The Quantum Wanderer

After waking up and playing a little bit with the girls, I start think about the preparations that we have to make. While we are having breakfast, it is time to start asking about the stuff.

“Shandon, do you mind if Cecilia rides you during the parade?”

She sighs. The answer is a little unenthusiastic.

“I suppose, my lord.”

I pretend I didn’t hear the lack of enthusiasm.

“Thank you, I appreciate. On that note, is there a way for you to protect her a little bit? Perhaps changing the way you fly a little?”

She sighs again.

“No need to change the way we fly, my lord. A lot of our flight is actually helped by air magic. Not all of it, but some. The air magic still needs the wings to be able to have a bigger area of interaction. Plus our wings have big mana channels that we can use, so they are built for that as well.

“I can just make the fast air go around her. The air around her is still going to be moving, but more akin to a breeze.”

“Hey! You could have done that the last time we flew!”

“Did you ask? How do you think the demoness kept her glasses on?”

Cecilia kept mumbling for some time.

We both looked at Siratra and Aquamarine. Siratra was nodding. Aquamarine had a smile. I got close to Aquamarine, and kissed her on the cheek.

“Thank you.”

Shandon apparently found something to stare on the wall.

So, a big part of the problem was solved.

“Opal, how long is the parade across Drakonia? How does this work?”

I remember that I had seen Drakonia from almost space. It was a very large continent, and the shape was pretty close to a tilted ellipse. Of course, it isn’t a perfect ellipse, but it is close.

“Well, to cross Drakonia we need 15 hours on the short side, and almost a full day on long side, with a comfortable speed.”

Those amount of hours are scaring me a little bit.

Applying the numbers that I already knew, that makes Drakonia kind of an ellipse with 6000 miles on the shorter side, and around 9000 miles on the other. It is a big continent. I wonder how it compares to continents on Earth, but I don’t remember the numbers on Earth. But there are a lot less continents on this planet, and the continent containing humans is considerably smaller.

“How long does the parade take over Drakonia?”

“I was just a hatchling during the last one, my lord, I don’t know. We would have to ask someone.”

I recall that there was a dragon I talked to, on the beach, when I was dealing with gangster wanna be son of the justice. What was his name again? Troggar. And if we are doing this, we should be doing it right. So let’s check the details. Where we have to go over, I might be able skip a lot of flying if we use the portals. But I should visit the places at least once to fine tune the portals. We do not need to fly 10 hours over the water. That’s already 10 hours saved. And according to what Opal informed, we just have to cover the Nursery on this side of the ocean.

“Do you think Troggar would know?”

“Probably, my lord, he was probably an adult at the time.”

“How do we find him?”

“You can go to the council caves and ask for him. He would be either there or with his clan. If he is not there, you can just send for him.”

“Ok, girls, I am going to have to do some preparations. There is going to be a lot of flying. That means that if all of you are coming along, Cecilia and Siratra are going to have to ride you. Do you mind?”

“Argh, sure, my lord, anything you ask.” Shandon replies.

I think about it, let’s see if there is a way to counter balance.

“Opal, we are preparing this thing for the parade. Do you mind letting Cecilia ride you? Aquamarine, do you mind giving a ride to Siratra?”

“Of course, my lord.”

“Anything you need, my lord.”

“Shandon, I will ride you this time.”

It’s amazing how her mood shifted.

“But you will have to behave when you are giving a ride to Cecilia as well, ok? She is also your mate sister.”

“I will, my lord.”

I kiss each girl on the lips, and I open a portal to my cave in Drakonia. We walk to the edge, and I infuse mana in my voice, making this a war cry.

“TROGGAR!”

I can see in a lower cave, just one level below the one I am in, a head comes out. It is Troggar.

“Troggar, meet us at the beach we last met.”

“Yes, my lord.”

I portal me and the girls there, it is a little distance. Troggar takes sometime getting there, about half an hour.

He lands in front of us, and assumes the submission position.

