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The sun was at its peak, just high enough to illuminate the exiles’ camp hidden deep in the canyon. From the shade of his lean-to, Sylas of Dregbourne waited patiently for his scout to return. At last, he saw her rounding the stone spire at the mouth of the crevasse, leading a wide-eyed young stranger into the camp.
“This is Happ,” said the scout. “He wants to join.”
Sylas emerged from his shelter, eyeing the youth casually. “Does he now?”
“I know him from the underground. The seekers took his family. He made it out, by the hair on his hide.”
Sylas nodded, quietly assessing the young man. He could sense the boy was blessed with powerful magic—some black and deadly pall. As for the rest of his character, Sylas could see nothing.
“He’s a good kid,” assured the scout. “And he’s from Dregbourne.”
Sylas’ brow furrowed with pleasant surprise, as if meeting kin he never knew existed.
The youth stammered out an introduction. “I… I thought maybe… I could join your cause… sir.”
The entire camp of outlaws laughed. The boy’s eyes darted around the grinning faces, searching for some hint of what he had done wrong.
“There’s no ‘sir’ here,” chuckled Sylas. “Unless you want to address everyone of us that way.”
“Yes, si— …Yes,” the youth said, nearly repeating his mistake.
Abashed, the recruit seemed to wonder if he’d made the right choice in coming to the camp. Sylas placed a heavily shackled arm on the boy’s shoulder, hoping to quell his embarrassment.
“Be at ease, Happ. No one will judge you here. We’re a long way from Dregbourne.”
He felt the youth relax his posture.
“I know your struggle. They’re always watching you, hounding you, making you feel inferior. Well there’s none of that here. Here, you belong.”
Happ beamed, staring at his feet, as though he felt unworthy of his newfound joy.
“Do you know why I wear these chains?” asked Sylas.
The recruit shook his head, too timid to offer a guess.
“They’re not just weapons. They’re a reminder. Of where we come from. Of everything we’re capable of, and of our liberation to come. Are you with me?”
“Yes. Yes, I want to be liberated.”
“Good,” said Sylas. “Tonight, you will break your own chains.”
Dusk was falling, and the darkened brush on the side of the road was the perfect cover for an ambush. There, Sylas lay in wait with a dozen of his most trusted mages. Beside him, the recruit nervously picked at his fingernails.
“Don’t worry,” said Sylas, with a reassuring smile. “I was nervous for my first one. After a while, it becomes as natural as breathing.”
Before the recruit’s nerves could be assuaged, the thunder of hooves and wagon wheels rumbled in the distance like a coming storm. Within seconds, the carriage came barreling down the road before the lurking hijackers.
An instant before the horses arrived, Sylas signaled to his comrades, and the ambush began.
With a flick of his wrist, a scruffy old mage summoned a thick cord of ironvines that snapped across the road, catching the galloping horses at the knees. The racket was deafening, as the steeds fell neck-first into the dirt, the carriage careening over them.
The mages sprang from their cover, subduing the dazed crew of the carriage with various weapons and spells. Sylas leapt atop the overturned coach, eager to seize the passengers of the unprotected cabin.
“Let’s go, recruit,” he called to Happ, beckoning for the lad to join him.
Happ scampered atop the cabin and began to help pry the door. It cracked open, revealing a very battered nobleman. Sylas’ eyes flashed with a malicious gleam.
“Well… look who’s kneeling now, my lord,” said Sylas, extending his hand.
The nobleman bristled. Though he was gravely injured, his hatred for Sylas remained intact.
“I’ll not cower before the likes of you.”
“Good,” said Sylas. “Because I wouldn’t want you to miss this.”
In minutes, all of the nobleman’s guards and coachmen were lined up beside the road with their hands bound. Sylas paced the line, individually acknowledging each captive.
“I ache for you all. I do,” said Sylas. “You are merely cogs in their wheel.”
Sylas paused, his tone shifting harshly, as he gestured to the bound nobleman.
“But you chose to serve them… and thus, serve their cause.”
He turned to his band of outcasts, loudly offering a question.
“Brothers and sisters—these folk work in the service of swine. What does that make them?”
“Swine!” replied the outcasts.
“Should we allow them to go free?”
“No!” yelled the mages.
“What if they have a change of heart? Promise never to bother us again?” asked Sylas, with a coy smile creeping across the corners of his mouth.
“They’d be lying!” yelled the scruffy old mage from the brush.
“They can’t be trusted!” said another in the gang.
“Then what is to be done with them?” asked Sylas.
“They must die!” shouted a young mage, his hatred beyond his years.
Others yelled out in agreement, until the phrase echoed across the land: “Swine must die!”
Sylas nodded, as if he were slowly being persuaded by their words.
“So it must be.”
Softly, Sylas touched the shoulder of his recruit. His petricite shackles began to fume with a dark smoke. He closed his eyes, savoring the captured power.
The sight sent a quake of dread through the captives. Many fell to their knees and wept, pleading to be spared. Only the nobleman stood proud, defying his circumstances, as Sylas addressed his crew with somber finality.
“It pains me that I cannot show you the beautiful world to come.”
The words sent a chill through the recruit.
“Sylas, no,” Happ protested. “These are just… people.”
Ignoring the pleas, Sylas extended his arms and fingers, and unleashed the magic stored in his gauntlets. A thick black cloud billowed from his fingers and collected above the heads of the nobleman’s crew. Almost in unison, they began to claw at their throats in suffocation. Moments later, they fell to the ground dead.
A grave hush fell over the mages, having dutifully observed the execution. The nobleman wept silently, tears streaming over his clenched lips. The only sound came from the recruit.
“No… why?” said Happ, falling to his knees.
Sylas eased the boy back to his feet, consoling him with a fatherly hand.
“Happ, you wanted to help our cause. This is it! This is our liberation…”
He gently guided the recruit toward the nobleman, and urged him forward.
“…one dead lord at a time.”
Happ looked at the nobleman through tear-filled eyes. He held out a trembling hand, preparing to take the life before him. Then, he let his arm go limp.
“I… can’t.”
Sylas’ tender patience began to slip away.
“This man is not your friend. His fortune is built on your suffering. He would sooner see you hang than show you any kindness.”
The recruit would not budge. At last, the nobleman found his voice.
“You’re a monster,” he said, his voice breaking.
“Yes,” replied Sylas. “That’s what your kind said when you locked me in the dark.”
Sylas held forth his hand, its shackle still faintly glowing. The magic he had taken from Happ mustered one last wisp of blackness. The small, dark cloud enveloped the nobleman’s face, drawing the breath from his lungs. As the man writhed, Sylas looked back at the recruit, not in anger, but mourning.
“I’m sorry, Happ. But you are not ready to be liberated. Go. Return to your chains.”
Sylas watched as Happ turned to leave, his eyes averted in shame. The recruit looked down at the wrecked carriage in front of him, and the long, dirt road that wound back to the capital. Sylas could almost feel the boy thinking, dreading the misery that awaited him in his old life.
Happ bent down, pried a dagger from the hand of the dead coachman, and returned to the nobleman, still struggling for breath on the ground.
“I’m ready.”
As the youth raised the dagger above the nobleman, Sylas’ sorrow turned to unmitigated joy. No matter how many he liberated, it always made him smile. | Mage |
Taliyah was outrunning the sandstorm when she first noticed the water. In the beginning, it was faint, just a cool dampness she felt as she lifted the stones from deep beneath the sand. As she drew closer to old Shurima, wet streaks dripped from each new stone as if they were weeping. Taliyah knew the rock had stories to tell as she sped across the desert, but she didn’t have time to listen, to hear if they were tears of joy or sadness.
When she was close enough to be covered by the shadow of the great Sun Disc, water from underground aquifers began to pour off the stone she rode like little rivers. And when she finally arrived at the gates, Taliyah heard the deafening water rushing along the bedrock. The Oasis of the Dawn, the Mother of Life, roared beneath the sands.
The people of her tribe had followed the seasonal waters for hundreds of years. The best chance of finding her family was to follow the water, and to Taliyah’s dismay, the water in Shurima now flowed from a single source as it had in ages past. The tragic remains of the capital city had always been avoided, almost as much as the great Sai and deadly creatures that hunted there. Even thieves knew to keep their distance from the city. Until now.
Taliyah brought the rock she rode to a sudden halt, nearly stumbling from it as she pushed the stone quickly below the desert’s surface. She looked around. The woman from Vekaura had been right. This place was no longer a forgotten ruin, haunted by ghosts and sand; indeed, the makeshift camp just outside the walls scrambled with life, like an anthill before a flood. Not knowing who these people were, she decided it might be best to reveal no more than was necessary.
It seemed there was tribal representation from all four corners of her homeland, but as Taliyah searched their faces, she saw none that were familiar. The people here were torn. They argued about the merits of staying in their temporary camps versus seeking shelter within the city. Some worried that just as it rose, the city would fall again, burying any caught inside. Some saw the storm that bristled with unnatural lightning and thought their chances were better within the walls, even if the walls had once been lost to the sand for generations. All of them moved quickly, packing haphazardly and worriedly glancing at the sky. Taliyah herself had won the race with the tempest, but it wouldn’t be long before the sand lashed against the gates.
“Now’s the time to decide.” A woman called out to her, her voice almost lost to the noise of the churning oasis waters and the rising storm. “Are you going in or leaving, girl?”
Taliyah turned to face the woman. She was Shuriman, but other than that, unknown to her.
“I’m looking for my family.” Taliyah gestured to her tunic. “They’re weavers.”
“The Hawk-father has promised protection to all those within the walls,” the woman said.
“Hawk-father?”
The woman looked at Taliyah’s concerned face and smiled, taking her hand. “Azir has returned to us Ascended. The Oasis of the Dawn flows again. A new day has come for Shurima.”
Taliyah looked around at the people. It was true. They were hesitant to move far into the massive capital, but the fear that worried their faces was more for the unnatural storm than the city or its returned emperor.
The woman continued, “There were weavers here this morning. They decided to wait out the storm inside.” The woman pointed to the throngs of people pushing in toward the newly beating heart of Shurima. “We must hurry. They are closing the gates.”
Taliyah found herself being pulled toward one of the capital’s great gates by the woman, and driven from behind by a crowd of strangers who had decided at the last minute not to brave the sands by themselves. Still, there were a few groups clustered near their circled beasts, determined to face the storm as Shuriman caravans had for generations. In the distance, strange and threatening bolts of lightning crackled at the edge of the whirlwind. Old Shuriman traditions might not survive the storm’s passing.
Taliyah and the woman were pushed across the golden threshold that separated Shurima from the desert surrounding it. The heavy gates swung closed behind them with a resounding thud. The immensity of old Shurima’s glory stretched out before them. The crowd hugged the thick, protective walls, unsure where to go. It was as if they sensed the empty streets belonged to someone else.
“I’m sure your people are somewhere within the city. Most have kept close to the gates. Few are brave enough to go farther than that. I hope you find what you are looking for.” The woman let go of Taliyah’s hand and smiled. “Water and shade to you, sister.”
“Water and shade to you.” Taliyah’s voice dropped off as the woman disappeared into the milling crowd.
The city that had been quiet for millennia now pulsed with life. Silently watching over Shurima’s newest denizens were helmeted guards that wore desert cloaks in gold and crimson. Though there was no trouble, Taliyah continued to feel there was something not right about this place.
Taliyah reached out to the thick wall to steady herself. She gasped. The stone throbbed beneath the flat of her palm. Pain. A terrible, blinding pain overwhelmed her. Tens of thousands of voices were etched into the rock. The fear and torment of their last moments, before their lives were cut down and their shadows were seared into the stone, screamed in her mind. Taliyah tore her hand from the stone wall and stumbled. She had felt vibrations in stone before, reverberations of memories long since past, but never like this. The knowledge of what had come before felled her. Wild eyed, she stood and stared, seeing the city anew. Revulsion washed over her. This wasn’t a city reborn. It was an empty tomb risen from the sand. The last time Azir had made promises to the people of Shurima, it had cost them their lives.
“I must find my family,” she whispered. | Mage |
Thunderclouds rolled off the Argent Mountains, promising pyrotechnics, but delivering none.
From the tower, the advancing mob looked like a child’s mismatched toys—all toothpick spears and tiny torches. The figure at the head of the group was tall, with a splash of grey hair, and a blade belted to her homespun tunic.
Veigar watched as the group started battering the outer gates, incensed by his villainous ways, demanding justice for the terrible acts he had wrought. Finally! He hurried down the stairs to the inner door.
There was a mighty crack as the gates gave way, and villagers tumbled into the courtyard. The leader drew her sword and advanced, picking her way between ungainly limbs, waiting for the rest of the group to find their feet and hold the right end of their spears.
Squinting through the gap in the door, Veigar giggled with anticipation.
The woman’s gaze snapped up.
Veigar clapped a gauntlet over his mouth, but the jig was up. The farmers tripped over themselves to cower behind their leader’s skirts. It was perfect. He stepped back and, barely holding his staff steady with all his booming laughter, blasted open the door with an explosive ball of purple energy.
He strode out to the top of the stone steps as the dust settled. He knew how imposing a figure he must strike—his hat barely clearing the enormous door frame, his iron boots sending up sparks and thunder with each giant step, his gauntlet big enough to crush any fool who might challenge him.
Unfortunately, the cowering villagers hadn’t looked up yet, and holding an intimidating pose this long was starting to feel forced. He let go of the breath he’d been holding, and deflated a little.
“The villain!” shouted the leader, eventually, brandishing her blade in his direction.
In the shadow beneath his hat, Veigar grinned. He drew himself up as intimidatingly as possible as the villagers beheld him.
Then the shouting and wailing began. Delightfully, someone at the back even fainted.
He gathered his sinister magic, gaining an inky nimbus, and causing violet sparks to leap off speartips and belt buckles. The leader stumbled back as a serpentine gash of deepest midnight encircled the villagers, and exploded upwards into an ensnaring cage of sorcery.
“Silence!” Veigar commanded them.
He relished every long stride down the steps toward the trapped mob. Around them, humming walls of violet light stretched between claw-like pillars, forming an eldritch henge. He stopped barely a sword’s length from the leader, glaring at his prisoners through his arcane barrier.
“I can see the fear in your hearts!” he began with a derisive, humorless, snort. “You dare march here to challenge my dread rule? I, Veigar, who has yoked the magic of the universe to my will? Veigar, Great Master of Evil, who has defeated countless arcane foes in my quest for ever greater—”
“Cursed my fields with rat-weevils for two seasons, you have!” an especially cloddish looking farmer cried out, crimson-faced with fury.
Veigar blinked, trying to process this interruption. “Cursed you with what…?”
“And ye turned Dollee lame the week ‘afore harvest!” claimed an outraged tiller, wagging her finger at the increasingly befuddled Great Master of Evil.
With that, the banks broke and the villagers began to make all of their grievances heard. Veigar could only catch snippets of the loudest accusations, the majority featuring soured milk and undersized beets. As he shrunk away from the verbal onslaught, the purple barrier flickered and collapsed, but the villagers didn’t even notice. They shuffled forward, yelling in his face.
He felt the stone banister of the stairs at his back. He was surrounded.
He tried feebly to respond, his voice losing depth with every word. “But I… I am…” They crowded closer, glaring, now eye to eye with him rather than looking up.
Suddenly, a commanding older voice rose over the din. “Stand down. Everyone.”
“But Margaux…” someone began, before the leader’s glare withered their objection. The mob retreated, and Veigar found himself alone with her. She seemed more than twice his height by this point, and radiated confidence.
He hated her.
“Alright, villain,” she spat. “You’ve heard our accusations. Do you plead innocence?”
Veigar felt like he had been slapped. He puffed out his chest, feeling a foot taller. “Innocence? Innocence?!” He turned and began climbing the steps, gaining height on the crowd. “You have the audacity to bring your superstitious bellyachings to my door, and then insult me by asking if I deny them?!”
He glared over his shoulder in their direction.
“I do! I deny every one of them! But do not dare presume that I claim innocence. You accuse me of evildoing—and I am evil! Since I took this arcane tower from its puny owner, I have burned your fields! I have terrorized your warlords, defeating them so thoroughly that they swore never to return!” He took the last two stairs in one great stride. “And I have begun my campaign of terror upon neighboring villainous sorcerers! For none will be permitted to obstruct my path to ultimate magical power! ”
At this, the sky crackled, and magical bolts hurtled from the clouds, exploding around the courtyard. Veigar threw his head back and laughed, reveling in the sheer glory of his own evil. These puny mortals would beg forgiveness in the face of his terrible magnificence!
When he stopped for breath, the villagers were conferring in a huddle, casting appraising glances in his direction. One of them popped her head up. “Did you defeat Vixis the Cruel? The warlord?”
“Of course I did! She failed to exhibit proper deference, and I…”
His words trailed off as the group returned to their earnest whispers. Veigar shifted uncomfortably, straining to hear what they were saying. One by one, the mob nodded to each other, and turned to face him.
They found him coolly admiring the polished gleam of his gauntlet.
The leader, Margaux, strode to the bottom of the steps, awkwardly half-bowing, and addressed him. “Oh, great and mighty… uh… sorcerer…?”
“Wizard!” Veigar corrected her.
“Mighty wizard. We, the residents of the barely-worth-bothering-with village of Boleham—”
“That’s our village!” someone helpfully interjected.
Margaux sighed. “Yes, our village. Well, you see, we’ve come to our senses, and do humbly beg the mighty wizard, Gray Jar—”
“It’s Vay-gar! Veigar!”
“Sorry! Veigar! We humbly beg that you spare us and just, umm, you know… keep doing what you’re doing.”
Veigar narrowed his eyes. “What do you mean?”
“Well, you know. We’ll just go home, and you keep doing your… reign of terror… thingy. Live and let terrorize, that’s what I say.”
This had to be some kind of trick. And yet, she went on.
“Of course, we’d exhibit the proper, you know, deference. Curse your name in your absence. Spread tales of your vile rampage. Frenk says his cousin down in Glorft heard a rumor of an evil sorcerer, if you’d be interested in, you know…”
“Destroying them! And taking their dread sorceries for my own!” Veigar clenched his gauntleted hand, imagining the sweet triumph of crushing an arcane peer in a wizard battle.
Margaux was watching him carefully. Hopefully, Veigar realized.
Finally, after a long pause, he rolled his eyes and flourished his staff.
“You fools! You thought you could trick me, Veigar, Master of Evil?! Perhaps you hoped I would grant you the mercy of a swift and painless end! Well, I regret to inform you that your lives are simply not worth my time!”
He laughed—a big, booming laugh to match his renewed stature.
“Take yourselves from my sight, insignificant peasants! Return to Boleham, and pray I do not find you worthy of my attention ever again!”
The villagers managed a few half-hearted bows or curtseys, before shuffling back toward the damaged archway. Margaux chanced a quick wink at him, then turned to leave.
“Wait!” he thundered. Her hand snapped to the pommel of her sword.
With as much indifference as he could muster, Veigar edged his way down the steps once more.
“When do you think I could talk to Frenk’s cousin about that other sorcerer?” | Mage |
It was midday on the island, and Vex was just emerging from her previous night’s sleep. The Black Mist that blanketed the Shadow Isles was especially thick today, creating an atmosphere of despondency that suited her perfectly.
The grisly host of specters surrounding her released a chorus of blood-curdling shrieks and hisses, hoping she might be in the mood to engage them on this exceptionally dismal day.
“You wanna play again?” Vex sighed. “Fine. I’ll do it. But someone else has to be the gravedigger this time.”
From her back, Vex heard her shadow volunteering.
“Shadow, if you’re gravedigger, that means I have to be gravedigger too.”
Shadow looked at her with sad, hopeful eyes.
“Whatever. Even though this is completely stupid, me and Shadow will be gravedigger. Everyone else, go die.”
Covering its eyes with its hands, Shadow began to count to one hundred as the host of specters scattered to find hiding places in the rocks and ruins that dotted the island.
Vex, her eyes uncovered, could see something peculiar bobbing through the haze in the distance. It looked like... a pair of pointy ears?
“Small fry!” called a voice from just beneath the ears. “Are you here, yordling?”
“Ohhhh no,” said Vex in dismay. “Tell me that’s not...”
The pointy ears continued bobbing toward her until, at last, the figure beneath them came into view. An older yordle stood before Vex, his arms splayed in excitement.
“There you are, yordling!” he said.
Vex’s eyes narrowed contemptuously at the familiar face. “Uncle Milty, what are you doing here?”
“What do you mean? Can’t a grown yordle pay a visit to his small fry?” said Uncle Milty with unrelenting cheer.
“Don’t call me that.”
Vex noticed her spectral peers were beginning to emerge from their hiding places, curious about the new visitor.
“I’m kinda busy,” Vex said to her uncle. “Can you just tell me what you want and get outta here?”
Uncle Milty’s face melted, its stiff, resilient smile changing to a grave look of concern. “Very well. I won’t lie to you, small fry—it’s your parents.”
Vex’s eyes rolled so hard they nearly fell from their sockets. “Ughhhhh, what about ‘em?”
Why did Uncle Milty even care what her parents thought? He wasn't her real uncle, anyway.
“They’d never tell you this, but... they’re worried sick about you!” said Uncle Milty. “You’re off living in some... drab stinkhole. Cavorting with ghosts. You have to come home.”
“No. Absolutely not.”
“Please, small fry.”
“No.”
“Just for a visit? Just to show them you’re okay.”
“No.”
“Just a quick one? Pop in and pop out.”
“NO. Now get lost,” said Vex.
Uncle Milty’s brow furrowed at her resistance. A moment later, his beaming smile returned, and a twinkle sparked in his eye.
“Well, I can see there’s only one thing to do here…” said the old yordle. He wiggled his fingertips, moving his hands in an arc around his body. A large rainbow portal opened before him. “Let’s not tarry. Your parents are just about to sit down for tea. We can join them if we hurry!”
Vex winced as Uncle Milty pulled her toward the magic gateway. Thinking quickly, she raised her hand, summoning a thick, black shadow at their feet, snuffing out the brightly colored portal. “If you think I’m walking through that thing, you’re even more clueless than I thought.”
Uncle Milty raised one of his bushy eyebrows high in befuddlement. “But—small fry, look around you. This place is for... dead things.”
“Duh. That’s why I’m here,” said Vex. “People suck. Yordles really suck. Colors make me wanna puke. And this place has none of those things.”
Uncle Milty stammered, stunned by his niece’s words. Then realization began to wash over him, and the twinkle returned to his eye. “Ohhhh, I know what this is. You’ve been away from the Bandlewood for too long! You’ve lost your yordle spirit. All you need is a couple days back home, and you’ll be right as rose hips!”
He wiggled his fingers, conjuring the rainbow portal once more.
Vex felt the very bottom fall out of her soul as she realized her eternal plight: she was a yordle, would always be a yordle, and would forever be tormented by their undying enthusiasm.
Unless...
A thought popped into Vex’s mind. She nearly smiled as she realized it just might be the solution to this torture. She quickly suppressed the smile and summoned her true malaise, full strength, and gazed at the ground. “What’s the point, Uncle Milty?”
“What’s the point of what, Vexy?”
“All of it. Bandle City, yordles... life?” She looked up from the ground to see her uncle’s smile fading.
“The point of life?” he asked. “Uhhhnnn... isn’t it...”
Seeing her uncle at a loss for words, Vex eagerly answered the question for him. “I mean, we’re all just random wads of magic. Who we are, what we do, who our family is—we don’t decide any of it. We’re all just drifting by like dead leaves with no control over anything.”
A strange look of determination came over Uncle Milty. “Oh, I don’t think that’s true. What about making people happy? We all have the ability to do that!”
“I guess. But their happiness never really lasts, does it?”
Vex could feel her words knock the wind out of Uncle Milty’s sails as his long, perky ears began to droop.
“It’s like everything else in this world,” she continued. “Happiness, birds, trees, bugs… rainbows—they all fade away. I guess you could say that’s their purpose. They hang around for a few minutes, and then die. Just ask all these chumps here.”
Vex motioned toward her spectral friends, who were poking their gruesome, withered faces out from their hiding spots. When she turned back to her uncle, she could barely see the edges of a frown forming on his lips.
“I guess I never… thought of it quite that way,” said her uncle.
Vex reached into her bottomless well of despair, hoping to drive the stake of misery deeper into his heart. “I know it’s a downer, but the whole point of life… is death.”
“Death?” whimpered Uncle Milty.
“Yeah. And the worst part of it all? Yordles don’t even get to do that. We just go on forever. Doomed to a stupid, magical, pointless existence.”
Uncle Milty’s lip quivered. Tears that shimmered like diamonds trickled from his eyes. The rainbow portal behind him evaporated into the surrounding darkness.
“That’s... so... awful,” he cried.
“Right?” said Vex.
Suddenly, Uncle Milty erupted in uncontrolled sobs. They came like thunder, scaring off even the ghastliest of the wraiths lingering nearby.
As her uncle ran away crying, Vex breathed a deep sigh of relief, the burden of intrusive cheer no longer weighing on her tiny, slouching shoulders. “Okay,” she said, “you can all come out now.”
One by one, her spectral comrades emerged from the rocks and ruins around her.
“One more game,” said Vex. “And sure, why not—I’ll be the gravedigger.” | Mage |
Viktor’s third arm emitted a thin ray of light that welded metal into his left arm with steady precision. The smell of burning flesh no longer bothered him, nor did the sight of his left wrist splayed open, veins and sinewy muscle fused with mechanical augments. He did not wince. Instead, he felt a sense of achievement gazing at the seamless blend of synthetic and organic materials.
The sound of children shouting gave Viktor pause. Rarely did anyone venture down the fog-bound confines of Emberflit Alley. He had chosen this location for that very reason — he preferred not to be interrupted.
Keeping his left arm immobile, Viktor adjusted a silver dial on his iridoscope. The device contained a series of mirrored lenses that angled light to allow him full view of the street outside his laboratory.
Several children were violently shoving a malnourished boy toward Viktor’s wrought iron gates.
“I doubt Naph will last a minute in there,” said a girl with imitation gemstones embedded above her eyes.
“I bet he comes back with a brass head,” said a boy with a shock of red hair. “Maybe then his brain won’t be dull as the Gray.”
“You better return with something we can sell, or we’ll be the ones to give you a new head,” said the largest one, grabbing the small boy by the neck and forcing him forward. The other children backed away, watching.
The young boy trembled as he approached the towering gate, which screeched as he pushed it open. He passed the front door encrusted with interlocking gears and shimmied through an open window. An alarm blared as he fell to the floor.
Viktor sighed and pressed a switch that quieted the ringing.
The skinny boy stared at his new environment. Glass jars, containing organic and metal organs floating in green fluid, lined the walls. A leather gurney stained with blood, upon which lay a mechanized drill, sat in the center of the chamber. Dozens of automatons stood motionless against every wall. To Viktor, his laboratory was a sanctuary for his most creative and vital experiments, but he could imagine it might seem frightening to a child.
The boy’s eyes widened in shock when he saw Viktor at his workbench, arm splayed open on the table. He ducked behind a nearby crate.
“You will not learn anything from that box, child,” said Viktor. “But on top of it, you will find a bone chisel. Hand it to me, please.”
A trembling hand reached to the top of the crate and grasped the handle of the rusted metal tool. The chisel slid across the floor to Viktor, who picked it up.
“Thank you,” said Viktor, who wiped off the instrument and continued work on his arm.
Viktor heard the boy’s rapid breathing.
“I am replacing the twisting flexor tendons — ahem, the broken mechanism in my wrist,” Viktor said, reaching into his arm to adjust a bolt. “Would you like to watch?”
The boy peeked his head around the crate.
“Doesn’t it hurt?” said the boy.
“No,” said Viktor. “When one eliminates the anticipation and fear of pain, it becomes entirely bearable.”
“Oh.”
“It also helps that my arm is almost completely mechanized. See for yourself.”
The boy stepped away from the crate and sat across from Viktor without a word, eyes fixed on his arm.
Viktor resumed welding a new boltdrive onto the tendons beneath his skin. When he had finished, he sealed the flaps of dermis onto his arm. He drew the beam of light across the seam, cauterizing his flesh and fusing the incision.
“Why did you do that?” the boy asked. “Didn’t your arm work fine as it was?”
“Do you know what humanity’s greatest weakness is?”
“No...” said the boy.
“Humans consistently ignore the endless infinity of possibilities in favor of maintaining the status quo.”
The boy gave him a blank stare.
“People fear change,” Viktor said. “They settle with fine when they could have exceptional.”
Viktor walked to his stovetop. He mixed a blend of dark powder and Dunpor cream into a saucepan, heating the liquid with his laser.
“Would you like a glass of sweetmilk?” said Viktor. “A weakness of mine, but I have always enjoyed the anise flavor.”
“Um... you’re not going to saw off my head and replace it with a metal one?”
“Ah. Is that what they think of me now?” Viktor asked.
“Pretty much,” said the boy. “I heard one kid had theirs replaced just because they had a cough.”
“Did you get this information directly?” said Viktor.
“No, it was my neighbor Bherma’s cousin. Or uncle. Or something like that.”
“Ah. Well in that case.”
“Would replacing someone’s head even get rid of a cough?” asked the boy.
“Now you are asking the right questions,” said Viktor. “No, I imagine it would not be much of an upgrade. Coughing stems from the lungs, you see. And to your earlier point, I am not going to saw your head off and replace it with a metal one. Unless, of course, you want that.”
“No thanks,” said the boy.
Viktor poured the thick liquid into two mugs and passed one to the boy, who stared longingly at the hot drink.
“It is not drugged,” said Viktor and took a sip from his own mug. The boy gulped down the sweetmilk.
“Are the others still watching outside?” said the boy through stained teeth.
Viktor glanced through his iridoscope. The three children were still waiting by the front entrance.
“Indeed they are. Do you wish to give them a scare?” Viktor said.
The boy’s eyes lit up, and he nodded.
Viktor handed him a sonophone and said, “Scream as loud as you can into this.”
The boy gave an exaggerated, blood-curdling shriek into the sonophone. It echoed along Emberflit Alley, and the other children jumped in terror, quickly scattering to hide. The boy looked at Viktor and grinned.
“I find that fear is more often than not a limiting emotion,” said Viktor. “Tell me something that scares you, for example.”
“The Chem-Barons.”
“The Chem-Barons are feared because they project an air of dominance and often the threat of violence. If no one feared them, people would stand up to them. And then where would their power go?”
“Uh...”
“Away. Exactly. Think of how many Chem-Barons exist compared to how many people live in Zaun. Fear is used by the powerful few to control the weak because they understand how fear works. If someone can manipulate your emotions, they can control you.”
“I guess that makes sense. But I’m still afraid of them,” said the boy.
“Of course you are. Patterns of fear are carved deep into your very flesh. Steel, however, has no such weakness.”
Viktor retrieved a vial containing miniscule silver beads floating in milky fluid.
“That is where I may be able to assist,” he said. “I have developed an augmentation that eliminates fear altogether. I could let you try it out for a short time.”
“How short?”
“The implant will dissolve in twenty minutes.”
“You’re sure it’s not permanent?”
“It can be, but not this one. You might find that without fear, your friends out there lose their grip. Bullies feed on fear, you see. And without it, they will starve.”
The boy nursed his drink, considering the offer. After a moment he nodded to Viktor, who inserted a thin needle into the vial and injected one of the silver beads into the skin behind his ear.
The boy shuddered for a moment. Then he smiled.
“Do you feel your weakness falling away?” Viktor asked.
“Oh yes,” said the boy.
Viktor walked him to the door and twisted a dial to unlock it before waving him out.
“Remember, you can always return if you wish a more permanent solution.”
A wave of fog created a ghostly silhouette around the boy as he emerged from the laboratory. Viktor returned to his workbench to watch the experiment through his iridoscope.
Emberflit Alley was empty, but as soon as the boy walked out his companions emerged.
“Where’s our souvenir?” asked the red-haired boy.
“Doesn’t seem like little Naph has held up his end of the deal,” said the girl.
“Guess we have to punish him,” added the large boy. “We did promise him a new head today, after all.”
“Don’t you touch me,” said Naph. He raised himself to his tallest height.
The bully reached for Naph’s neck, but Naph turned and punched him square in the face.
Blood streamed from the bully’s nose.
“Grab him!” the bully screamed.
But his companions were no longer interested in grabbing him.
Naph stepped toward the bullies. They stepped back.
“Get away from me,” he said.
The bullies eyed each other, then turned and ran.
Viktor closed his iridoscope and returned to his work. He stretched the fingers of his newly repaired arm and tapped them on his desk in satisfaction. | Mage |
Lyvia had nearly found sleep when the light appeared.
The first night in the orphanage carried strange emotions for her, unfamiliar yet close to a past that she had once held. Life had taken trust from Lyvia, like it had taken everything else, but habits of survival waned here, their edges dulled by the safety of a roof overhead. Her cot, though narrow and thin, was still far removed from the cold cobblestones of the capital. Sleep beckoned, warm and enveloping, tenderly lowering her eyelids with the promise of true rest.
Then the door opened.
“Wake, child.” Lyvia recognized the voice of Cynn, the headmistress. “Come.”
Afraid to lose what respite she had found from the streets, Lyvia obeyed and sat up. Her legs swung over the side to land on the cold floor, and she walked into the light of the hall.
Blinking, Lyvia took her place alongside the other children. All of them, ranging from eight to ten summers, had arrived there today, freshly collected from the streets of Noxus. A pair of brothers, three scrawny urchin boys who clutched each other’s hands in grubby unity, and Lyvia. Both groups shuffled away from her, retreating to the familiar.
“I know the hour is late,” said Cynn as she walked down the line of little faces, “but there are many demands upon the time of our patron. Still, he wishes to welcome the newly arrived.” There was something within Cynn’s words that Lyvia could not place. “It is an honor.”
It was then that the children noticed him with a start, as though he had appeared out of thin air. Tall, slender, clad in a wealth Lyvia had never known, the patron approached them. Cynn demurred into the background, her expression impassible.
Slowly, the man walked from orphan to orphan, his pale eyes casting them in an odd scrutiny. He passed the brothers without a thought. Lyvia felt her pulse quicken as he paused, the eyes falling upon her, and felt it slow again as he continued on. The trio of urchins bunched together, each defending the others, and the patron barely spared them a glance.
“Her,” the man said to Cynn, his voice low, silken.
Cynn’s arm was on her shoulder now, leading her to another room. It was empty, but for a single chair. “No harm will come to you,” Cynn said, an attempt to dispel Lyvia’s fear. “It is an honor,” she repeated, closing the door behind her.
Lyvia crossed to the chair, and sat in it. She watched the door intently, the sole means of entry into the room, only to notice a moment later the shadow stretching out from behind her.
The patron.
“Please,” he said, raising his hands as she bolted to her feet.
Lyvia did her best to contain her fear, to remember what Cynn had told her.
“Think I am here to hurt you?” he asked, his voice languid, accent cultured.
Lyvia shook her head, but it was far from convincing.
He feigned puzzlement, laughing softly. “My dear, has life not done enough?” He circled around in front of her. “No, my child, I am only here to hear about your life, and what has brought you here.”
He gestured kindly to the chair, and slowly Lyvia took her seat.
“I’m from Drekan,” she began.
“Yes?” He nodded, urging that she continue.
“War took papa,” said Lyvia, trying to keep her voice level, to betray no weakness. “So we came to the city. Mama went out to find work, but after four days we stopped waiting for her to come back. It was just my sister Vira and I. I kept her safe.” She fought her voice but it faltered. “Then Vira took sick. I couldn’t protect her, and then I… I was...”
“Alone,” he said softly.
Lyvia’s chest swelled with a tide of pain. Of loss. “Alone,” she repeated, and a tear struck her cheek.
“There!” he breathed. She recoiled as he reached toward her.
“Close your eyes,” he said, his voice hypnotic. “Focus upon that feeling. The pain. It has mounted for you in this unforgiving world, nowhere to go but bottled up inside. Feel it rise up, above your neck, slipping up over your nose, your ears. It threatens to swallow you, but just at the precipice, it yields. Face it and feel it break against you. That is strength. Turn your mind upon it, and allow it to drain from you.”
She let the pain flow out of her in sobs, feeling the cold of glass against her cheeks, softly touching beneath each eye. A torrent of despair, taking her breath, then it was gone.
Lyvia opened her eyes.
“Thank you,” said the man, and Lyvia noticed a vial in his hands, “for sharing.”
“You,” Lyvia dared to ask, seeing something she could recognize in her patron despite everything else about him. “You’re alone, too?”
He took his eyes from the vial, glanced at her. “I have seen much of this world, over many years—yes, almost all of it alone.”
Livia sniffed, looking up at him. “Will it get better?”
“For you?” He smiled gently, his eyes glimmering for a moment in a gentle show of sadness. “No.”
“She is unharmed?” Cynn asked as Vladimir stepped into the hall.
Vladimir arched an eyebrow. “Were you harmed, Cynn, all those years ago when it was you in that room?” He tilted his head, producing a thin ampoule in his long fingers.
Cynn’s eyes locked to the slender tube of glass, its frosted length dulling the contents to a soft ruby. Cynn snatched the ampoule, her eyes darting as she secreted it in the sleeve of her robe.
“Until next time, my dear,” Vladimir chuckled, then he turned and left.
The moon was full that night, bathing the Noxian streets in radiant silver hues. Vladimir stopped at the fountain in the orphanage’s empty courtyard, dipping a finger into the still water. Whorls of crimson bloomed from his touch, rushing across the shallow pool until it was a depthless claret. Stepping briskly up to the lip of the fountain, Vladimir dropped into it without sound or splash.
Vladimir rose from another pool within the dark halls of his manor, emerging dry, it was as though he had never touched the liquid. A chill wound through the yawning cavern of shadow and stone arches, brushing over shuttered windows and priceless artworks collected over a thousand lifetimes. His step was light across thick rugs, barely disturbing the layers of dust that caked them as he ascended a staircase.
For a moment his thoughts lingered on the child, Lyvia. Doubtless tonight had been a strange experience, but he had seen enough mortals to know this night would not define her life. She would live, and then die, like all the other little sparks around him. Her name, her face, their interaction would slip away from him, as they always did, to where he wondered if they had ever existed at all.
People. The creatures surrounded Vladimir yet stood upon the opposite side of an impossible gulf, tantalizing and impermanent. A thin, crooked smile came to him. He was melancholy tonight. He rolled the vial of tears in his fingers.
The studio beckoned.
Maudlin thoughts aside, of all the countless mortal lives he encountered, there were a select few Vladimir refused to forget, and so he labored to do what his mind could not. To remember them, those brief moments their lives touched, what felt like an eternity ago. In this case it was less than a millennium, the memory springing suddenly into his mind despite the vast time since last they met. For this one, he chose paint.
It was nearly finished, a work most would not find out of place alongside the masterworks adorning his lonely walls. He had certainly had the years to hone a craft. All the details were done: the gentle tumble of auburn hair, the tanned skin, features that alone were commonplace, but combined effected a demanding, regal aura. The expression, unthinkable loss. It was all there, save the whites of his eyes.
Vladimir opened the vial, tipping it into a pot. The innocent tears mingled with the paint, and with the touch of his brush, came alive when laid upon the canvas. Nothing else, in all his travels, could match the splendor it wrought.
What was his name?
He found he could not remember. The absence stabbed at him, a name gone, but at least the face preserved. The whites of his eyes would keep his memory here.
Like a lonesome soul, he sought me out from beyond, Vladimir mused with a smile. More melancholy, but fitting perhaps.
After all, there was nothing in the world as beautiful as sadness. | Mage |
This was the moment.
The singular moment that had cost him so much, that had taken a lifetime of planning. A corrupt empire and its strutting princeling would be struck down under the blankly idiotic sun symbol they both so trusted. The key to immortality, jealously guarded and miserly offered, would be his alone, stolen in front of the entire world. A singular moment of perfect vengeance that would finally free the slave known as Xerath.
Though his master's helm revealed no human expression, and knowing that the lovingly etched metal could not respond in kind, Xerath smiled up at the soulless hawk's face just the same, his joy genuine. A life spent in servitude, first for a mad emperor and now a vain one, endless manipulations for and against the throne, a near-damning quest for barely remembered knowledge that almost consumed him – all of it led to this grotesque masquerade of Ascension.
The very word when spoken aloud was an assault: We will Ascend, while you are chained to the broken stone as the sands of time swallow you all. No. Not anymore, and never again. The chosen golden lords will not be taken into the sun’s embrace and made gods. A slave will do this; a simple slave, a boy who once had the misfortune to save a noble child from the sands.
And for this sin, Xerath had been punished with a horrible, maddening promise: Freedom. Unobtainable. Forbidden. Should the thought even dart through a slave’s mind, it would be punished by death, as the Ascended could gaze past flesh and bone, deep into one’s very soul, to see its dim traitorous glow. And yet, there it was, spoken by the young princeling he dragged from the embrace of the mercurial mother-desert. Azir, the Golden Sun, vowed that he would free his savior and new friend.
A promise unkept to this day. The words of a grateful child, innocently oblivious to the impact they would have. How could Azir upend thousands of years of rule? How could he fight tradition, his father, his destiny?
In the end, the young emperor would lose it all by not honoring his word.
And so, Xerath was elevated and educated, eventually becoming Azir's trusted right hand – but never a free man. The soured promise ate into what he was, and what he could have been. Denied a small, simple thing, the right to live his life, Xerath decided to take everything, all of the things denied to him, all of the things he deserved: the empire, Ascension, and the absolute purest form of freedom possible.
With each step taken toward the offensively grandiose Dais of Ascension, positioned respectfully behind his emperor and flanked by the inept sentinels who supposedly protected Shurima, Xerath felt an unknown lightness he was genuinely shocked by. Was this joy? Does vengeance bring joy? The impact was almost physical.
At that very moment, the overwrought suit of golden armor that was his tormentor abruptly halted. And turned. And walked toward Xerath.
Could he know? How could he possibly know? This spoiled, self-obsessed boy? This righteous, falsely benevolent emperor whose hands were just as bloody as Xerath's own? Even if he did, there was no staying the killing blow that was already in motion.
Xerath had planned for every contingency. He had bribed, killed, out-maneuvered, and plotted for decades – he even tricked the monstrous brothers Nasus and Renekton into staying away from the event – but he had not planned for this...
The Emperor of Shurima, the Golden Sun, Beloved of Mother Desert, soon to be Ascended, took off his helmet, revealed his proud brow and smiling eyes, and turned to his oldest and most trusted friend. He spoke about the love of brothers, the love of friends, of hard fights won and others lost, of family, of future, and finally... of freedom.
At these words, the guards flanked Xerath, moving in, weapons drawn.
So the princeling did know. Had Xerath's plans had been undone?
But the fools in armor were saluting. There was no menace to them, they were honoring him. They were congratulating him.
On his freedom.
His hated master had just freed him – he had freed them all. No Shuriman would ever wear chains again. Azir's last act as a human was to unfetter his people.
The foundation-shuddering roar of the assembled masses drowned out any response Xerath could have had. Azir donned his helmet and strode out onto the Dais, his attendants preparing him for the godhood that would never come.
Xerath stood in the shadow of the monolithic Sun Disc, knowing that an empire-destroying doom was but seconds away.
Too late, friend. Too late, brother. Far too late for us all. | Mage |
Okay, Zaun. I’m here, I’m fuzzy, and I’m ready to explode stuff.
All that time up there in Piltover serving high-quality pyrotechnics to ungrateful snoots, Heimerdinger making me hide behind that dumb glamour, never allowed to do what I want... It’s left me with a thirst for KA-BOOM!
But was Jinx right? Is the gloomy, stinking undercity teeming with whizz-bang potential?
Let’s see what we’ve got here. What am I looking at? Nondescript building, nondescript building, slightly bigger nondescript building, an explosives factory, another nondescript building, nondes—WAIT, WHAT?
Explosives factory?! Dreams can come true!
I’m not crying. That’s just the Zaun Gray gettin’ all up in my eyes.
Man, the things they must have in there... But it looks so normal. Dull, even. No flashing lights, no sparkling signs... just a rundown pile of bricks and ironwork. It’s like no one even cares how bombs are made. And it’s quiet... GASP! They must have it soundproofed because of all the live bomb testing! I’ve gotta get in there! Ooh, I bet there’s a super secret passageway or maybe you have to blow the front wall off or—
Oh, wait, there’s the door.
Hang on, what’s this?
BUILDING NO LONGER IN USE
KEEP OUT
You’ve gotta be kidding me! Why? How? How could this sacred place no longer be in use? How could anyone be so disrespectful of the creation of lovely explosives and shut it down forever and—what is that noise?
Huh, I’m pretty sure locks aren’t supposed to be all mangled like that. Looks like this door’s been busted open. Let me poke my head around...
I appear to be looking at a pair of disgruntled young humans. Not bombs. Humans. In an empty room. I may be losing interest. They haven’t seen me, at least.
“This sucks,” one of them says. He looks as disappointed as I feel. “You said this place was full of bombs. Well, we’ve searched every corner, and there’s nothing here!”
Stop it now, kid. This hurts.
The other one kicks over an empty crate. “How was I supposed to know they cleared it out?!”
Did neither of them read the sign? I swear, humans never look—
“Whatever,” the first one sighs. Whoa. I wasn’t done thinking my thought. Rude. “I’m bored. Let’s go.”
Not before me—I’m not ready to have my fur ruffled today. See ya, kids!
Man, I can’t believe this. My first venture out in the undercity and I find a bomb factory! Entirely committed to making bombs! That could’ve been home. But no, instead it was the home of shattered dreams.
I’ve gotta do something about this. Yeah. Yes. That’s it. It’s the right thing to do. It’s what it was made for...
I’M GONNA FILL THAT PLACE WITH BOMBS!
Oh, hey! Welcome to my lab. Well, Jinx’s lab. She’s letting me crash here while I find my feet in Zaun. She thinks I only exist in her head, so I guess I’m not taking up too much room. Besides, with all her scrap heaps and bits of junk everywhere, I’m pretty sure I’m not the only thing with fur running around this place.
What, these? Just some hexplosives I’m working on. My own design, of course.
These bad boys are gonna give that old factory the send-off it deserves. Let it go out with some dignity.
I can’t leave it as I found it earlier, waiting for another innocent incendiary enthusiast to come along, get them all excited, and then rip their heart right out without so much as a spark. It was a real emotional rollercoaster.
No, I’ll spruce the place up with my own devices, and then they’re gonna go off one after the other like little fireworks. Flash! Bang! Tssss! Flash! Bang! Tssss! Over and over until the whole place crumbles down in a huge explodey mess.
I call them “Chain Smokers”.
Almost done. I just take this bit here, and this thing here, and... Perfection.
