The Quantum Wanderer

The crate that was in the ceiling drops down on a second, but the miners don’t realize.  They give another hit on the wall I take a look around, facing the crates.  I see Austri on the outside of the cave.  Then I hear the noise.  It comes from the wall being digged.  I turn around, and a hole comes up on the wall.  A huge ant head pops out, grabs the dwarf in the middle, and retreats.  Through the whole, another two ants enter, and go for Davina and another dwarf.

I use the quantum chance teleportation, and get to between the two ants.  I slice their heads before they can react, and then I close the hole in the wall with earth magic.  I look at the frozen dwarves, and the girls.  The dragonesses try to overcome the crate that is now in place, but they don’t manage to overcome it.

I grab my sword, and make the mana vibrate in, then I just cut the bars as if they were rope.  I am enjoying this new sword.  I wonder how easier the trial would have been with it.  The girls get close to us, the dwarves are completely phreaked out.  I check the situation.  I close the hole, and once I remove the dwarves from the hole they were escavating, I close it too, adding a lot of material.  I grab the ant’s head on the floor, and I open a portal to our room in the palace.  The girls, in special the dragonesses are pushing the dwarves and Cecilia towards it, in spite of their fear.  When we arrive in our room, they start shouting.

“WHAT THE FUCK!  IMMA GONNA HAVE THAT BASTARD’S HEAD!”, and that was the lighter sentence around.  Dwarf cursing is an experience.

“We don’t have time for this!  Davina, breath! We have to get to your father.”  While I shake her.

She realizes the situation, and calms down.  I grab the ant’s head, it is huge.  Davina opens the doors.  The mining dwarves stays at my room, and the rest of us go running towards the throne room.  The same two guards are there, halberds at hand.

I show the guards my tag.  “By the adamantite tag, I need to speak to the king right now!  Open the doors!”

The guards point their halberds at me.  I just turn my stone skin on, for a good measure.  I just open the doors while they keep hitting me.  Everyone stops talking mid-sentence and look at us.  I am holding a giant ant’s head, and there are two guards hitting me with their halberds, and I am just ignoring them. 

Dávrin, from up his throne, stands up.

“WHAT THE…?  YOU TWO, STOP THAT IMMEDIATELY!  WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU’RE DOING?”

He looks at me, then at Davina.

“What happened?”

I throw the ant head on the floor.

“The digging hit an ant’s nest.  And I think that Austri might have a finger on this.”

The nobles look at the head, and some of them get a really scared face.  Around half of them start running outside the room.  The guards are frozen at the door.

“By the gods…” Dávrin takes two steps back and falls down on the throne.  Now the room only has us, the advisors and the two guards.

“You two, leave.  And close the door.”

The two guards leave slowly.  Dávrin holds his head, and whispers “by the gods, almost a million dwarves…”

I look at the scene, and that moves me.

“Ok, girls, let’s clean that nest out.”

At this point, Dávrin lifts his head.  Davina is just kind of slow reacting to the whole situation.  It’s like she is not realizing the issues.  Ruby hits one of her palms with a closed fist.

“Finally, something to test the new sword, and really let go!”

“Wait, we want the carapaces…”

“NO! FUCK THE CARAPACES!  I WILL GIVE YOU AN ADAMANTITE ARMOR FOR EACH ANT YOU KILL, FUCK THE CARAPACES, JUST GET THEM DEAD! PLEASE!”

I sigh.  “Sure.” I open a portal to the mines.  “Girls, let’s go.  The game now is about speed.”  We jump into the portal, and close it behind us.  I undo the earth magic, and remove the compacted earth from the way, and the whole is bigger, with a lot of ants coming towards us.  I enhance myself, and I use several nails, and make it several strong shots with my railgun magic, and I clean up the area.  Not really cleaning up, there is a lot of goo and broken pieces everywhere, but no alive monsters.

The dragonesses and I dive in the fray, while Cecilia is behind, trying to use her magic.  Before she can cast, though, we are done with the immediate attack.

After we go through that hole, the girls move forward.  I come back to talk to Cecilia.

