Ishani was third through the Gate this time, but she emerged to find Chris making a coffee for his god, with a fire going and snow blanketing the ground around them. It was night and a full moon hung in the sky above them. Chris noticed her arrival and pointed at the moon, "Look familiar?"

The moon above her was strange, but also familiar, it took a second but then it clicked, it was the same moon, Luna, that she saw every now and then through the light pollution, but rotated by about a sixth of a full turn.

"That's our moon!"

It was a measure of her shock, that Ishani didn't notice Ngaboux's incarnation come up behind her and place a hand on her shoulder.

"No, it's not your moon, but it might be, one day. We're lucky, my avatar was both right, and very wrong. I'll explain more when everyone else gets here, we've probably got a few hours. The temporal differential is increasing, so I should just have time to explain the situation to everyone before my tether snaps. That's why the circle broke." Ngaboux gestured to the blackened ruined stumps of what had been the stakes holding the gate in place in time.

"There's debate about the moon!" Chris shouted. "Anyway, I'm making dinner, I caught a fish!"

"He caught it with his claws, it was positively savage. I loved it." Ngaboux walked over to Chris and laid their hand on his shoulder, while grabbing the coffee he'd made with the other.

Chris preened himself while he started chopping the vegetables, obviously enjoying the attention.

"Uh, should I come back later?" Ishani asked, clearly uncomfortable.

"This is technically a religious service, I just have a personal connection to my god. Anyway, it's purely platonic."

"I won't deny though, I did have a hand in choosing my avatar's form" Ngaboux said, trailing their hand down Chris' arm.

"You'd better pull up a chair, I expect us to be waiting all night."

To the immense relief of Ishani, Lin came through a few seconds after this pronouncement.

"Oh thank the fates you're here. I mean, you made it safely, through the Gate. I mean yes. Glad to see you." Ishani's mouth was running away with her relief.

"Ah you pulled the creepy stunt. Was it lech or lich?" Lin's voice sounded somewhat annoyed, insofar as Ishani could tell what a walking rock's voice indicated.

"I resent the implication," said Ngaboux. "But it was lech."

"They do this to everyone new." Lin said to Ishani, "It appeals to their sick and twisted sense of humour."

"I am a god, everything I do is by definition divine. It can't be sick or twisted. Anyway, this is a common form of hazing in my home realm. If you object to it, you're being culturally insensitive." The god of magic then went to the edge of the circle and began to repair and prepare the circle around the gate. "The moment Adili and Wolfgang get here we're going back to parity. I've got an industrial strength enchantment for this, but I think it'll only last at most an hour for us. We'll get everything put through then. We already sent back the message for that while you were en route"

It took only about another hour for Wolfgang and Adili to appear, steaming plates of food being presented to them as they arrived. Ngaboux threw another message through the Gate and then activated their new and more powerful circle. This time the glow of mana was subdued and almost pretty, the resulting blast wave from the activation was a bit more vigorous though, knocking everything magical they had on them, armour and weapons mainly, out of service for a second until normalcy was restored. The sky outside the circle was a blur now, and no sooner had the circle been activated than the gate was busy with attendants carting in supplies, pieces of building and everything they'd need for a six-month deployment.

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Ngaboux gathered them together around the table that Chris had been cooking on and started to explain."As you know, I have a lot more senses than you all, and I've got a lot more intelligence, as in the statistic. Though in my avatar's case, standard definition too. Anyway, that means I can process a lot, very quickly, in ways you can't begin to imagine. There is no hidden dungeon. There's a Gate with two sides, one here, one back where we came from. Our side is extremely normal, it's this side that's interesting. This is not a dungeon. This is a universe. Universes don't normally link to universes spontaneously and stably. However, this is not your realm in the past. This is... sort of an echo of your realm. It looks like another realm, another universe, which is the mirror of your universe. The bridge between the two realms is acting like a pump, pulling magic from... somewhere and pushing it into both universes. This means there is no core, there are no monsters to kill. There is however a lot of research to be done, for a start is this dangerous to us? How long will it last? What happens if this world grows like yours did? Will they make a portal to a parallel version of my realm? Will there be two Chrises? Luckily you have the foremost expert in parallel universes in at least two planets right here. Chris will be largely doing research for the next few months, it's your job to aid him and protect him if needed. Ishani, you'll have to work closely with him for this, and it would be helpful if you were in your other form. If you'll allow me, I can use the magic here to make you an elf again. Don't worry, I'll make you a developmentally equivalent elf. No one wants to be literally baby-sitting you. I'll have to hurry you though. I've got maybe fifty minutes left and this spell will be quite taxing, it'll take at least thirty minutes to cast. I can reverse it when you get back, no problems. I'll owe you a favour too, and a favour from a god has to be worth something."

Ishani paused. "I, would like that? I think? You can definitely reverse it when I get back, if I want you to?"

"On my honour as a god. Shall I take that as a yes?" Ngaboux began moving their hands in large circles, glittering runes hanging in the air as their hands passed through it.

"One quick question, before you get into the spell." Ishani asked. "How do you drink coffee and eat food if you're a construct made of precious metals?"

Ngaboux smiled "Magic. It's my purview after all. Now if you're quite done, I'll continue. This probably won't hurt too much."

Proof if, proof be needed, that gods can lie. Ishani was in agony as her body started to change from the inside out. Each cell was remade, and the human body began to fight the intruder. The change was accelerating though, and after a few minutes, the elven body was fighting the remnants of the human body. When she crossed the bridge, the whole her body changed at once, or it felt like that anyway. This was excruciating, the pain built and built until she gladly succumbed to unconsciousness. An agony later, she came to, and the change was complete. She was now an elf, and she felt very strange. She had been laid down on a bed, which hadn't been there when she had fallen. She was indoors, and out the window, the sky was blue and unchanging.

Wolfgang was sat in a chair across the implausible room she found herself in. "You're awake again then. Are you back to yourself now? Drink this, it'll help." He picked a water bottle with a drinking straw in the lid and passed it to her. She took a sip of the liquid, it tasted like artificial fruits, sugar and salt.

She looked around, noting that the room appeared to be part of the temporary buildings that they'd brought with them. Things looked strange though, different. Wolfgang was a ruddy dwarf as normal, but his voice was somehow more drawn out and his skin and hair were more red than she remembered. She took a deep breath and the scents of the outside world assailed her, she could smell the rain that had fallen last night, the ice in the mountains, the rich smell of humus in the forest below. Suddenly remembering, her hands flew to her ears, the delicate points and the lack of lobes confirming that she was in fact an elf again. A fully grown elf, for the first time in her life. She looked at her hands, longer and more delicate than before, still the same dark, warm brown as before though, just a little more refined and a little more other.

"Yeah," she croaked, before taking a larger swig "Yeah, I'm back. How long was I out?"

"Oh not too long, about a day. But you've been completely rebuilt, so I think that's actually pretty good going. While Ngaboux was still here, the attendants managed to put together about half the buildings, then the cirlce snapped and we've got about a month until the rest of the supplies are in. Don't worry, we have food, shelter and water. Adili and Chris are sulking because the Howitzer didn't make it through. Lin seems pretty happy about it though.

"Anyway, you drink up, have a shower, it's just through there. There's clean clothes over in that wardrobe. Once you're ready, head on through to the kitchen and we'll catch you up on what Ngaboux needed you to be an elf for. A real elf, not a pretend elf like Adili. That made him so snippy, it was funny.'But I am an elf!'. Hah."

Wolfgang stumped toward the door, stepped through it and closed it behind him. Ishani decided that actually she'd shower first and went to do it.