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Cassiopeia

The youngest child of General Du Couteau, Cassiopeia was born to a life of possibility and privilege among the Noxian noble houses. From an early age, she displayed a keen mind and sharp wit, and while her sister Katarina flourished under their father’s tutelage, it was their mother Soreana in whose footsteps Cassiopeia would follow.
A hero of Noxus’ expansion into Shurima, General Du Couteau eventually sent for his family, installing them close to the governor of the coastal city of Urzeris. Surrounded by strangers in an unfamiliar land, Cassiopeia remained close to her mother, learning much of politics, diplomacy, and subtle influence. As she grew, Cassiopeia could not help but glimpse other, hidden concerns within Soreana, beyond those of the empire…
One day, quite unexpectedly, Soreana collapsed in the family residence—her hairbrush had been laced with caustic venoms by an unknown hand, leaving her close to death. General du Couteau was well versed in the ways of an assassin, and so he had all the household staff removed, leaving his wife and daughters alone in an empty house.
Still little more than a child, Cassiopeia never left her mother’s bedside. While Soreana’s recovery took many months, the bond between them became stronger than ever before.
When the general was recalled to Noxus to prepare for the long-awaited invasion of Ionia, he took Katarina with him, but Cassiopeia remained in Urzeris. Seemingly relieved, Soreana confided in her daughter that she belonged to a clandestine and secretive cabal, known by some as “the Black Rose”. Having guided the empire for centuries, they had finally managed to spread their influence into Shurima.
Now free of her husband’s watchful eye, Soreana’s real work could begin.
In time, and under her mother’s tutelage, Cassiopeia blossomed into a young woman of tremendous beauty, cunning and intelligence, if somewhat lacking in empathy. She saw those around her as tools to be used to achieve her goals, and then cast aside just as quickly.
Though she had barely reached the cusp of womanhood, she was initiated into the Black Rose by hunting down and eliminating those who had sought the death of her mother. She surprised even Soreana with her speed and efficiency, and left no trace of her activities—or her proxies—behind. Only then was Cassiopeia made privy to the cabal’s broader plan for Shurima. Using her family’s tremendous resources, she undertook a number of expeditions into the deep desert, raiding ancient ruins with the help of a local mercenary named Sivir.
Her efforts were made all the more urgent when word reached Urzeris from the capital. Grand General Boram Darkwill had been deposed by Jericho Swain, and a number of noble houses had chosen to honor this coup… including Du Couteau.
Outraged and disgusted by her husband’s betrayal, and fearing that all members of the Black Rose were now in jeopardy, Soreana became desperate. She dispatched Cassiopeia to seek out the godlike power that had been the key to Shurima’s supremacy in ages past. Cassiopeia swore she would return with a weapon ready for the looming secret war, or not at all.
Fulfilling this oath would leave her changed forever. Upon unearthing a long lost tomb of the mythical Ascended, she knew this was the threshold to the power she sought, and intended to dispatch all witnesses from her expedition before claiming it. The guide Sivir was the first to fall to Cassiopeia’s blade, but then an ancient stone tomb guardian reared up, and buried its fangs into her flesh.
Overcome by its arcane toxins, she was carried back through the desert by her hired soldiers, screaming as her body twisted into something new and unspeakable…
Cassiopeia locked herself in the disused crypt of the Urzeris residence, and endured the untold agonies of this transformation. Gone was the brilliant and beautiful daughter of Soreana Du Couteau, replaced by a monstrous, slithering creature that skulked in the shadows, spitting poison, and crushing stone as easily as glass.
For weeks she wept and howled, grieving her lost life… until the day she could weep no more. She dragged herself up from the depths of despair, determined to accept—maybe even someday embrace?—her fate. It was not the Ascension she had hoped for, but Cassiopeia had unearthed the magic of dead Shuriman gods. She would turn it to the schemes of the Black Rose just as she and her mother had planned, and she could feel this power growing within her, day by day.
Though into what, even she cannot guess.
The Shedding of Skin

Rayla Heide

Cassiopeia reclined against the crenelated rooftop, and gazed over the winding alleys and crowded streets of Urzeris. A Noxian possession for years, the coastal city still refused to completely embrace its new identity—it felt ancient, and quietly resistant to the future.
So Shuriman.
Untroubled by the cool night air, Cassiopeia wore a shift of translucent silk, which revealed the transition at her hips where soft skin merged into sinuous, overlapping snake scales. The scent of roasted meat wafted up to her hidden aerie, but it could not mask the vile stench of thousands of people living on top of each other. Her mouth burned as noxious venom mingled with her saliva. She flexed her muscular tail, cracking the stonework and sending crumbled fragments to the streets below.
Rats scattered from the falling stone. Filthy street urchins dashed around street corners as hooded figures whispered in the shadows and burly soldiers staggered in and out of taverns. All were oblivious to the predator lurking in the darkness above.
Cassiopeia brushed a taloned hand against her scaly side, her serpentine figure concealed by the shadows. Once, she had been a powerful figure in Noxus: assassins killed at her slightest whim, soldiers spilled their darkest secrets, and generals willingly followed her counsel in the hopes of patronage. Cassiopeia sighed. These days, she emerged only under cover of night. No longer was she an influential voice in Noxian society—not since she had been reduced to this grotesque abomination in hiding.
Upon her return from the desert, Cassiopeia had hidden in the crypt of her family’s residence, fearful of her transformation. She remained alone in the cold, dank vault for weeks, filled with disgust for her serpentine body and mourning the loss of her aristocratic life.
Eventually, a growing desire to hunt overwhelmed her, and she ventured out to roam the city by night as the household slumbered.
Cassiopeia put aside her reverie as a broad-shouldered soldier in a leather breastplate stumbled from a tavern, drink in hand. Finally; this was the man she’d been waiting for. She trailed his movements from above, following him silently over fortress walls and archways, until he entered an empty courtyard. Perfect. Cassiopeia slithered onto an adjacent roof, eyes glinting with predatory thrill.
Her figure cast a shadow across the soldier. He turned, drunkenly defiant.
“I know you’re there! Show yourself!” he said.
Cassiopeia’s tail twitched in anticipation. Her forked tongue extended, tasting the air. She drew the sweet scent of his blood into her lungs, then exhaled with great satisfaction.
“Fight me face to face!” he shouted. “I ain’t gonna be stalked like some animal.”
Cassiopeia let out an angry hiss. By the time the soldier looked up, she’d slid to the opposite side of the courtyard and perched directly above him, remaining out of sight in the shadows.
“You consider yourself better than an animal, do you?” she said.
The man’s head turned abruptly, trying to pinpoint the sound of her voice.
“How’d you get across so fast?” he said, his wavering tone betraying false bravado.
“Even beasts are nothing to your savagery,” said Cassiopeia.
Breathless, he edged away, looking for an escape. He hammered his fists against every door, but each was bolted shut. Cassiopeia imagined his mind racing to solve the riddle of who was hunting him and why.
He unsheathed his sword, turning on the spot, unsure where to direct his threat. “You don’t want to cross me. I’ve gutted worse enemies than you.”
“Not just enemies,” Cassiopeia replied. “I’ve seen your handiwork. You’re not the only one who creeps about in the dark.”
She spat a bilious wad of venom as he turned toward the sound of her voice. The man howled in pain, coin-sized holes burning through his armor and into his skin. She inhaled the satisfying sear of burning leather and flesh.
The man brandished his sword. “Who are you? Why’re you doing this?”
“I’ve been watching you,” replied Cassiopeia. “I know what you are, what you do…”
“What I do is no business of yours.”
“I know you’re murdering children for drake meat. I hear it’s quite lucrative.”
The man tried to pry open the shutters of a nearby window with the flat of his sword, but they too were bolted shut.
“Then there’s the three tavern wenches,” said Cassiopeia. “Sarmela, Elmin, and Lyx. They were found in the river yesterday. Their faces were hardly recognizable once you’d finished with them.”
She relished the thought of sinking her talons into his flesh.
The man readied his stance. “You can’t fight me from the shadows. Show yourself!”
“Very well,” Cassiopeia said.
She slithered down to the courtyard and rose to her full height. The man’s eyes widened in horror, his hands trembling. Cassiopeia stood head and shoulders over the man, glaring down with narrowing eyes.
“Monster!” he cried.
“Monster,” murmured Cassiopeia. “Not the worst I’ve been called.”
She slid left and whipped her tail across his legs, effortlessly knocking him to the ground.
Curling her tail around his chest, she squeezed his ribcage tighter and tighter, sensing his pounding heart straining beneath her grasp. She heard bones crack. She resisted the urge to break him completely, and released her grip. He crawled to his sword, grasping it in desperation. She so enjoyed watching him tremble.
She circled him slowly. He met her gaze and stared in slow recognition.
“I know your face. The Lady Cassiopeia!” he said. “Look at you!”
Point to the ground, he pushed himself onto his feet with his sword.
“You chase drunkards like me through the filthy gutters of this city now, is that it?” The man spat a wad of blood. “From such great heights we fall, eh?”
She hissed, exposing dripping yellow fangs.
Cassiopeia’s gaze bored into the man’s eyes, locking them in a cold-hearted bond. She screamed, pouring all her rage into the cry; fury at the unfairness of her current state, anger at the loss of her privileged life, resentment for her failed ambitions. She channeled it all into the screeching, mind-shredding wail.
As she screamed, her fury was replaced with joy. It felt like she was floating, her potential for greatness infinite. Every fiber of her being sang with ancient power.
Searing emerald light blazed from Cassiopeia’s eyes. The man’s final panic was outlined in silhouette as he petrified from the inside out. His stare hardened, greyed, and stiffened, his last cry of terror stifled as her curse transformed his flesh to stone.
Cassiopeia slithered up to the statue and softly caressed its hard cheek. What was once skin fractured into a grisly pattern resembling a dried riverbed.
“Once, I had to manipulate, bribe, or otherwise… persuade people to orchestrate my schemes,” she said. “But now… Now I simply take what I want.”
She whipped her tail forward, smashing the statue to the ground. She smiled, eyes glinting, as it shattered into a thousand pieces of rubble and dust.
Cassiopeia flushed with pride as she considered her handiwork. Her life as a noble was over, yes, but never had she felt such boundless power coursing through her veins. She slithered back onto the rooftops, her mind awhirl with ideas.
Her next victim would offer her a far greater challenge.
Child of Zaun

Ian St. Martin

What’s the difference between law and order?
Can you have one without the other? And what does either have to do with justice? Maybe it depends on who you ask. If you asked me, well, the young me, justice comes by cracking skulls.
Guess I’m feeling young today.
It’s still dark when I finally reach the Hall of Law. As is often the case, though not usually so early in the morning, I’m bringing guests with me. A pair of them, two from the seven I had caught vandalizing a row of shops and cafes down on Horologica Avenue. One is snoring from the light tap I gave him, but the other is wide awake, and quite the fan of colorful language.
“Pipe down—you’re disturbing my peace.” I tighten my metal fingers around his collar and nod to his accomplice, slung over my shoulder. “If I were you, I’d take a hint from your friend here.”
“This is brutality,” he hisses. “Where are we? In Noxus?”
“Noxus?” I have to stop myself from laughing. “I wish. If we were in Noxus, I’d be taking you to the Reckoning pits, not a shaming cell.”
The imagery gives him a jolt, and I get a few moments’ quiet before he’s back at it.
“You think you can silence us, but you can’t. We are going to expose your system of oppression and tear it down.”
“And breaking all the windows in a tea room accomplishes this, how? You’re just another bored, spoiled brat, looking for a reason to smash things. You aren’t helping anybody.”
“We’re speaking up for those without a voice!” he snaps. “For the poor and the downtrodden.”
I look at his clothes. New, clean. There hasn’t been a day he’s wanted for anything. “Well, I am one of those poor, downtrodden Zaunites, and my voice works just fine.”
“And now you’re part of the system.” He spits pink onto the street. “Put a few cogs in your pocket and you turn on anything. How do you sleep at night?”
There’s an itch I get, wearing these gauntlets. The urge to feel a ribcage wrap around my knuckles that on some days is damn near overpowering. Try as I might, his words have my blood getting hotter, and my hextech fists begin purring in response, ready for a scrap that’s usually sure to come. But I tamp it down.
“When I’m not rounding up idiots for smashing up tea rooms? I sleep like a baby.”
Mercifully we reach the doors.
“Here, help a poor Zaunite in need.” I use the talker’s head to knock. I confess letting a touch of my frustration slip into the last rap—it’s loud enough to get someone to work the lock from the other side.
“Warden Kepple.” I grin at the blinking face behind the slowly opening door.
“Getting an awful early start, eh, Vi?” he grumbles, pawing sleep from his eyes.
“Injustice never rests, my friend.” I drag my arrests through the door, giving Kepple the quick version of the morning’s events.
“I’ve apprehended two of them,” I finish. “Both suspects are…” I look at each of them, now both snoring in tandem. “Subdued.”
Kepple raises an eyebrow. “Sure seems like it. Sheriff Caitlyn’s already looking for ya, upstairs.”
“I trust you can handle the processing for this pair of recreational revolutionaries, then?”
“I’ll get it logged,” Kepple grunts as I dump one of the punks in his arms, and the mouthy one at his feet.
I flash a smile as I pass him. “You’re an asset to the force.”

Caitlyn’s office is a mess. The creaking wooden desk is smothered, hidden beneath a forest of brass pneuma-tube capsules and the endless forms, messages, and edicts that they contain. The sheriff is lost somewhere in that forest, rummaging through warrants and mandates and the demands of her bosses and the merchant clans. It doesn’t look like she’s left the room in days, leaving me to guess at how short her temper might be as I close the door behind me.
“Sit down,” she says without looking up, still digging around for something.
Straight to it, then.
“What, this about those punks?” I clear off a chair and sit, flexing the mechanical fingers of my right hand and propping my boots up on the corner of her desk. “They’ll be walking around again in a few days. If you ask me, I went easy on them.”
“This isn’t about that,” she answers, each word somehow more tired than the last. “There is something that has been brought to our attention, developments that are… complicated, that we need to look into. It’s about Zaun.”
I see then that it’s not all lack of sleep weighing Cait down. Something’s got her guard up, an apprehension that’s rare in a woman who can put a bullet through a silver cog from three streets away.
“Is it her?” I ask. Can’t keep the acid from my voice.
Cait finally stops hunting around her desk. Those sapphire eyes flick up to me. “No. This is something different. Something new.”
“New,” I repeat, though no more sense comes out of it.
Cait takes a slow breath. “Something is happening in the Sump.”
I cock my head. “That’s pretty damn far from our jurisdiction.”
“Ever since the split,” says Cait, “our cities have existed in symbiosis. Despite appearances, one can’t survive without the other, so a balance must be maintained.”
Split, they call it. Usually a split is clean and even. In this case, some rich merchants got excited about digging a canal, too excited to make sure the land was stable. They put half of Zaun under water. Drowning people in service of commerce, and the way that commerce has been divvied since, is pretty far from clean or even.
“A real easy way to break that balance would be to reach down into lower Zaun and start shaking things,” I point out. “But we aren’t talking about the Promenade here—there’s no overlap in the Sump where we can massage events after the fact and make matters slide.”
Cait sighs. “These are all topics that have been discussed and considered.”
“By who?” I ask. “Care to clue me in?”
“I am able to tell you as much as you need to know, and right now you don’t need to know that.”
“So what does this have to do with us?” I ask, fiddling with an empty pneuma-tube capsule. “What the undercity does is its own business.”
“Not this time.” Cait plucks the capsule from my hand, setting it down as she sits back against the desk. I frown. She isn’t normally this tight-lipped.
“What’s changed, then?”
“We don’t know,” Cait answers. “To find out, we need eyes down there, someone who knows Zaun. That’s where you come in.”
“This is all pretty vague, sheriff.” I shake my head. “What about the barons? You think they’re just gonna sit back and let Piltover send wardens down to their turf and start flipping tables?”
Cait gives me a tired grin. “Is that the big, bad Vi I hear, scared of a few little chem-barons?”
I cross my arms over my chest. “I just like to know who’s going to be looking for my scalp, is all.”
“The barons won’t be an issue.”
“Oh, really?” I raise an eyebrow. “And why is that?”
“Because they’re the ones asking for help.”
I sit up straighter at that.
“You’re right. This is new.” I shake my head. Something is very off with this, and I’m not getting anywhere close to the full picture. “Still a lot of bad blood between the barons and the Wardens. There’s a dozen ways this can go wrong.”
“I wouldn’t worry too much on that account,” she says, “because you won’t be going as a warden. Those kids you tuned up happened to have spawned from Clan Medarda, and their parents want your head.”
She holds up a sheaf of vellum missives. I can make out the calligraphy through the light coming in from the window. From that same window I hear the beginnings of a crowd gathering—an angry one.
“Lucky for you,” Cait says with a smile, “I talked them down. You can keep your head, so long as you’re out of the Wardens. You’re leaving town, going home to reflect and reconnect with your roots.”
“Cute story.” The word home sticks out, whether she meant it to or not. All these years here, guess I’m still a visitor—one who’s getting the boot for doing her job, because someone has enough cogs to think they’re above the law. “Convenient, too.”
“This means you’ll be on your own down there.” The levity drops from her voice. “No backup. And appearances must be kept up. I’ll need your badge, and your hands.”
“Go down to Zaun…” I work the clasps on my gauntlets and take them off. “Don’t know what I’m looking for, only that it’s bad enough that the chem-barons can’t handle it.” I drop the bulky hextech fists on Cait’s desk with a thunk that crushes capsules and scatters papers onto the floor. “And I can’t even bring my hands. This is getting better by the minute.”
“There’s no one else I could trust to do this,” Cait says.
“So you’re really not gonna tell me who’s pulling the strings on this one?” I ask, biting back on my temper. “Not every day I’m asked to provoke an international incident.”
“I’ve told you all I can, Vi. Believe me.”
“You could always come with me,” I say with a grin. “Take a little working vacation to Valoran’s most scenic tourist destination.”
Cait doesn’t answer, but she doesn’t have to. I know she can’t go, but it’s always fun to tease. And it keeps me from punching a hole in the wall.

Dawn settles into morning by the time I reach the Rising Howl. The crowds outside the Hall of Law gave me jeers and a few tossed stones as I left, but they knew better than to get too close. They clung to the Hall where they could stay seen, and keep their teeth in their heads.
It feels strange to walk the city without my gauntlets, my hands still wrapped up from the day before. I left anything that could tie me to the Wardens back at the Hall, anything to tie me to Piltover, really. I’ll need to lay low—I’m far from forgotten in Zaun, and there are plenty of folks whose memories I’d rather not refresh. I’ll go down, see what’s got the barons so spooked, and be back in a few days, tops.
The conveyor fills near to bursting as the conductor whistles herself hoarse and the doors finally lock. Hexdraulic winches loosen their grip on the great chains holding us, and the descent begins. I find a seat on the bottom level of the pod, staring out through the bottle-green window panels as we sink.
The morning light has spilled across all of Piltover, glittering off towers of iron and glass, but only teases the lips of the chasms. The light will reach the Promenade—Zaun’s highest level—but won’t be much more than a glimmer any lower than that.
I shift my boot, seeing a symbol scratched crudely into the floor. Some kind of spider.
The air already starts to slicken as the conveyor slides through the Promenade, and I taste chem fumes and feel a low sting in my nostrils. The new spire comes into view, a giant tower of pale stone and shimmering glass starting all the way down at the Entresol. Mechanicians, laborers, and menials toil in its base levels, synthesizing and refining their hex-crystals before shipping them up to the city above. Of the process, all that remains in Zaun is the concentrated runoff, more dangerous than the Gray by tenfold, at least by the smell of it.
I’m not sure who owns this spire—Ferros isn’t the only player in the synthetic hex-crystal game anymore, though they still make the strongest, purest kind. Word is even chem-barons, like the Poingdestres, are trying to make their own brands of cheap knock-offs, without the merchant clans. But most likely, this spire is yet another joint venture between the barons and the clans.
As we descend to the Entresol, something catches my eye through the window. The conveyor shafts are no stranger to graffiti, but one mark stands out bright and new against the faded tags it’s covering.
A spider.
I look down at the floor. The mark is the same. My eyes go back to the window and I find it again, and again.
I stand up, pressing my back to the wall as the Howl shudders to a stop at the Entresol. The conveyor empties, and more than one pair of eyes look at me with alarm when I don’t exit.
A bell chimes, a signal the Rising Howl is due to depart. The conductor descends the stairs, peering this way and that before spotting me.
“Lift’s going down soon,” she says, the unease clear in her voice. “You’re heading Sumpward, then?”
I take a look around, seeing an empty platform beyond the doors. “Looks like I’m the only one.”
“May not pay to be unique in this regard, dear.” She takes a step closer, pushing her goggles up to her brow. I can see the fear in her eyes. “Sump’s not right these days. Best to stay further up.”
“You know anything about it?” I ask.
The conductor looks down, fidgeting with her sonophone. “Enough not to trifle with it.”
I consider her for a moment. “I think I’ll take my chances.”
She lingers, hoping I’ll have a change of heart, before giving a slow nod and clambering back up the stairs. Soon the Howl begins its slow rumble downward, down to the Sump, where I will see what everyone is so afraid of.

The light gets poorer once you clear the Entresol. Chem-lamps appear fewer and fewer, like fireflies rising up the farther down we go. The light from the Howl itself is enough to see the immediate surroundings of the conveyor, though the worth of that might be dubious.
The Sump has never been pretty. Maybe a long way back, before the Flood turned half of it into a graveyard and the other half became a landfill, it might have been different. But that’s long gone, and from what I see, even compared to what I remember, it’s only getting worse.
Make the wrong enemies, break one too many promises, back a loser with your last cog, you’ll end up down here. Desperate people scratching out a living, safe from those above who won’t stoop to look for them. That makes it almost a haven for them, if not from each other.
The lights flicker out. I stand, walk over to the window, and lean against the railing to glimpse through the green glass. After a few moments, the lights return, bathing the conveyor shaft in enough illumination to show me what’s covering every inch of it.
Spiders. Nothing but spiders.
That same crude mark as before, but where above it was rare, here it has been etched, carved, or sprayed over everything. An unending swarm, as though marching and climbing up from the dark they had already claimed as theirs.
I feel something cold in my stomach, a tiny flare of adrenaline. Whatever it is that Cait sent me down here to find, it has to be connected to this.
“This is as far as I’ll go,” I hear the conductor’s voice scratch from the sonophone as the Rising Howl comes to a halt in a groan of protesting iron. The doors unlock and I peer out at an abandoned platform, the only light a single chem-lamp pulsing faintly at the far end. I step onto the platform and the doors lock fast behind me, the conveyor already rising as I look back at it over my shoulder. Soon it’s just one more firefly, rising from the chasm.
There’s no such thing as silence in Zaun, even down in the Sump. I hear steam coughing out of corroded pipework, factories and scrapyards growling in the distance… and a trio of voices muttering in the dark.

The spider symbol crawling all over the conveyor shaft is on the gangers, too, splashed on threadbare clothes, still raw and red on their faces and necks from new tattoos. They’re armed, and making no effort to hide it. One has a chain, another a length of pipe. I see the dull sheen of a tarnished blade in the hand of the last.
They’re young, young enough not to recognize me. Whatever gang this is, these are new pups, the most likely to do something stupid in order to prove themselves.
“You lost?” one of them says, the one holding the knife.
“Can’t say that I am,” I answer, playing off a bored calm as I take in every detail. Posture, health, temperament. I know in a few seconds which of them take the orders and which one gives them. Which are most likely to run, and who is willing to spill blood.
I make to pass them. The blade flicks out ahead of me, catching the yellowed light from the chem-lamp.
“I think you are.” He looks me over. “Tell me, sister, have you come to hear the Voice?”
I take a slow quarter step to keep all three of them in view. “Whose voice might that be?”
Knife wrinkles his nose. “Believers and pilgrims would know, and that’s all who’s welcome here.”
“Time to turn around and go back home, sun-stained filth.” Another of them spits. He gets a hissing chorus of agreement from his mates.
I could probably get more out of them. The name of their gang, who this Voice belongs to, how exactly they have the whole of the Sump running scared. But the urge to lay hands on them wins out.
“Boys, boys.” I shake my head, smiling. I make a fist, and my knuckles crack loud enough for them to hear. “I am home.”
A quick side glance to each other and they rush me. My eyes go to weapons, flicking from blade to chain to pipe to see who I need to drop first. The air tastes like ammonia and grease as the tension cracks open.
Adding a splash of blood won’t hurt.
I throw the first punch, forgetting I had left my hands behind. Wear them long enough, and you get used to the power a pair of hextech Atlas fists can give you. When my knuckles find the side of Knife’s skull, I feel something flex sideways, between my fingers. The pain is sharp and immediate, making me hesitate enough for the pipe to swing in low and take me in the ribs.
The third circles, chain lashing my legs, but my focus is on the blade. My punch had sent him to all fours. A knee to the jaw and he sprawls.
I snatch hold of the chain, wrenching the ganger holding it into a headbutt. His nose mashes flat against my forehead. He topples, clutching at his face. The whistle of the pipe makes me duck, throwing its owner off balance, and I add to his momentum to send him crashing into a wall.
Pipe springs up to his feet, and freezes. His eyes dart from me to Knife, back to me, then to Chain. The pipe pings as it hits the ground, almost drowning out the pounding of his boots as he runs for it. I lunge after him, but I’m stopped cold by a spike of pain in my ribs squeezing my lungs shut. I let him go.
Knife and Chain aren’t worth the trouble. I snap the blade beneath my boot and fling the weapons off the platform, ignoring my ribs as I start making my way deeper into the Sump.

They say that when something’s hurt and on the run, it heads back to what’s familiar. A nest or warren, some kind of sanctuary where you know you’ll have some walls to put around you.
Precious few sanctuaries in the Sump, for me at least. There might have been a handful of places I could go, but now everywhere I look there’s that mark, the spider that’s swallowed everything. I need somewhere to catch my breath, and down here there’s only one place I can think of.
I’m hazy on when and how I first ended up at Hope House for Foundling Children. I haven’t thought about the orphanage in awhile, but I still know the way by heart. You always remember how to get home, even if you ran away from it.
I stay out of the open, keeping to shadows and side streets to avoid any more encounters. I watch clots of gangers moving around, every one of them armed, but no chaos. They aren’t breaking or wrecking a thing down here.
Why smash up what you already own?
My hand is getting distracting, joining my ribs with a sharp poke each time my heart beats. I can feel it swelling up under the wraps, not broken but damn near close. I just pull them tighter.
Round a corner and there it is, Hope House, in all its dull, crumbling glory. It was far from in good shape when I left it, and the years since haven’t been any kinder. I’m amazed it’s still standing. For a second I’m a kid again, coming home banged up from a scrap or a heist. I can’t keep the smile off my face seeing it.
Kids chase each other around the front of the building, the faster, healthier children outpacing those with a missing limb or wheezing through third-rate esophilters. They see me coming and scatter. Trust is a hard thing to come by this far down, one of the first lessons the abandoned are forced to learn.
One of them makes for the front door. He hurries up the worn steps leading to the entrance, nearly stumbling face first before reaching it. His fist pounds on the door until it opens, and a young woman looks down, too young to be his mother, but old enough to be responsible for him.
“Now what did I tell you about playing on those stairs?” she scolds, thumbing away a smudge of grime from the boy’s cheek. “I’ve told you they’re tricky, and if you’re not careful, one of these days—”
“One of these days,” I say, stopping at the foot of the steps, “you’ll collect a crack in your skull.”
Her eyes go wide. I knew her voice the second I heard it, and it’s enough to sting my own eyes a touch. My mind fights to reconcile the young woman standing there with the shy little girl I once knew.
“I used to have to warn a little girl here about that all the time.” I smile. “She was trying her hand as a tumbler, when her head wasn’t buried in a book.”
“Gave up on the tumbling,” she replies, gently guiding the boy through the door before stepping outside and closing it behind her. “But I still like to read, when I can find the time.”
“Roe?” The first stair creaks under my weight as I place a foot on it. “Is that you? Can’t be.”
“It’s me.”
I climb another stair. “You can’t be Roe. Roe’s just a kid, barely reaches my hip. Look at how you sprouted.”
“Nobody stays a kid down here for long,” she says. “You should know that better than anyone.”
Another stair. “It’s good to see you. Been a long time.”
“Yeah, well.” She looks down. “I’m not the one who went anywhere.”
I stop my climb, and take a step back. The hurt is clear in her voice. When I left, she was just a kid, one I had looked after from the day she first showed up at Hope House. I had never let her run with me, kept her clear of the scraps and the stealing and the gangs. I protected her.
And then I left.
“Heard you’re with the law now,” Roe says, leaning back against the door.
“You see a badge anywhere?” I spread my arms out wide. “I was a warden for a little while, yeah, but we’ve gone our separate ways of late.”
“Seems to happen a lot.”
I dip my head. “Hey, if you wanna brawl, we can brawl. You’re old enough now.”
Despite herself, a thin smile slips through.
“Maybe. Can it wait until I get back?” Roe asks. “I’m gonna go in just a moment.”
“Go where?”
Roe looks back toward the door, then to me. She is silent for a moment, considering me. I glance at her and notice a pin on her collar, little more than an etching on a chip of scrap metal. It’s of a spider.
“Have you ever heard the Voice?”

I leave with Roe, walking through the crumbling neighborhoods toward the gathering. I listen to her talk about her life, learning about this new person she’s blossomed into. The shyness is still there, and she’s still smart from all those nights I saw her with her head hidden in books, but there’s more to her now. There’s conviction in her, an intensity that shines in her eyes.
I stick to asking questions, skirting around mentioning what I’m doing down here. All the talking starts a coughing fit that nearly doubles me over.
“What?” Roe laughs. “Spent too long up out of the Gray, huh?”
“I took a pipe to the ribs.” I wince, pressing a hand to my side. “A message of welcome from your friends when I stepped off the Howl.”
Her smile dulls. “We all want the same thing. An end to the oppression. Liberation from the barons and the clans. Clean air. Just not everybody agrees on how we should get there. Most are coming from life in the gangs, so they’re on edge. There’s great people here, kind people who just want a better future for us.”
I’d spent years in Piltover, walking among those who saw Zaun as nothing but a prison, a wasteland, an underworld. Piltover looked down and saw Zaun’s eyes looking back at them, and they either pitied them or hated them—or tried to speak for them, like that punk I arrested.
“They certainly seem preferable to the lot I’ve met already,” I say.
Roe nods. “I’ll show you.”
The closer we get, the more people we see. There are all kinds, young and old, members of rival gangs who were out to slit each other’s throats only weeks ago, all walking together. Every one of them has the spider on them, on a patch or tattoo or on a pin like Roe’s. They’re filing into an old factory with only three walls upright, and no ceiling, waiting in patient lines to gain entry.
We reach the door, barred by a pair of brutes. They are armed, one augmented with a claw of burnished iron, but they know each person by name, greeting them warmly as they come in.
“Roe, my sister, you are welcome,” one of them says, his voice low and soft despite his aggressive bulk. He then looks to me. “But this one, no.”
“Let her in,” Roe tells them. “She’s with me.”
“She is sun-stained,” says the other, lifting his chin with a sneer. “Not to be trusted.”
They want to turn me away for the joke of a tan I’ve gotten upstairs in Piltover, not because I joined the Wardens. These guys must be new.
“She has come to hear the Voice. I vouch for her, Togg.” Roe stares the guard in the eye, not backing down. “Get out of the way.”
The pair convene, muttering, before turning back to us. “The Voice is for all to hear, so you are welcome, too. But we will be watching.”
I feel their eyes on me as we step inside, and the static’s enough to have me taking in the room for ways out if this goes wrong. The place is a wreck, full of holes and collapsed masonry. If things turn red, I can get out. The only question is whether Roe will run with me, or after me.
There’s no pomp or ceremony. No music or votive candles, no dish passed hand to hand for contributions to the cause. There’s just a mass of people, surrounding a mound of rubble in the center where a man sits, calmly waiting.
“Is that him?” I whisper to Roe. “The Voice?”
She nods. I look over at him, this man who conquered the Sump, and I don’t understand.
He’s young, barely older than Roe, little more than a kid himself. Scrawny and gaunt, he has the look of a ganger in his eyes, eyes that have seen his share of horror. But there’s a strange warmth there, too, like he has a secret to tell, just to you. The last of the assembly enters, and the Voice begins to speak.
“I see many new faces.” His voice is gentle, almost quiet, though it carries to every ear. “You are all welcome here. Each one of us found our own way to this place, countless paths leading to where they become one. Know now that you are no longer alone.”
I scan the crowd. All are hanging on his every word. I wonder how many have never had those words spoken to them before. The rejected and abused, the forgotten, seen as people for the first time.
“We all bear scars,” the Voice continues. “The marks of the lives we’ve had to live, our trials and our suffering. The world has done all it can to beat us down, to convince us to stay there and be grateful for what little we have. That has been the reality here for far too long, and it is time that changed.”
Murmurs of affirmation wash over the gathering. You don’t need to have worked as a warden to feel the tension ratcheting up. The Voice is dredging up wounds, making them raw again. He isn’t lying—these people have borne more than their share of hurt, but I can see the game he’s playing, hidden beneath that truth.
“How long have their boots been on our throats?” His voice begins to rise, its edge sharpening. “The chem-barons. They use our home to build their wealth, and what do we get from it? We get poison in the air we breathe, in the water we drink. Sickness, pain, death—is this what we deserve?”
“No!” The crowd is angry now, playing right into his hands. I glance at Roe beside me, and see the same rage on her and every other face. Maybe it’s the contrarian in me, but I feel like they should have found a theater to hold this performance.
“I say, no more,” growls the Voice. “No more will we weep for brothers and sisters too weak to stand, or watch our children’s lives waste away. The barons will pay for what they’ve done, but more than that, we will bring justice to those they truly serve.”
Here it comes.
The Voice stabs an accusing finger skyward. “The corrupt merchants in that city towering over us. A city where the sun shines so bright it blinds them to the crimes they have committed here. The pain they have caused you, and the ones you love. They hide in that blindness, because they think it will protect them. But it will not, not after he arrives.”
Awed whispers fill the room, like he has just spoken of a god. Roe brushes a tear from her eye. They’re all drawn in, but nothing about this feels right, and I’ve yet to trust a word that’s come from this Voice.
“Who is he talking about?” I ask, but Roe nods back to him as he continues.
“I am his Voice, and we are all of us his sons. I have seen his face. I have heard his words and survived his test. He laid his hands upon me as his chosen, to seek out his flock and make ready for his return. That day is soon to dawn, my brothers and sisters. Not one of retribution, but of justice.”
“And who will pay the blood price for that?”
Silence descends. All eyes turn to me as I find myself standing.
“What are you doing?” Roe hisses, tugging at my hand.
Damn my temper. Vi, you’re a terrible spy. Well, no going back now.
“I’ve heard this kind of talk before,” I say, both to the Voice and the crowd. “Glib talkers who prey on the pain of the wronged and the dispossessed. They rile them up in the name of justice, when all they want is to see their puppets dance, because they want to be a god.”
The Voice listens, without any change to his patient facade. “I have not seen you here before, sister. You are new to our ways—none can fault you for not seeing them clearly.”
“I see clearly.” I glare at him. “I see a cult getting whipped up to spill blood. I see a liar promising freedom and prosperity, but putting armed thugs at every entrance to his territory.”
“They are what will win our freedom,” he answers plainly. He looks me over. “If our brothers attacked you, then I am sorry. You must understand that a dog can only be kicked so many times before he bites back. We’ve waited and we’ve waited, but now there is another way.”
He walks down from his mound of rubble, slowly approaching with his arms spread wide.
“I see much pain in you, a hurt you keep hidden behind your eyes. I see a child of Zaun who has strayed from her rightful home. Piltover has its corruptive mark all over you. You think strength lies in helping our oppressors to change, but they won’t ever change. You have strength, strength that could be used to help liberate these people.”
He certainly has a way with words. I realize I’ve made fists, and exhale to slowly release them. As much fun as making a crater out of his head would be, I wouldn’t last five seconds after.
“Whatever pain I have is mine.” I thump a fist against my chest. “I carry the weight of the choices I made. I don’t push them onto others. I don’t make scapegoats, and I don’t believe the wrongs done to me justify my inflicting them on someone else.”
The Voice looks down, chuckles softly before meeting my gaze again. “He would like you. But, if this is not your path, then leave now, and no harm will come to you. Return, though, and I can make no promises.”
I glance down at Roe, at every face staring at me. “I’ll go, and so should all of you. There is no one coming, no great being to deliver you. All I see is a man, looking for lost people to do his bidding.”
Again that soft smile, almost sad and without a hint of malice. “No, my child. He is very real. And soon enough, you won’t have to rely on my words to know that.”

True to his claim, no one touches me when I leave. Not even a threat. I don’t hear a harsh word until I am clear of the place, and Roe catches up to me.
She cuts me off. “Who do you think you are?”
“I—”
“You left,” Roe snaps. “Years pass, and all of a sudden you just walk back in and think you know what’s best for me?”
“I heard enough. You can’t tell me you actually believe all of this.”
“What’s so hard to believe? That there’s someone out there who gives a damn about what happens to the Sump?”
I take a deep breath. “I know a demagogue when I hear one, Roe. They talk, and they say anything to spin folks up, but in the end it’s never their hands that get bloody. He’s manipulating all of you.”
“He’s trying to help us.” She shakes her head bitterly. “Do you even remember what it’s like down here? You got out, but the rest of us aren’t so lucky. We stay separate and alone, and nothing will ever change. He’s going to set us free!”
“How?” I try like hell not to sound like a warden just now. “And how many are going to be left alive when it’s done? Do you know what he plans to do? If you know something, Roe, please, it is very important that you tell me.”
Something changes in her eyes. “Why? Who are you going to tell it to? Why are you even here?”
“I want to understand what has happened.” I raise my hands, trying to walk back the suspicion curdling our talk. “What is happening now, so that I can keep two cities from falling apart.”
Roe laughs, but it comes out as half a sob. “You’ve been in the sun too long. You’ve lived up there for all these years, you say you care, but what the hell have you done for us?”
“Roe.”
“Just name something,” she presses. “One single thing you’ve done to help these people, to help me, instead of keeping us all locked where we are.”
“It’s not that easy.”
“Why not?”
It’s a simple question, but it hits me like a knife in the gut. A child might ask it, trying to figure out why the world doesn’t make sense.
“Forget it. Go back up. You don’t belong here. He’s coming, Vi, and then you’ll see. All of you up there will see.”
“Who?” I grip her shoulder. “Roe, who is he?”
Her expression goes cold. “Everyone knows who the Voice is talking about. Everyone but you. It’s the Dreadnought.”

“Dreadnought?”
It’s night up in the Promenade. Cait’s left behind anything that might make her stand out, to be recognized as a sheriff of Piltover in the bustle of where the two cities touch.
“Mean anything to you?” I ask.
Cait shakes her head once. “I’ll do some digging, see what I can turn up. What else can you tell me?”
I explain all that I had seen. The marks on every wall. The complete control over the Sump. The Voice’s words when they gathered.
“They are organized,” I tell her, “and they are angry. It’s not a matter of if this boils over, but when.”
“Okay.” She takes a breath, processing. “And when it boils over, do we know where, or how?”
“I don’t know.”
Cait’s voice changes with the next question. It’s lower, quieter. “Have you heard any of them mention hextech?”
“Hextech?” I frown. “What does that have to do with—”
“Hextech,” she repeats, locking my gaze to hers. “You hear anyone start talking about gems, crystals, magic, that is news I need to know immediately.”
A question surfaces in my head, one I don’t want to ask, but will stay lodged there until I do. “Do you already know what you’re looking for, Cait?”
She looks at me. “We’re on the same side here, Vi.”
“And what side is that?” The fact she has to say such a thing puts me even further on edge. “It isn’t just the barons involved with this, is it? We’ve watched them feud with the gangs for years, and never lifted a finger. Suddenly there’s a new player on the scene that the barons can’t keep on a leash, and now you’re talking about hextech. The clans get spooked about their margins, so they need us to go down and keep Zaun in line?”
Cait doesn’t answer. My blood’s up, and I push out a slow breath. “Guess I’ll have to find out myself.”
“I told you what I could, what you needed to know.” She looks me over, her eyes falling on my hand. “You’re hurt.”
“I’ll manage.” I stand, and start walking.

Dawn’s light doesn’t reach this far down. The flickering chem-lamps make a poor substitute as I climb the steps to the front door of Hope House, where that little boy sits, alone.
“Hey,” I say softly. “Remember me? I’m Roe’s friend. My name’s Vi. What’s yours?”
Both of us are careful as I close the gap. He’s pouting, cheeks flushed and arms crossed over his chest. “Yulie.”
“Yulie,” I say, stopping a few stairs shy of him. “Do you know where Roe is, Yulie?”
He nods his head. “She’s gone.”
Something goes cold in my stomach. “Gone where, Yulie?”
The boy looks at me, the hurt making his eyes shiny in a grimy face. “She came home mad. Then she left with some of her friends.”
“Now, Yulie, this is very important.” I reach out, very slowly, and place a hand on the stair he’s sitting on. He watches me, but doesn’t flinch away. “Do you know where they went?”
“She said they were done waiting.” Yulie sniffles. “I wanted to go, but she said I had to stay here.”
“Where did they go?” I try to keep my voice soft so as not to spook him, but I’m getting impatient.
“The new tower.” Yulie nods up toward the Entresol. “She told me they make the magic rocks there. I asked if she would bring me one, and she promised that, when she got back, she’d have enough for everyone.”
I’m already running.

