The Quantum Wanderer

We arrive at the estate, and when the girls hand me their coats, I can see the butler’s jaw dropping. I store the coats in the holding bag. He takes us to a living room. I see that the dragonesses are not really too enthusiastic about the whole dinner.

“Girls, why the long faces?”

“I am sorry, my lord, I know that we are supposed to always support you, but…” Opal starts. Aquamarine is the one the continues.

“You got us used to dragon and kraken, my lord… Now we have to go back to… Fenrir? Perhaps something like that?”

Akiko hears that, but she pretends she didn’t. I could see her heart beats change with the news, and the eyes bulge. I think we kind of messed up here.

We meet Julian’s family, and the father barely look at us. The mother looks at us, and she covers the lower half of her face with a fan. I can feel the poison from her eyes, though. Hikari hugs her mother and Julian comes closer, to chat with us. He compliments the girls on their appearances, and congratulates me on such beautiful wives.

We talk a little bit about generic subjects. One of the is the dwarves’ exodus, the stuff that happened Esdohr. I mentioned the monster culling quest that was issued throughout the whole guild, since this was not really a secret thing.

Julian’s family wasn’t really all that informed, there was not much to gain here. They didn’t worry about spies or protecting themselves, they were just obedient to higher nobles. They didn’t have much politics knowledge. The marquis that was bothering me was their boss, apparently. I may have made a mistake using the expensive stuff here today.

We sit while talking. The butler starts serving the wine, there are two bottles. He picks one and opens it. He pours wine for Julian, Julian’s father, Julian’s mother and Julian’s brother. He then picks the other bottle, and starts pouring for us. He pours for Hikari, Akiko, me, Cecilia, Ruby, Opal.

“YOU DARE?” Opal shouts, while holding the butler by the neck. I immediately cast a silence spell. After a few seconds, due to the shock, Julian’s father stands up and shouts.

“WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU’RE DOING?”

The butler is squirming in Opal’s right hand. She is not even faded with it. She looks at me.

“The wine is poisoned, my lord!”

“TAKE THAT BACK, BITCH!” Julian’s father screams. I grab her glass, and move to his side.

“Fine! Just drink it, and we will surrender.” I have a smirk on my face. That makes him even more decided.

“Henry! Listen-“

“Shut the fuck up, woman! Give me that!”

He takes the glass and drinks it. The whole thing. Then throws the glass on the ground, as a display of strength.

The two guards that were by the door finally react. They are trying to circle us, their spears pointing at us. They are waiting on Julian’s father’s orders. While Henry’s father are looking at me defiantly, his wife’s eyes are starting to shine. I see a tear forming. The very next second, as if by magic, the other dragonesses are around us, smirking at the guards. I can see that they were expecting a lot of things, but not a smirk.

Henry’s expression starts to change. He puts his hands over his stomach and his throat. He pukes blood. He looks at his wife with a surprised expression, and falls to the floor. He tries to scream from pain, but there is too much blood on his throat. He is shaking, his bladder gives out. He is rolling around. He starts puking a bloodied foam as well. That thing was nasty.

I side step immediately to the door, closing it. A little bit of earth magic makes it stuck.  The guards start to sweat when they notice that I was somewhere, now I am somewhere else. A reality that should not be. They are not really strong even for this world, with their levels almost forty. And now they see stuff that should not be.

They are looking at the person dying on the floor.

“YOU MONSTER! LOOK WHAT YOU DID! THAT WAS SUPPOSED TO GO TO THE BASTARD!”

I don’t quite understand what she is talking about. I shrug, and I extend my mana sense, to see if there was an alarm in place. Things are apparently going well. My mana senses also inform me that there are two souls in Hikari’s body. One is the normal one, anchored to the backside portion of her neck. The other one… in her belly.

“Hikari… Are you pregnant?”

She rubs her belly, and smiles in spite of the crazy situation around us.

“Good for you… Now… We have a situation…”

The guards turn around, and point their spears at me.

“That was a bad idea, boys.” I cut their lances and sheath the katana back before they can realize what happened. I kill them both with their own spears to the heart.

