The Quantum Wanderer

Dávrin POV

I felt like an ant with gods playing games.  The talk was completely absurd.  But it’s not a question of belief.  I know that everything said on that table is absolutely true.  One of the dragons was delayed by the task of putting the termite in the bag.  Something that several mithril adventurers have to band together to fight.  Of course, I am talking about the kings, but still, there are sometimes a hundred of those around.

I only know of mithril adventurers.  They would probably have to get at least some 35 mithril adventurers to do that quest.  And then the battles.  Lots and lots of very long battles, where the humanoids would have to weaken each one of the monsters, so that the final blow can be given by a strong party member.

It didn’t even occur to me to ask for more details.  This is something that should be written down somewhere.  I wonder if the demons know about this story.  I am pretty sure their new pope would love to add it to their new sacred texts.

And now I am realizing something.  Those were the girls, and they obey him!  If their society is strength oriented, where would that put things?  It’s a pity that this question can only be answered by him.  It occurred me to send a spy, but I notice how stupid that is right away.  I wonder what he would do with rude people.

By the gods!  Austri!  Should I kill that imbecile before he convinces Marcelo that dwarves are not needed in Andrea?  I had better have a talk with Marcelo, make sure that Austri’s actions are his own.  Austri might even having his head taken out through his own arse.  And literally!

“Dear?  What are you thinking about?”  Dyrgja asked.

My wife always know when something troublesome is going through my mind.

“Austri.”

“Oh, dear.  Yes, that can be a problem, but…  Do you think Marcelo even cares?”

“Huh?  What do you mean?”

“When was the last time you asked a baby about his opinion of you?  Would you care if a beardless youngling told you that he hates you?  At most, you slap him once.”

“I would give three inches of beard to see that slapping.”

I laugh imagining the scene.

I have to talk to uncle.  Davina mentioned that Marcelo and Brokkr are now talking to each other as old friends, like two weapons from the same ore.  His opinion on this is going to be important.

***

Marcelo POV

Getting to the hot springs is kind of easy.  I had noticed that all of them are by the elevator, and that structure can be seen from anywhere in the city.  It’s a pity that Siratra didn’t want to come, she would love seeing the marvelous construction, and talk about the power of steam.  But at least she is having fun with her math studies.

The elevator is absolutely massive.  The workmanship on the arms underneath the platforms is impressive, both volume and appearance.  It looks a lot bigger up close.  The only thing that looks weird is the lack of any protection against people falling off.  But I can put that in my perspective, coming from a place where batteries have instructions saying that one should not try to drink their water.

I am still getting used to all the looks, all the whispering around.  But apparently things are not so bad anymore.  I have to give it to them that we are something that most of them have not seen yet.  We wait in a short line.

When we reach inside, there is a counter, and behind it there is a female dwarf.  She looks at us, and makes a weird face.  She turns around, and shouts at full lungs.

“Ma, come see this!  The ugliest thing I have ever seen!”

She recomposes herself, while another dwarf woman comes from behind a curtain. She slaps the attendant in the back of the head.

“How may I help you?”

“Me and the girls would like to enjoy a little of your hot baths.”

She looks at the girls.  “Are you sure they are females?”

“Yes.”

“Alright.  2 large coppers per person.  Have you already been in a hot spring yet?”

“Not a dwarven one.”

“Ok.  In the first room you pick a space to put your things.  You wash in the second room, and you dip in the third.  After you’re done, you  get your things back in the first room, where you can also get some complimentary...  beard oils…  In this kit you can find your cleaning stone and your towel.”

The girls and I split, I go to the men’s side, they go to the women’s.  I see some lockers, with a device that looks like a card, stuck into a slot, besides a small open door.  A locker room.  I look around.  Other guys put their clothes in the locker, then remove the card, and hang it around the neck, beneath the beard.  I do the same.

I go to the second room, and some guys put the towel on the side, and use the cleaning stone as if it were a soap of sorts.  I take a look at it, it is a pomme round stone, and pores are covered with some soap like substance.  It actually feels nice against the skin, allowing for a deep clean.

The next room has some six small pools on the floor, with some boiling hot water.  The guys here are inside the water, with the towel on their heads.  I do the same, and I kneel down in the water.  I am a little higher than them.

