The Quantum Wanderer

“So, can you guys stay for dinner?”

I look at the girls, they seem to be having fun.  I bring them to a corner to talk.  I look at Muninn and Huginn, they are still being pet.  Muninn caws at me, apparently he is good where he is. 

“Do you want to have dinner here?”

Cecilia is the first to answer.

“I would love to.  But I would rather changing the clothes to something more civilian.”

I look at the other girls, and they all nod with their heads.  I turn to Edward.

“Do you have a room we could use to change?  These clothes are rather inappropriate.  We may take some time doing that as well.”

“Sure.  Reginald, please take them to guest room 3.”

His butler takes us to a room upstairs.  I open a portal to Frolk’s guild, and the girls and I start on the process of having a bath and getting better dressed for the occasion.

Once we are done, we portal back to that room.  The butler makes a very weird expression with his face when we come out of the room.  I hope he didn’t spy at an empty room.

We go down, and the girls are obviously gorgeous.  Edward stares a little from the room at the bottom of the stairs, and ends up receiving an elbow to the ribs from Addrianna.  He kind of deserved it.  He then grabs her and kiss her.  I don’t know if his no doghouse operation is going to work.  But then they come around, with their arms linked.

“I had my chef prepare some Fenrir steak.  You are in for a treat.”

Shandon is the one that replies.

“It is going to be able to…  Eat something different every now and then.”

I was amazed.  It was a nice attempt at diplomacy coming from her.  We go to the dining room, and the amount of steak is actually kind of correct in terms of serving my girls.  This obviously makes Addrianna look very curiously to Edward.

“Are we expecting more people, dear?”

“Not today.”

“Then…  Why…?”

He made the same ‘it’s ok, don’t worry’ face as earlier.  She shrugged and we all sit on the table.  We are served wine, and we start eating and talking.  While picking some of the meat, Edward turns to me.

“So, is there anything in particular that brings you to our fair town from Frolk?”

“Dear, where is Frolk?”

“Oh, it’s a village in Arthuria, close to Orora.”

By the looks, Addrianna thinks that this day couldn’t be getting any weirder.

“Not really.  We are just touring around.  We have been to Vaporvale recently.”

“I KNEW IT!  HAHAHAHA”

After he finished laughing, I continued.

“And we were told about the schools around, in the guild.  We thought about visiting the Magic school actually.”

“Really?  Are you looking for improving any magic in particular?”

“Not really.  Siratra here is interested in Nature studies.  We heard that there is some of that going around in the Magic school.  She also is interested in advanced math and the like.”

“Master has taught me some things, but he said that he lacks a proper method to teach it all.”

“Humm…  We do have some advanced math and some Nature studies in the Command school, way more than in the Magic school.  Perhaps you would be better suited there.  Do you want to visit the school tomorrow?”

I look at Siratra, she seem enthusiastic with the idea, but she lowers her head.  Cecilia looks at her and giggles.  The dragonesses seem a little uninterested.

“Sure, we would love to.  How do we arrange that?”

“I have several guest rooms.  Do you want to stay for the night?”

“Are you sure we are not imposing?”

“Not at all.  We just need to make sure that your girls…  Dragon sized hunger is satiated.”

He, Cecilia, Siratra and I laughed a little on this.  His wife did not understand.  The dragonesses were too busy eating the Fenrir meat.

The next morning, I get some dragon meat from my meat safe.  Once we are out of the room, we look and there is a butler waiting outside the door.  It’s a good thing we didn’t do anything too outrageous.  We have to have some self control when in someone else’s house.  I turn to the butler.

“Hi, what is your name, again?  I am really bad with names.”

“I am Reginald, sir.”

“Reginald, can we go to the kitchen really quick?”

“The kitchen, sir?  May I ask why, sir?”

“Well, I have on me some of the meat we like to eat, and I thought that I could provide it to them.”

“I am sorry, sir.  We have the best provider in town, he works directly with the guild.”

“Don’t worry, I have the. Good. Stuff.”

He shrugs his shoulders, and he leads the way to the kitchen.  The kitchen is big and clean, mostly made with some shiny metal.  The ovens are powered with gem stones.  As we enter, this tall, on the fat side, guy stops cutting something and looks at the butler and me.  He sighs.  Apparently, he is waiting for trouble.  The butler calls him.