“You can stay here.  Remember that you almost can’t be hurt.  Your sword should be able to cut through an ant easily.  Would you rather go back to our room?”

“No, you need someone guarding this.”

“Ok.  See you in a little bit.”

I go back and join the fray, in another direction.  It occurs to me that if the queen screams for help, using whatever method of communication they have, the other ants will come. I go to the deepest cave in the anthill, and start searching for the queen.

The ants are faster than the termites, but that doesn’t make much of a difference.  I keep on moving forward, slashing soldiers that are getting bigger and bigger.  Some of them even have a flat head, like some kinds of ants that use their heads to plug a hole in the anthill.  I slash right through them.  Sometimes I use the sword on the flat side, to make the ant explode instead of just slicing them, to help open the way.

I get to the queens nest, there are a sea of eggs, and a huge queen laying another one there.  I have to make it ‘scream’.  It takes a higher amount of mana to get the oxygen from the air around here, but I can still do it.  I burn her soft tissue, the egg laying part.

She lifts her head, and I can see the pincers moving frenetically.  I receive a bit of a shock, that goes straight into my mind.  I reinforce it.  I wait for the end of the mental scream.  At least I learned how they communicate. 

I then kill the queen, with a stab to the head.  With my whole body enhanced, it is easy.  I look to my front, and time is moving slowly because of the enhancement.  I let time pass a little, there is a sea of ants coming my way.

I move forward, killing them, just stabbing the heads, jumping from one ant to another.  The sensation I have is a lot of weightlessness, while I jump from head to head, sometimes using the ceiling.

There are a lot of ants around, but I keep doing that.  After some time, I see the dragonesses coming into this chamber, and we meet in the middle.  Opal seems bored, while Shandon and Aquamarine seem like they had some fun.  The fourth one has a human shape, completely covered in goo, but smiling.

“Hi girls.  Did you have fun?”

My pretty pile of goo answered.

“YES!  I NEVER DID WENT ALL OUT BEFORE!”

“What, never?”

“No, my lord.  We don’t overhunt in Drakonia, and we are not the strongest ones there…  This was AWESOME!”

I laugh, while Opal covers her nose.  We really need a bath right now.  I scan the area, with my magic senses.

“There are still a couple of ants around.  I will be back.  Can you please get rid of the eggs?”

“Yes, my lord.” Shandon answers, and I leave them.  I visit a couple of chambers that have a dozen ants that were outside the anthill.  I go to the top, and I use some earth magic to close it up.  It is in an area that is just a little off the dragons’ hunting grounds.

I come back to the queen’s chamber, and the eggs became dust.  Even with the fire almost complete immunity, the eggs were not on par with the dragonesses breath.  I do another inspection, and now things look clean and safe.

We go up to the dwarves’ caves, and meet up with Cecilia, that takes a look at the dragonesses, and then at Ruby.

“Eewww…”

“What sister?  Are you going to deny me a hug?”  Ruby answers, walking slowly towards Cecilia.  I giggle a little, and I open a portal to the throne room.  We really need a bath, but I am guessing that Dávrin would appreciate an immediate notice.

When we leave the portal, I see him.  He is sitting on the first step, in front of the throne, holding his hands, with forearms against his legs.  The nobles are in the corners, talking with a very deep and mournful face.  Dávrin looks at us, and a bell starts to ring.  Dávrin and the nobles raise their heads.  After a couple of seconds thinking, I see that Dávrin had thought of something.  He turns to his advisor, The Hammer.

“Quick!  Let the soldiers know that they are to let Austri enter the throne room.  He is to enter, but not to leave.” He then looks at us, and giggles a little.  “You do look like you just decimated a whole anthill.”

His advisor goes to the guards, and barks some orders.  They start running, and he goes running after them.  I reply to Dávrin.

“Yes, I did some searching, I think we got all of them.”  The nobles in the room start moving towards us, slowly, their eyes wide.  An elder raises his hand.

“You killed a whole colony, in a less than an hour?”

“I don’t really know how long passed, but apparently yes.”

