The Quantum Wanderer

The air is humid and earthy. The walls turn to stone as we go down. The stairs give way to a tunnel. At the base of the stairs, the strange custom of putting on sandals. Takeda puts his sandals on, while we put back our shoes.

Takeda pours mana in a different looking stone in the wall, and a corridor with bronze lanterns come to life. The corridor is going further down.

We all walk in silence for some time. The traps I sense have been deactivated. Matching this with the small surge of mana when Takeda injected it in the wall, I am guessing that what turned the light on probably disabled the traps as well. Not that it would make much difference.

The corridor ends in a T. It is impossible from our position to see the end of each path. We take our left. When we arrive at the first lantern to our left, Muninn clears his throat.

“We arrived.” Muninn announces.

Takeda takes a look at Muninn.

“What, would you rather we break it?”

Takeda takes a long sigh. He angles the lantern to the left. Behind it there is a slit, with a drawing in a small circle. He takes his katana, and inserts in the slit, until the tsuba, the hand protection, goes into stone. He turns the katana.

There is a noise of stone grinding against stone, and the wall starts to unassembled itself, the stones start getting back one by one, and accelerating. The visual is entertaining, like a powerpoint slide changing animation. The safe is finally open to us.

I extend my senses in the newly open chamber, I can’t sense any magical traps inside. I turn to Takeda.

“Thank you. You can hand over the texts.”

“I am sorry, guest, but the texts are inside. There are a lot of them. You can go through them if you want.”

“Fine.”

I enter the chamber. The light is not that good, it has the same lamp system as the corridor we came in. The girls enter with me, not really worried about the man outside.

I sense a ping of mana from him. He used some sort of communication device. I wonder if it is also a Comm Gem.

A big slob of stone in the ceiling, that right after the entrance, comes down, with a loud bang. I extend my senses to understand what happened.

This huge, room sized slab of hard rock was suspended by a cable. The cable was cut. The way this was designed looks like a single use device. After you cut the suspending rope, there is not really an easy way to pull the stone back up.

I take a close look at the stone, it has the same runes as the gems used to keep monsters away. Not a crystal, so it doesn’t store mana, so I didn’t sense it. If someone apply mana to try to apply a spell to it, it will try to absorb the mana  and use it to negate mana itself. Ingenious. 

Takeda’s voice comes through the stone, muffled but clear enough. “You will remain there. The inner passage will be sealed. No one will open it again.”

The declaration hangs in the stale air of the vault.

Then Ruby starts laughing, and this time the others join her. Shandon snorts. Aquamarine smiles with all her teeth. Even Opal’s mouth bends at one corner. Muninn makes a sound like a crow trying not to applaud. Not too different from when I did the last hit on my bachelor party.

I wonder why he isn’t remembering that I can just portal out of here. Cecilia did it right in front of him. I shrug. I cast a light spell.

 The place takes my breath away. The place is enormous. There are stands with armors of various kinds. Stands with different katanas. Stands with gold works of art that seem very detailed. Everything is very rich, one can almost smell the quality on these props.

Against the walls there are a lot of shelves, and a lot of different document types in it. On some shelves there are books, sown by hand, with characters that look closer to hieroglyphs than Japanese alphabet. Also several different scrolls, paintings, paintings divided into several scenes, telling a story.

Some of them very luxurious, some of them just artistical. There is a whole section that looks like sex positions.

And a lot of documents. Some of them just the scroll itself, some of them tubes of bamboo, painted on the outside, with a lid on one of the sides.

Ruby approaches the stone that is covering the exit of the place, and puts one palm against the stone, testing it with the casual curiosity of someone pressing a finger into bread. “My lord, do you want me to open it now, or after we are done?”

“Don’t worry about. Let’s just bag everything and go home. We can go through the stuff at home, after a meal.”

“What about these jewelry? They would look good on the mamas, papa.” Muninn says, with a malicious smile. “After all, he is assuming that we are dying with them  in our graves, right?”

I scratch my chin. Takeda managed to tire me with this last tirade. Even if a stupid one.

“Fine. Let’s get everything. Shelves first,” I say. “Keep anything fragile together. Boxes whole. Scroll cases whole. If it looks ceremonial, it goes in. If it looks like a receipt for rice taxes from a hundred years ago, it also goes in. I am not sorting the goddess’s filing system just because a man outside thinks a door is an argument.”

“Shelves too, my lord?” Opal asks.

I look at the rows of fitted wood, the brackets, the little carved dividers, and the neat labels attached to them. Sorting all of that later would be easier if we kept the structure intact.

