Reality slants. It folds. Angles assert themselves where none should exist. The air fractures into prismatic planes, oil-slick and reflective, their contours uncomfortably reminiscent of Ivory's form. An impossible sheen, like light bent through thought. It reminds her, absurdly, of water as it appears in the Cognitive Realm: familiar only by inversion. Wrong, disorienting...
—and yet, somehow, a relief.
This oddness is preferable to the strange, loud, relentless world she stumbled into moments ago.
Jasnah lifts her chin, spine straightening by instinct as the man approaches. He moves with purpose. With authority. Not military, exactly. No, something adjacent. A different grammar of power. She studies him with wary precision, cataloging what she can. The way reality itself seems to accommodate his presence. Invested, she decides. Or something uncomfortably close to it.
He speaks. The sounds mean nothing.
Her mouth tightens, irritation flaring sharp and immediate. Language failure, now? Of all times? She exhales through her nose and answers anyway, voice low, clipped, Alethi edged with frustration.
"Wait." It is, predictably, useless. Softer, almost involuntary, she repeats it to herself. "Wait..."
She rises from the bench. Slowly. Deliberately. Her left hand hangs at her side, covered and inert, a calculated non-threat. Her right hand lifts instead — palm forward, fingers spread.
She has seen Dalinar do this. A dozen times, at least. Touch, to initiate Connection. She has never needed to try it for herself before.
One step forward. Careful. Her gaze stays fixed on him. She would not blame him if he hesitates. She should terrify him. A woman who turned a structure into blood with a touch is not someone you want touching you in turn.
With visible reluctance, she raises her hidden left hand as well. She presses the covered hand against her open right palm. A buffer. A concession. Then she gestures again: palm to palm, then outward toward him. Once more, slower.
Touch, she thinks. Touch
Wherever she has landed, whatever storming corner of the Cosmere this is, she needs Connection. Needs to know if the rules still obey her. If she still obeys them.
The woman stands up, revealing herself to be taller than Stephen by a few inches, and although he holds his breath for a second, she makes no move to cast any spells - not immediately, anyway. The language she speaks is unfamiliar (the same word twice, and nothing happens; either it's not a spell or she can't access her magic here). Stephen wracks his brain to try and think of a translation spell (so many of them are imprecise because language is very nearly a magic of its own).
She steps forward, and Stephen holds his ground; the Cloak flares very slightly (almost unnoticeably) at the hem, like an animal trying to make itself larger when facing a predator. (Stephen doesn't need to posture, but the Cloak tends to be showy.) His fingers twitch a little as she gestures, but rather than the instinctual movements of spell casting, it's the same barely-there uncontrollable twitch that plagues him at the most inconvenient times.
He understands her meaning well enough without a shared language, and maybe it's because he assumes they're both thinking along the same lines, that they need a shared way to communicate. It's not the wisest thing to do, touching an unknown and most likely magic woman he's just met, but Stephen has occasionally been known to make unwise choices when faced with beautiful women. When he reaches out to touch her, his palm is flat against hers, but the fingers curve slightly, shaking a little at the attempt to hold still, and the scars on his fingers stand out starkly in the cold air.
Wit once told her that Connection only works one way. It is the outsider — arrived in a new land — who Connects to the local region and, in doing so, gains access to its language. So when their hands meet, palm to palm, she feels something click into place. A subtle alignment. A settling. The stranger, she assumes, feels nothing at all.
Except perhaps the sharp, narrowed focus of her attention as she watches his hand. Notes the faint tremor there. Catalogues the scars. He is warm against her skin, markedly so, and it takes her a moment to realize why: she has been sitting in this cold air, unmoving, for longer than is wise. A shiver threatens. She suppresses it. She could draw on the last of her stormlight to warm herself, but after what happened to the booth — after the blood — she is not eager to give her Surges anything to work with.
She clears her throat. Tentatively, she tests the shape of this language. Her voice is low and dry and controlled. "Can you understand me...?"
The words feel fascinating as they leave her mouth. New sounds. New grammar. She's still touching him as she lets the language sink in. The moment he gives any indication that it's worked, she withdraws her hand and steps back Distance reclaimed.
Only then does she properly appraise him.
He is dressed unlike the others she saw in the market; it's the long cloak that marks him as different. If she notes the faintly impossible way it flares and settles, it is only because she is passingly familiar with magics that animate fabric. She knows the tells. Even without that, the shifting, mirror-slick distortion of the air around them would be enough.
Jasnah Kholin is quite certain she is standing before someone heavily Invested.
Nothing seems to change when they touch, and Stephen lets his hand fall away, before the tremors worsen. The cold seems to exacerbate them, particularly when it sinks into his hands, and he finds himself wishing he would have stopped to pick up a pair of gloves. At least the Cloak cuts the wind when his hands are at his sides.
Then she speaks in English, and Stephen raises a single eyebrow. "I can," he admits, though not begrudgingly. Indeed, sharing a language means that he can pick her brain about her method of travel, assuming she's willing to share, and also assuming that she doesn't attack him before he has the opportunity to do so.
"My name is Stephen Strange, and you are on Earth. Did you intend to come here, or was it an error?" Are others coming after you, he wants to say, because while she might not pose an immediate threat, it's possible that she's fleeing one that will follow her. There are so many contingencies to think of when you have to protect an entire dimension - honestly, he might be tempted to leave a single woman to one of the other Avengers, but this is firmly within his wheelhouse.
