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  1. THEN, TEETH

    THEN, TEETH

    Matt Dunn

    Mazier is sprawled on the rotten planks, waves lapping at stone underneath. Her slowing heartbeat pumps blood into the seawater. She stares, unblinking, at the shanty-dwellings above, and the stars beyond.

    Pyke studies her face once more. Mazier’s dead eyes stab at his mind.

    A jaulling vessel. Four-master with tattered sails. Waves the size of mountains.

    Long hair in high-sea wind. Dozens of faces on deck. Watching. Blue eyes. Mazier’s blue eyes, wide in disbelief.

    Then, teeth.

    Not Mazier’s pearly whites. Gunky, sword-sized teeth. Criss-crossed the boat. Losing light. Closing. In the jaull’s mouth. Lifeline slack. Cut.

    The tongue was too slick. Eyes stung with sweat. Fingers finding no purchase. Get to open water. Swim, swim...

    The jaull’s teeth clamped shut. Then pain. Then darkness.

    Ship was gone. So were the eyes.

    Mazier’s eyes.

    An able-bodied sailor. Aye. She was there. She cut my line.

    Pyke nudges the body with his boot, gazing downward all the while. He nudges her until she reaches the edge of the dock. One more kick, and Mazier is floating. The sharks are quick to feast. Circling. Snapping. The ocean never wastes time.

    Gulls shriek, their warbled cries caught on the wind, as Pyke finds Mazier, abled-bodied sailor, on the list. Red ink strikes her name from the parchment.

    The last name on the Terror’s crew manifest.

    That’s it. No more names, just a lot of red crosses. Where did I get all that ink...?

    A feeling gnaws at Pyke. Restless, unsettled, unsatisfied. The churning lurch of bile in his belly. He can’t be done. There were too many of them there, on the decks. Maybe he got the wrong manifest. Maybe it doesn’t even matter.

    They let me die. So many hands. So many times.

    Another sound. Not gulls. Not waves. Not teeth closing. Not the voice in the back of his mind screaming out “You’re not done!” over and over and over. Not the music he remembers from the swimming city, all those years ago.

    It’s a new sound. A real sound. A here-and-now sound.

    Pyke looks with his living eye, and sees wooden stairs sagging under heavy bootfalls. A thickset man, walking down toward the moored, bobbing vessels.

    He stops when he sees all the blood. His hand disappears into his jacket, pulling a flintlock, keeping the barrel of the gun close to his chest. Ready to aim and fire. Like a bloody idiot.

    Pyke steps into the moonlight. The man looks like he’s seen a ghost. The skin around his mouth clams up tighter than a dock banker’s coin-purse. His eyes go wide and quivery, like jellyfish, like calm water catching a breeze.

    “Who’s that?” he yells.

    Come find out.

    The flintlock is aimed at Pyke’s head. Then comes the flash and the bang. The shot is true, but it splinters wood because Pyke is no longer where he was.

    He’s in the mist.

    He falls apart, into salt and drops of water—a fine man to a fine mist. He heard they call him a phantasm. They’re half right.

    The heavyset man reloads. Sweat beads his wrinkled brow.

    In those precious few seconds, Pyke is all around him, in the in between, somewhere behind the air itself, studying him. Those fearful eyes, crap-brown. His beard wild and white. Sagging jowls, crooked nose, cracked lips, the way his earlobes are cauliflowered from countless dirty tavern fights.

    Looks like a captain.

    The man reeks of sweet, prickly fear. Good old boot-quaking terror.

    Smells like a captain.

    Pyke needs to be sure. He takes form—he was always a big man, now with the baleful, glowing eye that the sea gifted him, he feels larger still. Tell me your name, he rumbles.

    The man didn’t expect anyone to appear behind him. Nobody expects that. Maybe they do in fantasies or nightmares or the stories they tell in bars. But in reality, everyone just craps their pants and falls flat on their face, and this heavyset captain is no rule-breaker on that count. He trips on his own stupid boots, and rolls down the stairs like a sack of tinned victuals.

    Pyke takes each step slowly. A Noxian galleon is moored at the dock. Trader ship, or traitor ship? Is there a difference? He guesses not.

    You got ‘til I get to the bottom of these steps to tell me what I want to know.

    The man wheezes, his wind knocked clear into someone else’s sails. Gasping. A fish on land. Chubby hands reaching out.

    I remember you...

    Step.

    White-knuckle grip on the deck rail...

    Step.

    The man tries to stand, but his knee bends the wrong way.

    Step.

    You were watching.

    Step. A wharf-rat scurries close. Dinner time soon.

    You were smiling.

    Sputter. Tears coming now. “P-please… I don’t know what you’re talking about...”

    Step.

    Name. Now.

    “Beke! Beke Nidd!”

    Pyke pauses to consult the manifest, one step from the bottom. All the red marks. All the crossed out names.

    There. Beke Nidd. Midshipman.

    Uncrossed. Clear as day. Must have had the paper folded wrong.

    Beke Nidd. Yeah, I remember you. You were there.

    “I’ve never seen you before! It’s my first night in Bilge—”

    People can’t lie with a hookman’s barber lodged in their cheek. They can’t beg or trade facts they don’t have.

    Fine tool, the barber-blade. Made of tempered sharkbone. Keener than steel. Sticks in real good, snagging on bone and flesh. Struggling only hooks it deeper, as Beke is learning. His eyes are really afraid now.

    Those eyes stab at Pyke’s mind.

    The memory rises like a tide, and he opens up to let the waters come crashing through, drowning out Beke’s gurgled pleas.

    A jaulling vessel. Four-master with tattered sails. Waves the size of mountains.

    Ragged beard in high-sea wind. Dozens of faces on deck. Watching. Crap-brown eyes. Beke Nidd’s crap-brown eyes, wide in disbelief.

    Then, teeth.

  2. Qiyana

    Qiyana

    The youngest child in a ruling family, Qiyana grew up believing she would never inherit the high seat of the Yun Tal. As her parents governed Ixaocan, a city-state hidden deep in the jungles of Ixtal, they raised their children to succeed them, schooling them in the proud traditions of their isolated nation. Primed to rule before her, Qiyana’s nine older sisters received most of the attention, and she often longed to find her own meaningful place in the family.

    That place became clear the day young Qiyana began to learn the ancient elemental magic of Ixtal. Soon after she took up lessons, she realized she was blessed with extraordinary talent. Though Qiyana was only seven years old, she mastered advanced techniques within weeks, while some of her older sisters had yet to grasp the basics after years of study.

    One by one, Qiyana surpassed her sisters in the elemental arts, and the more she progressed, the more resentful she became. Why did her parents waste so much effort grooming her inferior siblings? Each time they were chosen to preside over the grand rituals that shrouded Ixtal from the outside world, Qiyana lashed out in frustration, picking fights to prove her worth. It wasn’t long before Inessa, the eldest sister and immediate successor, became the target for Qiyana’s aggression.

    Rather than defusing the conflict, Inessa bristled at the disrespect from her sister, who was twelve years her junior. As both grew older, their words became increasingly heated, culminating in physical threats from Inessa, and a challenge from Qiyana: they should decide who was strongest in ritual combat, for all of Ixaocan to see—and for the right to succeed their parents. Inessa accepted the challenge to teach her sister some much needed humility.

    When the contest was over, Inessa was never to walk again, while Qiyana stood unscathed.

    She was eager to take her place as the rightful heir, but Qiyana’s parents were furious at her actions. They denied her the prize—tradition decreed that Qiyana would always be tenth in line to inherit the high seat of the Yun Tal. Though the news was bitter, Qiyana soon discovered that the duel had made her elemental prowess known across all of Ixaocan. At last, she had found what had long eluded her: respect.

    That respect quickly became an addiction. Qiyana felt a burning need to be recognized for her exceptional skill. In fact, all of Ixaocan should stand proud with her, and put the world in its place with their powerful elemental magic. Instead, they were hiding from foreign explorers, and miners who were uprooting the jungle on their borders.

    In her parents’ court, Qiyana laid out her ambitions—to drive off the miners and restore the lands. Qiyana’s parents rejected the idea. Contact with the “outlanders” would bring hatred, war, and disease, jeopardizing what their dynasty had protected for centuries. Qiyana stewed, impatient to prove her strength to the world, and determined to prove her parents wrong.

    Acting against their will, Qiyana raided the mining site, killing all the miners but one. As the man’s eyes shone brightly with fear, Qiyana knew he would spread her message—he would tell everyone in his Pilt-over about the grand elementalist who destroyed their mine.

    In Ixaocan, Qiyana gladly took credit for the slaughter, infuriating her mother and father. They told her the Piltovan merchants were sending fresh miners and armsmen into the jungle. Qiyana’s parents would not risk their insubordinate daughter drawing even more outlanders toward their borders, and regretfully ordered her imprisoned for her crime.

    Just as she was detained, several elementalists of the court came to Qiyana’s defense. The elemental talent displayed in the jungle was unheard of, and they convinced her parents that Qiyana should aid them in powering and defending the city. Qiyana was released, once she swore renewed fealty to her elders, and vowed to never cross paths with an outlander again.

    As a growing number of admirers throw their support behind Qiyana, she has finally realized her true place in the world. She holds a power stronger than tradition, and she will climb the ladder of succession by any means necessary.

    She is the greatest elementalist the world has ever seen. She is the inevitable ruler of Ixaocan, and the future empress of all Ixtal.

  3. Fit to Rule

    Fit to Rule

    John O'Bryan

    “I’m starting to sweat, Bayal. Please, do not let me sweat.”

    Qiyana’s servant fretted at the words. He mustered what little control he had over the elements, concentrating on forming a magical cloud of mist. In seconds, the mist surrounded Qiyana and grew cooler, dispelling the heat of the jungle.

    “That’s better,” said Qiyana. “If I am to do this, I must be able to focus.”

    She began to swivel her ohmlatl slowly around her body, causing the jungle thicket to bend and part with each rotation of the ring-blade. Roots and stems popped, tossing up bits of soil until, at last, a narrow trail revealed itself in the brush.

    “Here it is,” Qiyana said, and promptly started down the winding path.

    With each twist of her ohmlatl, the thick vines of the rainforest receded before her. Behind her, they slithered back across the path to conceal it. Bayal fell behind just long enough to be caught in the growth of the writhing plants.

    “Keep up, Bayal,” said Qiyana. “Honestly, you have one task.”

    The servant hurdled the freshly grown thicket, struggling to catch up to Qiyana, and to maintain the temperature of her mist cloud.

    When the two finally emerged from the forest, the sun had sunk low in the sky, its golden dusklight shining on a small village. Qiyana took one last look behind her to see the secret path was now completely buried in jungle. Three village elders greeted her with a respectful Ixtali salute, arms held tightly across their chests, and led her into a plaza just inside the settlement.

    At the far end of the plaza, a great Piltovan machine sat lifeless and defeated—spoils from a recent skirmish in the jungle. Qiyana paid it little mind as she took the seat presented to her at a small table, modestly set with fruits and nuts.

    “To what do we owe this honor, Child of the Yun?” asked an elderly woman, leaning forward to get a better look at Qiyana.

    “I have heard the news of your prefect’s passing. You have my condolences,” said Qiyana.

    “Killed by the outlanders,” said an old man, pointing at the Piltovan machine to his rear. “Tried to stop one of those from felling trees for their mine.”

    “So I was told,” said Qiyana. She sat perfectly upright as she arrived at the purpose of her visit.

    “It seems that Tikras needs a more capable governor. One who is strong enough to stand up to the outlanders, and their toys,” said Qiyana with confidence. “Someone like me.”

    The elders turned to each other, confusion showing through their weathered faces.

    “But Yunalai, respectfully, we already have… someone like you,” said the old woman. “Your sister is here.”

    “What?” fumed Qiyana.

    As if on cue, a procession of local servants marched across the plaza toward Qiyana. Four of them carried a palanquin on their shoulders.

    As the palanquin came closer, Qiyana could see a plush bed, several fine silk pillows, and her sister Mara, reclining with a goblet of wine in her hand. A silver tray of exquisite dishes rested beside her, and two servants cooled her with elemental magic far stronger than Bayal’s. As Qiyana wiped a bead of sweat from her brow, she glared bitterly at her servant.

    “Qiyana. So… good to see you,” said Mara uneasily, as her palanquin came to rest on the ground.

    “Mara. You seem to be enjoying yourself,” said Qiyana.

    Mara squirmed under her sister’s penetrating stare, seemingly trying to retreat into the plush bedding.

    “Would you care for some wine?” offered Mara, as she took a tense, joyless sip from her goblet.

    “You’re supposed to protect this village, not empty its larders,” said Qiyana, declining the drink. “You should step down. Let me be prefect.”

    Mara froze as she forced wine down her rigid throat.

    “I cannot do that,” she said. “You know this. I am older than you.”

    “A whole year older,” replied Qiyana. “Yet so far behind.”

    She approached her sister’s bed, her smug expression slowly transforming into a scowl.

    “I say this only as a statement of fact. You know it is true. What would happen if these miners discovered this village?”

    “I would defend it,” said Mara meekly.

    “You would die. So would everyone in this village. This we both know,” said Qiyana, for everyone in the plaza to hear. “I can protect them.”

    A murmur spread about the plaza. Mara bit her bottom lip—something she had done since childhood, particularly when her younger sister had gotten the better of her.

    “I… cannot give it to you. The Yun Tal will not allow it,” said Mara timidly.

    “They will if you resign,” said Qiyana. “Go home to Ixaocan. Tend your water garden. I will assume your responsibilities here.”

    She watched Mara’s eyes dart around at the elders, as if looking for some way to save face.

    “The law is clear,” said Mara. “No one else may be prefect, as long as I am capable of governing.”

    Clenching her jaw in anger, Qiyana turned toward the great machine resting at the far end of the plaza. She spun her ohmlatl around her body, startling the elders from their seats. Drawing elements from all around the plaza to the blade, she launched them toward the machine. In an instant, the great metal behemoth was entombed in ice, battered by rocks, and ripped apart by vines—all at the command of the young Yunalai.

    The elders and servants in the plaza gave an audible gasp at the display of power.

    “You think you already have ‘someone like me,’” said Qiyana. “But there is no one like me.”

    The elders frowned at her, reaffirming the decision. “As long as Yunalai Mara is capable of governing, the position belongs to her.”

    The words rang in Qiyana’s head as she turned and silently left the plaza, dejected. She led Bayal back to the edge of the village, where they were met by two elementalist wardens.

    “No need to see us off,” said Qiyana. “I know the way, and what to do with it.”

    With a turn of her ohmlatl, she parted the brush to reveal the path that lead back through the jungle. With her servant struggling to cool her, she walked back toward the grand arcologies of Ixaocan, uncovering the secret path, and re-covering it behind her.

    As soon as they were out of sight of the village, Qiyana’s ohmlatl slowed. Behind them, the path was now unconcealed, laid bare in the late day sun.

    “My Yunalai—you’ve forgotten to cover the path,” said Bayal.

    “Bayal, does your one task have anything to do with tending the path?” asked Qiyana.

    “No, my Yunalai. But… what if someone finds the village?”

    “Not to worry. I’m sure the new prefect will defend it.” said Qiyana.

    ***

    The following morning, Qiyana awoke in Ixaocan to the sound of sobs.

    “Outlanders. They found Tikras!”

    Her sister’s cries came from the hallway outside her bedroom. Qiyana put on her robe, and opened the bedroom door to find Mara, weeping in Bayal’s arms.

    “Mara. What’s the matter?” asked Qiyana, making some effort to sound concerned.

    Her sister turned to her, red-faced and trembling, covered in scratches from running through the jungle.

    “The miners… they leveled the village. Half the people are dead. The other half are hiding. I barely escaped—”

    Qiyana embraced her sister, suppressing a smile over her shoulder.

    “Do you see now? I was only looking out for you,” said Qiyana. “Being a prefect is a dangerous responsibility.”

    “I should’ve listened. You… You would have crushed the Piltovans,” lamented Mara.

