Well. This is emphatically not what she expected to see in her new world. She expected- well, she's not sure, but definitely not a place of Maximum Ominousness. She's very glad she decided to show up in a coat despite the relatively warm weather back home. She can feel that her clothes are sitting differently on her than she's used to, but it looks like she didn't change height at all, and conveniently her boots still fit and her hands seem to be the same size.

She had planned to pull out her phone and look at her new face with it, but the sheer Creepy Vibes of where she landed mean that she almost instantly forgets about that and quickly glances around to see if there's anything she should be worried about in immediate view.

A bit further down the path, there's a hill covered with creepy menhirs. There's a little altar in front of it with grooves cut in it, and that's where the path ends. Does that count as something to be worried about?

Not imminently? She's absolutely going to investigate that whole thing soon. But it doesn't look urgent enough that she can't take half a second to see what her face looks like, and get a bit of a better sense of how her body's changed.

And- start actually thinking of herself by the new name she picked. It's objectively kind of a dorky one, she thinks, but she likes it anyway. And she thinks thinking of herself by a new name will be easier once she has  new face to put to it. She pulls out her phone and looks at her face in the camera app, and-

Oh. She. She looks right. Her face isn't too tremendously changed. But it's shaped she way she actually wants, now. She's pretty and looks like a girl and has- the exact flavor of beauty that she wanted. There's no niggling little flaws.

Suddenly it's a lot easier to think of herself by her new name, now that she has a new face.

Alethia. Truth. It's- honestly it feels kind of chuuni. But- what's the point of being alive if you never let yourself be a bit chuuni? Yeah, sure, she got the idea from the alethiometer in His Dark Materials. Sue her, it's cool.

And it means something to her. Speaks to a part of herself she's genuinely, uncomplicatedly proud of.

So. Alethia.

Her body really isn't all that changed. She can feel that her jeans are notably tighter around her hips, so those got widened. But her hips were wide for a man to start with, and they still fit without too much stretching. They're probably pretty tight around her butt now, though. Fortunately they're made of that new material that stretches some despite appearing to be old-fashioned denim from a distance.

She presses against her chest through her coat. Yeah, she has breasts now. Not large ones, but they're Definitely There. And- yeah. Her muscles are still there too. Her shoulders seem less broad, given that her coat isn't ever-so-slightly-too-tight anymore, but is rather just the tiniest bit loose. So her bone structure has changed a decent amount. But- not in a way that feels uncomfortable. It probably should, given that it's new, but that aegis of metanarrative protection is worth its metanarrative weight in metanarrative gold and is preventing that.

She's happy, for a moment. Uncomplicatedly, straightforwardly. Sure, she's landed in Strange Ominous Place, but she feels comfortable in her skin. Those endlessly niggling insecurities seem to just actually be quiet. Huh. She guesses the reason they never quite shut up before is- well, she might have been relatively satisfied with how she looked, for a man. But- for a man. And relatively. And having neither of those qualifiers really is lovely.

But. There are those ominous menhirs there, and she’s in the middle of the most ominous looking place she’s ever seen. And she really should work on getting a bit more oriented. Hell, she’s apparently got narrative all over her life now and she landed a short jaunt from some stuff that looks kind of Plotty.

She’d be worried about things maybe having somehow gone wrong, but landing a place like this doesn’t actually feel like it rules out a world that’s going to be good for her. What’s important is people she gets along with, problems to solve, and the ability to do each. Her landing area looking spiffy really isn’t one of them.

She is more than a little bit on edge, regardless. The atmosphere really is something.

Onward to the menhirs, and the altar.

It's a fairly small altar, about two handspans long. Little more than a flat stone put atop a couple relatively flat rocks. It's a sickly green color, mottled like ore.

There's a presence around it, that hisses like static in her head. It's cold and aged and wrong. Turned inwards on itself. Her instincts are screaming not to get any closer.

