have been warned of dangerous machines called Builders. Below us instead of ground there is sky, or what looks like sky, and below that I know not." She takes a breath. 

"I heard an explosion, nearby, very recently, and want to investigate it -- but first I must see to the safety of my companion. Will you carry him away from here, and stay until I can rejoin you both?"

"Ah. Language."

The somewhat embarrassed throat-clearing sound is only audible on layers of reality which no mortal should be able to hear. Olivia can hear it without issue.

"Address me as Xhruut. I will carry your passenger wherever you would have me take him, but to where would that be?"

What a stunningly reasonable question to which Olivia has no good answer.

"Thank you, Xhruut. Um, how about fifteen miles that way -" Olivia gestures roughly away from where she remembers the explosion coming from, "and land somewhere that seems reasonable? If there isn't anything to land on feel free to try somewhere else, I'll be finding you through the summoning spell link. If you end up needing to find me, you can use this to see magic and trace back to me the same way." She pulls a bead on a string out of midair and holds it out to the bird. 

"A simple task. I will await you there. This passenger of yours, should I permit him to direct me? I can reach many places here where mortal feet cannot walk. Should I avoid those locations?"

Summoners sometimes get all shifty and unclear when you ask questions like 'is the person I'm carrying a captive who should be held in place or are they an ally who can wander around if they want to'. Xhruut has no interest in another confusingly messy contract where the summoner says they did it wrong and they say they did everything they were asked to do. Asking about natural prisons might get the information they need? If the summoner wants the passenger to wander around, he's probably not to be detained.

"Here, let's start getting his equipment loaded while I answer your questions," Olivia says, heading back into the main room with the hydroponics. 

"Kumoi, this is Xhruut, who will be carrying you out of the blast range," Olivia says, "and Xhruut, this is Kumoi."

"Kumoi knows more than I do about this world, so listen to his suggestions if he has any? And please don't, like, put him on a deserted ledge with no way off, I guess? I intend to meet you both but I could be delayed by whatever this is. It's not likely but just in case."

The summoning spell will last twelve hours and that's more than enough time for Olivia to get Gate back, so really almost anywhere will be fine if everything goes well. If things go badly she wants Kumoi to end up somewhere he can be okay, or as okay as is possible.

"I shall endeavor not to. Kumoi, the passenger. I greet you."

The bird shakes its wings and the thin mist surrounding it billows out into a denser cloud right behind it. "Carry your equipment and yourself in here. Worry not at the space. It will fit."

Anyone in the mist can look around without issue, though looking in from the outside will only show faint and unclear hints of movement within the mist. Looking down reveals a generically misty support, impossible to see the details of, which feels a bit fluffy and feather-y to the touch. There is no shortage of space — the mist barely looks like it could fit one person but it just keeps going as you walk through.

"Tell me or jump deliberately if you want off."

"I greet you as well, strange creature." He wanders over into the mist. "What's this stuff made of? It's like a solid fog."

"This spell calls some of my space as well as myself. Within reality it looks like this."

Flutter: the mist shifts and comes together into a shadow. Another flutter and it pulls itself out in the form of feathers. "I can vary it somewhat if you would prefer a different style, summoner."

"However you prefer," Olivia shrugs.

Having an opinion on the style of Xhruut's riding space sounds like having an opinion on someone's clothes, except even more fraught. 

That's... not really an answer to his question? It's evidently some sort of bigger-on-the-side technological artifact made of smart matter. What does 'summoner' mean?

"I'm afraid I still don't understand such wonders as this. Regardless, we probably ought to be heading away. I shall see you later, Olivia."

In that case it will revert to mist, now blowing in an invisible wind.

Close inspection will reveal that the wind which seems to be affecting any given volume of mist is not constant. Even closer examination may eventually reveal that some of the mist is vanishing and other parts of the mist seem to be coming in from nowhere. Olivia's sense may note that the apparent wind affecting the mist forms a continuous map of wind speeds in the four-dimensional ball surrounding Xhruut while keeping every bit of mist moving, in an effect which is not possible with a three-dimensional ball. Alice has picked steeds who can keep themselves entertained while waiting.

