The Quantum Wanderer

“And just how do can you calculate this kind of thing?” Autumnstart asks.

“Well, for this case in particular, there is one that says that force equals to mass times acceleration. In this case, acceleration is how the speed varies, by amount of time.”

“Excuse me?”

“When you talk about speed, you talk in distance divided by time, right? Miles an hour, means the amount of miles you went through in an hour. Acceleration is the time you would take to reach that speed. As it turns out, gravity is generally constant.

“Of course, magic is there to allow us to change those rules. At least the numbers.”

I smile.

Autumnstart is looking at as if I had grown a horn.

“And you were learning this kind of thing.”

“Yes, I was going to be a scholar on that. Of course, I only shared the very basic of it right now. I am not going to bore you with additional theories. These things start simple, and all of a sudden you identify things in the math that look like they could not be; yet they are, and without magic.”

There is a long silence. Autumnstart looks from his cup to me. I enjoy my drink.

The bard, that has taken the stage, start his presentation.

“Lo behold, Age of the gods,

“When gods, dragons and humanoids

“Roaming the land, giving out peace…”

The song is about the former Holy Kingdom. How it started, and how it developed into a Crow Kingdom. How the crow queen was chosen among a large population because she was tested and deemed worthy.

I think that I may be a little more emotional than normal, but sometimes it happens. I look at my girls, listening to the song. Their attitude towards it vary a lot. The most common sentiment among the dragonesses is pride. Cecilia is just listening. If I had to guess, she is more of a ‘at this point, I just don’t care anymore’. Huginn and Muninn are just listening to the songs. Aquamarine is, however, trying to hide the fact that she is paying attention at me.

In one of her attempts to survey me, I smile back at her. She blushes.

The day goes by in a relaxing way. The fun songs being played, the beautiful people in the inn. My girls around me. I am happy.

When the bard finishes his songs, we applaud. It was really fun. He looks at us and bows deeply. I take a look outside, it is getting close to sunset, it is time to go back home. I take a look at the girls.

“Girls, I think it is time to go home…”

“Sure, my lord.” Opal agrees. The other girls nod.

I signal to Lyriel.

“Hi Lyriel, can we close the tap and have the small keg of wine ale?”

“Of course, my lord.”

As always, the branch starts growing from the table, and the seeds fall from it. Lyriel goes into the kitchen. After a minute, a male elf comes back, carrying this very small keg. It has cork close to the one of the ends.

At some point, we go back home for supper, we have some fun and retire for the day.

Next morning, we have breakfast. We are going to go to school.

The waitress comes to the table, to refill some of the cups. I turn to her.

“Hi… I am sorry, what is your name, again?”

“Lyriel, my lord.”

“Ok. Hi Lyriel, I was wondering if I could buy a couple of bottles of wine ale to take home.”

The girl freezes. She looks at Autumnstart, and he nods.

“Lord, the wine ale is stored in small barrels, we don’t have bottles.”

“How much can a barrel hold?”

“Each barrel weights 20 pounds. 10 of liquid approximately. “

“How much does it cost?”

She looks at Autumnstart again, he shakes his head. She looks at me and does the same.

“You guys are spoiling me and my family. Sometimes I feel like I am exploiting you guys.”

I smile a little, when I notice Cedro by my side. She holds my face in her hands. Her standing up and me sitting puts us on almost the same eye level.

“Don’t ever say that, big brother! You saved us from… From…”

For a moment, a tear made of sap forms on the side of her eyes. I pull my chair back and open my arms, she hugs me.

As of late, I have been feeling like I have been doing too much freeloading on the people around me. I wonder if this is a side effect to some of the boredom. I take a look around.

My girls, Huginn and Muninn are looking foundly on dryad. Autumnstart is shaking his head. I pat the dryad in the back.

“Everything is alright now, don’t worry… Big brother is here, and you can always message me through the birds. Muninn and Huginn will hear, and we will come running.”

The dryad cries a little bit in my arms. The room gets completely silent. After a moment, the bard starts playing a very soft, soothing song. Instrumental only, no lyrics.

Cedro gets calmer, she whispers in my ear.

“Thank you, big brother.”

She opens her arms, ending the embrace, takes a couple of steps back. She opens a smile putting her arms behind her back.  We hear the laughter in the wind. She then merges with the floor.

The bard clears his throat, and gets to singing something very light, with a fast rhythm. Between normal accords, he taps his lute, it makes for a very animated sound.

