The Quantum Wanderer

A little bit after the incident, when the kids were already playing again I went upstairs to receive the girls from the school. They clean up, and we go back downstairs. Sophia, Caius and Cesar are still in the playground when we come down. I go over to the playground, and ask them if they prefer having dinner here or at home. I see three little smiles. Apparently they were won by the stomach.

They wash their hands and faces, and we have some dinner. Caius keeps looking at the amount of food that the dragonesses are eating. He is hypnotized by it. Cecilia notices and giggles. He realizes, and goes back to his plate. Sophia also notices it.

“How do you eat so much?” She asks Shandon. Aquamarine is the one to answer.

“Our bodies burn a lot of energy.”

Cecilia lowers her head, and say in a conspiratorial tone. “Do you promise to keep a secret?”

The three kids nod enthusiastically.

“These four are dragons.”

There is a “Oooohhhh…” Followed by a “Coooooolllll” from the kids. I giggle.

“But you don’t look like dragons.” Caius states.

“We are in this form to be able to stand by my lord Marcelo’s side.” Shandon replies.

“How big are you, in dragon form?”

Shandon looks around, trying to measure something equivalent. She looks to the door, that is almost 50 feet away.

“About twice the distance from here to the door.”

Another chorus of “Wow… Cooollll…” More giggles from Cecilia and me.

“How do you look like?”

“Did you watch the parade?”

“Of course. Everyone watched the parade.”

“They were there, the first four dragons in the parade…”

I was having a hard time holding my laugh in front of those shiny kids’ eyes. Rudolph comes to me.

“You have visit, lord. The duke.”

“Show him in.”

I stand up, to receive Edward. He comes in and sees the kids having dinner.

“I asked them, and they said they wanted to have dinner here, so I got a couple of additional plates out. I hope you don’t mind.”

“Not at all. If I knew about that, I would have skipped dinner as well.”

I laughed at Edward’s joke. I gestured them in, and they saw the kids talking to Cecilia and the dragonesses. The kids were now asking about the eating habits of the dragons. It was a fun sight. Edward took a step forward.

“Sophia, Caius, Cesar, time to go home.”

“But aunties are fun! We are talking about dragons!”

I giggled.

“Time to go.” Edward complements.

“Yes, father.” Caius responds and all three of them stand up and go with Edward. We say our goodbyes, and Edward meets up with his guards that are waiting in front of my door.

We chat a little bit about the girls’ day, and I tell them the confusion that happened. After that, we retire.

The next couple of days go by, not much to worry. Things have been so crazy lately that I enjoy the calm days. I spend a little of time underneath the crow’s tree. It is actually relaxing, in spite of the eventual cawing.

As I am relaxing there, I see a family at the gate, they talk to the guards. Then a guard goes to house, passing by me. Apparently it is not my business. After some time, I see Roberta coming from the side, drying her hands on the towel she keeps by her waist.

She sees me, she does a little courtesy and goes to the gate. She talks with the people there. I see them talking a little bit. She comes back my way.

“Excuse me, lord, is this a good moment to talk?”

I look at her, she seems concerned. She is generally not that worried to talk to me about anything.

“Let’s go inside” I say, and we go to my study. It is probably something important. Once we reach it, I put on a silence spell, and nod to her. She starts.

“Lord, my daughter and husband used to live in the Holy Kingdom. More precisely, they lived in the Esdohr diocese. He was a guard at the paladin temple there. He was kicked out of the order, and both him, my daughter and granddaughter came here. They are afraid of some persecution.”

I scratch my chin. There are two very different ways that this can go. He may be getting persecuted because the Holy Kingdom is bad, or because they themselves are bad. I think I should hear them, see where are the lies, before taking someone in my my home.

“Roberta, can you ask them to come here? I want to know what happened before I decide anything.”

“Of course, lord.”

She leaves the room, almost running. I sit on the chair, I have a bad feeling about this. They are basically requesting asylum from their previous country. After some time, they arrive in my study. Roberta, her son in law, her daughter and her granddaughter. The kid is very young, probably around 3 or 4 years old.

“Perhaps you want to take the kid to the playground, while we talk?” I ask Roberta’s daughter.

“Playground? What is a playground?”

I use the bell to summon Rudolph.

“Rudolph, can you escort misses… “ I look at her.

“Josephin.”

“Can you escort misses Josephin to the playground? She is going to go there with her kid.”

