Abigail has a spell that lets her sense magic, but she's not using it right now. Anyone on a horse like that is clearly wealthy and/or powerful and therefore almost certainly wearing a pile of artifice.

The Worldwound sounds immensely terrible.

Maybe they're somehow inside an enclave and the Worldwound is like their gates? That's probably insane, she's hardly an expert on what the sky looks like but she's pretty sure what's above them is that.

"Where are we relative to--the rest of Earth?"

"...the Worldwound is in the far north of the world. Which is round, and not the Elemental Plane of Earth, I'm not sure if we're having a translation issue or a deeper one. Fort Traves is on the southern border of the Worldwound, in what was formerly Sarkoris and is now a protectorate of Lastwall. The border with Ustalav's about thirty miles south of here, and the border with Mendev's about forty miles east. The Sellen runs along the border." If this is a trap it's at this point likely to be 'they're all distracted here and missing something else'. 

"We're definitely having some kind of issue. Earth is the name of the planet--big round thing with a north--that we were trying to get to, and I don't know what an elemental plane is." She hasn't heard of Sarkoris or Lastwall or Ustalav or Mendev either but that doesn't mean anything; there are loads of little countries.

"There are actually many planets, but you look human and there are many fewer of them with humans. The elemental planes are - other parts of the universe not accessible by any amount of travel in a direction, even for a very long time, but only by planar transit magic. This is also true of the Outer Planes, usually, though right now there is a rift to the Abyss here so I guess the Abyss is technically accessible without planar transit magic right now."

This explanation is interrupted by someone spotting some invisible crossing coloxus demons. Everyone pauses in being confused to murder those.

Pausing a conversation to do a bit of murder is the most normal thing that's happening right now. Once that's done: "Were the elemental planes and the outer planes constructed deliberately, or naturally occurring? The Scholomance, where we were this morning, is a thing like the planes and it was constructed."

"The word we use for deliberately constructed other planes is demiplanes. Spellcasters can learn to make those. Very powerful people can make large and permanent ones at great expense. The elemental planes and outer planes are older than this world, but I don't know if some god made them or what, exactly. I'm neither a historian nor a theologian. This is a Worldwound fort. We fight the Abyssal demons."

So: they're on an alien planet with alien humans. Getting home is going to be either difficult or impossible. There are enclaves and mals and also other dimensions, one of which is apparently chock full of mals, and there's a portal to the Mal Dimension right here. Also their parents are going to think they're dead and then be so fucking confused when they hear from everyone who saw them go out the gate.

She turns to confer with the others.

"Too bad El isn't here; I bet she could break the Abyss off the portal the same way she did the Scholomance."

"That would be pretty cool, yeah. I think we should assume it's going to be a giant research project to get home from here." Because 'giant research project' is something that will keep Marcy and the others feeling like they have a goal to move towards but also because she does in fact want to give researching it a go; if the Scholomance connected to this place then maybe a smaller temporary Void structure built here could connect to Earth.

"So what do we do in the meantime? Get jobs here?"

"That's not a bad plan; they'll have different spells from us so there's some good trade opportunities there too . . . wait a minute." She turns back to the spokesperson.

"If this is another planet, how do you speak English? Do you have spells for translation? Also, are the people who run this place looking to hire additional guards?"

" - yes, I am using a translation spell. And yes, we're hiring. - well, Fort Traves in particular is for people who have enlisted in the military of Lastwall or sworn oaths to a closely cooperating paladin order, but Lastwall also runs forts that hire independent adventurers, and Mendev hires independent adventurers. The Worldwound in general has too few people guarding it to keep the demons in, such that more people working on it saves lives."

Commanding the forts that take all well-intentioned comers is broadly considered one of the worst jobs ever. It is extraordinarily important and also random well-intentioned adventurers make terrible soldiers, cause fantastic amounts of creative trouble, and die in all kinds of truly bizarre ways. The last time he got drinks with a colleague who commanded Crusader's Fort the colleague had recently dealt with some sorcerers from Holomog who opened a planar rift inside the fort itself to give it positive energies so everyone would fight better. It was working perfectly, but when asked for how long it'd keep doing that the sorcerers said 'oh, you know, it varies', and when asked what would happen if it stopped the sorcerers said 'oh, you know, it varies'. And then they got very annoyed when asked to please close it. 