The elves start getting out of their stupor little by little. The waitresses serving the room pick up the pace, the drinks keep getting served faster. I looks like a dwarven inn by now. This inn is generally a lot more composed than the Ildra’s. I like the new energy. We enjoy our time.

After a couple of hours, the music gets slower again. It is time to end the party, apparently. We all get ready to get home. I turn to the girls.

“Girls, it is time to go back home, right?”

They all nod. Some take a couple of seconds longer than others to nod. I signal to our waitress, she approaches the table.

“Lyriel, can we have a keg of wine ale?”

“Of course, lord!”

She goes into the kitchen. A couple of minutes later, she comes out, carrying the keg. It feels like it is close to a gallon, not very big. There is a rope around it, that helps carrying it around. I notice that close to the top there is a cork.

I thank her.

The usual branch comes out of the table, growing and then spamming the seeds that are used for payment.

“Thank you very much, Lyriel. As always, everything was absolutely wonderful! Thanks for the company, Autumnstart.”

“My honor, friend!”

I open a portal behind the table, and my group and I go through it. We arrive at home. I offer the keg of wine ale to Roberta, she opens her bag of holding. I put it inside.

The girls and I, accompanied by Muninn and Huginn, go upstairs to have a shower. We are going to have to wait for dinner.

After dinner, the girls and I have some fun and retire for the night.

Next day, we wake up and go down for breakfast. As always, Cecilia, Lucille, Charles and I are the first ones to finish eating first. Huginn, Muninn and the other girls eat a lot for their body size.

Cecilia was looking at me for some time. I look at her.

“Is there something wrong?”

“No. I was thinking about the stuff that you mentioned yesterday to Autumnstart. Is that the source of your magic?”

“Yes.”

“How do you go from calculating how much a pebble takes to fall to all the other stuff?”

“Well… There are different areas of study. That area we talked about I used to call mechanics. There is also study of light. And some others that are quite harder to explain, like electricity, quantum mechanics, relativism, chord theory, etc. There are a lot of different fields.”

She keeps playing with some of the food that is still in her plate.

“Is that what… you know… she used to study with that guy Ambrose in the command school.”

I laugh a little.

“Yes, but their knowledge is very shallow if compared to where I come from. The place I come from has no magic, so things have to be created that way, with natural knowledge, or science. There are all sorts of knowledge that they have here.

“What concerns me is that most of that can also be used to kill.”

“Like the thing Muninn used?”

“Yes and no. Muninn had to use magic to achieve it, but yes. He used this knowledge and magic to fire this on Angelica. In a land without magic, however, some other ways to destroy a city also exist. They are just a lot more cumbersome and involve an operation with several people.

“That’s why I would prefer to keep this kind of stuff just among ourselves.”

“How much stronger than that could you cast it?”

“I don’t know, I never really tried to cast that. I know what he used, but I didn’t do it myself.” I turn to the two brâns eating. “Muninn, how big do you think you could go?”

He stops eating then puts his beak up.

“I think I could reach a couple of kilograms if I tried, father.”

I turn to Cecilia.

“Basing on what he said previously, he could reach perhaps 500 times bigger than Angelica…? Of course, that would have a global impact.”

“What would happen?”

“There is a situation where if you have a big enough impact on the planet, enough dust raise to the atmosphere that it covers the sun. No sun, no heating. You get a very harsh winter everywhere. Even places that don’t have winter.

“On that situation, most life on the planet can die. There are reports of something like that having happened.”

Cecilia is moving her fork very slowly. I can see how her mind is all over the place.

“Yes, it is a good thing you didn’t spread this to everyone.”

I nod at her.

The girls finish eating. They go to their room in the dormitories, while I just go outside to meet Edward.

I wait for him close to our gate. He stops the carriage and opens the door.

“Good morning, friend. How are you?”

“Doing well. How about you?” I ask him, while I enter the carriage and sit down.

“Doing well as well. Anything new happening on your side?”

“On mine? Not really. What about on yours?”

“I do have some news about the Crow Kingdom.”

“Is it already getting known as that?”

“Yes. They have sent some correspondence to some countries already. Among them, of course, the Empire. They wish to start diplomatic relations.”

“That sounds good. What is the position of other countries?”

“Everyone is going to delay their response, probably. I think we are going to be the very first ones to recognize their country.”

“Do you think they are going to have issues with any other country?”

“I don’t think so. They are still getting their internal administration in order, and no one is going to risk attacking them. Specially since they are the only country with an actual, seen god protecting.”

