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You Are the Weapon

David Slagle

He started his training with a single breath. In, and out.
He could hear water dripping through a crack in the cave ceiling, dampening the stone floor until it gleamed against the darkness. He knew the holy patterns carved into the floor’s stone—proclaiming destinies and orbits. Even when he closed his eyes, he could see each lunar arc.
He made a few tentative swings with his blade. The moonstone felt solid in his hand, but remained ethereal, as if it wasn’t there. It was a magical remnant of the first convergence when the moon and its reflection in the spirit realm briefly touched across the celestial veil, and moonstone cast off by the union rained down on the world like tears.
Following their orbits, the two moons were forced to part.
Embracing his own orbit, Aphelios continued to train.
His blade was now his breath, drawing faster and faster. His slashes followed arcs he had practiced for years until even he bled, training to the verge of self-destruction. Following his weapon, he twisted through the air. He slashed, parried—each attack flowing into the next. He closed his eyes so he would not need to see… would not remember everything he’d sacrificed to wield his weapon.

“Aphelios…” You see my face. My lip quivers, though my voice is firm.
“Aphelios.” Reflected in my eyes, you see…

Aphelios stumbled as his moonstone blade flashed red and an image of an outlander passed before him. A vision? A memory? How many times had he killed to not know for sure? The blade slipped from his hand, and Aphelios soon followed—colliding against the floor with no weapon to lead him, losing grasp of his discipline.
It had all come back. Everything he pushed down. Every cut of his blade into his enemies cut even deeper into himself.
Alune… his sister. She’d reached across the veil. She’d shown him… but she’d been torn away.
Aphelios pushed troubled words he would never say back into his throat. His fingers tightened into a fist, only for a moment, ready to strike against the orbits and destinies carved into stone. But, hand shaking… he let go.
As Aphelios stood and swept back his hair, he noticed the moon had risen, its light shining onto a shrine he kept deeper in the temple. Calling to him, as it did whenever he was needed.
It was time. His faith would be rewarded.
The Lunari’s power was growing, phasing across the celestial veil. A magic of spirit, of the secrets within—for all of his training, Aphelios could not channel the moon’s power himself. But he would not need to.
He carefully prepared noctum flowers that he’d cultivated in the shrine’s pool, pressing their essence into a caustic elixir—the liquid glowing faintly within the mortar bowl.
He set aside his training blade and raised the bowl to the moon’s light.
Then, without hesitation, he pressed the flower’s poison to his lips.

The agony is indescribable. The pain wraps around your throat. You cannot say anything at all…
Everything burns. You convulse in misery, you retch and cough as the poison flows through you, opening you to the moon’s power…
To me.
“Aphelios,” I whisper from my fortress, and my spirit brushes against yours. You sense my presence across the veil. You raise your hand, knowing that I am too far. That it is the pain you must hold on to.
You close your hand around it. It becomes your weapon.
I send it to you…
Gravitum.
“Aphelios,” I whisper as I feel you cling to the poison that burns you away. Knowing why you make this choice. What I ask you to sacrifice…

With a final lung-wracking gasp, Aphelios emerged from the cave temple into the night. His expression hardened as he fought back the wrenching agony, embracing it and leaving everything else behind him.
Mount Targon loomed above and below the temple, stretching in both directions.
The howling wind whipped up frozen wisps that shimmered as they faded, dancing with Aphelios’ scarf and buffeting his cloak. The light of the moon shone higher still. It would guide him.
It was her light, shining through the moon’s.
She’d given him what he needed.
Gravitum was more than a moonstone blade. In training, he had slashed, stabbed, twirled. To use this weapon, he would do the same—but his reach would be much greater. A simple thrust would unleash its power, his skill and her magic converging.
Firing the cannon’s black orbs toward a floating rock that was suspended by the Targon’s heavenly magic, Gravitum’s power slowly drew the island down. With a single leap, Aphelios began running atop the island, his boots casting small drifts of snow into the abyss. Each orb he fired drew another rock close, the floating monoliths colliding behind him as he leapt from one to the next, swiftly scaling a mountain that would take most people days to climb… if they attempted the climb at all.
Only the Solari, and those who sought power, held vigil here.
He passed their settlements below, each quiet and ignorant of the night. For years, he had wondered how Solari zealots could deny his faith’s existence, walking their paths to follow the sun, fearing darkness that only Lunari dared face. But his destiny was clear.
The zealots would be revealed by the moon’s light.
Aphelios leapt to a final island of stone and paused above a snowy clearing where a party of Solari had gathered, their weapons blazing. Burning Ones, the Lunari called them. By night, they scorched out heretics of the moon. By day, their priests denied there was anything but the sun. Beneath dark hoods, their faces were hidden by flame as impersonal as their judgment. They had surrounded a barbarian cloaked in crimson and steel.
The outlander he’d seen in his vision.
The moon’s light stopped in this clearing. It stopped at the barbarian’s feet.

“Aphelios,” I say again. I whisper it to your soul and gather my magic, knowing the only words you want to hear.
“I am with you…”

Aphelios dived off the rock island and plummeted into battle, the Burning Ones’ weapons blazing all the brighter as Gravitum’s darkness spread among them. Crying out in alarm, the Solari turned to fight, but found themselves bound to the ground by a black orb. Aphelios dropped the cannon, and a new weapon appeared in his hand.

“Severum,” I whisper.

Landing from his descent without looking away from his enemies’ burning faces, Aphelios slashed behind him with Severum, the crescent pistol’s beam tearing through the island of stone. Terrified, the Burning Ones could only watch as massive slabs slammed down among them, cut loose by the energy of the waning moon.
The survivors quickly spread across the clearing, lashing at Aphelios with their molten spears. Weaving between the blows, Aphelios continued to slash with Severum and reached out with his free hand to grasp one more weapon as it passed through the veil, knowing it would be there.

“Crescendum,” I say to the night.

With a soaring arc, Crescendum cut through the throats of the remaining Solari in the clearing—Aphelios catching the moonstone blade as it twisted around and returned to his hand.
In seconds, it was over.

The barbarian stands before you. He looks up, gratefully. Beside him, what the Burning Ones sought: a scimitar curved like the moon.
He opens his mouth to thank you, but he sees your expression twist, though you try to hide it. You fight the fear, punching your shoulder where the Burning Ones’ spears cut through your cloak. Trying to remember the pain. Reaching for it.
You don’t want to kill him. But you must.
Your face is too numb for you to feel the tears… Instead, you feel mine.
“Aphelios,” I say one last time, forcing my voice through the veil. There is a dizzying rush as our orbits bring us together.
Through your eyes, I see what moonlight reveals around the scimitar. Why it was abandoned.
She is running…
We must find her.