As they fall to the floor, I keep walking calmly forward. Julian is at Hikari’s side, and he grabs her hand, positioning himself close. I take another step, and he puts a dagger to Hikari’s throat. He has a glazed look.

“Stand back! Stand back, or I will kill her! I know you care!”

“Julian, she is your wife! Pregnant with your kid!”

“PROMISE YOU WILL LET US GO! They are my family… Promise me you will let my mom, my brother and me go, or we will all die together!”

“Julian…” Hikari begs.

“Shut the fuck up! It is your fault for bringing him in!”

All the eyes on the room were on me. People were expecting my reaction. The dragonesses were waiting for instructions. Julian’s mom and brother are waiting for a decision. Henry finally stops breathing. It took several minutes. I look at the corpse, it is a mess. That death must have been painful to say the least.

I always get amazed how people don’t pay attention to people that they are not focused on. I tilt my head. The reason I don’t end up too bored is that I am always researching, always trying to improve on the spells I have.

So now Julian’s dagger is in my hand. I just transported it, using the same quantum probability trick I used on myself to transport myself immediately. Julian closes his hand, and it is now empty. He was about to say something when Akiko’s shirasaya sliced his throat. Julian’s blood gushed over Hikari, that started crying out.

The dragonesses were already around Julian’s family. I nodded, and both died with a dinner knife on the top of their heads. Hikari was now horrified. Akiko tried pulling her hand, it didn’t work. Akiko slapped her in the face, she got a little more malleable.

The inn is too close for a direct portal. I open a portal Drakonia’s beach, and another one from there to our room in Akiko’s room.

“Let’s wash up any blood and go back to the mansion, that way we can create an alibi.”

Akiko nods, and takes Hikari by the hand. Cecilia looks at me, and I nod. She goes with them to help. After a quick interval, they are in new clothes, and we go as a group to the mansion.  There are more guards in front of the gate than usual. We arrive, and one of the guards is doubting his sanity.

“Lady Hikari… Weren’t you at home?”

Akiko is holding her straight, and answers for her.

“No, she was picking us up, since it is the bride’s friends dinner, you know. Now take us inside, we are excited with the dinner!”

“Oh! I am sorry, but… Something happened.”

“What do you mean, something happened? Call you superior here, NOW!”

Akiko deserved an Oscar. Soon the captain of the guard comes around. I can see that he doesn’t expect us to be at the gate.

“Lady Hikari, lady Akiko… I thought you were inside already?”

“Do I look inside, captain?”

Her strong tone gets the response we want.

“No, madam. I am sorry. There was a… crime. The scene is a little… troublesome. Probably some assassin. The whole family was… brutally… “

When hearing this, the whole scene must have come back to Hikari, that started crying and balling. Ugly. Tears, snot, falling on her knees. The captain and the guards are impressed with the reaction. One of the guards whisper to a colleague.

“Man, do you think my wife would ever cry like that for me?”

Of course, that doesn’t reach Akiko’s and Hikari’s ear, they don’t have the levels. I have a very hard time keeping a straight face.

We go inside, they take us to the dining room where everything went down. Hikari doesn’t have to fake shock once she is exposed again to the scene. She shakes, tears roll. Akiko pulls her in, and she cries on Akiko’s shoulder. I don’t display much emotion. I am not faking, I don’t care about the people dead on the floor.

The captain of the guard turns to Hikari.

“I am sorry for exposing you to this grueling scene, baroness. We need your permission to clean this up.”

Akiko turns to the captain of the guards.

“You may clean this up. No sense in keeping this. Let’s proceed with the normal funerary rites.”

She pauses for a minute.

“Captain, neither the baroness nor myself are already acquainted with the other aspects of this… Who do we talk to to get the affairs in order?”

“The young master was just getting the affairs in order. You have to talk to his personal advisor, Jean Luc.”

“Alright, thank you. I am going to bring my daughter to sleep in my inn, I will have you provide some guards for security. We don’t feel safe, besides the… more obvious reasons…”

“Sure, ma’am.” He pointed out to four guards that escorted us to the inn.

The guards stayed outside Akiko’s room while she tried to calm Hikari down. It was a tough night for both of them.

