31.Obsession
Resting inside his now-empty home, the Master Hunter retired to his chair, and set about cleaning the blood and corrosion from his sword. A simple system of leather straps sprinkled with a specific gray dust made the process something quite cathartic for the experienced bladesman.
He had never imagined that if he lived two thousand cycles he would ever see what he had just seen, and it was consuming him.
“How can it be? ... But I saw her myself. I thought they were only myth.”
He looked around the simple, wooden structure of his dusty home and felt alone. There was more in this world than he had ever thought possible now, and he only knew of what he saw because his grandfather had told him of the ones with liquid eyes. The knowledge was like an acid in his mind, burning out everything else. He sat, cleaning and obsessing for some time.
A knock woke him from a shallow sleep the following morning.
“What could they want now?”
He rose from his chair and sheathed his sword, walking slowly to the door as another sharper knock bounced off of it.
“Master Hunter LeYorn!”
A voice rang through, following the knock.
“Open this—”
“What do you want?”
LeYorn threw open the door to see two Cast Soldiers leering at him.
“You have been ordered to relinquish your food for this moon cycle due to your—”
“Because I trained Theor, I know this.”
He motioned to the empty house behind him.
“My woman and children have been taken to live with another Hunter, because thanks to that idiot, Theor, I have nothing for them. You need trouble me no further.”
Stepping back, he swung the door to close it.
“You do not choose when our conversation is over, Hunter.”
The Soldier stepped forward and forced his weapon through the door paneling, nailing it to the floorboards.
“What? I have done nothing that I can be punished for, you need not be here.”
“Careful ... Hunter.”
The Soldier’s eyes now rimmed with orange, focused entirely on LeYorn.
“You ... are no danger to me.”
LeYorn stood where he was, displaying no evidence of fear.
“I am no mere Dust Cloth, Cast ... now what more do you want from me?”
The Soldier calmed himself and removed his sword from the door.
Guaranteed as his victory would be, he was less certain of remaining entirely unscathed. Stepping back, he and the other Soldier made their way off, but not before muttering about sending an Officer to interrogate him further.
With no interest in staying around to risk a Cast Officer, LeYorn closed the door and turned back to his dark home.
Having his woman and children taken to the house of another better-provisioned Hunter was a great misery for him. Knowing that he may not be able to have them home again, left him with a destructive emptiness.
He felt his curiosity regarding the child he had just encountered take over from his remaining will to stay. It even replaced his hope that he could retrieve his family.
Giving in to his new direction, he collected what he could in portable food, a quantity recently diminished by his generosity, and clothed himself for a lengthy journey. He didn’t know where the child had gone, but with her distinctive scent in his nose, he would find her easily enough.
The house felt empty with no one coming back to it, and it was hard to leave behind as he looked back at the closed door. A home with no signs of life or light.
He started walking, following what he found of the signs that she left: little footprints, a subtle scent, a scattering of gravel fragments where she had sat to eat and got up quickly. As he traveled the fascination repeated.
Where did she come from? How is she even ... ?
As he walked through the dust cloud cluttered environment, he couldn’t help but be both excited and shaken at the presentation of something that he had always thought was legend, if not utter mythology. It was a rare feeling for LeYorn to have any real presence of fear or trepidation.
After generations of the Ohun Clans choosing their breeding so carefully, being afraid was limited to the most extreme of situations. Knowing so well his personal strength and capability, LeYorn kept thinking that he could mitigate the concern, ease the feeling, but it was just not possible.
He recalled stories of the liquid-eyed people from his childhood, and what he had always believed about the possibility of their existence. Not once had he imagined ever meeting one, let alone in the visage of a small girl. He, along with all the other Ohuns growing up, had assumed that these rare people were only ever adults.
I suppose all children think that way about the myths they hear.
Echoes of his own youth came and went as he passed by yet another set of little footprints. The idea that he was going to have to change his lifelong belief was very disconcerting. He began to wonder if other myths from his youth were based in reality.
The event had sent him into a spiral of uncertainty regarding his whole childhood education.
As he thought himself deeper and deeper into puzzlement, his contemplation was sharply broken by a smell he did not enjoy, and a sound even less welcome.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
“Master!”
The voice was like a sharp cut across his ears.
“I have good news, you need to hear this ... ”
Theor was striding toward him at a determined pace.
Oh ... this great imbecile.
The younger man drew closer, and there was no time to leave his sightline.
“What is it? I have little time for you.”
He turned to face the overeager Theor as he came to a stop, having to look up to his taller Master.
“I found out that they’re sending a Stalker after the stolen girl who got away from the Cast.”
“That’s not good news, you idiot. When are they sending her?”
“I don’t know, but they’ve begun talking about it. Why is it not good?”
“Because it means the Cast are looking foolish, and they will absolutely take that out on the Dust Cloth.”
His frustration with the short-sighted Theor brought an expression of disgust to his face.
“Well, why does it matter to us what happens to the Dust Cloth? They just eat our food anyway.”
LeYorn begun to slow his speech drastically.
“Because ... where do you think ... they will turn their attention ... when they decide it was the fault of the Ohun ... for not finding her after the death of the Boy Child?”
Theor stood silent for a moment, with an empty expression.
“It wasn’t our fault that she—”
“And how often has fault truly been the motivation behind a Cast Soldier dismembering one of us, in front of our family?!”
Theor stood back from his Master.
“I ... I thought it would mean they find her and things calm again.”