I see that some of them try to get close, but then change their minds when they feel the smell.  At this point we hear a voice, shouting from the corridor.

“YOUR MAJESTY!  YOUR MAJESTY!”

The voice keeps getting close, and now everyone is staring at the door.

“THERE HAS B…”

Austri enters the room and sees the scene.  He takes a couple of moments to understand what he is seeing in front of him.  He turns around, but I teleport to the doors, and close them.

“I WANT HIS FUCKING HEAD!!!” Davina has her sword out, and she is being held off the ground by Dávrin, while she shakes herself.

“Wait, daughter, that is not the way.  He is going to pay.”

Austri takes a short double axe from his bag of holding, and tries to attack me.  I hold the axe, and take if off his hands, and I slap him to the floor.  He falls and looks at me with anger, and then he feels a blade against his neck.  He looks up, and Dávrin is holding one of the halberds.

The Hammer enters the room, with a group of guards.  One of them has a metal pillory.  They put it on Austri, and take him away.

The king puts the halberd blade against the floor, and leans on it, looking tired.  “Thank you, friend.”

“Sure.  We are going to go get a shower now, if you don’t mind.”

He laughed.  “Of course not!”

We go to our room, and undress under the shower, there is no other way to do that.  We leave the dirty equipment on the floor, we can take a look later.  After sometime, Ruby’s hair become red again.  She is looking at me, in a horny way.  I get jumped by her, and then the other dragonesses join in.

After some time, we finish the shower, and dress up something light.  I clean my sword, and attach it to my waist.  The girls do the same to their swords.  I know I am not going to use it, but if I can show this around…

It is getting late already, and it is about to be dinner time.  We go to the dinning room.  The butler there gets close, does a bow.

“Sir, you and your’s presence is required in the throne room.”

We go to the throne room.  One of the guards asks us to wait a minute, while the second one enters an closes the door behind him.  The door opens again, and this time it is Dávrin that is opening it. He motions us to enter. 

The room is silent, everyone is kneeling down. We walk with him until the stairs before the throne start.  He climbs up a couple of steps, so that we stay at eye level.

“Three.  Three cities lost to plagues in the past.  One lost to termites, and two lost to ants.  We were going to be the fourth one, if not for our friend.

“Nothing I can offer is of equal value to the amount of lives and livelihood you saved today.  My only question is: How can I repay this?”

I scratch the back of my neck.  “I… errrrmmm… Never mind?  There is not really anything I want that I don’t already have…” I take a look at the girls beside me.  “And some of my girls actually had fun.”

Opal had her head high, as always, and Ruby was nodding, smiling.  Aquamarine was staring at me blushing, and Cecilia and Shandon reached out from behind and kissed me on the neck.  Dávrin continued his speech.

“Well, friend, that being said, nothing can compare to the price of a kingdom.  You have mine, and all the dwarves, thanks.”  And he bowed to us.

“Sure, it’s ok.”

“We are going to have a celebration, after Austri’s trial, in two days.  Will you give us the honor of being there?”

“Sure.”

“Thank you.”  He stayed bowing down, and the nobles are still kneeling.  I look at Cecilia, gesture her my ‘what are supposed to do here?’, but she just shrugs. 

“Errr…  You all can just act normal around us, it is ok.”

“Of course.”  Dávrin stands up, goes the two steps down, and hugs me.  I hug him back.  After that, we leave and go back to the dining room.  That was kind of weird.

We sit down, and the food is served. Davina arrives, and sits down as well.  She starts eating, and then we start eating.  It is noticeable that she is still furious with Austri.  I turn to Ruby.

“Ruby, do you have any idea on how many ants you killed?”

“No, my lord. After 100 I just lost count.  And that was on the first chamber already.”

Davina gasps, she chokes on the food.  She slaps her chest, and drinks some ale.  “AFTER THE FIRST 100?”

“Yes, it is difficult to keep count, smashing them is kind of relaxing, so I just got distracted…”

Davina puts her elbow on the table and gesticulates with her fork towards Ruby.  She opens her mouth to say something, but gives up, and just goes back to eating.

