The Quantum Wanderer

I ask Muninn to keep the crow’s feed, so that I can locate myself.  I do everything really fast.  I enhance my self, I will need speed for this one.  I open a portal, I cast a silence spell on the room, I pull the earl by his clothes into the portal, and then I close it.

A second later, I have a somewhat frozen earl in my hands, in Piotr’s cave.  He moves his head very slowly up and around, until he can see me dressed in black behind him.  He looks around the cave, and he starts shaking.

“Good, I don’t think I have to explain the situation, right?”

He very slowly shakes his head.  I turn to the couple of spies.

“Do you know what is curious?  This one doesn’t even have a suicide tooth on him.  This employee had one, but it was a quick poison.  The cheap poison you guys had was going to be very, very painful indeed.”

The woman and the guy try to make a smile, but it looks like a smirk.

“Should I, at the end of all this, make the earl use one of your tooth?  That should be adequate, right?”

The earl starts sweating.  It doesn’t help him that he is overweight.  I search for Comm Gems on him, but he doesn’t have any.  They are probably in his office, or his bedroom.

“Now, earl, let’s start talking.  I don’t enjoy torturing people, but I am actually good with causing pain, as your…  workers can atest.”

He turns around and looks at me, still sitting on the floor.  The cave is now too dark for him to see anyone, so I cast a tiny light spell, closer to the opening of the cave.  The looks at the unconscious operative, and then to the other side, to the couple.  The couple nod their heads intensively.

“I also know when you are lying.  Again, you can check with your workers.”

The couple nods again.  The earl starts to calm down, actually.  His breathing, that was shallow and fast when he first landed here, starts to get a little slower.  I think that my calm exterior is giving him the impression that he is safe.

“You seem a little calmer than I would expect. Do you realize the situation you are in?”

“Yes, I am a noble, and you are not going to dare put your dirty hands on me.”

I take a look at the spies, and they look positively terrified with this interaction.  The girls knows what is going to happen to this idiot.  I step on his foot, and break a lot of bones on his feet.  I stop his adrenaline from running in his body, he is now screaming and rolling on floor in pain.  I wait, until he stops rolling, and he sits, holding his now broken foot.  The other leg is extended.

“YOU FUCKING PEASAN…”

I break his shin, and he starts screaming again, this time he starts crying.  Once he recovers a little, I get closer, and he flinches.  I can see that the pain is starting to go down a little, so I heal him.

“In order to break it again, it has to be made whole, right?” and I smile.  Theatrics has a big effect on these things.  Now the earls face is a terrified one.  The calm is gone, and we can start our talk.  I look at him.

“Where do you keep intelligence you gather?”

“In my study.”

“All of it?”

“All of it.”

“You see, that was a lie.  Lying to me has a cost.” I stomp on his knee, completely crushing it.  Another spell to avoid the adrenaline.  He is yelling louder, I guess that this must hurt more.  I wait until the pain starts to subside.  I heal him.

“I haven’t even started.  I could scorch your feet until it is just bones.  I could go straight for your soul, and torture you in a way that your future reincarnations would remember it.  I said I don’t like to do this, but you are trash, and I need some information.  Now, where do you keep the intelligence you gather?”

“Th-th-there is-s-s a sec-c-crett  ro-o-om in m-y cel-lar.”

“Thank you.  Now, who did you tell about my travel magic?”

He looks at me, really scared this time.  He is starting to sweat.

“N-o one.”

“This time, I don’t even have to enhance my senses to see you’re lying.”  I get closer to him, he lifts his hand. “WAIT!” I scorch his feet with a simple flame spell.  The shoes are gone in the fire, and he is screaming even louder.  His head is completely red, snout is coming out of his nose.  This time, I don’t heal him.

“Again, did you tell it to the king, perhaps?”

He shakes his head.  I can see that he is being truthful.

“Your wife?”

He freezes.

“Any of your kids?”

He shakes his head.

“Anyone else?”

He shakes his head.

