The Quantum Wanderer

Ruby shrugs. The day continues normally. I leave the girls, to visit Cecilia in the other school. I sit with her. She also sits in the back. The professor, now a man, raises an eyebrow but doesn’t complain. He goes on a long rant about the spells, the syllables, and what happens when you cut the incantation short.

It is interesting. I had already looked at it myself, observing other people doing magic. The whole thing is basically placebo effect. As is all magic, actually. The chant is a helper to the magician, so that he can tune himself with the magic he is trying to produce. Like the chanting in religions on Earth. They make for a colective state of mind. That state of mind is needed to use the mana to change reality.

In the afternoon, we are starting the practical lessons. All the students are in front of targets. The place reminds me of a shooting range, with individual lanes for the students. They start casting, and throwing their magic against stones. Cecilia’s proficiency with casting is a lot better. She starts casting.

I get close to her, and hold her shoulder. She stops chanting. I turn her around, I hold her by the cheeks and shake my head. I get my mouth close to her ear.

“The chanting is not for the magic; it is for you. You don’t need it. You have to feel, in your bones, that the reality is what you want. Change it by perceiving it as changed, and then apply the mana. Now, I want you picture that water is composed of two gases. Like two types of balls, one much bigger than the other. Each tiny smallest piece of water is composed of one big ball and two smaller balls. Feel that reality with your mana. You are going to split them.”

At this point, the people around us stopped casting, and started to stare. I have to admit, this was an unusual scene in the school. I forget about them, I pay attention just to Cecilia.

“Once they are split, they are going to become gases, like air. You are going to keep them together, pressed and shoot that at the target, followed by a very tiny fireball. Feel the mana around you, feel the reality. Force the reality. Don’t use too much mana, just a sliver will be enough.”

Cecilia has her eyes closed. I turn her around by her shoulders, she is now facing her target once again. I sense the water magic concentrating the tiny portion of water in front of her. Something close to a drop of water. She is keeping it small. I can sense the water coming undone, but the gas being pressed together. Not a lot. I still have my hands on her shoulders. She propels the mana casing with a fireball right after.

I never really calculated how much energy hydrogen explosion carries, but I am assuming that something with that amount would be safe. The gas bullet hits the stone, followed by a fireball that detonates it.

BOOM.

The sound is way louder than I expected, pieces of stone flew in all directions, hitting the lane separations, that get a little a little damaged. The sound volume was akin to a high caliber gun, not fireworks.

“By the fuckING GODS! THIS WAS AWESOME!” Cecilia screams. The amount of mana she used was very low, the equivalent of a couple of magic missiles. I smile at her. She turns around, places her arms behind my neck.

“You are a cheat. You know that, right?”

“Just don’t mention that to anyone.”

The teacher, behind us in the shooting range clears her throat.

“What is going on here?”

Cecilia lets me go, but she can’t stop smiling.

“Just practicing the magic missile, prof!”

The other students start going their back to their thing, while looking at Cecilia sideways. Cecilia notices that we are attracting too much attention, and resumes the normal casting. She blinks one eye at me.

The evening carries on. After the classes, the girls go to their room, I get back home on foot. There are too many people looking at me right now. I loose a couple of Cecilia’s colleagues around the streets, but I would guess that they can learn where I live easily, so it is not a big secret.

We have some normal dinner, but Ruby is eating more than usual now. I tell Rudolph and Roberta to double the amount of steak for her. They look at each other, but just shrug it off.

The next morning, Ruby is really excited over breakfast.

“My lord, you told me that we could spar… Can we do it today?”

“Sure. We are going to the Dead Sand in Drakonia, and we can spar there… Don’t go too hard on me…”

I smile. She laughs. I am doing some math, it is 1000 miles wide, it should be enough to avoid damaging areas around.

“As if, my lord.”

Cecilia looks worried. Opal clears her throat.

“Can we watch, my lord?”

“I don’t mind. Just be careful. And Ruby, no breath attacks. I don’t know how far your new breath attack can reach. I don’t even know how much it would hurt me, even with the neutron crystal scales.”

“As you wish…” She pouts a little bit.

