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Smolder

Long before the lands that would become Camavor were named, dragons dwelt there.

Once mortals arrived, conflict followed. The strife was only quelled when the first king of Camavor humbled himself before the dragon matriarch, bending the knee and pleading with her to lend her great strength to his armies, and all his dreams of empire. So it was that the dragon who would eventually be known as Grandmother Viper and the Camavoran ruler swore the oath of Vol Visperi-Desinvein, binding their lineages for generations to come.

The dragons remained fiercely loyal to the throne and to those high houses that passed the trials and performed the sacred rites of the oath. In exchange, the dragons were kept satiated with livestock and showered with offerings. The gold, jewels, and precious artifacts they accumulated over the years garnered them a great respect… and those brazen enough to cross the dragons would pause at the thought of their own fortunes being reduced to molten slag and windblown ash.

Long after Grandmother Viper passed into legend and her brood was already much diminished, the young king—Viego Santiarul Molach Vol Kalah Heigaari—called upon the imperial dragons to accompany him and the knightly orders to the Blessed Isles. The dragons refused, seeming to recognize his madness for what it was… though even remaining in Camavor with all their treasures could not spare the kingdom from the tragic repercussions of the Ruination. The handful that survived bore witness to endless neglect and conflict, roosting within the deteriorating palace where no monarch would ever reign again.

Centuries would pass before another imperial dragon would hatch.

As that hatchling grew, scarcity of game forced his mother to venture further and further to hunt. This left the nest vulnerable to far-roaming Noxian beastmasters, who stole the young dragon and set sail for home to collect their reward.

However, shortly before arriving at their destination, the mother dragon discovered the ship’s whereabouts and obliterated it with her fiery breath. In the chaos, the hatchling was swept away, borne by the current to a nearby island off mainland Noxus.

Scared, alone, and hungry, the hatchling employed his mother’s lessons to hunt small prey in this strange environment—and on one such hunt, he stumbled across a human child called Marinos. The boy would go on to name his new friend “Smolder,” and as the young dragon’s ability to communicate grew, their friendship flourished… but remained a secret. The boy feared that if anyone else were to discover Smolder, he’d be taken to the mainland and sold to the highest bidder.

As time passed, the boy grew into a man—one with responsibilities that seldom allowed for the playtime Smolder had grown so fond of. And so, in an effort to amuse himself, Smolder decided he’d learn to breathe fire like the dragons in Marinos’ stories.

After many attempts, instead of sneezing sparks as he’d done countless times before, flames burst forth… and in his excitement over this new development, Smolder failed to notice the fire spreading until it had engulfed the forest canopy.

Suddenly, louder than a hunting horn, louder than thunder, a roar unlike any other rang through the air as a massive dragon approached. Having been drawn by the rising smoke, Smolder’s mother swept down to embrace her child lovingly, as if they never parted. Carried away from the growing inferno by the scruff of his neck, Smolder soared—his first time experiencing the world as dragons should.

Smolder now roosts with his mother on the cliffside where she’d spent so long watching and waiting for signs he yet lived. Every night, she recounts the history of his kin, the meaning and responsibilities of imperial dragons, and how to hone his fledgling abilities.

And one day, when he is ready, they will return together to their ancestral home to usher in a new golden age for Camavor.
Snow Day

Michael Luo

Snow falls all morning, blanketing the earth in fresh coats of white. One by one, feathery flakes trickle from the sky, gently at first, and then rapidly in unison. Soon, the howling blizzard muffles all sounds save for a peculiar racket coming from a nearby cave, where a shock of orange and blue bounces up and down, left to right.
Gnar bustles about, annoyed at the world. He has been drawing in the snow under the shelter of rock and stone, but nothing appears the way he imagines. Gripping a bone boomerang almost the size of his torso, the young yordle curses at the ground.
“Shubbanuffa!” says Gnar. This means one of two things. Either he believes the snow is being uncooperative, or he wants some sweetmilk. No one can say for certain.
With a jump and a skip, Gnar tumbles from one unfinished sketch to another, each depicting similar scenes. There they are, bands of carefree yordles living happily among the tribes of the frigid north. Sometimes, wild beasts stand a head above his kin. Other times, Gnar himself towers over everyone else. These little differences do not faze him. Instead, his wide eyes fixate on his boomerang, his paw guiding it to trace out a grand shape with long, sweeping strokes.
“Onna legga,” Gnar mutters to himself. This means he wishes not to be distracted. In the past, others have confused this with “Oga lagga,” meaning he would very much enjoy a hug.
Placing the boomerang in his mouth to free up his paws, Gnar leans downward. His claws pick away bothersome specks of dirt. His nose sniffs the ground, searching for any stray pests daring to deface his work. Pleased with the results, Gnar somersaults back to take a wider look.
The powdery snow paints the picture of a one-eyed monster with tentacles the size of mountains.
“Wabbo!” Gnar cheers, as his boomerang drops from his jaw. The monster is the right amount of scary—just as he imagined. With one arm, it slices through an entire herd of elnük. With another, it holds a whole bundle of elkyr, like sticks.
“Ganaloo mo,” Gnar grumbles. Upon further inspection, it appears his elnük look too much like elkyr. This will not do. As he moves to touch up his piece, he stops. His large ears perk, their violet insides twitching with vigilance.
Footsteps approach in fours from outside his cave. Perhaps it is the monster, and perhaps it has come to express its discontent with how it is being portrayed.
Grasping his boomerang, Gnar stands upright on his two hind legs. “Nakotak!” he declares, ready to face his rival once more. In truth, he is thrilled. Ever since he woke up from that long nap, he has wondered where the monster took his friends. Finally, he is about to get some answers.
But what trespasses into his cave sees with not one eye, but two.
And rather than tentacles, it has legs, stout and stocky. Coarse fur covers its entire body, forming a frosted mane to crown its head and back. Its scarred face appears worn and bitter, marked by two ivory tusks and a stiff, pudgy snout.
This is a strange-looking creature, Gnar thinks to himself.
As the giant drüvask boar lumbers inside, it sees only the comfort of stone overhead. Its sighs are deep, its breath strands of mist fogging the chill air. The beast’s hooves shake the ground beneath, stirring up snow like splashes of milk. After a few heavy steps, all of Gnar’s art is ruined.
“Raag! Wap!”
Gnar’s boomerang strikes the boar right between its eyes. The dazed beast shakes its head, blinking hastily as it lets out an angered growl. Gnar pants in a frenzy, wielding his prized weapon up high, enough for the boar to identify its source of pain.
Like thunder and lightning, the cave booms twice with roars of rage.
Tumbling out come the boar and a positively enormous yordle. Grown to a size larger than even his foe, Gnar pummels the intruder with his now massive, fisted hands. His wrath fuels every punch, jabbing blow after blow into the boar’s thick hide.
The fight seems to end as quickly as it began, until the savage beast somehow wrangles its hooves under Gnar’s chest to kick him away. The colossal yordle collapses next to his cave, bundles of snow rising as he lands. With his spiny back exposed, his head woozy, Gnar hears repeated huffs and puffs, and the clatter of those same bullish hooves scraping faster and faster on the wintry soil.
The blizzard wails, louder than before, as though the Freljord is bracing itself for the coming loss of one of its own.
“GNAR!” the hulking yordle bellows, leaping away from the boar’s charge. In a flash, he slams his bulky arms against the beast’s behind, sending it forward to crash into the rocky wall of the cave’s entrance.
A stunted screech pierces the wind. Frozen rocks crumble onto the boar, now lying still.
Gnar trudges toward the beast, his breath short and rushed. He nudges its limp body with his foot. There is no resistance.
He decides it has fallen asleep, but remains perplexed why its eyes are open. Curiously, the snow around the boar turns a deep red. All of this seems quite odd, and yet, it is not the first time this has piqued Gnar’s interest.
His memory flickers with similar images. Before the long nap, he would see different tribes yelling gibberish as they threw pointed sticks at one another. Their game looked at once exciting and exhausting, and Gnar would watch them until enough of one side fell asleep on red snow. They must have been awfully tired, just like this strange, tusked yordle.
Thinking of those bygone days makes Gnar quiet. He remembers waking up from the long nap, believing the world took away everything he ever knew. His breath slows, his shoulders slump, his feet shrinking until even he would not believe that he stands in his very own footprints from mere seconds ago.
The small yordle dashes into his cave to retrieve his boomerang, hugging it with all his might. It is the one thing that did not leave him after the long nap.
For a moment, Gnar glances at the boar. It rests out in the elements without a whisper. Setting his boomerang lightly on the ground, he skitters back into the storm.
The blizzard surges on. Gnar is not bothered, but maybe, the slumbering beast is. With his tiny paws, he gathers all the snow he can, and carefully places it atop the boar.
It is sleeping after all, and it will need a blanket.
Sona

Sona’s earliest memories are of the Ionian monastery where she was raised, in the province of Galrin. The monks, along with kindhearted volunteers from the local villages, took in any orphans or foundlings left at the front gates, and made sure that they would want for nothing.

As a young girl, Sona was considered shy and quiet, until it became apparent that she couldn’t speak at all. But she was unusually thoughtful and attentive, and the other children tended to seek her out whenever they needed comfort, their playful smiles quickly restored.

And Sona discovered other ways to express herself.

Unlike her playmates, she had one possession when she was first found—a curiously strung instrument, packed into a plain wooden case. None of the visiting musicians or teachers knew what it was… though that did not stop several of them from attempting to procure it for themselves, one way or another. Instead, Sona taught herself how to play it, and her simple, beautiful melodies moved even the most skeptical listener to tears of joy.

However, dark times were approaching. The foreign empire of Noxus had begun landing troops in the northern provinces, and the monks decided to evacuate their young charges to safety before the invasion reached Galrin. After their caretakers struck a deal with a Demacian trader, Sona and a handful of her friends found themselves bundled onto one of the last ships to escape before the Noxian blockade of Ionia’s western coast. She looked back in anguish, knowing that she would not be able to return for many years, if at all.

After months at sea, they arrived in Demacia—a strange, dour land where magic was widely distrusted. Their monks were called “Illuminators”, and they worshipped no gods or spirits, yet still placed great value on showing kindness to strangers and the needy.

So it was that Sona was taken in by the Buvelle family. Lord Barrett and his wife, Lestara, were prominent supporters of the Illuminator order, and renowned patrons of the arts in the Great City. Sona became like a sister to their daughter, Kahina, and Lestara in particular grew very attached to her. The Demacian language was often difficult to learn, but the Buvelles developed a personalized sign language that enabled Sona to communicate easily with her new family, and their friends.

Yet she yearned to express so much more. To show her appreciation to her adopted countrymen, she decided to use her gift to delight and soothe them, and returned to her music with renewed passion.

Soon, word spread of her virtuoso talents. Her performances captivated audiences, bringing them from sorrow to bliss, from righteous martial pride to almost exquisite peace… and Lestara became intrigued by the mysterious instrument that made this possible.

Delving deep into the libraries of the Illuminators, she came to believe it was one of the fabled etwahls—wondrous artifacts dating back thousands of years before Demacia’s founding, and now exceedingly rare in the world. If that were true, then this was an object of magic, and Sona’s preternatural connection to it was a dangerous gift indeed. Lestara urged her to keep it secret, to avoid bringing unwanted attention from the Demacian mageseekers.

Sona obeyed, though she wondered how something that brought people peace could be seen as a threat.

Some years later, Lord Barrett Buvelle was slain fighting Noxus at the Gates of Mourning. When Kahina took up her father’s blade and military commission, the heartbroken Lestara decided the time had come for Sona to return to Ionia, and the two of them withdrew from all courtly engagements to make the journey together.

In the war’s aftermath, a great “restoration” was underway across the First Lands, but the people were much changed by what they had endured, and Sona realized there was no longer any place for her there. Saying farewell to Ionia once again, she went back to Demacia with Lestara.

Even so, her chosen homeland is not without its own problems. In the wake of King Jarvan III’s assassination, the mageseekers have gained significant power, and many innocent citizens are persecuted for any supposed connection to magic.

As a child of two wildly different cultures, Sona increasingly finds herself at odds with her family’s political allegiances. With etwahl in hand, her melodies now serve not only to provide comfort, but also to defend what she knows is right and just.
One Last Show

Katie Chironis

That old, familiar smell hit her first. Hay, strawberries, and sturdy wood. The courtyard of the Argentine Inn had a particular waft to it that brought the ache of memories long past: a hundred concerts, a thousand faces lit by lantern light, and—most painful of all—a time when things were simpler and happier in Demacia.
But these days, that version of her home country felt distant. Worlds away. When she first spotted her old friend Etra emerging from the doorway of the inn, her breath hitched—maybe this, too, was different. But Etra’s eyes went wide. She shrieked with joy, and as she ran forward to wrap Sona up in her arms, Sona breathed a little sigh of relief. Some things didn’t change after all.
“You got my letter!” Etra said, and squeezed her tight.
Sona nodded. As Etra released her, she stood back to get a good look, still clasping Sona’s hands. “Someone’s been traveling,” she said, impressed. As if noticing Sona was on edge, Etra paused, released her hands, and slipped into the rough sign language they’d forged over a lifetime. All is well?
It was a relief to be able to sign back. To be understood by someone who loved her. Yes, of course, Sona responded, whether it was true or not. Missed you terribly, though. She held her hands a little lower. Didn’t want passersby to see the sharp gestures, the twitching fingers, and draw the wrong conclusions.
How long will you stay this time?
As long as I can, Sona signed. You know I never could refuse an empty stage.
Etra grinned. Excellent.

There was no audience around sunset, when Sona struck her first chord, but the first few folks trickled in right away. She was standing front and center in the Argentine’s “concert hall”—a converted barn with a bit of raised wood at the front to make a stage. Some of the people she could see were familiar faces. They brought their evening plans with them: wine by the flagon, cheese in its cloth.
Sona had set her etwahl center stage. The burnished gold on the front was freshly polished, gleaming. It sat on its little frame, the one she brought for Demacian performances only.To Sona’s right, a man named Cal kept beat on the inn’s goatskin drums. Etra’s voice joined her on the left after a moment, high and clear and smooth like water.
As they settled into their familiar rhythm, the crowd swelled. Wagons were pulled up beyond the open door of the stage hall now, horses tied to posts. Some of the men had started to sing along loudly. They were drunk faster than usual. Sona smirked over at Etra, and she signed back with one hand: They missed you, too.
Things were tense for folks right now. They’d just lost their king and seen their country turn on itself in a single bloody year.
As if to punctuate Sona’s thoughts, four figures slipped into the back row of the audience, hoods pulled loose over their faces. Dark blue fabric. Not terribly suspicious on its own, but…
One of them tilted their head up at Sona, and she saw the hint of a gold mask glinting in the light.
Mageseekers.
Sona’s stomach lurched. She heard the slightest hitch in Etra’s voice, too, but neither of them dared look at each other right now.
The only answer was to keep performing, keep singing, and—hopefully—keep up appearances. The next song in the set was a solo. Etra and Cal slipped backstage.
This was the moment the crowd had really come to hear, and there were small murmurs and comfortable rustles in the audience as people settled in. There was no name for the piece, but they all knew it regardless. It was Sona’s own creation, and she relaxed into it. Her fingers brushed the strings, the air teemed with silence—and then, with a pick of a single note, they were off.
Her fingers danced like fireflies. The song flowed, built, faded, built again.
But then something evolved in the music. There were additional layers to it, notes that should have been impossible to play simultaneously. Sona looked up and saw only smiles and closed eyes. The audience had become enamored, absorbed.
It was time. The etwahl had awoken. Long, twisting illusions rose up from the strings, stretching and snapping as the very air hummed. To her, they were brilliant—a language she and the instrument alone shared. No one else could see them.
The etwahl had chosen someone. An old woman in the back of the room was thinking of her husband, a farmer, and the instrument had become throaty with the full warmth and bass of his voice. Sona could almost hear him talk. And in the shapes that rapidly shifted before her, she saw the outline of his weathered face, the way his cheeks crinkled when he smiled. But the outline morphed… the fuzzy curve of a sleeping figure. He had fallen ill and passed a month ago. A hard harvest without him, no doubt.
The etwahl hummed something private to Sona then: the last rasping song the man had ever sung to his wife. The notes hung in the air. She took the snatched phrases of the melody and, without even having to pause, she wove it back into the song, building around it. When she glanced up, Sona saw the widow’s eyebrows raised with recognition, tears trailing down the woman’s cheeks.
Sona slipped music into the woman’s heart. Music to warm her. Music to soothe her. Music to give her strength to face the year ahead.
The music had reached crescendo now. She and the etwahl were deep in conversation. The shapes had expanded, brilliant and ever-moving, an aurora stretching across the hall…
A shout shattered the song. She halted, frozen. But the shapes still drifted, no longer a secret between her and the instrument.
She’d lost control.
The mageseekers in the back had risen, making their way down the center aisle. They were coming for her. Some threw their hoods back now. The rest of the audience was still transfixed, unseeing. They hadn’t yet registered what was happening. Sona took two steps back, toward the archway that led out the back of the barn.
“Stop!” one of the mageseekers cried. They were undeniably here for her. She bolted, hefting her skirts in one hand. The etwahl shuddered, broke free of its stand, and drifted after her through the air. Why hide it anymore?
She emerged out back and into the darkness. There was an alley back there—she could flee into the woods before they spotted her. But as she reached the end of the alley, two seekers stepped into her path. She pulled up short and turned around. Maybe… No. Three more blocked her way back to the inn’s door. She was trapped.
“If you don’t resist…” one of them started, but she saw the flash of Demacian steel in his hand and she heard nothing else. Behind her, footsteps. They were closing in.
She backed up against the wall of the inn, all five of them now standing in front of her.
She laid her fingers on the etwahl. I hope Etra ran, she thought.
The etwahl glowed. She struck a violent burst of music. The chord shot forth from her and slammed into the seekers. The air was charged gold, sickeningly radiant. They turned away from her. She heard their groans, their broken screams, and knew it was over.
They were dancing, all of them. They cut an eerie sight to anyone who might see: contorted, twisting figures bent against their will like puppets being made to perform. It was painful, she knew that much. But she had to make them hurt. She had to make pain the only thing they could remember. That way, they couldn’t remember Etra. They couldn’t come after her.
“For pity’s sake, mercy!”
“Ungh… My arm—”
At first they begged her to stop, but after a moment even that died away and there was nothing but gurgling, the shuffle of footsteps, the creaking and snapping of joints. I didn’t want to hurt you, she thought. I never do. But you… You’re the reason home isn’t home anymore.
One last beat. One final encore. She strummed. The chord reached them, deep violet. They dropped to the floor instantly like discarded toys, unconscious and forgetful.
And Sona disappeared into the silence of the woods.
Soraka

An age ago, when time itself was young, the inhabitants of the celestial realm regarded the fledgling races of Runeterra with growing concern.
These creatures deviated wildly, unpredictably, and dangerously from the great designs intended for them by those above. The guidance and fates that had been woven into the night sky often went unseen—or worse, were misinterpreted by their simple mortal minds, leading to chaos, uncertainty, and suffering.
No longer able to merely watch, one celestial being chose to descend to the mortal realm, determined to untangle the knots in the tapestry of the world. This child of the stars took on a form of flesh and blood, and though the powerful magic coursing through her veins burned this new body from the inside out, she knew her suffering meant little if she could help to heal all that was broken and incomplete.
And so Soraka came to be, and set upon her journey to soothe the mortals she encountered.
Even so, she quickly learned the capacity for cruelty that the peoples of Runeterra possessed. Whether on the battlefields of inescapable conflicts, in the seedy underbellies of sprawling cities, or on the frontiers of the untamed wilderness beyond them, there seemed to be no end to the fighting, betrayal, and suffering Soraka witnessed. She watched, helpless, as mortals ignorantly broke the threads of destiny they could have woven together. Their lives were too short, she reasoned. They were simply unable to see the greater patterns, now lost.
But as Soraka lived among them, as one of them, trying to repair what little of the damage she could… something incredible and wholly unforeseen happened.
From the snarls and tangles and knots, the messy breaks in the great patterns, Soraka noticed a new, unintended design emerging—intertwined, and of a staggering complexity.
Unintended and wild, the mortals were forging new and unknown futures for themselves. From the celestial realm above, it had seemed like pure chaos; but with her new perspective, and blessed by the stars to stand against the erosion of time, Soraka now beheld an almost perfect beauty. Just as mortals had the deepest capacity for cruelty, so too did they possess infinite potential for kindness, and inspiration to rival anything among the stars.
Soraka realized her place was not to repair or replicate the celestial pattern. While a part of her craved the fixed, comforting destinies of the stars, she knew in her heart that static fates could not contain the unbridled, dynamic potential of mortality.
And so her work took on renewed vigor, driven to unlock the untapped possibilities of all she met. Soraka sought now to inspire and guide rather than shepherd, to see what unblazed trails each mortal would discover for themselves in their brief, radiant moment.
Over the millennia, legends of the Starchild have filtered through all the lands of Runeterra. Some tribes of the Freljord still speak of a far wanderer, a horned healer who soothed the icy bite of the most brutal winters. In the depths beneath Zaun, rumors float of a lilac skinned medic who would purify weary lungs from the ravages of the alchemical Gray. In troubled Ionia, the oldest myths of the Vastayashai’rei recall a seer who communed with the stars themselves, and called upon their light both to heal the wounded and scorch those who would do further harm to the First Lands.
Currently, Soraka calls the westernmost peaks of Targon her home. She watches over an isolated tribe of vastaya, teaching them her healing ways, and tending quietly to her own needs—though what brings her so close to the great mountain, or how long she will stay, only Soraka knows.
Many times, she has watched entire civilizations dance close to the brink of destruction, and she has learned that she cannot save those who do not wish it, nor force them to see what they will not.
All the same, Soraka is determined never to stop trying.
Halfway Between the Stars and Earth

