"A lot of Spires are pretty keen on astronomy, some on geometry in both senses, the League enjoy dropping things off tall buildings and writing dramatic plays about it, there are a lot of related principles that go into boat building and navigation; I get the feeling that your use of the word encompasses more than that, though?"

"It does... dramatic plays about it??"

"Yeah, the League will turn anything into a play. It's probably a good idea too, I don't think I'd have remembered the thing about the feather and the steel weight if it hadn't been a dramatic play with two rival guilds betting on the outcome and attempting to sabotage each other, while the Wise Doctor was just trying to figure out the truth?"

"I suppose I have no idea if that's an effective pedagogical technique or not. But yeah, laws of physics is more general than that."

"I suspect most of the people who actually want to get things done with that kind of thinking go to the colleges of magic, yes. Any particular highlights that you'd like to share?"

The music is clearer now; someone's practicing scales on a brass instrument of some kind, presumably quite loudly to carry through the forest like this.

"Everything is gravitationally attracted to everything else proportionally to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them."

Allegra blinks a couple of times and waves her hands vaguely, attempting to make sense of this statement.

"...things apart come together?" she says, after a few moments.

"The force isn't that strong unless you're talking about stars and planets and such but yes."

"I mean, that is from the stars - it's the law of the Chalice, one of the constellations."

"Huh. What are the rest of them?"

"Things hold together; the Chain. Things apart come together; the Chalice. Things bleed; the Claw." Allegra closes her eyes briefly, trying to remember the full list. "Things move and change; the Door. Things end; the Drowned Man. Things live; the Fountain." Her hand rises to her face and brushes her cheek briefly, where the Fountain is tattooed. "Things change; the Great Wyrm. Things are hidden, things are revealed; the Lock and Key. Things are not easy; the Mountain. Things endure; the Oak." She touches her belt, which has a big tree on the decorative front plate. "Things learn; the Phoenix. Things are watched from afar, things are connected; the Spider and the Web. Things matter; the Stork. Things are connected by blood; the Three Sisters. Things go awry; the Wanderer." She looks up slightly and counts on her fingers.

Ugh, I've forgotten one... oh right, the Stallion, things procreate." She looks mildly embarrassed about that. "I don't really use that one very often."

"Some of those do sound sort of like - poetic laws of physics. Some of them sound more like information theory or descriptions of evolution or something."

"Well, the people most likely to be studying that kind of thing are the type of Urizeni we call Stargazers, so it stands to reason all the science we've got that's closest to being right is woven into Astronomancy."

The path opens up ahead to a lovely grassy clearing, with several circles of crude log benches around firepits, in front of tiers of neat wooden herb beds and an actually well constructed single largish wooden building, well supplied with balconies.

There are a variety of people visible, practicing musical instruments, tending the herb gardens, or just sitting around chatting. There are a couple of visible guards posted with spears, who seem to be looking out for something else.

None of them have the green veins or wooden features, most of them have at least one visible tattoo and predominantly the one with a short length of thorny branch.

Several have other interesting features, such as pointed ears, antlers, ram's horns, and patches of scales.

"This is First Voice Glade," Allegra announces. "If you can't see anything that might be a portal, I'm afraid your chances just got a lot lower.

We could head the other way down the Trod a bit or try a search pattern in the woods. Another half hour and I'd definitely call it off, that'll be twice as long the kind of temporary portal that leaves no trace at the arrival site tends to last."

A few people have glanced over at them, but nobody seems to be about to come over and talk.

"I don't see anything portalesque here."

"It's your call if we continue, I'm not convinced we'll find anything, but it's not my slender chance of getting home that's on the line."

"Is there... any prospect of getting home, ever, in like twenty years or something, if we do not find a portal today."

"If your home happens to be connected to the realms of magic and you just don't know about it yet, yes. Otherwise, we're in a completely unprecedented situation.

Or, possibly not completely unprecedented, but the last group of people who were actually people and not some other thing who mysteriously appeared did so at least a thousand years ago and did not make it home."

"Let's keep going."

"I recommend we go once round the glade here because it's easy going, then, hmm, probably back down the road towards Seren.

If you'd rather, we can head back to Foundhome and search the woods there closer to your original point of appearance but we'll lose some time getting back and have slow going through the woods; I really don't have a theory that distinguishes the probabilities between the two."

"I don't have a preference if neither's likelier."

An out of breath teenage briar catches up with them, cradling a couple of plant seedlings in neat little plugs of soil.

"Ah, thank you," Allegra says, taking the cuttings and offering them to Pelape. "Tuck them in the bag and they should make it."

Another couple of their escort emerge from the treeline and nod at the local guards.

"We could totally carry her back if it won't offend her dignity," one of them suggests.

"Uh, I'll walk, thank you." She bags the seedlings.

"Okay, let's do one lap of the Glade, then head out to Seren, and if we actually get there I can at least buy you a nice dinner to commiserate while you consider your options."

"I'd appreciate that."