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Sett

Though now a powerful player in Ionia’s flourishing criminal underworld, Sett had humble origins. Born from an Ionian vastaya and a Noxian human, the “half-beast” child was an outcast from the start. His birth appalled his mother’s vastayan community, which expelled the family for violating its tribal norms. The humans of Ionia were no more accepting of the taboo union, though Sett’s father’s infamy as a local pitfighter usually kept them from voicing their disapproval.
What little security the family enjoyed vanished the day Sett’s father disappeared. All of a sudden, those who had bitten their tongues at the sight of young Sett felt free to express their contempt. The boy was bewildered, wondering where his father had gone, and why trouble suddenly seemed to be following him.
Sett grew up quickly, becoming calloused in the face of the taunts and threats he endured, and before long, he began using his fists to silence the insults. When news of his fights reached his mother, she made him swear not to go near the Noxian pits where his father had fought.
But the more Sett fought, the more he thought of his father.
Longing to find the man he only vaguely remembered, Sett snuck away to the pit late one night, after his mother had gone to bed. Immediately, he was enthralled by the spectacle. Scores of Noxian soldiers, fresh to the shores of Ionia, roared with bloodlust from the stands around him. Down in the center of the arena, fighters from all backgrounds and martial disciplines clashed in gruesome duels with a variety of weapons—the winners handsomely paid in Noxian coin. When the event was over, Sett inquired about his father, and learned a hard truth: his father had bought out his contract and left to tour more profitable pits abroad. He had deserted his family, to seek fortune on the other side of the world.
Burning with rage, Sett asked the arena’s matchmaker for a fight, hoping that somehow his father would return from his tour—and be the opponent standing across the pit from him. The matchmaker assigned the boy a fight on the next card, figuring he would be easy fodder for one of his star combatants.
Sett would prove him wrong.
From the moment he threw his first punch, “The Beast-Boy Bastard” was a pit-fighting sensation. Though Sett had no formal martial arts training, his primal strength and ferocity more than compensated, and he leveled his more technically sound opponents like a battering ram. Never abandoning hope that he might one day fight his father, he soon became the undisputed “King of the Pit”, with a swollen coffer of prize money—and a trail of broken opponents—to his name.
Night after night, Sett brought money and comforts to his mother, always lying about how he had acquired them. It warmed his calloused heart to see her so proud of his success, no longer forced to toil at menial jobs. Still, Sett couldn’t help but feel he could do better. Being the King of the Pit was good, but being the person who owned the pit… that was where the real money was.
Late one night, after defending his title in front of a record-breaking crowd, Sett presented his new demands to the Noxian matchmaker and his cronies. He suggested they grant him control of the arena and its revenue. When they refused, Sett barred the doors. Minutes later, the doors re-opened, and the Noxians emerged, badly maimed, with a message on their bloodied lips: the half-beast was the new boss.
With the promoters out of the picture, Sett took control of the pit he once fought in. Ionians, who had only recently been conditioned for war, flocked to the arena, paying to satisfy an urge they only now knew they possessed. Sett took full advantage of their newfound bloodlust, accumulating wealth and power beyond his wildest boyhood dreams, as he transformed the pit into the hub of an underground empire of gambling and vice.
The half-beast who reigned supreme in the pit now runs his illicit enterprises with the same iron fist. Any time someone challenges his authority, he personally reminds them where they stand. Every punch Sett throws is a blow to his old life of poverty and ostracism, and he intends to make sure that old life stays down.
Big Head, Bad News

John O'Bryan

“Who’s watchin’ the till?” I ask.
Sherap—the stick of a man taking weapons at the door—looks at me with bug eyes, scared he’s done somethin’ wrong.
“Ryo. Ryo’s on the till tonight,” he says.
“Get two more on it,” I tell him.
It’s a big night—lot of spenders. Last thing I need is some lowlife makin’ off with the profit.
Sherap scurries off. A couple seconds later he comes back with two of my heaviest hitters. After they join Ryo at the coin box, I check back on the action in the arena. The place is packed, crammed to the doors with nobodies, somebodies, and everyone in between—people with nothin’ much in common, except a hankering for blood. And they’re about to get it.
My star combatant, Prahn the Flayer, has just finished his long, sauntering entrance. His chiseled body is painted entirely green, and he wears a small buckler on his left forearm. His infamous whip sword, painted to look like a viper, remains coiled on his belt as he enters the pit to face his opponent. The challenger—some Shuriman guy… is it Faran? Farrel? I’ll learn his name if he wins—stares a hole in him, his hands up by his shoulders, itching to grab the twin daggers sheathed on his back. He’s come halfway around the world for this, and he’ll be damned if some local golden boy is going to show him up.
With a wave of the pit officer’s scarf, our show is on. The fighters circle each other in the center of the floor. Always the entertainer, Flayer draws the whip sword and snaps it all around his body. (He’s one of about eight people in the world who can do this without cutting his own face off, and he loves to show it off.)
Insulted by the taunt, the Shuriman draws his daggers. He sprints across the pit, throwing himself into a whirl of blades, slicing the wind at unnatural angles. Flayer is surprised, but not off guard. He parries a dagger with his buckler, throwing the Shuriman off balance for a split second.
It feels like an eternity. The Shuriman’s body is turned off kilter, hands by his waist, his entire torso a wide-open target.
In a single, fluid movement, the Flayer swings his whip sword clean across the throat of his opponent. The Shuriman drops to the floor in a growing pool of his own blood. The crowd erupts.
“How’s that till?!” I shout to the boys in the back.
“Got it, boss!” replies Sherap, as the eager throngs swarm the vestibule to settle their bets.
Back down on the floor, I see the pit crew loading the Shuriman onto the corpse cart. A few feet away, Flayer celebrates with some of his fans. He’s got a look on his face. I know it well. It’s not relief. Not contentment. He’s getting a big head, and it’s going to be bad news.
About an hour later, the crowd has gone home, and the till has been emptied and counted. Just when I’m saying goodnight to the crew, guess who stops me at the door?
It’s the Flayer. He’s holding a fat bag of coin, but he don’t look happy. Says he’s got a bone to pick. Here we go.
I ask him what’s the problem. He just won big in front of a record-breaking crowd. He says that’s just it: he drew a record-breaking crowd. He should get a cut of the till. My till.
Now, I understand where he’s coming from—same place I was coming from when I took over this whole thing. But just ’cause I understand what a fella wants don’t mean I gotta give it to him. I tell the Flayer no.
Then the guy blows up. He starts telling me how lucky I am to have him in my pit.
“Do you know how many people in the world can do what I do?” he asks. “Nine!”
“Nine. Huh. Guess they must’ve added one,” I say.
He keeps mouthing off, says I’ve gotten fat and don’t remember what it’s like to risk my neck in the pit. By this point, a bunch of my crew is starting to listen in. Seeing how I can’t have people thinking I’m soft, I figure it’s a good time to remind Flayer who’s the boss, and who’s the employee. But he’s not havin’ it.
“You’re just some washed-up ex-champ in a fur coat, tellin’ us real fighters what to do,” he says. “Anybody could do your job.”
That does not sit well with me. I tell Flayer we can go toe-to-toe in the pit, and he’ll find out just how much of a fighter I still am. I guess at this point he feels like he can’t back down, because he accepts my offer.
“If I win, I take your pit. And all that comes with it,” he says.
I nod. He waits, like he’s expecting me to add my own stipulations. As if he’s got anything I’d want.
All I ask is that we do it in front of a crowd.
“Let’s get paid for it.”

Fight night comes, and there’s so many people on hand they’re spilling out the doors of the arena. I’ve got five of my heavies on the till tonight.
I walk out to the pit, drums beating, crowd roaring, and see the Flayer standing across from me—green and hot-headed as ever. My vastayan sense of decency kicks in. I tell him all he’s got to do is tell this arena full of people how wrong he was to disrespect me, and we can call off the fight.
He spits on the ground and angrily cracks his whip sword overhead. He ain’t backin’ down.
By the time the pit official waves his scarf, the Flayer is halfway across the floor. He flings his whip sword at me, and before I can react, the shifty little cuss takes off a piece of my cheek. He snaps it a couple more times, coming dangerously close to my throat. Then, while I’m trying to deal with his weird, floppy blade, he nails me in the face with his buckler. I land flat on my back, seeing double.
He draws his whip sword back. We’re not even a minute into this, and already Flayer is going for the kill.
This ain’t happening.
His blade comes lashing at my neck once more, and this time I grab it. With my bare hand. Flayer’s eyes bulge from his dumb green face.
My blood gets pumping. My hair stands on end. I feel a little growl escape from the corner of my mouth. I barely feel the blade cutting into my palm, or the blood running down my forearm, as I stand and pull the Flayer by his sword, yanking him into my other fist.
I repeat the motion a few more times, my brass knuckle-duster chewin’ his face to pulp.
When I finally stop punching, he coughs out a tooth, and tells me I’m making the biggest mistake of my life.
“What’re you doing? I’m your biggest draw,” he says.
“Flayer, you’re losing to a washed-up ex-champ. Who’s going to pay to see you fight now?”
With his last ounce of energy, he hocks a big mouthful of blood into my face—right there in front of the gods and everybody.
I can’t have an arena full of people thinkin’ I’m not the boss.
So I pick the guy up by the throat, and slam him, hard as I can, smashing his greedy fat head deep into the floor of the pit. He twitches for a second, then stops.
The crowd eats it up.

Late that night, I stop by momma’s house, like usual. She’s in bed already, so I quietly leave a nice sack of coin on the dresser and give her a kiss on the forehead.
She wakes, and smiles at the sight of her boy standing there at her bedside. As I touch her cheek, she notices the bandage on my hand—where I grabbed the Flayer’s blade.
“Oh, Settrigh, what happened?” she says, all concerned.
“Nothin’ big. Just cut myself building,” I say.
“What did you build today, son?” she asks.
“An orphanage. For orphans, ma,” I say, as I give her one last kiss goodnight.
“Such a good boy,” she says.
Her eyes tear up as she drifts off to sleep, like she’s proud knowing her son’s making a respectable living.
The Shackles of Belief

Anthony Reynolds

Thorva, Sister of Frost, hauled on her reins, dragging her hulking drüvask to a halt alongside Scarmother Vrynna of the Winter’s Claw. The shaggy-furred beast snorted in protest, hot breath steaming the air.
“Hush, Ice-Tooth,” Thorva said. The bone charms and totems wrapped around her wrist rattled as she patted her ill-tempered mount.
A bone-chilling wind whipped across the desolate landscape, yet alone among the raiding party, Thorva did not wear heavy furs and leathers. Her arms, tattooed with swirling indigo ink, were bare to the elements, but she gave no indication of discomfort, for the cold had long relinquished its claim on her.
The imposing figure of Scarmother Vrynna sat astride another drüvask boar, a tusked behemoth even larger than the one Thorva rode. It snarled and stamped one massive, cloven hoof, eyeing Thorva balefully. A sharp kick from Vrynna silenced it.
The scarmother was a ruthless veteran, her victories many and bloody, but Thorva refused to be overawed. Her name was not yet known across the Freljord like the scarmother’s, but she was a shamanka, one who dreamed the will of the gods, and even the most powerful matriarchs in the Freljord were wise to respect the old faith.
The rest of the Winter’s Claw raiding party had reined in, awaiting their scarmother and shamanka. They’d been traveling at pace for much of the day, heading east, deep into Avarosan territory. This was their first stoppage in hours, and they took the opportunity to slide from their saddles, stretching their backs and shaking out numb legs.
The wind picked up, whipping Thorva with snow and ice.
“A storm is coming in,” she said.
Vrynna, her face riven with old scars, did not reply, and continued to stare southward. Vrynna’s right eye was clouded and blind, and there was a streak of white in her dark hair—whatever had caused her wounds had certainly left its mark. Among the Winter’s Claw, such scars were a source of pride and reverence—the mark of a survivor.
“You see something?” asked Thorva.
Vrynna nodded, and continued staring into the distance.
Thorva narrowed her gaze, but could see little through the worsening weather.
“I see nothing.”
“You have two good eyes, yet you are more blind than I am, girl,” snapped Vrynna.
Frost formed around Thorva’s knuckles as her hands clenched, and her irises turned ice-blue. Nevertheless, she reined in her anger, forcing herself to take a deep breath.
It was clear Scarmother Vrynna, like most of the Winter’s Claw, had little time for her or her beliefs. It likely didn’t help that Thorva had chosen to join this raiding party uninvited. No doubt she thought the shamanka joining them may distract those more inclined to superstition, undermining their purpose and her authority.
In truth, a vague but compelling instinct had urged Thorva to join the raid, despite the scarmother’s initial protests, and she had long ago learned to trust such impulses as a gift. The gods wanted her here, but for what purpose, she knew not.
“There, a mile to the south,” pointed Vrynna. “Near that rocky outcrop. See?”
Thorva nodded, finally. A lone figure could just be made out, little more than a shadow against the snow. How Vrynna had spotted it in the first place was beyond her. Thorva frowned as she felt an itching sensation prickle the back of her neck. There was something strange about whoever this was…
The wind billowed, and the figure was obscured once more, yet the persistent unease Thorva felt remained.
“An Avarosan scout?”
“No,” said Vrynna, shaking her head. “They are trudging straight through a deepening drift. Not even a child of the Freljord would make a mistake like that.”
“An outsider, then. But this far north?”
Scarmother Vrynna shrugged. “The Avarosans do not follow the old ways. They trade with southerners rather than simply taking from them. Perhaps this is one of those traders that has lost their way.”
Vrynna spat, dismissively, and hauled her drüvask around to continue on. The other warriors followed her cue, turning the heavy, tusked heads of their own mounts back along the ridgeline, to the east. Only Thorva remained, staring intently into the storm.
“They might have seen us. If they carry word of our presence, the Avarosans will be ready for us.”
“That fool won’t be telling anything to anyone, except perhaps whatever gods they worship in the Beyond,” Vrynna declared. “This storm is worsening. They will be dead by nightfall. Come, we have lingered long enough.”
Still, there was something that bothered Thorva, and she remained on the edge of the ridge, looking back toward the lone outsider, though she could see barely more than a dozen paces now, at best. Was this why she had been brought here?
“Girl!” snapped Vrynna. “Are you coming?”
Thorva looked at Vrynna, then back south.
“No.”
With a nudge, Thorva directed her drüvask boar down the side of the ridge, allowing herself a satisfied smile as she heard Vrynna curse behind her.

“We go after her, yes?”
It was Brokvar Ironfist who spoke, the massive Iceborn warrior who had been her champion and sometime lover for almost a decade.
“The gods will bring ruin upon our tribe if anything happens to her,” Brokvar added.
If forced to pick just one person in the Freljord to fight at her side, Vrynna would choose Brokvar. Half a head taller than the next biggest warrior under her command, he was strong enough to lift a drüvask off the ground, and utterly dependable. He lived to fight—and he did it well—and he carried the broadsword Winter’s-Wail.
That blade was legend among the Winter’s Claw, and had been passed down between Iceborn for centuries. A shard of unmelting True Ice was embedded in the hilt of Winter’s-Wail, and crackling hoarfrost coated its edge. Anyone who wasn’t an Iceborn who tried to grasp it—Vrynna included—would suffer great pain, even death.
If he had one flaw, it was his superstition. He saw portents and prophecy in everything from the flight patterns of ravens to the splatter of blood in the snow, and much to her distaste, he practically worshipped the ground where the self-righteous shamanka walked. Worse, it seemed as if his overt reverence had rubbed off on the other warriors under her command. She saw several of them nodding agreement, and muttering under their breath.
Against her better judgment, Vrynna signaled, and the raiding party swung around, to follow the Sister of Frost.

Scarmother Vrynna was right about one thing: whoever the lone outsider was, they had less understanding of the Freljord than a child.
Watching their exhausted progress through the deep snow, Thorva knew they would be dead within the hour if she simply turned and rode away. In truth, it was a minor miracle they had made it this far, for they were plainly ill-prepared for the harshness of the tundra, and lacked even the most basic understanding of navigating it safely.
As she came closer, unaffected by the bitter wind whipping across the desolate landscape, she saw them stumble. Time and again the outsider struggled vainly back to their feet, but it was obvious their strength was all but spent.
The outsider seemed oblivious to Thorva’s approach. She was closing the distance from outside the periphery of their vision—coming at them from the flank, and slightly behind them—but not once did they turn.
Thorva scanned her surroundings. If there were any rimefangs or other beasts stalking this outsider, now would be the time to strike. Seeing nothing, she pushed on.
She was close enough now to make out more of the outlander’s appearance. It was a man, she saw now, garbed in leathers and furs, though he did not wear them in the Freljordian manner. Foolishly, he carried no spear, axe, sword, or bow. Thorva shook her head. In the Winter’s Claw, from the time one could walk, they were never without a blade. She herself had other more arcane weapons at her disposal, yet even she had three blades on her at all times.
Stranger still, the outsider dragged a pair of chains behind him, affixed to giant manacles of curious design clamped around his wrists…

It was far too late now, but Sylas of Dregbourne realized he had grossly underestimated the sheer, overwhelming hostility of the Freljordian landscape. He understood there was great magical power here, in the north—and now he was here, he could practically feel it in his bones—but it seemed now that it had been a mistake to come here.
A dozen hand-picked mages had set out with him into the frozen north, but each had fallen, one after another, claimed by blizzards, hidden ravines, and savage beasts. He thought the main threat would have come from the barbarian Freljordians themselves, but so far he had not seen a single living soul in the weeks of travel.
How anyone could live out here was beyond him.
He thought they had prepared well, layering themselves in furs and wool, and loading up the heavy, furred oxen with food, firewood, weapons, and coin to barter with; coin liberated from the coffers and chests of the tax-collectors and nobility of his homeland of Demacia.
Not even the oxen had survived this far, though, and now Sylas walked alone.
Sheer force of will and the burning desire to see the monarchy and noble houses of Demacia fall drove him on.
Already he had fomented considerable resistance within the boundaries of Demacia itself. He’d lit the fires of rebellion, but had realized he needed more fuel to see it truly burn. In his cell in Demacia he had consumed every book, chronicle, and tome he was able to get a hold of, and in several of them there had been references of the great and terrible sorcery and ancient magic far to the north. That was the power he needed. Even now, facing death, he believed the power he sought was close…
Nevertheless, not even his stubbornness was enough to overcome the relentless cold. His hands and toes were already turning black and had long gone numb, and a heavy lethargy hung upon him like a weight, dragging him down.
He thought he had seen a column of riders upon a distant ridge some time back, but he was not sure if that was real, or some fevered delusion brought on by exhaustion and the freezing temperature.
To stop was to die, though, he knew that well enough. He would find this power in the north, or he would be damned.
And so he slogged on, one foot in front of the other… but he made it only a dozen more steps before he fell face-first into the snow, and lay still.
Thorva shook her head as she saw the outsider fall, and urged Ice-Tooth forward. The man didn’t make any move to get up this time. For all she knew, he was dead, finally claimed by the unrelenting elements that she herself no longer felt.
Once she was close, Thorva slid from the saddle, sinking almost to her knees as she landed. She approached the face-down man warily, crunching through the snow.
Again she looked at his bonds, curiously.
If he was an escaped prisoner, where had he escaped from?
While the Winter’s Claw did not take prisoners, they did on occasion take thralls—though one that could not be tamed or beaten into service was just another mouth to feed. Thorva didn’t think even the Avarosans would chain someone in this manner. Could he have escaped from the southlands, over the distant mountains?
Grasping her staff in both hands, she prodded him. Getting no reaction, Thorva drove the base of her staff into the snow underneath the outsider, and tried to lever him onto his front. It was a difficult task, for the immense manacles the man wore covered most of his forearms and were incredibly heavy. Grunting with the effort, she finally managed to turn him over.
He flopped over lifelessly, and his furred hood fell back. His eyes were closed and sunken, and his lips tinged blue. Frost had formed on his brows, lashes, and his unshaven cheeks, and his dark hair, tied back in a loose ponytail, was similarly icy.
Thorva allowed her gaze to be drawn to the shackles around his wrists. The Sister of Frost had traveled widely, the duties of her faith taking her to many different tribes over the years, yet these restraints, made of some unknown pale stone, were unlike anything she had seen before. There was something deeply unsettling about them. It was vaguely uncomfortable even to look upon the chains, and they had clearly been made in such a manner that they were never intended to be removed. What had this stranger done to warrant having such things around his wrists? It must have been a terrible crime, she decided.
Kneeling in the snow at his side, Thorva tried to fathom why she had been guided here. The gods had clearly brought her here—just as they had directed her in the past—but why? The man was still unconscious, if not yet dead. Had she been brought here to save him? Or was it what he brought with him that was important?
Thorva’s gaze returned to the stranger’s bonds. Making her decision, she reached toward one of them.
Before she had even touched the pale stone, her fingertips began to tingle.
The man’s eyes snapped suddenly open.
Thorva jerked back in shock, but she was too slow. The man tore off one of his gloves and grabbed her by the arm, and even as Thorva tried to summon her gods-given power, she felt it ripped out of her, forcibly drained from the core of her being. Her body was stricken with a sudden, incapacitating coldness—a sensation she had not felt in years—and she fell, unable to breathe, unable to move, unable to do anything.
As the cold took her, she dimly registered color returning to the stranger’s face, as if he were suddenly being warmed by a hearth.
A hint of a smile curled his lips.
“Thank you,” he said.
Then he released his grip, and Thorva fell back into the snow with a gasp, empty, and drained.
Vrynna cursed as she saw the shamanka fall, and kicked her drüvask forward.
“With me!” she roared, and the rest of the raiding party lurched into motion. The ground shook beneath their thundering charge, the sound akin to an avalanche.
The outsider was kneeling alongside the Sister of Frost as the Winter’s Claw powered through the snow toward him. Curiously, she saw the man shrug off his fur coat and drape it over the fallen shamanka, the gesture almost tender.
He stood to face the earth-shaking approach of the Winter’s Claw, dragging his chains behind him. Vrynna tightened her grip on her spear.
Seeing the force bearing down on him, the stranger backed away from the fallen shamanka, who lay unmoving and pale upon the snow. He held his hands up to show he bore no weapon, but that didn’t matter to Vrynna. She had killed unarmed enemies in the past.
Without having to give the signal, Vrynna’s warriors fanned out wide to encircle him, cutting off any chance of escape. Wisely, he didn’t try to run. After all, there was nowhere to run to.
He turned on the spot, like the weakest of the herd, isolated by wolves. His gaze darted between the Freljordians arrayed against him. He was wary, yet he showed no sign of fear, which Vrynna could respect, at least.
Having taken off his coat, the outsider’s muscular arms were bare to the elements, but he appeared not to feel the cold at all.
Curious, thought Vrynna.
He was a tall man but he was hunched slightly, the weight of the massive shackles bound to his arms clearly pulling on him.
“See to the Sister,” she ordered, not taking her eyes off the stranger.
The stranger faced her, as one of the raiders slid from his saddle and moved to the shamanka’s side.
“I am Vrynna,” she declared. “Scarmother of the Winter’s Claw. Shieldbreaker. Woebringer. I am the Drüvask’s Howl. Who are you, and why are you here?”
The man cocked his head to one side, responding in a tongue she could not comprehend. Vrynna cursed.
“You don’t understand me, do you?”
Again the man gave her a quizzical look.
“Sylas,” he replied, tapping his chest.
“Sylas?” Vrynna repeated. “That’s your name, Sylas?”
The man simply repeated the word, tapping his chest again, and giving her a rakish smile.
The scarmother muttered under her breath. She glanced over to the shamanka, lying lifeless and pale upon the snow. One of Vrynna’s warriors knelt over Thorva, lowering his head to her chest to see if she was breathing.
“Is she dead?” she called.
“She’s half frozen, but she lives,” came the reply. “At least for now.”
The Freljordian warriors muttered under their breaths. Half frozen? It was known that the Sister of Frost was inured to the cold, claimed to be a gift of the old gods… but now she was freezing, and this stranger to the Freljord, Sylas, stood before them, his skin bare?
Vrynna frowned, considering her options. She didn’t put much faith in anything but steel, fire, and blood, but she knew her warriors—particularly Brokvar—would likely see this as some kind of omen.
“This is a waste of time,” she muttered.
Making her decision, she tightened her grip on her spear,and nudged her mount forward. The man, Sylas, raised a hand and yelled something in his weak, southerner’s tongue, but she ignored him. She would kill this fool, and be on her way.
“Let me do it,” growled Brokvar, riding at the scarmother’s side.
Vrynna’s brow raised.
“He did this to the revered sister,” Brokvar answered her silent question, stabbing a meaty finger toward the fallen shamanka. “It would be my honor to punish him, beneath the eyes of the gods.”
The outsider looked between Vrynna and Brokvar. Did he have any understanding that his fate was about to be determined?
Vrynna shrugged. “He’s yours.”
Brokvar dropped off his mount, rose to his full, towering height. The man, Sylas, was not small, but Brokvar made him look it. The Iceborn unsheathed Winter’s-Wail from the scabbard across his back, and began to walk grimly toward the outsider.

The last time Thorva had truly felt the cold had been when she was a child, not even six winters of age.
She had chased a snow hare out onto a frozen lake, laughing as she went. She had not realized the ice beneath her was so thin until the awful cracking sound, right before it gave way. With a strangled cry, she plunged into the icy, black depths. Such was the shocking suddenness of the bone-chilling cold that all the air was driven from her lungs, and her limbs instantly seized up, stiffening in agonizing cramps.
She’d been dead for long minutes before she was finally hauled out from under the ice and the tribe’s shaman breathed life back into her. She first manifested her gods-given power that night.
“Sometimes, when a person is brought back from the Realm Beyond, they return changed,” the shaman explained, shrugging. “The gods, in their inscrutable wisdom, have blessed you.”
In the days that followed, she had found herself impervious to cold, able to walk through freezing blizzards bare-skinned, with no ill effect.
Now, once again she was that scared little girl she’d been, sinking slowly as the hole in the ice above got further and further away… only this time she was staring up at the sky, unblinking.
Numb and breathless, Thorva lay on the ground, hearing nothing, feeling nothing. The cold infused her. It was her.
Was this the reason she had been brought here? To give her life to the outsider, that he may fulfill whatever it was the gods had decreed?
Nevertheless, an ineffable fear slowed her descent into oblivion.
Even if it were the gods’ will for her to die in the outsider’s place, Thorva knew in her heart that Vrynna would not let him live… and so, she began to fight back toward the surface.