The three of them go away. In the room, I am in the company of Roberta and her son-in-law. I extend my hand.

“Hi, I am Marcelo. What’s your name?”

“Winton, sir.”

I look at him. He is shaky. He is handling his shirt, probably to avoid shaking.

“Sir, I used to be a guard at the cathedral of Esdohr, the capital of the diocese of the same name in the Holy Kingdom. But somethings… Happened. I complained about them to a superior officer, and then I got dishonorably discharged. They accused me of insubordination, but I hadn’t been charged yet. In my defence, sir, I did not disobey, I just protested that… No one… deserves… that…”

He looked down to the floor.

“What did you protest to?”

He stays frozen, looking to the floor for some time. Roberta slaps the back of his head.

“The city itself is not a very big one, it has about 50.000 people. From one day to the other, 30 or so dwarves set up a caravan in the guild, and set off to somewhere in the forest. We had heard about the dwarven exodus.”

“There were still another 120 or so dwarves were still in the city, while the guild started the preparations for another escort quest. Next thing I know, I am stationed in the castle, in the dungeons. The dwarves that were about to leave, the 120 or so, are all there.

“At first, they refused to work for the bishop, and that’s when the inquisitor came. He got their leader impaled. They ran a stake up his ass, and placed him up, the weight bringing him down and killing him slowl-“

The guy cracked. He sobbed.

“THE SCREAMS! FOR 3 DAYS! THAT’S CANNOT BE HOLY!”

He started biting biting his closed fist. Roberta hugged him. He sobbed. I got a map from the shelves, and extended it on the coffee table. I am pissed off. Really pissed off. I remember that their cathedrals are their equivalents to nobles castles, with the addition of a capel for some rich merchants to do their adoration separated from the masses.

That cathedral has got to go.

“Can you point me where the city is in?”

He pointed me to place by the Big River. Many cities would actually be on the margins of the river. It provided a means of transport, water, food. Even in the empire, some rivers were connected to the big river, allowing for navigation. The Big River crossed both Arthuria and the Holy Kingdom. Some rivers from the empire are affluents to the Big River, creating a widespread means of travel for a lot of places. Boats are way faster than horses and chariots. Depending on the person’s money, they could also hire wind or water magicians to speed the travel a lot.

I go up to my room, and I put on my adventurer armor, covered with the black cloak.

I open a portal up in the sky and cast fly. I am going to portal hop until I get to the city. The city is easy enough to find. I portal to the forest in front of it, and I go to the line of people going inside the city.

Security has been reinforced, apparently. The line is way longer than expected for a city this size. There are a dozen guards in the gate, and they are inspecting carts coming in, and double inspecting the carts coming out of the city.

My blood is boiling, but I keep my cool. I wait in line, until it is my turn, with Muninn and Huginn on my shoulders. At some point, the cart in front of me is allowed in to the city. The guards look at me, and point their spears.

“Halt! What is that? Are you a heretic?”

I raise both my hands.

“Not at all. Is this Esdohr?”

“Yes! What do you want here? You are not allowed to get in with pests!”

“Ok, sorry…”

I turn around and go to the forest. I cast the stealth, and Huginn and Muninn do the same on themselves. I didn't even know they could do that. I go to the cathedral, it is hard to miss. It looks more like a castle than any cathedral on Earth. It is a place of power like a castle, not of worship.

I throw my mana senses around it, and I can feel the tunnels to an underground, with several mana signatures there. There are some high level people in the upper levels. To the left of a chapel that has some worshippers there is a corridor that leads down to the dungeons. I pass by the guards, that are just average level, they are in their low thirties.

I go down, and get to the dungeons. There are rows of a sweat shop, with some guards armed with batons. The tables are all facing a wall. By that wall is a spike, with a dead dwarf already decomposing. The putrid smell is nauseating. His bear was cut off. This room has a mezzanine, with several guards with bow and arrows.

Some tables have delicate instruments, and those dwarves are working on jewelry. Some of the other stations are metal workers producing weapons, shields, armors, etc.

The dwarves, generally very stout, are thin. Their arms have little muscle, their clothing is in tatters. They are chained by their ankles.

I whisper to Muninn and Huginn that I am going to turn the air bad. I can feel them pouring mana inside themselves. I let the CO flow out. Really flow. In very little time, the whole room is full of it. I continue pouring it, cranking it up. I can feel it going up the stairs, filling the whole thing.