Charles and Lucille are hearing all the talk, but they talk so little during these daily reunions that I even forget they are there.

After breakfast, we go up to our room, and I get in the armor, just in case. I am wondering at what level Ruby could be now. Muninn and Huginn’s evolutions made them into something way more powerful, they were a real cheat. But Ruby was already a female dragon, so extrapolating here would be hard.

After we are all ready, since I tell the other girls that they have to get in armor if they want to watch as well, I open a portal to the middle of the desert.

Just sand around. I extend my mana senses, I can feel some life here and there in the sand. Some small organisms, some monsters buried in the sand, waiting for something to fall in a trap. But everything a little sparse, it is not the same pressure of life that can be found in a forest.

Ruby and I go to our spots. The girls go to a distance that they can use their dragon enhanced eyes to watch, while keeping themselves safe. So, around 3 miles away, using a fly spell to keep themselves in the air. Cecilia tries to stay closer, but she is the most vulnerable one, I gesture her to get behind the other girls. Muninn and Huginn are in their large size, siding Cecilia.

I am really curious about how this is going to go. I enhance myself, starting with my brain, to improve reflexes, then muscles, so that I can move as fast. I assume a fighting position and prepare for it.

I nod at Ruby. An immediate chill on my spine makes me raise my left arm, and something strong hit it. I am sending flying back, the world is spinning around me. I protect myself while I hit the dunes. I can't hear the noise of the impact. Even with my senses enhanced, where the world seems to be going at slow motion, I can't get a grip on what’s up or down. I remember what the fight with the kraken felt like. But I wasn’t this enhanced then.

I kick several times until I finally manage to get a grip, in part using a lot of mana on a fly spell. I am laying on the sand. I didn’t expect this much.

I feel a sharp pain in my left arm and my chest.I take a look at my bracer that received a very strong impact. It looks fine. I can sense my soft tissues regenerating. I look at my chest. My wedding chest plate has now four scratches, from my right shoulder to my solar plex.

I inspect it closely. The neutron crystal cover is broken at these scratches.

The girls that were far away are now around me, Cecilia is shouting.

“WHAT THE FUCK, RUBY!!!! WHAT WERE YOU THINKING!!!”

Ruby looks apologetic, the girls turn to me, to come down, but I gesture them to stop. I fix the neutron crystal on the armor. I am going to try to fix the armor later, it is only scratched.

“Girls, I am ok. Ruby, don’t worry, you did nothing wrong. Just a second, and then we can continue.”

It is time to try to cheat as much as possible.

I relax for a minute, and then start preparing. I am not going to make this easy for Ruby. She is a quarter of a mile away from me, hoping from one foot to the other. She is smiling.

I am preparing a new cheat. I use a huge chunk of mana, and I enhance my nervous system, by a lot. I open a 3 inch wide portal close to my neck, pointing to the ley line I had found the kraken in, and I cast a sanctuary spell around it. Even with the feeling of time slowing down, I can feel my mana rising rapidly, washing from the inside of my body.

I pour mana reinforcing muscles, I turn some fibers to neutron crystals, I am going to use nuclear force for the contractions. I add reinforcement on the bones, and some for regeneration. I look at my body with my inner eye, and sense it turning into something closer to a mecha, where my soul is the pilot.

I reinforce my brain further, and my mana senses. I can see Ruby is looking at me with curiosity. I pass my hand in the air, there is some resistance. My movements don’t really pass through the air, they penetrate it, the air around me feels more like water than gas. And if I move too quickly, it feels like solid, and breaks. I can see the sound waves from the sonic booms expanding.

I decide to float, because small movements are going to send me up in the air, it is going to be hard to control. Right now, I am using the mana to control my body, more than any biological process. I extend my right hand to Ruby, and gesture her to come.

Ruby is also levitating a couple of inches from the ground. She starts coming my way, I can see the shock waves forming around her. She gets close and tries to scratch me with her arm extended forward, but that doesn’t work. I shove her arm down, and hit her on her back. She is still breaking the sound barrier, but now going towards the sand, and the sand explodes on impact.

