"AAAAAAH?!"

That was not at all what Urtho was expecting to happen! Even if the Gate had opened somewhere completely random, it would be an enormous coincidence for it to accidentally grab someone just going around minding their own business! 

He should probably head over and...apologize...? Hopefully she's from somewhere in range for he or one of his mages to Gate her home. 

(The artifact explodes. It's a less dramatic explosion than the last one, which basically vaporized itself, and the second-favorite Work Room shields catch it, but it's very loud and it does send fragments of quartz flying everywhere.) 

"OW!!"

Oh no! That was really not what he wanted to happen! 

Urtho's hertasi fortunately no longer permit him to work down here alone, so there's someone in earshot who he can yell at to have a Healer summoned, and then he hurries faster. 

The shields on the room are intact but that doesn’t mean a person will be! Urtho reaches it and flings the door open. 

“I am so sorry - are you all right -?” Is the mysterious person unconscious on the floor or less badly injured than that? 

She is conscious and confused and bloody and upset! She is disgorging shrapnel as her wounds close themselves up in a convenient fashion to push the bits of quartz clattering to the floor!

Urtho is not an expert on Healing but he's pretty sure that's not how wounds normally work! He spends a couple of seconds distracted and staring in fascination before he remembers that he has priorities here. 

He holds up both hands, open-palmed, and tries to look as unscary as he can. "Are you all right?" he repeats more slowly, even though this is kind of an inane question. 

She replies in a language he has never heard before!

That does imply she's from somewhere further away than Tantara's borders, but that's not incredibly surprising given the weirdness of his unintended experimental side effect. Urtho does speak more languages than just Tantaran! He'll try the Predaini tongue, and the regional trade-tongue, and his rusty and questionable court Haighlei because the woman does look like she might be from that area. He can cycle through six or seven languages before he runs out of ones he knows even a few words in. 

Nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, and nope. She tries a couple more too but not with much optimism.

Urtho is looking increasing apologetic as he starts to worry that getting her home is going to be genuinely really inconvenient. 

One of the hertasi runs in. "Is there a prob– oh. A Healer is on the way, Master Urtho! What happened?" 

"I have no idea!" He sounds apologetic but not exactly displeased. "- I need a Mindspeaker, please, it seems we have no languages in common." 

"Of course, Master Urtho!" 

The hertasi pauses for a moment to peer at Tarinda before darting out of the room again. 

(From Tarinda's perspective, it looks like a bipedal lizard, significantly shorter than the average human, with a large domed skull and jewel-bright scales. It's also wearing clothes - a sort of apron that seems more useful for the pockets it offers than for modesty - and a necklace with a large quartz pendant.) 

Weird but not THAT weird in context.

And shortly later a whole little crowd of hertasi are there, as well as a blond man who hurries over and, after a rushed conference with Urtho determines that the injured woman certainly doesn't speak any language he knows, attempts to mime that he needs to touch her, on the arm or something would be fine. 

(The closest available Mindspeaker is on her way, but she was a bit further away so it'll be another couple of minutes.) 

She doesn't get at all why he would need to do that but doesn't strenuously object, at least.

He notices the fact that her visible injuries are visibly behaving very oddly just before he reaches for Healing-Sight.

...Um. That's incredibly strange! What does it look like to his Sight? 

It looks like the nanobiotech in her system is repairing her wounds in such a way as to eject foreign particles, and also replacing lost blood! Why, what's it supposed to look like?

Not...like...that...? It looks a little like someone with an absurdly strong Healing Gift using it on themselves, but - only in the results, there's no actual Healing-energy involved, and also it's impossibly fast and you can't actually directly replace blood with Healing (just coax the body to make more in the usual places the body makes blood) and you definitely can't ??Fetch?? debris out of wounds like that!

Is she even human?? What???

...Anyway, it doesn't really look like she needs Healing help, and Tamsin is kind of nervous to touch it when he can't tell how her body works. He releases her arm and takes a step back, trying to smile reassuringly. 

"- She's going to be fine," he tells Urtho, which is deeply incomplete as a description of what's happening. 

And then a Mindspeaker is there.

She...kind of feels like she's missing some context here? Both Urtho and Healer Tamsin are making faces. But she's here because apparently no one can talk to the woman who Urtho maybe accidentally kidnapped with one of his absurd magical experiments, sooooooo she should do something about that first, probably? 

She reaches out with Mindspeech. :My name is Ellona. Can you understand me?:  And just in case the woman is from somewhere very remote and doesn't know much about Mindspeakers, :- er, you can try to loudly think yes or no back at me, I'm trying not to read your surface thoughts too much.: 

:Hi, Ellona! I'm Tarinda. Where am I??