The expressions vary a lot.  Just like in Dávrin’s court, there are all kinds of expressions.  I see a group that has a curious expression, more than anything else.  They are whispering among themselves.

One of them gets closer.

“Excuse me, sir.  Are you the one that passed the trial?”

I was almost snoozing, but I wake up to answer him.

“Yes, I am the one.  Though the rest of my group is in the other bath.” I gesture with my head towards the women’s bath.”

He turns around.

“HA! Told you.  You owe me lunch!”

“Fine!” Says one of the dwarves that stayed in the corner.

The one that talked to me turned around again.

“Dáni, by the way.”

“Marcelo.”  I change my position, to be able to provide more attention.

“Is it true that other races’ women don’t have beards?”

“A lot of them, yes.  None of my girls have beards.”

“How do you know they are of age?  I mean, just by looking on the outside?”

“Humans, elves and some other races have boobs.”

Another dwarf from the corner got closer.

“I heard of that!  The titties on the other races are absurdly big!”

“Some girls have bigger boobs than others.  It also varies…  Don’t you guys ever get outside the cave?  I have seen some dwarves while walking around some cities…”

“Why would we?  We have everything we might want right here.  We have good food, the chance to work however we want, and safety.  The world under the sky is savage.”

“Perhaps.  Don’t you ever meet monsters around here?”

“Not really.  There is an eventual mole, but they are not really bad to deal with.  They are a kind of soft monster for top of food chain under the earth.

“There would be the risk of hitting a nest of termite or ants when digging new places, but we have rock singers to avoid it.  They can actually check if there are going to be encounters with monsters after very thick walls of stone.

“And we haven’t had much digging, anyway.”

The other dwarves in the group start getting closer.

“What about you?  How did you win the trial?”

Another one of the dwarves slapped his back.

“Dáni here fell for the oldest trick in a father’s manual… “  And he giggled.

“What?”

“Sometimes, when a short-beard wants to go out, get to know the world, the father calls the kid, and have the talk ‘You know, son, out there is dangerous…  If you prove that you can defend yourself, I will allow.  Just pass the trial and you will have my blessing!’”

I laughed.  Apparently Dávrin hadn’t been the only one to fall for it.  At least he got the idea to go after an enchanted adamantite for the task.

“But tell me, how did you do it?”

“Well, there is a secret process that I can do to blades, that harden them in a weird way.  And then I put all my strength to it.”

“Just that?  That is both unbelievable and disappointing, in a way.”

“Well, I did loose my sword in the process?”

“Did it break?”

“Break?  It became dust.”

“Do you still have it?”

“No, I threw away.  You are the second person that asks about that, though.  Davina was also curious.”

“Do you mean princess Davina?”

Another dwarf tilts his head, and looks up.  “She is so stout and beautifull…  Her beard is the most fluffy and beautiful red…”

“Forget it, pretty boy.  Neither your arm neither your blade are worth a second look.”

The ‘pretty boy’ lowers his head.

“Yes, I know.”

“Perhaps someone that passed the trial?”

“I don’t think so, in both ways…  I am apparently hideous ugly to her, and I prefer my girls bearless…”

One of the dwarves puts his hand around his mouth, as if telling a secret.

“I know what you mean, friend, you being from another race and all, but don’t ever say that sentence around…  The meaning around these parts is that you like little kids…”

“Oh, thank you for the advice.”

We keep on chatting about the different women types…  Their preferences are actually the opposite of mine, it is really funny.

The chit chat ends with a slap on my shoulder.

“You are alright for a sky person.  Come, let’s get off before someone sleeps.”

We get out, and head back to the first room, where we can pick our stuff.  We go to a table, there are some bottles and some combs made of a substance like ivory.  Some of them pick a bottle, others pick other.  I open one, and I smell.  It is a woody smell, with wasabi kick to it.  I open another one, the smell is slightly different.

I put one of them on my short beard, and comb it.  One of them shakes his head.

“No, not like that…  Small movements…  You don’t want a straight beard…  Right?”

Another one laughs, and doesn’t really hold the burn.  “Don’t worry.  As ugly chick as he would look, there would be no problem!”