    “Yes. I would have,” said Qiyana. She beamed as she thought of the miners and mercenaries that had plundered the village—how easily she would slaughter them, and how the surviving elders would grovel in thanks to her as they came to the same realization her sister was now reaching.

    “You should be prefect of Tikras,” said Mara.

    I should, thought Qiyana. I deserve it.

  4. Quinn

    Quinn

    Quinn and her twin brother, Caleb, were born in Uwendale, a remote mountain hamlet in northeastern Demacia. It was a thriving village of hunters and farmers, protected by rangers who patrolled the wilderness and drove off any dangerous creatures wandering down from the high peaks.

    When the twins were still young, King Jarvan III visited Uwendale on a tour of his kingdom. Quinn and Caleb thrilled at the pageantry of the knights in his entourage, resplendent in their gleaming armor. Their father, a weaponsmith in the village, later saw them pretending to bravely defend the land themselves, and fashioned simple weapons for them to play with.

    But as they grew, they spent every moment they could outdoors with their mother—a warden among the local rangers. She taught them how to survive in the wilds, how to track beasts, and most importantly how to fight. Quinn and Caleb became a formidable team—with her keen eye for trails, his skill at baiting their prey, her aim with a bow, and his prowess with a hunting spear.

    But one expedition ended in tragedy.

    Quinn and Caleb, now rangers for Uwendale, were hired to accompany a party of nobles from the capital as they hunted a giant tuskvore—a predator known for its thick hide, long horns, and ferocious temperament. But they failed to kill the creature outright, and the wounded beast turned on them. The twins were quick to intervene, with Caleb’s spear putting out one of the monster’s eyes, and Quinn driving off the tuskvore with her arrows... but not before it gored Caleb with its deadly horns.

    The leader of the party, Lord Barrett Buvelle, helped Quinn bury her brother near where he had fallen. But all could see his death had broken her.

    Unable to move on, she would return to the gravesite, and the joy she had felt as a ranger began to dim. Her prowess in the wilderness waned, and she started making mistakes—she missed easy tracks, and her aim was off.

    A few months later, Lady Lestara Buvelle visited Quinn’s family. The noblewoman was grateful that Quinn had saved her husband’s life, and asked what she could do to repay them. Quinn could think of nothing. She thanked Lady Buvelle, and politely turned her away.

    A year to the day after Caleb’s death, Quinn returned to his grave, as she so often did. Lost in grief, she didn’t hear the approaching tuskvore, its one eye marking it as the very beast that had slain her brother.

    The monster charged. Quinn fired arrow after arrow, but to no avail, and she knew it was her doom. Just then, a majestic bird swooped in—an azurite eagle, a breed long thought extinct. The eagle’s talons and beak ripped bloody gouges across the tuskvore’s face, but the creature was resilient, its horns tearing into the bird’s wing.

    Quinn fired her last arrow as the monster charged her again. This time her aim was true, and the shaft flew right down its gullet, felling the creature in a heartbeat.

    Though the eagle was injured, she approached with caution, for such birds had been known as vicious and untamable hunters—but instead, she saw in his eyes a deep well of kinship. Quinn bound the eagle’s broken pinion, and returned to Uwendale with him. She named him Valor, and the bond that formed between them rekindled the fire in Quinn’s heart. Once more, her thoughts turned to serving Demacia in battle, as a knight.

    Her mother reminded her that this would require sponsorship, and that was far beyond their family’s humble means. But her father urged her to seek out Lady Buvelle, who had already offered recompense for service to her noble family, in the capital.

    With his help, Quinn crafted a new weapon worthy of a knight, a finely wrought repeater crossbow capable of firing multiple bolts with a single pull of the trigger. Quinn and Valor then set out for the Great City together.

    Lestara Buvelle gladly vouched for Quinn, even paying a personal visit to High Marshal Tianna Crownguard to petition for her. Within a week, Quinn took her oaths as a ranger-knight of Demacia.

    Now, having brought renown to the rangers of Uwendale, she prefers to remain out in the hinterlands, never staying within the walls of the outlying towns for long. Quinn rarely pulls rank with the rangers who report to her, instead deferring to their specialized skills and experience in the field—a stark departure from the rigid hierarchy of the rest of the military.

    Quinn and Valor have ventured far and wide in service of Demacia, risking journeys into the icy Freljord and deep within Noxian-held territory. And with each mission, their unique bond has helped ensure the security of the kingdom’s borders for generations to come.

  5. Rules of Survival

    Rules of Survival

    Quinn waited for the Noxians to light a fire in the forest clearing and drink two wineskins. Drunk soldiers were easy to predict. She wanted them drunk enough to be stupid, but not reckless. Mistakes got you killed in the wilderness, and these men had just made two big ones. Lighting a fire told her they were overconfident, the wine that they were sure no one was in pursuit.

    Rule One: Always assume someone’s after you.

    She eased herself through the mud on her belly, using her elbows to pull herself toward a hollowed out, rotten log at the edge of the clearing. The rain had turned the forest into a quagmire, and she’d spend the next few hours picking bugs and worms from her clothes.

    Rule Two: Survival never takes second place to dignity.

    Careful not to look directly at the campfire and lose her night sight, she counted five men - one less than she expected. Where was the sixth man? Quinn started to ease herself upright, but froze as the hair stood up on the back of her neck, a warning from above.

    A shape moved from behind a tree in the darkness. A warrior. Armored in boiled black leather. Moving with skill. The man paused, scanning the darkness, his hand never leaving the wire-wound hilt of his sword.

    Had he seen her? She didn’t think so.

    “Hey, Vurdin,” called one of the men seated around the fire. “Better hurry if you want any of this wine. Olmedo’s drinking it all!”

    Rule Three: Stay silent.

    The man cursed, and Quinn smiled at his obvious frustration.

    “Quiet,” he hissed. “I think they heard you back in bloody Noxus.”

    “Ach, there’s no one out here, Vurdin. The Demacians are probably too busy buckling on their armor and giving it a polish to bother with coming after us. Come on, take a drink!”

    The man sighed and turned back to the fire with a weary shrug. Quinn let out a slow breath. That one had some talent, but he too believed they were alone in the wilderness.

    Rule Four: Don’t let stupid people drag you down to their level.

    Quinn smiled and glanced up, seeing the smudge of night-blue darkness of her eagle companion against the rainclouds. Valor dipped his wings, and Quinn nodded, their wordless communication refined over many years together. She circled her right fist, then raised three fingers, knowing Valor could see her perfectly and would understand.

    Rule Five: When it’s time to act, do it decisively.

    Quinn knew they should just take these men out quietly and without fuss, but the affront of Noxians this deep in Demacia was galling. She wanted these men to know exactly who had caught them and that Demacia was not some primitive tribal culture to be crushed by Noxian ambition. The decision made, she pushed herself to her feet and strode into the campsite as if her being there was the most natural thing in the world. She stood at the edge of the firelight, her hood raised and her oiled stormcloak drawn tightly around her.

    “Give me what you stole and no one has to die tonight,” said Quinn, nodding toward a leather satchel stitched with the winged sword symbol of Demacia.

    The Noxians scrambled upright, blinking as they scanned the edge of the forest. They fumbled to draw their swords and Quinn almost laughed at their surprised ineptitude. The one who’d almost walked right over her hid his shock well, but relaxed as he realized she was alone.

    “You’re a long way from home, girl,” he said, raising his sword.

    “Not as far as you, Vurdin.”

    He frowned, put on the back foot by her using his name. Quinn saw his mind working as he tried to figure out how much more she knew. She kept her cloak pulled tight as the men spread out, surrounding her.

    “Give me the satchel,” said Quinn, a note of boredom in her voice.

    “Take her!” shouted Vurdin.

    It was the last thing he said.

    Quinn swept her cloak back over her shoulder and lifted her left arm. A black shafted bolt from her repeater crossbow buried itself in Vurdin’s eye, and he fell without a sound. A second bolt tore into the chest of the man to his left. The remaining four came at her in a rush.

    A screeching cry split the night as Valor swept down like a lightning bolt from a clear sky. His wings boomed as he spread them wide and swung around in a scything arc. Hooked claws tore the face from one Noxian, and the eagle’s slashing beak clove the skull of the soldier next to him. The third Noxian managed to raise his weapon, but Valor sank his claws into his shoulders and bore him to the ground. The eagle’s beak slashed down and the man’s struggles ceased instantly.

    The last Noxian turned and sprinted for the trees.

    Rule Six: If you have to fight, kill quickly.

    Quinn knelt and loosed a pair of bolts from her crossbow. They hammered into the Noxian’s back and burst from his chest. He managed to reach the edge of the trees before pitching forward and lying still. Quinn remained motionless, listening to the sounds of the wilderness, making sure there were no other enemies nearby. The only sounds she heard were those she’d expect to hear in a forest at night.

    She stood, and Valor flew over to her, the satchel of military dispatches the Noxians had stolen held in his claws. He dropped it and she caught it with her free hand, looping it over her shoulder in one smooth motion. Valor perched on her arm, his body rippling with the thrill of the hunt. His claws and beak were red with blood. The eagle’s head cocked to the side, and his gold-flecked eyes glittered with amusement. She grinned, her bond with the bird so strong she already understood his thoughts.

    “I was wondering that too,” said Quinn. “How did these Noxians get this far into Demacia?”

    The eagle gave a shrill screech, and she nodded in agreement.

    “Yeah, that’s what I was thinking,” said Quinn. “South it is.”

    Rule Seven: Trust you can rely on your partner.

  6. Rakan

    Rakan

    The Lhotlan vastaya once lived on the ancient, mystical borders of Ionia’s deep forests, on the eastern island of Qaelin. It was a place where magic was breathed like air, and time had little meaning. To these chimeric creatures, the lands of mortals were an unforgiving desert, virtually devoid of magic—and over the centuries, that desert only grew, encroaching on the vastaya’s territories.

    Rakan was born into a tribe in decline, yet he never gave up hope.

    Like his brethren, Rakan watched as human settlements continued to expand, damming the flow of Ionia’s wild, chaotic magic for their own safety. Many tribes sent emissaries to negotiate with them, securing treaties to protect the mystical energy the vastaya needed to thrive. Yet over and over again, these promises were broken.

    Disillusioned, most vastaya became increasingly isolationist as they clung to their remaining lands. But young Rakan advocated a different path. The battle-dancer believed that mortals could be convinced to let wild magic run free if they could only appreciate its beauty, and he boasted that he was the one to make them see it. For this, he was labeled mu’takl—distrusted as a human sympathizer, and collaborator.

    Rakan left the Lhotlan tribe, determined to spread the song of his people across Ionia. He was an entertaining rogue, a welcome performer at any tavern or village carnival, but over the years he realized that was all he was to mortals—no matter how many dances and songs he performed, no matter how much he enthralled the crowds, he merely provided diversion to drunken revelers.

    Rakan grew restless, finding himself without purpose... until he had a chance encounter with Xayah, a fellow Lhotlan, at the harvest festival in Vlonqo.

    Seeing her in the crowd, Rakan sang one of his old songs, entrancing the entire town with his gleaming plumage. Though countless human and vastayan women had fallen for him in the past, this violet raven seemed immune to his charms, though not uninterested.

    How could she see him and yet choose not to follow him? It was a puzzle with no easy answer.

    Intrigued, the battle-dancer approached Xayah and asked after the welfare of their tribe. When she told him that the Lhotlan had lost the last of their lands, Rakan howled with rage. This finally seemed to impress Xayah, and she assured him that there was still hope: she was part of something greater, a rebellion of sorts, to take back what the vastaya had lost. Not just for the Lhotlan, but for all tribes.

    Rakan was thunderstruck. Here was a chance for him to redeem his people, a cause he was willing to die for. He implored Xayah to let him accompany her, and she agreed—as long as he carried his weight.

    And, as Xayah would soon learn, Rakan’s dances were as impressive in battle as they were on stage. He called himself the greatest battle-dancer in Lhotlan history, a boast that none could refute. His grand entrances and dazzling acrobatics distracted and befuddled enemies, before Xayah felled them with her razor-sharp quills. In any dangerous situation, they fought together with uncanny harmony.

    During their travels, Rakan became fascinated by how Xayah interacted with the world. She seemed always prepared, aloof, and focused... whereas he was absent-minded, affable, and lacking seriousness. Although Rakan would often forget her carefully laid plans, he made up for it with his ability to read the emotions of others, using charisma and insight to persuade them. The two vastaya were so different, and yet they achieved great feats, each one’s strengths complementing the other’s weaknesses.

    Soon enough, Rakan couldn’t imagine life without Xayah, and it was clear that she felt the same for him. The pair pledged themselves to each other in the midst of a raucous tavern brawl.

    Yet they did not see eye to eye in all things. Where she viewed the world as black and white, with mortals always the enemy, he had more compassion, and believed some of them were redeemable. Despite this difference, Rakan was certain that his and Xayah’s love for each other would bear them through the storms that lay ahead.

    Through Xayah, Rakan has found purpose. Inspired by his partner’s singular drive, Rakan has made her crusade his own, and together they will fight to reclaim the First Lands for the vastaya.

  7. Nothing Rhymes with Tubebow

    Nothing Rhymes with Tubebow

    Odin Austin Shafer

    “Two paths lead to the monastery fortress from the villages below it,” Xayah begins.

    I follow her eyes and see a pair of golden stairways that stretch down from the mountain temple to the farmhouses below. Each wood-woven home probably has a whole family inside it. There, mortals are born, die, and—most importantly—create new songs.

    Probably with harps and drums. Maybe flutes? I should make a reed flute later. First, I need to fluff my cloak. Did I remember to clean my feathers? The town below must have an inn. A bottle of wine would be great right now.

    “Rakan…” Xayah says.

    Crap. She was telling me the plan. I focus back on her face, on her crooked smile. The sunset’s last rays reflect in her eyes. I love her eyelashes. I want to—

    “Repeat it back to me.”

    Something in the monastery. She was… Uh…

    “I rendezvous with you at…” I say, but I’ve already lost the thread. I pull at one of the feathers on my head, hoping to pluck the idea from it.

    A tiny shimmer of light glistens from her scrumptious bottom lip. Are her lips purple today? They were violet yesterday.

    “They will kill me if they catch me,” she says.

    The shock of the thought takes my breath. I feel my face twist into a snarl. “Who?!” I demand.

    “The guards,” she replies. ”It’s always guards.”

    “Then I’ll distract them! When?”

    She points to the sky. “Look for a green flash before the sun sets. Then draw the guards away from the western walls while I run along the ramparts to the cells.”

    “I put on a show the moment the sun sets,” I say. “Where do we meet?”

    “At the gate. I’ll throw a golden blade into the sky. But you have to be there in ten breaths,” Xayah says, plucking a feather from my cloak.

    “I will be at that gate the moment you throw the blade,” I say. Nothing in my life is more certain than that.

    “I know.”

    She nods, and begins telling me the safest path to take. She plans things, which is why I know she will be okay. Wow, the sky is gorgeous right now. That cloud is shaped like an eggplant. I saw a dog once…




    I do not like these steps. I do not like them. The gold leaf covering the stone is almost the same color as my feathers. It’s infuriating. I consider changing their hue, but it would take some magic. Damn, I can’t be tired when she needs me. Xayah probably sent me this way knowing my plumage would blend in here. A red cape would look better against these steps. Maybe indigo? What’s around this corner?

    More steps. Only humans would cut stone into flat shapes to make a mountain boring! I should climb the cliff. Xayah said to take the steps… I’m pretty sure.

    I pick up some pebbles and begin to juggle them. I hear the magic writhing north of me, within the twisting roots of the Lhradi Forest.

    The forest’s song finds its way into my head, and I begin to sing it.

    “What was that?” a voice echoes from above.

    An entry way! A human guard appears. His clothing is dark as shadow.

    “Who are you?” he demands.

    “I am Rakan!” I reply. How can anyone not know that?

    “Who?”

    I don’t like him. I hate him more than steps.