Brokvar Ironfist went straight for the killing blow, charging forward, Winter’s-Wail hissing through the air and trailing icy fog in its wake.
That blow would have split an ice-troll in half had it landed, but the outsider was surprisingly quick given he was weighed down by restraints. He darted back from the lethal strike and whipped his chains around in a whirling arc. They swung passed Brokvar’s face, barely missing the Iceborn warrior as he snarled in fury.
Still, he didn’t reel back, as perhaps the outsider had expected. He was as tough as the mountains and was exceptionally fast for such a big man. He lashed out, striking his opponent across the side of the head with a powerful backhand punch, and Vrynna winced as the smaller man was sent flying.
The outsider struggled to pick himself off the ground as the Iceborn stalked toward him, but finally regained his footing. In truth, Vrynna was impressed that he was able to get up at all. Still, he merely prolonged the inevitable outcome.
His face set in grim resolve, Brokvar closed in for the kill.

Sylas’ gaze narrowed as he focused on the barbarian’s weapon.
The pale ice shard in its hilt was glowing brightly, and crackling hoarfrost covered the blade.
The magic that chunk of ice exuded was unlike anything Sylas had encountered before. It was primal, dangerous, and enfettered. Sylas could feel it on his skin, a frisson of power that was almost intoxicating.
The woman’s power had revived him, driving the cold from his limbs and the blackness from his fingers, but this was a power far older. If he could just get his hands on it…
With a roar, Sylas stepped forward to meet the Freljordian.

The outsider lashed at Brokvar, swinging his chains around in a flurry of arcs. The Iceborn was struck across his head, one chain from each side. The heavy links whipped around, and with a wrench, the Iceborn’s helmet was torn off.
Brokvar shook his long hair loose, spat blood into the snow, and continued his advance.
The chains came around at him again, but the massive warrior was ready this time. He avoided the first of the strikes, before stepping forward and lifting one arm, letting the chain whip around his massive forearm. Then he grabbed the metal links in his vice-like grip, and yanked the smaller man toward him, straight into a swinging elbow.
The blow crumpled the man, and he fell at Brokvar’s feet. The Iceborn towered over him, Winter’s-Wail raised to deliver the killing blow.
“Wait! Do not kill him!” came a shout, and Brokvar paused.
Vrynna whipped her head around, scowling, to see the Sister of Frost, Thorva, rising unsteadily to her feet. She was deathly pale, and her lips blue, but she stomped forward, leaning heavily on her staff of office.
“What madness is this?” Vrynna snarled.
“Not madness,” Thorva said, leaning heavily upon her staff of office. “It is the will of the gods.”

The giant barbarian was momentarily distracted, a look of confusion on his brutish face, and Sylas saw his chance.
Rising to a knee, he lashed out with one of his chains. It whipped around the blade of his opponent, and with a sharp tug, he tore it from the man’s grasp.
It landed in the snow nearby, and Sylas leapt upon it, eagerly.
Grinning, he picked up the broadsword… and agony seared through him.

Vrynna shook her head at the fool. Only an Iceborn could hold a True Ice weapon. For anyone else, it was a death sentence.
The outsider released Winter’s-Wail, roaring as the cold shot up his arm. He dropped to his knees, clutching his arm, even as it began to freeze. The killing power of the True Ice began at his hand, but was steadily working its way down his arm, toward his heart.
“The gods wanted this?” Vrynna scoffed, gesturing at the outsider.
The shamanka scowled, but said nothing.
“But then, the gods are nothing if not fickle and cruel,” added Vrynna, shrugging. “Perhaps they simply wanted him to suffer?”
Brokvar retrieved Winter’s-Wail, hefting it without harm. The outsider stared up at him, anguish and confusion written upon his face as the lethal power of the True Ice consumed him.
“Put him out of his misery,” ordered Vrynna.
Brokvar’s iron gaze shifted to the shamanka, looking for her approval. Anger surged within Vrynna.
“If the gods want him saved, then they can intervene,” she snapped.

Thorva served and venerated the old gods of the Freljord, but she did not claim to know their will. Nor had she often witnessed them intervene directly in mortal matters.
And yet, it seemed impossible that what happened next was purely coincidental.
The outsider was lying on the snowpack, shivering and convulsing. The True Ice had almost claimed him, but he continued to fight it, reaching out one shuddering hand toward the Iceborn warrior.
Thorva knew what the Demacian was capable of, how he had siphoned her power with but one brief touch. She could have warned the Iceborn veteran… but she did not.

Sylas was dying, but even in death his will to keep fighting was strong.
In desperation, he reached out toward the towering barbarian looming above him. He grabbed hold of the warrior’s boot, but the barbarian kicked his clawing hand away.
The bearded giant looked down at him piteously, as one would a wretched dog in the street. It was the same way the nobility looked down on the lesser-born in Demacia, and Sylas’ anger surged.
That anger fueled him, and with a last burst of his dying strength, he sprang off the ground and grasped the Freljordian giant around the throat. Ancient, raw, elemental magic instantly began to infuse him.
Sylas may have been unable to grasp the Freljordian ice-weapon, but he could still draw from its power… using the barbarian’s flesh as its conduit.
It took no more than a moment.
The barbarian staggered back, unsure what had just happened. Sylas smiled, and his eyes began to glow with icy-pale light.
He turned his attention to his frozen arm, holding it before him. With a surge of his newfound power, he made the ice reverse its direction. It crept back down his arm, and then was gone, leaving his flesh unharmed.
Then he turned his attention to the warrior standing aghast before him.
“Now then,” he said. “Where were we?”

Brokvar stepped back away from the outsider, gaping in wonder.
“What is he?” snarled Vrynna. “Iceborn?”
“No,” Thorva interjected, eyes blazing with faith. “He is something else…”
Vrynna had seen enough. In one smooth, well-practiced motion she reversed her grip on her spear, and standing in the saddle, hurled it at the stranger, putting all her might and weight behind it.
It hurtled straight toward him, but the man thrust a hand out, fingers splayed, and the ground before him erupted. Amid a grinding series of cracks, a protective wall of towering ice-spikes surged up from below. Vrynna’s spear slammed deep into the ice, but could not penetrate it. It was left shuddering in place, embedded a solid foot into the barrier, and leaving the outsider completely unharmed.
Vrynna gaped at the magical barrier, even as it collapsed a moment later, falling as quickly as it had appeared.
The outsider stood revealed, laughing and looking in wonder at his hands, now rimmed with frost and radiating pale blue light, like the underside of an iceberg. He looked up at Vrynna, frozen fog emanating from his eyes, and began to gather the primal, frozen power within him once more. A spinning orb of magic, like a self-contained blizzard, began to form between his hands.
The Winter’s Claw fingered their weapons uneasily, unsure of themselves in the face of what was clearly Freljordian magic.
Thorva called out something then, though the words made no sense to Vrynna. She glanced at the shamanka in surprise.
She spoke the outsider’s tongue?
There was much about the Sister of Frost that she did not know, it seemed, and her distrust deepened.

The shamanka and the stranger spoke for a time, while Vrynna watched on, gritting her teeth.
“What does the outsider say?” she snapped, finally losing patience.
“He says we share a common enemy,” Thorva explained. “He says we can help each other.”
Vrynna frowned. “Who? The Avarosans? We raid them, as we always have, but we are not at war.”
“I believe he means his own people. The Demacians, across the mountains.”
“He is a traitor, then?” Vrynna said, “Why would we trust one who would betray his own?”
“The mother of scars would know how you would aid our tribe,” Thorva said, addressing the outsider in his own tongue. “Make your offer, else your soul will journey to the Beyond, here and now.”
Sylas gave his answer, speaking directly to Vrynna. Thorva watched him carefully as he spoke, asking several times for clarifications of words she did not immediately understand.
“He says he knows hidden paths into his homelands, paths known only to him,” said Thorva. “He speaks of the vast riches there, waiting to be claimed. Fields untouched by snow and filled with fat cattle, streets that flow with gold and silver.”
The warriors of the Winter’s Claw smiled and laughed among themselves at her words, and even Vrynna’s eyes lit up. They lived a harsh existence, making the promise of easy pickings a tempting one.
But still some doubt lingered.
“How do we know he would not lead us into a trap?” challenged Vrynna. “We cannot trust him. Better to kill him, here and now, and not be led astray by his golden tongue.”
“He…” Thorva began, picking her lie carefully. “He says he had a vision. A dream that came to him, of three Freljordian sisters. It was they who urged him to come here.”
“The Three!” breathed Brokvar in reverence. “He speaks of Avarosa, Serylda, and Lissandra!”

The other Winter’s Claw warriors murmured in surprise and awe, many of them touching holy totems hanging around their necks.
The Three Sisters were legends, the greatest and most honored warriors of the Freljord. They were the first of the Iceborn, and had lived in the age of heroes, long ago. Across much of the frozen north, they had come to be regarded as chosen ones, and many invoked their wisdom in times of strife, or begged their favor before battle.
Vrynna glared, regarding Thorva sourly. Did the scarmother suspect her lie?
Seeing Brokvar’s rapturous wonder spread through the other gathered warriors, however, she realized it didn’t matter. Thorva had known Vrynna’s Iceborn champion would latch on to those words. That they would inspire his awe and his faith, and that his influence among the other warriors was strong. They would never allow the outsider to be killed out of hand now, no matter what order Vrynna gave.
She allowed herself a slight smile of victory, though she was careful not to let Vrynna see it as she considered the outsider.
It was the gods’ will that this one lived, Thorva felt certain of it. She felt no guilt for lying to ensure that happened.
“He must prove himself before we would even consider trusting him.”
“A wise move, scarmother,” nodded Thorva. “What do you suggest?”
“He will come with us on our raid,” declared Vrynna. “If he fights well, and makes a good account of himself, then perhaps we will hear more of what he proposes. More about these hidden paths into Demacia. But he will be your responsibility. It will be up to you to control him, and if he turns on us, it will be on your head.”
Thorva nodded, and turned to the outsider.
“Fight with us. Prove to the mother of scars your worth,” she said. “Fight strong and you may live to have your alliance.”
Those final words elicited a broad smile from the outsider.
Thorva appraised him, giving him a look from head to toe. He was handsome for a southerner. A little lean for her tastes, but he was clever, and there was power in him.
She leveled a finger at him.
“But never touch me again,” she warned.
The outsider smiled wryly.
“Not without your permission,” he replied, and Thorva turned away so he did not see her smile.
“What does he say?” demanded Vrynna.
“He agrees to your terms, scarmother,” called Thorva.
“Good. Then let us move,” said Vrynna. “We raid.”
Shaco

Most would say that death isn't funny. It isn't, unless you're Shaco - then it's hysterical. He is Valoran's first fully functioning homicidal comic; he jests until someone dies, and then he laughs. The figure that has come to be known as the Demon Jester is an enigma. No one fully agrees from whence he came, and Shaco never offers any details on his own. A popular belief is that Shaco is not of Runeterra - that he is a thing from a dark and twisted world. Still others believe that he is the demonic manifestation of humanity's dark urges and therefore cannot be reasoned with. The most plausible belief is that Shaco is an assassin for hire, left to his own lunatic devices until his services are needed. Shaco certainly has proven himself to be a cunning individual, evading authorities at every turn who might seek him for questioning for some horrendous, law-breaking atrocity. While such scuttlebutt might reassure the native inhabitants of Valoran, it seems unimaginable that such a malevolent figure is allowed to remain at large.
Whatever the truth of his history might be, Shaco is a terrifying, elusive figure most often seen where madness can openly reign.
Shadow and Fortune

Graham McNeill

The Butcher Blades had hung the Jackdaw from a rusted marlinspike through his jawbone and left him for the quayside scavengers. This was the seventeenth murdered ganger the hooded man had seen tonight.
A slow night by Bilgewater's standards.
At least since the Corsair King had fallen.
Red-fanged wharf rats had already eaten most of the hanged man's feet and were perched on stacked kreels to tear at the soft meat of his calves.
The hooded man kept on walking.
“Help. Me.”
The words were wet, squeezed up through a throat clogged with blood. The hooded man spun, hands reaching towards the weapons slung on his wide belt.
Incredibly, the Jackdaw was still alive on the bone-handled spike. The Hooks stuck it deep into the wooden frame of a loading crane. No way to get the Jackdaw down without tearing his skull to splinters.
“Help. Me,” he said again.
The hooded man paused, considering the Jackdaw's request.
“What for?” he said at last. “Even if I get you down from there, you will be dead by morning.”
The Jackdaw carefully lifted his hand to a concealed pocket in his patchwork jerkin and removed a golden Kraken. Even in the dim light, the hooded man saw it was genuine.
The scavengers hissed and raised their hackles as he approached. Wharf rats weren't large, but meat as warm as this wasn't a prize to be surrendered lightly. They bared long, needle-like fangs, spitting diseased gobbets of saliva.
He kicked one rat out over the water. He crushed a second underfoot. They snapped and bit, but nimble footwork kept any from tasting his flesh, his every movement smooth and precise. He killed another three before the rest scattered to the shadows, sullen eyes glaring red in the darkness.
The hooded man stood beside the Jackdaw. His features were hidden, but the light of a rogue’s moon suggested a face that no longer smiled.
“Death is here for you,” he said. “Embrace it, safe in the knowledge I will ensure it is final.”
He reached into his coat and withdrew a glittering spike of silver. Two handspans long and engraved with curling symbols spiraling along its length, it resembled an ornate, leather-worker's awl. He placed the tip under the dying man's chin.
The man's eyes widened and his hand scrabbled at the hooded man's sleeve as he looked out over the vast expanse of ocean. The sea was a black mirror shimmering with the glow of myriad candles, quayside braziers and lamplight warped through salvaged glass from a thousand cliffside-hulks.
“You know what lurks over the horizon,” he said. “You know the horror it brings. And yet you tear at each other like rabid beasts. It makes no sense to me.”
He turned and hammered the heel of his palm against the flattened haft of the awl, driving the spike up into the man's brain. A last corpse rattle and the Jackdaw's pain ended. The gold coin fell from the dead man's fingers and rolled into the ocean with a soft splash.
The man withdrew the spike and wiped it clean on the Jackdaw's ragged shirt. He returned it to the sheath inside his coat and removed a golden needle and a length of silver thread dipped in waters drawn from an Ionian spring.
Working with the skill of one who had performed this service many times before, he sewed the man's eyes and lips shut. As he worked, he spoke words taught to him a lifetime ago, words first ill-spoken by a long dead king.
“Now the dead cannot claim you,” he said as he finished his work and replaced his implements.
“Maybe not, but we ain't leaving empty-handed, sure we ain't,” said a voice behind the hooded man.
He turned and pulled back his hood to reveal skin the color and texture of aged mahogany, cheekbones that were angular and patrician. His dark hair was bound in a long scalp-lock and eyes that had seen horror beyond measure surveyed the newcomers.
Six men. Dressed in aprons of blood-stiffened leather cut to display limbs of corded muscle wrapped with tattooed thorns. Each carried a serrated hook and wore belts hung with a variety of meat-workers’ knives. Petty thugs made bold by the fall of the tyrant who'd ruled Bilgewater with an iron fist. With him gone, the city was in chaos as rival gangs sought to carve out fresh territories.
Their approach hadn’t been stealthy. Hobnailed boots, offal-stench and muttered curses had announced their presence long before they'd revealed themselves.
“I don't mind a coin going to the Bearded Lady, sure I don't,” said the biggest of the Butchers, a man with a gut so prodigious it was a wonder he could get close enough to a carcass to gut it at all. “But one of ours killed Old Knock John there, fair and square, sure they did. So that gold serpent there was ours.”
“Do you want to die here?” asked the man.
The fat man laughed.
“You know who you're talking to?”
“No. Do you?”
“Go on then, tell me so I can carve it on the rock I'll use to sink your bones.”
“My name is Lucian,” he said, whipping back his long frock coat and drawing a pair of pistols wrought of knapped stone and burnished metals unknown to even the most reckless alchemists of Zaun. A bolt of coruscating light punched the fat Butcher from his feet with a scorched hole where his grotesquely swollen heart had been.
Lucian's second pistol was smaller, more finely crafted, and fired a searing line of yellow fire that cut another of the Butchers in half from collarbone to groin.
Like the wharf rats before, they fled, but Lucian picked them off one by one. Each burst of light was a killing shot. In the blink of an eye all six Butchers lay dead.
He sheathed his pistols and pulled the coat back around him. Others would be drawn by the sound and fury of his work, and he had no time to save these men’s souls from what was coming.
Lucian sighed. It had been a mistake to stop for the Jackdaw, but perhaps the man he had once been was not entirely lost. A memory threatened to surface and he shook his head.
“I cannot be him again,” said Lucian.
He isn't strong enough to kill the Chain Warden.
Olaf’s frostscale hauberk was covered in blood and viscera. He grunted as he swung his axe one-handed. Bone sheared and muscle parted before the weapon, its blade quenched on a bed of True Ice deep in the farthest reaches of the Freljord.
Bearing a spitting torch in one hand, he waded through the dripping innards of the Krakenwyrm, hewing deeper with every swing. It had taken him three hours to reach this far; cleaving through its enormous glistening organs and dense bones.
True, the beast was already dead, skewered a week ago after a month’s long chase down from the north. Over thirty harpoons cast by strong arms and broad backs from the deck of Winter's Kiss pierced its scaled hide, but it had been Olaf's spear that finally ended its fight.
Killing the beast in the heart of a churning storm outside Bilgewater had been exhilarating, and for one brief moment – as the ship heeled over and almost tossed him into the beast's maw – he'd thought this might be the moment he would achieve the glorious death he sought.
But then Svarfell the helmsman, curse his mighty shoulder, centered the rudder to right the ship.
And, sadly, Olaf had lived. Another day closer to the terror of dying peacefully in his bed as a greybearded ancient.
They'd berthed in Bilgewater, hoping to sell the carcass and strip it of battle trophies; vast teeth, black blood that burned like oil, and titanic rib-bones fit to roof his mother’s hall.
His fellow tribesmen, exhausted from the hunt, were sleeping aboard Winter's Kiss, but Olaf, ever impatient, could not rest. Instead, he took up his glittering axe and set to work in dismembering the colossal monster.
Finally he saw the beast’s inner maw, a ribbed gullet large enough to swallow a clan whole or crush a thirty-oar Longreaver in a single bite. Its teeth were chiseled fangs like obsidian boulders.
Olaf nodded. “Yah. Fit to ring a hearth circle of the wind-walkers and the readers of bones and ash.”
He jammed the spiked base of the torch into the meat of the Krakenwyrm’s flesh and set to work, hacking at the jawbone until a tooth came loose. Hooking the axe to his belt, Olaf lifted it clear and set it upon his shoulder, grunting at the enormous weight.
“Like a Frost Troll gathering ice for his lair,” he said, making his way out of the beast’s innards, wading knee-deep in blood and caustic digestive juices.
Eventually he emerged from the giant wound in the Krakenwyrm’s rear and drew in a lungful of slightly fresher air. Even after the innards of the beast, Bilgewater was a rank soup of smoke and sweat and dead things. Its air was heavy with the smell of too many people living packed together like swine in a midden.
He spat a rank mouthful and said, “The sooner I am in the north the better.”
The air of the Freljord was so sharp it could cut you to the bone. Every breath here tasted of rancid milk and spoiled meat.
“Hey!” shouted a voice over the water.
Olaf squinted through the gloom, seeing a lone fisherman rowing out to sea beyond a line of floating water markers hung with dead birds and bells.
“That beast just shit you out?” shouted the fisherman.
Olaf nodded and said, “I had no gold to pay passage on a ship, so I let it swallow me in the Freljord and bear me south.”
The fisherman grinned and drank from a cracked bottle of blue glass. “I’d sit and listen to that tall tale, right enough!”
“Come to the Winter’s Kiss and ask for Olaf,” he shouted. “We’ll share a keg of Gravöl and honor the beast with songs of doom.”
The air around the White Wharf usually smelled of gull-crap and rotten fish. Today it tasted of scorched meat and woodsmoke, a flavor with which Miss Fortune was coming to associate with ever more of Gangplank’s men dying. Ash darkened the sky and reeking fumes drifted westwards from burning vats of rendered leviathan blubber on the Slaughter Docks. Miss Fortune's mouth felt greasy, and she spat onto the crooked timbers of the wharf. The water below was scummed with residue expelled by the thousands of corpses sunk beneath the water over the years.
“You and your men had a busy night,” she said, nodding toward the smoke rising from the western cliffs.
“Aye, that we did,” agreed Rafen. “Plenty more of Gangplank’s men going under today.”
“How many did you get?” asked Miss Fortune.
“Another ten of his Cragside lads,” said Rafen. “And the Boneyard Scallys won’t be bothering us again.”
Miss Fortune nodded in approval and turned to look at the ornate bronze cannon laid on the quayside.
Jackknife Byrne lay inside the barrel, finally dead from the gutshot he'd taken on the day everything changed; the day the Dead Pool exploded in full view of Bilgewater.
A gunshot meant for her.
Now it was time for Byrne to go down among the dead men and she owed it to him to be there to see him go under. Around two hundred men and women had come to pay their respects; her own lieutenants, Byrne's old gang members, and strangers she thought might be former crewmen or curious gawkers hoping to see the woman who'd brought down Gangplank.
Byrne said he'd once run his own ship, a two-masted brigantine that was the terror of the Noxian coast, but she only had his word for that. Maybe that was true, maybe it wasn't, but in Bilgewater, more often than not the truth was far stranger than any tale spun by the city’s many chanty-men.
“I see you got them fighting each other out on the Slaughter Docks as well,” said Miss Fortune, brushing particles of ash from her lapels. Long red hair spilled from beneath a tricorn hat and gathered on the shoulders of her formal frock coat.
“Yeah, wasn’t hard to turn the Rat Town Dogs and Wharf Kings against each other,” said Rafen. “Ven Gallar's always had his eye on that patch. Says Travyn's boys took it from his old man a decade ago.”
“That true?”
“Who knows?” said Rafen. “Don’t matter, no-how. Gallar would say anything to get control of that part of the docks. I just helped him along.”
“Not much left to control over there now.”
“No,” agreed Rafen with a grin. “They pretty much killed the hell out of each other. Don't reckon we'll get trouble from either of them gangs any time soon.”
“Another week like this and there won't be any of Gangplank’s people left alive.”
Rafen gave her a strange look and Miss Fortune pretended not to notice.
“Come on, let's get Byrne sunk,” said Miss Fortune.
They walked over to the cannon, ready to roll it into the sea. A forest of wooden markers dotted the scummed surface of the water, ranging from simple wooden discs to elaborate sculptures of sea wyrms.
“Anyone want to say anything?” said Miss Fortune.
Nobody did, and she nodded to Rafen, but before they could tip the cannon into the water, a booming voice echoed over the wharf.
“I bring words for him.”
Miss Fortune turned to see a giant of a woman clad in colorful robes and acres of fabric striding down the docks towards them. A posse of tattooed menfolk accompanied her; a dozen youths armed with tooth-bladed spears, wide-mouthed pistols and hooked clubs. They swaggered like the cocksure gangers they were, standing with their priestess like they owned the docks.
“Seven hells, what's she doing here?”
“Did Illaoi know Byrne?”
“No. She knows me,” said Miss Fortune. “I heard that her and Gangplank used to...you know?”
“Really?”
“So the scuttlebutt goes.”
“By the Bearded Lady, no wonder Okao's men have been giving us such a hard time these last few weeks.”
Illaoi carried a heavy stone sphere that looked as if it weighed about as much as the Syren's anchor. The towering priestess carried it everywhere she went, and Miss Fortune assumed it was some kind of totem. What everyone else called the Bearded Lady, they called something virtually unpronounceable.
Illaoi produced a peeled mango from somewhere and took a bite. She noisily chewed the fruit with her mouth open and looked down the barrel of the cannon.
“A Bilgewater man deserves a blessing of Nagakabouros, yes?”
“Why not?” said Miss Fortune. “He's going down to meet the goddess, after all.”
“Nagakabouros doesn't live in the depths,” said Illaoi. “Only foolish paylangi think that. Nagakabouros is in everything we do that moves us along our path.”
“Yeah, how stupid of me,” said Miss Fortune.
Illaoi spat the fibrous mango pit into the water and swung the stone idol around like a giant cannonball, holding it up in front of Miss Fortune.
“You're not stupid, Sarah,” said Illaoi with a laugh. “But you don't even know what you are, what you've done.”
“Why are you really here, Illaoi? Is this about him?”
“Ha! Not even a little bit,” snorted Illaoi. “My life is for Nagakabouros. A god or a man? What choice is that?”
“None at all,” said Miss Fortune. “Bad luck for Gangplank.”
Illaoi grinned, exposing a mouthful of pulped mango.
“You're not wrong,” she said with a slow nod, “but you still don't hear. You let a razor-eel off the hook and you ought to stamp on its neck and walk away before it sinks its fangs into you. Then your motion will be gone forever.”
“What does that mean?”
“Come and see me when you figure it out,” said Illaoi, holding out her hand. Nestled in her palm was a pendant of pink coral arranged in a series of curves radiating from a central hub like a single, unblinking eye.
“Take it,” said Illaoi.
“What is it?”
“A token of Nagakabouros to guide you when you’re lost.”
“What is it really?”
“Nothing more than I say.”
Miss Fortune hesitated, but too many people were gathered for her to openly offend a priestess of the Bearded Lady by refusing her gift. She took the pendant and removed her tricorn to loop the leather thong around her neck.
Illaoi leaned in to whisper.
“I don’t think you're stupid,” she said. “Prove me right.”
“Why do I care what you think?” said Miss Fortune.
“Because a storm is coming,” said Illaoi, nodding at something over Miss Fortune's shoulder. “You know the one, so you best be ready to turn your prow into the waves.”
She turned and kicked Byrne's cannon from the dock. It splashed down hard and sank in a froth of bubbles before the fatty surface residue reformed, leaving only its bobbing marker cross to indicate who was below.
The priestess of the Bearded Lady marched back the way she had come, towards her temple in the cliff-crater, and Miss Fortune turned her gaze out to sea.
A storm was brewing way out in the deep ocean, but that wasn't where Illaoi had been looking.
She'd been looking towards the Shadow Isles.
Nobody ever fished Bilgewater Bay at night.

Piet knew why, of course; he’d known these waters all his life. The currents were treacherous, hull-splitting rocks lurked just below the surface, and the seabed was littered with the wrecks of ships whose captains had not accorded the sea its proper respect. But, more importantly, everyone knew the spirits of those drowned at sea were lonely and wanted others to join them.