Let’s go blow stuff up!
Okay, I’m back in the building. Come on, “KEEP OUT” sign, you had one job.
My little Chain Smokers are all laid out, ready to show their papa what they can do.
But Ziggs, I hear you say, how are you going to appreciate the products of all your talents if you can’t see them in action? My thoughts exactly. So I’ve got an extra treat for us all: I’m gonna blow the front wall off first!
This big one here’s the Party Popper, and it’s going to create the ultimate peephole!
Alrighty, time to push the button! Three... two... one... Big baddaboom!
...in sixty seconds.
What? I’ve gotta get out of here first—I don’t want to blow myself up!
Come on, come on, come on, I’m ready now! Got this nice pile of junk to hide behind. Perfect viewing distance. And... explode!
Nope. Forty seconds left. Turns out crossing the street doesn’t take that long.
Hey, why did the yordle cross—Oh no, what’re those kids doing back here?! They’re gonna get themselves a faceful of wall if they don’t move soon. Move. Move!
They’re not moving. They’re spray painting the wall. For the love of...
“Hey!” I call from behind the junkpile. “You kids! Get away from there!”
Yeah, that got their attention. A real Ziggs, out in the wild. They’re still standing there, though.
“What? You never seen a yordle before? Seriously, though, you need to move! You’re gonna get hurt!”
Are they...? They are! They’re laughing at me! Well, maybe I’ll just leave them to get exploded, after all! Jinx sure would.
Ohhhhhh, right. Jinx is a psychopath.
Ah! Ten seconds!
And I’m running. I’m running straight at those little sump-punks. Better to be tackled by a yordle than crushed by a building. That’s what I always say.
They’re not laughing anymore. The bigger one’s opening its mouth. “What’re you do—”
“No time! Move!”
BOOM!
We hit the other side of the street just as the wall goes up.
Yes! Bombs away!
Flash! Bang! Tssss! Flash! Bang! Tssss!
It’s mesmerising. Little lightning bolts striking every surface. Bricks tumbling down. Smoke pouring out, clouding all the locals who’ve come out to watch.
Flash! Bang! Tssss!
Wait, why are all these people staring at me instead of my art?
Flash! Bang! Tssss!
The roof is now completely caved in. It’s magical. No, I told you before, it’s the Gray! I’m not crying.
Flash! Bang! Tssss! Flash! Bang! Tsssssssss.
Haha! Yes! I can’t help it. I’m doing my happy dance. That was perfect!
Those two kids are looking at me like I just slapped their grandmother. I guess Zaunites are more used to collapsing buildings than gleeful furballs.
Whatever. I’m going in for a closer look.
My Chain Smokers performed just as they should; what was once a solid structure is now a blackened heap of rubble. That useless “KEEP OUT” sign is poking out from under a smashed roof tile. I’m gonna pick it up, a little souvenir for the lab.
Flash! Bang!
Gah! One of those sneaky little hexplosives waited for me to have a front-row seat. I think I’m on fire but—
“Wheeeeeee!”
—I’m flying through the air—
“Aaaaahahahahahaaaa!”
—trailing smoke—
“Oh, it burns! And tickles! But mostly burns! Hahahahahaha!”
—and all eyes are on this furry rocket.
“See, kids? Now that’s how you make bombs!” | Mage |
The humidity of Tonnika market and the crowd’s fragrant odor usually rushed buyers into hasty decisions, but Hatilly stood transfixed. Her eyes had fallen upon the strange, tangled bud encased with red withered leaves, a specimen she had never seen before.
“You don’t want that,” the old florist said. “It’s a rare Night-Blooming Zychid. Plucked from the southern jungles, where sunlight never touches the forest floor. It’s more for potion brewers or alchemists…”
The merchant directed her gaze to a bouquet of Sapphire Roses. “Now, these are from fair Ionia. Adapted them to our robust Kumangra soil myself… Or perhaps some Pearls of the Moon?”
Hatilly was not swayed. Sapphire Roses and Pearls of the Moon flashed their colors for any eyes to see. This zychid held exotic potential like the Kraken Lilies along the Serpentine Delta, or Parethan Corpse Tulips. Rare flowerings were precisely her and Cazworth’s type of indulgence.
“I’ll take the zychid.”
The florist welcomed the gold pressed into his palm, despite the doubt scrawled across his face. He deftly cradled the bud in a nest of damp silk, and planted the parcel into Hatilly’s waiting hands. She noticed the aerial rootlets clinging to a shard of something hard and chalk-white.
“What’s this?”
“Zychids cling to foreign objects,” the merchant said. “That one’s grafted to a bit of bone.”
Cazworth was bent over his antique desk, scribbling notes in the margins of his ledger by candlelight. He didn’t look up until Hatilly set the ceramic upon his table. The strange zychid, half buried in a mound of wetted soil, already seemed happy, its reds and greens vibrant and slick with life.
“A budding gift for a blooming businessman.” She planted a kiss on Cazworth’s cheek, feeling clever. He smiled and turned to examine the specimen.
“When you said you needed flowers to brighten the place up, I assumed they’d be colorful.” Cazworth jabbed the plant with his quill. “What is this curious fellow?”
“A most extravagant gift to celebrate the opening of the upper Kumangra’s newest trading supplier… Cazworth’s Exotic Goods.”
Cazworth pulled his wife onto his lap.
“Well, if you say this is a rarity indeed, then we are in for a treat.”
He kissed her sweetly. A single petal opened up, unfolding into the darkening room.
“It’s beginning,” Hatilly said. “Will you be up all night?”
“Most likely. There are still several invoices that need rubber stamping—the partners still have concerns about the shipping lanes…”
Hatilly yawned.
“Don’t let me bore you, dear wife. Run along to bed. I’ll wake you when it starts to flower.”
“Thank you, sweet husband.”
Hatilly awoke to a creeping sensation on her ankle.
Infernal skitter-ants were everywhere, this near to the jungle. She kicked it away. Sleepily blinking, she turned to the empty pillow next to her. Cazworth hadn’t come to bed.
The nagging insect was undaunted, and was crawling further up her shin. She flung off the bedsheets and saw that there was no insect, but rather a tendril vine weaving through her toes, entangling her ankle, and twining around her leg.
Panic shoved sleep from her mind.
She kicked but could not get the green and red shoots to release her leg. They tightened, biting into her flesh. She pried them off with her fingernails. Her hands bled from thorny splinters.
The snaking stalks wound a trail from under the bed chamber door, where they sprouted aerial rootlets to climb the bed frame. Her mind immediately flashed to Cazworth.
Armed with a flickering lantern and a pair of sewing shears, Hatilly followed the vines through the hallway of their manse. Their circumference widened the closer she stepped toward its source, which she now saw was in Cazworth’s study.
The door took several tries to open. Hatilly hadn’t known what to expect, but it wasn’t this.
The room was covered, floor to ceiling, with floral growth. A riot of obscene colors danced in her lantern’s flicker. Exotic bulbs dangled from the walls, their finger-like leaves undulating as if drawing breath. Flowers seemed to mock her through the darkness, flashing their rainbow petals like signal fires. All had sprouted from a singular dark nexus: an enormous closed flower bud, which lay on the fainting couch by the fireplace, where Hatilly herself often read while Cazworth worked. Bits of ceramic and soil lay strewn about. The zychid had outgrown its habitat.
All manner of protrusion crept from its pulsating petals. Everything in Hatilly’s mind screamed for her to flee her home, put it to the torch, and burn that hideous bouquet. But not without Cazworth. Vines twisted around the legs of the chair, the legs of the study table, the legs of…
Her husband.
Still sitting in his chair, Cazworth was cocooned from head to toe by a writhing mass of leaves. Hatilly reached his side, bare feet slipping on the foliage underfoot. She cut frantically at the strangling vines, but each snip of the shears only made them tighten their grip and produce little thorns that pierced her and her husband. Blood trickled out. Where the drops landed, zychid blossoms burst forward to feed.
Hatilly freed one of Cazworth’s hands—it was pale, and cold to the touch.
A stench filled the air, like a rotting corpse. With tears in her eyes, she turned her head toward the fainting couch, where the zychid bud was flowering.
The stench grew worse. Hatilly retched. The gargantuan petals peeled backward in colorful layers, revealing oblong petals of striking scarlet and deep green, garlanded in black tips, revealing a woman in place of the stamen. Her hair was red as blood. Her flesh like leaves. Vines and petals wreathed her in deadly beauty. Her eyes opened. They reminded Hatilly of a panther’s—narrow irises seeing only prey.
The woman who blossomed from the flower arose.
Hatilly clutched the shears like a dagger.
“You wish to prune me already?” the thing said, its deep voice ensnaring Hatilly.
“What are you?”
“The bloom you longed to witness.”
The stench turned. Gone was the reek of death.
Hatilly inhaled sweet fragrances—orange blossoms, the aroma of Sapphire Roses, the fruity scent of Kraken Lilies, the musk of Pearls of the Moon, the delicate hints of wisteria. There were more, secret flowers, but she somehow knew their names—they smelled of colors her eyes never saw. A name formed in Hatilly’s mind…
Zyra.
“Thank you for the lovely garden,” Zyra said, nodding toward Cazworth’s remains. “You tended me well, but we need more sustenance. To make the soil here more… fertile.”
Hatilly saw visions of a world covered by a bouquet of colorful death. It was a beautiful riot of hues, soft and fluttering, choking cities. There were no graves, no war, no money… Hatilly was breathless. She didn’t even feel the vines pull her down, nor the thorns bury themselves in her flesh, rending her skin, spilling her blood.
“Step into the garden that ever grows…” Zyra whispered through the stems and petals. “Death blossoms, and you don’t want to miss the colors, do you?”
Hatilly did not respond, for she was with the flowers. | Mage |
Shadya had only been dead a few weeks, and already Akshan could feel all traces of her slipping away. That was the hardest facet of his grief—the hoarding of mementos, the scrambling to scrape together whatever remained of his beloved mentor.
He pulled the old charcoal sketch from his pocket and studied it. The crude drawing was a poor likeness of her face, lacking in all fine detail. Still, he found if he closed his eyes and tried to remember, he could usually fill in the blanks. But more and more, his memory was failing him.
Shadya, why do you leave me? he wondered. Was it his own doing, something deep inside trying to protect him by eroding all traces of a standard he was failing to meet? Or perhaps he just needed something to jar his memory.
He stuffed the drawing back into his pocket as he walked into the open-air markets of central Marwi, searching for anything to remind him of his mentor. After a few blocks, he stumbled upon a jarring sight: In an alley between two stucco buildings, a young waif was fastening a familiar mother-of-pearl bracelet to her grime-smeared arm.
Quick as the wind, Akshan dashed right up to the urchin’s face, cape snapping in his wake. “Where did you get that?” he barked, his tone uncharacteristically brusque.
“I found it,” said the waif, smothering the bracelet with her arms. “What’s your problem?”
“My problem is this: That piece of jewelry belonged to someone I cared for very much,” said Akshan. “It was her favorite.”
The girl stared up at him, eyes wide with fear. Akshan realized his fist had tightened around her collar. He released his grip and attempted a wry smile.
“So...” he said, “why don’t you tell me how you’ve come to possess it?”
“I—I took it from someone who won’t miss it.”
The urchin’s face welled with spite from years of hardship. Akshan knew it well. He also knew of an infamous black-market jeweler on the next block, and what the man might pay the girl for the bracelet—if she hadn’t crossed paths with Akshan.
“Then you’d better tell me the name of this person.”
“I can’t. You don’t know what he’d do.”
Akshan gently coaxed the bracelet from the waif’s grip and felt his heart skip as he pulled something from its clasp: a single strand of long silver hair.
Shadya’s hair? It was silver... right?
Akshan’s mind flashed with a partial picture of her, now even less complete than before.
“Young friend,” said Akshan to the girl, “my Shadya is gone. This bracelet is one of the few remaining pieces of her. It was part of a set with four others.”
The waif averted her eyes as if her interrogator might glean some forbidden information from them.
Akshan exhaled, his voice softening. “Whoever you took this from... is sure to have the others. You must tell me who this scoundrel is.”
The girl stammered, her eyes shifting until she relented. “They call him the Devil of the Dunes, sir. He lives in the large palace in the foothills north of here.”
Akshan’s brow furrowed. “You stole this from a warlord?”
“I cleaned his stables,” said the girl. “He owed me.”
“I cannot begrudge you that,” said Akshan. “But this bracelet was not his for you to steal. It seems I must pay this Dune Devil a visit.”
“Don’t,” said the girl. “He is a killer, sir.”
“This, I already know.”
With that, he fired his grappling hook into the eaves of buildings above and launched himself out of sight.
In the darkest hour of night, a host of heavily armed guards kept watch over the warlord’s palace. None of them noticed the caped figure darting through the shadows toward the silver-inlaid doors of the main bedroom.
Inside, a large, battle-scarred ruffian lay sprawled across the entire width of his enormous goose-down bed. Three exotic pet rodents with long, flowing white hair perked up and scampered off the bed as Akshan emerged from the shadows.
His hand clamped down across the mouth of the sleeping warlord. The man’s eyes shot wide with rage as he uttered a muffled scream.
“Good evening, scoundrel,” said Akshan, pressing his gun to the ruffian’s chin. “Sorry to call on you at such an hour, but, uh... only a little sorry.”
The warlord squirmed under the tip of the Absolver.
“Now, now,” said Akshan. “Collect yourself. I’m going to remove my hand, and all I want to hear from your mouth is a confession. Ready?”
The rage in the warlord’s eyes turned to a cautious curiosity. Slowly, Akshan removed his hand.
“Confession?” asked the bemused warlord.
“Shadya. The sentinel. Elderly woman, stickler for rules, fond of pearl jewelry...” said Akshan.
“I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about.”
“She was the kindest person I have ever known. At least be a good lowlife and tell me why you killed her.”
“I didn’t kill her!” said the warlord, a tinge of frustration in his voice.
“Then how else could you have taken this from her?” asked Akshan, thrusting the bracelet into the warlord’s face. “She was wearing it the day she died. I found four others just like it in your jewelry case.” Tutting in disapproval, Akshan presented all five matching bracelets to the warlord.
“I know who you are,” scowled the warlord. “I’ve heard all about you and what you do. You think you can kill me and bring her back.”
“No. I believe the time for that has passed.”
“Then what d’you want?”
Akshan paused, thinking of the silver hair, the bracelets, and the woman whose face he could no longer recall. Was the man before him the one who had slain her? Did it even matter? Surely, the world would be a better place without him.
At last, he answered the warlord’s question.
“Peace?”
With a squeeze of the grip, Akshan fired the Absolver, illuminating the bedroom as countless bolts of relic-stone light pierced the warlord’s body.
Guards poured into the room, though not quickly enough to catch the fleeing Akshan, who disappeared through a window into the cool desert night.
As the sun rose over the mountains, Akshan trudged back to the city, his mind bedeviled.
He studied the five pearl bracelets he'd recently recovered. He had thought they might somehow bring Shadya back, if only in his mind’s eye. But her memory continued to fade, and now only a vague silhouette of her face remained.
Akshan knew one thing for certain: She would not have approved of him killing the Devil of the Dunes—not out of pure vengeance. But deep down, he knew he hadn’t done it for her. He’d done it for himself, and it had not brought him peace.
He turned one of the bracelets in his fingers, searching for solace, and noticed a tiny inscription etched inside the band. An old sentinel mantra that he’d heard often, but never really understood: “Give all, and all may live.”
The words rang in Akshan’s head like a war trumpet as a revelation shook him.
He fired his grappling hook into the eaves above and launched himself from building to building until he arrived at the place where he’d met the waif the day before. There she lay, sleeping in the same alley.
He knelt over the girl, bracelets in hand. “You should have these. It is what she would’ve wanted.”
Confused and half-asleep, the waif’s eyes blinked as Akshan placed the bracelets in her meager pile of belongings.
“But, uh... sell them to the jeweler in the spice district,” he said. “He will give you a better price.”
Akshan could feel the stunned gaze of the girl watching him as he walked away, and a bittersweet comfort washed over him. Though he had parted with the last physical remnants of his mentor, he felt a bright warmth within. And in his mind’s eye, clear as day, was Shadya’s face. | Marksman |
He started his training with a single breath. In, and out.
He could hear water dripping through a crack in the cave ceiling, dampening the stone floor until it gleamed against the darkness. He knew the holy patterns carved into the floor’s stone—proclaiming destinies and orbits. Even when he closed his eyes, he could see each lunar arc.
He made a few tentative swings with his blade. The moonstone felt solid in his hand, but remained ethereal, as if it wasn’t there. It was a magical remnant of the first convergence when the moon and its reflection in the spirit realm briefly touched across the celestial veil, and moonstone cast off by the union rained down on the world like tears.
Following their orbits, the two moons were forced to part.
Embracing his own orbit, Aphelios continued to train.
His blade was now his breath, drawing faster and faster. His slashes followed arcs he had practiced for years until even he bled, training to the verge of self-destruction. Following his weapon, he twisted through the air. He slashed, parried—each attack flowing into the next. He closed his eyes so he would not need to see… would not remember everything he’d sacrificed to wield his weapon.
“Aphelios…” You see my face. My lip quivers, though my voice is firm.
“Aphelios.” Reflected in my eyes, you see…
Aphelios stumbled as his moonstone blade flashed red and an image of an outlander passed before him. A vision? A memory? How many times had he killed to not know for sure? The blade slipped from his hand, and Aphelios soon followed—colliding against the floor with no weapon to lead him, losing grasp of his discipline.
It had all come back. Everything he pushed down. Every cut of his blade into his enemies cut even deeper into himself.
Alune… his sister. She’d reached across the veil. She’d shown him… but she’d been torn away.
Aphelios pushed troubled words he would never say back into his throat. His fingers tightened into a fist, only for a moment, ready to strike against the orbits and destinies carved into stone. But, hand shaking… he let go.
As Aphelios stood and swept back his hair, he noticed the moon had risen, its light shining onto a shrine he kept deeper in the temple. Calling to him, as it did whenever he was needed.
It was time. His faith would be rewarded.
The Lunari’s power was growing, phasing across the celestial veil. A magic of spirit, of the secrets within—for all of his training, Aphelios could not channel the moon’s power himself. But he would not need to.
He carefully prepared noctum flowers that he’d cultivated in the shrine’s pool, pressing their essence into a caustic elixir—the liquid glowing faintly within the mortar bowl.
He set aside his training blade and raised the bowl to the moon’s light.
Then, without hesitation, he pressed the flower’s poison to his lips.
The agony is indescribable. The pain wraps around your throat. You cannot say anything at all…
Everything burns. You convulse in misery, you retch and cough as the poison flows through you, opening you to the moon’s power…
To me.
“Aphelios,” I whisper from my fortress, and my spirit brushes against yours. You sense my presence across the veil. You raise your hand, knowing that I am too far. That it is the pain you must hold on to.
You close your hand around it. It becomes your weapon.
I send it to you…
Gravitum.
“Aphelios,” I whisper as I feel you cling to the poison that burns you away. Knowing why you make this choice. What I ask you to sacrifice…
With a final lung-wracking gasp, Aphelios emerged from the cave temple into the night. His expression hardened as he fought back the wrenching agony, embracing it and leaving everything else behind him.
Mount Targon loomed above and below the temple, stretching in both directions.
The howling wind whipped up frozen wisps that shimmered as they faded, dancing with Aphelios’ scarf and buffeting his cloak. The light of the moon shone higher still. It would guide him.
It was her light, shining through the moon’s.
She’d given him what he needed.
Gravitum was more than a moonstone blade. In training, he had slashed, stabbed, twirled. To use this weapon, he would do the same—but his reach would be much greater. A simple thrust would unleash its power, his skill and her magic converging.
Firing the cannon’s black orbs toward a floating rock that was suspended by the Targon’s heavenly magic, Gravitum’s power slowly drew the island down. With a single leap, Aphelios began running atop the island, his boots casting small drifts of snow into the abyss. Each orb he fired drew another rock close, the floating monoliths colliding behind him as he leapt from one to the next, swiftly scaling a mountain that would take most people days to climb… if they attempted the climb at all.
Only the Solari, and those who sought power, held vigil here.
He passed their settlements below, each quiet and ignorant of the night. For years, he had wondered how Solari zealots could deny his faith’s existence, walking their paths to follow the sun, fearing darkness that only Lunari dared face. But his destiny was clear.
The zealots would be revealed by the moon’s light.
Aphelios leapt to a final island of stone and paused above a snowy clearing where a party of Solari had gathered, their weapons blazing. Burning Ones, the Lunari called them. By night, they scorched out heretics of the moon. By day, their priests denied there was anything but the sun. Beneath dark hoods, their faces were hidden by flame as impersonal as their judgment. They had surrounded a barbarian cloaked in crimson and steel.
The outlander he’d seen in his vision.
The moon’s light stopped in this clearing. It stopped at the barbarian’s feet.
“Aphelios,” I say again. I whisper it to your soul and gather my magic, knowing the only words you want to hear.
“I am with you…”
Aphelios dived off the rock island and plummeted into battle, the Burning Ones’ weapons blazing all the brighter as Gravitum’s darkness spread among them. Crying out in alarm, the Solari turned to fight, but found themselves bound to the ground by a black orb. Aphelios dropped the cannon, and a new weapon appeared in his hand.
“Severum,” I whisper.
Landing from his descent without looking away from his enemies’ burning faces, Aphelios slashed behind him with Severum, the crescent pistol’s beam tearing through the island of stone. Terrified, the Burning Ones could only watch as massive slabs slammed down among them, cut loose by the energy of the waning moon.
The survivors quickly spread across the clearing, lashing at Aphelios with their molten spears. Weaving between the blows, Aphelios continued to slash with Severum and reached out with his free hand to grasp one more weapon as it passed through the veil, knowing it would be there.
“Crescendum,” I say to the night.
With a soaring arc, Crescendum cut through the throats of the remaining Solari in the clearing—Aphelios catching the moonstone blade as it twisted around and returned to his hand.
In seconds, it was over.
The barbarian stands before you. He looks up, gratefully. Beside him, what the Burning Ones sought: a scimitar curved like the moon.
He opens his mouth to thank you, but he sees your expression twist, though you try to hide it. You fight the fear, punching your shoulder where the Burning Ones’ spears cut through your cloak. Trying to remember the pain. Reaching for it.
You don’t want to kill him. But you must.
Your face is too numb for you to feel the tears… Instead, you feel mine.
“Aphelios,” I say one last time, forcing my voice through the veil. There is a dizzying rush as our orbits bring us together.
Through your eyes, I see what moonlight reveals around the scimitar. Why it was abandoned.
She is running…
We must find her.
The crimson-clad barbarian lay in the snow among the Solari.
With a gasp, Aphelios fell to his knees.
He glanced up at the moon, listening for a whisper only he could hear.
His expression dulled again. Without a word, he picked up the scimitar and walked into the night. | Marksman |
Even three bells after the Sun Gate had closed, Piltover was still full of life - life that was currently getting in her way. Caitlyn sprinted down Mainspring Crescent, weaving a path between midnight revelers strolling down the fashionable promenade of cafes and bistros. The supper clubs were emptying, as were the nearby theaters inside the Drawsmith Arcade, so this street was going to get a whole lot busier. If they didn’t catch up to Devaki soon, they were going to lose him.
“Do you see him?” shouted Mohan from behind.
“If I could see him, I’d already be drawing a bead on him!”
The hextech rifle slung over Caitlyn’s shoulder was loaded and ready to shoot, but she needed a target, and Devaki was more nimble than a spooked doe. He’d robbed three clan workshops (that they knew of) in the last five weeks, and Caitlyn had him pegged for two others. Working a hunch that something big was in the works, she and Mohan had been keeping watch on one of House Morichi’s workshops, and sure enough, Devaki had shown. Though they hadn’t known it until the city lighters had worked their way down the street to ignite the glow-lamps and Caitlyn caught his reflection in the glass of the cafe across the street. Devaki had seen her in the same instant, and took to his heels like a startled wharf-rat.
Caitlyn skidded to a halt at the next junction. The caged flames atop the fluted lampposts bathed the dozens of surprised people staring at her with a warm, amber light. Her pale blue eyes darted from person to person, seeking Devaki’s distinctive silhouette.
A young man crossed the street toward her, his cheeks ruddy with a night’s enjoyment. He waved at her.
“You looking for a man on the run?” he asked. “Fella with a big hat?”
“Yes,” said Caitlyn. “You saw him? Where did he go?”
The young man pointed left and said, “Down that way at a good clip.”
She followed his gaze and saw cheering theater-goers spilling from the Drawsmith Arcade, a vaulted structure of colored glass and ironwork columns. They mingled with stall-holders selling refreshments and promenade-girls looking for a wealthy mark. Mohan finally caught up to her, sweating and breathing hard. He bent at the waist and propped himself up with his palms on his knees. His blue uniform coat was askew and his hat tipped back over his head.
“Figures he’d try to lose himself in the crowd,” he said between gulps of air.
Caitlyn took a moment to study their public-spirited helper. His clothes were finely-tailored and must once have cost him a pretty penny, but the cuffs were frayed and the elbows worn. Her eyes narrowed as she took in last season’s colors and a collar that hadn’t been in style for a year.
Wealthy, but down on his luck.
Mohan turned toward the busy street and said, “Come on, Caitlyn! Let’s go or we’ll lose him.”
Caitlyn dropped to one knee to look at the street from a different perspective. The cobbles were slick from the evening rain and were well trodden. From this angle, she saw the scuffs of heel marks on stone that only a running man would leave. But they weren’t heading left, they were heading right.
“How much did Devaki give you to tell us that?” said Caitlyn to the unfashionably dressed young man. “If it was less than a gold hex, you were swindled.”
The young man put his hands up and said, “It was five, actually,” before turning tail and running toward the crowds with a laugh.
“What the...?” said Mohan, as Caitlyn sprinted in the opposite direction. She’d lost valuable seconds, but knew exactly where Devaki was going now. She soon left Mohan behind, her sometime partner a little too fond of the sugared pastries the District-Inspector’s wife made for her husband’s officers.
Caitlyn ran a winding path through the city, along seldom-traveled alleyways and crooked paths between the gables of tall, brick-fronted warehouses. She cut across busy streets, drawing cries of annoyance from those she barged out of her way. The closer she came to the great canyon bisecting Piltover, the narrower the streets became, but she was betting she knew the shortcuts of Piltover better than Devaki. After a dozen twists and turns, she emerged onto a crooked street of undulating cobbles that followed the jagged line of the cliff. Known locally as Drop Street thanks to the wheezing hexdraulic conveyer at the end that ran late into the night, it was deep in shadow.
The iron-framed cabin hadn’t yet opened, the lozenge-patterned grille still in the closed position. A group of fifteen Zaunites, a great many of whom were intoxicated, gathered around the ticket booth. None of them were the man Caitlyn was looking for. She turned and dropped to a crouch, resting the barrel of her rifle on a packing crate bearing the brand of Clan Medarda. Stolen property, no doubt, but she didn’t have time to check it.
Caitlyn thumbed the rifle’s primer switch to the upright position. A gentle hum built within the breech as she worked the action to ready a shot. She pulled the butt of the rifle hard against her shoulder and slowed her breathing. Her cheek pressed into the walnut stock and she closed one eye as she took aim through the crystalline lenses.
She didn’t have long to wait.
Devaki swung around the corner, his long coat billowing out behind him and his hat a tall silhouette. He appeared to be in no hurry, but then, he believed he had shed his pursuers. He held a heavy brass-cornered case in his metal-clawed hand; a crude thing Vi said he’d had done in one of Zaun’s ask-no-questions augmentation parlors when he was a foolish youth.
Caitlyn focused her aim on the pneumatic monstrosity and squeezed the trigger. A searing flash of orange-red exploded from the weapon’s muzzle and Devaki’s hand vanished in a pinpoint blast. He cried out and fell back, his hat toppling from his head as the case fell to the ground. Devaki looked up, his eyes widening in pain and surprise as he saw Caitlyn. He turned to run, but Caitlyn had been waiting for that. She toggled a thumb-switch on the breech and pulled the trigger again.
This time the beam struck Devaki in the back and exploded in a web of crackling energy. Devaki’s back arched and he fell, twitching, to the ground. Caitlyn powered down her rifle and slung it over her shoulder as she walked toward the fallen Devaki. The effects of the electro-net were dimming, but he wouldn’t be getting up anytime soon. Caitlyn bent to retrieve the case he’d dropped and shook her head with a tut-tut sound.
“H-h-h...how?” said Devaki, through the spasms wracking his body.
“How did I know where you were headed?” asked Caitlyn.
Devaki nodded, the movement jerky and forced.
“Your previous thefts were meaningless in themselves, but when I looked at them as part of a larger scheme, it seemed like you were gathering components to build a version of Vishlaa’s Hexylene Caliver,” said Caitlyn.
She knelt beside Devaki to place a hand on his rigid body.
“And as we all know, that weapon was outlawed as being too dangerous, wasn’t it? No one in Piltover would dare touch that kind of banned hex, but someone, maybe in Noxus? They’d pay handsomely for that, I imagine. But the only place you could get something like that out of the city is through one of Zaun’s less reputable smugglers. This is the only quick route down into Zaun that’s still running at this time of night. Once I saw you weren’t going to try and hide out in Piltover, all I had to do was get to the conveyor before you and wait. So you and I are going to have a long talk, and you’re going to tell me who you’re working for.”
Devaki didn’t answer, and Caitlyn grinned as she reached over his prone body.
“Nice hat,” she said. | Marksman |
When Heimerdinger and his yordle colleagues migrated to Piltover, they embraced science as a way of life, and they immediately made several groundbreaking contributions to the techmaturgical community. What yordles lack in stature, they make up for with industriousness. Corki, the Daring Bombardier, gained his title by test-piloting one of these contributions - the original design for the Reconnaissance Operations Front-Line Copter, an aerial assault vehicle which has become the backbone of the Bandle City Expeditionary Force (BCEF). Together with his squadron - the Screaming Yipsnakes - Corki soars over Valoran, surveying the landscape and conducting aerial acrobatics for the benefit of onlookers below.
Corki is the most renowned of the Screaming Yipsnakes for remaining cool under fire and exhibiting bravery to the point of madness. He served several tours of duty, often volunteering for missions that would take him behind enemy lines, either gathering intelligence or delivering messages through hot zones. He thrived on danger, and enjoyed nothing more than a good dogfight in the morning. More than just an ace pilot, Corki also made several modifications to his copter, outfitting it with an arsenal of weapons which some speculate were more for show than functionality. When open hostilities ceased, Corki was forced into a retirement, which he felt ''cut the engines and clipped the wings.’’ He tried to make do with stunt flying and canyon running, but it was never the same without the refreshing smell of gunpowder streaking through the air around him. | Marksman |
Even as an orphan on the streets of Basilich, Draven was headstrong and full of bravado, frequently getting into vicious brawls with older street children and shady underworld thugs. While supremely confident in his own ability—some would say overconfident—it is unlikely he would have survived childhood had it not been for his older brother, Darius, who invariably finished the fights Draven started.
When Basilich fell to the warhosts of Noxus, the brothers came to the attention of a captain named Cyrus, after Draven made an ill-considered attempt on his life. Impressed with their fighting spirit, Cyrus allowed them to join the Noxian ranks.
For years, the brothers fought as part of Cyrus’ warhost—yet while Darius took to this life easily, Draven grew steadily more bored. His martial skill was beyond question, but the daily drudgery of soldiering felt like too much effort for too little reward… and not enough personal glory.
Darius inevitably rose to command his own warband, and Draven joined him. However, if he thought that would be easier, or a way to achieve greater individual recognition, he was sorely disappointed.
Some say Draven chose to leave Darius’ command. Some say he was forced out. Either way, his skills were highly sought after as a champion and duelist, and he was enticed to join a succession of warbands during the occupation of Ionia, before ending up with a fairly respectable contract in the Reckoning pits.
For centuries, the gladiatorial Reckoners had performed a vital role in Noxus—punishing criminals and settling disputes between the noble houses—and Draven was determined to receive the riches, adoration, and renown he felt he deserved. However, with long, protracted wars on many fronts, the spectacle was beginning to lose its appeal for the common citizen. As the attention of the crowds drifted, Draven fell into a slump, spending more and more time in the seedier drinking halls and gambling dens of the capital.
He was washed-up and broke when the former general Jericho Swain found him.
Swain had a plan to reclaim Noxus’ lost glory, and needed Draven’s help to achieve it. Perhaps Swain only enlisted him as a way to ensure his brother Darius’ support after the fact. Regardless, Draven proved integral to Swain’s plan—to depose the Grand General himself, Boram Darkwill.
Standing triumphant with Swain, Draven smiled for the first time in months as the cheers of the Noxian people washed over him.
But duty called. In the days and weeks following this unprecedented coup, many among the noble elite refused to honor Swain’s succession, so they were sentenced to death in the arena.
One condemned man escaped his handlers ahead of his execution. Operating on pure instinct—as was ever his wont—Draven leapt from the high balcony and hurled a pair of axes at the fleeing man, cutting him down in a heartbeat. After a moment of stunned silence, the crowd roared their approval. Draven retrieved his axes, spinning them high in the air, playing to his new fans, and savoring their rapturous applause.
Thus Draven became the Glorious Executioner, turning routine bouts into grand spectacles that drew ever larger crowds.
Soon enough, an enterprising (and diminutive) promoter, tired of paying to house, feed, and train Reckoners only for them to die in front of dwindling audiences, approached Draven with an idea. What if the drama of the classic pit fights could be combined with Draven’s natural showmanship?
The Reckoners quickly became entertainers as much as combatants, each with their own carefully constructed backstory, fighting style, and flamboyant personality. The fights were often bloody—this was still Noxus after all—but far less often ended in death. The rivalries, trash-talking, and intrigue between the best-known Reckoners became the stuff of legend throughout the empire, but none were talked about more than Draven.
For a time he lived the high life, receiving invitations to a never-ending stream of parties and banquets, mixing with the wealthy and influential of Swain’s new Noxus. He even reconciled with Darius, and would occasionally still march out with the warhosts, defeating enemy champions and generals in single combat.
Nevertheless, Draven has started to grow restless once again. He has all that he could have ever imagined, and more, but now dreams of the day when the whole world knows his name. | Marksman |
After hours of trekking through the stiflingly humid jungle, the cool air of this underground crypt is sweet bliss. Sure, potential death awaits at every turn, but so does certain glory.
I step through a stone archway and clouds of dust rise like phantoms, revealing a pathway of circular patterns carved into the rock. This tomb is rumored to be impenetrable, uncrackable, and deadly. No explorer has yet escaped with their life, but then, none of them have been me.
So far I’ve infiltrated miles of labyrinthine tunnels, navigated spike-filled sand traps, crawled beneath swinging blade-pendulums, and wrestled hissing pit vipers. Nice place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live here.
Dozens of lidless stone eyes leer at me from the walls. Well, I’d leer too. I doubt they’ve seen anyone this astonishingly handsome since the last Rune War.
At the center of the room, a crystal vial rests on a pedestal. It shimmers with lambent fluid, casting tiny rainbows on the floor. That’s what I’m here for. Many will dismiss a grandiose tale of bold adventure as pure fiction, but there’s no denying a physical artifact. Collecting legendary treasure proves beyond doubt you’ve conquered the impossible.
The Elixir of Uloa is sought after by cults hoping it will imbue them with immortality, withered dynasties looking to reclaim power, and pilgrims seeking wisdom beyond belief. Quite a lot to promise for a vial whose contents wouldn’t fill a teaspoon.
I know every trap in the book will trigger as soon as I lift it from the pedestal. That’s the nature of places like this. I flex my fingers and the gemstone at the center of my gauntlet glows a satisfying cerulean blue. Now the real fun begins.
I approach slowly. A stone trembles underfoot and I step back to avoid activating a trigger. I pick my way across the room, only stepping on the most immobile stones. As my fingers close over the Elixir, deep cracks split the stone floor of the chamber. I activate my gauntlet, charging it with magical energy. Swirling rays of light overwhelm my vision as I teleport to the archway fifteen feet away. Not a second too soon. Hundreds of knife-sharp stakes cascade from the ceiling, missing me by a hair’s breadth as the entire room collapses into a shadowy crevasse below.
My gauntlet’s power is perfect for tight spots, but doesn’t lend itself to crossing great distances. And takes longer than I’d like to recharge.
A thunderous boom shakes the walls and echoes down the corridor. Sounds like the ancient foundations of this tomb won’t hold much longer, so it’s time to speed things along. I prefer my ground strictly solid, with a generous helping of reliability, so I sprint down the tunnel as widening cracks obliterate the floor behind me.
I chase the directional marks I chalked when I entered the tomb, sliding beneath collapsing archways, leaping over boiling quicksand, and dashing around colossal boulders rolling in to block this ever-narrowing passageway.
The wall to my right splits apart and a barrage of colossal insects tumble through, giant pincers snapping and venom dripping from their jaws. Thousands of red spider eyes gleam with hunger while scorpions scuttle forward with stingers poised. Jungle vermin are a damn nuisance, but I’ve got just the remedy!
I close my eyes for a split second. Energy flows down my arm, jangling my nerves with a pulsating beat as I concentrate power into the gem. I steady my gauntlet and aim it at the largest spider. As the monster opens his jaws I unleash a blazing ray into its mouth, blasting it back into the crawling horde. The smell of burned chitin stings my throat and my stomach churns.
I turn and run, firing blinding beams of light behind me at every twist of the passageway. A slab of rock the size of a house breaks from the ceiling directly overhead. My gauntlet recharges just in time and I reappear ten feet ahead in a whirling spiral of light as the tunnel behind me collapses.
Two toppling pillars fall toward each other and I slide between them a moment before they smash to dust. I dash into a chamber with a floor angled toward the surface.
A sliver of sunlight shines ahead, and I grin as I bolt for it. Freedom is close. The ground shakes with a deafening rumble and I stumble mid-run as the chamber falls apart in front of me. Freedom was close.
Then again, backup plans are a particular specialty of mine.
I ready my gauntlet and concentrate all my energy into the gem. I feel it drawing power from me. My vision blurs and the world seems to tilt as the gem fills with magic. The gauntlet pulses the blue of a clear sky.
I open my hand and a brilliant arc of golden light as wide as the tunnel bursts from my palm. The force of the blast staggers me, but I maintain my focus. The light blazes in a continuous glowing channel, gleaming brightly as it disintegrates everything in its path, leaving a precariously narrow gap. My favorite kind of gap!
I close my hand into a fist and the tunnel darkens once more. The ground lurches unpleasantly, sending me to my knees. I’m so spent I can barely move, let alone stand. Inches from my face, cracks spread across the floor faster than I can track them. Not good. The tomb won’t hold much longer, so I muster my remaining strength and rise, sprinting to what I dearly hope is safety.
I’m losing sight of the sunlight. Another crash - the walls crumble around me. I close my eyes and dive through the hole. Nothing wrong with hoping for a bit of good luck, and I am exceptionally lucky. I hit the ground, roll to my feet and inhale the sweet air of the jungle.
Behind me, the entrance to the tomb caves in completely, releasing a billowing cloud of ancient dust. I brush the dirt from my clothes, toss my hair out of my eyes with a well-practiced flick and walk away.
Another impossible ruin traversed. Another treasure to prove the truth of my daring tales.
And all before lunch. | Marksman |
Holed up in an empty bar, bleeding from a dozen wounds and surrounded by armed men who wanted him dead, Malcolm Graves had seen better days. He’d seen worse ones, too, so he wasn’t worried yet. Graves leaned over the smashed bar and helped himself to a bottle, sighing as he read the label.
“Demacian wine? That all you got?”
“It’s the most expensive bottle I have...” said the innkeeper, cowering below the bar in a glittering ocean of broken glass.
Graves looked around the bar and grinned.
“I reckon it’s the only bottle you got left.”
The man had panic written all over him. He clearly wasn’t used to being in the middle of a gunfight. This wasn’t Bilgewater, where fatal brawls broke out ten times a day. Piltover was regarded a more civilized city than Graves’s hometown. In some ways, at least.
He yanked the cork free with his teeth and spat it to the floor before taking a swig. He swilled it around his mouth like he’d seen rich folks do before swallowing it.
“Pisswater,” he said, “but beggars can’t be choosers, huh?”
A voice shouted through the broken windows, buoyed with confidence it hadn’t earned and the false bravado of numbers.
“Give it up, Graves. There’s seven of us to one of you. This ain’t going to end well.”
“Damn straight it ain’t,” hollered Graves in return. “If you want to walk away from this, you best go fetch more men!”
He took another swig from the bottle, then put it down on the bar.
“Time to get to work,” he said, lifting his one-of-a-kind shotgun from the bar.
Graves reloaded, pushing fresh shells home. The weapon snapped together with a satisfyingly lethal sound, loud enough to carry to the men outside. Anyone who knew him would know that sound and what it meant.
The outlaw slid off the barstool and made his way to the door, glass crunching beneath his boot heels. He stooped to glance through a cracked window. Four men crouched behind makeshift cover: two on the upper floor of a fancy workshop, another two in shadowed doorways to either side. All held crossbows or muskets at the ready.
“We tracked you halfway across the world, you son of a bitch,” shouted the same voice. “Bounty didn’t say nothin’ about you being alive or dead. Walk out now with that cannon of yours held high and there don’t need to be no more bloodshed.”
“Oh, I’m comin’ out,” shouted Graves. “Don’t you worry none about that.”
He drew a silver serpent from his pocket and flipped it onto the bar, where it spun through a pool of spilled rum before landing heads up. A trembling hand reached up to take it. Graves grinned.
“That’s for the door,” he said.
“What about the door?” asked the innkeeper.
Graves hammered his boot into the inn’s front door, smashing it from its hinges. He dove through the splintered frame, rolling to one knee, gun blasting from the hip.
“Alright, you bastards!” he roared. “Let’s finish this!” | Marksman |
One.
The gun in his hand was simply a tool—but a perfectly crafted one. Gold type was inlaid into the blackish-green metal. It spelled the smith’s name: this detail spoke of its creator’s pride and confidence. It was not a Piltovan weapon—those gaudy things that attempted to function with the minuscule amounts of magic available in those lands. This gun was made by a true forge master. Magic pulsed from its bronze, Ionian heart.
He wiped the gun’s stock a fourth time. He couldn’t be sure it was clean until he wiped it down four times. Didn’t matter that he hadn’t used it. Didn’t matter that he was only going to stow it in the bag under the bed. He couldn’t put it away until he was sure it was clean, and he couldn’t be sure it was clean until he had wiped it down four times. It was getting clean though. Four times makes it clean.
It was clean, and it was wonderful. His new patrons had been generous. But did the finest painters not deserve the finest brushes?
The scale and precision of the new device made his previous work with blades seem insignificant by comparison. Understanding firearm mechanics had taken him weeks of study, but evolving his ki techniques from blades had taken months.
The gun held four shots. Each bullet had been infused with magical energy. Each bullet was as perfect as a Lassilan monk’s blade. Each bullet was the paint from which his art would flow. Each bullet was a masterpiece. It didn’t just cut apart the body. It rearranged it.
The rehearsal at the mill town had already shown the gun’s potential. And his new employers had been pleased with the work’s reception.
He had finished polishing it, but with the gun in his right hand, the temptation was too great. He knew he shouldn’t, but he unpacked the black, eel-skin bodysuit. He drew the fingertips of his left hand across the slick surface of the clothes. The feel of the skin’s oily surface quickened his breath. He picked up the tight, leather mask, then—unable to help himself—slid it over his face. It covered his right eye and mouth. It constricted his breathing and removed his depth perception…
Delightful.
He was putting on the shoulder armor when the bells he’d hidden on the steps leading up to his room sounded. He quickly folded up the weapon and removed the mask.
“Hello?” the maid asked through the door. The lilt in her voice hinted to an upbringing far south of this town.
“You did what I asked?” he said.
“Yes, sir. A white lantern every four yards. A red lantern every sixteen.”
“Then I can begin,” Khada Jhin said as he swung open the door to his room.
The woman’s eyes widened as he exited his room. Jhin was well aware of how he looked. Normally, it elicited pangs of self-conscious loathing, but today was a performance day.
Today, Khada Jhin cut a slender, elegant figure as he walked out with a cane. He was hunched, and his cloak seemed to cover some huge deformity on his shoulder, but a jaunty stride belied this. He forcefully tapped the cane ahead of him as he marched toward the window. He tapped the frame rhythmically—three beats, then a fourth. His gold sparkled, his cream cloak flowed, and his jewels glittered in the sun.
“What… What is that?” the maid asked, indicating Jhin’s shoulder.
Jhin paused for a moment to study the woman’s cherubic face. It was round and perfectly symmetrical. A dull and predictable design. Removed, it would make a terrible mask.
“It’s for the crescendo, my darling,” Khada Jhin said.
From the inn’s window, he had a clear view of the rest of the town in the valley below him. This performance had to be wonderful, but there was still so much work to do. The councilman would be returning this evening—and so far, all of Jhin’s plans for tonight seemed… uninspired.
“I brought some flowers for your room,” the woman said, walking past him.
He could have used someone else to place the lanterns. But he didn’t. He could have changed clothes before opening his door. But he didn’t. Now she had seen Khada Jhin in his finery.
The inspiration he needed was so obvious now. So preordained. There was never a choice. There was no escaping the Art.
He would have to make this maid’s face... more interesting.
Two.
The candied pork glistened on top of the five-flavor broth. The aroma entranced Shen, but he set aside his spoon. As the waitress left, she smiled and nodded in approval. The fat had yet to melt into the broth. Doubtless, the soup was already excellent, but in a moment, the flavor would be at its peak. Patience.
Shen considered the interior of the White Cliffs Inn. It was deceptively simple and rough. The wood weavers had been masters, removing the tree bark and living leaves only where necessary.
The candle on Shen’s table flickered… wrongly. He slid away from the table, retrieving his blades from under his cloak.
“Your students are as quiet as a pregnant worax,” he said.
Alone and dressed like a merchant, Zed entered the inn. Brushing past the waitress, he sat down three tables away. Every part of Shen wanted to dash at his foe, to avenge his father. But such was not the way of twilight. He calmed himself as he realized the distance was too far… even if only by the length of his index finger.
Shen looked over at Zed, expecting to see him grin. Instead, his rival sighed. His skin was sallow, and dark folds hung beneath his eyes.
“Years, I have waited,” said Shen.
“Have I misjudged the distance?” Zed asked wearily.
“Even if my head is cut off, I will still close and strike,” Shen continued, sliding his foot backward and cocking it against the floor. Zed was ten paces and one half of a finger length away.