“Shelves too,” I say. “It is easier.”

Ruby brightens at that. Shandon braces one hand against the stone wall and pulls an entire section free with the careful delicacy of someone plucking fruit. Aquamarine takes the next one, brackets and all. Opal marks which shelves came from which wall before passing them into the bag. In moments, the vault is not merely being emptied; it is being disassembled.

“Ruby,” I say without looking up.

“Yes, my lord?”

“Leave the door alone.”

She looks offended. “I was going to punch it.”

“Also no.”

The last thing left is a pedestal, in the middle of the chamber. It is not large, but the stone under it is covered in old wards, not traps exactly, more like prayers taught to hold their breath. I study them for a moment, then wrap them in my own mana and lift the entire pedestal free of the floor.

The chamber shudders.

“That was probably important,” Huginn says.

“It is still important,” I answer, sliding the pedestal into the bag. “It is just important somewhere else now.”

When we finish, the safe looks absurd. Bare stone walls. Bare stone floor. Bare stone ceiling. No boxes, no scrolls, no tablets, no pedestal, no shelves, not even the little wooden brackets that had once told people where order belonged. A secret vault stripped with such speed and neatness that it almost feels rude.

I close the bag and open a portal to my study.

Warm lamplight appears on the other side. The smell of home spills into the sealed chamber: wood polish, paper, familiar air, and somewhere farther away, the kitchen. Cecilia is there already, standing with one hand on Akiko’s shoulder. Akiko looks up as the portal opens, and the dread in her eyes becomes confusion. We all cross the portal.

“That was fast,” Cecilia says.

“He locked us in,” I say, stepping through. “It was adorable. So we stole the room.”

Ruby comes next, still looking back over her shoulder at the stone door with deep regret. “We did not even get to break it.”

“You can write it a letter later,” Shandon tells her, following with Aquamarine and Opal.

Muninn lands on the desk, shakes dust from his feathers, and looks entirely too pleased with himself.

Huginn turns toward Akiko. “We have the texts. Also the boxes. Also the shelves. Also, if father had been slightly less restrained, part of the wall.”

Akiko stares at my bag of holding as if it has become a shrine, a crime, and a miracle at the same time.

Rudolph arrives before I can decide where to begin. Of course he does.

He pauses at the doorway, takes in Cecilia, Akiko, the girls, Muninn and Huginn, my bag, the dust, the expressions, and the faint smell of old stone. His eyes linger on Akiko for a moment, then on the bag of holding, then back to me.

“Lord,” he says, with the careful calm of a man who has decided that asking the wrong question might create more work. “Will we be receiving guests for the evening?”

“Yes,” I say. “We are spending the night here. Akiko too. Please let the staff know. Supper for everyone, and rooms prepared if they are not already.”

“Of course, lord.” Rudolph bows. “Will there be any special arrangements?”

I lift the bag slightly. “We need to empty this somewhere large. Very large.”

Rudolph does not ask what is inside. I admire him for that. His gaze only flicks to the bag once.

“The ballroom, lord,” he says. “It is the largest room in the house. I will have it cleared immediately.”

He turns and leaves with purpose, already issuing instructions before he is fully out of sight. His voice carries down the corridor, controlled and efficient.

“Maria, prepare the ballroom. Clear the center and cover the floor. Roberta, inform the kitchen that supper will include Lady Akiko and that the household will remain in service tonight. Send word to the laundry. Fresh towels. Extra lamps. No one enters the ballroom without permission once Lord Marcelo begins unloading.”

Footsteps scatter through the house. Doors open and close. Somewhere below, a maid answers, “Yes, Mister Rudolph!” and another voice repeats the order farther away. Within moments, the house changes from evening routine to organized readiness.

Akiko finally blinks. “Honored guest,” she says slowly, “how much can that bag contain?”

“Enough,” I answer.

Muninn hops along the desk. “That is father’s humble answer. You should see the face of disappointment he caused on master Brokkr. The best bag of holding in existence looks like was sown by a five year old. I think he felt actual pain.”

Muninn was laughing at his own joke.

By the time we reach the ballroom, the staff has already transformed it from an elegant space meant for music and dancing into a receiving ground for stolen history. Rugs have been rolled away. Protective cloths cover the floor. Lamps are being lit along the walls, one by one, their warm light catching on polished wood, tall windows, and the chandeliers overhead. The room is enormous by any normal standard, but even standing in the doorway I am not fully certain it will be enough.

I start unpacking the shelves containing texts and books indiscriminately, so that all written material is taken out.