The guards start to feel drowsy. The ones on the floor start to use the tables for support. A minute later, all of them just pass out. No wonder it is called the silent death. I keep it up. The dwarves are not affected at all, as expected. It is, after all, part of the gas they breath in their cities.

But they start looking around, really scared. They are all frozen. After all the guards are dead, I undo my stealth. The crows follow suit. There is a dwarf that is right by my side. I take out my katana, and I make it vibrate with the mana. I pull the dwarf that is near me, so that he stands up in front of me. He closes his eyes. I cut the chains close to his ankles. I don’t cut the anklet it is attached to because it is too close to his leg.

He opens his eyes, and looks down. He looks behind, and now I am doing this with the next one. The third one is already out of the chair, making my job easier. I keep on doing that to all of them. Once I do the last one, I remove the vibrating mana from the sword and sheath it. I turn around, and the dwarves are kneeling down.

“Who is the lead among you?”

The one in the front, the one I cut the chains out first, sighs and looks back at the one that was impaled. He sighs again and looks at me.

“Right now that would be me, lord Wrax.”

This is not the time to enter the discussion that I am not Wrax, this is a crisis moment.

“Very well. What is your name?

“I am Krom, lord.”

“Krom, let’s get that body down.”

I get close to the stake used to impale the dwarf. The dwarf is looking up, the tip of the stake is coming out his mouth. The sight is truly gruesome. I take the katana out, and again place the vibrating mana on it. I do a cut on the stake, close to the ground, way bellow the dwarf feet. I pull the stake, and the top of it fall towards us.

Some dwarves are already there, and they hold the body and the stake. I am really pissed off. I am going to leave a message. But I am going to need some help for that.

“I am going to need someone that can do a little bit of stone work to leave a message. Can any of you help me?”

In typical dwarven fashion, they all step forward at the same time.

“Krom, I just need to write a sentence on the stone. At most two will do.”

“Can I have that honor, lord Wrax?”

“Sure. Grab the tools.”

Krom turns to his side.

“Torvin, you come with us.” Then he turns back to me. “What about the others, lord?”

I open a portal straight to the square in Rockslide.

“For now, go to Rockslide, tell Dávrin what happened. I will be going after I finish the clean up here.”

They look at the portal, and the first dwarf puts his head through. He takes it out.

“Guys! It’s one of our cities!” And he goes through the portal. After that one, the dwarves carrying the body on the stake go through, and then the rest of the dwarves. They go in rows of 4, again with the precision inherent to the race.

Only Krom, Torvin and myself stay behind. I close the portal.

“Don’t worry, we will be meeting them soon enough.”

By now, the CO has already spread to upper areas. We go up the corridors. There is not a sound around. We hit a room on the upper floor, the CO has already spread here. I am still pumping more and more, I don’t have to care for the mana spent. The room had 4 guards, also dead. We go to a corridor, and there is an adjacent cafeteria. Everyone dead as well.

We go to the chapel, and everyone inside is dead. The priest is lying towards the altar, some people are dead, sitting on the wood benches. I get close to the door, there are two guards outside that did not realized what is going on yet. The chapel is darker than outside, and the people sitting on the benches did not move much. Some of them fell to the floor, but there are a lot of heads that just went back.

I place a silence spell on the chapel, and I wait a moment when there is no one looking. I pull the two guards in, and I close the doors of the chapel. I seal them with a little of earth magic. The two guards fall on the pathway in the middle of the chapel. They stand up, and look around. They are shaking.

They raise their sword, but they are trembling. I go behind the altar, there is a statue of Nergal. I am going to do this right. I suspend the huge statue by the ankles, and I drop it on the floor. The guards didn’t move one inch, still with their swords raised, staring at the door. After some more seconds, they fall unconscious. In a minute or more they will be dead.

Krom and Torvin are waiting for me by the entrance to the other areas. I sign for them to come over. I pick the altar up, and put it laying down, facing the door. That way, whoever enters the chapel from the street is going to be able to see it.

“I want you guys to write ‘Release all the dwarves, or else’.”

They both nod, and start writing it. In this time, I extend my mana sense around. Behind the castle like cathedral there are some guard barracks. They are walled in. These walls and protections are helping me a lot. I pump CO. The noise around it starts to die down.

I come back to the chapel. Krom and Torvin finished the engraving. They placed the sentence in the middle, with two crows, one on each side, looking directly forward. Unfortunately, the crows in the drawing only have two eyes. I liked it, but…

“Krom, there is just something wrong with the crows.”

