The Quantum Wanderer

I wake up with almost all of my girls around me. I just can’t tire of this. Not just the daily sex, but also being close to them. After our usual morning, we get down for breakfast.

After breakfast, Muninn lands in front of me, and passes me a scene. It is about Richard, he is still travelling, and quite fast at that. This is not too surprising, considering the distances are big, and the transports are slow. Although, in his case, he is really going for it. An adventurer, on his own, can actually cover a big distance. Specially with a level on around 40. They can run like a sprinter, but for a marathon distance. He can probably cover way more than a horse pulling a cart. Or even a horse by itself. I take a look at Muninn.

“Thanks, buddy.”

One of my Comm Gems kind of ‘ring’. It is the dwarves’ one. I start the communication. Dávrin let’s me know that they are going to have the occupation group for Stonehenge assembled tomorrow early. It is time to have a go on that map.

“Girls, I just got a message from Dávrin. He is going to have the occupation group for that city tomorrow. That means that we have to kill the ants today.”

“Do we have to put them in the bag?”

“No. We just have to avoid damaging the city any more than it already is. And the key word here is avoiding… Let’s avoid throwing ants against buildings, and stuff like that. You can do whatever you want in the nest. Now… Who wants to go?”

They all raise their hands. I pull out the map.

“I have to go there first, so that I can open the portal. Once I do that, I will be back for you. I will open the portal in our room. Cecs, don’t forget to wear the dwarven pendant, the air there is probably going to have the same issues.

“Muninn, do you want to go as well?”

He and Huginn caw. That sounds like a yes. I go up to our room, and I dress in adventurer mode. I check out the map, and I portal to a place nearby, quite high up. I look at the drawing, and I start looking for the place.

The drawing is very accurate. It looks like it was done quite recently, because it encompasses a lot of the decay for the area. I find the opening to the dwarven cave without issues. I expected to find a challenge here, but apparently that was just on the cave for the capital.

I enter the cave. There is a smell coming from it, I believe it must be the right place. I open a portal to our room, and the girls are getting ready. I close the portal, so that the smell doesn’t contaminate our place.

After a couple of minutes, the girls are in their adventurer mode as well. Ruby is kicking from one side to another, excited. Cecilia is the one begging them.

“Please, just a dozen. I want to level up.”

Shandon sighs. “Ok, let’s let our little sister get some ants for her. Even if she takes *so long* to kill one, ok, sisters?”

Ruby mumbles something, but ends up agreeing.

I open the portal, and we all go to Stonehenge. We trail a long way down by foot before reaching anywhere near the city. The smells are stronger and stronger. The vulcanic smells, of course, and then the insect smell starts to get really strong. At some point, Ruby just looks at me, like a puppy that wants to catch a ball, and I tell her to go ahead. The dragonesses are gone.

I reach the city, and take a look. The light crystals on the ceiling are still there. The city itself reminds me a lot of Rockslide, but it is a little smaller. And destroyed. A lot of the houses are down, doors that were forced by ants, and ended up breaking the building.

The elevators that were available in the capital did not work anymore here, obviously. I see the remains of an ant close to the opening where it used to work. There are guts of ants here and there, but not as big an amount as I would expect.

I can hear some very light noise coming from the elevator wholes. I princess carry Cecilia, and I fly to the opening. It is really dark, but I can see down there. It has a very similar layout as Rockslide. There are some floors bellow that would house farming, growing beasts, and the last floor would be the one with the forges.

I go down all the way to the forges floor, I am guessing that the connection to the ants’ nest should be here. I start flying around with Cecilia, just a couple of feet above ground, to speed things up. Muninn and Huginn are accompanying us. I go all the way to the lava pit, but no connection to ants’ nest. Sometimes I wish I had Opal’s nose.

Instead, I raise to the level before, and then I locate the trail of ants’ guts. It makes things a lot easier. I just start following it, and after sometime I start hearing a very feint sound of battle. When we get to the wall of the cave, it is clear to see, there are several holes in the wall, all of them circular in nature. The unnatural circular shape.

