Just as advertised. How nice. Occlus reaches through to test it.

Seeing one's own arm emerge from midair is pretty weird, at least the first few times you do it. In this case it's appearing from a spot about a foot from the wall, at a comfortable height for picking something up from a table scaled for human use, and oriented the same way it would be if it was more conventionally attached.

"Archivist," Occlus says to the droids, "record this for reference."

"Recording function active."

Occlus moves her arm around for a few seconds more, then withdraws it. Tap tap tappitytaptappity tap?

Portal: ceases to be.

"I also made it so it'll shut off if it gets too far away from you; I can undo that if you'd like though."

"No, that won't be a problem. The other location I wish to have a portal to is outside." Occlus walks back to the lift.

Follow follow, again. Less nervous about the lift, this time.

And here is a landing pad with several speeders parked on it! Occlus goes over to one with a closed cabin.

"Will being on the other side of the window from a location be close enough to portal to it?"

Nod. "The sense I'm using is more like touch than anything else, but I can extend it a few meters before I risk getting disoriented, more if I take my time or can follow an obvious path."

"Good." Into the speeder and then up into the air. Very, very far up into the air. Occlus takes them up about thirteen kilometers, and hovers.

"This spot will do. I would like both of the alternate portals to lead here."

...interesting choice. The hoop isn't big enough to put someone bigger than like baby-sized through, is it?

Only if they were very cooperative.

The kobold will not be particularly alarmed, then. Mage-sense, go.

"All right, I've got it," she reports after a few seconds, and then she gets started on adding the spell with the original code to the hoop.

If interrupting Occlus to ask for the second code doesn't seem like a bad idea, she'll do that too, and have the hoop complete by the time they land.

Occlus is amenable to being interrupted, the speeder has an autopilot. She provides the second code when asked (Tap tap taptaptappity tappity), and lands the speeder without incident.

"It will take several hours to complete my analysis, and I will not be available to escort you for that time."

"That's fine. Is there someplace I can put a temporary portal to Milliways, so I can wait there?"

"The hallway where we came in will be fine." Occlus is going to take the lift to there, unless the kobold would care to make a portal for them both.

Portal, no, but that's not the only way she can do things. She offers Occlus her hand: "teleport?"

This could be interesting. Occlus takes the offered hand.

It's certainly more abrupt than the portal: they were there; now they're here.

The kobold fishes a roll of painter's tape out of one of her belt pouches and affixes a piece of it to the wall, then creates a portal next to it that leads to Milliways' main room. "This one has a simple on-off trigger, just tap the tape. I might go up to my room for a nap while you're working; Bar can fetch me if I'm not around when you come to get me."

Occlus nods in acknowledgement, and closes the portal once the kobold has gone through.

Now, to work. First, she makes adjustments to the archivist droids' programming so that they will deliver any items she requests to right in front of the place the portal opens, so she can just reach out and take them. She has them fetch the other pieces of the map to the Lost Temple, and retrieves them through her portal-hoop. Yes, this could be very convenient indeed.

As for deciphering the map itself, the runes prove as resistant to translation as ever. But the final piece she obtained from Bar proves to be the key and several hours later, the hidden coordinates reveal themselves at last. She checks the result against a galaxy map, and there is a star system, right where it should be. Occlus smiles in satisfaction. Time to go retrieve the kobold.

Tap on the tape, and enter Milliways. Is she in the main area?

Yup, there she is over there, curled up on the couch watching an educational holofilm. She's too intent on the ...what is that, algebra?... to notice Occlus immediately.

Then Occlus will walk over next to her, and wait for an appropriate pause to announce herself.

The kobold looks up as soon as Occlus is clearly headed in her direction, and by the time she's within speaking range she's teleported the holofilm emitter back to the bar and stood up. "Ready to go?"

"Yes. Travel time will be approximately eighteen hours, you may wish to bring something to occupy yourself with."

The kobold nods and pats one of her belt pouches. "I'm good."

Follow follow?

Follow! Portal to lift to pad to speeder to spaceport to ship. Occlus sets the course, then retires to her cabin to meditate.