“Your path’s closer to mine. Your father’s ideals were a weakness. Ionia could no longer afford them,” Zed said. He leaned back in his chair, keeping himself just outside of the range Shen would need to strike a killing blow. “I know that’s not something I can make you understand. But I will offer you a chance for vengeance.”
Shen inched forward to the edge of his chair. “I do not act because of vengeance. You defy the balance. For that, you are damned.”
“The Golden Demon escaped,” Zed said, simply.
“Impossible,” Shen replied, feeling a hollowness that caught in his chest.
“Your father’s greatest victory. And now, again, his foolish mercy has tarnished his legacy.” Zed shook his head. “You know what that… thing is capable of.” Then Zed leaned over the table, well within Shen’s range—his neck intentionally exposed. “And you know that we are the only two people who can get close enough to stop him.”
Shen remembered the first time he’d seen the body of someone killed by the infamous Khada Jhin. His skin prickled from the memory; his teeth clenched. Only his father had been strong enough to still believe a merciful justice could be served.
Something in Shen had changed that day. Something in Zed had broken.
Now, that monster had returned.
Shen put his swords on the table. He looked down at the perfect bowl of soup in front of him. Little droplets of the pork fat’s oil shimmered on its surface, but he wasn’t hungry anymore.
Three.
There was still no sign of Zed. It was disappointing. Very disappointing. He certainly must have sought out his former friend. It was likely Zed was hiding, watching. Jhin needed to be careful.
From the jetty, Jhin looked back to the foreign ship. The tide had come in, and the ship would be leaving in a few moments. He would have to return soon if he was going to perform in Zaun next month. Risk on top of risk.
He stopped to check his reflection in a puddle. From the water, a worried, elderly merchant stared back at him. Years of acting practice combined with his martial training had given him total control of his facial muscles. It was a common face, and he had given it an unexceptional expression. When he walked up the hill, Jhin blended easily into the crowd.
He checked the white lanterns above him, counting the distance. If Zed appeared, he would need them. At the inn on the top of the hill, he glanced at the planters where he had hidden traps. Sharpened steel blades, shaped like flowers. They protected his escape route in case anything went wrong.
He thought of how the metal would slice through the crowd and splash the building’s freshly painted teal walls with red. It was tempting.
He was pushing through the crowd when he heard the village elder speaking to Shen.
“Why would the demon attack her and the councilmen?” the elder asked.
Shen, dressed in his blue outfit, didn’t answer.
Another of the Kinkou, a young woman named Akali, stood beside Shen. She walked to the doorway of the inn.
“No,” Shen said as he blocked her path.
“What makes you think I’m not ready?” Akali demanded.
“Because I wasn’t when I was your age.”
At that moment, a town guard stumbled from the entrance, his face pale and hollow.
“Her flesh, it was… It was…” He took a few steps, then collapsed to the ground in shock.
Against the far wall, the tavern’s owner laughed. Then he began weeping—his face painted by madness. “He saw it. He saw the flower!”
These were not people who would forget seeing Khada Jhin’s work.
Shen scanned the faces of the onlookers.
Clever boy, Jhin thought, before fading into the back of the crowd.
He checked the rooftops for Zed as he walked back to the ship.
The work was inescapable. Together or apart, Zed and Shen would chase the clues he had left. They would follow them back to the Blossom Festival. Back to Jyom Pass. And when they became desperate, then they would have to work together again.
It would be like it had been when they were young. They would huddle together in awe and fear.
Only then would the great Khada Jhin reveal himself…
And his true masterpiece would begin.
Four. | Marksman |
Jinx hated petticoats.
Corsets too, but she grinned at how she’d put the space under and within the stolen dress to good use. Her long blue braids were concealed beneath a ridiculous feathered bonnet that was the latest fashion in Piltover. Jinx sashayed between the wedding guests, keeping her smile fixed and trying not to scream at the dead-eyed people surrounding her. It took an effort of will not to grab each one by the shoulder and try to shake them awake.
Jinx had come here to get all explodey on the observatory atop Count Sandvik’s mansion, but when she’d seen there was a wedding underway... well, that was too good an opportunity for mayhem to pass it up. The count had spared no expense in making his daughter’s party a grand spectacle. The cream of Piltover society was here; the heads of the major clans, lauded hextech artificers, and even fat Nicodemus had managed to finagle an invite. The Warden-Prefect looked like an overstuffed poro in his dress uniform, chest puffed out and beady eyes ogling the sprawling buffet table. Music from a small orchestra drifted over the wedding guests, so slow and ponderous it made Jinx want to yawn. She’d take the foot-stomping, spin-around-till-it-made-you-sick music of Zaun any day.
Hexlumens fitted with rotating zoetropes and oddly-angled lenses projected spectral dancers onto the floor that pirouetted and spun to the delight of laughing children who’d never known a moment of hunger, pain, or loss. Mimes and sleight of hand artistes moved through the crowd, delighting the guests with the fingerwork of their card tricks. Jinx had seen better. The sump-snipes of the Boundary Markets would quite literally give any of these performers a run for their money.
Pictures of Piltover’s bigwigs hung on walls paneled with oak and inlaid with geometric copper fretwork. The men and women in the portraits looked down on the people below with haughty disdain. Jinx stuck her tongue out at each and every one of them as she passed, grinning as they tutted and turned away. Windows paned with colored glass patterned the mosaic floor with rainbows and Jinx skipped merrily over every bright square as she made her way to a table heaped with enough food to feed a hundred families in Zaun for a month.
A liveried waiter passed her, bearing a silver tray of fluted glasses filled with something golden and fizzy. She took one in each hand, spinning away with a grin. Flying foam stained the backs of dresses and frock coats of nearby guests and Jinx sniggered.
“Drink up,” she said and knocked back what was left in the glasses.
She bent awkwardly and set the glasses on the mosaic floor, right in the path of oncoming dancers, and burped the opening bars of Vi is a Stupid Fathead, a tune she’d only just made up. Cliques of society ladies turned to sneer at her coarseness, and Jinx covered her mouth in mock, wide-eyed embarrassment. “Sorry, I accidentally did that on purpose.”
She skipped on and helped herself to some weird looking fish-things from another waiter’s platter. She tossed them into the air and managed to catch at least one in her mouth. A few fell into her enhanced cleavage and she plucked them out with the glee of a sump-scrapper who’d found something shiny in the ooze.
“You thought you could get away from me, fishy-fishes!” she said, wagging a finger at each morsel. “Well, you were wrong.”
Jinx stuffed the food into her mouth and readjusted her dress. She wasn’t used to this much up top, and stifled a giggle at what she had stuffed down there. The hairs on the back of her neck bristled, and she looked up to see a man staring at her from the edge of the chamber. He was good-looking in a stiff sort of way and wore nice, formal clothes, but was so obviously a warden that he might as well have had a sign around his neck. She turned and pushed deeper into the throng of guests filling the chamber.
She reached the buffet table and sucked in an impressed breath as she saw the towering wedding cake; a frosted masterwork of pink fondant, whipped cream and lacework caramel. A replica of the Tower of Techmaturgy in sponge, jam, and sweet pastry. Jinx reached out, lifted a ladle from the punch bowl, and scooped out a cave in the sponge. She tipped it out onto the floor, licked the ladle clean and tossed it back onto the table. She saw a number of the guests looking at her funny and bared her teeth in her best, manic grin. Maybe they thought she was mad. Maybe they were right.
Jinx shrugged. Whatever.
She reached down into her décolletage and pulled out four chompers. She stuffed three deep into the hole she’d scooped in the cake and dropped the other in the punch bowl.
Jinx strolled along the length of the table, pulling out another two chompers and depositing them in various dishes. One went in a copper soup tureen, the other replaced the apple in the mouth of a suckling pig. Her dress was a lot looser without the additional baggage upstairs, and as she pulled down the side zipper, Jinx spotted the good-looking man she’d earlier pegged as a warden making a beeline for her through the guests.
“About time,” she said, spotting another four, gussied-up wardens, three women and a man, converging on her. “Oooh, and you brought friends too!”
Jinx reached around to the small of her back and pulled the knot securing the petticoats around her narrow waist. The bottom half of her dress sank to the floor as her corset fell away to surprised gasps of the men and women around her.
Revealed in her pink leggings, ammo-belted shorts and vest top, Jinx ripped off the bonnet and shook her hair loose. She reached down and swung Fishbones up from where it had been concealed beneath her dress, and hoisted the weapon up to her shoulder.
“Hey folks!” she yelled, leaping onto the buffet table and drawing Zapper from her thigh-holster. “Hope you’re all hungry...”
Jinx spun on her heel and fired a crackling bolt of energy down the table to the chomper in the pig’s mouth.
“‘Cause this buffet is to die for!”
The chomper exploded, draping the nearest guests in ribbons of scorched meat and fat. A chain reaction of detonations followed. The tureen blasted into the air to drench scores of guests in hot beef soup. The punch bowl blew up next, and then the climax of the detonations; the wedding cake.
The three chompers inside detonated simultaneously and the towering confection launched into the air like a rocket. It almost reached the stained glass ceiling before it arced over and nosedived back to the floor. Guests scattered as the giant cake exploded on impact, and fondant fragments flew in all directions. Screaming guests ran from the blasts, slipping and tumbling in patches of gooey cream and sizzling punch.
“Seriously folks,” said Jinx, blowing a loose strand of blue hair out of her face. “Screaming helps, not at all.”
She skipped down the ruined buffet table and fired a rocket from Fishbones that blew out the nearest window. Iron bolts from hand crossbows flashed past her to embed in the walls, but Jinx laughed as she leapt through the shattered window frame to land in the garden beyond. She rolled back to her feet and pulled up short. She’d had an escape route sort of planned out, but looking toward the Sandvik Mansion’s entrance, she saw a tall, gleaming ring-rider that looked like it’d be a ton of fun to steal.
“Now, that I gotta try...”
She slung Fishbones over her shoulder and elbowed a host of gawping Sandvik footmen out the way, settling into the disc-runner’s hand-tooled leather saddle.
“So how do you start this thing?” she said, staring at the bewildering array of ivory knobs, brass-rimmed dials and gem-like buttons on the control panel in front of her.
“Time for a little trial and error!”
Jinx hauled back on the nearest lever and hit the biggest, reddest button she could see. The machine throbbed beneath her, spooling up with a rising whine and hum of building power. Blue light spun around the outer edges of the wide disc as the main doors to the mansion slammed open. Stern voices yelled at her to stop. Like that was going to happen! The stabilizer struts retracted into the gleaming frame and Jinx whooped with manic glee as the disc-runner shot away from the mansion like a super mega death rocket.
“See ya!” she yelled over her shoulder. “Awesome party!” | Marksman |
The sword-wife stood amid the burnt out ruin of her home. Everything and everyone that mattered to her was gone, and she was filled with fathomless grief... and hate. Hate was now all that compelled her.
She saw again the smile on his face as he gave the order. He was meant to be their protector, but he’d spat upon his vows. Hers was not the only family shattered by the oath-breaker.
The desire to go after him was strong. She wanted nothing more than to plant her sword in his chest and watch the life drain from his eyes... but she knew she would never be able to get close enough to him. He was guarded day and night, and she was but one warrior. She would never be able to fight her way through his battalion alone. Such a death would serve no purpose.
She took a shuddering breath, knowing there was no coming back.
A crude effigy of a man, formed of sticks and twine, lay upon a fire-blackened dresser. Its body was wrapped in a scrap of cloth torn from the cloak of the betrayer. She’d pried it from her husband’s dead grasp. Alongside it was a hammer and three rusted nails.
She gathered everything up and moved to the threshold. The door itself was gone, smashed to splinters in the attack. Beyond, lit by moonlight, lay the empty, darkened fields.
Reaching up, the sword-wife pressed the stick-effigy to the hardwood lintel.
“I invoke thee, Lady of Vengeance,” she said, her voice low, trembling with the depth of her fury. “From beyond the veil, hear my plea. Come forth. Let justice be done.”
She readied her hammer and the first of the nails.
“I name my betrayer once,” she said, and spoke his name aloud. As she did so, she placed the tip of the first nail to the chest of the stick-figure. With a single strike, she hammered it in deep, pinning it to the hardwood door frame.
The sword-wife shivered. The room had become markedly colder. Or had she imagined it?
“I name him twice,” she said, and she did so, hammering the second nail alongside the first.
Her gaze dropped, and she jolted in shock. A dark figure stood out in the moonlit field, a hundred yards in the distance. It was utterly motionless. Breathing quicker, the sword-wife returned her attention to the unfinished task.
“I name him thrice,” she said, speaking again the name of the murderer of her husband and children, before hammering home the final nail.
An ancient spirit of vengeance stood before her, filling the doorway, and the sword-wife staggered back, gasping involuntarily.
The otherworldly being was clad in archaic armor, her flesh translucent and glowing with spectral un-light. Black Mist coiled around her like a living shroud.
With a squeal of tortured metal, the spectral figure drew forth the blackened spear protruding from her breastplate — the ancient weapon that had ended her life.
She threw it to the ground before the sword-wife. No words were spoken; there was no need. The sword-wife knew what was being offered to her — vengeance — and knew its terrible cost: her soul.
The spirit watched on, her face impassive and her eyes burning with an unrelenting cold fury, as the sword-wife picked up the treacherous weapon.
“I pledge myself to vengeance,” said the sword-wife, her voice quivering. She reversed the spear, aiming the tip inward, towards her heart. “I pledge it with my blood. I pledge it with my soul.”
She paused. Her husband would have pleaded for her to turn away from this path. He would have begged her not to condemn her soul for theirs. A moment of doubt gnawed at her. The undying specter watched on.
The sword-wife’s eyes narrowed as she thought of her husband lying dead, cut down by swords and axes. She thought again of her children, sprawled upon the ground, and her resolve hardened like a cold stone in her heart. Her grip tightened upon the spear.
“Help me,” she implored, her decision made. “Please, help me kill him.”
She rammed the spear into her chest, driving it in deep.
The sword-wife’s eyes widened and she dropped to her knees. She tried to speak, but only blood bubbled from her lips.
The ghostly apparition watched her die, her expression impassive.
As the last of the lifeblood ran from her body, the shade of the sword-wife climbed to her feet. She looked down at her insubstantial hands in wonder, then at her own corpse lying dead-eyed in a growing pool of blood upon the floor. The shade’s expression hardened, and a ghostly sword appeared in her hand.
An ethereal tether, little more than a wisp of light, linked the newly formed shade to the avenging spirit she had summoned. Through their bond, the sword-wife saw her differently, glimpsing the noble warrior she had been in life: tall and proud, her armor gleaming. Her posture was confident, yet without arrogance; a born leader, a born soldier. This was a commander the sword-wife would have willingly bled for.
Behind the spirit’s anger, she sensed her empathy — recognition of their shared pain of betrayal.
“Your cause is our cause,” said Kalista, the Spear of Vengeance. Her voice was grave cold. “We walk the path of vengeance as one, now.”
The sword-wife nodded.
With that, the avenging spirit and the shade of the sword-wife stepped into the darkness and were gone. | Marksman |
The battle spilled over like a feast before them. Such delicious life—so many to end, so many to hunt! Wolf paced in the snow while Lamb danced lithely from sword edge to spear tip, the red-blooded butchery never staining her pale coat.
“There is courage and pain here, Wolf. Many will gladly meet their end.” She drew up her bow and let loose an arc of swift finality.
The last breath of a soldier came with a ragged consent as his shield gave way to a heavy axe. Stuck in his heart was a single white arrow, shimmering with ethereal brilliance.
“Courage bores me,” the great black wolf grumbled as he tracked through the snow. “I am hungry and eager to chase.”
“Patience,” she murmured in his shaggy ear. As soon as the words left her, Wolf’s shoulders tensed and his body dropped low to the ground.
“I smell fear,” he said, trembling with excitement.
Across the muddied field of snow, a squire—too young for battle, but with blade in hand, nonetheless—saw that Kindred had marked all in the valley.
“I want the tender-thing. Does it see us, Lamb?”
“Yes, but it must choose. Feed the Wolf, or embrace me.”
The battle turned its steel toward the squire. He now stared at the roiling tide of bravery and desperation coming for him. This would be his last dawn. In that instant, the boy made his choice. He would not go willingly. Until his last breath, he would run.
Wolf snapped in the air and rolled his face in the snow like a new pup.
“Yes, dear Wolf.” Lamb’s voice echoed like a string of pearly bells. “Begin your hunt.”
With that, Wolf bounded across the field after the youth, a howl thundering through the valley. His shadowed body swept over the remains of the newly dead and their useless, shattered weapons.
The squire turned and ran for the woods until thick black trunks passed in a blur. He pressed on, the frozen air burning his lungs. He looked once more for his hunter, but could see nothing but the darkening trees. The shadows closed tightly around him and he suddenly realized there was no escape. It was the black body of Wolf that was everywhere at once. The chase was at its end. Wolf buried his sharp teeth in the squire’s neck, tearing out ribbons of vibrant life.
Wolf reveled in the boy’s scream and crunching bones. Lamb, who had trailed behind, laughed to see such sport. Wolf turned and asked, in a voice more growl than speech, “Is this music, Lamb?”
“It is to you,” she answered.
“Again,” Wolf licked the last drop of the youth’s life from his canine jaws. “I want to chase again, little Lamb.”
“There are always more,” she whispered. “Until the day there is only Kindred.”
“And then will you run from me?”
Lamb turned back to the battle. “I would never run from you, dear Wolf.” | Marksman |
When the prophet Malzahar was reborn in Icathia, he was led there by an ominous voice which thereafter anchored itself to his psyche. From within, this voice bestowed upon him terrible purpose, and though Malzahar was no longer tormented by its call, the voice did not cease its unrelenting summons. This baleful beacon's gentle flicker - now fastened to Runeterra - drew forth a putrid beast that ambled across a threshold it did not understand, widening a fissure between the spaces which were never meant to meet. There amongst the haunting ruins of Icathia, Kog'Maw manifested in Valoran with unsettling curiosity. The spark which led him to Runeterra teased him still, urging him gently towards Malzahar. It also encouraged him to familiarize himself with his new environment, to the stark horror of everything he encountered on his journey.
The enchanting colors and aromas of Runeterra intoxicated Kog'Maw, and he explored the fruits of the strange world the only way he knew how: by devouring them. At first he sampled only the wild flora and fauna he happened across. As he traversed the parched Tempest Flats, however, he came upon a tribe of nomads. Seemingly unhampered by conventional rules of physics, Kog'Maw consumed every nomad and any obstacles they put in his way, amounting to many times his own mass and volume. The most composed of his victims may have had time to wonder if this was due to the caustic enzymes which stung the ground as they dripped from his gaping mouth, although such musings were abruptly concluded. Even this feeding frenzy did nothing to satiate Kog'Maw's appetite. His swathe of destruction continues still as he is inexorably drawn towards Malzahar. What happens when he finds him is anyone's guess. | Marksman |
Bilgewater’s White Wharf had earned its name thanks to the layer of bird waste covering it from end to end, which was only to be expected at a resting place for the dead. Folk here didn’t bury corpses; they returned them to the sea. A grave of the sunken dead hung suspended in the cold depths, marked by hundreds of bobbing grave-buoys. Some were merely name posts, while others were elaborate tomb markers carved to resemble rearing krakens or buxom sea wenches.
Miss Fortune sat on an empty crate of Rapture Rum at the end of the wharf, legs crossed and a noxious cheroot dangling from her bottom lip. In one hand, she held a length of breathing tube connected to a half-submerged coffin floating low in the water. In the other, she grasped a length of frayed rope running through a rusted pulley block and tied to the coffin lid. Both her pistols were holstered within easy reach.
Moonlight cast a weak glow through the mist rolling in from the sea, staining the water’s scummed surface tobacco yellow. Cawing carrion gulls lined every swaybacked roof on the quayside, which was always a good omen. They knew better than any the signs of fresh pickings.
“About time,” she whispered, as a shaven-headed man in a drake-scale frock coat emerged from the narrow, debris-choked alley. A pack of needle-toothed wharf-rats stalked him, hoping he was drunk and might pass out to become easy meat. The man’s name was Jakmunt Zyglos, one of the Painted Brothers. Any corsair worth his salt had tattoos, but every inch of Zyglos was inked with clawed serpents, lovers’ names, and a record of every boat he’d sunk, every man he’d murdered. His skin was as good a confession as any she’d known.
He marched purposefully along the wharf, but his eyes darting warily from side to side gave the lie to his confidence. His hand gripped a long cutlass with a shark-toothed edge that hung low on his hip. He too boasted a firearm, a stubby carbine with glassy pipes running the length of its barrel.
“Where is he?” demanded Zyglos. “You said you’d bring him.”
“That a Piltover hex-carbine?” she asked, ignoring his question.
“Answer me, damn you!”
“You first,” said Miss Fortune, letting some rope out through the pulley and allowing the coffin to sink a little more. “After all, I’m not sure how long this breathing tube is, and you wouldn’t want your brother to go without air, would you?”
Zyglos took a breath, and she saw the tension go out of him.
“Yes, damn you, it’s from Piltover,” he said, drawing the weapon and holding it out by the trigger guard.
“Pricy,” said Miss Fortune.
“I guess you’d know,” he sneered.
She let out even more rope. Bubbles of air escaped the now fully submerged coffin. Zyglos held up his hands, instantly contrite.
“Alright! Alright!” he pleaded. “It’s yours. Pull him up. Please.”
“You’ll come quietly?”
Zyglos gave a bark of fatalistic laughter.
“What choice do I have?” he asked. “You sank my ships and killed all my men. You’ve sent my kin to the poorhouse or the gaol, and for what? A stolen hex-gun? A bounty?”
“A little of both and then some?”
“So how much am I worth to you, bitch?”
“Coin? Five hundred silver serpents.”
“All this mayhem for a lousy five hundred serpents?”
“It’s not the money that’s got you killed. It’s the fact that you’re one of Gangplank’s sworn men,” said Miss Fortune. “That’s why I want you dead.”
“Dead? Wait, the warrant says alive!”
“True, but I’ve never been very good at following instructions,” said Miss Fortune, releasing the rope and the breathing tube. The coffin plunged into the darkness of the sunken dead, trailing a froth of frantic bubbles. Zyglos screamed his brother’s name and ran at her, drawing his serrated sword. She let him get within spitting distance before drawing her pistols and blasting him with both barrels, one through the eye, one in the heart.
Miss Fortune spat her cheroot into the sea and blew the smoke from each muzzle.
“Self defense,” she said with a smile, rehearsing her lie for the bounty pursers. “Crazy fool came at me with that fang-sword of his. I didn’t have a choice.”
Miss Fortune bent to retrieve the fallen hex-carbine. She turned the weapon over in her hands. Too light for her tastes, but artfully made and absurdly lethal. The ghost of a smile twitched the corner of her mouth as she thought back to the warmth of the old workshop, the smell of gun oil, and the touch of her mother’s hand on her shoulder. Miss Fortune sighed and shook off the memory before it turned sour. She threw the pistol out over the water, sending it down to the dead. The sea demanded its due, after all, and she’d not lied; the weapon was worth a small fortune.
She stood and strolled back into Bilgewater. She knew she ought to throw Zyglos’s corpse into the water too, but the wharf-rats and the carrion gulls had to eat, didn’t they?
And fresh meat was a rare delicacy on the White Wharf. | Marksman |
You will know joy
You will be a hero
And you will pass into legend as all great heroes do
The only price I ask for such treasures
Is you
—The Cycle of Ashlesh: Chapter Ten, Verse Seven
Bilgewater isn’t particularly known for its cuisine, which makes Oyster Bill’s Oyster Bar an interesting conundrum. Located in one of the city’s poorer pockets, the establishment gained an impressive reputation over the years with the entire venture held aloft by “local celebrity” and proprietor Oyster Bill.
Along with the oyster-man’s love of seafood and exaggerated stories, he also enjoys renting an extra room above the restaurant to various drifters and vagabonds. One such person being his most recent guest: an ascetic warrior with few belongings and an unceasing ear-to-ear smile—who just kicked Malcolm Graves horizontally through the dining-room wall.
“I didn’t even do anything!” Graves moans, shifting his toothpick to the other side of his mouth. “You want one of the other ones. Senna maybe. Or Rango.”
“Your lack of foresight now threatens millions of innocents, Malcolm Graves,” replies a cheery-sounding voice in an unfamiliar accent. “I have questions about the little present you left on my shores. Viego of Camavor.”
The voice’s owner moves purposefully through the cloud of dust and debris, her liquid whip-blade suspended in a glittering arc around her. Each step illuminates the dingy restaurant as brilliant indigos and golds cast strange, dancing shadows over everything. Messy black hair frames a thin face and violet eyes, all underlined by an oddly exuberant expression, while at her side rests a glowing sphere held by two hands cast from a foreign metal. This is Nilah, and Graves has been trying to avoid her for weeks.
It hasn’t gone well.
Nilah arrived in Bilgewater seemingly overnight, and her presence immediately raised eyebrows across the city. From her odd habit of reciting various textual passages throughout the day—always while making complicated gestures with her palms—to her strange, seven-hand-motif armor, forged from a pearlescent metal no one recognized. Or her insistence that she hailed from Kathkan, even though the last full-blooded Kathkani hadn’t stepped foot on Valoran soil in over seven hundred years.
Then she started killing sea serpents—forty, fifty, sixty fathoms long. When any ship was threatened, Nilah rushed down to the docks and soared across the surface of the sea with a wide, calm smile, her wiry frame launching itself toward the writhing necks of her foes. As word spread about her, she began to ask the port’s grateful sailors if they knew anything about a so-called order of sentinels... and that was when Graves started running.
Now that Nilah’s found him, she doesn’t seem happy.
Or rather, she isn’t acting happy. She seems disconcertingly cheerful with her pleasant grin that never breaks and her demeanor and voice that stay locked in unnatural positivity at all hours of every day. It’s this peculiarity that makes most people unable to read her intentions—besides her pathological need to fight very big things—and that makes conversations with the woman hard to navigate.
“Don’t know nothing about Viego,” Graves lies, sifting through the rubble for his gun.
“I believe it was you who sealed him in Alovedra, am I correct?” Nilah smiles cheerfully, taking another two steps forward. Her legs move in a curious, artful pattern, like a coiled snake about to strike. “Don’t lie. You are man-sized. Killing you would be very easy for me.”
“Not that easy,” Graves snorts, New Destiny finally in hand. Savoring the moment to turn the tables, he fires three rounds directly into Nilah’s torso. Or, at least, he thinks he does. The bullets seem to move around her... Or maybe she moves around them. It’s like firing his gun into deep water—a thought Graves finds inexplicably unsettling.
Nilah’s wide smile twitches at the sides of her mouth. Unbeknownst to Graves, she is unable to feel anger, or any emotion beyond a radiant joyfulness—but she knows she would want to right now, were it possible. She whips the gun out of his hands and knocks it to the far side of the restaurant before bisecting a metal table next to his head with a brutal second strike of her whip-blade. For a brief moment, Graves swears he sees phantasmal blue hands in the air around Nilah... but maybe this is his imagination. He’s been getting hit in the head a lot lately.
“An interesting armament,” Nilah muses. “I imagine it works well against lesser opponents.”
“So what does that make you?” seethes Graves.
But Nilah doesn’t answer. Instead, she sheathes her weapon within the sphere, offering a brief recitation under her breath that Graves can’t quite make out. “My apologies. Based on your fighting style, you're not the sentinel I’m looking for.”
“Sweet Tommy Kench, ain’t you supposed to be some kinda hero?” Graves yells, sitting up among wood fragments and twisted metal. “I’m a hero too, when viewed in a certain light! So lay off, will ya?”
Graves exhales. “Damn... Nice magic, though. I gotta respect it.”
Nilah offers another recitation, her hands shifting as she mouths the words beneath her breath, smiling ominously in the dark. “Thank you, Malcolm Graves. I gave much to wield it.”
“I would prefer if you’d call me ‘Graves.’”
“I wouldn’t,” replies Nilah. “There is great power in a true name, Malcolm Graves. Remember that.”
"If you say so." Graves looks behind Nilah. "You folks in the back hear that, or should we speak up?"
Right on cue, a voice rings out from the street. “We’re here for the serpent slayer!”
Nilah turns to face a half-dozen mercenaries peeking through the hole she’d ripped in the wall. Her eyes drift past the men to a massive, pale something shifting on the planks behind them... and her heart skips a beat. She is often followed by disgruntled killers, but she hasn’t seen one of these before.
“I am she,” Nilah replies, her attention fixed on the creature. “What do you want, exactly?”
“You’re losing our bosses a lot of money. Think you can just flood the market with serpent catch? We own those docks and those ships, and as of now, we own you!”
“What is that creature?” Nilah asks Graves, ignoring the mercenaries.
“Deep eater,” mutters Graves. “They chow down on anchor graves that sink to the seafloor. Gives ‘em a taste for people. Mean and real dumb, so these idiots drag ‘em up and sic ‘em on marks they don’t like.”
Nilah’s eyes flash with excitement. “How big do they get?”
“I’unno. Ten, fifteen oars? That one looks pretty big.”
“Interesting,” she whispers. “An enemy of worth.”
“Hey!” shouts a mercenary. “When I’m talking, you listen or you die. Understand what I’m saying?”
“Yes, I believe I do,” replies Nilah, dipping her hand into the sphere at her side. “I am Nilah of the Seventh Layer. May our battle sing across history.”
Nilah whips her blade outward, its glimmering water forming two sharpened prongs that dance through the air with ghostly radiance. Whatever the mercenaries were expecting, it wasn’t this, and they mutter nervously as the weapon shifts and expands.
They don’t know it, but none of them will leave this encounter alive. The Seventh Layer is not simply a title, but a mythical order steeled to face opponents of unimaginable power and scale. Self-trained killers are merely pebbles on the road to true challenge, and tonight, this so-called “deep eater” is the only foe of worth—a massive isopod with sickly, flesh-colored plates and a mean-looking maw of bloody teeth.
From the depths of Nilah’s being, a hungry joy begins to swell.
What happens next is a blur. Nilah bounds across the room with frightening speed, cutting through her unassuming opponents while wearing that same cheerful, unmoving smile. Each strike of her blade connects with the force of a towering ocean wave, yet the dancing water is sharp as polished stone. Nilah glides between blows, beautiful and deadly, as her enemies are blasted apart.
In seconds, all that’s left is the deep eater. Considering that the words “ten oars” had suggested a beast of much larger proportions, this one isn’t too bad—about the size of a covered wagon. Not the most exciting opponent Nilah’s ever faced, but here in Bilgewater, it was something that would get people talking. They’d remember this victory, and that was all that mattered.
Nilah leaps onto its back, her formless blade flickering in the night air. “Beast of the deep! May you find Joy!” she sings, and she slices the monster clean in half.
“So, what exactly are ya lookin’ fer the sentinels for?” asks Graves, consigned to either having this conversation or being cut into little pieces. “We disbanded, mostly. And I pawned all my stuff, so you’re not getting those magic rocks or whatever.”
“Viego of Camavor will free himself someday,” Nilah replies, her smile now kind. Friendly, even. “The magic binding him is Helian, and it is weakening over time. My people are in unimaginable danger.”
“Hey, we beat him once,” replies Graves. “He’s strong, but we can probably do it again.”
“He is not the true threat, Malcolm Graves,” says Nilah. “His ruinations write new magic into the world... an act that drives demonkind berserk. Enough to stir their primeval forebears.
“Ten lords, long forgotten,” she continues, tapping the sphere at her side, “who must never be allowed to wake.”
“Demons, huh?” says Graves. “You’re not a demon, are ya?”
“No,” Nilah laughs. “Not entirely.”
The ascetic performs another hand gesture, reciting something under her breath. As she speaks, Graves gazes at her sphere of prismatic liquid, which seems to draw him in. An unconscious smile curls at the edge of his lips as high-pitched, whispering laughter rings in his ears. It seems like the metal hands are almost... offering it up to him.
“Don’t look too closely,” Nilah warns, and Graves snaps back to attention. “The beast is always hungry.”
Nilah claps her hands on her hips. “Ah, but the hour is late, and I fear you have no further answers to give me. I will retire to my room,” she says matter-of-factly, walking past a confused Graves as she circles the damaged dining room and climbs the restaurant stairwell. “If you encounter any monstrosities of note, come find me so I can slay them. If you encounter Oyster Bill, tell him that I apologize for tonight’s damage.
“It is good to meet a fellow hero, Malcolm Graves.”
A door closes upstairs, and the woman is gone.
Graves flicks his broken toothpick to the ground, bitten through in all the excitement. He reaches for a replacement but finds none, so instead gazes quietly out onto the street where six dead bodies and two halves of a giant marine louse are scattered.
“The sentinels ruined my life,” he says to no one in particular.
“Neat lady, though.” | Marksman |
Quinn waited for the Noxians to light a fire in the forest clearing and drink two wineskins. Drunk soldiers were easy to predict. She wanted them drunk enough to be stupid, but not reckless. Mistakes got you killed in the wilderness, and these men had just made two big ones. Lighting a fire told her they were overconfident, the wine that they were sure no one was in pursuit.
Rule One: Always assume someone’s after you.
She eased herself through the mud on her belly, using her elbows to pull herself toward a hollowed out, rotten log at the edge of the clearing. The rain had turned the forest into a quagmire, and she’d spend the next few hours picking bugs and worms from her clothes.
Rule Two: Survival never takes second place to dignity.
Careful not to look directly at the campfire and lose her night sight, she counted five men - one less than she expected. Where was the sixth man? Quinn started to ease herself upright, but froze as the hair stood up on the back of her neck, a warning from above.
A shape moved from behind a tree in the darkness. A warrior. Armored in boiled black leather. Moving with skill. The man paused, scanning the darkness, his hand never leaving the wire-wound hilt of his sword.
Had he seen her? She didn’t think so.
“Hey, Vurdin,” called one of the men seated around the fire. “Better hurry if you want any of this wine. Olmedo’s drinking it all!”
Rule Three: Stay silent.
The man cursed, and Quinn smiled at his obvious frustration.
“Quiet,” he hissed. “I think they heard you back in bloody Noxus.”
“Ach, there’s no one out here, Vurdin. The Demacians are probably too busy buckling on their armor and giving it a polish to bother with coming after us. Come on, take a drink!”
The man sighed and turned back to the fire with a weary shrug. Quinn let out a slow breath. That one had some talent, but he too believed they were alone in the wilderness.
Rule Four: Don’t let stupid people drag you down to their level.
Quinn smiled and glanced up, seeing the smudge of night-blue darkness of her eagle companion against the rainclouds. Valor dipped his wings, and Quinn nodded, their wordless communication refined over many years together. She circled her right fist, then raised three fingers, knowing Valor could see her perfectly and would understand.
Rule Five: When it’s time to act, do it decisively.
Quinn knew they should just take these men out quietly and without fuss, but the affront of Noxians this deep in Demacia was galling. She wanted these men to know exactly who had caught them and that Demacia was not some primitive tribal culture to be crushed by Noxian ambition. The decision made, she pushed herself to her feet and strode into the campsite as if her being there was the most natural thing in the world. She stood at the edge of the firelight, her hood raised and her oiled stormcloak drawn tightly around her.
“Give me what you stole and no one has to die tonight,” said Quinn, nodding toward a leather satchel stitched with the winged sword symbol of Demacia.
The Noxians scrambled upright, blinking as they scanned the edge of the forest. They fumbled to draw their swords and Quinn almost laughed at their surprised ineptitude. The one who’d almost walked right over her hid his shock well, but relaxed as he realized she was alone.
“You’re a long way from home, girl,” he said, raising his sword.
“Not as far as you, Vurdin.”
He frowned, put on the back foot by her using his name. Quinn saw his mind working as he tried to figure out how much more she knew. She kept her cloak pulled tight as the men spread out, surrounding her.
“Give me the satchel,” said Quinn, a note of boredom in her voice.
“Take her!” shouted Vurdin.
It was the last thing he said.
Quinn swept her cloak back over her shoulder and lifted her left arm. A black shafted bolt from her repeater crossbow buried itself in Vurdin’s eye, and he fell without a sound. A second bolt tore into the chest of the man to his left. The remaining four came at her in a rush.
A screeching cry split the night as Valor swept down like a lightning bolt from a clear sky. His wings boomed as he spread them wide and swung around in a scything arc. Hooked claws tore the face from one Noxian, and the eagle’s slashing beak clove the skull of the soldier next to him. The third Noxian managed to raise his weapon, but Valor sank his claws into his shoulders and bore him to the ground. The eagle’s beak slashed down and the man’s struggles ceased instantly.
The last Noxian turned and sprinted for the trees.
Rule Six: If you have to fight, kill quickly.
Quinn knelt and loosed a pair of bolts from her crossbow. They hammered into the Noxian’s back and burst from his chest. He managed to reach the edge of the trees before pitching forward and lying still. Quinn remained motionless, listening to the sounds of the wilderness, making sure there were no other enemies nearby. The only sounds she heard were those she’d expect to hear in a forest at night.
She stood, and Valor flew over to her, the satchel of military dispatches the Noxians had stolen held in his claws. He dropped it and she caught it with her free hand, looping it over her shoulder in one smooth motion. Valor perched on her arm, his body rippling with the thrill of the hunt. His claws and beak were red with blood. The eagle’s head cocked to the side, and his gold-flecked eyes glittered with amusement. She grinned, her bond with the bird so strong she already understood his thoughts.
“I was wondering that too,” said Quinn. “How did these Noxians get this far into Demacia?”
The eagle gave a shrill screech, and she nodded in agreement.
“Yeah, that’s what I was thinking,” said Quinn. “South it is.”
Rule Seven: Trust you can rely on your partner. | Marksman |
Sivir's throat felt like it was coated in a layer of broken glass. The cracked flesh of her lips burned. Her eyes refused to focus. I've given them more than enough time to move on.
She leaned around the edge of the boulder. The caravan was still at the spring and showing no signs of moving on.
Why did they have to be Kthaons? Of the many, many tribes that want her dead, the Kthaons stood out in their persistence.
Sivir scanned the tribesmen again, looking for any sign the caravan might climb out of the old riverbed and continue its journey. She rolled her shoulders trying to judge if her muscles were up to fighting a half-dozen men. She'd have to take them by surprise to stand a chance.
That prissy Noxian got the drop on me...
Sivir shook her head, trying to clear her mind. Now wasn't the time for those thoughts. I'm becoming scattered from the lack of water. Why didn't I bring more water?
The city had been bursting with it. Huge streams poured from statues, all at the command of an Ancient. He healed my wound and saved my life. Then he returned to rebuilding the temples around him, calling out strange words in an old dialect she could barely make sense of. Talking to himself in a dead city filled only with sand. I had to get out before that sorcerer decided to sink it all back beneath the dust – or that I owed him.
Swallowing brought fresh agony to Sivir's throat. She looked at the spring again, a simple puddle of brown water in the center of the caravan.
I've given them a day, she reasoned. I will die, or they will die. For a few drops of water or a few slivers of gold. That is the way of the desert.
Sprinting toward the first guard, she readied her crossblade. Would there be enough time to reach him before he turned back around? She counted the distance. Fourteen strides. Twelve. Ten. He can't make a sound. Two strides. She jumped. Her blade sank completely through his neck, down into his shoulder.
Blood erupted as she crashed down on him. Her momentum drove them behind the line of rocks on which he'd been standing. Sivir grabbed his arms. He struggled against her, refusing to accept he was already dead. The guard's blood drenched Sivir as he took a final gurgling breath. This man didn't need to die.
Sivir thought again of Cassiopeia’s blade. That Noxian bitch sunk a blade in my back. I died. That should mean something.
A distant rumble sounded. Horses? A sandwall collapsing? There wasn't time to wonder what it meant. Sivir crawled across the hard stones. It won't take the rest of the caravan long to notice the guard's absence. The next target was moving high along the ridge line. She needed to hit him before he walked away from the ledge. The shot has to be perfect. She threw the crossblade.
It hit the second guard, cutting him in half. The flying blade arced upward, but as it reached its apex, it slowed before reversing its direction. As it flew back toward her, it clipped the neck of the third man. There wouldn't be time for another throw now – the blade completed its arc, flying down toward the center of the water. She only had to reach it in time. The maneuver was an old standby. She would catch the weapon and kill the three remaining men in a single, spinning summersault.
But as she ran, her feet became heavy, and it seemed impossible to draw enough air into her pained lungs. Thirty strides. She had to make the distance before the second man's body hit the ground. Twenty strides. The muscles in her legs cramped, refusing to obey her commands. Fifteen strides. She found herself sliding, stumbling. No. Not yet.
Then, sooner than she had expected, the second man's body completed its fall and impacted the rocks. The sound was impossible to miss.
One mistake was enough. The Kthaons were a desert people. The remaining guards had weapons drawn before she took another step.
Her crossblade hit the water between the men and her. Five strides in front of them. Ten strides from her.
I could make it. Every reflex in Sivir's body willed her forward. Instead, she slid to a halt, nearly falling forward.
Failing to bring enough water. Waiting too long to attack. Misjudging distances. I don't make these mistakes. Why? Some other part of Sivir's mind answered. She remembered the moment after Cassiopeia’s dagger had pierced her back – she couldn't feel the blade itself. Instead, she felt a sudden, unexpected weight that seemed to steal her breath and crush her lungs.
"I killed three of you before you heard me," Sivir coughed.
"You don't have a weapon," the largest of the Kthaons said.
"Only because I didn't want your blood in the water," she lied.
The three remaining men exchanged glances. They've recognized me.
"A year ago, I killed your chieftain and two dozen of your finest for a bag of thin gold. It was a cheap price for their lives." She met the three men's eyes. They were spreading out from the water, attempting to flank her.
"The gold I earned from killing your chieftain and kinsmen?" she asked. "I gambled it away in a single evening."
"We will avenge them and your insult," the largest man responded.
"I shouldn't have killed them," she said, "not for that gold. Don't make me kill you for a few cups of water."
The Kthaons’ leader nervously adjusted the grip on his weapon.
"I'm telling you I can make it to the blade before you can act," Sivir explained. "And if I run for my blade. You will die." She indicated the foul brown water. "Your lives are worth more than that."
"Then we will die with honor," the largest man decided, though his fellows seemed less certain.
"Did I need that weapon to kill the twenty men you want to avenge?" Sivir warned. "You are too few."
The three men hesitated. They knew Sivir's reputation. The other two pulled the largest man away, before backing to their mounts.
Sivir edged toward the water.
"We will return with our tribesmen for vengeance."
"Lots of people have tried that," she said. "Never worked out for them."
Sivir rolled her swollen tongue against the top of her mouth, desperate for relief. Every part of her wanted to kneel down to the water and drink. I have to wait until they cross the far dune.
As the men climbed into their saddles and rode away, the strange rumbling sounded again. It was loud and growing louder. It’s not horses or shifting sands. Sivir turned to its source and watched as a three foot wall of blue water rushed down the ancient riverbed. The water from the city.
The moment before the water hit Sivir, she felt the rush of cold, damp air in front of the flood. It shocked her like an unexpected kiss.
The first wave nearly took out her knees. The impact stung with cold, but as it enveloped her waist and legs, it became soothingly cool. Sivir laid in the water, letting it wash over her. She could feel the painful grit of the desert washing away as her hair floated weightless and free.
I was dead. I must make that mean something. | Marksman |
Long before the lands that would become Camavor were named, dragons dwelt there.
Once mortals arrived, conflict followed. The strife was only quelled when the first king of Camavor humbled himself before the dragon matriarch, bending the knee and pleading with her to lend her great strength to his armies, and all his dreams of empire. So it was that the dragon who would eventually be known as Grandmother Viper and the Camavoran ruler swore the oath of Vol Visperi-Desinvein, binding their lineages for generations to come.
The dragons remained fiercely loyal to the throne and to those high houses that passed the trials and performed the sacred rites of the oath. In exchange, the dragons were kept satiated with livestock and showered with offerings. The gold, jewels, and precious artifacts they accumulated over the years garnered them a great respect… and those brazen enough to cross the dragons would pause at the thought of their own fortunes being reduced to molten slag and windblown ash.
Long after Grandmother Viper passed into legend and her brood was already much diminished, the young king—Viego Santiarul Molach Vol Kalah Heigaari—called upon the imperial dragons to accompany him and the knightly orders to the Blessed Isles. The dragons refused, seeming to recognize his madness for what it was… though even remaining in Camavor with all their treasures could not spare the kingdom from the tragic repercussions of the Ruination. The handful that survived bore witness to endless neglect and conflict, roosting within the deteriorating palace where no monarch would ever reign again.
Centuries would pass before another imperial dragon would hatch.
As that hatchling grew, scarcity of game forced his mother to venture further and further to hunt. This left the nest vulnerable to far-roaming Noxian beastmasters, who stole the young dragon and set sail for home to collect their reward.
However, shortly before arriving at their destination, the mother dragon discovered the ship’s whereabouts and obliterated it with her fiery breath. In the chaos, the hatchling was swept away, borne by the current to a nearby island off mainland Noxus.
Scared, alone, and hungry, the hatchling employed his mother’s lessons to hunt small prey in this strange environment—and on one such hunt, he stumbled across a human child called Marinos. The boy would go on to name his new friend “Smolder,” and as the young dragon’s ability to communicate grew, their friendship flourished… but remained a secret. The boy feared that if anyone else were to discover Smolder, he’d be taken to the mainland and sold to the highest bidder.
As time passed, the boy grew into a man—one with responsibilities that seldom allowed for the playtime Smolder had grown so fond of. And so, in an effort to amuse himself, Smolder decided he’d learn to breathe fire like the dragons in Marinos’ stories.
After many attempts, instead of sneezing sparks as he’d done countless times before, flames burst forth… and in his excitement over this new development, Smolder failed to notice the fire spreading until it had engulfed the forest canopy.
Suddenly, louder than a hunting horn, louder than thunder, a roar unlike any other rang through the air as a massive dragon approached. Having been drawn by the rising smoke, Smolder’s mother swept down to embrace her child lovingly, as if they never parted. Carried away from the growing inferno by the scruff of his neck, Smolder soared—his first time experiencing the world as dragons should.
Smolder now roosts with his mother on the cliffside where she’d spent so long watching and waiting for signs he yet lived. Every night, she recounts the history of his kin, the meaning and responsibilities of imperial dragons, and how to hone his fledgling abilities.
