The Quantum Wanderer

Guard’s POV

I am stationed on one of the easiest job, the cells for the special criminals. In particular because crime rate has been down by a huge margin, ever since the church started to take off, with teachings that the Great Adventurer despises criminals. And they say his crows are always watching, even when you can’t see them.

Earlier today, a woman was placed in the cells. I know my place, and I am not curious. I am just going to enjoy an easy job. Together with me are the master of keys, that holds the cells’ keys, as well as the door to the cells’ key, and my new colleague, fresh from the soldier camp.

Then my easy job starts to go downhill. The emperor and admiral Sidhu come together. I can see that he is behaving like normal. Then the master of keys open the path to the cells, and gets sent away by the emperor. HA! The moron isn’t used to responding to orders from so high up, I understand that he got nervous.

After they enter the cell block, my colleague looks at me.

“Do you know who that person with the emperor is?”

“Are you kidding? That is admiral –“ Then hell breaks loose. We hear the noise of something hitting the bars, and Sidhu’s shout. I think everyone in the palace heard Sidhu’s shout. Next we get the wave of mana from the war cry, and my knees go soft. My colleague is looking at me.

“What is going on?”

“I don’t know, but something derailed admiral Sidhu. This is bad.”

We keep hearing the growling, and the mana flowing from the room. I use the side table for support. My colleague approaches.

“Shouldn’t we go inside protect the emperor?”

I take a look at the door. I sense the bloodlust that is mixed with the mana.

“If he attacked the emperor, the emperor is gone. Believe me. If we enter, we die. And not in a ‘let’s give the emperor time to flee way’. The way things are now, if the emperor is to be attacked, there is nothing that can be done.”

“But…”

“You idiot, that is hellhound fucking Sidhu! Can’t you fucking hear? He is going to rip your arm off, and beat you and the emperor with it! And this is the first time I say this in a literal way. He has probably 10 or more levels on us. And I have never felt this amount of rage on anyone. I have been to the frontlines! I am not fucking going in there!”

He takes a look towards the door, it is not possible to see what is going in the next room. He nods. He just needed some justification from my side. The noises, the growling and the mana keep going on for a long time. My colleague looks at me.

“Do you think the emperess is going to have mercy on us? That is the next one in line, right?”

“I hope so. At least we can try to escape during the coronation confusion.”

After some time, Sidhu comes out of the room, and goes away. We assume our positions. The emperor comes shortly after. We salute him. His humor is not good. We salute him.

“You two, toilet cleaning duty for six months, and pray I don’t change my mind. Now go to the arena, and call the key keeper.”

And then he leaves. I relax at that moment. My colleague and I take a look at each other, and go inside to the cell block. The cell with the woman is bent! Fucking bent! These are supposed to be mithril, for high level people. I let out a wistle. My colleague touchs the bars, not really believing it either.

The woman is laying down on the floor. A drop of blood is starting to come out of each ear. My colleague sighs.

“What do you think she did?”

“Hells if I know. If I were her, I would be really worried right now.”

He sighs again, and we turn around.

“Do you think it is fair having toilet duty because of this?”

“My man, thank the gods we have arms to clean the fucking toilets.”

And we go to fetch the master of keys.

***

Marcelo’s POV

I wake up, my humor is a little better. This whole dwarf thing is distracting me, the past few days with all this movement in the house has been good to me. I am thinking about some stuff about the girls. In particular, on how to enhance the dragonesses.

“Shandon, a quick question.”

“Of course, my lord.”

“Are you able to do the transformation from dragon to human and human to dragon in a slow fashion?”

“Yes, my lord. But… Why would I do that?”

“I want to do a couple of experiments, I want to make you as resilient as Cecilia.”

The dragonesses’ faces light up with the possibility.

“Do you mean the same protection magic?”

“Yes. But I want to do it carefully, because I am worried that if the thing goes awry it can be either very painful, or it can lead to death. But I think that if go carefully with it, your scales and skin could become as resilient as mine, and with the regeneration on the bones… What do you think?”

…

“You don’t have to do it if you don’t want to.”

Opal slaps the back of her head. “Our lord asked you a question!”

Ruby sees this, and rises her hand.

“Me, me, me, me. Let’s do it, lord! I want to be the first dragoness ever able to fight an elder!”

I laugh a little bit.

“Sure, let’s do it today then, Ruby. We are going to Drakonia’s beach for it.”

Aquamarine raises her hand.

“I would like to go to the beach too…”

Cecilia is the one to wrap it up.

“Let’s all go to the beach, then.”

We finish breakfast, and ask Rudolph to come near.

“Rudolph, we are going to go out for some hours.”