I laugh as well, these guys are ok.  As we leave the place, I look at the front, and there is an eating place.  The girls are there, together with Davina.  Shandon waves at me.  I say goodbye to the guys, they say goodbye back, look at the girls and shrug.

“Hi girls.  Davina, did you join them?  We ended up leaving right after we finished breakfast, I assumed that you wanted to talk to your parents.”

“Not really, we are good.  I just needed to finish eating, and then I came around.  Finding the hot spring you guys came to was easy, I just had to follow the people whispering around…”

“Apparently, being the weirdest dwarf of all the king attracts some attention.”

I giggled.  I noticed that Cecilia was wearing 3 necklaces, hers and Shandon’s and Opal’s.

“What about you, girls?  Did you enjoy?”

“Yes, my lord, specially after I took that necklace off.  Before that, the water was feeling a little too cold, but we finally found a place with the water just right.”  Shandon offered.

“I don’t know, it could be a little hotter, it would be more relaxing…” Ruby added.

Cecilia just sighed.

Opal sniffed.  “That smell feels good on you, my lord.”

“Glad you like it, Opal.  And if you girls liked, we can always come back here for the hot spring.  Of course, we still have to check one of the other ones, as well as the palace’s one.”

I sit down, and I order one of what they are having.  It is really funny how the acidic taste kind of permeates everything, even these sweet drinks.  But it still tastes good.  We stay there, chatting and looking at the dwarves passing by.  Although I think that they were paying more attention to us than we were paying it to them.

People around seem, in average, quite satisfied.  I can see the same kind of quality of life from Suresh’s or Anthon’s empire.  People are moving around, busy, like a big clockwork, but without the kind of desperation that I saw in Lirastra, or the fear that I noticed flying around in Angelica.

After some time talking about stuff, and several bells rings later, we decide to get back to the palace, after Davina says that it is sundown time.

We have a private dinner with Davina, Dávrin and Dyrgja.  The kitchen now knows how much my girls eat, so the food is plenty. 

“How was your day, friend?  If I may call you that?”  Dávrin asks.

“It was funny and lively.  There was this one attendant at the hot springs, …” and I tell them what happened in the hot springs.  I see that Dyrgja throws a glance towards Dávrin, with the corner of her eyes.  I just had so much fun today.

“But tell me, what is the surface like?” Davina asks, changing the subject.

“That’s a very broad subject…  You know about the different kingdoms, right?  The bigger ones are the empire, the holy kingdom and Arthuria.

“My experience with Arthuria was on just a village, a couple of cities and the capital.  The village and the cities were fine, they were under a baronage that is thriving.  The capital, though, is in a really bad shape.  Crimes are running rampart, and the guards are corrupt. People say that sometimes you should call the bandits when you are being shaken by the guards.”

I tell them about the coliseum, the games, the farmer that was betting his life savings, about people trying to scam him out of his earnings.

“As for the empire, I mostly have been experiencing Ironhold.  The crime is under control, and most of the populace have a good expression.  I like it there, it is where we are currently living.”

“Do you have a house there?” Dávrin asks.

“I… don’t know?  We were offered one to stay in, and we just took it.  I hope they don’t mind the changes I had to do to hang the map.”

“What do you mean?  Hanging a map should be easy, no?”

“Well, no if it weights a some thousands pounds, and is made of glass.”

“Huh?”

I smile, ready to brag, and Opal makes a disgusted face.

“That thing belongs in the trash.”

Dávrin looks at her intrigued.  I continue.

“Love, you know that your art is way more valuable to me than that.  But moving on, that is a map of Drakonia, made by a dragon.”

“Drakonia?”

“Yes.  There are other continents on this planet.  Andrea is just one of them.  Drakonia is where the dragons actually live.  The Land of Dragons, in the mountains, is just their nursery.”

…

“But continuing, the empire is a lot safer than Arthuria, and also values form more than ostentation.  It feels more of a military state.”

“Yes, apparently the emperor is smart.” Dávrin adds.

“I think so.  And then we have the Holy Kingdom.  I have only been there very quickly, when I had a transaction to make.  I wasn’t allowed to enter with Muninn, I had to leave him in the forest nearby.”