I extend my arm to the side, and Muninn lands on it.  “Show me their home, buddy.”  He opens his third eye, and I lower my head so that our heads touch.  The woman is in the bedroom, walking from one side to another.  I enhance my senses.  When she is about to make a turn, I open a portal behind her.  She does the turn, and turns into me coming out of the portal.  I pull her and close the portal.  Already inside Piotr’s cave, she starts screaming.

And then she stops a little and looks around herself.  There is a couple sitting against one wall, there is an unconscious guy against another, and her husband is sitting on the floor, now with his legs crossed, crying.  I slap her, so that she shuts up.  She falls to the floor.  The earl stretches his arm, but retracts it when I stare at him.

Now she is scared, and she keeps staring at her husband.  I take a couple of steps closer to her, and do a war cry with some mana.

“LOOK AT ME!”

Now she is shaking.

“Your husband likes to talk about his work with you, apparently.  He mentioned to you about a person with unusual magic.  In particular, the ability to travel.”

She nods, very slightly.

“Now, I am going to be honest with you, and you can check with your husband.  I can detect lies.”

She looks at him, and he nods, doing a sad face.

“And he can attest that, although I don’t enjoy causing pain, I am good on doing it.” 

He shows her his foot, with the very ugly burn on it.  Blisters have already formed, and there is still a very slight smell of burned meat on the air.  She starts shivering.  I can continue the questioning.

“Good.  Now, who did you tell that information to?”

“NNnnno ooonnnnee.”

She is not lying, good.  I don’t really expect to be able to close the whole circle, but I am going to send a message that it is not going to be tolerated.  At this point, I hear Piotr’s voice.

“My lord, the unconscious one has been wake for a little while.”

I turn to him, and he tries to start running, towards the end of the cave.  He doesn’t give one full step, I kick him in the legs, breaking them at thighs.  He screams, loud.  The earl’s wife covers her ears, and starts ugly crying.  The earl and the other two spies are just…  there.  They don’t react much, as if they now believe this is just a nightmare.

The last spy falls on the floor, sitting against the wall in the cave, with his hands close to his legs.  I check to see if it didn’t puncture his artery, but it didn’t.  It did make a mess in the muscles, though.  I give it sometime to let the pain subside a little.

“Really?  After all you have seen, after how I got to you, did you believe you would be able to just run?”

He looks at the earls feet, scared.  I get closer.  He tries to pull his legs in, but he can’t, because they are broken, and the pain shows in his face.

“Now, you already understand the situation, right?”

He stares at me gaping.

“YES OR NO?”

He starts nodding.

“Good.  Does the earl have the list of your operatives?”

He shakes his head.  Not lying.

“Where do you keep the list of operatives?”

He taps his head. 

“How many more operatives are there, trying to spy on me?  Who it is?”

“Just one…” He lowers his head.  “An adventurer named Richard.  He was supposed to get closer to one of your wives, but then he managed to get closer to you.”

That one hit me like a rock.

“Does he know anything besides what I told him?”

“Why would he?  He is supposed to give *me* information, not the other way around.  But…  He could have something I don’t know yet…  I can’t say for him.”

“Which number is him?”

“423.”

“Very good, thank you.  Now, if you excuse me.  Oh, by the way, for the newcomers; please don’t try to escape.  Piotr is watching.” 

I turn to Muninn.  “Can you keep a pair of eyes on Richard?”  He caws.  I put on my stealth spell, and open a portal to the earl’s study.  I open the door slowly, and a guard is just outside his door.  He looks inside, I put him to sleep and place him inside the study, with a silence spell around.

I go to the cellar.  I should have asked a map of the house.  I get back to the study, and portal myself back to Piotr’s cave.  I get closer to the earl, that is now together with his wife.

“How do I get to your cellar?”

“The door to the cellar is in the kitchen.  The end of the kitchen has two door, one to the right, the fridge, and one to the left, with stairs, going down to the cellar.”

“Thank you.”

It feels weird saying thank you in this situation, but then everything feels weird in this situation.  I put my stealth on, and I proceed to get to the cellar.  I inspect the mana around, looking for some magical device that would allow a secret door to open, and I find the mana strands around a specific bottle of wine.  The label on the bottle is ‘Letni, year 14’.

I pull it softly, and I feel a little tug on the mana.  The shelf slides to the right, revealing a secret room.  I come in, and it closes behind me.