Relief softens her posture by small, small degrees. Softens it only in a way that might suggest she's confident enough to think a shared language is all she needs to Right this Wrong. By no means does she relax — but confidence flows in, replaces a measure of her anxiety, and she looks less like the hunted hare and more like the regal stag.
Y'know, if she even knew what a hare or a stag was. So maybe more like the a cremling and a whitespine. Whatever.
The man introduces himself, and she can be seen softly repeating the words — Stephen Strange, Earth — as she commits them to memory. Is Earth the planet? The continent? The country? The kingdom? He did say on Earth. Is that how the grammar works? Regardless, she doesn't jump to answer him immediately. Jasnah chews on her options.
Eventually: "An error."
Sort of. She definitely meant to go somewhere, but she doesn't think it was here. She's been trying to elsegate to Yolen, but she now suspects there's something preventing anyone from doing exactly that. And, in failing to reach her destination, she landed here instead.
"Sorry," she says in a way that suggests she isn't sorry at all, "Earth, was it?"
Earth. Had Wit ever mentioned an Earth? She doesn't think so.
Knowledge of a language doesn't always mean the facility of a native speaker - again, why translation spells are so difficult at the best of times (when a language native to Earth is involved) - but this one seems to work well enough. Enough that she can decide between the two options or choose a third, but Stephen relaxes a trifle when she settles on error. It means she's not here to attack on purpose, probably doesn't mean them any direct harm. The blood isn't the best sign, but it's possible it came here with her.
"The city of New York, state of New York, in the United States of America, on the planet Earth - I can go on, if you'd like." If anything in there helps her to orient herself. "Sometimes referred to as Midgard by the Asgardians."
With the wave of a hand, the mirror dimension crashes around them, fragments shattering like their namesake to return them to the normal hustle and bustle of New York at Christmastime. The officers stare in their direction - for them, it's been a matter of seconds.
"Everything's fine here!" Stephen calls out to them. "Though you might want to send for a biohazard squad to clean up."
If it's not fine and Stephen's moved too quickly - well, he can deal with that back at the Sanctum. It's cold out here.
New York, New York, United States of America, Earth. None of them are known to her. Nor Midgard.
— It's helpful to have a scholar's memory and attention to detail. Despite the unfamiliarity, she collects each new proper noun like a gem to be hoarded. She asks for a lot, admittedly, while giving very little in return. It's not that Jasnah is being intentionally unforthcoming; rather, she's very much the main character in her own story.
...A fact that is somewhat undermined by how easily, how naturally, this man simply dismisses whatever realmatic pocket he'd summoned. That's what it was, right? The Cognitive Realm on this planet must look like mirrored surfaces, unlike the many of hundreds-thousands-millions of beads back on Roshar. Anyway, he dismisses it and then dismisses the soldiers who'd been ringing the perimeter of her arrival. A leader? Something like a — a highprince, maybe?
"I would like," she eventually lands on her choice. "For you to go on."
It's possible that she doesn't have a name - for all he knows, she's part of a hivemind or collective intelligence, or she's made up of one, though the singular pronoun would discredit that theory. Maybe she's too discombobulated to offer one, or maybe she's just shy. Stephen doesn't worry too much about that.
Instead, he slips his hand into his pocket for his sling ring and uses it to inscribe a spinning circle in the air; on the other side of the circle is an opulent study, decorated in rich reds and golds, books on the shelves clearly evident from here. "Once we're out of this weather," he says, and gestures for her to step through the portal before him. He can't promise no harm will come to her, not if she proves to be a threat, but he has no intention of doing so unless she's in danger.
"I'm sure you could use something hot to drink," he adds, and the tone is about as inviting as Stephen gets, at least with a stranger.
She looks at the circle. She looks at him. She looks at the circle again. Her elsegates look nothing like this, but the concept is clear enough — obvious enough — that she cannot help but draw an immediate, personal comparison. Is he something like an Elsecaller?
Hard to say whether that familiarity with Transportation measures it as more or less ill-advised to walk through someone else's portal, but so far he's been leagues more hospitable than the screaming crowds or the weapon-wielding soldiers (aka, cops) — at least she'd assumed they'd been weapons. Small, bent at an angle, probably some kind of fabrial. Whatever they were, it was clear they were intended as a deterrent when they'd been leveled at her shortly after her dramatic arrival.
Jasnah makes up her mind when he says something hot to drink and strides forward — not without glancing over her shoulder, watching him, still nursing a healthy dose of paranoia. But all of her reservations crumble away into awe as she walks into — into a building, a room, a personal private space the likes of which she'd know anywhere. Like how the portal felt so familiar, this too feels like her own study albeit in a different font.
She turns on a heel, looking back at the portal even as she takes in the furnishings. The books. Are they his?
He follows her back into the Sanctum - thankfully, the wards don't go off, so he probably hasn't invited a malevolent extraplanar entity in - and back into a reasonable degree of warmth before he lets the portal close. The Cloak shakes a few flakes from its hem, then floats to settle over a nearby settee.
"The books? They are in the sense that I currently possess them. It's part of the collective library of the Masters of the Mystic Arts here on Earth. I'm the Sorcerer Supreme - the leader of them all. And, to finish your query, Earth is in what others might term the Sol System, in the Orion Arm of the Milky Way Galaxy, and what we call the Local Group of galaxies within a currently unnamed universe." Unnamed by the inhabitants, anyway.