Piet knew all this, but still needed to feed his family.

With Captain Jerimiad’s ship burned to cinders in the crossfire between Gangplank and Miss Fortune, Piet had no work and no coin to pay for food.

He’d drunk half a bottle of Scuttler’s Scrumpy just to pluck up the courage to push his boat out onto the water tonight, and the prospect of sharing a drink with the giant Freljordian helped steady his nerves.

Piet took another slug from the bottle, tugging the scruff of hair on his chin, then pouring a measure over the side to honor the Bearded Lady.

Warmed and numbed by the liquor, Piet rowed past the warning buoys and their dead birds until he came to a stretch of ocean where he’d had some luck the previous night. Jeremiad always said he had a nose for where the fish were biting, and he had a feeling they’d be gathering where the remains of the Dead Pool had drifted.

Piet pulled in the oars and stowed them before finishing off the Scrumpy. Then, making sure to leave a last mouthful in the bottle, he tossed it out to sea. With tired, drink-addled fingers he baited his hooks with grubs he’d scooped from a dead man’s eye and tied his lines to the gunwale cleats.

He closed his eyes and bent over the side of the boat, placing both hands in the water.

“Nagakabouros,” he said, hoping that using the natives’ name for the Bearded Lady might grant him a bit of luck, “I ain’t asking for much. Please help this poor fisherman and spare him a few morsels from your larder. Watch over me and keep me safe. And if I die in your embrace, keep me down among the dead men.”

Piet opened his eyes.

A pale face stared back at him, wavering just below the surface. It shimmered with cold, lifeless light.

He cried out and jerked back into his boat as, one by one, his fishing lines were pulled taut. They spun his boat around as thin coils of mist rose from the water. The mist thickened swiftly and soon the light from Bilgewater’s cliffs was lost to the darkness as coal-dark fog rolled in from the sea.

A cacophony of once-dead birds squawked from the warning markers, followed by the clamor of bells as their convulsing bodies swung the buoys back and forth.

The black mist...

Piet scrambled for his oars, fumbling in terror to fit them to the rowlocks. The mist was numbingly cold, and lines of necrotic black threaded his skin at its touch. He wept as the grave’s chill frosted his spine.

“Bearded Lady, Mother Below, Nagakabouros,” he sobbed. “Please guide me home. Please, this I beg of-”

Piet never finished his plea.

A pair of hook-headed chains erupted from his chest, droplets of vividly red blood streaming from their tips. A third hook punched through his belly, another his throat. A fifth and sixth gouged his palms and pulled them down hard, pinning Piet to his boat.

Agony surged through him and he screamed as a figure of purest malice emerged from the black mist. Emerald fire haloed its horned skull, and sockets gouged by vengeful spirits burned as they savored his pain.

The dead spirit was robed in ancient black vestments, and rusted keys scraped at its side. A chained corpse-lantern moaned and swayed with monstrous appetite from its clenched fist.

The glass of the infernal lantern opened to receive him, and Piet felt his spirit tear loose from the warmth of his flesh. The wails of tortured souls shrieked from its depths, maddened by their unending purgatory. Piet fought to keep his spirit within his body, but a spectral blade scythed and his time in the world was ended as the glass of the lantern snapped shut.

“A wretched soul you are,” said the reaper of his life, its voice like gravel on a tombstone. “But only the first to be claimed by Thresh this night.”

The black mist rippled, and the silhouettes of malefic spirits, howling wraiths and ghostly horsemen swelled within.

The darkness boiled across the sea and swept onto land.

