The Quantum Wanderer

Next morning, after breakfast, the girls go to school, but Huginn says she is staying behind. At around 10 o’clock, Rudolph tells me that we have visitors. I leave my study. In the living room, I meet Addrianna, with Sophia, Caius and Cesar in tow.

“Good morning.”

I look at Huginn, she smiles. I turn back to them.

“Good morning. How can I help?”

“Oh, the children told me that lady Huginn had invited them for a play date with Rutra.”

“Sure, no problem. You already know the way, right?”

“Yes, of course!” Sophia exclaims. Addrianna smiles. Sophia starts dragging Addrianna by the hand towards the kitchen. She turns back once.

“Thank you, uncle!”

She turns back and the family disappears in the kitchen. I look at Huginn, she extends a wing forward, and a portal opens up behind me. I turn around. Rutra comes through, accompanied by one of my vestals. Sitra comes after them.

“Great Adventurer! I am your servant!”

The vestal throws herself to the ground, kowtowing. Her tail is shaking in a weird, excited way. Sitra is looking at everything around. I turn to the vestal.

“You can stand up.”

She stands up. She is biting her lower lip, looking at me. I continue.

“I assume you are here to escort the girls, right?”

“Yes, your godliness.”

“The kitchen is that way, the park is after it.”

The demoness nods at me slowly. She starts looking around, seeing what my home looks like. She sees the glass slab with the map from Drakonia. She stares at it. She walks slowly, she sees Opal’s statue on top of the fireplace. Her tail flickers nervously.

She forces herself to keep walking. She disappears behind the kitchen door. I relax. Muninn starts laughing. I turn to him.

“What?”

“Nothing, father…”

He keeps laughing. Now I am worried.

“Spit it out!”

Huginn is the one to answer.

“The smell of… Womanhood and pheromones is palpable father. Aunties are going to feel it too, once they get home.”

There is not much I can do right now. I go back to my study. I am entertained with the history volumes, when I hear a knock on the door.

“Come in!”

Rudolph enters. He closes the door behind him.

“Lord, can you please ask the visitor to stop disrupting the kitchen?”

“Is it the demoness?”

“Yes, lord.”

“Is she being rude?”

“No, but there are a lot of questions. Roberta is starting to get a little… frustrated.”

I go to the kitchen. The demoness is watching everything Roberta does from her shoulder. She is deadly focused on looking at the meal preparations. Roberta is making a face. I turn to Rudolph.

“Where is Addrianna?”

“She is in the park, but she is far from the kids. Lady Huginn is also in the park.”

I turn to the demoness.

“You, come here, please.”

The demoness notices that I am talking with her.

“Yes, your godliness. How can I serve?”

“I thought you were here to escort Rutra and Sitra.”

“I am.”

“Aren’t they in the park?”

“Yes, your godliness. But lady Huginn is there as well. It may be presumptuous of me, but lady Huginn already spoke for the young ladies’ safety. There is nothing that could happen to them with lady Huginn’s protection. And if something were to happen, I would not be the one capable of stopping. Besides, I belong to your godliness, body and soul. Learning about your godliness’s tastes is way more important.”

She had half a point. I decide to play a little with he situation. Almost Muninn style.

“Even if that were true, you are getting in the way. What would we tell our wives if their dinner gets delayed?”

“BY THE GREAT ADVENTURER!!!” She throws herself on the floor, kowtowing. “I am sorry, I had not thought of that possibility. I clearly deserve to be punished!”

“It’s ok. Stand up. You can stay in the study while Rutra and Sitra play with the other kids. Huginn is in charge of that, anyway.”

She stands up slowly, looking down at floor, with some deep sense of shame. Roberta starts noticeably pitying the demoness. She even pats the demoness on the head, and tells her that she would share some of my food preferences.

We go to my study. I sit on my desk, the demoness sits on one of the couches. She starts biting her lower lip again. I get back to the history book. I notice that Muninn, on top of the bookcase, is smiling. I look at the demoness. She has her hand under her skirt, she is masturbating on the couch. Not in an obvious way, something that a horny woman might do inside a restaurant, under the table, for the excitement.

Muninn start laughing.

“Father, you will have some explanation to do…”

The demoness jumps up, she hadn’t realized that Muninn was there. The bookcase is made of dark wood, and if someone doesn’t pay attention, his figure, on top of the tall bookcase, can go by unnoticed.

The demoness is frantic. I sigh.