"Are you familiar with tea? It consists of dried plant leaves steeped in boiling water, with or without milk and sugar added." Hopefully the language comes with enough concepts familiar to her to allow her a frame of reference. "Or I can try to provide something similar to what you might be used to if you tell me what that is."
Ah, now that is a title. She doesn't need to understand its constituent words perfectly to understand, based on its distribution and weight, that it means something to be the Sorcerer Supreme. Even if he hadn't followed it up with any additional qualifiers on leadership. Honestly, this influx of knowledge might have been overwhelming — but Jasnah finds it near-soothing. She nods, thoughtful, as he continues. The only thing that gives her true pause is the suspicion that she may have somehow left the Cosmere entirely, a feat that she'd only ever discussed as a hypothetical with the only person who might have ever otherwise managed it. Hmm.
"I know tea," she answers — delayed, mostly because she's busy eyeing the shelves, but she soon looks back to him and settles into a firm, standing posture. "And would like some, thank you. Without milk, without sugar."
Jasnah doesn't know this, of course, but tea on Roshar is really just a tisane. Nevertheless, the Connection makes one word rope-up with another and she understands, implicitly, what she's agreeing to. Something brewed, and she knows how she'd prefer something unsweetened. It's unlike her to drink anything she hasn't prepared herself, or hasn't soulcast, but we'll cross that bridge when we get there.
Hm. Alright, time to build a different bridge first.
"Jasnah Kholin," she taps her right palm against her chest. And quite intentionally omits her titles. They won't mean anything here. "Before arriving here, I was in the tower city of Urithiru. The continent of Roshar. The planet Roshar." Not unlike the New York - New York nesting doll he introduced earlier.
Should she continue, like she asked him to continue? She considers for a moment.
"The Rosharan system. In the Cosmere. I — I don't know the galaxy. I don't know what a galaxy is."
Spoiler alert! What she thinks the universe is (the Cosmere) is in fact just a galaxy. But she doesn't know that. Either way, she doesn't seem in the least bit perturbed to admit to her shortfall in this topic.
"Does your spell grant you the ability to read English?" A slight tilt of his head towards the bookshelves. In fact, only about half the books are in some sort of English, and of those, maybe half bear names on the spines (all sorts of spines, bound in cloth and leather and wood and materials slightly more dubious, in all conditions of wear). The study contains the books that are safer to have around the uninitiated; the truly hazardous - by nature or by content - remain at Kamar-Taj.
Without waiting for an answer, he adds, "A galaxy is a group of millions - or more - of stars and their constituent systems." He seats himself on the edge of a red-upholstered armchair and produces a teapot and cups seemingly out of nowhere, though there is a tray on the low wooden table before them waiting to receive them. Perhaps he pulls this trick often enough that it's anticipated beforehand.
"It's a pleasure to meet you, Jasnah. I assume you're something of a bibliophile?" Because nobody looks at books like that unless they have a burning desire to crack them open. Stephen knows, because it's exactly how he would look put in front of a completely alien library.
"...Historian," she breathes the correction. It's easy and knee-jerk and answered by rote while she's still digesting his description of millions or more stars. It's a lot to think about, realizing that the breadth of her taxonomy might be too narrow to account for reality. Something else to chew on.
"And it wasn't a spell, I simply—" When she turns back, and sees the sudden teapot and cups, she frowns. Again, not with any kind of surprise or horror. She clearly isn't perturbed by the powers she witnesses. But they do furrow a line between her brows. Like she's trying to figure out how they fit together. Strange, new pieces.
He sits; she continues to stand.
"Is this English?" She points at her mouth, indicating the language they're speaking. "If so, then — yes. I'll be able to read it. I suppose you could say I borrowed some Connection. The bits of you that Connect you to your language."
Stephen doesn't expect her to be surprised; someone who routinely travels using magic isn't likely to bat an eyelash at suddenly-materializing beverages. He pours one cup for himself, one for her, and wafts her cup over on a saucer. No comment on her decision to remain standing.
"Borrowed some Connection via touch? Is it proximity-based? And is it limited to only one language?" He assumes that, as a historian, Jasnah already speaks more than one language; so does he, though he reads more than he speaks. Oh, he'd love to stick her in a MRI and see which parts of her brain light up - but magic doesn't always produce quantifiable results like that. And equipment is expensive to use.
"What were you trying to do when you came here?" Because maybe if he has a better idea, he can help her return home.
...He asks a lot of questions. Jasnah isn't bothered, but it does make her wonder whether this is what it's like for other people when they're on the opposite end of one of her barrages. Regardless, she takes a beat to lift the cup from where it floats — leave the saucer — and hold it carefully in her right hand.
She answers in reverse order, like dragging a finger up a card catalogue index from the bottom up.
"I was trying to go somewhere else. It's limited to the local tongue — it's a Connection to place, not strictly to language. If there's more than on common language in," a pause, "New York? I might be able to understand others. And, yes, by touch. Frankly, I wasn't sure it was going to work..."
Jasnah trails off, holding the cup close for warmth but not yet daring to take a sip.
"...Do you rule the city?"
A guess. Not a bad one, incidentally. Just a wrong one. But it tells a lot about where she's come from that she would look around, look at him, and assume ruler.
Years of training as a doctor have left Stephen inclined to gather as much information in any situation as possible, from reading charts to questioning patients - or, in this case, unexpected visitors. He can't diagnose the problem without fully understanding every aspect of it first.