She keeps kicking on the dunes, until she stops. She gets back at flying in my direction, but this time, when she gets close, she starts fighting normally. I can still perceive her as slow, though. I extend my conscience to the quantum probabilities, and start hitting her in non lethal areas. Her legs, her arms. I can feel the slightest bend in the armor before it gets back to normal position.

I can see shockwaves forming from the impact, and then forming again when the magic metal pops back into the original position.

Ruby tries to hit me, but the cheat worked too well. She leaves her ribs unguarded, I increase the punishment a little bit, and kick her. She is smiling, even when her face contorts a little bit because of the pain.

She tries to kick me, I hit her on the stomach. Again, my hand puncturing the solid air to reach her belly, they shockwaves stuck in place.

She flies back, bouncing on the sand. I see that is hurt, but she still wants to fight. I raise my hand, I think this is enough. She nods.

I look around. The shockwaves are all stuck in the air, they barely moved. There are a lot of them. The impacts, the flying through the air, everything. The air around me looks like broken glass in all the directions. I remove my enhancements, and I receive the whirlwind of sounds and pressure zones in the air.

I land on the sand, a bit disoriented by the experience.

I look at the girls, they are all holding their ears. I take some seconds to be able to hear again, the regeneration kicking in.

After some recovery time Ruby approaches us. Even with the neutron structures, she suffered some damage from the soft tissue. She is healing by the minute, though.

“… That was AWESOME! HOW DID YOU DO THAT, MY LORD?”

I shrug.

“You girls have been to the schools, I have been doing some experiments. I am a little drained, though. It feels like I stayed awake for days right now.”

Cecilia turns to Opal.

“How was the fight?”

Opal sighs.

“The first part, I could barely see Ruby approaching. I don’t know what she tried to do. On the second one, I saw a first approximation, Ruby flew instantly from where she was to then bouncing on the sand. Then she approached again, and next moment she was on that hill, apparently hurt. This is… Unprecedented.”

Cecilia looks at the scratch on my breast plate. It is not deep, though. She passes her fingers through them.

“I thought your cheats would make it indestructible…”

I shrug.

“Me too. We just learned that there is no such thing. The current title goes to Ruby’s nails.”

Ruby takes a look at her nails. The nail polish is gone completely, but the nails are not broken.

I am starting to feel sleepy. Some dragons are approaching, Troggar is among them. They land in formation, and courtesy to us.

“Greetings, Soul Devourer. There were some disturbances. Does my lord know the cause?”

“Oh. I had a spar with Ruby here.”

Ruby hits herself on the head, and puts the tongue out.

“Oops.”

Troggar turns his head, so that he can inspect Ruby. The silence lasts for a couple of minutes.

“Thank you for letting us know, lord. We are going to go back, then.”

“Sure.”

I open a portal back to our room. I take out the armor, and shower. I am feeling sleepy. Ruby tries to attack me at the shower, but after I am clean I just get to bed, I need a nap.

I wake up the next day. I can feel that my mana pathways are sore. I feel as if I were stiff in my soul. Still, it was fun, and a new experience. I really pushed the limits, though.

Besides stiff, I am hungry. The girls wake up slowly around me. We go down for breakfast. Besides Ruby that is eating double of what she used to eat, the other dragonesses start eating more too. Or so it looks like. We have to ask Roberta for an additional serving. I think that even I am with an unusual hunger. I feel like the food just doesn’t stop in the stomach.

Rudolph approaches us.

“Lord, there are a couple of things that I have to discuss…”

“Sure. What happened, Rudolph?”

“First, we received this letter from the Duke this morning.”

I open the letter, it is not a long one. ‘Dear friend, PLEASE STOP BREAKING MY PROFESSORS. They are hard to come by. Now I have three that won’t shut up about professor Marcelo. Thanks in advance, Dean Edward.’

I laugh about it. Cecilia turns to me.

“What?”

I give her the letter, she starts laughing as well. The dragonesses don’t really understand the humor in the situation.

Charles is intrigued, Cecilia passes him the letter.

“Here, dad.”

He reads tries to read it, but his reading is still not at that level yet. He looks at Cecilia that tells him about the letter.

