The Quantum Wanderer

After that, we talked a little about the forging process, while we proceed to disassemble the handles, put the neutron crystals, and reassemble them. Brokkr told me that he could show us the forges tomorrow, since according to the bell it is past noon at this point. On the way back to the palace, I notice that the focus of attention is no longer my face or my person, but rather the katana I carrying on my belt. That is actually a nice change, and I feel a little smug.

We arrive and enjoy a little of a hot spring before dinner. We go down for dinner, and we meet Dávrin’s family in the dining room, as always.

“Good evening, friend.”

“Good evening.”

“Davina told me a couple of things about your new sword. Congratulations!”

“Why the congratulations?”

“The last person Brokkr actually treated that way was my father. Davina told me that it doesn’t compare to my halberds. And they are a symbol of strength and power around here. Can I please see it?”

“Sure.” I open a hand sized portal to my safe, and get the katana from there. I offer it to Dávrin. Dávrin takes it, and starts looking at the craftmanship. I see that he is as impressed as I am with the designs, both on the scabbard and the handle.

He takes the blade out, and looks at it. He has an inquisitive face.

“It feels like adamantite, and yet it doesn’t… What is this?”

“I did the same coating I had done with the iron sword, remember?”

He grabs a single hair, and lets it drop on the edge of the blade, and it gets cut in two. Then he looks again at the blade.

“Your coating thing is very efficient. I don’t feel any mana from the blade, though. I expected it to be made of enchanted adamantite, not just plain adamantite.”

“Actually, plain adamantite is good enough, specially with the mana veins that Brokkrs managed to place on the blade.”

The king turn the sword upside down, holding it by the thumb and index finger.

“May I?”

“Sure, but it may ruin your floor. Wouldn’t you prefer to do this outside?”

“Neeeh, don’t worry.”

He drops the sword, and, of course, it does a little cut on the floor, about half an inch deep. I look at that, and I understand that he wants to duplicate what happened in Brokkr’s shop. I pick up the blade, and hold it down, and I gesture for Dávrin to hold at the tip like he did before.

This time, I vibrate the mana into it, and now I have a better grasp on the resonating frequency. When the mana in the sword is vibrating, I let it go, and Dávrin is till holding it by the tip.

“It feels weird now. It has an ethereal feel to it.”

“I imbued it with mana, in a particular way. You can drop it now.”

He drops it, and the same thing happens. The sword goes down, and the fall into the stone floor is only stopped by the handguard. Davina is a little more used to it, but I can see that Dyrgja is impressed. I continue the explanation.

“It still stays vibrating for a little bit after I stop, but not much longer. And if the sword is used, the mana ends up being used in the cut. So right now it is back to it’s normal state.”

The king tries to get the sword off the floor, but it doesn’t move. I imbue it with the vibrating mana once again, and it comes out easily.

“I have spent days looking at every blade in our vault after I became king. Hoping I would never have to use those blades. I have never seen something like this. Even what you consider ‘the normal state’ is already off the charts.”

Davina, at this point, pointed her fork at me and casually said. “That’s why great uncle called him ‘master Marcelo’.”

“WHAT? Now, that’s a miracle. He doesn’t address someone that way since my grandfather.”

“In that case, I feel honored.”

Dávrin puts the blade back in the sheath, and hands it back to me. I create the hand sized portal, and put it in our safe.

“I am sorry, but what is that spell?”

“It is a spell. Nothing too important.”

We continue chatting, and I tell him about some stuff that happened in Brokkr’s shop, with some observations from Davina here and there. I mention that we are going to visit forges tomorrow, and Davina asks her father to tag along in the group.

After dinner, we go off to bed.

The following day, we have breakfast and go to Brokkr’s shop, with Davina with us. Brokkr joined us, and we went to the elevator. Just like we did before, we get on the down elevator and pass by the layers that I had already visited. The mole raising, the fields, and then we keep going down, until we get to a plateau, where the platform make an U turn on the ground, to start raising again.

This U turn is happening around a very big and very noisy machine, that has some tubes going bellow the ground. The machine goes all the way to the ceiling here, that very high.

In front of us there is a chamber, and on the other side of the chamber there is another suspended trolley, similar to the one we used to reach the city on the first time we came here. We follow Brokkr, and board it.

The chairs only occupy half the trolley, the rest of it is just an empty space. Just like before, we go around, making some turns, and going deeper and deeper. The temperature keeps rising. With my fire resistance, I would survive here, but the heat alone would be very bad for Cecilia. I look at the dragonesses, but they seem to be comfortable.