    “I am Rakan! The battle-dancer of the Lhotlan tribe. I am the song of the morning. I am the dance of the midnight moon. I am the charm that—”

    “It’s that vastayan entertainer,” another guard interrupts. He too wears boring clothing—clothes I haven’t seen in this area before.

    The first guard wears a shiny golden amulet on his chest. I snatch it from him.

    “Hey!”

    “What’s this?” I ask. He doesn’t deserve this. Whatever this is.

    He grasps for it, but I flip it around my hand while still juggling the pebbles in the other.

    “Give me that!”

    I flick each stone into his face.

    “No,” I say. Then, as innocently as I can, I ask, “Is it important?”

    He draws a pair of hook-swords. I take one away from him before he can raise them.

    “Open the gate, I’ll give you back this… uh… shiny thing,” I offer as I twirl his amulet in my palm, and then send it spinning up my arm.

    Instead, the rude fool swings at me! I flip over his attack, and land behind him. He turns to slash again. I dive under his blade, using my rear to knock him off balance. He falls down the steps with a scream.

    The other guard watches his friend tumbling away, then looks back to me. I shake my head at him.

    “Honestly, how could anyone not know who I am?”

    This one stabs at me with his spear. I twist past him, allowing my feathered cloak to envelop him for a moment. Blinded, he stumbles and trips over himself. He falls onto his shield and shoots down the stairway with a clack-clack-clacking sound. Well, until he crashes into his friend on the first landing.

    The impact sends them both sprawling. I laugh. Now I get steps.

    “You are terrible dancers,” I say as I check my cloak for dirt.

    The two people stumble to their feet, glaring up at me.

    “You okay?” I ask, thankful for the amusement.

    They roar as they rush up the steps. Ungrateful bastards.

    I leap away from them and ask, “Wanna know the difference between a party and a fight?”

    They slash at me with their weapons again and again.

    “One is an entertaining day,” I say as I send them back down the stairs. “The other is… shorter.”

    A deafening gong sounds behind me. I smile. The fun part begins.



    “You gotta do better than that!” I yell, taunting my pursuers as I run. I do need to get out of here, though. There are twenty guards now. Okay, maybe thirty? More than lots.

    Running through their sleeping chambers was a bad idea. However, it did give me a chance to freshen up.

    Some of the men have those strange crossbows. They use fire from a tube. They had a name. I’m gonna call ’em tubebows. Their shots explode around me, eating holes into the wall as I dive out of the room.

    I slide into the courtyard, performing a full twist to give it some flair. The gate is open. I could run for it, but Xayah needs me.

    Hidden in an alcove, a guard swings at me with a large tubebow. Or is bowtube better? He pulls at the trigger. I leap toward him, diving over his shot.

    “What’s a good rhyme for tubebow?” I ask out loud.

    I kick the guard up in the air. As he falls, I spin and introduce my hand to his cheek. The sound is louder than his weapon.

    “Oh, slap!” I say, mimicking its intensity. The human rolls to his feet, pulling a short sword. “How are you not getting the message?!”

    I wonder if I can find a kitchen. That’s where the chocolate would be.

    The light in the sky is changing. I leap back into the air to check the sun’s location again. It disappears behind the hills, and an orb of green light flashes above it.

    “Party time!” I scream. Now, the entire castle is chasing me.

    “Surrender yourself!” a guard in a metal hat yells.

    “No! I am distracting you!” I reply. He looks at me confused. I’m gonna slap him next.

    A hail of arrows launches from the opposite wall. I swerve through them, enjoying the whistle they make as their fletching passes me.

    Would I look good in that metal hat?


    The golden blade hangs in the air for a second before falling. Xayah is ready to go.

    I take my first breath. She said I had ten, but four breaths is much too long. I need to know she’s safe.

    “Wanna see some sweet moves?” I ask the nearest human.

    He doesn’t seem enthused. I roll through the group and appear behind him. He turns just in time to meet my cloak halfway. My feathers spin him up into the air like a top. Twelve spins is my record, but that was on a hill.

    Second breath. The human slams into the ground after nine rotations. Damn. I don’t have time to try again.

    Third breath. I have to make it back to where she needs me, back to Xayah.

    I leap up the rampart, then bound off its roof toward the gate.
    I take the fourth breath in midair.

    Xayah runs toward the gate with some fancy juloahs—they are hairy where we have colored feathers. They must be from the Sodjoko tribe. Too formal looking, but I do like the thick ridge of hair that flows along the back of their forearms. I should make my feathers do that. The eldest one’s sarong seems like a terrible idea.

    “We’ll never make it,” he cries. “They have rifles!”

    “You mean the tubebows?” I ask.

    Akunir stares at me blankly.

    “Those are out of ammo,” I explain. “The Xini longbows too.”

    “What?! How?”

    “I am Rakan,” I explain. I expect this from humans, but my own kind?

    “All of you, run for the tree line,” Xayah says.

    A dozen men, covered in flour and chocolate, run out from the guardhouse. Mixed with eggs, they would make a thing called ‘cake.’ Pies are better though…

    “Run!” Xayah yells. When the old juloah fails to move, I pull him along.


    Coll kneels beside her guard’s body. She and Xayah pray that his spirit finds our lands. One of his horns is broken, blood pools in the leaves around him. Coll removes the last arrow from his corpse. He carried her all the way here, even after the humans wounded him.

    This juloah should not have died. Someone loved him. They will sing his songs. But only silence will answer.

    My eyes well with tears. Softly, I sing for his loss, and his family’s.

    Xayah stands with her fist clenched. She won’t grieve now. Instead, the pain will find her tonight when she thinks I’m asleep. That is her way. I will kiss away her sorrow then.

    The consul is named Akunir. He might have been a battle-dancer when he was young. He and Xayah begin arguing about politics.

    Coll kisses the forehead of her guard. Her jaw is tight. She holds an anger stronger than Xayah’s. She glares at her husband Akunir. She has been waiting for him to listen for far too long.

    “I will go back north, Akunir,” Coll says as she rises. “I will tell them what was done to us.” Her arms are as tight as branches, rigid against her sides.

    “Coll, no,” Akunir protests.

    “I will bear word of Jurelv’s fate to his kin, and mourn with them,” she says. That must have been the guard’s name. Perhaps he was kind. I like the smile lines on the side of his face. “Then, I will muster arms and prepare the tribe to fight.”

    “You cannot do that!” the consul yells.

    “I forsake my claim to you. I forsake your claim to me,” she speaks coldly.

    Akunir looks as if he’s been stabbed. He did not see this running down the hillside? Or in the forest? Or beside the dead guard? It was decided long ago. Moons ago.

    “Coll… please.”

    “No,” she states simply. He moves to grab her. I block him.

    “I will speak with my mate,” he says.

    I can feel his breath on my chin. He ate guloo fruit recently. My nose nearly touches his forehead. He glares up at me.

    I simply shake my head and shrug. I don’t need words. For this, silence is better.

    His remaining two guards tense. They don’t want to dance with me. I am Rakan. They know my name. They glance nervously to Xayah holding her blades. They know her name too.

    “Thank you, Xayah,” Coll says before limping away.

    Akunir and his guards watch her go. Wordlessly, they set off to the south, leaving us alone.

    I move close to Xayah. I feel her sadness for Jurelv, Coll, and for Akunir. I’ll drink wine tonight. Then I’ll sing rude songs.

    “Promise me nothing will come between us like that, mieli,” she says.

    “We’re not like them, miella. We’ll never be like them,” I reply. I can feel her worry. She’s smarter than me about so many things, but foolish about love sometimes.

    “Where to now, Xayah?”

    “Let’s just stay here a moment longer.”

    I wrap my cloak and arms around her. I will tickle her later. We will laugh and drink. She will plan and I will sing. I feel her cheek on my chest. I’m glad that Xayah needs me now.

    “Repeat it back to me,” she says.

    “We are not like them,” I say again. “We are not like them.”

  8. Rammus

    Rammus

    Idolized by many, dismissed by some, mystifying to all, the curious being, Rammus, is an enigma. Protected by a spiked shell, Rammus inspires increasingly disparate theories on his origin wherever he goes - from demigod, to sacred oracle, to a mere beast transformed by magic. Whatever the truth may be, Rammus keeps his own counsel and stops for no one as he roams the desert.

    Some believe Rammus is an Ascended being, an ancient god amongst men who rolls to Shurima’s aid as an armored guardian in its times of need. Superstitious folk swear he is a harbinger of change, appearing when the land is on the verge of a great shift in power. Others speculate he is the last of a dying species that roamed the land before the Rune Wars sundered the desert with uncontrolled magic.

    With so many rumors of great power, magic, and mystery surrounding him, Rammus compels many Shurimans to seek his wisdom. Soothsayers, priests, and deranged lunatics alike claim to know where Rammus dwells, but the Armordillo has proved elusive. Despite this, proof of his presence predates living memory, with crumbling mosaics depicting his image on the most ancient walls of Shuriman ruins. His likeness adorns colossal stone monuments made in the early days of Ascension, leading some to believe he is no less than an immortal demigod. Skeptics often point to a simpler explanation: that Rammus is just one of many such creatures.

    It is said that he appears only to worthy pilgrims in great need of his aid, and those blessed by his presence experience great turning points. After the Armordillo rescued the heir to a vast kingdom from a terrible fire, the man renounced his position to become a goat farmer. An elderly mason was inspired by a profound, yet brief conversation with Rammus, and constructed an enormous marketplace which became the bustling heart of Nashramae.

    Knowing Rammus’s guidance can pave an enlightened path, devout believers perform elaborate rituals designed to attract the favor of their deity. Disciples of the cult devoted to Rammus demonstrate their unwavering faith in a yearly ceremony by imitating his famous roll and somersaulting through the city in droves. Every year, thousands of Shurimans trek through the most treacherous and remote corners of the desert on a quest to find Rammus, for many teachings indicate he will answer a single question of those he finds deserving, if they are able to find him. Knowing his enthusiasm for desert treats, the pilgrims arm themselves with offerings thought to attract his blessing, packing their mules with flasks of sweet goat’s milk, chests filled with colonies of ants sealed in wax, and jars of honeycombs. Many never return from the deep desert, and fewer still with stories of the demigod, though travelers describe waking to find their packs mysteriously emptied of all edible provisions.

    Whether he is truly a wise oracle, Ascended deity, or a mighty beast, Rammus is known for his miraculous feats of endurance. He entered the impenetrable Fortress of Siram, an imposing bastion designed by a crazed sorcerer. The structure was said to contain untold magical horrors - fearsome beasts mutated beyond recognition, corridors wreathed in flames, impenetrable tunnels guarded by shadow demons. Not an hour had passed when the enormous fortress collapsed in a plume of dust, and Rammus was seen rolling away. None knew why Rammus entered the darkened gate, nor what secrets he learned within the basalt walls of the fortress. In the year of the great flood he crossed the vast lake of Imalli in just two days, and dug many miles deep to destroy a giant anthill and kill its queen, whose daughters had devastated the nearby farmland.

    Sometimes he appears as a benevolent hero. When invading Noxian warbands attacked a Northern Shuriman settlement, disparate tribes banded together to defend the territory beneath the Temple of the Ascended. They were no match for the invaders in size or skill, and the battle was all but lost when Rammus entered the fray. Each side was so shocked to see the elusive creature that fighting halted completely as they watched him roll between them. As Rammus passed the towering temple, the foundations of the building shook, and enormous stone blocks toppled onto the invading army, crushing many of its warriors. Now outnumbered, the army retreated to elated cheers from the Shurimans. While many swear Rammus saved the town out of love for Shurima, others argue he was merely defending the territory in which his favorite cactus flowers grew. At least one tribesman claims Rammus was simply sleeprolling and had no intention of taking down a temple.

    Whatever the truth, stories of Rammus are treasured by the people of Shurima. Any Shuriman child can list a dozen theories on the question of his origin, half of which they likely invented on the spot. Tales of the Armordillo have only increased with the rise of Ancient Shurima, as they did just before its fall, giving way to a belief that his presence heralds darker times to come.

    But how can such a benevolent, epicurean soul herald an age of destruction?

  9. Caravan North

    Caravan North

    Rayla Heide

    Ojan’s knife whittled the edge of the ironwood into a soft curve. As an eight-year-old, he wasn’t the most practiced craftsman; his wood block was just starting to resemble something round and spiky.

    His sister, Zyama, leaned down from her bunk and grimaced.

    “What’s that? Rhoksha dung?” she said. “No one will want to buy that.”

    “It’s not dung, it’s a great and fearsome god, with his armor and everything! And it won’t be for sale. It’s for luck.”

    “We’re traders, little brother,” she said. “Everything here is for sale.”

    The caravan clinked and clanged as it rolled over the dunes. Every space from floor to ceiling was packed tightly with jars of spices, leaving just enough room for the family’s narrow bunks.

    “Something’s chasing us from the south!” Ojan’s mother shouted from outside. Ojan heard her whip crack, urging the camels to hurry their pace.

    Zyama leaned out the window, staring through her most prized possession, an ornate spyglass.

    “They’re Kmiros! I’ll ready the arrows,” she said. “They must be after your Rhoksha dung.”

    Ojan replaced her at the window. Sure enough, hundreds of beetles the size of dogs swarmed over the dune behind them.

    Zyama returned with a bow and quiver of colorful arrows. She fired, taking one beetle out, but the mass of insects charged on without pause.

    “How many arrows do we have?” Ojan asked.

    “About forty,” Zyama said, looking into the quiver. She frowned.

    Their mother’s voice carried from the front. “We’ll have to outrun them. Hold on!”

    Whips cracked once more and the caravan jolted forward, knocking Ojan to the floor.

    Zyama loosed another arrow into the swarm, spearing two at once. The creatures fell, but plenty more took their place.

    “Oil! In the left cabinet!” their mother shouted.

    Ojan ducked away and returned with a flask of lamp oil and a wad of rags. He doused a piece of cloth before wrapping it around the tip of an arrow. He lit the bundle on fire and carefully handed it to Zyama, who blasted the flaming shot into a cluster of beetles. They burst into flames, screeching as they burned. Ojan grinned.

    Together they bombarded the horde with flaming arrows, firing as fast as Ojan could wrap each arrowhead. The air smoked with burning chitin. The caravan accelerated, and the gap increased. They were nearly safe.

    Ojan’s stomach dropped. The Kmiros spread glittering wings and rose to the skies as a unified black cloud.

    Ojan flinched as a heavy thud shook the cabin from above. More followed, and the wooden slats groaned under the weight of the oversized insects.

    “Hold on!” his mother shouted from the front as she veered them sharply left. Beetles tumbled from the roof, but Ojan heard a discordant scratching from above and knew more had landed.

    Pincers broke through the layered beams in the ceiling and an enormous beetle tumbled into the caravan. Zyama drew her dagger and stabbed it, but her blade was unable to pierce its tough carapace. She pushed Ojan back and waved her blade before her, desperately trying to hold it at bay.

    More Kmiros dropped through the smashed roof, all snapping jaws and clicking pincers. Ojan dove beneath his bunk, desperately kicking the insects as they clawed for him. He prised the round wooden figure from his pocket.

    “Please, Rammus, I pray to you,” he whispered. “Help us!”

    The caravan jolted as beetles landed on the roof. It pitched back and forth like a ship on a rough sea. Then the world tilted sideways as the caravan overturned completely, skidding in the sand.

    Ojan shielded his face from tumbling objects as dust clouded his vision. He was flung against the wall, his ears ringing and head throbbing as the caravan swerved. After a moment of stillness, he felt a hand tug his arm as his mother dragged him from the rubble. He squinted in the blinding sunlight.

    The family huddled in the wreckage of their caravan, coughing in the dusty air as the Kmiros circled. A beetle charged forward and Ojan’s mother stabbed it between its clicking jaws. She skewered another as it scrambled to bite her daughter, spilling rank yellow innards across the sand. A third beetle leapt from the top of the caravan and landed behind them. Zyama screamed as it seized her foot in its pincers.

    The beetles froze abruptly, halting their attack. They hunkered low to the ground, antennas flexing. In the silence, Ojan heard a distant whirring. He watched the western horizon as a sand cloud rushed toward them in a fury of dust. The family brandished their weapons in readiness to fight this new threat.