That sounds like more combat wizards than you get in one place on Earth, but if anything was going to get a huge group of wizards working together it would be a portal to the mal dimension. Translation magic is incredibly cool and also either makes everything they know obsolete or makes everything they know sellable; they'll need to think through the implications there once they knows how much mana it costs and whether there's anything commonplace on Earth but unknown here. Really they need to get more oriented to this place in general. 

"Can you tell us how to get to one of the forts that hires independents? Also are you interested in trading the translation spell for one of ours?" It'll be in a language she doesn't speak, but she can just learn random bits of random languages now and not get any homework in them, hah.

"Oh, are you a wizard? We took you for sorcerers. I can trade you spells. - actually, give us a minute, please -"

      "They claim they're friendly adventurers from another planet."

"Not the weirdest thing that happened this week."

      "What kind of week have you been having."

"There was that succubus who looked like my sister -"

      "No, the people from another world are definitely a lot weirder than that."

"See if that's how you feel about it when it's your sister."

       "- anyway. The location of Crusader's Fort isn't a secret, right, sir? I may as well give it to them?"

                 "Go ahead. Crusader's Fort will be better equipped to vet them, too. They can make it there safely?"

       "They seemed to think so."

                   "Right, then, the patrol can return to their usual duties, you can see they get good directions, and the poor heroes at Crusaders can sort things out."

"I can trade you spells," the man says again, switching back to English. "Crusader's Fort is about thirty miles east of here. If you stick by the barrier you won't miss it, though you will run into a lot of demons and some other patrols that will take you for disguised demons. If you go south along the Sellen you'll be safer, though it'll take longer. You don't want to cross the Sellen here. We administer southern Sarkoris; across the river it's Ustalav, and not as safe to wander around in."

"I don't know the difference between a wizard and a sorcerer but 'wizard' translated as the thing that we are. How many miles is it if we follow the river? We don't want to cause trouble with the other patrols but we didn't pack any food. Also, any particular thing you want in a spell other than 'good for combat'?"

"My blinding spell is good for stopping groups so you can pick them off one at a time, if you don't mind that French is one of those languages where you have to sound all casual about it. I don't know if translation magic gets around that kind of thing."

"Wizards can learn spells from one another, sorcerers mostly can't. Fifty miles, I think, if you go by the river? I don't know a mass blinding spell, don't know why the language it's spoken in would be a complicating factor at all though maybe that's a sign we're misunderstanding each other again, and will definitely get you some food in addition to Tongues if you have a mass blinding spell. What circle is it at?"

" . . . I don't know what it means for a spell to be at a circle."

"Is it a measurement of mana draw? I don't even know what it is in our units, it's not one of the ones that's pointless to learn out of affinity but it's not so easy a fourteen-year-old could cast it."

"I think you first picked it up at sixteen? Cost scales by number of targets and they don't all need to be next to each other but it doesn't get anything you don't know is there."

" - right, aliens. Our wizards learn spells that stabilize in specific topological configurations - did that translate - and they translate to how much power you need to cast them....also sixteen is young to be casting any but the weakest spells, did you had a really rough couple of years in there?"

Topology is a math thing, right? She looks at Franklin.

"That's not how our spells work. Only a very few of our kind of spell involves topology at all. It seems possible we won't be able to learn each other's magic without a lot of up-front work."

"I agree; if we want to do this we should try to teach you ours first so if it only goes one way you can pay us in food. Also where we're from mals go after teenagers specifically because they're weak; anyone with any magic basically has to have started learning before they're fourteen and go as fast as they can from there or they're dead meat." How does this planet have a portal to the mal dimension and also enough slack not to teach their kids fast. Maybe "demiplanes" are easier to secure than enclaves and kids just don't go outside.