If they're inside a painting, it sure is one hell of a well-made inner design. One might wonder why go through the trouble of putting so much detail into something that's ultimately a glorified prison, but whatever the reason, there seems to be a lot of space to explore. The overgrown ruins look like they could plausibly have been part of a small town, a few hundred years ago, if small town buildings were built mostly of carved stone. The last of the afternoon sun filters through the canopy, and the place's the kind of warm that suggests it won't get much colder in the night.

Gosh, this place is big. Or maybe it just teleported them to the middle of nowhere, that would probably be an equally effective way of dealing with most art thieves. Kind of expensive, though, since they still have their bag of holding full of all of Sir Whats-his-name's other display pieces.

(They check. It's still full of display pieces.)

They will climb a tree to see exactly how big this demiplane is/in the middle of nowhere they are.

They are rather in the middle of nowhere! It is getting dark fast, but they can see: trees, trees, more trees, lots of trees, and perhaps those are mountains in the distance?

Conveniently, darkness is absolutely no obstacle. Ah, the joys of dubious parentage.

Well, they could stand around here, or they could wander around exploring. Mountains are, if nothing else, a change of pace. They will head mountainward.

The mountains are: really, really, really far away. On the way, there are more trees. The ruins extend... perhaps farther than they might have expected, some of it no longer obscured by More Trees now that they're walking.

If the ruins extend this far, they're probably the sort of ruins that are riddled with traps and dangerous beasts. And treasure. They don't really have much space in their bag for more treasure, but if there's anything magical it's probably worth more by weight than a lot of the art, and being eaten by a dangerous beast is never pleasant. Neither, for that matter, is starvation. They keep their eyes peeled for creatures that look either dangerous or edible and start poking around some of the buildings.

The buildings look mostly just like very old places where people used to live. Lots of stone aesthetics, and nothing really of value—things have either been looted or just consumed by nature. The few creatures they see are—animals. A couple of squirrels, some birds, perhaps a snake over there slithering away from them.

Squirrels are probably edible. Snakes are venomous, and they can't remember if that means they're also poisonous or not. Birds are probably edible, but that would be weird - Birds are, however, a useful information source. They will call out to some.

"Excuse me - yes, I'm talking to you - have you seen any other humanoids around here?"

The bird flies off.

Rude. No, that's uncharitable, it is probably just not used to people. Or being talked to. It took a long time before the Sternhill pigeons were willing to tell Malak anything useful. And they don't even know which berries are suitable bribes and which are poisonous.

Towns generally have centers. Malak will try to find the center of this one, maybe there's an old temple or government office which might have some treasure worth taking. (Malak's other interest - people worth helping - seems likely to be absent here.)

It's very organised and structured, it won't be easy for them to find something like a town centre.

...and there's light coming from the largest building there.

Well, that's different.

Malak walks up to the building, turns invisible, and looks in.

...it looks like a library. It has the basic layout of a library.

But it doesn't have any books. The shelves have titles on them and sorta book-shaped stone things in them and there are chairs and desks and tables and a little reception...

...the light is coming from way out back, its source hidden by the shelves.

That is a little bit weird. They'll grab a book-shaped stone thing off a shelf (at random, it's not like they can read the titles. Which is a little weird, considering how many languages they speak.) and give it a closer look.

It's lighter it looks, and looks like it's based on a book, aesthetically. If it was ever colourful, though, the paint has long since peeled off.

So, either someone made a bunch of stone book replicas or all the books in the library were turned to stone. Either one seems like a tremendous waste of time and resources, unless the latter was the byproduct of something else.

They put the stone book back and head towards the light.

There's a boy there. He's sitting in front of one of the stone books, and it's projecting a hologram in front of him. He looks entranced.

What is the content of the hologram?

Diagrams, pictures, letters, there's some sound... It looks like it's an extremely multimedia version of a book.