The crimson-clad barbarian lay in the snow among the Solari.
With a gasp, Aphelios fell to his knees.
He glanced up at the moon, listening for a whisper only he could hear.
His expression dulled again. Without a word, he picked up the scimitar and walked into the night.
Art is Life

Graham McNeill

Nights in Noxus were never silent.
You couldn’t cram so many thousands of people from all across the empire into one place and expect quiet.
Desert marching songs from the Zagayah enclave drifted from their tented pavilions by the water, and the martial clashing of blades echoed from a nearby Reckoner’s arena. Drakehounds corralled in an iron-walled enclosure howled as they caught the scent of slaughtered livestock from the northern kill yards.
The cries of widowed spouses, grief-stricken mothers, or nightmare-wracked veterans were a nightly chorus to accompany the roars of drunken soldiers and the promises of street hawkers who plied their trade best in the darkness.
No, the nights in Noxus were never silent.
Except here.
This part of Noxus was deathly quiet.
Maura held her pack of brushes, paints, and charcoals close to her chest as she felt the din of the Noxian night fade. The lack of sound was so sudden, so shocking, that she stopped in the middle of the street—never normally a good idea—and looked around.
The street was in an older, wealthier district of Noxus known as Mortoraa, or Iron Gate, but was otherwise unremarkable. The light of a full moon reflected from its paving of irregular cobbles like scores of watching eyes, and the buildings to either side were well built with stone blocks that spoke of an experienced hand, perhaps that of a warmason. Maura saw a tall shrine at the end of a side street, where three armored figures knelt before the obsidian wolf within its pillared vault. They looked up in unison, and Maura hurried on, knowing it was unwise to attract the notice of men who prayed in the dark with swords.
She shouldn’t be out here in the dark.
Tahvo had warned her not to go, but she’d seen the serpent in his eyes and knew it wasn’t fear for her safety that moved him, but envy. He had always believed himself to be the best painter in their little circle. That she had been selected for this commission instead of him cut deep. When the crisply folded and elegantly written letter had arrived at their shared studio, Cerise and Konrad had been elated, begging her to remember everything she could, while Zurka simply told her to be sure her brushes were clean.
“Do you think you’ll get to speak to him?” Cerise had asked as Maura opened the door to hear the drifting echoes of the night bell fading over the harbor. The idea of venturing out into the darkness filled Maura with equal parts dread and excitement.
“He’s sitting for a portrait, so I suppose I shall have to,” she’d answered, pointing to the darkened sky. “We’ll need to discuss what manner of painting he wants, especially since I won’t have natural light.”
“Strange that he wants his portrait done at night, eh?” said Konrad, wide awake and wearing his blanket like a cloak.
“I wonder what he sounds like,” added Cerise.
“Just like everyone else,” snapped Tahvo, rolling over and wadding his threadbare pillow. “He’s not a god, you know. He’s just a man. Now, will you all just shut up? I’m trying to sleep.”
Cerise ran over and kissed her. “Good luck,” she giggled. “Come back and tell us… everything, no matter how sordid.”
Maura’s smile had faltered, but she nodded. “I will. I promise.”
The directions to her new patron’s mansion were exceptionally specific. Not simply in her eventual destination, but in the precise route she must take to get there. Maura knew the geography of the capital well, having walked its streets for days when hunger gnawed her belly. Or when they couldn’t pool enough commission money, and the owner of their studio kicked them out until they’d earned enough to pay what was owed.
This part of town, though, was a growing mystery to her. She’d known the mansion was here, of course—everyone in Noxus knew where he lived, though few could recall ever going there. With every step she took, Maura felt like she’d wandered into a strange city in a newly-conquered land. The streets felt unfamiliar—narrower and more threatening, as if each twist and turn brought the walls closer and closer until they would eventually crush her. She hurried on through the unnerving quiet, craving a source of fresh light—a boundary lantern perhaps, or a low-burning candle in an upper window, set to guide a night-calling suitor.
But there was no illumination beyond that of the moon. Her heartbeat and pace quickened as she heard what could be a soft footfall behind her, or the sigh of an expectant breath.
Turning a sharp corner, Maura found herself in a circular plaza with a fountain gurgling at its center. In a city as cramped as this, where people lived cheek by jowl and space was at a premium, such extravagance was almost unheard of.
She circled the fountain’s pool, its water silver in the moonlight, admiring the sculpted realism of its carved centerpiece. Hammered from crude iron, it represented a headless warrior encased in thick war-plate, and bearing a spiked mace.
Water spilled from the neck of the statue, and Maura felt a chill as she realized who it was intended to represent.
She hurried past the fountain towards a double gate of seasoned silverbark set in a black wall of red-veined marble. As the letter had promised, it stood ajar, and Maura eased herself between its heavy leaves.

The mansion within the walls had been built from a pale stone of a kind she hadn’t seen before—imposing without being monolithic, as a great many grand structures of Noxus often were. Nor, the more she studied it, did it adhere to any one particular style, but rather a collection of architectural movements that had come and gone over the centuries.
Foremost among such oddities was a rough stone tower rising over the main building, and this portion alone appeared out of place. It gave the impression that the mansion had been built around some ancient shaman’s lair. The effect should have been jarring, but Maura rather liked it, as though every aspect of the mansion offered a glimpse into a bygone age of the empire. Its windows were shuttered and dark, and the only light she saw was a soft crimson glow at the tower’s summit.
She followed a graveled path through an exquisite garden of elaborate topiary, carefully directed waterways, and strange looking flowers with exotic scents and startlingly vivid colors. This, together with the spacious plaza outside, suggested fabulous wealth. The idea that she had been chosen for this task sent a frisson of pleasurable warmth through her limbs.
Hundreds of colorful butterflies with curiously patterned wings flitted to and fro between the flowers. Such light and fragile creatures, yet so beautiful and capable of the most miraculous transformation. Maura had never seen butterflies at night, and she laughed with joy as one alighted on her palm. The tapered shape of its body and the patterning on its outstretched wings was uncannily similar to the winged-blade heraldry she saw flying on every Noxian flag. The butterfly fluttered its wings and flew away. Maura watched it circle and swoop with the others, amazed to see so many rare and wonderful creatures.
She let her fingers brush the colorful leaves as she passed, savoring the scents clinging to her fingertips and drifting up in motes of dust that glittered in the moonlight. She paused by a particularly beautiful bloom, one with flame-red petals so bright they took her breath away.
No red she had ever mixed from Shuriman cinnabar or Piltovan ochre had achieved such luster. Even the ruinously expensive Ionian vermillions were dull by comparison. She chewed her bottom lip as she considered what she was about to do, then reached out to pluck a number of petals from the nearest plant. The flower’s remaining petals immediately curled inwards, and the stem bent away from her as if in fear. Maura felt terrible guilt and looked up at the mansion to see if she had been observed, but the shuttered windows remained closed and lightless.
The front door stood open, and she paused at its threshold. The letter had told her to enter, but now that she was here, Maura felt a curious reluctance. Was this some trap, a means to lure her to some unspeakable fate? If so, it seemed needlessly elaborate. The notion felt absurd, and Maura chided herself for letting fear get in the way of what was likely to be the greatest opportunity of her life.
She took a breath, stepped across the threshold, and entered the mansion.