Akiko looks from Muninn to me. “You put the shelves inside.”

“And the brackets,” Huginn adds. “The labels too. He was restrained about the wall.”

The ballroom fills. Not messily, but impossibly. The largest room in the house becomes a map of the stolen vault. Opal insists on placing the shelves in wall groups, then lining the scrolls and boxes beneath the sections where they had originally rested. Akiko moves among them, sometimes stopping to touch a seal without breaking it, sometimes whispering a name, sometimes simply standing before an old box with her hand pressed to her mouth.

Once everything is set up, Rudolph approaches.

“Lord, is there anything we can do to help? Not all the household can read, but some of us can.”

“Thank you, Rudolph, but this is all in another language. I appreciate your offer, though.”

Rudolph places his right hand over his heart, bows slightly, and leaves the room.

I take a look through the window, and I notice that the sun is already setting. We should be getting ready for supper. I clap my hands only once.

“Well, it is time to wash up for dinner. Let’s eat something, and then we can start going through this amount of documentation.”

Akiko is looking nervously towards the ballroom. She starts moving towards the shelves, reading tags, opening parchments. Its like we are invisible to her. Cecilia touches her on her shoulder.

“Akiko, bear in mind that this is a long effort, not a quick one. It is better to take some rest here and there, to be able to keep the pace.”

She bows her head to Cecilia, and keeps glancing towards the shelves. Cecilia nods to her, and Akiko goes to the back of the room. The girls and I go to our room. We take off our armor and wash up.

We come down for dinner, and meet Charles and Lucille in the dinning room.

“Good evening, son.”

“Good evening, Charles.”

The girls do a slight head bow as customary, and we sit down to eat. As always, the big chunks of Kraken meat, with some day variance that Roberta comes up with. We follow through the normal supper. Opal insists on getting my plate ready, always adding too much food to it. It has been a lot of work to instill on her the idea that I will have so little steak. The other girls wait till my plate is ready before they start serving themselves.

I remember the one time where she was still serving me when Charles starting preparing his plate. Opal shot him a glacial look, and asked in a frozen way “Are you really going to serve yourself before the owner of the house?” The eyes turning to slits helped drive the point. Muninn’s laughter was entertaining. After Charles complied, she thanked him in an unnaturally sweet way.

“So, how is everything? Did you guys manage to get some clue?”

“Well, we are hoping to get a clue from some texts we got. “ I say. Opal handles me my plate. “Thank you, love.” She blushes.

At this point, I realize that Opal has been the only one doing this kind of thing. I turn to her.

“Why are you the only one that prepares my plate, Opal?”

She shrugs, in a regal way. She puts her hands together, delicately, and looks up.

“I think I am the only one that volunteers.”

I look at Cecilia, she very discreetly shakes her head. I let the subject go. Cecilia tells her father about some of the things that happened in the trip. The temple, the different architecture, the city in the middle of a river.

She tells about the encounter with the shogun, up to the tea party. She doesn’t really mention every detail.

We finish our dinner. Cecilia prepares a plate with food for Akiko, she is still in the ballroom, looking at the documents.

Rudolph is by the door.

“Good evening, lord. I tried to offer help, until I realized that I don’t quite recognize the letters.”

“It’s ok, Rudolph.”

Muninn and Huginn land on the top of a shelf, taking a look around. Akiko is kneeling, taking a look at a scroll.

Cecilia approaches her.

“Here, Akiko. You don’t want to, but you have to eat. You have to keep your energies.”

Akiko looks with a sad expression. Opal approaches her.

“We are here with you. We are going to find a way. We are going to make sure you can have your… your…” She turns to Aquamarine. “Sister, what is the [common] word for, “ then she growls.

Aquamarine thinks for a little bit.

“They don’t have a word for that, sister. Perhaps ‘vengeance for your child’ works?”

I turn to Aquamarine.

“Do you have a word in your language for ‘vengeance for your child’?”

“It is closer to ‘vengeance for your descendants’, but yes. Sometimes, when getting a new family, the new alpha kills the hatchlings; it somehow brings us in heat. The stronger minded of us don’t quite let it go.” Shandon explains to me. All this time with them, and there are still new facts I pick up here and there.

Akiko smiles just a little in spite of herself. She sighs and gets back to work.

We all split and start looking at the shelves. We can’t move too fast, some of the scrolls are frail. I look at the group, then turn to Huginn. Muninn isn’t by her side, though.

“Huginn, I was thinking… Do you think we could teach everyone here to read and write the south’s language? We could have more people helping.”

Huginn scratches her neck.

