It’s a bit too late to fly to Iceland today, but that suit me just fine, since there’s preparation to do. Of all the skills magic coming to the world would lead me to, electronics is not one I expected to learn, but here I am.

With just a little help from the space guys I’ve fixed up communication gear to communicate between all of us, which will also relay the incoming radio I hear to them, though not the other way round. I’ve also prepared some magi-null mesh, and combined with Leda being big and pretty heavy, I should be able to bring a lot more of the lift crystal home.

I’ve also tried to get in touch with those teens, but they’ve been unavailable. Well, I know where one of them lives, so I can just see if they’re home and tell their parents to give them a message if they’re not.

While it might be too late to comfortably cross the ocean, there’s still daylight left, and it’s not like cities go dark just because the sun has set, and it’s been a while since I’ve been to Bergen. It’s ‘on the way’ too, and I intentionally avoided it when traveling around with the wyverns.

It’s our second largest city, and on the west coast, and famous for rainy weather (being coastal and surrounded by mountains will do that) and ‘Bergensbanen’ the train route between in and Oslo, which is quite scenic. But we’re not here for that, though we do get to enjoy the scenery from above.

We’re here for me to meet with a couple customers, and of course I will take the chance to sell stuff if I have spare time. Leda and the whelp is to stay outside the city for the first part, but are welcome to join me for the latter if they can make themselves small enough. Come to thing of it, isn’t there an aquarium here? That’ll be a treat for good behaviour, I suppose.

Today’s customers are pretty normal, so that’s handled pretty quickly, after which I meet up with my two troublemakers above the city.

｢{Annoyed, stern}Leda, where are we?｣

｢We’re not in the city!｣

I draw in a deep breath and let it out as a sigh. Technically that’s true. ｢Right. And what do you think I meant when I said to stay outside the city?｣

She seems to shrink, though when I blink I realise the movement is purely mental - it’s not something you want to do when flying. ｢Not fly over the city. Stay outside the imaginary city lines.｣

｢So you do know.｣ Another sigh. ｢Don’t be a bad example for Lucas please, but I’ll allow it because you made sure to stay high up and no damage was done.｣

She does the mental equivalent to a grumble when I land on her, as she tends to do. Well, except when we’re play-fighting, because then she violently tries to throw me off. But she’ll have to suck it up, as having some kinda dragon-thing land near you is a lot less scary if a human is riding it.

I revert my wings to arms and mentally show her which way to go, and I hop off after we land in a snow-covered park with quite a few snowmen and what I assume is either dead snowmen, or snow fortresses.

“Okay, so here’s the deal. I’m gonna sell stuff, and if you two behave nicely, I can take you to see the aquarium, which has all sorts of fish, and also octopi and penguins and seals and more. Naturally, it’s too small for your main forms, so you’ll need to send a puppet or take on a smaller form. Oh, and you need to help me keep Lucas under control.”

｢{Excited}Do they have sharks?｣ she practically shouts into my mind.

“Aii! Uh, I think they have a shark tunnel, yeah.”

She does a mental ‘gesture’ which means something between a shrug and a ‘huh’, but at the same time. In short, it says ‘I don’t know, do you have more information?’, and we picked it up from the wolfkin.

“Well, it’s a big tank with sharks, and there’s a glass tunnel under it where you can see them from.”

It tells me all I need to know when she summons her raptor-like puppet and jumps up and down a couple times before even noticing that it doesn’t handle the cold very well, despite the cover of light feather-scales.

The form has become her default humanoid puppet now than it’s become more common to see people with body changes, and she prefers it over a baseline human. Well, if she scares people I’ve told her to retract the tail and tone down the feather-scales in her face and on her arms.

“You know, penguins live in pretty cold environments, so I bet you could use some of their tricks to stay warm.”

But for now I’ll have her wear some proper clothes. Her favorite shirt with a sweater enchanted to better stay at a comfortable temperature and matching pants. The feet end of the pants are closed with a wrapping of thick cloth which also covers her taloned feet in several layers.

Not that she needed to use her puppet right now, but I get that ‘I want to help!’ feeling from her, so I’m won’t mention that.

Unsurprisingly, we get some attention soon enough. Almost immediately, in fact, as a group of kids make their hurried way across the park after seeing us land. As they get closer I can hear them talk about a dragon rider and a dragon girl before one of the recognize me.

“Whaat! That’s Lars Eikeli! Coool!” he shouts and runs ahead of his group in his haste to get to me.