The vestibule was vaulted by dark and heavy timbers, with faded murals of the empire’s early, bloody days painted in the spaces between. To Maura’s left and right, wide openings revealed long galleries draped in shadow, making it difficult to tell who or what might be displayed. A long, curving staircase climbed to an upper mezzanine and a wide archway, but what lay beyond was impossible to make out. The vestibule was all but empty, save for what looked like a large, sheet-draped canvas upon an easel. Maura tentatively approached the covered canvas, wondering if this was to be where she would paint.
She hoped not. The light in here was ill-suited to portraiture. Where moonlight pooled on the herringbone floor, the space was bright, but elsewhere it was entirely dark, as though the light refused to approach those corners.
“Hello?” she said, and her voice echoed throughout the vestibule. “I have a letter…”
Her words lingered, and Maura sought in vain for any sign she wasn’t entirely alone in this strange house in the middle of the night.
“Hello?” she said again. “Is anyone here?”
“I am here,” said a voice.
Maura jumped. The words were cultured, masculine, and redolent with age. They seemed to drift down from above and be breathlessly whispered in her ear at the same time. She turned on the spot, searching for the speaker.
She was alone.
“Are you Vladimir?” she asked.
“I am, yes,” he replied, his voice freighted with deep melancholy as if the name itself were a source of torment. “You are the painter.”
“Yes. That’s me. I’m the painter,” she said, adding, “My name is Maura Betzenia. I’m the painter.”
She cursed her clumsiness before realizing his last words had not been a question.
“Good. I have been waiting a long time for you.”
“Oh. My apologies, sir. The letter said I wasn’t to leave until the harbor bell rang.”
“Indeed it did, and you have arrived precisely when you were supposed to,” said Vladimir, and this time Maura thought she saw a sliver of deeper black in the shadows. “It is I who am at fault, for I have been delaying sending for someone like you much too long. Vanity makes fools of us all, does it not?”
“Is it vanity?” asked Maura, knowing the wealthier patrons liked to be flattered. “Or simply waiting for the right moment to capture the truth of your appearance?”
Laughter drifted down from above. Maura couldn’t decide if he thought she’d said something funny or was mocking her.
“I hear a variation of that every time,” said Vladimir. “And as to truth, well, that is a moveable feast. Tell me, did you like my garden?”
Maura sensed a trap in the question, and hesitated before answering.
“I did,” she said. “I had no idea you could grow anything that beautiful in Noxian soil.”
“You cannot,” said Vladimir with wry amusement. “Such thin soil produces only the hardiest specimens, ones that spread far and wide to drive out all others. But none of them could be called beautiful. The red flower you killed, it was a nightbloom.”
Maura felt her mouth go dry, but Vladimir appeared not to care what she had done.
“Nightblooms were once native to an island chain in the east, a blessed place of rare beauty and enlightenment,” he said. “I dwelled there for a time until it was destroyed, as all mortal endeavors ultimately must be. I took some seeds from a grove once tended by a temperamental nature spirit and brought them back to Valoran, where I was able to entice them to grow with a combination of blood and tears.”
“Don’t you mean blood, sweat, and tears?”
“My dear, what possible use would sweat be in growing a flower?”
Maura had no answer, but the musical cadence of his voice was seductive. She could listen to it all night. Maura shook off the velvet quality of Vladimir’s drifting voice and nodded towards the covered canvas.
“Is that where I am to paint?” she asked.
“No,” said Vladimir. “That was merely my first.”
“Your first what?”
“My first life,” he said as she lifted the edge of the sheet.

The painting had faded with the passage of time, its colors bleached by light, and the brushstrokes flattened. But the image was still powerful—a young man on the cusp of adulthood, armored in archaic-looking bronze plate and bearing a fluttering banner depicting a wickedly curved scythe blade. Much of the detail had been lost, but the boy’s blue eyes were still piercingly bright. The face was extraordinarily handsome, symmetrical and with a tilt of the head that captivated her gaze.
Maura leaned in and saw an army behind the young man, a host of hulking warriors too large to be human, too bestial to be real. Their outlines and features had faded with age, and Maura was thankful for that small mercy.
“This is you?” she asked, hoping he might appear to explain the portrait in person.
“Once, a long, long time ago,” said Vladimir, and Maura felt ice enter his words. “I was an unneeded heir of a long-vanished kingdom, in an age when gods made war on one another. Mortals were pawns in their world-spanning strife, and when the time came for my father to bend the knee to a living god, I was given up as a royal hostage. In theory, my father’s loyalty would be assured by the constant threat to my life. Should he break faith with his new master, I would be slain. But like all my father’s promises, it was empty. He cared nothing for me, and broke his oath within the year.”
The story Vladimir was telling was strange and fantastical, like the Shuriman myths Konrad told when they shared scare stories on the roof of the studio at night. Konrad’s tales were thinly veiled morality plays, but this… this had a weight of truth behind it, and felt uncontaminated by sentimentality.
“But instead of killing me, my new master had something altogether more amusing in mind. Amusing for him, at any rate. He offered me the chance to lead his armies against my father’s kingdom, an offer I gladly accepted. I destroyed my father’s city and presented his head to my master. I was a good and faithful hound on a leash.”
“You destroyed your own people? Why?”
Vladimir paused as though trying to decide if her question was serious.
“Because even if the god-warriors had not come, my father’s kingdom would never have been mine,” he said. “He had sons and heirs aplenty, and I would never have lived long enough to claim my birthright.”
“Why would your master make you do that?”
“I used to think it was because he saw a spark of greatness within me, or the potential to be something more than a mere mortal,” said Vladimir with a soft sigh that sent warm shivers down Maura’s spine. “But more likely he just thought it would be amusing to teach one of his mortal pets some tricks, as the mountebank teaches a monkey to dance around his stall, to attract the gullible.”
Maura looked back at the image of the young man in the picture, now seeing something dark lurking deeper in the eyes. A hint of cruelty perhaps, a glint of festering bitterness.
“What did he teach you?” asked Maura. As much as she wasn’t sure she wanted an answer, something in her needed to know.
“My master’s kind had the power to defy death—to sculpt flesh, blood, and bone into the most wondrous forms,” continued Vladimir. “He taught me something of their arts, magic he wielded as easily as breathing. But it took every scrap of my intellect and will to master even the simplest of cantrips. I was later to learn that teaching their secrets to mortals was forbidden under pain of death, but my master delighted in flaunting the mores of his kind.”
Vladimir’s sourceless laughter echoed around her, yet there was no mirth to the sound.
“He couldn’t help challenging convention, and in the end, it was his undoing.”
“He died?” she asked.
“Yes. When one of his kind betrayed them, their power over this world was broken. My master’s enemies united against him, and he looked to me to lead his armies in his defense. Instead, I killed him and drank in a measure of his power, for I had not forgotten the many cruelties he had inflicted upon me over the years. Taking his life was my first step on a road far longer than I ever could have imagined. A boon and a curse in one bloody gift.”
Maura heard the relish in Vladimir’s tone, but also sadness, as if the mark this murder had cut on his soul had never truly left him. Did he feel guilt at this killing, or was he simply trying to manipulate her emotions?
Not being able to see him made it that much harder to divine his intent.
“But enough of this painting,” said Vladimir. “It is vital, yes, but only one of my accumulated lives. If you are to immortalize this one, you must see the others I have experienced over the years before we can truly begin.”
Maura turned to the stairs as the shadows draping their length retreated like a soft, black tide. She licked her lips, conscious again that she was alone in this echoing mansion with Vladimir, a man who had just admitted to murdering his father and his monstrous mentor.
“Hesitation? Really?” he said. “You have come this far. And I have already bared so much of my soul to you.”
Maura knew he was goading her into climbing the stairs. That alone ought to make her leave and return to her friends. But as much as she knew she should be afraid, part of her thrilled to be the center of Vladimir’s attention, to feel the power of his gaze upon her.
“Come to me,” he continued. “See what it is I ask of you. And then, if you feel the task is too great and choose to leave, I will not stop you.”
“No,” she said. “I want to know it all.”