    A round armored shape exploded from the flurry of sand and smashed into the nearest beetle with terrible force, crushing it to pulp.

    The shape barreled on, smashing beasts left and right. Though the insects snapped at the shape with their sharp pincers, it was unstoppable, and in a moment, no living Kmiros remained.

    The dust began to settle once more, and Ojan glimpsed spiked armor jutting from the round shape ahead.

    “Is that...?” Zyama said.

    “Rammus!” Ojan shouted. He scrambled down the hill to meet his hero.

    The creature’s shell was intricately patterned with spiral scales, and his claws were sharp as knives. He gnawed slowly on the hairy leg of a beetle, juice dripping from his mouth.

    Ojan and Zyama gaped.

    Their mother approached the Armordillo, bowing her head deeply.

    “You saved us,” she said. “We are grateful.”

    Rammus crunched the beetle leg as the family watched. Several minutes passed.

    He rolled to the fallen caravan and rummaged through the debris, emerging with Ojan’s wooden carving of the Armordillo. The likeness wasn’t perfect, but certainly discernible.

    “That’s you,” Ojan said. “Please, take it.”

    Rammus knelt down and bit the wooden figurine in two with a crunch. He turned and walked a few paces before spitting the pieces into the sand. Zyama stifled a laugh.

    “Hmm,” said Rammus.

    He tore a leg from another dead beetle and dragged it through the sand as he rolled away.

    The family watched him disappear over the horizon.

    Ojan ran after Rammus to retrieve the broken pieces of the statue. He pocketed them and bowed.

    “For luck,” he said.

  10. Redeemed

    Redeemed

    Phillip Vargas

    Senna woke with a gasp, her breath pluming in the frigid night. Slicked with sweat, her arms, legs, neck, and back were covered in a mantle of sand. A single thought tumbled through her mind.

    You need to reach Bilgewater.

    She sat up, and saw the dark waters of the Holnek streaming past the lonely riverbank. Her instincts were pulling at her again, speaking to her as they had since childhood. She had learned long ago to trust those feelings and hunches—and now they were telling her to leave.

    Lucian stirred in his sleep. He turned and pulled their bedroll away, leaving her bare. A gentle breeze chilled her skin even more, and she burrowed her toes in the sand, searching for warmth.

    There was an unusual ebb in Harrowings, and so they had traveled north, to south-east Valoran, sailing upriver until they neared the Noxian border. The pair had spent a short respite together in solitude, far from the storm that was their lives, a chance to rediscover one another after years of being apart. It was comfortable, like a well-worn cloak. Her instincts were ripping her away from the only refuge she and Lucian had known since they were reunited.

    She swallowed the knot growing in her throat, and closed her eyes, searching her heart, hoping that she had misunderstood, that her instincts weren’t so cruel, that they could be bargained with.

    But the feeling remained.

    She stared at the vast darkness and felt the glare of countless stars—each one like a wretched soul waiting for deliverance, watching in silence as she lived the life they were denied. She had no right to squander salvation, these precious moments spent with Lucian.

    He’ll understand.

    Lucian moaned softly in his sleep, head resting on a leather-bound tome. His breath quickened as he tossed beneath the bedroll, the moans growing louder. Senna shook his shoulder until he startled awake. He pushed himself up on his elbow, breathing heavily. As he readjusted to the waking world, he stared at her, through her, still seeing the woman from his nightmare, the one he failed to save from Thresh’s lantern, her years of imprisonment and torture. He took another deep breath, and relief settled in his eyes.

    “Sorry,” he said, offering her the bedroll.

    They watched the horizon. A radiant edge of purple and indigo heralded the approaching dawn.

    You need to tell him.

    Reluctantly, Senna turned to Lucian. “It’s time to go.”

    “We were just getting settled in,” he said, still looking out across the water. He let out a heavy sigh. “Where to?”

    “Bilgewater.”

    He shook his head. “If there’s a Harrowing, it’ll be over before we ever reach port.”

    There’s still time.

    “If we leave now, we could be there in a few days,” Senna said.

    “There’ll be nothing to do but bury the dead.”

    Senna tensed at the bluntness of his words, the easy disregard of their duty as Sentinels of Light. But she knew it wasn’t that simple—his feelings ran deeper, and his lapse would be momentary. “There’s still a chance,” she insisted. “I can feel it.”

    Lucian said nothing.

    His heart is elsewhere.

    She looked at the codex lying on the sand, its bronze clasp broken and pitted with age. “Perhaps we shouldn’t have come this far north,” she said. “It was careless.”

    The ancient manuscript was Lucian’s latest acquisition, and the reason they had initially sailed to the region. He had procured it in Krexor, hoping it would reveal a way to end her curse, to free her of the Black Mist that had pursued her relentlessly since childhood—drawn to a spark of unnatural life that had infected her when she meddled with a force she didn’t understand. There were dozens of such volumes on their ship.

    She’d often awoken at night, alone in their bedroll. She, shrouded in darkness. He, illuminated by candlelight, hunched over a tome, desperately seeking answers to questions she had long stopped asking.

    Lucian finally turned to Senna. “There hasn’t been a Harrowing in months,” he said. The warmth had returned to his face, along with a tinge of remorse. “I wanted us to rest, if only for a while.”

    A piece of Senna’s heart wanted nothing more. She longed to forget the horrors of the Black Mist, to look up at the night sky and see only stars.

    “I know,” she said. “We both did.”

    Lucian picked up the heavy codex and started to rise. Senna felt the chasm widen between them, leaving her alone on the other side. She took his hand, holding him fast. “We’ll start after dawn,” she said.

    He sat back down on the sand, and they watched the sunrise.




    They had broken camp shortly after dawn. Senna was hauling the last of their provisions up a narrow gangplank while Lucian untied the halyard, preparing to hoist the mainsail. They worked in silence, each lost in their own thoughts as the ship swayed in the calm waters of the Holnek.

    She planted a wooden crate on the weathered deck, next to their other supplies. Their stores had dwindled during their stay. “We’ll need to resupply before heading to Bilgewater.”

    Lucian nodded. “We can sail down the coast and provision in Holdrum, but we’ll also need to anchor at Mudtown.”

    She gave him a curious look.

    “There’s a weaponsmith in the Buhru Quarter that works with silver grenades,” he said.

    “We’ll lose at least half a day in port.”

    “If we’re headed into a Harrowing, Thresh will be there,” he said, eyes cold and flat.

    Senna gazed at the deep waters of the river, its current flowing gently toward the sea. Her gut feelings were leading her to Bilgewater, but something didn’t seem quite right.

    “The mist has been reaching out farther with each storm, like it’s searching for something,” she said. “Why return to Bilgewater?”

    “Those islands are his favorite haunts.”

    “This is bigger than Thresh,” she said, more sharply than she intended.

    Lucian didn’t respond. Instead, he opened his canteen, took a long drink of water, and then slowly pushed the stopper back inside.

    “He’s constantly scheming,” he finally said. “And all the other spirits are trapped in their suffering. Who knows what obsessions permeate what’s left of their minds?” He looked away, jaw clenched, lips pressed into a rigid line.

    Senna thought of the chaotic patchwork of maps and lengths of twine that stretched across the walls in their cabin. Lucian had used them to track the Black Mist for years while she was imprisoned in the lantern.

    He can’t see past his hatred.

    Senna shook her head. It was more than just anger. Lucian viewed the mist as a horrific blight upon the world, a scourge of wraiths needing to be purified. But her time in the lantern had shown her a different way. She could use her powers to redeem those wretched souls, liberating them from suffering.

    “The Ruined King is behind these Harrowings. There’s longing there... an intelligence,” she said. “I can feel it. He’s—”

    Something’s wrong!

    A light flashed in the east.

    Lucian opened his mouth to speak, but his words drowned before they reached Senna’s ears. Her legs weakened as an overwhelming weight pressed against her chest. She lunged for the ship’s railing but found Lucian’s hand instead.

    Dark lightning slammed into Senna. The jolt sent her crashing against the deck, every limb contorted in searing pain, her body tensing and twisting as bones threatened to snap. A chorus of screams breached her mind. The anguished cries resounded and swelled until the world shattered in fragments of blinding light. She felt herself being torn away from Lucian and the boat and the shore, and the anchor that held her life in place.

    Sadistic laughter ushered in the silence.




    Ash fell gently on Senna’s face. She cracked open her eyes, flinching as she saw pinpricks of dark lightning crawling down her arms. Tortured screams still resonated in her mind. Slowly, her thoughts cleared, and the arcs of energy dissipated. Only the echo of laughter remained.

    No. No. No... Something’s wrong... You need to get up.

    She struggled to a knee, braced her arm on her leg, and rose in a scattering of ash and cinders. Air, thick and sweltering, rushed past her face like heat from an open furnace, the tang of a burning world on her tongue. She tottered on baked clay—the ship had disappeared, leaving her alone on a plain of sun-cracked mud that stretched across a desolate wasteland, veiled in a haze. A triad of mountains towered in the distance, their fiery crowns spewing smoke into the ruddy sky.

    Senna was back in the lantern.

    Dread rose in her chest, hammering her heart and hitching her breath. She clutched her hands to ease their trembling, and inhaled deeply.

    You’re wrong. This can’t be the lantern.

    But she had seen this before, or something similar: scorched wastelands, frozen tundras, bustling streets in chaotic cities. The landscape perpetually changed and warped in the spectral prison, as varied as its tortures.

    No, this is something else.

    Senna shook away the doubt and squeezed her eyes shut. “Do not deny this truth,” she whispered to herself. “Not again.”

    In the early days of her imprisonment, she had wasted precious months, perhaps years, unable to accept her own death, trapped in a cycle of misery and loneliness. She wouldn’t repeat that mistake. She had escaped once—she would do so again. Her eyes opened, and she looked for a way out.

    A scream sounded from somewhere far away.

    Senna called to the Black Mist, but drew smoke and embers instead. The poor substitutes rushed in, transforming her into a wraith, shrouded by death. She moved, and the world blurred in a smear of color, hues shifting rapidly as the landscape changed.

    She stopped with a jolt, and Bilgewater snapped into place. But it wasn’t the Bilgewater she knew. The harbor lay ruined, overrun by a massive Harrowing. Rotting timber, slime-coated stonework, the bones of decaying leviathans, all melded into twisted spires. The warped amalgamations floated in midair among the broken hulls of ravaged ships and hundreds of charnel coffins once submerged in the sea. A fortune in tithes drifted amid the debris, glittering like ghostly stars.

    Senna released the darkness, and her body returned, the waterlogged planks of the boardwalk creaking beneath her weight. She walked along the causeway and came across the wreckage of a hunting vessel run aground, its copper-tipped prow skewering the remains of a seaside tavern.

    A figure stood at the center of the destruction. It was a statue of a woman, its arms raised in supplication, mottled face frozen in terror. Senna felt a strange familiarity, like a half-remembered dream, and a deluge of sorrow poured over her. Hand quivering, she reached out and lightly brushed the statue’s cheek. The face collapsed, and the entire figure began to break apart. Slowly at first, and then all at once, the stone woman crumbled into a heap of ash.

    He found her!

    An unfamiliar fear swelled inside Senna, urging her to take flight. She pushed it away. Of course he had found her, whoever she was. There was no hiding from Thresh; this was his domain. She had witnessed countless tortures, each soul an endless opportunity for the Chain Warden to delight in their suffering. Senna regarded the pile of ash.

    This isn’t Thresh.

    It didn’t feel quite right. In all her years in the lantern, she had never encountered anything like this. Perhaps he had refined his technique. If there was one constant, it was his pursuit of perfecting misery.

    She looked out at the dark waters of Bilgewater Bay. The fiery mountain range loomed from afar, spanning the horizon. She knew this to be untrue, a construct of the lantern. There were no mountains south of Bilgewater. She would have had to sail around—

    A stray thought flitted through her mind. She reached for it, grabbed it, and turned it over. The vault unlocked, releasing a memory.

    She had been going to Bilgewater—no, they had been going to Bilgewater. Lucian! He would be fighting out there, desperate to free her from the lantern, suffering alone, as he had for years. It had almost broken him.

    Senna’s consciousness reached out across the great expanse. She smiled, feeling Lucian’s love nearby. But there was something else, profound and urgent. It was panic. She had felt it in Lucian only once before—when Thresh had killed her.

    Pushing away her mounting dread, she narrowed her focus and spoke. “Lucian... I’m here.”

    Silence.

    She tried again, and again, and again, every attempt yielding the same result—Lucian remained unmoved by her call. In the past, she had been able to communicate with him from within the lantern, but Thresh must have found a way to suppress her voice.

    Her body trembled in desperation and fury. She shut her eyes, whispering the mantras she’d learned long ago. “Carve away the unwanted. Keep only the stone. Carve away the unwanted. Keep only the stone.”

    She opened her eyes with renewed determination. Thresh hadn’t beaten her yet.

    The rules of nature didn’t apply in the lantern. The ancient relic was an ever-shifting realm crafted for suffering. It appeared infinitely vast, but Senna knew the truth—she had discovered the lantern’s terminus and pressed against its walls, feeling its seams.

    As she studied the sky, her stomach quivered.

    This isn’t the lantern.

    She paused, reflecting again on those early days and the hard facts she had come to accept. She quelled the denials and continued searching. Dark plumes erupted from the fiery peaks, sending black tendrils of soot to mar the sky. She needed to pierce the cinereous veil.

    Drawing smoke and embers into her, she transformed once again, and Bilgewater blurred away as she took to the heavens. Senna flew across the ocean, ascending ever higher. But the mountains rose up as well, rumbling and spewing vapor in her path. She veered to avoid the acrid clouds, but the blazing peaks altered course with her, ever present and unavoidable.

    Darkness spread across the horizon—a great fog threatening to consume all in its path. Unable to evade the shifting billows, she plunged into the gloom. A storm roared around her, the wailing of countless souls pushing against her like a headwind.

    This isn’t the way. You need to turn back.

    Hand outstretched, she pressed even higher. A light flickered beyond her fingertips, and her doubts faded as she sought the edge of the lantern. The light sparked brighter and suddenly snapped at her fingers. She pulled back her hand, but the sting was already flaring into searing pain, stiffening her spectral form. Dark energy surged and leashed her in midair.

    Senna fell from the sky.




    She awoke on hard-packed dirt. Her human form had returned, an aching, knotted cord covered in a dusting of cinders and ash. She rolled onto her back, groaning and wincing as arcs of lightning crackled down her clammy flesh. They dissipated, leaving behind a stinging numbness.

    Physical torture was foreign to the lantern. Thresh rarely resorted to such debased forms of suffering. The mind and soul were richer fields to plant seeds of torment. Perhaps this was her punishment for escaping. And yet, it still felt wrong.

    You need to get up!

    She staggered to a knee, but her leg gave under her weight, and she crumpled back to the ground. The world dimmed as clouds stretched across the sky, pushing away the last remaining color.

    You need to fight... You’re dying!

    Senna laughed at the absurdity of the thought. There were fates worse than death. She had endured them for years—she would bear them again.

    But as the shadows grew, she began to fear what was in store for her this time. Her brief taste of freedom would make her captivity more desolate, her loneliness and torments greater than before.

    And then, she had an even more sinister thought.

    No! Don’t think that!

    Perhaps she had never escaped. What if she had watched Lucian suffer defeat after defeat, and her broken mind had imagined a different outcome, one that lifted her from this pit of misery? Perhaps her escape had been nothing but a delusion.

    As realization flared, Senna wailed, a primal sound filled with rage and despair. No. She hadn’t created this deception—it was made by Thresh.

    It’s not true!

    She shook her head, furious for clinging to false hope.

    You need to get up!

    “No,” she said, clutching her temples.

    You need to fight!

    “No, he’s won. This was his plan.”

    If you stay here, you’ll die!

    “I’m already dead!” she screamed. “I’m just a dead thing that’s cursed!” Her voice broke, along with something inside. She folded over, curling herself up to become small. Her cries of grief echoed through the great expanse.