And one day, when he is ready, they will return together to their ancestral home to usher in a new golden age for Camavor. | Marksman |
Teemo is a legend among his yordle brothers and sisters in Bandle City. As far as yordles are concerned, there is something just slightly off about him. While Teemo enjoys the companionship of other yordles, he also insists on frequent solo missions in the ongoing defense of Bandle City. Despite his genuinely warm personality, something switches off inside Teemo's mind during combat so that the lives he must end while on patrol do not burden him. Even as a young recruit, the drill instructors and other trainees found it a little disconcerting that, while Teemo was normally charming and kind, he turned deadly serious and highly efficient the minute combat exercises began. Teemo's superiors quickly steered him toward the Scouts of the Mothership, which is one of Bandle City's most distinguished Special Forces unit alongside the Megling Commandos.
While most yordles do not handle solo scouting missions with a great deal of finesse, Teemo is remarkably efficient at them. His record of success in defending Bandle City from infiltrators easily makes him one of the most dangerous yordles alive, though you'd never know it by having a cup of honey mead with him at his favorite inn. His signature weapon - a blowgun - uses a rare ajunta poison he personally gathers from the jungles of Kumungu. To help cope with his lengthy periods of isolation, Teemo recently struck up a friendship with Tristana, a fellow member of Bandle City's Special Forces. Teemo is a pint-sized foe that many have come to fear and whose small size belies his fearsome resolve. | Marksman |
H.I.V.E. Incident Report
Code Violation: Industrial Homicide
Casefile Status: Unsolved
Investigating Agent: Rol, P.
Team responded to report of suspicious character, criminal activity; proceeded to Sump Works, Sector 90TZ. Sector 90TZ notably absent. In its place: sinkhole, smoke, noxious fumes. Interviews with private security indicate urgent need for better private security.
Response team entered sinkhole. Toxic runoff had melted away building wreckage. Two survivors located, one partially liquefied and dripping off catwalk. Six deceased bodies found among wreckage, three of them partial; two appear to predate incident. Causes of death include acute deceleration, caustic liquidation, and/or fatal crossbow wounds. Unclear if lab's destruction was itself the perpetrator's motive or an attempt to cover tracks.
Survivor #1 (Ra Qintava, facility researcher) brought up for interview, but unable to provide statement due to 1) post-traumatic stress and 2) liquefaction of tongue and lower jaw. Awaiting toxin screen and prosthesis fitting.
Search-and-rescue discovered apparent shantytown constructed from refuse. Recovered items include:
57 waterlogged romance novels, illegible, with edits made in crayon
108 bottles, unlabeled (possible toxic runoff or discarded shampoo remnants)
200 pounds chewing gum (possible installation art project)
1 jar toenails, labeled by toe/finger, date, and mood
Survivor #2 (Valori Olant, Sludge Analyst) in recovery; regained lucidity following prolonged therapeutic electrocution. Statement transcript excerpt follows:
V.O.: GOT TO DO SOMETHING -
NURSE: She's lost so much blood --
P.R.: Her co-workers lost a lot more than that --
V.O.: IT'S STILL OUT THERE!
P.R.: Ma'am, I need you to focus. Tell me what he looked like.
V.O.: LIKE A RAT! (pause)
NURSE: Like a what?
P.R.: You mean, small? Beady-eyed? Sorta rat-faced -- ?
V.O.: I MEAN IT LOOKED LIKE A GIANT GODSDAMNED RAT! (pause). WITH A CROSSBOW! (pause).
P.R.: (to nurse) Can we moderate her painkillers?
V.O.: YOU'RE NOT LISTENING! IT'S A HOMICIDAL, PSYCHOPATHIC, GIANT FREAKING RAT!
IN A WAISTCOAT!
P.R.: Nurse?
NURSE: (injecting Olant's arm with sedative) On it.
[EDIT]
V.O.: We were just scientists, working on refining human waste into inexpensive baby formula... [EDIT] I saw - I don't know how else to - this crazed, enormous RAT - screaming at us! Kicking over vats! Spitting on our food! [EDIT] The lab was sealed. Industrial waste was spilling everywhere. Nowhere to run. [EDIT] I woke up in the dark. Well, the acid had melted my eyeballs. I could SMELL the twitchy bastard inches from my face. It said, “NOBODY STEALS TWITCH'S JUICE!” cackled wildly, and skittered off... I can still smell it in my mind. OH MY GODS, I CAN STILL SMELL IT-
End transcript. At this point victim began screaming; has yet to stop.
[UPDATE: Qintava, Written Testimony]
Suspect summary, as reported:
NAME/KNOWN ALIASES: ''Twitch.''
SEX: Male (unconfirmed).
AGE: Unknown.
HEIGHT: 4'9'' (hunched)
WEIGHT: < 99 lbs. (wet).
DISTINGUISHING FEATURES: Is a giant rat.
STATUS: At large; armed, extremely dangerous; DO NOT ENGAGE.
H.I.V.E - Enforcing Progress! | Marksman |
Vayne had one arrow left in her wristbolt launcher. She was bleeding from three different wounds. The previously-human beast she’d spent all night hunting had just knocked her to the ground and it was about to bite the head off her shoulders.
Things were going better than expected.
Slime dripped from the shapeshifter’s maw as it shrieked in anticipation of its kill. Scanning the darkness with her nightseeker goggles, Vayne found neither weapons nor cover nearby. She’d tracked the beast to this open patch of meadow specifically so it couldn’t take cover behind the alderwoods of Demacia, but that decision left her exposed as well.
Which was fine by her. There’s no fun in an easy kill, after all.
The beast grabbed Vayne by the shoulders, its mandibles opening to reveal rows upon rows of jagged teeth. If its jaws didn’t kill her, its fetid breath could certainly finish the job.
Vayne rapidly reviewed her options. She could try to dodge the beast’s bite, but that would be a short-term solution at the very best. She could kick the creature in its absurd number of teeth and attempt to land her last wristbolt in its bucking forehead, but she couldn’t trust her arrow would find its mark through its gnashing forest of fangs. Or, she could try something flashy, violent and slightly stupid.
Vayne chose the latter.
She shoved her entire arm into its gaping mouth. The creature’s razor teeth ripped strips of skin from her knuckles and arm, but Vayne smiled – she had the beast right where she wanted it. She felt its jaw clench, ready to bite and rip her limb off. She didn’t give it the chance.
Vayne twisted her arm, dragging her wristbolt launcher across the inside of the creature’s gob until the silver tip of her final arrow pointed directly at the roof of the beast’s mouth. With the flick of her wrist, the bolt tore through the monster’s skull, shredding its brain.
The shrieking stopped as suddenly as it started, the creature’s body limp as it collapsed upon the grassy soil. Vayne crawled out from under it and attempted to remove her arm from its skull without cutting herself more than she already had, only to find that her fist was stuck inside the creature’s head.
She could either keep trying to pull her hand through the shapeshifter’s jagged mouth – and probably lose a finger or two in the process – or she could dig her arm in further to punch through the top of its head and snap its jaw like a wishbone.
As always, Vayne chose the latter.
The hard part wasn’t killing the damned thing. The hard part was carrying it back to its bride.
Well, widow.
The widow Selina was beautiful beyond imagining, with hair that caught the sunlight even in the darkness of her fire-lit cabin. The deep scratches on her face, and even the tears that streamed down her cheeks, did nothing to diminish her beauty.
Vayne laid the carcass at the woman’s feet as gingerly as she could. Its flesh was monstrously transformed and wracked with wounds both self-inflicted and not-so-self-inflicted; it looked more like a collection of limbs and meat than a person.
“Was it quick?” the widow asked through sobs.
It had not been quick. Vayne had tracked the changeling to its den in the forests outside eastern Demacia. She’d managed to interrupt it mid-transformation: its eyes had multiplied and expanded, its mouth had grown mandibles, its left arm had formed into a razor-sharp pincer – and it was angry.
Vayne flicked a glob of brain off her wrist, a clinging remnant from when she’d punched through the creature’s skull.
“Erm,” Vayne said.
“Oh, my love,” Selina said, dropping to her knees and wrapping her arms around the mutated body. “What could have caused such a tragedy?”
Vayne kneeled beside the couple as the widow brought what was left of the man’s head to her breast, either not noticing or caring as his blood smeared her dress.
“Some people transform themselves into beasts. Some are transformed against their will,” Vayne said.
She picked up the bulging hand of the corpse, casually examining it. “He belonged to the second group.”
The widow’s eyes went wide with fury.
“Someone did this to him? Who would – why would–”
The widow collapsed onto the body in tears, unable to find the words.
“Sometimes, therians – shapechangers – want a companion. Sometimes they’re just savage: they lash out and bite somebody out of confusion or anger. Others I’ve met just get bored. They think it’s fun,” Vayne said, patting the woman’s head. “But some…some just need to eat.”
The widow looked up, sniffing away tears.
“I don’t – I don’t understand.”
Vayne gave the widow a pitying smile.
“They want to eat somebody, but sometimes that somebody gets away. And the thing that tried to eat them accidentally passes on its phage. Then they end up turning, too.”
The widow glared at Vayne. The wristbolt launcher on Vayne’s arm clinked as she brushed the woman’s hair out of her tear-filled eyes.
“The last therian I killed told me his victims tasted better if they loved him. Something about the juicy flavor they took on when they blushed. Can’t even imagine how they must taste while on honeymoon, hmm?” Vayne mused.
The widow stopped crying. Her eyes grew hard.
“He did love you, you know,” said Vayne.
The widow tried to stand, but Vayne gripped a fistful of the woman’s hair and pulled tight.
“He must have been shocked after you bit him. People are unpredictable when they’re scared. And there’s nothing more frightening than being betrayed by someone you love.”
Vayne flicked her wrist, cocking the wristbolt launcher on her forearm.
“So, who turned you?”
The woman stared back with hatred, her eyes slowly darkening to a deep red.
“Nobody,” she said in a voice like knives scraping across rock. “I am of my own design.”
Vayne smiled.
“How did you know?” the widow asked, sliding her hand behind her back.
“Bite marks on the front of his neck, rather than the back, combined with the lack of wounds anywhere else on his body, told me he was attacked by someone he trusted. Go ahead. Try it.”
The widow paused.
“Try what?”
“The pincer you’re forming behind your back. Slash me. Let’s see if you can cut my hand off before I put a bolt through your forehead,” said Vayne.
The widow retracted her pincer from behind her back, crestfallen. The game was up.
“Why?” she asked.
“Why what?” Vayne blankly replied.
“Why not just walk in and kill me? Why this whole… presentation?”
Vayne smiled. A sly, hateful grin.
“Because I wanted to be sure I was right. Because I wanted you to feel the panic and the fear he felt. But mainly...”
Vayne tightened her wrist. With a metallic twang, a six-inch bolt of cold silver pierced the changeling’s brain. The widow’s eyes rolled back into her head. She collapsed to the floor like a bag of stones.
“Because it’s fun.” | Marksman |
Rakan is the worst.
He’s not listening. He’s fixated on his own golden feathers—as if they’d changed from when he cleaned them this morning. I’m going to have to repeat the plan. Although, thinking it over again, it probably was too complicated for a rescue mission. Simple is better.
“They will kill me if they catch me,” I tell him.
“Who?!” He looks ready to kill at the thought of anyone harming me.
“The guards,” I say. “It’s always guards.”
“Then I’ll distract them!” He puffs his chest out. “When?”
“Look for a green flash before the sun sets. Then draw the guards away from the western walls while I run along the ramparts to the cells.”
“I put on a show the moment the sun sets,” he says like it was his idea. “Where do we meet?”
“At the gate. I’ll throw a golden blade into the sky. But you have to be there in ten breaths.” I pull one of his feathers from his cloak. It’s warm on my fingers. A memory floods back of me lying in his arms by the Aphae Waterfall. The sun filtering through the leaves, catching the edges of our feathers as they lay atop each other. That was a lovely day.
“I will be at the gate the moment you throw the blade,” he swears.
I take his hand in mine and lean close. “I know.”
That smug, confident grin cracks his face. I want to slap him. Or kiss him. Or both.
“Now, darling—if I were you, I would stay behind the cover of the tree line, so you’re not spotted.”
Our embrace is so warm I wish it would last all night. But the sun is dangerously close to the horizon, and our esteemed consul isn’t going to escape a dungeon guarded by a horde of shadow acolytes on his own.
Rakan tells me to be careful as he wanders away, looking at the sky. Every time he leaves, my heart sinks. I’m sure it won’t be the last time I see him. Although, one day, it might.
“Remember, my heartfire,” I whisper after him. “Sunset.”
I dart in between the fortress’ parapets unseen. Years of avoiding the stares of humans taught me their many blind spots.
Six acolytes guard the gate leading to the dungeons. They carry double-firing crossbows, swords tucked in their belts, and who-knows-what-else in the pouches fastened around their waists. I slink along the inner wall behind them to get within striking distance. I pluck five of my feathers and stack them neatly in my palm, holding them in place between my index finger and thumb, ready to send them flying.
There’s a noise from outside the walls. The crash of a gong. Shouts. Confused men. It has to be Rakan.
The prison guards hear it, too. Worry chokes my heart. I hope my love is okay. I know he’s going to be okay. He’d better be okay, or I will force a necromancer to resurrect him so I can murder him myself. He knows I’ll do that, too. I’ll figure it out.
The guards are distracted from their posts. He’s early, but it’s perfect timing. I can get in without needing to fell a single one of them.
I almost reach the dungeon door, when I see another guard climb the parapet and take deadly aim with his rifle. Nobody aims anything at my Rakan. I’ll have the still-beating heart of anyone who dares to harm as much as one of his feathers. It’ll make a cute beating-heart necklace.
I stop. The prisoners won’t be going anywhere. I’ve got time to turn this guard into a sieve.
I leap back toward the parapet. The first feather I throw slices off the barrel of the gun. It clatters loudly to the floor. The rest slice through his chest. He drops like a bag of turnips.
“Intruder!” one of the guards at the gate shouts.
I duck and roll as crossbow bolts ping off the stone wall behind me, or stab into the wooden posts. Staying low, I race straight toward the acolytes who are fanning out to get better angles. I leap. They shoot where they think gravity will take me, instead of where I am: hovering in the air.
I throw another handful of feathers, shaping them into blades mid-flight.
Five of the guards drop, my quills sticking out of their chests. The remaining acolyte narrows his eyes and squares his shoulders, ready to fight. His sword is out before my feet touch the ground.
“Your soul will serve me forever,” he grunts. I can feel the shadow magic bound up in his blade, the essence of every life it has taken.
I laugh. “I killed more people in the last twenty paces than you have in your entire life.”
The acolyte hesitates before slashing wildly in my direction. His little sword leaves wavering trails of darkness. I don’t have time for this, the sun is setting. I turn my back.
With a snap of my fingers, my quills tear free of the corpses behind the acolyte, and fly back toward me.
I hear the sword clang to the floor a moment before the dull thud of his body. I’m sure the Order of the Shadow will find some way to harness these men’s souls into a slingshot or something. I don’t really know how these guys work, but good on them for being so economical. One shouldn’t waste life essence.
I take Rakan’s feather and launch it high into the air. It hangs in the sky, a golden message that should turn some heads. But there’s only one who knows what it means.
Meanwhile, I have a date in the dungeons with the consul.
He looks terrible sitting in a cage. Emaciated. Weak. Beaten. He doesn’t look up, figuring me for one of the guards. He and his mate are Sodjoko, but his entourage are vastaya from other tribes. Their harrowed eyes thank me more than their tongues. They know as well as I that this is no time for gratitude. We’re not out of the fortress yet.
As I lead the prisoners toward the eastern gate, I’m perplexed by the appalling lack of guards. Nearly every post is deserted. Isn’t this supposed to be a fortress? Who makes their schedules?
We round past the armory and the barracks. There’s the gate. Looks like Rakan found the guards. Dozens of them. They’re surrounding him. My feathers bristle. Heartbeat necklace, here I come!
Rakan reaches us. His smile turns from confident to bemused as he speaks with the consul. Akunir is one of my father’s oldest friends, and the most important of our ambassadors. I have much to discuss with him once we’re out of this.
“All of you, run for the tree line,” I command.
They’re panicked, but thankfully Rakan took out the riflemen. More of us will survive crossing the field. “Run!” I yell.
Akunir’s too slow. Rakan begins to lead him toward the forest.
The consul grabs at Rakan. “No. Please, protect Coll.” Rakan turns back toward her.
I shake my head. Rakan understands. He drags the consul behind him.
I nod to the strongest-looking juloah. He lifts Coll in his arms. She calls him Jurelv, and he pledges on his horns to keep her safe.
He makes it ten paces before the first arrow strikes him, but he doesn’t stop. He carries Coll into the forest. The shadow acolytes surge forward after them.
“Xayah!” Rakan yells. “Bowtube or tubebow?!”
I wish I had time to play, but I don’t.
Instead, I join the fight.
And it’s not pretty.
For the acolytes.
We were safe under the forest canopy by the time Jurelv’s body could ignore its wounds no longer.
Coll kneels next to his corpse. His blood is on the leaves. We have already prayed that his spirit finds our ancestors in joy and peace. His family will mourn for moons.
I’m used to death. It doesn’t move me as it once did. Rakan takes it hard; I have to be strong for him.
At least the consul is safe. After taking his hand off his wife’s shoulder, he turns to me.
“I have friends in the south,” he says. “The Kinkou must be informed.”
“Humans broke the pact.” I feel my blood rising. “How can you not see this as a grievous trespass? To them, magic is power. To us, it is life. They will never respect our boundaries.”
“Humans are a splintered race, Xayah. Only Zed and his shadows broke the pact. They do not speak for all men.”
“You are naïve. Your friends in the south will betray you. Then, they will turn on us all.”
“The Kinkou are honorable. They will believe me. I trust them.”
“So you’re not naïve, you’re an idiot.” Akunir is shocked that I dare speak to him like this. I reject the notion of being diplomatic. Diplomacy will not restore life to the dead.
Coll stands up. Her face is a mask of grief and anger. “I will go back north, Akunir. I will tell them what was done to us.”
I honestly didn’t think she had it in her.
The glow fades from Akunir’s eyes. “Coll, no.”
“I will bear word of Jurelv’s fate to his kin, and mourn with them. Then, I will muster arms and prepare the tribe to fight.”
“You cannot do that!” the consul proclaims.
Coll ignores him. “I forsake my claim to you. I forsake your claim to me.”
“Coll… please.” His voice falters.
“No,” she says.
The consul takes a step toward her, but Rakan stops him.
“I will speak with my mate,” Akunir says to Rakan. To his guards.
But Coll is already turned away. She looks at me, and I no longer see a diplomat’s wife. I see a warrior. She gathers those loyal to her—all but two of the consul’s entourage.
“Thank you, Xayah,” Coll says before she turns north and walks farther into the forest.
Akunir and his guards watch her leave, then wordlessly set off to the south.
Rakan moves in close to me. I feel his heart beating in time with my own.
“Promise me nothing will come between us like that, mieli,” I say.
“We’re not like them, miella.” Rakan assures me. “We’ll never be like them.”
I watch Coll as she disappears among the trees.
“Where to now, Xayah?”
“Let’s just stay here a moment longer,” I murmur.
I bury my face in his chest. He drapes his cloak and arms around me. My head rises and falls with his breath. I could stay here forever.
“Repeat it back to me,” I tell him.
“We are not like them,” he says. “We are not like them.”
He smiles and kisses my forehead. The vows we took at the Aphae Waterfall spring to mind. His heart beats for me, and mine for him. Home is within his arms, his breath, his smile.
There is no one better than Rakan. | Marksman |
“I can’t accept this,” the shopkeeper said, pushing Zeri’s change back at her. “It’s just spare parts. You’ve done too much to help since the Mist.”
Restless, Zeri looked around. Familiar streets showed unfamiliar loss—homes and shops battered by wicked sorcery that nearly ended the world. People were missing. Families were hurting. But crowds still gathered at the Entresol markets. Zeri didn’t understand exactly what had happened, but she knew this: Zaun would rebuild, and she would help.
She frowned at the shopkeeper’s work-hardened hands and pushed her own forward. “Get some banana cues. For your girls.”
The shopkeeper sighed, then smiled.
Zeri continued through the market, recalling her grandma’s oft-repeated reminders. “Ignore old man Shay—his parts are always rusted! Line up early at Auntie Maria’s—her marinated chicken is divine!” Zeri admitted her grandma could sometimes seem annoying, but she couldn’t deny that the woman was right. Her grandma knew the market and its people inside out, like how Moe’s daughters loved caramelized bananas. And it was in moments like this where that intimacy proved helpful.
“C’mere, rat!”
Zeri spun toward the noise in time to see a boy scurrying through the crowd. Two men tailed him, one short and square, the other tall with lanky limbs. Their outfits were unmistakable. Chem-baron thugs.
As the boy darted by, Zeri snatched his arm. “There, quick,” she said, pointing with her lips at Moe’s shop. The shopkeeper nodded knowingly. The frightened boy stood still.
“Trust me—go!”
The boy sprinted over, ducking under a table that Moe quickly covered with cloth.
“Hoy! Looking for someone?” Zeri shouted at the lackeys as they approached.
The men shoved past the locals. “Yeah, a kid. Just ran through here. You see ‘im?” asked the stocky one.
“Maybe. Maybe not.”
The man narrowed his eyes. “Tell us. We won’t hurt you.”
“Doubt that. But let’s skip to the part where I hurt you instead.”
The man laughed. “With what?”
Zeri reached for where her gun was usually strapped, only to find nothing there. Crap. Must’ve left it at mom's workshop—again.
Well, time to improvise. She rubbed her hands together and started running in place.
The thugs straightened in surprise.
“Is she... dancing?” observed the lanky one.
“Who cares?” his partner squawked. “Nab her already!”
Zeri’s hands and feet became a blur. The gear on her jacket’s back, a limiter device she called the Sparkpack, spun with building electricity. In a blink, she zipped between the men, bowling them over in a trail of wild lightning. Stray currents bounced from her body onto nearby doors and awnings, leaving little embers.
“Woo!” Zeri skid to a screeching halt. The lackeys lay collapsed on the ground. Her jaw dropped as she noticed a blackened awning collapse and fall to the street. “Oh, sorry! I—”
“Don’t worry about it,” said Moe, gesturing under the table for the kid to come out.
“You’re amazing!” the boy blurted, arms stretched wide. “You gotta help me. They still have my parents.”
“What? Where?” Zeri asked.
“Corner of Brasscopper Alley! A factory. They... they took them there. And others. I saw it!”
“Got it,” Zeri nodded. “What’s your name?”
“Timik.”
“Timik, I’ll get your parents.” Zeri’s eyes met Moe’s. “Mind doing me another favor?”
“Sure thing.” Moe patted Timik’s head. “Hey, kiddo. Want some banana cues for dinner?”
Like its neighboring streets, Brasscopper Alley housed rows of chem-baron factories. Soot filled the air, heavy enough to taste. Who else but the barons would force people to work in these conditions?
On the corner, a few guards reeking of less-than-fine spirits played cards by a run-down building with rusted double doors. Just like Timik described. Zeri touched her belt, ensuring her gun was secure.
She looked for another way in, spotting a rickety air vent large enough to crawl through halfway up a nearby wall. She jumped for the opening, coming up inches short. Stepping back, Zeri ran, her feet catching sparks. She hopped higher this time, boosted by her electricity.
“You already played that card!” she heard a guard growl as her fingers gripped the vent’s edge.
“Did not!” snapped another. “And you woulda known too if yer head wasn’t buried in that bottle.”
Zeri exhaled in relief. Right again, Grandma. Guards are lazier at night.
She pulled herself into the vent and started crawling, eventually coming to a large grate in the floor. Below was a curious room where wide metal pipes lined every wall. The exit was closed off by the double doors she saw earlier.
In the middle, a group of people assembled parts as several thugs with hextech-powered spears watched on like jail guards. Every time something reached the end of the assembly line, a thug tested it. And every time, there’d be a flash of blue light followed by nothing. The guard captain smashed these apparent failures and demanded the people start over. “And they said you were the smart ones,” he said, spitting on the floor.
Zeri could tell these people were clearly being held against their will. Parents and spouses and friends, all suffering.
“Argh!” Without thinking, Zeri banged a fist charged with frustration and electricity against the grate, which rattled from the impact. Zeri scrambled to secure it, but as the heavy grate fell from its fixture, so did she. With a loud clang, she landed in the middle of the factory floor.
The room gasped and recoiled in surprise.
“Is it him?” asked a thug, shaking off the shock.
“No,” snarled the captain. “Her face doesn’t have the painted hourglass.”
Zeri rushed to her feet. “Dunno who you’re expecting, but you can’t keep these people here like this.”
The captain scowled. “Says who?”
“Me.”
Zeri whipped out her gun, her right hand clutching its rusted crimson grip. Her mom had designed it without trigger or magazine, needing only her daughter’s innate electricity, which now swelled with anger. Static buzzed from Zeri’s hand into the gun’s conductive barrel. She took aim.
“Ultrashock laser!”
A thunderous beam struck the double doors behind the thugs, blasting the rusted metal apart.
“Run!” Zeri cried. “I’ll take care of the guards!”
The hostages scattered, guards in pursuit.
A woman grabbed Zeri’s arm. “Have you seen my son? He wasn’t taken with us!”
“Timik’s fine. He’s—”
“Timik? No, that’s not—”
More thugs swarmed close. Zeri yanked her gun to face them and fired, pushing them back and creating space for the worried woman to flee.
“We gotta go,” a man warned, pulling the woman away.
Zeri unleashed more electric bullets as coverfire. “When word of this gets out to your boss,” she yelled, “you’re gonna wish you’d killed me here.”
The frustrated guards turned their attention away from the fleeing hostages and toward Zeri.
Good. Come to me.
As they approached, she vaulted onto one of the wide interlocking pipes attached to the walls. It was made of brass and copper—natural conductors.
Zeri’s feet crackled with electricity. Fueled by her sparks, she skated along the web of pipes, unloading flurries of bullets at three of the onrushing guards. Their bodies twitched and flailed before falling over. Deftly, Zeri switched directions, dropping the next few who were climbing the side railings to surprise her from behind. Only a handful of her attackers were left. She could head home soon. Her family was probably worried sick...
A blast struck the pipe beneath Zeri, forcing her off balance. She crashed to the ground.
“Got you now,” the captain said, holding what looked like a hextech cannon, smoke billowing off its muzzle. His remaining troops rallied, spears ready.
Zeri struggled to her feet, head spinning, knees scraped and bleeding, electric currents flickering across her injured body. She lifted her gun to fire.
It fizzled.
The captain smirked.
Damn! Must’ve broken in the fall.
Her enemies closed in.
“Screw it!” Zeri chucked her gun aside and tore off her jacket. Freed of the Sparkpack, she felt her body surge with voltage. Leaping into the air, she punched her left fist up toward the ceiling.
“LIGHTNING CRASH!”
Bioelectric waves shot from her fist, then her chest, and then her entire body, ripping the space asunder. Like a lightning storm, the waves arced off conductive metals, crackling violently as they drowned the room with Zeri’s raw power. Bodies jolted before dropping in droves.
Zeri fell to her knees, her knuckles propping her up. Blinking sweat from her eyes, she felt searing pain from her wounds everywhere at once. “That better have worked.”
“You little shit.” The captain's voice cut through the room. Zeri saw him stumble to his feet, bleeding from his nose and ears.
“Why?” Zeri roared. “Why hurt innocent people?”
The man scoffed, kicking the limp bodies around him in search of his weapon. “No one’s innocent in the baroness’s eyes.”
A hum filled the air as the captain lifted his cannon toward Zeri.
With what little force she could muster, Zeri tumbled to the side and slipped behind a large fallen pipe. The blast flung her and her cover into a wall. Zeri’s vision turned black. When her eyes opened, the captain was gone.
Staggering under moonlight, Zeri headed home through nearly empty streets. She was relieved the hostages were safe, but still gritted her teeth. The chem-barons—they always had more. More resources, more power. Their strength was the system they created with everyone under their reign, all contributing to a Zaun they controlled. Maybe the captain was right—no one’s innocent.
And everyone’s a victim.
A flash of blue light erupted behind her, stopping Zeri in her tracks.
“Hey, nice work.”
She turned to see a teenager with a painted face and a glowing bat in hand. Unsure if she’d been tailed, Zeri tried to ready herself once more, but struggled to stand up straight in the face of the stranger.
“Relax,” the young man said. “Timik told me about you.”
“And who are you?” Zeri asked.
“Name’s Ekko. Those goons from the warehouse were looking for me before you showed up. But man, you wrecked ‘em.”
Zeri sighed. If he’s against the barons, he’s alright.
“Look,” Ekko continued, “I know you’ve got questions—so do I. And I’ve gotta ask... why help folks you don’t know?”
Zeri shrugged. “I stand up for my community.”
Ekko smiled. “Then we should talk. Zaun needs people like you… and I oughta thank you for saving my parents tonight, too.”
Zeri smiled back. “Anytime.” | Marksman |
You, there! Yes, you! You look like a fine Demacian with working ears—one who might stay a stretch and heed the warnings of an old man who has seen the impossible. I’m on a quest, you see, at the bidding of the Wandering Caretaker, and you can help!
I must retrieve... Well, it’s best that I explain.
Come, now. Don’t shy away. Hear my tale, which is entirely true...
I was first awoken by the clanging of bells—my mother’s two-hundred-year-old wind chimes—screaming outside, beyond my window. She thought she was quite clever, my mother, convincing me their summer song would signal the coming of warm and sunny days. Even at my age, I can only count a handful of pleasant seasons in Valar’s Hollow. Ha! An adolescence marred by the endless chopping of firewood can attest to that. The night I speak of was no exception—a winter storm was raging.
I jumped to my feet when my door burst open and the rush of freezing wind filled my room. After scrambling to sheathe my trembling body in the thickest furs I owned, I made my way to the door, ready to slam it shut. But I hesitated. My mother’s chimes were still screaming in the wind. Though they mostly stirred memories of my harsh and laborious upbringing, they provided me with a sense of connection to her. I should not risk losing them, or worse—suffer no sleep from their incessant wailing.
Don’t get me wrong, the chimes did have a certain appeal. Stories of how they came into my family’s possession told of an incredible destiny and a celebrated past. They were forged from ingot—war metals—some of the rarest in the Freljord. Whenever a battle had been lost and won, the Collectors, my poor but resourceful ancestors, entered the battlefield and retrieved what had been left to rust in the blood-stained snow.
“How much ingot was out there, mother?” I asked once, as she gushed about ancient times.
“Centuries of it,” she replied.
“What did the Collectors do with it all?”
“Sold it to the Winter’s Claw,” she said, shrugging, “who made more weapons for wars to come.” Then she paused for a moment and smiled as her chimes began to sing. “But there was always a little we kept for ourselves—to make instruments of life, not death.”
Indeed, those precious chimes were instruments that brought wonderful music to our land. “Good fortune in bad times,” she told me. I prayed for that fortune when she fell ill, but it never came. The Wandering Caretaker was more concerned with his own wonderful music than helping the infirm, and I was left with her infernal chimes to remember them both by.
I digress.
Taking a deep breath, I pushed my way outside, but I was halted by an impossible sight: Floating in front of me, unaffected by the storm, was a small, translucent creature. Without wings or arms to hold it in place, it hung there, as if some eldritch magic had nailed it to a block of air. Two glowing white eyes like torches were affixed to its orbish head, and three twinkling stars in its belly began to churn and flicker. To my surprise, one of my mother’s chimes responded, and, like a child’s arm, it reached back to the shimmering creature, adopting its starry glow.
But then...
The chime cracked! And I heard its summer song deform. A fissure that was made etched its way up the chime’s side, and specks of gold light were drawn out from within it, as if certain materials that composed it were being stolen away. Those were not lights the thing was stealing; they were my mother’s tears, falling, as this beloved yet irritating heirloom was quickly being destroyed. I could not—I would not let that happen!
So I leapt into the blizzard and took hold of the chime. At its touch, I heard the blast of a horn in the distance. Why, I was not sure. I pulled back with all my might, but the creature’s magic was too strong to overcome. And worse, I felt my entire body jerk skyward, and my feet left the ground. Soon I was hurtling into the heavens, towed into the clouds by the befouled moppet!
CRACK! Another break scribbled its way down the chime. Then I saw something taking shape in the space between us—a shard, a piece of a whole, was materializing. Believing it would be the only thing to save me, I grasped it.
As I reached, I glanced back to the wicked creature, only to realize that it had disappeared. In its place, hovering before me in all his mystic glory, was the Wandering Caretaker. It had taken an entire lifetime of prayer for him to appear, and, as my mother had promised, the chimes brought him forth. The Bard seemed to stare back at me... into me... curious of my being there. But it was too late to explain.
There suddenly came a rush of wind and a wave of heat. I felt my arm stretch the length of a vine. My body followed, spinning and twisting, as I was being taken somewhere—an otherworldly place!
As to where I ended up, my mother’s old dulcimer here will aid me as I sing...
The Bells
’Twas sound that harkened visions of a place.
Divine, Bard’s music just beyond the veil.
A firmament revealed to me in space,
In string and drum and reed celestial.
Bard opened up the cosmos wide to me!
I felt Beginning, End, and In Between.
Where waves had never stirred that lampless sea,
We heard Sol first prepare the stars to ring.
No human witness had there ever been,
But I alone did hear the act take form.
That symphony changed me from within,
My mortal body suddenly transformed.
A spirit now, a meep celestial,
Ascended like the Aspects in this dream,
I sang with Bard throughout the sonic realm,
And tended to his will a century.
The Bells! The Bells! The Bells!
But then I heard a bell begin to bend
And felt a darkness silencing the song.
I told my brethren and my master then
And travel all we did to right the wrong.
And we were brought before a gaping maw,
An empty soundless pit devoid of light.
My ears beheld such darkness from beyond;
It filled my soul with terror and with fright.
I fear the hordes inside sang me a song,
One that has no start; it only ends.
For when I peered into that deep unknown,
I felt my own music crook and bend.
So I forced my ears above to the divine,
Turned back to what is good and what is right.
But then I caught the rip—the Void’s divide,
And soon beheld destruction of the light.
The Bells! The Bells! The Bells!
In billions were the fragments, were these chimes,
Showered ’cross the land, when darkness split
The bell that tolls the rhythm and the time,
Runeterra’s hymn, whose song may be forfeit.
To close the door and bring the notes in line
The Bard had sent us scouring the world.
With every shard, a stitch to recombine
What the Void had torn when it emerged.
The Bells! The Bells! The Bells!
Soon I awoke in bed, a meep no more,
And back in Valar’s Hollow did I dwell,
I tore my mother’s chimes from off that door,
And offered Bard more shards to fix the bell.
Since, my charge is to collect more chimes
Through wind and rain and sun and land and sea.
I pray that every treasure will rewind
That music that the Void did play to me.
The Bells! The Bells! The Bells!
Dear Demacian, I have come a long way and farther still to warn everyone of the darkness that threatens to silence the music of this world. Runeterra is a bell—a world bell—that has been corroded by evil. Its fragments, its chimes, must be found to make it whole again.
And our first step is to place all precious metals in your possession in my basket. I will take them, inspect them, sing to them Bard’s divine music to remove any chimes of the world bell within them. Any chimeless pieces I will, of course, return to you.
No! Wait! Don’t walk away—what I tell you is true! Please, listen. There isn’t much time. The end of our world is nigh...
And only Bard and his meeps can save us. | Support |
'Would you like to hear a bedtime story?''
''Grandma, I'm too old for that.''
''You're never too old to enjoy a good story.''
The girl reluctantly crawled into bed and waited, knowing she wouldn’t win this battle. A bitter wind howled outside, whipping the falling snow into devil whirls.
''What kind though? A tale of the Ice Witch, perhaps?'' asked her grandmother.
''No, not her.''
''What about a story of Braum?''
The girl nodded and the old woman smiled.
''Ah, there are so many, which to choose…? My grandmother used to tell me of the time Braum protected our village from a great dragon! Or once, this was long ago, mind, he raced down a river of lava! Or-''
She paused and shook her head. “No, none of them. Wait, have I ever told you how Braum got his shield?''
The girl shook her head. The hearth fire snapped, its warmth holding off the night’s chill.
''Well, in the mountains above our village lived a man named Braum. He mostly kept to his farm, tending his sheep and goats, but he was the kindest man anyone had ever met, and he always had a smile on his face and a laugh on his lips.
''Now, one day, something terrible happened. A young troll boy around your age was climbing the mountain and happened upon a massive stone door with a shard of True Ice at its center. When he opened the door, he couldn't believe his eyes! Beyond was a vault filled with gold and jewels. Every kind of treasure you could imagine!
''What he didn't know was that the vault was a trap. The Ice Witch had cursed it, and as the troll boy entered, the magical door clanged shut behind him! It locked him inside! Try as he might, he couldn't escape.
''A passing shepherd heard the boy’s cries. The entire village rushed to help, but even the strongest warriors couldn't open the door. The boy's parents were beside themselves. His mother's wails of grief echoed around the mountain. It seemed hopeless.
''And then they heard a distant laugh.''
''It was Braum, wasn't it?'' asked the girl.
''Aren't you clever? Braum had heard their cries and came striding down the mountain. The villagers told him of the troll boy and the curse. Braum smiled and nodded. He turned to the vault and faced the door. He pushed it. Pulled it. Punched it. Kicked it. Even tried to rip it from its hinges, but the door wasn’t for budging.''
''But he's the strongest man ever!'' cried the girl.
''It was perplexing,'' agreed her grandmother. ''For many days and nights, Braum sat on a boulder, trying to think of a solution. After all, a child's life was at stake.
''Then, as the sun rose on the fifth day, his eyes widened, and a broad grin lit up his face. ‘If I can't go through the door,' he said, ‘then I'll just have to go through-’...''
The girl thought for a moment. Her eyes went wide as she exclaimed, ''The mountain!''
''The mountain indeed. Braum headed to the summit and began punching his way straight down, pummeling his way through the stone, fist after fist. Rocks flew in his wake, until he had vanished deep into the mountain.
''As the villagers held their breath, the rock around the door crumbled. And when the dust cleared, they saw Braum standing amidst the treasure, the weak but happy troll boy cradled in his arms.''
''I knew he could do it!''
''But before they could celebrate, everything began to rumble and shake. Braum's tunnel had weakened the mountain, and now it was caving in! Thinking quickly, Braum grabbed the enchanted door and held it above him like a shield, protecting the villagers as the mountain collapsed around them. When it was over, Braum was amazed. There wasn't a single scratch on the door! Braum knew it was something very special. And from that moment on, the magical shield never left Braum's side.''
The girl sat upright, struggling to conceal her excitement.
''Grandma,'' she said, ''can you tell me another story?''
The girl’s grandmother smiled, kissed her forehead and blew out the candle.
''Tomorrow,” she said. “You need to sleep, and there are many more stories to tell.'' | Support |
For most people, a hundred years is a very long time. In a century, one could explore the entire world, meet thousands of people, or complete countless works of art. Now, anyone could easily assume that standing in one spot for over a century would be a colossal waste. But during that time, Ivern Bramblefoot accomplished more than any could dream.For instance, he settled a longstanding dispute between a colony of lichen and their host boulder, helped each generation of winter squirrels find their forgotten autumn acorns, and coaxed a lone wolf to rejoin her pack, despite the fact that they once called her howling “shrill.”Ivern’s toes burrowed deep beneath the topsoil, curled between vigilant tubers and oblivious earthworms to mingle with the roots of older trees, and the forest around him bloomed. There was much more, of course, but those examples alone are proof enough of a good century’s work.Things were going swimmingly until the sassafras started murmuring about dark doings on the edge of the forest.Hunters! they cried through their roots, alarming half the forest.Ivern knew sassafras to be anxious trees, raising their leaves in panic over the slightest stray saltsnail, and after all, hunting wasn’t so bad, for nothing is wasted or senseless in the cycle of life. But the sassafras had worried the robins, who told the butterflies, and if butterflies knew a secret, so did the entire forest.So Ivern stood up, and after briefly soothing the clipper ant colony whose ancestral home he had just displaced, he stalked away, shaking off layers of crusty bark. With each flower-blooming step through the forest, the alarm grew more frantic.Three of them, nattered the squirrels.Eyes like twin blood moons, gibbered the scuttle-crabs as they hid in the river.More bloodthirsty than elmarks, proclaimed the elmarks.The peregrines swore the hunters were after their eggs. The ivory-wreathed chrysanthemum feared for her illustrious petals—that worried Daisy, who loved her flowers dearly. Ivern calmed each of them, and urged them to hide until trouble passed. He pretended not to notice Daisy following him, since she thought herself to be quite sneaky.He saw an eight-tusked shagyak dead in the grass. Three arrows were thrust deep into the thick hump of muscle at the base of its neck. As a sappy tear escaped Ivern’s eye, a squirrel he’d named Mikkus scampered up the Green Father’s chest and lapped it off his cheek in solace.“Hunters take meat for food,” Ivern said aloud. “Hunters whittle bone into toys and tools. Hunters sew pelts into garments and tan skin into boots.”The corpse was missing its eight shimmering, pearlescent tusks. Ivern touched the ground, and a circle of daisies bloomed around the dead shagyak. He saw a baby stonescale viper slithering away. Stone-scale vipers are wise beyond their years.“Ssssssssafe?” the snake hiss-asked.Ivern knew snakes were embarrassed by their lisps and for a long time had avoided words with sibilant sounds. He’d challenged them to embrace the words they feared the most, but they took the lesson to heart and now spoke exclusively in words beginning “s.”Snakes; such overachievers.“It’s safe now, little one.” Poor thing must’ve witnessed the whole ordeal. “Coil up here and watch the shagyak for me,” Ivern urged the baby viper. “I’ll return once I get to the bottom of this.”The shagyak horns clacked relentlessly with each step Risbell took, so much so that she had to stop and repack the tusks lest the noise scare off their next kill. Upriver, those horns would earn them a fortune. City people paid well for half-cocked backwater remedies these days.Niko, the square-jawed hunter with one eye, uncovered another set of shagyak hoof prints. She beckoned behind her to Eddo, the rich city man with the whalebone bow, and grinned. Eddo’s toothy smile and malicious eyes made Risbell, the youngest of the crew, shiver.Up ahead, in a glade, another eight-tusked shagyak grazed on its very favorite variety of grass. Each of the three hunters approached slowly and quietly, rustling nary a dead leaf.In rehearsed synchronicity, all three readied their bows and took careful aim. The shagyak’s head was still bent low, as it dined on the soft mulderberries and scullygrass, obscuring the knot of muscles at the base of its neck. When pierced, the hump would keep the blood flowing while the hunters hewed off horns. It was very important that the shagyak still be alive when the tusks were harvested to increase their potency, Eddo said.Sweat beaded down her neck as she waited for the shagyak to raise its head. Just as the beast’s head swung up, the glade of low scullygrass bloomed impossibly fast, from ankle height to over their heads in a moment. The stalks stretched toward the sun, flowers blooming instantly in an array of radiant petals. A flowering wall of scullygrass completely obscured the shagyak.Eddo dropped his bow. Niko’s one good eye looked as if it was going to bulge from its socket. Risbell’s arrow errantly soared through the air. She didn’t command her fingers to release the bowstring. She backed up against the nearest tree, terrified.“I told you these woods were cursed,” Risbell whispered. “We should leave now.”“I’ve dealt with sorcery before,” Niko said. “I will do this the old way.”She placed her arrow back in her quiver and pulled a long, mean-looking dagger from her belt.Eddo did the same. They both beckoned for Risbell to stay put with the tusks as they stealthily disappeared into the wall of grass. She waited and held her breath, but couldn’t even hear their footfalls. One day she hoped to be as silently deadly as her companions. Still, she couldn’t shake the unnerving feeling that the wall of vegetation was a warning to be heeded. Stories her grandmother told her, of the strange creatures of magic that wandered this world, came back to her. Just children’s tales, she reminded herself.An eerie and unfamiliar sound echoed through the glade. It wasn’t the shrieking of a shagyak, but the heavy sound of rocks smashing into ground with loud, splintery thuds. Whatever caused the sound, it was enough to make Eddo and Niko race out of the brush, running at full tilt. Their skin was pale and their eyes were wide. Then she saw what had caused her companions to flee.A flower, a simple ivory-wreathed chrysanthemum, was dancing on top of the grass. It was a rather curious sight.Then Risbell realized it was getting closer. The grass parted, and there stood a behemoth of stone and moss. A living incarnation of granite, massively strong, and moving with rhythm. In the moment it took Risbell to reconcile what was happening, she heard a calm voice calling to the creature.“Daisy! Be careful. And... gentle!”Risbell grabbed the satchel of tusks and ran after Niko and Eddo, trying to remember the route that led back to their camp. At each tree, a new wall of grass sprouted up. Something stalked within the grass, rustling through the leaves as it walked, giggling as Risbell spun in circles trying to find her way out. She was alone in a strange forest, and behind every infernal tree lurked more grass, springing up nearly instantly.Risbell realized she was being corralled the same way grandmother used to herd sheep. Knowing full well that she was walking into a trap, Risbell squared her shoulders and followed the grass.Ivern watched as the young hunter stepped out of the grassy maze and approached the shagyak’s body. The poor thing looked positively terrified. She clearly had never seen anything or anyone quite like himself before. He tried to be gentle, but humans tended to be so individual in their reactions. Unlike, say, the caterwauling of smug mewlarks.“Please. Don’t be frightened. Unless that is your natural state. In which case, fright away. I’ll wait. I really don’t mind.”It wasn’t Ivern’s intention to frighten anyone. But no one can account for another being’s experience.“Get on with it,” Risbell said. Her voice quavered and her eyes flinched. “I’ve trespassed, I know. I’m at your mercy. Just let it be quick.”“Be quick?” Ivern shrugged. “Certainly. It didn’t cross my mind that you might have better places to be. Very well then.”The girl closed her eyes and lifted her chin, exposing her throat. She reached her hand back toward the scabbard at her belt and wrapped her knuckles around the dagger. If he came for her, there would be a surprise.“But I only want to know why,” Ivern said in a voice filled with merriment. He gestured with his branchlike fingers to the shagyak’s body. His arm stretched longer than it should, to the dead beast’s back, where he lovingly stroked its blood-mottled fur.Risbell drew her dagger and then felt a sharp pain in her ankle. A cold sensation spread up her leg. When she looked down, she saw the culprit: a stone-scaled viper, the most venomous asp in all the Aulderwood.Out of anger and instinct, she lashed out at the snake.“No!” Ivern shouted.Viney roots sprouted up from the soil and caught her arm, preventing her strike. They wrapped around her wrists and ankles and knees. She dropped her dagger in her struggles to break free.“I’m going to die!” she cried. The venom’s coldness spread up past her knees.The serpent slithered to Ivern’s feet and coiled up the outside of his leg, climbing up and around his body until it vanished into his armpit. It emerged from the back of his head, curling around one of the branches, and licked its forked tongue at Ivern’s ear.“Sssssssorry,” hissed the snake to Ivern. “Ssssstartled.”“Please,” Risbell said. “Help me.”Ivern thought for a second.“Ah yes!” His honey eyes twinkled with an idea. “There’s one thing that loves shagyaks. Especially dead ones.“And please, forgive Syrus; he’s only recently hatched and doesn’t know how to control his venom. Gave you a full dose, I’m afraid. He’s asked me to tell you that he’s awfully sorry. You startled him and he reacted purely on instinct,” Ivern said. “Now, watch.”The tree man knelt before the shagyak’s body, closed his eyes, and hummed a deep, earthy tune. His hands were in the soil, fingers splayed out. Twinkling green pops of light cascaded from his rune-carved head, down his arms, and into the dirt. Odd purple mushrooms popped up from the carcass. They were tiny at first; then their stalks rose as rot overtook the shagyak’s corpse. Soon there was only fur, bones, and an army of violet mushrooms.“Ah, stingsalve fungus,” Ivern sighed. He plucked one delicately. “Always so punctual.”The vines retracted from Risbell’s body. She collapsed in a heap. Her hands immediately shot to her heart. The icy pangs of stone-scale venom had reached her chest.“Eat this,” Ivern said, offered the purple mushroom to the dying woman. “It might not taste like salamander dew or sunshine, but it’s not as bad as lippertick apples.”Risbell had no idea what the strange treeman was on about, but her options were severely limited at that moment. A voice came back to her from the past. Her grandmother’s. Trust in nature; the Green Father never leads you astray.She grabbed the mushroom from Ivern’s hand. It tasted like bitter tea and mulch; a disappointing final meal. Then the icy grip around her heart thawed and retreated. Within minutes, her legs worked again.As she recovered, Ivern made her a tincture of odd leaves, tree sap, and water from a spring he’d discovered with his toes. He served it to her in a bird’s nest cup that a peregrine dropped into his hand.“You’re him, aren’t you? The Green Father.”Ivern shrugged as if he didn’t know. “You know what we could do here?” he said, turning his attention to the shagyak bones. “Moss always loves to pretty up the place.”As soon as he said it, a thick carpet of moss crept over the bones. With the mushrooms, what once had been a grisly sight was now beautiful.“Sheldon would love how beautiful his bones turned out to be. Badgers will use his ribs as shelter from the autumn storms. Nothing is ever wasted,” Ivern said, turning his attention to Risbell. “It seemed so senseless, but it makes perfect sense. If it wasn’t killed, you wouldn’t have lived.”“We wanted its tusks,” Risbell said. She fixed her eyes on her boots in shame. “Rich people clamor for them. Willing to pay a lot.”“I remember money. It’s rarely a good motivator.”“I knew we shouldn’t have killed it. My grandmother used to tell me that if one must kill, one must use all parts to honor the beast.”“I would love to meet your grandmother,” Ivern said.“She is gone to the ground.”“Returning to the soil that which the soil gave is noble.”“I’m sorry,” Risbell said after a long moment of silence.“All life is precious.” The gentleness and warmth and forgiveness in Ivern’s voice moved Risbell to tears. Ivern patted her on the head. “I probably couldn’t have handled the whole thing better myself. I’ve so much to remember about humans, and so much too I had forgotten to ever learn.”Ivern helped Risbell to her feet.“I must be off now. I promised the tadpoles of Southern Pond that I would monitor their elections for the king of lily pads. It’s quite the contentious race.”A while later, Risbell emerged from the tree line near the river. After gulping down some water, she dug a hole on the banks and tenderly placed the shagyak tusks inside. She scooped up a handful of dirt and recited the prayers of honor her grandmother had taught her. She repeated this ritual until the horns were buried. Then she bowed her head in reverence and left the site marked as a grave.From the depths of the Aulderwood, Ivern smiled at the gesture. The shagyak herd would be proud. | Support |
They think Zaun is where the losers live.