“You can just sit.”

He assumes the natural sitting position.

“I was talking to my mates, and Opal suggested that we didn’t do the Flight for parade of conquest.”

“I am sorry my lord? What is that?”

Opal captures his attention, and growls at him. Then he looks back at me.

“Oh. Yes my lord, you did not do it.”

“And now we want to do it.”

“Of course my lord.” And he takes off.

“TROGGAR! COME BACK!”

He lands back again.

“Yes, my lord?”

“Where were you going?”

“I was going to announce it, so that we can get the dragons of the clan united over the council’s caves.”

“Hold on, for now I am just understanding the whole thing, and planning it. I have some questions around the custom. How long is the parade?”

“It takes around 3 days over Drakonia, my lord. Then there is the time to reach the Nursery, and the flight to the Nursery, then the flight back. Somewhere around five days and four nights to a little more. It is supposed to end above the cave you are setting residence, my lord.“

“Five days? Do you guys stop for food or water? Don’t you guys need to eat or drink?”

“If we eat well the day before, we can get by, my lord. In spite of our size, we don’t need as much food as lesser species. Of course, talking relatively.”

“Do you have places that you have to visit in particular? Or do you have to fly the whole 3 days over Drakonia?”

“What do you mean, my lord?”

“There may be two different needs. One is the need to be seen on some centers, and the other is to cover the whole thing. If you only need to visit some centers, I can probably cut the trip short. For instance, the parade is supposed to go over the council caves, right? What other caves does it have to go over?”

“Oh, there are some tribes caves that we have to go over, my lord. I think they total 16. A tribe is a group of clans. The other ones are ours, and we will be in the parade. It doesn’t make sense showing your force to your own females.”

“Don’t we endanger having females taken while we are away?”

“The law forbids, my lord.”

“And why do you obey this law?”

He looked at me as if the question didn’t make sense.

“I don’t understand the question, my lord.”

“Sure, never mind. I would like to visit those places beforehand. Is it doable?”

“Of course, my lord. Do you want to follow me?”

“Just a second. How long would we take to fly there?”

He looked at me weird again.

“To visit all the places in single flight? Three days, my lord.”

This is not going to work. I don’t think I have a city I can actually see from very high up. I will have a bunch of caves in a group of mountains, or some sort of natural structures that are used by them. I am avoiding making additional stupid questions, so I get close to Opal.

“Opal, do you know where those places are?”

“No, my lord. Females generally don’t fly a lot. We only participate on the parade if we are the new leader’s mate. And the last time I saw one, I was a hatchling. Looking up, seeing all that power, and the females ahead of elders… I always dreamed of participating in one with the male that would duel for me… I am sorry, my lord, I overspoke.”

“Troggar, can you draw a map of Drakonia, marking those places we have to go through?”

“Sure, my lord.”

He turned around, and used his tail to straighten the sand. Then he hit the sand with his tail, compacting it. He then turned around, and positioned himself in around the roughly 15 feet wide circle, and spit fire on it. The sand melt, and became a liquid.

He used his huge front paw claw to draw this almost 15 feet wide ellipse, and started doing marks on it. Some of the markings he did with several claws, sometimes he used only one. Some lines where light, some deeper. At some points, he used his claws to make several smaller holes, and at some points he did a larger hole.

I now was the happy owner of a crude glass map of Drakonia drawn by a dragon. I know it may have been easy for him, but my earthling mind got crazy with this sentence. Not only it was detailed, but when I asked Opal where north was, I realized that the map was in the right position. I don’t know how trustworthy the scale may be. But the details are amazing, and even if they are a little off, I can now get a sense of the places. Opal, with her sense of direction, pointed me where we were in the map, right now. With that, I could do some estimation. I memorize it. It’s not that hard, given my current intelligence stats.

“Ok, girls, time to fly.”

I took out the 3 saddles. I could fly by myself, but I had promised Shandon. The girls undress and transform. Troggar doesn’t pay much attention to that. When I start placing the saddle on Shandon, Troggar is looking with a funny face.

