Laephra Jalqik lived in Chrona, in the small but populated town of Yalltl. Her family was impoverished. Their house was not really a ‘house’ but instead a ramshackle building of scrap, wood, and plaster. Her family tried their best, but they could only live so well on selling scraps and mushrooms.
Today, Laephra was scavenging in the Jeria River, a small river that streamed through the eastern side of Chrona, which was a tributary to the Chronan river, providing water to the residents. It was polluted, just like most other rivers in Asia, but that wasn’t entirely bad. At least, not for the residents in this scenario.
Laephra walked on the shoreline. She wore a dingy white shirt, her ‘expensive’ pants(that can be bought at a wal-mart near you), and sandals. Her hair hung extremely low, down to her waist. She was nineteen years old. She stared at the river, searching for scraps to pick up. A tire caught her eye. It was broken and clearly just runoff from a littering driver’s broken car, but it had its uses. There were two reasons she scavenged. The first was to find recyclable material, and the second was to find reusable material. Metals and plastics could be taken to a dump and sold for minuscule portions of money, while reusable material was about as useful as her imagination.
She had something she was working on in specific, though. Her little sister of eight years had been playing in the broken down and dangerous part of the town, and she wanted to make a play-spot for her where things could be a bit safer. Laephra decided the broken tire could be useful for the play-spot and placed it into her plastic bag. She decided it was time to meet back up with her friend and compare their hauls.
She had a pretty bad haul, nothing more than two plastic bags filled with aluminum cans, the broken tire, half a pair of scissors, some strange bands of metal, and a broken phone battery(which could snag her a whole three Jouls *Jouls are the equivalent of dollars*. She waited at the end of the gravel road, where her house was located about a half-mile down. She had spent three hours searching for stuff to use, and it earned her about two Jouls an hour regularly. She waited on the shore patiently. A plastic bag passed her and snagged on a branch. On a whim, she grabbed it and looked inside.
There was a thumb in it.
She yelped in surprise and threw the bag back into the water. What was that?! The bag floated down the river. Laephra was used to the harsh world she lived in, but finding a cut off thumb in a plastic bag was still...unsettling.
Finally, her friend, Palair, came running down the shore, waving at Laephra excitedly. She called her by her nickname, “Lae’ey, I got something awesome!”
Laephra put the thumb incident into the back of her mind and stood up, brushing her hands on her shorts like she was rubbing her disgust off her hands, “Cool, what’d you get me, Pal’ul?” she usually kept up the appearance of being laid back and calm.
Palair had no plastic bag in her hands, but instead a decorative box, “I found...” She walked right up to Laephra’ey and looked to her sides, making sure no one was listening. She whispered, “I found a relic!” Laephra knew what her ambitious friend was going to say, and her friend knew Laephra well enough to know she didn’t like the once in a lifetime development before them, “Lae’ey, why don’t we sell this! We could get at least a thousand Jouls off of this!”
Laephra crossed her arms. Relics were magical items known by most to be bad buisness, often to a superstitous degree. But, they were in a bad situation. Both she and her friend lived in ramshackle shelters, each sharing with a small family. She knew neither of them could afford to make the wrong choice, “Stash it, Pal’ul, let’s get a family meeting. Then we will figure out what to do with this.”
“...Yeah, we can do that.”
The two walked down the gravel path until they reached Laephra’s home. The Jalqik household was a bundle of random items, tools, and stored food in a corner, towels used as a carpet, and a scrap-built fence for privacy.
Keera, Laephra’s mother, sat on a towel, knitting a sparse amount of red thread into an as yet unrecognizable piece of clothing. She looked up from her work when the two walked into the shack, “I started knitting Jula’ul’s new hood for winter. I think this string is good enough quality to last a while.”
Laephra was the first of the two to speak, “Sounds good, mom...” she leaned closer to Keera’s ear and whispered, “We went to the shore looking for scraps...”
Palair kneeled down and presented the ancient box to Keera and spoke with hushed excitement, “And I found this!”
Keera’s eyes widened, then she slowly looked between the two girls, then back to the box. Her face showed melancholy neutrality, and she spoke slowly, “It’s a relic...?”
Both the girls nodded.
Keera looked to the side, ashamed of the words she wanted to speak, then looked back to Laephra, “...I don’t like this.”