“It’s ok, just sit down, no problem. Better yet, as a punishment, sit on the floor and stay there.”

It is a lot easier to wash a rug than to wash a sofa.

The time goes by, in silence. The demoness is looking around her, pacing the time. She is playing with her hair now. The hours go by.

There is a knock on the door.

“Come in!”

Rudolph comes in, he closes the door behind him.

“Lord, the girls are done playing. Everyone is waiting for you in the living room.”

Addrianna watches me arriving in the living room with the demoness in tow. She pays attention to her dress, but mentions nothing.

“Thank you for hospitality.”

“Sure, no problem.”

“Now, if you excuse me…”

The three of them courtesy me as appropriate. They go out the door, being escorted out by Rudolph. After they leave, it is the demons turn. Huginn extends her wing and the portal appears. The demoness turns to me, touching both index fingers.

“Doesn’t your godliness want to use his property?”

I smile at her.

“Not today. I will visit when I feel like it.”

She kowtows on the floor again, before standing up and leaving with the two girls. The house is silent again.

I go back to the study. The time for the girls to get back home approaches, I go to the living room and open the portal in their dormitory. The girls come through. Ruby has her arms behind her head, and a really bored. The other girls keep their normal demeanor.

Opal is the first one to smell the air. She turns to me.

“My lord, what happened here?”

Muninn laughing from the top of a bookcase does not help. Aquamarine is the one to continue.

“Wasn’t the agreement that you had us and the demonesses?”

Opal raises a hand. She keeps smelling the air.

“This was a demoness…” She smells some more.  “But there is no smell of my lord’s seeds…”

Muninn, from the top of the shelf, can’t help himself.

“Father, if you fart she is going to be able to tell what you ate.”

He starts laughing, together with Cecilia. The whole situation is too surreal. Opal is looking serious, but inquisitively, at the brân. She tilts her head to the right.

“You can’t? I expected more from you.”

Now I just lost it. Muninn is not laughing so much, but he is not even angry at the statement. I can see that Cecilia is uncomfortable with the situation. Opal and the dragonesses are still smelling the air. Opal is walking the corridor, following the smell. She opens the door to my study and gets two steps back. Cecilia is accompanying the group. I am behind all of them.

“What is it, sister?”

“The stench here is really strong. We should have to room aired.”

“What the fuck happened here?” Cecilia asks.

“The demoness was bugging Roberta, asking for what I like to eat, stuff like that. I told her to stay quiet, here.”

“And what were you doing?”

“I was reading the history book.”

Muninn decides to help.

“She was flicking the bean.”

“What?” Cecilia asks. They don’t have that slang here. I smile. Muninn starts saying the lines.

“Polishing the pearl. Diddle the skittle. Petting the cat. Finding Nemo.”

Huginn hits Muninn in the back of the head. Hard. Opal is the one that answers.

“She masturbated here.” She looks down at the carpet, there is apparently a stain that wasn’t there before. She steps on the stain, as if she were trying to feel it. I watch that.

“I told her to sit on the floor, she was going to leave that on the couch.”

Aquamarine was taking a look at the situation.

“That was actually thoughtful, my lord.”

“NO, AQUAMARINE! SHE SHOULD BE OUT WITH THE CHILDREN!” Cecilia shouts.

“That was a nice rug…” Shandon comments.

Cecilia points to Muninn, then to me.

“You  and you! Out! I want to have a word with sisters.”

Muninn lands on my shoulder. I go out the study, and sit on the couch. Rudolph approaches me.

“Should dinner be served, lord?”

“I… don’t know, Rudolph. Can you guys keep it warm a little longer? The girls are apparently angry with what happened today.”

“Are you going to be alright, lord?”

“I think so. I don’t know why Cecilia is so pissed. I am really innocent on the whole thing.”

“You think you are innocent? I just got expelled from the room, and I have nothing to do with this.”

Rudolph gives us a sad look.

“Very well, lord Muninn, lord Marcelo. Please try not to take too long, or the food may get dry…”

Rudolph bows down and leaves. With some hurry. I look at that. Then I look at Muninn, that looks at me too. We both start laughing on the absurd. I try to listen in, but there is no sound coming from the study. Cecilia probably casted a silence spell.

I relax, I start looking at the sunsetting sky out the window. It is pretty, with the moons starting to appear.

When night is full on, the girls come back from the study. I go running to the kitchen and ask them to serve dinner. Then I get back to the living room.