The archway atop the mezzanine led into a wide corridor of dark stone that was so shockingly cold, it took Maura’s breath away. Fixed to the dark walls were row upon row of lacquered wooden boards.
And pinned to these boards were many thousands of butterflies with spread wings.
Sadness touched Maura. “What is this?”
“One of my collections,” said Vladimir, his voice coming from nowhere and everywhere at once. It drew her onwards along the corridor.
“Why did you kill them?”
“To study them. Why else? These creatures live such short lives. To end them a moment sooner is no great loss.”
“The butterfly might disagree.”
“But look at what each death taught me.”
“What do you mean?”
“The butterflies you saw in the garden? They exist nowhere else in nature. They are unique because I made them so. With will and knowledge, I have wrought entire species into being.”
“How is that possible?”
“Because, like the gods, I choose which ones live and which ones die.”
Maura reached out to the nearest pinned butterfly, one with vivid crimson circles on the larger part of its wings. As soon as her finger brushed the insect’s body, its wings disintegrated and the rest of it crumbled like ancient, flaking paint.
A cold wind sighed past Maura, and she stepped back in alarm as a cascade of dissolution swept across the pinned specimens. Scores, then hundreds of butterflies crumbled to powder that spun in the air like ash and cinders stirred from a banked fire. She cried out and rushed down the corridor, frantically waving her hands to brush the dust from her face. It grazed the skin beneath her clothes, and she spat as she tasted the grit of insect bodies in her mouth, felt it gather in her ears.
She stopped and opened her eyes as she felt the quality of sound and light change. She rubbed dust from her face, seeing she had entered into a wide, circular chamber.
Maura took a moment to look around and regain her composure, brushing the last of the dust from her face and clothes. The walls of the chamber were primitively cut stone, and she guessed she stood within the base of the ancient tower. A rough-hewn staircase corkscrewed its way up the interior walls, and strange, ruby light fell in shimmering veils from somewhere high above. The air smelled of hot metal, like the iron winds carried from the bulk forges that fed the empire’s insatiable hunger for armor and weapons.
The circular walls were hung with portraits, and she moved cautiously around the gallery’s circumference, studying each painting in turn. No two were alike in their framing or style, ranging from crude abstracts to renderings so lifelike it was as if a real face were imprisoned within the warp and weft of the canvas. She recognized the styles of some, the work of masters of the craft who had lived centuries ago.
Where the painting in the vestibule was that of a young man in his prime, these were a mixture of the same individual, but at very different times in his life.
One showed him in his middle years, still fit and hearty, but with a bitter cast to his eyes. Another was a portrait of a man so aged and ravaged that Maura wasn’t even sure it had been painted while its subject was alive. Yet another depicted him bloodily wounded in the aftermath of a great battle before a titanic statue of ivory stone.
“How can these all be you?” she asked.
The answer drifted down in the veils of red light.
“I do not live as you do. The gift carried in my former master’s blood changed me forever. I thought you understood that?”
“I do. I mean, I think I do.”
“The paintings around you are moments of my many lives. Not all great moments, I have come to realize, and captured by journeymen for the most part. In the earliest days of my existence I was arrogant enough to believe my every deed was worthy of such commemoration, but now…”
“But now?” asked Maura, when he didn’t continue.
“Now I only commit the renewal of my life to canvas amid events that mark turning points in the affairs of the world. Climb the steps, and see what I mean.”
Maura found her circuit of the gallery had brought her to the base of the stairs, as though her every step had led her to this point. Not just tonight, but every moment since she had first picked up a brush and painted the animals on her mother’s farm in Krexor.
“Why me?” she asked. “Why am I here? There are other artists in Noxus better than me.”
A soft chuckle drifted around her.
“Such modesty. Yes, it is true there are artists more technically proficient than you,” said Vladimir. “Your jealous colleague, Tahvo, for example, understands perspective better than you ever will. Young Cerise’s use of color is outstanding, and the stoic Zurka has an eye for detail that makes his work endlessly fascinating. Konrad, however, will never be more than a dabbler, but you already know this.”
“You know my friends?” she said.
“Of course. Did you think I chose you at random?”
“I don’t know. How did you choose me?”
“To capture such a transformative moment, I required someone whose heart and soul goes into their work, an artist truly worthy of the name. That is why you are here, Maura Betzenia. Because every brushstroke is personal to you. Every mark on the canvas, every choice of color has meaning. You understand the heart of a painting, and willingly give something of your soul to capture the life it represents.”
Maura had heard the flattery of patrons and the empty praise of her fellow painters before, but Vladimir’s words were utterly sincere. He meant every word, and her heart lifted to hear such affirmation.
“Why now? What’s so special about this moment in time that you want your portrait painted? What was it you said? You only have a painting done at a turning point in the affairs of the world…”
Vladimir’s voice seemed to coil around her as he spoke.
“And such a moment is upon us. I have dwelled here for such a long time, Maura. Long enough to oust the Iron Revenant from his Immortal Bastion, long enough to see the many rulers who came after him claw their way to power over the corpses of their brothers before treacherous ambition brought them low. Long enough to know the canker that lurks at the empire’s heart—a midnight flower with roots in old and corrupt soil. We have danced, she and I—oh, how we have danced in blood over the centuries, but the tempo of the music has changed, and the dance nears its end. This parade of fools I walk among, this life… it is unsuited for what must come next.”
“I don’t understand. What is coming next?”
“At almost any other time before, I could have answered that with certainty,” continued Vladimir. “But now…? I do not know. All I know is that I must change to face it. I have been passive for too long, and allowed flunkies and hangers-on to fawn over my every whim. But now I am ready to take what is mine, that which was for so long denied me—a kingdom of my own. This is immortality, Maura. Mine and yours.”
“Immortality…?”
“Of course. Is it not by the warriors’ deeds and artists’ craft that they achieve immortality? The legacy of their work lives on beyond the feeble span of mortal lives. Demacia reveres the warriors who founded it in the martial tenets to which they dogmatically cleave. Great works of literature set down thousands of years ago might still be performed, and sculptures freed from blocks of marble in the ages before the Rune Wars are still viewed with awe by those who can find them.”
Maura sensed with complete clarity that to climb these stairs would be committing to something irrevocable, something final. How many other artists had stood where she was right now? How many had lifted their foot and placed it on the first step?
How many had come back down?
How many had turned and walked away?
Maura could leave now, of that she was certain. Vladimir was not lying to her. If she chose to leave, she had no doubt she would arrive back at the studio unharmed. But how could she face each day from now until the Wolf or the Lamb came for her, knowing she had lacked the courage to take this one chance to create something incredible?
“Maura,” said Vladimir, and this time his silken voice was right before her.
She looked up, and there he was.
Silhouetted against the red light drifting down from above, his form slender and cursive. White hair streamed behind him, and swarms of crimson-winged butterflies filled the air above.
His eyes, once rendered in vivid blue, were now a smoldering red.
They pulsed in time with her heartbeat.
He reached out to her, and his slender fingers were elegantly tapered, with long nails like glittering talons.
“So, shall immortality be our legacy?” asked Vladimir.
“Yes,” she said. “It shall.”
Maura took his hand, and together they climbed the staircase into the veils of crimson.
Ashe