At least she seems to be taking this in stride. :You're in Urtho's Tower, in Tantara. It sounds like he was doing a mage-experiment and somehow it accidentally Gated you here or something, I don't have the details yet. We're very sorry, obviously, and we'll try to get you home as soon as possible.: Obviously now is a terrible time for another logistical demand, but you can't just KIDNAP people by accident and then not send them home even if there's a war going on and you have a really good reason to be busy. 

She looks at the blood and winces. :- Urtho is really sorry you were hurt: presumably he is even if he mostly looked curious by the time she got here, :but it sounds like the Healer isn't too worried. Do you need anything right now?: 

:Well, I would be having lots of fun being whisked away to a fantasy universe but this is actually not a good time for me. I guess I could in the immediate term use some water and something to eat:

That is a very confusing response and Ellona doesn’t really know what to make of it! She can poke one of the hertasi with Mindspeech and ask about having food brought, though. Possibly to a nearby conference room instead of the Work Room with bloody shards of artifact all over the floor, since it seems like their unexpected visitor is probably capable of walking over.

:Of course: she sends. :It’ll just be a couple of minutes. …Er, where are you from?:

:Mars. I don't think you've likely heard of it:

:No, I haven’t, sorry.: Which doesn’t feel surprising, somehow, everything about this feels too strange for Tarinda to be from somewhere normal and straightforward like the River Kingdoms. :I'm sure Urtho can find a way to get you home wherever it is: because it's not clear if there's anything Urtho CAN'T do, and besides he got her here somehow in the first place, :but - it might be a while. ...I'm sorry it's a bad time: 

She's very tempted to ask why it's a bad time but there's no reason to think it's related or relevant to Urtho sending her home, she's just curious. 

:Can you bring things from where I came from, here, and it's just hard to send me back?:

:I have no idea! It depends what experiment Urtho was doing and I’m not a mage — you’d have to talk to him, and it’s difficult since he’s not a Mindspeaker.: And Urtho really shouldn’t be handed an exciting magical puzzle right now, he’s staying up all night enough already.

She’ll start ushering Tarinda in the direction of a nearby conference room, which should now have drinks and an array of foods courtesy of the hertasi.  :Is there something that would be helpful if you could get it?: 

:Yes, for me and everybody else too!:

Well that's cryptic! At least it's not the ominous kind of cryptic. 

She clears her throat. :Well, if you're all right here for the moment, I can go ask Urtho if he knows what happened and whether it'd be easier to - make it happen again, rather than reversing it to send you back. Is there, er, anything I can tell him about what sort of thing it is you'd want him to try to get?: 

:Uh, do you have computers at all?:

Whatever a 'computer' is isn't coming across incredibly clearly in Mindspeech, but then again Ellona isn't a mage and there are an awful lot of things Urtho would know that she doesn't. :I'm not sure. Is that some kind of artifact?: 

:It's not a magic thing if that's what you mean:

:Oh. I think we don't, then. What does it...do?: 

:It's a machine that can reason:

:Huh. So it’s - like a created species but made from things that aren’t alive, rather than animals?: What an incredibly bizarre idea. Who would even think to try that? She’s also not sure how one would do that without magic but there are plenty of things she doesn’t know.

:Sorta! We have a really good one back home and if you could bring some here that would be great. I have one in me but it's not as smart:

:That sounds really interesting: to Urtho more than her, :and useful! I can go tell Urtho about it and see what he thinks he can do.: She can’t see where Tarinda would be keeping a thinking machine on her, but maybe it’s just very small, like one of those clever clockwork timepieces the artificers make, and fits in her pocket? :Do you need anything else before I go?:

:If you have a dictionary I could flip through my AI can start learning your language more:

…Sure, why not, that might as well be how it works. She’ll have the hertasi bring a dictionary. 

The hertasi are so delighted to be helpful! They can bring several dictionaries! Are there any other kinds of book that would also be helpful? They have lots of children’s primers on learning to read, or on learning Tantaran for students who grew up elsewhere (the hertasi like children and teach a lot of those lessons.) 

If the alphabet is phonetic she'd appreciate having some words pronounced for her!

They can do that! 

It’s going to be about half an hour before Urtho comes back (he was pulled away for an urgent war-related matter in the interim.) Does Tarinda want to request or do anything else while she’s waiting?

Nope, she's still working on the dictionary and occasionally asking hertasi to pronounce irregular things.