Oooh. Probably best to introduce oneself then. Malak will step silently around some shelves before becoming visible again - don't want to scare the boy, after all - actually if they're going for non-scary the mask is maybe a bit much. And the armor. They make a gesture like brushing dust off their shoulders, and the chain links shimmer and takes on the appearance of dark grey cloth. They reach up as if to adjust their mask, and it fuses with their skin, giving them a more human face. (The kid looked human, and it's not like this is a very cosmopolitan area, he's probably never seen a tiefling before)

They step back around the shelves, knocking on the last one as if it were a doorway.

"Hello?" (They try Imperial Common first.)

The boy is entertained enough he probably wouldn't have noticed Malak even had they been visible, and he jumps when he hears them. He says something that's possibly a greeting in some other language.

...not a familiar one. Where are they?

In case he's multilingual, Malak asks, "Do you understand this?" in every language they speak. When none of those work, they sigh and point to themself. "Malak."

Self. "Kaede." Universal gesture for waiting.

Whatever that gesture was it didn't look very threatening, so it probably wasn't a threat. Not that this boy looks particularly threatening. Headtilt.

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.

Does weather normally do that for your magic or is that an unusual feature of the storm?

Unusual feature of the storm. It is rather extremely magical.

So is it just a consequence of magical interference from the storm's magic, or is it an intentional ward against scrying? Could you tell the difference?

Actually, wait, there are more immediate concerns than this. Like, do you have a better food source than raw squirrel, how did you get here, are you planning to return to civilization soon and if so can I accompany you?

I have a better food source than raw squirrel but I might need a new one for two, I got here by flying, I was not planning to return to civilisation soon but that plan can change and yes you're welcome to. And it's an intentional ward against scrying, or some completely unknown form of magic, one of those.

If you know how to safely start a fire I have heard it is theoretically possible to transmute raw squirrel to cooked squirrel. I don't know that that will be much of an improvement, but it's something.

Oh I don't mean I can't get you food that is not squirrel right now, it's just that that means I have half as much food as I'd expected and my plans need to change accordingly.

Right. I was thinking of ways to stretch food if needed. I'm not actually starving right at this moment but it was important to establish whether or not I need to leave and hunt down dinner soon or not.

Nah we have a coupla weeks—do you have weeks where you're froom?

Yes, we have weeks.

What is this place? Some kind of library? This - they gesture at the hologram - is not how I am used to books working, is this normal in this plane?

Some kind of library, yeah, and no this isn't normal nowadays. Ancient civilisations were very lavish and wasteful with their magic, though.

Well, at least some things are constant across planes. Mine also has its share of lavish and wasteful ancient civilizations. Also, I guess, more modern ones.

Modern ones don't have as much magic. They say it's because the gods no longer walk amongst us.

I don't think the gods take a very direct hand on my plane either, but they still bless their chosen followers. I'm guessing they don't do that here?

They're absent to the point that the existence of magic is about the only evidence of their existence.

We have magic that definitely does not come from the gods, so I wouldn't count that as evidence actually.

But, like, we've also talked to them - well, not me personally, but they sometimes talk to their most favored priests, and even less-favored clerics can summon up an angel and ask it questions.

None of that happens here, only some people are born with one of—four—kinds of magic and they're said to be chosen by the gods. And in the past everything was better and so the gods must've been around doing things.

...That does not seem to follow. The past could have been better for god-unrelated reasons - if it even was better, a lot of people thinking the past was better is just not having been around to see it. Adding active gods to a situation could wind up making it much worse, actually, depending on which gods.

I'm actually—extremely surprised to hear of somewhere with actual, active gods. It's somewhat indirect evidence that they're, you know, possible.

It's kind of surprising to find somewhere where that sort of skepticism is possible. 

Wait a second, what do you do for healthcare on this plane with the gods so absent?

...we have, like, doctors and barbers? Magic and gods have little to do with standard health anythings.

...What, exactly, do barbers have to do with keeping people healthy?

They, you know, pull teeth and perform surgery and stuff?

...

I guess if you don't have clerics that is maybe the best you can do, but why did it end up barbers instead of, like, assassins. Someone who knows something about anatomy. On my plane, barbers cut hair and that is it.

Barbers learn some anatomy from doctors, and most towns too small to have proper medics have a barber.

This is kind of disconcerting and I will try very hard not to get injured around here. Where I guess I will be stuck for probably a while, at least until we can figure out planar travel.