Next morning, we are having breakfast. Akiko comes to the restaurant to have breakfast with us, she drags Hikari with her. Hikari looks beaten up. Her eyes swollen, she did not care well about herself this morning. Akiko is all over the place, guiding Hikari every step of the way. Akiko is the one to start the conversation.

“Good morning, honored guest. How was your sleep?”

“It was good, thank you. Hikari, are you ok?”

She shrugs.

“We are going to be fine, honored guest. I have to thank you for saving our lives. Again.”

“Sure, no problem. Are you going to use the day to put the affairs in order?”

“Yes, honored guest. I have to see that there are no issues with the baronage succession. It may get kind of tricky.”

“How so?”

“The natural heir is the baby inside Hikari’s belly. But there are always a second son of a cousin somewhere that may dispute this. And a lot of noble’s issues are solved with people’s knowledge. Each noble has his or her own small army. But if you go against someone that has uncles, aunts, cousins in the right places, it makes it hard for you to defend your interests. We might just get lucky, though.”

“This world is kind of cruel on the weak.”

“That is very true, honored guest. Worst case, though, is that we loose the baronage, and we are not that attached to it.”

I shrug. That is actually true. One can just give up something that one is not attached to. They lived their whole lives on the hospitality industry. The baronage might be a good thing, but it would not be a need.

 I am thinking if I should help them, and how that help would be. After breakfast, we go to a beach as usual, I ask the girls to go to one in Buzios. Once we are settled, I put a silence spell around us, and I do a call to Edward.

“Good morning, friend! How are you? Where are you guys?”

“We are spending the week in Shoria. Right now we are in a neighbor town, called Buzios. You should come here, it is really nice.”

“I would love to, but the trip there would be a long one… Even using boats, it is a two week long trip. Unless someone, you know, decided to lend a hand…”

I laugh at the self invitation. He does so too.

“Sure. We can talk the details later.  There are some other options as well. Any way, I was wondering if you could help me with something.”

“Sure. What did destroy this time? Who did you kill?”

“Why do you assume that I killed someone?”

“It seems to happen a lot. Did you really kill someone?”

“Well… A baron’s wife tried to poison the girls and me. That didn’t… go well for them.”

I give a brief pause, so that he can stop laughing. Then he stopped.

“Wait, did you say you are in Shoria? Are you friends with the widow?”

“Yes. Not like she knows all my secrets, but I have helped them in the past. Do you remember the mother and daughter that the guild helped relocating?”

“Them?!?”

“Yes. The daughter started dating Julian, the baron’s son. The brother tried to have both of them killed, I intervened. Julian became baron. Then mother tried to poison us during nuptial bride’s friend’s dinner. You know, the usual.”

Both of us laugh a little. Why does everything end up so messed up? I probably should pray the gods for a calmer life.

“Well, you may have a problem in your hands. I have received a report that there may be some conflict in the area, meaning that there is some noble backed supposed heir feeling entitled.

“Tell the mother and daughter to delay the funeral as much as they can, no matter what pressure they receive, but in a polite way. Put the bodies in an ice crystal, to preserve them, and put them on display or something. That is going to buy some time.”

“Time for what?”

“There is not much you can do without raising a lot of flags, but Anthon and me might be able to help in this situation. Just tell them that you need two weeks.”

“Alright, thank you.”

“No problem.”

After finishing talking to Edward, I turn to the girls.

“Girls, I think that I am going to get back to Shoria. I have to relay a message to Akiko and Hikari. You can just enjoy the beach and go there when you feel like.”

Cecilia smirks, so that I know that she is joking.

“What? Are you too good for us now?”

I smile at her.

“Never. And you, behave. There are a lot of men wolving around. I think they can smell the dragon meat.”

Cecilia and I laugh. Opal smell her arm and waves her head from one side to the other. I think that Cecilia is going to explain the joke once I am gone. I check that they have their holding bags in place. I go to a bar nearby, where I can change my clothes, and after that I hit the road.