They won’t admit it, of course – they’ll smile through their teeth and pat us on the back and tell us that Piltover would be nowhere without Zaun. Our hard workers! Our bustling trade! Our chemtech that everyone in Piltover pretends they don’t buy, except they constantly do! Zaun is a vital part of Piltover’s culture, they’ll say.
All lies. Obviously.
They think Zaun is where the idiots go. People too stupid to make it in Piltover’s golden towers.
People like me.
I spent months dealing shimmer so I could afford to apply for Clan Holloran’s apprenticeship. I studied every crusty, dog-eared book I could find on gearwork machinery. I built a prototype gearbrace for people with broken or arthritic wrists that increased their mobility. I did everything I could have done to earn an apprenticeship in Piltover. I even made it to the final stage of the vetting process: a face-to-face meeting with Boswell Holloran himself.
They said it was a formality. Just a way to welcome me to the family.
He entered the room, looked down at my Gray-stained clothes, and laughed a strangled, joyless laugh. He said, “Sorry, my boy – we don’t take sump-rats here.”
He never even sat down.
So now I’m back here. In Zaun. One more idiot.
The Gray rolls through the streets, welcoming me back. Most days, it’s thin enough that you can breathe deep without coughing up something wet. Today, though, is what we call a Grayout. You choke with every breath. Your chest feels tight. Can’t see much past your fingertips. I want to run, but I know there’s nowhere to run to. The Gray feels like it’s closing in on me, crushing me, smothering me.
These are the times I pray to Janna.
Not everyone in Zaun believes she’s real, but my mother always had faith. She told me a bluebird hovered outside her window on the day of my birth, and she knew – she knew – it was Janna telling her I was going to be fine.
She was wrong, of course. I wasn’t fine, in the end. Couple of years ago, she – my mother – died while sump-scrapping, and I had to raise myself with the few gears she left me. Then, the usual: couldn’t make friends. Got beaten up a lot. Boy I loved didn’t love me back. Tried to study, tried to think my way up to Piltover. Couldn’t. Figured Janna had forgotten about me.
But I still keep the pendant my mother gave me: a wooden engraving depicting the bluebird she saw. Just in case of moments like these.
So I sit on the wet ground because I don’t care enough to find a bench, and I take out the bluebird pendant I always keep tucked in my shirt, and I talk to Janna.
Not out loud, of course – don’t need people thinking I’m some chem-burnt freak – but still, I talk to her.
I don’t ask her for anything. I just tell her about my day, and the day before that, and how scared I am that I’ll never become anything worthwhile and that I’ll die down here knee-deep in the Sump with nothing to show for it just like my mother, and that sometimes I just want to run away somewhere I can breathe and stop being so frightened and not feel like crying all the time and how I hate myself for feeling like I want to cry because I have it so much easier than some other people, and how sometimes I think about throwing myself into the chem pools of the Sump, just throwing myself in with my mother where I’d let myself sink to the bottom and my lungs would fill with fluid because then it’d be over, at least. I tell Janna I hope she’s okay. I hope she’s happy, wherever she is.
That’s when I feel the breeze caress my cheek. Just a light flutter, but it’s there. Soon, I can feel it blow hair across my face. The wind whistles loud and fast, and soon it’s whipping my coat in the air and I feel as though I’m at the center of a maelstrom.
The Gray swirls before me, pushed up by a breeze that seems to flow from everywhere at once. The fog slowly dissipates, and I can see other passersby on the Entresol level watching it float away.
The wind stops.
The Gray clears.
I can breathe.
Not just small, cautious gasps, but deep breaths that fill my lungs with cold, fresh air. No longer veiled in Gray, the sun shines past the towers of Piltover into Zaun itself.
I can see the Piltovans above, peering down at us. Without the Gray clouding their view, they can see us from their lofty bridges and balconies. I don’t think they like it very much. Nobody wants to be reminded they live above a slum; I see a few scowls.
That’s when I see him again: Boswell Holloran. Holding a sweetcake in his hand, looking down at me again. An expression of disgust on his face, just like before.
I’m so busy staring at his contemptuous face that I don’t notice the presence behind me until her hand is on my shoulder.
“It’s okay,” she says, and I know without turning who it is.
She squeezes my shoulder, then kneels and crosses her arms in front of my chest, pulling me into a hug.
“It’s going to be okay,” she says.
Strands of her hair fall onto my shoulders. She smells like the air after a long rain.
“It might not be okay now. You might not be okay for a while. And that’s fine. But someday, without knowing exactly when or why or how it happened, you’ll feel happy,” she says. My face is warm and wet and I don’t know when I started crying but it’s a relief, like the clouds are clearing, and I hold her arms and she holds me, just telling me over and over that it’s okay, that she’s here, that things will be better.
I don’t know how long she holds me, but soon I see everyone on Zaun’s Entresol and the balconies of Piltover above are staring.
Before I can say anything, she says, “Don’t think about them. Just take care of yourself. Will you do that for me?”
I try to speak, but instead I just nod.
“Thank you,” she says, and she kisses my wet cheek and gives me one last, quick squeeze.
She rises and glides past me. For the first time, I see her in her entirety – a tall, ethereal figure that I would’ve assumed was from my imagination if she hadn’t just touched me. I notice her long, pointed ears. Feet that don’t touch the ground. Hair flowing in the wind, even right now when there isn’t any. Eyes so blue I feel a little cold just looking at her.
But then she smiles, winks, and says, “You’ll want to watch this next part.”
There’s a massive gust of wind, so fast and sharp I have to cover my eyes. When I open them again she’s gone, but the wind is still blowing. It blows up toward Piltover and its gawking citizens.
It whistles as it picks up speed and strength, and the Pilties run for cover but it’s too late, the breeze hits them full force, sending their frocks sailing and mussing their hair. Boswell Holloran shrieks in terror as the wind launches him off the balcony.
It seems as if he’s about to plummet toward certain death, but another gust of wind shoots up toward him, and his descent slows significantly, as if the wind is guiding him down. You wouldn’t know it to look at him, though. Even though he’s falling with all the velocity of a tumbling leaf, He screams the entire way down. Very high pitched. Very undignified.
His clothes flap upward, smacking him in the face as he descends, until he’s hovering a few inches above a puddle.
“I –,” he begins, before the wind disappears altogether and he plops ass-first into the puddle, ruining what I assume was a very expensive ensemble. He yelps in a mixture of surprise, pain, and irritation, splashing around like an angry child. He tries to get to his feet, only to slip and fall back down all over again. If I’m being completely honest, he looks like an idiot.
And I can’t stop laughing. | Support |
Milio's story began generations ago with his grandmother, Lupé, and her twin sister, Luné—two elemental masters who wove their respective earth and fire axioms together to overcome the Vidalion’s trials and join the Yun Tal. But after Luné was caught plotting against the Yun Tal, both sisters were convicted of her crime and punished as twins. Lupé was banished to the farthest reaches of Ixtal and Luné all but vanished, taking with her the last of Lupé's trust.
By the time Milio was born, his family had done all they could to make the best of their new lives. He knew only love and laughter, and to him, life in the village was paradise—what more could they ever need?
When Milio was old enough, Lupé tried to teach her grandson the axiomata. Where the rest of her family had failed her, Milio showed promise and took to the elements naturally, but struggled to grasp the rules and rigidity of the discipline. Disappointed, Lupé gave up hope, abandoning Milio's teachings.
Milio, however, continued to learn on his own. Away from the guidance of his grandmother, he abandoned the restrictions she had tried to impose on him. Studying nature itself, he intuited his own set of rules and eventually mastered fire—the one axiom his grandmother wouldn't teach him.
But something bothered Milio about fire. Did it have to be so destructive, especially when he saw the potential for it to do more?
The answer revealed itself one night while Milio was chasing the glow of summer fireflies. They led him to one of the village’s hunters who was injured and unable to move. Milio tried to keep her stable with his fire axiom, but it wasn't enough. Knowing the village healer was too far, he tried desperately to adapt the axiom into a force that could heal.
As he placed his hands on the hunter's stomach to support her wound, he felt a flicker of warmth.. It was so familiar and soothing, like he was touching her soul. Her inner flame. Then Milio began to feel that same flame within himself. He could feel it within the trees, within the leaves—as if each part of the jungle was coming to life like a cozy bonfire.
Focusing all of his energy into that feeling, he used what nature had taught him to manifest that fire. What emerged was a creature—small and timid with wide, friendly eyes. Milio placed it on the hunter's wound and felt the creature—his inner flame—heal her from the inside out.
That night, he’d discovered an entirely new axiom, which he affectionately named “soothing fire.”
Milio ran home to show his family what he'd done. Before their eyes, he manifested another soothing flame that danced happily in the palm of his hand—his "fuemigo"—and his family celebrated.
Grandmother Lupé, however, was unsettled by this achievement.
Seeing Milio’s mastery of the axiomata at such a young age, Lupé knew that her grandson had done what the rest of her family failed to do. With his abilities, he could finally end their exile and restore them to their rightful place among Ixtal's ruling caste. However, she was troubled by his fascination with fire and how his burgeoning skills went against the traditional teachings of the axiomata.
Despite this, Lupé threw everything into her last chance at redemption. Milio became her sole focus as she nurtured and shaped his abilities, preparing him to leave home, travel to Ixaocan, and finally free her from the burden of her sister's failures. Milio felt this weight upon his shoulders, and the thought of leaving home on his own terrified him. But because Milio loved his family more than anything, he would find the courage if it meant ensuring their happiness.
In preparation for the journey, he and his grandmother fashioned a special backpack that Milio called his "furnasita," inside of which he could keep his ever-burning fuemigo. Then, with a heavy heart and a wide smile, Milio—at only twelve years old—left his village behind, outfitted with only his trusty furnasita and some new clothes made by his family.
He traveled the entirety of Ixtal, forging his way through the jungle, camping underneath the stars, and making friends along the way, all while sending frequent letters home that detailed his exciting adventures. After a long journey, Milio finally made it to Ixaocan, where he's since begun his training to challenge the Vidalion.
"The boy with the soothing flames" has caught the eye of more than a few—including Luné, currently imprisoned beneath the city and biding her time. Even Milio notices the whispering that accompanies him around the city, but his focus is on joining the Yun Tal and making his family proud. | Support |
Mazier is sprawled on the rotten planks, waves lapping at stone underneath. Her slowing heartbeat pumps blood into the seawater. She stares, unblinking, at the shanty-dwellings above, and the stars beyond.
Pyke studies her face once more. Mazier’s dead eyes stab at his mind.
A jaulling vessel. Four-master with tattered sails. Waves the size of mountains.
Long hair in high-sea wind. Dozens of faces on deck. Watching. Blue eyes. Mazier’s blue eyes, wide in disbelief.
Then, teeth.
Not Mazier’s pearly whites. Gunky, sword-sized teeth. Criss-crossed the boat. Losing light. Closing. In the jaull’s mouth. Lifeline slack. Cut.
The tongue was too slick. Eyes stung with sweat. Fingers finding no purchase. Get to open water. Swim, swim...
The jaull’s teeth clamped shut. Then pain. Then darkness.
Ship was gone. So were the eyes.
Mazier’s eyes.
An able-bodied sailor. Aye. She was there. She cut my line.
Pyke nudges the body with his boot, gazing downward all the while. He nudges her until she reaches the edge of the dock. One more kick, and Mazier is floating. The sharks are quick to feast. Circling. Snapping. The ocean never wastes time.
Gulls shriek, their warbled cries caught on the wind, as Pyke finds Mazier, abled-bodied sailor, on the list. Red ink strikes her name from the parchment.
The last name on the Terror’s crew manifest.
That’s it. No more names, just a lot of red crosses. Where did I get all that ink...?
A feeling gnaws at Pyke. Restless, unsettled, unsatisfied. The churning lurch of bile in his belly. He can’t be done. There were too many of them there, on the decks. Maybe he got the wrong manifest. Maybe it doesn’t even matter.
They let me die. So many hands. So many times.
Another sound. Not gulls. Not waves. Not teeth closing. Not the voice in the back of his mind screaming out “You’re not done!” over and over and over. Not the music he remembers from the swimming city, all those years ago.
It’s a new sound. A real sound. A here-and-now sound.
Pyke looks with his living eye, and sees wooden stairs sagging under heavy bootfalls. A thickset man, walking down toward the moored, bobbing vessels.
He stops when he sees all the blood. His hand disappears into his jacket, pulling a flintlock, keeping the barrel of the gun close to his chest. Ready to aim and fire. Like a bloody idiot.
Pyke steps into the moonlight. The man looks like he’s seen a ghost. The skin around his mouth clams up tighter than a dock banker’s coin-purse. His eyes go wide and quivery, like jellyfish, like calm water catching a breeze.
“Who’s that?” he yells.
Come find out.
The flintlock is aimed at Pyke’s head. Then comes the flash and the bang. The shot is true, but it splinters wood because Pyke is no longer where he was.
He’s in the mist.
He falls apart, into salt and drops of water—a fine man to a fine mist. He heard they call him a phantasm. They’re half right.
The heavyset man reloads. Sweat beads his wrinkled brow.
In those precious few seconds, Pyke is all around him, in the in between, somewhere behind the air itself, studying him. Those fearful eyes, crap-brown. His beard wild and white. Sagging jowls, crooked nose, cracked lips, the way his earlobes are cauliflowered from countless dirty tavern fights.
Looks like a captain.
The man reeks of sweet, prickly fear. Good old boot-quaking terror.
Smells like a captain.
Pyke needs to be sure. He takes form—he was always a big man, now with the baleful, glowing eye that the sea gifted him, he feels larger still. Tell me your name, he rumbles.
The man didn’t expect anyone to appear behind him. Nobody expects that. Maybe they do in fantasies or nightmares or the stories they tell in bars. But in reality, everyone just craps their pants and falls flat on their face, and this heavyset captain is no rule-breaker on that count. He trips on his own stupid boots, and rolls down the stairs like a sack of tinned victuals.
Pyke takes each step slowly. A Noxian galleon is moored at the dock. Trader ship, or traitor ship? Is there a difference? He guesses not.
You got ‘til I get to the bottom of these steps to tell me what I want to know.
The man wheezes, his wind knocked clear into someone else’s sails. Gasping. A fish on land. Chubby hands reaching out.
I remember you...
Step.
White-knuckle grip on the deck rail...
Step.
The man tries to stand, but his knee bends the wrong way.
Step.
You were watching.
Step. A wharf-rat scurries close. Dinner time soon.
You were smiling.
Sputter. Tears coming now. “P-please… I don’t know what you’re talking about...”
Step.
Name. Now.
“Beke! Beke Nidd!”
Pyke pauses to consult the manifest, one step from the bottom. All the red marks. All the crossed out names.
There. Beke Nidd. Midshipman.
Uncrossed. Clear as day. Must have had the paper folded wrong.
Beke Nidd. Yeah, I remember you. You were there.
“I’ve never seen you before! It’s my first night in Bilge—”
People can’t lie with a hookman’s barber lodged in their cheek. They can’t beg or trade facts they don’t have.
Fine tool, the barber-blade. Made of tempered sharkbone. Keener than steel. Sticks in real good, snagging on bone and flesh. Struggling only hooks it deeper, as Beke is learning. His eyes are really afraid now.
Those eyes stab at Pyke’s mind.
The memory rises like a tide, and he opens up to let the waters come crashing through, drowning out Beke’s gurgled pleas.
A jaulling vessel. Four-master with tattered sails. Waves the size of mountains.
Ragged beard in high-sea wind. Dozens of faces on deck. Watching. Crap-brown eyes. Beke Nidd’s crap-brown eyes, wide in disbelief.
Then, teeth. | Support |
“Two paths lead to the monastery fortress from the villages below it,” Xayah begins.
I follow her eyes and see a pair of golden stairways that stretch down from the mountain temple to the farmhouses below. Each wood-woven home probably has a whole family inside it. There, mortals are born, die, and—most importantly—create new songs.
Probably with harps and drums. Maybe flutes? I should make a reed flute later. First, I need to fluff my cloak. Did I remember to clean my feathers? The town below must have an inn. A bottle of wine would be great right now.
“Rakan…” Xayah says.
Crap. She was telling me the plan. I focus back on her face, on her crooked smile. The sunset’s last rays reflect in her eyes. I love her eyelashes. I want to—
“Repeat it back to me.”
Something in the monastery. She was… Uh…
“I rendezvous with you at…” I say, but I’ve already lost the thread. I pull at one of the feathers on my head, hoping to pluck the idea from it.
A tiny shimmer of light glistens from her scrumptious bottom lip. Are her lips purple today? They were violet yesterday.
“They will kill me if they catch me,” she says.
The shock of the thought takes my breath. I feel my face twist into a snarl. “Who?!” I demand.
“The guards,” she replies. ”It’s always guards.”
“Then I’ll distract them! When?”
She points to the sky. “Look for a green flash before the sun sets. Then draw the guards away from the western walls while I run along the ramparts to the cells.”
“I put on a show the moment the sun sets,” I say. “Where do we meet?”
“At the gate. I’ll throw a golden blade into the sky. But you have to be there in ten breaths,” Xayah says, plucking a feather from my cloak.
“I will be at that gate the moment you throw the blade,” I say. Nothing in my life is more certain than that.
“I know.”
She nods, and begins telling me the safest path to take. She plans things, which is why I know she will be okay. Wow, the sky is gorgeous right now. That cloud is shaped like an eggplant. I saw a dog once…
I do not like these steps. I do not like them. The gold leaf covering the stone is almost the same color as my feathers. It’s infuriating. I consider changing their hue, but it would take some magic. Damn, I can’t be tired when she needs me. Xayah probably sent me this way knowing my plumage would blend in here. A red cape would look better against these steps. Maybe indigo? What’s around this corner?
More steps. Only humans would cut stone into flat shapes to make a mountain boring! I should climb the cliff. Xayah said to take the steps… I’m pretty sure.
I pick up some pebbles and begin to juggle them. I hear the magic writhing north of me, within the twisting roots of the Lhradi Forest.
The forest’s song finds its way into my head, and I begin to sing it.
“What was that?” a voice echoes from above.
An entry way! A human guard appears. His clothing is dark as shadow.
“Who are you?” he demands.
“I am Rakan!” I reply. How can anyone not know that?
“Who?”
I don’t like him. I hate him more than steps.
“I am Rakan! The battle-dancer of the Lhotlan tribe. I am the song of the morning. I am the dance of the midnight moon. I am the charm that—”
“It’s that vastayan entertainer,” another guard interrupts. He too wears boring clothing—clothes I haven’t seen in this area before.
The first guard wears a shiny golden amulet on his chest. I snatch it from him.
“Hey!”
“What’s this?” I ask. He doesn’t deserve this. Whatever this is.
He grasps for it, but I flip it around my hand while still juggling the pebbles in the other.
“Give me that!”
I flick each stone into his face.
“No,” I say. Then, as innocently as I can, I ask, “Is it important?”
He draws a pair of hook-swords. I take one away from him before he can raise them.
“Open the gate, I’ll give you back this… uh… shiny thing,” I offer as I twirl his amulet in my palm, and then send it spinning up my arm.
Instead, the rude fool swings at me! I flip over his attack, and land behind him. He turns to slash again. I dive under his blade, using my rear to knock him off balance. He falls down the steps with a scream.
The other guard watches his friend tumbling away, then looks back to me. I shake my head at him.
“Honestly, how could anyone not know who I am?”
This one stabs at me with his spear. I twist past him, allowing my feathered cloak to envelop him for a moment. Blinded, he stumbles and trips over himself. He falls onto his shield and shoots down the stairway with a clack-clack-clacking sound. Well, until he crashes into his friend on the first landing.
The impact sends them both sprawling. I laugh. Now I get steps.
“You are terrible dancers,” I say as I check my cloak for dirt.
The two people stumble to their feet, glaring up at me.
“You okay?” I ask, thankful for the amusement.
They roar as they rush up the steps. Ungrateful bastards.
I leap away from them and ask, “Wanna know the difference between a party and a fight?”
They slash at me with their weapons again and again.
“One is an entertaining day,” I say as I send them back down the stairs. “The other is… shorter.”
A deafening gong sounds behind me. I smile. The fun part begins.
“You gotta do better than that!” I yell, taunting my pursuers as I run. I do need to get out of here, though. There are twenty guards now. Okay, maybe thirty? More than lots.
Running through their sleeping chambers was a bad idea. However, it did give me a chance to freshen up.
Some of the men have those strange crossbows. They use fire from a tube. They had a name. I’m gonna call ’em tubebows. Their shots explode around me, eating holes into the wall as I dive out of the room.
I slide into the courtyard, performing a full twist to give it some flair. The gate is open. I could run for it, but Xayah needs me.
Hidden in an alcove, a guard swings at me with a large tubebow. Or is bowtube better? He pulls at the trigger. I leap toward him, diving over his shot.
“What’s a good rhyme for tubebow?” I ask out loud.
I kick the guard up in the air. As he falls, I spin and introduce my hand to his cheek. The sound is louder than his weapon.
“Oh, slap!” I say, mimicking its intensity. The human rolls to his feet, pulling a short sword. “How are you not getting the message?!”
I wonder if I can find a kitchen. That’s where the chocolate would be.
The light in the sky is changing. I leap back into the air to check the sun’s location again. It disappears behind the hills, and an orb of green light flashes above it.
“Party time!” I scream. Now, the entire castle is chasing me.
“Surrender yourself!” a guard in a metal hat yells.
“No! I am distracting you!” I reply. He looks at me confused. I’m gonna slap him next.
A hail of arrows launches from the opposite wall. I swerve through them, enjoying the whistle they make as their fletching passes me.
Would I look good in that metal hat?
The golden blade hangs in the air for a second before falling. Xayah is ready to go.
I take my first breath. She said I had ten, but four breaths is much too long. I need to know she’s safe.
“Wanna see some sweet moves?” I ask the nearest human.
He doesn’t seem enthused. I roll through the group and appear behind him. He turns just in time to meet my cloak halfway. My feathers spin him up into the air like a top. Twelve spins is my record, but that was on a hill.
Second breath. The human slams into the ground after nine rotations. Damn. I don’t have time to try again.
Third breath. I have to make it back to where she needs me, back to Xayah.
I leap up the rampart, then bound off its roof toward the gate.
I take the fourth breath in midair.
Xayah runs toward the gate with some fancy juloahs—they are hairy where we have colored feathers. They must be from the Sodjoko tribe. Too formal looking, but I do like the thick ridge of hair that flows along the back of their forearms. I should make my feathers do that. The eldest one’s sarong seems like a terrible idea.
“We’ll never make it,” he cries. “They have rifles!”
“You mean the tubebows?” I ask.
Akunir stares at me blankly.
“Those are out of ammo,” I explain. “The Xini longbows too.”
“What?! How?”
“I am Rakan,” I explain. I expect this from humans, but my own kind?
“All of you, run for the tree line,” Xayah says.
A dozen men, covered in flour and chocolate, run out from the guardhouse. Mixed with eggs, they would make a thing called ‘cake.’ Pies are better though…
“Run!” Xayah yells. When the old juloah fails to move, I pull him along.
Coll kneels beside her guard’s body. She and Xayah pray that his spirit finds our lands. One of his horns is broken, blood pools in the leaves around him. Coll removes the last arrow from his corpse. He carried her all the way here, even after the humans wounded him.
This juloah should not have died. Someone loved him. They will sing his songs. But only silence will answer.
My eyes well with tears. Softly, I sing for his loss, and his family’s.
Xayah stands with her fist clenched. She won’t grieve now. Instead, the pain will find her tonight when she thinks I’m asleep. That is her way. I will kiss away her sorrow then.
The consul is named Akunir. He might have been a battle-dancer when he was young. He and Xayah begin arguing about politics.
Coll kisses the forehead of her guard. Her jaw is tight. She holds an anger stronger than Xayah’s. She glares at her husband Akunir. She has been waiting for him to listen for far too long.
“I will go back north, Akunir,” Coll says as she rises. “I will tell them what was done to us.” Her arms are as tight as branches, rigid against her sides.
“Coll, no,” Akunir protests.
“I will bear word of Jurelv’s fate to his kin, and mourn with them,” she says. That must have been the guard’s name. Perhaps he was kind. I like the smile lines on the side of his face. “Then, I will muster arms and prepare the tribe to fight.”
“You cannot do that!” the consul yells.
“I forsake my claim to you. I forsake your claim to me,” she speaks coldly.
Akunir looks as if he’s been stabbed. He did not see this running down the hillside? Or in the forest? Or beside the dead guard? It was decided long ago. Moons ago.
“Coll… please.”
“No,” she states simply. He moves to grab her. I block him.
“I will speak with my mate,” he says.
I can feel his breath on my chin. He ate guloo fruit recently. My nose nearly touches his forehead. He glares up at me.
I simply shake my head and shrug. I don’t need words. For this, silence is better.
His remaining two guards tense. They don’t want to dance with me. I am Rakan. They know my name. They glance nervously to Xayah holding her blades. They know her name too.
“Thank you, Xayah,” Coll says before limping away.
Akunir and his guards watch her go. Wordlessly, they set off to the south, leaving us alone.
I move close to Xayah. I feel her sadness for Jurelv, Coll, and for Akunir. I’ll drink wine tonight. Then I’ll sing rude songs.
“Promise me nothing will come between us like that, mieli,” she says.
“We’re not like them, miella. We’ll never be like them,” I reply. I can feel her worry. She’s smarter than me about so many things, but foolish about love sometimes.
“Where to now, Xayah?”
“Let’s just stay here a moment longer.”
I wrap my cloak and arms around her. I will tickle her later. We will laugh and drink. She will plan and I will sing. I feel her cheek on my chest. I’m glad that Xayah needs me now.
“Repeat it back to me,” she says.
“We are not like them,” I say again. “We are not like them.” | Support |
Rell thought about the Null often.She didn’t want to, of course. But the thoughts were intrusive and the road was long, and most of the time there wasn’t much to do besides drift back into those unhappy memories as she rode her shifting metal steed from one rumor to the next. Hours and hours of silence, and then, always, killing.This time, she was far in the outskirts of Noxian territory, following whispers of another Null child being secreted over the border.“Null.” Rell winced. Even the shape of that word hurt, and she silently swore to herself as she braced against nothing, shaking off the weight of it. Then the pain turned to anger. Then the anger turned to rage.Noxus had made the Null—and made her. And now, in their immeasurable cowardice, the Noxians couldn’t bear to look. Better to take the Null far, far away, so Noxus could go back to being glorious.Rell hated this ugly country, filled with its stupid, ugly people. She hated its bleak, strip-mined mountains, their ore gobbled up in Boram Darkwill’s foreign wars. She hated its cracked, rotten soil, used up for ration crops and then left exposed to the wind. Now the only thing that grew anywhere was the green-brown moss that seemed to cake every inch of uninhabited land, populated mostly by carnivorous lizards the size of a house.What a hideous, naïve place, she thought. So obsessed with its meritocracies, so consumed by constant expansion, that it could not and would not see what it had already become. The Black Rose and their experiments were just a symptom of its deeper sickness. Rell would tear it all down—she’d save the Null, then destroy the Empire brick by brick, even if she had to do it alone. Just like she’d ripped apart the academy.Then the boulder hit her, and for just a moment, everything was quiet.Rell had not known many of her classmates long. Most of the promising ones had been forced to fight her in “exhibition matches” to “test her strength”. She didn’t realize until much, much later that whatever shape they were in after, the instructors whisked them away, extracting their magic with essence-absorbing, stone-like sigils and leaving them Null forever.She remembered some of the kids, but the rest were a pastiche of faces punctuated by extreme pain, from the fights themselves, to the horrific, hours-long sigil grafting process that gave their power to her.The other students very quickly grew to fear her—hate her, even... and in that way, Rell was always alone.All save for one.Gabriel was a boy whose soft eyes and kind voice were not a product of Noxus, but some other far-flung locale that Rell could only scarcely imagine. He understood Rell and had an odd magic that allowed him to shape dirt into tiny fauna—the animals and birds of his homeland, dancing and playing for Rell’s amusement. Though he seemed sad to be so far from his family, the two found comfort in each other’s friendship—Gabriel spending many of his nights comforting Rell as she recovered from the academy’s abuse.It was simply a matter of time before they would face one another in combat, and while Rell seemed hopeful, Gabriel knew what was coming. Yet for a while, at least, the two could pretend.Rell awoke to the din of a warband that cautiously approached her, checking if she was dead.Unfortunately for them, she was not.Rell rose with the shattered metal plates of her steed, her titanic lance finding her hand as raw, molten ore poured upward from the ground and into the monstrous weapon. Her mount reformed, pulsating with the heat of a thousand furnaces. Raw iron contorted into shape, seizing itself into the jagged silhouette of a stallion, and Rell leapt upon its back.She counted five opponents, including a minotaur perched on a pile of large, jagged stones—probably the same kind that hit her—and then one more. A thin man in a dusty white coat clumsily tried to escape across the vast nothing of Noxian wilderness.Instructor Lukas. The man who’d brought Gabriel to the academy, and the man who took him away.Though Rell would fight anyone who stood in her path, she had a special rule for her old instructors: no questions asked, and no answers given. She wouldn’t make an exception for this one.Rell’s stallion charged forward as if it had escaped a dark, distant nightmare, and like the hammer of a scorned god, Rell’s lance slammed into the first soldier who stepped in her way. It was a weapon not made for piercing, but for crushing, and as the soldier’s eyes widened in horror, the last thing that went through his mind was his helmet.A second fighter attempted to impale Rell’s mount, but her spear snapped between its steaming plates, and Rell swatted her far into the distance—a deformed lump of scrap metal and flesh landing several yards away.Two crossbowmen, now much less confident than before, tried to beat a hasty retreat. Rell leapt into the air, her steed itself forming around her into a thick suit of impenetrable black armor, and she brought herself down upon them as the earth ripped open beneath her boundless rage.The minotaur’s rocks may have worked in a sortie, but even his great hunks of volcanic stone shattered against Rell’s armor as she slowly marched toward him. A dark knight, utterly unstoppable, who felled the great creature with a single blow.She turned her attention to her old instructor.Lukas felt the gentle pull of his former student, before chunks of superheated slag ripped him from the mossy dirt and into a whirlwind of jagged debris surrounding Rell. It was a storm of metal, heat, and hatred, and all he could whimper before the end was a panicked “Gabriel’s at the camp!” Rell crushed Lukas instantly, his broken form pounded so deeply into the ground that even the basilisks would have trouble digging out his corpse.Then the storm stopped, the slag fell away, and everything was quiet once more.True to the instructor’s last words, Gabriel was concealed in a tent within a grassy ravine where the ground had given way and created a wide, shallow indentation in the land. The perfect place to hide a camp.He was dead long before Rell found him. Malnutrition.Nullification didn’t just steal the magic of its intended victim—it sundered their soul apart, leaving a glassy-eyed husk that didn’t want anything, barely spoke, couldn’t remember, and never dreamed. A small handful had to be fed, but some Rose-aligned warbands simply chose to neglect this task out of resentment for the job.Rell looked at Gabriel... at the form wrapped in canvas who once made tiny animals leap from the ground to make her laugh when she was in pain. Digging her lance into the earth, she forced its dark metal out of her hand, then upward, then around him until his body was covered. A simple grave to mark her friend’s passing, but an indestructible one decorated with crude animals forever frozen in steel.She closed her eyes as she rode off, trying to remember Gabriel as he once was, but all Rell could see were the basilisks feasting on the dead, and her fist closing around a pale woman’s throat. | Support |
18:17
Renata Glasc’s heels click angrily against the marble floors on her way to the front door. It’s a long walk, and her annoyance grows as the bells screech out the same cloying tune a second time.
The mechanical fingers of her left hand unfurl as she reaches for the latch, twisting and snapping into the necessary shapes, embedding in the bespoke lock as its one and only key.
She throws open the ornate copper door and looks down at her visitor. “Mave.” All of Renata’s high-ranking subordinates had been informed that her priority for the evening was debuting her Decanter at the Vesella Novelty Gala.
“Ms. Glasc,” the shorter woman says with a curt nod, her prosthetic iron eyes rattling against the glass of her gel-filled goggles. “Sorry to interrupt.”
“It must be important.”
“We’ve gotten wind of a new type of breather. Not just a filtration unit. An air purifier.”
Renata’s eyes flash. “My devisers said we had nothing to worry about on that front.”
Mave shrugs—not her department.
“Who’s manufacturing it?”
“Baron Midstokke. Not sure where yet.”
She glances at her gaudy Piltovan clock. The gala begins in just under two hours, her presentation slot is at precisely 21:05, and she hasn’t even had time to pick up the Decanter from the laboratory yet… She sighs. It looks as though the gala will have to start without her.
Time to get the night back under control.
18:56
Basile, a worm of a man, grovels at Renata’s feet, dirtying her office floor with his soot-stained tears. “I’m sorry,” he chokes out, breath still rank from whatever swill he’d been drinking when she’d interrupted his visit to the Corrodyne Taproom. “I’ll get the money to you in a week. Two, at the most.”
Renata says nothing, letting Basile squirm and sob on the floor a little longer. He had come to her for a loan six months ago for his wife’s replacement leg after an accident at a machinist’s shop. Renata gave him what he asked for, and got him a well-paying factory job to boot. But after his wife died from sepsis and Basile tried to drown his sorrows at the taproom… it’s no surprise he can’t pay.
It’s what she’s counting on.
“Do you think,” she asks finally, “that I need that money? That I would even miss it?”
“I…”
“I’m not interested in money, dear Basile. Keep it.”
Basile’s eyes fill with tears of gratitude. “Thank you,” he whispers. “Ms. Glasc—”
“But.” She holds up a finger to quiet him. “There is something I need from you.”
“Anything.”
“You’re still working for Midstokke, yes? Got a nice little promotion last month?”
Basile’s face falls. Not everyone has the stomach to get between two chem-barons. He swallows hard. “I can get you your money in… in four days, Ms. Glasc.”
“No, Basile.” Renata Glasc leans down. She can see the sheen of sweat on his forehead. “You’ll get me the information I need, and you’ll get it to me within the hour.”
20:23
Elodat carefully moves aside the vials and burners, the metals and wires, the tools and masks that litter her own private workspace, and lays out the first few pages of designs. Renata watches as the deviser dons a loupe, looking closely at all of the details that make these new breathers tick. There are few she would trust with this new alchemical technology, but Elodat has proven her worth time and again since she first entered Renata’s employ at age twelve.
“These are unbelievable,” Elodat breathes reverently. “No filter system, no place for the toxins in the air to go. They just… destroy the toxins. Eliminate them completely.”
“And you understand how it works?” Renata asks. “Would you be able to replicate the results in a similar product?”
“Without question.” Elodat’s fingers twitch excitedly. “Is this my next project?”
“It is.” She pauses. “But make some part of it necessary to replace. Filters are a great way to keep money rolling in. Find our version of that for a purifier.”
Renata looks at Mave, who’s standing in the corner near the door and awaiting instructions. “We’re sure about the factory?”
Mave nods. “My scouts confirmed it. Just beneath Midstokke’s dance hall in the Promenade as Basile said.”
“Excellent. 22:30, then. That should give us both plenty of time.”
Mave turns to leave, but Renata stops her and glances at the deviser. “Elodat, the Decanter’s show-ready, yes?”
Elodat snorts as she marks up the design documents. “Of course, Ms. Renata.”
Beside the deviser’s workstation sits the Decanter prototype. A weapon. A tool. A mechanized wonder attuned only to the gestures of Renata’s left hand. All elegant lines of gold and brass, both sinuous and sharp, protective, yet delicate. Bubbling inside the contraption is the glowing magenta liquid that encompasses Renata’s entire inheritance.
Renata twirls one of her mechanical fingers in the air. In response, one of the vials attached to the Decanter fills with a pink gas. She plucks a breather from Elodat’s desk and grabs the vial, clicking it into the mask in place of a filtration unit.
“Make things easy on yourself,” she says as she tosses the mask to Mave. With a nod, Mave exits.
“Um, Ms. Renata?” The deviser looks at the floor as Renata turns back to her. “How are my parents? I haven’t seen them in… yeah.”
“They’ve just bought a house,” Renata says casually. “And I’ve found work for your brother and his fiancé at a cultivair. Your work has kept them very happy.” A pause. “You should visit them.”
Elodat’s head snaps up. “Really?”
“Absolutely.” With a beckoning gesture from Renata, the Decanter’s thrusters fire, lifting it into the air. It bobs beside her as she walks toward the door. “After the demonstration.”
21:46
“And now, finally,” the announcer says with a glare at Renata, “we have the newest product from Glasc Industries, presented by the fabulous Renata Glasc, herself! Renata, darling, please join us on the stage!”
With practiced ease, Renata steps out from behind the curtain to ravenous applause. Wealthy Piltovans, dressed to impress, fill the Vesella clan’s lavish ballroom, eager to hear about the newest novelties from their favorite Zaunite. The announcer claps politely, though his eyes roll at this level of excitement from the audience.
Renata removes her mask. Every breath she takes of the empty Piltovan air cuts her throat like glass, but still, she smiles. “A big thank you to the Vesella clan for having me! What a treat it is to spend an evening in your beautiful city.
“For many of you, ‘chemtech’ is a scary word. An ugly word. One of iron and decay. What, then, could a Zaunite have to offer Piltover? Glasc Industries has shown you time and again that chemtech doesn’t have to be ugly. And tonight, I’m going to show you that it can be beautiful.”
A flick of her wrist, and the Decanter floats across the stage past the announcer to Renata. Delighted gasps punctuate the murmur of the crowd.
So easily pleased. So hopelessly naïve.
“The Glasc Industries Decanter, a milestone in the world of healing! Alchemist and nursemaid all in one, creating medicine and administering it in the same breath.”
She’s interrupted by the announcer coughing into his sleeve. She turns to him, knowing full well that none of the chemicals in the Decanter are strictly medicinal. “Would our kind announcer be interested in helping with a demonstration?”
22:29
Renata sips her sparkling wine as yet another potential investor approaches her. Across the room, the announcer stands beside the Decanter and hands out Renata’s business cards—just as Renata had... suggested.
She peers at her pocket watch and walks toward a balcony with a phenomenal evening view of Piltover. Below, even Zaun’s promenade level is visible from here...
22:30
An explosion lights up the promenade. Right about where Baron Midstokke’s dance hall is, in fact. Or, rather, where it used to be.
But no one in the Vesella clan’s ballroom seems to care. A glance is the most any of them spare for the tragedy down in Zaun. It’s beneath them.
Except for Renata Glasc, who watches with a chuckle and takes another sip of her fine Piltovan wine. | Support |
There’s a saying on my island. “Only through stealing our breath can the wind speak.” You want me to describe the Black Mist that greeted me when I first arrived in the Ionian village, hood raised, relic cannon on my back?The Mist steals words too. The screams of those who die within.Once, they were my screams—but I’m alive now.I felt the warmth where Lucian’s hand touched my shoulder as we stepped off the boat onto Ionian soil, somehow reaching through my walls the way only he can. The way he’s the only fool stubborn enough to try.To learn the one thing that gets through my armor, and all the rules beneath, is love.“You go high, I go low?” I asked, feeling his warmth go cold as he considered. For a moment, he didn’t see me standing before him. He saw the woman he tried to save, who was cursed, always running. He saw the scythe, swinging toward her… He looked straight into her eyes, even as he looked into mine.“I go low,” he said, leaving other things to silence. And now his hands were on his guns. “Senna…” His voice broke with the weight of the memory.“It’s okay,” I said softly. I could remember that woman too.On the horizon, darkness swirled, casting even darker shadows onto a village carved into stone, deluged by heavy rain, and worse. Somewhere in that darkness was light. Another Sentinel who’d called us here.I’d have to fight my way to it.The path up the mountain to the village was nearly worn away by centuries of storms, washing away everything but the toughest crags… if that’s the right damn word. I could feel the wind pressing against my hood, the spray of the ocean hard against my skin, as if the world were pushing me back, warning me of the darkness ahead. But none of that compared to what hit me as a howl rose up, roaring through the village…It was my curse. The Mist knew I was here. It would come for me before anyone else.“Must be time for my daily ambush,” I muttered, unmoved, and from a horizon black with death, souls poured forth. Drawn to me as I drew breath.As I drew my weapon.The relic stones of fallen Sentinels moved as one, each held by too many hands before mine. Men and women, fathers, sisters, all lost to darkness. But when I held my weapon, I held their light, gleaming in the gun’s two barrels.A tendril of Mist hit me as the wraith within took shape. Staggered by the blow, I stumbled back, catching my footing just before falling toward the rocks below. Thunder pealed as the screams of souls joined the rain and crashing waves that besieged the island. But the flash of light that followed wasn’t lightning.It was my relic cannon, the shot boiling the wraith into shadow.It required control. It required focus. I needed to fight the Mist with every fiber of my being. And I could not stop. Not for a moment of my life.With every shot that burned a wraith away, another was revealed. I was so close to the village now, I could see new wraiths rising, sent spiraling toward me.Into blessed light.“Anabal, are you there?” I called out. I’d met him only once, when Urias brought me to a meeting of Sentinels. It was rare for Sentinels to gather, but something had frightened Urias that made him call them all together. He never told me what it was, but I could tell by the way the others looked at me…It hurt more when they didn’t know. When they tried to get past my armor, only to find the reason it was there.Still firing, I advanced further into the village. The wraiths moved fast, swooping into buildings nearly as old as the island itself, carved from the same stone. But there was order in the chaos. The wraiths were circling above. They wanted something. Not just life. Not just souls. Not just me…“Anabal!” I called again, barely hearing myself over the storm.“Over here! Hurry!” a panicked voice responded. It was the voice of a girl… and then her light joined mine in the darkness.Anabal’s apprentice, Daowan.She stood above a crumpled body, two figures in the dark. The light of Anabal’s relic-stone glaive glowed dully on her face, concentration clear on her brow as she defended her fallen mentor.He had managed to pass the torch, then… his relic stone was not lost.“We have to get out of here,” the girl said with a shudder. “We have to get the villagers out of here. I can still hear them. It must be them…” She paused and looked down at the shape at her feet, in confused agony. “I can still hear him…”But even as her knuckles grew white, clenching the haft of her glaive, I put my relic cannon on my back. I reached out gently and took her shoulder.“We’re going to get through this,” I said. Beyond her, I saw the entrance to the village catacombs. Swarming with wraiths. “All of us,” I added softly.Whatever the Mist wanted, it was there.The catacombs had been carved out by countless floods. As we left the village behind, heading underground, still the storm made itself known, water rolling down the walls around us. But if we were going to drown in the depths, it wouldn’t be from rising sea, or falling squall…It would be in the Black Mist that rolled like a wave to meet us, swallowing our light in a liquid roar.I could hear the screams of the people from my village, torn away when I was just a girl and first saw death. I could hear the echoes of my own, and see the look on Lucian’s face, when death first saw me. I was hit by the rage and fear of the people still dying above, their cries in a language I couldn’t understand, but speaking of pain I knew all too well.Wraiths rose up throughout the catacombs, trapped in a rictus of the agony they meant to inflict. But no matter how loud the screams of the living, the sound could never drown out their own. And no matter how brightly my light burned, it could never hurt them worse than when the darkness returned.And so instead… I embraced them, before death could.My call was irresistible. I could draw the Mist to myself, away from others. I felt death rush in, push the lie of my body away. As the Mist clung to me, one by one, it let the souls go. All who had been drawn here. All who had died above. For a moment, I thought I saw Anabal…Only one vague shape lingered, a will still slowly awakening. It hovered for a moment before turning to face me, rage burning where there were no eyes.“No,” I whispered through the shroud of death that had transformed me into a wraith. “You don’t get to speak. You listen.”Pushing the Mist into my gun, I fired all the pain and fear I’d gathered back at its source, where it was deserved. As darkness collided with darkness, the light within me glowed. Life wouldn’t let me go. I felt my body return, as the last of the Mist left me. With a gasp, I fell to my knees.“What did I miss?” a voice asked, emerging from deeper in the tunnels.“You know. The usual,” I said coolly, though I was still catching my breath.“Ruined King raiding catacombs to find who knows what?” Lucian asked.“Pretty much,” I answered. I looked up at Daowan, realization dawning on her face. Her glaive was still pointed at me.There’s a saying on my island. “Only through stealing our breath can the wind speak.”In the roaring clamor of the Black Mist, I hear the words of the dead.And I’m here to give their voices back. | Support |
It was a perfectly good night for a cup of tea. Chilly, certainly, but clear—as crisp a night as frigid Mount Targon ever got, really. Soraka was expecting a visitor. The snow in the stone kettle had already begun to melt over the hearth at the center of her little yurt; as it grew warmer, the room was suffused with the smell of dried tea leaves and sparse mountain herbs.
