Oh. My. God! Her mom was so badass!! Aeva was beyond excited to see that her mom and dad in this world seemed to be actual superheroes! There was no other explanation for such cool abilities like that, and such cool armor too!

She was babbling and giggling in excitement, giving her mom happy, if awkward, claps at the amazing show she just gave. In reality, such gore was probably inappropriate for an infant to see, but eh! Aeva sure as hell wasn’t going to complain! That was like seeing wrestling, but turned up to a thousand. This world was based on levels and the sort, so she was left wondering what the heck sort of level she’d need to be to be as awesome as that.

Vashnoruk would be badgered for answers later.

For now, however, her mother walked back over to her and scooped her up. Her giggling and excited half-hops had gotten her attention - though honestly, her attention had been on her kid the entire time. She was absolutely in love with the little twerp already, no matter how much like a potato infants looked. Her little Varo’K was an adorable tuber.

She hefted the child onto her side and smiled down at her, a genuinely happy smile. T’Kere and her husband had tried so many times… and each time it failed. She had once heard a term from an outsider, “Rainbow Baby.” A child born after the tragedy of miscarriage. Varo’K was their little rainbow.

“Sehts su es, ten?” she asked, grinning wide enough Aeva could see her fang-like canines.

There was that damned language again. It was a shame she couldn’t understand it yet. There were a few words she was already getting the hang of. For instance, “ten” meant yes, and “enta” meant no. Words like that were easy to get the hang of. Another easy thing she caught onto quickly was that they doubled words when it was plural. Like, “su” was you, but “susu” was a plural you. They also didn’t seem to use many words that used their lips a lot, and used a couple clicks that she had no clue how to identify.

So her mom was saying “something you something, yes,” which was… not useful. At all. She assumed it was a question, but that was only if she was lucky enough that they used the same sort of intonation as english did for questions. Hell, she didn’t even know if they used the same sentence structure! Even on Earth, the way English did it was only second most common.

The shaman had already apologized, but explained that she wouldn’t be able to babysit much these first few months. Her parents were far too attached to spirit her away for long. That meant that she couldn’t have language lessons.

On the plus side, news had spread about an outsider appearing at the Msavii Academy, so that had her hopeful that her brother was alright. She still hadn’t been able to get in contact with him, though, so she was trying her best to be patient.

T’Kere flicked her free hand down and created a portal with ease. There was always something new to look at here! Just how much stuff did her mom know?? She gave a smile to Aeva’s wide eyes and a small chuckle before she slipped through the tear in space.

When they stepped through, it wasn’t anything like Aeva imagined. Not that she was very sure what she expected it was like… but she definitely didn’t expect it to feel like she suddenly got dipped straight into outer space. It didn’t so much feel cold as it felt like… a complete absence of heat. She wasn’t there long enough to really see anything at all, but she could only imagine utter darkness broken only by occasional spots.

On the other side she was confronted with about a billion new smells and sights. It was some sort of market, that much was immediately clear what with the stalls and people milling about. Her mother was talking to her in sweet, quiet tones, explaining something about the market. She still couldn’t understand, though, so her focus was elsewhere. Aeva felt a tiny bit rude ignoring someone, but what else could she do?

Many of the people wandering about looked so alien. Sure, her parents, her new village, they looked odd, but they were at least one color palette! There were more inzi, the sort of being she was, that were easy to pick out because they looked like elves with some scales, big canines, and usually some variance bluish-green skin.

Dwarves, or what she assumed were dwarves, were easy to pick out too! They were shorter, as expected, and very stout. Some of the dwarves looked almost human with their skin tones, peach or dark browns. Others looked like they were cut straight from stone with marbling and veins of ore dancing along their skin. Regardless, their eyes were all so enchanting. Every dwarf they passed had gemstone-colored eyes, shine and all.

There were a few orcs too, which she had known before thanks to Vashnoruk. Their sturdy, tall forms and partly-scaled blue to green skin was imposing. They had a lot more scales than inzi did. They weren’t barbarians like in Earth stories, though. They were dressed no differently than anyone else… and heck, they even spoke really well and sounded so proper.

Elves… well they looked like how she imagined elves would look. Tall, pointy ears, those same glittering eyes inzi had, and skin that varied based on the type of elf they were. There were a couple that she saw, though, that looked like elves, and Aeva would have no doubts they were elves, if not for the massive bird wings they had! She had no clue what to make of them.

Humans were even weirder. They were the stature of a human, and had the ears of a human, no scales or weird teeth, but their skin was the weirdest of the whole bunch. There were some that were almost as white as a sheet of paper with black freckling across their cheeks and arms. Then, there were some that looked pretty normal with honey-toned, beautiful skin. After that, though, all normal skin tones went out the window. She saw one that looked like they were painted with gold, with even their eyes gold. They literally looked like they were made of metal. Then there was one that was purple-colored, and that was weird. And then she saw a couple of these “humans” that were so dark black they looked like the night sky over the ocean, but with big vitiligo patches that were of one of the other human colors.

Her mother was talking to some merchant by now, but Aeva’s head was still on a swivel. One lizard… thing… passed right by them. It looked like a tiny silver dragon. A DRAGON. There were also these small-statured people with animal ears and tails, which were incredibly cute. Moreover, they came in a wide variety. She saw some that were like dogs, cats, and foxes, which were common anthro types in Earth fiction, but there was also truly wild looking combinations like lion fish people with long spikes coming out of their back and tied together and up their back with leather bands as to not sting anyone, as well as striped hair. Then there would be the bat and bird anthros, with wings, and raccoon anthros with big ringed tails. The last thing she noticed that was so very out of the norm was a naga. It was a snake-person, colored like a rattlesnake mixed with a colubrid of some sort, with four beefy arms and a long, thick trunk of a tail that they had to curl up as close to themselves as they could while still being able to move. It was very awkward.

All this… she was so overwhelmed.

What was she supposed to think? She looked positively normal in comparison! She felt a cold fear in the pit of her stomach, wondering what her brother was now in this world. She wasn’t sure why it scared her, really, but… it did. They wouldn’t look like siblings anymore. He’d still… care about her, right? He wouldn’t leave her like mom and dad did… right?