Yeah, okay, she is one hundred percent listening to those instincts. Is the altar haunted is that's what's going on here? She has no idea how to dispel a haunting, even if her metanarrative powers guarantee she wouldn't be actually wounded by it. And messing with a ghost is, like, the archetypal mistake.

But. Are her instincts saying anything more specific than "don't get closer"?

Cold grey skies, scraggly trees, and now a haunted altar. If she didn't know better she'd think she was in fucking Sylvania or something.

When she pays closer attention, she's pretty sure she's getting the equivalent of rad ticks from a geiger counter from her mental defenses and physical poison immunity. It's low-level, but there.

Well, this is remarkably ungood. Right now she's pretty sure she's basically just a normal person, minus the super-strength, defences, and metanarrative protection. Admittedly those are some pretty substantial things to minus, but still. Every single one of her usual heuristics for what to do in a situation like this tell her to back the heck off and not disturb the Obviously Cursed Altar. Actually, said heuristics are using notably stronger language than "heck."

Sheeee is going to go along with those instincts for now. She doesn't think the narrative situation would allow for disturbing this to cause her to unleash an unstoppable horror that devoured a city but it absolutely would allow for her to end up needing to spend a week tracking it down to prevent it from hurting anyone.

She still doesn't really feel comfortable just abandoning the situation, though. Does it feel like the rad ticks are changing in frequency? If she steps away a bit does it follow her or does it stick to that altar?

It's fairly steady. If she steps away a bit the feeling lessens; it seems to center on the altar.

Okay. Probably interfering with this situation while she has no idea how to do so productively is more likely to cause a problem than leaving it well enough alone. She's going to back away and follow the path in its opposite direction and look around for anything that looks like it might indicate civilization. Omniglot should help if they don't speak English here, which she expects they don't.

The cairns fall away behind her. 

The pathway meanders on between hill after hill. There's really a lot of hills. There's a crow after maybe twenty minutes' walk, but no other signs of life...

Until eventually there's a small copse of trees, with a signpost nailed to one of them. 

It looks like it's in a vaguely slavic language. That's a number of distance, probably a small one because it's only one digit, and the rest is probably a name of a town? 

With only one word on the sign, and that probably a proper noun, it seems even Omniglot can't quite translate.

Well, that's not ideal. Hopefully it's not that Omniglot has just decided not to work and once people are actually talking to her it'll work fine.

She'll follow the road to the probably-town that's probably not too far away. She hopes the single digit isn't "nine" with a distance in leagues.

Hmm. Is she getting any diffuse hard-to-notice pings off of her defences, actually? The entire area kind of looks somehow cursed, but is it cursed enough that her defences are, uh, reacting to in a way she can notice?

There are occasional very small pings if she pays close attention, but not a lot of them. It seems to mostly be an ordinary spooky hilly landscape. 

... Was something moving up on that hill?

Her gaze suddenly locks onto the hill, scrutinizing it for signs of motion. Actually, she can suddenly listen as hard as she can for any noises too.

The flicker of movement is gone now.

She doesn't hear anything but the sigh of wind.

Well, that's incredibly concerning. How about she constantly scan her surroundings from here on out. Just in case.

Nothing disturbs her. 

The road winds onwards through the hills.

Eventually, she hears cawing. There's a small flock of crows over that way. Wonder what they're interested in.

She does wonder! She also kind of dreads the answer.

She's going to check anyway, though. Does she have to leave the path she's following by all that much to investigate? She's, uh, also going to try to be quiet while approaches. She's- kind of worried.

There's a turn around the hill, a dozen yards away from the path or so.

A dead hare lies in a low spot. It's got a bloody gash out of its belly and there are three crows bickering over the remains, cawing raucously and pecking at the corpse.

Oh! This is. Completely normal! Thank goodness. She was afraid it would be someone hanging on a tree or something.

She breathes a great sigh of relief and continues on towards the town she's presumably walking towards.

She's still actively scanning her surroundings though. Just in case.

There's nothing but hills and more path. The occasional leafless tree. Fortunately, there don't seem to be any more of the menhirs she saw earlier. 

A shadow moves behind her.