"No, we have a form of elected government in charge here." But he does look faintly amused by the suggestion that he's a ruler. Even now, he can occasionally come off as distant, arrogant, and condescending, which are the traits he associates with nobility (not that he's met any before now). "I just keep it safe." For a given definition of "safe" that doesn't include "a Hulk rampaging a few blocks away", not that he'd been a sorcerer back then.
He takes a sip of tea before it grows much colder. "What is magic like on Roshar? Or whatever you call similar abilities."
He may notice — because she damned well doesn't hide it — the way her interest piques at the mention of an elected government. Jasnah has not introduced herself as such, but she's a rather...recently crowned queen. A last resort after her male relatives had all been killed or refused to inherit. Succession law had to be adapted to allow her reign. And, in the wake of one amendment, she intends to oversee more. If Jasnah Kholin has her way, the Alethi monarchy will be abolished within the year. Ambitious. But maybe there's something to be learned, here...
— She folds the notion, tucks it away, and will follow up on it later.
"Surges," she offers. "We call them Surges. A mishap with the Surge of Transportation landed me here. And then again, the Surge of Transformation with..." A bob of her head. The blood, the spectacle, the temporary quarantine behind yellow ribbon. "What happened earlier. Things aren't working as expected."
It seems other worlds are familiar with the concept of democracy, though he wonders idly what it might be called without the influence of Greek in the language. Magic - not his particular practice, but the general concept - tends to deal quite a lot with language and semantics, and in this case, he's especially interested to know how much ideas translate over this so-called Connection, but it's probably best to delve into that later.
"Transformation," he echoes thoughtfully. "I'm glad your, ah, Surges don't normally involve that much blood. It's a terribly dramatic way to conduct things." To say the least. "And it means no innocent bystanders were harmed - not that I saw evidence of any such thing." He wouldn't be nearly as calm about all of this if she had landed on Earth and started maiming the locals, because starting off with destruction on a smaller scale never bodes well for things on a larger scale. "Are the Surges innate, or can anyone learn to use them?"
Jasnah still hasn't taken a single sip of tea. Ideally, she would use Transformation to cleanse the drink — not because she distrusts Stephen specifically (although she absolutely does not trust him) but because it's half-habit and half-compulsion to Soulcast any food or drink she receives from someone else.
Lightly, carefully, she shifts the cup within her one hand. Wondering how long is just polite enough before she abandons it.
"Surges require a bond. Oaths. The being to whom I've sworn mine isn't here," she surmises, "hence the malfunction."
"That sounds...intimate." There's no better way of putting it, because a connection to another person can't be described as anything else; it doesn't mean it's physically intimate (not that he's judging Jasnah if it is), but it does sound like the sort of thing that lends itself to emotional intimacy. At the very least, it's a form of vulnerability, as Jasnah has just proven. Without one's partner, for lack of a better term, a Surge is impossible. But the flaw in the system is obvious, and there's no real need to point it out.
"Does physical distance affect the bond?" Stephen's back to asking more probing questions now. "If you were on a different continent in the same world, say, would your Surges be as strong as they were if you were next to them?" This might not be pertinent to getting Jasnah back home, but it is very much pertinent to his prying curiosity.
A flicker of a smile tugs at the corners of her mouth. He's asking the right questions — the same questions she'd ask, if she was the one interviewing an unexpected interloper claiming the kinds of things she claims.
Her fingertips tap-tap-tap gently against the china cup. How much to share? With Ivory not here at all, presumably still bound back on Roshar, she may as well be sincere in her answer. She can't risk him any more than she already has.
"It does," she confirms. "More than a handful of miles, and the spren — the other involved party — starts to lose the sapience and anchoring in the Physical Realm they receive as their half of the bargain."
With her so, so far...? Storms, she hopes Ivory has taken refuge in the Cognitive Realm.
"Intent affects it too," she adds — eager to explain a little bit more if only because she's reacting so positively to his curiosity. "Break an oath, and you can actually harm them."
Oh, now his interest is piqued. These bond partners sound especially intriguing; entities that require an oath to give them both sapience and physicality sound fascinating. Stephen only regrets that he apparently can't meet Jasnah's.
"What sort of oaths do you swear to them?" He knows something about swearing to incorporeal entities - though the Vishanti are very much sapient, and would be insulted at any implication otherwise, and were once corporeal and chose to give up those forms for greater power. "And if there's a Physical Realm, I assume the counterpart is...spiritual? Mental? We have something similar called the Astral Plane."
Um, okay. Guy's got game. Jasnah abandons propriety altogether and, depositing the cup of untouched tea back on its original tray, she ventures a few steps nearer. Not, like, aggressively close — but equivalent perhaps as if they were sitting at a desk, across from one another. Him, seated on the side of the armchair. Her, standing a few feet back.
Again, she tackles his questions in reverse order. Starting with one of her favourite topics: Realmatic Theory.
"There are three. The Physical Realm — presumably where you and I are now, if Earth follows pattern. Then it's the Cognitive Realm...colloquially known as Shadesmar, where I'm from. A kind of inverse space. Thought and perception. And home to the spren, where they are perfectly self-aware even without a bond. Finally," she nods as though confirming his earlier assumption, "there is the Spiritual. I've not visited. It's — well, that would be a long conversation."
Oh. She's talkative, when the topic appeals to her.
"As for our oaths. Hm." Actually, with a wave of her right hand, she interrupts herself. "Wait. Was that your Astral Plane, earlier? The...reflective, angled space."