Katie Chironis

It was a perfectly good night for a cup of tea. Chilly, certainly, but clear—as crisp a night as frigid Mount Targon ever got, really. Soraka was expecting a visitor. The snow in the stone kettle had already begun to melt over the hearth at the center of her little yurt; as it grew warmer, the room was suffused with the smell of dried tea leaves and sparse mountain herbs.
She crossed the room, passing the shelf she’d built herself along the back wall. Like the rest of her home, it was ever-so-slightly crooked. As far as mortal skills went, carpentry was not her strong suit. But she had built it because she loved the keepsakes on the shelf: a willow-wreath from Omikayalan, a tiny golden acorn from a dear friend in Bandle City, and oldest of all, surely older than anything mortal, was a stone dog from the old days of Nashramae. She owed that city another visit. She hadn’t been back in centuries, and she had a fondness for its people.
But she was shaken from her reverie as the commotion started outside. Shouting. Barking. Precisely on time.
In the darkness a pack of wolves surrounded a huddled lump in the snow. She strode out into the night, drawing her shoulders back, her head high. The moon was out and appeared slightly too large, as it often seemed to on Targon. Her home, nestled partway up the peak, was framed to the east by craggy flats, and to the west by a sheer drop into the mist far below. A constant frigid wind battered everything westward. It wasn’t uncommon for wild creatures to be battered on their way across the flats, too… but it was rare that they found prey.
The wolves turned to snarl at her, half-illuminated in the yellow light from the yurt’s windows. Meanwhile, the lump rolled over. It was a girl. Frightened eyes stared back at Soraka, a wooden spear clutched between two shaking hands. Only one thing brought people to this remote cliffside on the approach to the Holy Mount. But they were never this young.
The wolves lunged for Soraka in unison, and she heard the stars cry out in her defense. Sparks trickled from her fingertips as she rained golden fire down on the pack. The slam of impacts sent most of the wolves skittering back with primal fear, but one of them was left behind, its hindquarters crushed beneath the weight of the dying embers. It moaned and rasped, struggling. She saw the remainder of the pack disappearing over the icy barrens, abandoning their fellow to his fate.
Soraka shook her head and instantly knelt in the singed snow, her hands already outstretched. She couldn’t bear to feel the poor thing’s pain. It tugged at her. As she laid her hands along its bloodied back haunches, it snarled, digging its teeth into her arm. Ouch. Mortality had its drawbacks.
“Stop!” the girl cried. “It… It’ll kill you!”
Soraka felt her face melting into a smile. “I’m not afraid of wolves,” she replied, as light spread down her arms and into the wolf’s mangled body. “Besides,” she added, “Targon belongs to him as much as to me.”
The creature’s flesh began to knit back together, the crushed bones becoming whole once more, like clay taking proper shape in an artisan’s hands. But the magic burned as it left her. She closed her eyes and lost herself in the pain for a moment.
When she opened them, the wolf had retreated. Only the girl remained. Her eyes flicked upwards, tracing the line of Soraka’s horn, and Soraka already knew what she was thinking.
“Are you… one of those things?”
“One of what?”
“Demons. I’ve heard…”
Soraka laughed. But before she could respond, the girl sagged weakly, the spear tip dropping. It was only then, her mind clearing, that Soraka finally felt the enormity of the girl’s own pain. Her arms were black all the way to the elbows. Her fingers were frozen to the spear, the flesh swollen red above that. Frostbite like this… she’d be dead soon.
When she laid her hands upon the girl’s arms, the girl flinched, and Soraka was worried. Humans were curious creatures when it came to healing. Their minds were intricate. It had to be a mutual agreement—they had to want to heal. Sometimes she’d get the tendrils of her magic deep into a wound and find that the mind pushed her right back out again.
But not here. The girl was too tired, all vestiges of her energy spent getting her this far up the mountain. Soraka flooded the dead flesh with all the power she could give, pushing through the pain. Coils of emerald light wound their way up the girl’s arms. The spear dropped to the ground. As Soraka worked, she watched the skin fade through black, red and purple to its proper dusky color. There. That should do it.
“Do I seem like a demon to you?” Soraka asked. Her gold eyes glimmered in the darkness.
The girl was silent. After a moment, Soraka pressed her. “You’re making the summit climb. Why?”
But the girl just looked away, ashamed, rubbing her newly-restored arms. “My family,” she blurted, shaking her head. “We… We Rakkor—we’re warriors. And my mother, she’s the strongest of all. You don’t know what it’s like to be the only one who can’t fight. To be…” she bit her lip, struggling to find the word. “Weak.”
Soraka swept a hand out towards the dirt path the girl had followed, the one which led all the way to Targon’s base. “You came this far, and still you think yourself weak?”
“I won’t be soon,” the girl replied, her hands balling into fists now. “Not when I reach the summit. I’ll walk off the final peak and right into the sky, just like the old stories. And then—then they’ll be forced to accept that I’m strong. No one made of the stars could ever be brought low.”
“If only that were true,” Soraka said, flashing a too-sharp grin.
She scarcely caught the girl’s face breaking out into stunned amazement as she turned, walking to the edge of the path. Above them the stars spread out against the inky sky, brighter than they were anywhere else in the world. They sang songs only she could hear. This was home to her. It hadn’t always been. But it was the home she’d made.
“Come,” Soraka beckoned. And she raised her hand, trailing her fingers across the heavens. As she did, she knit the clouds and mist into shapes which wound their way against the moon and became faces the girl would no doubt have recognized from stories. A young woman with pale hair. Her counterpart, a woman whose face burned as brightly as the sun. And a warrior with a spear not unlike the girl’s own.
“All of these mortals ascended to the peak. But they had chosen that path with all their soul.” She turned to the girl and spoke slowly, taking no delight in her words. “You have not truly chosen the mountain. And Targon will not choose you. You would walk to your death. Don’t do this.”
The girl turned away. She was silent a long time.
“Where, then?” she said at last, her voice rough. “I can’t go home. I can’t go back to them. Where else would I go?”
Soraka smiled. “The world is vast. Your paths are many. I can help, if you let me.”
The images in the moon had faded.
Soraka motioned to the cheerful yellow yurt nestled among the rocks nearby. “But first, better come on inside and get warm. No sense in starting back until dawn comes. Besides, I’ve got a kettle on. Perfectly good night for a cup of tea.”
The Spear of Targon

Anthony Reynolds

A lone figure awaited the armed convoy, standing silhouetted against the sun. His heavy cloak and the long plume atop his helm billowed in the hot, dry desert wind. A tall spear was held at his side.
The convoy was thirty strong. Most of its number were hired mercenaries—rough, warlike men and women garbed in hauberks, leather, and chain, bearing crossbows, halberds, and blades. They walked the dusty path alongside heavily laden mules, though they came to a halt, crude insults and jokes dying on their lips, as they saw the warrior standing motionless before them.
The dark-clad leader of the expedition frowned as he pulled his coal-black steed to a halt. While the others were from lands far away, he knew this place and its inhabitants, for he once counted himself one of them. While he had been raised among the mountain people of the Rakkor, he had long ago turned away from them. Now he returned, after many years of absence, drawn by the lure of the priceless wealth he knew awaited in the Seer’s temple above.
He knew and respected the fighting prowess of his former people, but a single warrior? Not even the Ra’Horak could survive such odds.
Even so, the figure atop the rocky outcrop made no move to stand aside.
“You come with murder in your hearts,” the warrior said, his voice as hard as iron. “I am of the Mountain. Turn back, or I will gladly destroy you. The choice is yours.”
The mercenaries smirked and scoffed.
“Piss off, madman,” one of them shouted, “lest we plant your head on a spike to mark our passing.”
“You are a long way from home, friend,” the leader of the convoy said. “We journey to the mountain ourselves. There need be no blood spilt here.”
The lone Rakkoran warrior was unmoved.
“We are simple pilgrims, and still have far to go,” said the leader. “And besides, there is no way back for us now. Our ships have sailed, see?” He gestured behind him.
Behind the convoy, less than a mile distant, the sea glittered like dragon scales in the dying light. A trio of galleys could be seen, sails unfurling as they turned north on the long journey home.
“We come with no ill intent, I assure you,” the leader continued. “We merely seek wisdom.”
“Your tongue is forked, serpent,” said the lone warrior. “You seek the blood of the Seer, and it will be your end. You were born on the mountain, and now you will die in its shadow.”
The leader’s frown deepened, and he turned away with a dismissive shrug.
“We shall see,” he said. “Kill him.”
In an instant, crossbows were hefted to shoulders and the air was filled with loosed bolts. The warrior of the Rakkor was not punched from his feet, however; the bolts clanged as they ricocheted from his heavy, circular shield. Then he began to advance.
He appeared to be in no hurry. He strode forward with grim resolve, still silhouetted against the sun, the tip of his spear lowering toward his enemies. Another flurry of crossbow bolts. Again they were turned aside by his shield.
The first of the snarling mercenaries launched herself toward him, a jagged-bladed scimitar arcing in for his throat. She died in the blink of an eye, the warrior’s spear buried in her chest. The next two died almost as quickly, a crimson line slashed across one man’s throat, and another falling with a broken skull.
“Take him!” roared the expedition’s leader, drawing an exquisite, bespoke pistol from his waistband.
A cloud passed in front of the sun, allowing the warrior to be seen more clearly. His armor was wrought with celestial imagery,and it seemed as if stars gleamed in the shimmery fabric of his midnight-blue cloak. That starlight also glittered in his unrelenting gaze, shadowed within the visor slits of his helm. For a moment, it seemed like his armor and speartip gleamed with what could only be described as divine power, and sudden dread filled the leader of the raiders, for he had heard of this power in his childhood, but had long since dismissed it as myth and legend.
The lone warrior moved like liquid, every movement smooth, efficient, and deadly. He was impossibly fast—faster than any man should be. More mercenaries died, their blood staining the dry desert ground. None could land a blow upon the deadly fighter. He moved effortlessly through the battle, closing inexorably on the horseman. One by one, the mercenaries were slain. In moments, those still standing turned and fled in the face of this unstoppable foe.
The leader of the mercenaries leveled his pistol at the lone warrior and fired. Impossibly, he swayed aside at the last moment, and the shot merely scraped across the side of his helm. The leader swore and cocked his pistol for another shot… but he was too slow.
The warrior’s shield took him square in the chest, and he was hurled from the saddle. He fell heavily and grimaced as the warrior’s foot came down on his torso, pinning him to the ground.
Staring up, the leader of the raiders realized with a shock that he knew the face of his opponent. A name surfaced in his memory, from a time when he had still lived among the Rakkor.
“Atreus,” he said. “Is it you?”
In answer, the Rakkoran’s spear drove down, punching through the leader’s chest.
“Atreus is gone,” said the warrior. “I am the Pantheon, now and forever.”
Blood bubbled from the dying man’s lips, and he shuddered. When finally he was still, Pantheon pulled his weapon clear and turned away. Twilight had given way to dusk, and countless stars lit the night sky.
A comet of burning fire streaked down toward the distant mountains, a hundred miles east.
Pantheon’s eyes narrowed. “It is time, then,” he said to the darkness, and began the long journey back to Mount Targon.
The Spirit of Copperwood Glade

Jared Rosen

It is common in these dark days to speak of the Elderwood with some deference, as both the young and old know it as a place of great danger, filled with tricks and traps laid by the last true children of the wilds.
Yet this was not always the case, and in the bygone age before the gods fell these fair folk did mingle with a wide-eyed humankind, both for good and ill. Tales of those misadventures exist even to this day―perhaps the last surviving stories of a more innocent time, captured and passed down so those who come after us will remember the magic that has been lost to witchery and shadow.
But let us not speak of sad things! Here is but one telling of those touched by the old forest, and the strange creatures living within it. For the Elderwood was once home to brave knights, gentle dryads, and odd spirits large and small, and some reside there still; perhaps, if you are lucky and pure of heart, you may one day even meet one yourself...

Many years ago, in a kingdom to the south of the great Elderwood, there lived a good-natured husband and wife who worked as toymakers. They had a young daughter whose name was Rowan, as gentle and pleasant as a child could be, and together they lived quite happily making all manner of playthings from the wood of the forest.
The toys fashioned by Rowan’s parents were greatly desired, even by members of the noble houses, and because of this they became wealthy and well-renowned. The toys were never damaged no matter how roughly children played, and never grew old no matter how much time had passed, and each was a work of art unique in everything but name, never to be made again―for this was the magic of the Elderwood, such as it was back then.
It had been said that Rowan’s great-grandfather had once saved a fledgling spirit, and in return his family had been blessed for one-hundred-and-two years, so that they might harvest a single tree each year and from it make as many creations as they desired. No creature would harm him or his descendants, even the Great Guardian Hecarim, so long as his family never turned against the denizens of the forest, and not more than a single tree was taken on the first day of spring. They must also live away from the walls of the city, to signify the bond of spirit and man, and in return the Elderwood would extend its protection to their kin forevermore.
Rowan’s family did respect the terms of this agreement for one-hundred-and-one years, and they were joyful for it.
On the eve of the one-hundred-and-second year, a nobleman from a foreign land visited Rowan and her parents. His name was Brín, and he fancied himself a king, though in truth his lands were small and his influence was quite minor among the lords and ladies of the kingdoms. As such he was obsessed with baubles giving the appearance of wealth and status, and so mesmerized by these wooden toys that he decided he must have as many as he could, so that in his court they might be considered commonplace.
“Honored toymaker,” he declared, “these treasures are priceless, and yet ye would sell them for such a pittance to the children of this land. Is it not more prudent to create them for a noble such as I? I could pay thee greatly, and fill thy coffers, so thy family may never want again.”
But Rowan’s father refused, as the Elderwood provided all the family needed. “I do not wish to sell my wares for profit, though their fame has blessed me greatly. I strive only to honor my agreement with the great forest, as my father did, and his father before.”
“Honored toymaker,” declared Brín, “thy fame is known throughout the lands, and yet ye would live among the edges of the untamed wilds. Craft these treasures in the name of my house, and I will build ye a great manse upon the riverbank, so ye might be the envy of all other men.”
Again, Rowan’s father refused, as even when they could harvest the trees no further, his family would always have a place among the fair folk of the Elderwood. “I am sorry,” he said, “but ye may purchase any wares within these walls, and bring them back to thy court. They never age or wear, and I am sure that will suffice.”
Now Brín did become furious. “If thou would’st reject such a generous offer, I will burn thy workshop to the ground. The Elderwood does not extend as far as my kingdom, and by the time its children come to thine aid thy life will be spent, and thy family slaughtered. I will take these treasures for my own, and that will be the end of it.”
With this, Rowan’s father relented, and the lord Brín would return one month hence, to claim every toy crafted from the final gifted tree.
“Father,” said Rowan, for she knew much despite her years, “what will we do? Though his lands are few, that man is a lord nonetheless, and might call upon a great many knights.”
“True,” said Rowan’s father, “but in his hubris he disregards the spirits of the wood. Take warm clothes from thy mother, and a bindle of foodstuffs, and go to the place called Copperwood Glade. There, thy eyes will fall upon a great tree as hard as armor plate. Sleep softly at its base, and the spirit that blesses this house will appear in a dream to barter with ye. But beware, for it is not a kind spirit, but a violent one. If thy words are false, or thy offers unfair, or it senses darkness in thy heart, then it will cut thy soul away, and thy body will never wake.”
And so Rowan did take warm clothes from her mother, and a bindle of food, and travel into the Elderwood, as her parents raced to carve toys for the lord Brín, in case her quest failed.

Before long Rowan did stumble upon a quiet glade apart from the forest, at its center an ancient tree whose bark shone like polished copper. Around it were the bones of many people, their tattered belongings covered in deep, green moss. Rowan could not hear the birds or the streams of the whispers of the countless spirits in this place―only silence, as though not even the wind would dare disturb its countless secrets. She felt a great dread here, as though she were being watched, but despite her fear she unpacked her bindle, and buttoned up her warm coat, and rested herself against the base of the copperwood tree as her father had told her to do.
Soon enough, she fell deeply asleep. The sun’s rays danced across her cheeks, and it seemed that these old bones strewn about were barely a bother anymore.
She awoke in the dead of night, to the sound of a hymn.
Now Rowan was brave and kind, but the words creaked and moaned like a beetle-filled log, and rustled like the branches of an old, dead willow, and soon enough her fear returned to her. Her father’s warning did echo in her ears, warning of a vicious thing, and so Rowan cried out, “Art thou the spirit of Copperwood Glade?”
And for a while the hymn continued, as if to answer the question.
Then the logs and the moss and the branches and the trees grew still, and the hymn ceased, and a strange, misshapen apparition did appear at the edges of the glade. Its arms hung low, and ended in sharpened blades, and its head turned unnaturally against its strange wooden body, and it looked at Rowan without expression.
“Hwæt þú gewilnunge mædencild?” said the spirit, its voice creaking like rotten timber.
But this was the old tongue, older by far even than Rowan’s great-grandfather, and she could not understand it.
“Ah,” said the spirit, “it has been many years since thy ancestor lent me his aid. Forgive me, for time does not pass for us as it does for thee, and often I confuse the mortal tongues. I am called Nocturne, and I am the spirit you seek. What dost thou desire, child? I wish to hear thy words. But speak not falsely, or I will cut thy soul away, and thy body will rot in the glade with those others who have aimed to trick a creature such as I.”
Yet the spirit did not draw closer, and Rowan’s fear would not subside.
“O, Nocturne,” she said. “One-hundred-and-one years have passed since ye blessed my house, and this year will be the last. We have always honored thy will, and the will of the Elderwood, and from this we will never falter. But a lord named Brín now threatens us with death, and we entreat thee for protection.”
“Ah,” said Nocturne, drawing closer. Rowan saw that he floated above the ground, and scraped his long blades across it as he went, and the bones beneath them were sliced clean in twain as though they were made from air. “I have heard of this Brín, and his lands to the west, where the air is warm and the forest thin. Should he slay thy family and steal thy treasures, I promise to take his life in return.”
“O, Nocturne,” replied Rowan, “we are unlike spirits of the wood. We have but a single life, and when it is spent go from this world hence, and do not return. Couldst thou act against him now? Would that I could offer something to a spirit such as thee, in payment...”
“Ah,” said Nocturne, drawing closer still. His hands trembled in excitement, and his blades clicked as they cut the stones and armor and paltry belongings scattered before him, and Rowan did feel within him a thirst for violence. “Perhaps if I had something fresh to eat, and something warm to wear, then I could make the journey westward.”
And Rowan did give Nocturne her bindle of foodstuffs, and her warm clothes, despite his body of bark and blades.
“Ah,” said Nocturne, rising up before Rowan, his carved face peering into her eyes. “But are thy words true? I wonder, what is the content of thy heart?”
And he sank a blade deep inside her chest, and raised her body high above his head. Yet Rowan was silent, and resolute, for she knew her fate when she saw the bones scattered about Copperwood Glade, and had accepted it gladly.
Nocturne then lowered Rowan, and placed her before him, and her wounds were healed. “Your words are spoken truly, and your offerings are given freely, and your heart is kind. You will not die upon this day. Go back to your home, and live your life, and the lord Brín will never trouble thee again.”
And Rowan did thank the spirit, and when she awoke she returned to her home at the edge of the Elderwood, and her family went on to take the final tree and then lived happily for many generations until they became one with the forest, as was the agreement they had struck so many years before.

