The Quantum Wanderer

***

Gang member #2 POV

Yesterday nobody left the house. This is the weirdest thing ever. Most minor nobles have too much time on their hands. They end up living their houses at least a little bit. They don’t live in big enough castles like the emperor, that walking around the castle is enough to see the time pass. Either that or they visit other nobles, gossip and things of this kind.

Count Lambebolas has paid us to keep an eye on these people yesterday, but tomorrow he is going to go back to Arthuria. He authorized us to try to get the jewel from the farmers today. It is supposed to be an easy job. Two peasants, farmers, low level. If the jewels are not with them, we have to try to enter the house.

From what we have seen already, there is not a lot of security in the house. They do have a couple of guards on the gate, but all the houses in the neighborhood have that. Some information is weird, though. How did an adventurer get this amount of money? A house here is supposed to be expensive. It is a good thing that adventurers spend so much time away.

We are in circle of three people, a little distance from the house. I keep looking at the door, and we luck out! The couple of farmers leave house, they are on their way to the gate. We are to the right of the house, some 300 feet out.

The couple leaves the house, but they turn left. We follow them, and we pass in front of the house. I take a quick look at the house. What I see makes me freeze.

“Guys! Guys!”

“What?”

“The crows on the tree… They are all looking at us. ALL of them.”

“Pffft… Quit being a bitch!”

“I don’t like it…”

“Pussy! ‘Oh, a bird is watching! My salts!’”

I look at the crows on the tree. A shill goes down my spine. Fuck this shit! I have already heard of too much fucked up shit already. Everyone knows the piratess was the leader of all bandits in Arthuria, until she wasn’t. She disappeared. Of course, some say that she just decided to go straight since no one knew her real identity. But others say that she left a fortune to be collected with her lieutenants. I prefer being an alive pussy than a brave corpse.

I split from the guys. I go for the exit from the noble district. I stop and look behind me. The guys are still following the couple around. Then I hear a bird’s call to my left. I look up, and perched on the roof there are a couple of crows. They are still looking at me.

I get out of the nobles district. I start walking around. I want to get rid of this feeling. I go to the guild. I still have my steel tag.

I enter, the guild is boisterous as always. I order a cup of ale, I sit on the corner, alone. The cup arrives. I thank the waitress. I take a look around. The chill in my spine is still there. The sensation of being watched. Of being hunted.

I take a look around. On the bean, straight above from a group of people, there are now four crows. They are staring at me. I take out my mini pistol crossbow.

“BOW!” “BOW!” “WEAPON!”

Taking out my weapon here was a bad idea. I look around, there are several adventurers with their hands on the hilts of their swords. I lower the pistol. I raise my hands up.

“I am sorry, brothers! It is just… Those crows are making me tense!” I point to the four crows on the bean.

The adventurers whisper to one another. “Are those Marcelo’s?” Every one of them is shaking their heads.

“Look, pal, this is the wrong place to hunt crows. There is a friend of ours that likes to come here, and he has a pet crow. I don’t think that would play well. If a level… What? What are you? Forty?”

I look at him. I don’t answer.

“Fuck it, I don’t care. If you need to fucking hunt a bird to prove that your dick works, buy a chicken and go happy.”

I still have my hands up. The waitress comes around.

“The ale will be one large copper.”

I pay her, I leave the place. When I look back to the building, there are 8 crows on the roof. They caw. Fuck this shit.

I take a look around, there are some adventurers by the door. And shooting a bolt in the city is not well seen. The bolt has to land somewhere. Sometimes it just happen to land on someone, so it is not something the guards take too keenly.

I walk around, trying to of a place to go. Whenever I look over my shoulders, the crows are there. I see a building. A small church.

I enter it, and I sit on the bench. Only then I take a look at the altar. I haven’t paid much attention to religions ever in my life. Even more so after I decided to go for some easy money here and there. The statue on the altar is of a man. He has dragons around him, and he has two crows on his shoulders. I feel another chill down my spine.

“Why the fuck do they have a Wrax church?”

“Wherever else would they adore Wrax?”

I look to my side, there is no one there. I feel something moving, I look at the bench, there is a crow there. The crow flies to the back of the bench in front of me. He stares me down.

“Now, fucker, let’s talk. What is it you want with my friends?”

The chill is now becoming terror. I feel the statue now towering over me. My soul getting sucked.

“Keek!”