I get through them, and I find the anthill. It is designed with a very close format to the previous ones. There is a main ‘road’, out of which other roads and caves are shaped. The sound of battle is coming from bellow us.

I expand my mana sense, and I notice that there are a couple of pockets with some ants in them. Probably the present to Cecilia from her sisters. I put her down.

“There are some pockets with ants in the tunnel going up. Probably a dozen of them. What do you say?”

“Great! Let’s go!”

I hold Cecilia by her armpits, and I fly to that position. She arrives at the cave, and throws herself on the ants. She realized that she is almost invulnerable, with the neutron crystal scale skin, unbreakable bones and the healing, so she is just hacking away with her sword. I take a look at the scene, and stay reasonably close.

“Cecs, try to enhance your brain!”

She answers between one hack and the next one. “Why? Everyone knows it is useless!”

“It is not! Trust me!” My mana sense confirms that she managed to do it, and she speeds up a little, as well as doing perfect strikes on the ants. She slices one. The next one comes around and tries to bite her, but she uses the sword to parry it, cutting the pincer int the process, and then cuts the head away.

I can feel the experience leaking, she must be getting a lot of experience. Muninn and Huggin caw, and then join the fray. They go for the heads, and start flying to the side when the ants start throwing acid. It wouldn’t burn them, but their feathers would probably be gone. They actually work as a team. The one that is getting close is avoiding the acid, then the one that is farther away distracts the ant, and the closer one goes for the kill, opening up the head.

The amount of experience that is being released is pretty good. Not a dragon good, but something around Fenrir good. And they are keeping at it. I can count some 10 kills already. Cecilia is getting stronger. It makes me happy.

The woman and crows keep at it for several minutes. At one point, things start to change. I can see that the ants stopped moving for a second, and now they are moving in a berserk way. If I am not wrong, the other girls may have hit the queen now. That means that the play is over.

“Cecilia, the others must have reached the queen. They are going to be more aggressive. It is better if I do the final clean up. Retreat.”

Her first impulse, between one parry and a slash, is to complain, but she can see that the enemy is now tougher.

“FINE!”

I enhance my body, and take Cecilia’s place, so that she come back to the opening of the cave. Once everything in front of me are ants, I decide to try the microwave spell. Even if they have fire resistance, I am betting that I could kill them in one hit. I pour a lot of mana, and I do a flash of microwave towards my front, taking care to not leak anything in Cecilia’s or the crows’ direction.

The closest ants just explode, their insides cooked. I am covered in hot ant gut. All of them die, though. The ones in the back are way less hot than these in front of me, but they are still hot. Cecilia look at me, picks up a gunk of ant, and smells it.

“This is so hot that it cooked. I know I should not be impressed anymore, but this is cool.”

I am removing ants’ guts from me. I don’t feel it is cool right now. I hope she got some experience from the ants that I killed. I killed about 30 ants, Cecilia killed 15 on her own. Not bad. Muninn and Huginn killed another 5. And the girls probably killed the other thousand or so. After a couple of minutes, I think I am clean enough to move along.

“Let’s meet up with the girls?”

“Sure.”

I expand my mana sense, to try to find any ants still alive, but I can’t feel anything than just guts everywhere. I princess carry Cecilia, so that we can get fast to the girls. This ants’ nest is gigantic. It is way bigger than the other two structures I had seen already.

The girls are kind of trying to remove some of the gunk. Amazingly, though, they are less dirty than normal. Taking a look at the corpses, I think that they actually used their swords this time.

“Did you remember to do away with the eggs?”

“They are ashes now, my lord.” Shandon replied.

“Thank you. Let’s go home, wash up.”

I think a little about the whole nest, if there is a way to replace it with something. But that is going to be up to the dwarves. They might even use the caves already there to expand their city, if they want to.

We go home, and wash up. The girls are really paying attention to me, trying to make me happy, and I enjoy their touch. Ruby, in particular, attacks me in the shower.