She crossed the room, passing the shelf she’d built herself along the back wall. Like the rest of her home, it was ever-so-slightly crooked. As far as mortal skills went, carpentry was not her strong suit. But she had built it because she loved the keepsakes on the shelf: a willow-wreath from Omikayalan, a tiny golden acorn from a dear friend in Bandle City, and oldest of all, surely older than anything mortal, was a stone dog from the old days of Nashramae. She owed that city another visit. She hadn’t been back in centuries, and she had a fondness for its people.
But she was shaken from her reverie as the commotion started outside. Shouting. Barking. Precisely on time.
In the darkness a pack of wolves surrounded a huddled lump in the snow. She strode out into the night, drawing her shoulders back, her head high. The moon was out and appeared slightly too large, as it often seemed to on Targon. Her home, nestled partway up the peak, was framed to the east by craggy flats, and to the west by a sheer drop into the mist far below. A constant frigid wind battered everything westward. It wasn’t uncommon for wild creatures to be battered on their way across the flats, too… but it was rare that they found prey.
The wolves turned to snarl at her, half-illuminated in the yellow light from the yurt’s windows. Meanwhile, the lump rolled over. It was a girl. Frightened eyes stared back at Soraka, a wooden spear clutched between two shaking hands. Only one thing brought people to this remote cliffside on the approach to the Holy Mount. But they were never this young.
The wolves lunged for Soraka in unison, and she heard the stars cry out in her defense. Sparks trickled from her fingertips as she rained golden fire down on the pack. The slam of impacts sent most of the wolves skittering back with primal fear, but one of them was left behind, its hindquarters crushed beneath the weight of the dying embers. It moaned and rasped, struggling. She saw the remainder of the pack disappearing over the icy barrens, abandoning their fellow to his fate.
Soraka shook her head and instantly knelt in the singed snow, her hands already outstretched. She couldn’t bear to feel the poor thing’s pain. It tugged at her. As she laid her hands along its bloodied back haunches, it snarled, digging its teeth into her arm. Ouch. Mortality had its drawbacks.
“Stop!” the girl cried. “It… It’ll kill you!”
Soraka felt her face melting into a smile. “I’m not afraid of wolves,” she replied, as light spread down her arms and into the wolf’s mangled body. “Besides,” she added, “Targon belongs to him as much as to me.”
The creature’s flesh began to knit back together, the crushed bones becoming whole once more, like clay taking proper shape in an artisan’s hands. But the magic burned as it left her. She closed her eyes and lost herself in the pain for a moment.
When she opened them, the wolf had retreated. Only the girl remained. Her eyes flicked upwards, tracing the line of Soraka’s horn, and Soraka already knew what she was thinking.
“Are you… one of those things?”
“One of what?”
“Demons. I’ve heard…”
Soraka laughed. But before she could respond, the girl sagged weakly, the spear tip dropping. It was only then, her mind clearing, that Soraka finally felt the enormity of the girl’s own pain. Her arms were black all the way to the elbows. Her fingers were frozen to the spear, the flesh swollen red above that. Frostbite like this… she’d be dead soon.
When she laid her hands upon the girl’s arms, the girl flinched, and Soraka was worried. Humans were curious creatures when it came to healing. Their minds were intricate. It had to be a mutual agreement—they had to want to heal. Sometimes she’d get the tendrils of her magic deep into a wound and find that the mind pushed her right back out again.
But not here. The girl was too tired, all vestiges of her energy spent getting her this far up the mountain. Soraka flooded the dead flesh with all the power she could give, pushing through the pain. Coils of emerald light wound their way up the girl’s arms. The spear dropped to the ground. As Soraka worked, she watched the skin fade through black, red and purple to its proper dusky color. There. That should do it.
“Do I seem like a demon to you?” Soraka asked. Her gold eyes glimmered in the darkness.
The girl was silent. After a moment, Soraka pressed her. “You’re making the summit climb. Why?”
But the girl just looked away, ashamed, rubbing her newly-restored arms. “My family,” she blurted, shaking her head. “We… We Rakkor—we’re warriors. And my mother, she’s the strongest of all. You don’t know what it’s like to be the only one who can’t fight. To be…” she bit her lip, struggling to find the word. “Weak.”
Soraka swept a hand out towards the dirt path the girl had followed, the one which led all the way to Targon’s base. “You came this far, and still you think yourself weak?”
“I won’t be soon,” the girl replied, her hands balling into fists now. “Not when I reach the summit. I’ll walk off the final peak and right into the sky, just like the old stories. And then—then they’ll be forced to accept that I’m strong. No one made of the stars could ever be brought low.”
“If only that were true,” Soraka said, flashing a too-sharp grin.
She scarcely caught the girl’s face breaking out into stunned amazement as she turned, walking to the edge of the path. Above them the stars spread out against the inky sky, brighter than they were anywhere else in the world. They sang songs only she could hear. This was home to her. It hadn’t always been. But it was the home she’d made.
“Come,” Soraka beckoned. And she raised her hand, trailing her fingers across the heavens. As she did, she knit the clouds and mist into shapes which wound their way against the moon and became faces the girl would no doubt have recognized from stories. A young woman with pale hair. Her counterpart, a woman whose face burned as brightly as the sun. And a warrior with a spear not unlike the girl’s own.
“All of these mortals ascended to the peak. But they had chosen that path with all their soul.” She turned to the girl and spoke slowly, taking no delight in her words. “You have not truly chosen the mountain. And Targon will not choose you. You would walk to your death. Don’t do this.”
The girl turned away. She was silent a long time.
“Where, then?” she said at last, her voice rough. “I can’t go home. I can’t go back to them. Where else would I go?”
Soraka smiled. “The world is vast. Your paths are many. I can help, if you let me.”
The images in the moon had faded.
Soraka motioned to the cheerful yellow yurt nestled among the rocks nearby. “But first, better come on inside and get warm. No sense in starting back until dawn comes. Besides, I’ve got a kettle on. Perfectly good night for a cup of tea.” | Support |
My, that’s quite the haul ye have, there! Won at the tables, was it? Well, here’s to your very good health. Cheers.
Oh, no, I’ll not be rollin’ the dice with ye. Not a gamblin’ man no more, or so I tells me self. There were a time, though... What happened? The River King happened, that’s what. Aye, Two-Coats, that old devil Tahm Kench. He’s what happened.
I was bilge-poor, beg your pardon, and livin’ in a flophouse. Had nothin’ to me name, not ‘til a single gold Krakenaye, this one ‘erecome into my possession. I could tell you how, but you’d call me a liar, heh.
So, with this one coin, what I oughta done was pay me debts, and find a new crew to join. I was a harpooner, see. Shoulda put aside whatever was left for the future. Been responsible, like. Harpoonin’s a harsh life, even for a younger man.
But that’s when the River King found me. “Why work someone else’s ship,” he says, “slavin’ away, riskin’ your life for next t’ nothin’, when ye might ‘ave a ship o’ your own?” I just had to think bigger, like. O’ course, one Kraken won’t buy a ship, but ‘e had an answer to that, didn’t he.
Dice. One good throw o’ the bones, an’ I’d ‘ave enough to start me own little operation. Others could do the danger work, while I sits back, nice and plum, enjoyin’ the profits. An’ after a few more drinks, you understand, that crooked devil’s advice starts to make a lot o’ sense to my ears. So, blinded by greed and possibility, I went along wi’ it.
That night were a blur. I awoke well after noon the next day, me head fairly poundin’! Had no idea where I wassome fancy bawdy-house, as it turns outbut on the dresser were me previous night’s winnings... more than enough to purchase me self a ship! Ah, but the River King, ‘e’d given me a taste for somethin’ more. Why should young Lars content his self with a single ship, when he could ‘ave a fleet? Just needed to chance me hand a few more times...
That’s Bilgewater. There’s riches to be had, if you’re willin’ to risk everything, over and over.
With old Two-Coat’s arm around me, I was led from the dice tables to other halls of avaricefrom backroom card games to gamblin’ and bettin’ parlors, high and low. I spent a fortune, lost a fortune, then made it all back again. Around and around in that allurin’ spiral I went. I was feelin’ the hunger, the yearning, and it was pullin’ me down like a whirlpool.
Years passed, an’ somewhere along the way, I’m ashamed to say I forgot what I was doing all this for. I forgot who I was. I had it all, but it never were enough. I wanted more.
And then I started losin’ big. That made me double-down, go for broke, all-or-nothin’, looking for the big stakes to put me back on top. Pretty soon, I was in a worse state than I’d been to start with. Sleepin’ in the gutter, catching rats to eat if I were lucky. I begged, borrowed and stole from everyone who’d ever shown me any kindness. Lost all me mates, chasing the dream.
‘E feeds on misery, see, does Tahm Kench. As old as sin, ‘e is, and older than Bilgewater by far. Been ‘round from the start of things, gorgin’ his self on the desperation what comes with the greed and sorrow in men’s hearts. I mean, I’d done it to me self, but it were him what give me the means. Ye might say, ‘e took me to the cliff’s edge, but I were the numpty what threw me self off, beg your pardon, and that old glutton revelled in me despair.
Came to me once more, ‘e did, when I was at me very lowest, drinkin’ from puddles, havin’ sold me own leg to be used for chum. In the darkest night, whisperin’ an’ cajolin’, ‘e pressed this gold Kraken back into me hand, with a knowin’ wink.
‘Twere the same one I’d ‘ad back at the start! It were this damn coin what started me on that wretched path! Eh, ‘e opened his mouth up wide, and says, “It’s not too late, Lars. Never too late. Come with me, an’ we’ll find you a fortune again...”
Even after everythin’, I was tempted. ‘Course I was! But no. I resistedMother Serpent knows how. Two-Coats only laughed. Said he’d be there when I changed me mind.
And, sure enough, the temptation’s still there, now, every day.
So here I am. Friendless. Broke. All the best years of me life behind me, wasted in those lost decades. Can’t remember most of it, neither, so I’ve no idea if I even enjoyed me self.
Anyways. Enough o’ my ramblin’. There’s a lesson to be learned, ‘erekeep your purse strings tight, and never, ever make a deal wi’ the River King. Ye’ve always got more to lose... | Support |
I look out across the once-verdant field, now scarred and ruined by the toil of battle.
The loss of life will be immense, but I cannot save those who seek their own destruction. All those sons, all those fathers, all those futures lost. Demacians and Noxians, ever at each other’s throats, magnetically drawn to one another by something lesser than both.
Plenty of defenders exist for their lofty ideals, and they all stand in my way, almost gleefully slaughtering themselves over a scrap of land, with no idea of its true importance. Two armies entwined, both committed to their ruinous dance.
I could try to reason with them, ask them to move their brawl elsewhere, but my former countrymen now see me as something between a traitor and a wrathful god, and the Noxians… well, the Noxians have always been short on patience.
My usual weapons—wit, charm, and warmth—are useless in this cauldron of desperation. So I push aside those who would slow me, and wade into those who would stop me. Every kind of horror one soul can inflict on another rages around me as I near my goal.
And there, dead center of the roiling fury of battle, the blaze of color calls to me—a delicate life about to be snuffed out amid the mud- and gore-covered boots. Standing bravely, unbowed by the thudding dullness of the armored brutes around it, its beauty rings out like a single crystal bell. It is the last flower of its kind. If it dies, no more shall bloom. I can not allow it to perish.
The two opposing commanders pause in their combat as I approach, an uninvited guest at their last moments. They turn to me, suddenly allied in their outrage at my intrusion.
I stand at the very eye of the two armies, seemingly inviting the cold embrace of death from all sides. But unlike all those who are now taking wary steps toward me, their sword hands trembling, I know why I fight. | Support |
My yordle Norra snores into the pages of my friend, Book. My tail twitches as dozens of moon-moths sail in through the open window like floating lanterns, and I leap joyfully into the air, not caring if I catch one. I bounce higher and higher, batting at the moon-moths as they drift all around me.
One of them bends and turns inside itself, lashing about until it twists into the shape of a mackerel. Around me, the other moon-moths spin in mid-air, all transforming into floating fish. Delicious—until the whole world turns upside down. Books cascade up from the shelves, landing on the ceiling with a dozen thuds. My Norra floats upward, still asleep. The fish flounder in every direction as we all fall up, up, up—
I wake up, blinking sleepily in a wooden box as moonlight shines through the slats. How in a mouse’s house did I get here? Oh yes. The tasty stink of fish fills my nose and I remember prowling the streets of Bilgewater, finding a crate of dried fish, then eating my fill before falling into a deep, belly-full sleep.
Before I can get comfy again, my stomach lurches and I’m knocked onto my side. Dozens of dried fish fall on top of me—just like my dream!—and my stomach purrs.
Book flutters in the corner as it tries to edge away from the falling fish. It’s always hinting that food is bad for its pages. I think dried-up-trees would be much improved with the smell of fish, but Book knows much more about dried-up-trees than I do, so I don’t argue.
I peek through the cracks between the slats. The floor beneath us creaks and shifts while, in the distance, moonlight flickers on the surface of the… ocean!
“Book, whyyy?!” I cry. “Naps never lead to bad things!”
Book opens and closes in exasperation. I don’t do water, and neither does Book.
I start to panic. Book rustles, reminding me not to worry—but it’s too late. I scratch and scramble at the wood in desperation, and I shred some of the dried fish by accident. This ocean is making me destroy my yummiest snack—it’s the worst type of water! I paw at Book’s cover, opening it to a frost-tinged portal that will take us far away from this watery nightmare. We have to escape somewhere, anywhere. Even somewhere cold.
I’m about to jump into Book’s portal when I hear a scream that sounds like tinkling bells and the brightest rainbows. A scream that makes my fur stand on end. A yordle scream.
I peek through the slats in the crate and watch as two human sailors drag a blue-furred yordle to the edge of the bustling ship’s deck. One of them has black chin-whiskers and the other is chubby, and both are smirking. They step over roped stacks of harpoons, fishing poles, spears, and coils of thick fishing wire. Must be deep-sea monster hunters.
“This little ’un is gonna fetch us a prize gulperfish, eh?” the first sailor says.
“I hear the biggest fish love yordle meat,” says the chubbier sailor. “Never tried it before, myself. Not a lot of yordles ’round Bilgewater.”
The blue-furred yordle squeals and struggles against them. “I’m not bait!” he exclaims, squeaking with each word. “I beg you, please release me!” The sailors don’t budge.
The whole ship tilts as a particularly large bump shakes my crate. “Ah, that’ll be the fish now. Time to fill our boat with gulperflesh!” says the first sailor, grinning. I don’t like his grin.
An enormous fin circles our boat, making lion-sized waves that bash the side of our ship. I feel Book tugging at me. I know it wants us to escape through a portal, to get away from the bad water right now before anyone sees us, but I hear the yordle cry out. I stick my paw through the slats in the crate and open the crate’s latch. I won’t leave a yordle alone to die. Not after losing my Norra.
The sailors watch the fin thrash around in the water. They don’t notice me as I leap from my crate like the quietest tiger and stalk them from behind.
The poor yordle is tied to a long fishing pole, which the sailors are dangling over the ocean. The water beneath him is bubbling and frothing. How does water always move in the worst ways?! I jump over the pile of harpoons and Book follows, flying next to me and nervously flapping its pages as it hovers in the air. They see us.
“Is that a purple raccoon—with a flying book?” one of the sailors asks.
“I think it’s a baby bear with a journal,” says another.
“No, you idiots, it’s just a cat,” says a third. “Get it!”
The sailors rush at me, but I dart swiftly between their feet. I unfurl a coil of magic that twists and tangles around their legs. They trip and topple like cups on a table.
I perch on the ship’s railing next to the fishing pole, unsure what to do next. The waves swirl below us, and my hunting instincts kick in—something’s gonna pounce.
“Untie me!” shouts the yordle as he clings to the fishing rod. “I am not a piece of bait. This is quite strange and embarrassing!”
Luckily for him, I am not afraid of fish. Even if I don’t like water.
I bound onto the fishing pole. In the midst of a cat’s leap, sometimes time slows. With my paws splayed out like pancakes and wind rushing through my fur over the terrible water, I am determined to save this yordle with everything I’ve got. Besides, mid-leap, there’s no going back.
“Don’t worry, small blue yordle!” I shout. “I got you!”
The yordle’s fate and mine intertwine as I land on its shoulder, with Book right behind.
The fishing pole wobbles under our weight. The biggest fish I’ve ever seen—a third the size of the boat—bursts from the sea with its mouth gaping open, hundreds of teeth glistening in the moonlight. Its jaws open so wide it could swallow a pair of cows, without even chewing them up. Even in the dark, with my shinylight I can see its skin is made up of pointed razor-sharp scales of silver and violet.
The giant gulperfish swallows us whole—the yordle, Book, me, and even a bit of the fishing pole, with room to spare.
We jostle against the roof of the fish’s mouth as it falls back into the water. It’s pitch-black, and smells like old seafood! Before it can gulp us down, though, I balloon open a magical shield that bubbles around us, lodging us in the fish’s leathery gullet. I blink on my shinylight again, illuminating some seriously rotten teeth that explain the awful smell. The yordle squeals at the sight. The fish lashes about, and the three of us are thrown in every direction, protected by the impermeable bubble.
What a strange way to make new friends!
I try to open Book so the three of us can escape, but the gulperfish leaps into the air once more, and we are tossed into a heap inside the bubble. We fall with a thud—the fish must have landed on the ship’s deck. I hear the sailors shouting as the enormous gulper thrashes back and forth, slapping them with its tail.
I hear a splash, and another, and another. The humans must have been knocked into the water. Still stuck in the throat of the gulperfish, I flip Book open to a portal that shimmers with the dusky green of Bandle City, the green of home.
I grab the small yordle’s shirt with my teeth and dive into the page. The portal widens and we spin into the spirit realm, dizzy and whirling into a jumble of colors.
We emerge, coughing, on the banks of a shallow creek. My lungs fill with the sweet air of Bandle City, thick and lush as in my dream. Sapphire-blue crickets chirp in the twilight as the brook babbles gently, full of fish—normal-sized fish.
Book flaps its pages to dry off. The blue-furred yordle stands up, dripping and shaking. “What was that? How did we… escape?” he asks. “Wasn’t the nearest Bilgewater portal back on the docks?”
“Lucky for us, Book carries our portals around wherever we go,” I say. Book twirls, showing off its dried-up-tree pages, each inscribed with a magical gateway outlined in ink and paint.
“Well, thank you for saving me, both of you,” says the yordle. He looks at Book curiously. “Is this where you’re from, too?”
“Yes, but we don’t live here anymore,” I say. I look at Book, sadly, thinking of master.
Book flutters. I know it thinks it’s time to move on.
“You know how to get home from here?” I ask the yordle.
“Yes, yes, just up the hill past the bowl-moles. I know this meadow well. And I do hope you find your yordle,” he says, before wandering off.
I stay for a moment, watching as the gloaming turns to daybreak. I catch a glimpse of a moon-moth hovering on the horizon and I long to pounce on it, but I remember that Norra is still lost somewhere, perhaps waiting for us to rescue her this very minute.
I pat Book as gently as I can with my paw—I know it misses her too.
Then I open it to a new page, and dive in. | Support |
My name is Axamuk Var-Choi Kohari Icath’or.
Axamuk was my grandsire’s name. A warrior’s name, it means keeper of edges, and it is an auspicious title to bear. Axamuk was the last of the Mage Kings, the final ruler to fall before the Shuriman Sun Empress when she led her golden host of men and gods into the kingdom of Icathia.
Var is my mother and Choi my father. Icath’or is the name of the blood-bonded clan to which I was born, one with an honorable history of service to the Mage Kings.
I have borne these names since birth.
My name is Axamuk Var-Choi Kohari Icath’or.
Only Kohari is a new addition. The fit is new, but already feels natural. The name is now part of me, and I bear it with a pride that burns bright in my heart. The Kohari were once the life-wards of the Mage Kings, deadly warriors who dedicated their lives to the service of their master. When Axamuk the King fell before the god-warriors of the Sun Empress and Icathia became a vassal state of Shurima, every one of them fell upon their swords.
But the Kohari are reborn, rising to serve the new Mage King and reclaim their honor. I bear their sigil branded on my arm, the scroll-wrapped sword.
My name is Axamuk Var-Choi Kohari Icath’or. I repeat it over and over, holding onto what it represents.
I do not want to forget it. It is all I have left.
Was it only this morning I and the rest of the reformed Kohari marched through the streets of Icathia? It seems like a lifetime ago.
The wide thoroughfares were thronged with thousands of cheering men, women and children. Clad in their brightest cloth, and wearing their finest jewelry to honor our march, they had come to witness the rebirth of their kingdom.
For it was Icathia that was reborn today, not just the Kohari. Our heads were high, my chest swollen with pride.
We marched in step, gripping the leather straps of wicker shields and the wire-wound hilts of our curved nimcha blades. To bear Icathian armaments had been forbidden under Shuriman law, but enough had been wrought in secret forges and hidden in caches throughout the city, in readiness for the day of uprising.
I remember that day well.
The city had been filled with screams, as baying crowds chased down and murdered every Shuriman official they could find. Resentment for centuries of humiliating laws intended to eradicate our culture—and brutal executions for breaking those laws—came to a head in one blood-filled day of violence. It didn’t matter that most of these people were merely scriveners, merchants and tithe-takers. They were servants of the hated Sun-Emperor, and needed to die.
Overnight, Icathia was ours again!
Sun disc effigies were pulled from rooftops and smashed by cheering crowds. Shuriman scriptwork was burned and their treasuries looted. The statues of dead emperors were desecrated, and even I defaced one of the great frescoes with obscenities that would have made my mother blush.
I remember the smell of smoke and fire. It was the smell of freedom.
I held to that feeling as we marched.
My memory recalled the smiling faces and the cheers, but I could not pick out any words. The sunlight was too bright, the noise too intense, and the pounding in my head unrelenting.
I had not slept the previous night, too nervous at the prospect of battle. My skill with the nimcha was average, but I was deadly with the recurved serpent bow slung at my shoulder. Its wood was well-seasoned, protected from the humidity by a coat of red lacquer. My arrows were fletched with azure raptor feathers, and I had carved their piercing heads from razored obsidian sourced from the thaumaturges—the magickers of earth and rock. Long runs through Icathia’s lush, coastal forests and along its high mountain trails had given me powerful, clean limbs to draw the bowstring, and the stamina to fight all day.
A young girl, her hair braided with silver wire, and with the deepest green eyes I had ever seen, placed a garland of flowers over my head. The scent of the blossoms was intoxicating, but I forgot it all as she pulled me close to kiss my lips. She wore a necklace, an opal set in a swirling loop of gold, and I smiled as I recognized my father’s craft.
I tried to hold on to her, but our march carried me away. Instead, I fixed her face in my mind.
I cannot remember it now, only her eyes, deep green like the forests of my youth…
Soon, even that will be gone.
“Easy, Axa,” said Saijax Cail-Rynx Kohari Icath’un, popping a freshly shelled egg into his mouth. “She’ll be waiting for you when this day is done.”
“Aye,” said Colgrim Avel-Essa Kohari Icath’un, jabbing his elbow into my side. “Him and twenty other strapping young lads.”
I blushed at Colgrim’s words, and he laughed.
“Craft her a fine necklace from Shuriman gold,” he continued. “Then she’ll be yours forever. Or at least until morning!”
I should have said something to berate Colgrim for slighting this girl’s honor, but I was young and eager to prove myself to these veteran warriors. Saijax was the beating heart of the Kohari, a shaven-headed giant with skin pockmarked by the ravages of a childhood illness, and a forked beard stiffened to points with wax and white chalk. Colgrim was his right hand, a brute with cold eyes and a betrothal tattoo, though I had never heard him talk of his wife. These men had grown up together, and had learned the secret ways of the warrior since they were old enough to hold a blade.
But I was new to this life. My father had trained me as a lapidary—an artisan of gemstones and maker of jewelry. A meticulous and fastidious man, such coarse language was anathema to him, and unfamiliar to me. I relished it, of course, eager to fit in with these leather-tough men.
“Go easy on the lad, Colgrim,” said Saijax, slapping my back with one of his massive hands. Meant as a brotherly pat, it rattled the teeth in my skull, but I welcomed it all the same. “He’ll be a hero by nightfall.”
He shifted the long, axe-headed polearm slung at his shoulder. The weapon was immense, its ebony haft carved with the names of his forebears, and the blade a slab of razor-edged bronze. Few of our group could even lift it, let along swing it, but Saijax was a master of weapons.
I turned to catch a last glimpse of my green-eyed girl, but could not see her amid the tightly packed ranks of soldiers, and the waving arms of the crowds.
“Time to focus, Axa,” said Saijax. “The scryers say the Shurimans are less than half a day’s march from Icathia.”
“Are… Are the god-warriors with them?” I asked.
“So they say, lad. So they say.”
“Is it wrong that I can’t wait to see them?”
Saijax shook his head. “No, for they are mighty. But as soon as you do, you’ll wish you hadn’t.”
I did not understand Saijax’s meaning, and said, “Why?”
He gave me a sidelong glance. “Because they are monsters.”
“Have you seen one?”
I was filled with youthful enthusiasm, but I still remember the look that passed between Saijax and Colgrim.
“I have, Axa,” said Saijax. “We fought one at Bai-Zhek.”
“We had to topple half the mountain to put the big bastard down,” Colgrim added. “And even then, only Saijax had a weapon big enough to take its head off.”
I remembered the tale with a thrill of excitement. “That was you?”
Saijax nodded, but said nothing, and I knew to ask no more. The corpse had been paraded around the newly liberated city for all to see, proof that the Shuriman’s god-warriors could still die. My father had not wanted me to see it, fearing it would enflame the desire to rebel that had smoldered in every Icathian heart for centuries.
The memory of exactly what it looked like is gone now, but I remember it was enormous beyond belief, inhuman and terrible…
I would see the god-warriors later that day.
And then I understood Saijax’s meaning.
We formed up on the gentle slopes before the crumbling remains of the city walls. Since the coming of the Sun Empress, over a thousand years ago, we had been forbidden to reclaim the stone or rebuild the wall; forced to leave the rubble as a reminder of our ancient defeat.
But now an army of stonewrights, laborers and thaumaturges were hefting giant blocks of freshly hewn granite into place with windlass mechanisms that crackled with magic.
I felt pride at the sight of the rising walls. Icathia was being reborn in glory right before my eyes.
More immediately impressive was the army taking position athwart the hard-packed earthen road leading into the city. Ten thousand men and women, clad in armor of boiled leather and armed with axes, picks, and spears. The forges had worked day and night to produce swords, shields and arrowheads in the days following the uprising, but there was only so much that could be produced before the Sun Emperor turned his gaze upon this rebellious satrapy and marched east.
I had seen pictures of ancient Icathian armies in the forbidden texts—brave warriors arrayed in serried ranks of gold and silver—and though we were a shadow of such forces, we were no less proud. Two thousand talon-riders were deployed on either flank, their scaled and feathered mounts snorting, and stamping clawed hooves with impatience. A thousand archers knelt in two long lines, fifty feet ahead of us, blue-fletched shafts planted in the soft loam before them.
Three blocks of deep-ranked infantry formed the bulk of our line, a bulwark of courage to repel our ancient oppressors.
All down our line, crackling energies from the earth-craft of our mages made the air blurry. The Shurimans would surely bring mages, but we could counter their power with magic of our own.
“I’ve never seen so many warriors,” I said.
Colgrim shrugged. “None of us have, not in our lifetimes.”
“Don’t get too impressed,” said Saijax. “The Sun Emperor has five armies, and even the least of them will outnumber us three to one.”
I tried to imagine such a force, and failed. “How do we defeat such a host?” I asked.
Saijax did not answer me, but led the Kohari to our place in the line before a stepped structure of granite blocks. Shuriman corpses were impaled upon wooden stakes driven into the earth at its base, and flocks of carrion birds circled overhead. A silken pavilion of crimson and indigo had been raised at its summit, but I could not see what lay within. Robed priests surrounded it, each one weaving intricate patterns in the air with their star-metal staves.
I did not know what they were doing, but I heard an insistent buzzing sound, like a hive of insects trying to push their way into my skull.
The pavilion’s outline rippled like a desert mirage, and I had to look away as my eyes began to water. My teeth felt loose in their gums, and my mouth filled with the taste of soured milk. I gagged and wiped the back of my hand across my lips, surprised and not a little alarmed to see a smear of blood there.
“What is that?” I asked. “What’s in there?”
Saijax shrugged. “A new weapon, I heard. Something the thaumaturges found deep underground, after the earthquake at Saabera.”
“What kind of weapon?”
“Does it matter?” said Colgrim. “They say it’s going to wipe the gold-armored dung-eaters from the world. Even those thrice-damned god-warriors.”
The sun was close to its zenith by now, but a shiver worked its way down my spine. My mouth was suddenly dry. I could feel tingling in my fingertips.
Was it fear? Perhaps.
Or, maybe, just maybe, it was a premonition of what was to come.
An hour later, the Shuriman army arrived.
I had never seen such a host, nor ever imagined so many men could be gathered together in one place. Columns of dust created clouds that rose like a gathering storm set to sweep the mortal realm away.
And then, through the dust, I saw the bronze spears of the Shuriman warriors, filling my sight in all directions. They marched forward, a vast line of fighting men with golden banners and sun-disc totems glimmering in the noonday sun.
From the slopes above, we watched wave after wave come into sight, tens of thousands of men who had never known defeat, and whose ancestors had conquered the known world. Riders on golden mounts rode the flanks, as hundreds of floating chariots roved ahead of the army. Heavy wagons the size of river barques bore strange war-machines that resembled navigational astrolabes; spinning globes orbited by flaming spheres and crackling lightning. Robed priests came with them, each with a flame-topped staff and an entourage of blinded slaves.
At the heart of the army were the god-warriors.
Much else fades from my mind; the blood, the horror and the fear. But the sight of the god-warriors will follow me into whatever lies beyond this moment…
I saw nine of them, towering over the men they led. Their features and bodies were an awful blend of human and animal, and things that had never walked this world, and never should. Armored in bronze and jade, they were titans, inhuman monsters that defied belief.
Their leader, with skin as pale and smooth as ivory, turned her monstrous head towards us. Enclosed in a golden helm carved to resemble a roaring lion, her face was mercifully hidden, but I could feel her power as she swept her scornful gaze across our line.
A palpable wave of terror followed in its wake.
Our army shrank from the scale of the enemy force, on the brink of fleeing before even a single blow was struck. Steadying shouts arose from our brave leaders, and an immediate rout was halted, but even I could hear the fear in their voices.
I, too, felt an almost uncontrollable urge to void my bladder, but clamped down on the feeling. I was Kohari. I wouldn’t piss myself in my first battle.
Even so, my hands were clammy and I felt a sickening knot forming in my gut.
I wanted to run. I needed to run.
We could not possibly stand against such a force.
“Big bastards, aren’t they?” said Colgrim, and nervous laughter rippled through our ranks. My fear lessened.
“They may look like gods,” said Saijax, his voice carrying far and wide. “But they are mortal. They can bleed, and they can die.”
I took strength from his words, but I wonder now if he knew just how wrong he was.
“We are Icathians!” he roared. “We are the heirs of the kings and queens who first settled this land! It is ours by right and by birth. Aye, we are outnumbered, but the warriors our enemies have sent are slaves, and men whose only loyalty is to coin.”
He raised his weapon high and the sunlight shone from its polished blade. He was glorious in that moment, and I would have followed him to the very end of the world if he asked me to.
“We fight to live in freedom, not in slavery! This is our home, and it is a land of proud people, of free people! There is nothing stronger than that, and we will prevail!”
A cheer began in the Kohari ranks, and was swiftly carried to the other regiments in our army.
“I-ca-thi-a!I-ca-thi-a!I-ca-thi-a!”
It echoed from the rising walls of our city, and was carried to the Shuriman host. The god-warriors spoke swiftly to their attendants, who turned and ran to bear their orders to the wings of the army. Almost immediately, our enemy began to move uphill.
They came slowly, their pace deliberate. On every third step, the warriors hammered the hafts of their spears on their shields. The noise was profoundly unnerving, a slow drumbeat that sapped the will of we who were soon to feel the tips of those blades.
My mouth was dry, my heart hammered in my chest. I looked to Saijax for strength, to take courage from his indomitable presence. His jaw was set, his eyes hard. This was a soul who knew no fear, who rejected doubt and stood firm in the face of destiny.
Sensing my gaze, he glanced down at me. “Egg?” he said.
A pair of peeled eggs lay in the palm of his hand.
I shook my head. I couldn’t eat. Not now.
“I’ll take an egg,” said Colgrim, taking one and biting it in half. Saijax ate the other, and the pair of them chewed thoughtfully.
The Shurimans drew ever closer.
“Good egg,” noted Colgrim.
“I add a dash of vinegar as I boil them,” Saijax replied. “Makes them easier to peel.”
“Clever.”
“Thanks.”
I looked back and forth between them, unable to reconcile the mundane nature of their words as an all-conquering army marched upon us. And yet, I felt soothed by it.
I laughed, and that laughter swiftly spread.
The Kohari were laughing, and soon, without knowing why, our entire army was laughing. The fear that had threatened to undo us all now fled. Fresh resolve filled our hearts, and put iron in our sword arms.
The Shurimans halted two hundred yards from us. I tasted a strange texture to the air, like biting on tin. I looked up in time to see the spinning globes on the war-machines burn with searing light. The priests attending them swept their staves down.
One of the flaming spheres detached from the globe and arced through the air towards us.
It landed in the midst of our infantry, and burst in an explosion of pellucid green fire and screams. Another sphere followed, then another.
I gagged as the smell of roasting flesh billowed from the ranks, horrified at the carnage being wrought, but our warriors held firm.
More of the spheres arced towards us, but instead of striking our ranks, they wobbled in the air before reversing course to smash down in the heart of the Shuriman spearmen.
Amazed, I saw our thaumaturges holding their staves aloft, and crackling lines of magic flickered between them. The hairs on my arms and legs stood up in the shimmering air, as if a veil was being drawn up around us.
More of the searing fireballs launched from the Shuriman war-machines, but they exploded in mid-air, striking the invisible barrier woven around our force.
Cheers overcame the cries of pain in our ranks. I let out a breath, thankful that I had not been among the war-machines’ targets. I watched those piteously wounded men dragged to the rear by their comrades. The temptation to remain there must have been tremendous, but we Icathians descend from explorer kings, and not a single warrior failed to return to their place in the battle line.
The strain on our mages was clear, but their power was holding the Shuriman barrage at bay. I glanced over my shoulder to the pavilion atop the pyramid. There too, the priests were straining with all their power. To what end, I could not imagine. What manner of weapon lay within, and when would we unleash it?
“Stand to,” said Saijax, and I returned my attention to the army before us. “They’ll come at us now. A big wave to test us.”
I looked back at the Shurimans, who now came at us in a run. Arrows flashed from the lines of archers ranged before us, and scores of enemy warriors died. Bronzed plate and shields saved some, but the range was so close that many fell with shafts punched clean through their breastplates.
Another volley hammered the Shurimans, swiftly followed by another.
Hundreds were down. Their line was ragged and disorganized.
“Now!” roared Saijax. “Into them!”
Our infantry surged forward in a wedge, spears lowering as they charged. I was carried by the mass of men behind me, managing to drag my blade from its sheath as I ran. I screamed to keep my fear at bay, worrying that I might trip on my scabbard.
I saw the faces of the Shurimans, the braids in their hair, the gold of their crests, and the blood smearing their tunics. We were so close, I could have whispered and they might have heard me.
We struck their wavering ranks like a thunderbolt. Spears thrust and shivered, hafts splintering with the impact. Driven by sheer will and a thousand years of pent-up anger, the momentum of our charge clove deep into their ranks, splitting them and breaking their formation completely.
Anger gave me strength, and I swung my sword. It bit into flesh and blood sprayed me.
I heard screaming. It might have been me. I cannot say for sure.
I tried to stay close to Saijax and Colgrim, knowing that where they fought, Shurimans would be dying. I saw Saijax felling men by the dozen with his huge polearm, but could no longer see Colgrim. I soon lost sight of Saijax in the heave and sway of surging warriors.
I called his name, but my shout was drowned in the roar of battle.
Bodies slammed into me, pulling at me, clawing my face—Icathian hands or Shuriman, I had no idea.
A spear stabbed towards my heart, but the tip slid from my breastplate to slice across my arm. I remember pain, but little else. I hammered my sword into a screaming man’s face. He fell, and I pushed on, made fearless by fear and savage joy. I roared, and swung my sword like a madman.
Skill was meaningless. I was a butcher hacking meat.
I saw men die whose skill was much greater than mine. I kept moving, lost in the swirling tide of flesh and bone. Wherever I saw an exposed neck or back, I struck. I took grim pleasure in my killing. Whatever the outcome of this day, I could hold my head high in the company of warriors. More arrows flew overhead, and the cheers rising from our army were songs of freedom.
And then the Shurimans broke.
It began as a single slave warrior turning his back and running, but his panic spread like fire on the plain, and soon the whole formation was streaming back down the hill.
In the days leading up to this moment, Saijax had told me that the most dangerous moment for any warrior is when a regiment breaks. That is when the killing truly begins.
We tore through the routed Shurimans, spears plunging into exposed backs, and axes splitting skulls. They were no longer fighting back, simply trampling one another to escape. The bloodshed was appalling, yet I reveled in it as hundreds of bodies were crushed in the slaughter.
I saw Saijax again, then, standing firm, his polearm at his side. “Hold!” he yelled. “Hold!”
I wanted to curse his timidity. Our blood was up, and the Shurimans were fleeing in panic.
I did not know it at the time, but Saijax had seen how dangerous our position truly was.
“Pull back!” he shouted, and the cry was taken up by others who saw what he had seen.
At first, it seemed our army would not heed his words, drunk on victory and eager to plunge onward. We were intent on slaying every one of the enemy, wreaking vengeance upon soldiers who had held our land hostage for centuries.
I had not seen the danger, but all too soon I understood.
Screams and fountains of blood sheeted from the leading edges of our battle-line. Severed heads flew backwards, spinning like rocks skipped over a pool. Bodies soon followed, tossed aside without effort.
Screams and cries of terror erupted, and the songs of freedom were snuffed out.
The god-warriors had entered the fray.
Three of them surged into our ranks; some moving like men, others like ravenous beasts. Each was armed with a weapon larger than any man could lift, unstoppable and invincible. They waded through our ranks with sweeping blows that slew a dozen men with every swing. Icathians flew in pieces from their crackling blades, were crushed beneath their tread, or were rent asunder like bloodied rags.
“Back!” shouted Saijax. “Back to the walls!”
None could pierce the god-warriors’ armor, and their ferocity was so primal, so inhuman, that it froze me to the spot. Spears snapped against their iron-hard hides, and their bellowing roars cut me to the marrow with terror. One, a cawing beast with ragged, feathered wings and a vulture-like beak, leapt into the air, and searing blue fire blazed from its outstretched claws. I cried out at the sight of my fellow countrymen burned to ash.
The elation that had—only moments before—filled us with thoughts of victory and glory, now shattered like a fallen glass. In its place, I felt a sick horror of torments yet to come, the retribution of an unimaginably cruel despot who knows no mercy.
I felt a hand grab my shoulder, and lifted my bloodied blade.
“Move, Axa,” said Saijax, forcing me back. “There’s still fighting to be done!”
I was dragged along by the force of his grip, barely able to keep my feet. I wept as we streamed back to where we had first formed up. Our line was broken, and surely the day was lost.
But the god-warriors simply stood among the dead, not even bothering to pursue.
“You said we had a weapon,” I cried. “Why aren’t they doing anything?”
“They are,” said Saijax. “Look!”
What happened next defies my understanding. No mortal eye had ever seen such a thing.
The pavilion exploded with forking traceries of light. Arcing loops of purple energy ripped into the sky and lashed down like crashing waves. The force of the blast threw everyone to the ground. I covered my ears as a deafening screaming tore the air.
I pressed myself to the battle-churned earth as the wail burrowed deep into my skull, as though the world itself were shrieking in horror. I rolled onto my side, retching as stabbing nausea ripped through my belly. The sky, once bright and blue, was now the color of a week-old bruise. Unnatural twilight held sway, and I saw flickering afterimages burn themselves onto the back of my mind.
Slashing claws... Gaping maws... All-seeing eyes...
I sobbed in terror at the sight of such horrors.
Alone of all the things being stripped from me, this I gladly surrender.
A nightmarish light, sickly blue and ugly purple, smothered the world, pressing down from above and blooming up from somewhere far below. I pushed myself upright, turning in a slow circle as the world ended around me.
The Shurimans were streaming back from the city, terrified by whatever force our priests had unleashed. My enemies were being destroyed, and I knew I should be triumphal, but this... This was not a victory any sane person could revel in.
This was extinction.
An abyss that bled purple light tore open amid the Shurimans, and I saw their ivory-skinned general overcome by whipping cords of matter. She fought to free herself with wild sweeps of her blade, but the power we had unleashed was too much for her. The pulsing, glowing light spread over her body like a hideous cocoon.
Everywhere I looked, I saw the same slick coils rising from the earth, or from the very air itself, to seize the flesh of mortals. Men and women were swept up and enveloped. I saw one Shuriman clawing his way over the earth, his body seeming to dissolve as the tendrils of foul energy overwhelmed him.
I began to hope, to pray, that this doom was what had been planned all along.
I saw shapes in the flickering light, too fast and indistinct to make out clearly. Stretching, swelling limbs of strange, tar-like matter. Men were clawed from their feet and pulled apart. I heard the gurgling, hooting bellows of things never meant to walk the surface of this world.
As awful as this day had become, I wondered if this was the price of the great weapon our priests had unleashed. I hardened my heart to the suffering of the Shurimans and remembered the centuries of misery they had heaped upon us.
Once again, I had lost sight of Saijax and Colgrim. But I no longer needed their presence to steady me. I had proved myself worthy of my grandsire’s name, worthy of the brand on my arm.
I was Kohari!
The sky groaned and buckled, sounding like a vast sailcloth tearing in a storm. I turned and ran back to the city, joining up with other soldiers. I saw the same desperate, horrified looks on their faces I knew must be upon mine.
Had we won? None of us knew. The Shurimans were gone, swallowed whole by the terror we had unleashed upon the world. I felt no regret. No remorse. My horror had given way to justification.
I had lost my nimcha blade somewhere in the frenzy of the battle, so I took my bow from my shoulder and pumped it to the sky. “Icathia!” I yelled. “Icathia!”
The chant was taken up again by the soldiers around me, and we stopped to watch the enemy finally overcome. The seething mass of matter that had consumed them lay like a shroud over the flesh it had consumed. Its surface was undulant, and swelling blisters of glistening matter burst open with frothing birth-sacs that twisted and unfolded like newborn animals.
I turned as I heard a deafening grinding of rock.
Booming cracks echoed as more and more chasms tore the landscape open. I dropped to my knees as the earth shook, and the walls of Icathia, fallen once and now rising again, were shattered by a groaning bass note that split the earth.
Geysers of dust and smoke erupted from within the city. I saw men screaming, but could not hear them over the crash of falling rock and splitting earth. Towers and palaces that had stood since the first Mage King planted his star-metal staff were swallowed whole by the ever-widening chasms. Only rubble and shattered fragments remained, my beloved city reduced to a charred skeleton.
Fires spat skyward, and the wails of my people were somehow magnified by the canyons of the city as they fell into the hideous doom below.
“Icathia!” I cried one last time.
I saw a flash of movement, and flinched as something flew through the air above me. I recognized the vulture-headed god-warrior from earlier in the battle. Its flight was erratic, its limbs already partially ruined and unmade by the strange matter spilling from the rents in the earth.
It flew towards the pavilion with desperate beats of its ravaged wings, and I knew I had to stop it. I ran towards the towering creature, nocking an obsidian-tipped arrow to my bow.
The thing stumbled as it landed. Its legs were twisted and its back was alive with devouring tendrils. Feathers and skin sloughed from its head as it limped past the bodies of dead priests, whose own flesh bubbled and roiled with internal motion.
Fire built around the god-warrior’s hands, ready to burn the pavilion with the last of its power.
Saijax had said the Sun-Emperor had more armies, and we would need our weapon intact if we were to defeat them. I drew back the bowstring, an obsidian arrow aimed at the god-warrior.
I loosed, and the arrow sped true, punching through the dissolving matter of its skull.
The god-warrior fell, and the fire faded from its hands. It rolled onto its side, the flesh falling from its bones—I saw threads of sinewy, pallid matter forming beneath.
The god-warrior sensed my presence, and turned its vulturine head to me. One of its eyes was milky and distended by growths of a strange, fungus-like substance spreading across its skull. The other had my arrow protruding through it.