“Pierre, our VIP guest wants to have a word with you.”

Pierre comes over, sighs again.

“Pierre, can you guys look at me for just 5 seconds?  I promise it will be short.”

Pierre has this French accent, and tells everyone to gather around.  He is less and less impressed.

“You could see, yesterday, that my girls eat a lot.  And we have a lot of meat.”

I put the large chunk of meat that I had cut, the same size I used for the dinner with Rajesh, on a meat table.  And I repeat what I told Rajesh’s team.  The large piece for my girls and I, another piece for Edward, and the rest for them, so that they don’t have to work on empty stomachs.

Pierre has a scowl, but when he gets closer, he shouts.

“IT’S DRAGON MEAT!  WE ARE GOING TO TASTE DRAGON MEAT!”

They all get closer, and fists in the air, scream with joy.

“You are having some of that too, Reginald.”

I could see Reginald was also salivating with the prospect.  He escorts me back to my room, where I go check on if the girls are ready, and we go down to the dining room.

I can see that the kids just can’t hold themselves, they look like they are enthusiastic about the breakfast as well.

“Good morning!  We heard that breakfast was being delayed because our guest apparently decided to provide the meat.”

“It happens.  We have a lot of it, and we eat a lot.”

“Do you mind if we call my cousin and his immediate family as well?  They live really close.”

“No, there is some extra there, it should be enough.”

He calls a butler, tell him something, and gives him a ring.  He runs.  As if he was in a 100 meters dash competition.

We stay in the dinning room, eating some small bread and cheese appetizers.  Some time later, another family joins us.  Edward brings them near.

“Marcelo, I want to introduce you to Anthon, my cousin.  This is his wife, Andrea, and his youngest son, Cesar.”  He turns to his cousin.  “Isn’t Brutus coming?”

“I was told he was still sleeping.  Snooze, loose.  More for us.”

He turned to me.

“So, you are Marcelo.  Nice to meet you.”

“Nice to meet you too.”

“How was your trip?  What do you think of our empire, so far?”

“The trip here was uneventful.  I have just seen parts of the capital so far, so I can’t say about the whole empire, but it looks like people is thriving. And if they thrive, everything thrives.”

“Oh? Thank you.  We try.”

“So you and Edward work in the public administration?”

“Yes we do.”

Since he didn’t volunteer much information, I didn’t want to press.  Cecilia facepalmed her face, was starting at the floor, saying something under her breath, “fckn mrn…”

The food is placed at the breakfast table.  Anthon gets a portion of stake, and someone gets close, cuts a small piece, and tastes the steak.  Anthon looks at the time the guy is taking to enjoy the flavor.

“Well?”

The guy whispers something in Anthon’s ear.  He just makes this ‘I am not enjoying this moron’ face, and starts eating.

We chit chat about several things, about the cost of things around different cities, about some of our experiences in Vaporvale, in Arthuria…  Anthon makes this sad face.

“Arthuria is at a very complicated place.  They are actually in a place where a corrupt noble group has as much power as the king.  The king actually did a summoning spell to try to bring strength to his group.  Generally speaking, the strength gained with a single hero outbalances the loss of the mages.  But it still is an expensive spell.

“And then you have all the waste.  Their short sightedness towards beast kin is impressive.”

We chit chat some more, I tell him about my meeting with the guard that has a special fear of Wrax.

“… Muninn lowers his head, opens his third eye and pretends he is going to attack the guy.  The guy went out cold.  I had a serious talk with him afterwards.”

The men all laughed, including Muninn, I think.  Edward was hitting the table.  The girls weren’t laughing so much.  Some of them were just looking down and shaking their heads.

After we finish eating, we say goodbye to Anthon, and we accompany Edward to a carriage, that takes us to the school campuses.  There is a security checkpoint, but the carriage just goes straight through.

Edward makes the carriage stop after the checkpoint, and we start walking, so that we can take a look at the schools.