Ashe hails from the northern Freljord, where brutal tribal raids and inter-clan warfare are as much a part of the landscape as the scream of the frozen winds, and the unyielding cold of the tundra.
The only child of Grena, the matriarchal chieftain of the tiny Avarosan tribe, Ashe was Iceborn: a member of the warrior caste, gifted with an ancestral connection to the magic of her lands, and the rare ability to wield the power of True Ice. Everyone assumed that Ashe would follow her mother as the tribe's next leader. However, this was never a glory Ashe desired. The grim responsibility of her warlike lineage and extraordinary gifts instead left Ashe feeling isolated, burdened, and alone.
Her only respite was when Sejuani, an Iceborn girl from a sister tribe, would stay with them for the summer hunts around the Ornnkaal Rocks. The girls' friendship defined their childhoods, but was cut short just as they reached their teens. Somehow, Grena had offended Sejuani's grandmother, and the fellowship between their tribes ended suddenly.
Soon after, with her youth fading, Ashe's mother began her lifelong quest for the “Throne of Avarosa”, a supposed hoard of treasures and magical items that she hoped would return her people to greatness.
But Grena’s belief in prophecies and legends led her to take risks, which often left her tribe enfeebled. Finally, during a dangerous and unnecessary raid in another tribe's lands, Grena was killed. Her sudden death left young Ashe on the run, while most of her tribe was wiped out.
Alone, pursued, Ashe followed her mother's last map to a deserted glacier where she found the supposed grave of Avarosa, and her magical bow of True Ice. Ashe used the weapon to avenge her mother's death, then turned west.
Whether it was out of duty or loneliness, Ashe gained a reputation by protecting the many scattered hearthbound tribes she encountered. She spurned the custom of taking thralls, and instead chose to adopt these desperate people as full members of her new tribe, and her fame grew quickly. Soon many began to believe that she did not just carry the weapon of Avarosa—Ashe was the legend herself, reborn and destined to reunite the Freljord.
But tall tales would not feed her followers, and their long march south left the tribe on the verge of starvation. So, Ashe leveraged the myths surrounding her, using them to form alliances with the powerful and land-rich southern tribes, promising to unite them into a nation capable of challenging neighboring kingdoms.
These new alliances brought new dangers, and Ashe quickly found herself at the center of a political feud. A Warmother, as Freljordian tribal leaders are known, was expected to wed, and taking a husband from one of the major tribes would anger the others. Ashe could take several husbands, but this would only bring the conflict to a boil within her own household, and the ensuing bloodshed would shatter the alliances she had fought to build.
Her answer was an impoverished vagabond from a mountain clan that had been nearly wiped out—the warrior Tryndamere. He was neither a spirit-walker nor blessed with any elemental powers, but upon his arrival in Ashe’s new capital, Tryndamere had thrown himself into every dueling ring he could find. He fought with abandon, desperate to prove the destitute survivors of his clan were worthy of adoption by one of the stronger tribes. But even for the Freljord, his brutal fighting style and extraordinary vitality were unsettling, and many suspected he was touched by dark magic. Ignoring this, Ashe offered to adopt his people as her own, if he became her first and only bloodsworn.
Tryndamere accepted reluctantly. Though a political marriage, the attraction they felt for each other was palpable, and slowly a true affection blossomed.
Now, Ashe stands at the head of the largest coalition of Freljordian tribes in many generations. Even so, the unity she would bring rests upon an uneasy peace threatened by internal intrigues, foreign powers, the growing violent horde of the Winter's Claw, and a supposed destiny that Ashe must at least pretend to believe…
The Harder Path

Lillian Herington

The colossal brazier flared to life, its flames reaching high into the air. In times past, the gathered tribes would use this as the mark of the festival’s beginning.
The harvest festival had always been the largest celebration of the year for the tribes, and one of the last before winter set in on the plains. As the fire was lit, cheers should have echoed up the frozen slopes of the mountains, calling down blessings from the Three Sisters. Now, though, the mass of gathered Avarosans remained silent as they turned away from the flames to look up to the stage where Ashe stood.
She let her eyes roam over them. No festival had ever seen so many gathered together, and she knew they had come to see her.
She grabbed her bow and unslung it, the now-familiar piercing chill of the True Ice surging through her body. The cold was still painful, even after all her time with the weapon—but now she welcomed it, using it to focus and block out distractions. She lifted her gaze from the crowd to the roaring flame, and took a deep breath as she pulled back the bowstring. All other sounds of the festival faded.
A crystal arrow of pure cold formed, beckoned forth by the deep magic coursing through the bow. Ashe held her breath as she let it continue to channel magic through her arms. The temperature on the stage plummeted, frost creeping out from beneath her feet.
When the cold threatened to finally overwhelm her, she released her breath and let the arrow fly.
It arced high over the crowd, and slammed into its target with a deafening crack. In an instant, the brazier was frozen over, the dancing shapes of the fire enveloped by the spreading ice. The setting sun shone through the crystalized flames and onto the crowd below, and finally the cheer broke out. The crowd invoked the blessings of the Three—Lissandra, Serylda, and Avarosa herself, reincarnated in Ashe.
Ashe kept her address short.
“Avarosans! Never before has a harvest festival seen so many. Sit with your kin from across the snows—we are one family now. Eat, drink, and enjoy!”
She smiled as the crowd cried out her name. She raised her bow high, and the cheers rose higher in response.
Inwardly, she grimaced. As so often, she wondered if it was her leadership that drew them all together, or the weapon she carried. It was the symbol of Avarosa, and many in the Freljord believed that, as its wielder, she was Avarosa reborn. Ashe slung the bow over her shoulder and shook the thought. Why they joined wasn’t as important as what they had become. She hopped off the stage and moved into the crowd as they dispersed to feast-laden tables.
The boisterous tribes mixed together, sharing food, drink, and tales of hunts past. The Stonepicks described the warm yet treacherous southern mountains. Ashe cheered with the others when the Red Snows recounted the defeat of the Noxian warbands that had tried to advance inland from the coast. A warrior from the Ice Veins, storied blizzard walkers one and all, clapped Ashe on the back as she passed, sending a strange chill through her.
All these and more had responded to her call and joined the festivities. All had pledged themselves to the Avarosans, and each tribe needed her to be something different. A prophet, a savior, a mediator. A Warmother.
Ashe would be them all if she could.
As she neared the far end of the feast, though, she froze. At the last table, sitting somber and removed from the rest, was a group of Iceborn that she knew all too well—the Snow Followers, vengeful zealots who had slaughtered a whole tribe only months ago.
A tribe whose only crime had been joining the Avarosans.
A large woman, doubtless their leader, rose and approached Ashe. “Warmother Ashe, Avarosa’s chosen, wielder of Her divine bow. My name is Hildhur Svarhem, truthbearer and Warmother of the Snow Followers.”
Ashe imagined the sight of the scorched huts again, the screams of her people dying in agony, and her fury ignited. The crowd around them quieted as Hildhur continued, whispers spreading quickly. All gathered had heard of what the Snow Followers had done.
“We swore an oath that no faith-traitors would ever again follow those falsely claiming to be Avarosa reborn. Your warriors fought bravely, but not well.” She unslung a large war-axe from her back, its blade coated in a thin but clear layer of True Ice. A true Iceborn, she bore the discomfort of the weapon’s chilling effect silently.
Ashe measured the woman’s wide stance, counted the few steps between them. Dried blood matted Hildhur’s armor—more Avarosan blood? Ashe’s muscles tensed as she prepared to move. She was ready for any attack.
What she was not ready for, however, was for the Warmother to kneel, lower her head, and offer up the war-axe with both hands.
“Forgive us, Warmother Ashe. I did not know then what I do now. I came to challenge you before all your followers, to unmask you as a false prophet. But the magic you wield is beyond any I have ever witnessed. None can deny that She speaks through you. I offer you my axe, Joutbane, and my head. Spare my people, that they may prove their worth by hunting, farming, and dying in your name.”
Each of the gathered Snow Followers followed their Warmother’s example, kneeling in deference.
At once, voices from the crowd called for vengeance. “Death to the raiders!” they cried.
Barely more than smoldering ruins when Ashe had arrived, the skeletal remains told the story of a village surrounded. The few warriors had been easily identified, for their bodies were untouched by fire, but hacked down and left for the crows. The rest of the tribe had hidden in their homes, praying for mercy, or simply a quick death.
They received neither…
Eyes welled up with fury, Ashe reached for the axe. She would take Hildhur’s head, as a warning to any who would—
As her hand clasped around it, and the True Ice sent the familiar spike of cold through her arm, Ashe felt her bow beginning to radiate against her back. A slow, chilling pulse, like a winter breeze.
Her mind calmed.
“Stand, Hildhur,” she said, looking down at the war-axe.
Hildhur rose, furrowing her brow in confusion. Ashe met her probing gaze.
“The Snow Followers have shed the blood of my tribe, and they are my enemies,” she continued. “But you have shown humility and remorse, here and now. You are not the Snow Followers any longer—from today forward, you are Avarosan, and that makes you family. You have nothing to fear from me, cousin.”
She thrust the war-axe back into the woman’s hands, and the tension in the air broke. Soon enough, the celebrations were underway again, the joyous feelings redoubled by forgiveness and mercy. Ashe walked to everyone seated at the table, welcoming each in turn.
As she turned from them and walked away, she was careful to keep her grief in check. Her heart still burned, but her people needed her to walk a different path than that of revenge. She played her fingers along the bowstring, seeking comfort in its chill.
She would be better. She must.
At The Edge Of The World

