Upon returning to the woman I tell her I know of a portal to what I think is another world, and that they might have gone there, but that I found no fresh tracks. I suggest she calls over whoever handles the search and missing people so that I don’t have to repeat myself, and instead explain how I met them and what happened while we wait for them to arrive.

Knock, knock, it’s the police. Ma’am, your son is gone, this guy is a knowledge?

Memes aside, there’s two people in police uniforms and one in civilian clothes. I explain again how I met them and what led to them showing me the portal, then continue telling all I know of the other side. Once I’m done, they have me show it on a map, and then they drive me over there.

As the car pulls off the road, the lights illuminate a giant creature, it’s eyes reflecting back the light, and the driver lets out what I can only assume to be an icelandic curse.

“Oh, that’s Leda, she-” I trail off as he visibly relaxes.

“It’s just your wyvern friend, that scared me.”

We get out of the car and wait for the other car to pull up next to us and introduce them to Leda. Reforming my orbs of light, I lead them to the portal, making sure they take note of the partially snowed-in tracks.

“I thought there were a lot of tracks here compared to last time, but if you had people searching for them, that might be it.”

“How come you didn’t leave any tracks?”

I push off of the snowy ground, hovering over it. “Well, I didn’t want to mess things up for you, and also I usually just fly around, since it’s faster. Anyway, do you see those red pieces of string, there and there?”

That they do, as I lead them through the portal.

“Get a feel for the ambient mana here. It’s quite a bit higher than on the other side of the portal. The strings mark the portal.”

None of them are great at magic, but after going back and forth a couple times they are at least convinced that it’s something. To better illustrate my point I find a volunteer and lift them up above the trees, pointing out the lack of light and buildings, and also the big flying island.

As soon as I put them down they radio in a short report, and from there it’s police work. I go over what I found again, then show two of the police officers the various tracks, and that most of them just leads back. Well, except for the one which seems to abruptly end.

“Thank you for cooperating.”

“Oh, no problem, I hope they’ll be found. Alive. Wait, actually, there is kind of a little problem. Specifically, I had planned to see if Leda could use the portal, and then explore the other side.”

“One moment,” he says, turning to the person in charge.

They have no problem with me going to the other side, especially if I also help look for the kids, but I have to wait until they finish their work around the portal. Said work takes about a hour, during which more personnel is called in, including some military looking folks.

Which is exactly why I was worried about whether I’d be let through or not.

Either way, they manage to get the exact dimensions of the portal, which is between the trunks of those two trees, even if you bend them. If you pull the treetops away from each other the portal still hold, and the top boundary of the portal becomes visible as a shimmer.

Eventually they clear us to go through. It’s a bit narrow for Leda, but she’ll fit, especially since they’ve pruned the longest branches. I go first, then Lucas, then Leda waddles through, looking quite uncomfortable having to walk with her wings tucked so close.

Once at the other side she sniffs the air, just like her son. Her puppet excitedly exclaims “I already like this place”

“Oh?”

“The mana is great! Let’s fly, I want to see the flying island!”

I chuckle, but have her levitate Lucas and herself out of the little forest covering this side of the portal before I let her relax and spread her wings.

“First stop, up there!” I yell, pointing at it, as I take on the flight form.

She says something as we get up near it, but the wind carries it away.

｢{Excited, curious}I said: There’s so much more mana here, it’s like where I came from. But this island, there’s stuff inside it which feels like that fancy floaty crystal you found.｣

I wait until we’ve both landed. “Yeah, I got it from this island. Hmm, actually… It isn’t the same place it was before, so for all I know it might be another one.”

“But if you took it from the island, can’t we just see if it’s missing?”

“Err, I wouldn’t be able to recognize, but I should’ve left some tunnels. Do you sense any tunnels in the island?”

She cocks her head - both of them.

“Mmm, no.”

“Huh, so it might really be a different floating island. Well, let’s dig up some crystals, shall we?”

We harvest a decent bit of the island’s crystals, but find no sign of the tunnels I should’ve left last time. That doesn’t mean it’s a different island, they might just have collapsed, and I’m not example a… dirt-engineer, so I might just have missed something.

And if the first island moved and another one came, where did the first go? And where did the second come from? I haven’t seen any other islands, but with it being so late and the weather as it is, I can’t exactly see very far.

On the other hand, the magi-null mesh does its job, and Leda is having fun jumping, flying and otherwise moving around with the crystals in the bags on her back.

“Heeh!” Her puppet exclaims from the tunnel, next to me, as we gather more suspendium dust. “It feels so weird, it’s heavy but, like, goes the wrong way!”

