“Lars Eikeli?” asks a voice, belonging to one of the three that just entered the room from behind me.

I carefully disconnect myself from the (temporary) mana absorption array and lower myself to the ground, turning to face two doctor-types and someone who looks familiar, but I don’t quite recognize.

“That’s me.”

“You seem to be well… What were you doing?”

“Replenishing my mana stocks and stretching my magical legs, so to speak.”

They exchange a few words before turning back to me. Apparently they expected me to be bedridden for the rest of the day, and came to talk about ‘Your daughter and pets’ and to take some tests.

“Uh, Leda isn’t my daughter. She’s a wyvern, the big one. The little scaled girl is just her puppet.” I summon the wolf serpent to demonstrate, “Like this one. I control it, see?”

The doctors look disturbed and intrigued, respectively, and the last person keeps a neutral look. Well, his face twitched a bit, but not enough for me to recognize any kind of emotion.

The man in the front quickly gathers himself and states that he’d like the ‘animals’ to leave. I complain about his wording and ask him why he didn’t just ask her to leave. He did, or rather, he sent someone else to do so, but Leda didn’t want to leave with her main body, so the only thing they managed to do was to get her to move to a backyard of sorts.

He then says he’s relieved that ‘at least we didn’t make a girl sleep outside’, which I let slide with just a stare and ask him (a bit less politely than I should) if we could move on, and soon I find myself in one of those scanning machines, after which I am poked and prodded by doctors, who conclude that I am ‘surprisingly healthy for someone who was at death’s door yesterday’.

It was that bad, huh.

In scientific curiosity they ask if they can do some more tests and gather more data (in addition to the planned checkups), which I agree to, and while we do that I ask about my, uh, state when I got here and what they did and their thoughts and such.

Different doctors give different answers, of course, most of which are clearly affected by their specialization (or lack thereof, in two cases), but in short my insides were fucked and I was not exactly entirely lucid.

They’ve all taken great interest in my insides, I tell you. One thing is the fact that most of my body isn’t quite human. But what most of them focused on is that it looked like my injuries had naturally healed, if poorly, from what should’ve been lethal far before natural healing did that. Not that I was out of danger, even mortal danger, but in various forms they all agree that whatever I did was amazing first aid.

One thing I noticed is that my… magical parts were more than a little bit scrambled, and some even… torn? Ripped? Hard to explain without pushing a metaphor too far. And I wouldn’t expect that to be in the medical curriculum just yet.

I have had similar ‘magical damage’ in puppets, so I knew how to… stabilize and smooth things, but all that does is the equivalent of a poor prosthetic. Sure, I can channel mana through the left side of my belly, but it… hitches and sputters, flows unevenly. I think whatever is the control center for everything was hurt too, or though it might just be lingering effects from the drugs that makes it hard to cast complex spells.

I suppose I should be glad for surviving that… Though I’ll have to find out how many wyverns that was, because I want to be able to say ‘I faced X wyverns and lived!’

Well, since they’ve done what they can, they advise me to take it easy for the next few days (which includes staying here at least out the day) and suggest that I should do checkups every week for a while. But that doesn’t stop me from facing my favorite wyvern. Well, it would, if she couldn’t visit me. I think she’s trying to keep them down, but I can still feel that her emotions are in tangles. Sadness, worry, regret, anger…

“Hey, I’m fine. I’m fine.” I say, patting her head. “Your clothes are dirty, otherwise I’d ask if you wanted a big ol’ hug.”

She looks really disheartened at this, so that’s when I strike: “Instead you get a little hug.”

After silently calming her down for a little while, I get her to share her memories of what happened, and… ouch, it might be good that my memories are so fuzzy. Also, turns out I faced fifty wyverns and lived. It’d be over a hundred with all of them, but not all of them joined Leda’s teaching hive mind mesh network thing. Well, not all of them got caught in it, I should say.

As for the lost teenagers, we have no leads as to where they might be, but neither of us think they were attacked by the wyverns. We can’t exactly rule out the possibility, but… Speaking of which, I hope the icelandic camp on the other side is okay. We didn’t piss of the wyverns, did we? They’re quite intelligent, which… well, it could affect things either way. Forming a stable communications channel would be great, though.

Well, the rest of the days pass uneventfully, the only thing that really happens aside from a few non-invasive tests and checkups is Leda taking a showing after deciding that she will sleep with me tonight. In the… innocent sense. I think. Got that impression through the companion bond, at least.

My half-asleep daze is destroyed when Leda makes a loud, pained yelping scream, followed by a girl making a similar sound, and then a gasp

“Whaaat?” I mumble-say, bolting upright.

As it turns out, a nurse stepped on Leda’s tail, with predictable results, which made the nurse take notice of the feather-scaled shape lying on a folded blanket the floor, and then the blood.