And half an hour later Urtho is back, looking frazzled but also excited.

He's brought Ellona with him, to relay what he wants to say in Mindspeech. 

:Ellona tells me the country you come from has artifice that can think and reason? I have so many questions!: One of the hertasi manages to catch his eye, and he ducks his head. :Sorry - my name is Urtho. I run an academy of magic in this tower. You would not have heard of it, I think, it’s quite well known but it sounds like you are from very far away.:

:Yup! I don't think I'm likely to be from anywhere in this entire half of the galaxy at least! Probably farther! We don't have magic where I'm from!:

:What, no magic at all?: He stares raptly at her. :You think you are from another world entirely? …I have no idea how my spell caught you! I did not think it could do that!: He doesn’t seem upset about this so much as fascinated. 

:I'm pretty confused too! Can you bring things from my world here? We've got a non-magical thing that has done a really good job with our world and could do stuff here too, like making sure people don't die and stuff:

:That sounds incredible.: ...At least a little in the literal sense of "not credible"; Urtho has been spending a lot of time with General Judeth, and she would be telling him firmly that he needs to ASK MORE QUESTIONS here before getting too excited. 

He winces. :- But I hope Ellona didn't get your hopes up too much. I have to confess that I really have no idea how you got here, the artifact I was testing was supposed to do an ordinary Gate on this world. I can try replicating it exactly but I'm not sure if it would work at all a second time, let alone in a controlled way.: He looks down. :I do want to help you, truly. It's...not a good time for a major research project.: 

:Why not?:

Another wince. :We are in the middle of a war. It - demands a lot of my time.:

:I think that makes it more important to have Sing - that's the thing I want brought - over here to make it so nobody dies!:

Urtho glances at Ellona, and hesitates for a long moment before relaying his response. :...Make sure nobody dies? How does that work?: 

She's about two thirds of the way through this dictionary now, barely glancing at each page. "You saw me heal, right? It can do that kind of thing."

Urtho blinks at her. "...I thought you didn't speak the language." 

"I don't. There's a thinking machine in me which has learned from the dictionary. It's connected to my eyes and ears, and it is giving me transliterations of what I would want to say that way, and translating what you say to me."

Urtho boggles at her. “It can do that?” She did already just say it can make people not die, which is objectively more impressive - and important - but it somehow feels a lot more real and immediate that it can apparently learn a language in half a candlemark. 

He leans forward. “How does it work?” And the mental voice of Judeth pipes up. “Is it - can it be dangerous, if someone wanted to use it for the wrong things?”

"- mine is, in the sense that it does whatever I want. The big one that I want to bring here isn't, because it wants its own things and none of them are dangerous."

More fascinated staring. “So it’s a person? Made of artifice?”

"It's not a person. It doesn't have experiences."

Blink. “But it thinks and reasons, and can learn? I’m - confused how you can have one without the other - I am not sure that part is important?”

He pauses, thinking. “Did someone make it? To be powerful but not dangerous? Powerful things are - often dangerous.”

 Powerful people especially, which come to think of it might be an excellent reason to make a…thing…that has the power to instantly wounds and prevent death (which is necessarily also the power to harm and kill) not a person. Power corrupts people. 

"Yes, it was made. We were really really lucky that we got a good one."

“So it could have gone the other way?” Urtho winces. “I’m very glad you - got lucky.” 

He straightens his shoulders. “I do want to help you — and it sounds like it would be a great help to us as well — but if the experiment doesn’t replicate, then I am not sure yet where to start, to find another world. It really shouldn’t have been able to do that!” He fidgets slightly. “…And I only made the one prototype, and - nay not have recorded everything I had changed.”

"...I also know enough to build one with my machine's help but that will take a long time if you don't have thinking-machines yet."

Urtho lights up. “You do? I would be very happy to help you with that! We don’t have thinking-machines, but if you tell me what you need to build them, there must be some way to do it faster with magic." 

And then his face dims. "...There is still the war. I can put everything off for a day to try to replicate the experiment, if it might only take a day and then all our problems are solved, but - if not, if it's going to be a long time, then - I am not sure." 

"It probably wouldn't take only a day. It might take only a day to get me to the point where I could do the rest myself with normal materials somebody less busy could get? - can you arrange to freeze dead people in the meantime, if you freeze them Sing can get most of them back."

“Freeze them? How does that—?” Urtho breaks off, shaking himself slightly. He has SO MANY QUESTIONS but now is not the time.

(Urtho has had a lot of practice, lately, in noticing that now isn’t the time to pursue something interesting.)