After a long time in the trolley, we get down, right before another huge machine. It is noisy, and then we walk down the platform.

There are several structures that look like a round table, except they are made of rock, and they have lava in them. The lava even bubles now and again, and it is a very liquefied lava, not a pasty one.

After following Brokkr a little, I see some groups of dwarves working. There is one of them holding metal pieces with pliers, diving them on the lava, taking it out, looking at it, diving it again, taking it out, placing on anvils for the other dwarves to hit. There is almost a rhythm to the sounds of metal against metal.

We keep following Brokkr, until he goes to a door on the side. He pulls out a key, and opens it up, and we go through. He closes it after us, and proceeds to go forward on the corridor, that actually goes down.

The temperature, that was already very high, gets higher. We follow him, until we get to a lake of lava. By the shore, there is this kind of dam, made of metal, and inside the dam there are some anvils, with different formats. Close to that, by the side of the dam, there is this kind of wall, with a lot of tools on it. Different kinds of hammers, different kinds of pliers, metal scissors, greaves, and some protection materials as well. I can see that this wall has a tube coming out of it, with a fawcet in it. The tube goes in the floor, until it goes into the wall.

I expand my senses a little bit, and I notice something odd. This is… underneath the nursery. It is not exactly beneath it, but it is almost. The nursery, and the ley line that it is placed in, are just about some 50 feet away from where we standing, starting in the middle of the lava lake.

“Welcome to my humble office! Say, master Marcelo, what do you think of it?”

I am still looking around. I go to the dam, and I get near the faucet.

“May I?”

“Sure.”

I open the faucet, and there is this light shower of water being springled. It helps reducing the temperature around a lot, providing some comfort. The water faucet is done in a way that the water does not reach the anvils.

“It is beyond what I thought. You are using lava, that is receiving mana from the ley line, to produce your pieces.”

“Oh, so do you feel the mana from the lava? You would be an exquisite dwarf smith, master Marcelo! Yes, there is that.”

“But… Wouldn’t dipping the hot metals in the ley line be good as well?”

He slumps down at the mention of this.

“Yes, that is how enchanted mithril would be forged, normally. For your tag, I had to use my personal mana, and a dozen potions to be able to keep it up. It is impossible to forge a bigger piece right now.”

“Ok… But… Why don’t you move your forge some 50 feet in that direction? Perhaps a little more to have a little wiggle room?”

“What do you mean?”

“The ley line starts 50 feet in that direction.”

His face starts contorting, he gets closer to me, and pulls me down by my collar.

“ARE YOU SURE? PLEASE TELL ME YOU ARE SURE!”

“Yes, it is in the middle of the lava lake, though.”

He lets my collar go, gives a step backwards, and start looking at the direction I am pointing. He then falls on his knees and starts crying. I look at Davina, trying to inquire what is going on, she just makes her best ‘how am I supposed to know’ face. Tears start rolling down the old dwarf cheeks.

“Come, please.”

We start to go all the way back, and he is almost running. We go all the way back through the elevators, and we get down on the streets. We walk with a brisk pace towards the palace. In the entrance, the guard says that he is going to announce Brokkr, he just ignores that and moves on. We go right behind him. We get to the throne room, the door is closed. There are two guards in front of it. They cross their halberds.

“Halt, master Brokkr, the court is in session.”

“Bah. Let me pass, or next weapon you are going to have to play soldier is going to be a hoe.”

“Sir, I can’t.”

Brokkr swaps the halberd from the guard, positions it against the ground, takes a hammer out of I don’t know where, and shatters the blade, right there. He puts the hammer back, and brakes the handle over his knee, and gives back the two pieces to the guard. I don’t think the guard understood what happened.

The other guard lifts his halberd, and Brokkr enters the room.

“NEPHEW! Send the morons home! I have something urgent.”

Everyone turn their heads. There is this silence in the room. Then people turn around to look at the king. He passes his hands over his beard a couple of times, stands up say.

“My uncle has never talked this way before. My advisors may stay, everyone else leaves!”

I turn around, but Brokkrs holds me by the shirt. I see all the nobles leaving the room. Only the king, his two advisors and us are left. Davina is hidden behind the dragonesses. After everyone leaves, including the guards that were outside the door, Brokkr turns from the door to the king.

“Nephew! We are going to be able to have enchanted adamantite again!”

“What? I thought you just wouldn’t do pieces in it anymore.”