“Hi girls. How are things?”

Cecilia is a lot calmer. She is not completely calm, but she is calmer.

“I understand I may have overreacted a little bit with you.”

I smile at her.

“No harm done.”

“I have talked with the sisters, and understand that our situation is a little different than most. We are going to let this one slide.”

I scratch my neck.

“Did I do anything wrong?”

“No, you did good. It’s just that… This is not how the deal works. The demonesses are supposed to be available, but in the church thing, not our home. Our home is ours. This feels a little invasive.” Cecilia answers.

I take a look at the other girls, they are nodding.

“Ok. Noted. I will make sure something like this doesn’t happen again.”

“Thank you.”

“That being said, what do you say we eat?”

Their humor improves immediately. We wash our hands, of course, but we leave our bath for later. We sit around the table. A maid goes upstairs, and a minute later gets back into the kitchen. Charles and Lucille come out to the dining room shortly after.

The humor improves even more once the girls start eating. I don’t really understand why Cecilia is so pissed off. I am going to ask this later, this might not be the best moment. Huginn tells of how the kids’ encounter was like. They did have some fun. They talked a lot with the other kids that were playing there, learned a lot about how the life of the servants is like.

I am happy with the outcome.

Rajesh’s Comm Gem vibrates. I show the girls, they nod at me. I answer it.

“Good evening, friend! Do you have a minute? With you and your girls?”

“Sure. They are listening.”

We hear Aisha’s voice from the other side.

“Good evening. I want to apologize. The nanny we have sent to take care of the kids apparently did not follow her orders. I still don’t know the full extent, but she apparently left the kids to wander. I APOLOGIZE! IT WILL NOT HAPPEN AGAIN!”

The apology works, and Cecilia calms even more.

“Sure, we will be sending you the carpet for cleaning?”

“What do you mean?”

“The nanny masturbated in the study, in front of Marcelo, and stained the carpet… With liquids… I am sending it to you for cleaning later.”

After some silence from the other side, Aisha continues.

“I am terribly sorry, I hadn’t heard this level of severity yet. I cannot apologize enough. I realize this is a breach of our agreement, I just hope you can forgive me for not being able to foresee what happened. Please rest assured this will not happen again.”

“Thank you.” Opal answers. There isn’t a lot of gratitude in that sentence, though.

“Thank you for your understanding. Now, if you will excuse me, I have some things I have to fix on my side.”

The connection is gone. Spirits are even better on our side. I am happy that the girls are at peace now.

The following days come with no big surprises for us. The girls are at the school. Ruby keeps asking me to have another spar, she said she still didn’t know the extent of her strength. The girls follow on their routine, while I am reading about the continent history.

I manage to have an idea on how things got to the way they are now. The races have different degrees of aggressiveness. The humans are, in fact, the most aggressive ones, with the propension for building armies.

The beast kin races vary a lot. They are not even one species. The groups are so different that placing them under the same name is kind of unfair. This was imposed largely by Nergal’s church, that considers other humans closer to monsters than humans. They mostly don’t have cohesion to form armies, but they don’t need them. The cities are smaller, and they have a cast system, largely based on the species they descend from.

Strength is important, but cunning is also a factor in their position in the society. That’s how orcs, with a higher intelligence then most, managed to get high in their hierarchy. The orcs here are not monsters to be fought. They are highly intelligent and cunning humanoids. Some merchants don’t like to deal with them, because they apparently see everything and are always two steps ahead.

There are cities all over, most of them are focused around a particular species of humanoids, but they still contain people from other races. Pigs, for example, can be found in most cities, being the best merchants around.

The elves live in their forest, to the north. It is a very thick forest, and their way of life is apparently connected to the forest. More of a symbiosis than predation. They do understand their part in the system. They protect the forest against alien species, be them monsters, animals or humanoids. I can understand their point of view.

They do have commerce with other races, though not as much as dwarves. They can grow special plants, and they have a vast knowledge about potions, which they trade. There are tales of how magical they are, and of what happens to people that invade their land.

There are few humans around those areas, they are mostly merchants or run aways, just like there are few, comparatively, beast kins in human cities. The beast kin are mostly neutral towards the war with the demons. There are no beast kin in the demon army either, but there are not many beast kin in demon territory.

I look outside the window, the sun is again setting. The girls are getting home, and we have a normal dinner. Everything is back to normal. After she is finished, I ask Cecilia.

“Cecs, can I ask you something?”