“Well, yeah. They do some kinda counter-gravity magic.”

“Uh-huh, it’s weird, but I want to learn it.”

I stop and look at, no, study her.

“You know… if you actually manage to learn it that’d be amazing. Then I’ll have to ask you to teach me.”

“Really?” She says with obvious excitement and somewhat premature pride. “What if I manage to make a portal?”

Hookay, does she actually think she can do that? “If you could do that… I’ll buy you a cake. Or a whole pig or something. Your choice, as long as it’s legal and all of that stuff. ‘Cus we’ll rich. Err, rich-er.”

“Then we could buy whatever we want!”

“Well, for the most part I can already do that, I think, aside from really expensive stuff like a huge house or boat or extra-fancy car or something. If we managed to find a method to make stable portals… If we played our cards correctly we could probably become so rich that we could buy an entire factory for one of those.”

“That’s a lot of huge houses or boats or extra-fancy cars!”

“Err, yeah sure. I guess you do make houses -or parts of them, anyway- in factories nowadays. Anyway, reform the mana link and let me control, I have an idea.”

She does as asked with the usual guarded curiosity, and she doesn’t need to form the words for me to understand her question. We’re becoming really good at getting in sync like this, the first few times I tried to fully control her mana were… painful.

Lucas wants to join, too. I continue forming the spells and blueprint for what I’m about to do, and Leda joins our bonds and includes him in the link, making sure to moderate his magic for me, as I want her to.

Man, implicit mental communication is amazing, but the blurring sense of self, ‘I’, and ‘us’, when we get to this level is a bit worrisome. No matter, I am ready. They are ready, too.

Relying on Leda’s superior mana range, I envelop the entire island in mana to sense its shape. Oh, so that’s how it feels to her. The crystals really are weird, but I don’t think what they do is magic, not the kind we use, at least.

The first step is to harden and solidify the soil of the island, and while I’m at it mentally mark the outer edges and having Leda cut off and hold the material from there. Next up, we take that extra material to the center of the island, and harden a decently big square, about seven by seven meters.

Huh, it turns a darkish gray; I expected it to be more like stone, which is what I wanted to make. I project the mental blueprint of the final result, then actually project it to use as a guidelines for working while I have Leda gather more soil from the edges and undersides.

Together, we form it into four cylinders and harden it, blacking it in each corner of the platform. We start engraving patterns, some for magic and others mundane, and keep eating the island from the outside, already having made it round if seen from above.

For the roof we form the entire dome as one piece with a square base and lower it onto the pillar, then engrave the insides as well. Everything leads to the center, the center leads everywhere.

The air is thick of magic, spontaneously creaturing sparks, gusts, heat, light, and other minor effects as we imbue the entire island, using one of Lars’ thumb-sized mana crystals in the process, and connect everything up with the previously purely mental pathways.

In a moment of shared inspiration, we create a relief of our flying forms on the inside of the dome as we merge the dark pieces of stone together, and radiating out from the central gazebo (or whatever it is) we create halfway spiral-like pattern to help draw in mana and channel it towards the center.

After slowly rising as we diffused mana into the air, the island noticeably drops, as mana is pulled away from the suspendite and instead to us, in the center. It’s almost intoxicating to have this much power, and it appear Lars’ body has gotten a few minor burns. No matter, we can heal it.

For safety’s sake, however, we create more pathways for the mana, with points for people to tap into the flow. With this, they can get as much mana as they need or dare, and the rest will flow to a few strategically placed enchantments to make the entire thing glow faintly, visible only against the darkness of night, and the unused mana will feed seeds of mana crystal or simple be let back out into the air.

Good, good. This turned out really well, we have reason to feel proud. With that done, let the bond slip, don’t want to rip us apart again. Lars- I- oh. Maybe… it wasn’t… heavy…

Motion. Levitation? A shout. Stop. Leda. “…-im, he ju- … -er!”

“Calm down, please!” Someone says, sounding frightened.

“But he fell over! I don’t know what to do!”

You should calm down. Is what I want to say, but I feel so heavy.

“He’s awake! Good, good!”

We were… magic, gazebo, mind meld… Oh, so that’s what happens if you use too much mana and push through the pain. You lose consciousness. Or maybe it was just the pain…? Did I even feel any pain?

Leda wants to know if I’m fine, and since she’s healed me, I probably will be.

“Uuurgh, I hurt.” Yep, there comes the pain.

“Mister Eikeli? Are you all right?”

“Yeah I, urgh, Leda, you missed my shin, I think. I’m fine, just gotta heal that-”

I can feel my mana (even though it has dropped very low) and even sense that there is mana around me, but… I can’t- “Oh, thanks Leda.”