We take a stroll through the city after that, there is not much time before dinner. I walk around the city, with two pairs of girls on each arm. Opal is walking after me, a step behind. But she looks satisfied. The ones that are linked to my arms are Ruby and Cecilia, they are the happiest of the bunch. We end up having some sweets at a restaurant.

After some time, we go back for dinner. I am really happy to be able to provide this much fun for the girls.

Next morning, I wake up with the dwarves Comm Gem. I look outside, it is still night, but I can see that the sun is about to rise. These guys are earlier birds than any I have seen around. I would generally want to have breakfast first, but there are probably a lot of people waiting. I dress up, adventurer clothing. The girls are still sleeping. Muninn and Huginn are at the cupboard, and fly to my shoulders. I go downstairs, there is already some movement in the kitchen. I get in, Roberta is already dispatching orders.

I haven’t seen Rudolph anywhere, so I get to Roberta.

“Hi Roberta, good morning.”

“Up already, sir? You generally come down for breakfast a little later. We didn’t even the… sounds… announcing you are about to come down.”

I am scratching my head, sounds… Oh.

“Can you pass on a message?”

“Of course, sir.”

“Tell them that I went out to help the dwarves move.”

“I am sorry, sir? What dwarves? Move where?”

“Don’t worry, just tell them that.”

“Of course. What about your breakfast, sir?”

“I am going to have a late one, I have to help those guys.”

“Permission to speak frankly, sir!”

“Sure.”

“Breakfast is a very important meal in a day, SIR! I can’t be a chef if I let you go out hungry! Please give me just a couple of minutes.”

She turns around before I can answer and starts preparing something, and putting on a plate. I remember an idea.

“Roberta, can you please put that between two slices of bread? That way I will eat it on the way.”

Her eyebrows go up, but she does that nonetheless. She brings in a sandwich and a pair of meat strips. Muninn and Huginn caw at her.

She says “You’re welcome.” I feed them the meat strips. I grab my dragon meat sandwich, and go up to the rooms corridor, close to the window. I think about it, and change the way. I jump out the corridor window, and put a gate beneath me. I fall inside the bedroom in Dávrin’s castle. Muninn and Huginn come right after me, their wings open, and land on my shoulders again.

A guard enters the room, because of the sudden noise. He sees me, and freezes. I turn to him.

“Can you take me to your king, please?”

That sentence looked like an unfreeze spell, he got the halbert on his shoulder.

“Of course, lord, please follow me.”

Instead of going somewhere inside the castle, we actually leave it, and we we are walking towards the elevator that takes us to the outside of the cave. The view itself was amazing. There was platform going up, full of dwarves. Up where the elevator ended, there was another crowd, moving forward, and another large line moving towards the elevator.

They worked in tandem, as if it were a single line. It looked like clockwork. It looked a little chaotic, there were several elements mixed in, from soldiers to laborers, but they moved with astounding precision.

The line did not occupy the whole street, though. Only half of it. The other half was kept free, and that is the space that the guard was taking me through.

The sheer amount of people was impressive. I wonder how Dávrin managed to mobilize so many people in so little time. As we go through, people start murmuring, ‘the crows’ ‘psst, are you daft?’ ‘that’s him’, ‘so ugly’, ‘if only he had a beard’, ‘… Austri …’ . I could hear all kinds of things.

The line has all sorts of people, with all sorts of implements. There are a lot of carts, being pulled by moles as well.

Dávrin is by the elevator, with a big mole behind him, with a saddle on it. I am pushing the very last pieces of sandwich into my mouth.

“Good morning, friend.”

“Good morning. I see it is a lot more people than I thought.”

“To tell you the truth, it is a lot more people than I thought as well.”

…

…

“I never noticed how early risers you are, when I was here.”

He looked at the line of people, and laughed whole heartdly.

“We are not! I actually delayed them as much as I could. Some people came to me saying that one minute after midnight would already be the next day. Most of these people are really excited about going back to some family roots.