“Oh, Leda forgot her talons, that’s why she’s on the floor.”

It’s not that bad, really, she just pricked the skin on my leg, but on the white sheets the two splotches of blood are quite visible. And after clearing that up, I get another checkup before they finally let me leave.

The hospital trip has me a bit bummed out, or maybe that’s just being stuck inside for a whole day, but either way I’m happy to leave after handling the -sigh- paperwork. As is completely natural to do after a near death experience, we go back to the other side, learning that they have spotted wyverns a few times, but never really got close, except for one that flew over one of the mapping/search teams.

At this point chances are the teenagers are dead and/or gone, and instead of actively searching for them, the ‘expeditionary force’ are surveying the area. A number of cables and tubes runs through the portal, leading to a makeshift shack, though there is also a couple of fuel generators, presumably as backup if the portal closes.

Next to the shack is the bottom of a medium-small radio mast, with a pair of magicians lifting another part into place. They seem to be at the end of their range with this latest piece, and are discussing climbing to get the the next segment up there, but Leda -on her own!- offers to help.

They look to me, of course, and after a quick discussion she links with them and let them control her mana. Well, some of it, we’ve already learnt that lesson. They take some time getting used to it before starting, and even then I could probably do it faster, but I’ll respect her wish to do it on her own.

There’s a near miss when one of them reach his capacity and loses control somewhat, but Leda quickly catches the falling segment and attaches it and the final one under their guidance. She positively swells with pride when they thanks her for her good work, only to run over to me.

“So what, you want me to inflate your ego even more?”

A twinge of shame/regret hits her at that comment, so I quickly continue: “Well, you did do a good job. Good initiative, offering to help where you can, and you worked pretty well with them, too.”

“Hey, before they leave, what if you take some pictures for the mapping guys?” Suggests one of the magicians.

“Oh that’s a good idea.” He says the other. “We’d appreciate if you could do that.”

“Normal drones can’t fly that high and we’re still waiting for a plane, so if you could get some high-altitude photos for us, that would be really useful.”

“Hmm, I don’t have the thruster with me, but I even without that I could probably reach ten kilometers. Hey Leda, think you could beat my height record?”

“But you went waaaaay high up!”

“I meant without me using the gear.”

“Oh. Maybe, I want to try!”

“Well, there you have it. Doctors said I should take it easy, so I’m not gonna go all out, But Leda can.”

“I’m gonna beat your record!”

“You’re gonna try.”

The next hour, err, maybe two or actually three we spend helping the mapping effort. Turns out Leda can reach an altitude of sixteen kilometers, assuming the instruments in my aeronav suite are accurate (they should be) and this world has the same atmospheric properties as earth (which seems to be the case).

We take lots of 2-5km altitude photos, and once I have to take a break Leda even lets one of the mappers ride her in a large spiral around the area. But something someone said at the beginning stuck with me…

“Someone mentioned a plane, are you setting up a proper base here with a runway and all?

“Oh yes, a small base that can house twenty, with a small hangar and an airstrip. The plane is a older, smaller model, so it doesn’t need a proper paved runway.”

“Oh, cool. So you just flatten an area with magic for it?”

He looks at someone else, who in turn looks at me, “You can do that?”

“Uh, yes? Could make it harder or softer depending on what’s useful, too, and even enchant it to stay warm and melt the snow on top.”

So that’s what I’m doing when Leda comes back, and when she joins in it takes no time at all to finish the flattening and hardening. The result is a top layer of rough, but hard, stone-like dirt and the next few meters under that being hardened enough that we can apply a serious amount of force without it giving way.

Since they’re happy with the size and shape, I have Leda handle the enchantments, a ‘passive’ one to use ambient mana to harden the runway, a second to draw in and absorb mana, and a third to heat the airstrip. In the meanwhile I make a simple control board so they can turn on and off the heat, and pull out mana for other uses, should they desire.

I explain the operation (which is extremely simple) and a give them a few tips on maintaining the enchantment, and also how to dispel them, just in case.

This time there is no magical gazebo island by Wyvern Mountain, and after checking that the wyverns haven’t become hostile, cross the mountain range. It’s pretty big all right, but eventually we start seeing fjords.

That’s a good point to make sure we can find our way back home, so we go with the blindingly obvious and find the second tallest peak nearby, and flatten the top of it, leaving a sturdy spire on a cylindrical base, and a triangle pointing in the direction we came. Because it seems like a good idea, we turn back and make a string of these, each visible from the previous.

By the time we return to Wyvern Mountain dusk highlights, so to speak, a minor issue we overlooked, and so we turn back yet again, enchanting the waypoints to use ambient mana to glow.