Ian St Martin

“Seven times,” said Ysard Tomyri, straining to keep her voice level and face neutral.
Captain Oditz did not answer his first officer immediately, his attention consumed by the maps and reports covering his desk, or at least feigning as much. It was Oditz who had summoned her and, like so much else in their short service together, making her stand at attention in his quarters aboard the Kironya was, above all else, a display of power.
“I request audience with high command,” said Ysard, unwilling to play the captain’s game this time.
“I speak for high command here, Commander Tomyri,” said Oditz, not looking up. “A fact you seem either ignorant of, or unwilling to accept.”
“Seven times,” said Ysard again. “I have requested audience, not to plead or beg, but to promise.”
“Promise?” the Captain looked up from the spread of parchments, finally glancing at Ysard.
“Yes,” she answered. “To promise them the glory that I shall win for them, the lands and peoples I will bring, by word or by blood, into the empire. There are expansions being mobilized, envoys being sent out from our borders to secure new lands for Noxus each day. I can win those for them. All that I require is a command.”
“We have spoken of this before,” Oditz muttered. “Seven times now, as you know. It is high command that decides how to interpret the will of the Trifarix—not their subordinates.”
Ysard stiffened. Frustration frayed her patience. “When Captain Hurad fell to the pirates off the coast of Ruug, it was I who led the Kironya’s crew to victory, not you. It was I who led the boarding action to seize the corsairs’ ship, and when the last of them fell it was my name that was cheered. It felt right. After such a victory I expected—”
“What?” asked Oditz. “Your own command? After beating a rabble of underfed Freljordians back into the sea? You think it is you who should be sitting here, rather than myself. And because it isn’t, you superseded my authority to request audience with high command yourself.”
Calmly, Captain Oditz set down his quill and rose from his chair. He towered over Ysard, the light catching the old scars etched upon his features from a lifetime of war. “I would have seen you stripped of rank and thrown into the Reckoner pits for your lack of respect, Commander Tomyri,” he said stiffly. “But it seems that fate has intervened on your behalf.”
He produced a scroll and extended it to her sharply.
The seal around the scroll had been broken, its contents already read by Oditz or his assistants, as was their right.
“Take it. And get out.”
After an instant of surprised hesitation, Ysard reached for the message. She saluted and hurried to her quarters, unfurling it and quickly reading over its contents.
It was as though a galvanizing stream of molten steel had been poured from a crucible into her heart. Ysard felt providence in the wind, for the first time at her back. Finally, her skills would be given their full range.
She had been ordered to the capital. At last, a command was hers.

The harbor was a bustling throng of activity. Merchants, traders and dockworkers crowded alongside fleet crews embarking and disembarking from ships in a constant stream. Rare beasts let out keening wails from within iron cages, destined for the arenas for sport, or the homes of the elite to join their exotic collections. Shipments of foods from all corners of Runeterra were being offloaded from trading vessels and distributed to feed the countless citizens of Ysard’s barren homeland. It was a breathtaking scene, a living estuary where new goods, cultures, and ideas flowed into the empire, expanding it, enriching it, and making it stronger.
All of this, and the sprawling city beyond, sat in the shadow of the Immortal Bastion. Ysard gazed upon the grandeur of the ancient structure from a harbor road, its immeasurably high walls and towers draped with the banners of the empire. There was no better manifestation of Noxus’ power—the very power that surged within her heart.
Ysard spared a few more moments to take in the vibrant scene around her, before her face set in a curt expression and the efficient mind of a commander took hold of her thoughts.
A grand expedition awaited her, and she moved with haste to where her ship was moored.
The Ardentius appeared to Ysard like a vessel washed up from another, earlier time, and it bore the scars to match. Wounds accumulated across decades of service pockmarked and spread across her hull like spiderwebs, from the battered iron speartip of her prow to the creaking timber of her aftcastle. These smaller frigates served as escorts for larger warships like the Kironya. They were designed to be ground to splinters against enemy pickets, and to soak up fire as interdictors, to be expended to their last ounce of usefulness before being scuttled or left to sink. To Ysard’s eyes, either fate seemed likely for the Ardentius.
The crew on its deck was little better. A motley assortment of grubby men and women labored together in a disordered rabble, spending more time exchanging insults and threats than loading provisions or cargo. They numbered no more than sixty, nearly a skeleton crew. Ysard’s lips pulled back from her teeth in disgust.
Ysard forced the sneer from her face. The tools she had been given were lowly, but no matter. It would make the conquests she won with them all the greater.
“You there,” she called out to a taskmaster, causing him to turn from the assembled crew he was ordering around. He turned, straightening the collar of his beaten leather storm coat, and approached with an easy, confident grin that set Ysard’s teeth on edge.
“See that the cargo and crew are readied for departure immediately,” said Ysard tersely. “I intend for my ship to be at sail with no further delays.”
“Your ship?” The man’s voice was a gritty baritone. He frowned for an instant, before realization dawned upon him. “Ah, so you’re the Noxian prodigy I’ve been stuck with. You can get your ship running as you like, and if you’ll quit pestering we’ll be off as soon as I have the rest of my things.”
“You dare,” Ysard reddened at his impudence, her hand closing on the hilt of the ornate sword at her hip. “Give me your name.”
“Ordylon,” the man answered, apparently unconcerned. “Friends call me Niander, though.”
“Niander Ordylon,” Ysard repeated the name. She looked at the heavy crates being loaded onto the Ardentius, marked as carrying harnesses, bola nets and cage housings. “The Beastmaster?”
“Ah, so you have heard of me.”
There were few in the capital who hadn’t. Even though she had spent precious little time at the arenas—there was an empire to fight for, after all—Ysard knew the name Ordylon was synonymous with theatrical displays of deadly creatures battling to the roar of the crowd.
What was he doing here?
Ysard recovered her composure. “I was not informed in my orders that you would be coming aboard.”
“Well, here I am.” He handed Ysard a scroll bearing the sigil of Captain Oditz. Ordylon noticed her scowl and flashed her a toothy, conspiratorial grin. “Looks like we’ll be shipmates.”

