A Long Time From Home

Author's notes:

I'm rather busy right now and as I've said before, the new chapters might take a little longer to finish. Sorry about that.

About the language and notation:

The Baylon language is a predecessor to Latin, which is why it looks like Latin at a glance.

Mental communication is denoted by a < and ends with a >, so a mental communication will look like this: "< Who are you? >"

Some warnings

:

This is erotic action adventure, meaning that there will be both sex and violence, but I don't mix the two.

This story is posted on the Literotica website and the author does not give permission for it to be reposted or reprinted anywhere else without consent.

P.S. I haven't gotten an editor yet, so any mistakes are mine. Interested editors are welcome :)

P.P.S. While you're here anyway, please rate the chapter and leave a comment :)

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Chapter 30 -- Modern life

Sunday, 25th of June 2000, Malaga, Spain

Ivan

True to his word, Julian slept on my sofa that night, but he took off right after breakfast, leaving me alone with the whole day to myself for the first time since I woke up from the trance.

My first stop was by the reception, where I got the man behind the desk to explain how the hotels laundry service worked. I also arranged for them wash everything I owned, except for the clothes I was wearing and the Iron-silk clothes. It wasn't much, and it made me realize, that I would need some more clothes if I were to look like a normal person, so I went shopping.

When I was done, I owned two more sets of clothes and two pairs of shoes as well as a suitcase large enough to hide the sword. Unlike the shorts I had bought earlier in the week, one of the sets was similar to what the locals used, giving me a chance to blend in if I needed to. I tried the sunglasses that everybody seemed to use, but found that it obscured my vision, so I bought a hat instead. It would still shield my eyes from the sun, and I didn't feel stupid wearing it.

I even bought a cell phone after a patient salesman had explained to me, that they could be bought with pre-paid local service. He had a long-winded sales talk, but for me it all boiled down to that I could buy a phone without showing papers that I didn't have. As all salesmen, he tried to sell me the most expensive one he had, but I kept explaining that I had no use for all the fancy things it could. He ended up selling me the simplest of the phones, though I did humour him in paying a little extra for getting a phone that was already charged, so I 'didn't have to waste valuable vacation time, while waiting for the battery to finish charging.'.

It even came with an instruction manual, and I read it all the way through as soon as I came back to my hotel room. As it turned out, it wasn't as difficult to use as I had feared, but it was still rather complicated for one that hadn't one ever before and it took me some time to get it to work.

Satisfied, I looked at the phone and realized I had absolutely nobody to call. The only person in the world I had a phone number for was Alice, and after Julian's talk about digital tracing, I was sure that the police had that one monitored.

Then I remembered the card that Sophia had given me the day before and called her, just to try it.

To my surprise, she not only answered the call, but she also agreed to join me for lunch, which had been my excuse for calling her.

After we had agreed to meet at two o'clock at Plaza de la Marina, I started to wonder what to wear. The information from the Trojan Women made it clear that when a man invited a woman to a meal, she expected him to dress nicely. The problem was that 'nicely' was vaguely defined, leaving me with no idea of what was expected. Then I remembered that there had been some magazines in the hotels reception and walked over there to look at them.

A quick flip-through of several magazines showed that men should be wearing a shirt with folded-up sleeves, pants, and leather shoes, instead of the t-shirt, shorts and sandals that seemed to be the clothes of choice for the tourists here. Fortunately, that was the same as most if the locals were wearing, so I already had that.

None of the pictures showed any money belts, meaning that I had to use my newly bought wallet. Ignoring jewelry, other frequent accessories were watches and sunglasses.

So, I fetched the bags from the safety deposit box at the harbour terminal and started to look through them to determine what I actually had, starting with the watches.

To my amusement, the boxes not only contained the watch pictured on the outside, but also papers that turned out to be some form for guarantee that the watch had been made by the watch company and had been legally sold.

Apparently even things like watches needed passports nowadays.