“I don’t think it is advisable, papa. Extending some knowledge is simple, it is more muscle memory than frontal lobe memory… A language is a big thing, it wires the way you think, it wires the way you ask questions. I don’t think it would be wise to do that to the household.”

“But you did that to us.”

“Yes, papa, but you are not exactly level 15, right?”

I hear a couple of voices from another corridor.

“You know he deserves it!”

“That not our place to judge, sister!”

“Oh, come on… Imagine his face…”

“Shhhh! I can be back before anyone…”

I take a look at the scene. Ruby has a kind of a book in her hands. It has all kinds of seals on the cover. I give Ruby a stern look. Muninn is standing on the top of a shelf, very interested in the situation.

“What is going on?”

She opens a smile and tries to hide the book they were talking about behind her back. Aquamarine is the one that speaks.

“We found the shogun’s personal documents, including ancestry, land ownership, a couple of commendations from the emperor…” Aquamarine said. “These two want to burn them in front of the shogun.”

I massage my forehead with my right hand, above my eyes.

“Ruby… Muninn… Just… Just let it go, ok? We can talk about this later.”

“Okay…” They both answer. I turn around, and Opal has a stern eye towards Ruby. It is funny, considering that all of the girls seem to be the same age.

We spend the night going through different papers. Even identifying what shelf was storing the papers from the temple’s library did not help all that much. The shogun had taken everything from the temple. There were receipts, accounting papers, and then a lot of holy scrolls, with different stories and different legends.

Some stories looked true, while others were a lot more fantastic. I don’t believe there was a literal “road of stars” somewhere. But I keep thinking on how hard it is to describe the physics I use to other people around, and I can see how much one needs to adapt the language.

We found some very old documents describing different races in the “Land of the Goddess”, as well as some descriptions informing the different continents. The kitsune are her closest subjects. Then we have other races taking care of other areas. Her land has different continents for different races, if the script is to be believed.

We keep investigating, and Akiko uncovers a book that makes her freeze. The girls are worried about her, Opal is the one to question.

“Akiko, are you ok? What happened?”

“This book’s cover… It is the flower that Kage would sometimes bring to me… It became a code of sorts… Everytime he was disguised, there was always something on him with this flower. I got a flower from him, but it shriveled really fast.”

She opens the book, and starts reading. It tells how a shrine was created for the mountain. How people identified that praying to the mountain would help with water flow, with rain, with crops.

At some point, something sprouted, and a temple was created around the sprout.

Years pass, and there are developments. The sprout gets sentient, a holy road, connecting the mountain to the faith, is created. A road where the dragon can reach people’s heart.

A lot of the text is a little cryptic. Being in a world that has actual dragons, feng shui takes a whole complete meaning.

Reading the text, though, one thing is certain. The road starts at this ancient shrine. And it is inside the temple. I look at Akiko. We both nod.

“Akiko, are you thinking the same thing I am? I think that we missed the start of the road by a hundred feet.”

“Yes, honored guest. I think that we are supposed to start from the shrine.”

Cecilia takes a look at the window. She claps her hand once.

“Great! It is going to be morning soon, so we should have a couple of hours of sleep, to get our mana to the best state possible. We don’t know what we are going to find on the other side. Akiko, I know that each hour counts, but we have to prepare ourselves to be our best before we reach the goddess. We have no idea what we are going to find there.”

I look out the window, the first rays of sun are starting to show. We all go to the kitchen, where they are starting the day. The cooks bow to us. Roberta approaches, drying her hands on her apron.

“Good morning lord. We were starting to prepare breakfast. Is something wrong?”

“Nothing is wrong, but would rather have a quick snack than a fully prepared breakfast.”

Roberta sighs.

“The meat would take some time to cook, lord.”

“Don’t mind about that. Everyone of us can use fire magic, we can just cook it on the table.”

“As you wish, lord. We will be placing the food on the table shortly.”

“Thank you.”

We go back into the dining room, and sit down. The cooks bring the plates, with the big slabs of kraken meat.

We just cut the steaks and apply fire to it. Cecilia and I use fire spells. The girls use fire breath. Muninn and Huginn prefer their steaks raw. Akiko eats some fruits. Cecilia notices.

“Akiko, do you want me to warm up a steak for you?”

“No need, honored guest. I am already having my fill with these.”

We don’t talk during the meal. We are all thinking about the next steps. Once we finish eating, I raise my glass of juice.

“Let’s have a couple of hours of rest. Once we are rested, we are going to get back at the quest.”

We all go upstairs to our rooms.