"I don't know where I am," says someone who am in an unexpected location.

A woman, dressed in a trench coat and fedora despite being indoors, puts a whipped cream covered whisk back into a mixing bowl with as much dignity as is physically possible under the circumstances.

"You are in my kitchen, on a largely uninhabited Earth." says the woman, starting down the path to neutralizing whatever threat this newcomer might pose to the safety of Cauldron and the world.

"I don't know how you got here."

"I think I got here in a magical accident but I wasn't expecting it to happen."

It sounds true, when Elspeth says magic is real. Still, Contessa hasn't trusted her own instincts about what's real and what's fantasy since she was 11. Path to knowing whether she is telling the truth and magic is real?

Path to Victory's basic functioning as a shard is to scan it's surrounding and simulate future events, determining what actions are necessary to achieve a specified goal. The simulation portion of this is incredibly detailed - if necessary it will model events down to the behavior of individual molecules to determine whether a plan will succeed (though typically coarser simulations are sufficient). However, it is based on the basic premise that reality functions according to known and quantified laws of physics. It's simulations don't account for the possibility of magic. It's not that Path to Victory is dumb, it's just that it's never encountered magic before.

And so, searching for the answer to Contessa's question, it scans the anomalous humanoid....

Oh, does someone want to know things about Elspeth? Her magic is very obliging! Here it is at full blast! ElspethisahalfvampirefromanEarthwherevampiresandmagicexistandshehasapoweranditistotellthetruththewholetruthandnothingbutthetruthand-

(It can go on like that at pretty high bandwidth.)

What happened to her power. Path to fixing to her power! Path!

"What did you do?!" the suddenly much younger seeming woman asks, brandishing the cream covered whisk in a white knuckled grip. 

"...I've just been standing here talking to you since I arrived."

That sounds true but how is she supposed to know whether it's actually true??

A bit of whipped cream drips from the whisk onto the floor as she glares at the intruder.

"I can just get out of your way, I apologize." She heads for the door.

She is going to stay in this kitchen and wait for her power to come back and also try to remember what Doctor Mother's phone number is. 

The compound hallway outside matches the spartan white decor of the kitchen, almost eerily clean.

Kind of weird. Elspeth's shoes are not eerily clean and she is going to track dirt here in the process of getting away from the woman who is ?allergic to half vampires? - maybe she has something like Alice does and can't route around it or turn it off and in that case not interacting with her is the only real solution. Down the hall, looking for the exit.

She can't find an exit. She can't even find windows, just labyrinths like hallways leading to rooms containing various pieces of medical equipment - CT scanners, MRIs, examination tables (with what appear to be cuffs to hold patients down), and devices which Elspeth doesn't recognize. None of the rooms contain any people.

"Hello?!"

No reply - there's barely even an echo. 

So concerning. Hello? she tries. I'm here the hallway she's in and lost. I'm looking for the exit.

She feels a gust of what might be air and an "X" being drawn on the palm of her hand by dozens of fingers at once. 

Huh. No exit?

A checkmark is traced onto her hand this time.

Is there a direction I could tunnel out?

No response.

What if she tilts her hands in different directions so a simple arrow could indicate any normal direction.

No response.