As for Lord Brín, he and his knights were slain by a vicious spirit while they rested, and his kingdom fell into a dark slumber from which it never awakened. The Elderwood grew quickly towards these lands, and consumed them utterly within the year, with nary a soul escaping. One can still find their ruins in the place now known as Somberwood, where it is said the spirit Nocturne visits from time-to-time, to admire his handiwork.
Starfall

Ariel Lawrence

There’s this dream I keep having.
It starts pitch black. It’s so dark, I’m not sure my eyes are even open. It’s like being woken up when the power’s gone out. All those familiar bits of light snuffed out, swallowed up. Just me and an empty night.
I can’t help myself. I reach out, hoping that it is just a blackout, that I can just push away the weight of being alone like too many heavy blankets. But the darkness doesn’t move.
I tread midnight like water in a well, all the while the cold drip of loneliness slips down my back. Then I realize that there’s no surface to break. My chest tightens. My panic rises and it’s hard to breathe. I’m in way over my head. Then someone or something’s pulled the plug at the bottom of the darkness and I’m sinking further into the inky black. My mouth opens to yell, to scream, but only silence comes out.
What did I expect when I have a mouth full of nothing? My heart’s beating too fast. Just when I’m about to give up, just when I’m about to let go, I feel them.
Janna. Lulu. Poppy. Jinx. I feel their light. It’s like warmth and joy and comfort and laughter got balled up together so tightly they had no choice but to catch fire.
My eyes are open. Maybe they were there from the beginning, but this is the first time I can truly see. Their faces are so beautiful, so peaceful. They’re sleeping, dreaming maybe, untroubled by the darkness that surrounds us. I stretch my arms out, but they’re too far. That’s when I realize we’re falling.
The horizon of a world big and blue rushes up to meet us. I can’t concentrate on where we’re going, the danger that’s fast approaching. At this point I don’t care. All I can see are my sisters falling. The atmosphere of the planet below us burns hot, and their lights ignite.
My arms ache to the bone. I try to catch them. I try to hold on, but I can’t stop them from falling. I’m not strong enough to keep us together. I’m not enough for them. The tips of my own fingers start to glow and break apart. The last thing I see is their emblems darkening as their light shatters into a rainbow of ragged cinders.
And then I wake up.
I’m in my bed, the blanket in a sweaty tangle. The darkness is gone, replaced by a muted gray. I’ve taken to sleeping with one of the windows open. I walk over to it and watch the street below. The soft glow of the lights outside paints me and my room in shadow.
Above all the sleeping quiet is darkness. I can feel it still, stretching on and on. It’s hard to see the stars from the city. Just a few pinpoints of light break it up. But I know more are out there. Somewhere.
I crawl back into bed and wait for the dawn. I don’t go to sleep. I can’t. The dream is the same.
Always the same.
“Are you going to join us?”
Jinx is lying on a plastic lounge chair in the backyard, while Shiro and Kuro are napping in the grass at her feet. It’s hard to tell if she’s heard me. Abnormally large plastic sunglasses cover her eyes and most of her eyebrows. She’s got one earbud tucked in her left ear, but I can see the other dangling over the side of the recliner.
She totally heard me.
“Hey, are you coming inside? We’re going to get started.”
Jinx sticks a wad of fluorescent gum back into her mouth, chews loudly, cracking the bubbles with her teeth, and then slowly begins to blow a big, pink bubble. When she gets the bubble big enough to obscure her sunglasses, she sucks it back in with a loud pop.
“Summer’s not gonna last forever, Lux,” she says without looking over. She folds her arms behind her head. Feathered clouds pass in the reflection in her sunglasses. “Better soak all this up before it’s gone.”
She twirls the end of one long red pigtail around the tip of her finger, challenging me to give her something worth coming inside for.
“You’re right,” I say. She loves it when she thinks she’s right. “Summer’s almost over. I just think we should talk about… things. You know, before school starts again.”
Jinx purses her lips and blows a raspberry in the air.
I should not have mentioned school. Definitely lost her there.
“Well,” I say, trying a different tactic, “I guess you don’t want any of the popsicles Poppy brought?”
Jinx sits up, straddling the recliner. Kuro startles awake, yawns, and mischievously starts to tumble the still sleeping Shiro over in the grass. Jinx pushes the enormous sunglasses up to sit on her forehead, making it look like giant plastic stars are shooting out of her pigtails.
“Popsicles?”
“Yep,” I say as I step inside the house. “Shaped like rockets.” I shut the sliding glass door behind me and walk towards the kitchen. Five seconds later I hear the door slide open and shut.
Thank the stars. As temperamental as Jinx is, she can be awfully predictable about desserts. And ammunition.
My peace is momentary. As I walk into the kitchen, Poppy is standing on a chair in front of the stove, turning pancakes on the griddle, her determination and focus evident from the bend in her elbows and the iron grip she has on a big metal spatula. There is a trail of batter and sticky syrup linking her to the refrigerator and the counter.
“Uh, Poppy, what’s going on? I was gone for, like, five minutes,” I say as Jinx elbows past me, making a beeline for the freezer.
“Lulu said she was hungry,” Poppy says over her shoulder. She shrugs and turns her concentration back to flipping the thin batter in front of her. “I made pancakes.”
Lulu is sitting at the kitchen table intently drawing with one hand and stabbing a bite full of pancake with the other, unconcerned with the food drama surrounding her. Pix is gnawing on an uncapped green marker. Lulu scratches her familiar’s head without looking up from her own work.
“Sounds good, Shortstop.” Jinx claps Poppy on the back and then slides into one of the chairs, all while slurping one of the rocket-shaped popsicles. “Make me one shaped like a star? No, wait, one shaped like a missile? Oooh, I know, how about a star missile? I need rainbow sprinkles!”
“Oh, look who finally decided to join us,” Poppy mutters to the griddle.
Chaos. Utter chaos. There’s pancake batter on the ceiling. How are we supposed to save the universe if we can’t get it together ourselves? Janna is quietly washing the pile of dishes that Poppy’s been creating. She’s staring out the window in front of the sink. Zephyr is sitting on the counter next to her attempting to lick the syrup from its paws.
“So,” I start to pace in the little bit of open space in the kitchen. “I think we should talk about the next year. School’s about to start and…”
“Hey, whatcha drawing, Loopy?” Jinx leans over Lulu’s shoulder, stealing a bite of her pancake with a spare fork. She doesn’t want to think about the future so badly, she’ll even feign interest in Lulu to get out of it. I try to keep my deep sigh inaudible.
I start again. “As I was saying, we…”
“It’s the starfall,” Lulu interrupts, completely unconcerned that words were coming out of my mouth. “The new stars are coming.” Without looking up she pushes a paper flyer across the table towards Jinx. A glob of whipped cream and sprinkles drips off Jinx’s pancake piece onto the paper as Jinx gives it a once over. She smirks and leaves it on the table. I can see the flyer has more than ten words and only one picture, so of course Jinx has totally lost interest in it.
I stop my pacing behind Lulu, taking a good look at what our little artist has been drawing for the first time. It’s a field with some trees around the edge. The five of us are standing in the field looking up at a night sky. Janna being the tall, purple one, Poppy has her hammer, and Jinx’s long, red pigtails are easy to pick out. I guess I’m the round pink one. Does my hair really stick out of the sides of my head like that?
“This is you?” I ask, pointing to the green-haired one in the meadow of green and black fireflies. Lulu nods, biting her lip in concentration as she shades in the dark blue of the sky. Among the penciled-in stars there are more colors.
“What about these?” Jinx asks, pointing at the colored bits.
“New stars, of course,” she says, rolling her eyes at Jinx. Lulu looks up at me. “Can we go?”
“There are no more new stars here,” Poppy says as she turns another pancake.
There’s a loud clatter from the sink as Janna fumbles a plate. “Sorry,” she stammers as she catches it.
I walk over and stand next to her. Through the kitchen window I can see the wispy clouds are gone; it’s just a big, empty summer sky. In the sink, Janna slides the sponge around the plate’s outer rim in a slow, wet orbit.
“Nice save,” I say, offering Janna a towel off the counter. “The slippery ones are the hardest to hold onto.”
Janna looks over at me and then down at the plate she’s been washing. Her cheeks color pink, betraying her normally cool demeanor. Something’s up.
She nods and puts the extra-clean plate in the dish rack. She tucks a lock of lavender hair behind her ear and picks up another syrup-drenched plate from the stack on the counter.
Yup, something’s definitely up.
Jinx, oblivious as usual, continues to drown her pile of pancakes in syrup, alternating layers with whipped cream and sprinkles.
“You know how much I hate to agree with our blue-haired door stop,” Jinx says as she crams a full fork in her mouth. “But Loops, it’s just us against all the big bad this part of the galaxy has to offer.”
Lulu puts down her pen and picks up the flyer, handing it to me. I take it and wipe off Jinx’s melting clump of whipped cream and sprinkles with a kitchen towel, smearing a wet rainbow trail across the top of the paper.
“'Camp Targon’s Summer Starfall. Watch the summer meteor shower. Get out of the city and get to know some new stars. Games and amusement. Last chance for summer fun',” I read aloud. “It’s hosted by the Astronomy class at the university and open to all the local high school students.”
I look up. No one’s listening. Lulu’s back to drawing. Poppy and Jinx are stacking more and more pancakes on their plates, determined to see who can eat the most. I can see Janna’s face in the reflection of the window. She’s lost in the sky again.
The paper crunches in my hand. I ease my grip, embarrassed by how tightly I’m holding on. The deadline to register for the camp is today.
“Last chance,” I breathe the words to myself. I look at the girls; everyone’s going in different directions. They are not going to be happy about this. But I’m the captain. This will be good for them. “It will be good for us,” I whisper out loud, talking myself into the decision.
“Pack your bags, ladies,” I say loudly, pasting a bright, shiny smile on my face. The bubbly confidence is as much a show for them as it is for me. Each of them looks up, unsure of what is about to happen.
I pull my phone out of my pocket and start dialing the number on the flyer. “We’re going to welcome some new stars.”
Jinx slips a floppy sunhat on as she ambles down from the bus. She had insisted on wearing her bathing suit on the ride over. The obnoxiously loud colors of her bikini are tempered only by the sheer cover-up billowing behind her in the breeze.
“Alright, nerds,” she sighs. “I’m going to find the pool. Time for some cannonballs.”
“It’s a lake,” Poppy corrects her while carefully watching the bus driver unload our gear onto a patch of grass.
“Whatever, Short Stack.” Jinx grabs a tote bag graffitied with hand-drawn stars and over-sized guns from the top of the pile. As she passes Lulu, Jinx tugs on the teal butterfly bow in Lulu’s hair. “See ya later, Loops.”
I look at Poppy.
“She didn’t actually bring a cannon, did she?”
Poppy shrugs. “Do you really think she could keep her mouth shut about it if she did?”
I’m about to call after Jinx and insist she stay with the group, when I hear a groan behind me. I watch as the bus driver pulls out the last bag, his arms quivering with the effort. The blue duffel is nearly as big as Poppy. She watches him carefully, her foot tapping out an impatient rhythm in the dry grass.
He sets the duffel down with a little grunt. “What have you got in there, kid? Rocks?”
“Nope.” Poppy reaches over and snatches up the handles of the duffel, swinging it over her shoulder with ease. She flashes a toothy, satisfied grin at the bus driver. “A hammer.”
Poppy gives me the same smile, I’m sure remembering the challenge I gave everyone before we left, that we’re here to blend in and hang out. Be normal. She grabs the handle of Jinx’s forgotten wheeled bag and nudges Lulu gently.
“Come on, Lulu. Our campsite isn't going to set itself up,” she says cheerfully.
Lulu nods, humming a song only she knows the melody to. She flutters from wildflower to pinecone to pebble, marveling at every treasure the camp has to offer while Poppy maintains her dutiful march down the trail.
The bus starts back up again and then pulls onto the road. I watch until it disappears behind an outcropping of rocks and trees.
“No turning back now, huh, Janna?” All I can hear is a breeze blowing through the pines. I spin around slowly. The last of the other stragglers from the bus are already halfway down the trail to the camp. The bus drop off point is empty. “Janna?”
I finally find Janna standing on the rounded top of a granite boulder that’s sunk deep in dirt. She’s got her back to me. Her hands are wrapped around her arms and the curls of her lavender hair are bouncing in the invisible breeze.
“Janna?”
I drop my backpack on a clump of grass and clamber up to stand next to her. Down in the little valley below us I can see the bustle of other campers and teams setting up. Between the trees there’s the glittery sparkle of Lake Lunari. My bet is that Jinx has already launched herself in there. I feel a smile cross my face as I wonder if she realizes that it’s fed by snowmelt.
But Janna’s not looking at any of that. She’s so tall. I shade my eyes from the sun and look up for a few minutes, straining to see what she sees. It’s another piercingly blue summer sky, empty save for the craggy face of Mount Targon and a few white clouds. My elbow brushes her arm as I shift my position.
Janna looks over surprised.
“Oh. Hi,” she says, like I haven’t been standing next to her for the last five minutes. She smiles, but I can tell that she’s still worried about whatever it is that’s been bothering her. She looks over to where the bus dropped us off.
“Where did everybody go?”
“Wow.” I shake my head. “You really are somewhere else, huh?” I look back at the purplish-gray outline of Mt. Targon framed by a dark fringe of pine. There’s still snow on the peak this late in the summer.
Janna rubs her hands over her bare shoulders and sucks in a breath as if she were suddenly chilled. It’s not even a little cold. The clear sky and sun overhead make me wish for the first time that I had followed Jinx’s advice and just worn a swimsuit and shorts. I fan my face with our camp registration.
“We should get going,” Janna says, her long legs stepping down easily from the boulder as if walking on air. She looks back at me as I fumble down the rock. Her smile fades as she glances back up at the sky. “There’s a storm coming.”
“What?” I try and look back at the sky, but my foot slips on a pocket of loose gravel and the roundness of the rock. As usual, too many things at once. I sit down hard in a puff of dust, the back of my leg scraping on the rock.
“Ow.” I wince at the sting. Just what I need. Lulu, Poppy, and Jinx blown to the corners of the camp. Janna feeling like she’s on another planet. And now their intrepid leader is going to be taken out by her own two left feet.
“Fantastic,” I mumble into my hand as I rub my face.
A cool breeze catches the damp hair at the back of my neck. I look up to Janna offering a healing hand.
“Nope,” I say. I manage a smile. “I’m fine. Remember, no powers while we’re here.”
Janna shrugs. “Better be careful then, we’ve only got one leader,” she says. She looks at me and I’m sure she can hear all the doubt rattling around in my head. She turns back to the trail as I stand up.
“Let’s hurry,” she calls over her shoulder. “We’d all be lost without you.”
I let out the breath I’ve been holding. That’s what I’m afraid of.
The camp information table is draped in dark purple fabric. Rocks and big pinecones hold down stacks of different photocopied flyers. Sitting behind the table is a girl with long black hair. No, not a girl. She looks too old to be in high school and way too cool for a dusty table at a summer camp. She must be one of the Astronomy class sponsors. I hear Janna’s footsteps stop behind me as I walk towards the ‘girl.’ I take this as a not so subtle clue that I’m on my own.
I walk up to the table. The tall pines and late afternoon sun combine at an angle so there is shaft of light stabbing me in the eye no matter where I try to stand. The contrast of light and dark makes it hard to see the person behind the table. She makes no effort to move out of the shadows and instead sounds somewhat amused by my inability to find a good spot to have a conversation.
“Hi,” I say, sticking my hand in the general direction of where I think she is.
“Name.”
Not exactly the friendliest response. Also a step more to the left than I anticipated. “Lux,” I answer, a bit flustered. “Luxanna. My group is the—”
“Hmmm… ‘the Star Sisters,’” the girl interrupts. Her voice holds a strong note of mocking disapproval. “That’s such a… cute name. You two are the last to check in. Leaders are usually the first ones to check in.” She lets out an exasperated sigh for emphasis.
Sun and planet align so I’m finally granted a sliver of shade to get a better look at our collegiate judge. On closer inspection, I think I preferred the audio only version. She’s pursing her lips as if she had just eaten something gross, but still had manners enough not to spit it out. A lanyard name tag with perfectly put together letters reads: Syndra.
“I’m sorry,” I try again, trying to sound more confident. I knew I should have told everyone to stay together. “I stayed to make sure all our bags made it off the bus. The others were really excited about getting to the campsite.”
I feel Janna’s fingertips on my arm, supporting me. I look over at Janna. Her normally calm face is grimacing at the girl behind the table. I do a double take between them before returning to the conversation.
“Well, we’re all here now,” Janna says curtly.
“Great,” Syndra says, totally not meaning it. “Space twenty-sixteen. Some of your group is already there. There’s also a loud one down by the lake. I assume she’s one of yours.”
Jinx. Fantastic.
Syndra leans over and picks out some of the colored papers. She stops and looks up when I don’t immediately acknowledge Jinx as my responsibility.
“You might want to, you know, deal with that,” she says. “Here’s a map and a schedule. The best viewing for the meteor shower starts after midnight.”
Syndra hands me the stack of papers, her eyes narrowing as she looks me over for a final judgment. I am obviously not living up to expectations. “You understand that leaders are accountable for keeping their groups together when it gets dark, right?”
“Yes,” I squeak. I nod dumbly, feeling like a child. I clear my throat to try and find my voice. “I promise I’ll keep everyone together.”
As if on cue, a group of four wanders in from one of the trails. It’s like cool just supernovaed in the middle of camp. A wake of starstruck campers begin to gather in little eddies behind them. I can’t blame them; I can’t look away either.
“Now there’s a team you can learn something from,” Syndra says pointedly. I watch as her snark melts into a smile. “Ahri!” she squeals.
The center star in the approaching constellation looks up. She brushes her perfectly side-swept, peach bangs from her eyes, and smiles. A tall redhead, a quiet girl with mint colored curls, and a kinda cute guy with blonde hair flank their all-too popular leader. Of course the group makes their way over to us, picking up more followers like a magnet. Not only does each member exude individual awesome, they move together effortlessly. I can’t help it. I’m so jealous my teeth hurt.
“Syndra,” Ahri says. “Are you all done? We missed you on the hike this afternoon.”
“I had to wait for the stragglers,” Syndra says looking at me.
“Yeah,” I say. “Sorry about that.” I turn to Ahri and smile, extending a hand. “Hi. I’m Lux. You must be—“
“Cool,” she says, finishing the conversation before it even got a chance to start. She eyes my extended hand floating out in space in front of her for an extra moment, really letting my awkwardness sink in for everyone. Finally her perfectly manicured fingers touch my hand in a halfhearted shake. “Charmed, I’m sure.”
Ahri turns to Syndra, effectively dismissing me from the conversation.
“Okay,” I say a little too loudly. “Nice meeting you, I guess.”
A breeze starts to blow through camp and I turn around abruptly and pick a direction to just start walking in, any direction, as long it’s not towards the information table.
Which is exactly when I run smack into Janna. The stack of camp papers goes flying. So much for situational awareness. Once again I’m on my butt in the dusty grass looking up at Janna. Only this time my annoyance is tempered by the expression on Janna’s face.
Her earlier grimace has been replaced by a dark scowl. The light breeze around us picks up into a stronger gust.
“I have to take a walk,” Janna says. She’s not asking. She doesn’t even look down in my direction. This is weird. I’ve never seen Janna so... so angry.
“But Janna,” I say, grabbing at the flying papers and trying to pull my wind whipped hair from my mouth at the same time. “They just told us to stay together.”
It’s too late. Janna walks down a shady trail taking the wind with her. Behind me, above the dying wind, I hear Syndra laughing. I hope it’s at something clever Ahri must have said. I venture a quick look back, only to catch Syndra looking directly at me. And smiling.
I turn away and concentrate on putting my multi-colored stack of flyers back together, letting the trail of lost paper take me as far away from the cool kids as I can get.
I find the last flyer curled in the hollow of a tree. Instead of bending over to pick it up, I let myself sink down onto a pile of pine needles and lean against the tree. In front of me is the lake, but now that I’ve stopped moving I realize I have no idea where I am.
I push my back against the scratchy bark. This trip is so not going how I wanted it to. We’re not even together, let alone working more as a team.
My face feels hot. The back of my throat tightens. The light glinting off the lake in front of me blurs a little. I can feel the water well in my eyes.
I start rifling through the stack of papers I’ve collected to distract myself from my sudden pity party.
“And not a single, stupid map.” I let out my frustration out in a groan. “How can I be a leader if I don’t even know where I’m going?”
“Meh. Maps are totally overrated.” A guy’s voice breaks the background noise of distant campers. I look up. Great. It’s the cute, blonde guy from Ahri’s star-studded entourage. I stand quickly and wipe my eyes with the back of my hand.
“But, if you really think you need one, I happen to have this on me.” He hands me a slightly wind-crumpled map of the camp. My group’s site is clearly circled and numbered in Syndra’s perfect handwriting. His grin is a little lopsided. “I have a knack for finding lost things. I’m Ezreal. You can call me Ez.”
I nod, trying to control my sniffling. He’s still smiling. Is he flirting with me? I look around. He takes a handkerchief from his pocket and hands it to me.
“Thanks,” I murmur awkwardly. Even in the shade of the pine trees, his eyes are really blue.
“Maybe you can help me find my team.” I gesture to the trees around us. This little corner of camp is empty except for the two of us. “Seems everybody’s lost but me and you.”
“Sounds perfect.” He sweeps a lock of blonde hair away from his eyes with his hand and gestures with a gentlemanly bow back to the trail. “It’s Lux, right? Like a light?”
“Yeah,” I nod. If he only knew. “My mom had a thing for desk lamps.” I feel my bubbly confidence returning, the one that Jinx constantly complains is so annoying. I look over and watch his cocky smile falter for a second. He’s not sure if I’m teasing him. It’s my turn to smile. Am I smiling too much?
“I’m just kidding,” I offer.
“Sure, lamps are cool,” he says a little relieved. “But not exactly my favorite kind of light.”
“You have a favorite kind of light?”
“C’mon, doesn’t everybody?” His cocky grin is back. The small footpath we’ve been following is about to join up with the larger trail that goes from the lake to the main part of the camp.
“Are you going to tell me or do I have to guess?” It’s silly, but I’m totally forgetting how sorry I was feeling for myself a few minutes ago. For the first time since getting to the camp, I’m not worrying about anything, not even tripping over my own feet.