"No, that was the mirror dimension. It's - a splinter, I suppose. Not a separate branch of reality in and of itself, just a temporary...dislodging, I guess you could call it. It's not something that can be sustained indefinitely." Though the Ancient One might have been able to sustain it longer than he can, and he's considered fairly proficient. "The Astral Plane is one where you detach your-" soul is such an awkward and spiritually bound term, but it makes for convenient shorthand "-conscious self from your physical form." He suspects that one of Jasnah's other two realms might be something like this, perhaps the Cognitive Realm.
She hums a soft, attentive sound. If she had to guess — and she doesn't mind guessing, even if it risks being wrong — his Astral Plane sounds a lot like the Spiritual Realm. Perhaps? Again, hard to say without having been there herself. It was enough to hear Wit's vague, ominous descriptions of a space where one might fully lose themselves in visions, in memories, in the infinite web of possibilities.
— And she's got another theory or three about the mirror dimension, but let's not get ahead of ourselves.
"I was in Shadesmar before I came here — trying to get somewhere else, but that somewhere else isn't keen on visitors. I suspect I got shunted elsewhere as a kind of defense mechanism on the part of that planet."
Not a complaint, just the truth. Although she does add: "Not that I intended that planet any harm, either. I was looking for someone. It doesn't matter. I'm here now."
And she'd like to get back. But there are some early obvious problems. But before he asks another question, her thoughts catch up to the earlier one she'd neglected to answer.
"—The oaths. Ah, they're different for different spren. Different Radiant orders. But the first are always the same."
She waits for some indication he'd like to know. She can share the First Ideal readily. They're no secret, even back home.
"How do you travel through Shadesmar?" This might involve more physics than Stephen typically gets into - he's a doctor, not a physicist - or it might just be Weird Magic Shit (which often operates by its own distinct logic, rather than explicable science, much to Tony Stark's dismay).
Anyway, he assumes that Jasnah can't access that realm now, so it's kind of a moot point, apart from his curiosity (which is significant in and of itself).
At least they're swapping information for information; it would be awkward (but hardly unusual) if Stephen were simply interrogating her on her world's magic. Speaking of which: "And that first oath?"
"Shadesmar?" She rolls the possible answers around the back of her tongue, thinking. "On foot, predominantly."
It's a slightly wry, too-literal answer. A sign (perhaps) that she's starting to shake some of the initial panic of her arrival.
"Shadesmar, or the Cognitive Realm, is the land of thought and perception. Inverse to the physical. Generally speaking, the only way to access it is by something called a Perpendicularity; however, some Radiants have the ability to crossover at will."
A soft, indicative tap of her sleeved hand against her chest. She is one of those Radiants. In fact, the only one. But that's not an important distinction right now.
"...And all Radiants start out with the same First Ideal: Life before death; strength before weakness; journey before destination. If your words are accepted, you gain rudimentary abilities."
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2025-12-18 08:59 pm (UTC)Reality slants. It folds. Angles assert themselves where none should exist. The air fractures into prismatic planes, oil-slick and reflective, their contours uncomfortably reminiscent of Ivory's form. An impossible sheen, like light bent through thought. It reminds her, absurdly, of water as it appears in the Cognitive Realm: familiar only by inversion. Wrong, disorienting...
—and yet, somehow, a relief.
This oddness is preferable to the strange, loud, relentless world she stumbled into moments ago.
Jasnah lifts her chin, spine straightening by instinct as the man approaches. He moves with purpose. With authority. Not military, exactly. No, something adjacent. A different grammar of power. She studies him with wary precision, cataloging what she can. The way reality itself seems to accommodate his presence. Invested, she decides. Or something uncomfortably close to it.
He speaks. The sounds mean nothing.
Her mouth tightens, irritation flaring sharp and immediate. Language failure, now? Of all times? She exhales through her nose and answers anyway, voice low, clipped, Alethi edged with frustration.
"Wait." It is, predictably, useless. Softer, almost involuntary, she repeats it to herself. "Wait..."
She rises from the bench. Slowly. Deliberately. Her left hand hangs at her side, covered and inert, a calculated non-threat. Her right hand lifts instead — palm forward, fingers spread.
She has seen Dalinar do this. A dozen times, at least. Touch, to initiate Connection. She has never needed to try it for herself before.
One step forward. Careful. Her gaze stays fixed on him. She would not blame him if he hesitates. She should terrify him. A woman who turned a structure into blood with a touch is not someone you want touching you in turn.
With visible reluctance, she raises her hidden left hand as well. She presses the covered hand against her open right palm. A buffer. A concession. Then she gestures again: palm to palm, then outward toward him. Once more, slower.
Touch, she thinks. Touch
Wherever she has landed, whatever storming corner of the Cosmere this is, she needs Connection. Needs to know if the rules still obey her. If she still obeys them.
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Date: 2025-12-19 02:38 pm (UTC)She steps forward, and Stephen holds his ground; the Cloak flares very slightly (almost unnoticeably) at the hem, like an animal trying to make itself larger when facing a predator. (Stephen doesn't need to posture, but the Cloak tends to be showy.) His fingers twitch a little as she gestures, but rather than the instinctual movements of spell casting, it's the same barely-there uncontrollable twitch that plagues him at the most inconvenient times.