Brokkr lowered his head. “Actually, I couldn’t. Part of the process was the shaping of the metal under the ley line. And then the ley line was gone. But master Marcelo here told me that it is still within reach.”

He pulled me forward. I am scratching the back of my head.

“Is this true, … master Marcelo?”

“It is. From the forge in the lava lake the Brokkr showed me, at least.”

“Everyone, let’s go to my study.”

We follow Dávrin to his study, where he grabs a map and unrolls it on top of a table. He also gets a big pen, that looks a lot like a deodorant stick, made of metal and glass.

“Where does it start?”

I pass my index finger on the finger, on the approximate place where the ley line starts. Dávrin turns to his advisor.

“Is there a way to move the forges? In particular, Brokkr’s?”

Andvari opens his bag of holding, and pulls out a set of maps from inside. Instead of being viewed from the top, it is a view of the city and it’s layers from the side. He starts analyzing it. Dávrin turns to us.

“Uncle, we are going to make this a priority. Leave this to us.”

Brokkr starts leaving. “Let’s go. I think that some celebrating is in order.”

We follow him outside the palace, and we accompany him towards a bar/restaurant close to his shop. We enter it, and he screams.

“ILDRA ! WHERE ARE YOU?”

This dwarf comes out from the kitchen, drying her hands.

“WHAT THE COLD HELLS BROUGHT YOU HERE? Can’t you enter like a normal dwarf?”

“THIS IS ONE OF THE HAPPIEST DAYS IN A LONG TIME.”

He says that, and lifts her up by the waist.

“ATTENTION, MORONS! DRINKS ARE ON ME! IF YOU DON’T FALL FROM THE BOOZE, I WILL KNOCK YOU OUT WITH MY HANDS!”

All the dwarves in the place lift their cup up, and say in a single voice.

“HURRAH!”

“Are you getting married, Brokkr? Did you find someone that can’t see how ugly you are?”

He embraces the woman. “You are going to hear about that soon. Right now, bring the ales!”

The dwarves are a noisy drunk bunch. But a fun one. Brokkr pulls me into sharing some songs with them. And I am particularly bad at singing. No tone, no rhythm. Apparently they are drunk enough that it doesn’t make any difference.

After some hours of partying, and people are mostly sleeping by the corners of the bar. The only dwarf left standing is Ildra, the dragonesses and myself. Cecilia is also passed out. I call Ildra, and say that we are about to leave.

I was going to pig carry Davina, but Aquamarine intervenes, and offers to carry her. I end up carrying Cecilia. Ildra told us to just leave Brokkr there, she would take care of him. I could see the way she was looking at him, with a lot of care. As we are loading our drunks, she comes closer and says.

“I don’t know what you did, but thank you.”

“Nothing of value.”

And we leave back to the palace. I see that there is some turmoil around it, there are more people running around than usual. Not really my business, Aquamarine dumps Davina in her room, and we go to ours to clean up.

When we go down for dinner, I notice that Davina is still not there. Dávrin says that she is still sleeping in her room, with a worried face. We eat dinner, and get to our bedroom, for a well deserved rest.

The next morning, Cecilia is completely well, although her mana reserves is not completely full. If I had to guess, the healing runes in her bones are doing their job.

We go down for breakfast, and sit down to eat. Dávrin and wife arrive first, and we start talking and eating. Davina arrives later, and she has a really bad hangover. She sits down, very slowly.

“Couldn’t we dim the lights just a little, daddy?” She asks, making some puppy eyes towards Dávrin.

“Did you have fun DAUGHTER?” The daughter part was shouted, really loud.

Davina grabs her head, and lowers it.

“Please dear. She was with uncle, with a group of good friends.” Dyrgja intervenes for her daughter. “You have to hit the metal when it is hot, trying to fix after it is cold is a fool’s errand.”

“Fine! I will forget this on account of the circumstances.” He then turns to me, with a much sweet demeanor.

“Did you enjoy yourself?”

“Yup, it was fun.” I tell them about the drunken episode in the demons’ festival, and we all share a very loud laugh. Except for Davina, that is trying to cover her ears.

“Now that Brokkr gave you the title of master, I can’t go back on it…” He laughed.

…

“We are going to start digging possibly later today. I wonder if you would like to see the digging tomorrow, once things are more set.”

“That sounds interesting. Dwarves excavating. I look forward to learning with you. What is the title of master?”

