Lerykaz: Home
He hadn’t been home for three days. With his brother still lying in a hospital bed hovering in that gray area between life and death, the lawmen wanting answers for what happened at the arena, and taking the rest of Karyzel’s things to Elyria’s place, Lerykaz had barely made time for sleep. When he shuffled through his front door he was sorely tempted to fall over on the cushions in the front room and welcome sleep with open arms.
But he needed answers first. The symbol on the Slaughterer’s chest—it hadn’t taken the village long to come up with a name—was burned into his brain. His father’s armor had the same symbol. He knew it.
If Zakyrel had seen all the vortexes salvaged from their father’s tower he never said anything. Lerykaz found them undisturbed in his knapsack his first night home, so it was possible his brother had never noticed them. Or he didn’t care. Either was entirely likely. All the same Lerykaz stashed them away somewhere his brother wouldn’t find them. He knew Zakyrel had found the loose floorboard under his bed and the hole in the ceiling where the lamp hung, but he hadn’t found the best one yet: a hollowed out spot in the window frame.
It wasn’t noticeable at all and it took Lerykaz himself quite a while to disassemble the inner window in order to pop the small panel free.
Sitting inside, covered in a few thin cobwebs, sat a lumpy leather pouch. Although an individual vortex didn’t weigh much, 42 of them were enough to give the pouch a decent heft.
Lerykaz didn’t bother to put the window back together, yet. This was going to be a quick glance at what his father had been working on. Even in the shock of realizing who he had killed, seeing all these carefully labeled vortexes hanging over his workbench had been enough of a clue: this was important. Maybe he could find out why his father had deserved to die; find out what made him so dangerous.
Truth be told he was looking for reassurance at this point. His trainer had told him to go to the tower, sneak in, and kill the man who was a threat to the entire system. Lerykaz found only his father in that gray spire. At the time it seemed straightforward.
But what about the Slaughterer? He had the same coat of arms. He’d murdered dozens of people at the arena and even some villagers when he escaped to the forest.
The word “vengeance” had been pricking at the back of Lerykaz’ mind as well. The Slaughterer was out for revenge for somebody. It had to be his father he was talking about. He was sure of that much.
Which meant Zakyrel could die because of his mistake. The Slaughterer thought he killed their father. That much was obvious.
His eyes itched and started to water, but no tears fell. The last three days demolished the rickety stability he’d built up at home. He was numb now.
Loosening the string on the pouch Lerykaz poured the small discs out onto his mattress. They clinked against each other, their small tags fluttering behind them like wings. Each was labeled 1 through 41 in carefully printed numbers that were the products of his father’s neat handwriting. The last one was simply called “Index.”
Remembering the printed dictionaries his father had given him when he was a kid—he sold them years ago as they weren’t edible and fruit was—Lerykaz started with the Index. As he opened the vortex he hoped his father hadn’t rigged it with a nasty surprise.
A piece of paper slid from the disc rather than a live grenade. The paper was thick, a deep, mellow white that bordered on raw cream. Along the left side were the numbers 1 through 41 again, and each set was put down in his father’s careful script. Running his thumb over the writing, Lerykaz could feel the indention of each letter from the pen’s nib.
His father did have a fascination with antiques after all.
At the bottom of the list was a small version of his father’s coat of arms. Though it was in black and white, he recognized it as the same symbol from the Slaughterer’s chestplate. His pulse ticked up and his heart beat faster at the thought.
The first seven things were what existed in the Ocost system: Asylum, Pormos, Sareste, Xydak, Cryce, the Pterri ship, and the Orb itself. After that the index didn’t make as much sense. Relic carving, worship sites, traps, stars, systems, an entry for each of the species, Robots, Races of Old, mythology, gods and goddesses and on and on it went.
Lerykaz picked up vortex 4, the one for Xydak, as it was the most familiar. He began digging out the materials his father had gathered. Reams of parchment, paper, data logs, blueprints, reports on geography, history, customs, census data, and even the most mundane of weather reports started to fill first his bed and then the floor. As the day wore on Lerykaz poured over everything his father had compiled about the Outcasts, the Draeg, and anything else that might have existed on the planet at some point, even the Spawn. In the margins of many pieces his father had made notes to himself, references to one of 77 notebooks he’d stuck in a single vortex, highlighted passages, and scratched others out. Hand-drawn diagrams came out in a single bundled pack, and Lerykaz carefully unfolded each one as the Orb dropped lower in the sky.
When twilight came he cobbled together a sandwich, brewed strong tea and lit the lamps in his room. He read onward.
Although he fought well, sleep finally overpowered him late into the night. His eyes slid shut and a stack of Xydasian University reports on the planet’s architecture served as a pillow. Lerykaz slept sprawled among his inheritance, having taken his first steps toward what would give him purpose.