She's in a dense forest. It's snowing, and everything within more than ten yards of her fades into blurry grey-white. The trees are leafless, and gnarled as though by intense winds, but otherwise look sturdy and healthy. Something chitters in the undergrowth but doesn't emerge. 

She can't see much of the terrain through the falling snow, but it doesn't feel mountainous. There is no sign of human habitation, at least not within ten yards in any direction. 

Huh? She can't actually think of a spell or outsider-ability that sends you to a random snowy forest without anyone touching you, short of a Wish, but that does seem to be the thing that's happened. The snowy forest rules out anywhere in Xopatl, they haven't gotten snow this bad in years, but it isn't otherwise very distinctive.

She already has Endure Elements up, so she finds a place to sit and waits for Aroden to scry her for a Teleport location. It shouldn't take much more than an hour.

She is unfortunately not quite going to get an entire hour uninterrupted. 

The rustling and chittering in the undergrowth continues intermittently, though whatever local wildlife is making the noises keeps out of sight for a while. It's not until three-quarters of an hour have passed that some of them seem to conclude that they might have found prey, and start circling her. She still can't quite get a clear look at the somethings, just flickering glimpses behind trees that don't entirely seem to line up – a vague impression of some kind of large toothy cat, but they seem to be...mostly invisible? Arazni can glimpse the angle of a head and ear here, the tip of a tail there, an elegant paw that slides in and out of visibility. The print it leaves in the snow stays put, at least for the few minutes it'll take for the falling snow to fill it in. Though the creatures investigating her probably won't wait that long to attack. 

(There is still no sign of Aroden.) 

Concerning. (Both the circling creatures and the lack of Aroden.)

She's completely out of spells, actually, but she wouldn't have lived long enough to learn magic if she didn't know how to defend herself without it. Her first resort: animals usually hate fire, many types of monster included. She starts gathering branches into a pile, and then lights them with a Spark, which ought to work in spite of the weather.

Without waiting to see if that deters the creatures, she draws her rapier and uses her Pearl of Power to recharge Glitterdust.

The creatures seem...a little...deterred by the fire? They don't run away, but they circle more cautiously for a while. The paw-print has time to soften and fade under more snow. 

...They are not deterred enough to leave, and eventually a couple of them are going to try leaping at her from opposite directions. They can fade to almost full invisibility for a moment or two, apparently, but if she's paying close attention, the scuffle in the snow and movement of air will be enough to warn her. 

Glitterdust stab stab and run like hell.

... well. That was the plan. She gets off the Glitterdust, but she didn't plan for two of them attacking in the same moment, from opposite directions. The one in front of her gets a rapier through the back of the throat and goes down. The one behind her lunges blindly and manages to hit her with a clawed paw, knocking her into the snow and leaving a set of scratches across her back.

(She's dazed but conscious, and bleeding but not dangerously so. She's tougher than an ordinary person. She'll be fine.)

(Probably.)

The Changelions harassing her are smart enough to know that the two-legged creatures that can make fires to warm them come in different varieties. Only some of them have the strange detachable and hidden teeth, and even when they do - even when it's a big, sharp tooth, like this one wields - a two-leg stupid or unlucky enough to be camping alone will usually go down to a pack's combined efforts. (The Tayledras scouts are not, usually, stupid or unlucky enough to go anywhere alone, even here on the relative outskirts of the Pelagirs.) 

But a few of the two-legs have more than just teeth – they have magic, and not just one kind like invisibility. They're tougher and harder to hurt, like they have an invisible armored hide, and they can kill pack members from a distance, when they wish to, with gouts of flame or lightning from nowhere. And this one, apparently, can blind you. 

The two-legs with magic aren't worth attacking. (And this pack has no way of knowing that Arazni, unlike a Velgarth mage, can be - and is - out of spells.) They scatter, with some difficulty given the Glitterdust, leaving their dying comrade bleeding into the snow. It's fully visible now, and clearly some kind of large cat, with dun fur and saber-like canines. 

Slowly, she gets back to her feet, verifies that the invisible not-jaguars are (probably) gone, and then opens her Bag of Holding and takes out a few of the emergency items Aroden gave her. She activates the wand of Cure Light Wounds and then considers her situation.