“My lord, what is that?”

“It’s a saddle. I am going to ride Shandon, and my non dragon mates are going to ride some of their mates sisters. It is designed to make the experience more comfortable.”

“My lord, I saw you flying already. Why?”

Shandon interrupted him.

“It’s not that he can’t. He just prefers riding, me. Besides, my lord doesn’t even need to fly to go over long distances. He can get to the Nursery instantly if he so wishes.”

I think that this was the first time I could see an impressed expression on Troggar’s face. After I am done fastening the saddles on the three ladies, I come back to the talk with Troggar.

“Troggar, if I had to create a bubble that you had to go through, how big would it have to be?”

“I could probably fit through 60 feet, my lord, but I would be a lot more comfortable with 300 feet wide.”

Given the large distances, the larger portal doesn’t consume that much mana, actually. And I have a lot. I tell Troggar to follow us, and we take off. I open a 300 feet wide portal in front of us, and we dive right in. Troggar takes sometime to come through. When he does, he looses his balance, and I can feel he is a little astonished. I feel the place, and I choose a location about 100 miles away from the spot. That is going to be the place where we are going to come out the portal. The second time we do that, Troggar no longer looses his balance after he comes through the portal. He got used pretty quickly.

This procedure gets faster and faster, and we finish all 25 places, then I portal ourselves again to the beach.

“Troggar, I am going to ask you to spread the word. We are going to do the parade in around 8 and half weeks. Today is the ninth of month five, we are going to have the parade on the first day of month 7. We are going to depart from this beach, at sunrise here.

“But we are going to make it different. After we depart, I am going to open a portal to one of the places we visited, and the other dragons have to go through it, like you did. So we make a single line, go through the portal, once we pass to the other side, we assume the formation again. Do you think there is a need to train that?”

“No, my lord, of course not. Anyone that is not capable of that should not have wings.”

“Good. Do you have any questions?”

“No, my lord. It is going to be done as my lord wishes.”

“Thank you.”

I finally turn to look at the girls. Cecilia is all sorts of wet and has some substance on her. If the thing on her was green instead of transparent, I would think we were back killing insects.

“What happened?”

“Oh, Opal had some sneezing during the whole thing.”

“We don’t snee…” Ruby was saying, when she got slap on the side by Opal’s tail. When I looked at Opal, she was admiring some cloud in the distance.

“Evrn a fckn jkr…” Cecilia was muttering again.

The girls turn back to their human forms, and I give them their clothes back. I look at the huge slab of crude glass on the ground. I dig around it, and see that the glass is about two inches thick. This could just work. I apply some anti-gravitation force to it, and lift it. There is sand on the bottom side, but this could probably be brushed off with a broom. I put it in my magic bag, and we portal back home, to our room.

I go downstairs to talk to Rudolph.

“Rudolph, I need your help with something.”

“Yes, sir?”

“We got kind of a work of art, a nice one. It is big, about 15 feet big, but it needs some cleaning on one of the sides. I was thinking of placing it there on the stairs, where they split. Can you please remove the painting and the carpet there, so that I can put the thing?”

“What is it, sir?”

“I don’t know how to call it, but I liked it. It was a 5 minute sketch, but still it looks cool.”

“Of course sir, I will do that while you have supper.”

During dinner, we talk about how the whole thing is going to be. I have to do some quick math. There is a 4000 mile distance to Drakonia, that means almost four hours in time zone. Of course, they don’t have time zones here, but the sun is going to rise up that earlier. We have to be on that beach around 5:30, but we are going to leave Ironhold around 1 am, to be on the safe side. The good news is that the time zones are going to allow us to do everything in a day. A very long day. We are going to spend around 20 to 30 minutes per spot. For 25 spots, that makes 8 to 13 hours flying. That’s rough. Then we gate back to the Nursery, and then fly over Arthuria, Ironhold and the demon’s capital. That means that we should be back in Andrea between 10 am and 3 pm. And then those flights. But since they are short, they shouldn’t pose too much delay. I already know where to place the portals.