“Of course, sir. But may I suggest talking to the dwarves before that? One of them mentioned that he needed your help on something.”

“Sure.”

I go out the kitchen door to the back yard. There is a camping that is centered in one space, and the dwarves are all working on the building. They are raising this metal skeleton. I look around, to see if any of them comes up to talk to me. Sure enough, it is Varr.

“Good morning, master Marcelo.”

“Good morning, sir Varr.”

“I am sorry, but in my case it is just Varr, master.”

“Then you can call me just Marcelo.”

“I am risking my beard if I do, master.”

“Is Dávrin that strict?”

“Master Brokkr is.”

I laugh a little, remembering Brokkr. I am going to invite Dávrin, his family, and Brokkr to my home once the building thing is done. I hope they have some fun. I am thinking of inviting either Anthon or Rajesh, but it wouldn’t be fair to either, so it’s better to keep them for another day.

“So, how can I help you?”

“Can you open a portal to the square? There are a couple of additional things that we need bring over.”

“Sure.”

We go to an empty space, and cast the spell. In comes a mole bringing a cart. Then another, then another. A total of six additional carts, with a lot of material in it. The proceed the same way, they put the carts away, untie the beasts, and guide them back to the dwarven city.

After they are done, Varr comes up, slapping his hands to remove the dust.

“Master Marcelo, are you intending on spending a week outside the house, perhaps? Construction work can be a little messy.”

“What dates would be best for you?”

“Any time you would fancy, starting tomorrow. Please let the help know that they will be inconvenienced as well, master Marcelo.”

“Let me check with the girls, and then I will provide you a date.”

He salutes me and go. I get back to the girls, with the idea of a week long trip. I tell them that the dwarves told us to avoid the house for that week, and I tell them to think of a place they would like to go. Cecilia is the one to raise her hand, excited.

“Me! Me! How about we visit my parents?”

I look at the dragonesses, and they shrug. There is not a preference there. I add to them that if it gets too boring, we can always do something else during the day and sleep in an inn nearby, and dine together with the in laws. Cecilia starts jumping.

“Can we go as dragons? Pretty pretty please?”

“I don’t know. Your parents knowing about our arrangements is one thing, the whole village is another. Can you think of way to make that happen?”

“Let me think…”

“And you also would have to convince your sisters. Specially the ones that are going to be ridden…”

“Ok…”

Cecilia looks at Shandon with a puppy face. “Please, sister…”

Shandon hugs Cecilia by the neck, a little strong, and kisses the top of her head.

“Ok, little sister. Our lord enjoys when you are happy too.”

“I enjoy when all of you are happy.” They all hug me, I am inside a pile of hugs and kisses.

“So, back to today, who wants to go to the beach? We already spent a lot of time just talking about next vacation instead of going to the beach.”

We go up our room, and change into a more beach like attire. I open a portal, and we reach the beach. I take of my shoes, I want to feel the sand between my toes. The girls do the same. Cecilia steps on the water, but not too much. The waves are comfortable, around 2 feet high.

After we each get our place in that immense beach that we have only for ourselves, I call Ruby over.

“Ruby, I am going to need you transform. Oh, undress first, so that we don’t loose the clothes.”

She undresses. No matter how many times I see them naked, I still appreciate their form. Ruby has a toned body, a little on the lean side. Her stomach is not a six pack, but it is very close. She sees me ogling her and starts making poses.

Shandon shouts from the place she is sitting, close to a tree, in the shadow.

“My lord, I thought you were going to do experiments!”

I giggle a little. I grab her had, and take a look at her bones. They are very similar to mine. I go to her back and take a look at her shoulders. There is actually a spare pair of bones over her scapula, but other than that her skeleton is surprisingly human like. At least, comparing to what I can see with my internal vision, that I get when I turn my mana senses toward myself.

“Ruby, can you please grow your wings? Just the wings?”

I look at the transformation. The extra bone over her scapula starts to extend, and passes through the skin, becoming first something like a second pair of arms, then a weird structure, hand shaped. Then the fingers in this almost hand extend, and the skin in it starts growing between them. It thickens and turn red.

I pass my fingers lightly over it, and she shivers. I give a light kiss on it, and gets goosebumps.

“I didn’t know about this.”

She gives me a smile and shrugs.

“I am going to place a very small rune on the bone, and see where it ends up, ok?”

“Go ahead, my lord.”

I design the rune on her wing bones.

“Now, very slowly, shrink the wings back.”

The opposite process start happening. As the bone starts the shrinking process the rune keeps shrinking with it, but it doesn’t break. I extend my mana senses, and see that it is in it’s sleep state, that it might be able to be activated. That’s a first step.

