A mirror-sheen bubble appears for a fraction of a second before disappearing. In it's place is a man wearing a white jumpsuit patterned with intricate but designs in subdued colors. He's ever so slightly in midair when he appears but he lands with a practiced ease. On his back is a similarly colored backpack that lacks any visible straps. He takes out a small device from a side pocket of the backpack without looking and fiddles with it for a moment, "Translation Online." Then he starts walking purposefully towards the steeper path.

It's a snowy mountain trail. The wind is rather harsh. It's beautiful in that spare way mountains are, though.

Suddenly there is a reptilian screech and that pile of snow is instead some kind of creature barreling down on him with a spiked club.

zabna is surprised but he keeps his wits and remembers his training. The creature is now holding a short handle and a fairly large mirror sphere is rolling down the mountain.

It looks around in confusion.

Then it stamps its feet and quickly lashes out a long tongue at him like some kind of frog.

"Why are you attacking me?" he shouts while dodging backwards. He moves a hand and suddenly his fingers get longer and are wrapping around a silvery sphere. He tried to get it between himself and the tongue in case he didn't dodge fast enough.

He successfully dodges. His computer will report 'unknown language' at its continued sounds. The lizard thing tries to close to melee again - it's fast.

And suddenly there's a field of glittering spheres underfoot between the two of them. They are very slippery. Zahn continues moving backwards, he isn't quite as fast as the creature but he's not much slower.

It stumbles and tumbles and starts rolling down the mountainside, falling off the cliff edge.

It stands back up at the bottom, but it doesn't seem to be trying to climb back up at least.

At least it didn't die from the fall, that seems plausibly a good thing. He isn't really clear on whether it was a person or not. He pulls out his translator and fiddles with it but it refuses to yield more languages. "Great, so either it's inhuman enough that it's language centers can't be parsed by magic or it's a tool user that doesn't yet have language." He puts his translator away.

He pulls out a different device and a small softly glowing map of the surrounding area appears above it. He pans and zooms until he gets a look at the area where he can see the alien creature, it has some magic, zabna doesn't look into precisely what magic that is for the moment. Then he zooms out, there don't seem to be more waiting along his path in ambush.

"Minimap it is." He attaches it to his shoulder and then fiddles with the surface of the device. The glowy map changes shape and size and position until it's floating at the top right corner of his vision. He resumes his hike down the mountain.

As he comes around the next bend the falling snow clears a bit.

He can see something flying above and to the south... Something big. Looks person-made. It's flying in a slow circle, high above that towering lake village.

He stops and stares for a moment. He doesn't really have the resources to try to get up there at the moment though, it's flying too fast for an impromptu hot air balloon and he doesn't have the parts to build a quick ultralight aircraft. He keeps walking down the trail.

He comes to another one of those flags with a pile of stone stabilizing them.

At its foot is a roughly built wooden chest, unlocked, unlabeled.

Well that's strange. He opens the chest.

It contains paper-wrapped packages of food (mostly meat), a stack of firewood, and a bundle of arrows with red metal tips that register as magic.

He doesn't really have a use for any of those at the moment but he'll take some string out of his bag and bundle the arrows to one of the sides. The rest he'll leave.

He has to detour off the path a bit to avoid a bundle of magic signatures like the lizard thing.

Soon, the downslope gets much steeper. The path fades from being a coherent trail and picks up again about a quarter mile down this steep, dangerous-looking slope.

His feet will undergo a curious transformation. Small holes will open in his jumpsuit around his ankles and small trees of metal will emerge digging through the snow and gripping onto the underlying rock. With this transformation he'll be able to manage the treacherous slope just fine.

It's getting warmer as he descends. Still below freezing for now, but less bitingly.

He's traveling down a narrow gully that seems to be a trailhead now. A lizard-thing-like magic signature is ahead, and doesn't look easily avoidable unless he wants to backtrack.

How bad are the walls of the gully, he can do the same thing with his hands as his feet so maybe he can climb.

...He could probably manage that.

Yeah, he gets past the signature just fine. There is a reasonably well-built log cabin with smoke coming from the a nearby campfire and another trail flag after another few miles. Someone who looks like a human from this distance is sitting nearby.

Past that, he can see that the lake is actually a deep crater. Tall rock structures like sea stacks dot the place, with a particularly towering one hosting a few dozen wooden buildings built onto and around it. It's still a bit too far to confidently make out many details, but the fact that it's a village is clear enough.

He walks over and says "Hello" trusting his translator to help him pick the right language.

Up closer, it's clear that he looks human - except for the long, pointed ears. "Hello, fellow traveler! Isn't Hebra such a beautiful place? Worth the dangerous journey, I think."

"It is quite beautiful. I had a little trouble with a lizard thing holding a club, but once I knew what to look for I managed to avoid fighting any others. Do you happen to know if they can be reasoned with?"

"Oh, Lizalfos... You really have to run far enough away they lose interest, or drop bait, or kill them, or avoid them entirely. Monsters like Lizals are why moving around is so dangerous these days. Where are you from? Your ears and clothes are strange. Here, come closer to the fire." He adds another log.

He takes another couple steps and crouches down. To be on the man's level. "I am from somewhere very very far away. It would take lifetimes to travel as far as I have on foot but I have magic that lets me travel faster, and in directions that aren't available to those travelling on foot. It seems a shame to kill anything smart enough to carry a weapon, but if necessary I can."