Creating new ones as needed on the way, we follow a fjord and eventually reach the coast. There, at the entry to the fjord, we set up what is essentially lighthouses. Whether you enter or exit, the one to your right (or starboard) has a smaller, green light, and the left (or port) one has a red light.

If anyone with modern knowledge came here they could then just go parallel to the beacons on the mountains, after which they’d have to cross a couple mountains to find the wyverns and an arrow pointing towards the portal. It’s not exactly ideal, but it’s more for our own sake than anyone else. While I think I’d be able to survive off the land, I’d rather not lose the luxuries of modern life.

Also, now that I think about it, I should have a system for more than one arrow per waypoint. In this case, one homewards and one seawards? Or at least towards nearby beacons that lead to this one? That way you can follow the waypoints both ways. Add in the north/south axis… Ideally you’d be able to navigate by them without being up close, so from a distance or in the sky.

Hmm, so it sits upon a flat surface, which I’ll call ‘tier 0’. The base is cylindrical and about a meter tall, and taking up about half the diameter is the spire… But if we change the base to be wider, pie shaped rather than hermetic can shaped, and make that ‘tier 1’, with the current base jutting up from that and being ‘tier 2’, and on the top is the spire, or ‘tier 3’...

Aside from the spire, each tier should have a decent height difference, but no more than a five year old can climb up, so about half a meter. North-south will likely be most relevant to fliers or those who otherwise don’t mind crossing terrain, so it can be in the form of a flat triangle pointing to the north, elevated halfway between tier 1 and 2. Mark it with an N, and south can get an outline of an arrow and the letter S, not so deep that it’s easy to trip over.

Between tier 1 and 2 we can mark the main direction, and we can have ‘returning arrows’ between 2 and 3 pointing back at any waypoint that point to this one. That way, the most visible parts are the main direction and, to a lesser degree, north/south, but you can backtrack as well.

Oh, and if we light ‘north’, ‘main’, and the spire, it should be possible to see the most important directions from a distance at night, too. As for the spire itself… I guess it can be decorated and maybe write a name on it or something.

Since it’s too late to really get back to sleep in a bed tonight anyway, we stop and make a mark-3 waypoint, and settle on a base of about 5 meters diameter, with the north and south arrows each being as long, tier 2 being half that, and the spire starting at about a meter and reaching a point after about three meters.

Well, roughly, I went by eye since a 2m measurement isn’t exactly ideal for this. With the prototype done, we head south along the sea for two more waypoints before the shore curves west. I find it interesting that it’s mirrored compared to Reykjavik’s sea to the west (curving east), but then again the sea is much closer on the other side of the portal that this one, so it’s not like it’s a mirror world.

Because ‘why not’, we keep going for a couple more, placing them on the hills that decorate this area instead of mountains, before deciding to turn back towards where we think the portal is, erring towards the mountain range rather than the areas we’ve yet to explore.

With the flatter ground the next waypoint becomes quite far away, and we don’t add the homeward pointer. I guess the most effective way to handle that would be to find the way to the portal, then go straight from there to the coast. Hmm, if we did that to the north and west, too, you’d be able to find your way towards the portal as long as you were inside the ‘circle’ and didn’t go diagonally away from it.

Well, no need to go that far just yet. As fun as it is to plan this, I don’t expect it to be used that much. Well, for now let’s make ourselves a shelter from the elements, and while we’re at it, let’s make an airstrip in case the icelanders want to land a plane here. Then I might as well make the shelter more than just the bare minimum, but that might obscure the waypoint, so let’s elevate it. In fact, if we make the shelter big enough, we can put the waypoint on top, make a pillar go through the middle…

Oh man I got carried away yesterday… Well, it’s cool so it’s okay. Better make note of it (and the other waypoints) so the icelanders are aware of it. I mean, you could make a religion from that. Minus the airstrip, that one is pretty obviously the same design as the other one I made.

We still make waypoints on the way home, making sure that each one can see the previous one (and by extension, the next one). Since it would be kinda silly to point people to that long winding trip we took to get here, I skip the homeward markers. Eventually Leda recognizes the terrain, and soon we connect all the waypoints up, forming a P shape where the portal is at the ‘base’ of the P.

People’s opinions on the waypoints are mixed, ranging from ‘oh that’s a good idea to not get lost’ to thinking I’m ‘polluting’ the landscape. If they have a problem with them they can go and remove them themselves. Just… be careful you find your way back home, hm? For now at least they’ll stay useful navigational tools, and might help the mapping efforts.

But that’s not my problem, because I’m going to handle customers on iceland for the rest of the day, edit the footage I’ve gotten on the trip and release the next video, then clock out before we go back to Norway tomorrow. And no, Leda, we are not going to the US. Not now, and not until you’ll have legal protections as a person there.