After the checkpoint, there is Knight school, to our left, and the Magic school, to our right.  In the middle, there is this paved street, that is busting with young people of all races, mostly adolescents.  Following the road till it’s end, on an elevated ground, is our destination, the Command school.  Edward is pointing us the architecture.

“Several of the constructions are actually maintained by earth magic students.  The Knight school is, as expected, way more practical in terms of construction than the magical one.  On the matter of nobles pushing their weight around, there are some imperial edicts that expressly forbids it, and there are high penalties. 

“Discrimination and bullying are also looked upon seriously.  Everything is investigated, of course.  Not even nobles can avoid interrogation under slave marks.  If innocent, the mark gets removed, of course. Every year we have to expel a couple of sons of nobles.  It is amazing how people don’t seem to realize that things are going to be taken seriously.  We have too many people trying to attend to worry about that impacting our attendance.”

“A graduation is considered a badge of honor, and helps further development later.”

“As for people that can’t pay the tuition, there are generally ways around it.  If talent is shown, either the army can sponsor, for instance.  But these sponsorships generally come with a  performance clause, in that the student has to keep his ranking above a certain level.”

As we are walking, I notice that every one that passes around us bows to Edward.  The ones that are not flabbergasted with Muninn and Huginn.  I have to admit that my looks got closer to Wrax’s.  As we continue chit chatting, we enter the Command school.

There are some separate buildings.

“The buildings correspond to knowledge centers.  That one is battle strategie, that one is troop logistics, that one is research and development…  Hummm.  I think you are going to enjoy the research and development.”

We go by a room, and I hear a professor saying.

“… Now, the turtle walks half.  You see how they should never meet?”

I am interested, so I peek from the door.  There is this board, it is made of white pumice stone.  The professor is actually writing on it using a piece of charcoal, and there is an assistant in the corner.  His room has around 50 to 60 students, and they are older than the ones we had seen in the campus, they seem to be on their late twenties.

Siratra looks over my shoulder, apparently the subject sounds interesting.

Edward whispers in my ear, “this is the number philosophy class.”

The professor looks at the slight number of people at the door, and then notices Edward.  He bows, “Principal”.

Edward turns to him.

“You can continue your lesson.  What is it about?”

“It is about the dilemma on the tortoise and the rabbit.”

That got me curious.  “How is that?”

“This paradox is one of the Unsolvables.  Let’s say there is a race between a tortoise and a rabbit, and the tortoise has a 30 feet advantage, but the rabbit is twice as fast.  The time the rabbit takes to run those 30 feet, the tortoise is going to run 15.  The time the rabbit takes to run those 15, the tortoise is going to run half that.  If we keep this forever, then the rabbit is never going to pass the tortoise, right?”

I remembered, how on Earth this is called Achiles and the tortoise.  This was fun.  I giggled a little.  Edward, asked me what was the issue, and I answered him, in a whisper, that that was not a paradox at all.  There was a solution.  Edward looked at me, and I saw this almost sadistic smile.

“He knows the solution.”

“What?  A kid?  How old is the kid?”

“You say you’re a researcher.  You will be able to check it.  Does it matter where the solution comes from?  Is this not the reason where we put in the discrimination laws in place, so we can find talent everywhere?”

The professor, with a disdain, grabs this piece of charcoal that is wrapped in a paper, and hands it to me.

“What do you call the operation that a number is multiplied by itself?”

“Multiplied by itself.”

“Ok.  I am just going to name an operation, then.  I am going to call this number to the power of…”

And then I start the whole thing.  First, I notice that the charcoal with paper is a really nice trick.  The pumice stone allows the paper to be sanded, and the charcoal sticks, so it allows them to emulate a chalk board perfectly.  If I have to guess, they have an earth magic somewhere that can erase it before the next lesson.

I start with defining the operation of n to the power.  Then I develop the equation of adding geometric progressions.  Then I explain that the distances are shorter, but the time spent to get there is shorter as well.  Then I add the geometric progression for the turtle, and for the rabbit, and show that both of them are going to meet in that point.  And that that point will actually exist in a short future.

When I am done, I giggle and place the charcoal back where it was.  I can see the professor is really trying to concentrate, while some students are giggling at the professor that got kind of owned by a kid.  Though I must say, I am already an adult here, with my aspect of being 16 years old.

