And they find themselves -

Well. Not in Boston. In the wilderness somewhere; there's a sparse pine forest, and a lot of mud, and it's eerily quiet. 

"Motherfucker. That was supposed to be the easy part!"

Also holy fuck, outside is big. He can't maintain awareness of the whole room he's in because it is incomprehensibly large in every direction. All four of them instinctively shift to face away from each other.

"More people went out the gates in the last twenty minutes than have ever gone out in one day before. Maybe it--wore out somehow."

"Doesn't matter. We're out. We just need to find some civilization, get on the phone, and our folks will buy us plane tickets home. It'll be a funny story a month from now."

Somehow in all the frantic work of the last several weeks Marcy ended up--not thinking they wouldn't get out, exactly, but not being able to imagine being out. This doesn't seem any stranger than if they had shown up at their actual exit point because anything that isn't more of the same is maximally strange. But Abigail always knows what to say to keep the rest of them going. She nods. "Right. Let's pick a direction and get moving."

Marcy scans the horizon for any sign of people, contemplates asking Abigail to give Kevin (the tallest of the squad) a vision boost. Their bodies and power-sharers are brimming with mana, because there was no point leaving any in the central enclave sink in the doomed school.

With a bit of a boost they can see a stone fortress on a hill a long ways off, and some isolated houses in the valley behind it.

And, in the other direction, a really weird force-bubble of some kind.

Kevin spots the force-bubble first. "That's . . . weirdly public."

"Maybe it's disguised to mundanes somehow. Or we're so deep in the middle of nowhere they're not worried about anyone walking up. Let's go to those buildings, they look--habitable, at least." And presumably inhabited by wizards if at all, with the blatantly magic bubble right there.

They all set off for the fortress at the steady jog of extremely fit teenagers who could stand to warm themselves up a bit. It's really cold here, at least compared to the seasonless uniformity of the Scholomance.

It's a long ways off, but once they're clear of the trees and heading towards it they get noticed. Five people approach on - force-horses, which they appear to be riding like normal horses but which are definitely some kind of spell; their misty hooves don't actually touch the ground. 

They open fire (from longbows) when they're still a quarter mile away. Innocent human teenagers just out for a jog, sure. 

Argh fuck they're definitely in the middle of nowhere with no mundanes and apparently strangers aren't welcome. She's not about to start a fight with five adults on their turf while she's trespassing; she puts up both hands and yells "We're here by accident! We mean no harm!" in one language after another until they respond.

The others follow her lead; Franklin puts up a shield for the whole group because he's the one who's supposed to do that in this sort of circumstance because he can do it the cheapest. (He's expecting the arrows to be enchanted to pack more punch than regular arrows, not that he'd want to get hit with one either way.)

The arrows are fired from a holy longbow with other magic on it, and would, in fact, do more damage than normal arrows, though the shield knocks them all away easily enough.

"It's a trick."

      "No kidding. Hold your fire anyway."

"- under protest, sir."

      "They just put up a shield; it'll be easier to hit them anyway once it has expired. And it could be a lost patrol."

"That lost their uniforms?"

     "The lack of uniforms is actually if anything weirder if those are demons! They could easily have disguised themselves with uniforms!"

"It's probably a distraction so someone else can try something somewhere else."

The arrows stop. The adults do not approach. An explanation is not forthcoming. 

In lieu of an explanation, actually, there are some mals approaching from the other direction! Unfamiliar ones; human-height, acidic slime, hard for the eye to track, carrying metal spears.

Kevin spots them first and opens fire (actually it's lightning). "Four on our six! Big ones." And either dumb as hell or even stronger than they look, if they're going after four adults in the open. Best not to assume the former.

Abigail tries to blind the mals with a stream of French.

Franklin shifts the power flow to the shield to strengthen it on the side facing the mals and chants in Latin to surround the mals with a sphere of inward-crushing force.

Marcy keeps one eye on the wizards, but if it looks like the others don't have the problem in hand she can pull a gun that shoots shurikens of solid light and join in.

"- that doesn't, in fact, mean they're not demons. Most demon-killing is in fact done by demons."

         "I'm actually most baffled by the lightning. Maybe there are some poor demon sorcerers out there with lightning spells but why would they use them."

                    "Could've just looked like lightning -"

         "Nah, the babaus ignored it like lightning, too."

                                "If they're fighting demons at the border we have treaty obligations."

"Surely not if they are literally themselves demons."

                                "No, but we don't in fact know that for sure. They could absolutely be a very lost adventuring party."

"Of all spellcasters."

     "The one on the left isn't a sorcerer, she's just using an item."

"This is a trap labelled 'trap' and you're all going 'hmm, traps aren't usually labelled, maybe it's not a trap'."

         "I'm going to call backup."

(The mals were, apparently, foolish; they aren't easy to kill, but they are distinctly killable.)

(Kevin switches from lightning to fire when the lightning fails to do what lightning should.)

(The shurikens aren't electric; they're just glowing temporary constructs. When your affinity is projectiles you get good at disposable ammo.)

Once the mals are dead she puts the gun back in her pocket and goes back to miming, if not harmlessness, at least peaceful intent. Did it look like any of her eight languages got through at all or do the others need to start trying?

Franklin tentatively takes the shield down now that there's no immediate incoming from either direction.

Backup will have someone who has third circle spells and can prepare Tongues, in case the obvious trap is not a trap. It'll take a while for backup to ride out and catch up with them, though. In the meantime a couple more demons will try to make their way across the barrier; they shoot them.

"It may look like a nalfashnee, but or all you know, it's just a lost adventuring party," the archer says, putting a dozen arrows in a nalfashnee.

     "None of us have seen through the illusion, yes? And we've all tried? Maybe it's not an illusion."

"That is true, it could be a polymorph."

And then backup arrives and they stop quibbling and ride closer. 

"This is Fort Traves," a voice yells in English when they're in yelling range. "Identify yourselves."

"Marcy Park, Boston enclave, today's Scholomance graduating class," she yells back. "We did not intend to trespass; our exit gate sent us to the wrong point and we're lost."

"- haven't heard of Boston, haven't heard of the Scholomance, you landed at the Worldwound. Do any of you urgently need food, shelter, or medical attention."

What. Is there an enclave in Siberia that hasn't interacted with the rest of the world in three hundred years? But they have someone who speaks English for the spells?

"Not urgently; if you have a telephone we need to call our families, though. What is the Worldwound?"

"I do not know what a telephone is. The Worldwound is the hole in the world through which hostile inhuman monsters of the Abyss escape and try to eat everybody."

They're in range for divinations, now. The mysterious sorcerers are Lawful Good. This is - a significant point to their credit, if it's not faked, which it might be.

(These adults are not dressed like people who've had any contact with the rest of the world in three hundred years. They're wearing and wielding a reasonable number of fancy magic artifacts, if anyone can see that.)