Laephra understood her mother’s reluctance entirely. Her mother kept quiet about the details of her past, but Laephra knew that involving themselves with the unreputable politics of relics and ‘inheritances’ was what put them in the slums in the first place. She averted her eyes in sympathetic thought, then looked back to Keera, “I don’t want to live here my whole life, mom. If we don’t use this to get out now...”
Keera shot the two a pained expression, “Get your mother, Palair’ul, we will talk about it with her as well.” She patted Palair’s head.
That elicited a whine of annoyance from Palair, and she quickly stood to shake off the affectionate hand of her friend’s mother. She held the box in her arms protectively, keeping the sight of it as obstructed as she could from those she passed. Palair wasn’t particularly protective or wary, but she knew that not everyone in the neighborhood was nice enough not to steal a relic if they got the opportunity.
As the two left the home, Keera called to Laephra, “And pick up Jula’ul, will you? She should be with Fikk’s house, assuming they didn’t run off again.”
Laephra nodded in agreement.
The two walked not far up the gravel road before turning into another house. It wasn’t much different in make than Laephra’s home, but its fence was built of proper aluminized fencing Palair’s mother had salvaged from a broken-down government facility not far from the town. An orange cloth, split in half, acted as its doorway. Palair and Laephra looked behind the curtains, but nobody was there. They waited in the home for a few minutes.
Palair absently thought to herself, “Oh, right, my mom should be back in like, ten minutes since she said she was going to the woods to gather some food today.”
Laephra placed her hand on her friend’s shoulder and looked to her wryly, “Is now the time to tell me that?!”
Her friend scratched her head, “Sorry. Why don’t we go pick up Jula first? My mom might be back then.”
The two agreed to leave and continued walking down the gravel path. After two minutes, they turned left onto a perpendicular path, where they continued down the road. After a minute, Palair tapped Laephra’s shoulder then pointed down the road, “Is that a jeep?”
Laephra looked down the road and saw a vehicle slowly moving down the road. The passerby made sure to clear the way for it and looked at it with refrained curiosity. The two women stepped to the side, letting the jeep pass them. They had a few seconds to see who was inside the rarely seen vehicle, and Laephra used all the time in careful observation. There were three passengers. inside, there was a man and a woman in military camouflage, and a woman who wore a dense, white winter jacket. Laephra saw the woman glance at Palair for a moment.
After the jeep passed, Palair looked to Laephra, “So that’s a jeep.”
Laephra spoke with haste and dragged her friend down the road by the hand, “Yeah. Built for off-roads and stuff. Let’s do this quick.”
After a few minutes of walking, the two arrived at Fikk’s house. It was in an older part of the town, so most of the ‘architecture’ was sturdier. The back wall of the house was a cinderblock wall, and the entrance to it was draped in an array of opaque cloth instead of built with a fence. It as a little larger then their other two houses.
Laephra poked her head in to see a man in his late twenties, feeding a baby with a milk bottle. He boredly looked up from his child at Palair and Laephra, “Looking for Jula’ul again, I guess?”
Laephra spoke, “Yeah, where is she?”
“If your sis didn’t run off, she should be in the commonground playing tag or something. I’m sorry I can’t chaperone them, little Oula here is really high maintenance, and my wife’s out buying food.”
She sighed, “Yeah, let’s hope she didn’t.”
The two girls walked down the street a little farther and arrived at an empty, flat, and dusty area where two small boys played some game with a dirty, slightly flat basketball.
They immediately recognized the two girls, and one whispered to the other, thinking the two couldn’t hear him, “Laephra’ey’s here.”
Laephra walked in front of the children, standing intimidatingly tall over the two, “Where’s Jula?”
They quickly shook their heads, and the same one spoke, “I don’t know.”
Laephra knew they were lying, but before she could say anything, Palair placed a hand on the boy’s head and presented him with a small, wrapped up, purple candy. He immediately tried to take it, but she snatched it back to her chest before he could, “You want this, right?” The boy kept trying to snatch the candy, but Palair wouldn’t let him, “You can have it if you tell me where Jula and Wanly are.”
The boy beside him cheered for him not to spill the beans, but he couldn’t resist the temptation. He held out his hand and reluctantly snitched, “They’re buying from the ice cream...”