It takes time to make it up to the Entresol, but once I’m there, I know where to go.
The spire. A symbolic and literal image of the common Zaunite’s oppressors. It spans both cities, but while all the sweat and blood are shed in Zaun, most of the money is spent in Piltover. At the very tip of the spire is a dome, where the merchant clan’s representatives lord over the workers below.
What a sight will greet them today, if they bother to look down. To see the base of their tower turned red with blood.
The ground is already thick with dead when I arrive. Piltover may be the destination for the hex-crystals, but the chem-barons get their cut for having the spire on their turf, and they make sure they have enough brutes on hand to keep the factory secure.
The cult must have run at the gates, dragging down the guards like a tide. I see corpses from both sides littering the way. The security force had chemtech weapons, training, and experience, but they couldn’t stop a wall of fanatics, armed with little more than blunt objects and the chance to get a little payback.
The gates have been thrown open, and I see men and women that I recognize from the gathering, hauling crates and inspecting racks of round metal canisters. I keep my distance, blending into the crowds. I find my way to where most of them are massing, around a pile of crates seized from the spire. I can’t see Roe anywhere.
Standing atop the crates is the Voice. His face is bloodied and bruised, his clothing torn. He looks like he had been in the thick of the fighting. Using a pry bar, he levers open the nearest crate, revealing racks of small, gleaming blue stones.
Synthetic hextech crystals.
“This is a momentous day!” The Voice holds up one of the crystals in triumph. “Behold, the instrument of our freedom. For so long we have given everything, and received nothing in return. Today, with these, we will balance those scales, and take what is rightfully ours!”
His celebration is interrupted by the terrible screech of metal against stone.
All eyes turn upward to the walls of the spire, where a dark shape can be seen descending in a great shower of dirty sparks. Even from a distance it is enormous, an entire arm replaced by a massive cannon, the body perched upon a multitude of splayed mechanical legs, segmented and ending in sharpened claws gouging deep wounds into the spire. As it gets closer, I can see that the top portion is vaguely human, pallid flesh fused to metal and lambent green medical tubing, but the legs belong to a monster.
Or a spider.
Dreadnought. I hear the name flicker through the crowd, whispered like a prayer.
I had believed that the Voice was deluded, or a charlatan. That the creature was something he had conjured up to rally an army for himself. But he is real. Things have suddenly become far more dangerous.
The Dreadnought crashes down to the ground, making impact in a cloud of dust and rock splinters. The people fall to awed silence, parting before him as his clicking spider legs bring him to loom over his prophet.
“You’re here,” the Voice says, an ecstatic whisper. “You’re finally here.”
“Indeed, my witness.” His true voice is thunder, rendered through furnace iron. “I am here.”
I push into where the onlookers are thickest, my eyes darting, going from searching for Roe to watching what is unfolding. The Voice leaps down from the crates, his hands full of hex-crystals.
“Mighty Dreadnought,” the Voice says, beaming, “I offer these, hard won with the blood of your children. The key to our liberation.”
The Voice pours the crystals into his master’s flesh hand, stepping back in preparation for praise.
“Why do you bring these before me?” The Dreadnought tilts his hand, and the crystals spill to the ground.
Silence. Then: “I don’t understand,” the Voice stammers, watching the priceless gems scatter into the dust.
“That is clear.”
“We’ve won you a fortune. With these we can buy weapons, armies.”
“You think as they do.” The Dreadnought says it like an accusation. He looks out to the crowd. “Hate Piltover for what they have become, but revere their forebears. Industrious, committed, those people possessed the strength to harness the magic within our world, and bend it to their will. Truly they were mighty.”
I can feel the crowd’s confusion, because I share it. Of all the things they expected their savior to say, I can’t imagine it was this.
“Yet over time, the tool they had forged bore more weight. It became a crutch, and then it became their master. They have made themselves into slaves. They awoke so shackled to these gems that in their absence, the civilization they had inherited would end.”
He turns to the Voice. “Wealth is a vice—it is not strength. The boy I found that day appeared worthy. Was I mistaken?”
Unease sweeps over the crowd. We all become very aware that nearly every facet of the Dreadnought is lethal, bladed, and weaponized as his hand cups the Voice’s jaw.
“I was chosen,” the Voice pleads. “That day. You spared me.”
“Indeed.” The monster nods slowly. “Though I am not infallible. I can only seek out my failures, and correct them.”
The Voice screams, a sharp, short sound. A yelp of agony and it’s over. The Dreadnought discards the body, immediately forgotten.
“I am Urgot,” the creature says, turning to address the crowd. “And I have heard you, Zaun. The whispers of your hearts, the things you have hoped and dreamt for me to be. The names, the titles. A liberator. A god. I speak before you now to say that I am none of these things. I am greater. I am an idea.”
Every person there flocks to him, ringing his monstrous form like a congregation. He reaches for one of the metal canisters, and I notice dozens more of them within the gates. “I am a reflection of this world, an echo of the great contest between strength and weakness waged in each of our souls, with every breath we draw. I cannot be a god to you—that offering is not within my power. What I can offer you is a test to learn if you bear the strength needed to be your own god.”
A sick feeling creeps up my spine. Urgot gestures to the medical tubing linking his mechanical body to the mask covering his mouth and nose, and holds up the canister. It’s covered with warning sigils: toxic, poison.
“What lies within this metal shell is the very air I have come to breathe. I took it in, and conquered it, for true liberation comes from within. That is the message we will take to our enemies, our would-be oppressors.”
Urgot scans the crowd. “Who among you has the strength to follow me? To take this misery within yourself, and endure?”
Every one of them sinks to their knees, yearning to be baptized.
“Urgot!” they roar. “Urgot! Urgot!”
“Very well.” Urgot closes his hand over the canister’s safety valve, pale fingers forming a claw. “Let us see.”
The gas bursts out from between Urgot’s fingers as he crushes the valve. He tears a rent in the canister, and a green cloud rushes out to envelop his followers. I’m near the back, away from the greatest concentration of it, but almost immediately people begin to die.
“Roe,” I whisper, pushing through the crowd as panic begins to set in. Men and women collapse, pinkish froth boiling from lips and noses. I find a breather mask discarded by the wreck of an equipment shed, and pull it on as I feel the air begin to claw at my throat.
Visibility devolves into a putrid greenish haze. I see silhouettes all around me, shivering and thrashing and toppling over. I have to find Roe. I have to get her out. I have to find her.
And I do.
She is kneeling with a group of others, tendrils of mist rolling up their chests as it finally reaches them.
“Roe!”
She looks up, seeing me. The shy little girl I used to know. Roe stares me in the eye, vision clear with absolute belief, and breathes in.
“No!” I skid to her side. Her skin begins to blacken, dark webs of corrupted veins filling with poison. She gags. Bloody foam rings her lips. I tear the breather mask from my face, trying to press it to hers. Roe spends the last of her strength fighting me, even as she sags to the ground. Her conviction, that ironclad belief, never leaves her eyes until the life does.
Less than half of them are still alive when the cloud finally dissipates. Many of the survivors are those who are half augmented, their jaws bracketed in clunky brass esophilters and prosthetic windpipes. My mouth tastes like blood and burnt sugar. Tears cut through the grime on my face.
“Arise.” Urgot lifts a hand, and his army clambers to their feet. “Those who have passed the test bear the right, and the duty, to grant that trial to the world.”
He turns his eyes to the peak of the spire. “For too long have they been separated from the full fruits of their labor. It is time we return it to them.”

Urgot had sealed the spire, his followers opening every canister inside the air-filtration system. The toxic mist is coiling up the tower like a sickly green snake to fill floor after floor with choking, paralyzing death.
I had managed to sneak in before they locked the gates. My heart pounds as I climb the stairs toward the top, clutching the breather mask to my face. I don’t know how many dead I pass on the way, but a feeling settles in my gut that I may join them before this day is done.
If that’s the cost of a reckoning, then I’ll pay it.
It’s a race now. The cult and their monstrous leader are swarming up to reach the dome. The men and women at the peak are clan folk, and if they die, so will many more from both cities. The symbiosis, that fragile peace, will end, and those waiting for an excuse to use violence will finally have one. That’s not a fight Zaun ever wins.
I’m ready to give my life to see that prevented, to protect these people so that the true innocents might be spared. But when I throw open the doors to the clan’s sanctum, all I see makes me want to hate them.
The peak of the tower is a shimmering glass dome, painted in painstaking detail to resemble a clear, clean sky. Opulence is heaped upon opulence, from the richly appointed furnishings to silver trays of sugared fruit. The clan representatives here do not reside in a laboratory or workspace—they are in a palace.
I hurry toward the knot of frightened Piltovans, trying to suppress my anger, when a familiar face steps forward from their midst.
“Cait?”
The sheriff tips her cap. “Up here in the Promenade, it can get murky where Zaun ends and Piltover begins. Sometimes you just aren’t sure where your jurisdiction is.”
I tell her of what has happened, of what is coming.
“Well, then.” She produces a bulky case and hands it to me. “You’re going to be needing these.”
The gauntlets purr as they come to life. I make a fist, my aching bones a memory as I wait for the scrap that’s coming. Toxic mist tumbles in, immediately stinging the eyes and biting the lungs. Several of the clan folk begin to vomit.
Cait’s face goes stony and her rifle snaps up high, faster than I can track. I hear the shot and the ring it leaves in my ears. I feel the air tear as the bullet strikes the reinforced glass of the dome.
Cracks radiate out from the hole left by the bullet, rushing across the surface like lightning. The dome shatters. Colored glass rains around us, spinning and slicing. The pressure change lashes at the gas, whipping it out of the tower.
It buys us a second to breathe, but no longer. The mist fills the entrance, darkening as cultists skulk through. They pace and rattle their weapons, but hold back, waiting.
The doorway darkens again, this time entirely. It solidifies into Urgot’s titanic silhouette as he arrives, stooping to enter the dome’s bucolic splendor, his followers parting before him.
Urgot watches the gas dissipate and chuckles, a sound like gravel and slipping gears. “You think you have denied these people their test? That you have denied yourselves? No. I shall deliver it to you, and after you are destroyed, I shall deliver it to them.”
Cait grips her rifle, the hextech crystal in its chamber pulsing with rose-tinted light. She looks over her shoulder at the Piltovans behind her. “Get clear, now. Take the bridge to the Promenade. We’ll handle this.”
Energy dances across my gauntlets as I crash them together. “Behold!” Urgot cries, gazing at me. “Such precious weapons. Your masters give you strength, but underneath you are broken. Weak.”
“I don’t need these to be strong.” I laugh, bitter and quick. “I won’t need them to break you. They’ll just make it more fun.”
“I saw you with the girl.” Urgot gives a slow nod. “You cling to two worlds, child of Zaun. The day will come when you will have to choose.”
“I’m tired of listening to you talk.” My rage finally slips. “I’m tired of doing anything other than beating you to death for what you did.”
I can’t tell if the fight lasts seconds or hours. I only remember it in flashes. Crushing metal. Ribcages wrapping around my knuckles. Thunder from Urgot’s cannon-arm, stitching explosions. The sound of blood, fizzing and popping as it cooks on my gauntlets.
Between Cait and me, we whittle down Urgot’s followers, until it’s only him left standing, a metal monster of fire and bullets and slashing chains. It’s unclear who will leave the broken dome alive, until Cait sees an opening with her bola net.
Urgot roars as it envelops him, pinning his arms to his sides and distracting him just long enough for my charge. I put everything into the blow, sending him teetering off the edge of the dome. But I won’t let him fall, not yet.
I gather up the end of the net, straining against his appalling weight as my boots slip and skid to the edge. I want to look him in the eye once more, before I drop him.
“Let’s see how fast a spider flies.”
“Wait!” I hear Cait shout behind me.
“This ends here, Cait,” I hiss.
Cait stops beside me, a metal spar in her hands. “True strength is being able to choose whether you use it. You let him die now, you make us no different than he is.”
She threads the spar through the net to pin Urgot to the tower. I don’t want to listen to her. I want justice. But I know it won’t replace what he has taken.
I spit, and hammer the spar into the ground.

It would take a very generous perspective to call the stacks of wind-blown rock just off the isthmus islands. Barren and lashed by salt-spray, they’re far from any place someone would want to make their home. Seems a few generations back, someone in a position of authority in Piltover agreed, and built a prison there.
After my reinstatement into the Wardens, I told Cait that I trusted her to see that Urgot would be transported and interred to the letter. I was headed for the Sump, to visit Hope House and use these heavy hands to build instead of break. But I think she saw what it meant to me, and she wanted me here to see with my own eyes that he would face justice.
“I know this was difficult for you,” Cait says. “But I wanted you to see the end result of all that you did. So you know that you made a difference.”
Difference. The word catches in my throat, and my head fills with the image of all those people, suffocating on the poison left in the wake of progress.
“Putting him away, we saved both Piltover and Zaun a lot of chaos.”
“Do you ever think that something better might come out of that chaos?”
She looks at me, sighing softly. “Maybe, or maybe something even worse. A lot of people would have to die for anyone to find out, and I can’t let that happen. So we fight, and we do what we have to, to keep things together. That’s what the law does, what we do. We preserve order.”
Law. Order. Can you have one without the other? And what does either of them have to do with justice? If you had asked the younger me, she might have had an answer. Ask me now, and I’m not so sure anymore.
“Urgot’s following will wither,” Cait says. “Ambitious folks will fracture it, looking for power. They’ll be too busy fighting each other to give us any trouble.”
“You weren’t there, Cait.” I shake my head. “Not like I was. You didn’t see the numbers, the commitment. We aren’t finished with them, not by a long shot.”
We’re standing on a gantry overlooking the cell block. Cells flank us on either side, the cages cleared as wardens and prison guards bring Urgot down a central passage to his new home, an immense tube of reinforced iron running from floor to ceiling like some gigantic piston.
Urgot is in chains. He makes no move to resist as the procession reaches his cell.
“How much of him can we remove before he dies?” Cait asks me, loud enough for the Dreadnought to hear. “I bet most of him.”
“Step forth and test your theory, then.” Urgot’s eyes glimmer. “Unless all you have brought with you are idle threats.”
“Let’s speak plainly.” Cait slings her rifle. “You exist here on our sufferance alone. You will eat when we tell you, sleep when we tell you, breathe when we tell you. Nothing more, nothing less. Deviate from this in any way, and I will have you destroyed. Is that clear?”
Urgot laughs. “You believe you have the power to destroy me? You don’t. You never did. That is a door that will never be open to you.”
“Well, I suppose I’ll just have to settle for closing this one.” Cait nods to a technician. He throws a switch and the tube descends over Urgot, clanging to the floor and locking fast.
I can still hear him laughing through the iron as we walk away. I pause at the door to the cell block, looking back over my shoulder, a dread I can’t shake sneaking up my spine.
Urgot didn’t look like a prisoner to me.
He looked like a spider, waiting patiently in his web.
Cho'Gath

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.
Confessions of a Broken Blade: Part I

Ariel Lawrence

- I -
The knife-edge of the plow cut through the rough topsoil, turning the underbelly of winter toward the spring sky. Riven walked the small field behind the ox-driven rig, her focus caught between steadying the wide set handles and the foreign words she clumsily held in her mouth.
“Emai. Fair. Svasa. Anar.”
Each step filled the air with the loamy scent of newly awakened earth. Riven gripped the wood tightly as she walked. Over the last few days the coarse handles had roused dormant calluses and fleeting memories.
Riven bit her lip, shaking off the thought, continuing with the work at hand. “Mother. Father. Sister. Brother.”
The thin-ribbed ox flicked an ear as it pulled, the plow kicking up clots and small rocks. They struck Riven, but she paid them no mind. She wore a rough woven shirt, the dirt-speckled sleeves rolled into thick bands. Pants of the same material had been dyed an earthen yellow. Their cuffed edges would now be too short on the man they had been made for, but on her, they brushed her bare ankles and the tops of her simple, mud-caked shoes.
“Emai. Fair. Svasa. Anar.” Riven continued the mantra, memorizing the words. “Erzai, son. Dyeda…”
Without slowing her pace she wiped a strand of sweat soaked hair from her eyebrow with her sleeve. Her arms were well muscled and still easily held the plow one-handed. The farmer had gone up to the house for a skin of water and their lunch. The old man said she could stop and wait on the threshold of the shaded forest that bordered the tract, but Riven had insisted on finishing.
A fresh breeze caught the damp at the back of her neck, and she looked around. The Noxian Empire had tried bending Ionia to its will. When Ionia wouldn’t kneel, Noxus had tried to break it. Riven continued her meditative pace behind the plow. For all the Empire’s strength, spring would still come to this land. It had been more than a year since Noxus had been driven out, and the grays and browns of rain and mud were finally giving way to shoots of green. The air itself seemed to hold new beginnings. Hope. Riven sighed as her hair’s bluntly cut edges brushed her chin.
“Dyeda. daughter,” she began her invocation again, determined. She gripped the wooden handles again with both hands. “Emai. Fair.”
“That's fa-ir,” a voice called out from the shadows of the forest.
Riven stopped suddenly. The plow handles lurched in her hands as the bony ox was brought up short by the leather reins. The plow kicked hard into a tough clod of dirt and gave a metal twang as a stone caught on the cutting edge.
The voice did not belong to the old man.
Riven tried to ease her breathing by exhaling slowly through her lips. There was one voice, but there could be more coming for her. She fought the years of training that urged her to take a defensive stance. Instead she stilled her body, facing the plow and beast before her. Riven felt too light. She held on tightly now to the plow’s wooden handles. There should have been a weight that anchored her, grounded her, at her side. Instead, she could hardly feel the small field knife on her right hip. The short, hooked blade was good for cutting dew apples and stubborn vegetation, nothing more.
“The word is fa-ir.”
The speaker revealed himself at the edge of the field, where the farmland met a band of thick amber pines.
“There is a break in the middle,” the man said, stepping forward. A wild mane of dark hair was pulled back off his face. A woven mantle was tucked around his shoulders. Riven noticed that it did not completely cover the metal pauldron on his left shoulder, nor the unsheathed blade at his side. He was of a warrior class, but did not serve one house or precinct. He was a wanderer.
Dangerous, she decided.
“Fa-ir,” he pronounced again.
Riven did not speak, not for lack of words, but because of the accent she knew they would carry. She moved around the plow, putting it between her and the well-spoken stranger. She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and bent to examine the plow’s blade, feigning interest in the stone she had struck. Meant to cut through sod and clay, the blade would be more useful than the field knife. She had watched the old man fix it to the wooden body that morning and knew how to release it.
“I don’t remember seeing you in the village when I was here last, but I have been away awhile,” the man said. His voice held the indifferent roughness of a long time lived on the road.
The ever present insect hum became louder as Riven refused to fill the silence between them.
“I’ve heard that the magistrates are being called to hear new evidence in the case of Elder Souma’s death,” the man continued.
Riven ignored him and patted the patient ox. She ran her fingers along the leather straps as someone who was familiar with the trappings of horses and farm animals, batting away a gnat from the ox’s big, dark eyes.
“Then again, if you are new to this land, perhaps you know little of the murder.”
She looked up at the word, meeting the stranger’s gaze, the innocent beast between them. A scar stretched across the bridge of the man’s nose. Riven wondered if the one who left that mark still lived. There was hardness in the stranger’s eyes, but under that, curiosity. Riven felt the ground tremble through the soles of her thin leather shoes. There was a sound like rolling thunder, but there were no clouds in the sky.
“Someone’s coming,” the man said with a smile.
Riven looked over her shoulder at the hill that led to the old man’s farmhouse. Six armed riders crested the little ridge and marched their mounts down to the small harrowed field.
“There she is,” one of them said. His accent was thick, and Riven struggled to parse the nuance of language she had been trying so hard to learn.
“But... is she alone?” another asked, squinting at the shadows between the trees.
A quick breeze wrapped around the plow and Riven, sliding back into the shadows of the forest. Riven looked to where the stranger once stood, but he was gone, and the approaching riders left no time to wonder.
“A ghost maybe,” the leader said laughing at his man. “Someone she cut down coming back for revenge.”
The riders spurred their horses into a trot, circling Riven and crushing the even trenches she had dug that morning. The leader carried a rigid bundle wrapped in cloth over the back of his mount. Riven’s eyes followed that horse as the others moved around her, their hooves compacting the loose earth back into cold, hard clay.
She gave the plow blade a final glance. Two riders carried crossbows. She would be taken down before she reached even one of them. Her fingers itched to touch the potential weapon, but her mind begged them to be still.
Tightness quickened in her muscles. A body long trained to fight would not surrender so easily to peace. A deafening rush of blood began to pound in her ears. You will die, it roared, but so will they.
Riven’s fingers began to reach for the plow blade.
“Leave her be!” The voice of the farmer’s wife was strong from calling in errant cows and it rang out over the field, breaking Riven from her self-destructive urge. “Asa, hurry. You must do something.”
The riders halted their circles around Riven as the farmer and his wife crested the hill. Riven bit hard on the inside of her cheek. The sharp pain centered her, quelling her urge to fight. She would not spill Ionian blood in their field.
“I told you to stay in your home until we were done,” the leader said to them.
The old man, Asa, hobbled through the uneven dirt. “She’s done nothing wrong. I was the one who brought it,” he said gesturing toward the wrapped bundle. “I will answer for it.”
“Master Konte. O-fa,” the leader said. A patronizing smile tugged at the corners of his thin lips. “You know what she is. She has committed many wrongs. If I had my way, she would be cut down where she stands,” He looked Riven over, then wrinkled his nose in annoyance. “Unfortunately, old man, you can say your piece at the hearing.”
While the leader spoke Riven’s feet had sunk into the moist earth, momentarily holding her fast. The feeling of being mired, pulled down, overwhelmed her. Her pulse quickened to a shallow beat and a cold sweat slipped between her shoulders as she struggled to pull free. Her mind was enveloped by a different time, a different field. There the horses snorted, their hooves trampling blood-soaked dirt.
Riven shut her eyes before more remembered horrors could bury her. She inhaled deeply. A spring rain floods this ground, not the dead, she told herself. When I open my eyes, there will be only the living.
When she opened her eyes, the field was a field, freshly turned, and not an open grave. The leader of the riders dismounted and approached her. In his hand he held a pair of shackles, swirls of Ionian metal far more beautiful than anything that would have chained criminals in her own homeland.
“You cannot escape your past, Noxian dog,” the leader said with a quiet triumph.
Riven looked up from plow blade to the old couple. The lines on their faces already carried so much pain. She would not bring them more. She could not. Riven tried to hold onto the image, the two of them leaning into one another, each holding the other up. It was a moment of fragile defiance before they knew something would be taken. When the old man wiped a sleeve across his wet cheek, she had to turn away.
Riven shoved her wrists toward the leader of the riders. She met his smug grin with a cold stare and let the steel close over her skin.
“Do not worry, dyeda,” the farmer’s wife called out. Riven could hear the taut hope in her voice. It was too much. Too much hope. The wind carried the strained words and the smell of freshly turned earth, even as Riven was led farther and farther away. “Dyeda,” it whispered. “We will tell them what you are.”
“Dyeda,” Riven whispered back. “Daughter.”
For two days after the girl surrendered, there had been nothing for Shava Konte to do but help her husband slowly repair the trampled furrows and plant the field. It was a task made easier by the girl’s labors, and yet, if their sons still lived, it was one she and Asa should not have had to do at all.
On the cold morning of the tribunal, knowing it would take more time for their older bones to walk the long road into town, the couple left before dawn to reach the village council hall.
“They know she is Noxian.”
“You worry too much,” Shava said, clucking her tongue for good measure. Realizing her tone was more fit for calming chickens than her husband, she gave him a hopeful smile.
“Noxian. That is all they need to proclaim guilt.” Asa mumbled his thought into the homespun wool wrapped around his neck.
Shava, who had spent the better part of her lifetime coaxing stubborn animals into the butcher’s pen, stopped short, turning to face her husband.
“They do not know her like we know her,” she said, stabbing one of her fingers to his chest, exasperation escaping through her hands. “That is why you are to speak on her behalf, you old goat.”
Asa knew his wife, and knew further argument would not change her mind. Instead he nodded his head softly. Shava gave a dissatisfied harumph and turned back to the road, marching in silence to the town center. The council hall that was beginning to fill. Seeing the crowd, she hurried into the narrow space between the benches of the council hall to find a seat closer to the front... and unceremoniously tripped over a sleeping man’s leg.
As the old woman fell forward with a weak yelp, a groan escaped from the sleeping man. Like a lightning blade, his hand snapped forward, his grip like steel, catching the old woman by the arm before she fell to the stone floor.
“You must watch your step, O-ma,” the stranger whispered deferentially, drink still heavy on his breath, but slurring none of his words. He withdrew his hand as soon as the old woman was back on her feet.
The old woman looked down her nose at the unlikely savior, her eyes narrowing. Under her scrutiny, the man receded further into the shadows of the mantle wrapped around his shoulders and face; the ghost of a scar across his strong nose disappeared into the darkness.
“The council hall is nowhere to recover from a night of misdeeds, young man.” Shava righted her robes, the disdain evident in the tip of her chin. “A woman’s life is to be decided today. Be gone before you are asked to concede your own wrongdoings before the magistrates.”
“Shava.” The old man had caught up and put a hand on his wife’s arm. “You must keep your temper in check if we are to offer our assistance today. He meant no injury. Leave him be.”
The hooded stranger offered two fingers up in peaceful supplication, but kept his face hidden. “You strike to the heart of the matter, O-ma,” he offered, humor creeping into his voice.
Shava moved on, carrying her indignation like a delicate gift. The old man tipped his head as he passed.
“Do not judge her quickly, my boy. She worries that an innocent soul will be found guilty before the truth is known.”
The hooded man grunted in acknowledgement as the old man moved on. “On that we are of the same mind, O-fa.”
The old man glanced back at the strange, hushed words. The seat was empty, save the ghost of a breeze that rustled the robes of a nearby couple deep in conversation. The hooded stranger was already receding into the far shadows of the council hall.

Shava chose a seat at the front of the gathered crowd. The smooth swirls of the wooden bench should have been comfortable—they had been shaped by woodweavers to promote balance and harmonic discussions of civic duty—but the old woman could not find a comfortable position. She glanced at her husband, who was now settled patiently on a creaky stool, waiting to be called. Beside Asa, a bailiff stood and picked his teeth with a sliver of wood. The old woman recognized the bailiff as Melker, leader of the riders that had come for Riven. She glared at him, but Melker took no notice. He was watching the doors at the back of the room. When they opened and closed behind three darkly robed figures, he straightened quickly, tossing aside the bit of wood in his mouth.
The magistrates, their smooth vestments settling behind them as they took their place at the head table, looked out at the crowded hall. The noise in the great room dropped to an uneven silence. One of the three, a tall, slim woman with a falcon nose, stood solemnly.
“This tribunal has been called to take in new attestations in the matter of Elder Souma’s death.”
A hum of murmurs, like a hundred locusts, began to build from somewhere in the middle of the crush of people. Some had heard of the new evidence the judge spoke, but most had gathered at the rumor there was a Noxian in their midst. But rumors didn’t change what they all knew: Elder Souma’s death was no mystery. The wind technique, the magic that scoured his meditation hall was all the evidence that was necessary. Only one besides Souma himself could have executed such a maneuver.
A wound, unevenly healed, opened. The hive mind of the crowd coalesced in a moment of communal pain. If the elder had not fallen, they shouted to each other, the village would not have taken such heavy casualties. Shortly after the murder, half of a Noxian warband had slaughtered many on the way to Navori. So many sons and daughters had been lost in the Noxian engagement, an engagement that swelled in the distressing imbalance of Souma’s death. Worse yet, the village laid the blame on one of their own.
The thrum found a clear voice.
“We already know who murdered Elder Souma,” Shava spoke through weathered lips. “It was that traitor, Yasuo.”
The crowd nodded and a biting agreement rippled through the mob.
“Who knew Elder Souma’s wind techniques? Yasuo!” Shava added. “And now Yone has not returned from the pursuit of his unforgivable brother. Most likely the coward is responsible for that as well.”
The crowd’s gnashing grew again, this time crying out for Yasuo's blood. Shava settled more easily on the bench, satisfied that the question of guilt had been pointed back at the correct person.
The falcon-nosed judge came from a long line of woodweavers, ones famed for being able to untwist and straighten even the heaviest burls. She lifted a perfectly round sphere of hard worn chestnut and brought it down definitively against its jet-black cradle. The sharp sound wrenched the crowd into silence and order returned to the hall.
“This court seeks knowledge and enlightenment about the facts of Elder Souma’s death,” the judge said. “Do you wish to stand in way of enlightenment, Mistress…?”
The old woman looked to her husband and felt heat rise in the skin of her cheeks. “Konte. Shava Konte,” she said much less boldly. She dipped her head. The old man on the stool watched her and mopped the sheen of sweat from his own balding crown.
“As I was saying, we are here to take in new evidence.” The falcon judge looked out at the crowd for any other stubborn burls and nodded to the bailiff, Melker. “Please bring her in.”
- Their story continues tomorrow. -
Confessions of a Broken Blade: Part 2

Ariel Lawrence

(Read Part I)
- II -
The overcast skies had parted since the magistrates entered. When the large doors at the back of the hall opened again, Riven watched as the room full of villagers was split by a blinding shard of daylight. She walked across the hall’s threshold and the movement pushed aside the still air in the hall like the release of a held breath.
The doors closed behind her. Two warrior priests marched her through the large aisle that divided the throng. The council hall was once again cast in the murky gloom from curled windows set high in the ceiling and the cylindrical lanterns that hung from the sculpted roof. She watched Shava Konte swallow thickly as she passed.
She knew what they saw. A woman, her white hair matted with straw from a rough sleep in stone cell. A stranger. An enemy. A daughter of Noxus.
Fatigue clung to Riven’s bones like the farmer’s mud that still stained her clothes. Her soul felt stiff and misshapen, but when Riven’s gaze found the old man on the stool, she stood a little straighter.
She took in the three judges seated on the dais before her. The stern one in the middle motioned for Riven to be seated, rather than shackled standing.
Riven refused the wooden chair shaped by magic. She recognized the bailiff as the lead rider that came to old couple’s field. His thin lips stretched in the same arrogant smile.
“Suit yourself, it’ll just be harder for you.”
The bailiff sat on the chair himself with an air of satisfaction. The center judge gave the bailiff a look of admonishment and then spoke to Riven.
“I know you are not of this land. The dialect here is tricky. I will speak the common tongue so that we may better understand each other.”
Like most Noxians, Riven had learned enough of Ionia’s common tongue to command and order, but like the land itself, the accent of each village had a unique personality flavored by its people. She nodded at the judge and waited.
“What is your name?”
“Riven,” Riven said. Her voice was hoarse, catching in her throat with a croak.
“Bring her water.”
The bailiff stood and took up a skin of water, shoving it at her. Riven looked at the skin, but did not take it.
“It is only water, child,” the judge seated beside the center judge said, leaning forward over the table. “What, do you fear we would poison you?”
Riven shook her head, refusing the offer. She cleared her throat, determined to speak without any more assistance. The bailiff pursed his lips and took a deep swig, water dribbled from the corner of his mouth. He flashed his teeth in a triumphant sneer meant for her.
“You have been brought before this council,” the judge interrupted, drawing Riven’s attention back to the three robed figures and the crowd gathered within the hall. “Because we wish to know what you have to say.”
“Am I not being sentenced?”
The judge swallowed her surprise.
“I am unclear about how justice is carried out where you come from, but here we believe justice is first served by understanding and enlightenment.” The judge spoke to Riven as if she was a young child. “We believe you have knowledge of an event that is most important to this community. If that knowledge reveals a crime, then you could be sentenced and punished accordingly.”
Riven looked from the judge to Asa, then back. Justice in Noxus was often decided in combat. If one was lucky, it was decided swiftly and with the sharpened end of the weapon. Riven eyed the judge warily. “What do you want to know?”
The judge leaned back. “Where are you from, Riven?”
“I have no homeland.”
The judge’s narrowing gaze told Riven that her words had been taken as defiance. The hawk-faced magistrate paused, tempering her response. “You must have been born somewhere.”
“A farm in Trevale.” Riven looked at the old man. “Noxus,” she admitted.
The council hall, which had dropped back to silence in order to hear the prisoner, took in a collective breath.
“I see,” continued the judge. “And you no longer call that place home.”
“When your home tries to kill you, is it still home?”
“You are an exile then?”
“That would imply I wish to return,” Riven said.
“You do not?”
“Noxus is no longer what it once was.” Impatience edged into Riven’s voice. “Can we get on with this?”
“So be it,” the judge said with a calmness that irritated Riven more than the shackles on her wrists. “You came with the Noxian fleet, yes?”
“I assume so.”
“You do not know?” The judge looked confused.
“I do not remember,” Riven said. She glanced to the crowd, her sideways look catching the eyes of Shava. The old woman had asked a similar question. Riven shook her head. “Does it matter? There was a battle. Many died. That is all I know.”
The painful memory of war that smoldered among the crowd flared to life at Riven’s words. They shoved each other, shoulders knocking together and shouting, as they all tried to stand at once.
Someone lashed out. “Noxian filth! My son is dead because of you!”
A moldy eggfruit sailed through the air and pelted Riven in the neck. The fermented juice and pulp slid wetly down the back of her shirt. The rotten smell rose up in the air, but Riven would not allow the scent of death to take her back to that moment long ago. She closed her eyes, allowing her breath to come through parted lips.
With that, the crowd erupted. Riven knew what it looked like, that she felt nothing for what had happened to these people. “Please,” she whispered to herself, unsure if she was imploring them to stop, or to encourage the fullness of their barely contained anger.
In answer, more of the late season eggfruit exploded on the stone floor. One caught Riven behind the knee. She stumbled, struggling to maintain her balance with her hands bound.
The judge rose to her full height, towering over the seated villagers and Riven. Her magistrate’s robe flared as she slammed the chestnut sphere against its cradle. The wooden benches beneath the crowd strained, groaning and flexing in response to the magistrate’s will.
“I will have balance restored to this hall!”
The reprimanded villagers quieted.
“Yes, Riven, the council remembers that time,” the judge continued with more restraint. “Many Ionians… and Noxians… perished. And you?”
It was a question that plagued Riven. Why had she been spared when others had not? She could offer no answer that would satisfy. “It seems I did not,” she said quietly
“Indeed.” The judge smiled coldly.
Riven knew there was little she could say to pacify the bereaved crowd. She owed them the truth, but even that was not hers to give. Her memories of that time were broken. She bowed her head.
“I do not remember,” Riven said.
The judge did not stop the questioning. Riven knew doing so would only allow for interruptions to spew forward from the anger simmering in the room.
“How long have you been in this land?”
“I do not remember.”
“How did you come to this village?”
“I do not remember.”
“Have you been here before?”
“I…” Riven hesitated, but could not hold on to the moment that would give a clear answer. “I cannot remember.”
“Did you meet with Elder Souma?”
The name stirred something within her. A memory of a memory, hazy and sharp at the same time passed through her. Anger flooded the empty place where her past once lived. She had been betrayed. She had betrayed.
“I can’t remember!” Riven lashed out in frustration, the shackles at her wrists rattling.
“War breaks many things,” the judge said, softening. “Some we cannot see.”
In the face of this enlightenment, some of the fight left Riven. “I cannot remember,” she said, more calmly than before.
The judge nodded. “There are others who may be able to speak to what you cannot remember.”
Riven watched the old man make his way slowly to a witness stool set in front of the judges. His fingers shook as he smoothed a few errant hairs in his thick eyebrows.
“Asa Konte,” the judged said patiently. “O-fa, thank you for sharing your knowledge with us today.”
The old man nodded.
“Do you know this woman, the one called Riven?” the judge asked.
“Yes,” the old man said. “She came to us at the beginning of this past wet season.”
“Us?”
“Myself and Shava, my wife.”
The judge looked up at Mistress Konte, who still shifted uncomfortably on the bench at the front of the hall. The judge gestured to Riven.
“She came to you?”
“Well, I found her in our field,” the old man offered sheepishly. “We had a calf wander in the night. At dawn I went looking for it. Instead I found her.”
Murmurs of surprise and concern spilled again from the crowd.
“Spy!”
“More will come!”
“We must protect ourselves!”
The judge rested a hand on the heavy wooden sphere in front of her. The room grew quiet. “What did she want, Master Konte?”
The old man smoothed his eyebrows again and glanced at Riven. His look begged apology.
“She wanted to die, magistrate,” he said softly.
The judge leaned forward.
“It was the start of the wet season,” Asa continued. “She was soaked to the skin, nothing but fevered bones held together by mud and stubborn Noxian muscle.”
“You knew she was Noxian?”
“She carried a weapon, a blade, the scabbard was inscribed with the marks of their father tongue. No Ionian would carry such a weapon.”
The judge pursed her lips. “Master Konte, you took heavy losses during the invasion?”
“I did, magistrate,” the old man said. He looked to his wife. “Two sons.”
“What did you do with the woman?”
The old man took a deep breath.
“I took her home to Shava,” he said.
The murmur of the hall rose again, questioning the man’s lenience on a foe that had been so merciless. The faces within the hall told their stories of loss. None in their community had been untouched by the conflict. The old man lifted his head, and turned to the crowd, challenging the hardness of their hearts.
“My sons… My boys… Their bones have long since been cleaned by the sky. Would those we lost wish us to bury ourselves in grief beside them?”
Riven watched as the old man and his wife shared a knowing look. Shava’s eyes were wet and full.
“We were not ready to let them go, but…” The old man’s voice quivered. “But it does us no good to mire ourselves in the past when there is life left to live.”
Shava bit her bottom lip and sat up straighter, daring those who sat next to her to speak ill of their choice. Asa turned away from the crowd’s stares. He sat facing the magistrate, the stool creaking beneath him.
“There were so many deaths, I couldn’t bear to add another,” he explained. “We cleaned her up and offered what we had in peace.”
The judge nodded without emotion. Riven watched as the judge took in Riven’s shirt and pants, mentally unrolling the cuffs. She knew what the judge pictured as she had thought the same thing many times since the old woman had presented the clothes. They were meant for a young man, a head taller than her, maybe a man with Shava’s smile or Asa’s kind eyes.
For Riven it was a constant reminder of her own weakness. All her years of living or dying by the strength of Noxus, and Riven had accepted their fragile offer of hope, let herself be clothed in it and in a family that could have been.
“When she regained her strength, she wanted to work in the fields,” the old man went on. “My wife and I are old. We welcomed the help.”
“You and your wife did not fear for your lives?”
“The girl wants nothing to do with Noxus. She hates Noxus.”
“She said this to you?”
“No,” he said. “She said nothing of her past. Shava asked her once and she said nothing. We saw that it pained her, so we did not ask again.”
“If she said nothing, then how do you infer her feelings about her homeland?”
Master Konte wiped at his old eyes. Riven watched the trouble pass over his face, like the words were not his to give. He spoke quickly, conscious suddenly of the audience surrounding him.
“Fevered dreams, magistrate,” he said. “The night she came to us. Something that belonged to her, something she had cared for greatly, had been broken. For that she cried out against Noxus.”
“Do you know the thing she spoke of?”
“I believe so, magistrate.” The old man nodded slowly. “The pommel of her weapon has been bound into her scabbard. Four days ago I saw her undo the laces. I saw the blade was broken.”
Riven had thought she had only been watched by the fat mousing cat that day in the barn.
A few snide comments about the quality of Noxian weapons passed like handshakes among the crowd.
“And what did you do with that knowledge, Master Konte?”
“I took the blade to the temple.”
The judge cocked her head to one side, looking down her predatory nose at the old man. “To what end?”
“I hoped the priests might be able to mend it. That if the blade was made whole, she might be relieved of some of the ghosts that haunt her.” Even as crowd erupted behind him, the old man looked at Riven and the chains that bound her hands. “That she might have some peace in the present.”
“Thank you, Master Konte, for sharing your knowledge with the council,” the judge said, coldly staring the congregation into silence. “Your attestation is finished.”
She looked down at an unrolled parchment and back to the bailiff.
“Bring in the weapon.”
Riven watched two temple priests carry in a large wooden tray draped with a scarlet cloth and set it gingerly on the table before the council judges. A warrior priest stepped forward, his high rank made evident by the fluted edges of his wooden pauldron and breastplate.
“Show us,” the judge said.
The warrior priest withdrew the scarlet cloth, revealing a weapon and sheath both bigger than a kite shield. The scabbard was etched in the harsh strokes of Ur-Noxian, the heavy angles and slashes in stark contrast to the fluid script of Ionia. But it was the blade that drew the interest of the judges. A blade so thick and heavy it looked like it would break the well-trained arm of a temple priest to lift it, let alone the slender wrist of the young woman shackled before them. Indeed, when Riven had seen the weapon for the first time, she had thought the same thing.
Now, instead of one solid blade, the weapon was fractured into angry pieces, as if monstrous claws had raked through its metal flesh. The five largest pieces would have been deadly in their own right, but laid out against the soft Ionian cloth, broken and raw as it was, it was terrifying.
The judge looked at Riven. “This weapon belongs to you.”
Riven nodded her head.
“I suppose in this many pieces, it makes it a bit difficult to wield,” the judge said to herself.
There were snickers among the crowd.
The warrior priest shifted uncomfortably. “This weapon is ensorcelled, magistrate. The Noxians have bound magic into the blade.” The disgust hung heavy on his words.
Riven didn’t know if the judge was listening to the priest. The judge was nodding absently, her gaze washing over the weapon until it found the spot that Riven knew it would, the empty place Riven had struggled to fill. The judge’s falcon nose twitched.
“There is a piece missing.”
A young temple adept swayed nervously before the council hall.
“Adept, is this the weapon Master Konte presented to the temple?” the lead judge asked.
“Yes, magistrate.”
“You were the one to alert this court?”
“Yes, magistrate.”
“How did you know this weapon would be of interest to us?”
Riven watched the adept wipe his hands on the lengthy sleeves of his robes. His face was pale, as if he might faint, or be sick on the stone floor.
“Adept?” the judge probed.
“I am a bone washer, magistrate.” The words tumbled out of the young man. His hands hung like spent candle wax. “For the elders. After their bodies have been left to the sky, I collect them and prepare them.”
“I am familiar with the duties of a bone washer, adept. How is it this weapon concerns you?”
“The blade is the same.”
A moment of confusion swept over the judge’s face. The same uncertain daze washed over the crowd, passing from person to person in befuddled looks. Riven, however, felt a wave of unease crawl over her skin.
“When I prepared the bones of Elder Souma, after his time, for the temple, I mean to say.” The adept’s haphazard explanation was losing many. Instead of continuing he pulled from a fold in his robe a small silk bag and started undoing the tight knots with his long fingers. He retrieved from the bag a shard of metal and held it up. “This metal, magistrate. It is the same as the broken blade.”
The adept scurried from his place and approached the judge. She took the shard from his outstretched hand and turned it over in her fingers. Even held at a distance, the metal seemed similar to the broken blade.
Riven's breath caught in her throat. There was the piece of her past that she had searched for and given up finding. Now it was on the verge of coming together, illuminating a dark and forgotten corner of her mind. The guilt Riven carried and had buried deep was finally being unearthed. Riven steeled herself against what she knew would come next.
“Where did you find this?” the judge asked.
The adept cleared his throat. “In the bones of Elder Souma’s neck.”
The council hall gasped.
“You did not bring this forward before?” The judge’s eyes narrowed as she focused in on her target.
“I did,” the adept said, trying desperately to look anywhere but the warrior priest who stood next to Riven’s broken blade. “But my master said it was nothing.”
The judge had no such trouble looking at the warrior priest.
“Approach,” she ordered. She handed the bit of mangled metal to the warrior priest. “Put it with the rest.”
The warrior priest glared at the adept, but followed the orders given. He approached Riven’s blade and then turned at the last minute to the judge. “Magistrate, there is dark magic in this weapon. We don’t know what this piece may reveal.”
“Proceed.” The judge’s words left no room for argument.
The warrior priest turned back. All the eyes in the council hall watched as he took the sliver of hammered metal and placed it nearest the tip of the broken blade.
The weapon was silent.
The judge let out a small sigh. Riven, however, continued to watch the old man and his wife. She knew their hope would last only a moment longer. She had been weak to accept it, to believe that there was something in this world for someone so broken. Their relief at her fleeting innocence hurt most of all. It hurt because Riven knew in that moment the good they believed about her was a lie. The truth of her past was sharper and more painful than any blade.
Riven heard the sword beginning to hum. “Please,” she called out. She struggled to be heard over the chatter of the hall. She struggled against her restraints. “Please, you must listen.”
The vibration built. Now it could be heard and felt. The villagers panicked, pushing and shoving to get back. The judge stood quickly, her arms outstretched to the wooden table that held the broken sword. The edge of the table began to grow and curl, the wood budding new green limbs over the weapon, but Riven knew the magic would not hold.
“Everyone, get down!” Riven yelled, but the sound of the blade drowned out her voice, indeed all the voices, as the weapon built to a fever pitch.
Then, all at once the power exploded in a burst of runic energy and splintered wood. A gust of wind knocked everyone who had been standing down to the floor.
From the ground, the faces of the crowd turned to Riven.
Riven’s lips were cold and her cheeks flushed. The ghosts of her mind, memories she had entombed, they were fully alive now, looming one by one before her. They were Ionian farmers, sons and daughters, the people of this village that would not kneel to Noxus. They were looking at her. Haunting her. They knew her guilt. They were her warriors, too, her brothers- and sisters-in-arms. They would have gladly sacrificed themselves for the glory of the empire, instead she had failed them. She had led them under the banner of Noxus, a banner that had promised them a home and purpose. In the end, they were betrayed and discarded. All of them cut down by the sick poison of war.
Now these ghosts stood among the living, the courtroom of spectators knocked down by the power of the blade. The villagers slowly rose to their feet, though Riven was still there in that valley from long ago. She couldn’t breathe. Death choked her nose and throat.
No, these dead aren’t real, she told herself. She looked at Asa and Shava and they at her. Two shades stood near them. One with eyes like the old man’s and the other with a mouth like Shava’s. The old couple clung to one another as they steadied themselves and stood, oblivious to the deathly past that surrounded them.
“Dyeda,” the old woman said.
At that Riven could no longer contain her guilt and shame.
“I did it.” The words fell from Riven’s lips with an empty hollowness. She would accept her fate at the hands of these people. She would let them pass judgment and she would answer for her crimes.
“I killed your Elder,” she told them, breathless. Her ragged confession filled the room. “I killed them all.”
- Their story continues tomorrow. -
Confessions of a Broken Blade: Part 3

Ariel Lawrence

(Read Part I) (Read Part II)
- III -
The council hall that had been as still as a grave swarmed back to life. Armed warrior priests, drawn by the commotion, flooded through the doors, pushing past villagers who just wanted to run away from the dangerous magic that had been thrust upon them.
The falcon-nosed judge had found her footing and cracked her wooden sphere against the table.
“This hall will restore itself to balance,” she demanded.
The room grew quiet once more. Overturned benches were righted. The crowd seated themselves. The hooded stranger scratched his scarred nose and moved to examine the new chest high scorch mark that blackened the walls of the council room. A warrior priest approached the magic weapon tentatively.
Amid the broken table legs, was the blade and sheath. A greenish glow of energy crackled around the still broken pieces. The warrior priest bent and reached for the pommel, using two hands as he felt the true weight of the sword. Though fractured, the weapon held its shape.
“Put that accursed thing away!” someone shouted from the crowd. The priest slid the weapon back into the sheath as more priests came to remove it.
“I killed him,” Riven repeated. The voice was hers and not hers. It was the past speaking through her. She looked at the faces in the room. Memory restored, she was awake once more to a shadowed corner of her history.
“Riven,” the judge said.
Riven’s attention snapped from the blade to the judge.
“Do you know what you are confessing to?” she asked.
Riven nodded.
“Why did you do this?”
“I do not remember.” The words were all she had to offer. Because of her bound hands, Riven could not wipe away the silent tears that ran down her jaw.
The judge stared hard, waiting for more to reveal itself, but when nothing came, she motioned to the bailiff.
“Riven, you will stay chained in this hall until dawn so that all who need to speak with you to make peace may do so before you are sentenced.”
Riven looked at the shackles on her wrist.
“The other magistrates and I will consult the scrolls and the elders for an appropriate punishment of your crime.”
The villagers left quietly. The last to leave was the old couple. Riven knew this because she heard Shava whisper in her country voice to the old man, though emotion made the words unclear. When she heard their aged feet finally shuffle over the threshold, Riven at last looked up. The room had been emptied of the living—the only thing she was left with were the ghosts of her past.