    It wasn’t meant to be a curse, Senna. What I gave you was a gift.

    Senna bolted upright. The words had been heavy and sharp, piercing her mind like a dagger. They weren’t her own.

    She swayed on her feet, ignoring the numbness in her legs. “Stay out of my head,” she said. “Do you hear me, Thresh?!”

    No laughter. No admission. Nothing.

    The mountains had receded, their fiery peaks muted in gray. Senna stood alone among the falling embers. Energy crackled on her skin, bolts raking down her body.

    “Is that all you have, Chain Warden?” she asked through gritted teeth. “You’ve lost your touch.”

    I’m not the Warden, sweet Senna. But I’ve also known his tortures.

    The voice was melodious and sorrowful and resonated with fragile tenderness. Senna had met others in the lantern, communing with them over their shared loneliness and suffering. Perhaps...

    “Who are you?”

    Silence, and then...

    A friend. Someone who can help you get back to Lucian.

    Bitterness rose in Senna’s throat. “How do you know that name?”

    I know your whole life. I’m here to help, but you’ll need to trust me.

    “You’re here to offer hope?” She laughed, but there was no humor in it. “I was wrong. You haven’t lost your touch. It’s more refined.” Senna whirled around, searching for the specter. “Your games are done, Chain Warden,” she said. “The cycle is broken. Here and now. Show yourself!”

    The world unfurled and changed, revealing clear skies over white sands and an emerald sea. Waves lapped at her feet, her ankles, her knees. She cast her gaze inland and gasped. Beyond a ridge of white dunes sat a dense grove, its wide-fronded trees native to her island. Senna was home.

    She heard a soft melody coming from beneath the canopy, evoking memories of her mother singing by the fireside. Senna held her breath, watching as a young girl exited the treeline, humming the long-forgotten hymn.

    She recognized the child—it was her.

    The girl strolled toward the shore, probing dunes with a carved walking stick. A cold swell washed over Senna. This was the fateful morning. The day everything changed. By evening, her innocence would be lost. She took a step toward the girl.

    It’s only a memory, Senna. You can’t change anything.

    “Then why bring me here? Is this another trick?”

    There’s something I need you to see.

    The girl’s eyes brightened. She bent down and plucked a seashell from the sand. Plump fingers caressed the pink husk before placing it in a pocket—one of dozens on her pant legs, each sewn by her mother, in different fabrics and patterns, to hold the countless treasures she found. The girl turned toward Senna and smiled.

    Senna hesitated, then offered a timid wave.

    She can’t see you.

    The girl dashed at Senna, but then at the last moment, she swerved and splashed into the water next to her. Senna whirled, and dread knotted her stomach.

    A shipwreck was washing ashore.

    The girl poked inside a dark hollow in the broken hull with her staff, declaring she had “rights of salvage”. She giggled at the words, convinced their power gave her claim to the ship’s bounty.

    Hands slicked with sweat, Senna grappled with the urge to snatch the girl and run. From her vantage point, she saw the danger the child did not—a tendril of Black Mist stirring in the wreckage.

    “She doesn’t know of the darkness she’s about to unleash on all the people she loves,” she said.

    But Senna’s angle also revealed something she hadn’t seen before. As the mist uncoiled and sought to prey on the child, beneath the water, a glowing sphere approached, its filaments of light breaking the surface, searching. The sphere flitted toward the girl and seeped into her spine. The girl stiffened for a moment, eyes wide with fear and confusion.

    Do you remember what happened next?

    “I-I sensed the danger before I saw it... My mind was screaming... A voice was telling me to run.”

    The girl flung her wooden staff at the dark tendril, and bolted into the woods.

    Senna grew thoughtful, recalling the warning that saved her life. “But it wasn’t my voice. It was yours.”

    The water stirred at Senna’s feet as a trio of luminous filaments rose from the sea. They turned and twisted, knitting together into a brilliant silhouette of hallowed light that gradually formed into the spirit of a young woman. The radiance washed away the details of her face, leaving only an impression of kindness and love. A rush of sorrow and joy overwhelmed Senna, like waters from a broken levee.

    “The attack wasn’t your fault,” said the spirit. She spoke with her true voice and not through Senna’s mind. “You were alive. And that’s the one thing the Black Mist cannot abide, for it abhors all life.”

    The words lifted a weight Senna had carried all her life. Unburdened, she was able to see the moment in a different way. “I should’ve died on that beach. I’d be another wraith, screaming in the mist, if you hadn’t warned me.” She paused to consider. “Why did you help me?”

    The spirit’s thoughts seemed to go far away, and although her face remained hazy behind the hallowed light, Senna saw the hint of a smile on her lips. “I was a girl once, playing with dolls, singing as I made believe.” She fixed her gaze on Senna. “Life should be preserved.”

    “But you stayed afterward,” Senna said, her voice shaking. “All these years, the Black Mist wasn’t drawn to me—it was you. The unnatural life. You’re the curse.”

    “If I could have spared you that pain... ripped myself out... I would have. I tried for years, but I didn’t know how.” The spirit turned and looked down at the water. “And then... to watch you grow, from that frightened girl into this fierce woman, a Sentinel of Light fighting back the mist—I had to see it through.”

    Senna arranged the pieces. That first night. Her village. Her home. All those loves swept away in dark waves. The chasm between her and those who survived. The fear in their eyes. Years spent running in terror. Losing people who tried to protect her. Losing Urias, her mentor. The walls she’d built to guard against the horror and the guilt, believing she had brought the curse upon herself.

    “I was a little girl—if I had known the truth...”

    “It was best that I didn’t interfere,” the spirit said, wringing her ghostly hands. “To learn you were conjoined to some unwelcome passenger, it would have robbed you of your own heart.”

    “But you did interfere,” Senna shot back. “The itch down my spine. The wrench of my gut. Even the whispers in my mind. It’s always been you!”

    The spirit hung her head in shame. “I was only helping you... when it was necessary.”

    Help? Is that what that was? All these years, you let me suffer alone!” Senna hardened, venom lacing her voice. “Why reveal yourself now?”

    The spirit met Senna’s glare, her eyes tender but resolute. “You were never alone, Senna. I just couldn’t reach you through the veil, until now.”

    The world shifted once again, as the white sands and emerald sea were blown away by a sulfurous wind. The pair remained on the island, but now the waters raged, and the mountains towered much closer than before. Ash rained down.

    Senna thought about these new revelations, as well as the discoveries she had made in the lantern, secrets learned from other fallen Sentinels. This spirit’s presence had marked her, leading her down a path to death and captivity. But that unnatural life had also kept her alive in the lantern, empowering her to escape. And now, it was still helping her. She knew in her bones that her life was tied to this spirit.

    Senna had many questions and lingering resentment, but she let them burn away like dying embers. Escape was the only thing that mattered.

    “You’ve been warning me that this isn’t the lantern,” she said, watching the waves crash against the shore. “This is all in my mind, isn’t it?”

    “Yes. But the threat is very real. It was Thresh’s powers that struck you down,” said the spirit. “His reach extends across the world, but Bilgewater is his goal for now.”

    “Then he’s the key. Lucian was right.”

    “The Warden is of consequence. But his cruelty only helped set things into motion... for him,” she said, motioning toward the horizon. Senna followed the spirit’s gesture to the mountain peaks. They rumbled across the ocean, pouring out thick gouts of darkness. “You’ve seen him in catacombs, and temples, and distant shores.” The spirit smiled wanly. “Trust your instincts.”

    “What does he want?”

    “To possess what is no longer his,” she said, the softness gone from her voice, the hallowed light flaring with her words. “He’s a child with a bitter heart, who would rather make the world share his misery than face it alone.”

    “How do we stop him?”

    “You’re the best hope. The years of training, the powers you wield, even your time in the lantern, all helped you become a formidable weapon.” The spirit looked away, eyes pooling with remorse. “I’ll be with you, every step of the way... Yet I fear, in the end, it may take all we have.”

    Senna simply nodded. “I’ve lived. I’ve fought. I’ve died. And still, I feel the warmth of Lucian’s arms, even now,” she said. “This curse is a gift.” She had come to accept it, even if Lucian had not. Squaring her shoulders, she turned her attention back to the mission. “Can we make it to Bilgewater in time?”

    The spirit seemed to ponder the question. “The attack is already under—”

    Before she could finish, the spirit’s form tensed with fear.

    Arcs of dark light spiked through Senna, driving her to one knee. She gasped for air as color drained from the sky. The heavens pressed in, and the world collapsed into a cavern of swirling ashfall. Every blistering jolt narrowed the cave even more—eventually it would become her tomb.

    Senna twisted, fighting the contortions of her body, and looked to the spirit. The apparition was folded over, writhing, trembling, sharing in the misery. Lightning pulsed across her ghostly form, searing away her hallowed light.

    “What... is... this?” Senna wheezed.

    “Thresh... His attack is still destroying your body... You must drive out his power.”

    Senna focused on the dark energy, bound it with her own light, and pushed it away as she would the Black Mist. It flowed out in a steady stream. But as it reached the tipping point, the power resisted and rushed back in, dousing her in pain. She crumpled to the ground.

    Her strength was rapidly fading, but underneath her dwindling light, she felt an untapped reserve of radiant power. It belonged to the spirit.

    “You say I’m never alone? Then prove it!” Senna grabbed the woman’s spectral hand. “Channel your light and add it to my own.”

    She turned toward Senna, though it looked painful to do so. “I’ve never—”

    “Don’t worry, I’ll help you,” she said, forcing a smile through the agony.

    Together, they channeled their light and pushed against the dark energy. They met resistance, but only for a moment, and then the nightmare exploded in a blinding flash of white.




    Senna woke with a gasp. She sat up, dark lightning still erupting from her chest. It dissipated in the cool morning air, and she collapsed in Lucian’s arms.

    “No, Senna... Not again, please...” Lucian’s voice quavered, his body shuddering as he held fast.

    “It’s—it’s passed... I’m okay.” She waited for a moment, feeling his heartbeat gradually slow, his trembling subside. Then she gently pulled away.

    “What is that?” Lucian asked, confusion and fear in his eyes.

    A faint light glowed in her chest. Senna remained perfectly still, until the light faded away. She waited, listening, feeling, hoping for the slightest hint. “Are you still there?” she finally asked, her voice tremulous.

    Yes,” said Lucian and the spirit, in her mind and in her ear.

    Senna exhaled and smiled.

    Lucian was staring at her, nodding, searching for answers. She met his gaze, and said, “We need to get to Bilgewater—something terrible has happened.”

    He was about to speak, to rattle off a litany of questions, but she reached for his hand. “I’ll explain what I can, but we need to leave, now.”

    Lucian sighed, a heavy and reluctant sound, but he helped her to her feet and prepared to launch. The ship gently creaked and swayed on the river, tugging against its anchor, ready to set sail. Senna looked toward the east, breathing in the new day, sunlight shimmering off the water.

    For the first time in a long time, she didn’t feel alone.

  11. Rek'Sai

    Rek'Sai

    The largest and fiercest of her species, Rek'Sai is a merciless predator that tunnels through the earth to ambush and devour her prey. Her insatiable hunger has laid waste to entire regions of the once-great Shuriman empire. Merchants, traders and armed caravans will go hundreds of miles out of their way to avoid these vast areas, though cunning bandits have been known to lure the unwary into her killing grounds. Once Rek'Sai detects you, your fate is sealed. There is no hope of escape; she is death from below the sand.

  12. Sai Kahleek

    Sai Kahleek

    Six boys and a camel, and the boys were cheaper to replace. Some were orphans and escaped slaves, but most were off casts — teenagers abandoned by families too poor to keep them. When Shahib offered him the work, Jaheje hadn’t eaten in days.

    Only the desperate would try crossing the Sai Kahleek, but those with any meager possessions bartered for Shahib. Jaheje looked across the cooking fire at the older boy. A few small tufts of facial hair had sprouted on Shahib’s cheeks, and his voice no longer cracked when he spoke. Few boys survived crossing the desert for more than a couple seasons. No one chose to do it after earning any money. No one except Shahib, who had walked the Sai Kahleek for almost ten years.


    Shahib whistled and the other boys ran to his side. He showed them how to cut the callouses from their feet.

    “Feel each step,” he instructed. “Start with your big toe, then roll outward until your whole foot touches down. Only then do you shift your weight from your rear foot.” He stood and demonstrated how to move with long, silent strides.

    “Practice,” he explained. “If the camel walks too slowly, it will reveal our presence. You must be quiet, and you must be swift.”

    Jaheje’s feet bled badly the first day; he nearly fainted from the pain. He practiced long after the caravan stopped and the ground cooled. By the fourth day, the pain was so intense, he used a bit of leather to bite down on. Shahib complimented him on his technique.

    Shahib laughed as he indicated it to the other boys. “Watch,” he said. “Jaheje is quieter than me. Copy how he moves. Each step as soft as a mouse, each stride as long as a gazelle. Yes, this is how you survive Sai Kahleek.”

    Longing as much for the older boy’s praise as the training he needed to survive, Jaheje soon followed him everywhere. He saw how Shahib rested with one foot raised and wrapped around the pendant spear. He saw how Shahib retied the spear’s pendant every morning, making sure the flag’s cut-cloth always flowed like the leaves of a desert palm. He saw how Shahib’s eyes searched the desert in a pattern, over and over, stopping only when he closed them for sleep.


    After the second moon, they arrived. From the top of the dunes, Jaheje looked down at the skeleton of the dead god. No one knew what the monster had been when alive, but its huge ribs raked into the sky, each casting a shadow that engulfed the caravan as they passed. Its bones meant they were entering the Sai Kahleek.

    Northerners called Sai Kahleek the “Bone Sea,” but this was a mistranslation. The Laaji tribes had never seen an ocean. Sai was the word the Laaji used for plains of sand and loosely packed rock, which were slow and painful to walk on. It meant the land was pockmarked with tunnels. It meant the Xer’Sai preyed here. It meant death lurked beneath the sand.


    Dragging the old camel behind them, the team of boys left before dawn, a half day’s march ahead of the caravan.

    Jaheje found his first burrow on the second day, and waved his signal flag. Shahib soft-stepped over to him. They approached the burrow cautiously and stopped a dozen yards from it. Its opening was no larger than a melon, but from it, the poisonous vapors of activity brewed. Shahib sent one of the boys back to redirect the caravan.

    Jaheje looked back and asked Shahib, “Can we kill a Xer’Sai that large?”

    Shahib scratched his chin, responding, “Their skin gets harder with age.” Slowly, a grin appeared proudly. “Last season I killed one the size of a jackal. We lost the camel, but I killed it.”

    Jaheje smiled, enjoying his mentor’s boast. But he found himself asking, “Does Rek’Sai exist?”

    Shahib chilled, his mood suddenly bitter. “I have seen her.” But before Jaheje could ask about the famous beast, Shahib stood and told Jaheje to keep moving. They crept away from the burrow, listening, waiting, scanning the horizon for any movement.


    When Jaheje heard the first gong of a sounding bell, it took him a moment to process what it meant. Something was coming from behind them, to the east. He had been so focused on looking for hidden burrows, he had forgotten to watch the horizon.

    The camel brayed, and Jaheje looked for the signal spears of the other boys in his crew. At the edge of his visibility, he could see their three flags.

    The bell sounded again. The boy who had sighted the Xer’Sai would now use the sounding bell to confuse the beast. Jaheje had to chase the camel away from the path of the caravan and toward the lookout. Assuming the lookout wasn’t killed, the Xer’Sai would follow the camel away from the caravan and allow the lookout a safe path to retreat.

    Jaheje could see Shahib running toward him. The bone-thin teen had abandoned silent-stepping, racing as fast as he could toward the camel and Jaheje. Shahib dropped his spear as a cloud of dust suddenly appeared behind him.

    Jaheje ran to the huge king-bell attached to the camel. He dragged it down to the ground and struck it with all of his might. Even muffled by the earth, the sound battered his ears. He kept hitting, but the cloud of dust pursuing Shahib didn’t change course. Each second it gained ground.