“We can do that with magic,” he says shortly. “I will have word sent out. Is there anything else we can set up now that would - help, later, once your thinking-machine is here one way or another?” 

What would Ma’ar think about all of this  it’s also not the time right now to speculate on that, which perhaps makes it easier that Urtho actually has no idea.

"I assume if you could instead be not having a war you wouldn't have one for fun or anything, but if there's some - unpalatable concession you could make that would get you a ceasefire for a few years, this might be a good time?"

“…Unfortunately the concessions I think we would have to make would involve not objecting to them killing people for blood-magic to build roads faster.”

Urtho’s voice is perhaps more bitter than he had really intended. He clears his throat. “- They have offered peace terms. But not concessions on - that - or on conquering their other neighbors. If we did accept a ceasefire on their terms…” Predain is winning the war, but Urtho doesn’t quite want to say that out loud. “I am not sure it would last even a year before it - left us worse off than we are now.”

"I could try to figure out something to let them build roads faster without killing anybody? If that's really what's going on?"

Urtho has to stop to think about that. “I - am not sure if that would be enough. I doubt it.” 

He has a hard time imagining Ma’ar bowing to the whims of a stranger Urtho summoned (albeit accidentally) from another world, even if - maybe especially if - that stranger is powerful enough to solve Predain’s problems and kind enough not to demand any payment.

“And he might not believe the offer is real,” he adds. “But it seems worth offering, if it doesn’t risk anything. Can the thinking-machine you already have with you build roads?”

"It can only think. It can't move except by suggesting ways I could move to me. But it knows some stuff about engineering."

Nod. “Could you write it down, now that your thinking-machine knows our language? I can have someone take dictation if you need, but - you should not go meet the other side face to face. It would be safer if we send something in writing.”

"I can write things down but it's much much slower than somebody being able to ask me questions and stuff, I don't know what they're currently working with or what they need. Do you not have channels for parley open?"

Urtho makes a face. "In theory. I'm - not incredibly comfortable sending you. The problem is that their army uses compulsions - er, mind-controlling magic. They claim there are rules about it, and using it on an emissary would be against them, but - it would be a huge temptation, right, to kidnap you and force you to work for them..." 

"No, you absolutely shouldn't send me into a war zone, I'm the only copy of Sing's seed instructions anywhere! I was thinking I'd get relayed conversations."

"...We can do that. I would rather not risk a Mindspeaker either, which is why I thought writing might be easiest, but I suppose we could have a Mindspeaker relay from off site." 

"I can try with writing but it's less dynamic. Responsive. Too easy to offend someone and not notice till too late."

Urtho nods seriously. "I'm not sure if taking offense is what I expect to go wrong, exactly, but it's certainly been - difficult to communicate with Predain. It - would be good to avoid more misunderstandings." 

"Maybe... do you have, uh - maybe I could build a not magic communications thing, but the problem with it is that you can build a listener easily but not a sender, so it only works one way if you don't have enough cooperation to do more than give them a little listening thingy."

Urtho, distracted briefly from the unhappy matter of the war toward the much happier question of artificing, briefly lights up before trying to control it and look appropriately solemn for the situation. "Incredible? How does it work? We do have magical artifacts for communication, but they are not secure like Mindspeech is, messages can be intercepted or even altered..."

And Ma'ar would claim he wouldn't do something like that, just like he claims he wants peace, but - he could. He's very very good at magic. 

"- oh, well, if that's the problem you can solve it with math and a letter!"

Urtho blinks. “That sounds fascinating! Say more? What sort of math?”

(It’s belatedly occurring to him that it would be fairly bizarre in the first place for Ma’ar to tamper communications from his own side, since if he wanted to be misleading he could just…tell the emissary what to say… There’s just still the mental habit of anxiety that Ma’ar will always outthink him and turn his plans against him…)

Tarinda can with Page's invisible assistance rattle off quite a good explanation of the relevant cryptography for her understanding of their comms situation. It involves prime numbers and stuff.

Urtho listens raptly! It's not entirely clear how well this solves any of his most pressing actual war-related problems, but it’s fascinating! 

…Aaaand after that he really does need to go, the hertasi have been trying to get his attention for a while. He can arrange for artificers to come meet with Tarinda and get instructions on what she’s going to need to start making her world’s thinking machine - unless she needs to rest now, in which case the hertasi can escort her to a room - and he’ll work on setting up a parley with Predain and alert her immediately once that’s been arranged?

She doesn't need to rest right now! She can put in materials orders - or, first, discover at what granularity she needs to put in the materials orders, at any rate - with the artificers first.