And the lights in Bilgewater started to go out.
Miss Fortune snapped the barrels of her pistols shut and laid them down on the table next to her short-bladed sword. Scores of frantic bells and shouts of alarm echoed from the panicked city below; she knew well what they signified.
The Harrowing.
In defiance of the incoming storm, she’d kept the shuttered windows of her newly-acquired villa open, daring the dead to come for her. Muttering winds carried their hunger and a cold that settled bone-deep.
Perched high on Bilgewater’s eastern cliffs, the villa had once belonged to a hated gang leader. In the chaos of Gangplank’s fall, he’d been dragged from his bed and had his brains bashed out on the cobbles.
Now it belonged to Miss Fortune, and she’d be damned if she’d go the same way. She reached up and ran a fingertip around the curves of the pendant Illaoi had given her at Byrne’s sinking. The coral was warm to the touch, and though she didn’t truly believe in what it represented, it was a pretty enough bauble.
The door to her chamber opened and she let the pendant drop.
She knew who was behind her without turning. Only one man would dare enter without knocking.
“What are you doing?” asked Rafen.
“What does it look like I’m doing?”
“Like you’re about to do something damned stupid.”
“Stupid?” said Miss Fortune, placing her hands on the table. “We shed blood and lost good people to bring down Gangplank. I’m not going to let the Harrowing just-”
“Just what?”
“Take this place from me,” she snapped lifting her pistols and jamming them into their custom tooled hip-scabbards. “And you’re not going to stop me.”
“We’re not here to stop you.”
Miss Fortune turned to see Rafen at the threshold of her chambers. A score of her best fighters waited in the vestibule beyond, armed to the teeth with a mixture of muskets, wheel-lock pistols, clanking bundles of clay splinter-bombs and cutlasses that looked like they’d been looted from a museum.
“Looks like you’re about to do something damned stupid as well,” she said.
“Aye,” agreed Rafen, walking over to the open window and slamming the shutters closed. “You really think we’d let our captain go out to face that alone?”
“I almost died bringing Gangplank down, and I’m not done yet. I don’t expect you to go with me, not tonight,” said Miss Fortune coming to stand before her men and resting her hands on the carved walnut grips of her guns. “This isn’t your fight.”
“Course it bloody is,” said Rafen.
Miss Fortune took a breath and nodded.
“There’s every chance we won’t live to see morning,” she said, unable to keep the hint of a smile tugging at her lip.
“This ain’t our first Harrowing together, Captain,” said Rafen, tapping the skull pommel of his sword. “And I’ll be damned if it’s our last.”
Olaf was in sight of the Winter’s Kiss when he heard the screams. He ignored them at first – screams were nothing new in Bilgewater – but then he saw men and women running from the quayside in terror, and his interest was piqued.
They scrambled from their boats and fled for the crooked streets as fast as they could. They didn’t look back and they didn’t stop, not even when a shipmate tripped or fell into the water.
Olaf had seen men run from battle, but this was something else. This was naked terror, the kind he’d only ever seen etched on the frozen corpses spat out by glaciers where the Ice Witch was said to dwell.
Shutters were slamming shut all across the wharf and the strange symbols he’d seen on every door were frantically being dusted with white powder. Enormous winches were lifting timber structures formed from bolted-together hulls of ships high up the cliffs.
He recognized a tavern-keeper who ran a drinking den where the beer was only slightly stronger than troll piss and waved to him.
“What’s going on?” shouted Olaf.
The tavern-keeper shook his head and pointed to the ocean before slamming his door. Olaf set the Krakenwyrm’s tooth on the stone wharf and turned to see what all the fuss was about.
At first he thought a storm was coming in, but it was just thick black sea fog, albeit fog that approached with unnatural speed and fluid motion.
“Ah, now,” he said, unhooking his axe from his belt. “This looks promising.”
The feel of the weapon’s battle-worn leather grip was pleasing in his callused palm as he passed it from hand to hand, rolling his shoulders to loosen the muscles.
The black mist swept over the farthest ships and Olaf’s eyes widened as he saw spirits plucked from the blackest nightmares writhing in the mist. A towering dreadknight, a monstrous chimera of warhorse and man, led them alongside a black-clad reaper limned in green fire. These lords of the dead left the spirit host to their sport on the quayside as they flew into Bilgewater proper with predatory speed.
Olaf had heard the natives speak in hushed whispers of something called the Harrowing, a time of doom and darkness, but hadn’t expected to be lucky enough to face it axe in hand.
The host of the dead tore into the wallowing galleys, merchantmen, and corsair ships with claw and fang, ripping them apart like an ursine with its snout in a fresh kill. Sailcloth tore and rigging lines snapped as easily as rotten sinew. Heavy masts splintered as boats were tossed into one another and smashed to kindling.
A host of screaming wraiths flew into the Winter’s Kiss and Olaf roared in anger as the Longreaver’s keel heaved and split, its timbers freezing solid in a heartbeat. The boat sank as swiftly as if its hold were filled with rocks, and Olaf saw his fellow Freljordians dragged below the water by creatures with cadaverous limbs and fish-hooked mouths.
“Olaf will make you wish you had stayed dead!” he yelled as he charged along the wharf.
Spirits boiled up from the ocean, icy claws slashing towards him. Olaf’s axe sang out, cleaving a glittering arc through the host. The dead screeched as his blade sundered them, its True Ice edge more lethal than any enchantment.
They howled as they died a second time and Olaf sang the song he’d written for the moment of his death with lusty vigor. The words were simple, but the equal of any saga told by the wandering poets of the ice. How long had he waited to sing these words? How often had he feared he might never get the chance?
A shimmering mist of snapping jaws swarmed him, specters and things of mist. Webs of frost patterned his hauberk and the deathly touch of voracious spirits burned his skin.
But Olaf’s heart was mighty and it fired his blood to heights of fury unknown to all but the berserker. He shrugged off the pain of the wraith touch, feeling reason recede and fury build.
Crimson froth built at the corners of his mouth as he bit the inside of his cheeks raw. He roared and swung his axe like a madman, caring nothing for pain, only that he slew his enemies.
That they were dead already meant nothing to him.
Olaf drew his axe back, ready to strike another blow, when a deafening crash of splintering columns and roof beams erupted behind him. He spun to face this new foe as a blizzard of smashed wood and stone cascaded onto the quayside. Bladed shards sliced his face and fist-sized chunks of stone pummeled his arms raw. Rendered fats and animal fluids fell in a rank drizzle as a horrendous groaning issued from the black mist.
Then he saw it.
The spirit of the Krakenwyrm arose from the remains of the Slaughter Dock. Titanic and filled with fury, its ghostly tentacles lifted into the air and smashed down like thunderbolts hurled by a wrathful god. An entire street was smashed to ruin in the blink of an eye and Olaf’s berserker fury surged as he finally beheld a foe worthy of claiming his life.
Olaf raised his axe in salute of his killer.
“Ya beauty!” he yelled and charged to his doom.
The woman was beautiful, with wide, almond shaped eyes, full lips and the high cheekbones common to Demacia. The portrait in the locket was a miniature masterpiece, but it failed to capture the depth of Senna’s strength and determination.
He rarely looked at her picture, knowing that to carry his grief too close to his heart made him weak. Grief was a chink in his armor. Lucian could not allow himself to truly feel her loss, so he snapped the locket shut. He knew he should bury it in the sand of this cave beneath the cliffs, but could not put her memory below the earth as he had her body.
He would shut the grief away until Thresh was destroyed and Senna’s death avenged.
Then, and only then, would Lucian mourn his lost wife with tears and offerings to the Veiled Lady.
How long had it been since that terrible night?
He felt the bottomless abyss of sorrow lurking in ambush and viciously suppressed it as he had so many times before. He drew on the teachings of his order, repeating the mantras he and Senna had been taught to close themselves off from emotion. Only then could he reach a place of equilibrium that would allow him to face deathly horrors beyond imagining.
The grief ebbed slowly, but it remained.
He’d opened the locket only reluctantly, feeling a growing distance between himself and Senna’s memory. He found he could no longer recall the exact sweep of her jawline, the smoothness of her skin or the precise color of her eyes.
The longer his hunt went on, the further away she felt.
Lucian lifted his head, letting the breath ease from his lungs, forcing his heartbeat to slow.
The walls of the cave were pale limestone, gouged from the cliffs upon which Bilgewater was built. The motion of water and the stone picks of the natives had crafted a labyrinth beneath the city few knew of or even suspected existed. The pale rock walls were etched with looping spirals, rippling waves and things that might have been unblinking eyes.
He’d learned these were symbols of the native religion, but whoever had carved them had not visited this place in many years. He’d found it by following the secret symbols of his own order, symbols that would guide him to places of refuge and succor in any city of Valoran.
Only dim reflections of light shimmered on the roof of the cave, but as his eyes followed the spiral of carvings, a shimmering radiance spread from his palm.
Let me be your shield.
Lucian looked down, the memory of her words as clear as though she stood next to him.
The locket glistened with lambent green flame.
He looped the chain of the locket around his neck and swept up his twin relic pistols.
“Thresh,” he whispered.
Bilgewater’s streets were deserted. The bells from the ocean were still ringing and cries of terror echoed from below. Rat Town was completely covered by the Black Mist, and howling storms raged over Port Mourn’s desolation. Fires burned all along Butcher’s Bridge and a shimmering fog clung to the cliffs above the Grey Harbor.
The people in the upper reaches of the city hid in their homes and prayed to the Bearded Lady that the Harrowing would pass them by, that grief would fall upon some other poor unfortunate.
Warding candles of ambergris burned in every window, shimmering through bottle green sea-glass. Burning roots of Empress of the Dark Forest hung from doors, shutters and nailed up planks.
“People really believe in the Empress?” asked Miss Fortune.
Rafen shrugged, his mouth a thin line and the creases around his eyes pulled tight as he searched the gathering mist for threats. He pulled out a smoldering length of identical root from beneath his shirt.
“It’s all about where you place your faith, isn’t it?”
Miss Fortune drew her pistols.
“I have faith in these and in us,” she said. “What else are you carrying?”
“This cutlass has kept me safe through six Harrowings,” he said, tapping its pommel again. “I offered up a bottle of ten year old rum to the Bearded Lady and this knife here was sold to me by a man who swore its edge was purest sunsteel.”
Miss Fortune glanced at the scabbarded knife, certain without even seeing the blade that Rafen had been swindled. The workmanship around the quillons was too poor to be Demacian, but she wasn’t about to tell him that.
“What about you?” he asked.
Miss Fortune patted her pouch of pistol shot.
“Every one’s been dipped in Myron’s Dark,” she said, loud enough for every one of her thirty-strong company to hear. “If the dead want a fight, we’ll meet them with spirits of our own.”
The oppressive gloom made it hard to laugh, but she saw a few smiles and that was about as much as she could expect on a night like this.
She turned and pushed down into Bilgewater, descending crooked stairs cut into the rock of the cliffs, crossing secret bridges of half-rotted rope and threading forgotten alleys that hadn’t known the tread of feet in years.
She brought them out into a wide square on one of the floating wharf-shanties, where swaying dwellings leaned together as though their twisted eaves whispered to one another. Every façade was a mishmash of driftwood, and patterns of frost clung to the skewed timbers. Frozen winds blew through the patchwork dwellings, freighted with sobs and screams from afar. Flaming braziers hung from hundreds of mast-lines strung between buildings, smoking with strange herbs. Pools of water rippled with reflections of things that weren’t there.
Most days this was a thriving marketplace, packed to the gunwales with stalls, rattling meat-vendors, drink-hawkers, merchants, pirates, bounty hunters and surly flotsam washed in from every corner of the world. Just about everywhere in Bilgewater had a view of this place, which was just how Miss Fortune wanted it.
Mist clung to every outcropping of timber.
Discarded figureheads wept frozen tears.
Mist and shadows gathered.
“Cutpurse Square?” said Rafen. “How did we get here? I ran this place as a wharf-snipe. Thought I knew every way in and out like any good little thief.”
“Not every way,” said Miss Fortune.
The counting houses on either side were silent and dark, and she resisted the impulse to look through the torn sheets of flapping canvas nailed over porthole windows.
“How do you know these routes and I don’t?”
“Lady Bilgewater and I are two of a kind,” said Miss Fortune, her gaze narrowing as black mist seeped into the square. “She whispers her secrets to me like an old friend, so I know her every hidden wynd and jitty like you never will.”
Rafen grunted as they spread into the empty square.
“What next?”
“We wait,” said Miss Fortune as they reached the center of the square, feeling terribly exposed.
The black mist twitched with things moving in its depths.
A disembodied skull of ghostly light stretched from the darkness, empty-eyed and with sharpened teeth. Its jaw stretched wider than any natural bone structure would allow and a keening wail built in its gullet.
Miss Fortune’s bullets punched through each of its eye-sockets and the skull vanished with a shriek of frustration. She twisted the wheel-lock on each pistol and ingenious mechanisms within reloaded each one.
For a moment, all was silent.
Then the black mist erupted in a screeching howl as the spirits of the dead surged into the square.
For the second time this evening, Olaf cut his way inside the dead Krakenwyrm. He wielded his axe like a crazed woodsman, hewing left and right with gleeful abandon. The beast’s vast limbs were insubstantial as mist, yet the ice of his blade clove them like flesh.
Tentacles flailed and slammed down on the stone of the wharf, but Olaf was fast for a big man. Slow warriors didn’t survive in the Freljord. He rolled and slashed with his axe, severing a suckered length of limb that faded from existence as it was parted from the monster’s body.
Even in the grip of the red shroud, Olaf saw the creature’s skull in the thrashing chaos of phantom limbs surrounding him.
Its eyes were afire with the enraged spirit of its life.
A moment of sublime connection passed between them.
The beast’s soul knew him.
Olaf laughed with joy.
“You see the taker of your life and we are now bonded in death!” he roared. “Mayhap if you kill me, we shall battle forever in the realms beyond mortal ken.”
The prospect of eternal war against so mighty a foe poured fresh strength into Olaf’s aching muscles. He charged towards the creature’s maw, caring nothing for his pain as each brush with the Krakenwyrm’s tentacles burned his skin worse than the splinter-winds of the Lokfar coast.
He leapt into the air, axe aloft.
He looked glorious death in the face.
A tentacle whipped out and lashed around his thigh.
It swung him around in a dizzying arc, lifting him high into the air.
“Come then!” bellowed Olaf, punching his axe skyward in salute of their shared destiny. “Unto death!”
A wraith-creature with grasping talons and a mouth of icy fangs lunged from the swirling mass of spirits. Miss Fortune put a bullet through its face and it vanished like smoke in a gale.
A second shot and another spirit vanished.
She grinned through her fear as she spun into cover behind a weather-worn stone bollard of the River King to reload. On impulse, she leaned over and gave his toothy grin a kiss.
It’s all about where you place your faith.
Gods, bullets or her own skill?
The grin fell from her face as one of the pistols jammed with a grinding crunch of metal. Her mother’s admonishing words arose from the dark recesses of memory.
“That’s what you get when someone else mixes your powder, Sarah,” she said, holstering the gun and sliding her sword from its sheath. She’d looted it from the captain of a Demacian galiot running north up the Shuriman rust-coast, and it was as fine an example of the artificer’s art as any she’d seen.
Miss Fortune spun from cover, firing her loaded pistol and slashing her sword through the mist creatures. Her shot plucked another specter from the air and her sword’s edge bit as if cutting flesh and bone. Did the spirits of the dead have a physical component to them that could be hurt? It seemed unlikely, but she was wounding something inside them.
She didn’t have time to think too hard on the matter and suspected that whatever power she’d tapped into would be undone if she did.
Men and women screamed as the howling storm of dead spirits filled Cutpurse Square, slashing with claws that froze their blood or reached into chests and sundered hearts with terror. Seven were dead, maybe more, their souls wrenched from their fallen corpses to turn on their comrades. Her heroic band fought with blades and muskets, shouting the name of the Bearded Lady, their loved ones, and even heathen gods of faraway lands.
Whatever works, thought Miss Fortune.
Rafen was down on one knee, his face ashen, breathing like a wharfside doxy after a long shift. Scraps of mist clung to him like cobwebs and the smoldering root around his neck burned with a fierce cherry red glow.
“On your feet, this fight isn’t done!” she said.
“Don’t tell me the fight’s not done,” he snapped, pushing himself to his feet. “I’ve been through more Harrowings than you could wrap a dead rat’s tail around.”
Before Miss Fortune could ask exactly what that meant, he leaned to the side and fired his pistol at something behind her. A conjoined spirit of wolf and bat screeched as it was banished, and Miss Fortune returned the favor as a spirit form of grasping hooks and snapping fangs lunged at her second in command.
“Everyone down!” shouted Miss Fortune, plucking a pair of splinter bombs from her belt and lobbing them into the howling mist.
They detonated in a deafening explosion of fire and smoke. Wood splinters and fragments of stone ricocheted. Broken glass fell in a glittering rain of daggers. Acrid fog filled the square, but it was man-made and entirely bereft of spirits.
Rafen shook his head and worked a finger in his ear.
“What was in that bomb?”
“Black Powder mixed with essence of copal and rue,” said Miss Fortune. “One from my special stash.”
“And stuff like that works against the dead?”
“My mother believed in it,” she said.
“Good enough for me,” said Rafen. “You know, we might just make it through-”
“Don’t say it,” warned Miss Fortune.
The mist began coalescing throughout the square, first in thin tendrils and wisps, then in glowing outlines of monsters; things with conjoined legs, fang-filled jaws, and arms that ended in hooks or pincers. The spirits they thought they’d killed.
Reforming, returning.
What was it folk said about plans and the contents of a privy?
“Turns out the dead are pretty hard to kill,” said Miss Fortune, trying not to let her fear show.
She’d been naïve to think petty trinkets and blind faith were enough to face the spirits of the dead. She’d wanted to show the people of Bilgewater they didn’t need Gangplank, that they could forge their own destiny.
Instead, she was going to get herself killed and leave the city to be torn apart.
A bass rumble rolled through the square. Then another.
Percussive thunder strikes, rising in a stalking storm.
It grew to become pounding hammerblows upon an anvil. Faster and louder until the ground shook with its violence.
“What in the nine deeps is that?” said Rafen.
“I don’t know,” said Miss Fortune as the outline of a spectral horseman in midnight plate emerged from the mist. He sat atop a strangely proportioned warhorse and his helm was worked in the form of a snarling demon.
“A dread knight,” said Miss Fortune.
Rafen shook his head, his face drained of color.
“That’s no knight,” he said. “That’s the Shadow of War…”
Paralyzing terror rippled through Miss Fortune’s company at the mention of this eternal nightmare of killing rage and endless fury.
The Shadow of War.
His name was once Hecarim, but no one knew if that were true or some ancient taleteller’s invention. Only fools dared recite his dark legend around the hearthfire, and even then only after enough rum to sink a Noxian war-barque.
As the Shadow of War emerged further from the mist, Miss Fortune saw he was no mere horseman. Cold dread settled upon her like a shroud at the sight of the monstrous creature.
Perhaps Hecarim had once been a knight, man and horse separate entities. But rider and mount were now one, a single, towering behemoth whose only purpose was destruction.
“They’re all around us,” said a voice.
Miss Fortune risked looking away from the armored centaur to see a whole host of ghostly knights, their outlines lambent with pellucid green radiance. They leveled lances or drew swords of dark radiance. Hecarim swept out a hooked and terrible glaive, its killing edge erupting with green fire.
“You know any secret ways out of here?” asked Rafen.
“No,” said Miss Fortune. “I want to fight that bastard.”
“You want to fight the Shadow of War?”
Before Miss Fortune could answer, a hooded figure leapt from the rooftop of a grain store and dropped into the square. He landed gracefully, a storm coat of worn leather splayed behind him. He carried two pistols, but they were like no weapons Miss Fortune had ever seen on her mother’s gun-table; bronzed metalwork braced around hunks of what looked like carved stone.
Light filled the square as he loosed searing bolts from each pistol in a fusillade that put the destruction of the Dead Pool to shame. The man turned in a tight spiral, marking targets and picking them off with whip-fast motion. The mist burned where his bolts struck, and the ghostly wraiths screeched as they were consumed.
The mist withdrew from Cutpurse Square, taking Hecarim and the death knights with it. Something told Miss Fortune this was but a temporary respite.
The man holstered his pistols and turned to look at Miss Fortune, throwing back his hood to reveal darkly handsome features with haunted eyes.
“The thing about shadows,” he said. “Bring enough light and they disappear.”
Olaf was not happy with this doom.
He hoped men would speak of his epic battle with the Krakenwyrm, not this ignoble fall to his death.
He hoped someone might have seen him charge the sea beast.
He prayed at least one observer had seen him lifted high into the air by its ghostly tentacle, then fled before seeing him hurled away like an unworthy morsel.
Olaf crashed down through the roof of a building bolted to the side of the cliff. Maybe it was a ship’s hull? He fell too fast to make it out. Crashing timbers and earthenware tumbled with him in his headlong plunge through the building. He glimpsed astonished, shouting faces flash past him.
Olaf smashed through a floor. A support beam drove the wind from him as he tumbled down Bilgewater’s cliffs. He bounced from an outcrop of rock and went headfirst through an open window, crashing out again through yet another floor.
Angry curses followed him down.
He spun out into a trailing forest of ropes and pulleys, flags and pennants. He thrashed as he fell, tangling his limbs and weapon. Fate was mocking him, wrapping him in a folded shroud of canvas sailcloth.
“Not like this, damn it!” he roared. “Not like this!”
“Who are you and where can I get a pair of guns like those?” said Miss Fortune, offering her hand to the new arrival.
“My name is Lucian,” he said, warily taking her hand.
“Damn glad to know you, friend,” said Rafen, clapping him on the back as if they were old shipmates. Miss Fortune saw Rafen’s familiarity made Lucian acutely uncomfortable, like he’d forgotten how to be around others.
His eyes scanned the edges of the square, his fingers dancing on the grips of his pistols.
“You’re a welcome sight, Lucian,” said Miss Fortune.
“We should move.” he said. “The Shadow of War will return.”
“He’s right,” said Rafen, giving her an imploring look. “It’s time to get inside, batten down the hatches.”
“No. We came out to fight.”
“Look, I get it, Sarah. We won Bilgewater and you need to fight to hold onto it, to show everyone you’re better than Gangplank. Well, you’ve done that. We went out into the Black Mist and we fought the dead. That’s more than he ever did. Anyone who risks lookin’ out a window is gonna know that. Hell, even the ones who ain’t looking will hear about it. What more do you want?”
“To fight for Bilgewater.”
“There’s fighting for Bilgewater and then there’s dying for Bilgewater,” said Rafen. “I’m all up for the first, not so much the second. These men and women followed you down into hell, but now it’s time to climb back out.”
Miss Fortune faced her company of fighters, every ragged, cutthroat one of them. None of them could be trusted not to sell their own mothers for a shiny trinket, but they’d done everything and more she’d asked of them. Venturing out into the Black Mist was just about the bravest thing any of them had ever done and she couldn’t repay that by leading them to their deaths for the sake of her vengeance.
“You’re right,” she said, taking a breath. “We’re done here.”
“Then may fortune follow you,” said Lucian, turning away and drawing his strange pistols once again.
“Wait,” said Miss Fortune. “Come with us.”
Lucian shook his head. “No, there is a mist wraith I need to destroy. The one they call Thresh, the Chain Warden. I owe him a death.”
Miss Fortune saw the lines around Lucian’s eyes deepen and recognized the expression she’d worn ever since her mother’s murder.
“He took someone from you, didn’t he?” she said.
Lucian nodded slowly, and said no more, but his very silence spoke volumes.
“This clearly isn’t your first tussle with the dead,” she said, “but you won’t survive the night if you stay out here alone. I’m guessing that might not mean much to you, but whoever this Thresh took from you, they wouldn’t want you to die here.”
Lucian’s eyes flicked downwards, and Miss Fortune saw a silver locket just visible round his neck. Was it her imagination or a trick of the mist that made it shimmer in the moonlight?
“Come with us,” said Miss Fortune. “Find somewhere safe till morning and you’ll live to do it again.”
“Safe? Where is safe in this city?” said Lucian.
“I think I might know a place,” said Miss Fortune.
They left Cutpurse Square and were traveling west up towards the Serpent Bridge when they found the Freljordian. He hung from a crooked spar like a shrouded corpse on a gibbet. Unlike most corpses, however, this one was thrashing like a landed fish.
A splintered pile of debris lay scattered all around him, and Miss Fortune looked up to see how far he’d fallen through the cliffside dwellings.
A long way was the answer, and that he was still alive was nothing short of a miracle.
Lucian leveled his pistols, but she shook her head.
“No, this one’s actually on the right side of the grave.”
Muffled cries came from within the shroud, curses that would get a man beaten to death in a host of different lands, shouted in a thick, Freljordian accent.
She placed the tip of her sword against the canvas and sliced downwards. Like a newborn sea-calf pulled from a ruptured birth-sac, a hugely bearded man spilled onto the cobbles. The reek of fish guts and offal clung to him.
He climbed unsteadily to his feet, brandishing an axe with a blade like a shard of diamond ice.
“Which way to the Slaughter Docks?” he said, weaving like a drunk. He looked around, confused, his head a mass of lumps and bruises.
“Ordinarily I’d tell you to follow your nose,” said Miss Fortune, “but I’d be amazed if you’ve any sense of smell left.”
“I’ll kill that Krakenwyrm ten times over if I have to,” said the man. “I owe it a death.”
“Lot of that going around tonight,” said Miss Fortune.
The Freljordian named himself Olaf, a warrior of the rightful mistress of the ice, and, after shaking off his concussion, declared his intention to join them until he could fight the most dangerous spirit within the Black Mist.
“Do you want to die?” Lucian asked him.
“Of course,” said Olaf, as though the very question was the height of foolishness. “I seek an ending worthy of legend.”
Miss Fortune left the madman to his dreams of death. So long as he swung that axe in the right direction, he was welcome to join them as they pushed onwards.
Three times the mist closed in on them, and each time it took an unlucky soul from their company. Spiteful laughter echoed from the sides of buildings, the sound of a whetstone over rusted steel. Ranks of carrion birds cawed from rooftops in anticipation of a flesh banquet by the light of the moon. Welcoming lights danced in the darkness of the mist, like beguiling corpse-candles over sucking marshland.
“Don’t look at them,” warned Lucian.
His warning came too late for one man and his wife. Miss Fortune didn’t know their names, but knew they had lost a son to ocean-ague less than a year ago. They walked from the cliffs following a vision in the lights only they could see.
Another man took his hooked hand to his throat before his friends could stop him. Another simply vanished into the mist without anyone seeing him go.
By the time they reached Serpent Bridge, their company numbered less than a dozen. Miss Fortune couldn’t feel sorry for them, she’d told them not to come with her. If they’d wanted to live forever, they should be shuttered behind closed doors and protective carvings, clutching spiral talismans of the Bearded Lady and praying to whatever gave them solace.
But against the Harrowing, even that was no guarantee of safety.
They’d passed countless homes smashed open with splintered shutters and doors hanging limply from leather hinges. Miss Fortune kept her eyes fixed forward, but it was impossible not to feel the accusing gazes from the frozen faces within or sense the terror of their last moments.
“The Black Mist will have its due,” said Rafen as they passed yet another charnel house, the families within cold and dead.
She wanted to be angry at such acceptance of horror, but what good would that do? After all, he was right.
Instead, she focused on the hazed outline of the structure across the bridge. It sat in the center of a gouged crater in the cliff, as if some mighty sea creature had taken a vast bite from the rock. Like most places in Bilgewater it was constructed from the ocean’s leavings. Its walls were driftwood and branches from faraway lands, its windows the scavenged remains of ships swept up from the seabed. It had a peculiar quality of possessing not a single straight line anywhere in its construction. The curious angles gave it a sense of being somehow in motion, as if it might one day choose another place to set down temporary roots.
Its spire was likewise crooked, fluted like the horn of a narwhal and topped with the same spiral symbol Miss Fortune wore around her neck. A shimmering light wreathed the icon, and where it shone the darkness was held in abeyance.
“What is that place?” asked Lucian.
“The Temple of the Bearded Lady,” she said. “The House of Nagakabouros.”
“Is it safe?”
“It’s better than staying out here.”
Lucian nodded and they set off across the winding length of the bridge. Like the temple it approached, the bridge was an uneven thing, its cobbles undulant like something alive.
Rafen paused at the crumbling parapet and looked down.
“Getting higher every year,” he said.
Reluctantly, Miss Fortune joined him and looked over the edge.
The docks and Rat Town were smothered beneath the Black Mist, and even the web of gun’dolas was barely visible. Bilgewater was choking in the grip of the mist, its tendrils seeping ever deeper into the city. Screams of terror drifted upwards, each one a life ended and a fresh soul for the legion of the dead.
Rafen shrugged. “A few years from now there won’t be anywhere in Bilgewater beyond its reach.”
“A lot can happen in a few years,” said Miss Fortune.
“This happens every year?” asked Olaf, one foot perched on the parapet with a reckless disregard for the dizzying drop.
Miss Fortune nodded.
“Excellent,” said the Freljordian. “If I am fated not to die this night, I will return here when the Black Mist rises again.”
“It’s your funeral,” replied Rafen.
“Thank you,” said Olaf, slapping an enormous palm on Rafen’s back, almost knocking him from the bridge. The Freljordian’s eyes widened as a host of ghostly tentacles rose from the mist, uncoiling to smash down on the dwellings of Rat Town.
“The beast!” he cried.
And before anyone could stop him, he vaulted onto the parapet and hurled himself from the edge.
“Mad bastard,” said Rafen as Olaf’s dwindling form vanished into the mist below.
“All the ice-dwellers are mad,” said Miss Fortune. “But he was madder than most I’ve met.”
“Get everyone inside,” said Lucian.
She heard the urgency in his voice and turned to see him facing a towering figure in stitched black robes hung with hooked chains. Sickly green light wreathed the specter as it lifted a swaying lantern in one pallid hand. Fear touched Miss Fortune, fear like nothing she’d known since she’d watched her mother die and stared down the barrel of the killer’s gun.
Lucian drew his pistols. “Thresh is mine.”
“He’s all yours,” she said, and turned away.
Her gaze was drawn upwards as shadows closed around the temple. The breath caught in her throat as she saw Hecarim and his death knights at the crater’s ridge.
The Shadow of War raised his fiery glaive and the ghostly horsemen urged their hell-steeds downward. No mortal rider could make that descent, but these were riders of death.
“Run!” shouted Miss Fortune.
The end of the bridge thickened with noxious green light. The Chain Warden hid his corpse features beneath a rotted hood, but the light of his lantern hinted at the remains of ravaged flesh, gaunt and drained of all emotion, save sadistic relish.
He moved softly, like all his kind. Pained moans sighed from his robes as he moved. Thresh lifted his head a fraction, and Lucian saw the glint of too-sharp teeth widen in a grin of anticipation.
“Mortal,” said Thresh, rolling the word around his mouth like a sweetmeat.
Lucian knelt, reciting the mantra of clarity to steel his soul for the battle to come. He had prepared for this moment a thousand times, and now that it was here, his mouth was dry, his palms slick with sweat.
“You murdered Senna,” he said, standing and lifting his head. “The only person I had left in the world.”
“Senna...?” said Thresh, the sound wet and gurgling, as though squeezed from a throat once crushed by a hangman’s noose.
“My wife,” said Lucian, knowing he should not speak, that every word was a weapon the wraith would turn against him. Tears blurred his vision as grief washed away every preparation and every shred of logic. He lifted the silver locket from around his neck and snapped it open, needing the wraith to understand the depth of all he had lost.
Thresh grinned, his needle teeth glinting as he tapped the glass of the lantern with a yellowed nail.
“I remember her,” he said. “A vital soul. Not yet barren and cold. Ripe for torment. Hope for a new life. It bloomed in her, you know. Fresh, new, like a spring flower. All too easy to pluck and ruin those with dreams.”
Lucian lifted his pistols.
“If you remember her, then you will remember these,” he said.
The toothed grin never faltered beneath the ragged cowl.
“The weapons of light,” he said.
“And light is ever the bane of darkness,” said Lucian, channeling every scrap of hatred into his relic pistols.
“Wait,” said Thresh, but Lucian was done waiting.
He loosed a pair of blinding shots.
A conflagration of purifying fire engulfed the Chain Warden and his howls were music to Lucian’s ears.
Then the howls changed to gurgling laughter.
A nimbus of dark light faded around Thresh, drawn back into his lantern and leaving him utterly untouched by the fire.
Lucian fired again, a storm of radiant bolts, each perfectly aimed, but every one wasted. Each shot dissipated harmlessly against a shimmering haze of dark energy from the lantern.
“Yes, I remember those weapons,” said the wraith. “I tore their secrets from her mind.”
Lucian froze.
“What did you just say?”
Thresh laughed, a wheezing, consumptive rasp.
“You don’t know? After all the reborn order learned of me, you never once suspected?”
Lucian felt cold dread settle in his belly. A horror he had never acknowledged for fear he would go insane.
“She did not die,” continued Thresh, holding up his lantern.
Lucian saw tortured spirits twisting in its depths.
Thresh grinned. “I ripped her soul out and kept it.”
“No...” said Lucian. “I saw her die.”
“She screams still inside my lantern,” said Thresh, drifting closer with every choked-out word. “Her every moment of existence is sweet agony. Listen...can you hear her?”
“No,” sobbed Lucian, his relic pistols falling to the stones of the bridge.
Thresh circled him, chains snaking from his leather belt and slithering over Lucian’s body. The hooks cut into his storm coat, seeking the soft flesh beneath.
“Hope was her weakness. Love her undoing.”
Lucian looked up into Thresh’s ravaged features.
His eyes were voids, dark holes into emptiness.
Whatever Thresh had been in life, nothing now remained. No compassion, no mercy and no humanity.
“All is death and suffering, mortal,” said the Chain Warden, reaching for Lucian’s neck. “No matter where you run, your only true legacy is death. But before then, there is me.”
The breath hammered in Miss Fortune’s throat as she ran for the temple. Her lungs fought to draw breath, and her veins felt sluggish with ice. Coils of enervating mist reached up to the rock of the temple, drawn by the presence of the two lords of the unliving. Brilliant flashes of light flared behind her, but she didn’t look back. She heard the thunder of hoof beats on rock, seeing sparks above them in the darkness.
She imagined the breath of ghostly steeds on her neck.
The space between her shoulder blades burned hot where she expected the stabbing thrust of a spectral lance.
Wait, how can they make sparks when they’re ghosts?
The absurdity of the thought made her laugh, and she was still laughing as she slammed into the warped timber doors of the temple. Rafen and her ragged band were already there, hammering fists and palms against the door.
“In the name of the Bearded Lady, let us in!” he yelled.
He looked up as Miss Fortune joined him.
“The doors are shut,” he said.
“I noticed,” she gasped, wrenching the pendant Illaoi had given her. She placed her palm flat on door, with the coral pressed hard against the wood.
“Illaoi!” she shouted. “I’m ready to stamp on that damn eel’s neck. Now open the bloody door!”
“Eel?” said Rafen. “What eel? What are you talking about?”
“Never mind,” she snapped, battering her palm bloody against the wood. “I think it was a metaphor.”
The door swung outwards as if it had been unbarred the whole time. Miss Fortune stepped back to allow her fighters inside first, and finally turned around.
Hecarim reared up and swung his fiery glaive for her skull.
A hand grasped her collar and hauled her backward. The tip of the weapon sliced an inch from her throat.
She fell hard on her backside.
Illaoi stood in the doorway, holding her stone idol out before her like a shield. White mist clung to it like corposant.
“The dead are not welcome here,” she said.
Rafen and the others hauled the door shut and dropped a heavy spar of seasoned oak into place on the rusted anchors to either side. A huge impact slammed into the door.
Wood split and splinters flew.
Illaoi turned and walked past Miss Fortune, still sprawled on a mosaic floor of seashells and clay fragments.
“You took your sweet time, girl,” she said as Miss Fortune climbed to her feet. The temple was filled with at least two hundred people, maybe more. She saw a wide cross section of Bilgewater’s denizens: its native population, pirates, traders and assorted sea-scum, together with travellers unlucky or unwise enough to seek a berth so close to the Harrowing.
“Is that door going to hold?” she asked.
“It will or it won’t,” said Illaoi, heading towards a many-tentacled statue at the centre of the temple. Miss Fortune tried to make sense of it, but gave up when her eye kept getting lost in the many spirals and looping curves.
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the only one I have,” said Illaoi, setting her idol in a concave depression in the statue. She began moving in a circle around the statue, beating a rhythmic pattern on her thighs and chest with her fists. The people in the temple joined her circling, beating palms against bare skin, stamping their feet and speaking in a language she didn’t understand.
“What are they doing?”
“Giving some motion back to the world,” said Illaoi. “But we will need time.”
“You’ll have it,” promised Miss Fortune.
Lucian felt the spectral hooks bite deep into his flesh, colder than northern ice and twice as painful. The Chain Warden’s hand closed on his throat and his skin burned at the wraith’s touch. He felt his strength drawn from him, the beat of his heart slow.
Thresh lifted him from the ground and held his lantern aloft, ready to receive his soul. The moaning lights within swirled in agitation, ghostly faces and hands pressing against the glass from within.
“Long I have sought your soul, shadow hunter,” said Thresh. “But only now is it ripe for the taking.”
Lucian’s vision greyed at the edges, feeling his soul peel away from his bones. He fought to hold on, but the Chain Warden had been harvesting souls for countless lifetimes and knew his craft better than any.
“Struggle harder,” said Thresh with monstrous appetite. “Your soul burns brighter when you fight.”
Lucian tried to speak, but no words came out, just a soft stream of warm breath that carried his soul.
A glittering scythe floated in the air above Lucian, a murder-soaked reaper of souls. Its blade shivered with anticipation.
Lucian...
That voice. Her voice.
My love...
The murder-edge of Thresh’s blade turned, angled to better part soul from flesh.
Lucian drew back his breath as he saw a face resolve in the glass of the lantern. One among countless thousands, but one with more reason than any to push herself to the fore.
Full lips, wide, almond shaped eyes, imploring him to live.
“Senna...” gasped Lucian.
Let me be your shield.
He knew what she meant in a heartbeat.
The link between them was as strong as it had been when they hunted the creatures of shadow side by side.
With the last of his strength, Lucian reached up and snapped the locket from around his neck. The chain glittered silver in the moonlight.
The Chain Warden saw something was amiss and hissed in anger.
Lucian was faster.
He spun the chain like a slingshot, but instead of loosing a lead bullet, he lashed it around the arm holding the lantern. Before Thresh could shake it off, Lucian drew the silver awl from its sheath in his long coat and plunged it into the specter’s wrist.
The Chain Warden screeched in pain, a sensation he had likely not felt in millennia. He dropped Lucian and thrashed in agony as the myriad souls trapped in his lantern suddenly found a means to strike back at their tormentor.
Lucian felt his soul snap back into his body and drew in heaving gulps of air, like a drowning man breaking the surface.
Hurry, my love. He is too strong...
His sight returned, clearer than ever before. Lucian snatched his pistols from the ground. He caught the briefest glimpse of Senna’s face in the lantern and etched it on his heart.
Never again would her face grow dim in his memories.
“Thresh,” he said, aiming his twin pistols.
The Chain Warden looked up, the voids of his eyes alight with outrage at the defiance of his captive souls. He held Lucian’s gaze and extended his lantern, but the rebellious souls had dispelled whatever protection it once offered.
Lucian fired a blistering series of perfect shots.
They burned through the Chain Warden’s ghostly robes and ignited his spirit form in a searing inferno of light. Lucian marched towards Thresh, his twin weapons blazing.
Shrieking in agony, the Chain Warden retreated from Lucian’s unending barrage, his wraithform now powerless to resist these weapons of ancient power.
“Death is here for you,” said Lucian. “Embrace it, safe in the knowledge I will ensure it is final.”
Thresh gave one last howl before leaping from the bridge, falling like a burning comet to the city below.
Lucian watched him fall until the Black Mist swallowed him.
He slumped to his knees.
“Thank you, my love,” said Lucian. “My light.”
The temple walls shook with the violence of the assault. Black mist oozed between ill-fitting planks and through cracks in the scavenged glass of the windows. The door shuddered in its frame. Grasping claws of mist tore at the wood. Screams echoed as a howling gale battered the mismatched timbers of the roof.
“Over there!” shouted Miss Fortune as a host of mist-creatures with burning red eyes poured through a broken section of wall that had once been a series of tea-chests from Ionia.
She leapt into the midst of the wraiths. It felt like jumping naked into an ice hole cut in a glacier. Even the lightest touch of the dead leeched warmth and life.
The coral pendant burned hot against her skin.
She slashed her looted sword through the creatures and felt the same bite she’d felt before. Her bullets might be useless against the dead, but this Demacian blade hurt them. They fell back from her, screeching and hissing.
Could the dead know fear?
It seemed they could, for they fled the sword’s glittering edge. She didn’t let them go, stabbing and slashing the mist wherever it poured in.
“That’s it! Run!” she yelled.
A child screamed and Miss Fortune sprinted over as the mist reached to claim him. She dived and snatched the boy in her arms before rolling to safety. Chill claws plunged into her back, and Miss Fortune gasped as numbing cold spread through her limbs.
She stabbed behind her and something dead howled.
A woman sheltering behind an overturned pew reached for the boy and Miss Fortune let him squirm to safety. She pushed herself to her feet, weakness spreading through her body like a raging infection.
Everywhere was gunfire and clashing steel, deathly howls and screams of terror.
“Sarah!” shouted Rafen.
She looked up to see the oaken locking bar securing the door split along its length. Rafen and a dozen men had their backs braced against the bludgeoning assault, but the doors were bulging inwards. Cracks spread and grasping hands of mist reached inside. A man was snatched backwards and his piteous screams were abruptly cut off as he vanished into the mist.
Another had his arm ripped off as he reached to help him.
Rafen spun and rammed his dagger through the gap.
Clawed hands tore the useless weapon from his hand.
A howling body pushed itself in through the disintegrating door and plunged its hands into Rafen’s chest. Her second in command roared in pain, his face draining of color.
She staggered over to him, her strength all but gone. Her blade hacked through spectral arms, and the creature shrieked as it vanished. Rafen fell into her, and they collapsed back into the nave together.
Rafen gasped for breath, his features as slack as hers.
“Don’t you die on me, Rafen!” she wheezed.
“It’ll take more than the dead to kill me,” he grunted. “Bastard thing just winded me.”
Glass broke somewhere up above. Coils of black mist coalesced overhead, a boiling mass of snapping teeth, claws and hungry eyes.
Miss Fortune tried to get to her feet, but her limbs burned with exhaustion. She ground her teeth in frustration. Barely a handful of her company remained, and the people sheltering in here weren’t fighters.
The dead were getting in.
Miss Fortune looked back at Illaoi.
The priestess was surrounded by her people, all of them still circling the statue and performing their fist-thumping, palm-slapping ritual. It didn’t appear to be achieving anything. The strange statue remained unmoving and impotent.
What had she expected, that it would come to life and drive the dead back like some clanking iron golem from Piltover?
“Whatever it is you’re doing, do it faster!” shouted Miss Fortune.
A section of the roof ripped loose and spun off into the tempest surrounding the temple. A swirling column of spirits boiled inside and touched down like a tornado. Wraiths and things that defied understanding spun from the unliving vortex to fall upon the living.
Finally the door gave out and exploded inwards, the timbers dry and rotted by the touch of the dead. The skirling blast of a hunting horn filled the temple, and Miss Fortune’s hands flew to her ears at its deafening echoes.
Hecarim rode into the temple, crushing the men who’d been bracing the door with their bodies. Their souls were drawn up into the Shadow of War’s flaming glaive, and the cold fire of its edge illuminated the temple with loathsome radiance. His death knights rode at his back, and the spirits already within the temple drew back in recognition of Hecarim’s terrible glory.
“I said the dead are not welcome here,” boomed Illaoi.
Miss Fortune looked up to see the priestess towering over her, stout and majestic. Pale light clung to her limbs and sparkled on the stone tablet she held in trembling hands. Veins stood out like hawsers on her neck, and her jawline was taut with effort. Sweat ran in runnels down her face.
Whatever Illaoi was doing was costing her greatly.
“These mortal souls are mine,” said Hecarim, and Miss Fortune felt herself recoil from the iron syllables of his voice.
“They are not,” said Illaoi. “This is the house of Nagakabouros, who stands in opposition to the dead.”
“The dead will have their due,” said Hecarim, lowering his glaive to point at Illaoi’s heart.
The priestess shook her head.
“Not today,” she said. “Not while I still move.”
“You cannot stop me.”
“Deaf as well as dead,” grinned Illaoi as a swelling radiance built behind her. “I didn’t say I was going to stop you.”
Miss Fortune turned and saw the spiraling statue bathed in blinding radiance. White light smoked from its surfaces, and shadows fled from its touch. She shielded her eyes as the light billowed outwards like writhing tentacles and where it met the Black Mist it stripped it bare, exposing the twisted souls within. The sinuous light pulled the dead onwards, purging the baleful magic that cursed them to undeath so very long ago.
She expected screams, but instead the unbound dead wept with joy as their souls were freed to move on. The light spread over the cracked walls of the temple, and as it touched her, Miss Fortune cried out as the deathly numbness in her flesh was banished in a rush of heat and life.
The light of Nagakabouros closed on Hecarim, and Miss Fortune saw his fear at the thought of what transformations it might work upon him.
What could be so awful that it was better to remain cursed?
“You can be free, Hecarim,” said Illaoi, her voice strained to the limits of endurance by what she had unleashed. “You can move on, live in the light as the man you always dreamed of being before his grief and folly remade you.”
Hecarim roared and swept his glaive at Illaoi’s neck.
Miss Fortune’s blade intercepted it in a clashing flare of sparks. She shook her head.
“Get out of my city,” she said.
Hecarim’s blade drew back for another strike, but before the blow could land, the light finally pierced his veil of darkness. He bellowed in pain and fell back from its burning touch. The dark rider’s outline shimmered, like two picture box images wavering in candlelight on the same backcloth.
Miss Fortune caught a fleeting glimpse of a tall rider, armored in silver and gold. A young man, handsome and proud with dark eyes and a future of glory ahead of him.
What happened to him?
Hecarim roared and galloped from the temple.
His death knights and the darkness went with him, a shrieking host of tattered spirits following in their wake.
The light of Nagakabouros spread over Bilgewater like the coming dawn. None who saw it could ever remember so sweet a sight; the first rays of sunlight after a storm, the first hint of warmth after a bitter winter.
The Black Mist withdrew before it, roiling in a churning maelstrom of panicked spirits. The dead turned on one another in a frenzy, some fighting to return from whence they had come as others actively sought out the light’s release.
Silence fell as the Black Mist drew back over the ocean, drawn to the cursed island where it claimed dominion.
True dawn broke over the eastern horizon, and a cleansing wind blew through the city as the people of Bilgewater let out a collective breath.
The Harrowing was over.
Silence filled the temple; the utter lack of sound a stark contrast to the mayhem of moments ago.
“It’s done,” said Miss Fortune.
“Until the next time,” said Illaoi wearily. “The Black Mist’s hunger burns like a sickness.”
“What did you do?”
“What I had to.”
“Whatever it was, I thank you.”
Illaoi shook her head and put a powerful arm around Miss Fortune’s shoulder.
“Thank the goddess,” said Illaoi. “Make an offering. Something big.”
“I will,” said Miss Fortune.
“You better. My god dislikes empty promises.”
The veiled threat rankled, and for a moment she thought of putting a bullet through the priestess’ skull. Before she could do more than inch her hand to her pistols, Illaoi crumpled like a ripped topsail. Miss Fortune grabbed for her, but the priestess was too enormous to hold upright alone.
They went to the seashell floor together.
“Rafen, help me get her up,” she said.
Together they propped Illaoi up against a broken pew, grunting with the effort of shifting her colossal bulk.
“The Bearded Lady rose from the sea...” said Rafen.
“Don’t be stupid all your life,” said Illaoi. “I said Nagakabouros doesn’t live under the sea.”
“So where does she live?” asked Rafen. “In the sky?”
Illaoi shook her head and punched him in the heart. Rafen grunted and winced in pain.
“There is where you find her.”
Illaoi grinned at the obliqueness of her answer and her eyes drifted closed.
“Is she dead?” asked Rafen, rubbing his bruised chest.
Illaoi reached up and slapped him.
Then started snoring like a stevedore with lung-blight.
Lucian sat on the edge of the bridge and watched the city emerge from Black Mist. He’d hated Bilgewater on first sight, but there was a quality of beauty to it as the sunlight bathed its myriad clay-tiled roofs in a warm amber glow.
A city reborn, like it was every time the Harrowing receded.
An apt name for this dread moment, but one that carried only a fraction of the sorrow of its origins. Did anyone here really understand the real tragedy of the Shadow Isles?
And even if they did, would they care?
He turned as he heard footsteps approaching.
“It’s kind of pretty from up here,” said Miss Fortune.
“But only from up here.”
“Yes, it’s a viper’s nest alright,” said Miss Fortune. “There’s good people and bad people, but I’ve been making sure there’s a lot less of the bad.”
“The way I hear it, you started a war,” said Lucian. “Some might say that’s like burning down your house to kill a rat.”
He saw anger touch her, but it passed quickly.
“I thought I was making things better for everyone,” she said, straddling the parapet, “but they’re only getting worse. I need to do something about that, starting now.”
“Is that why you were out in the Black Mist?”
The woman thought for a moment.
“Maybe not at first,” she said. “I let a razor-eel off the hook when I killed Gangplank, and if I don’t take hold of it and get it back on, it’s going to bite a lot of the good people.”
“A razor-eel?”
“What I mean to say is that when I brought the Pirate King down, I had no idea what would happen when he was gone. I didn’t much care,” she said. “But I’ve seen what’s happening down there without someone in control. The city’s tearing its own throat out. Bilgewater needs someone strong at the top. No reason that someone can’t be me. The war’s just starting, and the only way it’ll end quickly is if I win it.”
The silence between them stretched.
“My answer is no.”
“I didn’t ask anything.”
“You’re going to,” said Lucian. “You want me to stay and help you win your war, but I can’t. Your fight isn’t my fight.”
“It could be,” said Miss Fortune. “The pay’s good and you’d get to kill a lot of bad people. And save a lot of innocent souls.”
“There is only one soul I need to save,” said Lucian. “And I won’t save it in Bilgewater.”
Miss Fortune nodded and held out her hand.
“Then I’ll say farewell and good hunting,” she said, standing and dusting her britches. “I hope you find what you’re looking for. Just know that you can lose yourself to revenge.”
Lucian watched her limp back to the sagging ruins of the temple as the survivors within emerged, blinking, into the daylight. She thought she understood what drove him, but she hadn’t the first clue.
Vengeance? He was far beyond vengeance.
His beloved was held in torment by an undying wraith, a creature from ancient days that understood suffering like no other.
Miss Fortune did not understand even a fraction of his pain.
He rose and lifted his gaze out to sea.
The ocean was calm now, an emerald green expanse.
People were already moving down on the docks, repairing ships and rebuilding their homes. Bilgewater never stopped, even in the aftermath of the Harrowing. He scanned the forest of swaying masts, looking for a ship that wasn’t too badly damaged. Perhaps one desperate captain could be persuaded to take him where he needed to go.
“I am coming, my light,” he said. “And I will free you.”
The fisherman grunted as he worked the stern-windlass to haul the big man from the water and onto his boat. The rope was frayed and he sweated in the cold air as he worked the crank.
“By the bristles of her bearded chin, you’re a big bastard, right sure ye are,” he said, snagging the big man’s armor with a gaffing hook and pulling him around over the rolling deck. He kept a wary eye out for predators, above and below the surface.
No sooner had the Black Mist withdrawn over the horizon than scores of boats put out to sea. The waters were awash with plunder, and if you weren’t fast, you ended up with nothing.
He’d spotted the floating man first and had already fought off six sewer-jacks trying to reach him. Damned if wharf-scum like them were going to steal this ocean bounty from him.
The big man had been drifting on a bed of what looked like the remains of a giant Krakenwyrm. Its tentacles were pulped and bloated with noxious gasses, which was all that had kept the big man’s armored form afloat.
He dropped his catch to the deck and laid him out along the gunwale before casting an appraising eye over his body.
A heavy iron hauberk of ring and scale, rugged, fur-lined boots and, best of all, a magnificent axe tangled in the straps of his armor.
“Oh, yes, make a few Krakens out of you, me beauty,” he said, dancing a happy jig around his boat. “A few Krakens indeed!”
The big man coughed up brackish seawater.
“Am I still alive?” he asked.
The fisherman stopped his happy jig and slid a hand towards the long knife at his belt. He used it to open fish bellies. No reason he couldn’t use it to open a throat. Wouldn’t be the first time a salvager had helped someone on their way to the Bearded Lady to claim a prize.
The big man opened his eyes.
“Touch that knife again and I’ll cut you into more pieces than that damned Krakenwyrm.”
Twilight of the Gods