Evidently, she can't just sit here and wait for Aroden to rescue her. She could try to use her scroll of Sending to reach him, but if Aroden hasn't shown up already then either Aroden is dead, Aroden is uninterruptibly busy with something more important than her, or she is utterly beyond the power of arcane magic to reach, at least if you don't have a Wish diamond handy. (Aroden has several, but he needs them for the Veins of Creation and they both know it would be foolish to use one to rescue her instead.) She could try to Send to someone else, but anyone else she could contact would have little they could do to help her, except tell Aroden, who, again, might be dead.

She could use the scroll of Teleport*, or the Plane Shift if it turns out she's not on the Material. But even apart from the fact that she might not be able to activate them at all, she's already raised the possibility that she's too far away from home for a Teleport to reach. Sending is cheaper, so use that first.

You can Send to the dead with only a small chance of failure. Therefore: Sending to Aroden. If he's alive he'll come get her as soon as he's able. If he's dead she'll use the Teleport. If the Sending itself fails then the Teleport probably would too and she should plan on being here for the forseeable future.

In unknown location, snowy forest, unfamiliar invisible big cats. Your status? Request pickup at earliest convenience.

(*This is the spell called Greater Teleport in modern times; the "compressed" fifth-circle version hasn't been invented yet.)

She does not get an answer. 

On the bright side, if she is on another planet then it probably won't recently have had an apocalypse. (For all the good that it does her if she gets eaten by invisible jaguars.)

It's too early to sleep, so she picks the direction that seems most likely to lead out of the dense forest and starts walking.

The local wildlife is giving her a wider berth now. (Most of the Pelagirs Changecreatures are sensitive to magic, and have encountered human mages before.) The rustling in the undergrowth mostly keeps its distance. 

It takes a while, but the forest does seem to be gradually less dense, the trees straighter and less oddly twisted. There's a lot less undergrowth, and barely any deadfall wood; any paths are obscured under the blanket of snow, and any footprints wouldn't last long, but it's starting to look like you might expect if people were regularly picking over the forest floor for firewood. 

A squirrel watches her from a branch. It looks like a perfectly normal squirrel, not half-invisible at all. She probably has an hour or so of daylight left. 

When it gets too dark to walk she stops, and builds another fire, and—no, actually, she probably should not sleep out here, however badly she needs to regain spells. This precise situation is what the scrolls of Keep Watch in her Bag of Holding are for.

(She has a Ring of Sustenance, but it only does sustenance. Sleep-related abilities won't be added to the standard version of the item for several thousand more years.)

Non-magical wildlife, which is all that's nearby, knows better than to bother a human with a campfire. Arazni is left alone. 

Meanwhile, a Companion is currently galloping as fast as he possibly can toward the source of his Call. 

He is not grumbling about the timing. Choosing is an honor that every Companion lives for, and besides, there's a young future-trainee out there who, given the abruptness and urgency of the call, probably needs him very badly. So what if it means he's missing the rest of Della's sojourn in Haven while her Chosen, Herald Davret, is on leave; there will be lots of future meetings, and you only get to Choose once. Sure, normally one gets somewhat more warning than this - the other Companions talk about how they had a vague feeling for weeks or months - but not always, it's not like it's a rule. 

He wonders what his Chosen will turn out to be like. ...And he really hopes they're not in bad trouble right now. 

(Companions can move very fast, but the border is a long way from Haven, and for the last forty miles or so there are no real roads. It's going to take Ketran until morning to get there.) 

Time enough, then, for the snowfall to end and the sky to clear.

She spots the first bright point of light through a break in the clouds, and her breath catches in her throat. She's been to space with Aroden, and this would be, even under an entirely clear sky, a far less impressive view than that; but it does confirm for her what she had already begun to suspect: unless the gods have finally decided to rouse themselves for a miracle and clear the skies of Golarion overnight, she is a very, very long way from home.

She isn't afraid. A significant part of her desperately wants to get home, but being sent to another planet is not, actually, the right sort of thing to make her afraid.

Ketran will find her staring at the sunrise with a strangely intense expression of wonder.