The midnight air was cold and clear. The full moon held a ring of frost high in the dark sky. The light streamed in through the hall’s still open doors, but did not reach the shadows which held Riven at the back of the room. None of the crowd had come inside during the day to make their peace. The warrior priests had taken the blade, but the wooden spiked scorch mark that encircled the room kept the villagers from venturing inside the council hall. Some had come to the open door, a few with more rotten eggfruit, but ultimately Riven had been left alone with her thoughts. Sleep had finally come for her, but it was the light, fitful sleep of someone who knew the coming dawn could be her last. When shuffling footsteps approached in the dark hours before sunrise, she was instantly awake.
Riven opened her eyes.
“O-fa,” she said. “What are you doing here?”
The old man crouched down next to her slowly and unrolled a soft cloth full of tools. Riven recognized the metal instruments as the ones he used to fix the long blade to the plow.
“What does it look like I’m doing, child?” The silhouette of the moonlight deepened the wrinkled edge of his face, but the gloom of the shadows where the two of them sat did not touch him the way Riven had thought they would.
“You are stubborn in your wish to die,” he chided her. “That is not how you will find balance.”
He worked the shackles at Riven’s wrist and ankles. Riven did not push him away and tell him to go home as her mind insisted. Her selfish heart would not let her. If the old man was the last person she would sit beside in this life, Riven wanted the moment to go on as long as it could. She sat this way for a few minutes until she heard footsteps on the gravel outside the hall. Riven looked to Asa. He was smiling, dangling the opened cuffs before her like a child’s toy.
“O-fa. Quickly. You must hide. Someone is coming.” The edge to Riven’s voice was sudden and sharp and left no room for argument. The old man shuffled to a dark corner to wait in the shadows. Riven bowed her head again in the practiced pose of sleep. She let her hair fall in front of her face, but kept her eyes open.
A strong wind blew through the trees and curled around the posts of the hall’s great doors. There, framed by a shaft of moonlight, the contour of a man stood on the threshold.
The stranger’s mantle was now pushed back fully from his face and hung loosely over his shoulders, leaving his blade and metal pauldron clearly outlined. He paused at the doorway like the others. Unlike the villagers, he ventured inside. His feet made no sound on the stone floor. When he was a blade’s length from Riven, he stopped.
He reached behind his back and retrieved a leather scabbard with harsh runic writing carved into it. He tossed it, clattering, at Riven's feet.
“Which weighs more, Riven?” he asked. “Your blade, or your past?”
It was clear the stranger knew Riven wasn’t sleeping and so Riven no longer pretended. She looked up at him, his face reduced to gray shadow, yet the scar across his nose was clear.
“Who are you?” she asked.
“Another broken blade,” he answered. “You are ready to accept guilt. For that, I admire you.”
Riven watched as a brief wash of emotion crossed his face.
“There is more to the story of your blade,” he continued. “Do you desire the truth of what happened?”
“I killed him. He died because of me. They all died because of me,” Riven countered. She was not sure if she was capable of carrying more grief.
“Pick up your weapon.”
Riven sat. She could hear the man’s low growl of frustration.
“Stand and face your past,” the man said. His voice left no room for argument.
A wind began to build, swirling around the room, knocking back benches in the hall, and pushing Riven to her feet. Instinct and physical memory guided the young woman’s arm. When Riven faced the stranger, the sheathed blade was in her hand.
“I asked him to destroy it,” she said.
“Did you?” the man’s voice was mocking.
The stranger’s question was cutting and it hit a bone of memory in Riven. She shuddered with a half-remembered vision. Elder Souma’s voice had been so calm. The air in his meditation room had been heavy with thought and the smell of incense. Elder Souma had not judged her or her burden.
Riven looked at the stranger before her now, anguish building in her heart, flooding her body until it reached her hands. She tightened her fingers around the pommel as she drew the runic blade from its sheath.
“Why are you here?” Riven asked.
The broken blade coursed with power. The blinding light cast their shadows on the walls.
“I heard you wanted to die.” The stranger smiled.
The ghosts that haunted her had returned in full force and Riven swung wildly at them now. The man’s blade parried the sadness and the fury. It infuriated her and centered her back in the present. They danced around each other. The air hummed and crackled at each block and thrust.
“I came here to kill my master’s murderer.” He was breathing hard through gritted teeth. “I came here to kill you.”
Riven laughed, tears in her eyes. “Then do it.”
The wind warrior lowered his sword, and instead manipulated the very air that swirled around them. The magic built to a fever pitch, the man focused the energy at the runic blade. The Noxian spells within the weapon shuddered, the broken pieces separating for a moment, releasing the sliver at the fore end.
The energy collapsed and the sliver broke away, speeding toward the shadowed corner that held Asa. The tiny bit of death was about bury itself in the old man’s throat. The spiced memory of incense flooded Riven’s nose, she was back in Elder Souma’s meditation room.
“No!” she shouted. Riven dropped her blade, unable to prevent that which had happened before.
Just as the piece of shrapnel was about to graze the old man’s weathered skin, it stopped, held in place by a current of air. The man with the scarred nose let out a strained sigh and the small shard of Riven’s broken blade dropped harmlessly to the stone floor.
“You are lucky your breath comes so heavily, Master Konte,” the stranger said, his own short-winded words tumbled out quickly.
Riven ran to the old man and embraced him. She looked over her shoulder at the stranger. A breeze still whipped his hair as he wiped a bit of sweat away with the back of his free hand.
“It is true.” The stranger joined them, picking up the splinter of the blade. Riven watched some of his anger melt into understanding. “You killed Elder Souma, but you did not murder him.”
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” The moment Riven had been searching for, she was living again. The words came fast and thick. She was shaking as she held on to the old man.
“I came to him. I begged...” Riven struggled to enunciate each word as emotion overcame her. “I begged him to help me. To break this. To break me.”
“Elder Souma tried to destroy your blade,” the scarred man said. His voice grew thick. “But we cannot destroy our past, Riven.”
Riven knew what it was to face memories that could not live again, but would not stay dead. She saw now this stranger carried his own ghosts. The swirling eddies of air calmed around him as he gave a heavy sigh.
“Elder Souma was my responsibility. If I had been there… that night… I could have protected him. It was not your intention to kill him.” Riven watched, one knowing fighter to another, as the man resettled the burden of his own unseen demons once again on his shoulders. He met her gaze. “In the end, the fault of his death lies with me.”
“Yasuo?” The old man looked more closely at the man and then wagged a gnarled finger at this. “You have shown great honor in admitting the truth in this matter.”
“My honor left a long time ago, O-fa,” In Yasuo, Riven saw her own resistance at the offer of hope, of forgiveness. The man with the wild hair shook his head at the old man’s reprieve. “One mistake has compounded many others since. That is my punishment.”
The pronouncement was interrupted by the shift of gravel. A falcon-nosed woman entered the council chamber. She walked carefully around the room, inspecting the damage of the fight between the two broken warriors. A metal jangle kept time with her footfalls. The judge slowed as she passed Riven and the old man. Riven recognized a loop of leather slung with the keys to her shackles. When the magistrate came face to face with the stranger, she stopped.
“Taking responsibility is the first step to atonement, Yasuo” she said evenly.
“And the second?” There was a desperate edge to Yasuo’s words.
Yasuo held the magistrate’s gaze. The room stilled, holding its breath.
The judge’s quiet voice was loud in the empty council hall. “Forgiving yourself.”
Riven watched the fellow warrior closely. He could not bring himself to the words that would release him from his pain. Riven had wanted death for so long, but now as she witnessed Yasuo’s own struggle, she knew the hardest thing she could do was to live and to live with what she had done. Yasuo looked at her now. Would he stay and face his past?
The man who carried the weight of the wind turned his back on the council hall and walked into the night. Riven held tightly to the weathered hands of the old man.
Sunrise was cool, but there was a thickness in the blanket of clouds that hinted the day would turn warm and humid. When the warrior priest and the hawk faced judge with the leather loop of keys had come to collect Riven, the judge had raised one slender eyebrow at the neatly piled shackles still on the floor. Riven stood on her own and walked out of the hall to face her future.
The other magistrates had gathered the waiting villagers in the square outside the council hall. Riven assumed none of them wished to be confined with her or her runic blade. A cool breeze now tugged at the plaits of the judge’s hair.
“Upon examining the evidence and consulting with the elders, the Noxian woman will stand for her crimes,” the judge began.
Riven bristled at the inclusion of the land of her birth. She watched as Shava and Asa leaned on each other.
“Though easy to carry out, a sentence of death does not keep the world in balance,” the head magistrate continued. “It does little to repair the destruction a crime rips through a community.”
The people of the village nodded in sober agreement. Riven took in their faces, noticing a pattern to the many who were missing; fathers and mothers to the young, sons and daughters of the old.
“Instead, this council seeks a longer, harsher sentence,” the judge continued. “We will see that Riven, the exile, mends that which she has broken.”
The judge looked down her falcon nose at Riven.
“It will be a punishment of hard labor,” the judge announced. “Starting with the fields of Master and Mistress Konte.”
A murmur swept through the crowd.
“This court will also see Riven make reparations to the council hall. And to those whose homes and families were injured in the Noxian invasion.”
The judge looked at Riven expectantly. “Will you live by this decision?”
All eyes were on Riven now. A new emotion caught in her throat. She looked around. The ghosts she carried did not melt away with the pronouncement. Riven looked to them as they mixed freely with the living. It surprised her. She welcomed the visions. She would prove to them that she was worthy of the gift being offered.
“Yes.” Riven barely recognized her own voice, overcome as it was.
The old couple swept forward at this, crushing Riven between them. Riven relaxed into their embrace, leaning into them now as they did to her.
“Dyeda,” Shava murmured against the slashes of Riven’s white hair.
“Daughter,” she whispered back.
Corki

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.
Courting Disaster

Rowan Noel Williams

From a collection of letters, from Lord Emet of House Sassen to the Lady Elise
My dearest Elise,
It has been far too long since we last met, and longer still since you bade me visit you. Surely you have not forgotten how much I esteem you? Forget me not, my darling; I worship the very ground your lovely legs tread…

You are more radiant each time I see you, my lady. Your pale skin shines with an incomparable luster. As you pass in the streets attended by those unworthy of your attention, I am caught helpless, enraptured. If only you would favor me with your glance!
Shall I call upon you tonight? Last I came to your abode, there was no answer, but if you would not object to me letting myself in, I would lay such presents at your lovely feet. Roses from my family’s gardens, as red as your lips…

Would you dine with me, my queen? Perhaps this time, I might entertain…?
If you would not take it amiss, the presence of the cobwebs in your home leaves me somewhat… unsettled. Should you so desire, I have a maid who would happily attend to these matters, if so instructed.

Please, say you will see me again! I know better now than to dispose of your little house guests, which are no doubt as helpful as they are harmless. I promise my mistake will not be repeated.
I believe I saw one of your… pets… adorned with an expensive-looking headband given by Lord Istris to his wife some years ago, but surely it is not the same one?
If that piece did not please you, perhaps I might offer you a priceless diadem from my collection, instead?
To ascend the stairs of your home always seems to take an eternity, and though your pets unsettle me, I climb each time with fond eagerness and admiration in my heart. At the top lies my lady love, my slender goddess, my queen!

Oh, Elise! You captivate me! Your beauty arrests me, and I am powerless in your tender embrace. You have only to ask, my love, and I will give you my heart.
Yours without question & endlessly devoted,
Emet Sassen
Darius

Darius and his brother Draven grew up as orphans in the port city of Basilich. Darius struggled to provide for them both, constantly fighting with gangs of older urchins and anyone else who threatened his little brother—even the city guard. Every day on the streets was a battle for survival, and Darius earned more scars by his twelfth summer than some soldiers do in a lifetime.
After Basilich was seized by the expanding Noxian empire, the victorious commander Cyrus saw the strength in these defiant brothers, and they found a home within the ranks of his warhost. Over the years, they fought in many grueling campaigns of conquest from one end of the known world to the other, as well as crushing a number of rebellions against the throne.
Within the empire, anyone could rise to power, no matter their birth, culture, or background, and none embraced this ideal more fervently than Darius. From humble beginnings, he rose steadily through the ranks, always putting duty before all else, and garnering great respect for his aggression, discipline, and refusal to ever take a backward step. On the bloodsoaked fields of Dalamor Plain, he even beheaded a Noxian general after the coward ordered a retreat. Roaring in defiance and hefting his bloodied axe overhead, Darius rallied the scattered warbands and won a great and unexpected victory against a far more numerous foe.
He was rewarded with a senior command of his own, attracting many thousands of eager recruits from across the empire. Darius turned the majority away, accepting only the strongest, the most disciplined and iron-willed. Such was his fearsome notoriety, even in the lands beyond Noxus, that it was not uncommon for entire cities to surrender at the first sight of his banners.
After a grinding victory against the cloud-fortresses of the Varju, a proud warrior people who had resisted decades of Noxian aggression, Darius was named the Hand of Noxus by Emperor Boram Darkwill himself. Those who knew Darius best knew he craved neither power nor adulation—he wished merely to see Noxus triumph over all—so Darkwill ordered him and his warhosts far north into the Freljord, to finally bring the barbarian tribes to heel.
The campaign dragged on for years, ending in a bitter, icy stalemate. Darius narrowly survived assassination attempts, ambushes, and even capture by the vicious Winter’s Claw. He was growing weary of endless wars of attrition, and returned to Noxus to demand a reconsolidation of the military.
He marched his veterans into the capital, only to find that the emperor was dead, killed in a coup led by Jericho Swain. The act had been supported by many allies, including Darius’s own brother, Draven.
This was a difficult position. As Hand, many of the noble houses would expect Darius to avenge Darkwill, but he had known and greatly respected the disgraced general Swain, and had spoken against his discharge after the botched offensive in Ionia some years earlier. The oaths of the Hand were to Noxus, not any particular ruler, and Swain was a man who spoke honestly of his new vision for the empire. Darius realized this was a leader he was prepared to follow... but Swain had other ideas.
With the establishment of the Trifarix, three individuals would rule Noxus together, each embodying one principle of strength: Vision, Might, and Guile. Darius gladly accepted his place on this council, and pledged to raise a new, elite force—the Trifarian Legion, the most loyal and prestigious warriors the empire could produce—and lead the armies of Noxus into a glorious new age of conquest.
The Winterspike Road

Laura Michet

By evening, the snow had soaked all the way through Maja’s boots. With each step, she could feel icy water slosh from her heel to her toes, like a flaying knife drawn along her foot.
Other soldiers were struggling, too—fifteen miles downhill in waist-high snow wasn’t easy. But the legionaries at the head of the column weren’t limping. Their steps kept the confident rhythm they’d struck since morning, and their watchful eyes were still glued to the horizon.
They probably have better boots, Maja thought. Trifarians are tough, but nobody’s that tough in standard-issue boots.
“Hey,” Zalt muttered. “Holding up?”
Zalt, the only minotaur in the warband, was taller, wider, and older than everyone else. He was plowing a deep trench through the snow on sturdy hooves. Maja was jealous. “Wish I couldn’t feel my feet,” she said. “If I didn’t have feet, no one could make me march.”
“In the last campaign against the Winter’s Claw, I saw a soldier’s foot freeze solid,” Zalt said. “His toes cracked off when he put his boot on. So, wham! General Darius chopped the whole thing off.”
Maja turned her gaze down the mountain. On a bend in the road far below, she could see Darius himself—the Hand of Noxus, Might incarnate. The general’s huge axe gleamed on his back.
“You’re lucky to be here,” Zalt told her. “Darius knows this road better than anyone. He built it during Darkwill’s campaign. And we can help him take it back.” A little lick of anger burned in Zalt’s eye. “Damned Winter’s Claw!”
Cliffs rose sheer on either side of Darius’ mountain road. Looking up, Maja could see the silhouettes of soldiers standing atop them. “The scouts don’t get a rest, do they?” she asked.
“What?”
She pointed. “The scouts.”
“Which scouts?” Zalt asked.
Then he looked up, too.
Whatever curse he bellowed was smothered by the avalanche.
Two curtains of white separated from the cliff tops above them. Almost instantly, they filled the pass. Chunks of hard-packed snow smashed into the Noxian column, swallowing the soldiers row by row as the avalanche raced downhill. Maja braced, but it was like being hit by a charging basilisk. There was tumbling terror, an awful weightlessness—then darkness, and the crush of winter.

Crunch! Someone heaved Maja out of the snowpack. “Get up,” he commanded—a voice ringing like the clash of blades. “Dig them out!”
She shook herself and started to dig. Then she realized: she was digging beside the general himself.
Darius found a cloven foot in the snow. “Zalt!” Maja shouted. She helped the general heave him out.
Maja looked back up the frosty slope: far above, Winter’s Claw warriors were picking through the scattered remains of the Noxian dead. No retreat now, Maja thought.
Darius was counting heads. “Officers?” he called. Two Trifarian legionaries swiftly ran over. “Report casualties. There’s a river over the next ridge. We’ll fortify there.” Darius surveyed the battered Noxian ranks, his expression burning with barely leashed anger. “If you can’t walk, crawl.”

As the pale sun plummeted toward the horizon, Winter’s Claw skirmishers followed the Noxian column all the way down to the frozen river, peppering them with barbed arrows. However, the probing fire didn’t slow down the disciplined Trifarian Legion. Maja’s breath grew ragged as she hurried to keep up with them.
The frozen river was wide and slick enough to make it a dangerous approach for the Winter’s Claw, and by holding the bank, the Noxians knew any attack would have to come from the nearby treeline. In spite of the sporadic fire from the shadows beneath the pines, Darius ordered two snow trenches dug parallel to the bank. Soldiers repurposed shields into shovels, and Maja saw Darius doing the same.
“Remember this,” Zalt said. “You saw the Hand of Noxus digging with the infantry!”
Everyone then sharpened stakes for the outer trench. Darius checked defenses along the line—but stopped at Zalt. “You’re familiar,” he said.
“I fought in the first Freljord campaign, general!” Zalt nodded at Maja. “Told this youngster how much worse it was!”
Darius looked Maja over. “This is your first action,” he said.
Maja wondered how he could tell. “Yes, general.”
“Don’t waste time on fear,” he told her. “Focus on facing the enemy. On putting your blade in their throats.”
Maja wasn’t sure what to say. “Uh—”
Zzzzip. Something parted the air between them, and a javelin lodged in the wall of the trench.
Maja turned toward the treeline. Branches were shaking, blades were shining, and moonlight glinted on polished bone.
“Stand to!” Darius bellowed.
As the Noxians scrambled for cover, and another volley of javelins flew from the trees, Maja saw a soldier stagger, three feet of knotty wood sprouting from his chest.
Darius pushed past Maja and Zalt, arrows pinging off the axe on his back. “Soon. They’ll charge soon,” he told them. His eyes were lit with fierce excitement. “That’s when we’ll strike!”
And just as he spoke, a snarling came from the trees. A pack of six-legged, catlike shadows raced out of the darkness—trained wildclaws, leaping for Noxian throats.
The Winter’s Claw followed.
As Trifarian legionaries rose from the trench to meet them, Maja drew her sword. She saw Darius bring his axe down like a guillotine. She rose, too, ready to fight—when Zalt collapsed beside her.
A javelin was buried in his shoulder.
“Go,” he gasped, but Maja planted herself beside him. Winter’s Claw warriors were on them in an instant, hatchets swinging. Zalt deflected a skull-crushing strike with his good arm, and Maja tripped their attacker—but instead of delivering the killing blow, she turned back to Zalt.
She could save him. She had to!
She pushed Zalt toward the river, away from the fight, and they slithered out onto the ice behind the Noxian line. As Zalt fell to his knees, struggling for breath, Maja had a sudden urge to flee across the river with him.
“Don’t!” Zalt could tell what she was thinking. “A Noxian never flees!”
Maja’s heart seemed to be beating in her throat. She opened her mouth to argue with Zalt—I am a Noxian, I am—but her mouth refused to form the words.
Then Zalt’s eyes widened, and a heavy hand landed on Maja’s shoulder. She knew who it was before she turned around.
“Face the enemy,” Darius growled.
“I—”
“You’re not facing them.” With a flick of his arm, Darius spun her on the ice. “Noxians who flee, die,” he said.
By your hand, Maja knew. By that axe. As she stared, Darius hefted the axe above his head, and for an instant Maja thought, This is it—my execution.
But the moment never came. A flurry of arrows ricocheted off the flat of the blade, falling harmlessly around them, and Darius lowered the axe again. “Noxians don’t run. We win,” he growled. “We chop them to pieces for what they do to us.”
And suddenly, Maja was angry—at the Winter’s Claw, and at herself, and at her fear. With jerking, frozen limbs, she shoved Zalt aside. She heard him grunt as he hit the ice—but she left him there, and Darius did, too. Beside him, lock-step, she ran into the whirlwind of Noxian steel.
Their blades flashed, and Maja swung hers until her muscles burned and her hand was sore from impact after impact. And with each hammering blow, she reminded herself: Live. Win. Chop them to pieces.
By sunrise, the Winter’s Claw had been routed.

When they returned, Darius and Maja found Zalt at the riverbank, his chest prickled with arrows. Dead.
Maja felt numb. She’d been telling herself, Maybe he rallied. Maybe he fought. But he’d just died where they left him.
“I was trying to protect him,” she told Darius. “He’s—He was a good soldier. I was trying to protect him.”
Darius paused. “That was a poor decision,” he said.
Maja startled. “Sir?”
“You should have been fighting alongside soldiers who still had a chance of living.” He turned his gaze to Maja. She shuddered—his eyes were like iron. “Old Zalt was ready to die. But you should have been ready to fight.”
“Y-yes,” she stammered. “I’ll… I’ll be better, sir.”
Darius turned north, toward the dawn-lit slopes of the Winterspike mountains. Maja could see campfires up there. Smoke rising through the trees.
The Winter’s Claw, waiting.
“Then do it fast,” Darius said.
Dead in the Water

Graham McNeill

Red tide out, red tide in.
Hook ’em up, carve ’em true,
Strip ’em down, guts to skin.
But always pay the Lady her due,
Or the Titan of the Deep will come for you!
— from ‘Song of the Slaughter’

It was the stench of Bloodharbor that hit you first.
Like a gut-punch that took the wind right out of your sails.
The stink always got inside you, making you feel like you’d never get it out.
A noisome reek of opened leviathan bellies, dripping entrails you could crawl through, and weeks-old offal sticking to the cobbles like gory mortar left to rot in the sun. Mix that with the shit of ten thousand scavenging seabirds and the piss of the Slaughter Docks’ bloodied workers, and it was a smell strong enough to turn even the strongest stomach inside out.
You could wear a bandanna soaked in enough rum to souse the Bearded Lady herself, and it’d still get you.
Yes, it was awful, but Sarah Fortune loved what it represented.
It was the smell of prosperity, of a plentiful catch, and monster bounties earned.
A red tide meant people with coins in their pockets, ready to spend them all in the quayside taverns, gambling dens, and fleshpots, all of which paid a cut of their takings to Sarah.
Prosperity, yes—by the Bearded Lady, it was just the worst smell in the world.
Her small landing boat eased out into the sludgy water, its passage through the deepening evening lit by a storm lantern swaying from a wrought-iron tentacle at its bow.
Seated in the back of the boat, Sarah draped her hand over the gunwale and let her fingertips carve a path through the fatty layers on the water’s surface, drawing undulant spirals that rose and fell with the red tide.
“Even for you, that’s pretty damn reckless,” grunted Rafen, sweating as he leaned back and forth on the oars. Rafen was an old salt of the islands, with a craggy face weathered by ocean spray and hard winds, and a keen mind the rum hadn’t managed to take the edge off. He was, by turns, her conscience and right-hand man, and had seen pretty much every dark nook and cranny Bilgewater had to offer.
“How so?” asked Sarah.
“There’s ripper fish and flaying lampreys lurking just under the surface.”
“Scared I’ll get my fingers bitten off?” replied Sarah.
“Can’t pull a trigger without your fingers.”
“You worry too much, Rafen.”
“That’s my job, to worry about the things you don’t worry enough about.”
“Like this boat ride out to the Moon Serpent?”
“Exactly,” said Rafen. “I have a saying, and it ain’t steered me wrong none since I heard it at my papa’s knee. If it smells bad, leave it damn well alone, you idiot!”
Sarah shrugged. “Pretty much everything smells bad out here.”
“Maybe so, but that don’t change the truth of it,” said Rafen, glancing over his shoulder into the mist rising up from the water, where the Moon Serpent lurked like a dark secret. “The sea has an evil cast to it this night. Feels like hungry eyes are looking up from the deep.”
“Your bones talking to you again?”
“You mock, but I been listening to ’em for more’n forty years now, and I’m still alive, ain’t I?”
“Let it go, old man,” said Miss Fortune. “It’s a Captain’s Requiem, I have to be there. And if I have to be there in this ridiculous getup, then my second in command has to be there too.”
Said ridiculous getup consisted of a—literally—breathtaking whalebone corset of cobalt blue and golden lace beneath a gloriously long-tailed scarlet frock coat. In addition, she wore linen breeches of pale cream tucked into heeled boots of polished black leather with silver kraken buckles running from ankle to knee.
An absurdly impractical outfit, but in a gathering of captains it didn’t do to look anything less than obscenely wealthy. A poor captain was a weak captain, and like every kind of predator, Bilgewater reavers would ruthlessly prey on the weak.
Rafen hadn’t escaped the need to smarten up, either, and—under duress and threat of a demotion—wore a borrowed suit of sealskin leather, a scaled waistcoat whose buttons threatened to split from the fabric with every pull of the oars, and a stovepipe hat with a pressed tentacle headband.
“I might have to be there, but that don’t mean I got to like it,” said Rafen.
“True, but I need you to watch my back,” said Sarah. “Aligh had a large crew, and with him dead every captain will be circling like a wharf rat in heat. Last thing I need is his old crew going over to a rival captain or falling in with the likes of the Jackdaws or Butcher Blades.”
“Aye, there’s that,” begrudged Rafen. “Lot of powerful captains’ll likely be here to see Aligh off to the Bearded Lady, but do you really trust all of them to abide by the Truce?”
“Not even a little bit,” said Sarah, opening her coat to reveal a pair of exquisite ivory-handled pistols holstered under each armpit. “But it’s not like I’m going in unarmed.”
“They’ll take those off you, sure as eggs is eggs.”
“Please, you think they’re the only weapons I have?” she said, tapping the side of her head.
“Fair enough, but this still feels like a risk.”
“It surely is, but what’s life without a little risk?”
“I’ll remind you of that if this all goes under fast.”
Sarah grinned. “If it does, I promise you can haunt me from our watery grave.”
Rafen made a quick sign of the horns over his heart and shook his head, but returned his effort to rowing. He’d made his point, and Sarah had made sure he knew better than to press her when her mind was made up. Besides, she knew he was right, and there was nothing more irritating than a man who believed he was right.
But in deference to Rafen’s words, Sarah lifted her hand from the surface of the water and flicked the scum from her fingertips. Something toothy broke the surface where it landed and the old man raised his eyes in a told ya fashion.
Behind her, the ramshackle crags of Bilgewater shimmered in the fog, flickering anthills where people—her people—lived upon the flotsam and jetsam the ocean provided. Its structures clung to the rocks and mountains of the island chain like persistent barnacles that neither storm, Harrowing, nor the occasional probes of Noxian war-barques could ever entirely dislodge.
Like Sarah Fortune, Bilgewater was a survivor.
Since Gangplank’s death, she’d fought the unquiet spirits of the Shadow Isles and survived countless attempts on her life. Consolidating her rule over Bilgewater had been a messy, bloody affair, and her grip was still as shaky as an apprentice rigger on their first climb of the ropes. But she was still alive despite the venom—and firearms—aimed at her for putting her head above the parapet.
“Ship ahoy,” said Rafen.
Sarah looked past him to see a looming shape emerging from the rising mist.
Much like its former captain, the Moon Serpent was an old, unsubtle ship; broad in the beam and glowing with the dim light of dozens of hooded lanterns hanging from its many masts. The brigantine’s reinforced timbers were thickly caulked and carved with scales like a snake. Crusted salt in the grooves shone silver in the moonlight, and though its sails were still furled, Sarah knew they were woven from shimmering white cloth that must have cost Aligh a small fortune. Its ramming prow figurehead was a fanged serpent forged from the melted-down cannons of his enemies.
“By the Bearded Lady, I always forget how big it is…”
“She’s a beast sure enough,” said Rafen as the brigantine’s cold shadow fell across them.
“How in the world did a tight-fisted miser like Aligh pay for this?” said Sarah. “That cheapskate bastard never paid a kraken if he could spend a sprat. I heard he skipped out on his dues to the ocean, never so much as a drop of rum or a copper coin for the lords and ladies of the deep.”
“And ain’t that yet another reason for me to turn us around and not set foot on its deck,” said Rafen. “If even a bit of that’s true, then this here’s a doomed ship. The ocean needs its due, any captain worthy of the name knows that.”
“I gave a hex-carbine to the waters off White Wharf after claiming Jakmunt Zyglos’s bounty.”
“I remember,” said Rafen with a resigned shake of his head. “You promised that weapon to me.”
“Decent craftsmanship too. Wasn’t a Fortune Manstopper, but it was pretty nice.”
“Now you’re just being cruel.”
“A queen must be cruel only to be kind,” said Sarah with mock affectation, as Rafen eased the boat up to half a dozen others moored beneath a wide cargo net strung from the gunwale. The glossy hull of the Moon Serpent rose up like a black cliff and dark silhouettes moved through the lamplight high above.
“She’s sitting high in the water for such a big ship,” said Rafen, nodding toward the mottled green tide lines on the ship’s black hull as he tied the boat up with a loose slipknot.
“Her holds will be empty and most of the crew will be ashore getting three sheets to the wind on whatever cheap rotgut Aligh left them for his wake,” said Sarah.
“Lucky them,” said Rafen, pulling the oars in from the rowlocks and securing them along the gunwale. “You sure about this?”
Sarah rose and took hold of the cargo net, tipping her head back.
“Not really,” she said. “But when given the choice of going forward or back, a strong woman once told me that it’s always better to go forward, so let’s go.”
Hand over hand, Sarah and Rafen climbed to the Moon Serpent’s deck.

A pair of unsmiling twins in leather breeches and scaled shirts took Sarah’s guns and Rafen’s marlinspike dagger as soon as they clambered over the gunwale. Both women were heavily muscled and angrily sober, no doubt wishing they were ashore partaking in Aligh’s wake-rum instead of forming a skeleton crew for a bunch of captains who would, like as not, dance a jig to see one another dead.
One of the twins wore a helmet made from the skull of a scuttle-crab and matching patchwork armor of boiled shells, while the other had a face covered with tattoos of unblinking eyes. When the latter grinned at the sight of the gun-dame forged pistols, Sarah saw her mouth was filled with teeth prized from a razorscale’s jawbone.
Sarah followed them as they made their way to the raised foredeck, and marked which of the three chests they put the confiscated weapons into—cannonball dent in the right side.
An enormous bronze cannon sat on a carved ebony gun carriage just in front of the chests. The weapon’s flared muzzle was sealed with wax, and the sail-shrouded body of Captain Aligh would be entombed within, pickled in rum, vinegar, and camphor for its journey to the bottom of the sea.
“Shame to send something so beautiful to the deep,” said Sarah. “The cannon, I mean.”
“Aye,” agreed Rafen. “A finer thirty pounder I’ve yet to see, but it’s tradition, and you don’t go messing with traditions, right?”
“Right…” said Sarah, turning her attention to the broad-shouldered figure standing immobile next to the ship-wrecker. “Lady help us if we ever buck tradition, eh?”
He was swathed in a robe of iridescent scales with a wide-mouthed fish-head hood ringed in razor teeth. He carried a tentacle-wrapped billhook, and Sarah immediately knew him for what he was.
“A rare honor to have a serpent caller at a Captain’s Requiem,” she said.
“Amazing what enough gold krakens can buy you, eh?” replied Rafen.
Within the jagged hood, the serpent caller wore a mask of perforated coral over the lower half of his face, while his eyes and forehead were obscured by a dried-out squid’s body with crudely cut eye-holes through which the priest surveyed the gathered captains.
The wide deck was thronged with a host of Bilgewater reavers in all their finery: long coats, polished boots, tall hats, and archaic pieces of armor that would drag them straight to the ocean floor if they fell overboard. Sarah saw a wealth of gold and silver sigils and medals, Buhru fishhook amulets, and lucky talismans to honor the lords and ladies of the deeps.
Some captains she knew from fighting or drinking—often both—and some she knew only by reputation.
They, of course, all knew her.
With her blood-red hair, creamy skin, and confident swagger, Sarah Fortune would be a hard woman to miss in any circumstance, but on this ship she was a wild rose among poisoned thorns.
“Quite the gathering, eh?” said Rafen.
“Nothing like death to really bring people together,” said Sarah.
Rafen nodded and said, “Now I know how a fat waverider feels when it finds itself surrounded by a pack of hungry longtooths.”
Sarah shook her head. “You have it backward, old man. I’m the longtooth here.”
Rafen didn’t reply as Sarah marched to the ship’s centerline and back, adjusting each stride for the motion of the ship’s deck. Just as every pistol had its own unique character, so too did every ship; its own way to crest the tides and heed the wind. She moved with the anchored ship’s roll and sway, letting the creak and groan of seasoned timbers tell their secrets from her boots on up.
“A shallow-riding wallower,” she said. “Surprising for such a wide-beamed vessel.”
“I like ’em broad in the beam,” said Rafen, instinctively adjusting the width of his stance.
“So I heard.”
“Not as nimble as a cutter,” said Rafen, ignoring her jibe, “but I’ll wager a bottle of Myron’s Dark she’ll hold you tight to her bosom in rough seas.”
“That she will, Rafen,” said a slender woman dressed in a long coat of pale blue, with gold edging at the cuffs and bronze fringed epaulettes. “She’s a grand old dame, right sure. Sank Darkwill’s Glory and even poked a few holes in the Red Noxtoraa before the Mudtown fogs closed in and saved its cursed hide.”
A salt-stiffened bicorn flopped at a rakish angle on the woman’s shaven head, and the state of her eyes—two poached eggs wobbling in a bowl of fish soup—told Sarah she’d been hitting the rum hard already. Her skin had the waxy, yellowish complexion of someone only recently returned from a long sea voyage.
“Captain Blaxton,” said Rafen. “I heard you were dead.”
“Rumors of my death fly around Bilgewater with every sunset,” said the woman. “And with them, men weep, and their wives curse the morn of their disproving. I assure you, I am in the rudest of health.”
She turned to Sarah and gave her an elaborate bow before offering her a hand.
Sarah took it and was instantly on guard. Despite Blaxton’s drunken appearance and feather-light grip, she felt hard-earned calluses and powder burn ridges on the heel of her palm.
“Marla Blaxton, at your service, Captain Fortune,” she said, releasing Sarah’s hand. “Recently returned from a year of raiding the Amarantine Coast, where the sea is clear, the sky blue, and the coastal settlements fat with more gold than a captain could spend in ten lifetimes.”
“How wonderful,” said Sarah. “Why would you ever choose to return from that?”
“Good times can only last so long, you know. The inhabitants of said settlements had some strange ideas about ‘ownership’ and ‘not being dead’. Also, they were able to summon some curious mage-types who turned the sea and sky against me in ways I’d never seen before.”
“Ah, so you lost all your ships,” said Rafen.
“A few,” allowed Blaxton, waving her hand dismissively. “A temporary setback, Rafen. One from which I expect to bounce back any day now.”
“Perhaps with a new crew and a shallow-riding wallower of a brigantine?” suggested Sarah.
Blaxton laughed and said, “Anything is possible,” before giving her another bow and rejoining a group of captains gathered around a leaking barrel of rum by the foremast.
And Sarah’s heart skipped a beat as she saw a face she recognised, an enemy face.
Rafen saw him too and gripped her arm.
“Remember the Truce,” he hissed urgently.
Sarah didn’t answer, too focused on the man before her.
She pulled her arm free and strode toward him, keeping her face expressionless.
Blond hair, tied back in a rough ponytail, a loose strand hanging, just so, over his handsome, clean-shaven features. He looked up and met her gaze, the ice in his eyes frosting at her approach.
“Sarah,” he said, opening his arms to her. “Look, I know we—”
She didn’t let him finish, hammering her fist into his gut without breaking stride.
He buckled like he’d been hit by one of the twenty-four pounder balls, and his handsome face met her rising knee with a sickening crunch of bone.
He flew back and Sarah pounced on him before he could rise, straddling him and reaching for her pistol before remembering it was locked in a chest next to the mainmast.
Cannonball dent in the right side.
Instead of shooting him, she hauled his head up by his collar and cocked her fist back for another punch. He coughed blood, and lifted a forge-crafted hand of whirring bronze cogs, leather straps, and clicking mechanics out in front him.
“Please,” he wheezed through a broken nose and a mouthful of blood.
“Hello, Petyr,” she said. “I told you what would happen if I saw you again, didn’t I?”

Captain Petyr Harker.
The last time she’d seen him, he’d been cradling the splintered, bloody ruin of his hand, the hand he’d always boasted killed the Crimson Blade.
Petyr, along with Captains Crow and Bragg, had conspired to strip her of her hard-won gains in the wake of her killing Gangplank. Both Crow and Bragg were now dead, one from a pistol ball to the head, the other with one lodged in his liver.
Her pistol balls.
Walking out of the gunfight at MacGregan’s Killhouse, she’d promised to take more than Petyr’s other hand if she ever saw him again.

The Truce of the Sinking Soul was a long-standing tradition in Bilgewater.
More of an unwritten rule than a strictly enforced custom, but it allowed rival crews to gather without bloodshed when their captains attended the all too frequent funerals of old sea-legends.
That violent men and women would abide by such an archaic custom always struck Sarah as somewhat quaint, and until now she’d always kept it in the if it ain’t broken… part of her mind.
An iron grip seized her right elbow and pulled her clenched fist back.
Rafen appeared on her left, dragging her off Petyr.
“Easy, captain,” he said. “Easy now…”
Part of her wanted to land another punch, but by the time Rafen had her back on her feet, the anger had gone out of Sarah. She’d made her point, and so let herself be pulled away.
“Upon our last descent,” said a rum-sodden voice in her ear. “All gathered heed this oath.”
“Peace be upon us all,” she repeated automatically. “No harm to body or soul.”
“No shot nor blade, no serpent nor spell,” added Rafen.
“Observe the Truce of the Sinking Soul!” finished Petyr, scrambling away from her.
Sarah let out a long breath, and turned to see who, along with Rafen, had pulled her off.
A hunched wretch in an expensive kraken-skin coat, fresh octopus-tentacle tie, and glistening stingray flat-cap that was well above the tattered sackcloth she normally saw him wearing.
“Thorne?” she said, shrugging off Rafen’s touch.
“It’s Captain Thorne these days,” he said, spitting a wad of expensive dried-seaweed tobacco to the deck and missing the polished toe of her boot by a finger’s breadth.
Sarah laughed. “You? A captain? Since when?”
Thorne preened, looking like a powder monkey with a freshly stolen mango. “Got me a ship now, and a crew of hearty sea-rats off the back of what you done to Crow and Bragg.”
His breath was like a bucket of rotten clams. Thorne could parade in expensive clothes, but he could never change who he truly was.
“You always were a bottom feeder, weren’t you?” said Sarah. “Now get out of my way.”
Thorne stood aside, and said, “Mark my words, Sarah Fortune, you’ll get what’s comin’ to ya.”
“Promises, promises,” said Sarah, and in two quick steps she was standing over Petyr Harker.
She held her arm out and rippled her fingers, like she was flipping a coin along her knuckles.
“Can I give you a hand?” she said with a grin.
“Is that supposed to be funny?”
“It is funny,” said Sarah. “Look how I’m smiling.”
Petyr looked at her gloved hand through an eye that was already swollen and purple. Despite the obvious pain of his bleeding nose and winded gut, he grinned.
“If I give you my good hand, are you going to shoot it off?” he asked.
“I’m not planning to, but the day’s yet young.”
He took her hand, and Sarah hauled him to his feet.
“Why are you here, Petyr?” she asked.
“There might not be a Corsair’s Conclave anymore, but traditions need to be upheld, yes?”
“So I keep hearing,” said Sarah, glancing at Rafen.
She pulled a handkerchief from her coat and handed it to Petyr. He nodded gratefully and wiped the blood from his lips and chin before handing it back.
“Keep it,” she said, then nodded admiringly at his new hand. “Nice work. Doesn’t look like Bilgewater craft.”
“It’s not,” said Petyr. “Well, it is and it isn’t. A new apprentice down at Bitterbelt’s forge made it for me. Zaunite lad named Gysbert.”
“Looks expensive.”
“It was.”
Sarah looked him up and down, taking in his tailored clothing, the well-fed cheeks, and the empty scabbard that looked like it might hold a fine blade. Whatever had become of Petyr after losing his hand, he’d clearly bounced back well enough.
“I keep wondering if I should have killed you back at MacGregan’s,” said Sarah.
“I’ve often wondered why you let me live,” said Petyr. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad you didn’t kill me, but let’s be honest, I’m just the sort of fellow to seek dramatic revenge in some stupidly elaborate scheme.”
Despite herself, Sarah laughed. “That you are, Petyr, that you are. But if you want the truth, I didn’t kill you because killing you would have been Gangplank’s way of doing things, and I always try to be better than he was.”
“And how’s that working out for you?”
“It’s a work in progress,” admitted Sarah as Rafen stepped between them, holding tin mugs hooked over his fingers in one hand, and a large bottle of rum in the other.
“Here,” he said. “If the Truce is holding, and we’re not going to start killing each other, then we might as well have a swig of Aligh’s rum, eh?”
Sarah passed a mug to Petyr before taking one for herself as Rafen poured them all two fingers of the syrupy brown liquid.
“Keep your powder dry and your cutlass sharp,” said Rafen.
“And the world will turn,” finished Sarah, and the three of them touched mugs.
Sarah tipped her head back and took a mouthful, wincing at the gritty, overly sweet taste.
“Oh, that’s bad. That’s really bad,” she said. “You sure they didn’t put Aligh’s body in the rum barrel instead of the cannon barrel?”
“Aligh was known for many things—being a cruel old bastard, a ruthless captain, and a seasoned killer—but one thing he wasn’t known for was his largesse in vittles,” said Petyr, pouring the remains of his rum onto the deck.
“I didn’t know you knew Aligh.”
Petyr shook his head vigorously. “I didn’t. I mean, I knew him by reputation, of course, but it’s not like I ever set foot on the Moon Serpent before today.”
“The man was an enigma,” said Thorne, sidling up to Rafen and holding out his own mug. “A regular man of mystery, but who cares about that? He’s dead, and we ain’t.”
Sarah shrugged and nodded to Rafen, who poured Thorne a generous measure.
“Aye,” continued Thorne. “There’s none here gathered who knows much of the man. They say he never came ashore neither. Always sent one of them vicious twins. So, did you hear how he died?”
“I heard he was stabbed in his sleep by a cabin boy who’d taken one too many beatings,” said Captain Blaxton, arriving mug in hand.
Rafen duly poured her a measure.
“May all your lookouts be sober,” she said, taking a drink. “Ah, some of the good stuff.”
“That’s what you heard?” said Sarah. “I heard he choked to death on a barb-squid that wasn’t quite dead in his dinner.”
Rafen shook his head. “No, that’s just what the cutters on the Slaughter Docks are saying. I heard it from one of the chandlers down the grottoes that he was so drunk he fell overboard. His pockets were so laden with gold that he sank all the way down, straight into the waiting grasp of the Bearded Lady.”
Instinctively, they all looked over the gunwale to the ocean far below.
The waters swirled around the ship, deep and black like a liquid mirror. She saw her wavering reflection, splintered by the water and lapping at the barnacled hull. Hard waves broke against the hull—the kind you saw when something large was coming up from below.
“Told you it had an evil cast to it tonight,” said Rafen.
Sarah let out a breath and tapped her left eye twice with her right thumb, an old sailor’s tradition to ward off evil influences.
“Ach, he was an old man, maybe he just died,” said Sarah. “That’s what old men do best.”
“Fog’s rolling in,” said Blaxton, nodding out to sea.
A chill passed through Sarah as she saw the fog was coming in from the southeast; cold, clammy, and freighted with the smell of the deepest ocean trenches.
“Don’t matter none how the old bastard died,” said Thorne. “All that matters is what happens to his ship and his crew. That’s why we’re all here, ain’t it? Every one of us wants to claim that big prize, don’t we?”
All four captains studied one another, each knowing that was exactly why they were here.
“No one ever found his serpent sigil, did they?” said Blaxton.
“His sigil?” scoffed Rafen. “Like as not, it’s sealed away in that cannon with him. Doesn’t matter anyway, no one pays any heed to a captain’s sigil these days.”
“Maybe they should,” said Sarah. “Maybe there’d be a lot less bloodshed if you could just claim a ship and crew with the previous captain’s sigil.”
“Scared of a little blood, are ya?” grinned Thorne. “Not got the stomach for it, eh?”
Sarah took a step toward him and said, “Truce or not, talk to me like that again and I’ll show you how much stomach I have for bloodshed.”
“Didn’t mean to go upsettin’ ya, Captain Fortune,” laughed Thorne, exposing black teeth and rotten gums. “Just wondering how many of ’em here gathered would have even the slightest hesitation of trying to claim Aligh’s crew if they could get their hands on that sigil…?”
Sarah looked past Thorne at the other captains gathered on the Moon Serpent’s deck, wondering the same thing. Most of them were small fry, with crews that were too green to make a serious play for Aligh’s ship, but the three drinking rum with her… Now that was a motley crew indeed, and any one of them might be a rival she needed to worry about sticking a knife in her back.
Before any of them could say anything in answer to Thorne’s question, Sarah felt the deck shift underfoot, a slow roll and dip.
She reached inside her coat and pulled out a silver coin, flicking it over the side of the ship.
Thorne watched it tumble end over end to the waters, and for a moment she wondered if he might dive in after it.
“Why’d ya do that?” he said. “This ain’t your ship.”
“Someone has to,” said Sarah, as the Moon Serpent’s white sails unfurled. “We’re getting underway.”