LeYorn began to growl in a low and steady tone.
“You and your thoughts are the reason I am without my family. I have hoped that you would learn by now that thinking is not your strength, with only one ear to show for your recent efforts. What is it you imagine will happen if the Stalker comes back empty handed?”
“But, that doesn’t happen.”
Theor protested the idea that he was wrong, yet again.
“Well, it’s never happened that a CHILD has escaped the Cast before either. Are you willing to bet your other ear on the skills of a Stalker? What if you are gambling the life of one of your beautiful girl children?”
Theor dug his feet into the ground and quickly grasped a dagger-like weapon on his hip.
“No one is taking the life of a child of mine.”
He looked at his Master as though he were the one who would murder the girl.
“Ease, Theor. I’m not hurting your children.”
Raising a hand to quiet his former student, LeYorn moved forward, eyes flicking to the dagger in Theor’s hand.
“Wait, show me that dagger.”
His tone changed from consoling to authoritative in an instant.
“It’s one of mine.”
The younger man became defensive and irreverent.
“I’m not going to claim it! Just let me see it.”
LeYorn’s patience ran thin as he glared at him.
As Theor loosened his grip on the dagger, LeYorn could see the details: black, glass-like, ... curved…
LeYorn’s voice snapped in reaction, loaded with anger and frustration.
“You have a Veil claw dagger?!”
“I won it in battle, it is mine to claim.”
“You?! You won a battle with an adult Veil? When? What help did you have?”
LeYorn’s frustration and incredulity intensified as Theor had never demonstrated the kind of ferocity, patience and extraordinary skill it would take to survive a fight with a Veil. The moment of realization came almost as quickly as his annoyed expression.
“You didn’t kill an adult, did you?!”
Theor broke eye contact and held harder to the dagger grip.
“Are you holding a dagger made from a Gods-forsaken VEIL CUB?!”
LeYorn stepped forward and took up the now-shaken man as though he weighed not more than a child. Holding him by his temples with both hands, the great warrior interlocked his fingers around the back of Theor’s skull, and lifted him from his feet and began to shake him.
“Wait!”
Theor, hanging by his skull, was aware of how capable the Master Hunter was of truly taking him apart if he wished.
“I only took its claw. I wasn’t the one who killed it.”
He knew his moment for convincing the extraordinarily powerful LeYorn of his innocence was passing rapidly.
“Then who killed it?”
The tone of his voice was growing more and more similar to that of a thundering monster.
“I … I don’t know. I found the body outside, near the mountains, and I cut the claw from it.”
LeYorn dropped him from grasp.
“You Slop Brain!”
He snatched the dagger from Theor’s hand.
“These are only ever collected from adult males for a reason. Why would you not know that? If we take the life of a female or worst of all, a cub, the males will hunt all involved for the ... rest ... of ... their lives! Veils live far longer than you or I!”
He was looking the younger man directly in the eye now, his fury somewhat replaced with a desire to mentor once again.
“By taking this, you may have cursed yourself, and your family. You may well be the target of the male who sired this cub, forever.”
Theor’s face lost all color.
“But ... but, they never come into the Villages. That’s been true since the first ones were found.”
“That’s right, they don’t. Veils are supremely intelligent, and they take no unnecessary risks. That’s why we aren’t all dead and eaten. But you tell me if you would risk your life to avenge the death of your little Denaya, especially if you found her dead and MISSING FINGERS! Would you not do anything to find the man who took them? Look at what you did to that idiot Jund ... just for talking about them the wrong way.”
The full scale of his mistake began to dawn on Theor, and his breath left him as he sat hard on the ground.
“I have drawn a Veil here, and to my family?”
He looked up at his Master with terror and woe in his eyes.
“Let us just hope that its sire never figures out who you are, and that’s the thing you must remember. It is a thinking creature: not simply an angry predator. He may never stop hunting you. But tell me where you got the claw and I’ll try to return it. There is a chance it will stop once it has nothing to find.”
He took the dagger from Theor and concealed it in his robe.
Theor looked back at the man who was willing to take such an extraordinary risk to protect his family.
“But, it may kill you just for having it.”
“That is true, but it may not. And I will need you to watch over my family should I not return. Do you understand?”
LeYorn turned to leave.
“I do Master. I found it on a freshly slaughtered cub cycles ago, by the foothills close to the path up to the mountain tunnels. Someone had dropped it there and already taken a finger ... I am sorry for my foolishness, please do not disown me.”
LeYorn turned back to see Theor, standing, his hand to the middle of his chest, his head bowed low.
“Listen boy, if I were to disown you for foolishness, it would have been long ago.”
An almost wry smile cuts the grime and scars on LeYorn’s face.
“Live boy, learn from your errors. Guard the villagers; love your family. Be the man I know you can be. A good man is made more of love and willingness to evolve, than he is of strength and weaponry.”
Theor gathered himself and made his way back toward his home, his head low and steps slow, with none of the confidence he normally would walk with. In such a short time his girl children had been threatened, he was forced to kill a villager that was no match for him. He had lost an ear, and the food supply to not only his family, but that of his most-respected master. The feeling that he needed to be a better man was starting to become all-consuming. His thoughts drifted to his two beautiful girls, their delicate features and kind hearts.
Picking up speed he made his way home, suddenly feeling the awful emptiness of having put them in harm’s way, just to gain a trophy that he had not earned.
–Garrick M Lynch–