(The first thing Ketran will notice about his Chosen is that she isn't Valdemaran. Her skin is about the right shade to be Karsite, though her facial features don't quite match, and her clothing matches even less. She's a little older than typical Choosing age—maybe sixteen, but the sort of sixteen who really didn't get enough to eat as a young child. She's wearing kind of a bizarre amount of jewelry considering the somewhat rough and tattered state of her actual clothes, including a slim golden circlet on her head and multiple rings, bracelets, and necklaces. All of it is very visibly magical to anyone who can detect that, but she isn't, herself, Gifted in the sense known to Velgarth.)

...Oh. That's what it feels like, to see your Chosen for the first time. 

(Ordinary Companions don't exactly have mage-sight in the usual sense, but they do have a kind of sensitivity. There's a brightness and a thereness to her jewelry that catches Ketran's attention and makes him wonder.) 

He approaches slowly, making more noise than he needs to; he doesn't want to startle her. He - should probably be taking this slowly, actually, if she isn't from Valdemar then she might only know vague legends about what Companions are. 

Arazni will see a large snow-white horse, wearing a saddle and a blue-and-silver bridle only slightly worse for wear after galloping much of the night through inclement weather. (Ketran wasn't in quite enough of a frantic hurry to forget that part, when he's been told multiple times by the older Companions that your Chosen might never have ridden a horse before.) The horse has an unusually broad forehead, and large, long-lashed, oddly forward-facing blue eyes. 

:Hello: Ketran sends in Mindspeech, ducking his head shyly.

The first thought her brain jumps to, on being telepathically addressed by a horse, is 'Nirvana petitioner', because, as she's just now realizing, it's actually a lot more likely that she died than that she got randomly Wished to another planet. Except that Nirvana probably doesn't have things that attack you, and also she isn't a cute animal. E...lysium? There are plenty of things that discourage that hypothesis but none that conclusively rule it out.

:Hello,: she says to the horse. :Where...am I?:

Oh no is she lost, that must have been so frightening. Ketran doesn't know how he could have gotten there any faster but he still wishes he had, somehow. 

:Valdemar. Well, the edge of it, you're half in the Pelagirs. ...Are you all right? It's not - very safe here.: 

:I've survived worse but if you're offering a ride out of this forest I'd be grateful,: she says.

:Uh, I don't know what happened but I'm pretty sure I'm much farther from home than it's possible to get without powerful magic—:

(—the brief wordless image of Golarion from space, completely shrouded in ash and dust—)

:—I've never heard of Valdemar...this is the material plane, right? I thought for a moment I might have died but it's not obvious which afterlife this is and I think for the real ones it, uh, should be.: (She speaks of the afterlives as if they're...real places, far away but as much a part of the world as the trees around them—a lot more concretely than any tradition in Velgarth does.)

:No, gods! You're not dead, this is - the material plane.: Though what a bizarre way to refer to it, the way someone might say "this is Karse" or "this is my parents' farm." (The earlier claim is...more bizarre...but Ketran is mostly failing to actually think about it concretely.) 

He hesitates. :If you've never heard of Valdemar: because she's claiming to be from a different WORLD entirely????? :then - you probably don't know what Companions - like what I am - are? Unless they have them there as well?: 

(Some additional context comes across with that word. Companions are - servants of a god, but in a very nonspecific way, and also servants of a particular country, and - confidantes, protectors, mentors - and some concept not entirely different from 'Lawful' as it would be known in Golarion.) 

:I'm not sure that we don't have Companions, we have a lot of species, but I've never heard of you. Are you—some kind of outsider?: (This is how the 'servant of a god' connotation comes across to her; the connotations in her own Mindspeech are of people from, well, outside the material plane, often but not always associated with a god, usually more—fixed in their values than humans are, along particular directions that don't quite make sense just from reading Arazni's thoughts. It's a category that doesn't not apply to Companions even though they are not, actually, instances of the thing.)

:Er, I think we might be like - that thing - but I don't know because I'm not sure if we have that thing around here.: 

THIS IS SO AWKWARD Ketran just wants to stare into her eyes and Choose her and have it be - like all the stories and songs - but he really cannot do that when she doesn't even know what's happening, it wouldn't be fair at all. 