Which is exactly when Jinx shows up, a mischievous grin plastered on her face along with wisps of lake-soaked hair. Her smile tightens as Ezreal steps out of the shadows and onto the path.
“Hey there, Lux buddy. Find a new friend?” Jinx’s clap on my back startles me back into reality and I nearly choke on my tongue trying to answer her.
“Jinx, this is Ez,” I cough, trying to catch my breath. “Ez, this is Jinx.”
Ezreal extends a hand to Jinx. Jinx accepts the challenge and strong arms him, squeezing his fingers and pumping his hand up and down like some kind of backwards arm-wrestling contest. Much to Jinx’s surprise, Ez takes the awkward handshake in stride.
Jinx yanks him closer. “What exactly are your intentions towards our Lux, may I ask?” she says in a threatening whisper that all of us can clearly hear.
I feel my face go pinker than my hair.
“We… We…” Ez stammers. “We were just talking about our favorite kind of light. Did… Did you have one?”
Nice save, Ez. If there’s one thing that can distract Jinx, it’s talking about herself.
“Oh, that’s easy,” Jinx says. She eases some of the tension in her grip and lets go of Ezreal’s hand. Ez opens and closes his fingers, double-checking that they still work.
“Really?” I say, surprised. “You have a favorite kind of light?”
Jinx turns to me. “Well, of course. Doesn’t everybody?”
Ezreal shrugs. His cocky grin is back.
“Ezreal, is everything alright?” a cool voice asks. And now it’s a party. The tall redhead, the second star in Ahri’s constellation of awesome, approaches from farther up the main camp path. She doesn’t look too pleased with any of us. Especially Jinx.
“It’s alright, Sarah,” Ezreal says, attempting to smooth over the redhead’s rough contempt.
“Hi. I’m Lux,” I dust my hand off on my shorts and offer it to her in greeting. Her eyes narrow and suddenly it feels like I’m under a dissection microscope. And, of course, when I get nervous, I can’t stop talking. The words just start to pour out like someone left the faucet on. “It’s, uh, nice to meet you, Sarah. Your hair’s super cool! I don’t think I could ever pull off red, but on you—wow.”
“Miss Fortune,” she interrupts. “Sarah is for friends.” From the look on her face, I do not fall into that category.
“Oh, of course. I’m Lux. Did I say that already? I was just looking to pick up the team snack and got a little lost.” I search one of the flyers in my hands for the details I know I saw a few minutes ago. “Yep, team snack, right here at the mess tent. Looks like it’s chocolate chip cookies and... and… oranges.”
“I hate oranges,” Miss Fortune says coldly. She looks at Ezreal. “Ahri wants us to walk the perimeter before dark.”
Ezreal gives her a mock salute. “Aye, aye, captain.”
Miss Fortune rolls her eyes and begins walking back up to camp. Jinx begins to pull me in the opposite direction.
“I’ll catch you later, Lux,” Ezreal says and starts to jog after her.
I can’t help it. I call after him. “You never said what’s your favorite!”
He stops, shakes the hair out of his eyes, and cups his hands together.
“Starlight,” he shouts back. Even from this distance I can see his lopsided grin clearly. He turns and catches up to Miss Fortune.
“Huh,” Jinx muses thoughtfully. “I totally thought he was gonna say double rainbows.”
It’s my turn to roll my eyes. I punch her gently in the arm.
“Come on, let’s go find those cookies.”
It’s nearly dark by the time Jinx and I make it back to camp. By the way Poppy is going after a cord of firewood, I can tell she isn’t pleased. Jinx loudly crunches through another cookie, announcing our arrival.
“Took you long enough,” Poppy grumbles. She picks up another piece of wood to cut down to size.
“Ooh. There you are!” Lulu jumps off the stumps she’s sitting on and rushes me in a hug. At least someone’s glad to see us.
“Don’t sweat it, Bam Bam,” Jinx tosses the bag of oranges onto our picnic table. “I brought oranges and cookies.” Jinx looks into the bag again and brings out the last uneaten cookie. “I mean, I brought oranges and one cookie.”
Jinx breaks it in two, giving half to Lulu and keeping the other for herself.
“Here you go munchkin, don’t say I didn’t share,” she says.
Lulu looks up at Jinx and smiles. Poppy groans.
“Alright,” Jinx adds, “But only ‘cuz you’re crazier than me.” She gives Lulu the other half as well. “And because I don’t want Poppy to have any,” she whispers loudly. “Hey, aren’t we supposed to set some stuff on fire?”
“You mean a campfire,” I say.
“Yeah, one of those.” Jinx reaches into her Stars and Ammo tote bag. I can hear Kuro’s squeaking and the distinctive click of a trigger.
“Uh-uh.” I shake my head, “No powers.”
“Killjoy.” Jinx rolls her eyes. Poppy laughs between wood chops.
Janna bends over the campfire ring with a lit match and a bundle of dry pine needles. After a few seconds, the needles catch fire. A thin waft of smoke rises and Janna blows gently, coaxing a bigger stick in the middle to ignite. She tucks the flaming bunch into a teepee of wood in the center of the ring and gives Jinx a satisfied smile.
“And that’s not cheating?” Jinx drops the empty cookie bag on the table with a melodramatic sigh and starts looking around for a stick. “Whatever. Did we bring marshmallows?”
Poppy sets the neatly-chopped logs in a pile next to Janna. “Aren’t marshmallows all you brought?”
“Ooooh yeah,” Jinx snaps loudly, remembering. She finds her discarded tote and pulls out a bag of marshmallows, threading four on long, thin stick. “I brought a towel too, Shorty. I’m responsible.”
I settle onto a stump near Janna. She seems better than before.
“You alright?” I ask her. She nods.
“I think I just needed a bit of fresh air.”
I gesture to all the trees around us and smile. “Well, I guess we came to the right place.”
Janna nods her agreement, but without my enthusiasm. Before I can ask further, Lulu dusts the cookie crumbs off her hands and climbs up next to Janna.
“Tell us a story, Janna,” she says.
“I don’t really know any stories, Lulu.”
“How about a ghost story, Janna,” Jinx adds, “You’re old. You probably know some ghosts, right?”
Janna arches a lavender eyebrow at Jinx.
“Please?” Lulu pleads.
Janna takes a deep breath. It seems no one can deny Lulu tonight.
“Alright,” Janna begins. “Once upon a time, there was a lonely light that stood against darkness.”
“Was it the First Star?” Lulu asks.
Janna nods.
“Yes. In the beginning the First Star was all alone. After a while it didn’t want to be alone anymore so it took all of its starlight and spread it across the night.” Janna waved her hand gently across the sky, gesturing to the blanket of stars above us.
“And that’s where we came from,” Lulu says proudly.
“You. Me. The animals and the trees. Even Jinx,” Janna adds with a smile. “Everyone carries a little bit of that light. It’s very powerful stuff and the First Star knew it needed to be protected from the darkness. The first Star Guardians that were chosen were said to be very strong and full of light.” Janna’s voice drops slightly. “But, those that burn bright, burn quickly.”
“Isn’t that what we’re here for?” Poppy adds, confused. “It’s our duty to protect all of the First Star’s light.”
“Yes,” Janna agrees. She looks over at me. “But it’s more than duty; it’s our destiny. And it's our destiny to do it together. The First Star knew how hard it was to be responsible for so much and do it all alone.”
“Did anybody ever decide not to go with the flow, you know, against the whole destiny thing?” Jinx pokes her marshmallow stick at one of the burning logs, knocking off a few glowing embers. I’m surprised. I didn’t think she was paying attention to anything except burning sugar.
“There was a Star Guardian, once, who decided she’d had enough of the cycle. She didn’t want to return to starlight. She wanted to stay just who she was.”
“You have my attention,” Jinx says, turning to face Janna.
“It’s said that she first came to be in a system full of darkness,” Janna continues.
“Did she find sisters, like us?” Lulu asks.
“Oh, yes,” Janna says. “And because her corner of the galaxy was so dark, they meant everything to her. For a time they were happy. And she was happy with them. Then one day there was a battle. A great evil came, swift and terrible. She lost her sisters in the fight and she became very sad.”
“That would make me sad too,” Lulu sniffs.
“Me too, Lulu.” Janna says, hugging her. “But they say that instead of staying sad, she became angry and turned away from the First Star’s light. They say she followed the evil to where it came from, hoping she could find some way to undo her destiny.”
Lulu shivers and snuggles closer to Janna.
“Is she still alive?” Poppy asks.
“I don’t know.” Janna thinks. “If she is, her light would be pretty old by now.”
“Older than yours, Janna?” Jinx mocks.
“Yes,” Janna says, mocking her right back. “Older than mine.”
Lulu yawns. “Was that a real story?” she asks.
“I’m not sure anymore, Lulu,” Janna says quietly.
It’s quiet. All I can hear is the crackle of the fire as the weight of the night settles over us. I decide to break the silence.
“Well, the meteor shower begins in about four hours. Maybe we should get some sleep before then,” I offer.
Janna stands the sleepy Lulu up and marches her slowly towards one of the two tents. I go to follow her. Poppy stops me and points to the other tent, before going in ahead of Janna.
“You’re with Jinx,” Poppy says quietly. “She snores. Good luck.”
“I heard that, Little Bits,” Jinx says, stuffing another handful of marshmallows in her mouth.
“Don’t worry,” Janna says as she navigates Lulu into the tent. “I’ll look after her.”
I smile and grab a bucket of water to douse the campfire. I look up. More stars than I can count cover the sky. So many. Maybe more Star Guardians. Just like us. It would be nice not to feel so isolated. I shake the hope from my head and pour the water onto the fire. It sizzles and steams as the glowing embers are drowned, leaving me alone in the night.
I climb into the dark tent. Jinx is already whistle-snoring and I can hear Poppy smacking her lips in the other tent. Not exactly peace and quiet, but we’re together. There are four holes in the tent roof. Through them I can see the sky. I try and count the stars beyond our world.
I don’t even make it to ten before I’m swallowed by sleep.
The darkness is the same, but this time the dream is terrifyingly different.
Instead of just me at the bottom of the lonely well, we’re all there. Lulu, Janna, Jinx, and Poppy. We’re all lost in the darkness. Their calm serenity has been replaced by panic. Each of their muffled voices lap over each other, pleading with me to get them out.
Above us and far, far away I can see a handful of stars. Their light wavers, nearly blinking out. They call to me too, but I can’t reach them. I can’t move. Glowing ash rains down from above. It glitters as it falls through my fingers. I recognize what it is before the muted light winks out completely.
Star Guardian emblems. Shattered and broken.
An unseen weight hits me full in the chest, knocking the wind out of me, pushing me down further. The starlight above fades even more, moving away from me. The heavy weight bounces up and down, shaking me, but my arms and legs are dead weights. I’m stuck, frozen in the darkness.
The weight stops bouncing. I keep sinking.
“It’s no use,” Poppy’s voice is annoyed and resigned at the same time. She sounds closer, but I still can’t reach her.
“Here. Let me show you how it’s done, Smalls.”
There’s a metal scraping sound and a slosh of liquid. I suck in a huge breath as cold water splashes over me. I’m drowning. I am literally drowning this time. I sputter and blink my eyes open. It was just a dream. Sort of. The weight on my chest is distinctly Poppy-shaped.
Jinx is standing over the both of us with an empty canteen in her hand. “Oh look, our fearless leader is awake now.”
“Was that completely necessary, you two?” I wipe my eyes and try to sop up the water from my sleeping bag with a spare sweatshirt.
“Lulu’s missing,” Poppy says quickly.
I’m on my feet, out of the tent, and pulling on my shoes. I open the flap of Lulu’s tent. Her sleeping bag is empty. So is Janna’s.
“Janna didn’t even take the cane I made her,” Jinx adds, true concern peeking out in her voice. “What if the old lady falls and can’t get up?”
This is worse than the dream.
“We couldn't go find them without you,” Poppy says insistently. “You said it’s our duty to stick together.”
“I just wanted to dump a canteen of water on you and see what happens,” Jinx says. Her tone says she doesn’t care, but her face disagrees.
“Can we leave now?” Poppy pulls at my arm.
Resting on top of Janna’s pillow is the picture Lulu made of all of us in the meadow. We’re all looking up at the sky. New stars, Lulu said. My stomach sinks as I look closer at the picture. The fireflies. Black and green glowing things surround us. I have a totally bad feeling about this.
I look at Poppy and Jinx. I can’t remember the last time they shared the same expression. Their worry is clear. Flashlights aren’t going to cut it tonight.
“Poppy, get your hammer. Jinx, wake up Shiro and Kuro,” I say. “It’s time to bring out the big guns.”
The light from my staff is infinitely better than a flashlight, but does nothing to calm my pounding heart. I stop my run to get a better look at the map of the camp I’ve clenched in my other hand. Unfortunately, Lulu must have found someplace out of the way. We’re well past the boundaries of the camp.
“There’s a clearing near here,” I say. “A rock slide’s made it off limits to the rest of the camp.”
“Sounds like a great place to welcome the new stars,” Jinx pants, more than a little winded from the growing elevation. “Stupid cookies.”
Poppy tightens her grip on her hammer. “Let’s go.”
The distance between the trees becomes greater, finally opening up to a full meadow. I take a deep breath. Jinx lets out a low whistle.
It’s beautiful.
A low fog has settled like a misty quilt over the area. Moonflowers trail over tiny wild roses. Arcs of little blue flowers poke up and hang over the mist. White granite boulders catch the sliver of moonlight and dot the dark meadow like a stony star field. Above, the meteor shower has just begun.
Sitting in the center of it all on a red and white checkered picnic blanket is our little green-haired Lulu. She even brought the oranges.
“Oh, thank the First Star. She’s here.” A gentle breeze pushes some of the mist away as Janna steps out from behind a tall pine next to us. She must have come up the opposite way from camp. Even she is a little out of breath.
“Lux!” Lulu jumps up. I can’t stop myself from running to her. I’m running so hard, the ground shakes. Wait, no... I stop running, but the ground’s still shaking. A greenish black glow starts to emanate like sickly veins beneath the mist. A vibration rumbles in time with the now pulsing glow.
“Lulu.” I can barely hear myself over the deep growl of the moving rock beneath us.
“We’re not alone. New stars are coming, Lux.” The innocence in Lulu’s eyes has disappeared. She takes my hand. “I’ve seen them in my dreams.”
Even though she’s standing right next to me, her voice sounds so far away. Like she’s still caught in that dream.
Jinx, Poppy, and Janna circle around the edge of the meadow. The earth heaves beneath my feet.
“Stay back!” I shout.
The warning comes too late. The cracks break into deep fissures. The mist ruptures and a horde of black insects the size of dogs comes crawling out, dripping an eerie green light.
Staff in hand, I reflect a beam of Starlight to the nearest creature. The light hits the creature beneath its winged carapace. It explodes in a disgusting burst of lucent green goo.
“By Starlight,” I whisper. “They have wings.”
I shout to the others. “They have wings! We can’t let them reach the camp!”
“Woo-hoo.” I can hear Jinx whooping over the fray. “Shiro. Kuro. Who’s feeling ferocious?!” Missiles start firing before she even finishes her sentence. “Come on Short Stack, it’s bug squashing time.”
“You don’t have to tell me twice, Rocket Breath,” Poppy shouts back.
I see Janna rise off the ground a few feet. “Hold on, Lulu.” I feel her fingers tighten around mine. Janna’s voice echoes in the field.
“For tranquility!” A gust of wind blows the mist from the meadow. Several of the creatures get caught in the whirlwind eddies, smashing into heavy tree trunks. Now that the fog is gone, I see there’s way more of the awful little things than I thought. This isn’t like the other attacks. We’re in way over our heads.
“Look, the new stars!” Lulu shouts.
Five lights streak across the sky. They’re heading straight for us. I follow their arc as they touch down. The lights separate and hit the meadow in a perfect, five point landing. Several of the creatures explode with their impact.
When the dust and goo settle, I nearly have to pick my jaw up off the floor.
It’s Ahri and her entourage. Miss Fortune, Syndra, Ezreal, even the quiet, mint-haired girl.
“You’re a Star Guardian?” I yell. “You’re all Star Guardians?” No one can hear me over the fray. That, and everyone is listening to Ahri.
“Time to shine, ladies,” she says. Her smile alone could light up the meadow. “You too, Ezreal.”
They move as an efficient, synchronized unit. Miss Fortune raises a gleaming white pistol and fires the first shot. It blows through one creature and right through to the one behind it. It’s the first time I’ve seen her smile and I count my lucky stars that I’m not the current object of her attention. Ahri and Ezreal are blurs of light as they dash into and out of the fight. The creatures are definitely not fast enough to keep up. Ahri giggles and blows a kiss towards one of the bigger monsters. Seemingly even more mindless than before, it starts to walk slowly toward her and the glowing orbs she’s playing with. Her giggle stops cold as she lobs the orb at the creature, obliterating it in a burst of dark ooze.
Syndra hangs back, but only for a moment, entering the fray with three of her own orbs. The maniacal grins on the balls could give Kuro and Shiro a run for for their money. At the center, the girl with mint green hair raises a long staff in the air, channeling Starlight from above. Looking at her, I feel my racing heart start to slow down and my breathing get easier. Ahri’s orb catches the last creature effortlessly, exploding it in a shower of black insect exoskeleton and bioluminescent goo. As quickly as the new team had arrived, it’s over.
Ahri rubs the tips of her fingers together as she gathers her orbs, obviously not pleased by the creature’s residue. Syndra juggles her dark purple familiars while her casual arrogance lifts her up above the mess.
“All in a night’s work, eh Soraka?” Ezreal says, giving the quiet girl a wink. “Thanks for the little pick me up.”
Soraka maintains a serene smile while nodding enthusiastically at Ez.
Obviously satisfied with all the excitement, Ez smiles in my direction as his winged familiar tucks itself neatly back into his gauntlet. Miss Fortune blows a trail of smoke from her twin pistols and ignores both of them.
The easy moment is fleeting as the ground rumbles again. Before I can count to two, the earth ruptures, knocking me back. I hit my head hard against a log.
“Ow.” I try and shake off the metallic whine now stuck between my ears. I stop moving when I see the meadow itself is going all wonky, like the fabric of space and time is warping in front of me. The green glow is back and stronger than before.
“Lulu! Jinx!” I search for the girls, but all I can see is the hulking carapace of what looks like a space bug the size of two elephants emerging from the biggest rupture in the ground.
I feel the ground ripple and then there’s a streak of light in front of me. A white gauntleted glove reaches out and catches my hand as the earth beneath me starts to give way.
It’s Ez.
“Told you I’d catch you later.” His voice is drowned out in the chaos. “That inter-dimensional nasty isn’t going to explode itself.” The world is literally going to pieces and he’s still smiling. “You ready, Starlight?”
I nod. Ready as I’ll ever be. He lifts me up, launching me into the sky above the monster. From this vantage point I can see everyone.
Janna and Soraka contain a new horde of little evils crawling up from the smaller cracks. Ahri, Miss Fortune, and Syndra begin taking those out as they start to maneuver into a better position against the big one. I land close to Lulu as she avoids the monster’s many limbs while Pix zaps at the smaller creatures. Jinx and Poppy look like they’re arguing at the edge of the field. I can barely hear them above the fray.
“You want me to what?” Jinx yells.
“The Rocket. Fire me on the Rocket!” Poppy shouts back.
“Poppy!” Jinx’s jaw drops in shock. Then a smile slowly blossoms on her face as she leans over and excitedly hugs the short blue haired girl next to her. “I thought you’d never ask.”
A moment later Poppy is riding a missile towards the creature’s dripping maw, hammer in hand. The hammer connects with a loud crack. The creature reels back. Its moment is up. I lift my wand and channel Starlight into it. The creature’s sharp incisors snap greedily in the air. It sees Lulu at its feet and opens wide.
My beam of light smashes into it, bursting right out of the back of its head. A spray of noxious liquid drenches the field. The creature screeches and starts to topple over.
Its heavy, flailing limbs reach back in its death throes. Right where Lulu is. I look around. There isn’t anyone closer. I dive in and push Lulu out of the way. Black monster pieces rain down on top of me.
And then it all goes dark.
The first thing I can hear is canvas flapping gently. And birds chirping. My fingers are resting on a thin blanket. I crack my eyes open. Sunlight stabs me in the eye through the four little holes in the ceiling. I’m in my tent.
“Ugh... What…” The words get caught in my dry mouth. I try to sit up more, but think better of it as the ceiling starts to spin. “…am I?”
“Not dead,” a too-cool voice answers.
The fabric at the foot of my sleeping bag pulls as someone adjusts their position. I try and squint through the dizziness. Ahri tucks her perfectly peach hair behind her ear.
“You took quite a fall last night,” she says.
The events of the night start rushing back in some kind of horribly disjointed movie. Running through the woods. The field. The creatures. Lulu. Then everything crumbling around me. It wasn’t just a bad dream.
I bolt up, completely regretting the sudden move a moment later when my brain catches up and slams into the inside of my head.
“Lulu? Is she?” I grimace a little in pain. I rub my forehead to try and shake off the headache.
“Everyone’s fine. I sent them to get breakfast,” she says. “I’ve been told there’s a hammer with my name on it if I don’t tell the stubby, blue one when you’ve woken up.”
Ahri picks up a canteen that’s sitting next to her. She hands it to me.
I look at her as I take a sip of the cold water. This close and I can see that we can’t actually be that far apart in age. But there’s something about her. More experience. More confidence. She’s seen more of what the universe can throw at us. She’s the leader we’re meant to have. I know it.
“I wanted to tell you, you made the right choice,” she says. “Risking yourself and stepping in like that.”
“It was nothing,” I say, pushing away the compliment. “Any one of us would have done it. It’s what Star Guardians do. We’re sisters.”
She laughs softly, but then a touch of darkness washes over her face. A moment later it’s gone, the mask of perfection back in its place.
“We’re not sisters,” she says quietly, her voice tinged with regret. “We’re just strangers with memories.”
She stands up.
“We’ve sealed the incursion point. My team will be returning to the city this morning. We’ll take care of anything that comes up from now on. You and your girls can stay here until you’re recovered. Enjoy the summer sun. After that, stay out from underfoot.”
“Wait, you’re not going to lead us?” I ask, confused. My head is pounding. “Like, all of us together? With a team twice as big, we’re twice as strong. We worked great together last night.”
“You almost got yourself killed last night,” she says.
I’m not listening anymore. “Together, there isn’t anything we can’t face.”
“No, Lux,” she says with an air of finality. “Together, there’s so much more to lose.”
And just like that, dismissed again. Ahri turns to leave.
“Star Guardians are a team,” I say. I swallow the tightness in my throat. I’m not going to beg, but I can try to make her see reason. “It’s our destiny.”
Ahri pauses. She looks at me carefully. The tent flap is open; the bright sun divides her face in light and shadow. “Destiny?” she says; a subtle bitterness creeps into her voice. “That’s such an ugly word.”
The flap of canvas closes behind her. I can feel my face getting hot in frustration. She’s a Star Guardian leader. Why won’t she lead us? Why is she leaving me alone? I stare up at the top of the tent. The four holes of light dance above me.
Not alone. Jinx and Poppy and Lulu and Janna are out there. They need someone. I can’t just let this go if I’m all they’ve got.
I lurch to my feet and stumble towards the light outside. I don’t have time to wait for the world to stop spinning.
Jinx was right.
Summer’s not going to last forever.
The Stranger on the Road

