You set the assistant up with her emergency teleport, a talisman that when a thumbprint of her blood is added to it will whisk her back to the city. You also rig together a way of allowing alima and liss to contact you and give them the required items.
With the bits and pieces completed you find Fei and ask her very nicely to come with you on a tour of the multiverse’s rivers and attempt to connect them all to hers. She is delighted to join you. you set out first exploring the worlds already connected, then moving on to architects world. It’s in the midst of a power shift but you quickly identify a likely river. With the go ahead from several people you set up the necessary inscriptions and then charge the portal connecting it to the city.
Travelling around, you find many interesting worlds, connecting their rivers to yours, some are primitive with spear wielding tribes, and others are highly developed metropolises of power and everything in between.
You talk with Matthias at times and get useful world to connect rivers with, the empire is reluctant though and he can’t change their opinion despite being high in power, something about being permanently connected to the city that gave them a good beating just rubs the wrong way.
However Fei’s favourite world is by far Lisaseyo which is basically a continent divided into islands by a vast river network. The rivers span from 30 cm in diameter to 20 metres. You and fey spend many a happy month every year or so sailing around and trying the varied delicacies on each island. Each island has a different culture, from shrimp farmers to traders this world has them all. The food on each island is also vastly different but incredibly tasty. You come back here very often.
Through your river network far more interdimensional trade is possible, and so ideas can be shared without the need for violence, that is not to say that no fights break out but using your portals for this is greatly frowned upon and backed up by a angry river goddess flooding anyone who tries.
At the great arch over the river two figures appear, an old man and a woman in a flowing white dress. The inscriptions that have been there for the past week suddenly start glowing as the old man chants. Slowly but surely a shimmering gold portal widens halfway across the river, and as it opens a huge wave spills forth. The woman rides the crest of the wave along through the City, and every time she passes another one of the arches it too creates a portal, each to a different river in a different plane that swells the wave ever higher. As the wave leaves the City, she bows to the crowd and the wave fades into nothingness, leaving her standing on the surface of the river. The old man sails up in a small yacht, and the two of them pass through one of the new portals in each other's arms.