“Can you please assume full dragon form?”

She does, and I take a look at the rune that I had designed. The rune became ineffective. It is spending way more mana than it should for the same results. I inspect it, and it is because the drawing became massive, and the imperfections got multiplied as well. I remove it, and redraw it. I ask for her paw, and I draw the regenerative rune on her bones in her index finger.

I take a look at how her body is composed, examining the structure. She has additional bone structure for the wings, but other than that, her structure is almost mammal like. Knees, elbows, it is all where you would expect given the outer form.

I inspect the runes, and they are active.

“Ruby, can you please turn back, slowly?”

I keep holding her hand, while looking at the rune. The rune stays active, it just got smaller. Her number of cells don’t change too much. Somehow, the mana is allowing the mass to go… out of phase… It feels like my mana senses can almost grasp the concept, but my brain cannot interpret the information.

Now it dawns on me that that’s the reason why the rune has to be crafted on the big size. When they shrink to human form, part of matter and cells go to this out of phase place. When they get back to their form, these cells get back. But the cells that go and the cells that stay are not contiguous, they are spread all over.

Ruby is now in human form. I take a look at the runes in her index finger, and they are smaller, way smaller, but active. I take out my katana, since I don’t have anything else that is as sharp.

“Ruby, I did the regeneration in your left index finger. Can I ask you to do a small cut on the tip of the finger? Just to check out healing rate. I am going to isolate the mana a bit.”

“Sure, my lord. Whatever you need. We are yours.”

I hold her finger, and I interrupt the mana to the bone, impeding the rune to work. I cut her finger, just a small drop of blood cut. She is looking intrigued. I let the mana go, and the cut is gone immediately.

She looks at the finger, and then she reaches for my katana, I get in her way.

“WAIT! NO! It is only the finger right now!”

“Oh!”

“Get back in dragon form.”

I start designing the runes on her bones. This ends up being a lot more mana intensive than I thought. I apply a sanctuary spell, and being closer to a lot of ley lines makes the mana abundant. I spend the mana as it pours in. This is exhausting.

I go through every bone in her body. She is laying on the sand, in dragon form. I can swear she is throwing some looks towards Shandon, and Shandon is turning her face.

After a lot of time, it is done. I am drained. I do have mana, but my mana channels went through a lot of mana to be able to do this.

“My lord, may I see your katana?”

“Sure.”

I hand it to her. It does look like a tooth pick in her hands. She sits on her hind legs, and produces a gash on her hand, very deep one. It gets red with blood, and then closes almost instantly.

“Now, turn to human, very slowly. I want to watch each step of the transformation. Let me know if you have any unusual mana expenditure or any discomfort.”

“Of course, my lord.”

She starts getting smaller and smaller. I see that the bones start getting to their human format, but the runes actually hold.

I take a look at the runes, again with my mana senses, and they are active. In human form, she grabs the katana with one hand, and puts it through her other hand. I am horrified. Then she takes it out, and the gash closes almost immediately.

“Doesn’t that hurt?”

“My lord, I am dragoness.”

“Sometimes I forget how strong you girls are, just because I want to always protect you.”

She twists around, looking at the sand, and laughs in a weird and funny way. “HEHEHEHEHEHEHEHE”. And then starts jumping toward the other girls. I pick up her clothes, and follow her. I take a look at the horizon, and it is starting to get late in the day already. I open a portal to our shower.

We clean ourselves, and get ready for dinner. Ruby is brimming with happiness. And when I am not looking, tries to show the tongue to Shandon. Shandon turns to me.

“My lord, can you also enhance us?”

“Sure, I will. But I can only do that to one at a time. Even close to ley line, the amount of mana I have to process is huge. It ends up being consuming to me. I also want to check if we can do the other reinforcements. Right now, Cecilia’s and mine reinforcements are on three different actions. One is towards the skin, to make it puncture proof. The second, towards the bones, to make them unbreakable. And the third one is the healing runes, that I have just done to Ruby. I am pretty sure that with the regeneration runes alone you are going to be the strongest female dragons ever, but I want to do some more testing with the other two as well.

“Anyway, Cecilia, did you come up with a way to do the arriving on a dragon at your parents?”

“Not yet. If I come to them close to the village, the whole village is going to phreak out.”

“What if we send your parents an invitation for a trip somewhere else, and we met them midway? Muninn’s crows could keep an eye on them, make sure their trip is safe, no monsters around. Then we arrive, circling them so that they don’t run and hurt themselves. Then you jump from Shandon and go greet them.”

“Humm. That works! What do you think, sister?”

“Not much difference for me.”

“We can send them a message through the guild, and send money the same way. When can we do it, hubby?”