Graham McNeill

They came to a dead city in the mountain’s shadow under cover of night. Battle-hosts of a thousand warriors, each bearing bloody totems that told of the ancient lineages of the Sunborn Ascended who led them.
The city and the bones of its people had long ago become one with the desert, and it was impossible to tell ash and bone from sand. Only its tallest towers remained above the dunes: broken spires that sang mournfully when the winds blew from the realms beyond the mountain. Upon a broken plinth stood two trunkless legs of stone, the cruel visage of a half-buried avian head lying in the sand beside them.
In a long-distant age, an event of great moment had taken place in the valley where the city would later be built.
It had marked the beginning of Shurima.
And set in motion its ending.
None remembered that day, save the god-warriors who now led their hosts towards the city’s jutting ruins. Those same god-warriors had put the citizens to the sword in the wake of their emperor’s betrayal. And with its people murdered, they had seen the city burned and its name hacked from every stele and obelisk that remained standing.
Yet these acts of extermination were for naught but futile spite.
Futile because the child who had been taken as a slave from this city was long dead, and in life had no use for memory of his birth.
His act had destroyed the empire and sundered their brotherhood.
And so the god-warriors burned Nerimazeth, and its people, to ash.
The passage of deep time had stolen the golden scroll’s luster.
Much like us all, thought Ta’anari. He drew a clawed finger down the etched list of names and numbers, a meticulous record of tithes from the newly-established trading port of Kha’zhun in the north.
Newly-established...?
Kha’zhun had been a city of men for centuries, their savage tongue already debasing its name into something new and ugly. The Scholar might have found the scroll’s contents interesting, but the only worth it held for Ta’anari was the tangible link it provided to a time when the world made sense.
The room had once been a hall of records, its marble walls lined with shelves and stacked with scrolls recording tributes due to the emperor, accountings of his wars and long lists of his deeds. It had been a cavernous space, but the roof had caved in centuries ago, and sand filled most of the subterranean space.
He felt a change in the air, and looked up from his studies.
Myisha stood in the doorway, dwarfed by its dimensions, though Ta’anari’s black-furred skull would brush its lintel—were he still able to stand upright. Her frame was slight, fragile even, yet Ta’anari sensed she possessed depths not even he had fully grasped. Gold-blonde hair, like the men found in the cold north, spilled around her shoulders. Her features were youthful, but her eyes, one rich blue, the other twilight’s purple, held wisdom beyond her years. She wore thin silks, colorful and entirely unsuited to the desert, tied at the waist with a thin rope, from which hung a single golden key. A vivid pink scarf coiled around her neck, and she twisted its tasseled ends through her fingertips.
“They’re here,” she said.
“How many?”
“Nine hosts. Nearly ten thousand warriors.”
Ta’anari nodded, drawing his tongue over his yellowed fangs. “More than I expected.”
She shrugged and said, “They all need to be here.”
“Too much blood has been spilled over the centuries,” he said. “Too much hate unleashed. The idea that there could be peace between us is anathema to many of them.”
Myisha shook her head at such foolishness. “So many have already died in this endless war. You’ve managed to kill more of your kind than even the abyssal horrors did.”
A rebuke of her flippant tone died on Ta’anari’s thick tongue. She was right, after all.
And wasn’t that why he had summoned his kin?
“The moment Azir fell, a war between the Sunborn was inevitable,” said Ta’anari, putting aside the scroll, and rising from his study of ancient history. “With him gone, the scale of our ambitions was too great for any one of us to lead. So many visions of what the future needed to be, but all of us too broken to realize them.”
“Then perhaps you are not so different from mortals, after all.”
Once, he would have killed anyone who voiced such a thought, but the centuries of war and the colossal scale of the slaughter they had unleashed was testament to the truth of it.
Ta’anari had no clear recollection of Myisha entering his service. The lives of mortals were so fleeting, he barely noticed when one died and another took their place. But Myisha had drawn his notice more than any other. Her defiant insolence was part of it, but there was more to it than that. She had an insight into the minds of mortals that he and all his kind lacked since trading their humanity for greater power.
Ta’anari had last walked as a man so very long ago. He barely remembered the sensations of a mortal, or the awareness of time’s inexorable march. Ancient magic and the forge of the Sun Disc had remade him, wrought the crude matter of his mortal flesh into that of a god.
A flawed and broken god, but divine nonetheless.
His bronze-armored form had been panther-like, bowed by age and war, but still mighty. The fur of his upper body had once been lustrous black, but both his snout and limbs were threaded with grey, and he had reshaped himself as best he could. Ta’anari’s gaze had cowed entire armies, but one scarred socket now contained a cracked ruby, the other a slitted amber eye, rheumy with despair. His spine was twisted after an axe-blow taken during the Battle of the River Kahleek, a blow so ferocious that not even his fiery regenerative powers had been able to fully undo the damage.
He lifted a weapon from the table, a magnificent four-bladed Chalicar. He felt the perfect balance of its killing edges, but more than that, he felt the weight of expectation it embodied. He sighed and slung it in his shoulder harness before limping over to Myisha.
Even hunched by the ravages of time and old wounds, Ta’anari towered over her. The War of the Sunborn—though others were calling it a different, darker name—had exacted a grievous toll of lives on her kind, yet she had no fear of him.
Sometimes, he sensed a measure of pity from her.
At other times, a withering contempt.
She placed a tiny, hairless hand in his massive, pawed fist. “You are still a god-warrior, Ta’anari,” she said, “Remind them of what that once stood for, and you will win them over.”
“And if they don’t listen?”
She smiled. “Simple. You kill them all.”
His life-bearers were waiting for him in the sand-sunk antechamber. Once they had been queens and the rulers of mortal empires, but in the face of Ta’anari’s invincible warhost, they had pledged their swords to him.
Better to fight alongside a god-warrior than to be crushed by one.
Teushpa bowed as he approached, her muscular arms knotted with tattoos and banded with jade torques. Defiant, but loyal, she had been the last to offer her blood. Sulpae was desert-born with a lineage that reached back to the time before Azir’s father. She stamped her long spear at the sight of him. Her shaven scalp was scarified in a grid and pierced with gold beads at every ridged intersection.
Idri-Mi, proud and sturdy, held her long-hafted axe at her shoulder, its double-leafed blades heavier than most men could lift. She was a queen from the east whose mother and grandmother had fought for him. Her pale skin was like ivory, her long black hair hung with silver hooks.
Ta’anari stood before the three warrior women.
They were not his bodyguards; he had no need of lesser beings to protect him. Instead, they served as symbols of his will, how he could dominate proud warriors who wanted him dead, and were skilled enough that they might actually be able to hurt him.
His brothers and sisters of the fallen brotherhood would bring their life-bearers too, but none were so fierce as his.
Even so, none of the women looked him in the eye as he spoke. To meet the gaze of a god-warrior was to die.
“I have seen many life-bearers over the centuries of my existence, but you will be my last,” said Ta’anari. He scanned their faces for a reaction, but years of servitude had purged them of the weakness of emotion. They were as expressionless as the fallen statues littering the remains of the dead city. “I know this with complete certainty, as much from the patient gleam in your eyes as the nightmares that rip through my skull when Myisha’s elixirs wear off. You are all loyal, but you hunger for my death.”
Was that a flicker in the eye of Teushpa? Once, he would have gnawed the flesh from her bones at such a lapse in control, but his appetite for slaughter had waned over the centuries.
“I cannot blame you,” he continued. “What does my kind offer yours but death and horror? An age ago, the Sunborn saved this world at a terrible cost, but now we have brought it to the edge of ruin. The Ascended Host’s days of glory are long past, overshadowed by the darkness of our warring, and the all too fleeting memories of you mortals.”
Bitterness tainted the last of his words, tempered only by the knowledge that he and his brethren had brought this upon themselves. Overweening pride, war-damaged psyches, and ancient feuds alloyed to forge the blade that sundered their chains of duty.
Ta’anari let out a shuddering breath. For over a thousand years he had fought against this moment, but now it was upon him, he knew death was nothing to be feared.
“If you live through this night, you will greet the dawn free. When the sun rises, return to your people and tell them what you saw and heard here.” He turned away. “Myisha, is everything prepared?”
“Yes. They’re waiting in the amphitheater.”
Ta’anari nodded. “Then let us end this.”
The space had not been designed as an amphitheater. It had served as Nerimazeth’s marketplace, but Ta’anari’s slaves had carved it from the desert’s embrace, and his magic had shaped it with heat so intense that it vitrified the sand. Now it was an arena of blown glass; a caldera of smoky black, sea green and numinous iridescence. Its surfaces captured the soft moonlight and reflected it back in floating veils of silver.
Ta’anari entered through a sweeping arch shaped like a frozen instant in the life of an ocean wave. Tension thickened the air, as was only to be expected when the gods gathered their battle-hosts.
Ten thousand men and women filled the tiered heights of the amphitheater, the champions of the god-warriors assembled below. No blades were bared, but all were ready to unleash an orgy of slaughter at their liege’s command.
Ta’anari swept his gaze around his fellow Sunborn—brothers and sisters once united by unbreakable bonds of love and duty that were, in time, revealed to be as brittle as glass. Unimaginable power had wrought their bodies, drawn from a realm beyond comprehension to sculpt their mortal flesh in ways none living now could recreate.
But our minds are still mortal, he thought, and shockingly weak.
Syphax’s gaze offered understanding. Zigantus radiated disgust. Xuuyan seethed with outright contempt. It had been Xuuyan’s axe that crippled Ta’anari at Kahleek. The chelonian-headed god-warrior spat on the ground as Ta’anari limped to the center of the amphitheater.
Shabaka and Shabake, the raven-feathered seer twins, did not even look up, too engrossed in casting auguries with scrimshawed fingerbones. Valeeva watched Ta’anari with the same haughty disdain that her brother always did—the one member of their sundered fellowship he was relieved had not attended.
Cebotaru the Wolf paced back and forth, impatient to be done with this conclave. His battle-hosts ravaged the far north, and the lands over the western seas. Of all of them, Cebotaru was closest to breaking the bloody stalemate.
Naganeka of Zuretta watched from within her hooded cowl, a long scaled robe draped over the coiled length of her body. Her venom blinded life-bearers stood ready to convey her words, should she actually deign to utter any. None of them had heard her sibilant whispers in over five hundred years.
Only Enakai offered respect. He came forward, his skin patterned with new, vivid stripes of orange and black. Where Ta’anari was bent and bowed, Enakai wore his great age with pride, eyes undimmed, and strength unbroken by the long ages he had made war. Long ago, they had climbed the golden steps to the sun-disc together, hand-in-hand as its searing light infused them with celestial power. Enakai had borne Ta’anari’s wounded body on the retreat from Icathia, fought as his brother in the mud at Kahleek, and faced him as an enemy at the Glacier Port.
Live as long as we do, and the wheel will turn many times.
Enakai took Ta’anari’s paw in his. “Ta’anari.”
“Enakai.”
No more needed to be said. The span of many lifetimes’ worth of experience, joy, loss and heartache were contained in their exchange of names. They were beings raised up as gods. Inconsequential words were beneath them.
Enakai’s eyes narrowed as he caught sight of the weapon slung behind Ta’anari’s back. He opened his mouth to speak, but Ta’anari gave an imperceptible shake of his head.
“I hope you know what you are doing,” Enakai murmured, returning to his place at the edge of the amphitheater.
Ta’anari took a breath; he had rehearsed this moment many times over the years, understanding that a single wrong word could end this before it began. His kin were god-warriors, and had all the haughty arrogance and quick temper common to beings of such ego.
“Brothers and sisters,” he said, the magically crafted acoustics carrying his words throughout the amphitheater. “Such a gathering of the Sunborn has not happened since the drawing of the thousand before the walls of Parnesa.”
He saw nods, that vivid memory stirring the dimmed embers in their souls of what they had once been.
Now build on that. Speak as if to each one of them.
“I look around, and I see power,” he continued, every word delivered with passion and belief. “I see gods where once walked mortals—beings of noble aspect, mighty and worthy of devotion. Some call our ancient brotherhood sundered. They use the ancient tongue to name us darkin, but to see you here gives the lie to that word.”
Ta’anari paused, letting his flattery wash over them. It would be empty to most, for choirs of tortured subjects sang praises day and night to them... on pain of death.
But it might open enough of the rest for them to be won over.
“You all remember when we marched shoulder to shoulder, when Setaka led our Ascended Host to push the emperor’s realm to the very edges of the world. I know I remember it well. It was an age of glory, an age of heroes! Cebotaru, you and I rode dragons of twilight to the piercing summit of the world, where all time is as one, and witnessed the creation of the universe.”
He turned, and held a hand out to Syphax.
“Syphax, my brother, we waged war on the abyssal monsters when they poured from the ocean rift on the eastern coast. We fought for ten days and nights, to the very limits of endurance, but we drove them back. We triumphed!”
Syphax nodded, and Ta’anari saw the memory of that war ripple through his scaled flesh in waves of purple, black and red.
“I do not speak of that time,” said Syphax, his many eyes veiled in smoke. “Seven thousand golden warriors of Shurima died on the red shore. Only you and I returned alive.”
“Yes, we paid a terrible price for that victory, brother—in flesh and in spirit. But what a fight it was! Mortals renamed the ocean in honor of our deeds that day.”
Syphax shook his head. “Your memory has omitted the horrors we saw that day, Ta’anari. Keep your talk of glory. I’ll not hear it. When I close my eyes, I still hear the screams of those we lost. I relive how those... things killed them. Worse, how they wiped them from the world, and devoured their very souls. So spare me your gilded recollections, I do not recognize them.”
“Yes, they were days of blood and, yes, it is likely I glorify them,” said Ta’anari. “But I speak of how the world should know us and remember us. As mighty heroes, bestriding the world at the head of invincible armies and commanded by an undying emperor who—”
“But Azir did die,” snapped Xuuyan, planting his mighty long-axe hard enough to crack the glass beneath. “He died, and without him at our head, the Sunborn fell to war. What went before is now dust and ashes. It is meaningless. So if you think reminding us of golden memories will end this conflict, then you have fallen further into madness than any of us.”
“Reminding us all of what we once were is only part of my reason for bringing you here,” said Ta’anari.
“Then state your purpose, or let us get back to killing one another.”
Ta’anari tried to stand upright, but failed when the twisted bones in his back creaked like a bent branch. Pain shot up his spine like the raking claws of a Void-born terror.
“It is the old wound, Xuuyan,” he said. “It never really healed. You remember, at Kahleek?”
“Of course I remember, cripple,” snarled Xuuyan. “I remember every blow I have struck from the moment I stepped from the light of the great disc. There are none of us here who cannot speak of great deeds or betrayals at the side of those we once called brothers and sisters.”
“You and I, we held the line where Icathia once stood. You saved my life more than once.”
“Those days are gone now,” snapped Cebotaru, the words mangled by the growing disfigurement of his jaw. “And in the past they must remain.”
“Why?” Ta’anari demanded, rounding on him. “Why must they remain in the past? Are we not the Ascended of Shurima? We are not mere avatars, we are gods! What is reality, but what we decide it should be? Any one of us could rule this world entirely, but instead we have fallen to petty squabbling, waging wars for reasons that no longer make sense, even to the few of us that could still name them.”
He paced, his tone hectoring and judgemental, despite himself.
“Zigantus, you believed we should rebuild from the ruins, to continue Azir’s legacy. Enakai, you sought to establish a new kingdom. Valeeva, you and your brother saw spite in every eye, and sought vengeance for slights real and imagined.”
“Oh, they were real,” she hissed, her alabaster skin threaded with violet veins and her venomous spines standing erect at her shoulders.
Ta’anari ignored her. “Each of us saw a different path into the future, but instead of using our Sunborn powers and working together to achieve something divine, we fought like scavengers over a fresh corpse. Yes, Setaka was long dead, and we will never see her like again. Yes, Azir was betrayed, and our empire lay in ruins, its people scattered and frightened. Shurima needed a strong leader to guide its rebirth, but all it was left with was us, broken monsters who had stared into the abyss too long and felt its horror twist their minds to madness and self-destruction.
“So instead of rebuilding, we fought for the scraps of a dead empire, while burning the rest of the world to the ground. Even now, we would sooner see the extinction of all life rather than find common purpose. Alone we are mighty, but together...? There is nothing we cannot do. Nothing. If we wanted, we could storm the celestial gates, leave this ashen world behind, and forge a new empire beyond the stars!”
Ta’anari’s voice dropped, laden with regret.
“But we do not. We do what lesser beings do. We kill each other in a war that has lasted many times longer than any we fought before.”
And then his voice rose, soaring to far reaches of the amphitheater.
“But it does not have to be that way, not any more!”
Ta’anari reached back over his shoulder and unslung the Chalicar. A murmur of shock rippled around the amphitheater at the sight of the ancient weapon.
“You all remember this,” he said. “It is the weapon of Setaka, greatest and noblest of us all. Brought from beyond the mountain and raised aloft at Shurima’s birth. It is the blade that will one day be borne by Sivunas Alahair, the Bringer of Rains. In their hands it will be a weapon of great destruction, or a symbol of unity.”
He held out the Chalicar for his fellows to see. Its edges glittered gold, shaped by cosmic forces beyond this world by powers not even the wisest of Shurima understood. Ta’anari saw their reverence, their awe and pride.
But most of all he saw their desire to possess it. Xuuyan took a step towards him.
Of course it would be Xuuyan.
The god-warrior spun his axe, and Ta’anari remembered the awful pain of its obsidian blade splitting his armor and smashing his spine to shards.
“I will kill you and take it from your dead hand,” said Xuuyan, a wide grin splitting his beaked skull. “Will that make me the leader?” His chitinous carapace bulged at his shoulders, studded with outgrowths of bone spikes and iron blades. Even in his prime, Ta’anari could not best him.
But Kahleek was many centuries ago, and Ta’anari had learned new tricks since then.
“Are you going to fight me with that?” Xuuyan asked, pointing to the Chalicar with his axe.
“No,” said Ta’anari, turning to hand it to Myisha.
Its weight was almost too much for her to bear, but she winked and again he sensed capricious amusement from her, as though the sight of gods about to fight was amusing to her.
Xuuyan sneered. “Then what? You will face me unarmed? Is that what this is? You want to die here, in the sight of your fellow gods?”
“Not that either.”
“No matter, I care nothing for your reasons,” said Xuuyan, “I will finish what I began at the river.”
His charge was like an avalanche—a rumbling, inexorable thunder that was as deadly as it was inescapable. Ta’anari had seen entire phalanxes broken by it, giants toppled and fortress gates smashed asunder.
Ta’anari dropped to one knee and placed his hands flat against the amphitheater’s glassy floor. He felt currents of magic running through its structure, golden threads of power linking him to every living being that stood upon it. The mortals were like tiny sparks rising from a fire, fleeting and inconsequential, but the god-warriors were newborn suns of roiling magic.
He tapped into their power, just as Myisha had taught him. He drew out a measure of the cursed prescience of Shabaka and Shabake, feeling their alien senses twist within him. The lizard-swiftness of Syphax surged through his ancient body. The rage of Zigantus, and Enakai’s sense of righteous purpose.
Ta’anari closed his eye, now knowing where Xuuyan’s charging blow would land.
He swayed aside, the blade slashing a hair’s breadth from his throat. Xuuyan’s passing was like a thunderstrike, and Ta’anari swung around, grasping one of his attacker’s curling shell-horns. He vaulted onto Xuuyan’s back as his former brother roared in fury.
The god-warrior rolled, trying to throw Ta’anari, but his grip was too tight. The seer twins’ unwitting gift allowed Ta’anari to anticipate every wild, bucking move his foe made. Xuuyan reversed his grip on the axe and swung it over his shoulder like the barbed whip of a lunatic penitent. Ta’anari rolled aside as the blade smashed down, cleaving a deep and gory trough in Xuuyan’s unnatural armor.
The Sunborn bellowed in anger, wrenching the blade from his hardened flesh in a welter of blood. One of his horns hung by sinewy threads, and Ta’anari ripped it from the carapace. Ivory white and curved like a scimitar, its tip was sheathed in iron, and needle-sharp.
Xuuyan slammed into the wall of the amphitheater with a hammering impact that smashed it to spinning fragments of razored glass. Scores of mortal bodies tumbled into the arena, only to be crushed underfoot by the struggling god-warriors. Xuuyan hurled Ta’anari from his back. He landed hard on the ground, still clutching the sharpened horn.
Xuuyan turned and swung his axe down in an executioner’s strike, but Ta’anari dove aside, and the floor exploded in knives of glass. Instead, Xuuyan’s gnarled foot stomped down on his chest, pinning him to the floor. He felt his ribs crack, a shard punching through into his lung. The weight was colossal, easily capable of crushing him like an insect.
“The Chalicar will be mine!” Xuuyan shouted.
The god-warrior’s leathery, helmet-like skull extended from his armored carapace, his neck pale and thick with pulsing arteries. Soulless black eyes bulged at the promise of slaying yet another rival. As he’d promised, Xuuyan meant to finish what he had begun on the banks of the River Kahleek.
“No,” grunted Ta’anari through blood-flecked fangs. “It won’t.”
He unleashed a surge of newly-learned power, unknown to the rest of his kind. He blinked—a terrible sensation of hurtling through an unending vortex overcame him, a tunnel surrounded by hideous monsters that lurked just beyond the threshold...
The sensation lasted a fraction of a second only, but felt like an age.
He opened his eyes, and he was once again atop Xuuyan as the deadly axe arced towards the ground. A hard bang of displaced air echoed behind him as the fleeting portal closed.
Ta’anari raised the bloody horn high overhead, and plunged it down into Xuuyan’s eye.
The tip punched deep into the god-warrior’s skull, Ta’anari’s inhuman strength driving the entire length of the horn into the mass of Xuuyan’s brain.
It was a ferocious killing blow, but Xuuyan still stood, his Ascended flesh not quite ready to admit that it was dead. Ta’anari leapt clear as the towering god-warrior crashed to his knees with the sound of a mountain toppling. Xuuyan rolled onto his side, his remaining eye staring at his killer with mute incomprehension. His beaked mouth still moved, but no words came out.
Ta’anari gulped in breaths that heaved in his blood-frothed lungs. He heard Myisha squeal with delight, clapping like a proud teacher pleased at a student’s wild success.
The sound sickened him.
Even if things had gone exactly as planned, he’d suspected he would have to kill at least one of his brethren. But he had not relished the prospect. He and Xuuyan had never been close, but they had fought side by side for the glory of Shurima, back when the sun blessed them, and filled their bodies with strength.
He knelt beside his fallen opponent and laid a furred hand on his head. Blood glistened with the light of dragon-wrought stars. “I am truly sorry, brother,” he whispered.
A roar of anguish went up from Xuuyan’s champions. Not in mourning for their fallen god—Xuuyan was too hated for that—nor even in hunger for vengeance. The roar was for their own forfeit lives. Murderous blades slipped from the sheaths of the warbands to either side of them.
The god-warriors had taught their slaves well.
Men without a god to protect them were nothing more than vermin to be exterminated, or so the teachings had always been.
“Hold!” shouted Ta’anari. “Champions, stay your blades!”
These warbands were not his; but he was Sunborn, and the awesome authority in his voice halted them in their tracks. His fellow god-warriors stared in open-mouthed wonder at what Ta’anari had done. Naganeka of Zuretta slid forward, and lowered her upper body to study Xuuyan’s cooling corpse. Pale smoke was lifting from his flesh, celestial energies already fleeing the mortal meat of his body.
She pulled back her hooded cowl, revealing her many hypnotic eyes rimmed with ash, and scaled lips overhung by long, ebony fangs. She bent over the wound in Xuuyan’s back, and her tongue flicked out to taste his death.
“Rhaast will be disappointed,” she said, her voice a wet, reptile hiss. “He had sworn to slay Xuuyan himself.” Her venom blinded life-bearers shuffled behind her, unsure of what to do now that their reviled goddess had spoken aloud.
The others came forward warily. Enakai and Syfax watched Ta’anari with newfound respect. The others fixated on Xuuyan’s death, but they had seen Ta’anari do something impossible, even for a god-warrior.
Shabaka and Shabake circled the corpse. Their stunted wings fluttered in agitation. They wore the smell of death like a shroud—the corruption that touched them all was most obvious in those two.
Onyx eyes, eyes that had seen too much, darted back and forth. “Told him he would die today, didn’t we, sister?” said Shabaka.
“They never listen, do they?” Shabake replied.
Shabaka giggled. “No, no, never listen to the mad ravens. What do we know? Only everything!”
“You foresaw this?” demanded Zigantus.
“Yes, yes, saw him get too close a look at that horn of his. Told him so, but he just laughed.”
“Not laughing now, is he, brother?”
“No, sister.”
“What else have you seen?” asked Syphax.
The seer twins huddled together, whispering and tossing the small bones back and forth between them. Their minds had been shattered during the battle to seal the Great Rift at Icathia. No one, not even a god-warrior, could meet the gaze of the titanic entities who watched and dwelled within the Abyss without their sanity unravelling a little.
Shabake frowned. “Future too tightly woven to know...”
“And too many possible outcomes from the now to see any clearly,” Shabaka added. “Not for sure.”
“All of us may die today. Or just some,” said Shabake. “Or maybe none. Maybe you kill Ta’anari now, Zigantus, and we all get to live.”
“Live to kill each other another day!” cackled Shabaka.
“She wants it. She is the pebble that starts the avalanche.”
“Speak plainly!” demanded Zigantus. “Who wants what? Pebbles? Avalanches? Who are you talking about?”
“Her!” screeched Shabaka, pointing past Ta’anari to the slight figure of Myisha. “She is the mote-light in the eye of the gods.”
Myisha held the Chalicar tight to her chest, like a child clutching her father’s blade.
Cebotaru snarled and hauled Ta’anari to his feet. The Wolf’s physique was slender, yet monstrously powerful and wrought with four sinewy, grey-furred arms curled into clawed fists. “What are they talking about?” he growled. “That one, who is she?”
Ta’anari bit back a scream of pain as the twisted bones of his spine ground together. “She is a mortal, nothing more,” he said.
“You always were a miserable liar,” said Cebotaru, baring long, crooked fangs. “The truth, brother, or I will rip your throat out before you can blink.”
“She helped me find the Chalicar,” said Ta’anari.
Cebotaru shook his head. “The Scholar buried the Chalicar with Setaka when he took her body into hiding, after the doom of Icathia. How is it that a mere mortal knew where to find it?”
“She did not, but she led me to Nasus.”
The others forgot Xuuyan, and turned their attention on Ta’anari.
“You saw the Scholar?” said Valeeva, the spines on her back rippling with anticipation. “No one has seen him since he killed Moneerah for delving the charred ruins of Nashramae’s great library.”
“I saw him, but he is much changed since we last knew him. Whatever burden he bears has all but crushed him. He dwells at a tower raised on a hidden cliff, watching the dance of stars. He bade her find me, and bring me to his tower.”
“Why you?” hissed Naganeka. “Why not any of us?”
“I do not know,” said Ta’anari. “There are many more deserving of his attention.”
“And you spoke to him?” asked Enakai.
“I did,” said Ta’anari.
“And he told you where to find Setaka’s blade?”
“Yes.”
“Just like that?” spat Syphax.
“No, not just like that,” Ta’anari snapped, throwing off Cebotaru’s grip. He turned to retrieve the Chalicar from Myisha. The power within the weapon was potent and restless. “I told him of our war, of how we were burning paradise and clawing at one another like animals. I told him I needed the weapon of Setaka to end this bloodshed.”
“Nasus rejected us the moment Azir fell,” said Zigantus. “Why would he help now?”
“He rejected the Sunborn, because he saw the bitter jealousies and twisted rivalries that fester in our hearts,” said Ta’anari. “He has been walking the forgotten paths of this world, wracked by grief and adrift in memories of his lost brother, but always he is drawn back to the land of his birth.”
Ta’anari took a breath, grimacing as he felt the currents of magic shifting within him. Sharp pain stabbed up into his heart from his belly.
So, the end begins...
Myisha had warned that using the magic she had taught him would irrevocably change even an Ascended, breaking the fetters that bound the immortal breath of the gods to his human flesh. That power had held the hurts of endless battle and the passage of millennia at bay, but some things were never meant to live forever.
Fear touched him then, cold and unfamiliar, but he fought down the creeping tide of pain and weakness.
“You are right, Zigantus. Nasus will never fight in our war, but that does not mean he is heedless of what we do. He told me the stars speak of a time far in the future when Shurima will rise from the sands once more, when the rightful ruler will fight to claim dominion over all that has been lost.”
“Shurima will rise again?” said Cebotaru, unable to mask his eagerness. “When?”
“We will not live to see it,” said Ta’anari. “Not all of us.”
Shabake pushed her scrawny, skittering form between them. Her withered arms stabbed the air, her dark eyes wide. “All of us may die today. Or just some,” she screeched.
Syphax pushed her away. “The Chalicar,” he said. “It will play a part in Shurima’s rebirth?”
“Yes,” said Ta’anari. “For good or ill. It will be a symbol for the people of Shurima to rally behind. I had hoped it could heal the wounds between us—a reminder of what we once were, and what we could be again. It could have saved us if we had taken the chance to reclaim the brotherhood that once bound us together under a single banner.”
Cebotaru grunted in amusement. “And now the truth of it comes out. You gathered us here to claim the right of leadership, bearing the weapon of our greatest champion, and anointed by the Scholar himself.”
Ta’anari shook his furred head.
“No, I could never be the equal of Setaka, or Nasus. All I sought was an end to this war. I had hoped we could do it together, but I see now that was an impossible dream.”
Ta’anari walked away from his brethren, moving to stand in the centre of the amphitheater. All eyes were upon him, eight god-warriors and thousands of mortals.
The pain was spreading all through him, almost too much to bear. He swallowed, tasting the grit of sand in the back of his throat. Fur was drifting free from his body in wispy clumps. Every movement felt like broken glass was grinding in his joints.
He turned to address the others.
“Power without check made us vain, made us believe that nothing should be denied us. That made us poor stewards of his world, and we do not deserve to be its masters. We once called ourselves the Ascended Host. What are we now? Darkin? A name debased by mortals who no longer understand what we are, or what we were wrought to do.”
He lifted his fading eye to the thousands watching from the steps of the amphitheater, tears cutting a path through his flaking skin.
“They hate us, and when the horrors of the abyss rise once more, they will beg for our return,” said Ta’anari, meeting Myisha’s eager gaze. “But we will be gone, no more than whispers on the songwinds, a dark legend of imperfect gods told to scold disobedient children.”
With the last of his strength, Ta’anari rammed the Chalicar down into the crystalline floor of the amphitheater. The sound was deafening, like a hammerblow against the veil of the world. The cracks from its impact spread farther than they should have, and the clear sky burned with the diamond brilliance of a newborn star.
But this was no golden radiance. This was cold, merciless and silver.
“What the sun made, the moon will unmake!” screamed Ta’anari.
And a blazing column of white fire stabbed from the midnight sky.
It struck the Chalicar’s extended arms and reflected that fire outwards, drawing in the god-warriors and piercing their chests. It burned them, reached into the arcane heart of their being and devoured the magic that made them.
Shabaka and Shabake vaporized instantly, disappearing in an ashen cloud of drifting feathers. Their screams were cackles of release, freighted with resigned foreknowledge.
Syphax twisted in the light like a hooked fish, but even his power was meaningless in the face of this cosmic fire. The bull-headed Zigantus tried to run, but not even his legendary speed could outrun the moonfall called down by Ta’anari.
Even as his skin sloughed from his bones, Ta’anari wept to see them die. They were his brothers and sisters, and not even centuries of the most brutal war imaginable could make him hate them.
He saw Enakai unmade by the radiance, his divine flesh dissolving into light from his bones. He reached for Ta’anari, and his eyes were accepting as he met his fate.
He sobbed at what he had been forced to do.
The light burned away his remaining eye, and a world of darkness closed in on him. The last of his strength fled his body and he slumped to the glass floor of the amphitheater. He heard more screams and the shouts of fighting men who knew nothing of the affairs of gods. More bloodshed, but it would pass.
Would the mortal hosts continue the war his kind had begun?
Perhaps. But it would be a mortal war, and it would end.
Ta’anari drifted in darkness, lost in memories of happier days.
He tried to recall his life before climbing the golden steps to meet the sun with Enakai. Little remained of that time, the memories shed as the heavenly power had crowded his skull.
Ta’anari heard footsteps. Booted feet crunching over broken glass. He smelled mortal flesh, rank with sweat and decay.
They were smells he recognised. His life-bearers.
Ta’anari lifted a hand, seeking the touch of another living being, but no one took it.
“Sulpae?” he croaked. “Is that you? Teushpa? Idri-Mi? Please, help me. I think... I think I am mortal once more, I... I think I am human again...”
“You are,” said a voice that seemed on the verge of laughter.
“Myisha,” whispered Ta’anari. “Are they all dead?”
“No. Naganeka, Valeeva and Cebotaru escaped before the fire could take them. But they’re pretty weak, so I don’t think they’ll be a problem for long. It’s the others, all those who didn’t show up, who’ll be harder to trap.”
“No! You must finish them,” wheezed Ta’anari. “Even a wounded god-warrior could conquer this world.”
“Trust me,” said Myisha, “what we did here spells the beginning of the end for your kind.”
“Then we did it. We brought peace.”
Then she really did laugh. “Peace? Oh, no—this world will never know peace. Not really.”
Confused, Ta’anari struggled to rise, but the hard jab of a spear butt to the chest pushed him back.
“No, you stay down there,” said Myisha.
“Please, help me up,” he said. “I told you, I am human now.”
“I heard you, but do you imagine that fact washes away your multitude of sins? Think of all the lives you ended. Does being human now mean you’re forgiven for the oceans of blood you spilled? Tell me, how many atrocities did it take before your withered conscience finally pricked you enough to act?”
“I don’t understand,” Ta’anari murmured. “What are you saying?”
Myisha giggled, and she suddenly seemed so much younger to him, yet impossibly ancient too. He heard the cracking sound of the Chalicar being pulled from the amphitheater floor.
“I am saying that your death has been a long time coming, Ta’anari,” said Myisha. “Some of you turned out not so bad, I suppose, but most of you were so damaged in the war with the Void, it’s a wonder you survived this long. Perhaps you and your kind were a mistake to begin with, but a mistake I can help correct.”
Even without eyes, Ta’anari felt the golden power of the Chalicar hovering just above him. Though his body was withered and all but spent, he cried out in agony as its edge split his chest.
Myisha whispered into his ear. “The power that coursed through this weapon touched you all, Ta’anari. It knows your kind now. And I give that fire to mortals.”
Her hands were inside him, and Ta’anari felt his heart being cut away, felt it being lifted from the cage of his cloven ribs... yet, still, he lived.
For a few moments more, at least.
“Idri-Mi,” she said, handing off Ta’anari’s heart, “take this and the Chalicar to your weaponsmiths. We will need to take a different approach in dealing with the rest of the...”
Myisha paused.
“Wait, what was that old word?”
She snapped her fingers.
“Ah, yes. That’s it. Darkin.”
Twisted Fate