At least we get to do the whole thing in a single day. It is going to be tiring, but I can imagine that cleaning up the insect nest must have been boring for them. I don’t picture an underground quest as something fun for a dragon. And they did it anyway. And this will definitely blow boredom away for a while.

As I walk to the stairs, I see that the glass map was cleaned up. There is sand mixed with the glass in the back, but that was just the way it was done. I use the anti-gravity magic, and flip it over. I still think this thing is beautifull.

The next day, Edward is calling us on Leopold’s Comm Gem. He said that he wanted further detail on how the parade is going to be, if possible. I invite his family and him to dinner, that way we can talk. I remind him that this is something informal. I ring the bell, to call Rudolph.

“Did you call, sir?”

“Yes. Would there be a problem to have 4 more people for dinner?”

“Sir, 4 people wouldn’t even change the amount of food being served. No problem at all. Friends of sir?”

“Hum, I think so. Edward is coming for dinner, and he is bringing his family.”

“The duke?”

“Yup.”

“Excuse me sir.”

Apparently this set Rudolph on flames. He talks with everyone in the kitchen, and start doing a re-check on the whole house. I think the house is already clean, but Rudolph is probably driving the maids crazy.

I decide to sit underneath a tree outside, and enjoy the fresh day. The girls decided to take a stroll in the city. A couple of days is not ever going to be enough to see this whole city. I wonder why they like the city so much.

At some later time, we are receiving Edward and his family by our gate, and inviting them in. As we are walking by the tree that I was relaxing earlier, Sophia points at it, and say “Birdie!”. I look, and I find a crow there. I hadn’t realized that we started having crows. I turn to her.

“Sophia, are you afraid of it?”

“No”

“Ok. Put your arm like this.”

I place her arm so that she places her forearm in front of her. I then place my coat on top of it. I turn to Huginn, and ask her, “Can you ask your friend to land here a bit?”

Huginn caws, and the crow comes from the tree and lands on Sophia’s arm, that is protected by the coat. Sophia’s eyes are shining.

“Mama, can we bring it home? Pwease?”

“No, hon. It’s place is here, by it’s friends.”

“But it is close, it can always visit… Pwease...”

Sofia’s eyes are big. I am amazed on Addrianna’s self control on not caving in on this.

I giggle, and Addrianna is holding the bridge of her nose. When she sighs, Edward just starts laughing, and takes a soft punch on the shoulder.

“Just a second, “ I say. I tip the crow’s feet, and it goes to my forearm. I get the coat, and put it over Sofia’s shoulders, then I tip the shoulder, and the crow lands there. Addrianna is staring daggers at me. As we are dining, I see that Sofia is slipping some of her meat to the crow. At least on its side, now it is eternal love.

“We are going to consider. But first of all, you have to be a good girl, ok?”

“Ok.”

We enter the manor, and go to the living room. Edward sees the big glass thing against the wall.

“What is that?”

“That is something that just happened. That is a map of Drakonia!”

“By the gods.”

He goes up the single set of stairs, and takes a look.

“How was this created?”

“I asked a dragon to draw a map of Drakonia on the sand. He melted it beforehand, making it into glass! And then he drawed the hole thing with the tip of his claw!”

“Wow… Are these the mountains? What are these?”

“Yes, those are mountains, and these are places with tribes, groups of clans that we are also going to fly over.”

“What are these lines?” He pointed to some very soft lines.

“He drew the ley lines as well.”

“How accurate is this map?”

“Very. After going to those places, the accuracy of the map is amazing. I have not seen a map in Andrea as accurate as this.”

“I have to show this to Anthon.”

“We will, in the party, right? By then I will try to get someone to build a casing on the wall.”

“Caius, come look at this! A real dragon did this.”