:We're - created by a god, to serve Valdemar. We're from the material plane, though, and I was born like a normal horse and everything - I guess the Groveborn aren't, they just walk out of the grove fully formed...: He tosses his head. :We Choose good and brave people to be Heralds - well, they start out as trainees, but to be Heralds later - and we teach and advise them and help them - do the right thing for Valdemar.: 

This is more or less the explanation he practiced given in case his Chosen had only heard wrong stories, but he's not at all sure it's going to be enough for someone from ANOTHER WORLD AAAAAAAAH.

Eh, close enough.

:Which god?: she asks. Really she would have expected him to say. Not that the name will necessarily be informative, even if it's a god known to Golarion at all. It feels kind of like a Sarenrae intervention except that being a paladin of Sarenrae isn't horse-mediated at home.

...You know what that's probably a very reasonable question for someone who isn't from around here to ask! Ketran is abruptly faintly embarrassed that he never thought about that. 

:Well, the first King Valdemar prayed to the names of all the gods he knew of for a miracle to protect the future of the kingdom, and - the Companions appeared? So, er, maybe one of them or maybe all of them: ...Does he remember from the story WHAT the names of all the gods were: nnnnooooooot exactly but he can kind of guess? :He would've prayed to Vkandis and the Star-Eyed and Anathei and probably Astera and Kernos, and maybe others...: 

:...I would never pray to all the gods whose names I knew, because, in fact, some of those are Evil. I assume you meant only the Good ones?: Maybe they just don't have the Evil gods here somehow? Good for them, although, if they're not aware of the distinction at all it seems more likely that, rather, they "don't" "have" "Evil" "gods".

:Anyway, I don't recognize any of those names. Do you know much about any of them? Some of them might be gods we know by different names, and even if not, it seems—relevant.: It's really uncharacteristic, by Golarion standards, and also not reassuring at all, for such a blatant and ongoing divine intervention to exist and no one involved to know what god did it.

('Good' and 'Evil', in Arazni's thoughts, come across as crisp, concrete concepts—objective features of the world rather than a matter of moral opinion.)

:.....We don't have evil gods here.: 

There's a slightly odd note of - dismissiveness, almost, definitely a lack of curiosity - in the Mindspeech overtones.

:Er. The Star-Eyed Goddess has people in the Pelagirs, called the Tayledras, and they have a sacred mission to cleanse the land that was warped by the Cataclysm. Astera is goddess of stars and - libraries, I guess, or at least the holy orders I know of are all libraries. Kernos is the god of righteous warriors. Anathei is also called 'of the Purifying Flame' and I heard a story about a priestess who could do miraculous Healing even though she wasn't Gifted? Vkandis is associated with the sun and fire - they call Him the Sunlord - and people worship Him in Karse and Iftel. ...If you want to know more things than that you should maybe talk to someone religious. I guess.: Ketran is faintly confused about why it's so relevant and it comes across in his Mindspeech.  

Uh huh.

(It's not that she trusts Pharasma's judgement absolutely. The only person in Golarion actually trying to save it reads Evil as a result. But she also knows that most people who read Evil aren't Aroden, and people who read Good might be useless but are at least reliable not to hurt you. Detectable alignment isn't perfect, but—in places that have it, which apparently don't include this one—it's still a major inconvenience to the evil gods that Someone, at least, wanted this outsider to be very sure don't exist.)

:None of those obviously sound like gods I know,: she says. :You didn't say, but—were you meant to Choose me to be a Herald?: She's not entirely disinterested, if the institution is actually what it claims to be and is less useless than the paladins of Sarenrae at home, it's just that she does kind of need to get home.

Oh no he can't tell if she's happy about it. What if she doesn't want to be Chosen?????? That isn't supposed to happen but - he's heard stories...

:- Yes, I - we get a Call, like Foresight but not a vision, just a feeling. I had a call to Choose you, but - you understand what it is, to decide...: He trails off. Shakes his head, again, in an almost humanlike way. :You must have so many questions.: 

It's possible the Herald-choosing mechanism operates according to fixed parameters and doesn't know she's from another planet. Even if it does, if a relatively larger part of a god's attention is watching this situation in Foresight and decided to Choose her anyway, she doesn't know anything about this world's gods. Nonetheless it's—information. A divine intervention suggests there's something to see, even if the goal of the intervention is completely unknown.