Born to the nomadic river folk of the Serpentine Delta, the boy Tobias Felix quickly learned what it was to be an outsider. Tolerated for the exotic goods they peddled, but shunned for their strange traditions, his people found only short welcomes wherever they berthed their colorful river barques. His elders would shrug, and say this was just the way of the world… but the obvious prejudice always stuck in Tobias’ craw.

He found his true calling in the gambling tents, between games of chance and skill like Mortwheel and Stabberscotch, when he first picked up a deck of playing cards. Many years earlier, his superstitious grandfather had shown him how to read omens in the shuffle and cut, while his aunt had later taught him how to read all an opponent’s tells. Between the two, Tobias took to the high-stakes game of Krakenhand like an old master. He could almost feel each card’s place in the deck, and follow their movements through each successive hand. He was often accused of cheating, but it was difficult for anyone to explain exactly how.

Finally, one night, a group of men who’d lost their fortunes to young Tobias returned in the dead of night to settle the score. They came bearing cudgels and, emboldened by cheap rotgut, went from tent to tent in their search for him, beating down any of the river folk who got in their way. Fearing for his life, Tobias turned and fled into the darkness.

When dawn came, the lad sheepishly crept back to find his people breaking down the camp. No one would look him in the eye. He had thought only of himself, and left others to face the consequences of his actions.

Though he begged and pleaded with them all, Tobias was exiled for what he had done. With his whole world falling apart around him, he watched helplessly as the barques left, leaving him alone on the riverbank with nothing but his grandfather’s worn deck of cards clutched in his hands.

He grew to manhood as a drifter, trawling the gambling halls of every settlement he came to, using his preternatural skill to earn enough coin to survive. That Tobias was able to relieve the boastful, the arrogant, and the cruel of their cash was just an added bonus—though he was always careful to let his marks win at least a few hands, here and there.

Across one table, he met a deplorable fellow named Malcolm Graves.

Each recognizing a kindred soul, Tobias and Graves quickly joined forces, and the two of them spent years running various… dubious endeavors across the northeastern coastal towns, and beyond. With every con, swindle, and heist, Tobias felt the pull of the cards growing stronger, and he knew it was more than mere gambler’s luck that guided him. His people had always waved away concerns over primitive magic and “cartomancy”, but now Tobias began to seek out ever more dangerous means to bend the cards to his will.

That search ended badly when a particularly daring heist went wrong. The exact details of that night remain shrouded in mystery, for neither of them likes to speak of it—but Graves was taken alive, while Tobias and their other accomplices ran free.

Though he tried to break Graves out, he failed. Instead, seeking to begin again, he returned his birth name to the river’s waters, and took another: Twisted Fate.

After that, Twisted Fate continued to ply his criminal trade in the high parlors and low dens of every city he visited, though without his partner to help him, he tended to find himself cornered far more often. Indeed, he was imprisoned with great fanfare too many times to count, yet no cell ever seemed able to hold him for long; Twisted Fate was always gone with morning’s light, leaving only a mocking calling card to confirm he had ever been there at all.

In the port of Bilgewater, Twisted Fate and Graves finally had their day of reckoning. They were forced to put aside their differences after being caught up in a power struggle between the ship captains who ran the place—but following the death of the reaver king Gangplank, the pair managed a swift reconciliation before shoving off and making for distant Piltover.

All in all, Twisted Fate is glad to have his old friend back, even if it might take another job or two—or ten—to restore their once easy partnership.
Double Down

All eyes in Fortune's Glory were on Twisted Fate. He felt the gambling hall's many patrons regarding him with a mixture of envy, vicarious excitement, and spiteful longing for him to lose everything on the turn of the last card.
Beyond the avarice common to dens of chance, Twisted Fate felt a singular purpose at work here, a noose being slowly drawn around his neck. The cards were twitching in agitation, warning him of danger. He knew he should fold and get out before whoever was hunting him sprang their trap, but the opportunity to make a pauper of the man across the table was too enticing to forego.
He grinned at his opponent, a greedy merchant whose fortune was built on the whipped backs of enslaved miners. The man's robes were expensive: Freljord furs, hand-tooled leather, and Bilgewater sea charms. Every finger boasted a ring of blood gold worth more than most men would see in a lifetime. Aromatic smoke drifted from clay pipes to hang over the fortune in coin, jewelry, and deeds lying between them like a pirate's treasure horde.
Twisted Fate nodded toward the merchant.
“I do believe it's your call, Master Henmar.”
“I am aware of the rules, river rat,” said Henmar, as Twisted Fate ran his tattooed fingers in a repeating spiral pattern on the backs of his cards. “And do not think any of your fancy sleight of hand is going to distract me into making an error of judgment.”
“Distract you?” said Twisted Fate, exuding laconic confidence in every gesture. “I declare, I would never stoop to such a low and dishonorable ruse.”
“No? Then why is it your eyes keep darting from the table?” said Henmar. “Listen closely, I have negotiated with the best of them, and I know the tell of a desperate man when I see it.”
Twisted Fate gave a sly grin, swapping the cards between his hands and theatrically doffing his wide-brimmed hat.
“You're sharp, sir. I can see that,” he said, sweeping his gaze across the gathered crowd. The usual collection of hangers-on; men and women hoping that whoever won might be generous to those nearby. The cards trembled as Twisted Fate's eyes fell upon certain individuals and he felt his mouth fill with the rancid flavor of sour milk. He’d long learned to trust that reaction as a sign of imminent bedlam.
There. A man with an eye patch and a flame-haired woman. They were almost certainly armed and well aware of his slippery nature. Did he know them? Probably not. Were they working for Henmar, protecting his assets? Unlikely. A man like Henmar would make it obvious who he'd brought. Bounty hunters then. The cards were growing ever more alarmed in Twisted Fate's hands. He slipped them together and placed them flat on the table.
“You have a look that tells me you know you have already lost,” said Henmar with the tone of a man who believes everyone to be his inferior.
“Then what say we make this a little more interesting, sir?” replied Twisted Fate, spreading the cards in a fan and watching as the hunters eased closer. “Care to double down?”
“Are you able to cover that much?” asked Henmar suspiciously.
“Easily,” said Twisted Fate, locking his gaze with the merchant and lifting a heavy pouch of coins from the voluminous pockets of his long coat. “Can you?”
Henmar licked his lips and snapped his fingers. A flunky behind the merchant handed him a matching bag of coins. The patrons of Fortune's Glory gave a collective moan as it was added to the gold heaped in the middle of the table. Wars had been waged for less coin than was at stake here.
“You first,” said Henmar.
“Always,” agreed Twisted Fate, flipping over his cards as the bounty hunters made their move.
The man with the eye patch lunged at him with a capture collar. The woman shouted his name and drew a matching pair of pistols.
Twisted Fate kicked the underside of the table, spinning it into the air in a shower of coins, cards, and parchment. The pistols fired with deafening roars, blasting fist-sized holes in the table. The capture collar snapped closed, but when the smoke cleared and the screams stopped, Twisted Fate was nowhere to be found.
Henmar rose to his feet, his face twisted in outrage as he searched in vain for his opponent. He looked down at the broken pieces of the table and the color drained from his face.
“Where is the money?” he yelled. “Where is my money?”
Five cards fluttered face-up to the floor of Fortune's Glory.
A winning hand.
Twitch

A plague rat by birth, a connoisseur of filth by passion, Twitch is a paranoid and mutated rat that walks upright and roots through the dregs of Zaun for treasures only he truly values. Armed with a chem-powered crossbow, Twitch is not afraid to get his paws dirty as he builds a throne of refuse in his kingdom of filth, endlessly plotting the downfall of humanity.
Do Not Engage

H.I.V.E. Incident Report
Code Violation: Industrial Homicide
Casefile Status: Unsolved
Investigating Agent: Rol, P.

Team responded to report of suspicious character, criminal activity; proceeded to Sump Works, Sector 90TZ. Sector 90TZ notably absent. In its place: sinkhole, smoke, noxious fumes. Interviews with private security indicate urgent need for better private security.
Response team entered sinkhole. Toxic runoff had melted away building wreckage. Two survivors located, one partially liquefied and dripping off catwalk. Six deceased bodies found among wreckage, three of them partial; two appear to predate incident. Causes of death include acute deceleration, caustic liquidation, and/or fatal crossbow wounds. Unclear if lab's destruction was itself the perpetrator's motive or an attempt to cover tracks.

Survivor #1 (Ra Qintava, facility researcher) brought up for interview, but unable to provide statement due to 1) post-traumatic stress and 2) liquefaction of tongue and lower jaw. Awaiting toxin screen and prosthesis fitting.

Search-and-rescue discovered apparent shantytown constructed from refuse. Recovered items include:

57 waterlogged romance novels, illegible, with edits made in crayon
108 bottles, unlabeled (possible toxic runoff or discarded shampoo remnants)
200 pounds chewing gum (possible installation art project)
1 jar toenails, labeled by toe/finger, date, and mood
Survivor #2 (Valori Olant, Sludge Analyst) in recovery; regained lucidity following prolonged therapeutic electrocution. Statement transcript excerpt follows:

V.O.: GOT TO DO SOMETHING -
NURSE: She's lost so much blood --
P.R.: Her co-workers lost a lot more than that --
V.O.: IT'S STILL OUT THERE!
P.R.: Ma'am, I need you to focus. Tell me what he looked like.
V.O.: LIKE A RAT! (pause)
NURSE: Like a what?
P.R.: You mean, small? Beady-eyed? Sorta rat-faced -- ?
V.O.: I MEAN IT LOOKED LIKE A GIANT GODSDAMNED RAT! (pause). WITH A CROSSBOW! (pause).
P.R.: (to nurse) Can we moderate her painkillers?
V.O.: YOU'RE NOT LISTENING! IT'S A HOMICIDAL, PSYCHOPATHIC, GIANT FREAKING RAT!
IN A WAISTCOAT!
P.R.: Nurse?
NURSE: (injecting Olant's arm with sedative) On it.
[EDIT]
V.O.: We were just scientists, working on refining human waste into inexpensive baby formula... [EDIT] I saw - I don't know how else to - this crazed, enormous RAT - screaming at us! Kicking over vats! Spitting on our food! [EDIT] The lab was sealed. Industrial waste was spilling everywhere. Nowhere to run. [EDIT] I woke up in the dark. Well, the acid had melted my eyeballs. I could SMELL the twitchy bastard inches from my face. It said, “NOBODY STEALS TWITCH'S JUICE!” cackled wildly, and skittered off... I can still smell it in my mind. OH MY GODS, I CAN STILL SMELL IT-

End transcript. At this point victim began screaming; has yet to stop.

[UPDATE: Qintava, Written Testimony]
Suspect summary, as reported:
NAME/KNOWN ALIASES: ''Twitch.''
SEX: Male (unconfirmed).
AGE: Unknown.
HEIGHT: 4'9'' (hunched)
WEIGHT: < 99 lbs. (wet).
DISTINGUISHING FEATURES: Is a giant rat.
STATUS: At large; armed, extremely dangerous; DO NOT ENGAGE.

H.I.V.E - Enforcing Progress!
Udyr

Whenever the moon rises into a wintery sky, round and red as blood, the spirit walkers of the Freljord know that another of their kind has been born into the world. One attuned to the wilds and the land, one who walks within and beside the spirit that best matches the shape of their heart. On the night of Udyr’s birth, there was nothing in the crimson moon that suggested anything different than that.

Nothing that would suggest Udyr was already the most powerful walker to ever live.

Every being has spirit, whether person or beast, plant or animal, dead or alive or deathless. But unlike his brethren, Udyr’s power of spiritual connection was not limited to one type of spirit—he could hear them all. The needs and wants of everything around him constantly flooded his mind, making it impossible to hear anything above their roar.

His parents did not know how to help him. Their warmother sent for other spirit walkers to train the boy, but each said the same thing: spirit walker training focused on opening oneself up, not closing oneself off.

The first time Udyr tapped into his powers with purpose was the night the Frostguard came for him. Young Udyr, terrified, hid in the forest. He did not expect to feel the life ripped from... everyone. His entire tribe, slaughtered in an instant. Howling with sadness and rage, Udyr took power from the spirits of the forest. With a swipe of his claws and a beating of his wings, he brought the mountain down on the Frostguard. Alone, grieving, and overwhelmed, Udyr wandered the wastes for years, doing what he had to in order to survive.

He did not interact with humans again until he landed the killing blow on a wildclaw that was troubling a Winter’s Claw hunting party. Impressed, they brought Udyr back to camp. Warmother Hejian sent him to be trained in the ways of war alongside her daughter Kalkia. The wild boy showed the lonely daughter how to live in the wild, and she showed him how to live among people. Soon, the Winter’s Claw began to almost feel like a home.

But that changed when a pack of starved and diseased rimefang wolves skulked close to the camp. Udyr lost himself in the fog of the pack’s madness and hunger, attacking and nearly killing a child. It took Kalkia and her mother’s True Ice to stop Udyr. After the wolves had all been slain, Hejian banished Udyr from the Winter’s Claw.

Udyr returned to the mountains, far from those he could hurt. Kalkia would visit whenever she could get away until she was eventually called upon to lead her tribe. She joyfully lifted Udyr’s banishment, but he refused to return. He still had no control over the spirits whose wants and needs howled inside his mind, but swore he would always be there to protect Kalkia and the people she loved. That was the last time they saw one another.

Everything changed when a foreign monk sought him out, saying he had come to train with the spirit walkers so that he may learn how to subdue the dragon spirit that burned within him. Udyr refused, but the monk challenged Udyr for the right to train with him. They fought to their limits, but in the end, neither won.

The monk introduced himself as Lee Sin, and said that this battle had shown him they both had much to learn. He invited Udyr to train in his homeland of Ionia. With nothing left to tie him to the Freljord, Udyr agreed.

The two men grew close during their journey, taking time each day to spar together and to speak of the spirits, but when they finally arrived at Hirana Monastery, they found it besieged by Noxian invaders. Calling upon the spirits of Ionia, Udyr leapt into the fray.

After their victory, the two men asked the abbott for guidance and how to learn control. The abbott told them that self-mastery had no guaranteed end, but agreed to train them both.