“So the news on what happened is already spreading out?”

“Yes, pretty much. They already have a start of an army, that was created from some of the adventurers that stayed behind after their revolution.

“They have a new religion already that is spreading throughout the country. They now have to get their affairs in order. Set the government machine back to a functioning state. I have heard that they are quite competent at that, though. And the levels of corruption are really low. But we are only going to be able to check that once their government is stablished and stable.”

“So you received the notification from them. When does Anthon intend on recognizing them?”

“He is going to do that this week.”

“Hum. I thought he would like to take longer.”

“They still have a rather large population. Their civil war was actually very… Civil. There were no fields destroyed, the lower classes were excluded from the whole thing. They still have to get their nobles aligned, but for the foreseeable future, they can trade some stuff already. Mostly cheap stuff like food and simple goods.”

“What do you think Arthuria is going to do? I am a little concerned with them.”

“Arthuria currently does not have the resources to attack anyone. It is fighting an uphill battle against the demons. I don’t think they are going to recognize the country too soon. They would probably require some compensation for that. The other human countries would probably go along with us. Some may go with Arthuria.”

I think about the relationship between the nations.

“What relationship do you have with beastkin nations?”

“Right now, there is not much, to tell you the truth. The beastkin actually live a little far away from the Big River. The biggest truth is that we do have some relations with some of them, but not many. There is an underlying religious tension from most humans towards other races. The church spreads out a message that the planet is supposed to belong to humans.”

I sigh.

“And how is the church right now?”

“It is a mess, to tell the truth. On the good side, the church of Wrax is quickly taking over.”

“There is so much I have to understand about that. Does that church have a scripture?”

“For starters, there are several different branches, it is not centralized. Each construction is a different church, so things are a lot messier. But then the current churches of Nergal are currently like that as well.

“Some of Wrax churches are working with Sidhu’s books, actually.”

“Do they know that their book is coming from the demons?”

“Some of them do, and simply don’t care. There are two different groups that are deciding to not care about that. The first one is the true believers, since one of the messages passed is the respect for sentient races. Another group is the people that is tired of war. It has been used for a long time as an excuse to increase taxes, army conscription and population control.

“There are groups of self-proclaimed scholars that are studying that book. They are finding some hidden messages in it, apparently. Most of them agree that, although there has been a small direct interaction with humans, Wrax sees all races as equal, and he harbors no hard feelings towards humans. I mean, towards all humans… The Nergal people deserved it, in their own understanding.”

I just digest all the information. Perhaps I should get a copy of the scripture so that I could take a look at it.

“What countries do we have diplomatic relations with? I mean, what beastkin countries do we have relations with?”

“Lupinus Council, to our south, is one of them. The inhabitants say they are the children of the Great Wolf’s dream.”

“Are they prejudiced against humans?”

“Prejudiced is a strong word, but they are very cautious on foreigners. Specially humans. We do have some laws against mistreating other races, and we enforce them, but not all human countries are like that.”

I look out the window. We are getting close to the schools. I just let all that information settle.

Edward drops me by the Magic School, and goes his way towards the Command School, where his office resides.

I go to my classroom, and I meet with the gang. Muninn flies up to the beam he likes to nest in close to the ceiling.

“Marcelo! Good morning!”

“Good morning, Dedi! Guys…”

The others just do a short wave or nod their heads.

“How was the weekend?” Dedi asks.

“Very good.” I smile with a playful face. “I mean, come on, have you seen my wives?”

The guys laugh, Mayara sighs and shakes her head. I let the laugh die down a little.

“We like to fly around during the weekends, it is not uncommon to visit another city close by.”

“I wish I was that proficient enough with that school of magic.” Mayara says, clearly imagining all the traveling that she would do if she could.

“Don’t you learn that magic here?”

“No, it is too advanced.” Dedi says.

I don’t continue the conversation. I just might say the wrong thing.

While I am thinking what to say next, but professor Maggio’s arrival saves me.

The mandala class is a normal one. He teaches us some runes and provides some exercises with it. It feels like it is a mix of math and a programming language, but no quite. It is a little like music, where I could use math to describe it, but the language we use to write music does not have math explicit on it.

As soon as professor Maggio leaves the room, Dedi turns to me.

“Hey, I was thinking…”

“Yes?”

“Who taught you flight magic? It is a very advanced air school magic.”

I look at him.

“My flight magic is not really based on air magic. There is a component, though.”

“Really? What is it based on, then?”

“I know a little bit about gravity magic.”