    At the moment, it seemed certain to overtake Shahib. Instead of running or dodging, he froze and screamed, “Don’t move!”

    The other boys stood as motionless as their bodies would allow. At the exact instant, the old camel began running.

    And then, before a word could be spoken, an energy crackle hit them like a wall. The hair on Jaheje’s neck stood on end.

    “It’s close,” Jaheje whispered.

    “No,” Shahib warned. “It’s not close. It’s big.” And for the first time Jaheje saw real fear on the older boy’s face.

    Shahib scanned the desert, looking for a fin, a dust cloud, anything. Then he judged the distance. “The caravan’s too far. If it heads for the camel we can make it to the rocks.”

    Jaheje desperately turned, looking for the hidden creature. “Where is it?!”

    In the distance, they heard the camel bray in pain. The animal’s screams ended suddenly.

    “What could kill a camel that quickly?” Jaheje asked.

    Shahib pushed them forward. “We have to reach the rocks,” he insisted.

    And with that, they began to run.

    When Shahib told them to stop, they stopped. When he indicated for them to silent-step, they did so. Jaheje could only hope Shahib saw what he did not.

    But the black rocks seemed to run away from them. No matter how many steps they took, they never grew closer. So they ran as clouds covered the sun and the desert became black. They ran as the wind swept away their trail. They ran knowing the Xer’Sai was behind them; knowing it heard every misstep, every stumble. They ran knowing that it followed, and that every mistake led it closer.


    When Jaheje saw it, it seemed to be a giant mouth cut into the rock, vapors hissing from it menacingly. The burrow’s entrance was so large, even standing upright, he would be able to walk into it without lowering his head.

    “Rek’Sai,” he whispered in terrified awe. As he turned, he realized that all around them, the black stone was pockmarked with the creature’s giant tunnels.

    Young Xalee gave voice to the horrible realization that they all understood: “She can tunnel through rock.” The cliffs they had thought to be their salvation were instead Rek’Sai’s lair.

    “We should go back, try and reach the caravan,” Xalee suggested.

    “Try if you like,” Shahib answered.

    “We can silent-step.”

    “A day’s travel,” Shahib cautioned. “Can you travel soundlessly for a whole day?”

    “What will you do Shahib?” Jaheje asked.

    “If we go back, we will die in the Sai Kahleek. I will go forward and pray a guardian watches over me.”

    Xalee asked, “Where does this valley lead?”

    “It doesn’t matter where it leads. It is our only choice.”

    They moved cautiously along the cliffs, entering a wind cut valley, and hoping it would lead to water soon. Avoiding the monstrous burrows was impossible. Each boy silently prayed Rek’Sai had heard, and pursued, the distant caravan instead of them.

    As the sunlight crept over the edge of the valley, it revealed the desolate obstacle they faced. It was impossible to walk silently in the canyon, for bones were scattered underfoot. The sound of each footstep echoed with a hollow lifelessness.


    She launched from an unseen hole behind them, which had appeared dead. For Jaheje, everything became a blur.

    “Back!” Shahib screamed to the others. “Get downwind!”

    The warning was already too late for Xalee. The creature brought down the boy like a wolf taking a mouse. Her huge fangs snapped Xalee’s spine, killing him before he could cry out.

    Rek’Sai loomed above Jaheje, twice his height. Her powerful forelimbs stalked left and right. Her leech-like tail, many times the size of an alligator, dragged behind her body. Her long tongue rose, then swayed like a dancing cobra, sniffing the wind.

    Jaheje could feel every muscle in his body aching to move. He stood transfixed as the huge Xer’Sai turned toward him. Gore covered the beast’s eyeless face and armored beak.

    Rek’Sai was so alien and perfect in her deadliness, Jaheje felt his mouth open in awe. The boy gripped his spear staff, certain he wouldn’t be able to pierce her armored hide if she attacked.

    “Down!” Shahib barked.

    All the boys ducked flat to the earth as Rek’Sai’s “fin” pulsed a sickly green color. Jaheje could feel the invisible energy crackling above him.

    The Xer’Sai turned, facing the distant caravan. Her tongue sniffed the air again, and considered the distance. Suddenly, the fin returned to its original violet color, and Rek’Sai pulled Xalee’s body down into her burrow.

    Save the pool of thickening blood and Xalee’s absence, no evidence of the great beast remained.

    Shahib whispered to go. The survivors silently retreated, deeper into the canyon.


    No one spoke. The dark stone, pockmarked with burrows, robbed them of the ability to speak, to cry, to mourn.

    Breaking free of the spell, his exhaustion cast over him. Jaheje looked around the canyon walls. He realized in an instant the enormity of what stalked them and why Shahib had decided to press on. Since Omah ‘Azir’s time, when stone was clay and Shurima built itself to the sun, Rek’Sai had fed here. This valley was hers alone. And all believed the Xer’Sai existed only to eat.

    “But why do they stay here?” Jaheje said aloud.

    Suddenly, the monster appeared. She burst out of the ground in front of them, diving at Jaheje.

    Jaheje ducked as Rek’Sai soared past him, her mass blocking the sun. As she landed, her forelimbs ripped apart the ground and she disappeared beneath the surface.

    Hidden in the brush, VezKah, the youngest boy, motioned Jaheje closer. Just then, his mouth opened in horror. A pulse of dark energy ripped from Rek’Sai’s fin, tearing apart the earth as she rushed toward VezKah. The earth cracked apart as Rek’Sai ripped the ground up and threw the boy into the air. VezKah landed in a heap as the huge fin rushed toward them.

    Together, Shahib and Jaheje ran out of the gully as quickly as they could.

    The creature lurched forward, then slowed a rhythm, which matched the swerving pattern of her pursuit. She pushed them even further into the valley, blocking any other road of escape.

    Silent-stepping was meaningless now. Rek’Sai was too close. All that was left was to run.


    When Caleeb lost his breath, Rek’Sai took him. Seeing this, Shahib stopped. He collected Caleeb’s spear and waited. All around him, the air churned and bent like a reflection in the water.

    “What are you doing?” Jaheje whispered.

    “I will be the camel. Go silently.” Shahib acknowledged the walls around them. “Tell people what you have seen here.”

    Jaheje followed Shahib’s eyeline. Behind him, the stone cliffs had been cut apart by burrows into a pattern of intersecting circles. From them, a bizarre connection of ink-black energy flowed and dripped like a sticky liquid. And through this matrix, an incompressible reality bent and twisted as someplace else prepared itself to enter our world.

    Hidden in this isolated valley, the true lair of Xer’Sai was a half-constructed tunnel. A tunnel to the nightmare place where these creatures had been born, and fouler things waited hungrily at this unfinished gateway to our world.

    “Keep going, Jaheje,” Shahib said with a tired smile. “Each step as soft as a mouse, each stride as long as a gazelle. You must survive the Sai Kahleek.”


    Jaheje made it to the far cliff before he heard the scream. Turning to look, Jaheje rolled his foot down, then slid his heel to the ground just as Shahib had taught him.

    He did this as his teacher was reduced to the sound of bones snapping, and the great beast chewing.

    Jaheje watched as Rek’Sai opened her maw and pulled a sticky ball of dark energy from Shahib’s ruined body. The ball rotated as tendrils dripped to the ground, sticking and stretching as Rek’Sai manipulated it into a pattern, which she attached between two of the burrows.

    Jaheje looked away, then turned silently and soft-stepped out of the valley.


    Jaheje ran out of sweat the next day. He felt his dry eyes scratching against his eyelids. His lips swelled, then split open bloodlessly.

    When his calf muscles locked in a cramp from dehydration, and he was no longer able to soft-step, only then did he fall to the ground to cry. He cried for the days of hunger he’d suffered before joining Shahib’s caravan. He cried for knowing his parents off cast him instead of his brothers. He cried for Shahib, the first person who’d shown him kindness. And it was those last tears that dragged him back onto his cramped legs and made him stand. Knowing each shaky and tired step revealed his position to any Xer’Sai nearby, Jaheje stumbled onward.


    When Jaheje reached the great river Renek and told his story, few believed him. But soon, those who tried to cross the Sai Kahleek with any meager possessions left, bartered for Jaheje. And Jaheje taught off cast boys how to cut the callouses from their feet and how to soft-step by rolling their heel. He taught them how to survive the Sai Kahleek, and he warned his students of the monster named Rek’Sai.

  13. Rell

    Rell

    Posters across Noxus warn of a dangerous criminal, armed with a massive, blunted spear and borne atop a magical fiend, whose mere existence poses a threat to the safety and security of the entire nation. Even some within the steeled ranks of the Trifarian Legion have begun to worry that they will be sent after her to their almost certain deaths.

    What kind of monster could be behind such heinous, unchecked destruction?

    The simple answer is a sixteen-year-old girl.

    The complicated one is unforgivable.

    Rell was special from the moment of her birth—and fated to suffer for it. Born the daughter of a Noxian footsoldier and the heir to a fallen noble house, she enjoyed neither the trappings of wealth nor the gilded upbringing common to children of the lower aristocracy. Nevertheless, her parents had grand plans to mold her into someone who could shatter through Noxus’ dense political landscape. As Rell’s mother always said, “Excellence is measured in sacrifice.”

    Rell’s unhappiness grew with time, sparking something unique within her—a magic unlike anything seen in centuries: the ability to manipulate metal. To Rell’s parents, this was something to be exploited—for Rell’s own sake, of course!—and they tried unsuccessfully to apprentice her with many powerful mages who might whisk their daughter into the political or military elite.

    But someone else took notice of the young girl’s magic. Seeing in Rell a weapon who could one day face Noxus’ most hated, ancient foe, a certain pale woman visited the family with a dark bargain. Rell soon found herself the star pupil of a very special academy, hidden far from the capital and away from the council’s prying eyes. And though they rarely made appearances in her new boarding school, her mother and father never seemed more proud or more hopeful of their daughter’s future.

    It seemed, at least for a moment, that perhaps Rell would be loved after all.

    Then the true horrors began.

    Rell was first forced into combat with another student when she was eight, and, afterward, a kind of magic sigil was painfully grafted into her arm, amplifying her powers so that she could become even stronger. Yet while this had been framed as a training exercise, Rell never saw the boy again. She never saw any of her opponents again.

    Every day, she grew more powerful, honing her magic for martial combat. Her body became covered with sigils that amplified her magical abilities to impossible heights. In time, she could rip a vein of raw ore from deep out of the ground, twist the walls into deadly weapons, and superheat an opponent’s armor until it collapsed and crushed them. But her instructors desired even more from her—all in the hopes that Rell would be the most powerful soldier the empire had ever known.

    On her sixteenth birthday, after a particularly barbaric duel, she’d finally had enough. Casting her instructors aside, Rell tore past the guards and ripped open the doors of a forbidden wing of the academy, discovering the true nature of her school: Every opponent she’d defeated had been Nullified—their magic forcibly extracted from them and placed into the very sigils covering Rell’s body—and left as emotionless puppets devoid of memories. This was the price of her power, and she could never give it back.

    Worst of all was the headmistress who oversaw the procedures herself: Rell’s own mother. All of this had been for Rell, she said. After all... excellence is measured in sacrifice.

    Rell raged.

    To the small handful of faculty who survived her escape from the academy, it was like the earth had been torn open into a twisting whirlwind of razor-sharp slag. The building ripped itself apart, forming an impenetrable suit of black armor around Rell as she crushed those who stood before her, flattening seasoned soldiers with a lance heavier than a mountain. Bursting through the front gate on a steed made of rippling iron, she led as many of her classmates as she could to freedom—leaving the Rose scrambling to recover the Null and erase any trace of what their organization had done.

    But it was far too late. Soon enough, the surviving faculty members began to die in increasingly public ways, and the Null could no longer be kept secret.

    Rell is now a threat to Noxus, but not in the way the handbills proclaim. She is a self-styled defender of the meek, full of unchecked fury, distrustful of everyone, and merciless toward a government that turned a blind eye to years of suffering and abuse. Not because the empire was personally responsible—but because they stood by and did nothing.

    Riding atop her iron steed, Rell’s eyes are set on nothing less than the complete destruction of Noxus and saving any children who, like her, survived the Black Rose academy.

    And there is nothing in this world that can stop her.

  14. The Second Grave

    The Second Grave

    Jared Rosen

    Rell thought about the Null often.

    She didn’t want to, of course. But the thoughts were intrusive and the road was long, and most of the time there wasn’t much to do besides drift back into those unhappy memories as she rode her shifting metal steed from one rumor to the next. Hours and hours of silence, and then, always, killing.

    This time, she was far in the outskirts of Noxian territory, following whispers of another Null child being secreted over the border.

    “Null.” Rell winced. Even the shape of that word hurt, and she silently swore to herself as she braced against nothing, shaking off the weight of it. Then the pain turned to anger. Then the anger turned to rage.

    Noxus had made the Null—and made her. And now, in their immeasurable cowardice, the Noxians couldn’t bear to look. Better to take the Null far, far away, so Noxus could go back to being glorious.

    Rell hated this ugly country, filled with its stupid, ugly people. She hated its bleak, strip-mined mountains, their ore gobbled up in Boram Darkwill’s foreign wars. She hated its cracked, rotten soil, used up for ration crops and then left exposed to the wind. Now the only thing that grew anywhere was the green-brown moss that seemed to cake every inch of uninhabited land, populated mostly by carnivorous lizards the size of a house.

    What a hideous, naïve place, she thought. So obsessed with its meritocracies, so consumed by constant expansion, that it could not and would not see what it had already become. The Black Rose and their experiments were just a symptom of its deeper sickness. Rell would tear it all down—she’d save the Null, then destroy the Empire brick by brick, even if she had to do it alone. Just like she’d ripped apart the academy.

    Then the boulder hit her, and for just a moment, everything was quiet.




    Rell had not known many of her classmates long. Most of the promising ones had been forced to fight her in “exhibition matches” to “test her strength”. She didn’t realize until much, much later that whatever shape they were in after, the instructors whisked them away, extracting their magic with essence-absorbing, stone-like sigils and leaving them Null forever.

    She remembered some of the kids, but the rest were a pastiche of faces punctuated by extreme pain, from the fights themselves, to the horrific, hours-long sigil grafting process that gave their power to her.

    The other students very quickly grew to fear her—hate her, even... and in that way, Rell was always alone.

    All save for one.

    Gabriel was a boy whose soft eyes and kind voice were not a product of Noxus, but some other far-flung locale that Rell could only scarcely imagine. He understood Rell and had an odd magic that allowed him to shape dirt into tiny fauna—the animals and birds of his homeland, dancing and playing for Rell’s amusement. Though he seemed sad to be so far from his family, the two found comfort in each other’s friendship—Gabriel spending many of his nights comforting Rell as she recovered from the academy’s abuse.

    It was simply a matter of time before they would face one another in combat, and while Rell seemed hopeful, Gabriel knew what was coming. Yet for a while, at least, the two could pretend.




    Rell awoke to the din of a warband that cautiously approached her, checking if she was dead.

    Unfortunately for them, she was not.

    Rell rose with the shattered metal plates of her steed, her titanic lance finding her hand as raw, molten ore poured upward from the ground and into the monstrous weapon. Her mount reformed, pulsating with the heat of a thousand furnaces. Raw iron contorted into shape, seizing itself into the jagged silhouette of a stallion, and Rell leapt upon its back.

    She counted five opponents, including a minotaur perched on a pile of large, jagged stones—probably the same kind that hit her—and then one more. A thin man in a dusty white coat clumsily tried to escape across the vast nothing of Noxian wilderness.

    Instructor Lukas. The man who’d brought Gabriel to the academy, and the man who took him away.

    Though Rell would fight anyone who stood in her path, she had a special rule for her old instructors: no questions asked, and no answers given. She wouldn’t make an exception for this one.

    Rell’s stallion charged forward as if it had escaped a dark, distant nightmare, and like the hammer of a scorned god, Rell’s lance slammed into the first soldier who stepped in her way. It was a weapon not made for piercing, but for crushing, and as the soldier’s eyes widened in horror, the last thing that went through his mind was his helmet.