“What is it, lord?”

I tap my shoulder, Muninn lands on it, and opens his third eye. Krom bulges his eye, but slaps Torvin on the shoulder, and they draw the third eye on the crow on the toppled altar.

“Thank you. Tell Dávrin that I… Marcelo will be there shortly. I will portal to my room.”

I open a portal, and they both go to Rockslide. I do a mana sense. There is still something alive on the second floor.

In a very quick motion, I explode the doors of the chapel out and go up the stairs to the second floor. I want a public thing. I want these guys to sweat.

I enter a corridor, and I see some more guards dead, but these have finer armors, and are way higher levels. They probably were around mid forties. I follow through several corridors, until I bump into a closed door.

Several paths come here, this seems like an important place. I check the door, it seems reinforced. Not enough, though. Not for me. I kick it open, the heavy door flies inside.

There is a knight, with a very ornate armor. It seems that everything he is using is mithril. Armor, shield, sword.

“WHO ARE YOU? WE ARE GOING TO HAVE YOUR HEAD FOR THIS.”

I sense the mana around, and I see that the bishop has a Comm Gem. He is transmitting everything from his pocket. I place a silence spell around it. Now we can talk.

“I am karma. Dwarven karma, right now.”

The knight raises his sword, and tries to attack me. I step to the side, and step forward, cutting him right in the middle. The lower portion of his shield falls on the floor. He doesn’t realize what happened, though.

“YOU MISSED, I AM GOING –“ He tries to turn around, but even though his lower turns around, his trunk doesn’t. He looks down, and then falls to the ground. When his torso splits in two, his guts spill out. But he is still breathing. The cut was too fast. His brain is having a hard time understanding what is going on.

I walk towards the bishop, and he raises his necklace towards me, as if I were a vampire or something. I laugh a little, this is funny.

“Tell me, holy man, why did you enslave the dwarves?”

I grab his necklace, squash it to a lump of metal, and throw it over my shoulder. I grab the wrist that is holding the Comm Gem, and squash it as well. I grab the Comm Gem and put it in my bag, it can be useful later.

The bishop is now holding his broken wrist, shaking. I get close to him, breathing on his face. I hold his chin up, so that I can look at his eyes.

“Do you want me to repeat myself?”

I grab the hurt wrist, and squeeze it just a little.

“They were not supposed to leave! They were supposed to serve the church! To serve Nergal!”

I stand up, and I sigh. I put my dwarven necklace on his neck, then I grab him by the shirt, and open a portal to the room I used in Dávrin’s palace. I drag him there.

There is already a commotion in the room. Dávrin and Viggr are there already. They look at the scene, I drop the bishop on the floor.

“I am lending my pendant so that he doesn’t die immediately. This is the bishop that kept the dwarves enslaved without reason.”

The bishop tries to move back, pushing the ground with his feet. I squash one of them. I turn to him.

“You only move when I say you can move, scum.”

Dávrin takes a step forward.

“What is happening here, friend? The reports I am received are all mixed up, it was hard to create a storyline from them.”

“The information I got was that some dwarves had left the city of Esdohr. The very next day, this scum, knowing that the other dwarves were going to leave the city, rounded them all and enslaved them.

“When I got there, they were in the dungeon. There was an impaled corpse, apparently to encourage them to work harder.

“I killed the guards and freed the dwarves. I left an open letter for them. But don’t worry, nothing can be connected to other dwarves. Let me know if they don’t comply.”

They looked at each other. Dávrin was passing his hand through his beard.

“I don’t think I have a way to thank you enough, friend. It feels like I opened a cave full of treasures. I don’t know how to say it enough.”

“Don’t worry. I am not fond of slavery. I can understand criminals being enslaved, that is quite reasonable. I can understand prisoners of war being enslaved. They were there to kill you. I can even understand debt slavery. I don’t like this last one, but I can see how it can be fair, provided it wasn’t a malicious situation.

“But innocent slavery, specially an unreasonable one…” I turn to the bishop, and lower my head so that he feels my breath. I place some mana in my voice. “THAT IS FUCKED UP!”.

The bishop lets a high pitched groan out. Then I turn back to Dávrin.

“Enjoy him. Let me know when I can get my pendant back.”

“HAHAHAHA… We will, friend, we will.”

I open a portal and go home.