Palair placed the candy in his hand and smiled.
Laephra rolled her eyes, “Of course she ran off again, can’t make this easy for us, can you, sis?”
They made the detour to the ice cream shop, which was thankfully still in the old district, rather than the dangerous area the two liked to play in. This part of the district had a few old, but functional houses. One of them, built of damp brown wood, was home to around ten residents, despite only having three rooms. Laephra knocked on the door, taking the lead as usual. An old man opened the door, “Oh, it’s you again. I guess you’re here to pick up your kid again?”
Laephra sighed, “She isn’t my kid, John’ey” The name, John, was a strange one in Chrona, but Laephra’ey figured from the old man’s skin color and name that he might have been an American. There were a few veterans here and there from when the country had tried to occupy Chona to free them from their monarchal rule. At the very least, he was born a foreigner, as the postfix, ‘ey’ implied. Technically, Laephra’‘ey’ was also born in a foreign country, so she was also given that postfix.
This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
“Oh, sorry, I guess I forgot. Do you want to come in? I have a new batch of ice cream!”
Laephra was perturbed after the events of the day, “I must refuse. Can you get me Jula’ul and Wanly’ul?”
“Of course!” he closed the door and returned a few seconds later, with two children who quickly ran to Palair’s side.
Laephra looked to Jula, her little sister of six years of age, and patted her thighs with a warm smile “come here, Jula’uuulll!”
Jula shook her head defiantly, “No.”
Laephra stared at her sister in dejected silence while Palair laughed, “Looks like your sister likes me more! Isn’t that right?”
Jula clung to Palair’s pants, “Yeah, Pala’ul is my favorite sister!”
Palair put a hand to her mouth to stifle her laughter, “I’m not even your sister, but I guess I’m just that good.”
“Yeah! You’re the best sister.” Jula stuck her tongue out at Laephra.
“And you’re the best friend’s sister too.”
Laephra turned her face to hide her eyes and spoke in an overdramatically dejected tone, “I...I guess it’s time to leave since I’ve been demoted to ‘worst sister’...”
The two returned to Laephra’s house, and Palair took a small detour to her home to pick up her mother while Laephra led Jula back.
The two families sat on the ground, cushioned by towels. The four sat surrounding the relic. Jula was bouncing a small rubber ball on the ground in the corner of the room to entertain herself while the families had their serious-talk. The whole of their two families had gathered, just five people in total.
Laephra was the first to speak, staring the conversation with polite exposition, “Palair’ul found this floating down the river. Anything else to note, Pal’ul?”
“Not really.”
Laephra’s mother, Keera, was impatient because of her nervousness, “Well, open it up then! Why’re you showing us the box and not the relic itself!”
“Okok, I got it...” Palair slowly opened the box, revealing a fragile glass flute inside.
Tinbau, Palair’s mother, had once worked for a relic museum in the capital, so the family left her to appraise it. She carefully lifted it to her eyes, “Hmm, looks like Gena Dynasty work, which would put the relic at around 400 years old...it doesn’t come with an instruction manual or anything, does it?” she gave Laephra a wry smile, trying to milk the situation for its comedic value.
“No, I’m afraid relics rarely do.”
“Though I wish they did...So, who wants to test the flute?”
There was a silence, then Palair raised her hand, “I’ll play it.” She was excited but kept that excitement out of her voice for the sake of propriety.
Her mother handed the relic over to her. She put her mouth on the mouthpiece. It was a relic, so likely it would work without the need for proficiency in playing the instrument. She blew into it, and a horrible noise came out that sounded like wheezing. None of them had played the flute before, so all of the gathered family members had to try their best not to tease her about her incompetence.
After she finished blowing into the flute, she rested it back into the box. The families waited in bated breath, interested in what the flute might do. Palair began to put her hands into her lap, wondering if what she had found was really a relic when she noticed the effect start. As her hands approached each other, sparks of lightning arced between her fingertips in flashes of light.
“Woah! so cool!” She said, and the sparks make noises that sounded similar to Palair, accompanying her voice with a high pitched echo, “Woah! so cool!”
Laephra looked underwhelmed, “Is it just some voice filter...? Who would pay for that?”
Another voice came from beyond the fence, “I would.”