None of those entertainment methods included thought detection. Xhruut will remain wholly unaware of Kumoi's confusion.

"So we ought."

"Goodbye, see you later!" 

With Kumoi's departure, Olivia can turn her attention to the ominous explosion.

She's not really sure what to look for. Hostility, maybe? She's more worried about mechanical indifference but that's harder to spot. So, keeping her ordinary (and less ordinary) senses peeled and not quite at top speed, she Navigates her way towards the source of the noise she heard. Staying firmly in three dimensional space and turning down routes involving teleportation shortcuts: she wants warning if she's approaching anything dangerous. 

The shortest route to the source of the noise involves flying out of the large gap in the wall to her left and up and around the building. Her destination is above and to one side. It will require some complicated maneuvering to reach, especially once she re-enters the building itself. She does not detect any danger within the (much shorter) range of her hostile intent domain sense.

Out and up and around she goes; with two different flying Aspects active at once, complicated maneuvering is not an issue at all. If and when her shorter-range domain sense finds any hostile intent, she's going to stop there and reassess.

Her navigation directs her up a few miles and toward a strange diagonal shaft on the side of the building.

A couple hundred feed above her, and further inside the building, are some dozens of instances of danger and hostile intent! It is a cold and mechanical intention to exterminate all <illegal lifeforms>. The minds producing it are pretty alien and removed from anything human.

There is also a distinct source of hostility, rapidly moving downward inside the building. This one is driven by... personal grievance? Racial animus? Some mixture of the two. They are much less alien, but still probably not human.

Also, perhaps half a mile below her, a ?man? hangs off the edge of the building. He's climbing up the side of what looks to be a large radio antenna. He's outside the range of her domain sense.

The primary aggressor might be moving rapidly, but she's Hasted, so she's faster. Unfortunately, that isn't going to cut it when it comes to navigating the twisty passages inside the building without any kind of map. And Navigate isn't much good at tracking moving targets.

Instead, Olivia casts her second-best teleportation spell, and blinks down to level with the top of the antenna. Does the ?man? have any hostile intent?

The man has hostile intent toward the other moving person and all members of his ?species?.

He also has hostile intent toward her now! He notices her almost immediately, like really incredibly quickly, even given her time acceleration. His intentions are much more 'wtf is this thing, how and why did it suddenly appear, is it <incomprehensible>' than 'I hate you'. His body does, in fact, move several times faster than a human's, but not thirty times faster, so his movement is still much slower than her ability to react to it. His hand is reaching down toward his side, where there is a holstered gun of some sort.

Warding Gesture, dropping one of the layers of her layered wards for a ward against him specifically. That might not be a good idea, because if he shoots her he'll have a bad time with the reflected impact, but it's by now reflex, not thought, to ward herself against harm.

She follows that up, a hundredth of a second later, with a Message link, and says, "Peace!". The link carries with it her emotions and intentions: that she means no harm, that though she doesn't understand the nature of this conflict she will prevent harm if she can, that she is much more worried about his safety in any conflict than her own.

What? Does she have some way to send direct messages over the network? Well, to be fair, he can do that, but also it's not showing up in his logs? He can't turn off the communication? Also, what is she? She looks human but what are all those things on her body? They're probably not the part of the City, they're too varied and strange. Tiny tiny creatures crawling all over her.

He does seem to have a working data link with her. He'll use the Builder language matrix. For their link to be this high bandwidth, it's likely she knows it. If she doesn't, he'll try something else.

Olivia receives a large chunk of data in a very unusual format from the man. Her message magic will helpfully translate this to...

...