The road from Tenacity to Progress was a flat, barren thing, unspooling across miles and miles of cactus country from one edge of the sky to the other—but that pinched end of packed dirt in the distance never seemed to get any closer. The cowboy stared down it dutifully. He had enough water to get him to town, and enough cattle to earn his employer a tidy sum at market, all he had to do was make it there with himself and the herd in one piece. Simple enough.

If the cows saw any trace of apprehension, they did him the good grace of not acknowledging it. For that, he was grateful. Instead they walked and lowed and tried to graze despite the lifeless earth, eyes shining black and flat under the pitiless noonday sun, keeping apace with the steady hoofbeats of his mare. They were on track to make it to Progress before nightfall, and that was a boon all its own. Strange beasts had been spotted around these parts after the sun went down: hellhounds with teeth the size of a man’s forearm; unburied dead still bloated and shambling across the cracked earth; Outsiders hunting down sorry souls who bet untold riches at the casino and lost it all, only to try and run from the wages of their sin. No sir, ain’t nothing good ramblin’ in the dark chill of the desert night.

Apparently the cowboy wasn’t alone in traveling under the protection of daylight. It was just a speck, at first, moving slow as the sun in the sky, but there—a dark shadow crowned with a wide-brimmed hat on the road ahead. The cowboy hadn’t expected to see anybody until he got to where it forked north to Fort Nox. There weren't many folks left who used this particular old trail, and weren’t many who still lived out in a run-down two-street like Tenacity, neither, so the question remained.

From this distance, he could spy the hem of the stranger’s jacket dragging through the dirt behind him, the man hunched over and hiding in the shadow of his own hat as though the sun had insulted him personally. His course did not change, his speed did not quicken, and so the herd and the cowboy caught up to the stranger, step by step.

The horse stopped first. Her ears flattened against her neck, breath huffing out in agitated gusts as she shifted uneasily beneath the saddle. Any breeze drifting along the road died promptly, like a town shuttering itself against some fearful creature slouching in from parts unknown.

The cowboy offered a simple greeting, voice hoarse from dust and disuse, “Howdy, friend.”

Without so much as a response, the stranger collapsed onto the barren earth.

“Whoa there—” In one swift movement the cowboy swung down from the saddle, landing and hefting the stranger into his arms so he wasn’t lying face down in the dirt. The fella was lighter than the cowboy thought he’d be, as if beneath the coat he had bird bones, hollow and wanting. Smoke and copper and heat lingered on his scent.

The stranger muttered something, coughing while his cracked lips moved as if in prayer or possession, barely a whisper. “Water...”

“Oh! Of course,” The cowboy reached for the canteen on his hip, knowing it was half empty already but haunted by childhood stories—tales of travelers who didn’t help wandering strangers on the road, how they were punished for it when those wandering strangers turned out to be spirits or witches or some such. This particular stranger felt real enough. He accepted the offer of the canteen gratefully, downing swallows that parched the cowboy’s throat, but a decision had been made; no changing his mind now.

The stranger wiped his mouth on the back of his sleeve, now as bone dry as the canteen in his hand. As if lifted of some fell curse, golden-brown eyes ringed with exhaustion finally rose to meet their erstwhile savior from under the brim of that wide leather hat. He couldn’t have been much older than the cowboy himself, but whatever trials of the desert this man had survived rendered him haggard: skin sallow, pale hair stuck to his sweat-soaked brow—and yet there was something unearthly about him, beautiful in a way that evoked an animal fear deep in the cowboy’s gut. Beautiful like a wildfire. Beautiful like a well-polished knife.

“Much obliged,“ the stranger managed through a weak smile, handing the canteen back to him. “I am in your debt.”

The cowboy, suddenly realizing that staring was impolite, swallowed the lump that had appeared in his throat. “Ain’t no trouble. Are you alright?”

As if to make a point, the stranger rose to his feet, only to double over in a fit of coughing despite himself. It was little more than a reflex for the cowboy to stand and steady the man, holding his arm and gentling his shuddering back. Funny, that the shoulder under his palm prickled as his fingers wrapped around it. Curiosity was a deadly entertainment, particularly with a man such as this, but it reared its head in spite of any propriety the cowboy could muster.

He released his hold on the stranger’s arm, catching the faintest glimpse of something white and downy beneath the close-kept shadows of his coat. Feathers. When the cowboy looked up, he found the other man staring back.
“I’m fine,” the stranger answered, setting his jaw against something unnamed and unspoken between his teeth. He watched him now, gaze bright beneath the shade of his hat. “Don’t mean to impose, but where you headed?”

“Progress,” the cowboy answered.

The stranger thought for a moment, eyes pitting through him with no trouble at all. “That’s in an amenable direction, and travel is more pleasant with company. May I join you?”

And so they walked.

The stranger didn’t stumble again, carrying on his slow gait alongside the uneasy plodding pace of the cowboy’s mare. He stepped light, this wandering stranger, footfalls unvoiced and unimpeded by rock or scrub or the memento mori of dried-out bones that littered the trail. Their mutual quiet swam with the midday heat along the horizon.

“Why’re you headed to Progress, if you don’t mind me askin’?” he offered by way of conversation.

“To catch a train,” the stranger replied simply, as if there was no more explanation to give. The cowboy nodded.

Silence was everyone’s closest friend and bitterest enemy on the road—safe in its reassurance that danger ain’t near, but potent in its foreboding. A promise that whatever’s out to get you ain’t here... yet. The cows knew this, and they watched with a prey’s patience, a single living thing with a hundred eyes all fixed on the stranger in the wide-brimmed hat.

“I’d like to repay your kindness,” the stranger broke that sacred silence, squinting into the horizon. “Don’t much care for being in debt.”

The cowboy looked down at him, a smile summoned to his face not by any gladness in his heart but by the demands of gentility. “Naw, don’t worry ‘bout it none. Just aidin’ a fellow traveler.”

“You’re too kind,” the stranger said, an observation, not a pleasantry. “I must insist. I cannot let such generosity go unanswered.”

The manner of those words struck the cowboy as strange, and that deadly entertainment called curiosity circled around once more. The sweat that trickled down the back of his neck was cold as ice as he asked against his better judgment, “What did you have in mind?”

The stranger shrugged, easy-as-you-please. “How about an old tale of the West? One I reckon you might not’ve heard.”

Despite the dead wind and fierce heat, gooseflesh rose on the cowboy’s skin. “I couldn’t possibly trouble you for that—”

“Consider it a payment,” the stranger replied, a familiar forlorn tug tucked into the upturn of his smile.

It was a pitying thing to the cowboy’s eyes, the same regretful sigh his father had made, leading prize cattle out to slaughter when the crops rotted in the field and there was nothing anyone could do to save them.

The cowboy’s throat closed around something shaped like anticipation as the stranger began his tale.

No one knows who prophesied this one, since the real prophets were killed for their truths long ago, and any who profess the same nowadays are selling snake oil. But this is a real one, from the age before the fall of Heaven. Back when a fella felt the joy of corruption and the sting of sanctity, because each of those meant something when they had the other. Now, everything out here is profane—but I digress.

There is a beginning of all things, and there is an end of all things. Ain’t no stopping the beginning, since it’s already done and begun. Ain’t no way to stop that we are here, that we have been here, and that we done the land wrong. But the ending... Well. It is said that the end of all things will be upon us after the fall of Heaven’s gates, when Hell and man have bled the land dry, and rendered us all unto a final judgment.

The flows of life and death will become commerce, taken in by misers of industry and churned on machines of smoke and brimstone. I reckon this is already in motion, if you heard tell of the Sulfur Rail and its mechanical devil-king.

Tidings of the end-times will arrive on the backs of five Harbingers, heralds from all corners of the earth.

From the South: The First Harbinger rides an ivory steed, conquering all in her wake. Any who stand in her way shall kneel, or burn.

From the West: The Second Harbinger leaves the land of Angels, delivering retribution upon those who slaughtered the innocent and damned the holy. Forged in love, broken in death, tempered in vengeance.

From the North: The Third Harbinger is one with shadow and smoke, balancing the bloody ledgers of sin on the edge of her knife. She is Our Lady of Restitution.

From the East: The Fourth Harbinger travels through the deep waters of the world, his appetite for all things unsated and unstoppable. He’ll consume everything until there ain’t nothing left to consume.

From Above, So Below: The final harbinger walks with death at his side, a specter sowing decay with every step. He harvests the living crop of man, reaping souls to carry beyond the bounds of Heaven and Hell and into an Unknown Country.

These five will ride together. They will topple the wicked who reap the bounty of imbalance, lay low devils and behemoths of steel, strike down the King of the Sulfur Rail himself.

The balance of the West is shifting. The coming of the clockwork angel and the gunslinger’s revival were just the beginning—now the Harbingers are here to end what they started. Some say their arrival is what beckons the storm of chaos to wash the West clean of all its mired sins. Some say they will punish the wicked and usher in a new age of man. Most think they’re simply here to raze us all and be done with it—

The stranger swayed, throat catching and coughing once more, and in the span of a panicked heartbeat the cowboy leapt down from the saddle to try and catch the stranger before he could fall again. This close he could see the forlorn furrow on the stranger’s brow, how he met the cowboy’s eyes with an exhaustion that ran marrow-deep.

“What do you think?” the cowboy asked. “About the Harbingers? What’re they gonna do?”

The stranger pondered this with a mirthless chuckle, voice rasping. He summoned up the thing in his throat and spit it to the ground: a clump of wet, bloody white feathers.

In a voice thick as coal smoke, the stranger rumbled, “I think we are all livin’ on borrowed time, hoss, and the powers that be ain’t keen on lettin’ us sinners remain in debt.”
He stood slowly, stepping away from the cowboy’s support and rising to his full height. The cowboy hadn’t noticed that one of the stranger’s hands was hidden beneath his sleeve, but as it emerged he could see fingers sharpened to points in some unholy claw—black as burning pitch and red as hellfire, reaching up to scrape off his battered coat and bandanna and drop them to the ground as a rattlesnake might, shedding its skin. Where half the stranger’s body roiled with darkness even under the light of day, his left shoulder erupted into white feathers, spread like an infection down his arm and across his chest and ending in a crackling hiss where they met the shadows on his skin between the parted collar of his shirt.

The cowboy couldn’t imagine how he ever thought this stranger was a man. He heard the stamp of his mare’s hooves behind him, the way she snorted and whinnied and rolled the whites of her eyes in fear at the thing that stood before them, so close that either one could reach out and touch the other. The cowboy could run. He should run, every fiber of his being screaming at him to turn tail and take his horse and tear through the desert in any direction that was away from here—but his knees trembled, his hands quaked, and the burning gaze from beneath the brim of that hat fixed him in place.

A train whistled in the distance, and somewhere in the back of the cowboy’s mind he registered that as strange, since they were miles from the nearest railroad. A shame that would be his final thought, but then again, the West don’t care one whit for the dignity of men. The stranger conjured a blade on his clawed wrist, stepped closer, closer—and only then, as he wiped away a tear rolling down the cowboy’s cheek with that heavenly hand, did he slip the hellish knife between his ribs.

“Much obliged,” the stranger murmured into his ear as the knife slid out of his body, as his body slid onto the ground, and as the cowboy’s soul slid out of both—collapsing to the dirt.

The earth rumbled in the distance.

Had this been five, ten years ago, looking down at a body wouldn’t have meant nothin’ to the stranger. He wouldn’t have felt a damn thing, wouldn’t have stopped to think on it, wouldn’t even have left a body behind at the height of his power when his form was more shadow than man, and he was free to slake his bloodlust as he pleased—but it wasn’t five or ten years ago. Now he gazed at the wreckage of it all: the blood on his blade, the thin death rattle of the cowboy’s breath as his chest stilled, the horse galloping away for safer pastures that withered long ago. Damn the angels, damn their consciences.

He reached down to help up the wayward soul, reduced to a blank-eyed shade of a man, and rested a hand upon his shoulder. Where once was fear and curiosity and kindness, now there was nothing at all, staring into the unseen distance between life and death as if there were an answer on the horizon if only he looked hard enough. Do the dead see something in the world the rest of them miss? They seem so intent on nothing.

Well, they’d all find out soon enough.

The earth shook beneath the stranger’s feet. The train whistled again, a scream into empty air like a thousand bellowing vultures scenting death on the wind, that roiling rumble deeper than thunder in its wake. It grew louder, and louder, and louder still, until the bowels of the cracked desert earth split asunder and from the chasm rose the stench of smoke, the screech of metal on tracks, and finally, the Sulfur Rail itself.

It was a beast of cinders and fire, ash and coal, a titan of steel machinery that dwarfed men and monsters with a grandiosity only outdone by the conductor of the train himself. The sight of it was enough to drive any sane mortal mad. The train’s hulking form cast a noonday shadow, blocking out a corner of the sun. A railroad formed up beneath it as the wheels churned and slowed and eventually came to a shuddering, seething stop.

Steam greeted them as the doors hissed open. The stranger stepped onto the train, guiding the soul of the cowboy over to the devil serving as the ticket taker. The devil nodded at the exchange. This fare would do.

A foreign pang shuddered under his ribs as the soul shuffled toward the other passengers huddled in the next car over: rail barons and beggars, gentlemen and gunslingers, cowboys and angels, all riding the same sorry train to Hell. The stranger grimaced and turned back to the ticket taker as the doors shut behind him.

“Tell your boss Talon’s here, and I want to talk. The Harbingers are gathering.”

The ticket taker blanched and scurried off, leaving him alone in the stagnant air of the train as it idled on the track, an impatient machine. The train’s conductor was a particular man, with lavish tastes and an uncompromising will—every window was filigreed in sterling silver, every curtain draped in precious velvet. The Sulfur Rail was an expensive ticket in all regards.

Out of the corner of his eye, Talon caught sight of someone watching him from the doorway of the next car. He could feel his jaw tighten under his teeth.

“What’re you lookin’ at?” he growled, but the cowboy’s soul didn’t move. Anger simmered in his heart, impotent and helpless, a reminder that he never had one to begin with and was worse off for the addition of it. He stalked over to the soul, staring him down as he had done when the fella was alive, but now he didn’t waver at the fire burning in Talon’s eyes. Indifferent. “Do you want me to apologize?”

The soul just kept on staring.

“Do you want me to say something?”

The soul just kept on staring.

“I’m sorry! There. You happy?”

The soul just kept on staring.

Talon spat, reaching to grip the shadow of the cowboy’s neck—

Then the soul lifted a hand to Talon’s cheek and wiped away a tear from the space beneath his eye.

He’d never wanted to weep before—a pitiful act, the sanctimonious mourning of angels and men for lost lives that had never been theirs to begin with—but all the rain that never touched the desert fell inside his chest, a storm unstoppable, threatening to water the West in tears and drown him where he stood.

Talon tore himself away, cast his gaze out the window at what he had left behind: the lonely road to Progress, an empty canteen, the blank stare of a body that once was a man, and a herd of dead-eyed cattle stepping over the corpse of their shepherd as they grazed the barren ground, searching for something green among a mess of dead white feathers smudged with blood and brimstone.