“The whole thing is master forger. It is not given away lightly. There are currently only seven of them in the kingdom, only three in this city. It makes you entitled to a private forge, if you want.”

“I don’t think I will need one, thank you.”

We keep talking about the events from the day before, about the digging plans, about the party. We walk around the city and go over to Brokkr’s, to see how he is. He isn’t there, his shop is closed. We go to the bar from the day before, and Ildra tells us that he is still in the back, with a big headache. She says that she scolded him, that his beard is already about to turn white, that he is not young enough to keep doing those things.

We laugh, and we decide to have lunch there, and after we hit one of the hot springs. We have a very relaxing day.

Before dinner, we ask to go to the kitchen, and I offer them some dragon meat, enough for us, Dávrin and family. They are very suspicious of the present, until they taste it. It ends up being very noisy, and fun. Dávrin really appreciates the steak.

Next morning, Davina is well on her feet again. Dávrin is very excited over the breakfast, the digging was going well, apparently. He tells me that he told one of the miners to guide us to the current dig. He checks with Davina, and she is going to accompany us. The queen actually rised her eyebrows.

After breakfast, we meet with the miner in front of the palace. We go to the digging place. It is hot, it is close to the magma. As we get close to the entrance of the cave, I take a look. There are some square metal arches, every 60 feet, and after each stone arch there is a crate of metal, stuck to the ceiling. We go inside the cave, that currently has 3 sections like these.

The we meet the digging crew. There are five dwarves with their pickaxes on their shoulders. One of them is Dáni.

“Hi Dáni, how are you?”

“I am well. Finally doing some digging. The only problem of not mining our own mithril and adamantite is the lack of digging. But then it is impossible to make a living on the prices the humans do it. How do they do it?”

“I heard that they use slaves.”

“That makes sense…”

“I am just curious here, I have never been in a digging site… Is this safe?”

“Yes, very safe. See those arches? They won’t allow any landslides. We have our rock singer, that is going to check if there are any monsters expected nearby, they have that ability. And if something happens, we just have to remove the rope, and the mine gets closed up, so we can keep any monsters that appear outside the city, after we flee the cave.”

“What are those crates made of?”

“Adamantite. Not the very best quality that would be used for a sword or shield, but still better than the finest mithril you could find anywhere. Very resistant. No monsters are able to go through them.”

As we are talking, I see another dwarf arriving. He carries himself with a lot of importance, it is funny. It is Austri. He gets close to us. The miners lower their heads.

“Good morning, singer. For a safe digging.”

“Good morning. For a safe digging.”

He bows to Davina and me.

“Princess Davina, what are you doing here? This place might not be safe enough for a princess.”

“Austri, the last accident happened over 150 years ago. Are you going to try to behave like father now?”

“I still don’t think this is completely appropriate, your highness.”

“Don’t worry about that. I will assume the risks.”

He touches his head to the middle of the wall right in front of us, and starts a chant. He sounds like one of those Australian flutes, a Didgeridoo. I can feel that there may some subsonic notes mixed in it. It’s fantastic. With my mana sense, I check that there is some mana being inject in that song. After a little bit, he removes his head from the stone.

“It’s clear, pure rock until the next gate.” He turns to Davina. “Princess, I have to ask you, let’s leave this place for the professionals. It is dangerous.”

“Leave me alone, Austri. I am tired of your games.”

He leaves the place, stomping his feet. The dwarves place themselves in front of the wall, spread apart for the distance in the corridor, that is around 15 feet. The dwarf in the very right puts the pickaxe on the floor, and issue a command.

“HeyHo!”

They all lift the tools at the same time. Austri tries to pull the princess away, she is the closest to the digging. The girls and I are one gate away from the miners. They strike the rock at the same time. I enhance my brain and eyes, to see the thing in detail. They don’t actually hit the rock at the same time, but a very close one. The two dwarves on the end of the line actually hit first, then the ones close to them hit very soon after, finished by one the in middle.

The next set, the opposite happens. They start with the one in the middle, and it goes all the way to the end. I can see that the interval they are using between two people hitting is smaller than the speed of sound would take for one hit to reach the other person.

I can see that the wall cracks up, not only on the surface, but kind of from the inside as well. A little guess here, they just might be hitting the wall so that the hits resonate with the speed of sound in the rock. I get entranced by this, and relax. I let the enhancements go, and I keep listening to the sounds. Their team work is magical. If it is not literally, although I am not sure of that, at least figuratively.

They are already 10 feet in the rock when it happens.