He understands her meaning well enough without a shared language, and maybe it's because he assumes they're both thinking along the same lines, that they need a shared way to communicate. It's not the wisest thing to do, touching an unknown and most likely magic woman he's just met, but Stephen has occasionally been known to make unwise choices when faced with beautiful women. When he reaches out to touch her, his palm is flat against hers, but the fingers curve slightly, shaking a little at the attempt to hold still, and the scars on his fingers stand out starkly in the cold air.
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Date: 2025-12-19 02:57 pm (UTC)Except perhaps the sharp, narrowed focus of her attention as she watches his hand. Notes the faint tremor there. Catalogues the scars. He is warm against her skin, markedly so, and it takes her a moment to realize why: she has been sitting in this cold air, unmoving, for longer than is wise. A shiver threatens. She suppresses it. She could draw on the last of her stormlight to warm herself, but after what happened to the booth — after the blood — she is not eager to give her Surges anything to work with.
She clears her throat. Tentatively, she tests the shape of this language. Her voice is low and dry and controlled. "Can you understand me...?"
The words feel fascinating as they leave her mouth. New sounds. New grammar. She's still touching him as she lets the language sink in. The moment he gives any indication that it's worked, she withdraws her hand and steps back Distance reclaimed.
Only then does she properly appraise him.
He is dressed unlike the others she saw in the market; it's the long cloak that marks him as different. If she notes the faintly impossible way it flares and settles, it is only because she is passingly familiar with magics that animate fabric. She knows the tells. Even without that, the shifting, mirror-slick distortion of the air around them would be enough.
Jasnah Kholin is quite certain she is standing before someone heavily Invested.
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Date: 2025-12-19 03:17 pm (UTC)Then she speaks in English, and Stephen raises a single eyebrow. "I can," he admits, though not begrudgingly. Indeed, sharing a language means that he can pick her brain about her method of travel, assuming she's willing to share, and also assuming that she doesn't attack him before he has the opportunity to do so.
"My name is Stephen Strange, and you are on Earth. Did you intend to come here, or was it an error?" Are others coming after you, he wants to say, because while she might not pose an immediate threat, it's possible that she's fleeing one that will follow her. There are so many contingencies to think of when you have to protect an entire dimension - honestly, he might be tempted to leave a single woman to one of the other Avengers, but this is firmly within his wheelhouse.
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Date: 2025-12-19 03:53 pm (UTC)Y'know, if she even knew what a hare or a stag was. So maybe more like the a cremling and a whitespine. Whatever.
The man introduces himself, and she can be seen softly repeating the words — Stephen Strange, Earth — as she commits them to memory. Is Earth the planet? The continent? The country? The kingdom? He did say on Earth. Is that how the grammar works? Regardless, she doesn't jump to answer him immediately. Jasnah chews on her options.
Eventually: "An error."
Sort of. She definitely meant to go somewhere, but she doesn't think it was here. She's been trying to elsegate to Yolen, but she now suspects there's something preventing anyone from doing exactly that. And, in failing to reach her destination, she landed here instead.
"Sorry," she says in a way that suggests she isn't sorry at all, "Earth, was it?"
Earth. Had Wit ever mentioned an Earth? She doesn't think so.
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Date: 2025-12-19 04:06 pm (UTC)"The city of New York, state of New York, in the United States of America, on the planet Earth - I can go on, if you'd like." If anything in there helps her to orient herself. "Sometimes referred to as Midgard by the Asgardians."
With the wave of a hand, the mirror dimension crashes around them, fragments shattering like their namesake to return them to the normal hustle and bustle of New York at Christmastime. The officers stare in their direction - for them, it's been a matter of seconds.
"Everything's fine here!" Stephen calls out to them. "Though you might want to send for a biohazard squad to clean up."
If it's not fine and Stephen's moved too quickly - well, he can deal with that back at the Sanctum. It's cold out here.
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Date: 2025-12-19 04:16 pm (UTC)— It's helpful to have a scholar's memory and attention to detail. Despite the unfamiliarity, she collects each new proper noun like a gem to be hoarded. She asks for a lot, admittedly, while giving very little in return. It's not that Jasnah is being intentionally unforthcoming; rather, she's very much the main character in her own story.
...A fact that is somewhat undermined by how easily, how naturally, this man simply dismisses whatever realmatic pocket he'd summoned. That's what it was, right? The Cognitive Realm on this planet must look like mirrored surfaces, unlike the many of hundreds-thousands-millions of beads back on Roshar. Anyway, he dismisses it and then dismisses the soldiers who'd been ringing the perimeter of her arrival. A leader? Something like a — a highprince, maybe?
"I would like," she eventually lands on her choice. "For you to go on."
More data points, please.
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Date: 2025-12-19 04:24 pm (UTC)Instead, he slips his hand into his pocket for his sling ring and uses it to inscribe a spinning circle in the air; on the other side of the circle is an opulent study, decorated in rich reds and golds, books on the shelves clearly evident from here. "Once we're out of this weather," he says, and gestures for her to step through the portal before him. He can't promise no harm will come to her, not if she proves to be a threat, but he has no intention of doing so unless she's in danger.
"I'm sure you could use something hot to drink," he adds, and the tone is about as inviting as Stephen gets, at least with a stranger.
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Date: 2025-12-19 04:33 pm (UTC)Hard to say whether that familiarity with Transportation measures it as more or less ill-advised to walk through someone else's portal, but so far he's been leagues more hospitable than the screaming crowds or the weapon-wielding soldiers (aka, cops) — at least she'd assumed they'd been weapons. Small, bent at an angle, probably some kind of fabrial. Whatever they were, it was clear they were intended as a deterrent when they'd been leveled at her shortly after her dramatic arrival.