The ship sailed eastward out of Bilgewater Bay, taking a gently curving route to avoid the many jagged reefs, treacherous sandbanks, and jutting wrecks that could see a ship foundered. The fog Blaxton had spotted had fully enveloped them now, and the ship sailed in an almost dead silence, interrupted only by the occasional shout between the skeleton crew.
Despite the awfulness of the rum, Sarah, Rafen, Thorne, Petyr, and Blaxton worked their way through the rest of the bottle. After a couple of shots, the sweetness became bearable, and Sarah felt her mood loosening.
With the bottle empty, Rafen threw it overboard and Sarah sent him below deck to find another.
The Moon Serpent sailed onward, deeper into the fog.
More theories as to how Aligh had died were offered, each more ridiculous than the last, and Sarah found herself wiping tears of laughter from her eyes as Petyr finished a preposterous tale of Aligh falling afoul of the Trickster and being led out to sea in a golden narwhal costume only to be carved up by the Bloodharbor Ripper in a tragic case of mistaken identity.
A distant voice, muffled by the fog, called out from the crow’s nest.
“What did he say?” she asked, peering up through the rigging. She held on to the gunwale rail as her vision spun a tad. The rum was bad, but it was strong. Time to ease up.
“I think he said ‘Land ho!’ or possibly ‘Sand Lo!’” said Blaxton, bleary eyed from the rum.
Sarah blinked. “Sand Lo? Why would he say that?”
“I believe it’s a traditional Shuriman greeting,” giggled Petyr, taking another belt of rum.
Sarah fought the laughter bubbling up from her gut as she heard the clatter of iron chains spilling off the deck, swiftly followed by the heavy splash of an anchor hitting the water.
“We’re here,” said Thorne, spitting a viscous wad of tobacco into the sea.
Sarah peered through the mist, seeing a craggy spur of black rock rearing out of the water. Salt crystals glittered in the weak light of the stars.
“Moonshard Reef,” she said. “Why in the name of the Lady’s Beard are we here?”
“Aligh always claimed he was part Marai on his mother’s side,” said Petyr.
“Horse dung!” said Thorne. “The man’s never even seen a Marai, let alone been birthed from one.”
“Makes for an exotic tale though,” said Blaxton. “Mystic origins, magical blood, that sort of thing. Kind of backstory every captain wishes they had. Wish I’d thought of it.”
The thumping of wood on wood halted further discussions, and Sarah turned to see the serpent caller hammering the raised foredeck with his tentacle-wrapped billhook.
In his other hand, he held a flaming torch that burned with a brilliant silver light.
“The sea is this world’s cemetery, and its souls sleep best without monument,” said the serpent caller, his voice a grating hiss through the coral mask. “All other graveyards show symbols of distinction between great and small, rich and poor—but the king, the fool, the prince, and the peasant are all the same to the ocean. Now, fellow travelers of the Sea… heed my words, it is time to pay the ocean its due!”
“About damn time,” said Sarah. “Let’s get this done and go home.”
“I’ll drink to that,” said Petyr.

Sarah and the other captains gathered before the wax-stoppered cannon as the serpent caller’s eyes swept over them all. She felt the potency of the rum swimming around her body, and saw a number of the other captains swaying with more than the motion of the ship.
Where in the eight seas is Rafen?
She didn’t want any more rum. She just wanted him here by her side.
The twins who’d met her and Rafen as they came aboard to confiscate their weapons worked a block and tackle over to the center of the deck. An enormous hook on a thick rope loop was lowered and secured to the lifting ring on the cannon just behind the oiled fuse.
“What a waste,” said Blaxton, tears streaming down her face.
“I didn’t realise you and Aligh were close,” said Sarah.
“What? Gods, no! I mean the cannon. That’s an Orban thirty pounder,” said Blaxton. “Probably one of only a handful left in existence. One hit from that would punch a hole clean through a Noxian warship from stem to stern. Crying shame to see it go to waste.”
Thanks to her mother’s teachings, Sarah knew more about pistols and rifles than she did about the intricacies of ship-borne weapons, but even she had to agree the bronze cannon was far too good for the likes of a miserly soul like Aligh. Was that a final insult to those left behind, that his most beautiful weapon would serve as his tomb and never belong to anyone else?
Something niggled about that, though—a nagging feeling she was missing something.
Crab Hat secured the hook to the cannon, then she and her twin stood back as the serpent caller began to speak.
“Captains of Bilgewater, it does my heart proud to see so many of you here today,” he said. “The best and the worst, the scum and the cream of our city’s reaver-kind.”
A few mutters went through the captains at so harsh an opening, but serpent callers were known to be touched by the Bearded Lady, and their ways were unknowable to most people.
“Our fair isles stand at a pivotal moment in their history, and many paths lead into the future, as tangled and inconstant as the many limbs of Nagakabouros, but I have seen the way forward! On many of these paths, I see the peaks and coves of the Serpent Isles ablaze, its people dying as our enemies close in. But on one path, one singular path, I see us proud, stronger than ever, a united people under a great leader!”
Sarah’s brow furrowed. Yes, the serpent callers were a strange bunch, but this was beyond anything she’d heard any of them say before.
“You have gathered here to see Captain Aligh down to the depths, a man whose boots none of you were fit to clean. A man of vision, a man who knew what needed to be done!”
The twins began hauling on the pulley ropes to lift the cannon, their muscles bunching and straining as the rear end of the cannon, gun carriage and all, began lifting from the deck. The barrel tilted downward, and were it not for the waxed stopper, Sarah felt she could have looked right down its length to see Aligh’s dead body.
“You all have failed Nagakabouros! You all have fought and betrayed one another, like Rat Town scum scrabbling over a copper sprat. None of you has the vision to raise a fleet like the ones of old and make Bilgewater ruler of the waves! You all throw your coins and your tributes into the water, and for what? For safety? A blessing? No, it’s a sacrifice you’re offering, a blood price for the ocean to lend you its wrath. But what does the ocean care for copper coins or the smallest fish of the catch? No, for Bilgewater to prosper, it needs a red tide of offerings!”
Sarah surreptitiously glanced around at the other captains to see what they were making of the serpent caller’s lunacy, but clearly the rum had numbed them to just how insane this was. She felt eyes upon her and saw Petyr looking right at her.
He gave her a terse smile, and her unease ratcheted up several notches.
She saw he was easing, half-step by half-step, toward the gunwale.
Sarah looked back down the cannon barrel.
And then she knew.
“Oh no…”
She ran toward the raised foredeck, tearing off her hat and reaching up to pull out twin stilettos masquerading as hairpins. Each was a slender needle of blackened steel with a rounded skull-pommel, and she knew just where to stick them to kill a man stone dead.
“So I offer the sea your blood, your sacrifice!” screamed the serpent caller, tearing off his mask and hood so everyone could see him. So everyone would know who had brought them here to die.
Sarah saw a grey-bearded face, furrowed by old age and aglow with madness. A long scar bisected his leathery face from right eyebrow to left cheek, and the wisps of his beard were twisted into thin braids entwined with pearls and fishhooks.
His eyes were the eyes of a man who never paid a kraken if he could spend a sprat.
Who skipped out on the ocean’s tithe on every voyage.
A man she knew from reputation and decades of bloody legend.
“Aligh, you treacherous bastard!” she yelled.
The twins saw her coming, but couldn’t yet release the chains holding the cannon’s rear aloft.
Time slowed for Sarah, her heartbeat like the slow tolling of the bell upon the Widow’s Manse whenever a ship was lost to the ocean. It felt like she was running knee deep in sticky guts in the carving bays of the Slaughter Docks.
“You’re too late, Captain Fortune,” said Aligh.
He swept the torch down to the back of the cannon, and roared in triumph.
She pulled back her hand to throw one of her stilettos.
She knew she wouldn’t make it.
The silver flame lit the oiled touchpaper.
And the world exploded in a deafening blast of fire and thunder.

That she wasn’t dead was Sarah’s first surprise.
Her second was that the Moon Serpent was still afloat.
A cannon that big ought to have holed the ship all the way down to the ocean, and broken its keel.
She couldn’t hear anything, not really. Her ears were filled with a high-pitched whine, maddeningly shrill and muffled at the same time.
She rolled onto her side, wincing as she felt blood streaming down her arm.
A dull awareness of foggy, distant sounds coming from behind made Sarah turn her head.
A scene of utter carnage, worse than anything she’d seen in a long time.
And suddenly she knew why the ship wasn’t sinking. The cannon had been primed with canister shot.
It was a load designed to shred and maim flesh, but leave a vessel intact, and it had worked its lethal power with horrifying potency.
Sarah’s mad dash toward Aligh had carried her mostly clear of the wide fan of red-hot fragments, but the other captains weren’t so lucky.
Men and women lay sprawled on a deck slick with blood.
Those closest to the gun were almost unrecognisable, transformed from living, breathing human beings into scraps of bloody meat. Shorn arms and legs lay scattered in gory heaps, and it was all but impossible to tell which limb belonged to which body.
But not everyone was dead.
Those captains toward the rear of the throng writhed in agony, bleeding from scores of deep lacerations and screaming the name of the Bearded Lady. Sarah could still barely hear them.
She saw Blaxton lying in a lake of blood, her fine blue coat cut to pieces, as if someone had given her a hundred lashes from a barbed cat-o’-nine-tails. Sarah couldn’t tell if she was dead or alive, but she was lying very still. Thorne slithered out from beneath her, and with the luck typical of that lowlife, it looked like he’d escaped the worst of the blast using Blaxton as a human shield.
Rafen! Where’s Rafen?
She couldn’t see him, and could only hope that he’d found a way to survive.
He must have, he’s Rafen. He survives everything, doesn’t he?
Then her eyes settled on a figure lying sprawled against the railings, bloodied, but mostly unhurt.
Petyr Harker.
He grinned, and hate filled Sarah as she knew that somehow, in some way, that smug, conniving sea-slug had known about Aligh’s trap. He had to have been part of setting it up, a glittering, silver-tongued lure for captains who didn’t know him well enough to send him packing.
Sarah saw the deck hatch swing open, and the skeleton crew that had sailed them out to Moonshard Reef emerged with long gutting knives to finish what their vile captain had begun. They moved as if in a languid dream, skewering bellies and cutting throats with sadistic relish.
Anger surged through Sarah, and she sat upright, blinking through tears of pain.
You’re alive, damn it! Do something!
With that thought blazing in her mind, sounds rushed back and her vision cleared.
The screams of the dying drove her to her feet, and she swept up her stilettos once again.
Aligh stood far behind the smoking cannon, arms aloft and surveying his bloody handiwork with the eyes of a zealot. Sarah sprinted toward him again, but this time the twins rushed past their captain to intercept her.
She vaulted over the cannon, and hammered her boots into the face of the twin with the tattooed eyes all across her skull. Razorscale teeth splintered under Sarah’s iron hard boot-heels, and sent the woman flying backward.
Sarah landed lightly and leapt to the side as Crab Hat swung a monstrous, fang-toothed club at her head. It smashed the deck boards to splinters, and Sarah rolled to her feet hammering her daggered fist into the woman’s back. The crab-shell armor was hard and smooth and the stiletto slid clear without penetrating.
The woman wrenched the club from the deck and spun around, the weapon slashing just over Sarah’s head. Her tattooed twin was back up, blood streaming down her face of many eyes, turning it into a hideous grimace. She held a pair of long punch daggers with razor-toothed sawfish blades.
She came at Sarah in a flurry of blows, elbows, and high kicks.
Sarah tried to parry and dodge, only barely avoiding each killing blow. She could hold her own in a fight, but she’d take a pistol over a pair of thin daggers any day. By the time they’d backed up toward the cannon, Sarah’s shirt was soaked in blood and she was seriously reconsidering the wisdom of her plan to fight hand to hand.
From the corner of her eye she saw the armored twin winding up for another strike.
Two to one, this fight would only end badly for Sarah.
Tattooed Eyes slashed her dagger low, and Sarah grunted as it cut a line of fire across the side of her thigh. She dropped to one knee as a reverse stroke came for her throat.
She lifted her arm to parry, and the slashing blade cut straight through the fabric of her coat.
The impact sent searing bolts of pain up Sarah’s arm, but the iron rods specially woven into the back of the sleeve halted the blade before it bit flesh.
Her foe let out a “Ha!” of triumph, but the grin fell from her face as she realised Sarah was unhurt.
“Gedian and Sons, Battle Tailors and War Clothiers,” said Sarah, and hammered her stiletto up through the soft flesh on the underside of her foe’s jaw. Her eyes flew wide in shock, and Sarah saw the black needle of the blade behind her razor teeth as it punched up into her brain.
Sarah rose and kicked the dead body away as her twin screamed in anguish.
Stiletto versus war-club—bad odds. Really bad odds.
Sarah risked a glance behind her.
Cannonball dent in the right side…
This was her chance to even those odds.
The armored twin launched herself at Sarah in fury, her huge, toothed club rising up for a strike. The weapon slashed down in an executioner’s arc, and Sarah dived aside at the last instant.
The iron head of the club smashed the chest behind Sarah apart. She spun inside the twin’s guard and drove her blade into a gap between the plates of crab-shell armor.
The woman grunted and stumbled backward, tearing the weapon from Sarah’s hand.
Sarah turned and began frantically searching through the shattered ruin of the chest, sweeping aside damaged knives, brass-knuckles, and iron-tipped cudgels.
“Come on, come on, where are you…?” she hissed, hearing the scrape of a club being lifted from the deck. A broken handle, a bent blade.
Had one of the twins hidden them somewhere else, hoping to keep them for themselves…?
No, no, no…
And then her palm closed on the smooth, ivory-handled grips she knew better than anything.
Sarah spun the twin pistols into her grip, and snapped the firing mechanism into place.
She twisted and dived to the side, pulling the triggers in a storm of shot.
Crab-shell armor was proof against blades and hooks, but against gun-dame-forged weapons, the tattooed woman might as well have been naked.
Red-hot pistol balls blasted through her armor, and she toppled over the cannon, leaking vital fluids from more than a dozen neat holes.
Sarah rose to her feet and tensed as she felt the roll and sway of the deck change. It was a subtle change, almost unnoticeable, a change in the angle of the anchored ship’s prow as the swell of the ocean shifted…
“Oh, now that’s not good…” she said, as Aligh limped toward her, distraught at the sight of the dead twins.
“You killed them!” he cried.
Sarah fired a shot into each of his kneecaps. “That’s for all the captains you killed tonight.”
Aligh screamed, writhing on the deck. He wept and feebly tried to swing his billhook at her.
Sarah easily batted it aside and jammed a pistol under his chin.
“Any last words?” she asked. “Now this really is your funeral.”
The deck shifted again, and a deathly silence fell over the ship.
Even the wounded seemed to recognize the strange quality of the darkness closing in around them as a deep rumbling sound rose up from the water.
Sarah sensed fearful tremors running through the ship’s timbers.
“What’s happening?” she demanded, jabbing the pistol harder into Aligh’s throat. “What else did you have planned tonight?”
“This is none of my doing,” wept Aligh, and despite his obvious agony, he laughed with the hysteria of a man who knew his time had come. “My bill to the sea is due. And you’re going to pay it with me…”

Sarah had felt something like this in the bones of a ship once before.
Nine years ago, just north of Bilgewater and making the last, hooking sprint to the inner bay. They’d been returning from a bounty run up by Drakkengate and spotted a smuggler running a slimmed-down carrack out of the Ironwater coves, fleeing the Serpent Isles with treasures looted from a Buhru temple.
She still remembered the mournful rumble of the titanic serpent horns as they echoed over the ocean, and the terror as her crew watched an abyssal kraken rear up from the water to smash the carrack to matchwood and drag all aboard to their deaths.
The shift in the deck as the kraken had passed under their ship felt just like this.
She ran to the gunwale and searched the fog and ocean.
The sea swirled around the crags of Moonshard Reef, dark and keeping their secrets. No one knew just how deep it got around here, but any ship that sank out this way was never seen again, never washed up on the isles.
What’s out there…?
And then she saw it.
Two hundred yards out, huge and unyielding, a titan rising from the deep.
The vast dome of its helmeted head broke the water, twin eyes glowing with the orange light of a smelting furnace. The water boiled around it, frothed to madness by a dark miasma surrounding its wavering outline, and leaving an oily slick in its wake.
Its body was huge, encased in plates of corroded iron, looped with chains torn from countless sunken vessels. Across one shoulder it carried a colossal, hook-bladed anchor, dripping with black water and garlanded with rotten weeds from the deepest, darkest abyss.
Sarah’s mind refused to process what she was seeing.
This is impossible.
It was a dark legend come to life, a scare story told around the beer-soaked tables of the wharf-side taverns by drunken rakes hoping for a free drink. She knew its name, had even laughed at the impossibility of its existence.
But here it was, rising from the ocean with booming, ponderous strides.
The drowned tallyman, come to claim the ocean’s due.
Even his name was said to be a curse.
“Nautilus…”

The water exploded as Nautilus hurled his anchor at the Moon Serpent.
A tidal wave made stagnant and rotten by its time in the darkness washed over the ship, as the anchor crashed into the deck. It smashed clear through the timbers, and the ship tilted wildly to port as the impossible weight of it pulled it over.
Sarah fell against the railing and jammed her pistols home in their shoulder holsters as the ship tilted downward. Crew screamed as they slid down the angled deck or were thrown overboard. The anchor ripped clear of the ship’s side, and the ship violently righted itself. Sarah looked up at the sound of splintering masts overhead. Silver sails billowed as the topmast and mizzen snapped like twigs, falling to the shattered deck to crush a dozen men or more.
She struggled to her feet, hearing the groan of a keel bending under stresses it had never been designed to endure. Caulked timbers split and geysers of black water erupted all along the length of the deck.
Sarah turned to Aligh, who clung to the bronze cannon that ought to have served as his tomb.
“You did this!” she yelled, as the looming shadow of Nautilus reared up from the water.
The carved wooden railing smashed to splinters as a massive hand, surely too large to have once been mortal, slammed down on the foredeck. Another swiftly followed, trailing a length of chain that slithered with a black, oily substance.
“He’s not real!” screamed Aligh, his mind undone by the sight of Nautilus. “It was just a story!”
“He looks pretty damn real to me!” shouted Sarah over the cacophony of smashing wood, tearing sails, and terrified screams. Fiery heat washed over her as Nautilus hauled his bulk over the gunwale, and turned his infernal gaze upon her.
She felt the deathly heat of it crawling over her skin, its touch loathsome and invasive, as if the titan of the deeps could see into her very soul.
His titanic weight heeled the ship over again, and Sarah grabbed hold of the looped pulley ropes as the deck tilted crazily. The front of the cannon slid sideways as the block and tackle swung wildly and its knotted end strained to bear its colossal weight. The wooden pegs securing the wheels of the gun carriage in place creaked ominously.
Aligh pulled his way along the cannon toward her.
“I won’t go alone!” he screamed. “If the ocean wants me, I’ll drag you down with me!”
The man was a lunatic, like the crippled sailors raving in Bilgewater’s alleys with a mind destroyed by the foulest rotgut. His fraudulent serpent caller robes had come loose, and dangling from his neck on a leather thong was a silver-and-brass sigil of three intertwined serpents.
Swinging on the pulley, Sarah tried to kick him away, but he had a madman’s strength, clawing at her throat with his free hand. Cracked fingernails drew blood, and she struggled to find purchase as the ship tipped over onto its side, its port side now completely underwater.
Far above them, Nautilus drew back his anchor once again and brought it down like a colossal woodsman’s axe.
Its unnatural mass sheared through the deck amidships, and Sarah heard the thunderous crack of the keel finally splitting. The vessel’s stern rose up sharply, and the sounds of Aligh’s screaming crew echoed in the mist.
On the ocean, we are all equal, went the old saying, but right now Sarah didn’t give a wharf-rat’s shit for those murderous, traitorous bastards.
Let them all drown.
The front half of the ship sprang up with the force of the blow, then slammed back down onto the ocean, tilting back upright as seawater poured into the bow section. The weight of it was dragging the prow deeper underwater with every passing second.
In moments, nothing would remain on the surface.
A body slammed into the deck next to her; Aligh’s tattooed daughter, the one with Sarah’s stiletto still jammed in her brain.
Slicks of black fluid spilled from her mouth and swirled in her eyes.
With a groan of screeching metal, Nautilus reached for Aligh with a massive, corroded gauntlet. His crushing grip fastened on the treacherous captain’s torso and pulled. Aligh held fast to Sarah with lunatic strength, as though they embraced like lovers.
She couldn’t shake him loose.
“All because you wouldn’t pay the damn tithe,” snarled Sarah, as Aligh fought to hold on to her.
“The ocean will take you as well as me!” he screamed.
“Not today,” said Sarah, reaching up and back to grip the skull-pommel of the stiletto wedged in the soft tissue under the tattooed twin’s jaw.
She pulled hard, and the blade slid free in a welter of fluids.
“You want him?” said Sarah, reversing her grip on the weapon. “He’s all yours!”
She rammed the blade into the side of Aligh’s neck, driving it hard through to the other side. His head snapped back and Sarah’s hand flashed out to catch a falling leather thong cut loose from around Aligh’s throat. His grip spasmed, and the metal titan wrenched him back just as the deck hook securing Sarah’s rope loop snapped.
The full weight of the cannon yanked on the block and tackle, lifting Sarah away from the weapon and Aligh. Swinging wildly above the sinking ship, she watched as Nautilus turned and sank back into the ocean, the screaming Aligh clutched in one iron fist.
The water closed over him, a trail of frantic bubbles following Aligh down as Nautilus returned to the darkness below with his bounty. As Aligh was dragged down, Sarah took grim pleasure in seeing the look of terror in his eyes at his fate; condemned to an eternity in darkness without so much as a pauper’s marker to his name.
The Moon Serpent’s prow rose almost vertically in the ocean, and Sarah swung on the rope to reach the jutting, serpent figurehead. Her booted feet caught the silver fangs, and she managed to remain upright as the ship slowly sank into the ocean.
With a moment’s pause, she saw the back half of the boat was almost entirely underwater, with only a few sailors crowded in around the upright stern, so close she could likely have swung over to reach them. One of the survivors was Petyr Harker, and she felt bilious hatred rise in her gorge.
“I did tell you I was just the sort of fellow to seek dramatic revenge in some stupidly elaborate scheme,” said Petyr. “Admittedly, I didn’t quite see it turning out like this, but at least—”
Sarah didn’t give him a chance to finish, throwing the rope loop toward him like a lasso, and no harpooner had ever cast so perfect a throw.
The loop settled around Petyr’s neck like a noose, but before he could lift it clear, Sarah drew her pistol and aimed upward.
“Say hello to Aligh on the way down, Petyr,” she said, and pulled the trigger.
The shot smashed the block and tackle straining to hold the cannon’s enormous weight, and it immediately fell into the ocean. Sarah had a fraction of a second to savor the look of horror in Petyr’s eyes before the rope snapped taut and wrenched him from his perch.
His scream was cut short as he hit the water and vanished into the depths as the cannon dragged him all the way down.
Standing atop the serpent figurehead, Sarah watched the Moon Serpent’s stern finally go under in a swirl of foaming water and cracking timbers. The few sailors still clinging to the wreckage paddled frantically on the surface before the suction of the wreck finally pulled them down with it.
Looking down, she reckoned she had a few seconds at best before the prow did the same to her.
“Shame to send something so beautiful to the deep,” said a voice behind her, and Sarah smiled.
She looked over her shoulder to see Rafen in their landing boat, soaked to the skin and covered in cuts, bruises, and bites. The storm lamp on the prow bobbed like a welcome beacon of safety.
“Thank you kindly, old man,” she said.
“I meant the cannon,” said Rafen, carefully rowing toward her. “A finer thirty pounder I’ve yet to see.”
“Aye,” agreed Sarah, “but it’s tradition, and you don’t go messing with traditions, right?”
“Right indeed,” said Rafen.
“So where in the name of the Bearded Lady did you get to?” asked Sarah, “I needed you on the damn deck when everything went to shit.”
Rafen shrugged and said, “Went below to get another bottle of rum and ran into Aligh’s crew fixing to get a-murderin’. They didn’t take kindly to being discovered and tried to cut my damn head off. Managed to gut a couple with some borrowed steel, but had to jump out of a gunport before they shanked me good. Swam around to get our boat, getting feasted on by all that lives under the surface, thank you very much. But I’m here now, so do you want to get on board or are you planning to go down with the ship?”
“This ship’s captain’s already gone with her,” said Sarah, stepping casually from the figurehead to the landing boat.
With her safely aboard, Rafen rowed them away from the doomed Moon Serpent as the figurehead and its topmost mast finally went under in a swirl of bubbles, rope, and broken spars.
Sarah moved to the back of the landing boat, now seeing she wasn’t the only passenger Rafen had picked up. A bloodied body in a lacerated coat of pale blue, gold cuffs, and frayed bronze epaulettes lay slumped in the landing boat’s bilges.
“Blaxton?” said Sarah. “She’s still alive?”
“Just about,” said Rafen. “She’s a blowhard, but she didn’t deserve to go down with scum like Aligh. Didn’t feel right to leave her to drown, right?”
Sarah said nothing, too exhausted to do more than nod.
“So you going to tell me what in the eight seas happened up there?” asked Rafen.
“You’d never believe me,” said Sarah.
“I’m guessing it was you that sank the ship firing the damn cannon into the deck?” said Rafen.
“Wasn’t me. What happened up there was all Aligh’s doing,” said Sarah, with a look that told him not to ask more.
“Fair enough.”
“Though I did manage to get this.” She opened her palm to reveal a disc stamped with three intertwined serpents of silver and brass.
“Aligh’s sigil,” said Rafen.
“Might not mean much these days, but we’ll see what happens when I show it to the rest of his crew, once they’ve sobered up.”
Rafen grinned. “Well, at least this trip wasn’t a total waste of time.”
Sarah slumped in the back of the boat and watched as the rearing crag of Moonshard Reef began to fade into the mist. She narrowed her eyes as she saw a lone figure climb from the water and shake itself dry.
A hunched wretch in an expensive kraken-skin coat.
“Thorne,” she whispered. “It’s always the bloody rats that make it out.”
“What’s that?” said Rafen, mid-row. “Someone else made it out?”
“No,” said Sarah, turning away. “No one at all.”
Dead of Winter

Graham McNeill

Even from a distance, Sejuani could see the mammoth was dying, but like everything in the Freljord, it fought to live with every fiber of its being. Half a dozen spears and twice that many arrows jutted from the colossal beast’s matted hide, its russet hair stiff with frozen blood, but still it wouldn’t die.

Its furious bellows shook the mountainside, and Sejuani kept glancing to the lightning-wreathed summit, fearful of an avalanche.

Or something worse…

Purple lightning flared beyond the mountains, silhouetting the toothed peaks and turning them into serrated fangs ripping open the sky.

She and her Winter’s Claw hunters had stalked the mammoth for a week, driving it toward the shallow canyons of the foothills, but each time it broke through their ring of spears and axes to flee higher up the mountain’s pine-shawled flanks.

Of the ten warriors she had set out with, only seven now remained.

Three less mouths to feed.

Sejuani hated having to think this way, because these were fine hunters and fearsome warriors, but Viljalmr the seer was predicting one of the harshest winters in living memory and the Winter’s Claw’s supplies of food were dwindling fast. The mountain herds of Elnuk they would usually raid had already been driven south to the greener lowlands by their Avarosan drovers, and the fish of the Ice Sea were locked below thick pack ice.

She hauled back on Bristle’s reins, pausing to gather her thoughts. The giant drüvask grunted and shook his head in annoyance, the smell of the mammoth’s blood thick in its nostrils. The mounts of her hunters were wary at being this close to a mammoth, but Bristle was eager for a fight.

“Easy there,” she said, loosening the stiffened scarf from across her mouth and feeling the cold on her skin like a slap in the face. “This is not a fight for tusks, but spears and bows.”

“Good to know even Iceborn can feel this svaaging cold,” said a cloaked figure riding next to her. His voice was muffled by the furs wrapped around his face, and all Sejuani could see were his bloodshot eyes. The rest of his face was hidden behind a leather mask wrought in the shape of a roaring bear, its snout formed by thick, overlapping knotwork.

A low rumble built in Bristle’s throat at the man’s nearness, so Sejuani ran a hand through the coarse, wiry hair of his flanks to calm him.

“I feel it well enough, Urkath,” Sejuani replied, “I just don’t gripe about it.”

Urkath nodded up the mountain and said, “How much higher do you think our quarry will go before it turns and fights?”

Some three hundred yards ahead of them, the mammoth trudged uphill through the snow, its steps labored and a trail of crimson staining the virgin whiteness of the landscape.

“It won’t be long,” said Sejuani. “He’s lost too much blood to reach the summit. He’ll turn before the timberline.”

“How do you know?” asked Urkath.

“I don’t,” admitted Sejuani, “but I’m betting he thinks we won’t follow him if he gets higher.”

“Is he wrong? Any higher and we’ll cross into the realm of He Who Stands.”

Even thinking about the Volibear and the Ursine flooded Sejuani’s mouth with the taste of warm blood and the sensation of lightning in her veins.

Images flashed in her mind, sharp, bright, and painfully real. Memories that weren’t hers, sensations she hadn't felt, woven together as though she’d lived them only moments ago.

Fangs and claws ripping flesh from the bone…

Elongated skulls with cold, blue fire burning in empty eye sockets….

A pact and a living city reduced to blackened skeletons of stone and timber…

Slaughtered corpses hung from the withered branches of death-nourished trees…

“Warmother?” said Urkath.

Sejuani tried to answer, but the words wouldn’t come, as though a more ancient, primal part of her soul was looking out through her eyes, the part that once ran with the beasts, knees and palms bloody, skin raw and bare, caked in mud.

Urkath reached out and placed a hand on her fur-swathed arm.

“Warmother?” he said again, more urgent this time.

Her hackles raised at his unwanted touch. Saliva filled her mouth as her lips pulled back, baring her teeth, ready to tear his throat out.

Sejuani closed her fist on the spiked pommel of her saddle, hard.

The pain cleared her head and wrenched her back to the present as she let out a shuddering breath.

“You’ll want to take that hand away,” she said, her eyes flashing a pale winter’s blue and her tone icier than the mountain winds.

Eyes watchful, Urkath snatched his hand back and said, “Apologies, Warmother, but to enter the lands of the Lost Ones without their leave… it’s a death sentence.”

A shadow blotted out the low sun before Sejuani could respond, a towering figure of a man wearing the wide-horned helm favored by warriors of the Lokfar.

The coastal peninsula of Lokfar was one of the harshest, most brutally cold regions of the Freljord, and only those with fire in their blood could endure there.

Its warriors were typically rangy, lean, and stoic.

Shedding blood alongside Olaf the Berserker for many years had taught Sejuani that he was none of those things. Even on foot, he was easily the biggest Freljordian she had ever seen, the equal of the mounted Sejuani and Urkath in height. Some said Olaf’s mother must have lain with a troll to grow so big, but they never said it to his face.

He climbed into the teeth of the oncoming blizzard like a man out for a stroll, his powerfully-muscled body made thicker and broader by the furs and iron plates bound across his chest and arms.

The braids of his beard were frozen into spikes of fiery orange and his pale eyes were alight with the prospect of potentially facing what lay at the top of the mountain.

“A death sentence, you say,” said Olaf, striding past them. “I like the sound of that.”

The mammoth sank to its knees within a spear’s throw of the cliffside timberline.

Its blood soaked the snow, and Sejuani almost felt sorry for the beast, coming so close to the border between this world and the terrible things that dwelled in the storms wracking the summit.

She pushed thoughts of sentiment aside. An animal this size would feed the Winter’s Claw for a week—surviving a day, an hour, or even the span of a breath was a victory in the Freljord.

Sejuani slid from Bristle’s back as her hunters dropped to the snow, unstrapping long, thick-hafted spears from their mounts. She reached over her shoulder and unlaced the thongs securing her mighty flail, Winter’s Wrath.

Steeling herself for the pain, she gripped its leather-wrapped haft and swung it around her body, feeling the deathly cold of the True Ice secured at the end of its thick chain. Pale radiance built behind the blue of her eyes, and she exhaled a breath of aching cold.

The flail was a weapon of great power, but it came with a cost.

Glowing lines of hard, crystalline blue formed under her skin, threading the veins of her forearm and reaching up to her corded bicep.

Urkath drew his great longsword, its hilt worked from the jawbones of a rimefang wolf and its blade sharp enough to cut stone. Olaf unsheathed his mighty axes, their blades glimmering with hoar-frost.

“My edges hunger,” said Olaf, his teeth grinding in anticipation. Blood flecked his lips where he’d chewed the inside of his cheeks.

“We do this right,” said Sejuani. “Together. No heroics.”

Olaf grinned and nodded, his eyes glazing over and his mind already sinking into the blood-mist of the berserker.

Sejuani took a step toward the mammoth, lifting the flail and letting the beast see the glimmering cold of its True Ice.

“Get up,” she ordered. “You are a king of the Freljord. You don’t die on your knees.”

The mammoth glared at her and, taking strength from her words, pushed itself to its feet. It threw back its shaggy, tusked head and loosed a ferocious bray of defiance. The sound echoed over the mountains like the Forge God’s legendary Carnyx, a war-horn whose blast could be heard all around the world.

The sound shook snow from the trees, eclipsing the storm raging at the summit.

The mammoth lowered its head and stamped its huge front legs, each as thick as the ironwood trees ringing the rocks at Ornnkaal. Its head swayed from side to side, displaying its jagged, sword-like tusks, each capable of goring a warrior to death with a single blow.

“We will give you a good death, you have my word,” promised Sejuani.

“A glorious death…” grunted Olaf, the words forced out between bloodied teeth, but Sejuani wasn’t sure whose death he meant.

The Winter’s Claw hunters spread out, weapons at the ready. The warriors with the spears flanked the mammoth left and right as Sejuani, Olaf, and Urkath stood before it, meeting its challenge head-on.

With a bellow of rage, the mortally wounded beast charged.

Its speed was ferocious, far faster than should have been possible.

It churned the snow, throwing up great chunks of black rock and bloody ice.

Sejuani and Urkath dove to the side, but Olaf leapt to meet the beast with a bellow to rival that of his foe. His ax struck the mammoth in the center of its head, but bit only a finger breadth before skidding from the thick bone of its skull. With a dismissive flick of its trunk, the mammoth tossed the berserker over its back. Olaf landed hard on the rocks behind, dangerously close to the sheer drop of the cliffs. He came to his feet with a delighted, lunatic laugh.

Sejuani rolled to her feet and swung Winter’s Wrath in a wide, two-handed sweep.

The flail’s True Ice smashed into the mammoth’s back knee.

It faltered, stumbling as the limb buckled beneath it.

The beast crashed to the ground and skidded to a halt, trying to push itself to its feet on a back leg that wouldn’t work. Sejuani’s warriors closed in, ramming their spears into its flanks with the grim, pitiless precision of hunters who had done this many times before.

Thrust the blade, twist the haft, withdraw to a safe distance.

The mammoth roared and surged upright as iron spearheads pierced its body, fresh blood staining the snow. A successful hunt had little to do with glory or honor; it was about exhausting the prey, wounding it and wearing it down until it couldn’t fight back.

Then came the killing.

One of her warriors slipped in the snow, and the mammoth jerked to the side, stamping down with one mighty foreleg. The man’s scream was cut off as he was crushed to gory red paste beneath its massive foot.

The other hunters backed off, chests heaving, looking for an opening to strike again.

The mammoth swung its lethal tusks from side to side, turning on the spot and backing toward the edge of the cliff. Sejauni moved left, keeping the head of her flail in motion. Urkath circled right, sword held high at his shoulder.

Sejuani resisted turning her head as she heard Olaf’s ululating battle cry.

He charged headfirst at the mammoth, his ax flashing silver in the waning light.

The beast lowered its head, tusks ready to gore the berserker to death.

Olaf was deep in the blood-mist, a state of mind that turned him into a ferocious killing machine, a living avatar of death. The mammoth swung its head up and Olaf leapt into the air to grip one of the slashing tusks with his free hand. Using the momentum of the beast’s movement, he swung up and over its head to land on the mammoth’s shaggy back.

His ax hacked down, like a woodsman chopping at a stubborn tree-root.

The mammoth reared up, shaking its body to dislodge the berserker, but Olaf had ridden wilder monsters than this. He gripped a handful of its long hair and laid a flurry of blows upon the mammoth’s back. Seeing his chance, Urkath charged toward the beast, sword raised to cut its exposed throat.

Its trunk lashed around his waist like a tentacle of the boneless creatures that sometimes washed up from the deep ocean on Yadulsk’s shores. The mammoth lifted Urkath into the air before slamming him down on a jutting black rock.

Sejuani heard his spine shatter even over his scream of agony.

Twice more it smashed him against the rock before hurling his body aside.

Urkath’s bloody remains fell to the snow, his body shattered, his arms and legs hideously twisted. Sejuani screamed and sprinted forward as Olaf continued to chop through the beast’s thick hide to its spine.

The beast’s eyes were maddened with pain and fury, but still it saw her coming.

It bellowed and thrust its tusks at her, almost too fast to avoid.

Almost…

Sejuani dropped to the snow and slid beneath the mammoth’s belly on her back. Holding the haft of Winter’s Wrath in one hand, she screamed as she took hold of the chained shard of True Ice in her fist.

The pain was unbearable, as if she’d thrust her hand deep into a fire.

She slammed the shard up into the mammoth’s chest, turning her head from the flaring burst of blue-white fire as it punched deep into its body.

Sejuani slid out from under the mammoth and sprang to her feet. The chained True Ice fell from her numbed hand. Her fingers were black and clawed with frostbite.

The mammoth staggered, its mighty heart freezing in its chest, the blood in its veins turning to ice. Its eyes misted with the white of a blizzard and it staggered like a drunk as it fought to stay upright.

“Olaf, get off!” yelled Sejuani. “Olaf!”

Her voice was hard and commanding, a voice to be obeyed. It penetrated the blood-mist wreathing Olaf’s mind, and he vaulted from the mammoth’s back.

He landed next to her, chest heaving, eyes wide and his ax blade soaked in blood.

Sejuani wanted to speak, but the pain was too great. That was good, she hoped, it meant the hand wasn’t beyond saving. Her fingers throbbed in agony, and she thrust them deep within her furs, doing her best to hide the pain.

The mammoth staggered and swayed, dragging its back leg as its blood grew ever more sluggish and cold. Her hunters closed in, spears poised, but Sejuani halted them with a word. The hunt was over. The beast had its back to the cliff, nowhere to go.

Though the mammoth knew it was beaten, it lifted its head proudly.

It had fought to the last, and Sejuani held her weapon high, honoring its spirit.

The great beast stared her down, caring nothing for the gesture.

Instead, it stepped back and over the cliff.

Sejuani ran to the cliff’s edge and sank to her knees, watching as the mammoth fell thousands of feet down the mountain before landing on a wide expanse of heavy snow.

“Svaag!” swore Sejuani, balling her fists in the snow, heedless of the pain.

Olaf stood over her, leaning dangerously far out over the cliff.

“Ach, we’ll just climb down to carve it up,” he said with a shrug. “The beast saved us the bother of dragging its carcass off the mountain.”

Sejuani sighed, about to agree with him, when she heard a distant cracking sound. A sound babes in arms were taught to recognize.

The sound of breaking ice.

A network of angular black lines spread out from where the mammoth had landed and Sejuani realized the wide expanse of white wasn’t a stretch of tundra at all. It was the frozen surface of a mountain tarn, a lake pool formed in a deep hollow.

The ice splintered into jagged segments and Sejuani watched with a sick sense of horrified inevitability as the mammoth’s body slid beneath the frigid black waters, far beyond their reach.

“Svaaaaaaag!”

Defying all Sejuani’s understanding of the human body, Urkath yet lived.

His ribs were smashed and his spine was splintered into fragments, but he still drew breath as Sejuani and Olaf squatted next to him. Incredibly, he’d managed to prop himself up against the very rock that had destroyed his spine, drawing short, hiked breaths.

“Wolf calls me home…” he said with a pained grin, his voice little more than a whisper.

“Lamb would never think to come for you, Urkath,” said Sejuani, taking his hand. “We are Winter’s Claw. We don’t go meekly into the beyond.”

Urkath nodded. “My sword?”

Olaf pressed Urkath’s weapon into his palm and closed the man’s fingers around its grip.

“The tale of your death will be told at the hearthfires for many seasons,” said the berserker, a melancholic edge in his voice. “I envy you that.”

Urkath coughed a mouthful of blood and said, “I’d gladly… swap fates with you, big man.”

“No,” said Olaf sadly. “I do not think that you would.”

Urkath turned his head, the light fading from his eyes, and said, “The gods… they show me a fine sight… as I die…”

Sejuani followed his gaze to the top of the mountain, where a vivid borealis of crimson and amber had driven away the lightning, a swathe of light painting the night sky that was as beautiful and magical as it was strange.

She saw Urkath’s bloodstained mask lying in the snow and slid it over his now lifeless face.

“Wolf will be here soon,” whispered Sejuani. “Give the old bastard a scare for me.”

They left Urkath there, at the border between the realm of mortals and the Lost Ones.

His body belonged to the Freljord now and his spirit would roam the frozen winds until the cold, atavistic soul of the land found a use for it.

Their mood was grim as they descended the mountain.

To stay on the hunt any longer would be pointless. As it was, they had only scraps to sustain them back to the Winter’s Claw encampment, two days’ travel westward.

Exhausted and with hunger gnawing at her belly, Sejuani swayed in Bristle’s saddle, her frozen hand tingling beneath her furs.

Olaf kept pace with her on foot, keeping his own counsel, his mood dark.

Night closed in as they reached the foot of the mountains and camped in the lee of a titanic menhir. It had once been part of a great stone circle higher up the mountain, but had toppled in a long-ago earthquake. The smooth stone surface was carved with ancient symbols no one could read, and a pair of frozen skeletons lay entwined at its far end, a frosted blade lying within their bones.

Lovers or bitter enemies, who could say?

Dawn brought fresh snows and colder winds coming off the high peaks, as though the mountain itself sought to drive them from its slopes. Their route home took them past the remains of a village that had once stood where the road turned to the mountain pass. Its structures were ghostly tombs now, its inhabitants dead or long gone.

Nightfall on the second day saw them come within sight of the Winter’s Claw encampment.

A few guttering torches marked its edge, and Sejuani’s heart sank to see how few they were now. Not so very long ago, when she had first marshaled her followers, they numbered in the thousands, but hunger and the harshness of recent seasons had forced her to scatter her host.

“How do you fare?” asked Olaf as they trudged toward the beacons of light, the first words he had said since coming off the mountain.

“At last, he speaks,” said Sejuani, irritated at his sullenness.

“Ach, don’t mind me,” said Olaf. “Each time the blood-mist takes me I hope it will be the last time. That I will finally die in glory. And every time it fades, I am sad that I know I am one step closer to dying at peace.”

Sejuani shrugged. “Have no fear, Olaf. With enemies all around us, I promise you days of blood and battle, nights of death and fury.”

Olaf grinned, and his grim countenance vanished like snow before the summer.

“You swear it?”

“I swear it,” promised Sejuani. “But to answer your first question, Viljalmr will take it as an ill-omen that the tribe’s leader returns with nothing to show for her hunt.”

“A pox on his kind,” spat Olaf. “Seers only ever speak in riddles and deliver naught but grim portents. I’d sooner trust a southerner.”

Sensing an opening, Sejuani asked, “Are you ever going to tell me why you went south?”

“No,” said the berserker. “I don’t think I will. Some tales are best left in the past.”

Sejuani ran the stiff brush through Bristle’s fur, letting the anger burning within her after the meeting in the tented longhouse flow from her with every hard sweep. As she’d feared, the seer, Viljalmr, had found great woe in her having returned without meat for curing. Circling the firepit, his cloak of raven feathers glistening in the orange light of the flames, he told the assembled claw-leaders that the coming winter would be the grimmest any of them had known.

