A Wild Halcyonite Appears

They'd kind of assumed the same thing until he showed up. That he'd just died after he punched Zantibyra out of existence.

"He lived," Jude confirmed. "Barely. Came through the portal just after us, but took a bit to get here. He's settled in."

But hearing the list was... Jude didn't even have words for all the emotions. We The People. Armourer. The others were effectively strangers to him (maybe Ross had come through?), but We The People. Armorer.

"If Armorer came through in his suit, they can probably find a frequency to contact him with. Everyone else... well, hopefully they can find us. They know about Manta Carlos, and that's the big first step. I guess you already talked to the scouts that brought you here?"

He paused, taking a moment to keep himself together. "How did you even end up getting here?" It sounded like he hadn't been long.

"How are you planning to manage that?" He assumed that Daniel had something in mind in particular. A spell he'd pre-prepared for Clarence and the others. Something more specific than 'wish and hope'.

"I got lucky," Jude admitted. "I ended up here with, uh, me. I was on the island to start, but some of the others ended up around where you did and had to get picked up. Halcyon seems to map approximately to New York, although not quite exactly."

"Akechi Abara," Jude said. "She's a god here. This place has... lots of things we didn't. Gods. Demons. Vampires. They just walk around and exist like anyone else, and she's one of them. A god of messengers and travel, I think. We could contact her and see if she can help... ah, set things up."

Or wizards. God, there were a lot of very powerful wizards. A lot of very powerful magic.

It was weird having Clarence just talk to Giltenn, because he could feel Giltenn bow, and he knew Clarence would feel it in turn.

"Time is of the essence," Jude agreed. "But this island's pretty much the best place for it. There's so much... power here. Things that would be impossible back at home aren't an issue here. Like... Travis. He's got a human form here. It's pretty surprising."

Three days? Even with the time dilation... Jude wasn't quite comfortable being hopeful that the time dilation would continue as they were.

"Alright," Jude said. "We'll go see if we can find Akechi, if we can. I know some people we can talk to, and we can do as much as we can today. I already let the rest of the Defiant know you're here, so they might meet up with us as we go. We can..."

Jude paused, faltering.

Oh.

"I think I know where we need to go. Did you see how Akechi arrived?"

Jude made a point of firing off a quick text to the others before sliding into the drivers seat.

"The plaza," Jude said. "Manta Carlos has a transportation plaza with a guy there--Idar--who's a god of portals. You can pay him to make a portal to your home dimension, only generally that requires knowing more about it than I did. I talked to him before but wasn't able to be specific enough to locate home."

He'd wait for Clarence to get in, and then turned, giving him a long, long look.

"...I'm happy you're here. Just because it's you. Not for any of the other reasons."