A really fantastically large number of words of translated text. Unfortunately, her mind cannot process this much information at once, so it will be read to her sequentially. (Progress: 0%)

5B 6F 17 56 92 D3 7E 81 E3 30 C1 81 3C BC 82 8C 1D F1 BC A5 25 69 59 EA 89 1E D9 9B 4C DF F6 AB
90 AF 04 55 1E 1F 99 3D 50 A5 03 E8 4E E9 99 55 0F F4 D0 BA 8F DF 37 83 8C 80 F2 2C 77 CD 93 8A

4D A7 3B A1 FF 38 5B 83 C7 40 81 4E FA 57 04 11 77 F8 50 47 B9 14 CD 9A C1 7D F1 31 4E 9F BB D0

00 1A 2B 3C 4D 5E 00 16 3E AA BB CC 08 00

60 00 00 00 00 2A 06 40
20 01 0D B8 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 50
20 01 0D B8 00 01 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 10

C8 DE 1A 0B 00 00 A3 F1 00 00 B2 04 50 18 20 00 8F 3C 00 00

It continues for a while. (Progress: 0%)

P R I V M S G # ビ ル ダ ー FA DF B2 4B C1 A8 4B 95 99 EC 8E 33 58 6E 58 2C : 何 プ ロ ト コ ル

And it keeps going... (Progress: 0%)

The translation magic is really struggling here. It's a hideously complicated network protocol? Of some sort? Also there's probably some actual language in there but it's going at Olivia's maximum comprehension speed and this is just not fast compared to the amount of data. The actual details are simultaneously interesting and completely worthless, at least given her level of knowledge.

That! That looks like it's hex data. Plus a message header, probably?

I think this is mostly formatting data, to start with, he offers to Olivia. Probably Central and the rest of the party would be better equipped to parse through all of this. I can walk us through setting up a high-bandwidth datalink through the discord to pass this all through.

This is machine data, that honestly makes a lot more sense. 

Setting up the datalink to Base isn't difficult, but unfortunately that in itself doesn't fix the problem that the Message is only doling out the data at human parsable speeds to her, so she's limited in how much she has to copy across at a time.

Back to Nate: Do you suppose there's a way to add a summons or something to the link that Message would be willing to speed up for?

He considers it.

Nate-Central considers.

Nate-Central brings it up with Bob, who then loops Tessa into the conversation given she's the standing expert on Message.

In the end, Olivia's mini-Nate communicates their conclusion: A modcog equipped with high-density language and Scribe-quality reading should be able to get it started, and if more bandwidth is needed they can expand with self-summoning. There should be a blueprint in your Pocket.

And then he'll wordlessly transmit the mental motions necessary to loop the resulting cogs into her Message with the ?android?, using her discord admin privileges as an intermediary.

She assembles the Cog and loops it into the Message, which gains it's own (faster-progressing) progress bar.

The rate of information transfer to the cog is much faster than it is to Olivia. Even so, it's not particularly fast. Perhaps another few (subjective) minutes until it's done.

The first few seconds of processing reveal an extremely complicated set of instructions. Many are for network and communication, though many are also of unclear purpose. Somewhere wrapped deep within them, comparatively a very small section, is a collection of packets whose protocol seems to match that of the Internet Protocol, Version 6 (IPv6) Specification.

Huh! That's an odd overlap between universes. With the cog's help, they're getting through the message at a reasonable speed. 

Olivia, because she controls the spell, can refuse the buffered message on her own behalf. With the message link between herself and the ?man? open again, she replies: "Thank you. In a few minutes I will finish parsing your data message. Was there anything more urgent than that for us to discuss?"

That's a bizarre response. Why would someone have a personal link with such high bandwidth without the processing speed to handle a language matrix that needs it?

He will try the Cluster's language matrix instead. It's made for normal humans. I asked a lot of questions. Shortlist in order of relevance: Who are you? What are you? What do you want? Why are you forcing direct communication with me?

The gun is now in his hand.

Introductions!

"My name is Olivia, and I am an explorer, a traveler from far away, and a magic user. What name do you go by, and what brought you here?"

"I came here in pursuit of knowledge and understanding, and to teach my magic, and to help those who need it. I apologize for forcing communication - I heard an explosion a few seconds ago and want to learn more about what caused it and why. Also, I was concerned that you would attempt to harm me and that you would come to harm as a result; my personal shields will reflect any attack."

He's not really less confused but it's a start.

I am Killy. I am looking for the Net Terminal Gene. Do you possess it? Have you heard of humans who can see letters and images with no physical interface?

I do not know what 'magic' is. The explosion was caused by the firing of my weapon. I am not sure whether I will attempt to harm you. If you are friendly, as you say, it seems unlikely.