“Look at me!” I hear the crow whispering, with an imposing voice. I look at him. I start to sweat bullets. The crow’s eyes are not just a black dot, it is a dark sea, I see myself submerging in it. Even breathing is hard now.

“What do you want with my friends?”

“I am sorry, sir crow… “ I tell him everthing.

When I finish, I see that I am kneeling down, on the piece of wood placed there for this exact reason. Once I am done telling him about our employer and our mission, the crow flies away. I am stunned.

I look around myself, and I notice that the priest and the rest of the people in the church are looking at me. I don’t really understand what they are saying at the moment, everything has this unreal feel to it.

***

Gang Member #3

I see our colleague giving up. Because some birds were acting strange. I have to admit, when he gave up the whole thing I got a little scare. It is a good thing the boss calmed me down. We are relatively high levels, we have nothing to fear from little birds. No matter how many of them.

We follow the couple. We hit the lottery with these two. They leave the noble district. They are simpletons. Only idiots would leave the nobles’ district if they have money. The amount of security inside it would prevent exactly what is going to happen.

Apparently the count is right. They really don’t deserve having anything of value.

We keep following the couple, they end up in a teahouse. I check for alleys we can use. I position myself close to one, on boss’s order. He covers the other one.

When the couple exits the tea house, around an hour later, they turn to their left. They are going towards the boss.

The boss cuts they path, I arrive, I am behind them. They understand that they are supposed to enter the alley or else.

We circle the couple. The other end of this alley is closed. Easy job. The boss starts his talk.

“Alright, you guys know the drill, right? Give us everything, or else.” Boss takes a dagger out.

The farmer guy looks up and smiles. I look up, and the neighbouring roofs have crows. A lot of crows. It looks like all the crows in that fucking tree came here. They start cawing. I have to admit that this makes me a little nervous.

I look back at the farmer couple. Boss repeats his threat. I sense some movement behind the boss. This 6 foot wide ball appears behind him. I see this huge claw shooting out. It grabs boss by the middle of the body.

At that point I feel a hand grabing me by the back of my colar. It pulls me back with a strength that takes the air out of my lungs. I am thrown into a dark place.

After being thrown for what feels like 10 feet, I hit the ground, but I don’t stop immediately. I bounce a little, and roll, until I stop. My mind is running as fast as it can. I have never been the smartest around. Hence why I have been working with boss for so long.

This is just impossible. I was in an alley. I swear I was. The mana here is toxic. The place smells like death. It is dark, though I can see the opening of the cave. I look up. I see two sets of eyes starting at me. One is a pair of human eyes. The other is a monstrous set of two pairs of eyes, in the shape of four red slits.

***

Cecilia's POV

Now I have to decide what to do with this trash.

"Mama, one of them already did not go unconscious. What do you want to do with them?"

That is a harder question than the ones I normally have. I wonder what hubby generally does. I look at them. One is in his early forties, the other around almost level 50. Probably levels 42 and 48 should be around right.

"I don't know. What do you think Marcelo would do?"

"For starters, is there anything else you would like to know?" Huginn asks me, tilting her head to the side.

"We already know about the count, right? Anything else we would have to know? Perhaps where they are staying?"

Huginn gets close to the higher level goon. Her eyes shine with a stronger glow, the whole cave is visible in red light.

"They are staying with a distant cousin, a viscount. The thing is, a lot of nobles marry among themselves, there is always going to be a relative in somewhere."

I look at them. The lack of light is not really an issue, neither to me neither to Huginn. They are not as scared as the goons Marcelo deals with. I wonder how he scares the guys. I could ask for Piotr's help, we are in his cave, but there is nothing we really want to know.

"Thank you. Should we get them to Edward or just take care of them? What do you think?"

"It's up to you, Mama. They wanted to hurt grandma and gramps. I also obtained the information that the count is going to travel back tomorrow. The kid is going to stay, the travel time from here to their home in Arthuria is over a week. There is only one month before next period starts."

"I don't know what I would do without you. Thanks. Any suggestions on the the way to dispose of them?"

"Last time Papa had to get rid of a group, he used the piranhas in the big river. Nasty thing." She turns to the goons. The second one is awake now. Huginn is talking to me, but facing them. "Big monsters kill you quickly. Those piranhas… Even I shudder, Mama. They kill you by ripping off small pieces. You get eaten while still conscious. Very, very nasty…"

The goon that woke up is scared. Good. They deserved.