“Do you even... know… what you... have done… foolish… Icathian?” the blind god-warrior managed, its voice a wet growl of dissolving vocal chords.
I sought to think of some powerful words, something to mark the moment I had killed a god-warrior.
All I could think of was the truth. “We freed ourselves,” I said.
“You… have opened a door... to… a place… that should... never be opened…” it hissed. “You have... doomed us all…”
“Time for you to die,” I said.
The god-warrior tried to laugh, but what came out was a gurgling death-rattle. “Die…? No… What is to come… will be far worse… It will be… as if none of us… ever existed…”
I left the arrow embedded in the god-warrior’s skull. Men were limping back from the battle, bloodied and weary, with the same look of incredulous horror in their eyes. None of us truly understood what had happened, but the Shurimans were dead, and that was enough.
Wasn’t it?
We milled in confusion, none of us knowing what to say or do. The landscape before the city was twisting with unnatural motion, the flesh of the Shuriman army utterly obscured by pale, coiling ropes of hideous matter. Its surface was darkening as I watched, splitting where it hardened like some form of carapace. Viscous ichor spilled out, and more and more I had the impression that this was just the beginning of something far worse.
Light still spilled from the colossal rents torn in the ground, and alien sounds—a mix of shrieking, hissing and crazed howls—echoed from far below. I could feel tremors rising up from the bowels of the earth, like the slow grinding of bedrock that presages an earthquake.
“What’s down there?” said a man I didn’t know. His arm was all but encased in a translucent caul that was slowly creeping its way up the side of his neck. I wondered if he even knew. “Sounds like a nest. Or a lair, or… something.”
I did not know what hideous things lived down there. Nor did I want to.
I heard a voice call my name, and looked up to see Saijax limping toward me. His face was a mask of blood, thanks to a jagged wound that ran from above his right eye to his jawline.
I hadn’t thought Saijax could bleed at all.
“You’re hurt,” I said.
“It’s worse than it looks.”
“Is this the end?” I asked him.
“For Icathia, I fear it is,” he replied, moving away to grab the bridle of a cavalryman’s mount. The beast was skittish, but Saijax hauled its reins, and vaulted into the saddle.
“I would have given everything to see the Shurimans defeated,” I murmured.
“I fear we just did,” said Saijax.
“But… we won.”
“The Shurimans are dead, but I’m not sure that’s the same thing,” said Saijax. “Now find a mount, we have to go.”
“Go? What are you talking about?”
“Icathia is doomed,” he said. “You see that, don’t you? Not just the city, but our land. Look around you. That will be our fate too.”
I knew he was right, but the idea of simply riding away...? I didn’t know if I could.
“Icathia is my home,” I said.
“There’s nothing left of Icathia. Or, at least, there won’t be soon.”
He extended his hand to take mine, and I shook it.
“Axa...” he said, casting a glance back at the creeping horror. “There is no hope here.”
I shook my head and said, “I was born here and I will die here.”
“Then hold to who you are while you still can, lad,” he said, and I felt the weight of his sadness and guilt. “It’s all you have left.”
Saijax turned his mount and rode away. I never saw him again.
My name is Axamuk Var-Choi Kohari Icath’or.
I think… I think Axamuk was my grandsire’s name. It has meaning, but I can no longer remember what.
I wandered the ruins where a great city once stood. All that is left is an impossibly wide crater, rubble, and a tear in the fabric of the world.
I feel a terrible emptiness before me.
Axamuk was a king, I think. I do not remember where. Was it here? In this ruined, sunken city?
I do not know what Var or Choi mean. Icath’or should have meaning to me, but whatever it was is gone. There is a terrible void where my mind and memories once dwelled.
My name is Axamuk Var-Choi Kohari.
Kohari? What is that?
There is a mark on my arm, a sword wrapped in a scroll. Is it a slave mark? Was I the property of a conqueror? I remember a girl with green eyes and an opal necklace. Who was she? Was she my wife, my sister? A daughter? I do not know, but I remember the smell of her flowers.
My name is Axamuk Var-Choi.
I repeat it over and over, holding onto it as if it can stave off this slow dissolution.
I do not want to forget it. It is all I have left.
My name is Axamuk.
I am being erased. I know this, but I do not know why or how.
Something awful writhes within me.
All that I am is unravelling.
I am being undone.
My name is
My name
My | Support |
Many civilizations have resisted Noxus, but none as long as the clans of the Great Barrier mountains. Though these fierce minotaurs had protected the overland trade routes to the ancient city of Zaun for centuries, they preferred to avoid Valoran’s wider conflicts.
The noble warrior Alistar was respected among all the clans. Out on the mountain peaks, his roar could scatter even the bravest trespassers, leaving only the foolhardy to face him in combat. Even so, in the moot halls he would always urge his kin to forge greater bonds with other mortal races. Many saw minotaurs as little more than beasts, which soured any interaction and kept them firmly as outsiders.
Then Noxus came, promising something better. Their emissary, the matriarch of House Tewain, proclaimed that the empire was poised to take Basilich, a coastal city to the east. However, she pledged that they would not do this without the support of the great clans of the mountains, and called for parley on neutral ground.
Many of the minotaurs were eager to accept her offer. This was a way to gain the power and recognition they sought, by joining with Noxus.
But Alistar remained skeptical—he had encountered many Noxian scouts in recent years, and knew them to be a duplicitous and cunning people. For this reason, his clan sent him to meet Tewain, along with fifty of their mightiest warriors, to reject any alliance. The other clans could do as they wished, but Alistar would not accept the rule of some distant “Grand General”.
Under the banners of truce, he and his kin were betrayed.
The larger clans had already pledged themselves to Noxus, and their representatives turned against him as soon as he made his position known. The battle was swift and bloody, and Alistar himself crushed Lady Tewain’s skull with his bare hands—but soon enough he and his surviving warriors found themselves bound in chains, headed for the distant Noxian capital, accused of inciting rebellion.
These unfortunate minotaurs found themselves cast into the Reckoning arenas of the capital, as part of a grim gladiatorial festival known as the Fleshing.
Alistar was appalled by the chanting of the bloodthirsty spectators. He implored his clanfolk not to fight back, not to give these Noxians the monstrous display they so craved…
When the festival ended twenty-one days later, Alistar was the only member of his tribe left. Pelted with pebbles and rotten fruit from the crowd, dragged out to face Reckoner after Reckoner, he was driven to fight like a beast—and think like one. He killed and killed until even his memories of home became stained with blood.
Alistar had fallen far by the time he met Ayelia, a servant girl in the arenas. At first he bellowed and charged the bars of his cage, expecting her to fear or goad him like the others, but Ayelia did neither.
She returned every day, and spoke to him with gentle respect, until eventually Alistar answered in kind. Ayelia’s homeland had also been claimed by Noxus, and seeing his suffering had convinced her they should leave this hateful city together. She whispered her plans through the bars, and for the first time in years Alistar found he could think of home without dwelling on the way it had been taken from him.
One night, Ayelia brought Alistar the key to his cell. She had sacrificed much to arrange this escape, and he swore he would repay her tenfold.
They hurried to the river, where a cargo barge awaited them. However, as they boarded, Noxian agents burst from the shadows. Alistar hurled himself into battle, his vision tunneled with rage, and although Ayelia called out to him again and again, he did not hear.
By the time Alistar had slain their attackers, the boat was gone—and Ayelia with it—so he fled south on foot instead. He searched everywhere for the servant girl, but found nothing. Had she been captured? Killed? It seemed there were no clues left to find.
Weeks later, a political coup shook the empire to its dark foundations, and the arena minotaur’s escape was quite forgotten.
Alistar now travels alone, as quietly and anonymously as he can, encouraging resistance in Noxian-held territories and fighting on behalf of the downtrodden and the abused. Only when he has cleared the shame from his heart, repaying every cruelty and every kindness, will Alistar return to the mountains and leave his rage behind.
And in every city he passes through, he asks after Ayelia. | Tank |
“The gods were angry, and shook the land. Cracks rent the earth,” said old Khaldun, his crag-featured face lit by firelight. “It was into one of these fissures that a young man ventured. He found an opening; the entrance to a tomb, hidden for the Jackal knows how long. The man had little ones to feed and a wife to please, and so he ventured in, lured by opportunity.”
Adults and children alike crowded in close to hear the old storyteller’s words. They were all weary - they had traveled far that day, and the Shuriman sun had been unrelenting - but Khaldun’s tales were a rare treat. They drew their cloaks tight around their shoulders against the chill of the night and leaned in.
“The air was cool in the tomb, a merciful relief from the scorching heat outside. The young man lit a torch. Its light made shadows dance before him. He stepped cautiously, wary of traps. He was poor, but he was no fool.
“The walls inside were smooth obsidian and carved with ancient writings and images. He could not read – he was a simple man – but he studied the images.
“He saw a boy prince, sitting cross-legged upon a sun disk borne by a team of servants, a beaming smile upon his face. Chests of coins and riches were piled before him, the offerings of strangely garbed, bowing emissaries.
“He saw other carvings, again showing the smiling prince, this time walking among his people. Their heads were pressed to the ground before him. Stylized rays of sunshine radiated from the boy’s crown.
“Before one of these images was a small, gold statue. It alone was worth more than he could have hoped to earn in ten lifetimes. The young man took it, slipping it into his satchel.
“He did not intend to linger. He knew it would not be long before others came upon this place. When they did, he wanted to be gone. Greed makes fools of even the greatest men, and he knew that others would willingly spill his blood to claim that golden statue - and the other riches that were surely further in. Avarice was not one of the young man’s faults, however. He felt no need to delve further. The other treasures hidden here were someone else’s to claim.
“He looked upon one last image before he left the tomb. It showed the boy prince dead, lying upon a bier. Those closest to him were wailing... but further back, people were celebrating. Had the boy prince been beloved, or had he been a tyrant? There was no way of knowing.
“That was when he heard it: a sound in the darkness that made his skin crawl.
“He looked around, wide eyed, holding his torch up before him. Nothing.
“‘Who’s there?’ he said. Silence was his only answer.
“The young man shook his head. ‘It is just the wind, you fool,’ he thought. ‘Nothing but the wind.’
“Then he heard it again, more distinctly this time. A child was crying in the darkness further into the tomb.
“Heard anywhere else, his paternal instinct would have been to go to the sound. But here, in the darkness of a funereal tomb?
“He wanted to run... but he did not. The sobbing touched his heart. It was filled with such misery and grief.
“Was it possible there was another entrance to this tomb? Had a young boy found his way down here and become lost?
“Torch held high, he crept forward. The weeping continued, echoing faintly through the gloom.
“A wide chamber opened before him, its floor black and highly reflective. Golden artifacts and jewel-inlaid walls glinted within. Gingerly, he entered the room.
“He stepped back sharply as his heel sent ripples spreading out across the floor. Water. The floor was not made of reflective obsidian – it was covered in water.
“Kneeling, he scooped a handful of it to his lips. He spat it out immediately. It was salt water! Here, in the heart of Shurima, a thousand leagues from the nearest sea!
“He heard the sound of the boy weeping once more, closer now.
“Holding his torch before him, the young man glimpsed a shape at the edge of its light. It appeared to be the child, sitting with his back to the man.
“Carefully, he stepped into the room. The water upon the floor was not deep. The hairs on the back of his neck stood on end, and fear clutched at his chest, yet he did not turn to run.
“‘Are you lost?’ he asked, as he stepped closer. ‘How did you get here?’
“The shadowed figure did not turn... but he did speak.
“‘I... I don’t remember,’ he said. The sound swam around the young man, echoing off the walls. The boy spoke in an old dialect. His words were strange... but understandable. ‘I don’t remember who I am.’
“‘Be calm, child,’ said the man. ‘All will be well.’
“He stepped closer, and the figure resolved itself before him. His eyes widened.
“The shape before him was a god-statue carved in onyx, nothing more. It was not the source of the crying, nor of the child’s voice.
“That was when a small, dry hand grabbed him.”
The youngest of the listeners gasped, his eyes wide. The other children laughed in false bravado. Old Khaldun smiled, a golden tooth glinting in the firelight. Then, he continued.
“The young man looked down. The linen-wrapped corpse of the tiny prince stood beside the man. Dull, ghostly light emanated from the deathly boy’s eye sockets, though his entire face was bound in burial wrappings. The corpse-child held the man’s hand.
“‘Will you be my friend?’ the boy asked, his voice muffled by linen.
“The young man lurched backward, breaking free of the child’s grasp. The young man looked down at his arm in horror; his hand was shriveling, turning black and withered. The wasting touch then began to climb up his arm.
“He turned and ran. In his shock and haste, he dropped his lantern. It hissed as it fell into the lake of tears, and darkness descended. Still, he could just make out the glow of daylight up ahead. He ran toward it, scrambling desperately, even as the wasting death crept up his arm towards his heart.
“At any moment, he expected to feel the deathly boy’s grasp upon him... but did not. After what felt like an eternity, but could only have been a matter of heartbeats, he burst from the darkness into the desert heat once more.
“‘I’m sorry,’ echoed a mournful voice from the gloom behind him. ‘I didn’t mean to.’
“And thus, the Tomb of Amumu was unearthed,” said old Khaldun, “and the deathly child released into the world.”
“But everyone knows he isn’t real!” cried one of the children, the oldest of them, after a moment of silence.
“Amumu is real!” said the youngest. “He’s wandering the land trying to find a friend!”
“He’s real, but he isn’t a boy,” said another. “He’s a Yordle!”
Khaldun laughed, and pushed himself to his feet with the aid of a gnarled walking stick.
“I am old, and we have far to travel tomorrow,” he said. “It is past time I was abed.”
His audience began to dissipate, smiling and talking in low, familial voices, but one child did not move. She stared at Khaldun, unblinking.
“Grandfather,” she said. “How did you lose your arm?”
Old Khaldun looked down at the empty sleeve pinned at his shoulder, then flashed the girl a grin.
“Goodnight, little one,” he said with a wink. | Tank |
There is a place between dimensions, between worlds. To some it is known as the Outside, to others it is the Unknown. To those that truly know, however, it is called the Void. Despite its name, the Void is not an empty place, but rather the home of unspeakable things - horrors not meant for minds of men. Cho'Gath is a creature born of the Void, a thing whose true nature is so awful most will not speak its name. Its fellows have been poking at the walls that divide dimensions for a crack, a way into Runeterra, where they can visit their own personal paradise of horror upon the world. They are called the Voidborn, creatures so ancient and terrible that they have been removed from history altogether. It is rumored that the Voidborn command vast armies of unspeakable creatures on other worlds, that they were once driven from Runeterra by powerful magic lost to antiquity.
If such tales are true, then the rumors that follow must be equally true - that one day, the Voidborn will return. Even now, something dark stirs in Icathia. Cho'Gath, an alien creature of malice and violence, causes all but the most stalwart to cringe in fear. Cho'Gath even appears to feed on its predations, growing and swelling as it gorges itself. Worse yet, the creature is intelligent, perhaps greatly so, hinting at the sentient horror of the Void. | Tank |
War was coming, and Galio could do nothing but watch as the Demacian soldiers prepared for it. He couldn’t say how long it had been since he last tasted magic. He’d been carried from the plinth many times before, only to return without getting a chance at life. But even when his body was still, his mind was always stirring.
And it longed to fight.
Galio could just make out the bristling rows of northern barbarians in the distance. Even with his senses dulled in this dreamlike state, he could tell their ranks were sloppy and undisciplined, pacing to and fro in eager anticipation of their Demacian foes. Galio had overheard talk of these wildmen many times, given their recent conquests. The fearful people of the city whispered that the Freljordians left none alive, and mounted the heads of their foes on enormous tusks from strange beasts...
But the barbarians were of no interest to the colossus. His eyes found a bigger prize – a titanic shape, seeming almost as tall as the hills behind it. It moved ominously, heaving like the waves of a troubled sea, waiting to be unleashed.
What is that? thought Galio, hopefully. I hope it fights.
Beneath him, his Demacian comrades marched in precise synchronization, reciting a cadence, chanting away all thoughts but battle. To each other, they sounded confident in their victory, but to Galio, who had heard this song so many times before, their rhythms were less certain, more hesitant.
They are not excited to battle this great beast. I will do it for them!
Galio was filled with the urge to scoop up every one of these men in his arms and tell them it would be fine, that he would spring forth and chase the entire invading army back to its borders. But he couldn’t. His arms, legs, and claws were as cold and inert as the stone he was hewn from. He needed a catalyst, a powerful magical presence of some kind, to awaken from his living dream.
I hope there’s a mage this time, he thought, gazing toward the horizon. Usually there isn’t. I hate it when there isn’t.
His worry grew as he heard the snorts of exhaustion from the oxen pulling him. They numbered several dozen, and still had to be swapped out with fresh replacements every mile. For a brief moment, Galio thought they might all collapse, leaving him in the outer Demacian brambles while the humans had their fun.
Then, at last, his cart came to a stop at the edge of the battlefield. He knew there would be no parley, no chance that the savage enemy would surrender. Galio could hear the clatter of his tiny human comrades locking shields, forming a solid wall of steel. But he knew that whatever the barbarians’ enormous beast was, it would surely cut right through the fine Demacian armaments.
The two sides flew at one another, colliding in a flash of limbs and blades. Galio heard swords clashing, and axes meeting shields. Men from both armies were falling to their deaths in the mud. Brave voices that Galio knew well cried like children for their mothers.
The soft heart of the stone giant began to quiver. Yet still he could not break his paralysis.
Suddenly a shock of blinding purple seared through the fray, causing scores of Demacians to drop to their knees. Galio felt it then – that familiar sensation in his fingertips, like the noon sun warming cool alabaster. He could almost wiggle them...
The flash came again, sapping the life from more heroic Demacian soldiers. Galio’s senses came to life with startling acuity, revealing the conflict in gruesome detail. The bodies of men in broken armor were strewn about the field in grotesque contortions. Many barbarians lay slain in pools of their own blood.
And in the distance, behind their lines, their cowardly sorcerer was summoning a crackling orb between his hands, readying his next attack.
There he is. He is the reason I wake, Galio realized, first in gratitude, then in rage. I will squash him first!
But his attention was once again drawn to the monstrous shape in the farthest reaches of the battlefield. Finally, it was coming into focus: A towering behemoth of a creature – covered in thick, matted fur. It struggled against the steel chains that restrained it. Its head thrashed about viciously in an attempt to free itself from the giant blinding cowl that covered its eyes.
Galio smiled. Now that is a foe worthy of my fists.
The barbarians pulled off the behemoth’s covering, revealing a snarling, mangled snout beneath a beady pair of jet-black eyes. Free from its blinders, the creature erupted in a fearsome roar, as if declaring itself ready to ravage everything in sight. The monster’s handlers released a mechanism that let loose the chains, and the behemoth threw itself into the opposing infantry, instantly slaying a dozen Demacians with just one swipe of a saber-like claw.
Galio was horrified. These were men he had guarded since they were children. He wanted to weep for them, as he had seen humans do in mourning. But he was not built for that. He focused on his purpose and the thrill of the fight that awaited. This was a huge, terrible beast, and he couldn’t wait to put his hands on it. He could feel the vitality of life returning to him.
Yes! At last!
The sensation shot through his arms, his head, and all the way to his legs. For the first time in a century, he could move. Across the valley a sound echoed, something not heard in living memory.
It was the sound of a stone giant’s laughter.
Galio leapt into the fray, knocking aside the barbarians’ crudely built siege engines. Friend and foe alike stopped to gape at the stone titan who was now smashing his way through the front lines. Like a living monument, he burst from the press of soldiers and threw himself into the path of the rampaging behemoth. “Hello, great beast,” he rumbled. “Shall I smash you?”
The creature threw its mighty head back and howled, as if in acknowledgment of the challenge. Both titans ran toward one another with earth-shaking force. The behemoth slammed into Galio’s mid-section with its shoulder, and let out a groan of intense pain as it crumpled to the ground clutching its collarbone. Galio stood above it, reluctant to smash a prostrate opponent.
“Come now, no need to feel bad,” said Galio, eagerly motioning with his hand. “That was a good try. Now hit me again.”
The monster slowly pulled itself to its feet and regained the angry glint in its eye. It struck Galio with all its might, its claws raking away a piece of his head.
“You broke my crown,” said the colossus, pleasantly surprised, encouraged by the hope of a competitive fight. He struck at the beast with the bottom of his hand, swinging it down like a club with every ounce of his stone frame. The petricite fist collided with the behemoth’s flesh, and the surrounding field rang out with the cracking of gigantic bones.
The monster staggered, screaming and swinging blindly, but connecting with nothing.
Galio grabbed the giant beast around the waist in his monolithic arms and wrenched its torso, trying to break its spine. But the behemoth twisted out of his grip, and began to circle him warily before backing away.
“Wait! Our battle must be resolved!” bellowed the colossus. He started to lumber after the beast, hoping it would reconsider its decision to flee.
But the faint cries of his Demacian brethren carried to him on the wind. Without realizing, Galio had followed the monster for hundreds of feet, straying from the heart of the battle. He wanted to fight the creature, but his human comrades needed him.
As the abomination limped away into the distance, Galio gave it one last wistful gaze. “Farewell, great beast.”
He turned and thundered back to his comrades. More than half of them were lying on the ground in agony, tortured by unseen coils of power. He knew at once it was the same magic that kept him living.
The stone titan saw the terror in the soldiers’ faces, before turning to the malevolent sorcerer once more. Galio knew what he must do, and what the consequences would be.
He leapt high in the air and then came crashing down onto the mage, interrupting his vile incantation, and squashing the barbarian into the loam. The remaining invaders were routed, dropping their arms in terror and fleeing in all directions.
As the sorcerer’s magic faded, Galio felt conflicted. The animating force was draining from his body. He’d saved countless lives, but he was being dragged back to slumber.
He didn’t understand why he had no magic of his own, like all living things must have. Why had he been made this way? Had that even been his creator’s intention? As he felt the cold embrace of his dormancy returning, he took comfort that life itself was magical, and if Galio only experienced it briefly, it was worth it.
Until the final day. Until he would come to break the world’s last mage in his unyielding fists, and the stone sentinel of Demacia would awaken no more. | Tank |
General Miesar slid an ivory cone across the map. Jarvan wondered at the simplicity of the white piece. No head, no features denoting a face. Just a simple rounded shape, neutral and plain, with no resemblance to the hundred Demacian soldiers it represented.
“If we lead our knights south now, we can attack the argoth head-on before they reach Evenmoor,” said General Ibell, a stout woman with commanding eyes.
“The argoth are fiercest in swarms,” said General Miesar as he paced the length of the tent. “They rely on overwhelming numbers to defeat direct attacks. If we cannot divide them, they will slaughter us long before we reach their queen.”
Jarvan strode to the edge of their tent, parting the fabric and gazing out across the valley. He might have enjoyed the view – morning light made the verdant landscape sparkle with dew, and the village of Evenmoor looked peaceful from a distance. But an ominous gray shape swelled on the horizon as the horde thundered in the distance.
The argoth were not enormous creatures; fighting one alone would be easy enough, but in large numbers, they were subject to the dominating will of a queen, able to move and fight as one vicious unit. This swarm was bigger than any Jarvan had seen before.
Miesar wiped sweat from his brow. “They’ll be here by this evening?”
“Sooner,” said Ibell. “We have an hour, maybe two if we’re lucky, until the argoth overwhelm Evenmoor.”
Jarvan turned back to the map. Ten ebony cones representing the argoth stood at the outer edges of Evenmoor, overshadowing the single Demacian cone. The queen was marked by a smaller figurine of red jasper, right in the heart of the ebony mass.
“Any charge would need to fight through hundreds of argoth to get near her,” said Jarvan, gesturing to the red stone. “What do you propose?”
Miesar halted his pacing. “I’m afraid you won’t like this, my lord, but we could retreat. Surrender Evenmoor. Return on the morrow with forces strong enough to cut through the horde and slay the queen.”
“Leave Evenmoor to the argoth?” asked Ibell. “That’s a death sentence for these people. They will be overrun in a matter of hours.”
Jarvan stared at the ebony and ivory until they merged in his mind’s eye. All he saw was the red queen stone.
Ibell raised her eyebrows. “You see something?”
“A desperate plan,” Jarvan replied, “but it is all we have. We conceal our fiercest fighters within Evenmoor and lay an ambush. With such a small band they won’t anticipate our attack. Then, when the queen is within reach, we strike hard and fast. With her death, the swarm’s unity will be broken.”
“Into the center of the argoth, my lord?” Miesar said. “That, too, may be a death sentence.”
“But we give Evenmoor a chance of surviving the attack,” said Ibell.
“No plan is without risk,” Jarvan said. “I will lead only those willing to join me, and will not engage until our hope of victory is greatest. We bide our time until the eye of the maelstrom is upon us, and then strike from within. With the queen dead, it will be a simple matter to fight our way out.”
Ibell slid a single ivory cone to the village on the map, then moved the circle of ebony pieces forward until they overlapped Evenmoor entirely. The jasper queen stood at its center. With a flick of her finger, she tipped the red stone over. That done, she slid two more white cones to join the fight.
“This is our plan,” said Jarvan. “Ibell and Miesar, you and your troops will lead the second wave.”
“Aye,” said Miesar.
“And you, my lord?” Ibell asked. “Where will you be?”
“I have a queen to kill,” Jarvan replied. | Tank |
K’Sante wipes his forehead, his bloodied fingers catching sweat and dirt. He stands with his back hunched, and wounds fresh, but still towers over the tensome attackers surrounding him. Beside them, fallen bodies lie baking in the Shuriman heat—all crazed followers of the Ascended who’ve been seeking K’Sante’s death.
The remaining zealots raise their swords. K’Sante sees glints of light on their blades. He knows the sun is watching overhead, its gaze awaiting his next move. He entertains the thought of dying here and spits on the ground. It was a simple ambush. He hadn’t become the Pride of Nazumah just to perish in the very savanna where his ancestors had overcome even grander foes. These were raiders at best—lost in some deranged sorcerer’s delusions of conquest.
The zealots holler and charge, shrublands echoing the rumble of their feet. K’Sante watches their movements. There’s no strategy here—only bloodlust. He grits his teeth, and, despite his battered legs, a bruised chest, and the taste of his own blood in his mouth, braces himself.
Metal clashes against metal. K’Sante’s ntofos block a lethal slash. He growls as he pushes against the zealot’s blade, the weight of his own weapons working in his favor. K’Sante had constructed them with that in mind, their hefty rectangular structure built from cobra-lion armor—one of the strongest materials in all of Shurima.
A zealot sneaks in with a sword and slices K’Sante’s cheek. He grunts from the pain and shoves his ntofos into the foe he’s blocking, causing them to collapse, then swings his weapons in an arc, striking the zealot who’d cut him. He chuckles. Somehow, slaying a Baccai seems easier now than fending off wave after wave of the Ascended’s zealots.
“Kill the nonbeliever!” cry his enemies. “The Magus demands it!”
K’Sante has many words he wishes to say about Xerath, but telling the Magus’ followers would be a waste. They’ll soon join their companions, unable to pass on any messages, and he’d rather speak to Xerath himself to let the Magus know it was he who slayed the Baccai abomination. To think the Magus, a self-declared “god,” would create a cobra-lion to terrorize innocent people...
K’Sante’s stomach churns in disgust. His people, his culture—they are his pride. And, unfortunately for the Magus’ followers, that pride fuels his survival. Eyes forward, he grips his weapons tighter as his enemies push their assault.
The zealots plunge toward him, attacking from all angles. How many are there? Four, five, six? His vision fades in and out—maybe due to heat, maybe due to exhaustion—and he steps forward, but his right knee buckles beneath him. Using his ntofos, he steadies himself and blocks strikes from above and below. His enemies are piling against him, now. They must think he’s hit his limit.
Hardly.
With a roar, he knocks them back and hefts himself onto his feet again. But before he can retaliate, three arrows fall from the sky and land dead center in three zealots’ throats. Stunned, K’Sante watches his foes stagger and gasp for air before toppling over.
“Take them out!” a voice commands.
K’Sante turns, seeing a tall, armored warrior wielding a bow and leading three other archers, each nocking fresh arrows. They wear matching patterns of green and gold, but the leader’s face is hidden behind an ornate mask.
“Worry not, Nazuman,” the leader says. “We are no friends of the Ascended.”
K’Sante glances at the arrows stuck in the dead zealots’ bodies. “I see that.”
The leader laughs. His voice is warm and rich and somehow familiar. K’Sante can’t see the man’s face, yet is reassured.
The zealots rush once more while K’Sante’s unexpected allies gather together.
“Ready, Nazuman?” the leader asks.
“Always.”
K’Sante slams down his ntofos. The ground before him ruptures, sending cracks rippling through the dirt and gravel surging upward from the impact, which knocks back the foes closest to K’Sante. The ntofos’ outer layers shatter. Their now-exposed centers shimmer in the sun, revealing twin obsidian blades. K’Sante reverses his grip and aims the sharpened edges ahead. He knows he only has a brief time before his weapons regenerate their defensive coating.
K’Sante leaps forward. Mustering all his strength, he uses his momentum to spin midair, heaving one leg across his front to land a devastating roundhouse kick on three of his foes. As they tumble back, he lands with a thud and slices his ntofos across their chests, tearing through armor and flesh.
The zealots scream.
K’Sante’s allies roar.
A hail of arrows falls around him, blocking the zealots who’ve flanked to his sides.
“Take no prisoners!” the leader declares.
K’Sante nods. Red runs down his face—whether it’s his blood or his enemies, he isn’t sure. With clenched teeth and furrowed brow, he pushes ahead, thrusting his blades into the hearts of his enemies. One by one, they fall.
When the dust settles, the zealots lie still, finally among their previously fallen companions.
“It is over,” the leader observes, satisfied.
“Yes,” K’Sante says. “For now.” He stands upright, but just barely, his face and body stained crimson. The ntofos in his hands begin to regenerate as he stares at the lifeless zealots’ bodies.
“You haven’t changed one bit, K’Sante,” the leader says.
K’Sante looks up. Mask now in hand, a smiling face looks back. It's an expression K’Sante assumed he’d never see from this man—from Tope—ever again.
“I’m sure you have questions. But for now, come with us.” Tope gestures loosely into the distance with his hand. “Our camp is nearby, and you look dreadful.”
K’Sante can’t stifle his strained breathing. Even though he’s unsure, the idea of rest is too enticing. K’Sante nods slowly and takes a step closer, but the world spins around him, and he collapses to the ground.
When K’Sante wakes, he’s lying on a wooden bed beneath soft blankets. He runs his fingers along the verdant threads, feeling their gentle, sinewy fibers—a trademark of Marrowmarkan fabric.
The tent overhead shields him from the sun’s heat, but he can still hear the bustling camp outside its walls. Iron being forged, steel being hammered—sounds that remind him of his own weapons. K’Sante quickly scans his surroundings and, to his relief, sees his now fully regenerated ntofos leaning against the bedpost, polished and cleaned. He studies the cobra-lion inlay along their sides, images he carved and painted himself based on some of Tope’s old drawings. He wonders if Tope noticed. Would he say something, even if he did? What if Tope made the wrong assumption? That was years ago, after all. K’Sante tries to remember. Exactly how long has it been?
“Two whole days,” a voice says. “You were out like a baby armordillo.” Dressed in a Marrowmarkman tunic of greens and golds, Tope stands by the entrance of K’Sante’s tent, his arms crossed. Seeing his grin, K’Sante offers a half-smile in return.
“No mask today?” K’Sante asks, sitting up.
“We both know, had I not been wearing a mask, you wouldn’t have let me help with those zealots.”
K’Sante opens his mouth to protest, only to close it again with a sigh. Despite his recent efforts to curb his more audacious tendencies, he knows there’s still truth in that statement.
“Word spreads fast,” Tope explains. “Over the past few months, the Ascended forces have encroached farther south. I expected them to be by the savanna. And I expected Nazumah to send its finest. What I didn’t expect was to see you. Just you. Fighting twenty-plus of their soldiers.”
“I thought I could take them.” K’Sante stumbles out of bed. He grabs his armor from beside his weapons and grunts as he puts it on, his body aching everywhere.
“Of course you did,” Tope mutters under his breath. “And I’m sure you would have.” He shakes his head. “Well, if you can walk, you can eat. Why don’t you thank me over lunch? I won’t have the Pride of Nazumah returning home on an empty stomach.”
K’Sante gingerly follows Tope out of the tent. Before him, the camp stretches wide. Warriors spar and restring bows, and among them are some faces he recognizes from Tope’s rescue party. Nearby, chefs stir various cast-iron pots. K’Sante smells something comforting and familiar wafting out from one of them: Cassava, yams, and cornmeal. And from another, tomatoes, onions, goat meat, and peppers over rice.
Tope pulls a couple chairs up to an open table. A young man wearing armor two sizes too large rushes over with filled glasses.
“Palm wine?” Tope offers.
K’Sante is tempted. It is the favorite drink of his home. But, he passes. He wishes to keep his mind sound for wherever this conversation might lead. “Water,” he answers. “Please.”
Tope beams at the attendant. “You heard the man.”
The young man scurries off.
“So,” K’Sante asks, “what do they call you here?”
“King or Lord, mostly,” Tope says, face static. K’Sante hesitates. Tope slaps the table with a grin. “I’m joking! You think, after all these years, I’d crown myself like a mad Ascended?”
“I don’t dare guess what your aunty might think,” K’Sante says.
“Oh, that woman would have me disowned,” Tope assures. “Publicly—so our ancestors would not be offended,” he explains in his aunty’s voice.
K’Sante chuckles.
“That’s no joke.” Tope continues, chuckling in tandem. “Your parents would do the same.”
He pours water for K’Sante and himself as the attendant returns with two plates of food. K’Sante’s stomach growls at the sight of peppered rice, dyed bright orange by spices, with fiery scents steaming off its top.
“Please,” Tope says. “Dig in.”
As K’Sante eats, he examines Tope and the surrounding camp. Everyone here seems happy, even amid warfare. Laughter travels from nearby people exchanging battlefield tales. Men and women come and go, offering their well-wishes as they jog between stations. The atmosphere is busy and driven, but whenever Tope asks for more food and drink, it’s delivered without complaint.
“Looks like you’ve made it,” K’Sante observes.
Tope sips his wine. He then raises an arm and motions to the rest of the camp with a sweep of his hand. “Yes, leading my own band of fools. So far, no one’s removed me from command. Can you believe it?”
“You’re too stubborn for that.”
“Does the cheetah call the leopard spotted?”
Both men smile. K’Sante notices the roughened edges on Tope’s face—marks of age and a few scars. Are they new? Or were they part of what he failed to notice before? K’Sante searches for something. Anger, sadness, pain? His body stiffens with guilt. He continues to eat and glances around the camp, the busy clamor filling the pause in their conversation.
“Commander,” Tope says. “That’s what they’re supposed to call me. I don’t like it, so I command them not to.”
“At least you’re not the Pride of Marrowmark,” K’Sante says.
“Ha! That title always fit you better than it did me. Say, I hear there’s going to be a celebration in your name?”
K’Sante humbles himself. “Uh, yes. At Hunter’s Hall in Nazumah.”
Tope looks impressed. “Right where we used to train. That’s fantastic! Your mother and father—I assume they’re going?”
“I couldn’t drag them away.”
“I would like to see you try.”
K’Sante chuckles.
“When is it?” Tope asks.
K’Sante swallows another bite of peppered rice. “It’s next month. The first weekend.”
“Oh, right around my wedding!” Tope chirps cheerfully.
K’Sante wavers, searching for words. Quickly, he smiles. “Congratulations!”
“Thank you,” Tope smiles back, unaware of K’Sante’s fluster. “Looks like we’ll both miss each other’s special occasions.”
K’Sante chuckles again. After all these years, Tope still has his wit. That’s what had attracted him to Tope in the first place. How, in their interactions, there was always laughter. On hunts, at dinner, in bed. The timeless parts of their romance were the joys they shared.
K’Sante misses it. And yet, he knows it was the right choice for them to separate. That final cobra-lion hunt—it broke them. They were young. They were strong. And they couldn’t agree on anything. That’s the funny thing about pride. Sometimes, it reveals the worst version of your best self.
Out of all the things K’Sante expected, the last was this meal with the man sitting across from him. But he isn’t unprepared. Years ago, he had promised himself that should this day happen, there would be no blame. The past was the past. In fact, he’s more curious now about the present and the future.
K’Sante stares up from his food. “How did you two meet?”
“Ah, funny story,” Tope responds. “I met him at school.”
“School?”
“Yes,” Tope says, then pauses. “After the cobra-lion, I went back to Marrowmark. Back to school. You know that I always loved studying the intricacies of combat. So, I took a couple years to learn everything, such as strategies from faraway cultures. Noxus, Demacia, and those cold, sad warriors in the Freljord.”
K’Sante feigns surprise. “And that was enough to convince them to make you commander?” He exhales through closed teeth with exaggerated gravity. “War really does make people desperate.”
Tope snickers. “I’m glad you’ve not lost your humor.”
He leans back in his chair. “We’ve both come far, K’Sante,” Tope observes. “From two young hunters with... What did they used to call us? All talent, no discipline?”
K’Sante nods. “Now we’re some talent with some discipline... sometimes.”
Tope laughs, loud and free. K’Sante is reminded of the warmth of that booming sound—how Tope always made those around him feel accepted. K’Sante sighs, relaxes his shoulders, and, for the first time during this meal, he too leans back against his chair.
“You know, I never got the chance to say this,” Tope begins, “probably because I didn’t believe it back then, but now... I'll regret it if I don’t. So here goes.”
K’Sante watches Tope pick at his nails before he continues.
“I’m sorry,” Tope finally says, sitting up tall. “I didn’t support you back then. During the cobra-lion battle, I mean. At least, not the way you wanted. I hadn’t realized what it meant for you to—”
“No,” K’Sante interjects.
He’s thought about this conversation many times over. A few years ago, it was the only thing he could think about. Rehashing what he felt, and why. Then, later on, it started to come up less frequently and felt more like a lesson. A reminder of how their relationship had evolved him, and how it allowed him to finally acknowledge the damage his pride could do.
It took him even longer to understand that, even now, his pride is a force—one that drives off others and turns tides in battle. In love, it is... not so different. Killing enemies is straightforward. Resolving conflicts is not.
These days, K’Sante hasn’t thought about this conversation much, if at all. Again, he certainly hadn’t expected to be having it now, but all those years spent thinking about it allows him to say what comes next.
“No,” K’Sante repeats firmly, and sits forward. “I hurt you.”
He exhales. “Yes, the cobra-lion was damning. And yes, it meant everything to me to slay it—to prove that I could be Nazumah’s greatest warrior. But I didn’t need to do it in a way that belittled you. In fact, I used your notes. You discovered it was Baccai. That’s what allowed me to finish what we had started. For that, I’m grateful.”
K’Sante looks down at their plates, both half-eaten. A sign of deep conversation. His eyes rise to meet Tope’s. “I could’ve been a better partner to you, too. And for that, I’m sorry. I truly am.”
He senses the cool desert air on his skin as he watches Tope’s face soften. The sun must’ve set. When it dropped from the sky, he can’t recall.
He takes a breath and smiles. “But you should also thank me.”
“Oh?” Tope says, amused. He sips his wine as he considers K’Sante. “And why’s that?”
“By doing what I did, it seems I’ve helped you in both your career and your love life.”
Wine spurts from Tope’s nose. He throws his head back, howling with laughter. It’s contagious. The merry sounds of both men intertwine with nearby campfire songs and dance.
“That pride of yours,” Tope says, “has never truly gone away.” Smiling and sighing, he wipes droplets of wine off the table. “It is your greatest strength, and I, for one, think the Nazumans are lucky to have you. In times like these, there is no better Pride of Nazumah.”
K’Sante sits back and enjoys the wide, open evening sky. He had imagined this conversation going a million different ways. Seeing Tope’s success, hearing his acceptance, and feeling his maturity—coupled with K’Sante’s own growth—is a relief.
He grabs the pitcher of palm wine and pours himself a glass. “And no better commander of Marrowmark.”
“Then let us toast,” Tope declares. “Ascended, empires, or beasts—”
“None shall threaten our homes while we still stand!” | Tank |
The raiders attacked before dawn; fifty wolf-lean men in iron hauberks mantled with strange furs and bearing ash-dulled axes. Their steps were swift as they entered the settlement at the foot of the mountain. These were men who had fought as brothers for years, who lived in the heartbeat between life and death. A warrior in battered scale armor and bearing a heavy-bladed greatsword over his shoulder led them. Beneath his dragon-helm, his face was bearded and raw, burned by a lifetime of war-making under a harsher sun than this.
The previous settlements had been easily overcome; little challenge for men weaned on battle. The spoils were few and far between, but in this strange land, a man took what he could get.
This one would be no different.
Sudden light flared ahead, sunlight gleaming brightly.
Impossible. Dawn was an hour or more away.
The leader raised a callused hand as he saw a lone figure standing athwart the settlement’s street. He grinned as he saw it was a woman. Finally, something worth plundering. Light enflamed her, and the grin fell from his face as he stepped closer and saw she was clad in ornate warplate. Auburn hair spilled from a golden circlet and sunlight glinted from her heavy shield and long-bladed sword.
More warriors emerged from the street, taking their place to either side of the woman, each gold-armored and bearing a long spear.
“These lands are under my protection,” she said.
Leona lifted her sword as the twelve warriors of the Ra-Horak formed a wedge with her at their center. Six to either side, they swung their shields and hammered them down as one. Leona made a quarter turn and locked her own shield into place at the apex. Her sword slid into the thrust groove beneath the shield’s bladed halo.
She flexed her fingers on the leather-wound grip of her sword, feeling the surge-tide of power within her. A coiled fire that ached to be released. Leona held it within her, letting it ease into her flesh. Embers flecked her eyes and her heart pounded in her chest. The being she had joined with atop the mountain longed to burn these men with its cleansing fire.
Dragon-helm is the key. Kill him and the rest will falter.
Part of Leona wanted to give the power in her free reign; wanted to scorch these men to smoldering bone and ash. Their attacks had killed scores of people who called the lands around Mount Targon home. They had defiled the sacred places of the Solari, toppling sacred sun stones and polluting the mountain springs with their excretions.
Dragon-helm laughed and swung his greatsword from his shoulders as his men moved away from him. To fight with such a huge weapon and keep it in constant motion needed space. He yelled something in a guttural tongue that sounded more like animal barks than anything human, and his warriors gave an answering roar.
Leona let out a hot breath as the raiders charged, their braided beards flecked with frothed spittle as they pounded toward the Ra-Horak. Leona let the fire into her blood, feeling the ancient creature merge its essence with hers more completely, becoming one with her senses and gifting her with perceptions not of this world.
Time slowed for Leona. She saw the pulsing glow of each enemy’s heart and heard the thunderous drum-beat of their blood. To her, their bodies were hazed with the red fires of battle-lust. Dragon-helm leapt forward, his sword hammering Leona’s shield like a stone titan’s fist. The impact was ferocious, buckling the metal and driving her back a full yard. The Ra-Horak stepped back with her, keeping the shieldwall unbroken. Leona’s shield blazed with light and Dragon-helm’s mantle of fur smoldered in its furnace heat. His eyes widened in surprise as he hauled his enormous sword back for another strike.
“Brace and thrust!” she yelled as the rest of the raiders hit their line. Golden spears thrust at the instant of impact and the first rank of attackers fell with their bellies pierced by mountain-forged steel. They were trampled underfoot as the warriors behind them pressed the attack.
The shieldwall buckled, but held. Axes smashed down, sinews swelled and throats grunted with the effort of attack. Leona thrust her sword through the neck of a raider with a scar bisecting his face from crown to jaw. He screamed and fell back, his throat filling with blood. Her shield slammed into the face of the man next to him, caving in his skull.
The Ra-Horak’s line bent back as Dragon-helm’s sword slammed down again, this time splintering the shield of the warrior next to her. The man dropped, cloven from neck to pelvis.
Leona didn’t give Dragon-helm the chance for a third strike.
She thrust her golden sword toward him and a searing echo of its image blazed from the rune-cut blade. White-hot fire engulfed Dragon-helm, his furs and hair instantly igniting and his armor fusing to his flesh like a brand. He shrieked in hideous pain, and Leona felt the cosmic power inside her revel in the man’s agony. He staggered backward, somehow still alive and screaming as her fire melted the flesh from his bones. His men faltered in their assault as he fell to his knees as a blazing pyre.
“Into them!” shouted Leona, and the Ra-Horak surged forward. Powerful arms stabbed spear blades with brutal efficiency. Thrust, twist, withdraw. Over and over again like the relentless arms of a threshing machine. The raiders turned and fled from the Ra-Horak’s blood-wetted blades, horrified at their war-leader’s doom. Now they sought only to escape.
How and why these raiders had come to Targon was a mystery, for they had clearly not come to bear witness on the mountain nor make an ascent. They were warriors, not pilgrims, and left alive they would only regroup to kill again.
Leona could not allow that and thrust her sword into the earth. She reached deep inside herself, drawing on the awesome power from beyond the mountain. The sun emerged from behind its highest peaks as Leona thrust her hand to the light.
She dropped to one knee and slammed her fist on the ground.
And sunfire rained from the sky. | Tank |
The chill wind whips through cracks in my bark with a hollow whistling sound. I shiver. My limbs have long forgotten the warmth of summer.
The towering shapes around me fracture and fall in the gale. The lives within died long ago; now they are my silent companions. Their brittle trunks remain only as empty husks, rough gray sketches of the lush forest that once bloomed here.
A spirit weaves between the trees in front of me, pale and spectral against the night air. A knot tightens in my bark. Normally I would lash my roots through its heart, but today I hold still, trying not to alert the wraith to my presence. I am tired of resisting. That I exist at all is an act of defiance against the curse plaguing these lands.
Its moonlike eyes are vacant. There is nothing alive and vulnerable to fuel its cold bitterness on this isle of death, nothing to be hunted or consumed. The spirit slips between the trees, leaving me to my solitude.
I look across the forest of shadows and my branches waver. My gaze catches – a tiny flame of red growing amid the endless gray. Nestled in a mound of black dirt, the smallest flower bud pushes up from the ground, its petals so bright they burn my eyes.
It is a nightbloom. Long ago, they carpeted the floor of the Blessed Isles, blossoming on the evening of the summer solstice. By morning the flowers wilted, leaving only blackened petals, not to be seen again until the following year. But for one night, they illuminated the forest with blazing crimson, as if the very ground were aflame.
I look around and, for a fleeting moment, hope that if one flower exists there might be others. But there is only the somber gray of these dead isles.