:I think I would be honored to be chosen, if I were from Valdemar,: she says. :As it is I'd—like to learn more. I really ought to get home, my world needs me more than this one, but—maybe I can't, and—:

She sends him a memory over the telepathic bond:

"And maybe," Aroden is saying, addressing a small crowd beneath an illusory dome of stars, "one day, some archmage on a far-off world will find the secret to traveling between the stars, and they'll find us. You can't pray to them, you cannot beg for their help; they are even farther away than the gods, and they cannot hear you. But what you can do is be the sort of person who would help them, if your places were reversed; and they, in turn, will be a little likelier to be the sort of person who would help you."

:What's your name, by the way?: she asks, realizing she doesn't know it. :I'm Arazni.:

:Ketran.: He's gone very still. :I - am honored to meet you, Arazni.

- who was that? In your memory?: Someone important to her, he can gather than much. Important to a lot more people than just her, he suspects. 

:I'm honored likewise.:

:That was Aroden, he's—one of the most powerful wizards in the world, he survived Earthfall: she suspects the truth is more complicated than that but people aren't supposed to know that :and he's one of the only people who remembers the magic and other things people knew in Azlant, before it was destroyed by Earthfall. I was—am—one of his students.:

(The mental connotations of 'Earthfall' suggest a disaster at least as great as Velgarth's Cataclysm, if of a somewhat different nature—implicit in her thoughts is the fact that the sky has been obscured by ash and dust for her entire life, and life on her planet is—accordingly difficult.)

Oh, gods. No wonder the poor girl is desperate to get back home. 

(It occurs to Ketran a moment later that many people would be relieved to be far away from somewhere where life was that difficult. It would be understandable, normal, he wouldn't judge someone for it - especially not a child - but he's also not at all surprised that Arazni doesn't see it that way. He was called to Choose her, and he knows what kind of person Heralds tend to be.) 

:- I'm so sorry: he sends. :That - sounds awful - and of course you should go back, if it's possible. I - would do my best to help.: Even though AAAAAAAAAAAAAAH and also he's feeling abruptly very possessive and protective about HIS CHOSEN going back to somewhere incredibly dangerous, despite the fact that Arazni is not strictly speaking his Chosen yet. 

:I don't know how: he admits. :Or if it's possible to do that with magic. But you got here somehow, so - if we get back to Haven, that's the capital, maybe Herald-Mage Savil will know a way?: 

:Yeah. Let's get out of this forest and go to Haven. Do you mind if I ride you?: He has a saddle but it seems polite not to assume. She's never ridden a horse who was a person before. It's a little bit awkward, actually.

:No, of course. That's why I wore a saddle. You know how to ride?: 

Personally Ketran has always felt like, really, riding a horse who isn't a person seems like it would be more awkward. He knows it's the more ordinary thing for most people, but - no conversation to keep each other company on the road? Having to tug them around with reins rather than just agree on where you're going? Not being able to just belt in and sleep because you might wake up in completely the wrong town? All sounds AWKWARD. 

:Sort of: she says. :I should be able to figure it out.: She's actually only ever ridden Phantom Steeds before—real horses are too expensive to feed—but it's probably not that different. She gets into the saddle without too much difficulty.

(Many of their ploughs and carts, now, are pulled by dead beasts of burden, reanimated with some horrible new necromancy that probably damns the caster even if you only ever use it on animals and condemned criminals who informedly chose it over Pharasma's judgement. (Aroden is very insistent that she never learn to cast it herself.) It works on clean skeletons, so it's less gross than it would be if it didn't, but it still gives her the creeps.)

Fortunately Companions are very easy to ride! Ketran politely kneels to make it easier for Arazni to mount, and then keeps to a very gentle trot. She shouldn't have any trouble staying in the saddle, even when Ketran has to do some amount of weaving between trees. 

:It's going to be three days back to Haven if we stick to a reasonable pace: he sends. :Maybe two days if we ride longer at a stretch than I really think we should. But we'll reach one of the Waystations by noon, we can rest there a little. You must be hungry.: She doesn't seem to have any food on her, or any belongings at all other than the incongruous jewelry.