The hard thing about this is finding the right pace. I have no idea how fast mithril adventurers can run. Right now I probably could break the speed of sound without enhancement. I am going to use the spy apprentice. Since he is reasonably high level, I can run just a bit faster than he can keep up. This is going to be fun.

I start running at just double speed of a normal person. I say normal person, but I am trying for a one hour marathon, so that would be double speed of a highly trained marathon runner. I can feel the spy project is having no issues. Let’s double it. Let’s wait a little bit, he has to realize that I sped up. He is speeding up. I am just a little faster then he is now. This is good enough.

I arrive at the city, go for the baron’s mansion. I talk to the guards at the gate, and I am brough up to Akiko and Hikari. Hikari looks better, but she is a little scared with the situation.

“Good afternoon, honorable guest! What brings you here?”

I place a silence spell around us.

“Good afternoon, Akiko, Hikari. I got in contact with a friend of mine that is better attuned to nobles’ politics. He told me that he is going to help, but we have to delay the funeral for a couple of weeks. He suggested putting the corpses inside an ice casket, so that the populace can say their goodbyes.”

Akiko is thinking, Hikari is looking at me with tired eyes. I can see that is about to say something, but she holds it in. Hikari is looking at the distance, thinking about it.

“Did your friend give you a timeline?”

“He told me to hold the burial for 2 weeks.”

“This is reasonable, specially because we can say that we will wait for relatives to come. They would be traveling from far away. Are we not going to be in danger?”

“Probably not more than you are right now. I was told that there is a small military movement on some neighbors. They may be coming in to take the baronage by force.”

Hikari looks at me.

“What if we just give it to them? Won’t they be satisfied?”

Akiko was the one to answer. Hikari turned to face her.

“We might, but if someone is evil enough to take it by force, what will stop them from just sending some assassins when we are lazing around? It would save some possible trouble in the future for them.  That would mean a life of running. Perhaps not a life, but at least a couple dozen years.”

Hikari nods. Akiko looks at me.

“We are going to get a mage to encase the bodies in ice.”

“I can do that, if you want.”

“I would not accept that normally, honored guest, but right now I still don’t know the people to run to get things done.”

“No problem. Let’s go to the bodies.”

They took me to a room in the back, where the bodies were covered with a sheet. They had been already treated, so the wounds were sown close and received some treatment to look normal. I cast an ice spell, creating a parallelepipedon of translucent ice. I made the four shapes float, and we found a place by the ante chamber, just after the door. I placed a cold rune on the floor, that would keep ice from melting for a couple of weeks. I used a monster gem as a source of mana.

Akiko got to the butler, to get in touch with the guild to publish the news, and with the advisors to announce the display of the bodies so that people could say their goodbyes.  That would give them the time needed.

When this was all over, I just went to the inn, to wait for the girls. I decided to wait in the inn’s restaurant, drinking some tea. I let the girls know where I am through our Comm Gems. After some wait, the girls appear. Cecilia is apparently have a heated up discussion with Opal.

“… him!”

“What happened girls?”

Opal was the one to answer.

“I didn’t like the way the guy was looking at us, I wanted to dispose of him, but Cecilia said that you wouldn’t have liked that, my lord.”

I look at Cecilia, with an inquisitive look.

“The marquis’ captain.”

I laughed. I pull my chair back a little bit, and I slap it for Opal to sit on my lap. I hug her.

“Why did that get you angry?”

“I didn’t like the feeling of being looked by that… “ and she just shrugged. “Only my lord is allowed to look at us.” She pouts. She feels just so cute. I kiss her.

“Well, Cecilia is right about this one. I know it is a bother, but it is a small one, we can just ignore it. If we decide to kill him, then we will have to eventually wage war with several nobles, then we will loose some of the liberties we have right now. Stuff like going to the beach here, eating at a restaurant, enjoying the sweets. Do you understand what I am saying?”

“Yes, my lord, thank you. We really don’t deserve you.”

“I think that as well, my love.” I turn to the others as well. “My loves.”

They all stand up and hug us.  Opal goes back to her chair. We have our dinner, talking about the events of the day.  We retire to our room.

Next morning, we go to the restaurant for breakfast. After breakfast, we go home.