“The loss of that city happened just some 200 years ago. Many of the people here still remember the fleeing. Of course, the majority of them are elders now, but they have also told their gransons some stories. This is a historical moment. Basically, I couldn’t force them to sleep, they have been preparing day and night.”

“I hope they don’t find themselves disappointed. I could still see the greatness there, but there is a lot of destruction as well.”

“Don’t worry, my friend.”

I shrug.

“Anyway, I am going to do my thing. Can you ask them to pause for a minute?”

“ALL, HALT!”

Dávrin shouts this command, and the command keeps getting repeated, but the line keeps moving along a little bit. About 5 steps later, the whole line stops at once. Their organization would put the empire’s military to shame. I turn back to Dávrin.

“I am going to go to the front line, and I am going to open a portal to Stonehenge. The destination portal is going to be in front of a big empty square. Does that sound good?”

“Do you mean your travel magic? Can you transfer this amount of dwarves?”

“It would take a long and boring conversation, but the short answer is yes. I am going to open a portal, a gate, and you guys have to cross it. On the other side, you are going to be in Stonehenge.”

Dávrin is passing his hands through his beard. A lot. He gestures one aid, that brings in a device that looks like an old microphone, those big ones. I can sense him adding mana to it. When he speaks, his voice gets to be heard everywhere in the line.

“Listen up! Our friend here is going to open a magic path to Stonehenge. We are going to go through it!”

I can hear the murmur around people. Some of them have hope in their eyes, but a lot of the older folks are having a hard time believing in this.

“I WILL GO WITH HIM!”

The Hammer comes from around the king, and we keep walking, towards the front of the line. The line is huge. There are probably several thousand dwarves, perhaps more than ten thousand, in this line. I am bad at estimating it like this, but I know that the line extends to a long distance. Something like at least half a mile.

Once we are in front of the line, I open a portal. I have to open a huge one, since the line is also wide. I open the portal, and after I jump through, Viggr does the same. We are in front of a big square, and up ahead, following one of the streets, is the dwarven castle against the granite wall.

Viggr walking mechanically. He looks at the houses around the square, some of them still intact, but a lot of destruction around.

He looks again at the palace in the wall, in the end. He falls to his knees, then to all fours, and starts sobbing. I leave him alone for a while. After some time, he stands up, and comes to me.

“No dwarf should ever have to be away from his ancestors’ bones. You have no idea… Just say the word, and you can have my beard.”

I imagine that this is probably a big thing, considering how they view their beards.

“No problem. You guys are also going to have to clean up the mess we made with the ants…”

He laughs, he looks to the ground, and then shakes his head. I gesture towards the portal.

“Should we get back and let them know?”

“Of course. Would you give me the honor of calling you friend?”

“Sure.”

We go back through the portal, and walk all the way back to Dávrin that has been waiting there. He gets close to Dávrin, that hands him the big microphone.

“I have just stepped in the Square of Hammerdrill! I have gone through and back through the portal. It is completely safe! Now move! Lets get back to our homes!”

The line starts moving again, very slowly. People are moving forward, their precision is still impressive. I am by Dávrin’s side, to keep the spell going. Viggr puts his helmet one.

Dávrin laughs at the scene.

“It seems you managed to get his mustache wet, friend.”

I don’t really understand what he means by that, but I will take it as a compliment. The line keeps moving. What I thought was going to be the end of the line, actually, wasn’t. The line just keeps reforming itself on the end, with people waiting their turn to join the procession towards the other city.

I appreciate having had some breakfast more and more as the time goes on. The line just won’t end. I keep chit chatting about other stuff with Dávrin. He is really excited about the whole thing. The lift on their population pressure is going to allow them to get back to previous populations level, he says that their future look brighter.

While we are talking about some generalities, Viggr asks to be excused for a short while, and Dávrin excuses him.

After another hour or so, the line finishes abruptly, and it gets shorter and shorter, until everyone is already on the other plateau, and I follow them. When the last one goes through the portal, I close it.