Olaf had openly mocked the man, telling him a child could see the same thing.

The other hunting claws had met with little more success—Svalyek’s claw had taken six elnuk from an Avarosan drover who’d waited too long to lead his herd to greener pastures, and Heffnar’s group had found and killed a small pod of horned seals trapped on land after the ocean floes had frozen to the edge of the land.

It wasn’t nearly enough, but it would keep the tribe’s bellies full for a few days.

Fear made the tribe’s blood run hot, and shouting voices clamored to know what she would do, how she planned to keep her people alive until the spring muster. Sejuani had no answer, and angry voices echoed long into the night with ill-formed thoughts on how they should survive.

Some said they should march south to Ornnkaal Rocks and make peace with the Avarosans, but they were quickly shouted down by Gunnak, the most bellicose of Sejuani’s war-leaders. Beating his tattooed chest with his ax, he demanded they take their claws and carve a red path as deep as they could into Avarosan lands to earn a glorious death.

Sejuani had to admit, despite its suicidal futility, the idea of riding into the southern lowlands with blades unsheathed greatly appealed to her. Others said they should try another hunt. After all, wasn’t there still light and food enough to mount one more expedition?

Heads nodded at that suggestion until Hunt-leader Varruki explained there was barely enough food to sustain the hunters, and that everyone would be frozen and starved before they returned.

Quieter speakers said maybe they should disperse the tribe, each family making their own way into the wilds. Smaller groups would be easier to feed after all…

Sejuani had quashed such talk straight away.

She knew it was going to be hard enough to get the full tribe back together in the spring months as it was. Breaking up even further would only tempt each smaller group to turn from the Winter’s Claw to try and forge a new life in the south.

In the Freljord, community was life, and to separate further was to die. No one could endure alone, and only by the combined will of the tribe, even one as harsh and unforgiving as the Winter’s Claw, was survival even possible.

Besides, going south meant a life lived as a prisoner of the fields, of homes built from stone, of tending flocks. That was not the Winter’s Claw way, and would never be their way.

Sejuani would rather die with the blood running hot in her veins and a blade in her hand than stooped and worn down by years of grubbing in the dirt for seeds.

In the end, Viljalmr had marched straight up to her, a brazen threat to her authority.

How were the Winter’s Claw to survive?
Once, she would have struck him down for such open defiance, but his question was fair and everyone gathered in the tent knew it.

Her people needed a leader who could make life and death decisions without fear, so she told the assembled leaders they would have her answer when dawn’s light clawed over the mountains.

Now, brushing the thick hair running down Bristle’s back, she felt the raging storm within her mind finally calming. Grooming the giant beast always soothed Sejuani’s emotions, reminding her of a time when things had been simpler, though part of her knew that life had never been simpler, not really.

She thought back to when she’d brought Ashe to the Winter’s Claw after finding her alone and in exile on the ice. She smiled, remembering how her childhood friend had mistaken Sejuani for one of the Ursine.

Her strokes grew harder as she thought of how Ashe had betrayed them and turned her back on Sejuani during the raid on the Ebrataal. That was the moment Sejuani had known for sure there was no chance of the Winter’s Claw ever making peace with the Avarosan.

Bristle grunted in annoyance, stamping his hoofs in irritation.

“Careful, lass, the beast’s getting unsettled,” said a voice from behind.

Sejuani spun, reaching for the knife at her hip.

A shape lay at the corner of the corral, small and useless looking, like a bundle of rags.

She released her grip on the knife, shocked to see who had spoken.

Lying in a makeshift bed of straw was a wretched old man who should have been left out on the ice to die many years ago. His legs were stumps that ended just above the knee, and his sightless eyes were mottled white like a gull’s egg.

His name was Kriek and he’d once been the seer of Olgavanna’s tribe, farmers and builders who’d refused the call to Sejuani’s banner. So she had sent Urkath’s war-claw to wipe them out and take their herds, their furs, their iron, and their salt. The survivors fled up the slopes of a mountain whose summit seethed with the red rock that flows.

When Urkath returned, it was with Kriek on his back and he’d seemed confused when Sejuani demanded to know why he’d brought them a useless mouth to feed. Urkath claimed the Ursine had driven them from the mountain, speaking of blade-pierced titans draped in bloodied fur and horns, gaping skulls, and fists that hurled fire.

He’d simply said that the mountain had told him to bring the blind man, before dumping him unceremoniously at the edge of the village. Sejuani had given orders that no one feed the seer, that he be left behind for the Freljord to take. But here he was, many months and leagues from that battle, alive and, more confusingly, somehow still with the Winter’s Claw.

“Word is you glimpsed the realm of the Lost Ones on the mountain,” said Kriek. “Don’t envy you that, lass. I saw them once, back when you drove us into Hearth-Home.”

Sejuani put aside her irritation long enough to say, “You didn’t see anything. You’re blind.”

Kriek nodded and said, “Oh, I seen them, better’n any true-shotted archer ever did. White and gold in the clouds, lightning for blood, and voices of thunder. I saw, I did.”

Sejuani peered into the milky whiteness of his gaze.

“Those eyes haven’t seen anything in many a year.”

“True,” said Kriek. “World went white for me on my tenth winter, but some things are best seen without eyes, lass!”

Sejuani tapped the flat of her blade against Kriek’s neck and said, “Call me lass again and I’ll slit your throat right now.”

“Ah, yes, that’s right, you’re no lass, you’re Warmother, ain’t ya? You remember that next time some seer tries to tell you what to do,” laughed Kriek, waving a filthy, gnawed hand at her. “But listen, you know warriors who lose a hand or leg’ll swear they can still feel the cold in ‘em? Same for my eyes. Now I see more’n I ever did before, more’n I ever wished to see. Things you’d gouge your own eyes out with that knife if y’saw the half of them.”

“You don’t know the things I’ve seen,” said Sejuani.

“That’s right,” said Kriek, leaning in. “Ever since that night you and your spirit walker made offerings to the Lost Ones… You sang the oaths, you burned the wood in the death knot, and offered up the weapons and bone, so what do you see? Days of blood and battle, nights of death and fury?”

Just thinking of the slaughter at the city by the river filled Sejuani with a hunger for raw meat, a thirst for marrow sucked from splintered bone.

She shook her head free of the sensations and said, “How are you alive? I told my people not to feed you, to leave you behind.”

“Old Ornn fed me,” said Kriek. “At Hearth-Home, just before your killers came out of the smoke. Lifted me up like a babe and nourished me with a mouthful of broth from his great cauldron. That he did, yes!”

Sejuani sighed. Kriek was clearly mad, but she was more irritated that someone in the Winter’s Claw had clearly been feeding this old fool when their own were going hungry. She went to rise, but the old man’s hand shot out and took her wrist in a powerful grip.

“On my honor, not a scrap of food has passed my lips since your dead man brought me down the mountain,” said Kriek, his lifeless white eyes boring right into her, as though something else stared out from behind them, something infinitely older and wiser. “Never took no food. Nor water, neither! Ornn’s great cauldron seen to that! No company that sups from it ever leaves unsatisfied. One mouthful and your belly don’t growl for a whole turn of the seasons!”

“Ornn’s Cauldron?” scoffed Sejuani. “That’s just a legend. Wishful thinking. It’s one of the lost tales to tell to children.”

“And where d’you think them tales come from but truth!” snapped Kriek. lifting the furs covering his body. “This look like wishful thinking to you?”

Sejuani let out an involuntary gasp at the sight of Kriek’s torso, his flesh ruddy and pink, his belly full and soft with fat. Sejuani was ivory pale, her wrists too slender, the flesh pulled tight over her frame, pressing against the bones for want of meat and fat and fish.

“How…?” said Sejuani.

“I told ya,” said Kriek. “The Great Cauldron of Ornn. Lost Ones stole it from Hearth-Home for spite’s sake. Said Ornn was too soft on mortals, that if they could fill their bellies any time they wanted, they’d get spoiled and weak! So they killed his followers and took it to their mountain, high up where its power now paints the sky with blood-red light. Ornn’s crafty, y’see. His magic’s too wyrd-cunning to stay hidden forever. Even the Lost Ones can’t keep power like that out of sight! Ask that spirit walker friend of yours. If he still remembers he’s a man, he’ll hear the truth of what I say!”

Sejuani shook her head. “Udyr’s gone. He walked into the blizzard. Said he needed time away from the spirits looking to get inside him. Said he needed to find a way to strengthen his will.”

“Then it’s all on you, Warmother,” said Kriek. “What’s it to be? The old ways? Frozen on your knees or your blood soaking warm southern soil? Or maybe try and take back what the Lost Ones stole? You’ve faced them before, so what’s one more time, eh?”

The old man’s story was lunacy, wasn’t it? How could she possibly convince her people to march into the mountain realm of the Ursine on the word of a madman?

The Freljord was a place of dark mystery, where legends walked the ice, and its magic was there in every breath. Some whispered that Ashe had fought her way to the legendary bow of Avarosa, and Sejuani’s own Iceborn powers were proof that magic was woven into the very fabric of the landscape… but still…?

“Why would you help me?” asked Sejuani. “My warriors slew your tribe.”

“Don’t you understand yet, Warmother?” said Kriek, the timbre of his voice deepening, becoming low and melodic. “We are all one tribe and it is long past time you understood that. You think too small, like a fighter only seeing the foe in front of them. You must think like a Warmother, like a queen! There is a season for fighting, a season for leading, and, aye, one for dying. But a time is coming when the sons and daughters of the Freljord must stand together or you will all die, one by one. And the first step on that road is staying alive. Tell me you hear me, daughter of Kalkia.”

Sejuani nodded and said, “I hear you.”

Sejuani left Kriek and Bristle in the corral. First light was breaking over the mountains, and she paused to savor the coming of a new day.

The orange glow of the dying hearthfire was visible within the tented longhouse, where her people waited to hear what she had decided.

Olaf squatted by its entrance, running a glittering whetstone over the blade of one of his enormous axes. He looked up and his eyes narrowed.

“You have the look of someone chewing a nettle,” he said.

“I know what we have to do, but no one’s going to like it.”

Olaf shrugged. “They don’t need to like it. You’re Warmother. You tell them what to do and they do it. That’s how this works.”

“I’ll want you at my side,” said Sejuani.

Olaf rose to his full, towering height, hooking his ax over his shoulder.

“No,” said Sejuani. “Blade out.”

Olaf nodded slowly and said, “You going to tell me your plan before we go in?”

“Remember how I promised you days of blood and battle, nights of death and fury?”

“Aye, Warmother, I do!” said Olaf, his smile as wide as the horizon.

“We’re going back up the mountain,” said Sejuani. “To the realm of the Ursine to steal the Great Cauldron of Ornn from the Volibear.”

“You’re right, they’re not going to like it,” said Olaf. “But I love it!”
Demacian Heart

Phillip Vargas

The boy admired the yellow dormisroot peeking through the frozen soil. It was one of hundreds growing in a tiny patch of vivid color in an otherwise barren landscape. He crouched next to the blossom and inhaled. Crisp morning air and a faint aroma greeted his nose. He reached out to pick the wildflower.
“Leave it be,” said Vannis.
The older man towered over the boy, his blue cloak stirring in the gentle breeze. Marsino stood next to him, holding an unlit torch. The three had been waiting for a while, completely unchallenged.
The younger man smiled down at the boy and nodded.
The boy plucked the flower and stuffed it in his pocket.
Vannis shook his head and frowned. “Your time with the boy has instilled bad habits.”
Marsino flushed at the remark, his smile disappearing. He cleared his throat and asked, “Do you see anything?”
The boy stood and studied the row of houses across the frostbitten field, the weathered dwellings nothing more than dilapidated shacks strewn across a hillside. Shapes and shadows moved past the cast-glass windows.
“There’re people inside,” he said.
“We can all see that,” said Vannis, his tone biting. “Do you see what we’re looking for?”
The boy searched for the smallest hint or impression. He saw nothing but the dull grey of weathered planks and hewn stone.
“No, sir.”
Vannis grumbled underneath his breath.
“Perhaps if we drew closer,” said Marsino.
The older man shook his head. “These are hillfolk. They’ll put a spear in you before you get within twenty paces of their door.”
The boy shivered at the words. The southern hillfolk’s fierce reputation was known back in the Great City. They lived in the untamed edges of the kingdom, near the disputed territories. He glanced over his shoulder and inched closer to Marsino.
“Light the torch,” said Vannis.
Marsino struck his flint, showering the oil-soaked cord with sparks. The pitch erupted in flames and chased away the brisk morning air.
They didn’t need to wait long.
Several cabin doors opened, and a dozen men and women marched toward the group. They carried pikes and axes.
The boy’s hand fell to the dagger at his side. He turned to Marsino, but the man’s eyes were fixed on the villagers.
“Steady, boy,” said Vannis.
The crowd stopped at the edge of the field, their ragged clothing in stark contrast to the royal blue and white finery worn by Vannis and Marsino. Even the boy’s own clothes were better kept.
A slight tingle ran down his spine. He touched Marsino’s arm, attracting his attention, and nodded. The man acknowledged the signal and motioned for him to step back. There was a process to be followed.
An old woman stepped out from behind the crowd. “Do mageseekers burn villages now?” she asked.
“There’s nothing here, move on!” shouted a young man with wild hair, standing next to the woman. The others joined in, jeering and barking.
“Hush!” the woman snapped, elbowing the man in the ribs.
The man winced and bowed his head. The crowd fell silent.
The hillfolk were unlike anyone the boy had seen in the Great City. They didn’t shrink at the sight of mageseekers in their traditional blue cloaks and half-masks of hammered bronze. Instead, they stood tall and defiant. A few fiddled with their weapons, glaring at the boy. He averted his gaze.
Marsino stepped forward. “A bushel of dormisroot arrived in Wrenwall six days ago,” he said, gesturing to the flowers with his torch.
“People sell things. People buy things. Is it different in the city?” the old woman asked.
The hillfolk laughed.
The boy nervously joined in. Even Marsino offered up a weak smile. Vannis remained unmoved. He regarded the crowd, hand on his quarterstaff.
“Of course not,” said Marsino. “But the flower is rare this time of year.”
“We’re good farmers. Good hunters, too,” she said, the smile disappearing.
Vannis fixed his gaze on the old woman. “Aye, but the ground is frozen and there isn’t one among you who’s ever worked a plough.”
The old woman shrugged. “Things grow where they want. Who are we to say different.”
Vannis smirked. “Aye, plants grow,” he said, as he unclipped the Graymark from his cloak. He dropped down on his haunches and held the carved, stone disk over a dormisroot.
The petals wilted and shriveled.
“But they don’t die at the sight of petricite,” said Vannis, standing back up. “Unless you use magecraft to grow them.”
The smiles disappeared from the villagers’ faces.
“The use of magic is forbidden,” said Marsino. “We are all Demacian. Bound by birth to honor her laws—”
“You can’t eat honor up here,” said the old woman.
“Even if you could, your belly’d be empty,” sneered Vannis.
The crowd stirred at the insult and pressed in closer, coming within several paces of the mageseekers.
Marsino cleared his throat and raised a hand. “The hillfolk have always honored the ways of Demacia. Keeping with law and tradition,” he said. “We only ask you do so again today. Will the afflicted step forward?”
No one moved or said a word.
After a moment, Marsino spoke again. “If honor does not compel you, then know we have a boy here that will root out the guilty.”
The crowd focused on the boy. Reproach welled in their eyes as harsh whispers flowed through their ranks.
“So the runt can invoke magic without censure, but not us?” asked the man who had shouted earlier.
The boy shrank at the accusation.
“He works in service to Demacia,” Marsino said, before turning to the boy. “It’s fine, go ahead.”
He nodded and rubbed a sweaty palm on the leg of his breeches before turning to face the hillfolk. Among the dirt-streaked faces stood a singular, radiating presence. A corona of light pulsated and shimmered around the mage.
Only the boy could see this light, and it had been so all his life. This was his gift. This was his affliction.
The rest of the villagers watched with scorn. It was the same everywhere. These people hated him for his gift. All of them—except for the old woman. Her soft eyes simply pleaded with him not to speak.
The boy hung his head and looked at the ground.
They all waited as the moment stretched in silence. He could feel Vannis taking measure, and judging him harshly.
“It’s alright,” said Marsino, placing an encouraging hand on his shoulder. “We keep the order. We uphold the law.”
The boy looked up, ready to point out the mage.
“Don’t say it, boy,” said the old woman, shaking her head. “I’ll accept it. Do you hear me?”
“Enough of this,” Vannis snapped, pushing past him, Graymark in hand.
The radiant light around the mage momentarily dimmed as the crowd closed in.
“Wait!”
“Quiet, boy. You had your chance.”
But it wasn’t the woman who was afflicted.
The boy turned to Marsino. “It’s not her! It’s the other one!” he said, pointing to the wild-haired man standing next to the old woman.
Marsino took his eyes off the hillfolk, attempting to follow the boy’s gesture. But before he could fix on the threat, the man lunged at the mageseekers.
“Mamma!” he yelled as he reached for Vannis. His hands glimmered with an emerald sheen as thorny vines bloomed from his fingertips.
Vannis spun out of the way, swinging his staff in a wide arc, and cracked the mage across the temple with the hefty wooden pole.
The mage stumbled into Marsino, clutching him by the arm. Sharp thorns pierced his sleeve. Marsino recoiled in pain and shoved the stricken man to the ground, dropping the torch in the commotion.
Flames licked the man’s tunic and ignited the tatters.
The old woman screamed and rushed toward her son.
Arms grabbed and pulled her back, holding her as she struggled. The rest of the hillfolk pressed forward, but Vannis held his ground, staff ready.
“Did he touch you?!”
Marsino fumbled with his weapon, finally unhooking his scepter, his eyes glazed and unfocused.
“Marsino!”
“I’m fine!”
“Are there any more?” Vannis yelled.
The boy didn’t answer. He remained frozen, gazing down at the dying mage writhing in the flames. Bitterness rose in his throat, but he choked back the foul taste, refusing to retch.
“Boy!”
He finally snapped to attention. The fire was spreading through the field, creating a wall between them and the mob. He searched the murderous faces behind the growing flames, the heat overwhelming his senses.
“No.”
“Then mount up!”
The boy mounted his pony. Marsino and Vannis quickly followed on their own steeds and the three raced away from the village. The boy turned to look back. The fire roared, and the field of flowers was already wilting.

Vannis had pushed them to ride well into the evening, putting as much distance between them and the hillfolk as possible. It would take three days to reach Castle Wrenwall. Vannis intended to mount a cohort of mageseekers and return. The law must be upheld, he said.
They bedded down shortly after dark, the rocky terrain too dangerous to navigate. The boy was relieved to have his own feet on the ground. Boys from Dregbourne rarely rode horses, unless they stole them from a livery stable, and he’d never been much of a thief.
He took the first watch, sitting at the base of a towering oak, back and bottom sore and stiff from hours of riding. He shifted his body, seeking a comfortable position. After a few minutes, he stood and leaned against the ancient giant. A solitary wolf howled somewhere up in the hills, and a chorus responded in kind. Or perhaps they were braget hounds—he still couldn’t tell them apart.
Distant thunderheads flickered in the night sky, their rumblings so removed they never reached his ears. Overhead, stars struggled to push through drifting billows of gray. A sheet of thick fog settled over the lowlands.
He threw another bundle of wood in the fire. It sent up a burst of embers that quickly died out.
Ghostly voices filled the stillness in his mind. They pleaded and denied a shimmering truth as memories of the burning mage danced in the campfire. He shuddered and turned away.
It had been a gruesome death. But every time those thoughts invaded his mind he pushed them away and replaced them with all the beauty he’d witnessed since joining Vannis and Marsino.
He’d been traveling with the mageseekers for months, seeing the world outside the crowded streets of Dregbourne for the first time. He’d explored the distant hills and mountains he’d once watched from the roof of his tenement. New mountains now stood before him, and he wanted to see more.
Magic had made it possible.
The affliction that once filled him with fear of discovery was now a gift. It allowed him to walk as a true Demacian. He even wore the blue. Perhaps someday he would also don a half-mask and a Graymark of his own, in spite of being a mage.
Faint rustling broke his thoughts.
He turned and found Marsino mumbling in his sleep. Next to him lay an empty blanket roll. The boy’s heart raced at the sight. He searched the treeline for the older mageseeker—
Vannis stood beneath a nearby oak, watching him.
“You hesitated today,” he said, as he stepped out of the shadow. “Made a bad showing. Was it fear or something else?”
The boy averted his gaze and remained silent, searching for an answer that would satisfy the mageseeker.
Vannis scowled, growing impatient. “Go on, say your piece.”
“I don’t understand… what’s the harm in growing dormisroot?”
Vannis grumbled and shook his head. “Every inch given is an inch lost,” he said. “It's true on the battlefield and true with mages.”
The boy nodded at the words. Vannis regarded him for a moment.
“Where’s your heart, boy?”
“With Demacia, sir.”
Marsino stirred once again. His mumbles rapidly turned into moans until the man was struggling against his blanket roll.
The boy walked over and tugged at the man’s shoulder. “Marsino, wake up,” he whispered.
The young mageseeker twisted at the boy’s touch. The moans grew louder until the man was wailing. He shook Marsino again, only more roughly this time.
“What’s wrong?” Vannis asked, looming over him.
“I don’t know. He’s not waking.”
Vannis pushed the boy aside and turned Marsino over. Sweat slicked his brow and temple, matting his dark hair. Marsino’s eyes were open and vacant and shined a cloudy white.
Vannis pulled back the heavy blanket and opened Marsino’s cloak. Dark tendrils of blight marred his arm. To the boy’s eyes, a radiant bloom pulsed beneath the corrupted skin.

They had been riding since before first light.
Vannis and the boy had managed to lift Marsino onto his horse and secured him to the saddle. The young mageseeker had remained in a fever dream as Vannis tied Marsino’s horse to his own and set off.
The boy’s pony struggled to keep the brisk pace Vannis had set—Castle Wrenwall was still over a day’s ride away.
He watched Marsino jostle with every stride. The wounded man threatened to fall over several times, but Vannis would slow down and resecure Marsino in his saddle. Every time the old mageseeker did so, he scowled at the boy before pushing on.
They reached Corvo Pass by mid-morning. Their mounts clambered up the narrow switchbacks carved into the mountainside. It would cut half a day from their travels, but the treacherous path was ill kept and the thick brush slowed them to a crawl.
The boy squeezed his legs and clutched the reins, nervously watching the precarious drop into the deep gorge below. His pony simply trudged along, instinctively keeping them from certain death.
They broke through the thicket into a flat clearing. He watched Vannis push on his stirrups, driving the horses into a canter—Marsino began inching to his right, leaning over much further than before.
“Vannis!”
The mageseeker reached out, but it was too late. Marsino fell over and slammed onto the ground.
The boy reined up and leapt off his mount, rushing to the downed man. Vannis did the same.
Blood streamed from Marsino’s forehead.
“We need to staunch the bleeding,” said Vannis.
The man unsheathed his dagger and, without asking, reached out and cut a long strip of cloth from the boy’s cloak.
“Water,” said Vannis.
The boy pulled his water skin and poured a stream over the deep gash as Vannis cleaned the wound.
Marsino shifted and muttered incoherently in his fevered state. The boy tried following the man’s ramblings but understood only a few words.
“Drink,” he said, pouring drops of water over the man’s dry lips.
The young mageseeker stirred, his tongue lapping at the moisture. He opened his eyes. Ruddy blotches stained the cloudy white.
“Are we… there?” Marsino asked, chest wheezing with every word.
Vannis shot the boy a look. He knew not to say a thing. They were still far from reaching help.
“Almost, brother,” said Vannis.
“Why build… Wrenwall… so far up a mountain?”
“'It's supposed to be hard to reach,” Vannis said, with a brittle smile.
Marsino closed his eyes and chuckled slightly. It soon turned into a cough.
“Easy there, brother,” Vannis said, watching the man for a moment before turning to the boy. “The dormisroot—do you still have it?”
“Yes.”
The boy dug into his pocket, drawing a straw horse, a polished river stone, and the yellow flower. He smiled at the sight, knowing the blossom would help Marsino.
Vannis snatched it from the boy’s hand. “At least you did something right, boy.”
His stomach tightened at the words. Vannis was right. He had faltered, and his friend had paid the price.
Marsino shook his head. “It’s not… his fault… I should’ve been… more careful.”
The older mageseeker remained silent as he picked several petals from the dormisroot.
“Chew on this. It’s not refined, but it will help with the pain.”
“What about… the magic?” Marsino asked.
“It quickened the growth and kept it hardy, but the plant is untainted,” Vannis said as he placed the petals in Marsino’s mouth. He leaned in close and whispered in the younger man’s ear, gently stroking his hair. Marsino smiled, seemingly lost in some memory.
The boy took a swig from his waterskin. A slight shiver ran down his spine. The fine hair on his arms stood on edge.
He turned and walked to the end of the clearing—a verdant canopy of pines covered the lowlands below.
“What is it?” Vannis asked.
“I don’t know…” He gazed down at the valley. Nothing appeared out of place, even the sensation had disappeared.
“I thought—”
He stopped short. Plumes of dark smoke rose in the distance.

The boy stared at the charred and smoldering husks lying in the pasture. The smell of burnt animal flesh hung in the air. His stomach rumbled.
“What do you think did that?” he asked, tending to Marsino. The young mageseeker lay on a makeshift litter made from a blanket roll and lengths of rope.
“Don’t know,” said Vannis. “Stay there and keep watch.”
The older mageseeker inspected the dead cattle. They all bore fist-sized puncture wounds in their thick hides. Vannis prodded one of the scorched cavities with the tip of his stave, measuring its depth. A third of the shaft disappeared.
“Maybe we should go,” the boy said.
Vannis turned to him. “Do you feel anything?”
The boy studied the cattle. Traces of magic radiated underneath the seared flesh. Whatever had killed them was powerful enough to mutilate the immense creatures. A man couldn’t fare any better. Even one with a quarterstaff.
The boy turned his attention to the farmstead. It held a small log cabin, a weathered barn, and an outhouse at the far end. The property was tucked against the hills, surrounded by dense forest. They never would have seen it if not for the smoke.
The sound of footfalls approached.
Vannis spun around and raised his staff.
An old man rounded the corner of the barn. He stopped at the sight of the unannounced visitors. He wore trousers and a tunic fitted for a larger man, and he carried an old, beaten halberd, its edge gleaming and sharp.
“What are you doing on my farm?” The man asked, shifting the grip on his weapon and remaining well outside Vannis’ reach.
“My friend’s hurt,” said the boy. “Please, he needs help, sir.”
Vannis gave the boy a sidelong glance but said nothing.
The farmer looked down at Marsino. The young mageseeker stirred in his litter, lost to a fever dream.
“They have healers in Wrenwall,” the farmer said.
“It’s over a day’s ride. He’ll never make it,” said Vannis.
“A beast prowls these woods. You best ride out,” the old man said, gesturing to the dead cattle.
The boy glanced at the dense treeline. He sensed nothing at the moment, but he remembered the shiver he’d felt earlier. At that distance, it had to be a massive creature.
“What kind of beast? Is it a dragon?”
“Steady, boy.” Vannis said as he stepped toward the farmer. “You have a duty to quarter a Demacian soldier.”
The farmer stood his ground. “You wear the blue… but a mageseeker is not a soldier.”
“Aye, but I was once. Like you.”
The farmer’s eyes narrowed, and he angled the spearpoint of his halberd in Vannis’ direction.
“It’s that pole cleaver,” Vannis said. “A gut ripper of the old Thornwall Halberdiers, if memory serves. Far as I can see, neither it nor this old soldier have lost their edge.”
The farmer regarded his weapon with a faint smile. “That was long ago.”
“Brothers are for life,” said Vannis, softer this time. “Help us. And we’ll hunt your beast down after we’re done.”
The boy glanced down at Marsino. The mageseeker’s eyes remained shut as he drew shallow breaths.
The farmer regarded Vannis, considering the offer. “That won't be necessary,” he finally said. “Let’s bring your man inside.”

Vannis and the farmer carried Marsino inside the cabin. A small fire burned in the firepit and the modest room smelled of cedar and earth. The boy cleared a table standing in the middle of the room, tossing wooden bowls and hardtack biscuits onto a nearby sleeping pallet. The men eased Marsino down onto the wooden planks.
“Who else is here?” Vannis asked, using his dagger to cut off Marsino’s tunic.
“I live alone,” the old man said, examining the wound. The boy could see the blight had spread. Dark tendrils reached out toward Marsino’s neck and heart.
“We have to have cut it out,” said Vannis.
Marsino started to convulse, threatening to fall off the table.
“Hold ‘em down,” said Vannis. The boy pinned Marsino’s legs, using his weight to secure them in place. The man thrashed against the restraint. A heavy boot kicked free and cracked the boy in the mouth. He stumbled back, nursing his jaw.
“I said hold him!” Vannis yelled as he wiped down the blade of his dagger.
He reached for Marsino’s legs again, but the farmer stepped in.
“It’s alright, son,” the man said. “Try talking to him.”
He moved around the table. Marsino’s tremors had eased, but his chest rattled with each ragged breath.
“Marsino?”
“Hold his hand, let him know you’re there,” said the farmer. “It helps with injured animals. Men aren’t much different.”
The boy grasped Marsino’s hand. It felt warm to the touch and slick with sweat. “It’s going to be alright. We got help.”
Marsino seemed to focus on his voice, turning toward the sound, his cloudy white gaze now a deep red.
“Are we in Wrenwall?”
The boy looked at Vannis, and the magehunter nodded.
“Yes. The healers are working on you,” the boy said.
“The dormisroot… it bought me… some time,” Marsino said, squeezing his hand. “You did good… You did good…”
The boy clenched his teeth, fighting back the grief swelling in his throat. He held Marsino’s hand tighter, not wanting to let go.
“I’m sorry, Marsino. I should’ve—”
“Don’t… it wasn’t… your fault,” Marsino said, every word labored and pained. He strained to lift his head. Searching the room with eyes that could no longer see.
“Vannis?”
“Right here, brother.”
“Tell ‘em… tell ‘em it’s not on him.”
Vannis fixed his stare on the boy. “Aye, bad luck is all,” he finally said.
“See…” Marsino said, offering a wan smile. “You don’t need… to carry it.”
Vannis gripped Marsino’s shoulder and leaned in close to the man’s ear. “We need to cut it out, brother,” Vannis said.
Marsino nodded his head.
“He’ll need something to bite on,” said the farmer.
The boy unsheathed his dagger, the carved wooden handle perfectly suited for the task. He placed it in Marsino’s mouth.
“Good,” Vannis said, holding his own blade inches from the wounded arm.
The tendrils slithered beneath the skin. To the boy’s eyes, they radiated a soft, pulsating light the others couldn’t see.
“Stop,” he said.
Vannis looked up at the boy. “What is it?”
Marsino bit down on the dagger’s handle and released a stifled scream. He squeezed the boy’s hand and thrashed against the table until the movement underneath his skin subsided.
The blight stretched across Marsino’s neck.
“It’s too deep,” said Vannis. “I can’t cut it out.” The mageseeker stepped back, unsure of what to do next.
“What if you burn it out?” The boy asked.
“You can’t cauterize that close to the artery,” Vannis said. He turned to the old man. “Do you have any medicinals?”
“Nothing that would help that.”
Vannis gazed down at his injured partner, weighing something in his mind. “What about a healer?” he said, the words no louder than a whisper.
“They would have medicinals, but the closest one—”
“Not that kind of healer.”
The old man remained silent for a moment. “I don’t know anyone like that.”
It appeared Vannis wanted to push the matter, but he bit his tongue and searched the cabin instead.
The boy followed the mageseeker’s gaze. He found a stack of hides in one corner, a netted hammock in another, and a carver’s workbench crowded with dozens of wooden drakes against a wall. Nothing that would help.
“The cattle,” said Vannis.
The farmer blanched at the mention of the dead livestock. “What of them?”
“Did they ever suffer from tinea worm?”
“Yes. We burn it out with a pulvis of lunar caustic.”
“If we cut the source and use a thin band of the pulvis for the rest, it might work,” Vannis said. “Where is it?”
The farmer looked out the window. He seemed to hesitate, perhaps trying to remember where to search in all the clutter.
A deep guttural sound rose from Marsino’s throat. He violently convulsed and teetered toward the edge of the table, dagger clenched between his teeth.
Vannis held the wounded man down by the shoulders. “Where’s the pulvis?”
The farmer wrestled with Marsino’s flailing legs. “It’s in the barn, but—”
Marsino wailed.
“I got it!” the boy said, as he turned and ran outside.

Crisp mountain air rushed past his face as he raced toward the barn, the heat building in his legs and lungs. The barn door was less than twenty paces away when a shiver ran down his spine.
He slid to a stop.
The surrounding forest stood dark and silent. He searched the dense thicket for the slightest hint of magic but found nothing in the brush. Steam and smoke still rose from the smoldering heaps in the pasture. The tingling sensation spread across his back—there was something nearby.
He needed to warn Vannis but knew better than to shout.
Should he go back?
Another agonizing scream erupted from within the cabin. Marsino needed him to be brave.
He took a deep, sobering breath and darted to the outbuilding. His trembling hands fumbled with the latch until he finally got the door open, then he slammed it shut behind him.
A jolt rushed down his spine.
He stumbled back and fell, crashing into a rack of ditching tools. Shovels and spades clattered on the floor.
It was inside the barn.
The boy reached for his dagger but found the sheath empty. He had given it to Marsino. A silvery brilliance radiated from one of the stalls.
He tried to stand, but his legs refused to act. The glow flourished as a shape exited the stall and rounded the corner. He’d never witnessed a light so blinding. It distorted the very air in waves of colors.
The shape approached.
A droning rose in his ears, like an army of nettle bees swarming inside his head. The boy scrambled back, one hand shielding his eyes as the other searched the ground for a weapon. He found nothing.
The world vanished behind a sheet of light and color.
A sound tried to break through the hum as the shape pushed through the radiant glow. His mind struggled to piece it together until a single utterance made everything clear…
“Papa?”
With a word, the entire world resolved back into place.
It was a little girl.
She stared at him, eyes wide in fear. The corona around her flared brighter again. It pulled at the boy, compelling him to reach out and touch its radiance.
“W-Who are you?” she asked.
“I’m… I’m Sylas.” He rose to his feet, holding out his hand. “I won’t hurt you… if you don’t hurt me.”
The girl balled her hands and pressed them to her chest. “I would never hurt anyone…” she said, her gaze falling to her feet. “Not on purpose.”
The boy recalled the cattle in the pasture. He pushed the thought away and focused on the golden-haired child. She seemed tiny and lost, even here in her own home.
“I believe you,” he said. “It’s not always… easy.”
The light around her dimmed, and the pull on him diminished.
She looked up at the boy. “Have you seen my papa?”
“He’s inside the house. Helping my friend.”
She timidly reached out to grasp his hand. “Take me to him.”
He drew back. “You can’t go inside,” he said.
“Is something wrong with papa?”
“No. It’s… He’s helping a mageseeker.”
The little girl recoiled at the word, and the inside of the barn brightened once again. She understood the danger.
“Are you a mageseeker?” She asked, her voice quivering.
The question wrenched at something deep inside the boy.
“No,” he said. “I’m like you.”
The girl smiled. It was genuine and warmed his heart in a way that no praise from a mageseeker ever had.
Another scream came from the main house.
“Papa?”
“It’s my friend. I need to go back,” he said. “Can you hide until we’re gone? Can you do that?”
The girl nodded.
“Good,” he said. “Do you know where the lunar caustic is?”
She pointed to a clay jar sitting on a narrow shelf.

The boy snatched the container and bolted from the barn. Another agonizing wail broke as he approached the cabin. He pushed harder for the last few steps and burst through the door.
“I found it,” he said, holding the jar like a prize in hand.
Silence filled the room.
Vannis was staring at Marsino’s lifeless body. Only the farmer turned toward the door.
There was fear and resentment in the old man’s eyes. It was the same the boy had seen in all those desperate souls trying to hide their affliction.
The old man slowly reached for his halberd, his gaze sweeping from the boy to Vannis, who still hadn’t moved or said a word.
The boy shook his head, silently imploring the man to stop.
The farmer paused and looked toward the barn before looking back at the boy.
He offered the father a reassuring smile.
The old man regarded him for a moment and then rested his weapon against the wall.
Vannis finally snapped from his trance. “What took you so long?” the mageseeker asked.
“It’s not the boy’s fault. Your friend was too far gone.”
Vannis stepped back from the body and sat down on the sleeping pallet.
“The cur is the reason we’re here,” he sneered. “He’s one of them, you know. Pretending to be normal.”
“Your friend didn’t believe so,” said the farmer. “Honor that memory.”
Vannis looked away from Marsino’s body. He fixed his attention on the dozens of carver’s tools and wooden figures strewn about the floor beneath the hammock.
“He was a young fool who felt things far too deeply,” he finally said. Vannis fell into a deep silence after that, his thoughts seemingly elsewhere.
The farmer and the boy joined him in the uncomfortable stillness, unsure of what to do next.
“So it’ll be the two of us hunting the beast, then?” Vannis asked the old man.
“It’s not necessary,” said the farmer. “Tend to your friend. I have a wagon. It’s yours.”
“Doesn’t seem proper to leave you here… alone,” said Vannis. “I’d be abandoning a brother.”
The mageseeker’s voice carried a subtle sharpness that made the boy uneasy. Sorrow transformed into suspicion. The grieving mentor had become the interrogator once again.
“I’ll manage,” said the farmer. “Been doing so since my days wearing the blue.”
“Of course,” Vannis said, smiling.
The mageseeker leapt from the cot, rushed the farmer, and slammed him against the wall—his dagger tip poised inches from the man’s throat.
“Where is it?”
“What?” The farmer asked, his voice trembling and confused.
“Your beast?”
“I-It’s in the woods.”
“Does it bed down in your cabin at night?”
“What?”
“Your hammock,” said Vannis, gesturing to the netted cord. “Spend enough time on campaign and it becomes your best friend.”
Vannis pressed the dagger to the man’s flesh. “So why the cot?”
“It… belonged to my daughter,” said the farmer, his gaze momentarily flicked to the boy. “She passed last winter.”
The boy looked at the sleeping pallet. It was built for a child.
But it wasn’t only the cot. There was a wooden bowl and spoon, and a practice sword too small for a grown man. If he could see through the lie, then…
“Let’s visit her grave,” said Vannis.
“We can’t,” said the farmer, averting his eyes in shame. “The beast took her.”
“Like it took your cattle?” Vannis sneered. “I wager if we search carefully we’ll find it on your farm.”
“There’s nothing here,” the boy said. “We should go.”
“What do you see on that table, boy?”
He stared at Marsino’s body. The bloodstained eyes wide and lifeless. The blighted tendrils had choked off his neck and webbed his face.
“What do you see!”
“Marsino… I see Marsino.” he said, the words choking his throat.
“A mageseeker, boy. One of my own,” Vannis said, anger and pain seeping from each word. “What is he to you?”
Marsino had been the only mageseeker that showed him kindness. He had accepted him as a true Demacian, despite his affliction.
“He was my friend.”
“Aye… and he was killed by a mage,” Vannis said. “This man hides one from us. A dangerous one.”
The boy remembered the intense glow of the little girl and the scorched flesh of the dead cattle.
“What do we do?” Vannis asked.
The boy wiped the corners of his eyes with his sleeve.
“We keep the order. We uphold the law.”

Vannis led the boy and the farmer outside, driving them with his staff. The three stood in the pasture, watching the barn and the outhouse. He jabbed the man in the ribs with the stave.
“Call your daughter.”
The farmer winced at the blow. “She’s not here,” he said. “She’s gone.”
“We’ll see.”
The old man looked at the boy, silently pleading.
“I’ll search the barn,” the boy said.
“No. Let her come to us.” Vannis slammed the farmer’s head with the edge of his staff, driving the man to the ground.
“Come out! We have your father!”
There was no response. No movement. And then the man wailed.
The boy turned to find the farmer tottering on one knee, clutching his temple. Blood pooled underneath the man’s fingers, slicking his hand with blood. Vannis stood over him, ready to strike again.
“What are you doing?”
“What needs to be done,” said Vannis, his face contorted by anger and grief.
A jolt raced down the boy’s spine. And once again, all the fine hair on his arms and neck stood on edge.
The barn door creaked open.
“That’s right, come on,” Vannis said.
Darkness framed the doorway. Tiny footfalls approached. The little girl crossed the threshold and stepped outside. Her panicked eyes fixed on her injured father.
“Papa…” she said, tears cascading down her face.
“It’s alright,” the bleeding farmer stammered. Papa’s just talking to these men.”
They all watched as the child inched toward them, the men were unaware of what only the boy could see.
She glowed like the midday sun.
The power inside her pulsated and shifted colors. It shimmered with a radiance that appeared to bend light itself. She was a living rainbow.
This was his affliction. This was his gift.
He alone could see the fundamental beauty and nature of magic. It lived in this frightened child as it lived in every single mage in Demacia, and perhaps all across the world. How could he betray that? The boy had seen all he needed to see.
“She’s… normal.”
“Are you sure? Look again!”
He turned to the mageseeker. To Demacia, Vannis was a venerated bulwark, guarding against the threat of magic. But to the boy, he was a simple man clinging to tradition.
“You were wrong. We should go.”
Vannis regarded him for a moment, searching for deception. The mageseeker shook his head and scowled.
“We’ll see if she passes the trials,” he said, removing the Graymark from his cloak.
The farmer’s eyes went wide at the sight of the petricite emblem.
“Run, child! Run!” the old man shouted as he leapt to his feet and lunged at Vannis.
The mageseeker moved fast, thrusting his staff into the farmer's midsection. The man staggered back from the blow, creating some distance between the two. Vannis darted forward and drove the stave down onto the man's head. His crown shattered in a bloom of crimson.
The little girl screamed. Her hands crackled with sparks of lightning—this time, for all to see.
Vannis held out his Graymark, capturing the flickering arcs in the stone and suppressing the magic. But the petricite rapidly darkened and cracked, overwhelmed by the little girl's power. Vannis dropped the ruined disk and spun around, swinging his wooden stave at the child’s head.
“No!”
The boy rushed toward the girl, throwing himself between the heavy quarterstaff and the flaring streams of light. The hairs on his arms singed and his fingers blistered as he touched the little mage.
A twisting arc of lightning pierced his hand, and a blazing current rushed through his flesh, contorting his entire body. The boy's heart clenched and all the air inside him rushed out. He gasped for breath but drew only emptiness.
The edges of his vision blurred and the colors drained as deathly magic flooded him. Vannis appeared motionless, staff in mid-swing, like ancient statuary depicting a hero of old. The little girl was also frozen, her tears dull crystals as the radiant glow around her dimmed and faded…
And then his lungs filled with air.
His heart raced, pumping a numbing calmness throughout his body. The blaze inside him remained, but no longer threatened to consume him. Instead, it flowed calmly throughout, and for the briefest moments it felt malleable to his thoughts. Then it suddenly sparked and flared hotter until he could no longer contain it inside.
Light erupted from his hands, and the world disappeared.