Jasnah makes up her mind when he says something hot to drink and strides forward — not without glancing over her shoulder, watching him, still nursing a healthy dose of paranoia. But all of her reservations crumble away into awe as she walks into — into a building, a room, a personal private space the likes of which she'd know anywhere. Like how the portal felt so familiar, this too feels like her own study albeit in a different font.
She turns on a heel, looking back at the portal even as she takes in the furnishings. The books. Are they his?
In fact...
"Are these yours?"
One hand raised, gesturing.
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Date: 2025-12-19 04:44 pm (UTC)"The books? They are in the sense that I currently possess them. It's part of the collective library of the Masters of the Mystic Arts here on Earth. I'm the Sorcerer Supreme - the leader of them all. And, to finish your query, Earth is in what others might term the Sol System, in the Orion Arm of the Milky Way Galaxy, and what we call the Local Group of galaxies within a currently unnamed universe." Unnamed by the inhabitants, anyway.
"Are you familiar with tea? It consists of dried plant leaves steeped in boiling water, with or without milk and sugar added." Hopefully the language comes with enough concepts familiar to her to allow her a frame of reference. "Or I can try to provide something similar to what you might be used to if you tell me what that is."
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Date: 2025-12-19 05:00 pm (UTC)"I know tea," she answers — delayed, mostly because she's busy eyeing the shelves, but she soon looks back to him and settles into a firm, standing posture. "And would like some, thank you. Without milk, without sugar."
Jasnah doesn't know this, of course, but tea on Roshar is really just a tisane. Nevertheless, the Connection makes one word rope-up with another and she understands, implicitly, what she's agreeing to. Something brewed, and she knows how she'd prefer something unsweetened. It's unlike her to drink anything she hasn't prepared herself, or hasn't soulcast, but we'll cross that bridge when we get there.
Hm. Alright, time to build a different bridge first.
"Jasnah Kholin," she taps her right palm against her chest. And quite intentionally omits her titles. They won't mean anything here. "Before arriving here, I was in the tower city of Urithiru. The continent of Roshar. The planet Roshar." Not unlike the New York - New York nesting doll he introduced earlier.
Should she continue, like she asked him to continue? She considers for a moment.
"The Rosharan system. In the Cosmere. I — I don't know the galaxy. I don't know what a galaxy is."
Spoiler alert! What she thinks the universe is (the Cosmere) is in fact just a galaxy. But she doesn't know that. Either way, she doesn't seem in the least bit perturbed to admit to her shortfall in this topic.
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Date: 2025-12-19 06:13 pm (UTC)Without waiting for an answer, he adds, "A galaxy is a group of millions - or more - of stars and their constituent systems." He seats himself on the edge of a red-upholstered armchair and produces a teapot and cups seemingly out of nowhere, though there is a tray on the low wooden table before them waiting to receive them. Perhaps he pulls this trick often enough that it's anticipated beforehand.
"It's a pleasure to meet you, Jasnah. I assume you're something of a bibliophile?" Because nobody looks at books like that unless they have a burning desire to crack them open. Stephen knows, because it's exactly how he would look put in front of a completely alien library.
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Date: 2025-12-19 06:23 pm (UTC)"And it wasn't a spell, I simply—" When she turns back, and sees the sudden teapot and cups, she frowns. Again, not with any kind of surprise or horror. She clearly isn't perturbed by the powers she witnesses. But they do furrow a line between her brows. Like she's trying to figure out how they fit together. Strange, new pieces.
He sits; she continues to stand.
"Is this English?" She points at her mouth, indicating the language they're speaking. "If so, then — yes. I'll be able to read it. I suppose you could say I borrowed some Connection. The bits of you that Connect you to your language."
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Date: 2025-12-19 06:37 pm (UTC)"Borrowed some Connection via touch? Is it proximity-based? And is it limited to only one language?" He assumes that, as a historian, Jasnah already speaks more than one language; so does he, though he reads more than he speaks. Oh, he'd love to stick her in a MRI and see which parts of her brain light up - but magic doesn't always produce quantifiable results like that. And equipment is expensive to use.
"What were you trying to do when you came here?" Because maybe if he has a better idea, he can help her return home.
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Date: 2025-12-19 06:47 pm (UTC)She answers in reverse order, like dragging a finger up a card catalogue index from the bottom up.
"I was trying to go somewhere else. It's limited to the local tongue — it's a Connection to place, not strictly to language. If there's more than on common language in," a pause, "New York? I might be able to understand others. And, yes, by touch. Frankly, I wasn't sure it was going to work..."
Jasnah trails off, holding the cup close for warmth but not yet daring to take a sip.
"...Do you rule the city?"
A guess. Not a bad one, incidentally. Just a wrong one. But it tells a lot about where she's come from that she would look around, look at him, and assume ruler.
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Date: 2025-12-19 07:10 pm (UTC)"No, we have a form of elected government in charge here." But he does look faintly amused by the suggestion that he's a ruler. Even now, he can occasionally come off as distant, arrogant, and condescending, which are the traits he associates with nobility (not that he's met any before now). "I just keep it safe." For a given definition of "safe" that doesn't include "a Hulk rampaging a few blocks away", not that he'd been a sorcerer back then.
He takes a sip of tea before it grows much colder. "What is magic like on Roshar? Or whatever you call similar abilities."