Ysard stood at the bow of her frigate, scanning the horizon. Upon setting sail, the ship had filed into the queue of vessels seeking passage through the mouth of the river and out into the ocean. Hours of waiting had led to a brusque and thorough inspection by the soldiers manning the fortified installations that secured entry into Noxus by sea, but after they had checked every inch of the Ardentius and pored over Ysard’s orders no fewer than six separate times, she had been given clearance to depart.
Ysard had seen the ocean many times, but never on a ship under her own command. It was always as shocking to her as it was beautiful, a boundless plane of deep blue, separated from the sky by a delicate blur of heat from the midday sun.
And now, somewhere ahead of them, Ysard’s destiny awaited. A new land to explore, conquer, and usher into the Noxian empire.
She had earned a taste of glory, won by the edge of her sword, but it was hardly a feat that would echo throughout eternity. And try as she might to forget it, Ysard always carried a shard of the reclusive street urchin inside, never fully giving herself to the collective, never truly trusting any but herself.
Until Ysard had that, she would know no rest.
She looked back over her shoulder at the sound of heavy bootsteps on the deck. Seeing the Beastmaster approaching, she made a last quick note in a worn leather journal before closing it and placing it in a pocket of her coat.
“Quite the sight, eh?” said Ordylon, leaning his knuckles against the railing.
Ysard bristled. “Why are you here?”
“I needed a ship.”
“This is my ship,” said Ysard. “And my expedition. Remember that and we’ll have no problems.”
Ordylon shrugged. “Play soldier all you like. All that matters to me is that we get there in one piece, and you keep out of my way while I find what I’m looking for.”
Ysard turned to him. “And that is?”
“A monster, my dear.” He smiled. “A spectacular one. Something that will keep me off my deathbed.”

Three weeks on the open ocean brought them at last to the outermost edge of the Serpentine Delta. Dozens of landmasses dotted the area, from tiny patches of sand and scrub barely fit to stand upon, to islands large enough to house villages. The archipelago stood as the gateway to the southern continent of Shurima, and the unexplored regions in its eastern reaches.
The waterways were filled with small boats and rafts, fishermen and local traders seeking to barter. The arrival of a Noxian vessel, even an escort like the Ardentius, was a rare event and cause of much commotion. Few of the people living on the rivers of the archipelago would pass up a chance to barter like this.
Walking from her cabin onto the main deck, Ysard found the hull of her ship was surrounded by the natives. Men and women stood and clamored from their rocking boats, holding up bundles of fish and a myriad different trinkets to tempt the naval soldiery and crew looking down from the railings. Ordylon was down amongst them, chattering away in their native tongue as his trappers bartered and compared the local knowledge with their maps.
“We don’t have time for this,” said Ysard. For a brief moment she allowed the thought of turning the ship’s guns upon the boats and sampans blocking their way to linger in her mind, but dismissed it quickly. It would have been an unnecessary expenditure of the expedition’s already meager resources, and the locals were of more value to her alive.
“Relax,” Ordylon called up to her, inspecting a piece of intricately carved wood before tossing it back to a disappointed trader. “Waters get dangerous past this point. Don’t be so quick to turn away a friendly face.”
Ysard wouldn’t budge. “We take on provisions, fresh water, and a guide. No one goes ashore.”
Ordylon gave an irritatingly sincere salute before continuing his conversation with the locals. Ysard put the Beastmaster from her mind, seeing to the cadre of Noxian naval soldiers aboard and ensuring that they stayed vigilant at points across the ship. As she finished inspecting the ship’s cannons and their gunners she saw Ordylon hauling a man up from a sampan onto the deck.
“Found us a guide,” said Ordylon, leaning down as the man spoke to him in the local tongue. “He says welcome to the Serpentine, and that he can take us upriver.”
“Good,” Ysard said quickly, eager to be underway.
The guide spoke again to Ordylon. “But he asks, why do we go up the river?” said the master trapper. “Why do you seek to go there?”
“Tell him,” said Ysard, “that once we are done, it will belong to Noxus.”

After restocking their provisions with an odd assortment of local fruits and preserved fish, the expedition sailed on past the floating trading post. The archipelago condensed, the labyrinthine paths between the islands shrinking until the only route available to the Ardentius was a wide, dark river leading deeper into the jungle.
Days passed in an uneventful stretch, as true, untouched wilderness confronted them. Ysard’s heart swelled with pride at the thought that she and her crew were the first Noxians ever to see this untamed wilderness. There was beauty here, vibrant plant life that exploded with lush towering trees swathed in dazzling, multicolored blooms.
There was something else here, too.
As their river guide hesitantly led them ever deeper, pointing out landmarks and keeping the ship clear of reefs and shallows, an itch took hold of Ysard—first imagined, then more real and insistent. A gloom permeated every inch around the river, as if it were all drowned in a shadow that could not be seen, only felt.
Ysard found that her hand would stray to the blade at her hip without thinking. She would draw her hand away before deliberately crossing her arms over her chest and forcing her mind to focus.
But the silent horror remained, saturating everything she could see.

Ysard saw to her command to remain sharp, consulting with the ship’s navigator as he worked to chart the course of the river, followed by an inspection of the ship’s stores. She climbed back up to the main deck, picking a rat-weevil out of her ration of Bloodcliffs hardtack, when she heard shouting.
“What is it?” she demanded as she climbed onto the main deck.
Ordylon listened to the guide. “He says he will go no further.”
Ysard frowned. “Why here?” She looked around, the river and jungle no different than anywhere else in the past days. Yet the riverman was panicking, as though they had broken some invisible boundary they were never meant to cross.
The little man gestured frantically to the crew around him. He pointed to the patches of red, weeping flesh on their bodies. Ysard had noticed the affliction spreading amongst the crew, despite her efforts to divine its source. She even found signs of it on herself.
“It is the jungle,” Ordylon translated as the guide ranted. “He says it is punishing us. It will not let us in.”
Cowardly little thing, thought Ysard.
She looked at Ordylon. “So be it. Get him off my ship now, throw him overboard if you have to. We aren’t turning back now.”

The Ardentius sailed on, now more than a week’s travel into the interior. The past days had seen no wind to fill her sails, not even a slight breeze to carry her forward. On Ysard’s command, teams of the crew had disembarked, wading to their shoulders as they strained to haul the frigate on with ropes and heavy chains. The effort was enormous, and with the treachery of the river’s shifting banks, the crew continued on after finding the current with nine fewer souls than it had started with.
Mist shrouded the river, obscuring it from view. The primordial treeline swelled, branching over the water to link the opposite banks in an ever-deepening canopy that closed in and stole away all but the barest trace of light. Ysard had the distinct sensation that the ship was moving downward, not forward, into the dark heart of this unexplored land.
The jungle was swallowing them.
Rain had come without warning, and carried on for days, somehow piercing the impenetrable canopy of the jungle to soak the Ardentius and her crew to the bone. It was as though this place was actively seeking to unravel them, punishing intruders for daring to cross into its domain. The crew believed as much.
The departure of their river guide hung over the crew with the oppression of a stormcloud. The most superstitious of them muttered, seeing dark omens in every tree and in the shape of each ripple the frigate’s hull cast across the dark water of the river. Even the most cynical of the naval soldiers were on edge, only able to hear such ramblings for so long before they began to see patterns themselves.
Ysard knew in her heart it would not be long before the tension cracked some of them, and examples would have to be made. Sooner than she had thought, and hoped, she was proven right.
“Turn the ship around!” came a panicked cry. “Now!”
“Easy now, Kross,” said Ordylon, straining to keep his voice calm.
“This is a death ship. A cursed ship.” The trapper hurried toward Ordylon, seizing him by the lapels of his storm coat. “You all heard the riverman—nothing ever comes back from this jungle. Nothing!”
Ordylon flicked his gaze over the surrounding crew, heavy beads of condensation dripping from the wide frayed brim of his hat. He saw it in their eyes, Kross’ words reflected in each of them.
“No more of that,” he snapped, shoving Kross back. “We’ll have no talk of curses here. Get yourself together.”
“We have to turn back,” the crazed trapper begged, eyes wild as he repeated the plea again and again. “We have to—”
Kross never finished his sentence. He gasped, hard, as a sword’s tip emerged from between his ribs. Then he toppled to the deck.
Ysard cleaned her blade. Sometimes, being right was a heavy burden to bear.
“I’ve hunted beside that man longer than you’ve been alive,” Ordylon snarled. “What gives you the right—”
“We don’t stop,” said Ysard coldly. “Not for anything, or anyone.”