Everyone turned their suspicious attention to a man who rested his arm on their fence with a devious smile. Laephra was the first to speak, as usual, “And who are you?” She looked him up and down. He wore a nice, dark jacket and looked to be in his early twenties. She could tell he was a foreigner from the color of his skin and accent, probably from Europe.
“A buyer,”
“We both know that doesn’t answer the question.”
“I’m someone who has been tracking that thing down for quite a while.” he scowled at Laephra, “Is that enough information for you?”
The family looked to each other, silently acknowledging the severity of the situation. They each guessed there was a lot more to him than he showed.
“I’ve got money...” he continued.
Laephra showed the least nervousness of them all and wouldn’t back down even in a dangerous situation like this. She spoke slowly and carefully, “You’ve got an ‘Inheritance’, don’t you?” She was tempting the wolf...
His face morphed into a scowl at Laephra’s question, but he continued speaking like he’d heard nothing, “...One-thousand jerais.”
“Mind informing us what it does before we pawn it off to the first buyer?” She said, baiting him into a fallacy.
“It makes sparks and sounds cool. Not much else to see.” He shrugged.
“So you’re tracking down a relic, but all it can do is make cool sparks. I feel like that level of effort isn’t worth a tiny spark flute. I can tell it’s worth a lot, don’t try to con me.”
He gritted his teeth in anger and leaned further over the fence, “Fine, you’re right about that. But we both know you want nothin’ to do with that thing, woman. I’ll give ya’ three thousand to take it off your hands, and we can call it a deal.”
He walked to the entrance of their house. Laephra noticed he had a disturbing lack of a shadow in the setting sun. He shuffled through his jacket and pulled out multiple stacks of cash, then he threw it on the ground, confident he would seal the deal. He held out his hand for Laephra’ey to shake it. She looked to the others, who were nervous, borderline scared. If he really did have an Inheritance, the man was very bad news and very dangerous.
“...You’re hasty.”
“So what, slum jackal?!” He took another step into the shade of the house, rage leaking into his voice.
Unlike her family, Laephra refused to budge once she saw an advantage, “Someone else is looking for this. If the government learns I sold this to you-”
“I’ll accept the deal!” Palair had acted in panic; afraid Laephra was too aggressive. She held out the flute.
He wasted no time snatching it, “Thank you...Now, how about we do this, for both our sakes...” he took another step towards Laephra, “I’m going to take this, you’ll keep my generous donation, and we can pretend none of this happened. You got it?” seeing that she remained quiet, he continued, “...Good. If I hear one of you snitched, I’ll come back and personally bust your skulls.” He walked out, satisfied with the result.
The families sat in silence, each person thinking hard about how to move forward.
They didn’t get time to finish their thoughts before the situation was turned on its head. Nearby, a gunshot ripped through the air in a thunderous sonic boom, and a scream followed.
Jula flinched, losing her bouncy-ball, then quickly huddled against the wall in fear; it wasn’t the first time she’d heard a gun. The two families first looked in the direction of the sound, then to Jula. Before anyone moved, Keera first kneeled next to Jula and softly spoke to her, trying not to let her built-up panic leak into her voice, “Jula’ul, don’t leave the house, ok?” she knew how scared Jula was, but comforting her had to come later. Hopefully, her fear would keep her out of trouble. The others filed out of the house in haste, and Keera followed.
About twenty feet down the road, they learned what had happened. Laying on the ground, the foreigner was crying in pain, attempting to get onto his feet. Blood dripped onto the ground beneath his torso, and his limbs quivered unsteadily. He tried to place a foot forward to stand but fell to the ground facefirst instead when his leg gave out. He didn’t try again.
The four were the first to find him, but others quickly filed out of their houses to monitor the situation. Everyone kept their distance from the dying man, concerned for their own wellbeing.
He turned his head to the family and opened his mouth. For a few seconds, no sound came out, but he eventually found the words he wanted. His voice came out raspy but surprisingly coherently, “A sniper got me. Heh, that’s all it takes...” his eyes wandered around the family with an unsteady gaze, “I don’t suppose any of you want to-” he coughed blood onto the ground. In response to his own cough, his movements and speech began to reflect his dire predicament, moving and speaking with lethargy. He lifted himself just far enough to take a look at the blood that had pooled beneath him, bright like the sunlight passed straight through him. He then fell to the ground again. He let his aggressive tone fade, “t-to save me...?”