Edward is not even trying to disguise his laughter. 

We leave the room, and keep our snooping around the school.  I am very impressed with the installations.

“Would there be any problem on Siratra attending a couple of classes?  Do you have a list of courses available?  How much would it cost?”

“No problem at all, I will have my secretary prepare an extract on the classes available.  As for cost, we can say you just paid all of your families’ tuition right now.  Even Cecilia, if she so wishes, I heard that she is a fire and wind mage.  She could attend the Magic school.  And let me know if want to teach.  No matter what.”

“Nope, I was just a student.  Not really interested in teaching at the moment.  Thank you, though.”

“It’s a pity.”

We walk a little more through the campus, and then go back.  We take the carriage, that now is in front of the dean’s office, and go back to Edward’s home.

“Do you mind if I tell my cousin about you?  I will make him promise to keep your secret.”

“As long as I don’t get harassed in the future because of that, sure.  This whole secret thing is just because I don’t want to be threatened, and I enjoy this simple life.  We travel, we enjoy places, we meet new people, and we keep everything on the light side.  At least when we can.”

“Thank you for your trust.  Would you be interested in staying around?  I can probably talk to my cousin, he could probably find a place for you to stay.  In that case, you would his guest, and he would worry about the maintenance of the place.”

“Wouldn’t I be abusing you guys?  I don’t want to owe any favors.”

“No, no, no, it would be our pleasure.  Politics aside, I haven’t had a fun day like this for a very long time.”

“For a time, at least, I wouldn’t mind, but let me talk to the girls.  We are a family.”

Later we have dinner.  And again, we sleep in a guest room.

Next morning, I bring some more dragon meat, and we have breakfast.  Apparently Edward was summoned to the schools and has a summons for later from Anthon.  He is going to be busy.  He suggests that the girls could do a walk around town, with Addrianna, and they go for it.  I think it is a good idea as well.  I hand Cecilia some gold coins, she has the best common sense among the girls.

I am kind of alone.  Not a bad thing for an introvert.  I decide to put on my adventurer gear and take a look at the guild.  They might just have something worth doing.

As I enter the guild, I take a look around.  I see some known faces, sitting on a table, talking among themselves.  I walk up to them.

“Yo!  How are you guys doing?”

“Marcelo!  Long time no see.  How have you been doing?”

“That’s a very long story.  It feels like everything just happens to me, you know?  How many hours to you want to spend?”

We all laughed light heartedly.  Lu pointed to my neck.

“Someone got promoted.  And you feel a little stronger.  Did you gain many levels?”

“A couple.  Do you guys remember that in Orora they had that goblin quest, for a village nearby, called Frolk?”

“Yes.”

“So, Frolk has a guild branch, obviously.  And they have a person working there, called Cecilia.  Cecilia and I…”

Tar punched me in the arm, and resumed his drink

“You dawg, “ Lu said humorously. 

“And the other girls just happened.”

Lu got startled. 

“Other girls?  How many?”

“The other five girls.”

Tar spit his drink.  Not pretty, considering that his cup was actually proportional to his size.

“But anyway, what about you guys?  How have you been?  What other quests did you get?”

“We have been getting a lot of escort jobs, but it is that thing.  The ones that pay well are dangerous, really dangerous.  The whole situation in Arthuria is complicated.  There is an all gang war going on, apparently.  And the merchants, and their escorts, get sometimes caught in the crossfire.  They have always been corrupt, but believe it or not, the corruption was at least a little organized.  Now, depending on where the store is, it is getting charged protection from more than one gang.  There was a case of a merchant that actually had his store destroyed because two gangs met inside it, while trying to charge his protection money.

“I heard a tale of a robber that was robbed on the way to the slums.  And then he tried to complain to the guards.  Of course, he got arrested for it.  That’s a reason we are thinking about leaving Arthuria altogether.  Although Orora is not bad, it is an oasis of not bad in a sea of shit.”