Sylas opened his eyes. Three smoldering husks lay strewn on the scorched ground. One of them held a warped and splintered staff in hand. The other two had fallen near each other, their arms splayed and reaching, but forever apart. His eyes welled at the sight of his failure, and regret gripped his heart. He rolled over onto his back and shuddered.
Countless stars stretched across a cloudless firmament. He watched them arc across the darkness and disappear behind a black canopy of trees.
The night sky turned a purple hue before he finally staggered to his feet.
His legs trembled as he limped away from the carnage. He stopped after a short distance, but didn’t look back.
There was no need. Those images would remain with him for the rest of his life. He pushed them from his thoughts and gazed at the spine of mountaintops spanning the horizon.
He had no intention of riding to Wrenwall, or any of their strongholds. No amount of pleading would save him from their punishment. In time, they would seek him out, not stopping until he was brought to justice. After all, the law must be upheld.
But he knew their ways, and Demacia was vast.
The Despoiler of Havenfall

Michael Haugen Wieske

The fog had come in swiftly, eclipsing the afternoon sun over the crossroads. Jonath had tried to find his way between the thick tendrils, the world around him darkened by an impenetrable shroud. Shapes pushed at the fabric of the mist, grasping for purchase. Reaching for him from beyond.
He fumbled with the reins in his hands, trying to find the nerve to do what he had to. So he could mount up and ride for safety.
“Don’t do this, boy. We all have a duty.”
Jonath blinked the fear from his eyes, fixating on the knight slumped over the steed. He had found her like this, still mounted but unable to even right herself in the saddle. Her armor was pierced and slick with blood, although Jonath didn’t know what manner of weapon could have inflicted these wounds. The knight was dying all the same.
In her eyes, he saw judgment—they found him weak. Unworthy. She gripped the reins firmly in one plated fist, pulling him in close.
“We must carry word to the capital. You... the heir must know. Tell Prince Jarvan what is happening here, the garrison cannot hold them off.”
Faint sounds of battle from the south told Jonath that the beings in the mist had reached Havenfall. The air around him grew colder, darker. The inky mist pulsated, inching close. Havenfall’s knights were none of his business. The supposed elite of the crown had never done anything for him. And the people there...
Screwing shut his eyes, Jonath ripped the reins from the knight, trying to ignore her pained gasp as she rolled out of the saddle and hit the ground.
“Protector forgive me,” he whispered, his voice wavering. This was no worse than the other times he’d taken horses, he tried to tell himself as he mounted.
The war steed’s bulk instilled a measure of calm in him. Running a hand down the stallion’s muscled neck, Jonath looked around the crossroads to get his bearings. The eastbound road led to the Great City, with its high walls and countless soldiers. What warning did they need? Surely, whatever foul magic urged the claws and voices in the mist would be no match for the capital’s defense of stone and steel. Just to the south lay Havenfall, his home. Moments ago, he could see its glinting rooftops and rows of masts from where he now stood. Behind the town lay open country, as far as a horse could carry him.
Jonath had spent days beyond count riding across those rolling hills, racing incoming ships along the white cliffs overlooking the bay, letting the sea stiffen his hair with salt, rejoicing in the thrills of unchecked freedom. He’d never kept any he took. He was no thief who deserved to be exiled to the Hinterlands. He borrowed horses, always returning them at the end of his excursions, tired but unharmed.
How will I return this one? If I leave her to—
No. It wasn’t his fault she had gotten in the way of this mist and squandered her chance at survival—for Jonath to take his did not make him guilty of her death. No matter what he did, he had always been deemed insufficient. He had a hand with horses and the will to work, but even his elders—horse breeders and traders—had shunned him for his unwillingness to put the demands of others ahead of his own needs. No use in talent if he couldn’t be relied on, they said. No use in the approval of people who didn’t value true freedom, thought Jonath. Not to mention the garrison, who glorified obedience above all else, sneering at him down gilded lances even when he came to prove his mettle on the recruiting fields.
Well, out in the hills, chasing the wind on the back of an unbroken steed, he was the exemplar. He would outrun this unnatural mist, and lose himself among the ranging herds.
Jonath spurred the stallion, making for the southern path, as time slowed down around him. The stallion flattened his ears, suddenly rigid under Jonath. Whatever had scared it was beyond the natural din of battle, something that didn’t belong here; Jonath felt it, too. Primal fear seized him, squeezing his chest with an unyielding grip. The mist pulled close, then pulsed clear of the crossing, as if limbs within were pulling the veil aside. Jonath heard nothing in the deathly stillness.
Then came the sound of steeled hooves on hard-pack road.
As the veil parted, Jonath made out riders in the gloom. Even though he could hear the mounts at full gallop, the clatter of plate armor, and the whipping of stirrups, the echelon appeared immobile—like a framed tableau of nobles on the hunt, or the crown’s elite on the charge, come at the last second to defend the citizenry against the dangers beyond the border. But these were not Demacian knights, nor saviors from fairy tales. These riders were not here to protect. They were girded in black-iron plate, and an evil light glowed in their motionless eyes. A bannerman carried a still pennant, the beating fabric audible nonetheless. A hornblower, lipless mouth deadlocked around his instrument, sounded the attack.
The mist shrieked. Heeeecaaaariiiim.
It was a name—somehow, Jonath knew. The mist heralded his coming.
It was the name of death itself.
As this realization staggered Jonath, he noticed the rider at the lead. He was gigantic, towering over his retinue, shaking the ground with each unmoving stride. His eyes, bright with inner fire, took in all before them. Even staring ahead, they seemed to bore into Jonath, searing through him, filling him with an ancient dread.
The rider turned his head, and smiled.
Jonath let out a cry, recoiling with instinctual fear. He flailed, kicking back to stay in the saddle, startling his stallion. The mount reared, throwing Jonath to the ground with a dry thud. Galvanized by the shock, the animal bolted into the darkness. Jonath groaned, his head ringing with the impact. He pressed his forehead against the dry earth, dust packing his nostrils with each panicked breath. He wished he could pray away what he would see when he looked up.
“Rise, squire,” a grinding voice said, a smile pulling the syllables taut. “Find your courage... Look at me.”
The words were guttural, each syllable slowly surfacing as if rising from the depths of a furnace. Jonath could not place the accent, but he had heard its mocking tone before. A sting of old spite made him raise his head.
Crudely shod hooves burned the soil where they stood. The rider’s horse seemed to be made entirely of blackened iron, glowing from within with green fire. Jonath’s breath caught in his throat as he saw the rider was not saddled on this unnatural steed—he was fused with it. What was he? Had he come as punishment for Jonath’s crime? The monstrosity laughed, slowly raising an infernal glaive.
Tears ran down Jonath’s face, his mind seizing hold of the only thought it could. Protector forgive me. Protector forgive me.
But the blow never fell. Instead, the monster called one of his ghostly riders closer. The rider, too, was not a horseman at all, but fused at the midriff with the body of a horse. The entire echelon was deformed like their leader. Hecarim gripped the rider’s neck and slowly, effortlessly, ripped his torso from the equine trunk. The rider, trailing green smoke, made no sound, twitching erratically. Where his body had been, there was now the head of a withered, armored destrier.
“We’ll be back for you later,” the leader chuckled as he released the rider’s spirit. The spirit floated mid-air, aimless now that it had been severed from its animal half. The rest of the undying echelon remained utterly motionless, frozen in time.
Hecarim turned his gaze to Jonath.
“I claim this land by decree of King Viego, regent of the Shadow Isles. Let my loyal knights witness that Hecarim, Conqueror of Helia, Grand Master of the Iron Order, honors his foes with a fair fight.” The words twisted around his smirk. “So, find your courage, noble squire, and mount up. War has come.” He presented the reins of the spectral destrier to Jonath.
Jonath took in Hecarim, the tone of his offer betraying it for the lie it was. He looked around him, the echelon of knights looming, immovable rictus grins carved into their skeletal faces. His mind screamed in tune with the whispers behind the veil. Let soldiers deal with these monsters. He grabbed the reins and, with one motion, swung up into the saddle.
The steed’s body was solid yet incorporeal at the same time, the heavy barding hissing where it moved against the beast’s bulk. Where he would sense a horse’s character, Jonath felt only emptiness. Where he should feel a union of kindred minds, he teetered on the edge of a ravenous void. Jonath let his fear take over and hammered his heels into its flanks. He ripped at the reins and turned south, piercing into the wall of black mist...
Hooked nails scoring my skin. Long-dead grimaces accusing me.
...and bursting out the other side into the clear. Ahead, the path was open. The sun was setting over the bay, the sea glittering calmly beyond the cliffs.
Behind Jonath, hollow, furnace laughter echoed through the crossroads.
“Give chase,” he heard Hecarim order.

Jonath clung to the steed, speeding down the path faster than he had ever seen any stallion gallop. In his wake, a thin trail of the unnatural mist lined the packed earth. The sun was setting into the bay, giving way to the deep blue of dusk. It had been a beautiful day for a ride; if he kept its pace, he might see another. Looking up, he saw the Protector’s Shield coming into view in the darkening sky. Jonath’s smile at the constellation turned stale as he heard the long call of a hunting horn.
His heartbeat quickened as he saw thick tendrils of mist closing in behind him. The monstrous Hecarim and his Iron Order rode within. Tendrils of darkness flanked Jonath, and he thought he could see shapes coalescing inside. His mouth fell open in horror, his vision blurring from sudden tears. He could see her nonetheless. The knight he had left to die, now a ghostly form trapped in the mist. She raised an arm that ended in a ragged stump—the hand that had held the reins, missing.
“You have no honor,” she wailed. “You are no true Demacian!”
“Please, no,” Jonath whispered, forcing his gaze ahead. He frantically kicked the steed’s flanks, willing it to get him away from this horror. He glanced down at the reins. The knight’s severed fist was gripping them, yanking the mount into a stall.
“Flee, coward,” the voice echoed from the mist.
Whimpering in anguish, Jonath ripped the reins out of the fist and threw the plated gauntlet toward the riders at his heels.
“So quick to take offense, squire,” Hecarim jeered. “I did not think you had the courage. If you are challenging me to a duel, then I accept. We noblemen have a code to follow, after all.”
Jonath raised his arm in front of his face as Hecarim closed to striking distance, but instead of being beheaded by the glaive, Jonath was engulfed once more in cloying darkness. The faces of the dead surrounded him, their scornful laughter an anthem to their twisted master’s trickery. Jonath spurred his spectral steed, and as he burst from the mist, Hecarim and the riders disappeared from view.
Night had fallen over the coast as Jonath passed the stables at the edge of Havenfall. The sound of battle had stopped, and the approaches to the town appeared largely untouched. He felt a brief wave of relief. He would find soldiers here who could fight. Commander Tyndarid and his garrison would see off the riders on Jonath’s trail—for all his imperious arrogance, the castellan was an indomitable warrior.
Jonath saw war horses, some half saddled and barded, some still tied to their hitching rails near the trough, lay dead. His heart sank.
As Jonath’s destrier carried him further into the settlement, the true horror of the black mist around him became apparent. Jonath slowly turned around. All of this... couldn’t be real. It had to be a figment of his troubled imagination, or some dark sorcery worked by a vengeful hedge mage.
But his eyes told him otherwise.
In the streets, the spirits of newly dead townsfolk lingered above their own corpses, cowering in fear, wailing silently, reliving the instant they were ridden down by the Iron Order. Proud knights of the crown stood mute where they had died battling. As Jonath passed, one by one, spirits fixed their hollow eyes on him. A knight, his killer’s spear still pinning his shield to the shade of his body, made a step toward Jonath. A gasp escaped his lips as he recognized Commander Tyndarid. A group of dead shipbuilders haltingly gained their feet and tumbled toward Jonath in agitation. He kicked his steed and made his escape. A voice inside him whispered that even in death, they knew he didn’t belong.
Wraithlike raiders coursed through the merchant quarters, corralling survivors and putting torches to the roofs of the smithies and trade posts. Green fire engulfed the buildings and cast a deathly light across the square—the thatching and wood somehow remaining untouched by the flames. The townsfolk inside... Jonath looked away as he rode, willing himself not to hear.
By the harbor, fishing boats and river barges lay low against the white-stone pier, scuttled and ablaze. Jonath looked out over the bay, his gaze drawn across the still water by the long, mournful note of a hunting horn. A squadron of spectral riders raced across the calm water in the moonlight, lowering their spears as they neared the last sailship still afloat. The charge hit home, followed by the faint clash of weapons and the cries of sailors dying. The ship disappeared from sight in a mass of writhing fog.
The entirety of Havenfall was under siege—who knew how much of Demacia was affected by this invasion.
Circling his mount, Jonath tried to control his fear and find a way out. Perhaps he should race his own steed off the pier and ride the waters across the bay. He was unable to outpace these deathless monsters, but he might slip away unnoticed and escape this terrible nightmare...
Jonath was brought back to the present by the sound of footfalls. He noticed a gaggle of survivors picking their way through the ruined market square. There were four of them. A pair of brown-haired youths, clearly siblings by their features, held on to short blades, their eyes darting fearfully across the square. They protected an elderly woman who followed in their wake, dressed in the garb of the Illuminators and carrying a steel cudgel. Jonath knew the powerfully built figure at the head of the group—it was the blacksmith Adamar. He held a heavy blade and shield, still unadorned and blackened with the soot of its forging.
“Jonath!” Adamar called out quietly. “We thought we were the last ones left alive. We’re getting away from here. You are welcome to joi—” The blacksmith fell silent as he saw Jonath’s steed. His eyes hardened with fury, and he ushered the others behind him, soot-matt shield held high. “You’re in league with these monsters!”
The old Illuminator placed a hand on Adamar’s shoulder. “Look at his eyes, Ada. He’s just as afraid as we are. He’s not with them.” She addressed Jonath directly. “Get off that abomination, child, and come with us.”
“I wish I could,” Jonath heard himself say. The guilt of his actions washed over him, making his head swim. He saw the dying knight’s face again, accusing him. “But Adamar... he’s right. I don’t belong here, and I don’t deserve your mercy. You don’t know what I did today, who I really am. I am no Demacian.”
“Enough of that. You are Jonath of Ropemaker’s Row, not some stranger. Don’t think I haven’t noticed you pray at the Protector’s shrine after dark. I know your heart wants to lead you back to righteousness. I cannot tell you if it will, but tonight all that matters is survival. There are not many of us left here, and you are one of us. One of the living. Now get off that... thing, and let us leave this place.”
Jonath grabbed the saddle, swinging his leg up to dismount. “Thank the Protector for your mercy—”
Coils of mist ripped open above the town square, spectral riders bursting forth. Hecarim was at the fore, galloping through thin air, swinging his jagged glaive wide. Before Jonath understood what he was looking at, the blade struck the Illuminator in the chest, cleaving her in two. Hecarim’s riders unceremoniously ran through Adamar and the two youths, before cantering to a halt. Like the first time Jonath saw them, they became completely still—their spears held rigidly upright, their banners and pinions frozen, only the sound of their motionless regalia piercing the deathly quiet.
Ever the first of their number, there was Hecarim, hooves scraping the ground, his animal body pacing back and forth, his eyes burning with ancient intellect. Grand Master, conqueror. Despoiler of Havenfall. How was Jonath meant to stand against the might of this infernal warmaster? How was anyone?
Hecarim closed the distance, riding up alongside Jonath until they stood shoulder to shoulder. Slowly, he reached down toward the bridle of Jonath’s borrowed steed, arresting it in place. The Grand Master was taller than Jonath by half.
“You acquitted yourself well today,” Hecarim said, the deep, furnace-roar softened to a growl. His gaze wandered, settling on the moonlit bay behind Jonath. “I have seen kings lose their minds when faced with the Black Mist and the eternal anguish that it brings. Everyone you ever knew perished this night, yet your will to survive remains unbroken. Who else are you willing to sacrifice so you can live? Are you willing to let even your liege die?”
Jonath’s heart pounded, his vision blurred as tears of helpless panic threatened to overwhelm him. Moments ago, Hecarim had slain the last survivors of his hometown, and now he was conversing with him as if they had sparred in some practice duel on the training grounds.
“The... the king is already dead. The crown prince, Protector guide his hand, is next in line, and there could be no one more deserving. I... do not want to put him in peril for my own gain.”
Hecarim remained still for a moment, then scoffed with soured mirth. “In the line of succession, the crown does not always go to the most fitting heir. And what do I care for the frail kingdoms of the living. We all have to make do with the hand fate deals us.”
Up close, Jonath could see the countless pits and scratches in Hecarim’s armor. He could see endless years of conflict scored into the black-iron plates encasing the flames that made up his body, and understood a fundamental truth about this creature... He had been created by war, and he was made for war. He had done nothing but battle for centuries, condemned to relive his worst transgressions. Whatever crimes he had committed in life, this was his punishment.
And he relished every interminable second of it.
Wherever the unnatural mist went, Hecarim and his Iron Order followed—pillaging, killing, and reveling in the atrocities they inflicted on the living. What would become of Demacia if no one stopped this evil? Jonath finally understood something that had eluded him his entire life. Courage wasn’t some unique quality infused into true Demacians at birth, or a measure of his worth to the world. It was a question of realizing what must be done, and choosing to do it no matter what. He felt calm for the first time since the crossroads. He remembered the wounded knight’s dying words, one last time.
There were no soldiers left in Havenfall to warn the crown prince, and soon there might be none left in the entire kingdom. Fixing the Grand Master with his gaze, he pulled the reins from Hecarim’s mailed fist, taking control of the destrier. Hecarim indulged him, his posture changing from introspection to curiosity.
Jonath wheeled, gaining a few paces of distance. “I have seen how you ride down defenseless villagers, reveling in the screams of the helpless. I know you are bound to your basest instincts for eternity, but there is more to you. If a shred of your living self remains, if you have any honor at all, abomination, you will let me pass!”
He collected himself. He knew he would not make it to the Great City, but he was going to try. The bulk of his tireless mount tensed as it sensed what was about to happen. With all his might, Jonath gave it the spurs, and his spectral steed charged. For the first time in his life, Jonath truly believed the words as they sprang from his lips.
“For the uncrowned king! For Demacia!”

Hecarim smirked with delight as the boy charged willingly toward the spears of the Iron Order. The folly of youth had stayed with him until death, a flaw all too common in Hecarim’s experience. But as long as Viego chased his own foolish obsession across the oceans of the world, trailing the Mist in his wake, Hecarim would enjoy the spoils of war.
Around him, as far as he could see, his riders spread terror and death. A cast-iron grin widened across his burning skull.
“If but our hands were not bound by fealty...” he mused, as he watched the last living soul of Havenfall perish.
The Man With the Grinning Shadow

Jared Rosen

“You the marshal?” the river man said, his features an unreadable patina of lowland dust and dried bottlebrush needles, caked together by mud from the bottom of an old lakebed. He stood in the doorway of Lucian's private train cabin, small and large at the same time, dressed in gold-panning rags that had been picked from a dead claim jumper on the outskirts of Progress.
The river man didn't breathe in or out. Didn't have to.
Lucian had heard about them before, the river men, but never seen one up close. They needed moisture or they'd dry out, never venturing far from the mudholes and gulches they spawned in. If a traveler was unlucky enough they’d try to fill a flask with a river man's putrid water, or dig a pan into the silt where one lived. Without warning, it would snap up like an alligator, pulling you into the suffocating muck with wide, earthen arms, and just like that you were gone. Another ghost of the Old West.
“Not anymore,” said Lucian.
Lucian looked at the river man and the river man looked back, the gunslinger comfortably resting against the floral draperies of his cabin. Flecks of light occasionally entered through the curtains as their train rattled along, illuminating the river man's dark, piscine eyes, nearly hidden beneath the earthen cracks in his face.
“I want your badge,” he said.
Lucian nodded. A federal's badge would get the thing past Fort Nox, away from its government monster hunters, and down by way of caravan to the mangrove swamps just south of Bandle. Probably thought it could take up shop there, now that more and more east coasters were settling the low desert. Didn't make the creature's gamble less desperate, but Lucian appreciated when the stakes were clear.
“Must not be many of you left,” said Lucian.
“Ain't too many of anything left,” said the river man.
The boxcar's springs clicked once as they compressed against a couplet of uneven rail lines, and in the instant that the cabin shifted, the river man spread his arms wide, the mud on his face giving way to dozens of needle-sharp teeth as great spines burst from his shoulders. Before the springs clicked again a gunshot rang out, a thin ray of hellfire erupting through the side of the train and into the setting sun, and before the river man hit the floor Lucian's sidearm was already back in its holster.
The creature's head, split down the center and burnt beyond recognition, smoldered with the faint scent of sulfur and blackthorn. Its body contorted on the ground, flame roasting its membranes from the inside, and Lucian straightened his hat as he leaned back into the darkness of his room. The darkness shuddered softly around him, and smiled.
No one came to check on Lucian. No one came to take the dessicated body of the river man. The two traveled in silence together, door open, all the way down to the last stop at Angel's Perch.
And then out to the preacher who spoke with the dead.

Progress had been alive with whispers that this was the lawman what tangled with the devil and lost, and now he was headed up to New Eden to meet with the holy reverend. Both were ill portents in the Old West, so nobody would deny the aims of the man with the grinning shadow. They didn't need another Twin Reeds or Redriver, entire towns swallowed up and gone with some foul twist of happenstance. They needed Lucian out of their settlement and fast, and would give him anything he needed with all speed.
This had been the game ever since his last job with the federals, when they'd sent him out to reckon with the devil himself and drag him back to civilization. They would ‘put the devil on trial’—or that was the play, at least—and prove to the world that the frontier was safe to claim.
Of course, Lucian knew there wasn't just one devil, but the public thought better in singulars. He’d seen how the desert was crawling with strange creatures from every end of the world: demons in clean pressed suits, angels holed up in mountain crags, witches and ghosts and all manner of beast that might cloak itself in moonlight and tear an unsuspecting pilgrim to ribbons. The western natives and their alien weaponry; the skull-faced colossi who fed on ripened flesh; the mechanical men built by human hands, long gone rogue. And always, always devils.
This devil, though, was different. He went by many names—The Reaper, The Slaughter God, Old Turnkey, and Great Horn. He collected souls, or so the stories said, and went from town to town conducting his dark business, tearing the spirits out of the living and leaving their flayed skins behind. A creature of the Old World and demon of the wild frontier who, like his kin, sated his terrible hungers on an endless river of fresh-faced pioneers. Enough so that folks were starting to take notice, and for a government aimed on expansion, folks taking notice was bad for business.
Three marshals were dead at his hands, all told. Lucian had known two of them.
“They call it Thresh,” his handlers revealed. “Think you can catch him?”
Lucian looked over the sketches, noting the monster’s brazen, bovine skull, alight with the flames of all seven hells. He figured the lantern hanging curiously nearby was the source of its power, and if he could get in a clean shot, the fight would be over before it started.
Yet it was never that easy with devils, especially devils with a federal bodycount. He remembered tangling with a particularly nasty specimen near Chuparosa that moved with the speed of a desert storm, kicking up whirlwinds as it went. It was too fast to hit with a bullet, and if it hadn’t been for the timely intervention of his partner, Lucian might not have made it out alive. This hunt required backup.
“Not alone,” said Lucian. “I’ll need Senna.”

“Last stop, Angel’s Perch,” the conductor uttered, so gently it was almost a whisper. The heat of the journey had shriveled the river man’s corpse nearly into rawhide, but in the long shadows of the cabin a worse creature had perched itself upon Lucian’s seat.
It was smoke and fire, teeth and flames, its arms the artillery of a demon general cast up from the bottom of the abyss. It had the rough shape of a man, were a man made from campfire ash, with the glowing sigil of the federal marshals inverted upon its breast. Its legs were the incinerated spires of ancient, burning elms. Its red heart pulsed with the rage of all the earth.
“God,” spoke the conductor, not knowing which god he was invoking. The thing stood on its curious, spindling legs, leaning against the train’s still air. Its face seemed to peel apart, mouth broken in horrific ecstasy, as hellfire illuminated a ragged, mocking grin.
In that moment the ash fell away, and Lucian stepped out from the darkness.
“Sorry, friend,” he spoke. “Didn’t mean to scare you.”
The conductor quivered in silence for a long while before Lucian brushed past, down the steel halls of the cabin car and out into the twilit evening. He figured the man would make a good story of it.
Angel’s Perch. A boomtown at the edge of civilization, where the trees grew tall and the air was thick with the scent of honey and wine. No one knew what lay beyond the ring of gargantuan pines at the foot of the mountains west of town, but they did know they had enough guns and men to hold off anything the far frontier could throw at them. Or at least they assumed. The creatures who made a home of Angel’s Perch would only reveal so much about what lay beyond, and no other living thing what had ventured that far west had returned sane, or at all.
Lucian made his way through the Perch’s bustling train station and into the center of town, past no less than three snake oil salesmen, each hucking the artificial magic ointments of the industrial east, and a saloon girl with the body of a cobra. Her milky eyes were hidden behind a veil, lest a paying customer turn to granite before they ever sat down to drink.
Near the mouth of main street, beyond the loggers and lamplighters, the general stores and the brothels, and the reclusive gunsmith rumored to be a fallen deity, there stood the town’s famed saloon. Popular myth held it had been in business since the founding of the settlement, or perhaps even before. It was called The Earthly King: be you man, woman or beast with a fate to outrun, its kingdom was open to you… as long as you had cash to spare.
It was, in many ways, the kind of place where a man might lose himself. But Lucian didn’t have much of himself left to lose, always feeling the tug of invisible strings against the weight of his soul, the shadow grinning behind him. He couldn’t stay for long.
Humans had little knowledge of settlements in the far west, and creatures living in town wouldn’t spill their precious secrets without a fight. The natives, if they spoke at all, would never reveal anything about anything, the few who tolerated settlers busying themselves with their strange machines.
Lucian had to rely on friends. Most could have been counted among the federal marshals, but they didn’t take kindly to demons, and like it or not that was what Lucian was fast becoming. He had to reach even further back, before the government contracts and the cobblestone streets of St. Zaun, to his days as a brash young gunfighter for hire. There he’d met many friends who lived and died with a revolver in their hand, but one figure remained as steadfast and obstinate as always, too big to kill and too old to die. He wasn’t a man per se, but he’d been fighting long before the first ships landed on the continent, and would probably be fighting long after everything else was dust and whispers.
Lucian stepped through the wide-set doors of the King and, for a moment, the bar grew quiet as its unsightly patrons sized up the harrowed stranger. “I’m looking for the longhorn,” he said, and they at once turned back to their card games and beer, the high shrill of an out of tune piano crashing against a dozen incomprehensible hoots and hollers.
Lucian soon spotted the longhorn at the far end of the bar—his massive bulk was hard to miss, even amid the carousing of the King’s clientele. Despite his frame he liked to keep to himself, though it was not uncommon for cocky young fighters to call him out over some perceived slight, hoping to down the beast for fame and glory. This never ended well, and more nights than not a boisterous challenger would have their skull pulverized with a single, swift butt to the head.
Alistar was a minotaur, easily ten feet tall and six feet wide. If you picked a fight with him, you got what was coming.
“Longhorn,” said Lucian.
“Marshal,” replied Alistar.
“I’m making my way to New Eden,” said Lucian.
“Aren’t we all,” replied Alistar, as Lucian sat beside him.
Alistar was old, now—few of his kind remained, and he would no doubt outlive them all. He spent his days as a glorified thug for other, weaker creatures, and his nights on a bar stool built for beings half his size.
The pair gazed solemnly ahead. Not a man came to Angel’s Perch without a reason, and fewer still walked through the doors of The Earthly King unless that reason was dire. It was the drinking hole of renegades and dead men, a drain where the aimless slowly circled downward, and those seeking a final battle spilled their coin before vanishing into the wilderness.
Lucian was heading deep into the uncharted northwest, where no trains ran and vicious gods walked among the trees, seeking a rumor on borrowed time.
Both knew the stakes, and the favor, though none had been asked.
“What do you think she’ll say?” asked Alistar. “When you get there.”
“I don’t know,” answered Lucian. “I don’t rightly know.”
The longhorn sighed into his drink, a thick aluminum tankard about the size of a child. He never had liked long goodbyes.
“Let me draw you a map.”

Lucian had first met Senna at the end of a gun—her gun—during a bloody shootout in one of Buzzard Gulch’s most squalid drinking parlors. Not that shootouts in Buzzard Gulch were uncommon, but this one had involved some fool bounty hunter drawing on an Outsider with his back turned. It got ugly.
The Outsiders, so they claimed, were from everywhere and nowhere at once, creatures in clean pressed suits whose love of gambling had made them infamous among outlaw clans and desperate homesteaders. Beating one meant riches beyond compare, conjured from nothing and guaranteed by an Outsider’s wax seal—itself worth a small fortune. Losing was another matter, as they accepted no wager less than a man’s most deeply cherished possession. Farms, watches, children, souls… a favorite knife—the bet was always steep, even if you didn’t know it yet.
Rumor had it this specimen had beaten Jeremiah James, a millionaire railroad baron Lucian had once done small jobs for. Jeremiah was a giant, and a mean one at that, who’d posted a sky-high bounty the moment he lost whatever dire prize he so foolishly put up for collateral—enough to bankrupt him twice over.
And as almost every gunfighter knew, once a reward swung out of the piss-pot, gully stabbing, prairie-shotgun-ambush fare of Buzzard Gulch’s wanted board and into the realm of jilted industrialists, bounty hunters would come calling. The whole lot of them loved money and killing, and not much else.
The hunter drew with little warning, and instantly the room went quiet. The Outsider sipped his whiskey with a calm that suggested the absence of all intent. Senna, a handful of federal marshals and the longhorn were present, among the town’s usual collection of heavily armed scoundrels and murderers. Everyone waited to make a move.
“Now, friend,” the hunter cooed, her voice sugar tinged with blood, “I know you’ve got what I came for. Turn it over, and everybody walks out the way they came in.”
The Outsider said nothing—his face was as placid as a porcelain doll, unmoved and unperturbed by the threat of his assailant’s twin six-guns. He’d known she was coming the whole time. Probably knew before she even took the job. But in the heat of the low sun, plied with drink at the edge of the world, it was hard to tell who was itching for a fight, and who was just bluffing.
The hunter broke the silence with a bullet, and a heavy round exploded from her pistol and into the center of the creature’s chest. The Outsider’s body billowed outward, the hole rippling black smoke in the shape of crows, and from the smoky mass a great, vicious claw burst into a table of poker players. Cards, chips, and searing blood sprayed across the room as the hunter started unloading.
Lucian drew on the hunter, the marshals drew on Lucian, and the longhorn tore through the bar to get as many pieces of the action as time would allow. Every gun in the place lit up, and as bullets ripped through fastgun and marshal alike, Lucian took cover behind a pool table—where he found himself in quite a different predicament.
“Hello, stranger,” said Senna, her gun squarely aimed at Lucian’s forehead. Her eyes were the color of a gentle prairie, mottled with specks of black, and Lucian almost forgot he was speaking into a loaded firearm.
“Ma’am,” he replied.
“I assume you choose to associate with these upstanding individuals?” she asked, as the lead-riddled body of a barkeep collapsed limply beside them. Black smoke drifted softly out of his mouth.
“Some of them,” Lucian answered.
Senna ducked as another shell ripped past the backside of the bar, taking a chunk of a pool table with it. The motion was so quick Lucian almost didn’t see it—then again, he’d never seen anyone dodge a bullet. Certainly not with such confidence, and Senna had plenty to spare.
She smiled warmly, her badge glinting in the light. The star of a chief marshal, one of the deadliest quickdraws in the known world.
“Well, to each their own,” she grinned, gingerly confiscating Lucian’s pistol. “Don’t worry, I’ll give it back… if you’re not dead when this is over.”
And with two quick shots from cover, she swung back into the fight, leaving Lucian wondering what had just happened.
The rest of the shootout was a blur. At one point the bounty hunter ripped some sort of oil-soaked object from the Outsider’s roiling body and ran out the saloon doors, and the creature went screaming after her. With most of the clientele dead and nobody left to shoot, the survivors went across the street to finish their drinks. Buzzard Gulch never found itself wanting for corpses or liquor.

It was there, the marshals like to say, that Lucian decided to hang up his hat and hunt monsters for the government.
Though they’ll also mention it was less about saving people from beasts, and more about a pretty girl who dodged a bullet with a smile.

The longhorn’s map had been useful, if sloppy. Lucian had followed it on foot for what seemed like a hundred years, further north from Angel's Perch than most living souls would ever dare to venture. Here colors seemed more vivid, the air itself breathed with strange magics, and when Lucian drifted off, he could swear gargantuan creatures lurked just beyond the edge of his vision, watching. Yet Lucian did not feel afraid. He made camp as the sun dipped over the horizon, and steeled himself. The shadow grew strongest at night.
He would sense its evil dragging him downwards, pulling him out of himself. Soon Lucian’s skin would itch and flake away, his mouth twisted into a hungry grin. He would feel the flames, hear the demon whisper in his own voice. He would drown in the crackling inferno of indigo sagelands erupting into a sea of hellfire. And he would feel the anger. The terrible, ageless anger, the shame, the disgust. Hateful bile born the from the darkness of his own soul. Only then would the battle begin—the demon assuming Lucian’s body, while what was left of the man tried to wrestle it back.
Lately, the transformations were beginning to last longer than Lucian liked.
He felt his skin begin to prickle, and watched as it cracked against the cool night air. Lucian rested himself against an old log, as comfortably as he could. His muscles froze in place—awaiting the change, and the struggle, and the promise of morning.
His eyes glazed over. The sky twisted into deep crimson—overtaken by a perpetual sundown, ringed with flame, and the trees around him stood as ghastly totems against thick, otherworldly fog. Only the campfire illuminated the world as it was, the greens and browns of patchy grassland. The change had begun.
Or if not the change, something worse.
Deep in the forest, a train whistle sounded. It rang hollow, a warped and yawning sound that spilled out from the demonic vision’s umber mist. This was something new, a creature Lucian had not prepared to face—and locked in combat with himself, he could not turn or draw. He tried to stand as thick metal legs splintered the primeval woodlands like they were toys, dragging a colossal torso awkwardly behind them. He could not move, nor turn his eyes from the glowing core of hungry coals, or grisly flesh, or smoke from bulbous locomotive valves that lined the shoulders of a long-dead giant.
A devil, Lucian thought. Another devil.
The hulking thing stepped before him, still obscured by fog, and bent its massive legs down until a familiar face leaned into view of the firelight.
“Lucian,” it spoke.
Lucian recognized it—him—instantly. The millionaire, long thought missing or dead, who so many years ago had wagered his own heart in an Outsider’s game of chance.
“Jeremiah?”
The old industrialist chuckled. He was hideously malformed—gone were even the last glimpses of his humanity, replaced instead by infernal steamwork and the gutted skeletons of a dozen ruined cargo trains. His belly swelled with heat of a devil’s furnace, and the campfire between the two travelers seemed to draw towards it, as though Jeremiah were breathing it in.
“I have shed that name, my good marshal,” he spoke, his voice melting over the land as Lucian sat paralyzed before him. “You may call me Urgot now, for that is the name I have taken.”
“I know what you are wondering,” he continued. “Understand that I was laid low in my efforts to civilize this desperate land, and divorced from my plans for a great steel empire. No, I made a mistake of hubris—I took a deal, as you once did… and paid so, so dearly for it.”
The colossus motioned towards where his heart might have been, now nothing but a tangled mass of white-hot copper. The rumors had been true. Jeremiah had died.
“It was not death,” he said, as if snatching the thought from the air. “Though by the time my treasured property was returned, it was far too late to call myself alive. My body was abandoned at the edge of the desert by some… associates… who have come to know the dire price of treachery. Yet as you are aware, there are many devils… and unlike the monster you failed to destroy, I was visited by one with a particularly tantalizing offer.”
Urgot was close now, the campfire pouring endlessly upwards into his stomach. The grinding of a thousand starving gears echoed from somewhere within him, and Lucian imagined a devouring maw, chaining the sky down before swallowing it whole.
“I know you will lose the duel within yourself, marshal. I did. Brought low by my losses I turned to common banditry, and the darkest hollows of my sadly mortal imagination. When you follow me down that trail—and you will—I intend to meet with the creature wearing your body. We have… a great many things to discuss.”
With that, the enormous metal legs pulled Urgot away, until even his illuminated hellmouth disappeared from view. The sky buckled, and broke—bitter sun replaced once more by cold, lightless midnight, and Lucian was alone.
The shadow would claim him soon.
He had to move quickly.

Lucian had been careless.
Forgetting what a devil was, the kind of power one could wield, he and Senna had rushed into an alpine tundra on horseback, determined to take Thresh with a single shot. Lucian was one of the greatest marshals the outfit had ever seen; Senna was the greatest. They were brave, and impetuous, and in love—and Thresh had been waiting for them.
The devil called Thresh was not an ordinary monster of the high frontier. Ravenous and cruel, he had lived for eons before the men of the Old World landed on his continent’s eastern shores.
The cosmic beings who birthed the gods grew old and died, their ancient bodies fell to earth to become the mountains and valleys and primordial seas, but Thresh continued on, his unnatural life sustained by a bottomless, ravenous thirst for destruction. Before spoken word could give shape to his name, all living things knew his face—the skull of a beast, hateful and burning, gazing balefully down upon them. His malice was woven so deeply into his ancient form that it could never be purged, and he walked across the broken bodies of the vast things he had outlived, devouring the souls of their sad and forgotten children.
Lucian didn’t even see his opponent before a razor whip sliced cleanly into his shoulder, knocking him from his mount and crippling his shooting arm. Senna leapt for her lover’s pistol, but she too was struck low by the devil’s power, walls of flame erupting from the earth as laughter echoed from his bleached, lidless skull. His voice rattled within their heads, a deep and primordial howl, and Lucian saw in his mind the beast sinking his blade deep into Senna’s throat. The fight had lasted only seconds, and already Thresh had won.
The devil stood over Senna, flames within his ancient body twisting against the chill air, and he drew a jagged blade from somewhere inside of his ragged, billowing coat. Lucian had seen the skinned corpses of a dozen frontier towns on the way to Thresh’s den, and the piles of twitching muscle where unlucky wagon trains had drawn his hellish gaze. Lucian was prepared for the devil to take him, and always had been—but he would not let Senna share the fate of a young and foolish gunfighter.
And perhaps, momentarily amused after so many years of dark, sumptuous slaughter, that was why Thresh offered him a deal.
Such a simple thing, Lucian had thought. So easy to accept.
His soul for the life of the girl.
Then the shadow took hold, the hate and shame within the young marshal coming alive, hijacking his senses, his body corrupting before Senna’s pleading eyes. The bargain had been struck, the pact sealed. As Lucian’s vision turned to flame, he watched the monstrous devil he had been sent to hunt turn to Senna’s defenseless body—laughing hideously as he ripped out her heart.

The holy reverend of New Eden was little known or understood, but the rumors of his supposed power had spread even as far as the eastern territories. A man who could speak with the dead, as many liked to say, though few did survive the pilgrimage into the unexplored northwest to see if the rumors were true. Those who struck out for New Eden never returned—and now, looking down upon the enclave from a nearby hill, Lucian understood why.
Untouched by the elements and unspoiled by the beasts of the forest, the modest church commune was small and thriving, surrounded by bountiful crops and quaint homes that seemed to swell with life. Children ran across dirt roads as shopkeeps and townspeople passed peacefully by, far removed from demons and Outsiders, gorgons and giants, and the machinations of bandit clans that should have long ago picked every building clean. It was a place from a storybook, bright and clean. Lucian wondered for a moment if he had lost the duel with the demon already, and this was his reward.
He descended from the hill, and the villagers turned to see the newcomer in their midst.
“You’ve come to meet the holy reverend?” asked a fresh-faced young man.
Lucian nodded.
“Then hallelujah, stranger,” he smiled. “You’ve come home.”
No town in Lucian’s memory accurately compared to the sights of New Eden. A bakery filled his nostrils with the scent of fresh bread, as young women danced and fiddlers played in the street. Songs of salvation drifted from mead halls that had never for a moment known the Old West’s violent madness. Ordinary people greeted him as he passed by, offering him food and water, asking where he came from and where he was going.
The demon raged inside him, but in the light of day Lucian could overpower it, control it. And there was something about this place that calmed him, in a way he hadn’t felt in a long, long time.
“No one fears death here,” someone spoke. Lucian turned to find a kindly old man, dressed in a modest preacher’s frock, possessing a youthful glint in his now-faded eyes. “A fear of death is a fear of life. We accept death for what it is, and live a life free from the snares of its uncertainty.”
Lucian liked the way the man spoke. His speech lilted softly, like a song.
“I don’t know if I believe that,” replied Lucian.
The man smiled. “Of course.”
He continued on, walking in no particular direction. Lucian followed.
“We live in a land of angels and demons. We see their influence every day, for good or evil, and the calamities they wreak. The world is old, but many of our gods are still alive, watching over their progeny even now.”
He motioned to the center of town, where a picturesque church with white walls and a blue roof stood. The building was immaculate—even the stained glass windows seemed to glow, polished to a radiant sheen. Villagers milled in and out, talking and laughing, as children crowded around their legs. The building could have been erected yesterday.
“And they bestow the faithful with many gifts. The gift of life, the gift of love.”
The man turned to Lucian, a knowing smile upon his face.
“And the gift of death.”
Something rang curiously in Lucian’s ears. It was the way the man said death, the way the sound was shaped by his lips, much like a secret whispered to a lover. The passersby, too, had become still, their eyes closed as if dreaming, and they only opened them again when the odd melody had finished washing over them.
“Meet me inside, when you’re ready,” he said. “They call me Reverend Karthus, and I have so much I want to show you.”

The interior of the church was clean and white—its pews were polished, its pulpit modest. Karthus shooed the rest of his congregation outside, and they looked lovingly at Lucian as they passed. Some whispered a passing “welcome,” others clapped their hands together in quiet reverence. To Lucian, New Eden seemed to be a sleeping child that hadn’t yet awoken to the monsters in the world outside its door. The fact that it stood at all was testament to whatever powers Karthus claimed to possess, real or not.
Deep within Lucian, the shadow raged. He once again felt the itch beneath his skin, the flames bubbling up from some dark corner of his soul, and his mouth twisting into a forceful, mocking grin. But something was different—the creature was frightened, and Lucian couldn’t understand why.
“My, my,” Karthus spoke, a smile still crossing his face. “We can’t have that now, can we?”
The reverend picked up a small, black-bound book, emblazoned with the symbol of a golden key. With a gentle wave and some intangible words, the demon was suddenly silenced—but not before Lucian felt something else, something the creature had not done before. It whispered softly in his ear, the low and crackling whimper of a dying fire.
“They are monsters.”
“In a land of angels and demons, I wonder what you will become?” continued Karthus, resting a faded stole over his shoulders. The reverend then motioned for Lucian to kneel before him, and to Lucian’s surprise, he did.
“Why do you fight this battle? What do you have to gain?”
Lucian did not answer. The light had begun to fade, as New Eden’s hopeful music slowly twisted into a strange, lopsided dirge. Karthus nodded slowly, his smile widening, and Lucian kept his eyes locked ahead. A curious skittering echoed from the floorboards behind him. It was a sound he knew well.
“We give so much of ourselves to fear,” spoke Karthus, his voice growing deeper and darker. “And you have given most of all.”
Energies swirled about the old man—luminescent blues and greens in the rough shapes of friends Lucian had lost, things he had killed. They danced against the rafters of the now decrepit church, its paint peeling away to reveal black, moldering rot.
Lucian sensed the presence of at least a dozen shapes behind him. Some were crouched on all fours, others clambered softly over the warped and ruined pews, and still more waited outside the church, their human disguises melting away. Lucian now knew why the town lay untouched, why its people seemed so good and kind: they weren’t people at all. Or if they had been, they’d been dead a very long time.
Lucian’s hands moved slowly towards his pistols.
The reverend now loomed over him, lifting off the ground as he gripped the book with the golden key, his sermon exploding into a rapturous chorus of overlapping voices: “Our souls will be purified in the cool waters of death! Our broken spirits will be repaired, the things we lost shall be returned!”
The creatures behind Lucian crawled forward, slavering and starved, as Karthus floated ever upwards, his arms outstretched, ascending into the musty air. Images of Lucian’s past twirled all around him, men and women whose deaths played out again and again.
A familiar voice brushed against his ear, almost a word, but not.
“Do you hear her?” asked Karthus.
Lucian listened.

The sound was crackling sage, the ashes of a campfire, the striking of a match. It spoke of Senna’s death, and how Lucian had fallen into despair. For years the ruined marshal had wandered from place to place, dead in everything but name and emptied of all joy. As each day had passed, another small, cruel thing filled his mind, and the shadow had grown wild within him, his inner darkness yearning to seize control. Any offer of peace had to be investigated, no matter how dangerous or foolish.
Lucian had heard of a man who could speak with the dead, and gone without question. He had given himself to a shadow that took the shape of his own monstrous hatred, and allowed it to rule him utterly.
Lucian found himself alone with the demon—away from the church, and far from the streets of New Eden. The two stood apart, facing one another, in a moonlit field of white flowers. Lucian could feel the cool air against his skin. He could see the distant lights of a town, high in the mountains, and the moon hanging low in the sky. Beneath the demon the flowers burned, but the creature stood calmly, its face twisted into a familiar, ravenous grin.
Lucian breathed. So much of himself had been lost to the shadow—to Thresh, and the spectre of the unforgiving west. But he still ruled his own soul, half-corrupted as it was, and the shadow was a part of it—a part of him.
It drew closer, slowly, each step burning more flowers away.
Lucian reached out his hand, and the shadow rested a charred limb upon it. It whispered: “Would you cast your enemies into the fire?”
Lucian was silent. His skin crackled at the shadow’s touch, but he said nothing. It already had its answer.
It whispered once more, now in Lucian’s own voice, as its ashen body bonded with his mortal flesh: “Then we will go together.”