Beside Laephra, Palair quietly whined in fear and clung to Laephra with her eyes closed. Their mothers had pained expressions but didn’t avert their eyes. Each of them was ten feet away from the bloody scene.
Laephra clenched her quivering fists but gave no other indication she was perturbed by the scene in front of her. She looked the dying man in the eyes, “There isn’t a hospital of any kind for a mile. You’re dead.”
The man remained silent but stared daggers at Laephra, his eyes focusing. After a moment, he let a smile overtake his face. No other time would his pride let that expression loose in front of another person. No other time but his last moment. In an uncoordinated effort to push his agenda, his eyes stared with hate, and his smile with goodwill, straight at Laephra, “Come...on...girl...just give me...take the...do...” he rearranged his words out loud, possibly without noticing. He lifted his shaking right hand, revealing a bloodstained glass flute. The hand had no thumb. “Girl, take this...and...and take it to...the spot on my map...” his other hand reached into a pocket in his pant pocket and pulled out a piece of paper, weakly presenting it to Laephra.
Laephra crossed her arms, “That sounds dangerous. No thanks.” she glanced back to their house, “Let’s get ou-”
“WAIT!”
Laephra looked back.
“T-there’s a reward! If you-” he coughed more blood but tried his hardest to keep speaking, his voice growing raspier, “Please...if you do it, you can get everything I own...you can save me...I’ll do anything for you! It’s only-” his breath let out for a moment, then he continued after taking a breath, “The location is only a mile away! We are so close to it, just-”
“No.”
“P-please! I-I’m d-dying...” as if his acknowledgment of that fact made him grow weaker of spirit, he stopped speaking. His face fell to the ground, seemingly resigned to die, and tears slowly followed, slowly falling to the bloodstained gravel beneath his face.
Laephra sighed and let down her hands, hesitant to leave. Years of living in the slums made her want to give a helping hand to those in dire need, but even if she wanted to help, she could do little but comfort the dangerous man.
Palair whispered to Laephra in a pained tone, “Can we go now?”
“Yeah, we can go no-”
“T-the creepy man was shot, right?! We need to help him!” Jula ran past the four before any of them could react, straight towards the dying man. Her mother tried to run after her before she got close to the body...
When the child got within seven feet of the dying man, the dying man’s morbid smile faded into an expression of pure determination...and a shadow rose from the ground. He had activated his Inheritance.
From beneath the man, a circle of shadow instantly grew to about seven feet in radius. Just as quickly, a spectral hand of shadow phased out of the ground. It wrenched Jula off the ground and dragged her, screaming, to the man.
Keera’s eyes widened, and she ran forward with no concern for her own well-being, straight into the circle of shadow, “DON’T YOU TOUCH MY DAUGH-”
While Laephra screamed in panic and tried to grab her mom’s hand, “MOM DON-”
What appeared to be a sword built of shadow phased from the ground and launched at Keera from below, impaling her through the chest. She kept running for an extra two steps before her legs gave out and fell to the ground. The blade soon disappeared as if it never existed, and blood spilled onto the ground below her.
Laephra’s facade lifted and turned into unbridled rage. She took a step forward but stopped before the circle of shadow. It took everything Laephra had not to run into the impossibly deadly aura of darkness in a futile attempt to save her only remaining family. After stopping herself, she began to process what had happened. Her mom was dying, and her sister was...
The spectral hand gripped her sister’s neck. The man couldn’t even move his face, but he still hadn’t given up yet, “Y-you can still-” he coughed, weary, “You can still save them. Do...do what I asked you do...Promise me...” the pointed part of a shadowy sword phased halfway out of the ground below Jula, and threatened her life, “If you don’t promise me-” he coughed again, all vitality leaving his hoarse words, “I’ll kill her...”
Laephra was frozen in fear and let out a whine, unable to speak through rising tears.
Her mother wasn’t dead yet, though. She slowly rose to her feet, blood falling from her wound. She took one more step towards the man, “...I won’t...let...you-” a volley of shadow knives appeared from the darkness and flung at Keera. She fell to the ground, dead.
“G-go before...they come...get-” he stopped speaking for a moment, “The Royal Martyr-” he coughed out blood, and the shadow faded away. He was dead.