“My dear hubby here helped me in the magic school, and now the professor that was there wants him to share his secrets...”

“Oh…” He does this face that says impressive.

Meanwhile, I am still eating, and Rudolph brings my chest plate.

“Did lord notice that there was an accident with your… Enchanted adamantite breast plate?”

I scratch the back of my head. I am going to have to visit Brokkr, he is the only one that can help us with this. I remove the neutron crystals that were covering it, so that I don’t forget to do it later.

The scratches are not that substantial, the armor would probably work well with it, but my idea is that we can fix it. And I have more than enough money that I wasn’t able to spend yet. I turn to Rudolph.

“Is the rest of the equipment ok? Any other issues?”

“None that I could spot, lord.”

“Fine. Leave it by the living room, I will visit the dwarves and try to get it fixed. Thank you.”

“Of course, lord.”

After we stand up from the table, I pick up Dávrin’s Comm Gem, and get in contact with him.

“Hello, friend! How are you? How is the married life?”

“Oh, it couldn’t be better.”

“I can only imagine.” He giggles a little. “But say, how can I help you?”

“Well… I have to visit Brokkr.”

“Oh. Do you need something else done?”

“Not done, fixed.”

“Fixed?”

“Yes, I got my breast plate scratched.”

…

…

“What do you mean, scratched? I am sorry, are you sure it is not dirt?”

“I don’t know… I don’t have a better way to describe it, Ruby scratched my breast plate...”

Dávrin starts laughing, first a slow laugh, then it increases. After almost a minute. He gets back to talking.

“I am sorry, friend, I am just imaging Brokkr’s face right now. Do you mind if I bring Dyrgja and Davina with us? Please, let me be there when you tell him.”

“I don’t mind. Do you have any tips on how to apologize to Brokkr?”

“Oh, don’t worry about it. Let’s make it this way, I am going with you, I will apologize to the old goat myself!”

“Sure, I guess…”

“Great! I am calling the ladies, I will let you know when we are all in your room.”

“Ok.”

The girls and I sit on the couch. Cecilia is the one to turn to me.

“Do you think this is going to be a big deal?”

“I have no idea. There must be something that we are not seeing. Muninn, what do you think is hapenning?”

“Me, father? Why do you think I would know? I don’t even have eyes among the dwarves.”

“To be fair, his voice sounded a bit like yours when you are up to something.”

“Oh yes, blame the brân on everything.”

“I am sorry, but doesn’t Dávrin’s voice sound suspicious?”

Muninn tilts his head.

“Yes…”

I pick the breast plate and take a look, as if it would change anything. Even working with my magic and trying to manipulate matter is kind of tough with the material. The mana embedded into the material kind of shields it, weirdly as it sounds. It makes it a lot harder to maneuver the bonds and molecules around.

The Comm Gem vibrates again. I stablish the connection.

“Friend? Please come over.”

I open the portal, and we jump through. Cecilia, the brâns and I are already wearing our dwarven pendants.

“Hello, friends. Welcome. Can I see it?” Dávrin immediately says, upon seeing us.

His wife slaps him on the shoulder.

“Is this the way to treat visit? Watch your manners!”

“Of course, sorry. You are right my gem.”

Dávrin answers this, but I can see his hands nervous over one another. I sigh. I get the chest plate from the bag of holding, and pass it to him.

He receives it, and inspects the crack. He starts laughing out loud. He shows it to Dyrgjia. She doesn’t pay much attention to it, she passes it on to Davina that is impressed with this somehow.

We start going our way towards Brokkr’s. As always, some dwarves bow to us. I bow back to them. He is talkative today.

"On another subject, I would like to say thanks for the deal you did with the dragon that is visiting the surface. We are safe from normal animals and most monsters, but a dragon in human form… There is no way to fight it."

"Sure, no problem. I got all the areas with friends anyway."

"Why, thank you.”

After some walking and talking, we arrive at Ildra’s inn. As usual, there is a lot of noise inside. We get in, Brokkr is sitting by an empty table. He sees the lot of us and gets intrigued. The sound in the inn stop for a minute, people start whispering.