    A second fighter attempted to impale Rell’s mount, but her spear snapped between its steaming plates, and Rell swatted her far into the distance—a deformed lump of scrap metal and flesh landing several yards away.

    Two crossbowmen, now much less confident than before, tried to beat a hasty retreat. Rell leapt into the air, her steed itself forming around her into a thick suit of impenetrable black armor, and she brought herself down upon them as the earth ripped open beneath her boundless rage.

    The minotaur’s rocks may have worked in a sortie, but even his great hunks of volcanic stone shattered against Rell’s armor as she slowly marched toward him. A dark knight, utterly unstoppable, who felled the great creature with a single blow.

    She turned her attention to her old instructor.

    Lukas felt the gentle pull of his former student, before chunks of superheated slag ripped him from the mossy dirt and into a whirlwind of jagged debris surrounding Rell. It was a storm of metal, heat, and hatred, and all he could whimper before the end was a panicked “Gabriel’s at the camp!” Rell crushed Lukas instantly, his broken form pounded so deeply into the ground that even the basilisks would have trouble digging out his corpse.

    Then the storm stopped, the slag fell away, and everything was quiet once more.




    True to the instructor’s last words, Gabriel was concealed in a tent within a grassy ravine where the ground had given way and created a wide, shallow indentation in the land. The perfect place to hide a camp.

    He was dead long before Rell found him. Malnutrition.

    Nullification didn’t just steal the magic of its intended victim—it sundered their soul apart, leaving a glassy-eyed husk that didn’t want anything, barely spoke, couldn’t remember, and never dreamed. A small handful had to be fed, but some Rose-aligned warbands simply chose to neglect this task out of resentment for the job.

    Rell looked at Gabriel... at the form wrapped in canvas who once made tiny animals leap from the ground to make her laugh when she was in pain. Digging her lance into the earth, she forced its dark metal out of her hand, then upward, then around him until his body was covered. A simple grave to mark her friend’s passing, but an indestructible one decorated with crude animals forever frozen in steel.

    She closed her eyes as she rode off, trying to remember Gabriel as he once was, but all Rell could see were the basilisks feasting on the dead, and her fist closing around a pale woman’s throat.

  15. Renata Glasc

    Renata Glasc

    Life had not always been good to Renata Glasc.

    Her parents were brilliant alchemists, focused on innovations for the healing arts. Dedicated to their work and their community in Zaun, they gave their care and their cures to anyone in need... regardless of whether their patients could afford them. Renata grew up accustomed to going to bed hungry, resentful of her parents’ ideology, yet powerless to change her circumstances. She dreamed of the ships that sailed through Piltover’s Sun Gate canal, imagining herself taking the wheel and steering her life in a new direction—toward the riches of the world.

    When she was old enough to join the family business, it was quickly discerned that Renata had no aptitude for alchemy. She did, however, have ideas about turning a profit. In her first sales pitch, Renata convinced her parents that they wouldn’t need to ask anything more than people could give, if they started treating wealthier Zaunites. With loyal patients extolling the Glascs’ talents to their betters, their charity work was soon paid for by the rates Renata set for the rich.

    Instead of living comfortably, however, the Glascs spent that money developing a highly refined chemtech formula to extend the lives of their sickest patients. No matter what they did, the formula always had unwanted side effects—such as making their patients extremely suggestible, or extremely violent—so they continued to try and improve their work. Only Renata, bitter at what her parents chose to do with the money she had earned them, wondered if the formula could be useful as is.

    Up in Piltover, the elite clan leaders who had been making money off of Zaunite medical stopgaps heard whispers of the Glasc family’s research. Not willing to let anything threaten their bottom line, they paid off a handful of enforcers to “take care of it.” Renata woke to the sound of her parents’ screams as her home burned down around them. She lost her arm trying—and failing—to save them.

    With only her family name and the scraps of research that survived the fire, Renata swore to avoid her parents’ mistake of thankless altruism. Instead, she threw herself into building her meager inheritance into something bigger, something that could give her everything she’d never had, something that would give her money and power and control. An empire.

    As the years passed, she became the brains behind several successful small-time operations while building relationships with unsavory, but influential, individuals throughout the city. She’d give people jobs, lend them money, and give them medicine for their sick children—but never for free. If they couldn’t pay in coin, she demanded their loyalty.

    Renata quickly realized that genius was the rarest and most lucrative commodity in Zaun and devised a plan to invest in destitute youths with a talent for innovation. She offered a space to work and stability for their families in exchange for their work in perpetuity. The poorest among them couldn’t afford to say no. Renata found herself with plentiful access to new and unique product designs, and novel uses for the chemtech formula that was her parents’ legacy. Profits soared. She then established Glasc Industries after purchasing the first of what would eventually be dozens of factories to manufacture her high-end chemtech products.

    Glasc Industries quickly expanded across Zaun—from chemtech mining operations to dance halls to refineries—angering some barons who’d held monopolies over the ventures. But, one by one, Renata persuaded them all to go into business with her. And just like that, Renata quietly managed to become a chem-baron in her own right, and no one could push back for fear of upsetting their own cash flow. While Glasc Industries flourished, Renata herself remained in the shadows, waiting for the right time to make her next move.

    That time came after a chemical accident sent poisonous fumes sweeping through the streets of Zaun, leaving the city in its worst state in decades. Amidst the noxious gray clouds, Glasc Industries offered basic breathers and replacement filters to everyone in the city… for free. Now everyone in Zaun knew of Renata Glasc and her benevolence. She had earned Zaun’s loyalty.

    Word of her generosity swept through Piltover, as well. For the first time, shopkeepers looked seriously at Renata’s elegant and ultra-refined chemtech designs and soon lined their shelves with her products.

    Now, every fashionable Piltovan owns at least one Glasc Industries product, and the wealthiest among them vie to sit beside Renata at novelty galas and the opera house. But Renata’s plan was never to be a chem-baron in Zaun or the corporate darling of Piltover.

    No, she aims to take Piltover’s source of financial power for herself—the Sun Gate she had dreamed of so often in her youth. For she who controls the Sun Gate, controls the flow of trade; and she who controls the trade, controls the world. With a secret cache of her parents’ chemtech formula embedded in every Glasc product in both Piltover and Zaun, ready to be released at her command—side effects and all—it’s only a matter of time before everyone works for Renata Glasc.

  16. Right On Time

    Right On Time

    Dana Luery Shaw

    18:17

    Renata Glasc’s heels click angrily against the marble floors on her way to the front door. It’s a long walk, and her annoyance grows as the bells screech out the same cloying tune a second time.

    The mechanical fingers of her left hand unfurl as she reaches for the latch, twisting and snapping into the necessary shapes, embedding in the bespoke lock as its one and only key.

    She throws open the ornate copper door and looks down at her visitor. “Mave.” All of Renata’s high-ranking subordinates had been informed that her priority for the evening was debuting her Decanter at the Vesella Novelty Gala.

    “Ms. Glasc,” the shorter woman says with a curt nod, her prosthetic iron eyes rattling against the glass of her gel-filled goggles. “Sorry to interrupt.”

    “It must be important.”

    “We’ve gotten wind of a new type of breather. Not just a filtration unit. An air purifier.”

    Renata’s eyes flash. “My devisers said we had nothing to worry about on that front.”

    Mave shrugs—not her department.

    “Who’s manufacturing it?”

    “Baron Midenstokke. Not sure where yet.”

    She glances at her gaudy Piltovan clock. The gala begins in just under two hours, her presentation slot is at precisely 21:05, and she hasn’t even had time to pick up the Decanter from the laboratory yet… She sighs. It looks as though the gala will have to start without her.

    Time to get the night back under control.

    18:56

    Basile, a worm of a man, grovels at Renata’s feet, dirtying her office floor with his soot-stained tears. “I’m sorry,” he chokes out, breath still rank from whatever swill he’d been drinking when she’d interrupted his visit to the Corrodyne Taproom. “I’ll get the money to you in a week. Two, at the most.”

    Renata says nothing, letting Basile squirm and sob on the floor a little longer. He had come to her for a loan six months ago for his wife’s replacement leg after an accident at a machinist’s shop. Renata gave him what he asked for, and got him a well-paying factory job to boot. But after his wife died from sepsis and Basile tried to drown his sorrows at the taproom… it’s no surprise he can’t pay.

    It’s what she’s counting on.

    “Do you think,” she asks finally, “that I need that money? That I would even miss it?”

    “I…”

    “I’m not interested in money, dear Basile. Keep it.”

    Basile’s eyes fill with tears of gratitude. “Thank you,” he whispers. “Ms. Glasc—”

    But.” She holds up a finger to quiet him. “There is something I need from you.”

    “Anything.”

    “You’re still working for Midenstokke, yes? Got a nice little promotion last month?”

    Basile’s face falls. Not everyone has the stomach to get between two chem-barons. He swallows hard. “I can get you your money in… in four days, Ms. Glasc.”

    “No, Basile.” Renata Glasc leans down. She can see the sheen of sweat on his forehead. “You’ll get me the information I need, and you’ll get it to me within the hour.”

    20:23

    Elodat carefully moves aside the vials and burners, the metals and wires, the tools and masks that litter her own private workspace, and lays out the first few pages of designs. Renata watches as the deviser dons a loupe, looking closely at all of the details that make these new breathers tick. There are few she would trust with this new alchemical technology, but Elodat has proven her worth time and again since she first entered Renata’s employ at age twelve.

    “These are unbelievable,” Elodat breathes reverently. “No filter system, no place for the toxins in the air to go. They just… destroy the toxins. Eliminate them completely.”

    “And you understand how it works?” Renata asks. “Would you be able to replicate the results in a similar product?”

    “Without question.” Elodat’s fingers twitch excitedly. “Is this my next project?”

    “It is.” She pauses. “But make some part of it necessary to replace. Filters are a great way to keep money rolling in. Find our version of that for a purifier.”

    Renata looks at Mave, who’s standing in the corner near the door and awaiting instructions. “We’re sure about the factory?”

    Mave nods. “My scouts confirmed it. Just beneath Midenstokke’s dance hall in the Promenade as Basile said.”

    “Excellent. 22:30, then. That should give us both plenty of time.”

    Mave turns to leave, but Renata stops her and glances at the deviser. “Elodat, the Decanter’s show-ready, yes?”

    Elodat snorts as she marks up the design documents. “Of course, Ms. Renata.”

    Beside the deviser’s workstation sits the Decanter prototype. A weapon. A tool. A mechanized wonder attuned only to the gestures of Renata’s left hand. All elegant lines of gold and brass, both sinuous and sharp, protective, yet delicate. Bubbling inside the contraption is the glowing magenta liquid that encompasses Renata’s entire inheritance.

    Renata twirls one of her mechanical fingers in the air. In response, one of the vials attached to the Decanter fills with a pink gas. She plucks a breather from Elodat’s desk and grabs the vial, clicking it into the mask in place of a filtration unit.

    “Make things easy on yourself,” she says as she tosses the mask to Mave. With a nod, Mave exits.

    “Um, Ms. Renata?” The deviser looks at the floor as Renata turns back to her. “How are my parents? I haven’t seen them in… yeah.”

    “They’ve just bought a house,” Renata says casually. “And I’ve found work for your brother and his fiancé at a cultivair. Your work has kept them very happy.” A pause. “You should visit them.”

    Elodat’s head snaps up. “Really?”

    “Absolutely.” With a beckoning gesture from Renata, the Decanter’s thrusters fire, lifting it into the air. It bobs beside her as she walks toward the door. “After the demonstration.”

    21:46

    “And now, finally,” the announcer says with a glare at Renata, “we have the newest product from Glasc Industries, presented by the fabulous Renata Glasc, herself! Renata, darling, please join us on the stage!”

    With practiced ease, Renata steps out from behind the curtain to ravenous applause. Wealthy Piltovans, dressed to impress, fill the Vesella clan’s lavish ballroom, eager to hear about the newest novelties from their favorite Zaunite. The announcer claps politely, though his eyes roll at this level of excitement from the audience.

    Renata removes her mask. Every breath she takes of the empty Piltovan air cuts her throat like glass, but still, she smiles. “A big thank you to the Vesella clan for having me! What a treat it is to spend an evening in your beautiful city.

    “For many of you, ‘chemtech’ is a scary word. An ugly word. One of iron and decay. What, then, could a Zaunite have to offer Piltover? Glasc Industries has shown you time and again that chemtech doesn’t have to be ugly. And tonight, I’m going to show you that it can be beautiful.”

    A flick of her wrist, and the Decanter floats across the stage past the announcer to Renata. Delighted gasps punctuate the murmur of the crowd.

    So easily pleased. So hopelessly naïve.

    “The Glasc Industries Decanter, a milestone in the world of healing! Alchemist and nursemaid all in one, creating medicine and administering it in the same breath.”

    She’s interrupted by the announcer coughing into his sleeve. She turns to him, knowing full well that none of the chemicals in the Decanter are strictly medicinal. “Would our kind announcer be interested in helping with a demonstration?”

    22:29

    Renata sips her sparkling wine as yet another potential investor approaches her. Across the room, the announcer stands beside the Decanter and hands out Renata’s business cards—just as Renata had... suggested.

    She peers at her pocket watch and walks toward a balcony with a phenomenal evening view of Piltover. Below, even Zaun’s promenade level is visible from here...

    22:30

    An explosion lights up the promenade. Right about where Baron Midenstokke’s dance hall is, in fact. Or, rather, where it used to be.

    But no one in the Vesella clan’s ballroom seems to care. A glance is the most any of them spare for the tragedy down in Zaun. It’s beneath them.

    Except for Renata Glasc, who watches with a chuckle and takes another sip of her fine Piltovan wine.

  17. Renekton

    Renekton

    Renekton was born to fight. From a young age, it was obvious he had no fear, regularly brawling with much older children. It was usually his pride that led to these confrontations—Renekton was unable to back down, or let any insult pass. While his older brother, Nasus, disapproved of his street-fighting, Renekton relished it.

    Nasus eventually left to join the prestigious Collegium of the Sun, and Renekton’s skirmishes became more serious. Fearing his brother’s violent nature would see him imprisoned or in an early grave, Nasus helped him enlist in the Shuriman army. Officially, Renekton was too young, but Nasus made sure this was conveniently overlooked.

    The discipline of military life was a blessing. Renekton fought in numerous wars of conquest to expand the empire—his ferocity and toughness were still evident, but his honor and bravery became renowned. Nasus, now a celebrated general and tactician, would often say that he planned many great battles, but it was Renekton who won them.

    Indeed, after saving the isolated city of Zuretta, Renekton was made a captain by the emperor himself, and named Gatekeeper of Shurima. Outnumbered ten to one, he and a small contingent had faced the enemy in the remote, rocky passes to the south, to buy time for the city to be evacuated. It was a battle none had expected Renekton to survive, let alone win... yet he held out long enough for a relief force led by Nasus to arrive, and the invading forces were routed.

    Through decades of service, Renekton’s reputation came to rival even the god-warriors of the Ascended Host, his presence on the battlefield an inspiration to those fighting alongside him, and terrifying to his foes. Still, he was a grizzled and battle-scarred veteran of middling years when word reached him that his brother was close to death.

    He raced back to the capital to find Nasus a pale shadow of his former self, having been struck down by a debilitating wasting malady. The sickness was incurable.

    Nevertheless, the general’s greatness was recognized by one and all. Beyond his military acumen, Nasus had curated the empire’s great libraries, and compiled or translated many of the finest literary works of antiquity. Such a man could not be allowed to pass, and it was decreed that he was worthy of Ascension.

    The whole city gathered in witness, but Nasus no longer had the strength to climb onto the dais before the Sun Disc. Without thought for his own safety, Renekton lifted his brother in his arms, and climbed the final steps, fully expecting to be obliterated in the process. He was just a warrior, after all, and he knew Shurima would need Nasus in the years to come.