"How do we do it?"

Huginn opens the portal. The light from it illuminates the cave. They can now see Huginn and me.

"Keek!"

They both let out a very high pitched sound. Huginn opens the portal. I reach for the lower leveled one, and I throw him through it. We hear the splash sound. Then we hear him trying to swim. He is not very good with it. Nobody is very good with it. Most waters contain monsters, and specially under the water, they tend to be a lot stronger than humans.

Then he screams once. He shouts. Then he starts screaming in a very terrible pain. I look at the other one. He pulls out a dagger towards me. I twist the dagger out of his hands. Mithril. Not bad, but subpar for us. And a way to track. I throw it through the portal. I grab him by the colar. He tries to move my arm. Futile. I have over double his levels. I hold him in the air for some moments, while he looses his will to fight.

"Ppppleease… I am sssso-rry…"

The guy is crying. Ugly crying, with snout. I hold him closer.

"Would you have let my father and mother go if they begged?"

I see a shine in his eyes. A glint of hope. And a glint of dishonesty. Both he and I know he is going to lie.

"Off… Coursssse." He says, among crying hiccups.

"Nice try." I throw him through the portal.

I look at the floor, I turn to the back of the cave.

"Piotr, I am sorry, it looks like they soiled themselves."

"No problem, uncovettable. Nothing a little fire won't fix."

"Thank you."

I open a portal home, Huginn and I go home. I think about my sisters, but Opal knows how to open portals as well.

I take a shower, then I take a long bath. This whole thing was so… Uncivilized. I think I have been spending too long with Opal.

***

Marcelo’s POV

I enjoy the routine. After the bard sings in the inn, I go back home. Once I take a look at the bathroom, I see Cecilia in the bathtub. I don’t sense the other girls at home.

“Helloo… Hi Cecs.”

“Oh, hi, my villain.”

“You came back before the other girls. Are you ok? Are you feeling well?”

“I am ok. Do you remember the guys that were spying on us?”

“Yes. What happened?”

“They tried to mug my pa and mah.”

I think for a minute. This is serious.

“Did you get that solved?”

“The lower guys, yes. Their boss is an Arthurian nobleman. One of his kids was in knight school.”

“Does he live here? Or did he come for the graduation ceremony?”

“Just the ceremony. He is going back to Arthuria tomorrow. First light. What should we do?”

“Well, you apparently already interrogated the goons, right? Did you deliver the goons to Edward?”

“No. One of the goons abandoned the idea because of Huginn’s convincing. He is currently in your church? Wrax’s church? He was the one that told on everything.”

“The others?”

“I used one of your ideas, the big river, piranhas.”

“Yeah… I used that for the pirates and the guys that kidnapped Rudolph’s family. That is nasty. What are your next plans?”

“I don’t know. I was hoping you would suggest something.”

I tilt my head.

“Since you already disposed of the goons, we can’t use their knives to kill the noble. The big problem is getting the noble alone. Either some accident during the trip, but then nobles generally travel with an escort, and you would have to do the escort as well… Or his bed at night. I did that with the piratess. It is a guilt I carry, her husband was innocent, but I had to do both of them.

“There are two things that I regret about that, now that I think about it. The first one was husband thing, I could probably have tried harder to get her alone. But I didn’t have the resources at the time. Muninn and Huginn weren’t as evolved. They help a lot. Heck, I don’t have to do anything nowadays, you girls and them can just take over… I just might really become Lionheart!” I laugh a little. I continue.

“The second one was doing a deeper cleansing on the underworld. I could have helped a little bit more.

“That being said, what do you want to do?”

“What about talking to Edward?”

“Politically, this is a wasp’s nest. Nobles are supposed to have immunity. And then it is not one of Anthon’s noble. If you want to do him a favor, we can do a disappearing trick on the noble once he is out of the empire.”

She takes her arm out of the water, and applies some soap to it.

“Let’s do that. Let’s wait until he is back in his castle, he can just disappear then. I don’t think he is going to plan anything during the trip.”

“Do you want help, or do you want to do it by yourself? Perhaps Huginn’s help?”

“I am going to ask Huginn’s help. Did you know she called me ‘mama’?”

“AWWWW… I am happy that my girls and my kids are closer…” I wink at Cecilia.

I take a shower. The other girls arrive. They are not too worried about Cecilia, though. They all wash up, we go down for dinner. We meet Charles and Lucille in the dining room.