“How long do you need to prepare those things?”

She gets dejected.

“It is going to take a week to plan this. The money transfer through the guild takes a couple of days, and they have to prepare for the trip.”

“In that case, let’s spend a week somewhere so that the dwarves can do their thing uninterrupted. Let’s go somewhere this week, and next or two weeks later if it is better, we can do that. We have to plan for this week. Aquamarine, Opal and Shandon are probably going to want their enhancements as well.”

“They can always wait a little longer, my lord.” Ruby says, putting her tongue out.

I giggle. “We can probably sleep at home and do the enhancements in Drakonia’s beach. We are still not going to be much at home. I am going to talk to Varr. If it gets complicated, we can always stay at an inn somewhere. Even Orora, Frolk, or your parents, for that matter. We could visit them first as humans, and you do your show later. What do you think?”

“That could work as well.”

“Well, Cecs, decide on what you want. You have to choose.”

“Ok. Why don’t we go to a tourist city by the sea side?”

“My lord, we could also stay in your cave.” Opal suggests.

“Huh? My cave?”

“Yes, in Drakonia.”

“Hummm… Let’s try a human tourism destination, it has bed and people to cook for us. Don’t you like sleeping on a bed?”

“Sure, it works, I guess.”

“We have a lot of time ahead of us. Once we do these things we are planning, we can stay some days in the cave in Drakonia if you want. How does that sound?”

“It sounds great, my lord.”

“My lord, what about those women from the inn that you helped? Akiko?” Aquamarine suggested.

“That’s a very good idea. Leopold can get us the location. What do you girls think?”

They all nod. I open the small voice portal to Leopold, and call out to him. Next thing I know, I am in his office. As always, the silence spell is up.

“Hi Marcelo. Girls.”

“Hi Leopold.”

“How have things been?”

That question triggers thoughs on Siratra, and it kind of reflects on my face. Cecilia is shaking her head at Leopold. Opal is the one to respond.

“Our… former sister is no longer with us. This caused some… pain… unresolved anger…”

I look at Opal, distracted by her statement.

“I don’t have unresolved anger towards Siratra.”

“We do, my lord.”

I can see Aquamarine closing her fists, irradiating some savage energy. I kiss them both, and they calm down. Leopold looks at that, and adjusts his demeanor.

“Shit! I am sorry. I don’t quite understand the ‘she left part’, specially considering… But how can I help?”

“Anyway, there is some construction going on around our home. I am having living quarters for the crew built.”

“HAHAHA. Knowing you, you put dwarf king to lead the crew! HAHAHA”

Cecilia blasts laughing. Even I giggle a little.

“Not quite. He did select the crew, though…”

“No shit! HOW?”

“A couple of weeks ago we visited the dwarves. And we helped them with a couple of ant infestations. Yadda yadda, the dwarves are building those living quarters.”

“Hahaha… The help’s building is going to be better than the main house!”

“Most probably. Take a look at the katana I got from them.”

I show him the katana. He holds it as if he was holding a treasure. He takes it out of the scabbard, very slowly. There can’t be a person on the planet that is not going to admire the work.

“Is this… Adamantite blade?”

“I am glad to see that you can tell.”

“I have never even heard of a blade this beautiful. You do realize that not even the king, emperor or pope from the big three have something like this, right?”

“I don’t know. I would expect them to. But wait, do you have some hard rock, something really hard to cut? Think of something uncuttable.”

“Not around, no. I do have a mithril shield.”

“Well, I was going to show you something, but I wouldn’t want you loosing your shield.”

“Are you telling me that this sword can cut the shield?”

I nod.

“I have to see this.” He brings out a kite shield from his holding bag.

I hold the shield by the side, and he does a cut, from up to down. It does a cut of around 10 inches on the shield. He is impressed.

“This is absolutely awesome! I neve-“

I interrupt him, and grab the katana. I make the mana vibrate in the blade, and hand it back. He holds the blade and looks at me.

“Something is different. What did you do?”

“Some magic blade thing. Try cutting the shield again, but this time, I want you to not put strength behind it. Use just one hand.”

He looks at inquisitively, and I nod. He cuts the shield in half. Now his eyes are bulging, and the mana in the sword is spent.

“Fuuuuuuuckkkk. What else can you cut?”

“I have cut a set of adamantite bars without any issues.”

He puts the katana in the scabbard and hands it back to me, while letting out a whistle.

“When I think you have shown me something extraordinary… I think you don’t have common sense anymore.”

Cecilia giggles.

He sits back on the sofa, and crosses his legs.

“Anyway, how can I help you?”

“I wanted to know where Akiko stablished her new business, I am thinking of spending the week there.”