Naturally, her sudden return with my unconscious body caused, uh, a bit of ruckus, so I have to repeatedly repeat that I’m fine, and also let some medic do basic stuff like ‘flashlight to the eyes’ and ‘medical armband float’.

Which is nice and all, but my values can be a bit here and there thanks to all the changes I’ve made, but they look good enough. At least when I manage to control my mana again I am able to shapeshift closer to a baseline human, it’s within the normal ranges.

On the other hand, I would appreciate if you can stop reading my thoughts, Leda. She’s not even trying, and is also doesn’t like being unable to block my thoughts. Why? They’re stronger? They sorta dominate her mind, I see. Well, we both agree that we need to find a way to control it, then.

And so we apologize for the commotion and fly off to the glowing gazebo, which looks really pretty against the dark background, or what we can see beyond the relatively sparse, gently falling, large snowflakes. On the way I have Leda illuminate the ground below us, and she does a really good job as a searchlight plane.

There, we form a mind bond, which only opens up for more direct communication, as opposed to the vaguer intent/emotion kind of effect the companion bond has now. At least, it feels like that’s what has changed.

“Hey, fly off and see how it works at longer distances.”

This is tough. And more than a little bit creepy; I do not like being able to ‘override’ her thoughts. I don’t think I could make her do something against her will, it’s more like… shouting in her headspace? Either way, yeuch!

Let’s see, if I want her to do a small div- that worked, huh. So not only is the connection still there, despite being past mine and her mana range, but I can make her do stuff. Which likely mean she’s going to take revenge at some point, but it’s just more reason to figure out how to control this.

I would say she might as well come back, but since intent is transmitted even at this distance, she might as well circle around the area while illuminating the ground, to look for any signs of the lost kids. In the meanwhile, I throw my hand into my face.

Oww, so that works both ways. I shouldn’t be mad about that. Yeah, stop that, Leda. I think I’m getting better at differentiating our thoughts. Hmm, maybe I can use mind magic on myself, defensively? Essentially creating a barrier between myself, my self rather, and external influences?

I might as well sit in the gazebo, maybe try to regrow some of the mana crystals I used. And the outside should probably glow a bit brighter, so let’s change that. The inside is fine, though, creating a light level you’d find comfortable in a living room.

I blink the lights out of my eyes after the searchlight named Leda passes by and turn my attention back to defending my mind from the foul, foul thoughts of a rather naive, but generally content (or even happy) ‘little girl’.

Such bad thoughts as ‘I wonder how a whole salami would taste’, ‘burning dead things really makes them taste better’(okay that one was a bit worrying), ‘I wonder how it would be to go to school’, ‘I want to sleep’, and ‘I wonder if Philip is having fun right now’.

I guess her positive and simple outlook on life (& Stuff, trademark pending) is a good thing, at least for now - no, I’m not making fun of you, and you’re doing fine, I think. Stop being grumbly.

So normally I use mind magic to reach out and form a connection to someone else… what I want to do here is the opposite, to block off everything else. If I first use the ‘solid wall’ method- oh, wow. That- that feels really… lonely, heavy. In comparison, anyway.

But the solid wall is overkill, the last defence if someone just can’t shut up their mind, or hold others out, I suppose. And it takes effort. With a normal mind bond, now that I’m used to it, I can mentally control how much or little is transferred and received, at least if the bond is not manipulated, but I can manipulate the bond to counter that, too.

So if I lower those defences, carefully, mmm, togetherness feels nice. Wait, that’s- huh, this could be more subtle and/or insidious than I thought. And Leda didn’t like the sudden shutdown either. I reckon you could use whatever we did to become a beastmaster. Well, if you tried to force it against something with as strong a mind as her it might backfire.

Is the upgraded companion bond that bad? No. Also, yes. It’s great to be able to communicate better and over longer distances, but having no control is sketchy at best.

At least it’s not Tåke, the strongest instincts and drives I’ve felt from Leda is maternal instinct and the occasional burning curiosity, not… that time. Then again, I could probably completely dominate Tåke’s mind and order her around. The problem would be those sneaky influences from her side. Ugh, I don’t want to think of that, and also not of-

No. Bad brain. Stop linking bad thoughts. Be purged! Fireeeee!

…good thing neither stone or snow burns, but Ahh! that was pretty cathartic. With my mind somewhat cleared, I think about it some more, and resist the urge to facepalm when I realize I’ve stopped using mind magic and am controlling it without it. All I had to do was to be patient and git gud.

Sigh. Well, let’s keep practicing it.