“Davina, a quick reminder here, we are not a normal party of adventurers.  These four girls are dragons, they are just in a human form.  I modified my body and Cecilia’s, I don’t think any of your weapons can puncture our skin.”

She angles her head, and then nods.

We are still eating, when the king and Dyrgja arrive at the table, and sit down.  Dávrin puts his cup up, and gets it filled with ale, that he drinks in large gulps.  His wife stands up and starts putting food in his plate. 

“This was a day!  I still feel like this whole thing is a nightmare turned dream.”  He giggled. “Perhaps send some people bring the demon’s church?”

I laughed a little.

“What do you mean, father?”

“Do you want to hear the story of the demon’s god?”

“Sure, I guess.”

“So, it is said that a reincarnation of Wrax, in the form of a human popped up to the demons, and told them that he had killed some dragons that dared challenge his rights to hunt wherever he wanted. 

“This god of knowledge wanted balance, so he offered to sell some dragons parts to the demons, so that they wouldn’t get overridden by humans due to a difference of newly acquired strength.

“The demons appreciated the gift, and pledged their loyalty.

“The god was pleased, so he decided to share his knowledge with them, providing a way to capture pure water from the sea.

“The draught was contained, and previous deserted areas are now green with plant life.”

After some time of silence, it was obvious to Davina that the story was finished.

“What a beautiful tale.  When did all this happened?”

“A little more than 6 months ago.”

“It does sound nice when you put it that way.”

“I am not putting anything in anyway.  That’s their current holy scripture.  I have to get an updated copy, I am sure they are going to have some more in there.  They might even add a chapter on how the god destroyed the dwarf trial as a joke, and saved them from extinction, as an after thought, to keep balance between the races.”

I laugh.  Cecilia does as well.  The dragonesses are just proud.

Davina is looking around, not quite understanding.  She looks at her mother, that nods and then points at me with her eyes.

“NO!  Really?”

I laugh some more.  This is funny.  And right now, everyone is alright.  It feels good to help people once in a while.  Specially if they are being nice to us.  At this point, Brokkr enters the room.

“I should remove you from my will, nephew!  You didn’t mention to me that you were having dinner with master Marcelo.”

“Do you even know how a will works, old man?  You apparently forgot how a country works!”

“I don’t think I have.” He gets closer, and puts his hand on Dávrin’s shoulder.

“Did you hear about the whole thing already?”

“Of course, nephew.  Who hasn’t?  It’s not like the evacuation bell is particularly discreet.  And you do know who trained your guards, right?”

“Why do you call him master Marcelo, and I am just nephew?”

Brokkr shrugs.  “He earned it.”  Davina looks appalled.

“Who are you, and where is my great uncle?”

Brokkr just raises a brow, and sits down on an available chair.  “MAID! BRING ME A PLATE!”

The household actually listen to him, and bring him a plate and some silverware.  He starts eating with us.

As I am eating, I remember something that Dávrin had mentioned earlier.

“Dávrin, I was wondering…  You said that you lost 3 cities to ants and termites, right?”

“Yes.”

“Do they look like this?”

“They might have looked, in the past.  They have been taken over by those things for centuries now.”  He says while he reaches for some bread.

“Do you want those back?  I mean, it can be done.” 

Dávrin drops the bread, and looks at my face.  “I… don’t… know…”

“You would have to have the people to restore and then populate it, but the ant killing should not be a big problem.”

He stops eating and starts staring at the distance.  “We definitely have to open a church here too…”

We laugh.  Brokkr tells the tale of a nephew of his, that wanted to be an adventurer when he was a kid.  But he was the son of the king, and the king wanted him to learn about his people, so he proposed the most used lie in the dwarf kingdom…  If he could defend himself…  He was laughing when he told that the kid spent 10 years working hard to get enchanted adamantite halberds.

Dávrin shrugged.  He looked at Davina, and told her that she got extremely lucky, she was going to be the next one.  She got a bit angry, but that just made everything funnier.

We retire for the night, tomorrow is going to be an interesting day.