Maybe they all deserved what was coming.
Swain

Born into a patrician family, one of many to exist since the first walls were raised around Noxus, Jericho Swain seemed destined for a life of privilege. The noble houses had played a key role in Boram Darkwill’s rise to power, stoking rhetoric that their proud heritage was the nation’s greatest strength.
However, many hungered for greater influence, plotting against Darkwill in a secret cabal united by nothing more than the symbol of a black rose. Uncovering their intrigue, Swain personally executed the most prominent conspirators. Among them were his own parents, whose whispers of a “pale woman” had first alerted him of the danger to Noxus, which he valued more than house or kin.
They sought a power, a shapeless voice cackling in the darkness of the Immortal Bastion. Something like a raven’s caw…
For exposing the cabal, Swain was granted a commission in the Noxian army, far from anything he had ever known. There, he learned firsthand that the empire was not strong because of Noxians, as he had believed, but because of the way it could unite all men in spite of their origins. On the front lines, a foreign slave could be the equal of a highborn noble.
But still, Swain found only darkness in the wake of each battle. Clouds of carrion crows…
After securing the western borders, Swain’s own reputation was secured in Shurima, where his forces raised countless noxtoraa above the desert sands. Yet, in time, it became clear that greed was the sole purpose driving the empire forward. Fighting wars on too many fronts, lusting over magical relics, the aging Boram Darkwill was clearly growing unhinged.
When Noxus invaded Ionia, Darkwill began to move even more brazenly, retasking entire warbands to scour the land for anything rumored to extend a mortal lifespan. With Swain’s forces depleted, it became nearly impossible to engage the enemy. Finally, at the Battle of the Placidium, after luring the local militia into what should have been a trap, Swain’s warhost was overrun. His veterans were routed, and Swain was gravely wounded, his knee shattered, Ionian blades cleaving through his left arm.
As he lay on the verge of death, a raven approached to feed, and Swain felt an old, familiar darkness press upon him again. But he would not let it take him. He could not. Staring into the the bird’s eye, he saw reflections of the evil strangling the heart of Noxus. A black rose. The pale woman... and her puppet emperor. Swain realized that he had not defeated the hidden cabal, and they had betrayed him to what should have been his death, after seducing Darkwill, the man they failed to overthrow.
All this was glimpsed, not in the mind of a raven, but something more. The power his parents had been seeking, the demonic eyes blazing in the dark…
Cast out of the military for his “failure,” considered nothing more than a cripple, Swain set about uncovering what truly lay within the Immortal Bastion—an ancient entity, preying upon the dying and consuming their secrets, as it had attempted to consume his own. Swain stared into that darkness, seeing what even it could not: a way to wield it.
Though his meticulous preparations took many years, Swain and his remaining allies seized control of Noxus in a single night. Physically restored by the demon, he crushed Darkwill in full view of his followers, leaving the throne shattered and empty.
Swain’s vision for the future of Noxus is one of strength through unity. He has pulled back the warhosts from Darkwill’s unwinnable campaigns and, with the establishment of the Trifarix, ensured that no individual can rule unopposed. He embraces any who will pledge themselves to the empire—even the Black Rose, though he knows, in secret, they still plot against him.
Gathering knowledge as the demon did before him, Swain has foreseen far greater dangers lurking just beyond. However, many Noxians secretly wonder if the darkness they face will pale in comparison to the dark things Swain has done…
The sacrifices are only beginning, for the good of Noxus.
The Black Powder Plot

David Slagle

He arrived at the camp only moments before the strategy council was to begin, flanked by a small honor guard, each handpicked from the Trifarian Legion. They remained at the entrance as I watched him approach.
Some men cast a shadow greater than themselves, but few could bring a darkness such as this, one that circled above us and hungrily cawed. In a way, the ravens that seemed to follow him around the camp were a grim reminder of every warrior’s fate, the tattered cloth in their beaks a match for the state of our own banners. Yet, as he strode into the remains of the war tent, I realized I had not prepared myself for how truly mortal he looked.
There was grey in his hair, framed by a crimson sky choking on ash. His battle-worn armor gave way to a functional coat, and he kept his arms tightly within its folds—as I imagined one of his lineage might. I smiled, for he was still, at his heart, a gentleman. He wore no signs of rank beyond the telltale scars of a soldier who had seen his share of bloodshed. There were many gathered now for the council who demanded more fear and respect, swaying their warhosts with powerful displays of strength. Each of them seemed more than capable of breaking the man before us.
But, somehow, this was the man who led us all. The Grand General of Noxus.
Looking at him, I could feel there was something I could not place, no matter how closely I looked. Something truly unknowable, perhaps? Perhaps it was because there was something unknowable about this man, that so many flocked to his side. Whatever the draw, Jericho Swain stood before us now, and it was far too late for me to turn back.
Five warhosts had marched onto the Rokrund Plain, but it had been only a matter of weeks before the locals had shattered our positions. They blasted through our hastily-constructed berms with explosive powder, mined from hills that seemed even more barren than those of home. Disaster had built upon disaster, until Swain himself had no choice but to intervene. I had made sure of that.
For months, I had prepared. I had sent warmasons deep into the mines. I had mapped every detail, every conceivable twist of the land… and the fates upon which Noxus now balanced, the whispers that gave each moment shape…
My ear itched at the memory of the pale woman’s words. Of the moment she first commanded me, and gave voice to our plot.
Everything was in place. I had accounted for it all. Here, where the earth opened into a maze of canyons impossible to escape, I and I alone would determine the future of the empire.
After all, was that not what Swain had called upon this council to do?
“My trusted generals,” Swain said finally. The power in his voice rang out like the drawing of a blade. He paused, as if giving us a moment to test ourselves against its keen edge. “Tell me how Noxus may prevail.”
“There are twelve war-barques here, in the hills,” Leto began, pointing to a spot on the map already worn white by his attention, “each drawn by a basilisk. Send them before the warbands, and we’ll be marching over the enemy dead. Those beasts would rut with a hedge of rusty spears if we let them.”
He smiled, pleased at his own cunning, but Swain was more concerned with the wine being poured into his glass.
Will it be poison? his eyes seemed to ask, as he peered around the table. I stared at my reflection in his armor. I would betray nothing of my intent.
“We can scarcely control the basilisks ourselves,” Swain finally murmured, carefully regarding the fine Ionian vintage. “Imagine even a single explosive, dropped by a sapper within earshot of the beasts. And then tell me, in your imagination, who runs first—the basilisks with their tails between their legs? Or your vaunted warhost?”
“We scorch the earth then,” Maela petitioned before Leto could respond, the words flying wildly from her mouth. “Set fire to the pitch they’ve laid to burn on our advance. Drive them out of those damn mines.”
Swain sighed. “We came here for the very earth you would burn. Though I suppose it is too much to expect you to know the uses of saltpetre.” He swirled the wine in his glass, betraying a hint of disappointment. “All you have done so far is bury your own men with it.”
“The redblades are still sharp,” Jonat spat impatiently from the shadows where he lurked, the darkness seeming almost bright against his Shuriman skin. “We’ll enter the mines after dusk, take out their leaders. Clean or messy. Doesn’t matter.”
“An admirable strategy,” Swain laughed. “But those leaders are not soldiers. Not yet. Our enemy here merely follows whomever bellows the loudest. Kill one, and there will be three bellowing by morning.”
I laughed, nodding to the frowning leader of the redblades. “For a moment, I was afraid you’d find a way for us to actually win, Jonat.”
Silence fell around the table. The candles were burning low beside the maps.
This was my moment. The pale woman would be pleased. I would say her name as I sent our Grand General to oblivion.
“The truth is, you cannot win this battle,” I continued. “No one can fight death. Not even the ruler of Noxus. Darkwill showed us that.”
Swain and the others watched as I carefully drew the flint striker from my tunic. The fuse line was already in my other hand. Leto, aging hero of the Siege of Fenrath, bristled.
“Granth, what are you doing?” he growled, glancing down at the crude demolition charge I had carefully positioned under the table, barely an hour before. “You would threaten the Grand General? This is treason.”
Still, none of them dared approach me. I held the striker over the fuse, ready.
Except… someone was laughing. It took me a moment to realize who it was.
“And there, General Granth is the only one who has the right of it,” Swain chuckled, smoothing the wrinkles from his coat. “He alone understands. The rest of you, you see a battle and ask what you must do to avoid defeat. But some battles cannot be won. Sometimes, the only strategy is to burn. To charge into the flames, knowing full well you will die, but that twenty thousand march behind you. And that behind them, there is a greater power.”
He let his coat fall open, to reveal… To… reveal…
“Granth and I,” he said with a cruel smile, “we always look for what must be sacrificed in order to win.”
Maela lunged for my trembling hands. Leto too. But it was Swain’s inhuman grip that clamped around my throat, hefting me from the ground, the unlit fuse forgotten.
“If only you could tell her yourself how you failed,” the Grand General whispered, his voice rumbling with the wrath of eons. “If only she, too, could heed the wisdom of the dead.”
I tried to scream then, to confess it all. To somehow beg for forgiveness.
But there is nothing now, save for the soft murmur of whispers. I spill my secrets, this tale, into your ears. Fading like the rustling of wings, as the raven cries its carrion caw…
Sylas

As a mage born to a poor Demacian family, Sylas of Dregbourne was perhaps doomed from the start. Despite their low social standing, his parents were firm believers in their country’s ideals. So, when they discovered their son was “afflicted” with magical abilities, they convinced him to turn himself in to the kingdom’s mageseekers.

Noting the boy’s curious ability to sense magic, they used Sylas to identify other mages living among the citizenry. For the first time in his life he felt he had a future, a life in service to his country, and he performed these duties faithfully. He was proud, but lonely—forbidden from associating with anyone but his handlers.

Through his work, Sylas began to notice that magic was far more prevalent than Demacia cared to admit. He could sense glimmers of hidden power even among the wealthy and prominent… some of whom were the most outspoken decriers of mages. But while the poor were punished for their afflictions, the elite seemed above the law, and this hypocrisy planted the first seeds of doubt in Sylas’ mind.

Those doubts finally bloomed in one deadly, fateful event, when Sylas and his handlers encountered a mage living in hiding in the countryside. After discovering it was only a young girl, Sylas took pity on her. When he tried to shield the child from the mageseekers, he accidentally brushed against her skin. The girl’s magic rushed through Sylas’s body—but rather than killing him, it shot forth from his hands in raw, uncontrolled bursts. It was a talent he did not know he possessed, and it resulted in the deaths of three people, including his mageseeker mentor.

Knowing he would be called a murderer, Sylas went on the run, and quickly gained notoriety as one of the most dangerous mages in Demacia. Indeed, when the mageseekers found him, they showed no mercy.

Though he was still just a youth, Sylas was sentenced to life imprisonment.

He languished in the darkest depths of the mageseeker compound, forced to wear heavy shackles of magic-dampening petricite. Robbed of his arcane sight, his heart turned as hard as the stone that bound him, and he dreamed of vengeance on all who had put him there.

After fifteen wretched years, a young volunteer from the Illuminators named Luxanna began to visit him. Even with his shackles, Sylas recognized her as a singularly powerful mage, and over time the two forged an unusual and secretive bond. In exchange for Sylas’ knowledge of the control of magic, Lux educated him about the world outside his cell, and brought him whatever books he desired.

Eventually, through careful manipulation, he convinced the girl to smuggle a forbidden tome into his cell—the original writings of the great sculptor Durand, detailing his work with petricite.

The work revealed the secrets of the stone to Sylas. It was the foundation of Demacia’s defenses against harmful sorcery, but he came to see that it did not suppress magic, but absorb it.

And if the power was held within the petricite, Sylas wondered, could he release it…?

All he needed was a source of magic. A source like Lux.

But she never visited Sylas again. Her family, the immensely powerful Crownguards, had learned of their contact, and were furious that Lux had broken the law to help this vile criminal. Without explanation, it was arranged for Sylas to be executed.

On the scaffold, Lux pleaded for her friend’s life, but her cries fell on deaf ears. As the headsman pushed past her to raise his sword, Sylas managed to touch Lux. As he had predicted, her power surged into the petricite shackles, ready for him to unleash—and with that stolen magic, Sylas blasted his way free, sparing only the terrified young Crownguard.

He left the mageseeker compound not as an outcast, but as a new, defiant symbol of the broken and persecuted in Demacia. While traveling the kingdom in secret, he amassed a following of exiled mages… However, perhaps he always knew that even their combined power would not be enough to succeed in toppling the throne.

Which is why, with a band of his closest followers and several hardy oxen, Sylas eventually journeyed over the northern mountains to the frozen tundra of the Freljord.

There he seeks new allies, and the great elemental magic of ancient legend, so that he might return to Demacia and demolish the oppressive system that has made him and his fellow mages suffer for so long.
The Recruit

The sun was at its peak, just high enough to illuminate the exiles’ camp hidden deep in the canyon. From the shade of his lean-to, Sylas of Dregbourne waited patiently for his scout to return. At last, he saw her rounding the stone spire at the mouth of the crevasse, leading a wide-eyed young stranger into the camp.
“This is Happ,” said the scout. “He wants to join.”
Sylas emerged from his shelter, eyeing the youth casually. “Does he now?”
“I know him from the underground. The seekers took his family. He made it out, by the hair on his hide.”
Sylas nodded, quietly assessing the young man. He could sense the boy was blessed with powerful magic—some black and deadly pall. As for the rest of his character, Sylas could see nothing.
“He’s a good kid,” assured the scout. “And he’s from Dregbourne.”
Sylas’ brow furrowed with pleasant surprise, as if meeting kin he never knew existed.
The youth stammered out an introduction. “I… I thought maybe… I could join your cause… sir.”
The entire camp of outlaws laughed. The boy’s eyes darted around the grinning faces, searching for some hint of what he had done wrong.
“There’s no ‘sir’ here,” chuckled Sylas. “Unless you want to address everyone of us that way.”
“Yes, si— …Yes,” the youth said, nearly repeating his mistake.
Abashed, the recruit seemed to wonder if he’d made the right choice in coming to the camp. Sylas placed a heavily shackled arm on the boy’s shoulder, hoping to quell his embarrassment.
“Be at ease, Happ. No one will judge you here. We’re a long way from Dregbourne.”
He felt the youth relax his posture.
“I know your struggle. They’re always watching you, hounding you, making you feel inferior. Well there’s none of that here. Here, you belong.”
Happ beamed, staring at his feet, as though he felt unworthy of his newfound joy.
“Do you know why I wear these chains?” asked Sylas.
The recruit shook his head, too timid to offer a guess.
“They’re not just weapons. They’re a reminder. Of where we come from. Of everything we’re capable of, and of our liberation to come. Are you with me?”
“Yes. Yes, I want to be liberated.”
“Good,” said Sylas. “Tonight, you will break your own chains.”

Dusk was falling, and the darkened brush on the side of the road was the perfect cover for an ambush. There, Sylas lay in wait with a dozen of his most trusted mages. Beside him, the recruit nervously picked at his fingernails.
“Don’t worry,” said Sylas, with a reassuring smile. “I was nervous for my first one. After a while, it becomes as natural as breathing.”
Before the recruit’s nerves could be assuaged, the thunder of hooves and wagon wheels rumbled in the distance like a coming storm. Within seconds, the carriage came barreling down the road before the lurking hijackers.
An instant before the horses arrived, Sylas signaled to his comrades, and the ambush began.
With a flick of his wrist, a scruffy old mage summoned a thick cord of ironvines that snapped across the road, catching the galloping horses at the knees. The racket was deafening, as the steeds fell neck-first into the dirt, the carriage careening over them.
The mages sprang from their cover, subduing the dazed crew of the carriage with various weapons and spells. Sylas leapt atop the overturned coach, eager to seize the passengers of the unprotected cabin.
“Let’s go, recruit,” he called to Happ, beckoning for the lad to join him.
Happ scampered atop the cabin and began to help pry the door. It cracked open, revealing a very battered nobleman. Sylas’ eyes flashed with a malicious gleam.
“Well… look who’s kneeling now, my lord,” said Sylas, extending his hand.
The nobleman bristled. Though he was gravely injured, his hatred for Sylas remained intact.
“I’ll not cower before the likes of you.”
“Good,” said Sylas. “Because I wouldn’t want you to miss this.”
In minutes, all of the nobleman’s guards and coachmen were lined up beside the road with their hands bound. Sylas paced the line, individually acknowledging each captive.
“I ache for you all. I do,” said Sylas. “You are merely cogs in their wheel.”
Sylas paused, his tone shifting harshly, as he gestured to the bound nobleman.
“But you chose to serve them… and thus, serve their cause.”
He turned to his band of outcasts, loudly offering a question.
“Brothers and sisters—these folk work in the service of swine. What does that make them?”
“Swine!” replied the outcasts.
“Should we allow them to go free?”
“No!” yelled the mages.
“What if they have a change of heart? Promise never to bother us again?” asked Sylas, with a coy smile creeping across the corners of his mouth.
“They’d be lying!” yelled the scruffy old mage from the brush.
“They can’t be trusted!” said another in the gang.
“Then what is to be done with them?” asked Sylas.
“They must die!” shouted a young mage, his hatred beyond his years.
Others yelled out in agreement, until the phrase echoed across the land: “Swine must die!”
Sylas nodded, as if he were slowly being persuaded by their words.
“So it must be.”
Softly, Sylas touched the shoulder of his recruit. His petricite shackles began to fume with a dark smoke. He closed his eyes, savoring the captured power.
The sight sent a quake of dread through the captives. Many fell to their knees and wept, pleading to be spared. Only the nobleman stood proud, defying his circumstances, as Sylas addressed his crew with somber finality.
“It pains me that I cannot show you the beautiful world to come.”
The words sent a chill through the recruit.
“Sylas, no,” Happ protested. “These are just… people.”
Ignoring the pleas, Sylas extended his arms and fingers, and unleashed the magic stored in his gauntlets. A thick black cloud billowed from his fingers and collected above the heads of the nobleman’s crew. Almost in unison, they began to claw at their throats in suffocation. Moments later, they fell to the ground dead.
A grave hush fell over the mages, having dutifully observed the execution. The nobleman wept silently, tears streaming over his clenched lips. The only sound came from the recruit.
“No… why?” said Happ, falling to his knees.
Sylas eased the boy back to his feet, consoling him with a fatherly hand.
“Happ, you wanted to help our cause. This is it! This is our liberation…”
He gently guided the recruit toward the nobleman, and urged him forward.
“…one dead lord at a time.”
Happ looked at the nobleman through tear-filled eyes. He held out a trembling hand, preparing to take the life before him. Then, he let his arm go limp.
“I… can’t.”
Sylas’ tender patience began to slip away.
“This man is not your friend. His fortune is built on your suffering. He would sooner see you hang than show you any kindness.”
The recruit would not budge. At last, the nobleman found his voice.
“You’re a monster,” he said, his voice breaking.
“Yes,” replied Sylas. “That’s what your kind said when you locked me in the dark.”
Sylas held forth his hand, its shackle still faintly glowing. The magic he had taken from Happ mustered one last wisp of blackness. The small, dark cloud enveloped the nobleman’s face, drawing the breath from his lungs. As the man writhed, Sylas looked back at the recruit, not in anger, but mourning.
“I’m sorry, Happ. But you are not ready to be liberated. Go. Return to your chains.”
Sylas watched as Happ turned to leave, his eyes averted in shame. The recruit looked down at the wrecked carriage in front of him, and the long, dirt road that wound back to the capital. Sylas could almost feel the boy thinking, dreading the misery that awaited him in his old life.
Happ bent down, pried a dagger from the hand of the dead coachman, and returned to the nobleman, still struggling for breath on the ground.
“I’m ready.”
As the youth raised the dagger above the nobleman, Sylas’ sorrow turned to unmitigated joy. No matter how many he liberated, it always made him smile.
Syndra