I quickly placed three of the watches in the boxes again, since they had a metal link strap, which I didn't like, and looked at the four that was left.

Two was made by a company called IWC and the two others were made by someone named Patek Philippe. All showed just about everything you ever needed to know about time, including time, day of the week, month, and year. Even moon phases were shown on the watch, though I couldn't think of a reason why anybody would need that in this modern age.

The two Patek Philippe was slightly bigger, so I put them back in the boxes again.

That left the two IWC watches. Both were named Grande Complication, but one was in gold with a brown strap and another in a silvery material with a black strap.

Taking a decision, I took the silvery watch and strapped it on my wrist, before spending half an hour reading the manual for the watch and getting it to work.

After that, I dressed up in the set of local clothes I had bought, folded up the sleeves and looked the mirror. Not bad, I decided. At least the fashion in the modern world was comfortable to wear and not as ridiculous as some other fashions I had tried during my time.

I laughed to myself as I remembered the Roman toga and the tall pointy hats some of the Scythians had worn. Goddess that had been bad.

Still chuckling, I turned my attention towards the bag with the money and simply turned it upside down over the bed. Stacks of paper money held together with bands poured out and landed on the bed, followed by several ID's and two leather folders.

Wanting to get the money out of the way as soon as possible, I ignored the last two items and stacked the bundles next to the sword in the new suitcase, counting while I did it.

"This is not good." I mumbled to myself, as the last bundle was number forty-nine. With ten thousand dollars per bundle, that was an awful lot of money and somebody was bound to come looking for them. Even if the owner was dead.

It was too late to change things now, so with a shrug, I placed the unused watches in the suitcase, along with some of the old stuff that I didn't use at the moment, like the gold and ivory toothbrush and comb. The laptop I had found in Curtis' house was next. I didn't have the first clue about how to use it, but there was a chance there was some valuable information on it, so I couldn't just throw it out.

Then I sat down on the bed and turned my attention towards the leather folders. Both those from the moneybag and the ones from the second safe in the house.

All held papers which, according to my knowledge from the women, looked like legal papers in English, Spanish and some languages that I didn't understand. I tried to read what I could but realized that my knowledge wasn't good enough to understand the complicated language. As far as I could tell, it was documents of ownership for land and other stuff in various countries: Bahamas, Malaysia, Mauritius, Brazil, Spain, Croatia, and Costa Rica.

Unfortunately, I didn't have a clue about where those countries were or what to do with the papers, so I placed them in the suitcase again and I turned my attention to the ID papers.

I studied Curtis' picture in the passports for a while, but no matter how I disguised myself, there was no way I could come to look like him, so unless I could switch out the picture, it was useless.

It didn't take long to determine, that changing the picture wasn't going to be easy. There was a thin layer of a transparent material over the passport and from the women I knew that it was most likely some kind of plastic. Not a material I was used to working with, but at least it wasn't magical.

I was tempted to try to cut the picture out, but since I had no picture of myself to put in its place, there was no need to rush it, so instead I started to examine the IDs from the moneybag.

They turned out to belong to Parker, as it was his face on them, and Parker had documents of ownership from England, Italy, Ukraine, Greece, and several other places.

Despite the modest house Curtis had lived in, both were clearly enormously wealthy, and it didn't take a genius to figure out, that it had to be due to their mental powers.

As a Mentat in a world of non-mentats, they would have a huge advantage in most situations, but their lifestyle indicated they had been careful about it. Considering the two international police officers most likely also had mental powers, that was a smart move.

However, why was Parker still here in Malaga? If I had been involved in something illegal and my partner in crime was killed, I would have left immediately. Parker had not only stayed in the city, but also had the nerves to try to get a closer look at Curtis' victims.

I pondered that for a while, but simply didn't have information enough to come to any form for conclusion that wasn't total guesswork, so instead I packed the suitcase, closed it, and walked to the harbour terminal, where I put it in a safety deposit box.