:Oh, I actually have a magic item that means I don't need food: she says, mentally pointing out her Ring of Sustenance. :I mostly don't eat at all, at home, there's not enough to go around and most people can't afford what I have. I do need to sleep, though, or else I won't be able to prepare spells tomorrow.:

What. No, what? 

:You...have a talisman that lets you go without food? How in the world does that work? I've never heard of that being possible.: 

:Uh, it's just the cleric spell for conjuring food and water, adapted to directly conjure the things your body digests food into, directly into your bloodstream—possibly this is not the cause of your confusion: she realizes belatedly. :If none of your gods have taken credit for Companions then possibly you don't have clerics either.:

That was indeed not where Ketran was confused!!! 

:Your - priests - can create food and water from nothing? No, I've never heard of that here. What - else can they do -?: 

:A lot of stuff, but the biggest thing they can do that wizards have a much harder time with is healing. Also resurrecting the dead, though that's arguably a special case of healing.:

:—do you even have wizards?: she wonders. Impossible as it now seems, she knows there was a time before arcane magic was learnable by anyone; the spellbook wasn't invented that long ago, in the grand scheme of Golarion's history. It's reasonably likely this planet doesn't know about it yet.

:We have mages! I can't tell if that's the same thing.: The concept coming through in Mindspeech sounds similar, at least as far as "someone who can do magic in general", but Ketran isn't sure all the associations feel right. :Mages can - light fires, throw levinbolts, cast shields against physical or magical attacks or against other Gifts, cast wards that detect attacks or trespassers or certain kinds of magic, do Gates if they're very powerful. You have to be born with potential and then have it awaken to be a mage.: 

Her native language doesn't actually distinguish the kinds of arcane magic users very well. :Those sound like what we call 'sorcerers': she says, trying to mentally use the Azlanti word, which does distinguish. :Our sorcerers can do—more things than that, as a class: (do they just not have transmutation here?) :but most sorcerers, individually, can only do a few things. 'Wizards' don't need to have an innate potential, except being smart enough to prepare spells, which gets pretty complicated, and they can prepare any spell that 'stabilizes': a technical term she's not really bothering to try to communicate the exact meaning of, :which includes most things sorcerers can cast. 'Clerics' are people who are granted magic directly from a god—'paladins' also get spells from their god but spellcasting isn't really the main thing they do. There are a bunch of other kinds of magic user but those are the most common—it sounds like you only have the one?:

:We have a lot of different kinds of Gifts, but we don't have - magic that someone without Gifts can just learn– .....wait sorry did you say your priests can resurrect the dead? How? What does that even - mean -?: 

:Uh, you have to call back the soul from the afterlife, or from the River of Souls if it hasn't made it that far, which is why it requires a god's cooperation, and it's more difficult and expensive the longer it's been and the less intact their body is... Do you know about the afterlives?: Is she going to have to warn these people about Hell.

Ketran seems to need a while to think before answering. 

:We know that souls go somewhere when a person dies: he says finally. :People say that if you worship Vkandis, then He takes your soul when you die, but - I don't think we really know, or even know what that would mean.: 

:Souls are judged according to their 'alignment'*—Lawful or Chaotic, and Good or Evil, and you can also be Neutral on either axis—and sent to the plane matching their alignment. I don't specifically know that to be true here, but it's true everywhere we've checked, and we know that the afterlives draw from many different planets. Gods sometimes claim the souls of their clerics separately from this: and sometimes people sell their souls to Hell but she's not going into that right now :but I've never heard of one that does it for all their worshippers.: If just worshipping a particular god was enough to keep you out of the Evil afterlives then Their church would certainly have made it known.**

She hesitates before saying the next part. :It might actually be better, for you, if your souls don't go to the afterlives we know. The Good ones are paradises, and the Neutral ones are generally fine places for the sort of person who goes there, but the Evil ones are—very bad.:

(*A difficult-to-translate technical term conveying something like "the relationship to the world that one establishes through one's actions".)

(**There is, actually, one god who takes the souls of nearly all His followers, cleric or not, to a place outside the normal afterlife system. Unfortunately, He's Zon-Kuthon.)