“Who is Muninn?”

“Oh, one of my crows.  They have a very hard prejudice against crows there…”  I remember the happenstance with the bishop that shot against a crow that was in my home, and I giggle a little.

“Crows?  CROWS?  YOU HAVE CROWS?” Davina got excited, and stood up, her brows way up in her forehead.

“Yes, Muninn and Huginn are generally with me.  They are like family.  I just didn’t bring them because…  Bad air.  No offense.”

“None taken.” Dávrin answers, while Davina falls on her chair.  She looks at me, and then at her dad.  I realize her concern, I think I am getting better at this.

“I am not related to Wrax.  I was just kind of adopted by Muninn, and I like the buggar.  There is nothing else to read on this.”

Dávrin raises his cup to my statement, and I do too, and we drink.

After a couple more of mundane subjects, like Davina’s evolution as a warrior, some trends in the kingdom, we go to our rooms for the night.

The few days we end up visiting another of the hot springs, as well as the palace’s.  The palace one is way more lavish than the populace one, but it is understandable.  In the palace one, I happen to go with Dávrin and couple of his friends or advisors.  In particular, The Hammer and The Anvil.  We chat about overall state of things.  The demon’s new water source, their first steps in steam development.  We also talk about the big blunder in the war by Arthuria.

After that, The Anvil starts showing me their farming.  They have large fields of vegetation, but the vegetation is mostly red in the leaves.  He tells me that it happens because instead of sun, the vegetation here actually use heat and substances released by close magma to grow.  I get absorbed by looking at that immense sea of red, with some workers here and there, generally with a device being pulled by a mole.

Each beast is about twice the size of an average horse.  I can see that there is a lot of focus on simple machinery, that helps them with all the steps.  Nothing like a modern tractor on Earth, but something more advanced than I had seen being used by the humans.

When there is a break, we get to talk to the farmers a little bit.  They kneel before the advisor, but I can see that the way the farmers address him is a lot less convoluted than I would expect.  Not completely casual, but pretty close.

The distribution of work between males and females is equal.  Given that the females in this race have a body constitution very close to the males, that is not really surprising.  What surprises me is that Davina has come with us, and she has a lot of surprise on her face.  I would have expected for her to know more about this lands.

The following day, I am taken to their moles raising farms.  It is also very interesting.  The moles stay inside granite enclosures.  I am told that if it were different, they would just dig their way out.  They show me how they get milk from moles.  The whole process is fantastic.  The moles that had babies are kept in a separate enclosure.

There is a place in the enclosure that the moles get by themselves.  In there, there is not much room for movement, and a dwarf gets closer and starts milking them.  Once done, he presses one of the three buttons on the wall, and it opens a box in front of the mole, with some food.  They eat it and leave the box.

I see that some moles are not milked.  Instead, they go in the box, and the dwarf presses the first button, and the door just opens.  Some of them receive the second button, and some of them the third one.  I am told that they have to wait a little to accumulate milk in the tits.  Because of this, the food reward is proportional to the amount of milk they provide.

I am told that they have normal food available, the food reward is just tastier to them.

I also go through their killing and meat cutting facility.  I am impressed on the cleanliness of it all.  It reminds of Earth standards.  The whole precision of the operation if amazing.

The day after that, in breakfast, Dávrin tells me that our swords are ready.  After eating, we go to Brokkr’s shop, with Davina.

“Boya!  HA!  I knew that you would come the moment I let my nephew know that your stuff is ready.”

We got to a table, that have a bunch of swords inside sheaths.  The workmanship takes my breath away.  They are the most beautiful sheaths and handles I have ever seen.  They compose of a single piece of art, towards the handle.  White, silver, gold, and a red gold composing intricate designs.

Some of the sword, the hand guard is mouth of the dragon, on others it is a dragon offering the blade, with a pair of open hands.  On another one, the blade is coming out of a dragon’s mouth.  The details are amazing, it is almost like the drawings are alive.

I look at Brokkr, and he gestures.

“Go ahead, those are yours.”

I pick up the katana.  The metal in the handle is… soft.  It feels like leather soft, and it doesn’t slip.  When I grab it, I can feel a very small tug on my mana.  When I apply mana, I can feel the little mana veins in the blade spreading the mana.

