She swears, vociferously, as - 

Well, she doesn't even know what that was, except that it felt like there might have been between two and an infinity of her for a singular, eternal moment, before she landed in a damn desert.  And her without her waterskin, and in her formal robes, not her travel robes.  Blast it.  She'll have to improvise.  At least she has been to a desert before, during her youth; she knows some of the tricks to surviving.

At least she had enough pockets for her important things and she hadn't been passing any around.  And...there's no sign of Nerat?  (Who is no longer an Archon, in her mind.)  Which could be good or bad.

She turns in a circle from her position at the top of a small hill, looking for --

...

Sweet merciful ancients what the fuck is all of that!

A city.

Far off in the distance and on the horizon from here, gleaming metal and glass in the setting summer sun. Small shapes flit through the towers, barely visible through the haze. A thousand lights shine from within the glass, steadier and brighter than any torch. High above, a long thin shape like an arrow slowly arcs downwards, leaving a trial of smoke. It's painted blue and white, but too distant to see in much detail. Another is climbing, rising from its place somewhere deep in the city. And in the desert heat there is the distant sense of something incredibly heavy- A low rumble of background noise that seems to spread from the place, a hint of something acrid and unwanted on the wind.

The distant city is vast, vast. She can see the tops of the towers, dozens of them, but surrounded by thousands more smaller constructions. Square blocks of stone, growing shabbier and more irregular the further they are from the core. She must be miles and miles away from the place, and yet it's so huge as to take up a good portion of the horizon. Closer at hand there are signs of neglect. A crumbling concrete block, and an old barrel full of trash. A raised stone - road? - in the distance, worn and cracked and partially collapsed. Tracks of some sort in the dust, relatively fresh.

Something perhaps like the Oldwalls and the Spires, were they new.  And such a wealth of metal it's used for discardable containers!

She doesn't like the smell, but at least it's not shit.

...Well, she may as well follow the - strange cart-track?

The desert continues to be hot and unwelcoming, but the track is reasonably clear at least.

It comes to a junction after a minute. There's a pair of long ramps that join the raised road. There are a couple burnt-out metal husks of something boxy and wagonish surrounding the area. Atop the high-way is some sort of camp, a few tents at least, and a figure walking back and forth dressed in covering tan garb and carrying a long weapon of some sort. Masked. They're obviously being deliberately visible, a lookout and a warning. They stare directly at her but don't look especially aggressive or alarmed.

Interesting that these - boxy metal things - is that an axle?  She thinks it is - were burnt like that.  She'd almost expect the Chorus, but it doesn't look like their fire.

And then - the watchman.

"Ahoy the watch!  Sorry to trouble you, but I've gotten a bit off-track - you mind telling me where the absolute fuck I've fetched up?"

Who does not dare, cannot win.

A nod to Ophelia's right, towards the city, and a slight gesture with the weapon. "Cinci's that way. Nice duds, not really a great fit for the badlands. You some kind of tourist, head? Lost your muscle? Got peeps who'd pay to see you home safe?" The voice sounds feminine.

Her voice sounds, if anything, archaic.

...There is a moment as she attempts to decode the novel words, only to give half of them up for a bad job.

"I suspect that if you knew any of the people who would pay to see me returned to the task I was previously attending to, which the..." She places the descriptive words delicately, "grievous breakdown thereof, brought me here, you would rather wish you didn't."  And she doesn't see the Interloper, either.  This does not seem to be Terratus.  There's still, perhaps, the faint echo of a buzz in her teeth, and she still feels her magic, though unpacking the memorized copies of old lore into spellwork beyond her best-known Sigils will take time if she has to do it herself.  "But as far as your question about misplaced muscle...I like to think I can handle myself, in a pinch."

Some kind of corpo 'crat? Who the fuck knows. She doesn't want it to come bite her, she know that much.

"...Sure, okay. We mind ourselves out here. Don't start none, won't be none."

"An eminently reasonable standard."

And it's good to know she's managed to convey enough 'don't fuck with me' that they expect such information to be necessary.

"Might I approach the camp?  I imagine your lungs must be getting a bit tired of projecting this far."  Indeed, she has been carefully standing exactly where they first noticed eachother the whole time, almost eerily still, hands clasped before her and staff planted in the sands.