They gesture at the hologram again.

I should probably learn your language if I'm going to be here a while. Also whatever this one is, if it's different.

"It's a very old dialect but understandable," he says at the same time as he sends telepathically.

They grin. That's one way to learn a language.

They play with the words, repeating them until they get the pronunciation identical to Kaede's.

"It's a very old dialect but understandable. It's a very old dialect but understandable. It's a very old dialect but understandable. It's a very old dialect but understandable. Understandable. It's a very old dialect but understandable."

How is my accent? Say more things.

"Understandable, but thick and weirdly foreign, like can't-quite-place-maybe-mountain-folk foreign?"

"Un-der-stand-a-ble. Under-standa-ble. Under-stand-able. Understandable. It's a very thick and foreign? It's a like mountain folk? Mountain folk it's a foreign? Mountain folk it's a weirdly?" Trying to get your grammar here.

He repeats those sentences correctly. "I'm terrible at languages, you'll do much better."

"I'm much better at languages? I'm weird and foreign? I'm thick and foreign? You'll terrible at languages?" It gets easier after the first few. Do you just have the one?

"I have like one and three quarters of two others," he says after correcting sentences.

Your world has four kinds of magic, you said? What are those?

"Arcanism, enchanting, elementalism, and metamancy. Do you want the long or the short explanations?"

Long, please.

"Elementalists have 'blessings,' which are persistent states of magic they cast on themselves. An Expressed elementalist always has one and exactly one blessing active. So, a possible blessing is flight, and while an elementalist has flight active they can... fly. At will. But there's a mana cap per blessing, and if they run out of mana they can't fly anymore. Only way to recharge mana is by having a blessing active but not being used. They can only switch blessings out while they're not using them, too. They're called that way because it used to be really common to get blessings that control the elements."

Nod.

"Enchanters can make magical artefacts. They basically define the effect they want an object to have—and that's pretty much anything from a warm blanket to a golem, there are even legends of sapient golems—and pour mana into the object while going through the definition in their heads. They don't have a maximum amount of mana, it just continuously charges from the moment they're born, forever. Artefacts have a mana charge that runs down with time and needs to be periodically recharged."

"That's interesting. My kind of magic-users can all make artefacts with, uh," special training? "but the enchanting sounds some the same."

"Special training," he enunciates, "but yeah only enchanters can do that here. Well, arcanists can do some of that as scrolls—er, they also have unlimited mana, like enchanters, but they attach magic to symbols rather than objects or themselves. Words count as symbols, as well as gestures, or drawings or whatever—any action that conveys meaning. They also have to come up with a definition of an effect and when they've done that and attached it to a set of actions, whenever they perform those actions and have enough mana they will cast the spell no matter what. When an arcanist attaches a spell to something it's stuck with that forever, so they should be careful with it. And the scrolls are things they create that are encoded with spells they made, and other people can use those scrolls, but they're one use only, and are destroyed when they're used."

"That sounds more like the magic I know, though more -" flexible. -"The fourth?"

"Metamancers do magic to magic. They can detect magic—in artefacts and people and things—and tweak it and steal it and convert it and generally mess with it. Also they're said to be blessed by an evil god."

"And which are you?"

"The evil one."

"Do you feel like you're blessed by an evil god? Is evil even observable with your magic?"

"No and no."

"Yeah, I don't feel blessed by an evil god either. I'm, uh, a tiefling. Tieflings are an offshoot of humans, supposedly blessed by Asmodeus. And, depending who you listen to, always absolutely irredeemably evil."

"Well, it is a pleasure to meet you, fellow evil being. But at least your gods look kinda real."

"Well, you've offered up your dark secret, I may as well offer up mine. It's also easier if I don't have to worry about keeping it, I wasn't going to slip up but this is less mental effort." They reach up and remove their face. The face in their hand shifts into a feathered mask.

The face underneath looks like it might have been blessed by an evil god. The eyes are solid black spheres, the teeth triangular and serrated. In place of hair, mostly rigid spines, like a porcupine.

They spread their arms and wait for a reaction.

"Cool!"