“Hi Charles, Lucille. Cecilia told me that you had some issue with an attempt mugging today.”

“Why, yes, we did. But daughter took care of it.” He looked at the top of the bookcase, where the two non crows were perched, nodded at Huginn. “My… granddaughter…? Helped.”

Huginn lowered her head slowly.

“Those ruffians!” Lucille exclaimed.

Charles looked at her, then laughed.

“Ruffians, dear? Are you using pretty words now?”

Lucille rolled her eyes. No need for Charles to call her out.

The dinner goes on normally.

We retire for the day.

The next few days are fun. We go to the elves, and have some fun in the inn. We hear some new songs from the bard, but some are repeated.

The nobles that attempted mugging Charles and Lucille started his trip. He was in the middle of the road. They are not very high nobles, they can’t really put a lot of money on tamed monsters or magically enhanced horses and carriage.

During breakfast, I ask Muninn.

“Muninn, how are things on the hero’s side?”

“Well, father, a group of people from the Holy Kingdom got there yesterday afternoon. There are some guards scorting some… nobles? I don’t know if they are really nobles, but there is a lot of riches around them. The clothing involves a lot of gold.”

“What about the hero himself?”

“He has been mostly keeping himself to the palace. He has been having some fun with the maids, apparently.”

I sigh.

“What about his party?”

“There are all kinds. There are even some elves in them, and they are the most well behaved in the group.”

“But the elves did not stop the disrespectful behavior of the others.” I say.

“But the elves did not stop the disrespectful behavior of the others.” He repeats. Muninn then closes his eyes. He then opens them again and turn to me.

“The hero’s party is leaving Romuela.”

The girls, Charles, Lucille and I go to Shoria. We decide to spend the day by the beach. After a normal day for us, we go back home for supper.

After eating his fill, Muninn hops up to me.

“Papa, the hero’s party boarded a river ship. They are going towards the big river.”

“Ok.”

“And…”

Huginn hops in front of me and Cecilia. Both Muninn and Huginn have that sinister smile on their faces. The impossible smile because their beaks are twisted.

“The noble has just arrived home…”

“Oh?” Cecilia asks.

Ruby looks at her, excited.

“Do you want help, sister?”

Cecilia clean her mouth with the napkin.

“No need, sisters. I will only need daughter’s help.”

After we stand up, Cecilia puts on her armor. Huginn stays at her shoulder. They go down to the living room.

I let Cecilia have this. She is already powerful enough, she is going with Huginn. Each of them is capable of facing the noble’s guards. The whole of the city guards, actually.

***

Cecilia’s POV

I have to wait a little longer, until the count and his wife are in their beds. Huginn informs me when this happen. I want to avoid innocents getting caught.

With Huginn’s help, I open tiny portals, underneath the bed, and I start spraying the room with silent death. People loose consciousness before they die.

Now a little patience. I take a look at my nails. Getting them done in Shoria is always fantastic. I wonder why they don’t do this all over. That might change with Addrianna, though.

The couple is starting to feel dizzy. I wonder what I am going to do with him. He tried to mug my father. Perhaps the piranhas? That sounds good.

They lay on the bed, and go under. I dissipate the gas with a light breeze through the portals. I open a big portal and I am there. He is lying on this stomach. I think about doing something elaborate, but I just don’t have the patience Marcelo has with this scum. I open a portal to the big river, now I am flying over it.

I am holding the scum by his wrist. I throw him up, and start holding him by the back of his pajama. I stab him in the leg, he wakes up. He looks around, still scrumbling on his thoughs.

“WHAT THE FUCK! WHAT? HH-“

He is franctic, until he looks up and sees me. He is bending towards his leg. Blood starts dripping on the water.

“PUT ME DOWN, BITCH! YOU DON’T KNOW WHO YOU ARE DEALING WITH! I WILL HAVE YOUR HEAD!”

The water where his blood is dripping starts to get messy. Apparently the monsters are sensing that dinner is ready. The count looks down, terrified. He looks up again. In time to hear me.

“Gladly.” I have a smirk on my face.

I let him fall in the middle of the piranhas. The blood spreads through the water. He screams in agony. I let the monsters do their job. They tear through flesh and pajamas as well, bite after bite after bite.

The noble just keeps screaming. Once he looses his voice, I open a portal home. I go for a shower, it helps. Marcelo is already sleeping with my wife-sisters.

I lay down with them.