“Do you hear the love you have lost?” Karthus sang.
Lucian drew his pistol. “No.”
His arm elongated, stretching into the hellish cannon of the demon within him, and a ray of unholy flame ripped through Karthus’s forehead. As the preacher’s body fell, Lucian spun around, melting into shadow as a screaming ghoul leapt at him from one of the broken pews. He fired again, obliterating the creature, and launched a third shot into the crowd of its shriveled, wide-mouthed brethren—the fiddlers and bakers, dancers and farmers now shrunken, twisted, and hollow. The bullet exploded among them, blasting their bodies apart, and at once a swelling sea of horrors flowed in through the doors, windows, and broken cracks in the church’s ruined facade. New Eden had risen to greet him.
Lucian’s body gave way to the shadow, and it lifted its arms high as a stream of liquid fire tore through the crowd of monsters. The demon shrieked with joy, its voice melding with Lucian’s own, and it soared into the air as hellfire sprayed in every direction. Burning wood fell from the ceiling as shots tore outward through the church’s brittle walls and across the sprawling wastes of New Eden, setting the town alight. Ghouls shrieked in terror, their hordes turned to flee, but the demon was quick—springing through the crumbling roof and into the delipidated streets, firing the cannons of hell into the creatures’ still-open mouths.
Then, Lucian surged outwards from within the demon’s form, its body bursting into ashen mist. He clapped his pistols together as the undead hordes scattered in every direction. Artificial magics woven into the gunmetal bubbled, their intricate filigrees spiraling outward as the barrels hungrily fused. A concentrated beam of light surged from somewhere within them, cutting across the plains as screaming undead melted beneath its fury.
Soon the light faded, and the metal unwound itself as Lucian scanned his surroundings.
He waited. The shadow within him was quiet now. No more ghouls lept from the burning, derelict homes, or rose from the beds of rotten crops. Karthus lay dead as his church collapsed around him, flames consuming even the memory of his fell magic. Though from the corner of his eye Lucian swore he could see the old preacher, grinning among a crowd of New Eden’s townsfolk, as the burning roof finally caved in over their heads.
The former marshal turned back towards civilization and began to walk, the shadow grinning close behind.
He’d been close to speaking with Senna again. Closer than he’d ever been. But Lucian no longer needed the comforts of old rituals and incantation—he would see his love once more, one way or another, the day he was lowered into the dirt. That was the rightful end of a true and valiant gunfighter. Until then, there were terrible things lurking in the darkness, which could only imagine the demon soon to knock upon their doors.
Out there, somewhere in the wild expanses of the great frontier, Lucian had a devil to kill.
The Road to Ruin

When I was a child, my brother asked me: “Does the wind flee, or does it follow?”
For a long time, I chose to run, for death followed at my back. The people hunting me once called me their friend. Now, when they draw their blades, they call me murderer.
One by one, they find me. The first was a swordsman of strength renowned throughout Ionia. When we were young, I saw him cleave a tree in two with a single swing of his blade.
But he could not cleave the wind.
The second was a warrior of speed and grace. Agile and cunning, she outran the clever foxes in the woods.
But she could not outrun the wind.
The third was a man of compassion. He taught me the meaning of patience when I was just a prideful child.
My guide. My friend.
My brother.
How long can I keep going? Even the strongest wind eventually dies.
But until then, I will not flee. I will follow the truth. Let the wind guide my blade, and lead me to the true murderer—the one responsible for the blood on my hands.
The Twilight Star

Ariel Lawrence

I have too many questions I want to ask her. I sneak a side-glance as we walk. She’s looking straight ahead. I watch her gaze sweep back and forth across the far perimeter of the park, her red hair catching the last scraps of the afternoon light with each step. Does she see something? Is this the way she normally patrols? Is she bored? Why is she here? I can’t believe she wanted to come. Why did she come? I quicken my pace to keep up.
“Fortun—Sarah,” I say, remembering.
She doesn’t look away from the path ahead, so I keep going.
“Thanks for coming. I know this was a kinda last-minute ask. Lulu draws weird stuff sometimes. A lot, actually. And the other Star Guardians from your team—”
“Ez really does have detention, Lux,” she says.
“Oh,” I stammer. “It’s cool.” I can feel the pink in my cheeks. I tug on the tips of my gloves. She turns to look at me, a smug grin softening her face.
“He wanted to be here,” she says. “Soraka too, but Pantheon’s was short staffed. And tonight is Syndra’s astronomy class at the university—”
“—And Ahri?” I blurt out too quickly.
Sarah’s smile tightens. “She’s been busy.”
“No worries,” I say, looking for a way to change the subject. In the middle of the park, Janna pushes Poppy and a free-loading Jinx on a squeaky merry-go-round. Lulu sways idly in a close-by swing set, its metal chains clang softly, like lonely windchimes. There’s no one else in the park besides us. “It’s pretty quiet.”
“Like you said, it’s probably nothing,” she says casually.
I take the folded slip of paper out of my pocket. The frayed edge where I tore it out of Lulu’s notebook flutters in the breeze. The shapes of the playground equipment and power lines surrounding Valoran City’s metro park were clear enough, but it was the dozens of circles in the sky that worried me. Poppy said that it was too warm in physics class, and Lulu was just doodling to stay awake.
“Look!” Lulu shouts from the swing, snapping me out of my thoughts. She is at the top of the swing’s arc, gesturing excitedly at the horizon. A bright spot has risen just over the silhouette of the skyline. “Twilight star! I saw it first.”
I let out a breath I didn’t realize I was holding. It’s just a star. Stars can’t hurt us.
“The twilight star is not a real star,” Poppy groans. “Technically it’s a planet.”
“Janna said everything has starlight in it,” Lulu argues back.
Janna nods her head in agreement.
“What are you gonna wish for, Loops?” Jinx juggles Shiro and Kuro absently as the merry-go-round spins. Lulu pumps her legs on the swing, pushing it higher.
“More stars!” she shouts. “I want to see more stars.”
“But it’s not dark yet,” Jinx says. “The other stars aren’t out yet.”
“Doesn’t matter.” Lulu pumps her legs harder. “The other stars are always there no matter what. Even if you can’t see them.”
“Rocket-breath is right,” Poppy says, hiding her reluctant agreement with Jinx by examining a non-existent scuff on her hammer. “It needs to get really dark before you can see the stars in the city. It’s not like at the camp.”
I cup my hands together and shout back to them, “You’re all right.” Jinx opens her mouth to argue, but shrugs and takes the win.
I turn back to Sarah.
“Are they always like this?” she asks. I’m sure she’s thinking about us compared to her own team. How this kind of talk would never happen if it was only them. They would just get right down to business. Search the park and be done. I can’t tell if she’s disappointed or annoyed or both.
“You mean are they always this argumentative?” I offer. “No, I mean, well, yes… sometimes—”
“This innocent,” she says, quietly.
“Well, you have Ahri to lead you. Of course you always know what you’re doing. Us, well… All they’ve had is me.”
“Innocent isn’t always a bad thing.” She has that faraway look on her face again, like she’s trying to remember a dream she had a long time ago. She nods her head slowly as if agreeing on the memory. “Yes, that’s who you remind me of.”
“Me? Remind you of Ahri?!” I ask, trying desperately to not sound desperate. Does she really think I’m like Ahri? Which part? Maybe a younger Ahri? I mean, she should know, she’s Ahri’s lieutenant. Did Ahri have multiple lieutenants on her old team? Maybe if our teams join, I can be another one, like Sarah?
“No.” Sarah lets out a sharp laugh. I don’t know if she can read minds, but my hope deflates like an untied balloon.
“Someone else. You remind me of someone else,” she says, softening. “Someone I lost a long time ago. She had pink hair too.” She looks me over again, and I try not to squirm under the scrutiny. “Come to think of it, you’re also too loyal for your own good… and such a dreamer. You’re kinda a mix of all of them,” she says.
Them? The team you lost? Is this a bad thing? Who were they? I add ten more questions I want to ask her to the list running constantly in my head.
How did it happen?
“Lux! Sarah! Look.” Lulu yells happily, interrupting my thoughts before I can get any further. “My wish!”
We look back at the distant playground. I run through a quick check. Lulu. Jinx. Poppy. Janna. Still safe and sound. The twilight has softened all of them, making them seem younger than they really are. The street lamps in the park click on in an unsettling coincidence. Hovering above the team are a swarm of twinkling lights. The team looks like they’re caught in a magical dream.
“Loops, It’s like Short Stop said, it’s not dark enough…” The creaking of the merry-go-round slows to a stop as Janna, Poppy, and Jinx look up as well. It’s getting darker fast. Too fast. I can barely see the trees around the edge of the park. Sarah and I start walking back toward the playground more quickly.
“Those aren’t stars,” Sarah says. I squint to get a better look. The points of light waver, almost glistening. As we get closer I can see what Sarah means. Dozens of thin translucent spheres reflect the light from the street lamps. Bubbles? They were… bubbles? I stuff Lulu’s drawing into the cuff of my glove.
“I don’t think the twilight star heard you right, Lulu,” Poppy says. “Those are bubbles.”
They aren’t just bubbles. One of them floats down toward Poppy, almost as if it was following the sound of her voice. Poppy steps back, letting it drift toward the metal railing of the merry-go-round.
The hushed silence is interrupted by a snort-laugh from Jinx. “C’mon. They’re harmless—”
A trail of bubbles begins to close in on her. I reach for my wand as I start running. “Jinx!”
I throw the staff out ahead of me. It and a prismatic rainbow of starlight just graze the top of Jinx’s pigtails before returning to my hand. A sphere of multicolored light covers Jinx and Poppy. A few bubbles bounce off the barrier and pop against the swing set leaving behind a swirl of dark mist, fluttering black shapes—bugs perhaps, or moths?—and a long, high-pitched laugh, like the delighted cackle of a child.
“That can’t be good, right?” Jinx whisper-yells. “Let’s pop these bad boys!”
“My thoughts exactly.” A double shot of Sarah’s twin pistols fire before she can finish her sentence. A wave of bubbles pop in a shower of black haze and twisted butterflies.
“What’s inside doesn’t look that great either,” Poppy says.
“Don’t let them touch you.” Janna’s eyes glow lavender. A breeze picks up in the park as she begins to rise off the ground. The air current gathers fallen leaves as it begins to draw the bubbles together. Janna corrals them and the darkness they contain into a dense pack. Each of them pushes against each other, almost as if they were annoyed at being restrained.
The high-pitched laugh stops short and is quickly replaced by an annoyed groan. The noise echoes around us, setting my teeth on edge. In the center of the pack of toxic bubbles that Janna gathered, a thin circle takes shape. The circle opens into a portal, letting long tendrils snake out from some dark dimension. One unsettling squid eye opens, followed by a second. The gelatinous blob unfolds into some cross between an evil octopus and demonic jellyfish.
“Take it down,” Sarah yells. Shiro and Kuro fire eagerly. Poppy twists around, pulling her hammer back for a long, arcing hit. She growls through the effort as the hammer swings around. In a resounding smack, it connects with the bubble mass, knocking the now angry and disoriented jellyfish out of the center. The malcontent blob drifts for a moment, but collects itself and the scattered bubble pack. They move purposefully toward Sarah.
“Sarah, get down,” I yell. I can feel the heavy power of pure starlight channel through my staff, vibrating the bones in my fingers and arm. The creature darts around, hiding behind bubbles. I fire in a beam of white-hot light. The little jellyfish slips between the bubbles and I miss. I try to get closer, but it feels like time is standing still.
“Loops, no!” Jinx yells.
It’s too late. From out of nowhere, a tiny Lulu pushes Sarah out of the way. Sarah lands hard, but rolls onto her back, both barrels blasting above her.
One bubble escapes the pack above. It floats down, straining to get closer. It breaks against Lulu’s cheek in a wet pop. The darkness seeps out, expanding, and in the space of two heartbeats, Lulu is enveloped by an inky cloud. Her eyes close as she crumples to the ground in a small heap. I dive for Lulu, scooping her up in my arms. More bubbles pop above me as Sarah and Jinx finish off the last of them. A portal opens above the dark jellyfish. The maniacal laughter gets louder and the little beast floats toward the opening, almost as if was buoyed by the sound. As it crosses the portal’s threshold, it disappears, taking the remains of the dark magic with it.
I bring my ear down to Lulu’s face. She’s breathing, slow and even… is she asleep?
“Lulu!” I shake her by the shoulders. Lulu lets out a soft moan and her eyes flutter for a second. I bring my wand up, the brightness is near blinding. Lulu’s closed eyes flinch. “Lulu, by Starlight, wake up!”
“Lost. They were lost.” Lulu’s voice is barely a whisper. Her eyes close tighter against the light, and her lip quivers. It’s as if she’s stuck in a nightmare. “Dark now,” she says.
Lulu sits bolt upright, her blue eyes wide open now. She looks past all of us, like we’re not there, like she’s seeing through us to somewhere else. Like she’s somewhere else.
“She’s on her way,” Lulu says.
“She? Who, Lulu? Who’s on their way?” This is big. One blaring thought shuts out all the others in my brain. Could it be her? Is Ahri on her way? I bite my lip. I look around at Janna, Poppy, Jinx, and finally Sarah.
“Ahri!” I say. “Ahri will know.”
“No,” Sarah says.
“Of course she will.” I push off her muted reply, trying to keep a smile of optimism for the others. “Can you call her, Sarah?”
“I can’t.” Sarah won’t look at me.
“Wait, why?”
“We’re not talking right now,” she says quietly.
“Sarah, I think this is more important than—”
“—The slumber party.” Sarah interrupts looking me straight in the eye. “That night. She was supposed to come. At the last minute, she said there was something she had to take care of. Something she wouldn’t let me help with. I thought she was just being…”
“Ahri,” I finish as she nods her head in confirmation. “You haven’t seen her since?”
Sarah shakes her head no, tightening her grip on the pair of pistols in her lap. Just before Sarah looks away, I see it—a flicker of panic. I can feel my heart thump harder in my chest.
A hundred more questions flood my brain. My stomach tightens.
What could make Sarah panic like this? Where did Ahri go? What’s coming?
Are we strong enough to face it?
Am I strong enough?
I want to ask her, but I can’t.
The Whispering Doodad

Graham McNeill

Let me tell you about my glade.
On a clear night—like this night, in fact—when the moon is full and ripe, silver light glitters on star-shaped leaves with hair-fine fronds like threads of silk, and night-blooming Seleneia render my glade a magical wonderland.
A traveler might catch the scent of far distant continents on the wind. Only hints, to be sure, but such hints! A bouquet of desert spices, sun-baked stone, and salt from the crests of racing waves, mingled with the evergreen sap-scent of highland firs. You might think such a turn of phrase overly whimsical, words that might tumble from the lips of a hopeless romantic, or a lovelorn poet. You’d be right, of course, but that doesn’t make them any less true.
And while we’re on the subject of romantics—an artistic soul might, if they came here at just the right time, see dancing patterns in the moonglow dappling through the forest canopy. Their eye might follow it around, gradually sensing an order to the play of light and shadow across the bark of a tree, or in the ripples upon a pool of water. A pattern that almost looks like it might just form a doorway of sorts, if only it would complete.
But no matter how those patterns swirl and dance, they never fully coalesce into a whole. Almost never, that is. After all, the magic of these lands is skittish—with good reason—and doesn’t reveal its secrets to just anyone. We nature spirits are drawn to places like this. They nurture us, as we in turn nurture them. You can find us all over the world—in some places more than others, yes, but if there’s magic bubbling up, like as not you’ll find a spirit like me.
I flatter myself that the glade I inhabit is more infused with it than most other places in this land that mortals call Noxus—if you know the right way to look. Most of this world’s inhabitants have forgotten how to see, how to really see, but there are others, a whole race of them, in fact, who never forgot. They’re called yordles, and they’re not exactly from this world. I’m friends with a lot of them.
Two of them are approaching now. It sounds like they’re trying to get back to their kin, but they’re having trouble with the—for want of a better word—key that’s supposed to help them find their way home. You see, the low roads they travel don’t run on the surface of this world. Nor do they travel straight, like those of the men who call the lands hereabouts home. They curve and loop, swirling all around the place like a crazy knot you can’t ever untie.
Most yordles know how to travel them relatively easily, but these two?
Let’s just say they’re not the best-suited traveling companions. I can hear them, just beyond the spirit veil, bickering like a pair of hungry foxes.
They’ll be here soon, but I wonder if they know they’re not the only ones approaching.
Mortals are coming this way. Warriors. Armored in steel and stone, bearing instruments of death. I don’t like them, but don’t misunderstand my reasons. I understand death is necessary, a vital part of the natural cycle of being, but these people only take, and don’t give back. They pave over the land with roads that do not curve. They use their axes and saws to clear the land of growing things. They are an empire of angles and order. Nearby trees bend away from them in response, but they don’t notice, of course.
Mortals almost always miss their impact on the world around them.

A woman with long brown hair is the first to enter my wooded glade. She taps spurred heels to her horse’s flanks, and rides in a circle, scanning the treeline and ground for signs of life that might mean her harm.
Her eyes are cold, and she surveys the beauty of the trees like a woodsman sharpening an axe.
She halts her mount in the middle of the glade and sits in silence. She hears birdsong, the sighing of the forest, and the burbling stream flowing over time-smoothed rocks. Most people who come here are calmed by these sounds, their souls replenished simply by being in nature.
But not her.
None of the forest’s energy touches her, and I don’t know whether to feel sad or angry. The woman is patient, and only after several minutes pass does she lift her arm and spread her fingers wide. Moments later, a dozen riders appear at the edge of the glade. Their horses are exhausted, flanks lathered white and heads bowed. These animals have carried their riders a great distance, so I extend a little magic into their tired limbs. They whinny and toss their manes in gratitude.
A mustachioed man clad in leather and furs rides towards the woman. A bronze circlet holds his long dark hair from his face, and his tunic has been cut to show off his muscular build. A wolf-pelt cloak mantles his shoulders, and a pair of circle-grip axes are slung at his back. Like the woman, his gaze makes me fear what he might do to the trees.
Yes, I think I dislike him even more than the woman.
“What took you so long, Tamara?” he says. “Afraid we’ll be ambushed?”
She ignores his questions. “We should make camp here, Draven. Fresh water and plentiful wood. It’s broad and wide, too, so there’s limited avenues of approach.”
“Spoken like a true Noxian warmason.”
“You say that like it’s a bad thing.”
She slides from her saddle, and as soon as her boots hit the ground, I recoil from the stone in her veins, the iron in her soul. The sounds in the glade dim, but none of the humans notice.
“I want to reach the capital before we die of old age,” says Draven. “The fighting in Basilich was fun, but I need to get back to the arena and put these axes to good use.”
“You also want to go back and tell Darius you’d rather his army advance without a warmason carefully scouting the way?”
“We’re in no danger,” says Draven. “Not in the empire’s heartland.”
She folds her arms. “You heard what happened to Wintory outside Drekan?”
“No,” shrugs Draven, “but you’re going to tell me, aren’t you?”
She looks at him, then sighs and shakes her head. “What would be the point? It’s not about you, so you’re not going to care.”
I listen to them trade insults back and forth, but am confused at how the words they say don’t match the shimmering colors of their auras. It’s a source of great confusion to me that mortals spend so much time saying things they do not mean, and feeling things they do not express.
There’s an honesty to nature—albeit a bloody one—you can count on.

It’s nightfall when the yordles get here.
I feel the irresistible call of their key, and push a little of my power into the spirit realm to open the way. One of the silverbark trees shifts her branches windward slightly, and the last rays of sunset complete a glowing amber pattern on the gnarled knots of her mossy trunk. Shadow, light and ridged bark combine to form an endless loop that, from a certain angle and a certain height, looks like a portal into a land of eternal sunrise.
Whispers and song echo from the arbor in the heart of the tree. The Noxians are busy with their horses, and the animals make enough noise that the humans don’t hear it. It sounds like the winds are speaking, passing secrets between the trees. Maybe they are—you can never really know what the winds are saying. Well, maybe the blue bird of the seas knows, but she doesn’t roam far from the sunken city these days.
The grass around the base of the silverbark ripples in a warm breeze that carries a multitude of stories from another realm. I’ve heard hundreds of them, but the yordles have an inexhaustible supply, and I never tire of learning of their travels.
There’s a soft pop of air, like a bubble bursting on the surface of a lake…
…and two diminutive forms tumble out from the tree. They roll into the high grass, looking surprised to find themselves in a forest glade. One of them immediately picks herself up, and brings her big cannon to bear. She spins around. Left then right. She draws a bead on a rabbit with a half-chewed ear, poking a twitching nose from its burrow.
“Did you do this?” she asks.
The rabbit doesn’t answer. But then rabbits are stoic. You want a secret kept, but have to tell someone? Tell a rabbit, they’ll take it to their grave.
I know this yordle—she’s called Tristana, and she looks mad. Like she’s ready to march off to fight, but forgot which way the war was. Her purple skin is flushed a deeper shade than normal, and her white hair is swept back in a tight ponytail.
She hefts her cannon and aims it towards the rabbit.
It hops forward, unfazed by the threat.
“I won’t ask again,” says Tristana, “and Boomer never misses!”
The rabbit twitches its nose, cool as winter frost.
Tristana’s traveling companion sits up, a tiny, winged faerie circling her head. Ah, Lulu and Pix. Her wild purple hair billows in a wind that only seems to affect her, and her tall hat sits at a funny angle. It’s slipped over her eyes, and she taps around her with a curling stick.
“I’ve gone blind!” she says. “That’s new.”
Tristana keeps her gaze locked on the rabbit, and holds up a hand to silence Lulu, but her friend doesn’t see it. Lulu gets up and walks in a circle, tapping the ground in front of her. The flowers duck, and the buzzing glitterbugs scatter before Pix can pluck their wings. Lulu’s faerie companion is cute, but he’s got a strange sort of humor. I can’t ever tell if he’s really funny or rude. Maybe it’s both.
“Tristana! Are you there?” says Lulu.
Tristana sighs in exasperation. She taps two fingers to her eyes, then points them at the rabbit with a stern look.
“I’m watching you, flopsy,” she warns. Her jaw drops as she finally notices the humans in the glade. She darts over to Lulu and pushes her back against the tree. The portal they fell from is already fading as the light changes.
“Humans,” she hisses.
“Where?” says Lulu. “It’s all dark! But then, sometimes I see more with my eyes closed.”
Tristana sighs, and pulls the brim of Lulu’s hat up.
Lulu blinks, and hugs Tristana.
“It’s a miracle!”
“Quiet,” hisses Tristana, and Pix darts down to zap a tiny spike of violet light at her cheek.
Tristana bats the faerie away with a grimace.
I bend the shadows around the trees a little. Humans sometimes have a hard time seeing yordles, at least as they really are, but I think the woman with the cold eyes might be sharper than most, and I don’t want to see these two get hurt.
Tristana glances around the tree. The Noxians are making camp, but I’m relieved to see they’re not lighting a fire. Draven is grumbling about that, but Tamara is adamant they not broadcast their presence. I make sure all the wood in this glade is green and not good for fires. Doesn’t stop everyone who comes this way from trying their luck with an axe or saw… but most of them.
Tristana nods to herself.
“They haven’t seen us,” she whispers. “Good.”
“They look friendly,” says Lulu, peeking over Tristana’s shoulder. “I think we should say hello.”
“They’re Noxians,” replies Tristana, and I feel her exasperation. “You don’t talk to Noxians unless you want to lose your head.”
“Why? Do they like collecting heads?”
Tristana rolls her eyes, finally taking the time to examine her surroundings. I lift up some flowers and wave to her. She can’t help but feel the magic in the glade, and waves back. Some people say Tristana’s all business, and so very serious, but I know better.
She looks up at the tree and gives it an experimental rap with her knuckles. She taps gently around the bark, before finally hearing a booming echo from deep inside the tree. Some of the Noxians look up, and she winces. I creak some branches, and persuade the water to splash playfully over the rocks. The Noxians return to their work.
Tristana nods and says, “Thanks,” before turning back to Lulu and asking, “Right, where’s the whispering key?”
“The what-now?”
“The thing we’ve been using to travel through all the portals…”
“Remind me, what did it look like?”
“It looked a little like a compass made of carved stone.”
“Oh, you mean my doodad.”
“Your…,” begins Tristana before settling on, “Yes. That’s what I mean.”
Lulu does a pirouette and pats herself down, checking pockets that seem to appear and disappear at random. She closes one eye, and bites her lip, pulling out coins, dice, chips of precious stones and glittering fluff. But nothing resembling a key.
“I just had it.”
“Yes, you did,” agrees Tristana through gritted teeth. “You used it to open the portal on the beach while we were running from that pack of cragwolves, after we’d dropped in on Poppy.”
“I like Poppy, but she’s so serious,” says Lulu, stomping around as if she’s marching on a parade ground. She pauses to stare at Tristana. “Wait! Are you and her actually the same yordle?”
“No, of course we’re not,” sighs Tristana. “Now, will you hurry up, please?”
“You could be, you know. Same hair, and that little furrow just above your nose when you get mad. See, there it is!”
Getting angry with Lulu won’t do any good. It would be like chasing a cub that’s stolen your shoe; it’s all part of a fun game. I send a cooling breeze to ruffle Tristana’s white hair, but it doesn’t seem to help.
“The whispering… I mean, your doodad? Can you just get it for me?”
“Oh, right, yes, I was looking for that, wasn’t I?”
“Yes. Yes, you were.”
Lulu sighs, making a theatrical show of befuddlement. She looks up at the darkening sky and snaps her fingers.
“No wonder I can’t find it,” she says. “It’s too dark!”
She lifts her crooked staff, and Tristana’s eyes widen as she realizes what Lulu’s about to do. But it’s too late to stop her.
A stream of glitter bursts from the end of Lulu’s staff and explodes like a swarm of dancing fireflies overhead. The glade is bathed in the glow of a thousand stars and a secret gathering of moons.
“Aha!” says Lulu, finally pulling out something from a fold in her tunic. It looks like a cross between a budding seedpod and a curling seashell. A rainbow of colorful lines swirls on its surface, and what look like tiny tadpoles swim inside it. “Here it is.”
Tristana looks horrified as the light from Lulu’s staff floods the glade, but before she can react, a spinning axe blade flashes between the two of them and buries itself in the bark of the tree.
Lulu almost jumps out of her skin, and the seedpod-seashell flies from her hand.
The silverbark cries out in pain, so I pour magic up through her roots and into the heartwood. Vivid amber sap oozes from the gouge in the wounded tree’s bark, pinning the axe in place.
Lulu’s doodad sails through the air to land somewhere in the middle of the glade. It rolls into the tall grass, and I feel its primal energies pulse outwards in a rippling wave.
“Oops,” says Lulu.
A veritable flurry of black-shafted arrows slices through the undergrowth as the Noxians respond the only way they know how.
“Get back!” shouts Tristana, swinging Boomer around and dragging Lulu away to find cover behind a moldy log covered in moss and ivy.
An arrow punches into the rotten wood. Another splits the night a hair’s breadth from Tristana’s ear. Lulu squeals, and Pix darts to Tristana’s side. Fresh wildflowers of blue, gold, and crimson instantly bloom on the dead wood.
Tristana fires Boomer. Blam, blam, blam!
Everyone ducks. Noxians, rabbits, and glitterbugs. Even the worms burrow deeper.
Boomer’s cannonballs streak burning streamers across the glade, and spouts of water leap from the stream to cool them as they ricochet from the rocks. The last thing we want in the glade is a fire!
“Spread out!” yells Draven, running to retrieve his axe from the silverbark’s trunk.
The Noxians are quick to obey.
Say what you want about the Noxians—and I’ve heard plenty of humans passing through my glade who have a lot to say about Noxians—they’re disciplined! Tamara runs to her horse and draws a slender rapier from a saddle scabbard.
She grins at Draven and says, “No chance of an ambush, eh?”
Draven shrugs, and his aura gives no sense of any alarm or care at being proven wrong. All I sense is glee at the chance to spill blood.
Yes, I definitely dislike him more than Tamara.
The Noxian warriors spread through the glade, moving forward in pairs, as archers loose steady volleys of arrows to keep the two yordles from moving. I know nothing of war, but even I can see the deadly tactics of the Noxians will see Lulu and Tristana dead.
I’m all for fun and games, but I don’t want anyone killed…
Magic surges through the ground in a powerful wave. I weave loops of grass that tangle the feet of the first Noxian soldier, a great brute of a man with a double-bladed axe. He goes down hard, slicing open his arm as he falls flat on his face. His companion trips over him, dropping her sword, and the man cries out in pain as it stabs a handspan into his buttock.
An amberwood tree twists its trunk and whips its willowy branches around like a catapult. It smacks a crouching archer in the face, and he topples backwards. The arrow he was poised to loose goes straight up in the air. A careful gust of wind, and it plunges down between his legs, tearing his britches open at the crotch. He yelps in alarm and scrambles back on his haunches.
Tristana fires again, and Pix jumps onto her head, punching the air and shouting squeaking insults with every shot. Flowers fall from the air above the tiny faerie, and I see more than one arrow deflected around the yordle gunner by their shimmering petals.
“Can you see your doodad?” shouts Tristana over the cannon’s noise.
Lulu spins her staff around, and springs onto its shepherd’s crook handle. She shades her eyes with one hand, and peers through the fading illumination. An arrow slashes towards her, but the coiled point of her hat smacks it from the air.
“Nope, but then I don’t know what it looks like now.”
“What do you mean you don’t know what it looks like now?”
Lulu spins in a spiral down her staff, and daisies spring up around her as she lands. “The doodad’s a bit flighty, you see. Every time I put it down, it likes to try out a different shape.”
Tristana groans as Lulu sends a blazing shaft of sparkling light through the trees. A pair of Noxians are hurled through the air. They land in the stream, and I immediately mob them with a knot of frogs. The tongues of bucket-frogs are coated with slime that will give them waking dreams, and ought to send them to the moon and back.
“So it could look like anything?” asks Tristana.
“Pretty much,” agrees Lulu. “Just look for it out of the corner of your eye. It only changes if it thinks you’re looking right at it.”
“I never thought I’d say this, but I wish Heimer was here right now,” says Tristana. “We could really use his hex-goggles.”
“Don’t be silly,” says Lulu. “That’d take all the fun out of this.”
Tristana spins on her heel to fire at a Noxian leaping towards her. Her cannonball punches him square in the chest and he flies back into a thorny bush that suddenly gets a lot more thorny.
“Fun?” she says. Then she grins. “You know what, you’re right. Let’s have some fun with these numpties. Grab on.”
Lulu laughs and throws her arms around Tristana’s neck as if she’s about to give her a big sloppy kiss. Tristana fires again, and this time her cannon is aimed at the ground. The two yordles erupt from behind the flowery, arrow-studded log and arc over the heads of the advancing soldiers. The Noxians watch in open-mouthed surprise as the two yordles spin over their heads, giggling musically as they go.
Who knows what the Noxians are seeing? Something strange, no doubt. A yordle’s glamour is an inconstant thing, and even they don’t know how others see them most of the time.
Gleaming bolts corkscrew from Lulu’s staff, and everywhere they hit, Noxians are thrown from their feet in a spray of petals and sparks that burn like drops of venom. The two yordles land on the run, and while Tristana spins around, firing at any Noxians who rear their heads, Lulu scrambles around on all fours in search of her doodad.
“Here, doodad,” she whispers to the grass. “Pretty please, with sprinkles on top! I’ll let you take us somewhere you want to go next.”
The doodad—or whatever it’s really called—doesn’t respond, but I sense it rolling away from Lulu. Well, not really rolling, as such, more making itself be where she isn’t. It’s a thing of old and powerful magic, but not without a childish sense of whimsy. It’s like it thinks this is a fun game. Perhaps it is, as Lulu is laughing with delight, spinning around and bounding through the glade like a weasel chasing its own tail as she chases her doodad. It turns into a large snail as Lulu gets close to it. And when she takes her hand away, sticky, it turns into a puff of light before reappearing behind Lulu as a stick-man tottering away on mismatched legs.
Tristana’s keeping the Noxians’ heads down with a barrage of cannon fire. I hear Draven finally wrench his axe from the silverbark, its edge all gummy with sap. He turns and moves from cover to cover, stalking Tristana like a cat, all taut limbs and steely focus. He draws his arm back, ready to throw his other axe.
A squadron of buzzing wasps swoops in and swarms him as a battalion of angry squirrels drops from the trees. His axe flies wide of the mark, thudding back to earth where the Noxian horses used to be. Now there’s only a mess of hoofprints and a few discarded saddles. Draven spins around in a frenzy, pulling the scratching, biting squirrels from his arms and neck. Squirrels are the thugs of the forest. Rabbits might be stoic, but squirrels will bite your ear off as soon as your back’s turned.
Lulu’s not even looked up. She’s still running in circles and giggling like a child as she shoots puffs of light from her staff.
With an explosive burst of speed, Tamara breaks from cover and runs straight for Lulu. I use my magic to throw distractions in her path. Frantic moles dig holes before her, but she weaves between their hasty traps. The thorny stems of a hookbrush whip at her, but she skids under them. She looks around, starting to understand she has another enemy here—one she can’t see or fight.
“Gotcha!” cries Lulu, finally grabbing hold of her doodad. Now it looks like a knotted bunch of twigs held together by loops of grass and spiderwebs.
Tamara dives over a coiling root I rip up from the earth, and rolls to her feet. The last sparkles of Lulu’s starburst gleam on the rapier as Tamara pulls it back to strike.
And then Tristana’s there.
She hefts Boomer as if her cannon’s suddenly gotten heavier.
A lot heavier.
“That’s my friend, buster,” she says, and pulls the trigger.
The booming thunder of the cannon is deafening, and birds as far away as two rivers west take to the sky at the noise. A blazing tongue of fire erupts from the muzzle as a giant cannonball blasts out. The force of the recoil spins Tristana around, but that’s nothing compared to what it does to Tamara.
She flies backwards like she’s been punched by an angry stone golem. She vanishes into the trees, and I don’t think she’ll be getting up any time soon.
Then Tristana is hauled from her feet by the scruff of her neck. Boomer drops to the earth and Draven holds her up to his face with a bemused grin on his scratched and bleeding face.
“Now, what in the name of the Wolf are you?”
“Put me down, ya big oaf!” yells Tristana.
She kicks and swings her fists at him, but not even her pluck can overcome the length of his limbs. Draven cocks his head to one side, clearly wondering what he’s got his hands on.
“Hey, why don’t you pick on someone your own size?” yells Lulu, aiming her staff towards Draven. Swirling fireworks ripple up and down its length, but Draven doesn’t look impressed.
“Do your worst, shorty,” he says. “You ain’t got nothing can hurt Draven.”
The fireworks shoot out of Lulu’s staff in a storm of light.
And miss.
Draven laughs, spinning his axe up.
But then a tall shadow falls over him, and he slowly turns around.
That’s when he realizes Lulu didn’t miss at all.
The rabbit with the half-chewed ear looms over Draven, twice his height at least. It munches slowly on a carrot—a carrot that’s as long as Draven’s arm. He drops Tristana as the giant rabbit taps two stubby fingers of its paw to its eyes, then points them at Draven with a stern look.
Draven is a warrior, and has fought his share of monsters, but this is too much even for him. He turns and sprints for the trees, pausing only to scoop up his other axe as he goes. The rest of the Noxians have already fled, or are backing away slowly into the undergrowth at the sight of the giant rabbit. Something tells me they will find a different route for their master’s army.
Tristana turns to look at the rabbit with the half-chewed ear.
“Thanks,” she says, but the rabbit doesn’t reply. Like I said, stoic.
It turns and makes its way back to its burrow in a series of thudding hops. By the time it reaches the entrance, it’s more or less returned to its normal size. It squeezes into the burrow with a final waggle of its tail and a puff of earth.
Tristana slings Boomer over her shoulder. “Do you have your doodad?”
Lulu holds it up triumphantly. “My very naughty doodad. Shouldn’t run off like that!”
Tristana shakes her head and marches back to the tree they fell out of. Lulu skips after her as Pix buzzes overhead, riding a pair of wasps with a tiny squeal of delight.
Lulu catches up with Tristana and waves her doodad at the tree in what might be a predetermined pattern, or might just be her hoping for the best. Whatever it is, it works, and the leafy arbor reappears in the silverbark’s trunk. Sunrise over the land of the yordles spills into my moonlit glade. I feel its ancient magic, and I send a pulse of my own through the air, wishing my two friends interesting travels.
Lulu pauses and looks over her shoulder.
“Thank you,” she says, and I feel the boundless joy in her heart.
The beauty of my glade is made all the richer for it.
“Come on, we should get going,” says Tristana.
“Why are you in such a hurry?”
“We should be gone before the Noxians return.”
“I don’t think they’ll be coming back,” says Lulu with a wide grin.
The light of the portal swells outwards in a glowing, rippling spiral to envelop the yordles. Their forms blur, and their voices grow faint as they are drawn away once more. But I hear Tristana’s last words, and cold winds pass through the glade in a ripple of unease.
“They’re Noxians,” she says. “They always come back.”
The Will of the Dead

Laura Michet

Long before she became a Truth Bearer of her people, Illaoi had been an acolyte priestess at a Buhru temple on the coast. Every morning, she went down to the shoreline to exercise in the sun. She tried to focus on the principles her teachers held dear. Discipline. Motion. Strength.

She’d been alone on the beach one morning when the sea dropped low, lower than a low tide. The lookouts on the serpent-caller towers began ringing their alarm bells and pointing toward the horizon.

A Great Wave loomed, rushing toward shore with the strength to pulverize bone and rip swimmers out to sea.

In the moments after the alarms rang out, fear blanked Illaoi’s mind. Her teachers’ lessons abandoned her all at once. Do I have the time to escape? she wondered. Should I just stand here?

She glanced at the wave, then at the waterline. At her feet, she noticed a swarm of pink crabs. The wave had sucked the water away, and the crabs were frozen absolutely still on the wet rocks, paralyzed by sunshine and surprise and indecision.

Little creatures, too small to understand the fear they felt. A crab couldn’t do much to avoid a wave like that.

Illaoi could. She shook herself into action and sprinted to the temple gates just in time for the priestesses to slam them shut. As she perched on the temple’s parapet and watched the wave hit the shore, Illaoi thought about how she had stood in paralysis and fear.

I could have died. It was the closest she’d come to death in her sixteen years.

“I won’t do that again,” she told her teachers. Nagakabouros, the Mother Serpent, loved those who grew and changed. She had no sympathy for those who carried on as before while the wave bore down on them.

These days, something about the streets of Bilgewater reminded her of those frightened crabs.

It was noon. The sun was high and hot. Usually, the streets would be filled with sailors celebrating shore leave, or sea-monster hunters spending their earnings. But today, the streets were full of people hurrying about their business heads down, silent.

Bilgewater was on the edge of a civil war, but this was no battle of fresh and eager wills. Sarah Fortune and Gangplank were fighting the same damned war they’d fought already. The same war they’d fight a hundred times, if they could. Gangplank wanted his throne back; Sarah wanted him dead. The city stank of the stagnation lurking in their hearts. Each believed that victory would give them the things they had lost. Respect, perhaps. Justice for the long-lost dead. Something to soothe the pain of defeat and failure.

It would be so much easier if I cared nothing for either of them, Illaoi thought. But Sarah was her closest friend—and Gangplank, her former lover. Never before had two people been so trapped by their past, and so eager to waste their potential.

Illaoi glanced down at the lockbox under her arm. “And this is your fault, too,” she muttered.

The lockbox screamed back at her.

Its screams were quiet, just soft enough that they were hard to hear without listening closely. But whenever Illaoi focused on them, a hateful presence started scrabbling at the edge of her mind.

The fellow within the lockbox—the screamer who hurled horrible, muffled imprecations at Illaoi day and night—was to blame for everything.

It was he who put the shadow on Sarah’s soul.

Just then, some of Sarah’s crew came marching around the corner. Cutlasses and pistols hung from every belt, and every knuckle was ornamented with brass. They were streaked with blood and sweat and gunpowder. The fighting had been hard.

And with them, of course, was Sarah Fortune herself. She looked exhausted. The right sleeve of her fancy captain’s coat was stained with blood. Her shoulders were hunched and her hat was tipped low, as if a cold rain only she could feel battered her from above.

“Hey, Illaoi,” Sarah called, her voice flat and sharp. “Let’s get this done.”

“Are you well?” Illaoi asked. “You look miserable.”

“I’ve been chasing Gangplank for a week.” Sarah pointed at the quietly wailing lockbox. “And that thing is still on this island, too. Come on, let’s finish this.”

They turned to a nearby artifact dealer’s shop. While Sarah’s crew remained on guard outside, guns drawn, Illaoi led the way inside.

The loupe in the owner’s eye flashed as they entered. “Illaoi!” he called. “It’s been too long!”

Jorden Irux was a spindly fellow with knees and elbows heading in every direction. He was also the only artifacts dealer in the city with mixed paylangi and Buhru heritage. Illaoi often went to him for help identifying the relics she couldn’t recognize.

“I have a puzzle for you, Jorden.” Illaoi thumped the lockbox down on his countertop.

“You have two for me,” he said, glancing at Sarah. “Captain Fortune herself in my little shop!”

“Don’t get weird about it,” Sarah growled. “Let’s get this over with.”

The moment Illaoi’s key clicked in the lockbox, Sarah shuddered. A sickly light blazed a slash of teal across the wall.

Inside the box sat an amulet. Three curved stones, carved in the Buhru style and looped together with a thin wire. They glowed brightly with the light of a trapped soul.

“Oh, that’s nasty.” Jorden, too, could hear the screams. “By the Goddess, that’s not...?”

Illaoi nodded. “Viego of Camavor.”

It had been only a week since this furious shade of an ancient king attempted to turn Bilgewater into a smoking crater. The whole city knew his name now, and knew to curse his memory. If he gets out of this amulet, he will do it all again.

“It’s a temporary solution,” Sarah said. She let out a short, bitter laugh. “We couldn’t figure out how to kill him for good. There’s no telling what he’ll do if he gets out of there.”

Illaoi nodded. “Our historians say that the stones are made of serpent-amber... but we do not know if shattering them will release the spirit, or kill it.”

“Goddess’s Tears? I’m not surprised,” Jorden said, using the Buhru term for serpent-amber. “It is so rare, only a fool would practice smashing it.” He leaned close and adjusted his loupe. “A Buhru artisan shaped these. Our people’s style is unmistakable. But there’s a marking here on the back... Where did this come from?”

Illaoi laughed. “The Shadow Isles, actually. Our people studied with the scholars there, before the Isles were transformed.” If Viego escapes, he will try to transform Bilgewater into a twisted graveyard, too.

“Let me look something up.” Jorden leaped off his stool and ran into the back of the shop.

A half second of prickly silence followed... and then Sarah turned to Illaoi. “I know what you’re going to say,” she said, grit in her voice. “So don’t.”

“I was not planning to say anything.” After their last fight, there was no use belaboring Sarah with a truth she refused to listen to. “I was not going to talk about your futile hunt for Gangplank, or what it’s doing to the city. I was actually planning to let us stand in awkward silence.”

Sarah scowled. “I’m having a terrible week. Don’t make it worse.”

They silenced themselves when Jorden burst back into the room. He carried a scroll covered with a strange script Illaoi didn’t recognize. And there was a drawing of... a tower?

“Look.” Jorden pointed to a matching symbol etched onto the back of the amulet. “The sign of its makers. The Brethren of the Dusk.”

“Gloomy,” Sarah said. “Never heard of them.”

“Religious order from the Blessed Isles. They died out long ago.”

“Damn.” Sarah shook her head. “Then that’s a dead end.”

Jorden caught himself. “Wait—I forgot. There is a mad hermit who claims he represents them. But... you know what people who spend too much time over there are like.”

The twisted spirits of the happy folk who had once called the Blessed Isles home were not good neighbors. A thousand years wandering under the shadow of the Black Mist had turned most of them into beasts—wraiths, specters, and mistwalkers contorted in endless hideous reflections of mortal weakness. Any living person who chose to live alongside those shades must be uncommonly strong, and very strange. Some of the mortals who made their home on the Isles worshiped death and disease. And spiders, too, for some reason.

But Illaoi had not yet met a Shadow Isles dweller she couldn’t flatten like a sea star beneath her Goddess’s idol. “Such beings do not frighten me,” Illaoi said. “Not long ago, we killed Thresh, the Isles’ greatest monster. Compared to him, parlaying with this hermit will be a simple task. He may know something about the amulet.”

They paid Jorden and stepped out onto the street. “I didn’t expect this would send you back to the Shadow Isles,” Sarah muttered. She seemed apologetic.

Illaoi nodded. Before trapping Viego in the amulet, they’d tracked and fought him on the Isles. Camping in collapsed ruins and sharing meals around a campfire were joyful when friends were there... but to go back so soon, alone, would be melancholy.

“You’ll need a ship. There’s a captain who owes me—Matteo Ruven. He knows safe routes to the Shadow Isles. But don’t let him know about the amulet.”
“Few are left in this city whom we can trust,” Illaoi agreed.

Suddenly, Sarah’s face turned red. Her brow tightened.

Ahh, I’ve said the wrong thing, Illaoi realized. She cannot trust me, because I will not fight in her heedless war against Gangplank.

“I know you are still furious with me,” Illaoi said. She struggled for a new way to say the things Sarah refused to hear. “But my friendship comes with... with challenge. With change.”

“I can hear everything the king says in that amulet,” Sarah blurted. “Did I tell you that? Every moment of the day and night. He talks about... my mother.” Her voice cracked, and her face contorted into a grimace. “I can hear that box whispering from all the way across the city.”

Goddess. That’s a burden.

Illaoi embraced her friend. The need came over her, and she did it, without worrying what Sarah would think.

At first, Sarah held back—but then she returned the embrace. Tears started at the corners of her eyes. “Guhh,” she sighed. “Okay. Fine.”

“You are meant for more than this,” Illaoi told her. “You are meant for better things.” She believed it. She’d never believed anything more. But no matter how many times she said it, Sarah never understood.