I have an idea, and I start moving the mana, in and out of the sword.  At one point, at a very high frequency, way above sound, I can feel that the sword enters a resonant state with the mana vibration.  I stop the mana, and the sword still keeps resonating.  I am looking at the effect, amazed.

I turn the blade down, and drop it.  The katana penetrates the floor, and only stops at the hand guard.  Only then I realized that I had messed up.  I had just pierced Brokkr’s floor.  Everyone is looking at the sword or me.  I put on a apologetic expression.

“Hey, I think this sword can cut me.”

Brokkr turns his face, very slowly, from the floor to me.

“WHAT. DID. YOU. DO?”

He grabs the handle and tries to pull up the sword, but it doesn’t work.  I do the same thing, and at first it is really stuck.  Instead of trying to it by force, I make it vibrate again with mana, and I pull it without any effort.  Even if I had left the katana already coated with the neutron crystal, brute forcing it might cause more damage to the floor.

I pull the mana out of the sword, and place it on the table.  Brokkr kneels down, and he is passing his finger over the slot open in the stone block on the floor.  He stands up, and holds me by my clothes.  I can see that the dragonesses are prepared to kill, and I see Davina’s discomfort, looking at them.  I gesture them that everything is alright.

“Hold on, I will tell you.  Perhaps some tea?”

Brokkr looks around himself, and realizes what he is doing.

“I am sorry, boya.”

“No problem.  I am also sorry about damaging your floor.  Perhaps I can try to fix it with earth magic?”

“DON’T!  Please…  Leave it as is.  I am going to grab some tea.”  He goes out the back.  I look at Davina.

“Davina, do you think I pissed him off too much?”

“I don’t think he looks pissed off…”

The girls go over their swords, looking at it.

“What do you girls think?”

Cecilia is flabbergasted with her short sword.  “This is something that belongs in a king’s treasure.  I don’t know if I am going to have the courage to walk around with something like this on my waist.”

“It passes for something usable, my lord.  I have to admit that even I would have some trouble creating something like this.” Opal replies.

“I can’t imagine a better compliment.  Let him come back with the tea, I will have him open up the blades so that I can do the neutron crystal coating.”

“The what what coating?” Davina asks.

“You saw it last time we were here, right?  I put on a coating meant to make it sharper and sturdier.  In this case, I also added space for the mana veins in the blade.”

Brokkr comes from the back, with some tea and some wooden cups on a tray.  He goes past us, and places that on the table outside his door.

We sit down, and he starts serving the tea for all of us, including Davina.

“Uncle, this is the first time I see you serving tea anyone!”

He looks at her, with a not funny face.

“And the last!”

After he is done, he sits down with his cup, that did not get tea, but is rather full of ale.

“Now, boya, tell me.  What did you do?”

“Oh, it was kind of a coincidence.  I injected mana in the katana, right? Then I pulled it out.  I kept pushing and pulling the mana, increasing the speed, and at one point it reached the blade’s resonant frequency.”

“What is that?”

I got a cup, and placed tea inside it.

“Sometimes when you have a movement repeating, in something, you have a wave.  I am going to call the substance the wave is in, medium.  A wave has a number of times per second that it goes, right?”

“Ok.”

“But the medium has a natural frequency to it.”  I move the spoon faster in the cup, and because it is not the right frequency, the liquid doesn’t spill.  Then I lower the frequency, and the liquid starts going from one side to the other, as whole, taken by the spoon.  “That frequency, that number of times per second, is called the resonant frequency.

“I did that with the sword.  Once I realized what had happened, I just got curious to see what would happen, and dropped the blade on the floor.”

“So it was just the weight of the sword?”

“Yes.”

“Ha… HA HA… HAHAHAHAHA” Brokkr burst out laughing.  “Boya, that is just…  You just created a god blade, and I have the first ever thing cut by it!  I don’t believe it!”

…

…

“Huh, can I ask you to show us how to open the other blades?  I still have to do the coating with them.”

“Of course, master Marcelo.  Right after we finish this tea.  Don’t you prefer something better than tea, though?  That thing is going to make you chest hair fall down.”

“No, I am good.” And we laughed.