There are several bookcases, and each one of them full of material.  There is also a desk and a chair.  I put everything in my holding bag.  Then I start tapping the walls and floor, to check if there any other hidden places, but nothing comes up.

I open a portal home, and start walking towards it, and then close it.  I go from there straight to Edwards.  When I get close to the front gate, the guards see me, and immediately open the gate, with urgency.  We go to his study.  He is sitting behind a desk.  I am gestured to come in, and the guard and the butler leave the room.  He places a silence spell.

“Any good news?”

“A lot of news, actually.  Yes, the earl was involved, he told his wife about my thing.  He has a storage for intel in a secret room in his cellar. I have the material that was there in my holding bag, I am imagining that we could do the same thing we did with the Holy Kingdom’s.  Are you interested?”

“Of course, are you kidding?  How could I not be.”

“Where can I dump it?  And them?”

“Them?”

“Yes, I imagine you may want to interrogate them as well.  I have the couple of spies I had mentioned.  You said that you don’t need them, but I don’t know if killing them before questioning the others is good or bad for the questioning.  Then you have the earl, his wife, that is only alive because you are going to question the earl.  She is to die as well.  Then you have a mid level one, that has some 30 operatives working for him, and he knows their identity by numbers.  Look at this.”

I place the bag with the Comm Gems on the table, and Edward picks one, with a number.  415.  He looks at me, and I continue the explanation.

“He said that the spies’ identities are only in his memory, and I believed him…  So…  Where do you want me to put the things and them?”

“Follow me, please.”

We go down to Edward’s dungeon.  He gestures me a room, and I drop the bookcases, table, chair.  We then keep moving, up to a group of cells.  I go close to the biggest one.  A guard down there opens the door for me, I enter.  I close the door.  I open a portal, and then I bring the people through the portal.

Once they see where they are, their position changes to one of relief.  I leave them, and I get back home.  Time for some sleeping, it is way too late in the night.  I shower, and go to bed.

Next morning, I wake up to an empty bedroom.  I think that I overslept a little bit.  I get up, and I go down for breakfast.  The girls are all at the table.  Rudolph is at the room, almost shining.  It looks like he just got back the years he had lost over all the confusion.

I sit down and have some food.  I am thinking that we have a problem to solve here.  I have to make sure that my people’s family are safer.  Most of them live in a poor part of the town, they can’t afford anything in the merchant district or noble district, and that makes both them and me vulnerable to something like this incident happening again.

“Rudolph, how does the emperor and the duke avoid the issue that happened with your family?”

“The servants have live-in arrangements, lord.”

“And we don’t?”

“No, s-lord.  This mansion was the property of a noble that didn’t care for that.  He didn’t care much for the help.”

I sigh.  “It is sad that something like this had to happen for me to realize this issue.  Rudolph, please let me know about stuff like that in the future.  I really want to be able to take action before any problem arises.  Do we have space in our plot of land for some servant housing?”

“We do have the space, lord.  This mansion is actually thin, not very deep.  It looks a lot bigger on the outside than it is.  The back garden is not actually visible from outside, so it is a simple one.  We only started regaining it from wild plants.”

“So, basically, this mansion is mainly about appearances?”

“Yes, lord.”

I giggle a little. Just because this is unexpected. It is so Arthuria style.  I am thinking of construction, I cannot take my mind off the dwarves.  They are masters at that.  Perhaps I could hire some of them.  I wonder how much it would cost.

“Rudolph, how may of the crew have family members?”

“Most of them, lord.”

“Ok, got it, we need 23 houses.”0

“Lord, generally a room is provided, not a house.  The back yard may be large, but it will not fit 23 houses.”

“Don’t worry, I am starting to come up with a plan.  I am going to check on what can be done.”

“Thank you, lord.”

“No problem.”

After breakfast, I go to Edward’s.  I have to find out if I can build a living complex behind the mansion, and usual costs.  I am taken to his study.

“Good morning, friend.  We are still going through the intel you provided.  Is there anything I can help you with?”

“It’s ok, nothing too big, actually.  Can we sit down for a couple of minutes?”