“Of course, my villain…”

“Why did the whole incident yesterday get you pissed off?”

She looks at me for some time. She is evaluating something. She sighs.

“We have an agreement with Aisha. Those demonesses are not supposed to be part of our lives. They are supposed to be there, you can use them however you want. We don’t care. They are your toys. But toys are not supposed to give unsolicited shows. Toys are supposed to be on the shelf. You go there, you play with it, you put it back. This place is ours. This group here, on this table, is the most internal group. It is us against the world. There is no space here for a toy with illusions of grandeur.”

I take sometime to digest it all. She is right. I hadn’t seen any of this. I nod.

“Thank you. I… I hadn’t noticed this.”

Cecilia puts her hand on my face.

“I know.”

This whole thing ended up bringing us closer. A lot of unsaid things, all of them good, ended up getting out, we had a very chill night.

The next morning after I finish eating breakfast, I mention something.

“I was thinking… I have talked about Ruby’s evolution to Dávrin and Edward. I wanted to share that with Rajesh, Leopold and Andrew. If you don’t mind.”

“Why?” Aquamarine asks. “I thought the goal was to hide these kind of things, my lord.”

Cecilia raises an eyebrow, she looks at me. I am smiling. She sighs.

“He wants to brag.”

“Huh?” Ruby asks.

I was going to answer, but Cecilia cut me.

“He wants to show them that you scratched the armor, he wants to brag about your new strength.”

Ruby is happy with it. A lot.

“I will go with you, my lord. They may want another demonstration, like the one I did for the dwarves.”

“We are all going to go. If you don’t mind, my lord.” Says Opal. She seems a little off though. Cecilia turns to Opal.

“Don’t worry sister, the evolution is probably going to happen to you too…”

The dragonesses stop eating, stand up and do a group hug on Cecilia. She taps some arms.

“It’s ok. I don’t need it.” Cecilia says.

The moment is endearing. I wonder if she is somehow feeling bad for this. She enjoys the hugs, she doesn’t seem too worried about her apparent lack of power. After the hug, they go back to their seats, back to eating.

After they are done with breakfast, Ruby is staring anxiously at me. She is apparently happy to be displayed around as the powerful one. After breakfast, we dress casually. I inject some mana in Rajesh’s Comm Gem. I wait a little bit, until he answers.

“Good morning, friend! How can I help you?”

“Nothing important or urgent. I understand if you are busy.”

“For you, friend? Never. Is there something I can help you with?”

“No, just a social visit.”

“Well, this is a welcome surprise. When do you want to visit?”

“What time would be best for you?”

“Probably a little time for us to prepare.”

“Sure, what about some two o’clock?”

“That sounds great, friend. It will give me time to clear my schedule.”

The girls and I are sitting in the living room. We still have several hours till our meeting with Rajesh. Cecilia summons Rudolph. He comes shortly.

“Yes, lord?”

I point at Cecilia with my chin. He turns to her.

“Yes, lady Cecilia?”

“Did you roll up the stained carpet?”

“Yes, as per your orders, madam. Do you want it brought out now?”

“Yes, please put it here, we will bring with us.”

“Of course, lady.”

Cecilia has a happy smile on her face.

“Cecs, can you please go easy on rubbing Aisha’s face on the carpet? She is already fixing the problem. She doesn’t need to be educated, she is already probably as angry as you are with the whole incident. You can ask to rub the demoness’s face if you want, but you are going to have to ask for the demoness that was the nanny.

“Why don’t you ask Aisha how she is going to punish her, then you decide?”

“Ok…” Cecilia picks the rug, that is now tied on the middle, and she just pushes the rug into her bag of holding. For her, it is light as a sheet. She turns to Muninn.

“Sometimes he can be a joy killer, right?”

“You said it, auntie!”

We get out, we go visit some shops around. The girls keep looking at some of the cloths around. Cecilia asks about price, and she hears something she apparently doesn’t like. I come closer.

“What happened?”

“The prices increased. I had been thinking that I might have been mistaken, but prices have gone up by a lot.”

“Well, there is a war going on inside the continent. Something beyond the one with the demons. Perhaps that was the reason.”

We have some tea. I haven’t had tea in a long time, so I don’t really remember the prices. They seem a little high, but I always felt that everything in the noble quarters was expensive. We spent some hours. We talk about stuff in general, school.

We give it the necessary time. We go back home. It is time to visit Rajesh.