HONK.

Suddenly and inexplicably, Sable is no longer on Earth.

Instead she is in a cave. The floor is uneven and damp, the stone is whitish and full of stalactites and stalagmites. Limestone. It's an irregularly shaped chamber maybe 20 feet across, and there's one way out- a passage that twists to the right. The only lighting is dim pale blue light coming from a large glass sphere, two or three feet across. A man with a stained worn tunic sort of thing in pale green, shaggy hair and a slightly unkempt beard, deep bags under his eyes, is touching the crystal with both hands. He turns a bit to look at her, but his hands don't move, stuck fast to the crystal.

There's a bone-deep humming, that warbles unpleasantly when his attention wanders. He looks back at the crystal. The humming returns to tune. He looks towards Sable again and blinks.

"What the colors..." This is in an unfamiliar language that she, nonetheless, knows. And then, in accented and rusty English, "Is that jeans?"

What.

What.

"Did I just get fucking isekaied? And what kind of curse is 'what the colors'?"

"What- Eesay? You're from Earth? Like me? Fuck!" Unpleasant warble. Focus on the sphere. It calms. "Colors! I can't lose focus on this."

"Yes, Earth." She switches into the new language, best to build good habits now. "Need help with this thing?"

"What the fuck. I thought I was only the one. Uh... Yes. Making a core. But I never actually learned how. I learned magic... When I was hit by a truck, and got here. I never went to school for it. So I don't understand what I did wrong but it's obviously wrong. It's going to kill me if I don't fix it and I have no idea what happens if you try interfering."

She feels around in her head. Does she have any suspicious instincts about "making cores" and whether she can help?

She knows how to reach out and claim or shape two kinds of magic. And the glowy core looks awfully claimable.

She also knows how to use them on herself. She could... Do math?? Or heal herself?? And probably other things, but those suggest themselves as the most obvious possibilities.

(You're welcome.)

She frowns thoughtfully. "I've got suspiciously convenient instincts that say I can claim the glowy core. Gonna try unless you think it's a terrible idea."

If he doesn't interrupt her, then... reeeaaach out? Grab it and try to claim it?

"If you're okay risking it-"

Oh wow. This core is incomplete. There's five - exchanges? Surfaces? Three look okay, but her two are just kind of constantly unravelling and regenerating. The math one feels like it's stuck in a panic attack or an endless loop and the healing one feels like it's falling asleep and waking back up constantly.

They just need to be stable, maybe, and there's the other three right there to look at what 'stable' looks like...

"Oh shit, that's why it's flailing so hard. There are five sections to it, and three of 'em are fine, but the two that match my Suspiciously Convenient Skills are failing to generate properly. Fixing 'em."

She grabs hold of the core, especially the two flailing interfaces, and gently but firmly twists them into approximately "like the stable three but for the correct skill". No, this core is not allowed to fail. It's going to stabilize, because she says so.

"That feels weird..."

But it seems to be working?

Something rushes out of her. Its absence makes her feel cold and stupid and slow. But then everything stabilizes and she feels fine again.

And then she can feel SO MUCH MORE. It's an overstimulus. There are a bunch of things out there, people-shaped blobs with bodies she could reach out and touch and thoughts she could grab in her mental fingers- And dead matter, and trees, and microbe scum on the cave walls, and mice, and twisty anomalies slowly dissolving somewhere far away.

And the core. Three out of five of the surfaces are hers, but she's sharing one with the stranger, and the other two are out of reach.

It's hard to make sense of.

She staggers a bit. "Holy shit that's so much there's so much of everything but I think it worked."

She doesn't poke the people-blobs that sounds like a way to break someone how about the dead matter? Or maybe a tree? What's a tree feel like to her new senses?

It's alive and it's doing so many complicated things. She could totally make it produce fruit early, or grow faster. It might hurt the tree but it's obvious, a complicated flowcharty pattern that she could apply over part or all of it, practically a speed slider for fruit.

"Oof, that's- A lot. A lot. I think we need to talk. But thank you. You probably just saved a bunch of lives... Even if this isn't how it's supposed to work."

She smiles confusedly at him for a moment, then manages to focus on only one place at a time. "Okay, stepping away from all the shinies. Um. Saved lives? Woo? That sounds pretty great, guess I'm a good girl who saves people now?"

She shakes her head a bit.

"Context would be great. Context would be really great."

"Girl?"

Maybe he's just confused. Or...

"Oh, right. They dont have deadspeaking on Earth. That'll do it. Uhh... This world kind of sucks. There's magic poison everywhere that's not covered by the aura of a core. That's the colors. And there's magic hurricanes wandering around. Dragons. We were... Colonists, I guess? Looking for a good place to settle. But a dragon passed over us a few days ago and wrecked all our supplies and killed a few people. And the other mage who's still alive is unconscious from exhaustion from healing people so if I died trying to make a core they'd all be utterly fucked, no way back to another demesne without dying to the colors first."

She boggles, then gapes. "Deadspeaking? Wait, that's what the convenient healingish skill I got is called? It can do transition? Holy shit. Help me make sense of these skills that got crammed into my head well enough to feminize my body and I will do anything you ask. I mean, I probably would help out with anything just to keep you and the other colonists alive, but figuring out how this works is basically my single biggest wishlist item."

Holy shit. Holy shit.

He rubs his hands all over his face.

"Sorry, very sorry, but can that happen - later? I'm very tired and I think... We need to figure out how to explain you existing and then... Go out there and get things organized. Because... The dungeon binder is king inside their demesne. Or queen. By right of biggest stick. And... There are still injured people. And they'll panic if I just don't come out. We need water... I can try to explain things but I don't know deadspeaking. Theres whispering, mentalism, horotraction, and deadspeaking. Most people have just one. Actually most people have none, and almost everyone else just has one."

"Later is fine. Eventually is fine. Just not never. Let's get to work. Are dungeons ever bound by two people? Is any of what needs done right now a deadspeaking or... mentalism? probably mentalism thing?"

Do her shiny new instincts say any of those people-blobs are injured? Or anything about how to change her body?

YEP. There are a bunch of injuries. Burns, mostly. Simple Healing is something her implanted knowledge considers nearly a primitive action. Reach out, touch, define an area, apply Healing, supply energy, activate Healing, deactivate Healing. And then remove the Healing definition from the person. She could totally do it right now. She could... Change some of her own internal processes? Like with the tree? Her instincts seem to think it's very possible to sculpt living flesh and bone and muscle, also dead ones, but also to be super careful that the underlying biology supports everything for living ones.

"I have never heard of a dual dungeon binding. I can pull water from the river with whispering... And deadspeaking is good for healing. The other deadspeaker is unconscious. She might be a better teacher... If you don't want to hide your strangeness. I want to... What do we say to explain you suddenly being here? Were you following us? Was I sneaking you along? Serendipitous encounter, you were also lost?"

"Lost makes the most sense, on the simple basis of being extremely true. I have no idea where anything except our dungeon core is, and the people and stuff in range of it. I don't mind people knowing I'm different. Maybe I came from someplace weird that didn't have a deadspeaker, or didn't allow using it to change people like this, and that's why I left? Also, I can probably buy a bunch of goodwill by everyone's first memory of me being healing them all, since it seems to be a primitive action according to my new instincts."

"I'm too tired for this. Okay, we tell them you were lost too, and we're both dungeon binders, and refuse to explain further? And you heal people- You might have to physically touch them- And I sort out water and smooth floors to sleep on. And maybe toilets. And- Then we can talk more."