He looks at me with a weird face. Chet laughs.

“He got you, Dedi. But you deserved it, you shouldn’t be asking these kind of things to adventurers. I heard that asking about an adventurer past is a taboo.”

I smile with a calm expression.

Shortly after that, professor Curie enters the classroom. Her class is just the average potion mixing. Today she is teaching the preparation of a paste to apply on wounds.

We go for our noon snack. We meet with the girls, the killing stares are a constant. It couldn’t be any other way, though.

The mana management class is a light one. The professor starts talking about increasing the absorption from the environment. It is something based in meditation. I don’t worry too much, since I have been working with stuff like that ever since I realized that a long time ago. This case in particular is quite the opposite as magic theory; I have a much better stablished mana format for doing that, based on those gems to keep monsters away, than the professor. He doesn’t realize the actual shape to improve it, so their way is by improving on the natural way. Meditation being used to induce a partial sleep state, and the recovery happens through the same way as if the person were sleeping.

It would be interesting for the average mage, though.

I look at the students casting one magic after another to bring their mana down, so I decide to sit this one out. It would bring a lot of eyes.

The professor doesn’t care about me sitting it out. In his words, “your money, your will”.

I smile. The students here, although most of them are around 15 to 16 years old, are really treated as adults. For better or for worse.

Even though the professor let me do as I will, he still glances at me once in a while. Not that it matters much. I just meditate lightly.

At last we have my preferred class, practical magic. The professor puts the students in the shooting range, throwing their magic against reinforced armors.

After he is done with everyone, he turns to me.

“Good afternoon, lord Marcelo. Come with me.”

He places me on a desk in the corner of the room.

“Can I see your progress with the drawing with both hands?”

I get two pieces of paper, and draw a simple house on both of them at the same time. The professor is looking at it.

“Not really a work of art, but enough to go to the next phase.

“You don’t have to actually trigger the spells, building up the mandalas should be enough. So your first task is going to be building two mandalas of the same type, one on each hand.

“Don’t worry about not being able to do this without a lot of training. This is a very large step.”

“How long does it take, generally?”

He laughs. He bows down, so that he can whisper to me.

“This part alone takes around 3 years. But then drawing simultaneously also takes a couple of years, and while you didn’t master it, you are ready to train the next phase. The whole thing would normally take around a decade, perhaps more.”

“Why is it so uncommon, then? 10 years training something like that is not a big investment.”

“You would think so, but that is the best scenario. Just doing that. Most people just end up not doing that. Casting two spells will eat twice the mana, after all.”

“How many can you case simultaneously?”

“Three.”

“Ok. Thanks.”

“No problem.”

I think about what he says. Given the amount of mana I have, I decide to cheat. First, I assume a position that I won’t have to change. Any small movement will feel strange for the people around.

I place a large chunk of mana into my brain.

Time slows down. A lot. I start my practice. I draw the mandalas very slowly. Right now I don’t even try to make them using fractals. Just two small mandalas.

Everything is blurry, straight lines are bent, the circle ended up an egg drawing. I sigh. The air around me is a little liquid like. I

I undo the mandalas and start again.

And again.

And again.

Hours pass, one attempt after the other. The stupid amount of mana I have decreases little by little, but the spells are on the cheap side, so I can keep casting.

Even like this, my mana goes down.

Hours go by.

Without moving my head, I take a look around. The professor is looking at me with the corner of his eyes, but he is the only one. The other students are just focusing on their lesson.

I open the one inch wide portal to the ley line in the ocean right above the back of my head. I absorb the mana quickly, I feel my mana flowing better due to the amount that I am dealing with. In a couple of minutes, I get more plasticity with it. I close the portal.

I keep working on the lesson. The straight lines are a little better, the circle is smoother. Just a little bit, but no one said this was going to be easy to learn.

The hours go by. I keep on practicing.

I am not really keeping a score on how much I dilated time, so I don’t know how long has passed. I slowly undo the brain enhancement, and time gets back to normal. Sound gets back to normal as well.

The kids are throwing their magic at the targets. Invoking the mandala while they whisper the spell.

I relax a little, and let time pass. I am really tired.

After sometime, the class is over. The guys and I leave the room. I get out to the front of the school, to get a ride with Edward.

When I arrive at home, the girls are already there. We go upstairs to clean up, and get back down for dinner. We talk a little about our day at the schools.

The week goes by. Due to the time dilatation during the practical magic training, I feel like I spent already years on multi casting.