“Meant for better things?” Sarah rubbed her hand across a damp eye. “Tell that to Gangplank.”

Sarah must have had a serious claim on Captain Ruven, because he scrambled to make his ship, the Trained Rat, ready for sail the very next day.

When Illaoi arrived, the ship was swarming with sailors hurrying to make it seaworthy. Ruven hollered orders from the command deck. He was older, slender, and knobbly-elbowed, with a halo of frizzy, wind-blasted orange hair.

I could snap him in half, Illaoi thought. Those were her two categories of people—ones she could snap in half, and ones she could not. It made the world an easier place to navigate.

He waved her up to the command deck. “I know you,” he called. “You’re the Buhru queen.”

“Absolutely not,” Illaoi said. “I am a Truth Bearer. A priestess.” This will be one of the annoying ones, she thought.

“All right.” Ruven shrugged. “Ship’s a disaster today. But this is the kind of service you get when you only give me twelve hours’ notice.” He flashed her a disarming, jagged smile, and extended his hand for a shake. “There’s an empty cabin for you down below.”

“Will we leave today?” Illaoi asked.

“We better. Or Sarah Fortune will include me in one of her little dockside executions.”

The ship’s passageways were so cramped, Illaoi could barely fit her idol down the stairs into the lower deck. The enormous orb of sea-tempered metal was wider across than Illaoi’s muscled shoulders. Down here, the roof was too low to carry it comfortably on her back, and the passageways were too narrow to carry it at her side. She had to balance it on her hip and shuffle crabwise between the cannons.

“Excuse me,” she muttered, squeezing past a group of sailors with scrubbing rags and buckets. As she passed, she heard them cursing quietly. Sailors, in Illaoi’s experience, were usually full of motion, game for anything and everything—her favorite sort of paylangi. But this crew was sullen. Their brittle fear filled the ship as completely as the stink of sea salt and rotten ropes.

Bilgewater’s ill temper lives here, too.

When the ship lifted its anchor and turned to ride the wind, Illaoi made her way up to the breezy command deck to speak with Ruven again. The jagged roofline of the city was soon hidden by wave chop and clouds of soaring birds.

“Bilgewater to my rear, and all my troubles forgotten.” Ruven laughed.

“Is Bilgewater more frightening to you than the Shadow Isles?” The idea made Illaoi smile. “The mood there is foul, certainly. But the Shadow Isles are worse.”

“Hey, none of the spirits over there have it out for me personally,” Ruven said. “Our fearless queen, on the other hand... well. Between you and me, I’m lucky to still be alive.”

Illaoi raised an eyebrow. “What did you do?”

Ruven coughed out a nervous laugh. “I owe her. We have an agreement. I bring you there and back, and all my debts to her are cleared.”

Sending someone to the Shadow Isles seemed like a poor way to collect a debt. Your chance of losing the debtor to a wraith or a spider bite seemed a little too high. “You must owe her a great price.”

“Yeah. I tried to blow her up.”

“What?!”

“Look, I wasn’t working for Gangplank.” Ruven rubbed his face with his hands. “I was just against the new loot fees. I made some new friends... it was their idea.”

These were not the words of a man who faced his destiny bravely or took responsibility for his choices. Ruven seemed like he was tossed about by the whims of others.

“Captain Fortune does not care for such excuses,” Illaoi said. “These days, she solves problems like you with a pistol.”

“Yeah.” His voice dropped. “The crew is... not pleased. We lost a choice contract because of it. So I went to Fortune and I told her: I’m useful! Make use of me. My pa and I were pilots for hire to the Shadow Isles, back in the day. I know routes nobody else knows.”

“To be used by others is no freedom for a soul,” Illaoi said.

“Well, it’s better than being executed! Look, you’re friends with Fortune, right?” he asked. “Being enemies with her is exhausting. I may be a sorry old fellow, but I could still learn some new tricks.”

Illaoi sized him up. It isn’t likely, she found herself thinking. “Your life is ruled by stagnation,” she said. “The freedom you seek is impossible without motion. You need spiritual counsel, not... help with small talk.”

Ruven chuckled. “I mean, I’d take that too.”

Illaoi sighed. Even the most stagnant people could hide deep currents where the soul still moved and changed. Everyone deserves a chance to prove themselves worthy.

And she knew: If this man can change, then Sarah certainly can, too.

“Perhaps we can talk,” Illaoi said. “If we have time on the journey.”

Ruven loved to talk.

He told Illaoi about his father—a pilot for hire, perpetually lurking around Bilgewater’s busiest pubs, “copping free drinks off captains and fishing for gigs.” He wasn’t around when Ruven needed him most, but he was building a legacy, Ruven insisted, charting his route to the Shadow Isles.

“You’ll see it when we get there. It’s incredible. Only safe approach to the entire archipelago. Never seen a wraith on the beach there once.”

“Impressive. How did you learn it? Did your father show you?”

Ruven laughed. “No way! He used to hand me the charts, shove me into a dingy, and make me do the trip myself. All alone in the Black Mist, with him safe on the ship!”

“That is a great effort,” Illaoi said. “Any man who can teach himself a route to the Shadow Isles alone can turn his life around.” He is like Sarah, Illaoi thought. There is greatness within him. He must only find it.

In the final days of their trip, the daylight was less reliable. Each afternoon, an early “evening” crept across the sun and drowned its light in an exhausted gray. It was the Black Mist—its frayed edges, at least. The lookouts grew more tense. The Mist’s cover could give safe passage to furious wraiths of all kinds.

Illaoi always made the most converts to her faith among sailors who had been to the Shadow Isles. When they heard her preach against stagnation, they knew what she meant. Black sand shores. Rotten, twisted, leafless trees. Monuments of slick, dark stone, moist from ocean spray, buried by heaps of ancient loam.

As those haunted Isles loomed on the horizon, Ruven joked constantly and obnoxiously, ribbing sailors about their frowns. The Buhru term for people like him was wave-dodgers: those who shift back and forth on the beach, trying to keep their toes dry with frivolous and frightened motion. Many small steps to avoid a bigger one.

When the Isles were close enough to pick out the ruined towers on the hilltops, though, Ruven turned his frantic energy into action. He vanished into his cabin, then returned brandishing a bundle of paper scrawled with notes and diagrams. When he replaced the navigator at the ship’s wheel, he looked as if he were about to vomit.

“Time for me to prove my worth,” he told Illaoi. He turned to the crew in the rigging and shouted, “Half speed!”

The ship began a strange dance toward the shore. Ruven grappled with the wheel, throwing his scrawny weight into every urgent turn. The ship’s timbers groaned, and the tips of jagged rocks passed less than an arm’s length from the hull. She glanced at Ruven’s inscrutable papers. No wonder Sarah kept him alive. Whatever knowledge he has is useless in translation.

They came to a stop in a rocky little cove. Shattered stones hid it from the open sea, and sheer cliffs concealed the mast and sails from the shoreline. A rare safe harbor... and luckily, not too far from the monastery.

Ruven leaned against the wheel, exhausted. “And that’s how I earn my keep,” he said. “Tell Captain Fortune how impressive I am, will you?”

About twenty sailors—more than half the crew—went ashore for the mission. The monastery would be a few hours’ walk inland. Illaoi brought only her idol, a full canteen, and the lockbox.

“Stay close,” she told the crew. “My Goddess scorns the Mist, so the Mist fears her idol. We will be safe from it if we move together.”

The sailors fell into place behind Illaoi and Ruven as they pushed into the forest. Illaoi’s idol parted the Mist, revealing strange architecture and foliage on either side of their path. Everything was frozen in a moment of decay. Desiccated trees more ancient in life than the citadels of the Buhru capital scraped the sailors’ faces and shoulders as they trudged by.
Soon they found themselves among the ruins of a small town. Crumbling walls forced them to twist and turn through the underbrush. They slowed to pass, single file, along a tight path through the thicket—what might have once been an alleyway.

The dried bushes and trees all looked the same. “Do you even know where you’re going?” someone behind Illaoi demanded.

He was a small, wiry fellow with a patchy beard and a spattering of golden teeth. Another very snappable man.

“Yes,” Illaoi said. “Please chart your own path, if you would like. I can hurl you into the Mist in any direction you please.”

“Kristof? Shut up,” Ruven said. “Or you’re going in the brig when we get back on the ship.”

Kristof was furious. “We shoulda put you in the brig, after what you pulled with Fortune!”

“Stop this nonsense at once,” Illaoi commanded. But now everyone had joined the argument, and their raised voices were echoing through the forest.

Illaoi knew this would draw enemies. Behind the shouts, she could pick out a quiet crunching noise, like footsteps through heavy loam.

The thicket beside the path suddenly churned. Branches scraped against one another with a sound like blades drawn across bones. Clawlike brambles unfurled into hands. There was a face in every bush and tree, withered like those of the unshriven dead.

The arguing turned to screaming—and then the thicket smashed shut. The path was gone in an instant. The sailors bolted in sheer terror. She saw one dash into the woods, but he was slammed to the ground by a knotty branch. The trees closed over him, strangling his panicked shout.

Illaoi even caught a glimpse of Ruven’s back as he ran away through the trees, his papers scattering behind him. Coward, she thought. Then the wraiths were upon her.

The sailors nearest Illaoi fought back, but their swords did nothing—it was like stabbing a thornbush. The wraiths pressed forward through a hail of glancing blows and stabbed the sailors with splintered wooden limbs.

When a wraith lunged toward her, Illaoi ferociously swung her idol. Her strike was true—its body echoed like a hollow bucket and burst into pieces. When another rushed forward, Illaoi punched it so hard it snapped in half like a rotten fencepost.

Goddess, that’s satisfying!

The avatars of the Goddess specialized in muscular force. “Nagakabouros,” she shouted, “defend us!”

She lifted her idol in the air and slammed it down into the mud. The sailors staggered, but the wraiths flew back, repelled by the idol’s blazing green glow.

Paylangi always asked her: Where do the tentacles come from? She’d tell them, It doesn’t matter. The Goddess was everywhere, in everything that changed. She could go anywhere, and be anything, because anything could change.

A wraith, for example, could change into many tiny pieces of wraith.

A protective wall of tentacles erupted from the ground and began transforming wraiths into sawdust. Illaoi helped. Bushes and trees splintered. Knotty wooden heads went rolling through the mud like bowls. She caught a glimpse of a wraith flung high in the air, spreadeagled; it looked like a bird.

When the wraiths nearest them had fallen to pieces, Illaoi hefted her idol onto her shoulder, and the tentacles faded away. The trail was eerily quiet. There was no sign of the sailors who’d run off—not even distant screams. Even the dead were missing. Borne off, perhaps, or buried beneath roots.

“Collect your breath,” she told the group. “Who remains?”

There were only seven. Kristof was among them. “Should we go looking for the captain?” he asked. He didn’t seem enthusiastic. “We can’t sail away from here without Ruven.”

Illaoi saw Ruven’s bundle of charts lying on the ground, soaked through with mud. She picked it up and fished out the map she’d given him. Behind the grime, the way to the monastery was still visible.

On the ship, he’d seemed ready to change. But he’d returned to cowardice in the end—a stagnant soul, forever tossed about by the tide of others’ whims. I’d only be saving him to use him, she thought. Like Sarah and the others did.

And searching for him with only seven injured and exhausted sailors? They would surely die. Kristof and his crewmates did not deserve such a fate. The living can still change and grow, she reminded herself. The dead cannot.

Her decision was clear. “We must press ahead,” Illaoi announced. “To the monastery. We shall have to rely upon the charity of the hermit who lives there.”

It wasn’t long before the monastery loomed up out of the Mist. It seemed well maintained—its tall tower looked just like the one carved on the amulet.

As Illaoi approached the gate, a man leaped onto the path ahead of her. He looked so much like a beast of the Isles, she almost smashed him with her idol.

“Wait! It’s me,” Ruven croaked.

For a moment, the whole group simply stared. Ruven’s body was completely coated with mud. His jacket was soaked with blood. Dead twigs were trapped in his hair. He looked like he’d been run over by a herd of giant rock crabs.

Illaoi was relieved—for a moment. Then her frustration returned in full force. “That was a shameful thing you did,” she snapped. “Leaving your crew.”

Ruven seemed shocked. “I thought you’d be glad to see me.”

“I am never glad to see a man abandon his duty!” Illaoi did not hold back. “You told me you wanted to change. I did not see a man who wants to change on the battlefield today.”

Ruven shot the crew an embarrassed glance, and Kristof went for blood. “How’d you survive the Mist?” he asked.

A strained smile cracked the mud on Ruven’s cheeks. “I, uh...”

“Illaoi said running off by yourself was death.”

Ruven’s expression darkened. “If you’d like to know, I brought my own protection, actually. I was fine.”

Illaoi was disgusted. A protection he did not choose to share. An artifact of some kind? “We shall discuss your shame at a later time,” she said. “First, we must get inside.”

She turned and knocked on the massive wooden door. The sound echoed in some open space beyond. Then, high above, someone cleared his throat and said, “Who goes there?”

Illaoi could make out broad shoulders and a hooded head leaning over the parapet. “I am Illaoi, Truth Bearer of the Buhru,” she called. “I seek the hermit who represents the Brethren of the Dusk. May we take shelter here?”

The man paused for a moment. “I will let you in,” he said, his voice deep. “But do not lay a hand on any creature inside.”

“Creature?” one of the sailors whispered.

The doors slowly began to grind open. Each door was more than twice as tall as Illaoi, and enormously heavy. When they were cracked open about an arm’s length, she saw who was pushing them from within: mistwalkers.

They were spirits shaped like hunched, tired men and women, with long dragging arms and slack mouths ringed with fangs. But unlike others Illaoi had seen, they moved in passive, obedient silence, heaving against the door like dutiful footmen.

Illaoi recoiled, shocked—but the mistwalkers did not lunge for her. Behind her, the sailors reached for their weapons.

The man from the parapet stepped into view. “Do they frighten you?” he asked. “They are my companions.”

Illaoi had never seen anyone like him before. He was robed like a priest, but built like a boulder, with huge shoulders muscled by hard work. Not a man I could snap in half. In one hand, he carried a heavy shovel of dark, rugged metal, stained with dirt, as if he’d just come from digging these beasts out of their graves.

Illaoi noticed that his arms were not sleeved. Their bluish tone... that was his bare skin.

“Are you also a mistwalker?” She had allied with mistwalkers before, though it gave her no joy. Creatures trapped in the stagnation of death often brought pain to the living, and were an unholy affront to the sanctity of life.
The man smiled. “Are you asking if I am alive?”

“On these isles, it is a fair question!”

“A very private one, too.” He made a thoughtful shrug. “I am... a caretaker. Please, come inside.”

The courtyard beyond was filled with mistwalkers carrying scraps of wood and rocks, clambering among rows of gravestones. They paid the newcomers no mind. Though their mouths hung open and their eyes were vacant, they seemed to be driven by some strange mission.

“This is madness,” Ruven whispered. “He has an army.”

“He has protection of some kind, too,” Illaoi said. “Look. The Black Mist does not attack him.”

The hermit overheard them. “It does not need to. It has the Maiden to watch me.”

He pointed at the top of the tower. Illaoi caught a glimpse of a figure up there, but it retreated behind the parapet, as if ashamed to be seen.

“The Maiden?”

“Another... companion of mine.”

“And what is your name?”

“Yorick,” said the hermit. “I am the last of the Brethren at my post.”

She stared. No. He can’t be serious. “The last?”

“I’ve been here since all this started,” he said, gesturing at the Mist-choked sky. “I’ve been here since the Ruination.”

Illaoi had never imagined a home like Yorick’s. The empty halls of the monastery were alive with the motion of mistwalkers. They walked the clean-swept floors in silence, each fixed on some cryptic duty.

She felt her skin prickle and her mouth go dry. It was not fear—it was anger. He keeps the dead in servitude. Unconscionable. Disgusting. She kept this thought to herself, however. This man could still help save Bilgewater.

“You had trouble on the road,” Yorick observed. He gestured to a spiraling stairwell. “I have little in the way of mortal comforts, but there is clean water in the cistern downstairs. And a fire to keep you warm.”

While the others went down to wash on the lower level, Illaoi waited on the doorstep, gazing at the mistwalkers in the yard below. Before her journey with Sarah and their friends to stop Viego, if she’d met a man trapped in the rut of his life for a thousand years, leading an army of restless spirits... she’d have killed him on sight. And Nagakabouros would have blessed me for it.

Yorick appeared at her side. “You have business with me,” he said.

“I do.” She kept her voice calm with difficulty. “But I am not used to seeing spirits treated this way.”

“They are not trapped here, if that is what worries you,” Yorick said. “I search these islands for the tormented dead. Some of them stay here with me for a while, before they move on.”

“And what are they doing?”

“Building graves,” he said. “These are the people of the Blessed Isles. My countrymen, seeking rest and peace.” He paused for a moment, as if saying a prayer. “We can speak privately upstairs, in my library.”

The tower was made of huge, dark blocks of stone, smoothed by time and streaked black with torch smoke. It was older than the ruins of Helia, or the vaults Illaoi and Sarah had visited before.

He has been entombed here like a man dead for a thousand years. Stagnation incarnate. His politeness almost made it worse.

The chamber at the top of the tower was lined with bookshelves and lit by a cold, blue light filtering in through the window. Beside the door hung a pair of stone pauldrons with a cape of Black Mist roiling from them. And atop one of the lofty bookshelves, a nest of dark Mist and glowing blue light slowly turned on itself.

“That is the Maiden,” Yorick said. “She has been with me for centuries.”

“I thought you said they moved on.”

“When they are ready.” He closed the door behind them. “And, if you are ready, please show me who you are hiding in that box on your belt.”

Illaoi raised an eyebrow. “You can sense it?”

“The Maiden speaks to me. She told me whose spirit that is.”

Illaoi opened the box with the key around her neck. Yorick leaned forward to see, and the light of the amulet made a sinister dance across his craggy features.

“Viego of Camavor,” he said. He extended one huge, calloused hand toward the box—then stopped himself. “Since the Ruination, I’d hoped to see something like this. But... I expected more.”

“What did you expect?”

“That the Mist would be gone. But it remains. That the spirits would cease their suffering. But it continues.” There was an unreadable expression on his face. “Perhaps I expected that I would change.”

Illaoi felt a blaze of sympathy for him. She, too, had wondered if the Shadow Isles might change with Viego’s banishment, if the Mist might finally disperse. But that is a challenge for some greater strength than ours, she reminded herself.

“When you defeated him, I saw the lights in the sky,” Yorick said. “But the spirits were not freed, and the Maiden continued whispering in my ear. So my responsibility to them continued.” He gazed at Illaoi, his expression stony. “I am a member of a holy order, same as you. Long years of toil... that is our way. Persistence, faith, and dedication.”

Illaoi bristled. “Nagakabouros does not scorn dedication. She scorns stagnation.”

Yorick stood and went to the window. “Come, look at this.”

Spread out beyond the walls of the abbey, across miles of wild and Mist-wreathed hillsides, were thousands of tombs. Tombs carved by the hands of mortal artisans stood side by side with rough, makeshift ones assembled from rubble by the stumbling dead. Here and there, the endless acres of gravestones stirred with the motion of mistwalkers.

“Is that not the largest cemetery you have ever seen?” Yorick asked wryly.

It was, Illaoi realized, half as big as Bilgewater itself.

Yorick’s voice was tight with controlled emotion. “If there is any agent of change on these isles, I am it. I open the earth and bring the spirits to their rest. And the world around me changes.” He turned to Illaoi. “Do I not, then, honor your goddess?”

A constellation of beliefs netted Illaoi to the particulars of her faith. They were simple beliefs, clear and gracious and humanizing. Though her relationship with the Goddess had changed over the years, the core of her faith remained strong. Life is motion. To live fully is to change; to change is strength.

The living can change. The dead cannot.

Illaoi now felt that foundation shifting beneath her feet. Can the dead build a world of their own? Can they follow their own desires? No. Why would he think that?

She’d brought motion to beings trapped between life and death before. The Bloodharbor Ripper, Pyke, was one of them. But his grace had been given to him by Nagakabouros, and the Goddess had no part in Yorick’s domain.

“I suppose,” she finally admitted, “the dead could have their own kind of motion. But Nagakabouros would never keep spirits here beyond their years in life.”

“She would see them reborn?”

“Yes. As soon as possible! It would be a sin to deny them life for even a moment.”

“And this is our difference,” Yorick said. “You would banish spirits before their time.”

Illaoi knew that if the conversation continued, she’d never settle the issue of the amulet. So she changed the subject. “This is one spirit I’d like to banish.” She lifted the amulet by its chain and showed him the mark on its back. “Your order made this, but in the Buhru style. We hoped you could tell us how to destroy the spirit inside.”

Yorick took the amulet in his bare hand. It did not seem to trouble him the way it had troubled Sarah.

“I think I remember the woman who made this,” he said. He turned to his bookshelves and found a sheaf of fragile, gray parchment. “She was a Buhru sailor. She saw too many perish at sea. So she joined our order, to bring peace to the dying.”
The parchment was covered in an ancient Buhru script. Illaoi could pick out the old words well enough. This artisan had worked on gems made of serpent-amber—a technique practiced only by the Buhru. But she had also tempered the gems under high heat, to form a crystalline shell capable of holding an angry spirit. The technique she used was from the Blessed Isles.

“I cannot read Buhru myself,” Yorick admitted. “Does it say anything useful?”

Illaoi’s eyes wandered down the page. She picked out an illustration of some kind of blast furnace, powered by magic focused through prisms and lenses. A gyroscopic dynamo of light and flame. The illustration was labeled, The Spirit Destroyed.

That seemed clear enough. “She used your people’s machines to temper the gems. At the same heat, we could kill the spirit inside.”

“The furnaces?” He laughed sadly. “I used the blocks to make tombstones.”

They stood for a moment in silence again, thinking. Illaoi wondered how Sarah was doing. She wondered if, across all this distance, she could still hear the amulet speaking to her.

“There is one solution close at hand,” Yorick suddenly said. “You could hurl the amulet into a volcano.”

Illaoi glanced at him. “You are joking.”

“I am not. I have not gone this far in a thousand years, but volcanoes, at least, last that long.” He returned to the bookshelves and found a map rolled into an enormous sheaf. It showed the Blessed Isles as they had been before the Ruination, marked with roads and cities. “This one.” Yorick pointed to a tiny dot in a far corner of the map. “Scardover Cay. Half a day’s sail from here.”

“It has... exposed lava?” She felt ridiculous asking.

“Time changes these things,” Yorick said. “But it did, in my day.”

A thought occurred to Illaoi. If Pyke could see the truth in the Goddess’s ways, this man could, too. “It is still your day,” she said. “Come with us. You wanted to see this king destroyed. You may hurl him to his death yourself, if you like!”

Yorick coughed out a grim bark of a laugh. “It is beyond the Black Mist. I doubt I will be able to help you much when I am outside the realm of the dead.” He gestured to the Maiden. “My powers lie with the dead. And I have not left my post in a thousand years.”

“Then there is no better time to try it!” Illaoi urged. “Leave this place, if only for a day. I think you will enjoy the experience.”

Yorick considered for a moment. “What a curious idea,” he murmured. “Doing something because I would enjoy it.” He drew himself up straight, and crossed his huge arms on his barrel chest. “And you’re right. There is nothing I’d enjoy more than killing Viego.”

They all gathered in the courtyard to leave the monastery.

Ruven stood apart from the rest of the group. As Yorick directed his spirits to open the gate and let them out, Illaoi bundled the navigational charts she’d found in the woods, and went to talk to the captain.

“Have you settled things with your crew?” she asked. “Can you all return to the ship in peace?”

He would not look directly at her. “Sure. Yeah. We can walk back.”

“Did they threaten you? I have a mission. I will tolerate no interruption from you or the crew.” Still, Ruven refused to look at her. Frustration tightened her throat. “You must tell me if they plan a mutiny,” she muttered.

He shrugged. “I don’t know anymore. I don’t give a toss what they do with me. This is my last voyage, probably.”

Illaoi looked down at the navigational notes. He’s the only one who can use them, she thought. There will be time to bring him back to his senses once we’re on open ocean.

She handed him the paper bundle. “I expect focus from you,” she told him. “Dedication. A man can change his life, but he has to try.”

“Fine.” Ruven stuffed the papers into his mud-stained jacket.

They returned to the ship in frigid silence. Half the crew was dead, and Ruven was no longer on speaking terms with the ones remaining. As Ruven navigated out of the cove, Yorick stood at the railing and watched the Maiden standing alone on the sand.

“You are leaving her for the first time in a thousand years,” Illaoi said. “Do you feel any different?”

He lifted something from his collar: a small vial, filled with a clear, bright liquid. “The Mist’s whispers are quieter,” he said. “And the sound this makes—it is louder.”

Illaoi took a moment to realize what she was looking at. “Blessed water?”

“Indeed.” He hid the vial under his collar again. “At the monastery, this merely kept me alive. Out here, I pray it will bring me strength.”

The journey was a straight shot, half a day’s voyage to an island on the edge of the Shadow Isles’ archipelago. The crew kept the sails trimmed for speed, and Ruven stewed on the command deck. He hunched his shoulders, thrust his hands deep in his pockets, and kept his eyes fixed grimly on the horizon—and now and then, on the crew, too.

Illaoi approached him. “I know we said we would discuss Nagakabouros, and your place in Bilgewater,” she told him. “If you still wish for guidance, I am here.”

He glanced at her. There was something in his eyes—fear? “Maybe later,” he muttered.

“What did you discuss with your crew at the monastery?” They must have had choice words for him. Whatever they’d said, he needed to listen closely.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” he said. “Look, I’m busy.”

Illaoi shrugged, and descended from the command deck to walk the length of the ship with Yorick.

She was surprised at how much she enjoyed it. When she didn’t have to look at his army of mistwalkers, it was easier to discuss his beliefs on their own merits. They spent all night deep in conversation. His beliefs were as sincerely held as hers, but his priorities were so strange. Healing the dead was more important to him than returning them to the light of life.

“I will never understand it,” she told him. “But I believe that you mean it.”

“I do not expect you to understand. But I am glad you listened.”

Most of the sailors went to sleep in the lower deck sometime before dawn. When the sun rose, the Trained Rat left the last of the Black Mist behind, and their destination came into view.

“There it is,” Ruven said. “The island. That shadow on the horizon.”

A handful of crew members gathered at the railing. There was a dark, conical blemish on the pale gray skyline ahead.

“Scardover Cay,” Yorick mused. “I’ve heard that people lived there, long before my time. I am not sure I believe it.”

Illaoi could pick out the stench of sulfur when they were still miles from shore. As they grew closer, the hazy shadow on the horizon resolved into a mountain of dark ash, running bare and treeless from the waterline to the lip of the crater. Here and there, it was studded with the stark forms of jagged rocks, each larger than a house.

As the crew lowered the anchor, Illaoi returned to her bunk to retrieve her idol. The belly of the ship was shadowed and quiet, with no sound louder than the creak of timbers and the slosh of waves against the hull. Here and there, crew members were still sleeping in hammocks strung from the ceiling beams.

Her idol was on her bunk. Carrying it awkwardly at her side, she made her way back down the center of the lower deck, between the cannons.

It’s so quiet, she thought.

Then she realized she couldn’t hear anyone snoring.

She put her hand on the nearest hammock and tipped it toward her. Kristof lay inside... and he was not breathing. His dry lips were parted, and his eyes stared blankly upward. Illaoi could feel the presence of his spirit, but he lay like one dead.

A magical stasis? This was not done by natural means.

She stepped swiftly to the next hammock. The sailor there was trapped in corpse-like stasis, too.

Every ship that leaves the Shadow Isles can carry as many stowaways as it has shadows.

“Reveal yourself,” she said. “Who did this?”

THUMP. Farther up the length of the ship, the hatch fell closed over the stairway, and the whole of the lower deck was drowned in darkness.

Illaoi crouched and tightened her grip on her idol. There was barely any room to fight in the lower deck. It was the only place on the ship where she was vulnerable. “You waited until Yorick and I were separated, didn’t you?”

A wink of blue light flared in the dark. “Yes,” a voice said. “And until the Mist was gone. Your new friend wields it like a weapon.” Ruven stepped out of the shadows between Illaoi and the stairwell. “I wanted to speak in private.”

A faint glow wreathed him. And behind him stood someone else.

It was a hunched, robe-swaddled spirit, dressed like a Blessed Isles scholar. His gowns were crisscrossed with arcane geometry and stained with black slime, as if he’d come wading out of some putrid swamp. Tendrils of Black Mist coiled around him. And above his tight, tarnished-gold collar sat a warped face of sagging, melted skin, split by an enormous, toadlike mouth. When his lips pulled back in a smile, Illaoi could see multiple rows of little pointed teeth.

“I know you’ve made a habit of stooping low, captain. But I did not expect this. You’ve made a pact with a monster.”

“I’ve made a pact with a man who helped me! That’s all I ever wanted—a little help.” Ruven’s lips twisted into a pained grin. “I’ve worked hard enough in my life, haven’t I? I don’t need spiritual work, Illaoi. I just need some help!”

The spirit raised his hand. He held an orb that glowed with the same blue light that flickered around Ruven. Black Mist flowed from it, as it flowed from the spirit himself. Then the orb flared, and Ruven’s head made a strange jerk.

Illaoi realized she’d badly misread this man. He didn’t want to do the work of changing. He wanted to be some leader’s lackey. He just wanted a more forgiving master than Sarah.

It was too cramped for her to attack, so she tried to keep the conversation going. “And where did you meet this spirit?” she asked, making her way forward between the cannons.

“Bartek saved me from the wraiths.”

Illaoi could not hold back her bitter laugh. “He’s using you. Be your own man, Ruven.”
Ruven hesitated, but the orb flared again. He jerked like a puppet brought back to stand at attention.

“Stop her,” Bartek said. His voice was rough and wet, like a gas pocket escaping from a bog. “Get the amulet.”

Illaoi did not wait to see what he would do. She took one silent, confident step forward into an open space and swung her idol as hard as possible into Ruven’s snappable little body.

He flew across the deck and hit the opposite hull of the ship hard, cracking the boards in half. Bartek recoiled in surprise and gave a frustrated shriek. “Foolish priestess!”

“Choose your champions better,” she said. “Or why not fight yourself?”

She approached him, and the creature’s craven retreat answered her question clearly enough. “My master has given me a weapon stronger than your Goddess,” he snapped. “And a champion to fight for me.”

Once again, the orb in his hand flared... and the captain stirred. Slowly, he lifted his broken body back to its feet.

“You cannot kill him,” Bartek told Illaoi. His lips parted in a wide, toothy smile, like the River King’s catfish mouth. “I can bring him back. The lantern-lighter’s gift has given me dominion over his soul.”

The lantern-lighter—Thresh! Illaoi stepped back. An artifact that ensnared souls, a gift from Thresh’s hand? By the Goddess. That’s no good.

Ruven moved like a pile of sticks held together with string. Illaoi could see his muscles bunching strangely on his arms and neck—driven by magic, not by his own will. With a twist of his cracked legs, he launched himself toward her with uncommon speed. She dove out of the way and dropped her idol, awkwardly, as she squeezed between cannons. It rolled across the boards of the deck between them.

They paused. Ruven sized her up with a cross-eyed stare. Illaoi took a sharp breath, and lunged for the idol. Ruven dashed forward and kicked her in the ribs. It was like being hit by a mortar shell—and now it was Illaoi’s turn to shatter the boards behind her. The idol flew out of her hand and straight through the hull, leaving a ragged gap as tall as Illaoi herself.

As her fingers slipped from the idol’s grip, she felt her vital connection to Nagakabouros fade. Damn! Fists it is, then. She struggled to peel herself off the deck and square up against Ruven.

“Lost your magic?” Ruven sneered.

“But not my faith. I have wanted to snap you in half for the last day,” Illaoi told him. “I think Nagakabouros will grant me my wish.”

But as she raised her hand to strike him in the jaw, Bartek also raised his. The orb in his palm flared. In the hammocks around the deck, glass-eyed sailors sat up, rigid as a board. Each leaped from their hammock like a Piltovan automaton.

“You profane the dead,” Illaoi snarled.

“They aren’t dead until I tell them to lie down and die!”

Bartek swung the orb, and the sailors swung for her. There were eight or nine of them, and they each hit with the force of a charging brineseal. Illaoi kept her guard up over her face, twisting to shrug off the blows.

Without her idol, she could not summon Nagakabouros’s tentacles to throw them back—but she could punch. The Goddess tests even me, she thought. But this is a test I am glad to bear!

She hit a sailor on the shoulder so hard, his arm dislocated with a sound like a plank cracking in half. She kneed another so forcefully that his flying body shattered the stairs leading to the upper deck. She moved through forms of combat she’d learned while training for the priesthood. Fists snap forward, like the strike of a ramming ship. Legs planted, like the roots of an island in the bed of the sea. Whispering a regretful prayer to Nagakabouros, she dodged Kristof’s punch, rolled him over her shoulder, and threw him down on the deck. His forehead left a splatter of red on the boards.

She began backing up toward the hole in the wall. Outside the ship, I’ll have room to fight. “Captain, you’re an embarrassment,” she taunted. “You are everyone’s fool.”

Exactly as she expected, Ruven’s expression curdled with rage.

“You feel weak because you are weak,” she continued. “Nobody’s help can change that.”

He dove at her. Illaoi let the force of his leap carry them both straight out the side of the ship.

They burst into the sunlight locked arm-in-arm. She caught a glimpse of the chaos on the upper deck: Yorick swarmed by attacking sailors, each wreathed by blue light. She saw him swat a woman clear off the ship with the flat of his shovel.

Then she and Ruven sank into the sea. This was her territory—Ruven was strong beyond human strength, but the man could not swim. Illaoi had been training to swim through riptides since childhood. She pinned him to the sand on the bottom of the bay, grabbed him by the neck, and held him down. Then she punched him until she cut her knuckles on his teeth.

Illaoi could hold her breath underwater for nearly five minutes, if she was conserving her energy. Punching Ruven into submission took so much out of her, she only lasted for a minute and a half before she had to kick up to the surface and take a gulp of air.

Ruven was thrashing weakly on the bay floor, kicking up a cloud of sand. Illaoi swam back down, grabbed him by the jacket, and dragged him across the water and onto the shore. “Give in,” she shouted, and struck him again. He coughed up a mouthful of seawater. “Give in! You’re a dead man.”

Ruven’s eyes darted to the ship. She followed his glance and saw Yorick and Bartek grappling at the prow of the boat. Yorick was holding Bartek’s throat, but the spirit’s hand, gripping the orb, was raised to the sky...

The orb flared a blinding white, and pain drove Illaoi to her knees. It was as if someone had driven a lance of fire through the top of her head. By the Goddess, what was that? She hurt too much to move.

Ruven crawled to her on broken limbs, a dagger in his hand. “His master is too powerful, Illaoi,” he said. “We all have people we answer to. He answers to a phantom who’s near like a god. Just... just give him the amulet.”

Illaoi had destroyed that “god” several weeks ago. “No,” was all she could croak.

But the searing light of the orb shone from the boat again, and this time, the pain was worse. Illaoi gritted her teeth. It felt like someone was trying to peel her mind from her body.

“Give in,” Ruven begged her. “He’ll suck your soul out your ear and make you a puppet. Like he did me.”

“I’d like... to see... him try.”

She struggled to raise her arm—and simply gave Ruven a backhanded slap. He was so badly injured that it sent him sprawling.

A moment later, a shadow loomed over Illaoi, and Bartek hurled Yorick to the ground beside her. Yorick seemed dazed, but alive.

With tendrils of Black Mist flickering about him, Bartek leaned down and unhooked the lockbox from Illaoi’s belt. “My prize,” he gurgled.

“Heal me, master,” Ruven begged. “Please... I’m dying.”

Bartek simply gave a flat, scornful cough of a laugh. “No.”

Illaoi knew they had only moments before Bartek left. She turned to Yorick. “Gravekeeper,” she whispered.

Yorick blinked, shook himself and collected his focus. He placed his palm on the sand to push himself up—then drew it back, as if burned. “There’s something down there,” he replied. “The dead. Corpses.”

Ruven had seized the hem of his new master’s robes. “I want to live,” he begged.

He won’t survive this, Illaoi realized. But his crew still could. She glanced at Bartek, then back at Yorick. “Let them out.”

Yorick closed his eyes. “Rise,” he told the bones. “I have work for you!”

Illaoi felt the rumbling before she heard it.

The sand danced. The ash on the slope of the volcano began to slide down toward them in sheets. Bartek looked about, suddenly nervous. Deep below them, in the bedrock beneath the ocean, something cracked.

Then a tide of spirits rose.

From a crevasse growing beneath Yorick’s palm poured a torrent of furious souls. Illaoi could see spirits leaping from the sand all around her, howling with a rage so profound and concentrated that she lost her breath. They stank of sulfur. The air was so thick with their charred, transparent forms, the terrain around her distorted.

Yorick lifted his hand and flung it at Bartek. With a sound like a cracking whip, a lash of Black Mist flew from the cape on his back and struck the Helian scholar. The Mist around him surged and coiled.

“This man is a servant of the Mist,” Yorick shouted. “The Mist that woke you, and trapped you here!”

The spirits surged toward Bartek, drawn like hounds to a scent.

“Kill him,” Yorick commanded.

The geyser of souls struck Bartek, flipped him onto his back, and thumped the sand around him into a crater. The furious dead tore at Bartek’s robes and beat him with their fists. He writhed, screaming; every strike of their sulfurous hands burned him.

Something flashed in his own hand. The lockbox! Illaoi forced her aching body to stand. The sand bubbled and churned as hundreds of spirits erupted from it, and the rushing current of passing souls whipped her hair and buffeted her like a strong wind. She could barely keep her footing.

She pushed forward, stumbling, and grabbed Bartek by the robes. Spirits writhed around her, screaming in their desperate attempt to strike him. Holding on to him was like holding on to a flag in a hurricane. She tugged him closer. “Give me the amulet!”

“It belongs to my master,” Bartek roared.

She struck him in the jaw. She felt something crack. “Your master is dead,” she shouted. “My friends and I killed him!”
But then his jaw writhed back into position on his face. “No,” Bartek snarled, tar spilling over his warped and sagging lips. “He still lives!”

He brandished his orb, but Illaoi grabbed it. Its smooth surface burned her hands, but she ripped it from his grasp just as it released its final flash. The souls around him recoiled, screaming, and Illaoi fell backward.

She caught a glimpse of Bartek launching himself out over the sea. The lockbox was clutched in his slimy fist. He floated there, victorious...

But then the spirits caught up. They overwhelmed Bartek, and the force of their charge pushed him toward the horizon. He shot like a cannonball over the surface of the water—two hissing sheets of spray flew up on either side of his path.

“No,” she heard Yorick shout to the dead. “Wait!”

The spirits ignored him. The ocean boiled with furious souls, and they carried her enemy and her duty away from her. Far out at sea, something detonated, and a tower of spray shot up the height of a ship’s mast. A moment later, there came another, even farther out. The spirits were moving faster than any ship or serpent-steed.

Illaoi dropped Bartek’s orb and fell to her knees. She pressed her forehead to the sand. I’ve failed. He has Viego.

Yorick collapsed beside her. “This is their will, not mine,” he croaked.

“I’ve failed in my duty,” she said. “I’ve failed Sarah.”

“Who?”

Illaoi struggled to sit up. “My dearest friend. I told her—I promised her I would destroy it.” When she needed me most, I failed her. Goddess, forgive me!

Yorick watched as more spirits rushed out to sea. “I’ve uncorked something I cannot control,” he said. “They were locked down there for centuries, beneath the stone. A city of souls. So much pain and fury. They want revenge... and he is a creature of the Black Mist that roused them.”

As the last of the spirits rose from the earth and poured into the ocean, Illaoi could feel their rage dissipating. “What will happen to them?” she asked.

“If they make their way back to the Isles, I will find them,” Yorick said. “But I doubt I will find that toad who took Viego.”

They struggled to their feet and surveyed the battlefield. Bartek’s rule over the ship’s crew had ended. She could see several of the sailors lying still on the beach, and more draped over the railing of the ship. Ruven himself lay nearby, half-buried by a drift of sand. Illaoi felt for a pulse, but could not find one. “He has died,” she told Yorick.

“But his spirit is still here.”

Yorick knelt beside Ruven and placed a hand on his shoulder. Illaoi saw a shade of him rise from the body, shimmering a near-invisible pale blue in the bright morning light.

His voice was faint and echoing, like a person whispering to them from the far end of a pipe. “I’ve died!” he exclaimed, dismayed. “Gods. I’ve died!”

Yorick took the spirit’s hand. “You’re safe,” he said. “You’ve left your body behind.”

Ruven regarded his broken body with uncomprehending shock.

“You can leave it all behind,” Yorick said. “I’ve awoken you so that you can find peace.”

Ruven froze. “Find peace?”

“Is there anything you need to say?” Yorick asked. “Anything you need to do?”

“I’m not going to find peace. Not without the crew,” Ruven said. “I’m their captain. I owe them.” He glanced around. “Where’s that fiend’s artifact?”

Illaoi was dumbfounded. In his moment of death, at last, Ruven thought of his crew. Goddess, Yorick was right. The dead can change.

“I have the artifact,” Illaoi said. “Can you use it?”

“It held my soul,” Ruven said. “I felt how it works. It can’t save me... but it can save them if they haven’t died yet.”

“Help me heal them,” Yorick begged. “Please, show me how.”

Ruven turned to Illaoi. His face was split with a silly grin, the only genuine smile she’d seen on him since they’d met. “Priestess, watch this,” he said. “I’ll show you what I can do.”

Then he gripped Yorick’s hand... and faded away.

Yorick ran down the beach. The sailors on the shore were at the brink of death. He seemed to know whose spirit still stayed with them, and who had already passed. With Ruven’s knowledge guiding him, Yorick moved among the corpses. When the globe shone in his hand, their breath returned.

As Kristof came alive again in a fit of coughing, Illaoi thought, Yorick heals the living and the dead. What does the Goddess think of him?

But she knew the Goddess would not tell her what to think of Yorick. The Goddess needed her to decide for herself.

That evening, after she’d hauled her idol up from the bottom of the bay, Illaoi and Yorick went to bury Ruven and the other dead high up near the lip of the volcano.

“There’s a fantastic view up here,” Yorick remarked, covering the final grave. He wielded his spade like an accomplished craftsman.

Illaoi approached the edge of the volcano and looked down into the black-capped, red-cracked lake of lava below. She wasn’t sure what to feel. “Perhaps their spirits can watch the rest of the world covered in ruination from up here,” she said.

Yorick stood beside her. “I do not think that will happen,” he said. “Even if Viego tries to kill the whole world... well. The dead have their own kind of will.” He glanced at Illaoi. “I’ve met several in my time who would see him destroyed. They can help us.”

Illaoi thought for a moment. The dead, rising up against Viego? She’d seen something like that on the Shadow Isles before. But it was so rare. With Yorick, was another future possible? Spirits and Buhru, aligned with the same goals? It felt impossible. But...

“I will help them,” Yorick promised.

Illaoi felt a strange hope growing inside her. “You have a good heart,” she said. “Your ability is like a promise of Nagakabouros fulfilled, I think. The power to move the dead from stagnation... I have never seen anything like it before.”

Yorick shrugged. “I do what I must.”

“No,” Illaoi insisted. “You do more than anyone expects. You freed Ruven’s spirit. You moved him after his death. And you brought motion to the trapped dead!”

As she spoke the words, she felt the shock of it growing within her. If this is possible, she found herself thinking, then anything is. Motion for my friends. Freedom for Sarah. A better world for all of us.

“Nagakabouros brought us together for a reason,” she continued. “I think we can learn from one another, as the ancients did.” The possibilities blossomed in her mind. The ancient Buhru and the scholars of the Blessed Isles had created such incredible things together. What they lacked was a common purpose, a mission uniting them toward a single goal. “What your Brethren wished for the world, what my faith dreams of—they are the same. Change and growth. Liberation!”

“I do not know if the rest of your religion would agree.” Yorick laughed.

“I will make them,” Illaoi promised.

“I think it is possible. In my youth, our people were close. But for now, I must return to my home. There are spirits there to whom I owe a duty.”

The Maiden, Illaoi thought. “It is your way. Persistence and dedication, as you said. But one day, when you are ready to leave, the Buhru will welcome an honorable monk like you. We will need an ally in the fight against Viego.”

Yorick gazed down at the lava below. “No one has ever called me an honorable monk before,” he mused.

All stories

Cassiopeia

The Shedding of Skin

Child of Zaun

Cho'Gath

Confessions of a Broken Blade: Part I

Confessions of a Broken Blade: Part 2

Confessions of a Broken Blade: Part 3

Corki

Courting Disaster

Darius

The Winterspike Road

Dead in the Water

Dead of Winter

Demacian Heart

The Despoiler of Havenfall

The Man With the Grinning Shadow

The Road to Ruin

The Twilight Star

The Whispering Doodad

The Will of the Dead