There seems to have been some snowfall recently, so it’s more like hurriedly wading through a thick layer of fresh snow, so I decide to show off by using a bit of magic to make him -and his friends- lighter, and to make the snow a bit harder.

“Coool!” “It’s magic!” “Hahaha!”

I feel a smile on my face when they get over to me. “Hello.”

“Hi!” ”Hi!” “Hello!” “Is that Leda?”

Upon my prompt she steps forward. “Yeah, I’m Leda! Hi!”

“Can I touch your face?”

Aaaand she’s in ‘playing with kids’ mode. At least she’s great at that, but as post a status update on the relevant pages Lucas seems disgruntled at being left out. I’ll stop him in a heartbeat, no, quicker, if he lashes out, but as long as he’s not putting anyone in danger…

Just as he turns towards his mother’s big form, Leda turns around. “This is Lucas! He’s my whelp!”

“Woah, is he a baby dragon?”

“Baby dragons are big!”

“I said we’re wyverns, not dragons!”

“Pfft, aren’t wyverns just smaller dragons?”

“Oh, oh, oh! Imagine how big a baby dragon would be then!”

｢{Worried}Make sure he doesn’t hurt them.｣

｢{Annoyed, happy}I know!｣

While the kids (and one mother) plays (meaning she shows off magic, they get hyped, and she does some other thing they request and/or her child attempts to copy her), I talk to the other people.

I’m wasn’t expecting all that much in sales, but clearly I haven’t been servicing the local market enough, because there’s people who say they’ve travelled more than an hour to get here and meet me. Granted, some of them just want to meet me ‘and see if anything interests them’, but several people want kemo shifting.

I’m not sure what to think about that being my most popular service, behind only tutoring. Well, self expression is good, and I like that a (sub-)culture for self-expression through body modding and shapeshifting, but are all humans just un-awakened furries or something? Except that guy just now who wanted feathers, he’d be a… nah, just a different brand of furry.

And in a thousand years time, when humanity has started spreading beyond this tiny corner of the universe, humans are no more, for everyone has some changes… Hmm, that’s not a bad future, really. And I suppose it’d include those coming from the other side as well, uplifted animals.

When things are starting to die down I announce that I will finish things up for now, and after the predictable increase in interest, I do just that, and we head for the aquarium. Leda perks up again after her ‘new friends’ had left earlier, and despite our growing habit to only share what we mean to, her mind is filled with ‘sharks! Real sharks! I’m gonna see sharks!’ and so forth.

We land on some flat area just outside the aquarium, which is a lot smaller than most of the others I’ve visited, and raptor Leda almost rushes off before we figure out how to handle Lucas, but in the end we end up having him make a puppet which is essentially a bird-sized wyvern to sit on her shoulder.

As we enter, he’s not particularly affected by Leda’s enthusiasm, but I guess he either doesn’t understand what we’re about to do or don’t care.

Our first obstacle turns out to be the ticket booth, and I end up feeling a bit bad about having to use my fame to convince them he’s not some pet. Besides, the rules only says no cats or dogs, nothing about reptiles or dragonids. Even then I have to make a ‘leash’ from his leg and tie it to Leda, but I guess that’s fair, a good idea even.

Her enthusiasm to see sharks quickly turn into general enthusiasm as we look around, and were it not for her, and eventually Lucas, I think we’d be looked at just as much as we look at the exhibits.

“It’s an octopus!” she exclaims, pointing at it and looking at me, then back. Oh yeah, I don’t have that aspect, let’s learn it.

It looks at her for a moment before climbing over some corals, possibly to better see her. Then she gets closer, and eventually they’re staring at each other from each side of the glass. After a moment they both take a step back, and then it raises an arm.

She looks at me and then back, then she raises her own. It raises another. She copies it.

And it raises a third arm.

“Mmmou!” She says with palpable frustration, before pulling up the bottom of her sweater, and, with an expression of concentration, grow six more arms.

I was about to walk over to her and raise one of mine, but since she’s using that trick, it looks like I don’t need to.

She lets go of the sweater and clumsily raise four arms.

Soon enough they both have raised all eight arms and, after a brief pause, she wiggles her fingers with a smirking grin. Not to be outdone, it wiggles the end of its tentacles, then lean them all to one side.

Okay, now I’m impressed. As they continue to copy each other, I study its behaviour and try to understand it a bit better. It’s quite far from the land mammals I’m used to, so [Animal Empathy] isn’t of that much help.

Well, it’s not particularly magical. I could… Yeah, the staff would probably not want me to, but they won’t notice anyway. I reach out with a channel of mana- huh, the tentacles really have their own brain, huh. Or, it definitely feels like they each have their own mind, faint and connected to the main brain.