As a young child of Navori, Syndra was prone to distraction. She would often get lost in the magical beauty of a pond eclipsed in shadow, or a trail of sugarbeetles climbing the wall. Whenever her chores at home went unfinished, she was scolded harshly by her mother for her lack of focus. Syndra was even blamed when the milk soured, or when any other minor misfortunes befell the family.
Her older brother, Evard, teased her more than anyone. Syndra often fled to her favorite hiding spot—the ghost-willow, a tree sacred to the people of her village. Alone, she would whisper to the tree for hours, seeking solace. Unbeknownst to her, one warm evening, Evard and his friends followed her in secret. They snickered at her childish tears. Her shame and rage grew as she tried to ignore their insults, until one of them threw a clump of dirt at her head.
Syndra could no longer control her emotions. All her anger erupted from deep within her, in the form of darkly shining magical orbs, heavy with the weight of her anguish.
This powerful ability had been dormant until now. It flared with volatile strength, the orbs like pearls of negativity that leached the spirit magic from the world around her, draining the ghost-willow of its life essence. Evard and his friends backed away in horror as the ancient tree twisted, its bark withering to a tarry black.
Deprived of the ghost-willow, the villagers grew concerned that their connection to the Spirit of Ionia had been severed, and Syndra’s family was to blame. Forced to move on in search of a new home, all had become fearful of her magic.
After months of travel, they reached the coast and encountered a hermit-priest named Konigen. He spoke of his home on the island of Fae’lor, where he taught those who wished to learn to control their wild magic, and Syndra’s family could see no other option—perhaps he could succeed where they had not. Young Syndra climbed the steps to a cliffside temple, crafted long ago from dark stone, and overlooking the sea. Though she missed her old life, she tried to embrace her teacher’s wisdom, and put all her effort into tempering her emotions.
However, Syndra grew frustrated as, instead of gaining more control, over the years her magic seemed to weaken. Konigen now locked himself away each morning, meditating in solitude rather than teaching her anything new, and so she confronted him. His teeth gritted with exhaustion, he confessed that he was deliberately dampening her power, for her own safety. Such negativity had a strange, unpredictable effect on reality, and Syndra had grown far beyond his ability as a mentor.
She felt more betrayed than she ever had before. Konigen tried to calm her, which only fueled her anger… and in that moment, his focus was lost.
The foundations of the temple shook. The morning light seemed to pale. Syndra rose from the floor, as her frustrations surged within her. She snatched dark orbs from the air, and cast them through her mentor’s body, forcing him to feel all of her bitter outrage as he died.
The ceiling gave way, rubble raining down, burying the sacred gardens in dust. Syndra turned her powers against what was left of the temple, sending shockwaves throughout Fae’lor, and draining raw magic from the island itself.
Never had such negative energy been so concentrated in one place, and it was the Spirit of Ionia that swelled to counter it. The bedrock opened up beneath Syndra, dragging her down to a cavern deep underground—roots pulled her into a pool of living water to suppress her powers, and trap her in a magical slumber.
Syndra dreamed for what seemed an eternity. Most of the world forgot she had ever existed.
War with the Noxian empire divided the people of Ionia, and Syndra was eventually awakened by those who had once stood guard over Fae’lor. Some came to kill her, while others hoped she would aid them against Noxus, but she unleashed chaos upon them all. She refused to be a pawn in someone else’s game. Ripping apart the walls of the fortress that had been built on top of her island prison, Syndra raised the greatest tower into the skies to carry her far away.
She would not be controlled. Not ever again.
Tahm Kench

The waterways of Valoran are old, but far older still is the demon Tahm Kench. From muddy gambling tents along the Serpentine River, through the salt-crusted dice halls of Bilgewater, to the gilded wagering tables of Piltover and Zaun—all those who have given a covetous glance to another’s wealth know the unending hunger that comes from an encounter with the River King.
The first tales of the creature were told by a traveling people who plied the Serpentine. They warned of a giant fish with a cavernous mouth, who would lure in the dissatisfied with the promise of more. One such story was that of a young man renowned for his honesty. Though born to the ways of a raftsman, he desired a life beyond the poor banks he knew so well, and the River King promised him an unforgettable experience if only he would tell one little lie. It seemed harmless enough, so the raftsman bent the truth in conversation with his own brother. That night the demon appeared, revealing a fork in the river the raftsman had never noticed before. He followed it to a camp of foreign folk who offered him food and drink, and fresh companionship. As dawn neared, and the raftsman was full and ready to return to his people, the demon appeared again, promising an even greater experience for another lie. His interested piqued, the man accepted the bargain, telling falsehoods to his hosts. The river parted again and he followed it to an evening of even greater luxury. This continued, night after night, until the once-honest raftsman’s deceits came as easily as breathing.
When the river finally emptied into the sea, he found himself alone and lost—there was no one left to lie to. So many dark choices, all of them his own, had left the raftsman with no way back home.
The brackish rivers of the mainland carried the tales of the River King to the Blue Flame Isles, where the creature gained a name as his legend grew—Tahm Kench. In Bilgewater, fortunes are boom or bust, with as much wealth going out with the tide as comes in. Many a tavern yarn tells of ol’ Tahm, a demon of the water with an unending appetite for games of chance, such that the loquacious beast became a symbol for many of the city’s gambling dens and houses of sin.
Once the Sun Gates opened easy trade from Bilgewater to Piltover, tales of Tahm Kench became more common in the City of Progress and its underbelly, Zaun. There, children know Tahm as “Two-Coats,” a fish so monstrously large that he wears two fine jackets stitched together. With a jaunty top hat and a smile wider than the Pilt itself, he drives the jealousies of young artificers. It is said he came one Progress Day to a struggling Piltovan inventor, and offered her an idea certain to make a wealthy clan take notice. All he asked in return was a single lock of her hair. The ambitious woman made the trade and, true enough, her work landed her a lucrative contract. But one invention would not satisfy, and Two-Coats wandered by, this time asking for all of her lovely braids. Not wishing to disappoint her new patrons, the inventor agreed—and Two-Coats ate them up on the spot. Still the woman was unable to find the one great innovation that would make her name. The demon came again, offering a deal that would take the tip of one finger. The following week it was an ear. A year passed, and by then there was little left of the woman to give. Finally she called Two-Coats herself, begging him to make it all stop.
He laughed as he opened his jaws wide, telling her he would protect her from herself, and promptly swallowed her whole.
The River King. The Great Waddler. Old Yawn-Belly. Two-Coats. The demon Tahm Kench is known by many names, but all who speak them have learned a singular truth: no matter how alluring his words may be, in his mouth you will be lost.
The Gambler’s Woe

Anthony Reynolds

My, that’s quite the haul ye have, there! Won at the tables, was it? Well, here’s to your very good health. Cheers.
Oh, no, I’ll not be rollin’ the dice with ye. Not a gamblin’ man no more, or so I tells me self. There were a time, though... What happened? The River King happened, that’s what. Aye, Two-Coats, that old devil Tahm Kench. He’s what happened.
I was bilge-poor, beg your pardon, and livin’ in a flophouse. Had nothin’ to me name, not ‘til a single gold Krakenaye, this one ‘erecome into my possession. I could tell you how, but you’d call me a liar, heh.
So, with this one coin, what I oughta done was pay me debts, and find a new crew to join. I was a harpooner, see. Shoulda put aside whatever was left for the future. Been responsible, like. Harpoonin’s a harsh life, even for a younger man.
But that’s when the River King found me. “Why work someone else’s ship,” he says, “slavin’ away, riskin’ your life for next t’ nothin’, when ye might ‘ave a ship o’ your own?” I just had to think bigger, like. O’ course, one Kraken won’t buy a ship, but ‘e had an answer to that, didn’t he.
Dice. One good throw o’ the bones, an’ I’d ‘ave enough to start me own little operation. Others could do the danger work, while I sits back, nice and plum, enjoyin’ the profits. An’ after a few more drinks, you understand, that crooked devil’s advice starts to make a lot o’ sense to my ears. So, blinded by greed and possibility, I went along wi’ it.
That night were a blur. I awoke well after noon the next day, me head fairly poundin’! Had no idea where I wassome fancy bawdy-house, as it turns outbut on the dresser were me previous night’s winnings... more than enough to purchase me self a ship! Ah, but the River King, ‘e’d given me a taste for somethin’ more. Why should young Lars content his self with a single ship, when he could ‘ave a fleet? Just needed to chance me hand a few more times...
That’s Bilgewater. There’s riches to be had, if you’re willin’ to risk everything, over and over.
With old Two-Coat’s arm around me, I was led from the dice tables to other halls of avaricefrom backroom card games to gamblin’ and bettin’ parlors, high and low. I spent a fortune, lost a fortune, then made it all back again. Around and around in that allurin’ spiral I went. I was feelin’ the hunger, the yearning, and it was pullin’ me down like a whirlpool.
Years passed, an’ somewhere along the way, I’m ashamed to say I forgot what I was doing all this for. I forgot who I was. I had it all, but it never were enough. I wanted more.
And then I started losin’ big. That made me double-down, go for broke, all-or-nothin’, looking for the big stakes to put me back on top. Pretty soon, I was in a worse state than I’d been to start with. Sleepin’ in the gutter, catching rats to eat if I were lucky. I begged, borrowed and stole from everyone who’d ever shown me any kindness. Lost all me mates, chasing the dream.
‘E feeds on misery, see, does Tahm Kench. As old as sin, ‘e is, and older than Bilgewater by far. Been ‘round from the start of things, gorgin’ his self on the desperation what comes with the greed and sorrow in men’s hearts. I mean, I’d done it to me self, but it were him what give me the means. Ye might say, ‘e took me to the cliff’s edge, but I were the numpty what threw me self off, beg your pardon, and that old glutton revelled in me despair.
Came to me once more, ‘e did, when I was at me very lowest, drinkin’ from puddles, havin’ sold me own leg to be used for chum. In the darkest night, whisperin’ an’ cajolin’, ‘e pressed this gold Kraken back into me hand, with a knowin’ wink.
‘Twere the same one I’d ‘ad back at the start! It were this damn coin what started me on that wretched path! Eh, ‘e opened his mouth up wide, and says, “It’s not too late, Lars. Never too late. Come with me, an’ we’ll find you a fortune again...”
Even after everythin’, I was tempted. ‘Course I was! But no. I resistedMother Serpent knows how. Two-Coats only laughed. Said he’d be there when I changed me mind.
And, sure enough, the temptation’s still there, now, every day.
So here I am. Friendless. Broke. All the best years of me life behind me, wasted in those lost decades. Can’t remember most of it, neither, so I’ve no idea if I even enjoyed me self.
Anyways. Enough o’ my ramblin’. There’s a lesson to be learned, ‘erekeep your purse strings tight, and never, ever make a deal wi’ the River King. Ye’ve always got more to lose...
The Lost Tales of Ornn

Matt Dunn

“I have never seen the forgotten god. My grandmother told me these tales, but she never saw the forgotten god either—nor did her grandmother before her, or hers before her, a thousand times over. His legends endure only around crackling fires and meals of roasted fish. The further back we trace our ancestors, the truer the tales become.”
The children’s weary faces lift a little higher. Firelight dances on their cheeks, but pain lives in their eyes.
“Gods dwell around us, in the sky, in between clumps of soil, and behind the veil of stars. We need only to seek their favor, to channel their being into our hearts and deeds. For instance, on the sea, it is so cold that your eyeballs might freeze solid in their sockets. No, it’s true! But when sailors rub blubber on their faces and think about the Seal Sister, whose true name is forgotten, they are protected from the icy ocean winds.
“Others, such as Volibear, refuse to allow their own legends to fade, and still stalk this world. He demands sacrifice and forces obedience, much like the Ursine…”
They have all heard tales of the half-bear abominations. Fear makes the children lean closer to the fire.
“Oh yes, little ones—we may speak later of the bearskinned storm-bearer, but the less said about him the better.”
Like grandmother used to say, once they lean closer to the fire, they’re yours.
“Instead, these stories concern the firstborn of the gods…”
Ornn was the firstborn of his brothers and sisters. He leapt into the world, itching for a fight. This was not so easy, however. Trees were weak adversaries, snapping far too easily. Icebergs melted at his touch, running away into the sea.
Frustrated, he punched a mountain. The mountain did not yield. Ornn was pleased by this, so he challenged the land itself to a good-natured brawl.
As Ornn wrestled with the land, he dented and bruised it, shaping all of the Freljord that we know today. He headbutted mountains from the planes, and pounded down deep valleys. When he was tired, Ornn thanked the land for the glorious match. The land responded by opening a fiery pit, showing him its very heart, and he was honored to see it was a reflection of him: a fiery ram. The land had deemed Ornn worthy, and bestowed its secrets to him, gifting him the strength of primordial flame, for fire is the true agent of change.
He looked at the landscape that was the result of his fight and nodded. It would do. After this, Ornn set himself to building tools and weapons.
My ancestors must be smiling, for at this moment, a light snow begins to fall. Gentle flakes settle on the children’s furred hoods, and they stick out their tongues.
“Did you know that there used to be no snow in the Freljord?” I ask them. The children look confused. “It’s true. Our lands have always been the coldest in the entire world, but in the early days there was only bitter, dry air, and no such things as stormclouds…”
It was during the early, cloudless and cold days that Ornn built a house. He made it of the finest lumber. The magnificent home spanned three valleys. Can you imagine that? After completing his majestic Horn Hall, Ornn appraised his work.
“Good,” he said. These were the days before language, so this was a compliment indeed.
Now, his sister Anivia was annoyed. Ornn had felled her favorite perching trees to build his home. So she decided to teach him a lesson.
While Ornn was sleeping, she flew in through his bedroom window. Then, she tickled his nose with one of her feathers, causing him to sneeze a gout of flame that set fire to the bedsheets! The bedsheets set the floor ablaze! Anivia panicked, and flapped her wings to fly away, but this only stoked the fire hotter with the dry Freljord air. Soon, all of Horn Hall was alight.
The fire raged for days, darkening the skies with ash. Of course, Ornn slept through the whole thing. He awoke atop a pile of ashes in a very bad mood, for he had not had a restful sleep. But he did not know what Anivia had done. And to this day, she has never told him the truth.
“I complimented my own handiwork, and look where it got me,” said Ornn, surveying the damage. “Never again will I pat myself on the back. I shall let the quality of the work speak for itself.”
Ornn had one goal in particular for his next home: he did not want it to be flammable. He fashioned himself a spade, a lever, and a fork. With these tools, he could dig for ore, move mighty pillars, and eat the delicious spiced cherries he so enjoyed.
He hammered and shaped chunks of ore until a black mountain stood. Inside was a great forge that channeled the primordial molten flame from deep within the earth. He was pleased with his Hearth-Home—but it was too hot inside to dwell comfortably, even for Ornn.
So he dug a trench from the sea, straight to the mountain. The Seal Sister allowed cold waters to rush through the trench and cool the Hearth-Home. Great plumes of steam rose up. It took three days for the mountain to cool enough for Ornn. In that time, the ocean that fed the river dipped several inches.
By then, so much steam had risen from the waters that the perpetual blue sky was mottled with darkening gray clouds. As these new puffy forms gathered and cooled, they grew heavier and heavier until they burst with snow.
It snowed for a hundred years. This is why the Freljord still has so much snow today.
One of the children frowns at me. “If Ornn did so much for the world, then why is it only you who knows the stories about him?” she asks. The girl is young, but has already seen so much hardship that her hair has several shocks of silver running through it.
“There is one tale that answers this very question,” I reply. “Would you like to hear it?”
The children’s eager faces say it all.
Once, there were Three Sisters who needed Ornn’s help in saving their world. Ornn, however, did not care to help anyone save any world, anywhere. It was for personal reasons, and he did not elaborate on the matter. But this did not stop the Three Sisters journeying many days and nights to ask.
“There are creatures of great and wicked magic that stalk our tribes,” the First Sister said. She had fierceness and war in her eyes. “They want to destroy all things and claim the world for themselves!”
“This sounds like a problem,” Ornn said. He did not look up from his forging.
“Then will you fight with us, and use your strength to slay the monsters?”
Ornn grunted. This grunt meant “no” in such a way as to halt any more discussion. This was understood by all. If you heard this grunt, you would have thought the First Sister wise for not pressing the matter further.
“These beings watch our every move,” the Second Sister said. There was hope and wisdom in her voice. “I would ask you to take the spade that once dug your mighty river, and use it to dig the deepest trench in all the world. Then we can lure the monsters into the pit ourselves, and solve our own problem.”
Ornn grunted. The sound of this grunt meant “I will dig that hole,” and that everyone should stop talking immediately. This was understood by all. If you heard this grunt, you would have thought the Second Sister wise for not pressing the matter further.
So Ornn dug them a trench, for a very deep hole can add much to a landscape. Also, he had planned on digging one anyway, and the proposed location was a fine spot. When Ornn was finished with the trench, he left the three sisters with nary a word, for he had already said far too much to them.
“That is one deep hole,” the Second Sister said. “I pray it is deep enough.”
Wind blew up from the freshly dug abyss with an otherworldly howl, as if to say that it was deep enough. If you had heard the abyss’ howl, you would have thought it wise that no one climbed down to measure its depth.
Several years later, the sisters returned. They looked as if the battles with their foes had taken a toll.
This time, the Third Sister spoke. Her icy breath reminded Ornn of the cold and dry days, long ago. “Ornn, Builder of All Things,” she began.
“I did not build all things,” Ornn grumbled. Again, he did not look up from his forging. “Just some of them.”
The Third Sister continued. “We come now to ask you one simple favor. The pit you dug is so deep and so wide that we cannot build even a single bridge across it. Teach me how to build a bridge that can never break, and I will do the work myself.”
Ornn raised an eyebrow. He studied the Third Sister’s eyes. He did not trust her, for she had a scent of magic about her, and magic always makes sturdy things weaker. “There are many able bridge builders. Go and bother them.”
“The other builders cannot make a bridge with the type of stone we have,” the Third Sister replied. “They claim it fell from the sky, and they cannot forge it for all their efforts.” She then presented a chunk of star metal.
If you had seen the star metal, you would think it wise that only Ornn could possibly ever shape this material, for it was almost as stubborn and unyielding as him. Ornn agreed, but he would do the work alone, and required the star metal itself as payment.
The Third Sister gave it to him, and he used it to forge a tool to help build the bridge.
With that tool, and only that tool, Ornn built the bridge. The Second Sister felt bad about the Third Sister’s lie—for they did not need a bridge at all. She asked Ornn what sort of tool it was.
“I used it to hammer,” Ornn said. “So I will call it ‘Hammer.’ I have said enough.”
When he was out of sight, the Third Sister walked the length of the bridge, reciting strange incantations across the entire span. This turned the bridge into a crossbar that sealed the beasts below within the abyss. However, Ornn had been right, and the addition of magic ruined the quality of his work. Had the Three Sisters left it well enough alone, it would have lasted forever. Instead, the enchantment would slowly eat away at the masonry. It would take ages, though, so nobody paid it much mind, and the Three Sisters vowed never to speak of Ornn again.
Ornn, meanwhile, realized he did not like people asking him favors, and threw his spade as far to the west as he could. Where it landed, no one knows, and its fate is lost to darkness.
Then he turned east and threw his favorite eating fork as far as he could. It landed in the Great Sea. Some say, later, a mer-king found a powerful trident at the sea-bottom, and still uses it to rule his kingdom.
Ornn was ready to throw his hammer into the night sky, but he could not bear to do it and decided to keep it. Were you to see Ornn and ask him if it is his favorite tool, he would scold you for thinking like a child. But in secret, he favors Hammer above all other things he has made.
“Dawn brings the plumpest berries and the meatiest fish,” I say to the children. “We need to be rested.”
They groan in unison and plead with me for one more story. Just one more story.
“There is only one more story about Ornn left,” I tell them. “We should save it for another night…”
Only when they pledge to do every chore and not complain about being too tired, do I relent.
Everyone knows that you never challenge a troll to a drinking contest, don’t they? Even you little ones know not to make a bet with a troll, for trolls are sneaky and will always win. Also, everyone in the Freljord knows that the uglier a troll is, the luckier and more cunning it can be.
Unfortunately, Ornn did not know any of these things.
Grubgrack the Hideous was the oldest troll-kin in the world. His chest hair was so long, it got tangled up in his gnarled toes. Ugh! He would often trip over it and break his nose, which was bulbous and misshapen from being broken so many times. He only had two good teeth, one bad eye, and one worse eye. Warts and pimples covered his rotund belly. I will not tell you how he smelled. If I did, you would never eat fermented fish stew again.
“Build me a door that will keep my treasure safe from thieves forever,” Grubgrack said to Ornn outside Hearth-Home, “and I will give you ten casks of my trollmead. It’s a family recipe.”
Ornn dismissed his guest, but Grubgrack stuck out his foot to stop the door from closing. Ornn did not want the troll’s bunion-covered toes ruining the paint, so he let the creature go on.
“Let us make a wager,” said the truly un-beautiful troll. “Whoever can finish a cask of trollmead first owes the other a debt.”
“If it will make you go away, okay.” Ornn had never been beaten in a drinking contest. Everyone knew this back then, and now you do, too.
“At least it will be good to have a drink,” Grubrack replied, and his smile warped one of the Hearth-Home’s pillars. While Ornn’s back was turned, the troll slipped a shard of True Ice into a cask and handed it to his challenger.
They toasted in the jovial manner of the Freljord and drank. Ornn found the trollmead watered down, and he did not like it. However, Grubgrack was halfway through his cask. With his own cask still almost at the brim, Ornn tipped his head back further and drank until he thought he would drown.
But Grubgrack slammed his empty cask down and belched, and the fire in the oven turned a sickly green! Ornn coughed and spluttered.
“What is wrong?” Grubgrack teased him. “Are you choking?”
Then Ornn noticed the True Ice in his drink. It was perpetually melting and watering down the trollmead. No matter how much he chugged, the True Ice had replaced it. He smashed the cask with one hand.
“You cheated,” Ornn said. His angry voice set off an earthquake that sunk a few islands.
“Of course! What other advantage would an ugly troll like me have against the mighty Ornn?” In truth, the ugliest trolls have almost all the advantages in the world, but Ornn did not spend much time with ugly trolls, so he wouldn’t know that, but now all of you little ones do. “A deal is a deal,” Grubgrack reminded him.
“My word is as good as Hammer,” Ornn grumbled. “Even if I was cheated.”
So Ornn labored for ten days and built the single best door anyone had ever built. He adorned it with a ram’s head, like his own, and the one at the heart of the Freljord. It was impervious to magic and lock-pickers alike. Grubgrack was so impressed with the quality of the door that he was speechless, which is very rare for a troll.
Ornn fastened the door in front of the troll’s cave, which was on top of the troll’s mountain, and where all the ugliest troll-kin in history had hid their treasure.
With a grunt, Ornn trundled off, leaving Grubgrack admiring his new door.
When he had regained his wits, Grubgrack realized it had been a day since he last counted his gold, and he was growing anxious. But he could find no way to open the door! None at all.
Grubgrack tried brute force. The ram-faced door did not budge. Then, he tried to strip the paint with his foul breath. Again, the door did not budge. Lastly, he tried to pry the hinges from the cave wall but, alas, the door was fixed to the mountain so firmly that the troll only hurt his shoulders trying to shake it loose. He was locked out.
Grubgrack stormed into Ornn’s forge. “What trickery is this?” he shouted. His breath was so bad, the forge fire nearly flickered out.
“There is no trickery,” Ornn replied, stoking the flames back to life. “You told me to build a door that would keep your treasure safe from thieves forever, and I did. This door will stand longer than the mountain it is on. No one can break it. I made it just as you asked.”
“But I cannot get inside!” Grubgrack cried. “And I stole nothing from you!”
“Time is more valuable than gold,” Ornn said. “So you are a thief, and my work is as good as my word.”
Grubgrack tried for years to get back inside for his treasure, but the door never opened for him, and he could not even find the keyhole. With each attempt, the ram-headed door stared back at him, an eternal reminder of the time he cheated Ornn.
And if you listen carefully, up in the mountains, you can hear greedy old Grubgrack’s wails of anguish before any avalanche, even to this day.
The children are fast asleep, snuggled into each other around the fire. I carry them one by one to the orphans’ tent. Our tribe hasn’t much to share, but we are not the Winter’s Claw.
The last child is still awake by the fire. He lies on his side.
“Those stories aren’t real,” he says with the tiniest voice.
It’s the legless boy. We found him half-dead after our own village had been raided. We couldn’t leave him—I couldn’t leave him—so I wrapped his wounds in bandages, and carried him on my shoulders.
“I think they are made up. Or… changed to help us go to sleep.”
“A story is as real as we believe it is,” I tell him, as I settle down next to him.
“There is a god who is good, but he doesn’t care about us.”
I nod slowly. “I can see why you would think that, but it is not true. There is one more story I can tell you. It was the last story my grandmother told me before I blossomed into womanhood. She wanted me to be ready, for it is not like the others. But I think you have seen enough to be ready. What do you think?”
The boy nods. I draw him close to my chest and begin.
Once, long before the splintering of the Freljord, Ornn had a legion of smiths who lived at the base of his mountain. They claimed to worship Ornn, but if you were to ask him, they were misguided, for he would say he had no followers. Still, it is true that they built themselves a little town and that it was filled with folk who wished to make the finest things in all the world.
There were thousands of them. They made tools. They made plows. They made carts and armor and saddles. They built furnaces and homes. They called themselves the Hearthblood, for they never felt the biting cold of the Freljord, and could tolerate the immense heat bubbling beneath their bare feet on the slopes of Hearth-Home. They became the finest craftspeople in the world, and their workmanship was surpassed in quality only by Ornn’s.
Occasionally, he would appraise their work. If he liked what one of the Hearthblood had wrought, he simply said “Passable.” This was a mighty compliment from Ornn, who had learned long ago to let good work speak for itself. Do you remember that tale?
Ornn never admitted that he admired the Hearthblood but, deep inside his chest, his volcanic heart churned with respect for the hardworking people. They did not kneel or offer him sacrificed flesh. They did not turn his words into scriptures and spread them across the land to people who did not want to hear them. Instead, they focused on their work in silence. They were imaginative, resourceful, and hardworking. These Hearthblood folks made Ornn smile, although nobody knew because they couldn’t see the smile underneath his beard.
One day, Volibear came to visit his brother Ornn.
This was no friendly stop, for Ornn and his brother were never friendly, nor had they ever visited one another before. The great bear was going to make war and needed weapons for his army. Ornn saw the army—fierce aberrations, men twisted into other shapes by their efforts to please Volibear. They were simple, and fierce, and quick to anger.
“Give them swords and axes,” Volibear demanded, with wicked intent. “Give them armor, and I will make it worth your while.”
“No,” said Ornn, for he wanted no part in Volibear’s warmongering.
“Fine,” said Volibear. “Have your followers do it instead. I do not care. Do this. I am your brother.”
This irked Ornn so much that his great horns flared with molten heat. “The people in the town below do not follow me. They build for themselves. They are quiet and work hard. That is all.”
But Volibear saw beneath his brother’s words to the fiery heart in his chest. For all his flaws, Volibear was very good at reading others.
“They are a reflection of your own image.”
Ornn’s horns grew red hot, and then white hot. “If I see you again, Volibear, I will beat you within an inch of your life,” he growled. If you had heard this threat, you would think it wise for Volibear to leave and never return.
But Volibear loved fighting, and he was not wise, so he took a piece of armor from the walls of Ornn’s forge.
“If you will not make me what I want, then I will take it.”