For the first time, Udyr’s mind was quiet enough for him to hear his own thoughts. He and Lee trained together to master the spirits within and beside them. With new knowledge and understanding, Udyr was able to help Lee and his dragon find balance with one another. And through this endeavor, Udyr came to understand that harmony and interdependence created a state of balance in Ionia. In contrast, balance in the Freljord was based on a sense of struggle and conflict—of growth and change—where the fight to survive against an uncaring and dangerous environment lived deep in the soul of every Freljordian.

After several years, Udyr’s powers plateaued. He was faced with the choice to stay and train in Ionia, or return to the struggle of his homeland where he could continue his growth. In the end, the choice was obvious.

Lee gave Udyr one of his blindfolds to keep with him—a reminder of his commitment to self-mastery—and asked for a promise. That, once Udyr had achieved what he was looking for in the Freljord, he would return the blindfold to Lee in person. Udyr wrapped the blindfold around his hand before setting off across the world once again to take up the mantle of spirit walker.

A new conflict between an Avarosan and Winter’s Claw warmother greeted Udyr upon his return to the Freljord. The Avarosan wanted to unite the people of the Freljord under a single banner, putting an end to their struggles. Udyr understood that such an action would harm the spirit of the land, and so he decided to offer counsel to the other side—the Winter’s Claw. It was Kalkia’s headstrong daughter Sejuani who received him, and he could feel her need for guidance.

The young woman accepted Udyr’s help, but Sejuani’s trust was hard-won, for she had grown up hearing tales of the spirit walker and his bloodlust. Udyr came to appreciate Sejuani’s drive and cleverness, though her ruthlessness worried him. Sejuani saw wisdom and a warrior’s heart in Udyr, but his frequent absences grated her nerves. In time, they came to view one another like family—a surrogate oathfather and daughter—though they would never say it aloud.

Before long, the other spirit walkers summoned Udyr down to the south. But fate intervened when he met a strange old woman in an enormous coat. She asked for his help with several impossible tasks that he inevitably failed. Entertained by his attempts, she rewarded his efforts with bread so salty that he choked, and water so cold that his veins turned to ice. The old woman laughed at his reaction and shrugged off her coat, and the spiritual power hit Udyr like an avalanche. He passed out, and woke alone. But he could feel something had changed within him—a new power had awakened. He didn't realize it, but the Seal Sister, in one of her many disguises, had tested Udyr and given him her blessing.

Still unnerved by this odd encounter, Udyr joined his brethren in the south and listened as they told him of a strange spiritual shift they had each felt. They feared the Freljord was dying—the spirits of the land itself crumbling from within. Udyr believed that it was the Avarosans, in their efforts to unite the Freljord, that was causing this pain. He told the other spirit walkers as much, and asked them to fight against the Avarosan advance alongside the Winter's Claw. Many were skeptical, but others, afraid that Udyr might be right, agreed.

With his new spiritual power flowing within him, Udyr raced back to the Winter’s Claw to help end this existential threat to the Freljord once and for all.
A Walk with the Voices

Michael Luo

Far above, Udyr heard the cries of an eagle riding the gale. Its voice was strong, confident, but not close enough to get in the way of his own thoughts. It was a relief to feel this human.
The voices were never silent, but Udyr knew not to be ungrateful. Even a moment’s reprieve was rare.
I can hear myself breathe… for now, at least.
Today, he walked alone. He hiked up the mountain slopes, a chill wind following him, carrying away his lingering memory of Ionia’s ethereal beauty with every gust. The monks at Hirana had offered him a parting gift a few moons past when he left their lands—a riddle intended to guide him on his path to mastering his spiritual powers.
Below winter’s peak
Nature’s pure life essence flows
Now transformed to glass
It read more beautifully in their tongue than his own, but it had not taken him long to solve. After spending months traveling with the blind monk, Udyr had learned to decipher the meaning behind Ionian speech.
Reaching the precipitous eastern slopes of Winterspike, Udyr paused to gaze out at the lake before him, frozen in all its majesty. At the edges of the lake laid the bones and corpses of wild beasts, as well as those of dead shamans and priests who had come to this place, months, years, and lifetimes before him.
Udyr stood still, his chest bare, eyes closed, bracing against the brisk morning air.
This land was my home…
He looked down at his reflection on the ice. It showed the face of a man, ragged and worn from his travels.
My rest ends. I hear them coming.
The ice stirred. A crack at first, as Udyr saw his image splinter into disparate pieces. Soon, entire slabs broke off, drifting apart. Udyr waited, respectfully.
The frigid water bubbled. Slowly to begin with, and then rapidly all at once. Steam rose from the surface, filling the air with heat.
Udyr took in a quiet breath, his shoulders rising, to ready himself.
Out of the mist leapt an ice-formed beast, carved by the land’s magic and birthed from the lake. The ground trembled as it took a thundering step toward Udyr.
Udyr looked up at the wild spirit towering above him, three times his height.
The murmurs started low, soft—leaves falling on fresh snow. Yet quickly, they grew.
Bitter. Restless.
There they are.
Grunts turned into snarls, mutters into barks, one swallowing another. Their rage seized his mind, shattering his every thought. At first, the voices competed for dominance—elnüks, drüvasks, and others. Udyr had heard these voices within himself many times. Soon, they joined together, into the shape he had most feared.
The ravenous tiger.
“Spirit walker. Step closer,” it growled. “Raise your voice and show us why you have returned.”
Udyr only just mustered the strength to stifle a gasp. His knees buckled under the weight of the noise in his head. His hands shot toward the soil to steady his body. Straining his neck, he glared up at the savage creature, not willing to answer.
The voices rose at the sight of Udyr’s inaction, with the tiger roaring above the rest.
“You do not deserve to call the Freljord home. You are weak.”
Udyr braced himself as the spirit rammed its head into him, shards of its icy body cutting into his skin. Tumbling far across the ground, Udyr landed against hard rock.
I must not give in.
Regaining his balance, he wiped the blood off his face and forced his hands into fists. He punched his knuckles into the frosty ground, and the throbbing in his arms overtook him. Veins pulsated from his hands to his shoulders. Getting back to his feet, Udyr readied himself to deflect another blow.
The spirit roared once more. “The strong fight! Instead, you stifle your voice and cower!”
The spirit charged headfirst. Udyr tried dodging out of the way, but his foe was quicker and stronger. As he rolled to the side, the tiger swiped his leg with its claws, spraying the spirit walker’s blood across the frosted ground.
Udyr knelt on one knee in pain. He felt his own anger building, but still he held back.
I must not give in.
The spirit loomed closer, letting out a feral cry before pouncing toward Udyr. Realizing he could not dodge in time, he crossed his arms before him and clenched his fists. Magical energy surrounded him, blocking the tiger spirit’s lethal blow.
The spirit slid backward. After regaining its footing, it grinned through its fangs. Its icy body crackled with vicious energy, splintering the bones of its past victims beneath its feet. Death was all this place knew.
Udyr knelt on both knees now, his head down, his body pounding with pain while the spirit paced around him. He felt the ground shake with its every step.
This is not the way.
He gritted his teeth, their points drawing blood from his lips as he felt the ground tremble once more.
The voices boomed. “The weak… are prey!”
Udyr looked up, seeing the spirit charge toward him, its eyes lusting for blood—so wide he could see himself staring back, with the same lust for violence.
I must embrace who I am.
Golden flames erupted from Udyr’s skin like wildfire, the anger coursing through his body matching the fury of the tiger spirit before him.
“Finally, the prey has decided to fight!”
Udyr roared as he rushed straight at the tiger spirit. Vaulting onto the beast’s leg, he climbed its craggy surface, smashing his bleeding hands into whatever piece of ice he could to pull himself upward. The creature shook, the sharp edges of its body piercing the spirit walker’s skin. Udyr screamed, relishing in his might. At last, his wrath matched the fire in his foe, as the two reveled in their savage violence.
With a brutal lunge, he reached the spirit’s back, trails of his blood dripping down its sides. Spirit energy surged through him, a force strong enough to drown out any pain. The voices of wild beasts clamored unchecked in his mind—the bitter cries of those consumed by the tiger, and his own unbridled anger—merging as one.
“I am no prey!”
Udyr brought his fists down in a flurry of explosive blows, creating a web of cracks running down the creature’s body. He clawed and slashed with abandon, tearing away at his foe. Howling in pure rage, he threw back his head and sank his fangs deep into the spirit’s neck.
He expected the spirit to tumble over, its body to break apart, giant lumps of ice disappearing to dust.
But it was already gone, along with its voices. Had they shrieked? Had they cried?
High above, he heard the eagle call.
Focus. Calm.
Udyr fell and staggered onto solid ground. Breathing heavily, he lay next to the lake, and watched the last of his enemy vanish. Suddenly, he heard another rumbling and stumbled to his feet. The lake, as if celebrating his victory, began to thaw. Piece by piece, the remaining ice melted, raising the water level to wash over the cold, hard land.
Remembering the ritual he had repeated countless times at Hirana, Udyr limped forth. Cupping his hands, he splashed cool water across his head, shoulders, and back, rinsing his wounds clean. Then, gently, he took a drink.
He stared at his reflection, seeing a man looking back. Wounded, tested, alive.
I am who I am.
Udyr heard only the sound of flowing water—and yet, he did not smile.
But this fight is far from over.
Urgot

Urgot always believed he was worthy.
As a headsman, an executioner of the weak, he was a living embodiment of the Noxian ideal that strength should rule, making it a reality with every swing of his axe. His pride swelled as the bodies piled ever higher behind him, and his intimidating presence kept countless warbands in line.
Even so, a single word was all it took to seal his fate. Sent to distant Zaun to eliminate a supposed conspiracy against the ruler of Noxus, Urgot realized too late the mission was a setup, removing him from the capital even as the usurper Swain seized control of it. Surrounded by agents of the chem-barons, and enraged that everything he believed was a lie, Urgot was dragged down into the chemtech mines beneath Zaun. He was defeated. He was enslaved. He was not worthy after all. He endured the mine’s hellish conditions in grim silence, waiting for death.
In the Dredge, death came in many forms…
The mine’s warden, Baron Voss, would sometimes offer freedom in return for a prisoner’s tortured confession—granting it with the edge of her blade. From the screams that echoed through the tunnels, Urgot learned about the wonders of Zaun. There was something special about the city, something marvelous and evident even in the secrets that spilled from slit throats. Urgot didn’t know what it was until he was finally brought before Voss, fearing that she would break him.
But as the baron’s blade cut into his flesh, Urgot realized that his body was already wracked with agony, far beyond anything Voss could inflict. The Dredge had made him stronger than he’d ever been as a headsman.
Pain was Zaun’s secret. His laughter drove Voss back to the surface, and a reign of anarchy began in the depths.
Seizing control of the prison, Urgot reveled in new trials of survival. He found the parts of his body that were weakest, and replaced them with scavenged machinery, technology created by those who would die without it—necessity being the mother of pain.
The guards could no longer enter the areas Urgot had carved out of Voss’ grasp. The prisoners themselves were more afraid of their new master than they were of her. Many even grew to hold a fanatical respect for Urgot, as they were forced to hear his feverish sermons on the nature of power, his grip tightening around the necks of those who would not listen.
Only when a Noxian agent arrived in the Dredge was Urgot finally forced to confront his own past. Though the spy recognized him and sought his aid in escaping, Urgot beat him mercilessly, and hurled his broken body into the darkness.
It was not strength that ruled Noxus, Urgot now realized, but men… and men were weak. There should be no rulers, no lies, nothing to interfere with the pure chaos of survival. Starting a riot that ignited a chemtech vein within the mine, Urgot shook the city above, and cracked the prison open in an explosion that rivaled the birth of Zaun itself. Many prisoners died, with thousands fleeing into the Sump—but the worthy, as ever, survived.
From that day, Urgot’s reign of terror only grew. A hideous fusion of industrial machinery and Noxian brutality, he slaughtered chem-barons and their lackeys one by one, gathering a following among Zaun’s downtrodden masses. He was said to be a new savior, one who would lift the boot of the oppressor from the neck of every common Zaunite.
However, his actions did not make such distinctions, as Urgot tested the worthiness of the meek and the powerful alike. To any who found themselves spared in his deadly trials, his message was clear: he was not there to lead, but to survive. If others were worthy, they would survive, too.
When Urgot finally struck at representatives of the Piltovan merchant clans, the Wardens were forced to intervene, hauling him in chains to a fortified prison cell—though this merely seemed to confirm “the Dreadnought” as a legend among the gangers, the sump-snipes, and the forgotten.
For Piltover is not the first to shackle Urgot, and one must wonder if any cage can ever hope to hold him for long…
Son of Ur

David Slagle

We were running through the streets of Zaun. The pipes and stained glass were blurred, smeared colors against the Gray, and the fog that hung in every chem-soaked alley. Zori was to my left, all matted hair and rusty knives—her smile was the only sign that she was beautiful beneath the grime. Blenk was behind her, with a spray-philter full of glowing paint and a head dripping with ideas. Scuzz brought up the rear, every bit the kind of lug you’d expect to be called Scuzz. But he was our Scuzz, every scuzzy bit of him.
He yelled our gang’s name into the billowing smoke, marking the night as ours.
“Sump Riders!”
We laughed, and yelled it too. We were young, we were alive. Nothing could stop us. It would have to catch us first, and we were still running.
The city itself seemed to carry us forward as we slid down into its depths, farther and farther from the sump-scrapper we’d just robbed and left bleeding in the gutter. His cogs still jangled in our pockets. More than enough for a bit of fun. We were on our way to the Black Lanes, the market at the heart of Zaun.
“Think they’ll sell us any shimmerwine?” Zori asked. “Bleedin’ that sumper made me a mite parched.”
Blenk scoffed. “They’d sell shimmer to a child in the Lanes. And then they’d sell the child.”
“Gob it, both of you,” Scuzz growled, catching up. His face showed a kind of concern that I’d never seen before, a frown slowly forming. “Can’t you hear that?”
I squinted my eyes and peered into the night—since you can’t squint with ears, you ken? Not without a few augments. “I can’t hear nothin’,” I said with a shrug. “Not even a plague rat’s brown cough.”
“That’s what I mean,” Scuzz muttered.
And the silence after… It weighed heavier even than Piltover, glittering above us.
Pushing slowly into the market through the fog, we found dram-carts overturned, their wheels spinning lazily. Stalls abandoned, still full of exotic wares. There was a stench in the air that reminded me of the sump-scrapper—a stench strong enough to make my eyes water, when even seeing him bleed had not.
And there were bodies here, too. Many of them were wearing a chem-baron’s emblem. They’d been torn to pieces, the cobbles red beneath them.
It was a massacre.
“Nasty bit of work, eh?” Blenk grinned, rooting through one of the dead men’s pockets, carefully picking away giblets of flesh. “Guess that means we’re gettin’ a discount.”
Zori only shuddered. “There’s someone… in there,” she whispered, pointing into a cloud of raw chemtech that was spewing from a pipe in the clearing beyond. It was the source of the stench that was only growing stronger, crushing my senses, somehow making my ears hum. “It’s… It’s a man.”
“That’s not a man,” I murmured, following her gaze into the growing green veil. “Not anymore…”
It was a hulking shape, with mechanical legs and many guns, fused savagely to its flesh the way a mechanician would fuse two pipes. Burning and searing. Just looking at it made me wince. In one hand, it held a much smaller figure aloft. A man, choking in the chemtech cloud. As he writhed, the monster taunted him, its voice a mechanical buzz vibrating deep in my gut, threatening to loose the bowels within.
“This is what you want,” it almost cooed, cruelly forcing the man’s face into a rent in the pipe, the chemtech gas gushing out around them. “Breathe it. Make it yours.”
But the man only writhed, kicking uselessly, growing weaker and weaker—until finally, only his augmented arm still jittered, echoing his last, desperate thoughts. Even after they ceased.
And with that flash of brass, it hit me. The dangling corpse, he was a chem-baron, the only kind of person who could afford newfangled kit. Baron Crimson, or somesuch. These were his men, scattered around us.
Were his men. And now…
“We have to get out of here,” I gasped, turning from the carnage to my friends behind me. But I couldn’t see them. The gas from the pipe, it was spreading, a toxic green cloud making it harder to breathe… Harder to… to…
Run. We had to run.
I could hear Zori, Blenk and Scuzz panicking and coughing somewhere nearby. I reached out into the swirl for anyone, anything, to pull along with me as I made my escape. But there was only the sound of a body slumping softly to the ground, a spray-philter rattling across the cobbles.
Blenk. I stumbled as the truth hit me. He was gone.
And the worst was still to come.
The monster pushed itself through the cloud, a massive, armored leg slamming down beside me, and then another, and another—all revealed chemtech-filled tubing, and protruding gun muzzles that smoked with the very same heat still smoldering in the bodies around us.
I could taste it at the back of my throat, a truth as bitter as the acrid air. I was going to die here.
The monster grabbed me by my ragged scruff, lifting me close enough to see its face. It was a visage of terror, all the more horrifying because it was human. More human than the rest of him, at least. His tox-mask glowed as it vented pure alchemy, but his eyes were somehow even brighter. Intelligent. Almost seeming to smile as they took my fear in.
“A son of Zaun. What is your name?” he growled as he brought me closer. His accent was sharp, but I couldn’t place it. His words battered my resolve, each one hitting with the force of his hate.
I couldn’t even stammer an answer.
He laughed. “The baron, you recognize him? Like many, he tried to rule this city, casting countless people into the depths, to mine this…” He breathed in deeply as the gases swirled. “…this misery. Now he is no more, killed by that which gave him power over others. It is you, the gutter rat, at home in the squalor, who survives. So, tell me, which of you is stronger? Which of you deserves to live?”
Suddenly, I was falling back to the ground, landing on top of my friends. They were shuddering, choking as the chem-baron had. Scuzz, his mouth was foaming. And Zori… I closed my eyes against the tears before I could see what had happened to her.
“Run,” the monster said. “Tell the city how you survived and a baron did not. You will be my witness. The first of many.”
I hesitated.
“Run!” he bellowed. I saw Zori then, sobbing, reaching out for help with the last of her strength. I didn’t want this to be the way I would remember her. I wanted to remember her smile. I still do.
But I was running again, through the streets of Zaun.
And can you imagine how it felt to realize, with burning lungs and heaving breaths, that my screams were the message I was to bear?
I was alive. My friends were not.
I was worthy.
Varus

Regardless of what he would later become, Varus was once a paragon of loyalty and honor. A skilled archer of the ancient Shuriman empire, he was appointed as a temple warden in the eastern states, and he held this duty sacred above all else.
During the earliest stages of the war with Icathia, even though it lay far from that cursed place, Varus’ homeland was attacked. While other wardens abandoned their posts to join the defense of the outlying villages, he alone remained, screaming in anguish with every arrow he loosed—for he had chosen to uphold his oaths rather than return home to protect his own family.
Emissaries from the Ascended Host found him kneeling in solemn meditation amid the corpses of his foes. It was said that his cold gaze unsettled even the god-warriors themselves, and yet, in recognition of his noble sacrifice, Varus was offered a place in their ranks.
As one of the great Ascended, he was utterly consumed by his pursuit of vengeance against the Icathians, and the voidling horrors they had unleashed. It is likely that Varus did not even fully comprehend Shurima’s ultimate victory in that war, so twisted had his mind become—nor the empire’s fall centuries later. Atrocity after atrocity blurred together, leaving him as a withdrawn, callous killer, reshaped and sent into battle countless times by his degenerate brethren.
Their name became feared throughout the known world.
The darkin.
Warring among themselves, they destroyed any other who stood against them. With his crystalline bow, Varus assassinated enemy commanders and champions, helping the darkin defeat entire mortal armies with ever greater ease.
Eventually, Varus was cornered by vastayan moon-stalkers and human mages in service of a golden-armored warrior queen of Valoran. They bound him within his bow, leaving him to howl in impotent rage. By then, the raw, corrupting influence of the darkin was known, and yet still the queen chose to wield the deadly weapon in the final days of the war, gladly sacrificing herself for a greater victory.
In the months that followed, the queen carried Varus to the First Lands—those that would later be known as Ionia. Now made monstrous by the bow’s power, her last act was to command her followers to bury her alive in a lightless well, sunk deep beneath a mountain temple overlooking the village of Pallas.
And there Varus was imprisoned, both by the natural magic of Ionia, and the ritual ministrations of the temple guardians.
The bow remained hidden for centuries, unknown, untouched, and all but forgotten, until Noxian invaders attacked the First Lands. Two beast hunters—Valmar and his heartlight, Kai—fought against the first wave at the Temple of Pallas. Though their courage was great and they drove off the attackers, Kai was mortally wounded, and a grief-stricken Val carried him inside, believing the well’s forbidden magic could restore him.
But the temple held only damnation, and both hunters were consumed by the unleashed power of the darkin within it. The very matter of their bodies was unraveled and bound together again to craft a new body, a body fit to free Varus from his imprisonment. What emerged from the well was a gestalt creature, pale and inhumanly beautiful, part human and part darkin. After more than a thousand years, Varus was reborn.
Even so, the human and darkin elements of this imperfect form are in constant flux, with each managing to wrest control for a short time before being reined in by the other. Varus fights to silence the two mortal souls once and for all, and wreak vengeance for the destruction of his race. Still, Kai and Val struggle against his malevolent influence, hoping against hope that their love can overcome the darkin’s hatred.
How long they can keep Varus conflicted is anyone’s guess—but should this sadistic and egotistical killer come to fully dominate his new host, it is certain he will seek to reunite with others of his kind, and reduce all of Runeterra to an ashen wasteland.
Dark Kin

Graham McNeill

Varus followed a river running through the desert. Its water was gritty, but drinkable. The new body he had wrought to bear his bow was beautiful, fast and strong, but it came with the weaknesses of flesh. It hungered. It thirsted.
Days earlier, a crook-backed creature with a withered arm and birdlike features had told him this was Shurima, but that couldn’t be true. The Shurima Varus remembered had been a desolate wasteland.
“Was I imprisoned for so long?” he wondered.
He despised the human noises his new mouth made. It sounded bestial and primitive, but at least he could speak aloud once more. As to how long he had been imprisoned... it was hard to say. He retained no concept of how mortals measured time, and the bird creature hadn’t recognized what he was. She had no idea how far back the Darkin War had been fought.
“My kind all but destroyed this world,” he said. “And now we have been forgotten? How is that even possible?”
With enough time, even the greatest horrors can fade.
The voice echoed in his skull, impossible to ignore. Which one was it? Kai or Valmar? He suspected Val, but mortal minds were so simple and muddy that it was hard to tell one from another.
“Any race that can forget staring into the abyss of its own extinction does not deserve to live,” said Varus.
We don’t forget. This was Valmar, decided Varus. Horrors become myths so we can bear to hear them, so we can learn from them and not go mad.
Such a notion was ridiculous, and Varus knew he would never allow the doom of his kind to fade from memory. He was about to say so, when he heard noises from around a bend in the river ahead; shouting voices, braying animals, and the sound of tools on stone. He darted forward, into the shadow of a toppled obelisk, and scanned ahead.
The new river had exposed the sunken ruins of an ancient structure comprised of pillars and statues of the oldest Ascended. Yes, this was the source of the magic he had sensed. Old magic. The kind the flame-haired queen used to enslave his kind.
The kind used to imprison him beneath the rock of Ionia.
Tanned, wolf-lean men worked the ruins, digging out hidden reliquary chambers as thick-limbed beasts of burden dragged excavated rocks from deeper inside the structure. Warriors wearing boiled leather breastplates and carrying hook-bladed spears guarded the perimeter. Varus grinned and vaulted onto the obelisk, drawing back on his bow as he landed. Violet light built in the living weapon as it flexed, and a coruscating arrow of lightning formed in the air.
Why must you kill them? This was Kai. He hated unnecessary killing.
Varus felt his hands tremble as Kai fought to make him lower the bow.
“Your people destroyed my kin,” said Varus, exerting his will to steady his aim. “That’s the only reason I need.”
He sighted along the crackling arrow as a burly warrior with a forked beard and shaven scalp saw him, and yelled a warning.
So everyone you see must die?
Varus exhaled, and in the space between breaths loosed the shot. It flashed through the air to pierce the bearded warrior’s heart, burning a hole clean through him. He dropped to his knees, his mouth wide with shock. Others hurled spears, but Varus was already moving. He sprang from the obelisk, sending a hail of blood-red bolts toward them, and hit the ground running.
A hook-spear swung at him. He dove to the side, rising to his feet and sending a pair of crimson shots through his attacker’s chest. Varus sprinted, leapt, and dashed through the ruins, blazing shafts of light striking his targets with absolute precision.
In seconds it was over. Sixteen dead, and he hadn’t even broken a sweat. He felt the anguish of Valmar and Kai within him, and grinned. Every death gnawed at them, weakened them, and made them less able to fight him.
The men excavating the ruined city fled, throwing down their tools and running for the river. Varus let them go. They were an irrelevance, and the killing of mortals without weapons always provoked the two souls within him to greater rebellion.
Varus entered the ruined structure, briefly glancing at a pair of canine and crocodilian statues as he passed. Inside, it was cool and dark, the walls covered in vivid bas-reliefs depicting wide discs spreading golden rays over a bountiful land. The stone floor was inscribed with a magical script that had been old even before Icathia’s rebellion.
“Warding sigils. Potent once, but faded,” said Varus, crossing the inscribed flagstones to where a towering statue of a great, serpent-headed god-warrior had once stood sentinel. Some past catastrophe had toppled it, and beyond its sandstone remains lay a lightless chamber.
He entered, the glow from the smoldering light at his heart revealing nothing but bare stone, burned black and glossy by ancient fire.
Varus sighed. “Where are you, sister...?”
Eduard Santangelo's Vastaya Field Journal