We kept talking about a lot of stuff all afternoon.  How Muninn ended up adopting me, then Huginn came along.  They laughed at my resistance to entering Angelica, because Muninn would not be able to come with me.  I can swear Muninn poked me lightly on the head when I told them that.  It was fun meeting these guys again.  After some hours of chit chat, I ended up promising them that I would introduce them to the girls, and that we might go on a quest together.  Cecilia and Siratra would enjoy, the others would probably find it boring. 

The day was fun.  I went back to Edward’s place, and I was allowed entry immediately.  The girls had arrived a little earlier, and they were talking energetically with Addrianna. 

I am thinking that we have already got to know Ironhold, this was fun, but I am thinking that we can get back to Frolk.  If they decide to let me lease a place here, we may come back, or even stay for good.  We don’t really have roots in Frolk.  We just have to let the guild know, because I don’t know how things are going to stay with Muninn going away.  There is the whole hunting monsters that he does with his crew.  We wait for Edward to get back home, we say our goodbyes and go back to Frolk.

***

Edward’s POV

He is gone, and I need a drink.  I am sitting in my study, looking at the red moon through the window.  The white moon should be right over my head, so I can’t see it. 

I pour my self some hard liquor.  He is an interesting person.  I think I understand how he ticks.  I hope I understand how he ticks.  Yesterday, I let him kind of play with professor Ambrose.  It was all fun and games.  Today I paid that laughter dearly.  I placed all the information together, it wasn’t hard to understand what happened.

After we left, professor Ambrose left the room, running, to get his colleagues to exam all that math on the pumice board.  The pumice eraser saw the empty room, and erased the whole thing.  When Ambrose arrived at the room, the eraser was leaving, and the board was clear.

Ambrose tried to kill the eraser.  Good thing people held him, and we brought him to a cell inside the dean’s office.  We managed to keep this kind of quiet, but still.  I visited him, and had a talk that, for the first time, impressed me.  Those old geezers in the schools are generally conceited, and are not willing to listen anyone else.  Apparently, Ambrose is an exception.  When I got to the room that we were using to lock him up, he was agitated.  He just couldn’t stop walking in the room.  I told him to calm down.  All was not lost, we might be able to check if any of the students copied the whole math thing in one of their wax tablets.  They used those to make notes, and then it could be erased later on easily.

He told me, quite aggressively, that we have to hire Marcelo, no matter how, no matter at what price.  I giggled a little.  He looked me in the eyes, still kind of shaking, and said that he wrote everything in the board as if it were common knowledge.  As if he was teaching his nephew about his first numbers.  Just as a fun activity.  But there is a detail about that math.  He at least knew about his lack of knowledge.  He knew the question, but not the answer.  Now I had to imagine what questions Marcelo would know about, that didn’t even cross our minds.

Of course, news of this reached my cousin’s ear.  There is no way the emperor’s little birds would not sing.  I had to go there, and talk to him.  We sat down on his privy.  The talk would be funny, if he wasn’t the emperor.  Actually, even then it was kind of funny, in a ‘there is not much more we can do’ kind of way.

I told him about the Ambrose incident, the math thing.  Of course, not which math problem we were talking about, but rather the whole thing.  He was laughing until I told him about what Ambrose told me.  He stopped laughing then.

He said that he felt goosebumps when he met Marcelo, and asked me how strong he is.  I told him that I couldn’t say.  I mentioned to him that the weakest piece in his party are the crows.  And then took out the mithril shield from my personal bag and showed it to him.  And it was done on a whim.  And that crow was smart.  Being able to do math smart.  His eyes kept bulging.  If the situation wasn’t as serious, I would be laughing till passing out.

And then I asked him to try to guess what were the races of his women.  He guessed two humans, and the other four, he thought that they had some mix of elf with something else.  He served himself a big glass of liquor when I told him the truth.  He poured some more when I mentioned that our ‘land of dragons’ was just ‘the nursery’.  And that Marcelo could actually command a clan of dragons.

At some point, Anthon just got desensitized with all that information.  Either that or the amount of alcohol he ingested started to do its work.  He asked my suggestion, and I told him to keep him friendly.  With all that, Marcelo seemed reasonable.  I told him about my idea of offering a place to stay in Ironhold, straighten a friendship.  He told me to choose a manor, he would evict the noble and choose appropriate personnel.  He said that we would talk more about this later.