He gestures me to the couches, and I sit on one of them.  He sits on the other one.

“Do you want anything to drink?”

“Not really, I am good.”

“Ok, let me get a drink for myself.” He giggles.  “More often than not, whenever you knock on my door, a bottle goes down the drain…” And we laugh open heartedly.

“I really hope this time it is not much the case…  Anyway, now you know what happened, with Rudolph’s family, and I was thinking of building some servants lodge behind the mansion.  We apparently have the space.  Am I allowed to that in that property?”

“Didn’t I mention to you that the property is yours?  You can do whatever you want with it.”

“Do you have any idea on what that would cost?”

“It depends so much…  You would have to check with a crew, actually.  I can suggest one if you want.”

“No, thank you…  I think I can get a nice crew on my own.”

“Really?  You are not going to bring dragons in the city, are you?”

“No, I will be bringing dwarves in.”

“Dwarves?”

“Yes, those guys are master builders.  Do you have any idea?”

“No?  No one has?  We only know about their metal work, that exceptional.”

“I can agree.  I got a katana made for me.”

“Can I see?”

“Here.”

I show him the katana.  I have a little nostalgia, he has the same pair of eyes that he had when I showed him the dragon map, or Opal’s sculpture.

“Is this sharp?”

“Very.  And there is the possibility of making it sharper, by adding mana in a special way.”

“Can I see?”

“Sure, do you have any rock big rock around?”

“It is a pity we are not in the schools, I still have a couple of menhirs there…”  He actually hits me with a puppy face.  “Can I ask the carriage?”

I sigh.  I pick up the girls Comm Gem, and tell them that I am going to the school with Edward, but they don’t fancy coming along.  Only Muninn and Huginn are accompanying me right now.  Other than Edward, of course.

We get to the command school, and he is walking with a brisky pace.  It looks like a kid that is going to test a new toy.  We go through several corridors, until we get to a deposit that has some menhirs in there, similar to the ones that were used in the entrance exam.  Edward gets close to the first of them, and takes the sword out of the scabbard.  He looks at the blade.

“What was used on this?  Even the blade is simple, yet…”

“The core is made from adamantite.  There is an outer shell that is made with a magic of mine.”

“May I?  I don’t think I would be able to afford something like this if I broke it.”

“Just go wild.”

I can see that he is pretty good with reinforcing himself.  He puts all his strength, and he makes a gash on the rock, the sword cuts 2 feet of rock, then stops.  Of course, the whole menhir is around 5 feet at this point.

“Wow…  I didn’t expect this.  This sword is definitely the best sword I have ever seen.  What happened to your previous one, by the way?  I know it was exceptional already.”

“That one…  It broke during the dwarves’ trial.”  I giggled, remembering that it became dust. “Now, let me try something…”

I grab the sword by the handle, and I pour the mana, making it vibrate.  I handle it back to Edward. 

“Be very careful with that.  Try again.”

“Ok.”

He swings again, but this time the katana goes from one side to the other.  The lack of resistance makes him loose his balance, and he falls to the floor, right where the top of the menhir is going to drop.  I pull him by his feet, out of the way.  He drops the sword there.  The top of the menhir falls on top of the sword, and the sword gets embedded into it.

He smiles at me.

“Thank you, friend.  I had no idea.”

He stands up, and sees the sword embedded in the stone.  He tries to pull it out, but now it is stuck, the vibrating mana is already gone.

“What did you do to it?”

I just smile.  He just has a congratulations face.  He picks the scabbard that I am holding, puts the sword in it, and handles it back to me.  Then he goes on to examine the cut in the menhir.  The stone is smooth, the edge of the cut even sharp.

“That was definitely worth the trip.”

“I am glad this made you happy.  Would you have any issues with me bringing in some dwarves to do the building for the servant’s residence?”

“None at all.  Now let’s escape before my secretary finds me here.”

“Sure.”

We go back, and I get back to my home.  The girls come to greet me.  Cecilia in particular.  I can see that there is some mischief in her face.  As always.

“So, what did you guys had to go to the school for?”

“I was showing him the new katana.”

“Oooh…  Boys measuring each other’s… Swords…”