As I walked back to the hotel, a bookshop caught my eye and I walked in there with the intention of buying a map of the world. What I ended up with was even better: A big book, called 'Atlas of World History', which not only showed the world as it was now, but also as it had been in the past.

I was excited by this find, since that would enable me to find the present names of places I had visited in ancient times, and I was on my way back to study it, when I discovered a camera shop. It wasn't the cameras themselves that caught my eye, but a sign in the window, stating that they made photos for passports there.

Since I needed passport photos, I walked into the shop and had some made.

Making the passport photos didn't take long and half a glass later I was sitting in the hotel room, drinking a cup of tea, and looking at the atlas.

Just out of curiosity, I looked up Croatia, which conformed what I had gotten from Natasha's mind. Next was Argentina, the other country Curtis had a passport from, and that turned out to be one of the places I haven't visited before. Mostly since the part of the world laying to the west of Baylon, which would now be the Americas according to the map, hadn't been part of my area of expertise and so, I was never sent there, though others were.

I flipped through the pages to find Bahamas, Brazil and the rest of the places stated on the documents. I did find them, but I also found many other places and before long, I was chuckling to myself when certain names sparked memories, but after a while, I closed the book again. There were simply too many memories being brought to life for me to handle them all at once.

Instead, I found the passports again. It was clear that everything had been done to make it as difficult as possible to mess with the passport, but I had one advantage, that the makers of the passport haven't been able to consider: Ars Mentalis and with that, the ability to fuse things together as if they had never been apart. Fortunately, it's a skill similar to healing for the obvious reason that a healer needed to be able to close a wound.

I found my adamantine scalpel, meticulously cut the plastic on the side and top of the photo and gently removed the photo from the plastic. Some of the colour from the photo stuck to the plastic. An Ars Mentalis cleaning trick took care of that, so I could place my own picture in the passport instead before smoothing the plastic over. Finally, I used a mending Ars Mentalis trick to seamlessly fuse everything back together exactly as it was before.

Satisfied, I inspected my work to see if there were any tell-tale signs of my tinkering with it, but it was as smooth as I could have hoped for and the picture looked like it belonged in there.

It also fitted with the few descriptive words in the passport, as I was both blonde and blue eyed. Even the height was almost a match and I doubted that anybody would notice the small difference between the height stated in the passport and my actual height.

"Ivan Kolba." I mumbled to myself as I studied the passport. It sounded strange, but I had to get used to it, as it would be mine for a while. Not permanently though. I was confident that the makeshift passport along with some mental powers could get me away from Malaga, but at some point, I needed a real passport and not a fake one... or at least a fake one that was so good, that it couldn't be detected as fake.

I hid the rest of the passports again and glanced at the watch. It was time to go meet Sophia.

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Lunch was delightful. Dressed in a white summer dress, Sofia looked even better than last I saw her, and we spent the better part of an hour talking about life in general. Since that wasn't the best subject for me, I kept asking her questions about Malaga, her life, and plans for the future.

As I had found out doing our last meeting, she wasn't a prostitute, but used the extra money from her topless massage to put money aside, with the hope of opening her own massage parlour at some point. The only downside with her current business was that traveling to the customers required that she had a man along for protection, so she had hired her cousin for that.

If the massage parlour didn't work out, she had plans of going back to school and take an education as something called a 'physical therapist', which apparently was the modern name for a healer specializing in working with the muscles and bones in the body. To me it sounded a lot like the healers that had worked with the gladiators in Ancient Rome, who had been highly trained and well-paid, so I suggested that if she had the chance, she should go that route.

After dinner was over, Sofia led me on a small walk around the quarters near Plaza de la Marina. It was a lovely area, and I was having a good time, when Sofia stopped near a residential building and suggested that since she lived there, we could have a coffee in her apartment. There was a gleam in her eyes and with lust emanating from her, I didn't have any doubt that the coffee was just an excuse to get us out of the public eye and into a space, where she could seduce me.

She looked shocked when I said, "Thanks, but no thanks. I don't drink coffee." Taking advantage of her stunned silence, I leaned closer and whispered. "I would rather have you, than coffee."