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Date: 2025-12-19 07:16 pm (UTC)— She folds the notion, tucks it away, and will follow up on it later.
"Surges," she offers. "We call them Surges. A mishap with the Surge of Transportation landed me here. And then again, the Surge of Transformation with..." A bob of her head. The blood, the spectacle, the temporary quarantine behind yellow ribbon. "What happened earlier. Things aren't working as expected."
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Date: 2025-12-26 10:11 pm (UTC)"Transformation," he echoes thoughtfully. "I'm glad your, ah, Surges don't normally involve that much blood. It's a terribly dramatic way to conduct things." To say the least. "And it means no innocent bystanders were harmed - not that I saw evidence of any such thing." He wouldn't be nearly as calm about all of this if she had landed on Earth and started maiming the locals, because starting off with destruction on a smaller scale never bodes well for things on a larger scale. "Are the Surges innate, or can anyone learn to use them?"
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Date: 2025-12-26 10:24 pm (UTC)Jasnah still hasn't taken a single sip of tea. Ideally, she would use Transformation to cleanse the drink — not because she distrusts Stephen specifically (although she absolutely does not trust him) but because it's half-habit and half-compulsion to Soulcast any food or drink she receives from someone else.
Lightly, carefully, she shifts the cup within her one hand. Wondering how long is just polite enough before she abandons it.
"Surges require a bond. Oaths. The being to whom I've sworn mine isn't here," she surmises, "hence the malfunction."
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Date: 2025-12-26 10:35 pm (UTC)"Does physical distance affect the bond?" Stephen's back to asking more probing questions now. "If you were on a different continent in the same world, say, would your Surges be as strong as they were if you were next to them?" This might not be pertinent to getting Jasnah back home, but it is very much pertinent to his prying curiosity.
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Date: 2025-12-26 10:41 pm (UTC)Her fingertips tap-tap-tap gently against the china cup. How much to share? With Ivory not here at all, presumably still bound back on Roshar, she may as well be sincere in her answer. She can't risk him any more than she already has.
"It does," she confirms. "More than a handful of miles, and the spren — the other involved party — starts to lose the sapience and anchoring in the Physical Realm they receive as their half of the bargain."
With her so, so far...? Storms, she hopes Ivory has taken refuge in the Cognitive Realm.
"Intent affects it too," she adds — eager to explain a little bit more if only because she's reacting so positively to his curiosity. "Break an oath, and you can actually harm them."
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Date: 2025-12-26 10:54 pm (UTC)"What sort of oaths do you swear to them?" He knows something about swearing to incorporeal entities - though the Vishanti are very much sapient, and would be insulted at any implication otherwise, and were once corporeal and chose to give up those forms for greater power. "And if there's a Physical Realm, I assume the counterpart is...spiritual? Mental? We have something similar called the Astral Plane."
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Date: 2025-12-26 11:02 pm (UTC)Again, she tackles his questions in reverse order. Starting with one of her favourite topics: Realmatic Theory.
"There are three. The Physical Realm — presumably where you and I are now, if Earth follows pattern. Then it's the Cognitive Realm...colloquially known as Shadesmar, where I'm from. A kind of inverse space. Thought and perception. And home to the spren, where they are perfectly self-aware even without a bond. Finally," she nods as though confirming his earlier assumption, "there is the Spiritual. I've not visited. It's — well, that would be a long conversation."
Oh. She's talkative, when the topic appeals to her.
"As for our oaths. Hm." Actually, with a wave of her right hand, she interrupts herself. "Wait. Was that your Astral Plane, earlier? The...reflective, angled space."
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Date: 2025-12-26 11:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-12-26 11:21 pm (UTC)— And she's got another theory or three about the mirror dimension, but let's not get ahead of ourselves.
"I was in Shadesmar before I came here — trying to get somewhere else, but that somewhere else isn't keen on visitors. I suspect I got shunted elsewhere as a kind of defense mechanism on the part of that planet."
Not a complaint, just the truth. Although she does add: "Not that I intended that planet any harm, either. I was looking for someone. It doesn't matter. I'm here now."
And she'd like to get back. But there are some early obvious problems. But before he asks another question, her thoughts catch up to the earlier one she'd neglected to answer.
"—The oaths. Ah, they're different for different spren. Different Radiant orders. But the first are always the same."
She waits for some indication he'd like to know. She can share the First Ideal readily. They're no secret, even back home.
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Date: 2026-01-07 06:32 pm (UTC)Anyway, he assumes that Jasnah can't access that realm now, so it's kind of a moot point, apart from his curiosity (which is significant in and of itself).
At least they're swapping information for information; it would be awkward (but hardly unusual) if Stephen were simply interrogating her on her world's magic. Speaking of which: "And that first oath?"
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Date: 2026-01-07 06:48 pm (UTC)It's a slightly wry, too-literal answer. A sign (perhaps) that she's starting to shake some of the initial panic of her arrival.
"Shadesmar, or the Cognitive Realm, is the land of thought and perception. Inverse to the physical. Generally speaking, the only way to access it is by something called a Perpendicularity; however, some Radiants have the ability to crossover at will."
A soft, indicative tap of her sleeved hand against her chest. She is one of those Radiants. In fact, the only one. But that's not an important distinction right now.
"...And all Radiants start out with the same First Ideal: Life before death; strength before weakness; journey before destination. If your words are accepted, you gain rudimentary abilities."
A beat.
"Are your arts unbound by oath or vows?"