Caius get closer, and touches the glass. Edward pulls his hand, but I tell him that it’s ok. This thing is a very solid slab of glass.

After some time we turn to look back at the ladies. They are kind of waiting on us. The only one that is not caring about all of this is Sofia. She is petting the crow on the chest, and it stretches its beak up, showing its neck. That gets some petting as well.

After dinner, the girls, Sofia, Addrianna and Caius are talking in one corner, while Edward and I are talking in another.

“You are going to get me in trouble with this crow thing.”

“Well, they make great pets, really. They are clean, smart, and protective of the ones that treat them well. If you mistreat them, though… They are kind of vengeful, and have an excellent memory.”

“Are they smart as dogs? Wait, let me rephrase that. Are normal crows smart as dogs?”

“No, they are way smarter. Unless a cage has a real locking mechanism, with a key or something, they escape. They learn how to open it. They had this kind of issue in the Demon Empire.”

“How so?”

“Apparently, it became fancy to have crows at home. But they value their liberty. Muninn and Huginn are not really pets, they are more like pals to us. I treat them well, but they are free to come and go. And crows are really, really loyal, as far as I know.

“I have heard stories of crows that, after being fed a couple of times, started bringing presents to the people feeding them. Small shiny things. Of course, a lot of junk mixed in, they can’t really tell the difference between a gold earing and a new shiny nail, but you can get the picture.

“Do you know about the bed in Frolk’s guild branch?”

“Not really.”

“Well, the guild provided the bed frame, and the leather, but we needed feathers to fill it up. And there weren’t feathers available in the city for cheap, so I had to pick them up. But I prefer hunting a single Fenrir than trying to fetch a million feathers, right?”

“Right…”

“So I bribed the crows with Fenrir meat, and they did the feather searching in the forest.”

“Oh. This is fantastic.”

I shrugged.

“By the way, I forgot to ask you a couple of things. Where is the parade going to fly by?”

“I hadn’t given much thought to that. The only requirement right now is that it is supposed to go over the main capitals. That’s the custom I have to uphold. Why? Is there a particular route you would prefer? I don’t think I would mind either way.”

“Anthon mentioned something, and then it got me thinking as well. We want to know how it is going to be, so that we can get the main seats to the spectacle. Seeing two hundred dragons flying, and not having to worry about safety… That is a once in a millennia thing.”

“The last one happened, Opal was a hatchling. That must have been a little more than a thousand years. But anyway, what would your preference be?”

He takes a map from his bag of holding, and we go to the table, where he unrolls it.

“This one is easy to see, right? Not as beautiful as yours, but it will do… Here is the imperial castle, obviously, this is me, this is you. If you come from behind the palace, it is going to be look like there is a friendship between the dragons and the empire. Something coming from the emperor. If you come from the gate, crossing the city towards the palace, it can either mean friend or foe. Since there is no invitation, it is a demonstration of force. Of course, a hero parade would have to start at the gates, because they can’t just come in through wherever they want. If you cross it sideways, it is going to impart the idea of neutrality.

“These are all perceptions, of course. But something big like this, people are going to try to interpret every little wing beat, every little sound, every little sneeze.

“What is your choice?”

I look at the girls. They are happy here, I am happy here. So far, Edward has been very true to his word, the way people are treated here is fair.

“Can I assume that if you could choose, for personal gain, you would choose coming from behind the palace?”

“Not so much for me, personally. It would benefit Anthon, of course, and it would benefit me indirectly. But it is not something I would ask. I meant it when I said that his house has no strings attached.”

“Ok. From behind the palace it is. But I am not sure on what time we are going to do this. There are a lot of flying to happen in Drakonia, and I am not sure how long it will take. I have never done it, and I am not really willing to do 12 hours test flights to check that.”

After some more chit chat, we are saying our goodbyes. Sofia tries to convince her mother that she will take care of the crow, but Addrianna says that it is going to be waiting for her here if they decide to adopt it.

Once they leave, we decide to retire as well.