He starts saying lots of things in his language.

That is probably not an attempt to communicate - lack of common language has been pretty clearly established - It doesn't seem recognizably spell-like but there's enough variation between casting traditions that that is no guarantee. Given the circumstances if it's a spell it's probably one for languages but there's no way to be sure of that. Malak's hand drifts to where Sevrance is belted at their hip and they tense tense up imperceptibly, ready to spring forward if it's something less friendly.

...testing, testing, you getting me? they hear in their head.

They relax a little.

...hi. Is this town yours?

Nooo, definitely not, I found it—yesterday—how'd you find it, and what were those languages, I didn't even know there were that many -

I either suffered a magical mishap or fell victim to a magical trap. Those languages were, in order, Imperial Common, Draconic, Kalziran, Turathi, Elvish, Sylvan, Dwarvish, Gnomish, Cloudspeech - most people just call that one Giantish, though - Celestial, Infernal, and Abyssal. I like languages and I've moved around a lot. Uh. Never to the outer planes, I just picked those ones up from books.

...I've never heard of any of these languages in my life. And I don't know what outer planes are.

I thought wizards tended to study that kind of thing at least a little. I guess I'd just assumed you were a wizard from your spellcasting and all the books - Are you some kind of sorcerer, then?

Neither of those words mean anything to me. I'm a mage.

The concept I am getting for that is 'a person who uses magic'. Where I'm from most recently we have a word for that, but we also divide them into Wizards - scholarly sorts, learn spells from books and each other, mostly - and Sorcerers - they do it kind of intuitively, they need to practice but not to study. There are other kinds but you're obviously not a summoner and witchcraft is kind of illegal so I don't think there are very many witches. You must be pretty powerful, I heard telepathy is fairly hard, as these things go.

It's... moderately expensive but I'm good at what I do. And I think you're rather farther away from home than you believe—none of those things exist here as far as I'm aware.

So you're saying I'm on another plane? Are there other people here or is it just you and these ruins?

If by 'here' you mean this physical location I'm pretty sure I was alone, but this planet has more people. I'm getting, like, something akin to 'existence' from this plane of yours but not quite?

Yeah, kind of. A plane is bigger than a planet - the name is an artifact from before we figured out planets were round, people thought the world was a big, flat, endless expanse and all the planes just neatly stacked on top of one another - some of them are infinite, some are finite. They don't physically connect, but you can get between them with magic if you know what you're doing, which I don't. Some of them are clustered kind of close to each other - no, I don't know what 'close' means in this context, something about how easy they are to get to? - and those are the inner planes. Others are 'farther away' from the inner planes and from each other, those are the outer planes. And that's about all I know.

Okay... That's more than we know, I don't think anyone's suggested alternate universes seriously, like, ever.

...Huh. I wonder why you don't get many visitors here. And where 'here' even is, cosmically speaking - those aren't questions I'm expecting you to answer, you've never heard of other planes. You look human to me, are you? - no, wait, I guess asking that on its own isn't very useful - here are some traits of humans, let me know if any don't seem to fit: Terrible night vision, live about 70 years naturally with good nutrition, quick learners for the first 20 or so, then they slow down to a more normal pace, no native magical ability, a lot of variance but are on average a little less intelligent than other people, fairly average strength and flexibility for people of their size...?

...I'm not sure what you're comparing all those traits to, here, but I'm gonna go out on a limb and guess there are multiple sapient species where you're from? There. Aren't, here. Just humans. And some do have magic.

Blink.

... Yeah you'd be right. Just humans then? Huh. Uh, night vision and age are easily checkable, how far can you see in starlight? In pitch black? Does seventy years sound about right to you? A year is three hundred thirty two days on my plane, I think our days are about the same length.

How many humans?

Three sixty-five, bit less than seventy yeah. We have a few hundred thousand?

Oh that is not many people at all. My plane has cities with over a million. Wow. A whole planet, basically empty.

- cities with that many people? Wow. And, erm, not the whole planet, more like the main continent, the rest of the planet is not super well-explored for one reason or another.

How do you know your continent is the biggest if you haven't explored the rest of the world? Or are you using some other definition of 'main continent'?

'Main' as in the one most people live in. We actually have good enough scrying to know there are only three continents in the southern hemisphere, one being Galatea, the other being a nameless frozen one, and the third being the one where we are right now, with a less agreed-upon name that varies language to language.

Northern hemisphere's unaccessible and impossible to scry on due to a huge magical storm that circles the planet.

The storm stops scrying?

Yeah.