    However, Renekton was not destroyed. Beneath the blinding radiance of the Sun Disc, both brothers were raised up and remade, and when the light faded, two mighty god-warriors stood before the crowds—Nasus in his lean, jackal-headed body, and Renekton as an immense reptile. The jackal was often regarded as the most clever and cunning of beasts, and the fearless aggression of the crocodile fit Renekton perfectly.

    Renekton had been a mighty hero before, but now he possessed power beyond mortal understanding. He led Shurima’s armies to many bloody victories, neither giving nor expecting any mercy. His legend spread far beyond the borders of the empire, and it was his enemies that knew him as “the Butcher of the Sands”, a title he embraced.

    But there were some—Nasus among them—who came to believe that a portion of Renekton’s humanity had been lost in his transformation. He seemed crueler, taking ever greater pleasure in the spilling of blood, and there were whispers of many battlefield atrocities. Nevertheless, he remained a staunch defender of Shurima, faithfully serving a succession of emperors, even through the rebellion of Icathia and the horrifying war that followed.

    Some years later, it was decided that the young emperor Azir would join the ranks of the Ascended Host, and become the immortal ruler his people deserved.

    The results were catastrophic.

    Renekton and Nasus were each more than a day’s journey from the capital when it happened, and they arrived to find the glorious city in ruins. The Sun Disc was failing, drained of all its power. At the center of the carnage, they found the emperor’s treacherous magus, Xerath—now a malevolent being of pure energy.

    The brothers fought hard, but knowing that they could not destroy Xerath, Renekton finally wrestled him into the Tomb of the Emperors beneath the city, and bade his brother seal them inside. Knowing there was no other way, Nasus reluctantly did as his brother ordered.

    Xerath and Renekton continued their battle. For uncounted centuries they stalked one another through the lightless depths, as the once-great civilization of Shurima turned to dust in the world above. Xerath taunted his adversary, whispering poison in Renekton’s ear, and gradually, his viperous words began to take hold. He convinced Renekton that Nasus, jealous of his success, had leapt at the chance to be rid of him, and enjoy immortality alone.

    Piece by piece, Renekton’s sanity cracked. Xerath drove a wedge into these cracks, twisting his perception of what was real and what was imagined. When the Tomb of the Emperors was finally opened by greedy mortal scavengers, Renekton roared his fury and thundered out into the desert, sniffing the air for his brother’s scent.

    But Shurima has changed much in his absence. The Ascended Host is no more, leaving the people scattered and leaderless, for the most part. Though he cares little for such things, Renekton has attracted followers among the most fierce and bloodthirsty of the desert raiders... even if he cannot always tell friend from foe in his frequent, deranged frenzies.

    And while there are moments when he resembles the proud, honorable hero of the past, most often Renekton is little more than a devolved, hate-maddened beast, driven on by the thirst for blood and vengeance.

  18. Darkness Renews

    Darkness Renews

    Am I a god?

    He no longer knows. Once, perhaps, when the sun disc gleamed like gold atop the great Palace of Ten Thousand Pillars. He remembers carrying a withered ancient in his arms, and them both borne into the sky by the sun’s radiance. All his hurts and pain were washed away as the light remade him. If this memory is his, then was he once mortal? He thinks so, but cannot remember. His thoughts are a cloud of duneflies, myriad shattered memories buzzing angrily in his elongated skull.

    What is real? What am I now?

    This place, this cave under the sands. Is it real? He believes so, but he is no longer sure he can trust his senses. For as long as he can remember, he knew only darkness; awful, unending darkness that clung to him like a shroud. But then the darkness broke apart and he was hurled back into the light. He remembers clawing his way through the sand as the earth buckled and heaved, the living rock grinding as something long buried and all but forgotten heaved itself to the surface once again.

    Towering statues erupted from beneath the sand, vast and terrible in their aspect. Armored warriors with demonic heads loomed over him, ancient gods of a long dead culture. Bellicose phantoms rose from the sand and he fled their wrath, escaping the rising city as light blazed and the moons and stars wheeled overhead. He remembers staggering through the desert, his mind afire with visions of blood and betrayal, of titanic palaces and golden temples brought down in the blink of an eye. Centuries of progress undone for the sake of one man’s vanity and pride. Was it his? He does not know, but fears it might have been.

    The light that once remade his flesh now pains him. It burned him raw and seared his soul as he wandered the desert, lost and alone, tormented by a hatred he did not understand. He has taken refuge from its unforgiving light, but even here, squatting and weeping in this dripping cave, the Whisperer has found him. The shadow on the walls slithers around him; always muttering, always conspiring to feed his bitterness. He presses long, gnarled hands that end in vicious, ebon talons to his temples, but he cannot shut his constant companion in the darkness out. He never could.

    The Whisperer tells tales of his shame and guilt. It speaks of the thousands who died because of him, who never had the chance to live thanks to his failure. A part of him believes these to be honeyed falsehoods, twisted fictions told often enough that he can no longer sift truth from lies. The Whisperer reminds him of the light being shut away, showing him the jackal-face of his betrayer looking down as he condemned him to the abyssal dark for all eternity. Tears gather at the corners of his cataracted eyes and he angrily wipes them away. The Whisperer knows every secret path into his mind, twisting every certainty he once clung to, every virtue that made him the hero revered as a god throughout...Shurima!

    That name has meaning to him, but it fades like a shimmering mirage, remaining bound within the prison of his mind by chains of madness. His eyes, once so clear-sighted and piercing, are misted with the eons he spent in the endless dark. His skin was as tough as armored bronze, but is now dull and cracked, dust spilling from his many wounds like sand from an executioner’s hourglass. Perhaps he is dying. He thinks he might be, but the thought does not trouble him overmuch. He has lived an age and suffered too long to fear extinction.

    Worse, he is no longer sure he can die. He looks at the weapon before him, a crescent bladed axe without a handle. It belonged to a warrior king of Icathia, but a fleeting memory of breaking its haft as he had broken its bearer’s army returns to him. He remembers remaking it, but not why. Perhaps he will use it to slice open his ridged throat and see what happens. Will blood or dust flow? No, he will not die here. Not yet. The Whisperer tells him fate has another role for him. He has blood yet to spill, a thirst for vengeance yet to slake. The jackal-face of the one who condemned him to darkness floats in his mind, and each time he sees it, the hatred carved on his heart boils to the surface.

    He looks up at the cave walls as the shadows part, revealing the crude daubings of mortals. Ancient, flaking images, so faded as to be almost invisible, depict the desert city in all its glory. Rivers of cold, clear water flow in its pillared thoroughfares and the life-giving rays of the sun bring forth wondrous greenery from a newly fertile landscape. He sees a king in a hawk-headed helm atop a towering palace and a dark-robed figure at his side. Beneath them are two giants in armor wrought for war, one a hulking, crocodilian beast armed with a crescent-bladed axe, the other a jackal-headed warrior-scholar. In the reptilian form, he recognizes a mortal’s awed representation of his ascended incarnation. He turns his gaze upon the remaining warrior. Time has all but erased the angular script beneath the faded image, but enough is still legible for him to make out his betrayer’s name.

    “Nasus…” he says. “Brother…”

    And with the source of his torment named, his own identity is revealed like the sun emerging from behind a stormcloud.

    “I am Renekton,” he hisses through hooked teeth. “The Butcher of the Sands.”

    He lifts his crescent blade and rises to his full height as the dust of ages falls away from his armored form. Old wounds seal, broken skin knits afresh and color returns to his supple, jade crocodilian skin as purpose fills him. Once the sun remade him, but now darkness is his ally. Strength surges through his monstrously powerful body, muscles swelling and eyes burning red with hatred for Nasus. He hears the Whisperer speak once again, but he no longer heeds its voice. He clenches a clawed fist and touches the tip of his blade to the image of the jackal-headed warrior.

    “You left me alone in the darkness, brother,” he says. “You will die for that betrayal.”

  19. Rengar

    Rengar

    Rengar hails from a tribe of Shuriman vastaya known as the Kiilash, whose society venerated the honor and glory of the hunt. Rengar was born the runt of the litter to the tribe's chieftain, Ponjaf. Ponjaf believed Rengar's diminutive size would make him a worthless hunter. He ignored his child, assuming the runt would starve to death.

    Eventually, the young Rengar fled the camp, ashamed that he had disappointed his father. He subsisted on grubs and plants for weeks until, one day, he was nearly killed by a legendary human hunter named Markon. Upon seeing Rengar's state, he took pity on the creature and let it live. Besides, this was no mighty vastayan warrior worthy of Markon's blade.

    Rengar spent months following Markon, feeding off the corpses the hunter left behind. He still hoped to one day rejoin his tribe, and so took great care in observing how Markon took down his quarries.

    After some time, Markon grew sick of the pathetic Kiilash following him around. He put a knife to Rengar's throat and informed him that the only way to be a hunter was to hunt. He tossed Rengar the blade and kicked him down a ravine, where he was forced to make his first kill to survive.

    From then on, Rengar spent years pushing himself almost to breaking point. He scoured Shurima for the most powerful and dangerous prey. Though he would never be as big as other Kiilash, Rengar was determined to be twice as ferocious. Over time, instead of coming back to his camp each time with fresh scars, he began to come back with trophies. He polished a sandhawk's skull to a sheen; he braided the teeth of a shrieker into his hair.

    Then, when he decided the time had come, Rengar returned to his tribe, ready to be accepted as a true hunter.

    Ponjaf scoffed at Rengar and his trophies. He decreed that only by bringing back the head of the elusive and legendary Void-abomination known as Kha'Zix would Rengar be welcomed back into the tribe.

    Blinded by his eagerness, Rengar allowed this cunning beast to get the drop on him. The Void creature ripped out one of Rengar's eyes and escaped. Furious and defeated, Rengar admitted his failure to Ponjaf. As expected, his father chastised him.

    But as Ponjaf spoke, Rengar noticed all the trophies adorning his father's hut were dusty and old. The chieftain had not hunted anything in a long time—he had likely sent Rengar after Kha'Zix because he was too afraid to do it himself.

    Rengar interrupted his father and called him a coward. Many Kiilash were blessed with strong bodies or comfortable homes. Rengar, conversely, was born facing death. He had taught himself how to hunt, and had the trophies and scars to prove it. Even his own bloody eye socket was a trophy: proof that though Rengar was born with disadvantages, he never gave up.

    Rengar leapt onto his father and gutted him from neck to belly. The fiercest hunters of the tribe crowned him with flame-roses, marking him as their new chieftain.

    But Rengar didn't need his village's acceptance. All he needed was adrenaline pumping through his veins as he chased down his prey. He left the village, without even pausing to take a trophy from what was left of Ponjaf—his father was not a kill worthy of remembering. Instead, he set off determined to find and slay the Void creature that had tried to blind him.

    Not to satisfy the Kiilash, but to satisfy himself.

  20. Prey

    Prey

    Anthony Burch

    Rengar smelled the blood before he saw the dead humans. Six or so, he estimated, but it was tough to get an exact count thanks to the number of pieces they’d been torn into. Their swords were strewn about the meadow, as useful as dulled cutlery.

    He knelt, licking blood from the ground.

    Cold to the tongue. Still sweet, yet bitter with the taste of iron.

    It had been spilled less than an hour ago.

    Turning over one of the stray limbs in his hand, Rengar found a line of greenish saliva dangling from where the arm had been ripped from its body. He raised the stump to his nose and sniffed.

    The saliva smelled foul, like a corpse that had rotted in a puddle of excrement. Just raising it to his nose nearly made Rengar want to vomit, and he had a stronger stomach than most.

    He smiled his wide, toothy smile. The creature who inflicted these wounds would be easy to track.


    Rengar watched from the brush as the razorhide worked its claws around an old man’s skull and crushed it between its boneteeth. It howled in disappointment, evidently unimpressed by the lack of a crunch.

    The giant, four-legged beast stomped through the elderly man’s tent, crushing it with a single step, then biting at the canvas and tearing it apart.

    Tossing aside the man’s bedroll, it howled in delight as Rengar heard the scream of a young boy.


    Little one.

    Frightened. Good fear. Delicious fear.

    Time to eat. Time to silence screams. Time to—

    Pain.

    Pain on the back of its neck. Sharp and hot. Something bit it? No. Another pain, then another. Sharp stabs. Something with a weapon. Something with some fight in it.

    Maybe something tasty.

    Rengar held onto the kirai saber with one hand as the razorhide bucked back and forth, trying to dislodge him. With his other hand, he grabbed a knife and punctured the beast’s leathery hide over and over. He knew he’d never kill the beast this way, but he’d get it bleeding. Confuse it.

    With any luck, panic it.

    The razorhide dropped to its stomach and rolled over, taking Rengar with it. It was fast—much faster than Rengar would have thought for a creature of its size. He barely had time to dislodge his blades and jump away.

    The two combatants got to their feet. Blood trickled down the razorhide’s scales, each one sharp enough to sever a limb. Combined, the scales made for a nigh-impenetrable defense and a thousand small weapons all at the same time. It circled Rengar, sniffing the air. Rengar could tell he’d never win a straight fight against it. It was too big, too quick, too strong.

    A lifetime of scars had taught Rengar the secret of hunting. It wasn’t about being strong. It was about knowing when to withdraw, and when to attack.

    Right now? It was time to withdraw.

    He sprinted away from the village toward the tall grass surrounding it. The razorhide leapt after him in pursuit, its feet pounding the earth. Rengar could hear it behind him. He could be hidden in the grass soon enough, but the razorhide would catch up to him long before then.

    He just needed a few extra seconds.


    One-eyed vastaya will be delicious. Only one thing tastier than something young: something that just tried to kill you.

    Stomp the cat-beast to death before eating? No. Better to swallow him whole, feel thrashing grow weaker and weaker until it deliciously stops.

    Unhinge jaw. Bite down, feel warm spurts of blood—

    Tripping. Falling. What?

    Some sort of weapon—three balls, tied together with leather—tangled around legs.

    Bad.

    Still. Broke free easily. But cat-beast gone. Only slight rustle in tall grass to show where he went.

    Bound into field after it. Cat-beast: small, scared.

    Me: big, fast.

    Will stomp all tallgrass down if it takes—

    Pain.

    Warmth running down hind legs. From where? Behind?

    No cat-beast. Ran away again.

    Pain. New pain, in side. Annoying. Not problem. Just annoying.

    Start running. Doesn’t matter which direction. Put distance between us. Regroup.

    Turn around. Where vastaya? Maybe ran away. Maybe hiding, waiting.

    This was the best part. Invisible within the tall grass. His prey cautious, but not smart enough to be terrified.

    The momentary silence before the attack. Before the quarry realized just how helpless it was. Before the howls of pain, and the blood, and the adrenaline, and the joy.

    Rengar threw his head back and roared.


    Where roar coming from? Sounds like everywhere. Not roar of anger. Not roar of fear.

    Excitement.

    Getting closer.

    No. This was a mistake. Out in the open. Run. Run back.

    Hard to breathe. Why?

    The wound in the side. Deeper than it felt? Throat wet. Choking. Blood.

    Don’t slow down.

    Where is village? This way? No. The other.

    Vastaya still roaring. Still getting closer.

    Run. Doesn’t matter where. Just r—

    Flash of metal. Cool air blowing on stomach.

    No, inside stomach.

    Feel self growing lighter. Sound of something wet and heavy hitting the ground. Many wet and heavy things.

    Look back. Guts. Fluid. A trail of red and green.

    Pain. Stinging pain, throbbing pain, stabbing pain. Everywhere.

    Can’t stand up. Legs buckle. Breathing hard. Hear footsteps coming closer.

    Sound of knife leaving sheath.

    Feel something. Something new. Something terrible. Not hunger, anger, joy.

    Fear.


    Rengar approached the prone razorhide, its feet still kicking at the air as blood poured from the massive slash across its belly. Its eyes were dilated.

    What trophy would he take? The skull? The mane?

    The creature lifted its head and worked its jaw, biting at the air out of anger or confusion.

    Rengar smiled. The creature’s boneteeth were sharp. Smooth.

    One of those would make an impressive addition to his necklace.

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