My boughs creak as I take a shaky step forward. I approach the bloom, transfixed, crushing ashen leaves to dust underfoot. My colossal frame towers over its delicate shape. I lean down until my face is inches above the sweet-scented petals. The potent groundwater within my heartwood stirs, awakening in recognition. Life.
The flower’s neck is tilted as if curious. Deep vermillion veins spread across each petal, and its pale green stem is coated with hundreds of silvery, velvet-soft hairs. I could spend eternity basking in its every facet.
Every moment it grows and shifts in subtle ways; its stem pushing ever higher while its petals slowly unfurl. I am enchanted by each movement, however minute. I watch as the bloom spreads to reveal the filaments extending from within, its heady scent flooding my mind with color. For a moment I forget the cold, the hollow wind, and my own bitterness.
A pale light flickers and I flinch. A glowing shape approaches. My bark tingles. Nothing from these bloodless woods is an ally.
The cursed spirit is returning, attracted to the lure of movement. Life is not so still as death.
I flex my limbs in fury, no longer eluding violence. I welcome it.
For one night, a living thing will exist on these barren isles unmarred by corrupt forces.
The spirit glides toward us. She was once human, but is now translucent and bone-white. Her blank expression grows ravenous as she sees the blood-red blossom.
The specter races toward the flower and tries to inhale its fragile life. Before the bloom withers into a lifeless shade, I fling my limbs forward and lash them about the spirit’s legs. She screeches, recoiling as if burned, and I roar. The groundwater within me is anathema to such unnatural beings.
She twists and breaks free of my grasp. I hoist my roots and smash them to the ground. The impact splits the barren topsoil and sends shockwaves through the earth. The reverberations strike the wraith and she reels in agony. I laugh bitterly. As she stirs, I sling my limbs through her form and she dissolves.
Dusky mist rises from the ground, accompanied by a foul stench. As the wind moans, dozens of spirits materialize before me, their garish faces gaping silently at the scene before them. The nightbloom and I grow before the wall of shadows. I will not let them destroy this one pure thing amongst so much darkness.
I throw all my rage into my blows, driving them back with furious strength. I cannot destroy every spirit on the isles, but I can hold them off for a time. A wraith tries to dart past me. I howl as I lift my roots to pierce its heart, and it dissipates into mist.
My strength is draining with so many spirits nearby, but I refuse to concede.
The flower grows brightly beneath the moonlight, oblivious to this battle for its very existence. A single crimson petal falls from its perfect blossom like a drop of blood. The lifecycle of the bloom is near its end, bringing death, and with it, respite. But I do not crave it. I feel I could cleanse the entire island of its scourge in my fury.
The cursed mist has risen above the treeline and swirls in great clouds. An endless host of spirits pours from the fog, mouths agape with ghoulish hunger. I rise to my greatest height and slam my limbs into the ravenous spirits, shattering one after another into dust. Still, more come.
I howl as I stir the air into a crudely twisting spiral, and nourish the storm with my wrath until it expands in a tempestuous whirlwind. I revel in the chaos as the maelstrom surges in a frenzied circle around me and the flower. It blasts the spirits violently back beyond the trees. From within this nightmare, I have carved a sanctuary where life can grow.
I turn to the flower. We are silent together at the eye of the storm, still amidst the madness. A second fiery petal falls from the nightbloom, then another. My energy drains into the maelstrom, but I do not falter and the tempest rages on. With each passing moment, the blossom droops further until it faces the ground. It is perfect in its slow, natural decay. I cannot look away as it gradually loses its crown of flaming petals and wilts completely.
It is dead.
I lower my branches and the maelstrom quiets. Above me, the sky is slate gray - as bright as it ever gets in this grim place. The gloom of the mist encroaches once more and the spirits return. Their faces are blank, no longer sensing the illicit life of the nightbloom, no longer anticipating the joy of a fresh kill.
They retreat into the hollow woods. I whip my roots through a specter as it passes me, scattering its essence into the fading mist. The others edge farther away from me as they return to their gloom.
Though the land appears unchanged, these isles are not the same gray wasteland they were yesterday. The waters of life stir within me and the soil beneath my roots is fertile again.
Though its petals decay into dust, the luminous nightbloom burns fire-bright in my mind, igniting my fury. Just as these islands were born of burning rock, I will cleanse them of their pestilence in a flaming blaze.
I follow the trailing spirits as they slip between hollow trees.
They will pay for their wickedness. | Tank |
I wake up suddenly, like a story that starts in the middle of the action.
The song. I heard it!
“Willump!” I shout. “I heard the song again! Wake up!”
I shove aside the snow that serves as our blanket and look my flufferific friend in the face. His whiskers are twitching like they can feel my dream slowly fading. He growls, and his breath swirls into all kindsa shapes. But even though he’s old and has hair in his earholes, still, he’s my best friend! I laugh as his beard tickles my nose.
Nothing like a magical yeti to bring me back to reality!
Willump rolls over and starts scratching his grumbling belly. “You’re always thinking about food,” I laugh again. Laughing feels good, it helps me remember.
My mom…
We’ve been following her song across the Freljord—my mom’s heart-song. Everywhere we’ve ever been, she made a verse, and if I could only remember what each place was, I could find my way back to her. I could save her, like a hero in her stories!
But I can only remember parts of the song when I’m not trying, and sometimes… it’s like my mom is out there, singing.
Like that! Did you hear that?!
“It’s coming from that village,” I bellow, pointing towards a patch of darkness beneath a frozen waterfall. Something inside me knows that’s where the song came from. “Sword first, Willump, I’ll cut through the wind!”
I shiver as we enter the clearing a few moments later, though I’m surrounded by scrazzly fur. Even this close, the village is mostly shadows. There are no people—if there were, I’d know, ‘cause it’s so cold I’d see their breath. “What is this place?” I ask.
Willump growls wisely.
“‘Naljaäg’? That can’t be its name. How would anyone know how to spell that?” Then Willump grumbles that it’s the yeti word for “stone.”
The buildings are stones heaped really high, the pathways are stones, too. Stones. Got it. So… it’s not weird that the flowers are carved out of stone, right? And those furs, hanging over a door. And that old rope! At least, it would be rope if it wasn’t hard and gray.
“Is everything around here stones?” I ask. It’s not fair—in the stories, stones at least have runes carved into them or something.
I’m starting to wonder why the song led me here, when finally I see a person, their back turned beneath an archway!
“My name is Nunu, and I’m here to help!” I yell, and I pull at the person’s shoulder—but when they topple into the light with a dull thwunk, I immediately realize… they’re stone, too!
And…
Beyond the archway are all the missing people from the village, huddled together like statues. There’s one who looks like a warrior, now dull and gray. There’s a farmer and his wife, holding each other tightly, like they were carved from one slab. A little girl, a pebble beside them.
It’s a curse. A real one.
“Willump,” I say. “We gotta do something!”
That’s the thing about mom’s songs. My favorites were always tales of heroes, more than a match for any curse. With the lessons I learned, we can save these people, right? I have to believe, otherwise… how am I gonna save her?
I remember one song, a myth about how Avarosa healed the turtle that carries the sea, by giving it a big kiss! But I don’t want my first kiss to be a statue. I make Willump kiss ’em just in case, and watch as the stone gets stuck to his fur.
I try saying the prayers Lissandra taught me, just in case. I make a dragon out of snow to scare the curse away, like Anivia did to fight the southern army! I even try pulling the sun closer, like how Braum thawed his village in the song my mom sang. But the sun’s too far.
Braum must have really long arms.
Willump tries to comfort me. He says some curses can’t be fought. Sometimes, heroes don’t win. But I remember what matters. I can feel it, even though my mom is missing, our caravan buried in snow. The feeling of being loved.
That’s what this village deserves!
“If we can’t help these people,” I tell Willump, “then we’re gonna help these statues!”
I smile and reach for my flute. I mean, my sword! Svellsongur!
Hero time, hah!
I can smell the curse. A hateful stench, like troll. It has the weight of centuries; weight that could grind the years this child has left down to mere days. Here is where even heroes of song would question how they could fight, blades powerless against ancient magic.
But Nunu is no mere hero. He is something better.
He is a boy!
He whoops, and calls my attention to the frozen waterfall above us. We are close enough now that we can see them, nestled atop stillness. Krugs. Stone creatures animated by magic, more than at home living above a village such as this one.
Their nest has dammed the waters’ flow, holding back the Freljord’s lifeblood. I taste a hint of Nunu’s intentions.
It tastes like krugs. Delicious.
“Hey, stoney crabs! You took something from those statues!” Nunu yells, and hops onto my back without losing a beat, for the music is in his heart.
The magic is his now. Swept up in his imagination, snow forms before us, gradually taking shape into a mighty snowball! I laugh as we ramble wildly, our merry burden growing so large that beneath us the village trembles, buildings stretching themselves awake. And still the snowball grows larger. The krugs make only a tiny chitter as we leap into the air to the top of the waterfall, blotting out the sun.
The Freljord goes white, the dam embraced by snow even as it’s torn apart.
And then, the earth roars.
Icicles crack like bones made brittle by winter. The roar grows louder as the river coughs and clears dust from its throat, water tumbling into the village below.
“Did you see that, Willump?!” Nunu asks. But my eyes are already closed.
I can feel a magic more powerful than the curse welling up to fill the village, casting shivers through my fur and bringing warmth to a world that is cold. It is the only magic that can save the Freljord. Even the frozen dreams of my people, coveted by the Frostguard, pale in comparison to this magic, held in abundance by a child.
Hope.
His arms are around me now, and I hug him back with all four limbs, looking away so he does not see the snowflakes falling from my eyes.
The curse has not lifted. But still, life has returned. And as it spreads, stone flowers washing away to make room for living ones, what curse could stand in its way? No evil can last, if life embraces joy, and refuses to hide…
I reach onto the ground and pick up a chunk of ice, crushing it to snow between my paws.
“Hey!” Nunu yells as I hit him in the face with a snowball, trailing the magic that swirls in his heart.
As we play, the wind whips through the flute on Nunu’s back, casting up stray notes. Then I finally hear it, too.
Her song.
Where waters
Once roared,
Winds whisper
To stone.
In shadow,
Naljaäg lies.
Silence sings.
Hope survives. | Tank |
No one knew who lit the fire, but we saw the plume of smoke from far away.
The Winter’s Claw had driven our tribe north, where the land was so harsh that even our warmother Olgavanna shivered through the first night. Our elnuk herd died on the second. At least we had food for the third.
But even that feast was a memory as we climbed the mountain with no peak. Legless Kriek called it “the Half-Mountain of Old Ornn.” Our shaman had lost his mind, but Olgavanna bade us carry the fool. He had convinced her that our survival lay at the source of that mysterious smoke. The rest of us believed we were marching to our doom.
The slopes of the half-mountain were a tortured landscape of black stone. We found the ruins of a forgotten city shown on no map—now just a maze of charred foundations. Kriek, perched atop Boarin’s shoulders, insisted it was once named Hearth-Home.
Dark clouds to the east flashed lightning and winds carried the stench of wet fur and sweet decay. Our scouts did not return. We all knew what this meant, but none of us wished to utter the word “Ursine” aloud.
We climbed until we stood at the edge of a vast crater. Then, Kriek saw the fire. This was odd, because Legless Kriek was also blind.
In the center of that basin was the source of the smoke venting into the sky. Olgavanna reasoned that at least the steep crater walls offered respite from the howling winds, and so we descended into what would likely be our grave. The smoldering terrain proved difficult to navigate, but any halt would mean to bow our heads and accept slaughter.
Then we saw the furnace. The domed structure was the only one that looked hand-made. It was crafted like the head of a great ram, with tufts of goat-grass in the spaces between the smooth flagstones. In the ram’s mouth was a flame so bright, we could find it with our eyes closed.
We huddled around it for warmth while Olgavanna laid out the plans for our last stand. It was better to die on our feet, than shivering and huddled in the cold. Most of us were farmers, builders, menders, and few were skilled in combat like the other tribes. We cared for our elderly, our sick, and our children. Now we were far from the aid of the Avarosans—but war craves only blood and bones.
We could only ever stand a chance against the Winter’s Claw. If the Ursine struck first, our defense would be terrifyingly short. That hideous legion of half-bear abominations would overwhelm us.
And soon enough, we heard their battle-growls growing louder, along with the clamor of their footsteps. We smelled their stench. Hundreds descended the cliffs, like shadows twisting down the basalt slopes. We fashioned spears from our stretchers, and sharpened our carving knives on the flint. We would minister the Rite of the Lamb to our elderly and wounded, and the rest of us would dance with the Wolf. It would all be over by morning.
No one saw who stoked the fire, but it grew so hot that we needed to back away. Then the furnace spoke, its voice like crackling logs.
“Volibear is near,” it said. “Seek shelter now.”
“There is no shelter to seek,” Olgavanna replied to the fire in the forge. We knew not in whose presence we stood. “Enemies are at our heels. The Ursine are flanking us.”
“The Ursine…” and the forge grew hotter at these words, “…will be stopped. The other problems are your own.” The goat-grass caught fire. The flagstones grew red hot around the edges, then toward their centers. Steam sizzled from the cracks.
Some shed their clothes to seek reprieve as the temperature rose. Others fainted. The next wave of blistering heat dropped us all to our knees, gasping for air. “I never thought I’d see the day!” cried Kriek, weeping tears of joy.
Stone began to drip like candlewax. Masonry flowed down the base of the structure. The domed top of the forge melted inward, pulling the rest of the outer shell into a molten pool.
A flash of orange light blinded us, briefly silhouetting a humanoid figure. Then, a geyser of flame spouted into the air, drops of molten rock hardened on the ground at our feet. Where the massive forge had stood, there was now a hulking beast, its form blurred by waves of heat. There it was, the forgotten legend Kriek always told us about—Old Ornn, as tall as three frost pines. The ancient forge-master cooled rapidly into fur and form, lava dribbling down his chin and hardening into a braided beard. His eyes were glaring embers. In one hand he carried a hammer, in the other he hefted an anvil with equal ease.
We gathered behind our warmother. Olgavanna gripped Fellswaig, her true-ice axe, and approached Ornn. “If the Ursine are your foes, we will fight by your side,” she said. Then, in a gesture unbecoming of an iceborn warmother, she bent the knee and laid her weapon at Ornn’s feet. Fellswaig’s true-ice melted, revealing an ordinary bronze and iron axe beneath.
I had never seen true-ice melt. No one had ever seen true-ice melt. We felt it wise to join Olgavanna in her kneeling.
Ornn grunted. “Stand up. Kneeling is death.” He looked to the gathering thunderstorm swirling overhead. “I will deal with the Ursine. Do not follow me.”
He lumbered toward the advancing horde, who charged forward with vicious speed. We could see his fire reflected in their large eyes. Boarin hoisted the old shaman higher onto his shoulders. “Old Ornn swinging his hammer, he pounds valleys from mountains,” the legless fool half-sung.
We watched in stunned silence as the creature stood alone against the Ursine. With a roar, he brought his hammer down onto the ground, and a fissure cracked toward the advancing army, stopping just short of their vanguard. Spouts of lava and sulfur jetted into the sky, hardened fire rained down on the half-bear warriors.
Whatever Old Ornn was, he fought with the hot blood of the earth.
Behind the Ursine, giant chunks of slag broke through the ground, cutting off their retreat. Ornn charged and smashed them with more swings of his hammer. Still, they attacked with the viciousness of ten berserkers each.
But we knew when Ornn reached their rearguard, for there was a deafening explosion—the slag wall shattered, and Ursine flew through the air in contorted arcs of burning flesh and fur.
The sky darkened with ash. Columns of smoke rose to clash with the menacing thunderclouds, and bolts of lightning lanced through the haze. The world grew eerily still as the Thousand-Pierced Bear itself took to the battlefield. We could see its telltale shape: spears, swords, tusks, all were stuck in its hide. Lightning followed in its wake.
And it laughed.
The answering blare of the horn shook our insides. Lava bled from the black cliffs, rivers of fire flowed down the slopes, rushing toward the valley basin, and formed a surging wave. Bolts of lightning stabbed back at the cliffs, to cauterize the wounds in the rock, and a thick, caustic fog blanketed the entire caldera. We saw only blue-white bolts and hellish crimson explosions filtered by the thick vapor. The heat from below the ground scorched the soles of our boots.
Then we saw that surging wave of flame form into a great stampeding ram. Ornn charged at the molten beast, catching the thing he had named as Volibear between his shoulder and the lava-ram.
The force of the explosion toppled us all. The legless shaman was thrown a hundred paces from Boarin’s shoulders, laughing the whole time.
We waited all night for the great cataclysm to overtake us, but it never came. We only heard the roars of the Thousand-Pierced Bear, and the gruff bellowing of the forge ram.
When the pall lifted in the late morning, we saw that the slopes around us were covered in chunks of hissing scree, and unnatural columns of crusted basalt rose at odd angles from the ground.
As we realized what stood before us, we recoiled in horror and awe. The Ursine were frozen in stone, their faces petrified masks of agony.
We did not see any sign of Ornn, nor Volibear. We had no time to look, either. The hunting horns of the Winter’s Claw announced their approach. We picked up our weapons and dug in our heels. What remained of our clothes were scorched tatters of cloth, but our skin no longer prickled with cold.
Olgavanna’s hair had been singed away, her muscular back branded with heat. Her once true-ice axe was bronze and iron, as naked as we were. She had never looked stronger.
Our blood boiled. Our stomachs growled. We were raw and blistered, bare and exposed. We smeared our chests with ash in the shape of a hammer, and ram horns upon our faces.
We sang and chanted in the memory of last night, with the words of mad old Kriek.
We knew who lit the fire. The Winter’s Claw would know, too. | Tank |
Poppy had nothing against the briar wolf, aside from the fact that it was about to maul her. Its muzzle was stained crimson from a previous kill, and the yordle wouldn’t chance being its next. She was hot on the trail of a renowned monster slayer, and she didn’t intend to die before she found the man and judged his worth.
“You should step back. You won’t survive this,” Poppy told the wolf, holding her hammer aloft as a deterrent.
But the briar wolf was not discouraged. It padded toward her, propelled by some strange desperation that Poppy couldn’t identify. Then she saw the telltale foam at the corners of its mouth. This animal was not driven by hunger or territorial instincts. It was in pain, and it wanted release. The wolf leapt at her, as if it had made up its mind that its next act would be to kill or be killed.
Poppy swung the hammer, using every ounce of her strength to move the weapon’s considerable weight. The blow she delivered collapsed the animal’s skull in an instant, ending its torment. Poppy took no pleasure in the kill, but she supposed it was the best possible outcome, for her and the wolf.
The yordle looked around at the empty meadow, but sensed no trace of the monster slayer she’d come to find. She had roamed the countryside, following rumors of his activities, hoping this mysterious hunter might be the fabled hero she had sought for so many years. But thus far, all she’d found were wolves and wyverns and highwaymen, most of whom she’d been forced to kill in self-defense.
She had spent weeks traveling from hamlet to hamlet in the far-flung corners of Demacia. She walked as fast as her tiny gait would allow, but the monster slayer always seemed to be one step ahead of her, leaving naught but tales of heroic exploits in his wake. For a yordle, time is a curious thing whose passing is seldom felt, but even for Poppy, the search was beginning to grow long.
One day, just when she was beginning to doubt herself and her mission, she spied a notice nailed to a roadside post:
“All are invited to attend the Festival of the Slayer!”
It was a celebration to honor the very monster hunter Poppy had been seeking. If there was any hope of locating this elusive hero, she would certainly find it there. He might even make an appearance, and then she could size him up in person to determine if he was worthy to carry the hammer Orlon had bequeathed her. The prospect put a spring in her step, and she marched with renewed purpose toward the celebration.
Poppy was anxious when she arrived at the village, its banners and streamers gaudily proclaiming the day’s festivities. Ideally, she would have arrived early at such a public event and claimed a spot in the rear of the crowd, so as not to draw attention. But the main market was already packed with spectators, and Poppy found it hard to maneuver through the press of bodies. She squeezed through the legs of the townsfolk, most of whom were too inebriated to notice her.
“I’d buy ’im a pint if ’e were here,” slurred one voice above her. “Saved my goats by killing that monster.”
Poppy’s heart raced, as it always did when she heard tales of the hunter.
What if he turns out to be the one? she thought.
But deep inside, Poppy asked a different question. What would she do once she was rid of the weapon? Would she find an entirely new purpose? A yordle without one was a pathetic sight indeed. She stopped her mind from wandering and brought it back to the task at hand.
The tiny warrior finally managed to weave her way to the back of the market. She found a tall lamppost both easy to climb and behind the eyes of the crowd. She then shimmied up the post, just high enough to see over the throng.
Poppy was just in time. On the far side of the market, a speaker stood with several Demacian officials on a dais, and behind him, something tall was draped in a ceremonial veil.
Even with her keen yordle senses, Poppy could barely hear the man’s words. He was talking about the monster hunter, and how he had saved numerous farms and villages from wyverns, rabid wolves, and bandits. He said that although this revered warrior had chosen to remain anonymous, it shouldn’t stop them from celebrating his deeds. The slayer had been spotted several weeks ago near the town of Uwendale, leaving the first eyewitness accounts of his appearance. With that, the speaker pulled off the veil to reveal a stone statue.
Poppy grew faint with excitement as she saw the hunter’s likeness for the first time. He was the paragon of a Demacian warrior—seven feet tall, armored in heavy plate mail, and rippling with sharply defined muscles. Beneath him lay the corpse of a wolf he had presumably slain.
Just as the image had begun to settle in Poppy’s mind, she heard the sound of a child’s voice a few yards away.
“Look, Da. It’s the slayer! The one from the statue!” declared the wide-eyed girl.
Poppy saw the girl was pointing in her direction. She whirled around to see if the slayer was standing behind her. But no one was there.
“No, lass,” said the girl’s father. “That one’s no monster slayer. Too small by half.”
The girl and her father quickly lost interest and strolled through the village to partake in the various amusements.
As the crowd in front of the statue dispersed, Poppy moved in for a closer inspection. Now she could see the fine details of the hunter’s marble depiction. His hair was long, fair, and bound in two separate side knots. His hands were gnarled from a hundred battles, and in them, he held a massive battle hammer not unlike the one Orlon had given her. If there was a truer hero in the kingdom, Poppy had never seen him.
“He has to be the one,” Poppy said. “Hope I’m not too late.”
She turned and left the festival as fast as her legs could carry her, taking the swiftest route to Uwendale. | Tank |
Ojan’s knife whittled the edge of the ironwood into a soft curve. As an eight-year-old, he wasn’t the most practiced craftsman; his wood block was just starting to resemble something round and spiky.
His sister, Zyama, leaned down from her bunk and grimaced.
“What’s that? Rhoksha dung?” she said. “No one will want to buy that.”
“It’s not dung, it’s a great and fearsome god, with his armor and everything! And it won’t be for sale. It’s for luck.”
“We’re traders, little brother,” she said. “Everything here is for sale.”
The caravan clinked and clanged as it rolled over the dunes. Every space from floor to ceiling was packed tightly with jars of spices, leaving just enough room for the family’s narrow bunks.
“Something’s chasing us from the south!” Ojan’s mother shouted from outside. Ojan heard her whip crack, urging the camels to hurry their pace.
Zyama leaned out the window, staring through her most prized possession, an ornate spyglass.
“They’re Kmiros! I’ll ready the arrows,” she said. “They must be after your Rhoksha dung.”
Ojan replaced her at the window. Sure enough, hundreds of beetles the size of dogs swarmed over the dune behind them.
Zyama returned with a bow and quiver of colorful arrows. She fired, taking one beetle out, but the mass of insects charged on without pause.
“How many arrows do we have?” Ojan asked.
“About forty,” Zyama said, looking into the quiver. She frowned.
Their mother’s voice carried from the front. “We’ll have to outrun them. Hold on!”
Whips cracked once more and the caravan jolted forward, knocking Ojan to the floor.
Zyama loosed another arrow into the swarm, spearing two at once. The creatures fell, but plenty more took their place.
“Oil! In the left cabinet!” their mother shouted.
Ojan ducked away and returned with a flask of lamp oil and a wad of rags. He doused a piece of cloth before wrapping it around the tip of an arrow. He lit the bundle on fire and carefully handed it to Zyama, who blasted the flaming shot into a cluster of beetles. They burst into flames, screeching as they burned. Ojan grinned.
Together they bombarded the horde with flaming arrows, firing as fast as Ojan could wrap each arrowhead. The air smoked with burning chitin. The caravan accelerated, and the gap increased. They were nearly safe.
Ojan’s stomach dropped. The Kmiros spread glittering wings and rose to the skies as a unified black cloud.
Ojan flinched as a heavy thud shook the cabin from above. More followed, and the wooden slats groaned under the weight of the oversized insects.
“Hold on!” his mother shouted from the front as she veered them sharply left. Beetles tumbled from the roof, but Ojan heard a discordant scratching from above and knew more had landed.
Pincers broke through the layered beams in the ceiling and an enormous beetle tumbled into the caravan. Zyama drew her dagger and stabbed it, but her blade was unable to pierce its tough carapace. She pushed Ojan back and waved her blade before her, desperately trying to hold it at bay.
More Kmiros dropped through the smashed roof, all snapping jaws and clicking pincers. Ojan dove beneath his bunk, desperately kicking the insects as they clawed for him. He prised the round wooden figure from his pocket.
“Please, Rammus, I pray to you,” he whispered. “Help us!”
The caravan jolted as beetles landed on the roof. It pitched back and forth like a ship on a rough sea. Then the world tilted sideways as the caravan overturned completely, skidding in the sand.
Ojan shielded his face from tumbling objects as dust clouded his vision. He was flung against the wall, his ears ringing and head throbbing as the caravan swerved. After a moment of stillness, he felt a hand tug his arm as his mother dragged him from the rubble. He squinted in the blinding sunlight.
The family huddled in the wreckage of their caravan, coughing in the dusty air as the Kmiros circled. A beetle charged forward and Ojan’s mother stabbed it between its clicking jaws. She skewered another as it scrambled to bite her daughter, spilling rank yellow innards across the sand. A third beetle leapt from the top of the caravan and landed behind them. Zyama screamed as it seized her foot in its pincers.
The beetles froze abruptly, halting their attack. They hunkered low to the ground, antennas flexing. In the silence, Ojan heard a distant whirring. He watched the western horizon as a sand cloud rushed toward them in a fury of dust. The family brandished their weapons in readiness to fight this new threat.
A round armored shape exploded from the flurry of sand and smashed into the nearest beetle with terrible force, crushing it to pulp.
The shape barreled on, smashing beasts left and right. Though the insects snapped at the shape with their sharp pincers, it was unstoppable, and in a moment, no living Kmiros remained.
The dust began to settle once more, and Ojan glimpsed spiked armor jutting from the round shape ahead.
“Is that...?” Zyama said.
“Rammus!” Ojan shouted. He scrambled down the hill to meet his hero.
The creature’s shell was intricately patterned with spiral scales, and his claws were sharp as knives. He gnawed slowly on the hairy leg of a beetle, juice dripping from his mouth.
Ojan and Zyama gaped.
Their mother approached the Armordillo, bowing her head deeply.
“You saved us,” she said. “We are grateful.”
Rammus crunched the beetle leg as the family watched. Several minutes passed.
He rolled to the fallen caravan and rummaged through the debris, emerging with Ojan’s wooden carving of the Armordillo. The likeness wasn’t perfect, but certainly discernible.
“That’s you,” Ojan said. “Please, take it.”
Rammus knelt down and bit the wooden figurine in two with a crunch. He turned and walked a few paces before spitting the pieces into the sand. Zyama stifled a laugh.
“Hmm,” said Rammus.
He tore a leg from another dead beetle and dragged it through the sand as he rolled away.
The family watched him disappear over the horizon.
Ojan ran after Rammus to retrieve the broken pieces of the statue. He pocketed them and bowed.
“For luck,” he said. | Tank |
Sejuani slammed the axe into the tree’s trunk. It had taken her five hits to fell it, and hacking down a dozen trees had winded her. Iceborn were strongest in the cold, and the southern heat was sapping her strength.
Her weary reavers cheered. Though only a hundred strong, their roar echoed off the hills.
The time for stealth had passed. The southerners had gathered an army of many thousands and were less than a half-day behind. On the surrounding hilltops, enemy scouts watched.
The main body of Sejuani’s forces were in the far north occupied by the summer: fatting herds, fishing, and hunting. She had scattered small war parties along the Demacian border to destroy towns, burn crops, and wreck keeps. Hoping, when winter came, her full horde could smash through these weakened lands and raid further south.
Scarmaiden Kjelk approached Sejuani. Like the rest of the raiders, she rode a drüvask, a boar-like creature larger than any ox.
“Warmother, enemies gather on the other side of the river!” Kjelk said, bringing her monstrous mount to a stop.
“Show me,” Sejuani replied, leaping onto her own drüvask, Bristle. He was twice the size of his peers and as wide as a mammoth.
Together they rode down the hillside, passing warriors lashing the logs into rafts. She followed Kjelk along the riverfront until sweat dampened their mounts’ backs.
Downstream of a waterfall, just three hundred paces across the river, Demacian skirmishers were exiting the forest that had hidden them and climbing down the bare rocks. It was an advanced flanking force of a few hundred archers and spearmen. They spotted the two Freljordian women on their drüvasks, but continued on their path.
“Svaag!” Sejuani spat at the flowing water in front of her. In winter, bogs, lakes, and rivers like this one became frozen highways for her fast-moving warbands.
A horn sounded, and Sejuani needed no scout to tell her that the main force of the enemy army had arrived. She turned and could see their armor glimmering on the hilltops behind them. The Demacians’ plan was clear.
If her warband tried to cross the river on rafts, the enemy skirmishers would rain missiles onto them, cutting her numbers in half. Then, using the high ground just beyond the riverbank, the spearmen would be able to hold her survivors long enough for the main force to catch up and overwhelm them.
Bitter and raging, Sejuani kicked Bristle onward and the giant beast ran, crashing through underbrush and shallows back to where the rafts waited.
Most of the warriors had already spotted the enemy forces and were preparing to flee along the river’s edge. A fear had gripped them—not of battle, but of the trap the southlanders had sprung.
“The enemy will send riders to block off any escape along the riverside. We cannot stand against the army coming down from the hills. We must cross. Now,” Sejuani commanded.
Sejuani took a small piece of wood wrapped in leather, no larger than her thumb, and slipped it into her mouth. Then she uncoiled her great flail, Winter’s Wrath. Each link of the weapon’s chain was as large as a man’s hand. At the chain’s end hung a massive shard of True Ice, the largest most had ever seen. Misty vapor rose from its magical cold.
Sejuani clamped her teeth down on the leather-wrapped stick to resist the pain of the weapon’s magic. For wielding True Ice always had a cost. Its cold frosted her arm, sending her into agony. Her eyes watered and tears froze like diamonds on her cheek. Yet all her warriors saw was a grimace of certainty and rage. She swung the weapon around her before crashing it into the water.
A bridge of ice formed, but—as she had expected—it immediately broke apart in the warmer currents. It could not hold her war party.
A few arrows began to fall from the other side of the river, archers testing their range. Few reached land, but she could hear the southerners’ jeers.
Sejuani set Winter’s Wrath back, spat out the stick, and removed her helmet. Then she unwrapped the wolf-gut twine on her wrist. Seeing this simple act, her men roared in approval.
A barking chant began. The warriors, no longer afraid, knew now they were witnessing something special. Sejuani was making the most sacred oath of her people.
She would tie a death knot.
She uncoiled her braids and deftly ran the wolf-gut through her hair. She wondered how many times she had taken a death oath. A dozen? More than any warrior known. Eventually she would fall or fail. Would it be today?
Arrows began to hit the shore around her as she bound the knot. A few of her warriors fired bolts back at the enemy, but the wind was against them.
“I am Sejuani, Warmother of the Winter’s Claw! I am the Winter’s Wrath! I am the Flail of the Northern Winds!” she cried as she tied the last triangular knot into her hair. “Even in death, I will hold the riverbank until you safely cross. This is my oath! I see the Wolf. And my fate… is tied!”
Her warriors cheered, voices growing hoarse as they tried to hold the sound longer. Many had eyes wet with emotion, for Sejuani had sworn to save their lives, even at the cost of her own.
She did not need to give them any further orders. They readied their weapons and climbed onto rafts. They would cross as quickly as they could—and perhaps they might arrive in time to save her.
Sejuani placed the leather-wrapped stick back between her teeth. She ran her fingers through the wiry hair on Bristle’s neck, who needed no oath or words to understand her intent. He grunted and turned to face the water.
Again she grabbed Winter’s Wrath and swung it. Exhausted, in pain, and sweating in the heat, Sejuani brought it down onto the water…
A bridge of ice formed as Bristle charged. The ice cracked and tilted, but her steed somehow ran true.
Arrows fell; not the few exploratory shots from before, but a black rain. Sejuani held her shield high, though a few still stabbed her shoulders and thighs. Dozens pierced Bristle’s hide.
Then, barely halfway across the river, the bridge collapsed, and they were in the water.
Bristle struggled. Desperately, he tried to hold them above the surface. Still the arrows fell. The distant shore was gone. All Sejuani could see was a rain of black bolts and the water red from Bristle’s blood.
The great beast was screaming—with a sound like a thunderstorm and a baby wailing. Bristle sputtered. Without thinking, Sejuani leaned over, protecting his torso with her own. Her shield covered his face to ease the mount’s suffering.
It was then she thought, Perhaps our death comes today.
Suddenly, Bristle found his footing in the shallows. Instead of drowning, the great beast made huge splashing strides onto the riverbank.
Sejuani stood in her saddle and swung her flail in front of her, releasing an explosion of ice. The blast cut apart a dozen unarmored archers. Bristle gored and trampled another two. The others ran from her, back uphill, seeking cover behind the spearmen who formed a shield wall to block her next attack. More missiles would rain down and the spearmen would charge her in mass momentarily, but Sejuani grinned, knowing the archers had lost their opportunity.
She looked back to see her own warriors crossing, unharried by the barrage she had just weathered. Sejuani still did not know if she would survive this day, but she had not failed her oath or her people…
And that is what mattered. | Tank |
The twisted, unfathomable madman known across Runeterra as Singed began his life as an ordinary man in Piltover. As a child, he displayed a prodigious intellect and a boundless sense of curiosity. The principles and interactions of the natural world fascinated him, eventually leading him to pursue a scholarship at the prestigious University of Piltover.It did not take long for his brilliance to be recognized.Singed’s research into the natural sciences was impressive—groundbreaking even—but he found that Piltover’s attention had been stolen away ever since the discovery of hextech, and the opportunities the hybrid of magic and technology presented. Singed found himself on the outside looking in, seeing magic as a crutch leaned upon by those who were either incapable of understanding how the world worked, or simply didn’t care enough to find out. He became a vocal critic of what he saw as a new and ignorant fad within the university.Singed instead delved into the chemical potential of alchemy, and despite the boon his intellect garnered for the field, his efforts earned him little more than the ridicule of his fellow academics. Before long, his funding had dried up, and he was forced out of the university, and out of Piltover. Singed had no choice but to begin a new life—in Zaun.In the undercity, life was cheap, and the demand for innovation high. Singed was quickly able to find work in the emergent chemtech industries, lending his skills and relentless drive for a variety of increasingly unscrupulous clients. His experiments, often of questionable ethicality, cast a wide net: augmenting humans, animals, and even fusions of the two, among countless other endeavours. Nonetheless, he pushed his new field forward at an incredibly rapid pace, but often at the expense of his own health. Understanding better than anyone the chemical needs of a living body, he engineered stimulants that could keep him alert and working for weeks at a time, before he would collapse, shivering and feeble, and sleep for days on end.Singed’s obsessive, tireless efforts as an alchymist meant he found no shortage of patrons and clients, eventually including even the warmasons of Noxus. The gossip was rampant across both Piltover and Zaun that the empire and their Grand General were on the verge of bankruptcy from paying Piltover’s extortionate tithes for military passage to the campaigns in northern Shurima, and soon they might be looking elsewhere for new, less expensive conquests. So long as they paid his fees, Singed didn’t care.After years of smaller, off-and-on projects, Singed was approached by a Noxian military commander named Emystan, who contracted the alchymist to help her break the bitter stalemate of the war in Ionia. She needed a new kind of weapon from him, the like of which no one had ever seen before… and she could make him a wealthy man indeed.Putting aside all other concerns, Singed poured all of his intellect, knowledge, and experience into the synthesis of this new weapon. The result of his efforts was an alchemical fire that was unstable, volatile, and utterly horrifying. When it was finally unleashed in Ionia against the enemies of Noxus, it burned hot enough to fracture stone, and tainted the earth around it with dense, metallic poisons so completely that almost nothing would grow there. Even Emystan’s own allies were appalled, though not quite enough to name her and Singed as war criminals.Now, without any restraint for capital, materials, or even subjects to experiment upon, Singed nonetheless feels the weight of years upon him. His most recent work has taken a decidedly more biological angle, and of a far more dramatic scope. A recent exercise in the melding of animal, man, and machine left his laboratories in ruins, his face held together with filthy bandages, and his subject freely prowling the streets of Zaun, yet Singed remains undeterred.He has already mastered the destruction of flesh, and thus now has turned to the preservation and transformation of it… and perhaps even the possibility that life need not end with an inescapable death. | Tank |
BLOOD.
SMELL IT.
WANT. ACHING. NEED!
CLOSE NOW. THEY COME.
NO CHAINS? FREE! KILL!
IN REACH. YES! DIE! DIE!
Gone. Too quick. No fight. More. I want... more.
A voice? Unfamiliar. I see him. The Grand General. My general.
He leads. I follow. Marching. To where? I should know. I can't remember.
It all bleeds together. Does it matter? Noxus conquers. The rest? Trivial. So long... since I've tasted victory.
The war wagon rocks. Rattles. A cramped cage. Pointless ceremony. The waiting. Maddening. Faster, dogs!
There. Banners. Demacians and their walls. Cowards. Their gates will shatter. Thoughts of the massacre come easily.
Who gave the order to halt? The underlings don't answer. No familiar faces. If I do not remember, neither will history.
The cage is opened. Finally! No more waiting. WE CHARGE!
Slings and arrows? The weapons of children! Their walls will not save them!
I can taste their fear. They shrink at every blow as their barricades splinter. SOON!
Noxian drums. Demacian screams. Glory isn't accolades; glory is hot blood on your hands! This is life!
A thousand shattered corpses lie at my feet, and Demacian homes burn all around me. It's over too quickly! Just one more...
The men stare. There's fear in their eyes. If they're afraid to look upon victory, I should pluck those craven eyes out. There is no fear in the Grand General's eyes, only approval. He is pleased with this conquest.
Walking the field with the Grand General, surveying the carnage, I ache for another foe. He is hobbled, a leg wound from the battle? If it pains him, he does not show it. A true Noxian. I do not like his pet, though; it picks over the dead, having earned nothing. His war hounds were more fitting company.
Demacia will be within our grasp soon. I can feel it. I am ready to march. The Grand General insists that I rest. How can I rest when my enemies still live?
Why do we mill about? The waiting eats at me. I'm left to my own devices. The bird watches. It's unsettling. Were it anyone else's, I would crush it.
Fatigue sets in. I've never felt so... tired.
Boram? Is that you? What are you whispering?
Where am I?
Captured? Kenneled like some dog. How?
There was... the battle, the razing of the fortress, the quiet of the aftermath. Were we ambushed? I can't remember.
I was wounded. I can feel the ragged gash... but no pain. They thought me dead. Now, I am their prize. Fate is laughing. I will not be caged! They will regret sparing me.
Demacian worms! They parrot kind words, but they are ruthless all the same. This place is a dank pit. They bring no food. There is no torture. They do not make a show of me. I am left to rot.
I remember my finest hour. I held a king by his throat and felt the final beat of his heart through my tightening grasp. I don't remember letting go. Is this your vengeance, Jarvan?
I hear the triumphal march. Boots on stone. Faint, through the dungeon walls. The cadence of Noxian drums. I shall be free. Demacian blood will run in the streets!
No one came. I heard no struggle. No retreat. Did I imagine it?
There is no aching in this stump. I barely noticed the iron boot. It's caked in rust.
When did I lose my leg?
I still smell the blood. Battle. It brings comfort.
The hunger gnaws. I have not slept. Time crawls. So tired.
How long?
So dark. This pit. I remember. Grand General. His whispering. What was it?
Not who I think.
Fading. Mustn't forget.
Message. Cut. Remember.
''SION – Beware ravens.''
FREE ME!
BLOOD. | Tank |
The golden hour between fifth and sixth bell. That’s my favorite time of day. It’s when most people in the Factorywood finish their work shifts. They’re bone tired, but they’re done for the day. Work is behind them. A hot meal and home are ahead. The people here are nice, and I always feel good squeezing my gelatinous body through the cliff-cracks seaming the rocks around the Factorywood. I feel love emanating from a man going home to his newborn son. I relish the anticipation of a married couple looking forward to a romantic dinner in the Boundary Markets.
Their thoughts soak into me. It’s nice, like a warm bath, though I tend to stretch out pretty thin when things get too hot. There’s always a few people in the mix who aren’t so happy. After all, life in Zaun can be hard. Some people are nursing broken hearts, while others can’t stomach the thought of another shift and feel nothing but seething resentment. I absorb the good and the bad, because that’s the way I was made. The bad feelings sometimes make me angry, but there’s nothing I can do about that. My parents taught me it’s okay to feel bad sometimes. Without the bad you can’t properly savor the good.
I follow the crowd until people start to go their separate ways. A few lingering bad feelings drift through my thoughts, so I decide to do something good to push them out. I seep down through a network of cracked vents I’ve been meaning to fix for a while, but just hadn’t gotten around to. I collect fragments of metal in my body as I go, extruding them from my amorphous form wherever there’s a crack, then heating my outer layers to weld them in place. With the cracks sealed, clean air from the pump station higher up in Piltover flows once again. Which hopefully means fewer cases of lung blight in a good many of the streets below.
The bottom of the pipe brings me out in the upper reaches of the Sump level. Things aren’t so nice here. Lots of people don’t have much of anything, and there’s plenty who want to take even that from them. The sump pools, full of toxins and runoff from the chem-forges, remind me of the time I spent alone as a specimen in a laboratory. I try not to think of that time, because it makes me angry. And when I get angry I sometimes break stuff, even though I don’t mean to. I don’t like feeling like that, so I ease myself into my favorite cleft in the rock, the one running beneath the twisting rookeries of the Skylight Commercia. It’s always nice there. People out together, browsing the galleries, meeting friends, dining or going to see one of the companies of players that tour the undercity with their satirical works. The atmosphere warm and friendly, it’s the perfect place to bask in all that Zaun has to offer.
But as I pass beneath the outlying streets, a spike of anguish ripples through me. A tremor of fear and pain disturbs my liquid flesh. I don’t like it. It feels out of place, like something I’d expect to find deeper down in the Sump. That’s the place where bad things happen more often than good things. It shouldn’t be happening here! I get angry as more of the bad feelings soak into me. I follow them down, wanting to stop them from spreading.
I push my body from the corroded pipes running below a metalsmith’s shop. My bulk fills the space under the warped floorboards. Light shines in angled beams through the louvers of a grille set in the floor. Angry voices come from above. Shouts and the sound of a weeping man. I press my body against the grille. My gelatinous mass breaks apart, only to reform on the other side. I push hard and quick, re-establishing my form inside the shop.
The owner of the shop is on his knees beside a woman who bleeds from a deep wound in her belly. He kneels at her side, one arm outstretched toward the four men standing in the wreckage of his shop. I know these kinds of men. I see them all the time in the Sump; thugs who force good-hearted people to pay up or face seeing their livelihoods smashed.
The interior of the shop is lit by chem-lanterns, one of which is held by a man wearing a butcher’s apron and who has a meat-hook crudely fixed to the stump of his other hand. The other three are mere brutes, slab-muscled simpletons in canvas overalls and thick magnifier goggles. Their eyes grow stupidly wide with shock at the sight of me rising over them. I bloat my body, greenish limbs swelling with power as I form a mouth where I think it ought to be.
I want to really hurt these men. I know it’s their emotions I’ve been feeling, but I don’t care. I just want to hurt them as badly as they hurt these people.
“This is gonna get messy,” I say.
My right arm shoots out, smashing the first thug from his feet. He slams into the metal stanchion by the door and doesn’t get back up. A second thug swings a heavy iron club, a sump-scrapper’s oversized wrench. It hits me in my middle and is promptly swallowed by my pliant flesh. I reach down and pluck him from the ground, hammering him up to the latticework girders of the ceiling. He drops back down, his limbs bending in ways even I can tell they shouldn’t. The third thug turns and runs, but I reach up and stretch my arms toward the girders. I spring forward and hammer my feet into his back. I squash him to the ground as their leader slices the blade of his butcher’s hook down the center of my back.
It hurts! Oh, how it hurts. The pain causes my body to lose cohesion. I fall to the floor in a shower of liquid green ooze. For a moment, I lose all sense of spatial awareness, seeing and feeling the world from a thousand different perspectives. The thug stands over me, a gap-toothed smile splitting his stupid face. He’s glad he killed me, filled with pride at his destruction of a living thing.
His pleasure at this destruction courses through me like a hateful elixir. I don’t want to feel like this, it’s not what I was taught, but to help these people I need to use the wrath that fills me. I must turn it against these men. My scattered globules reform in the time it takes him to realize he hasn’t killed me as thoroughly as he thought. I surge from the floor and crash into him, altering my density to that of a thundering piledriver. We smash into the wall of the establishment, the flesh and bone beneath me disintegrating at the force of impact.
I peel myself from the bloody wall, feeling the anger slowly drain from me. I form my body into something man-shaped as I feel the mixed emotions emanating from the couple behind me. The man looks at me with a mixture of fear and trepidation. His wife smiles at me, though I can feel her tremendous pain. I kneel beside her and she takes my hand. It is soft. I am immediately soothed by her gratitude.
I nod and place my hand on her stomach. Heat spreads from me as I ease a sliver of my form into her wound. I’ll be leaving a piece of me behind, a piece I’ll never grow back, but I give it willingly, knowing she will live because of me. The portion of my body within her repairs damaged flesh, knits ruptured tissue and stimulates regenerative growth in her stomach lining. Her husband wipes his hand over her wound, and gasps to see her skin is pink and new.
“Thank you,” she says.
I do not answer. I cannot. Expending such power drains me, leaves me thin. I allow my cohesion to loosen, flowing back down the grille and into the pipes. It is all I can do to maintain my form as I pour down through the cracks in the rock, heading toward the places I know will be awash with good emotions. I need to renew myself. I need to feel all the good Zaun has to offer.
I need to feel alive.
I need to feel. | Tank |