(She, by way of contrast, has a positive barrel of tricks for speaking to be heard, and something almost akin to a forge-bind with herself to push them beyond limits instinct would balk to breach, but reason permits.)

"I don't fucking know you, okay? Go to the Bordertown if you want conversation."

"Which would require me to be oriented, bringing ourselves back to the original question I raised."

There's a strange note of...almost wistful pride?  That slips into her voice, from the watchwoman telling her off.

"Which is to say, I will need directions, if you wish to send me some specific elsewhere from your bivouac.  It's rather hard to entirely miss..." she languidly waves a hand at the city, "All of that, if you'd just rather be rid of me, but as I said prior, I am unfortunately...misplaced, and worse, without a decent map."

"Look, head, I don't know what game you're playing but we're not a charity. It's hard to fucking miss. The buildings outside of Tower's perimiter. That's Bordertown. And unless you have drugs or some shit to sell, you ought to get going before Rex starts wondering who I'm gabbing with."

"Ah.  My mistake.

"Really, I ought to trade at least for water, making that trek, but I've a suspicion that I've nothing you'd want, unless you happen to be wanting for metals, or writing supplies."

"...If they're as classy as your robe thing, might be worth something! Collector's shit, like. Okay, sure, you can come closer and show me, but don't come up the ramp, just down below the highway."

...Sure, she can, faintly bemusedly, show them - those are literal actual scrolls and a glass vial of ink like you'd use with a quill pen.

They're not - specifically ornamented, but they are each of them unique.

And if the other side of the transaction happens to know what vellum is, well, it's quite possible that the scrolls are intensely valuable to the idle rich, in an age where nature is for sale.

Another has joined the first figure by now. Presumably Rex. He's a bare chested man, heavily tattooed and with two colorful hard spikes a few inches long sticking out of his head just above the ears, and also carrying a rifle. He glares suspiciously.

They peer down at her stuff and discuss it for a bit, then conclude, yeah, antiques. Fancy paper, maybe vellum or a real convincing synthetic if not. Rich people are into that stuff. Or not. Who knows. Worth buying, it's interesting even if it ends up not being a profit.

The conclusion is, "Fifty bucks per scroll! Twenty for the ink and if you have a real old quill or something. I'll give you my spare canteen, full, and a ration pack for twenty bucks back off that number."

She'll trade a scroll; she has quite the surfeit of them, given what she had intended to be doing today.  "It's real vellum, by the way.  I don't think the people that made it knew how to synthesize imitations.  Pleasure doing business with you, Rex, and...I don't recall ever learning your name, miss guard."

The spikes are very intriguing.  What purpose they serve she knows not, but she suspects they are a status symbol of sorts.

The woman snorts, Rex laughs. "You hear that, miss guard?"

"Oh, shut it! She's probably gonna get shived and dumped in a ditch anyway." She complains, while tying a brown pack, a green canteen, and three slips of paper together with a bright red rope.

She lowers it down; The canteen is painted stainless steel, the brown pack is shiny plastic with something gooey inside, the paper is green and black, very tough looking and also kind of plasticky and has the number '10' on it in amongst the odd designs and other words, like 'FREE REPUBLIC OF OHIO' and 'LIBERTY AND PROSPERITY' and 'SI VIC PACEM PARA BELLUM'.

"That's all then. Tie the scroll to the rope, then move along before the convoy gets here to pick us up, yeah?"

"Politeness costs nothing," she rejoins.  "And while I sincerely doubt some random murderer will do for me, the warning's appreciated."

The package comes down, the scroll goes up.  The request to move along is made.

"Caaan do," she drawls out, getting a bit of a better feel for these folk.  "Like as not you'll run into me later, though, if the convoy's heading city-wards; I was figuring to just follow this road on in.  Shade's good.  This your people's money, by the way?  Or just what you're gettin' paid in?"

An eye-roll. "Maybe literally if you don't get out of the way. Ohio Dollars are good pretty much everywhere this side of the Badlands. State of Ohio and all. Go on, get moving."

"Ayup.  Safe travels."

And she's off.