The stunned expression on her face turned into a smile, as she took hold of my hand and dragged me towards the door.

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Once inside her apartment, Sofia moved very close to me and whispered, "Finally alone." Her eyes looked up into mine and her lips parted, as her hands pulled my head downwards for a kiss. Her lips were soft and seductive against mine and made my dick harden almost immediately.

My hands caressed her back and shoulders as we kissed and in return, she moved a hand from my head to stroke my chest. The kisses became more passionate, and my hands followed the soft curve of her hips to the bold swell of her well-shaped bottom, fondling it and making her moan.

Still kissing, she unbuttoned my shirt and had me stop fondling her for a moment, so she could take it off me. In return, I pulled up her dress just enough to get my hands on the soft skin of her thighs. She moaned slightly as my hands made contact with the warm, naked skin.

Then I slid my hands upwards, letting my forearms lift the dress, as my hands followed the gorgeous curve of her hips, going over the soft cloth of her panties to reach her waist, lifting the dress in the process.

Sofia sighed a happy sigh and lifted her arms, enabling me to continue my journey. She shivered and moaned again, as my hands went to her impressive breasts. Even encased in a bra as they were, they still felt both soft and firm at the same time, but with her holding her arms up, I couldn't linger for long, so after a little fondling, I moved up. The dress slipped over her head easily and was dumped on a chair.

The sight of her voluptuous body sent a wave of anticipation through my body and I dragged her close and gave her a kiss. She almost melted into my arms and pressed her body against mine, clearly feeling my erection.

Sofia broke the kiss to giggle. "Always nice to feel appreciated."

"Never doubt your sexiness." I whispered and kissed her cheek, slowly working my way towards her ear. She tilted her head to give me better access and I gently suckled her earlobe into my mouth, lightly teasing it with my tongue. That made her shiver, moan and pull me closer, so I nibbled her earlobe a bit more before I moved on to kiss and lick her neck, while I used my hands to unlock her bra.

Sofia giggled and undid my pants in return, before she yanked both them and my underwear down, making my dick spring free.

Without hesitation, she dropped to her knees, grabbed the shaft with one hand and flicked her tongue across the tip of my cock before she sucked the head inside her mouth.

I moaned slightly, as I felt her warm mouth engulf the head and her lips caress the sensitive area just below, while she sucked gently on the head.

For a blowjob, it was very wet with lots of saliva, which was very different from the last blowjob I had gotten from her. It was also a lot shorter. She had just gotten into a rhythm when she stopped and said. "Walk backwards."

With my pants still around my ancles walking was extremely awkward, but after a quick glance behind me I discovered there was a chair less than two small steps away and a moment later, I was sitting on it.

Sofia didn't waste any time, but crawled the short distance to me, breasts swinging with every move. I also discovered that she was a magician. Not only had the panties disappeared, but somehow, she now had a condom in her hand. A condom that she put on me expertly, before straddling my lap and looked into my eyes, as she kissed me with fiery intensity.

Then she lifted herself up briefly, just long enough to place my cockhead at her pussy lips, before she settled down on me, burying my cock in her wet pussy.

"Oh yeah!" She groaned, squeezing my cock with her inner muscles for a few heartbeats before she placed her hands on my shoulders and began to ride me.

Her magnificent breasts were swinging right in front of my eyes, so I caught one of them with a hand, fondling it, while leaning forward just enough to take the stiff nipple into my mouth.

Sofia groaned again and slowly increasing her pace as she rode me, leaning slightly forward to thrust her breasts into my face. With a groan, I ran the other hand down her side, until I reached her ass and squeezed it and making her moan again, as she picked up the pace.

Sliding the hand a little further down, I ran my fingers along the stretch-out lips of her pussy, feeling the fingers getting wet from her juices.

"More!" She whispered and I happily followed her order, moving my fingers upwards between her butt creeks, reaching her anus.