(Being a journal of the observations, theories, and ruminations of the chimeric creatures of northern Ionia as recorded by the esteemed
EDUARD SANTANGELO:
Gentleman, Explorer, Chronicler)
I first became acquainted with the chimeric creatures known as the vastaya upon landing on the fertile shores of Ionia. There, I had hoped, would I find a cure for a uniquely Piltovan malady known as the doldrums – a soft boredom for the ins and outs of everyday life in the dependably shining City of Progress where I make my living as an author of some renown.
Within Ionia’s soft and magical bosom – a bosom generally unexplored by cartographers who were not born upon its vast shores – I endeavored to find something utterly beyond my scope of expertise. Something wondrous, and magical, and beautiful, and terrifying.
Once I discovered the vastaya, I knew I had found that which I sought.
I met my first vastayan creature in the dead of night, as it rummaged through my camp for something it could stuff down its gullet. Though it nearly sprinted away in fear upon my waking, a handful of sweetcakes and the sonorous delivery of a soothing bedtime melody taught to me by my mother (I am a soprano, and thus uniquely well-equipped to serenade others with songs of relaxation) convinced it to stay awhile in my camp.
Though it walked on two legs like a human, its features were a chimeric combination of several other creatures I had seen either in books, or on my myriad travels: it had the long whiskers and pointed nose of a cat, the scales of a snake all over its body, and the physical strength of a Bilgewatrian salt beast (which I discovered when, upon finishing his sweetcakes, the creature lifted me above his head with the same effort I might expend to scratch my nose, and held me aloft until it determined I was not hiding more candies in my bedroll).
The creature fled into the darkness shortly thereafter, and I knew what I had to do: I resolved to learn more about these vastaya (as the locals refer to them).
What follows are my notes on the varieties of vastaya I encountered in my travels across the mysterious continent.
Were I to hypothesize about the origins of these beings – and being a learned gentleman of the physical sciences, I consider myself more than qualified to do so – I would theorize that the vastaya are not an individual species, but a taxonomic classification more on par with a larger order, or a phylum.
Simply put, while many vastaya look similar to one another (as I discovered after following the cat-snake-ape boy back to his village and being rudely chased away by his identically hybridized brethren. Presumably they had confused me for some sort of nefarious spy or apex predator, which explains why they followed me back to my camp and subsequently relieved me of my foodstuffs), the different tribes and familial groupings often look and act in drastically dissimilar ways.
Days after my encounter with the vastaya, I – by following the Whispering River (so named by myself because it was infuriatingly loud, and, like many sophisticates, I have a penchant for irony) near their village, and knowing others would certainly be drawn to such a water source – discovered an entirely different tribe. These vastaya had the squeezable, furry faces of otters, but the lower girth of seals.
After I unsuccessfully attempted to give them my glasses as a peace offering (many of the creatures carried packs full of knickknacks and shiny bits and bobs – perhaps they were a mercantile society), I began an impromptu “I come in peace and will do you no harm” interpretive dance (this particular jig was all about knee placement, and my patellas are positively pristine), which inspired my companions to take me in and feed me a warm supper of a meal I can only describe as slightly unraw not-quite-fish.
Though they said not a word while I performed my ritualistic gyrations, they later revealed, upon politely requesting I pass them a cup of yellowish powder that smelled of salt and fire, that they spoke my language fluently. Their various dialects and colloquialisms were unfamiliar to me, but I could, with very little effort, understand exactly what they said. As hungry for knowledge as I had previously been for food, I hurriedly queried them about the history of their kind.
I learned that the vastaya’s origins could be traced back long, long ago, to a hidden corner of Ionia where a group of humans fled to escape the myriad horrors of the Great Void War (a subject upon which I have written numerous tomes, all of which can be found at the better Piltovan booksellers for more-than-reasonable prices). These refugees came into contact with a tribe of intelligent, shapeshifting creatures who were greatly in tune with Ionia’s natural magicks. The pairing of these two groups produced the creatures I eventually learned to refer to as vastaya. Over time, the offspring of these pairings settled into a variety of regions and therefore adopted diverse forms, from the winged humanoids of Ionia or the sporadically-limbed sandshufflers of Shurima, to the Freljordian scaled manatee with a look of perpetual discomfort on its face.
I wished to stay and ask more of the otterfolk, but one of my questions seemed to cause great offense, and I was unceremoniously ejected from the village and the creatures’ good graces in one fell swoop. My question, for those looking to avoid the same mistake, regarded whether the pairing of the two species was purely magical or more (shall we say) physical in nature.
Relieved of both my supplies and my calm, but never my thirst for adventure, I again struck out in a different direction with nothing to protect me save my gumption and multisyllabic vocabulary. Months passed as I availed myself of Ionia’s plentiful fruits and vegetables, picking them from the ground and trees as easily as one might procure an item from a stall in the Boundary Markets.
I marked time only by the rising and setting of the sun, and happily forgot all those cumbersome Piltovan habits to which I had become accustomed. To wit, after many days spent ambling across Ionia, I had developed something of a stench.
I paused, disrobed (after checking to make sure I was alone – a gentleman never forces his own nudity upon others) and stepped into a nearby lake that smelled of berries and grass.
It was there that I saw the most wondrous thing I had ever seen in my entire life, and will ever see should I live to be a thousand.
Far more human than any vastaya I had yet seen, this creature, bathing on the opposite shore, had the ears and tail(s) of a fox, but she was unclothed – and I shall leave my descriptions vague so as not to offend my younger or more sensitive readers – and otherwise very, very much like a female human.
Very.
I caught but a glimpse of her as I soaked in the pond; my mouth agape, rivulets of water streaming down my gaunt frame as I attempted to come up with the perfect words of greeting. Mayhaps I would introduce myself as a writer of some renown, quoting her some of my more effusive reviews. Or, I might serenade her with one of the many romantic ballads I had composed and memorized for situations such as this.
Soon however, a rustling in the brush behind me gave me a start. I turned to confront the rustling out of instinct, but with no threat brave enough to show itself, I turned back to find the glorious fox woman was gone, leaving me with nothing but questions, the first few bars to “Oh, My Love, My Dream, My Prospective Bedfellow” bouncing around my head, and a decidedly embarrassed look on my face.
The rustler, whom I was determined to beat into bloody unconsciousness for scaring the love of my life away, turned out to be a human merchant from a distant village who specialized in selling gingerfruit – an apparent delicacy I chose not to taste as I was uncertain I’d resist the temptation to smash one into his smiling face.
Shai – for this was his name – chastised me for bathing in the pond, informing me that it, and the fox woman who was sometimes known to bathe there, would be hazardous to my health. I informed him that sneaking up on naked, enamored men would be far more hazardous to his, but he merely laughed.
After I dressed, the merchant agreed to lead me back to human civilization and answer a few of my questions in exchange for my hat (Jeanreaux’s Haberdashery, retail price fifty-three gears).
He informed me that his family had known of the strange woman for generations – that she, like the other vastaya, have far longer lives than we humans. Some have been said to live for thousands of years, while others, rumors and legends say, might well be immortal. It was Shai who informed me of Ionia’s name for these creatures – up until this point I had referred to them as “phantasma,” until the merchant scoffed at my nomenclature. I have retroactively changed all mentions of “phantasma” to “vastaya” purely out of cultural empathy, as my vocabulary is matched only by my humility.
We walked together for several days. Occasionally, he would stop and sniff the air like a starved bloodhound. When I asked him to explain his behavior, he would merely smile and inform me that he was looking for treasures. Though I found his vague demeanor a very special flavor of infuriating, his doglike sniffing led me to a thought which I immediately shared with him: if vastaya were the amalgamation of humans and ancient, shapeshifting ancestors, then what would happen if that blood were to become extremely diluted through reproductive diaspora? What if, say, one had vastayan blood, but not quite enough to take chimeric, animalian form? What would happen then?
It was then that he stopped sniffing and his eyes widened. He looked at me, smiled, and said, “Well, they’d be able to change their shape, wouldn’t they?” before the bastard turned into a pig and unearthed a silktruffle.
As utterly shocked as I was to meet a shapeshifter – to have, what’s more, met THREE different varieties of vastaya in only a few months is beyond lucky, even for a deserved scholar such as myself. I couldn’t help but note, however, that “transforming pig man” was a considerable step down from “voluptuous fox woman.”
At this rate, the next vastayan creature I see could likely resemble a walking roach.
I spent the last several months scouring Ionia for any and all information that I could collect on the various vastaya species in an attempt to create an all-encompassing taxonomic guide to Runeterra and its fauna.
Though I have accumulated an incredible amount of information on the vastaya, there is much left to be discovered – I suspect that in limiting my search to Ionia, I have uncovered a mere fraction of the overall diversity to be found within this classification.
Still, for now, it is time to move on – I have merely opened the door on vastaya, and it will be the job of another journalist to step through it. Today, I draw my attention to the other creatures of Runeterra whose stories have yet to be told: Those horrifying, sentient weapons known as Darkin. The corrupting creatures of the Void. Those illusive fae creatures of legend, the yordles. These stories mustn’t go untold, and on my word, I shall be the explorer to do it. Indeed, I may well be the only one who can.
EDITOR’S NOTE:
Only two weeks after submitting this manuscript, Mr. Santangelo embarked on an unofficial return trip to Ionia to, in his words, “Ask further questions of the foxlike woman – purely for the purposes of a second edition.”
Several weeks later, we received a letter from Mr. Santangelo reading as follows:
“I’ve experienced the grand misfortune of being kidnapped. My captors – a surly lot who call themselves the Navori Brotherhood – suspect I am a Piltovan spy. Naturally, being a man of the world with varied intellectual, athletic, and romantic skills such as [edited for brevity], I was insulted at the accusation.
Still, I convinced them to hold me for ransom rather than execute me outright. If you could, then, send some precious minerals, or food, or weapons in an amount befitting my abstract worth to you as a writer, it would be most appreciated. It is, of course, YOUR choice as to how much to spend on my return, but I imagine you will have to bankrupt the publishing house and all of its investors, at a minimum. Still, the price will obviously be well worth it.”
Upon receiving this ransom note, we subsequently sent Mr. Santangelo the projected profits of his new book: a handful of pocket change and a spoiled sweetcake.
We have not heard back from him since.
Vayne

Shauna Vayne is a deadly, remorseless monster hunter who has pledged her life to finding and killing the demon who murdered her family. Armed with her wrist-mounted crossbows and a heart full of vengeance, Vayne is only truly happy when she’s slaying practitioners or creations of the dark arts.
As the only child to a wealthy Demacian couple, Vayne enjoyed an upbringing of privilege. She spent most of her childhood indulged in solitary pursuits – reading, learning music, and avidly collecting the various insects found on their manor’s grounds. Her parents had traveled across Runeterra in their youth, but settled in Demacia after Shauna’s birth because more than any place they’d found, Demacians looked out for one another.
Shortly after Vayne’s sixteenth birthday, she returned home from a midsummer banquet and saw something she would never forget.
An unspeakably beautiful, horned woman stood before the bloodied corpses of her parents.
Vayne screamed in agony and terror. Before disappearing, the demon looked down at the young girl and flashed her a terrible, lustful smile.
Vayne tried to brush the bloody hair out of her mother’s eyes, but that haunting smile lingered in her mind, growing and consuming her. Even as she shakily smoothed her father’s eyelids closed – his mouth still agape, frozen in his last horrific moments of confusion – the demon’s smile seeped through her thoughts.
It was a smile that would fill Shauna’s veins with hatred for the rest of her days.
Vayne tried to explain what happened, but no one truly believed her. The thought of a demon on the loose – in the well-defended, magic-averse kingdom of Demacia, of all places – was too far-fetched to consider.
Vayne knew better. She knew from the demon’s smile the enchantress would strike again. Even Demacia’s tall walls couldn’t keep dark magic from creeping through the cracks. It may disguise itself with subtleties or keep to shadowed corners, but Vayne knew it was there.
And she was done being afraid.
Vayne had a heart full of hatred and enough coin to outfit a small army, but where she would go, no army dared follow. She needed to learn everything about dark magic: How to track it. How to stop it. How to kill those who practiced it.
She needed a teacher.
Her parents had told her stories of iceborn warriors who fought against an Ice Witch in the north. For generations, they had defended themselves from her unknowable forces and dark minions. This, Vayne knew, would be where she would find her tutor. She evaded her appointed custodians and booked passage on the next ship to the Freljord.
Shortly after arriving, Vayne set out in search of a monster hunter. She found one, although not in the way she intended. Traversing a frozen ravine, Vayne was ensnared by a cleverly carved icetrap. After tumbling to the bottom of a jagged, crystalline pit, Vayne stared up to see a ravenous ice troll, lips smacking with anticipation as he gazed upon his catch.
His gigantic blue tongue fell limp as a spear whistled through the air, pierced the troll’s skull and planted itself deep in his brain. The giant toppled into the pit and Vayne rolled aside just in time to escape being crushed. A sticky pool of drool and blood collected at her boots.
Vayne’s savior was a grizzled, middle-aged woman named Frey. She bandaged Vayne’s wounds as they clung to the warmth of a campfire that struggled to stay ablaze in the frigid canyon. Frey told Vayne of her life’s work spent fighting the Ice Witch’s minions who had murdered her children. Vayne implored the woman to take her on as a student and teach her to track the dark creatures of the world, but the Freljordian had no interest. Vayne stank of privilege and money, neither of which kept your teeth gritted or your blade sharp through the grueling perseverance of a fight.
Vayne couldn’t accept Frey’s answer and challenged her to a duel: if she won, Frey would train her. If she lost, she’d offer herself as bait to the Ice Witch’s minions, so Frey could ambush them. Vayne had no reason to think she’d win – her training amounted to a single afternoon of studying fencing before she wearied of trying to fight with one hand behind her back – but she refused to back down. To reward Vayne’s mettle, Frey threw snow in Vayne’s eyes and subsequently taught her the first rule of monster hunting: don’t play fair.
Frey saw a determination in Vayne she couldn’t help but respect. The girl had a long way to go as a fighter, but each time Vayne pushed her bruised body up from the dirtied snow to continue the fight, Frey saw a little more of the relentless hunter this girl could become. Beaten in skill, but never in spirit, Vayne beseeched Frey one last time: both of their families were dead. Frey could spend the rest of her days tracking ice trolls until one of them caved her head in, or she could teach Vayne. Together, they could kill twice as many monsters. Together, they could save twice as many families from experiencing the pain that defined them both. Frey saw the same hatred and loss in Vayne’s eyes her own had burned with for years.
Frey agreed to accompany Vayne back to Demacia.
Together they made the journey south, heavily disguising Frey to illude Demacia’s border guards. Once back at Vayne’s estate, the two spent years training. Despite the pageant of suitors who solicited Vayne’s company, Shauna had no interest in anything other than training with Frey. As a result, the two became incredibly close.
Frey taught Vayne the fundamentals of dark magic, conjured beasts, and vile spells. Vayne committed every word of Frey's teachings to heart, but found it slightly unnerving that Frey never explained how she came to know so many specifics of these malefic practices.
Due to the kingdom’s watchful soldiers and antimagic trees, dark creatures were rare within Demacia's walls, so Frey and Vayne would venture into the border forests at night to hunt. Vayne earned her first kill – a bloodthirsty creature who preyed on traveling merchants – at the age of eighteen.
Soaked in the creature’s viscera, something awoke within Vayne: pleasure. The hot flush of vengeance and violence raced through her blood, and she relished in the sensation.
Vayne and Frey spent several years hunting dark creatures, their respect for one another growing with every kill. One day, Vayne realized that she loved Frey like a mother, but her emotions of familial love were so tangled with pain and tainted by trauma, Vayne fought them as she would any beast out to hurt her.
Vayne and Frey traveled Valoran, until tavern tales from the highlands caught their ear, whispering of a demonic horned creature of mesmerizing beauty. According to the stories, the demon had been busy: she’d formed a cult, designed to attract worshippers who would do her bidding. People would walk into the hills, never to be heard from again. It was said the cult’s high priests had a holy grounds near the cliffside, where they’d prepare the demon’s sacrificial offerings. Vayne and Frey immediately set off on the hunt.
As they journeyed into the hills by cover of night, Vayne found herself distracted. For the first time since their partnership began, she felt worried for Frey – worried she might lose her mother figure for a second time. Before she could confess her fear, one of the demon’s priests lunged from the brush, swinging a mace into Vayne’s shoulder.
Vayne was badly wounded. Frey had a brief moment of hesitation, but her eyes steeled with certainty as she apologized to her friend and transformed into a monstrous Freljordian wolf. As Vayne watched in shock, Frey – in her animalistic form – tore the priest’s tendons from his throat with a swift snap of her mighty jaws.
With the priest’s body laid strewn at Vayne’s feet, Frey retook her human form, yet her eyes betrayed the scared animal within. She explained that after the death of her family, she had become a shaman, inviting the curse upon herself in order to gain the power to change shape and fight against the Ice Witch. The ritual that gave her these powers involved dark magic, but she made this sacrifice to protect–
–Vayne put an arrow through Frey’s heart without allowing her another syllable. Whatever affection she had felt for Frey evaporated upon discovering her true nature. A tear formed in Frey’s eye as she collapsed, but Vayne didn’t notice – whatever warmth the two had shared died with Frey.
There were still hours left before dawn, which meant hours left to continue the hunt. Vayne thought only of the demon. The kill that would be hers to savor. And all the kills to come. Runeterra’s underworld would come to fear her, just as she had once feared them.
For the first time since her parents’ death, Vayne smiled.
Monsters

Vayne had one arrow left in her wristbolt launcher. She was bleeding from three different wounds. The previously-human beast she’d spent all night hunting had just knocked her to the ground and it was about to bite the head off her shoulders.
Things were going better than expected.
Slime dripped from the shapeshifter’s maw as it shrieked in anticipation of its kill. Scanning the darkness with her nightseeker goggles, Vayne found neither weapons nor cover nearby. She’d tracked the beast to this open patch of meadow specifically so it couldn’t take cover behind the alderwoods of Demacia, but that decision left her exposed as well.
Which was fine by her. There’s no fun in an easy kill, after all.
The beast grabbed Vayne by the shoulders, its mandibles opening to reveal rows upon rows of jagged teeth. If its jaws didn’t kill her, its fetid breath could certainly finish the job.
Vayne rapidly reviewed her options. She could try to dodge the beast’s bite, but that would be a short-term solution at the very best. She could kick the creature in its absurd number of teeth and attempt to land her last wristbolt in its bucking forehead, but she couldn’t trust her arrow would find its mark through its gnashing forest of fangs. Or, she could try something flashy, violent and slightly stupid.
Vayne chose the latter.
She shoved her entire arm into its gaping mouth. The creature’s razor teeth ripped strips of skin from her knuckles and arm, but Vayne smiled – she had the beast right where she wanted it. She felt its jaw clench, ready to bite and rip her limb off. She didn’t give it the chance.
Vayne twisted her arm, dragging her wristbolt launcher across the inside of the creature’s gob until the silver tip of her final arrow pointed directly at the roof of the beast’s mouth. With the flick of her wrist, the bolt tore through the monster’s skull, shredding its brain.
The shrieking stopped as suddenly as it started, the creature’s body limp as it collapsed upon the grassy soil. Vayne crawled out from under it and attempted to remove her arm from its skull without cutting herself more than she already had, only to find that her fist was stuck inside the creature’s head.
She could either keep trying to pull her hand through the shapeshifter’s jagged mouth – and probably lose a finger or two in the process – or she could dig her arm in further to punch through the top of its head and snap its jaw like a wishbone.
As always, Vayne chose the latter.
The hard part wasn’t killing the damned thing. The hard part was carrying it back to its bride.
Well, widow.
The widow Selina was beautiful beyond imagining, with hair that caught the sunlight even in the darkness of her fire-lit cabin. The deep scratches on her face, and even the tears that streamed down her cheeks, did nothing to diminish her beauty.
Vayne laid the carcass at the woman’s feet as gingerly as she could. Its flesh was monstrously transformed and wracked with wounds both self-inflicted and not-so-self-inflicted; it looked more like a collection of limbs and meat than a person.
“Was it quick?” the widow asked through sobs.
It had not been quick. Vayne had tracked the changeling to its den in the forests outside eastern Demacia. She’d managed to interrupt it mid-transformation: its eyes had multiplied and expanded, its mouth had grown mandibles, its left arm had formed into a razor-sharp pincer – and it was angry.
Vayne flicked a glob of brain off her wrist, a clinging remnant from when she’d punched through the creature’s skull.
“Erm,” Vayne said.
“Oh, my love,” Selina said, dropping to her knees and wrapping her arms around the mutated body. “What could have caused such a tragedy?”
Vayne kneeled beside the couple as the widow brought what was left of the man’s head to her breast, either not noticing or caring as his blood smeared her dress.
“Some people transform themselves into beasts. Some are transformed against their will,” Vayne said.
She picked up the bulging hand of the corpse, casually examining it. “He belonged to the second group.”
The widow’s eyes went wide with fury.
“Someone did this to him? Who would – why would–”
The widow collapsed onto the body in tears, unable to find the words.
“Sometimes, therians – shapechangers – want a companion. Sometimes they’re just savage: they lash out and bite somebody out of confusion or anger. Others I’ve met just get bored. They think it’s fun,” Vayne said, patting the woman’s head. “But some…some just need to eat.”
The widow looked up, sniffing away tears.
“I don’t – I don’t understand.”
Vayne gave the widow a pitying smile.
“They want to eat somebody, but sometimes that somebody gets away. And the thing that tried to eat them accidentally passes on its phage. Then they end up turning, too.”
The widow glared at Vayne. The wristbolt launcher on Vayne’s arm clinked as she brushed the woman’s hair out of her tear-filled eyes.
“The last therian I killed told me his victims tasted better if they loved him. Something about the juicy flavor they took on when they blushed. Can’t even imagine how they must taste while on honeymoon, hmm?” Vayne mused.
The widow stopped crying. Her eyes grew hard.
“He did love you, you know,” said Vayne.
The widow tried to stand, but Vayne gripped a fistful of the woman’s hair and pulled tight.
“He must have been shocked after you bit him. People are unpredictable when they’re scared. And there’s nothing more frightening than being betrayed by someone you love.”
Vayne flicked her wrist, cocking the wristbolt launcher on her forearm.
“So, who turned you?”
The woman stared back with hatred, her eyes slowly darkening to a deep red.
“Nobody,” she said in a voice like knives scraping across rock. “I am of my own design.”
Vayne smiled.
“How did you know?” the widow asked, sliding her hand behind her back.
“Bite marks on the front of his neck, rather than the back, combined with the lack of wounds anywhere else on his body, told me he was attacked by someone he trusted. Go ahead. Try it.”
The widow paused.
“Try what?”
“The pincer you’re forming behind your back. Slash me. Let’s see if you can cut my hand off before I put a bolt through your forehead,” said Vayne.
The widow retracted her pincer from behind her back, crestfallen. The game was up.
“Why?” she asked.
“Why what?” Vayne blankly replied.
“Why not just walk in and kill me? Why this whole… presentation?”
Vayne smiled. A sly, hateful grin.
“Because I wanted to be sure I was right. Because I wanted you to feel the panic and the fear he felt. But mainly...”
Vayne tightened her wrist. With a metallic twang, a six-inch bolt of cold silver pierced the changeling’s brain. The widow’s eyes rolled back into her head. She collapsed to the floor like a bag of stones.
“Because it’s fun.”
Veigar

For most of the peoples of Runeterra, yordles are not typically something to be feared. Their fabled home of Bandle City is said to be a mysterious, spiritual place, filled with odd trinkets and keepsakes gathered from across the material realm. While these curious creatures often leave to dwell among mortal races for a time, they generally return with fresh tales and new experiences to recount.
Yet, sadly, there are also those yordles who lose their way. Among them is the sorcerer Veigar.
After the Great Darkin War left the world in ruin many centuries ago, the only light that seemed to shine on Valoran came from the skies above. Scattered survivors looked to the heavens, and their renewed study of ancient celestial magic piqued Veigar’s interest. Imagining himself already a master of these mystical arts, the yordle joined an order of mages in the Noxii territories, hoping to learn more of their craft. They did not think to question this eager newcomer, and he taught them to draw hope from the patterns created by the movements of the stars.
But while many toiled to rebuild the world, others sought to conquer it. The brutal warlord Mordekaiser and his armies swept across the lands, crushing and enslaving any who would oppose his rule, and the mages of the order—unskilled in war—were of little value to this tyrant. Looming over them in his accursed battleplate, his keen eye fell upon Veigar, and Mordekaiser recognized the yordle for what he truly was. He snatched him up in one iron gauntlet, and dragged his prize away as the other mages were put to the sword.
Imprisoned in the heart of the warlord’s new, monolithic fortress, Veigar was forced to turn his magic to darker purposes. Knowing that yordles were craftier than any of the mortal races, Mordekaiser bound Veigar to the physical plane, preventing him even from escaping to Bandle City. He was not the only captive in that hellish place, but such isolation was the worst and most cruel form of torture for a yordle. Veigar performed grisly enchantments against his will—some strengthening his master’s dominion, others simply evoking terror for terror’s sake.
Indeed, terror was what seemed to fuel this dreadful empire. Miserable beyond imagining, Veigar became a reluctant witness as Mordekaiser's vile deeds empowered him to near-immortality. Whether it was over the course of decades or centuries, Veigar never knew, but eventually the yordle’s magic and appearance started to twist in response…
Memories of his past faded. Why had he come to Valoran? Where had he come from? Had he known any other life before this? Questions such as these weighed on his fragile mind, like the last flickers of light before an eclipse.
When the revenant warlord’s own followers conspired against him, the nightmare of his reign was ended, but by this point Veigar was nigh unrecognizable. His eyes blazed. Even his voice had become a sneer of malice. Fleeing from his ensorcelled cage, the wretched creature had no interest in the wars of succession that inevitably followed. Deep down, he most likely yearned to regain the sense of safety and freedom that all living things crave.
And yet, he chose not to turn away from evil, but to embrace it. Clad in armor befitting a sinister warlock, he vowed to seize respect in the only way he could remember—through ruthless villainy, inspiring fear in all who encountered him. He would call down the fury of the stars themselves upon his foes, and trap them in the timeless infinities between moments.
And yet… Veigar could not quite find the same success as his former captor.
Certainly, the good people of Valoran did learn to fear him, to some extent. More often than not, they would find their pastures scorched, or the local baron’s mansion razed to its foundations. Sometimes though, inexplicably, bands of brigands would be driven from their woodland hideouts, or the remains of feral murk wolves found scattered through the town square, and it was difficult to tell whether these acts were malicious or actually reasonably helpful. For all his aspirations of evildoing, it seemed Veigar would always come up a tiny bit short.
Still, the nefarious yordle has not abandoned his quest to become the world’s most wicked villain. With his diabolic staff in hand, he seeks nothing less than to bring all before him to their knees, and revels in the timely demise of those who dare to underestimate him.

All stories

Sett

Big Head, Bad News

The Shackles of Belief

Shaco

Shadow and Fortune

Twilight of the Gods

Twisted Fate

Double Down

Twitch

Do Not Engage

Udyr

A Walk with the Voices

Urgot

Son of Ur

Varus

Dark Kin

Eduard Santangelo's Vastaya Field Journal

Vayne

Monsters

Veigar