With that, Ornn charged at Volibear and smashed him with his horns. It was so powerful a blow, the summit of the mountain shook.
This was exactly what Volibear wanted. For centuries, he had grown jealous of the love the Hearthblood freely gave to his brother. It enraged the war-bear.
They fought for eight days. They fought so hard, the base of the mountain trembled. So fierce was their fighting that molten stone exploded from the peak of Hearth-Home. Lighting strikes barraged the mountainside, and geysers of flame gushed from the cliffs. The skies grew black and red. The blood of the world ran through the highlands as the ground shook. People all over the Freljord saw the results of the battle between Volibear and Ornn.
When the smoke cleared, the mountain had lost its peak. But worse, the Hearthblood were all dead, and their town was nothing but smoldering ruins and a fading memory.
For many centuries, the half-mountain once called Hearth-Home has stood silent. Every now and then, a plume of smoke rises from the crater where the peak once stood. Some say it is Ornn, lighting his furnace to keep the fires under the surface of the world from going out. Others say he is building a great weapon that he will one day unleash.
And there are others still, who believe Ornn was killed by Volibear, for he has not been seen in the Freljord since.
“And so, Ornn’s name and tales have been lost to time and written out of the histories. These few stories, passed on around our meals of roasted fish, are all that remain.”
“That is a sad tale, which means it is the truest,” the legless boy says, looking up at me. There is a tear in his eye. “What do you believe happened to Ornn?”
“I believe when the Great Builder returns,” I tell him, “it will be to remake the world.”
The boy laughs. “I would like to see that day.”
“Maybe you will. Do not weep for the Hearthblood. Weep instead for the stories lost to war and time, for once they were more numerous than the stars. Repeat these tales so our children’s children can still hear our ancestors’ voices, and stoke the fire of the forge in our hearts.”
In my own heart, I can feel my grandmother’s smile.
It warms me. I feel no cold beneath my bare feet.
Taliyah

Taliyah is a nomadic mage from Shurima who weaves stone with energetic enthusiasm and raw determination. Torn between teenage wonder and adult responsibility, she has crossed nearly all of Valoran on a journey to learn the true nature of her growing powers. Compelled by rumors of the rise of a long-dead emperor, she returns to protect her tribe from dangers uncovered by Shurima’s shifting sands. Some have mistaken her tender heart for weakness and paid the price for their error, for beneath Taliyah’s youthful demeanor is a will strong enough to move mountains, and a spirit fierce enough to make the earth tremble.
Born in the rocky foothills bordering Icathia’s corrupted shadow, Taliyah spent her childhood herding goats with her tribe of nomadic weavers. Where most outsiders see Shurima as a beige and barren waste, her family raised her to be a true daughter of the desert and to see beauty in the rich hues of the land. Taliyah was always fascinated by the stone beneath the dunes. When she was a toddler, she collected colorful rocks as her people followed the seasonal waters. As she grew older, the earth itself seemed drawn to her, arcing and twisting to follow her tracks through the sand.
After her sixth high summer, Taliyah wandered from the caravan in search of a lost goatling that had been placed in her charge. Determined not to disappoint her father—the master shepherd and headman of the tribe—she tracked the young animal into the night. She followed the hoofprints through a dry wash to a box canyon. The little beast had managed to get high up the rock wall, but could not get down.
The sandstone called to her, urging her to pull handholds from the sheer wall. Taliyah laid a tentative palm against the rock, determined to rescue the scared animal. The elemental power she felt was as urgent and overwhelming as a monsoon rain. As soon as she opened herself to the magic, it poured over her, the stone leaping to her fingertips, bringing both the canyon wall and the beast down on top of her.
The next morning, Taliyah’s panicked father tracked the skittish bleats of the goatling. He fell to his knees when he found his daughter unconscious, covered loosely in a blanket of woven stone. Grief-stricken, he returned to the tribe with Taliyah.
Two days later, the girl awoke from fevered dreams in the tent of Babajan, the tribe’s grandmother. Taliyah began to tell the wise woman and her concerned parents of her night in the canyon, of the rock that called to her. Babajan consoled the family, telling them that the patterns of rock were evidence the Great Weaver, the desert tribe’s mythical protector, watched over the girl. In that moment, Taliyah saw her parents’ deep worry and decided to conceal what really happened that night: that she—not the Great Weaver—had pulled at the desert stone.
When children in Taliyah’s tribe were old enough, they performed a dance under the face of the full moon, the manifestation of the Great Weaver herself. The dance celebrated the children’s innate talents and demonstrated the gifts they would bring to the tribe as adults. This was the start of their path to true learning, as those children then became apprenticed to their teachers.
Taliyah continued to hide her growing power, believing the secret she carried was a danger, not a blessing. She watched as her childhood playmates spun wool to keep the tribe warm on cold desert nights, demonstrated their skill with shears and dye, or wove patterns that told the stories of her people. On those nights, she would lie awake long after the coals had burned to ash, tormented by the power she felt stirring within.
The time finally came for Taliyah’s dance beneath the full moon. While she had talent enough to be a capable shepherd like her father, or a pattern mistress like her mother, the young girl dreaded what her dance would truly reveal. As Taliyah took her place on the sand, the tools of her people—the shepherd’s crook, the spindle, and the loom—surrounded her. She tried to concentrate on the task at hand, but it was the distant rocks, the layered colors of the land, that called to her. Taliyah closed her eyes and danced. Overwhelmed by the power flowing through her, she began to spin not thread, but the very earth beneath her feet.
Startled cries from Taliyah’s tribe broke her out of her spell. An imposing braid of sharp rock reached up to the light of the moon. Taliyah looked at the shocked faces of the people who surrounded her. Her will over the stone broken, the earthen tapestry crashed down. Taliyah’s mother ran to her only daughter, to protect her from the falling rock. When the dust finally settled, Taliyah saw the destruction she had woven, the alarm on the faces of her tribe. But it was the small cut across her mother’s face that justified Taliyah’s fear. Though the cut was minor, Taliyah knew in that moment that she was a threat to the people she loved most in this world. She ran into the night, so weighed down by despair that the ground trembled beneath her feet.
It was her father who found her again in the desert. As they sat in the light of the rising sun, Taliyah confessed her secret in choked sobs. In turn, he did the only thing a parent could do: He hugged his daughter tightly. He told her that she couldn’t run from her power, that she must complete her dance and see where her path would take her. Turning her back on the Great Weaver’s gift was the only danger that could truly break his and her mother’s heart.
Taliyah returned with her father to the tribe. She entered the dancer’s circle with her eyes open. This time, she wove a new ribbon of stone, each color and texture a memory of the people surrounding her.
When it was over, the tribe sat in awe. Taliyah waited nervously. It was time for one of her people to stand as her teacher and claim the student. What felt like eons stretched between Taliyah’s hammering heartbeats. She heard gravel shift as her father stood. Next to him, her mother stood. Babajan and the dye mistress and the master spinner stood. In a moment, the whole tribe was on its feet. All of them would stand with the girl who could weave stone.
Taliyah looked at each of them. She knew that a power like hers had not been seen in generations, perhaps longer. They stood with her now, their love and trust surrounding her, but their worry was palpable. None among them heard the earth call as she did. As much as she loved these people, she did not see the one who could show her how to control the elemental magic that coursed within her. She knew that to stay with her tribe was to risk their lives. Though it pained all of them, Taliyah said farewell to her parents and her people, and set off alone into the world.
She journeyed west toward the distant peak of Targon, her natural connection to rock drawing her toward the mountain that brushed the stars. However, at the northern edge of Shurima, it was those who marched beneath the banner of Noxus who discovered her power first. In Noxus, magic like hers was celebrated, they told her; revered, even. They promised her a teacher.
The land had raised Taliyah to be trusting, so she was unprepared for the smooth promises and practiced smiles of Noxian dignitaries. Soon, the desert girl found herself on an unbending path, passing under the many Noxtoraa, the great iron gates that marked the Empire’s claim over a conquered land.
The crush of people and the layers of politics within the capital city were claustrophobic to a girl from the open desert. Taliyah was paraded through the tiers of Noxian magical society. Many took an interest in her power, its potential, but it was a fallen captain who swore to take her to a wild place across the sea, a place where she could hone her abilities without fear, who made the most convincing case. She accepted the young officer’s offer and crossed the sea to Ionia. However, it was made clear as their ship dropped anchor that she was intended as a glorified weapon for a man desperate to regain his place at the highest ranks of the Noxian navy. At dawn, the captain gave her a choice: Bury a sleeping people in their homes, or be discarded in the surf.
Taliyah looked across the bay. The cooking smoke had not yet risen from the village’s sleeping hearths. This was not the lesson she had come so far to learn. Taliyah refused, and the captain threw her overboard to drown.
She escaped the tide and the fighting on the beach and found herself wandering, lost, in the wintry mountains of Ionia. It was there she finally discovered her teacher, a man whose blade harnessed the wind itself, someone who understood the elements and the need for balance. She trained with him for a time and began to find the control she had long sought.
While resting at an isolated inn, Taliyah heard that the Ascended Emperor of Shurima had returned to his desert kingdom. Rumor had it this emperor turned god sought to gather his people, the disparate tribes, back to him as slaves. Even with her training unfinished, there was no other choice; she knew she must return to her family to protect them. Sadly, she and her mentor parted ways.
Taliyah returned home to the sand-swept dunes of Shurima. As the punishing rays of the sun beat down on her, Taliyah pushed farther into the desert, determined to find her people. Hers was a will of stone, and she would do whatever was necessary to protect her family and her tribe from the danger that loomed on the horizon.
Echoes in the Stone

Taliyah was outrunning the sandstorm when she first noticed the water. In the beginning, it was faint, just a cool dampness she felt as she lifted the stones from deep beneath the sand. As she drew closer to old Shurima, wet streaks dripped from each new stone as if they were weeping. Taliyah knew the rock had stories to tell as she sped across the desert, but she didn’t have time to listen, to hear if they were tears of joy or sadness.
When she was close enough to be covered by the shadow of the great Sun Disc, water from underground aquifers began to pour off the stone she rode like little rivers. And when she finally arrived at the gates, Taliyah heard the deafening water rushing along the bedrock. The Oasis of the Dawn, the Mother of Life, roared beneath the sands.
The people of her tribe had followed the seasonal waters for hundreds of years. The best chance of finding her family was to follow the water, and to Taliyah’s dismay, the water in Shurima now flowed from a single source as it had in ages past. The tragic remains of the capital city had always been avoided, almost as much as the great Sai and deadly creatures that hunted there. Even thieves knew to keep their distance from the city. Until now.
Taliyah brought the rock she rode to a sudden halt, nearly stumbling from it as she pushed the stone quickly below the desert’s surface. She looked around. The woman from Vekaura had been right. This place was no longer a forgotten ruin, haunted by ghosts and sand; indeed, the makeshift camp just outside the walls scrambled with life, like an anthill before a flood. Not knowing who these people were, she decided it might be best to reveal no more than was necessary.
It seemed there was tribal representation from all four corners of her homeland, but as Taliyah searched their faces, she saw none that were familiar. The people here were torn. They argued about the merits of staying in their temporary camps versus seeking shelter within the city. Some worried that just as it rose, the city would fall again, burying any caught inside. Some saw the storm that bristled with unnatural lightning and thought their chances were better within the walls, even if the walls had once been lost to the sand for generations. All of them moved quickly, packing haphazardly and worriedly glancing at the sky. Taliyah herself had won the race with the tempest, but it wouldn’t be long before the sand lashed against the gates.
“Now’s the time to decide.” A woman called out to her, her voice almost lost to the noise of the churning oasis waters and the rising storm. “Are you going in or leaving, girl?”
Taliyah turned to face the woman. She was Shuriman, but other than that, unknown to her.
“I’m looking for my family.” Taliyah gestured to her tunic. “They’re weavers.”
“The Hawk-father has promised protection to all those within the walls,” the woman said.
“Hawk-father?”
The woman looked at Taliyah’s concerned face and smiled, taking her hand. “Azir has returned to us Ascended. The Oasis of the Dawn flows again. A new day has come for Shurima.”
Taliyah looked around at the people. It was true. They were hesitant to move far into the massive capital, but the fear that worried their faces was more for the unnatural storm than the city or its returned emperor.
The woman continued, “There were weavers here this morning. They decided to wait out the storm inside.” The woman pointed to the throngs of people pushing in toward the newly beating heart of Shurima. “We must hurry. They are closing the gates.”
Taliyah found herself being pulled toward one of the capital’s great gates by the woman, and driven from behind by a crowd of strangers who had decided at the last minute not to brave the sands by themselves. Still, there were a few groups clustered near their circled beasts, determined to face the storm as Shuriman caravans had for generations. In the distance, strange and threatening bolts of lightning crackled at the edge of the whirlwind. Old Shuriman traditions might not survive the storm’s passing.
Taliyah and the woman were pushed across the golden threshold that separated Shurima from the desert surrounding it. The heavy gates swung closed behind them with a resounding thud. The immensity of old Shurima’s glory stretched out before them. The crowd hugged the thick, protective walls, unsure where to go. It was as if they sensed the empty streets belonged to someone else.
“I’m sure your people are somewhere within the city. Most have kept close to the gates. Few are brave enough to go farther than that. I hope you find what you are looking for.” The woman let go of Taliyah’s hand and smiled. “Water and shade to you, sister.”
“Water and shade to you.” Taliyah’s voice dropped off as the woman disappeared into the milling crowd.
The city that had been quiet for millennia now pulsed with life. Silently watching over Shurima’s newest denizens were helmeted guards that wore desert cloaks in gold and crimson. Though there was no trouble, Taliyah continued to feel there was something not right about this place.
Taliyah reached out to the thick wall to steady herself. She gasped. The stone throbbed beneath the flat of her palm. Pain. A terrible, blinding pain overwhelmed her. Tens of thousands of voices were etched into the rock. The fear and torment of their last moments, before their lives were cut down and their shadows were seared into the stone, screamed in her mind. Taliyah tore her hand from the stone wall and stumbled. She had felt vibrations in stone before, reverberations of memories long since past, but never like this. The knowledge of what had come before felled her. Wild eyed, she stood and stared, seeing the city anew. Revulsion washed over her. This wasn’t a city reborn. It was an empty tomb risen from the sand. The last time Azir had made promises to the people of Shurima, it had cost them their lives.
“I must find my family,” she whispered.

All stories

Smolder

Snow Day

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One Last Show

Soraka

Halfway Between the Stars and Earth

The Spear of Targon

The Spirit of Copperwood Glade

Starfall

The Stranger on the Road

Swain

The Black Powder Plot

Sylas

The Recruit

Syndra

Tahm Kench

The Gambler’s Woe

The Lost Tales of Ornn

Taliyah

Echoes in the Stone