That sounds like a very reasonable procedure and Tanya will proceed to do just that!

The local baron is another bird person, who seems rather exasperated by the whole affair. Of course he wouldn't want to take up too much of an otherworlder and a famous wizard - who invented the world's best flight spell! -'s time. Surely they have more important things to do than linger overmuch in his humble town. It would be really regrettable if there were more misunderstandings or even an incident before they concluded their business and left. Hint hint nudge nudge go be someone else's problem please, couched in the politest possible tones.

And the local branch of the travellers' guild is perfectly willing to fill out a form and issue her a metal plated card with a unique numerical ID on it. It's a reassuringly bureaucratic process, even if the paperwork is just two pages long it's at least woodcut-stamped instead of handwritten.

See, doesn't that feel better?

(Their bureaucracy does not seem adequate to the challenge of random towns sometimes serving as impromptu immigration offices, but that's not Tanya's problem.)

She is apologetic and will do her best not to cause any more misunderstandings now that her own is resolved. And now she is ready to leave. ...does Sinnah propose to leave somewhere far? They can talk on the way if they fly slowly enough that wind isn't a problem, or they can fly at (Tanya's) top speed to whereever they're going.

"I want to learn your magic. I have a small workshop in the City of Glass five hundred and fifty miles away and a large one in the Duchy of Roses two thousand six hundred miles away. What do you want to do?"

"I want to learn whether it's possible for me to go back to my world and what that would take. I want to learn about this world in order to - orient myself to it, figure out what I can or should do once I'm done teaching you what I can and have exhausted avenues for going back, including I assume ways to earn money. I should learn a local language but I won't make much progress in a few days so it can wait until the other questions are more settled. ...I assume I will want more things once I know what there is to want, here."

"I can fly at five hundred miles an hour comfortably, somewhat over six hundred if I push it but it's inefficient. I don't mind spending several hours flying to your farther base if you prefer to stay there for the next while." Hopefully her shiny new ID is still valid there?

"Going back through the rift or trying to reactivate it is a scale of months or years research project. City of Glass is better for orienting you, probably. It's, well, a city. More services, including information services. There's a famous museum and stuff. I don't need the high-end workshop for initial questions and discussion anyway."

Tanya has a perfect excuse for staying off the frontlines until the war is over and all she can think about is how her men will make it without her how little she knows about theoretical magic.

They can be at their destination in seventy minutes.

The land very quickly transitions from jungle to densely cultivated farmland. There are towns. Then they're at the city. It's a premodern city! Bits of urban sprawl attempt to extend past the traditional huge stone walls. Lots of glass is in use in the architecture. Most of the buildings inside are four to six stories high, mostly brick and glass. Near the center of the city is a monument and manor district including a startlingly modern-style all glass exterior tower, twenty four stories and near indistinguishable from a modern skyscraper. There are even a few radio transmissions coming from the city!

Sinnah pauses at low altitude outside the gates, it having been expressed to her earlier by someone who can actually back it up that they'd confiscate her workshop if she too flagrantly flouts air safety.

"Air traffic rules are in effect in the city proper. A max speed restriction of eighty miles per hour. And, see the roof markers every few hundred feet? Blue and red ones? They mark preferred air travel lanes, blue on the left and red on the right. The lanes aren't strictly enforced but they do reduce maneuvering and make decent landmarks."

That's more modern than median Germanian small city! Glass skyscrapers! Radio! Air traffic control!!!

Tania was worried when the local magistrate turned out to be a 'Baron' (she's still not clear on whether and how those two qualities are related) who just, wanted the interplanetary visitor to please go away and stop bothering him (???!), but clearly that was a small rural town the likes of which can, indeed, be found all over even the most modern country.

Tania will be a very diligent student of air traffic rules. ...is there air traffic other than the bird-people? Those didn't seem likely to go much faster than eighty miles per hour anyway.

Well, skyscraper. Singular.

There are a few flying carriages, and some people without wings flying using the same magic signature as Sinnah, and occasionally something slightly more exotic, but mostly it's bird people, yep. Quite a few at the sub 200 foot altitude band. Sinnah stays high, 1000 or so, and heads for a district about halfway to the center from the edge of the city before descending and landing on a garden'd roof.

(...There's a lot of magic in use here in the city. It's a constant rain of magic signatures. The ratio of magic users must be quite high, or maybe it's just the population density?)

Either they have a much higher ratio of mages than Earth, or many mages have chosen to come here. Maybe this is a university city and the skyscraper is a magic research institute.

Flying carriages are a civilian technology, which is good considering the alternatives. They may have also invented the airplane but that's not useful for transportation in a city, and helicopters are much harder to build and also too noisy.

Tanya does her best to record distinct spell signatures in her orb but she has no idea how to label almost any of them and they're sometimes hard for her orb to tell apart.