“Why, you seem to be in a good mood, nephew.”

“Yes… Can we go somewhere we can talk in private?”

“Ungh. Ok.”

Brokkr finishes his cup, and signals Ildra. We leave, and he leads us to a house neighboring the inn. Brokkr managed to move, to stay close by.

We enter his house. We sit on sofas in the living room. Brokkr offer us some ale. We take him on his offer, and hold it high. Brokkr clears his throat.

“To all master forgers, MAY THEIR TOP WORK NEVER GET SCRATCHED!”

We all raise our cups. Then Dávrin turns to Brokkr.

“Not you, you put that down!”

And he starts laughing.

“WHAT THE FUCK?!?” Brokkr screams.

Brokkr turns to me, excited.

“Show him!”

I scratch the back of my neck. I am apologetic.

“I had a mock battle with Ruby. She got stronger. I wanted to check with you if we can fix this.”

Ruby is apparently very proud. I hand the breast plate to Brokkr. He passes his fingers on the scratches. His eyes are bulging. He opens his hand over it, noticing that the pattern is one of four fingers in paralell.

His eyes bulge even more.

“FUCK! HOW? HOW THE FUCK?”

“I told you, she got stronger…”

“There hasn’t been a single account in history of enchanted adamantite being damaged after forged. It is just… “

He suddenly has an idea. He goes over to a drawer, and pulls out the blade of something that would be a knife, if given a handle.

“Can I see it? Please, just leave a mark for me.”

He hands the blade to Ruby. She looks at it, then looks at me. I nod. She puts the blade across her mouth, and bites a chunk out of it. The noises this produces is akin to an hydraulic press smashing some resistant metal. It gives me chills. The noise of metal against metals, something giving in. But loud. Really loud. Heard by the whole neighborhood loud.

She hands the blade back to Brokkr, and the piece she bit out to me.

I don’t know if Brokkr is just amazed or horrified to know that there is something that can make this kind of damage on enchanted adamantite. He looks at the other girls.

“Can all of them do that?”

Opal shakes her head.

“Right now, only sister can do that.”

Brokkr sits on the couch, with the bitten knife blade in his hand. Dávrin is shocked as well. The one giving less importance to it all is Davina. I keep having some sips of ale, while Brokkr recovers. Dávrin looks at me with puppy eyes, staring at the piece of metal that Ruby had bit off the blade. I clean the spit out on my shirt and hand it to him.

He holds it, and checks some edges that were created during the bite. He passes it on to Dyrgja, that also looks at it. They look at it as if it were part of a magic trick that they are trying to understand. Dyrgja passes the piece of metal to Davina. Davina looks at it uninterested.

“So what?” She asks.

“So what? You are looking at something that should not exist, and your question is so what? This is not rare… THIS IS JUST THE IMPOSSIBLE!”

…

“Brokkr, if another dwarf showed you this, what would your response be?” Dávrin asks his uncle.

“Why the fuck did a master spend enchanted adamantite on a prank?”

Dávrin continues.

“Your wife is redefining the dragon saying, friend.”

“What saying, father?”

“Where does a dragon lays down? The answer is, wherever he wants. In this case, it would be something like, ‘what can a dragon bite? Whatever she wants.”

Dávrin and Brokkr giggle a little. I let them have some fun, but I have to try to get it fixed.

“Master Brokkr, back to my breast plate… Can we get it fixed? I am prepared to share the necessary coin…”

“I will make you a new one… Just hand me that one, I-“

“No, it’s ok.” I cut him off. “I am attached to this one. It was the one that I wore in my wedding. It was scratched by one of my wives. I will wear it with the scratch.”

Dávrin laughed.

“Yes, yes, wear it proudly around.”

Brokkr ears were red. I am not understanding what is going on.

“What is the problem?”

“It is a shame for a forgers to have his work damaged in battle. The higher the material the higher the shame. In that case, I spared no material, I spared no excuse… Please don’t show this to others. I will make you a new one, master Marcelo.”

I hold the breast plate in front of me. I can do what Brokkr is asking, but I am still keeping this somewhere at home. I didn’t know there was all that honor thing involved in this.