Ronnie's only form of socialization was with a sentient torn blanket that encouraged anything that would be a bad idea.
Ronnie had quickly forgotten this in his consistent state of panic over the last few days and began asking it for advice.
He and The Leech were in the living room, while Ronnie watched TV. He munched on a protein bar, going over the knowledge of the last few days, and was trying to come to the right conclusion of what to do with Ace's magic house.
"Why are you a blanket," Ronnie asked The Leech. "Why not like, a hammer?"
"Why are you a meatsuit? Why aren't you something useful?"
Ronnie wasn't falling for the bait.
"You're being purposefully antagonistic and dodging a basic question," Ronnie stated.
"What do you want?"
Ronnie took one last giant bite of his lemon protein bar and wiped his fingers on his shirt.
"Tell me everything about this house," Ronnie demanded.
"No."
Ronnie looked around in confusion as if there were someone else around to agree with him that this was ridiculous. He had rescued him from the attic and now he was incorrigible.
"I just want to make sure it's still here when Ace returns," Ronnie said.
His half-lie oddly worked on the blanket. Like all the iterations of Invictus they were enamored with Acheus, and at the very mention of his name, The Leech became compliant.
"The house's manual is inside Dad's room," The Leech said.
"I don't wanna go inside his room. It feels kinda wrong."
"The cat man will take Dad's sword too if he learns how to get past the security system."
Curiosity overcame Ronnie. He reasoned that the sword must be quite magnificent, seeing as Tyreceus could do such fantastical things to his house. Apprehensively he clutched the old blanket and walked up the stairs, toward Tyreceus' bedroom. When finally in front of the door, he realized he needed a key to get inside the locked door. The moral ambiguity of going inside a dead man's room when his own son hadn't opened the door for years was solved for him.
For exactly three seconds.
"Try opening it. You didn't even turn the knob."
"You turn the knob."
"Open the door."
"It's locked."
"Stop being weak."
Ronnie's ego was at stake once again. He wasn't going to be called weak by a blanket. So, he turned the knob, and the door had been unlocked for the past two and a half years.
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A bit of dust covered the furniture, but the room was left untouched. Books upon books shoved inside multiple bookcases, stacked on the floor, and a few in the closet surrounded Ronnie when he tentatively walked inside.
"I don't see any sword," Ronnie said.
"He keeps it under his bed. He's not very good at hiding things."
Ronnie wanted to exit quickly. The death of Tyreceus became very real once he was standing in his empty bedroom. He crouched down to the ground, coughing up dust and scaring away the resident spiders. Lifting up the skirt of the bed, he found no sword, but miscellaneous items, like shoes, books, and a box labeled Home.
"There's no sword here!"
"You're staring right at it."
Ronnie took out the box labeled Home, assuming it would be random household supplies but instead what he found was numerous pictures, books, and bobbles, but with labels in an indecipherable language.
There was a small picture of Ace as a baby, and on the back of the photograph were more words Ronnie couldn’t read. Pictures of Amara and Aegis, dead friends, all kept inside this box. Ronnie didn’t want to continue the invasion of privacy, especially since there was no sword to be seen.
He started putting the photos back into the box until he saw something peculiar.
It was a large book, with strange leather. It was kept closed with a wrapped piece of string which had a star medallion at the end of it. Ronnie gently unwrapped the book, opened it, and saw another strange language he couldn’t read.
“This is his shield, the manual,” The Leech informed him “It’s older than dirt, and he used it all the time on the house. You can use it too!”
“I can’t even read this,” Ronnie replied.
“Keep it for the day you can.”
He put the box back under the bed, gently closed the ancient book, and took his magical trinkets to the kitchen table. He surfed the internet on his laptop, trying to find symbols that matched the ones in the book. After about two hours he found them, on an obscure linguist forum.
User Achilles5789 posted a thread in the forum “On vacation and found this? What do?”
A picture of a dirt covered stone tablet was posted, with similar looking symbols in the book. The replies to the thread however, were not kind.
L8rSk8r: Dude, you can’t vacation there it’s illegal. Ur gonna get arrested!!!111!!
Achilles5789: I can come if its for educational purposes, its nbd, lol. Empire ain’t that bad, don’t listen 2 propaganda
“This is Ionadian,” Ronnie asked the Leech.
“I don’t know, I can’t read.”
Ronnie sighed, and opened another tab, looking for a Ionadian translation service. Moogle translated very few of the words, and it was even harder to type them out because there was no Earthian equivalent alphabet system. Ronnie had to copy and paste symbols as he went.
After another hour of searching online, Ronnie learned that this was an old dialect found on artifacts. Pictures of an exhibit at the Museum of Imperialism with different stone tablets showcased the same exact symbols Ronnie was looking for.
“Time for a field trip,” he said. “We’re leaving the house.”
“Finally!”
Ronnie hoped that the change of scenery would stop the complaints from The Leech.
The Museum of Imperialism was on the western seaboard, so Ronnie would have to make a day trip and go tomorrow. He spent the rest of the day translating as much as he could, and the only parts he could make out were a few words.
On the first page, it read.
GRIMOIRE L_-||_ M||TH.
||OP_||=|
The next page seemed to have different scribbles, all with different handwriting from different people. They were all written in ink, blood, and dirt, but two were written in red pen. One was struck out, and then next to it, something else was written right next to it.
Ronnie found it strange that an ancient book would have a red pen in it. So he decided to translate it next. Through a stroke of luck, it was one of the few words that could be translated into modern-day Ionadian.
It read.
TYRECEUS TIRINUS DES METALLA
But was struck out and replaced with.
INVICTUS DES REGALIS
“These are names. I have to sign my name,” Ronnie said. “Why?”
“I don’t know. You ask me a lot of questions!”
“I don’t want to write my name in this thing. Ace’s dad did and he died.”
“Everyone dies eventually, just do it!”
Ronnie found a pen from one of the kitchen drawers and warily eyed the book.
“No one is ready to die, I guess.”