I draw a sharp breath and close my eyes in preparation, then form a mind bond with the main brain. Ah, oh, wow, that’s-

Such a curious, if alien, mind! Huh, I think I can- yeah, I can control the individual tentacles. But let’s not. It’s looking at me now, having stopped the game with Leda.

“What are you doing!?”

I break the bond with it. “Sorry Leda, I didn’t mean to interrupt your fun. But you know, they close a bit early, so if we want to see everything we have to move.”

She looks thoughtful for a moment before retracting the arms and waving to it. “Goodbye mr. arms!”

When it waves back I can’t help but do the same, and then we move along to see all the other wonders. Well, I’m mostly interested in the penguins and seals, to learn and improve those aspects, respectively.

When we’re done Leda happily stomps around in the snow with no footwear, having changed her feet to be more like that of a penguin’s. When she’s satisfied we head outside the city, where she was supposed to stay earlier, and they head out to find a temporary nest in the mountains while I head back to the city.

There were a few people who wanted shapeshifting beyond just animal ears, as well as some other things I couldn’t or wouldn’t do outside on a wintry day, so I’ll handle that and get something to eat, and maybe some snacks, then head to wherever they set up ‘camp’ for the night.

After a surprisingly good sleep (for sleeping outside with no tent or anything during winter), Leda and the whelp hunts some small animals to eat while I prepare for our fight. When they return, I rendevouz with them in the air, and after I get the go-ahead from air traffic control, we rise in altitude and fly over the ocean.

A bit less than six hours later my ride lands in the street outside the home of one of those teens, and I get over to their door, hitting the bell. The one who open is presumably his mother.

“Hi, is Martin here?”

She stares at me for a moment, then glances over my shoulder at Leda awkwardly shuffling out of the way so a car can pass.

“Are you Lars Eikeli?”

“Yes?”

“And you’re here for Martin? Did he buy something from you?”

“Uh, yes, well, last time I passed by we had an agreement, I’d tutor him and his friends for free. Is he not here?”

“No,” she begins, her face darkening, “Him and a few others are missing.”

“Oh. I-” The portal, did they get lost on the other side, or maybe it closed behind them, somehow? “I… Might have an idea of what… of where they could be. I… If- if you could tell me a bit more, I’ll quickly go and check something then return to you, okay?”

“You know where he is?”

Aww man, this feels like I’m playing with her feelings. “Please don’t misunderstand, I don’t know anything for sure, but… When were they last seen?”

“Four days ago, at school. Their classmates said they were planning to go somewhere, but don’t know where. Apparently they had found a secret place they didn’t want to tell anyone about.”

“Okay, thanks, I… When I passed by they showed me a place, but… Before I say anything else I should go there and check it out. I should be back within an hour, and then I can tell you all I know, is that all right?”

“Thank you, yes, that’d be great, thank you!”

I turn around. “I’ll be back, see you then. Leda! To the skies!”

Since it has been this long a little bit of time does not make a great difference, but I better not spend that one second that might prove to be too much, so I shift as I shoot in the direction of the portal, and by the time the others catch up I have my wings out.

It doesn’t take long to reach the spot, and during the flight I shared everything she might need to know with Leda. “I don’t know how big the portal are or whether you could enter it, though I hope to show you the other side, but for now, just stay on this side while I investigate.”

I make sure I have the best possible sense of smell, an almost painful difference from even my normal (improved) levels, and create several balls that brightly light up the area. They’re partially filled, but there is definitely tracks here, yeah.

I stop in front of the portal, signal to Leda that I will go through, and then do so, clearly feeling the increased mana. Good, it didn’t close, at least. There’s track here, too, but none that are fresh, so I lift myself into the air and look around the thicket.

No fresh tracks, but also no signs of being attacked or killed by animals or beasts. Hmm… I think the floating island has moved a bit? There’s a group of tracks in that general direction, but also in other directions. I follow the tracks towards the island, since they expressed an interest in that, but they seem to stop before they get under it. If it moved, though…

The result is the some on top of the island, and all the other tracks seem to just circle back. Dammit! Well, it’s getting fairly dark, so my lights should be visible to anyone who even glance in this direction.

Oh yeah, the flare spell I taught them, combined with a shock-clap for sound effect! I do so several times with a pause in between. No response, aside from scaring some birds or something.

If they went here, they either flew away or were picked up by something, or never left to area around the portal, but if the search teams have no leads, this might just help them find the kids. I’ll head back and tell the woman what I know.