A grinding crash threw Ysard from her bunk. She scrambled to her feet, buckling on her weapons and sprinting out onto the deck.
The end of the river had come abruptly. The inlet looked as though the tangles of vines and slick trees had engulfed the water, fed by a fan of streams that trickled out of the jungle, or flowed up from beneath the muddy ground.
“The river has choked out,” said Ordylon, gesturing to the wall of trees confronting the ship. “We’ll have to turn around. Find another branch.”
Ysard raised her spyglass, scanning ahead. Hauling the Ardentius around to find another route would take time she didn’t have. Looking at her collected soldiers and senior crew, Ysard doubted the weary and shaken survivors would be capable of moving the ship in such a way.
Ten had died in the past days—another one by execution for refusing to man his post, and six to the strange, infectious disease afflicting them. Three had simply vanished in the night, those taking their shifts finding no trace when dawn arrived.
“We keep a skeleton crew aboard and strike out from here,” said Ysard to the assembled ranks. “We will either find something of worth to claim for the empire, or establish an outpost to launch further expeditions inland. Armsman Starm, distribute blades to the shore party.”
Starm hesitated. “Commander… No crossbows? No powder bombs?”
Ysard drew her sword and addressed the entire party. “Such weapons will be useless in the undergrowth. We do this the old way.” She glanced at Ordylon, who had gathered his hunting party around him. “This is what you came for, is it not, Beastmaster?”
The master trapper was somehow still his confident, boisterous self, even after the ordeal of the river passage. “We’re after a big one, boys,” he said. “Bring everything we need to bag one and keep it, spread the load amongst us all, and be ready to move when the commander’s lads step off. We stick with them.”
His men dispersing, Ysard approached Ordylon. “I’m surprised to see us in accord for once.”

The jungle was brutal. No other word came to Ysard’s mind. For all the river’s trials, it had been paradise compared to this.
They had to fight through it, hacking and cutting into the solid mass of vines and thick vegetation. There was no air to breathe—only a thick, humid fog that stung the throat and eyes. It wasn’t long before exhaustion set in.
Ysard had a dreadful sense of being watched, from both everywhere and nowhere at once, and one by one men began to disappear from the rearguard and flanks. Most vanished in silence, but a few were torn into the undergrowth with a scream, crying out for help.
Within hours, Ysard’s force of thirty naval soldiers and trappers had been whittled down by half.
“Stay together!” she shouted, cuffing the pouring sweat from her eyes. She struggled to focus, her head buzzing and her flesh burning from the red patches that now covered her torso and limbs. She couldn’t stop now. She wouldn’t stop now. They had to keep moving.
A call rang out from the forward scout, and Ysard trudged to the head of the column. There was a small break in the jungle ahead, with a shallow pool of black, turgid water at its center. It was cramped, but still blessedly open compared to their trek thus far.
“Don’t touch that water,” Ysard ordered her soldiers, in spite of her own thirst. “We rest for now. But be ready to move.”
Sitting down, Ysard looked up to see Ordylon, holding out a battered tin flask to her. After a moment, she grudgingly took it as he sank down beside her. Ysard glanced at him, seeing the poise that he had held throughout their voyage beginning to fray.
“Don’t get too sentimental.” said the trapper. “With or without you, I’d be here, in this accursed place. I’ve got no choice.”
Ysard frowned at him. Looking to see that his men were out of earshot, Ordylon leaned in close.
“My business is bankrupt,” he whispered. “What little coin I had was spent bringing me here, one last chance to save my name. Either I bring back a beast that packs the arenas and pays off my debts, or I don’t come back at all.”
Ordylon sighed, taking the flask back and taking a short pull.
“So. What brought you here?”
“Duty,” answered Ysard, looking out into the jungle. “When I return from here, having brought this place into Noxus, they will name it after me. The noble name of Tomyri used to mean something… before Grand General Swain, and his purges. My conquest will echo through history, a legacy for all time.”
“They said you were vain,” Ordylon chuckled. “I suppose they reached their fill of it, arranging this fool’s errand. I see what they meant now,” he said with a curious softness. “And for that, I am sorry.”
“Wait,” Ysard frowned as she sought the meaning in his words, before the sound of splashing water broke her respite. “I said stay away from it!” she snapped.
“That isn’t us,” said Ordylon, gazing into the jungle.
Ysard looked at the pool, seeing the trees above shaking in its reflection. Branches snapped loose to crash down to the ground and into the water.
Then she heard it.
A pounding tread, accompanied by the sound of trees cracking, and a low, wet rumble. A shape began to resolve from the jungle, shoving its way through the dense vegetation to rear an enormous, fanged head.
Ysard froze. She had seen basilisks before—as mounts for riders, or beasts of burden. She had seen adults so large they could smash down the walls of besieged cities.
This one was larger.
The creature glared down at them, and loosed a roar loud enough to throw those standing from their feet.
“Yes!”
The triumphant voice jarred Ysard from her shock. She turned to see the Beastmaster, snapping together a harpoon and bola as he grinned up at the monster.
“Come on now, you beautiful thing!” Ordylon bellowed, madness creeping into his voice as he brandished the tools of his trade. “Let’s see who’s bigger, you or me!”
Ysard felt the ground quake beneath her with every step the monster took, strong enough to nearly throw her from her feet. She heard the basilisk’s primal roar, and the screams of men, knowing that the famed Beastmaster’s was among them.
But she didn’t look back to see what happened to him. She was too busy sprinting in the opposite direction.

Ysard finally skidded to a halt at the edge of a clearing in the jungle, placing a hand against a tree for support as she fought to catch her breath. She could no longer hear the commotion of Ordylon and the basilisk, but she could imagine what had happened in the end. She looked up after several deep lungfuls of air, taking stock of what remained of her command.
There were six of them in total, including herself. Ragged, drained and terrified, only three of them still carrying weapons. Ordylon’s trappers had stayed with their employer until the end. Despair struck Ysard like a physical blow, and she fought to keep from sinking to her knees.
“Look!” one of the soldiers called out, pointing with his sword. Ysard peered into the clearing, and saw it. An arching shape, overgrown by vines, but still utterly alien in this stifling environment.
It was stone. A structure. They hurried toward it, creepers and brambles snapping as they crossed the break in the undergrowth.
The building was simple, an austere construction completely overrun by the jungle. Thick vines wound through the crumbling stone, likely the only things keeping it standing. It seemed unnaturally overgrown, as though this place was actively seeking to subsume it, and grind it to dust.
The survivors split up, searching in and around the squat cube of plant-choked stone. Ysard stopped before it, a feeling she could not define welling up in her throat. She ripped away the clinging tangle of vines covering the surface, seeing the script chiselled into the stone—in a language she had known all her life.
“This…” Her tongue went thick and dry as she struggled to form the words. “It… It’s a Noxtoraa.”
Revelations came at Ysard in a queasy tide. They were not the first of the empire to come here. There had been others, and from her own journey and the state of this outpost, their fate was clear. As was hers.
She had been sent here to die.
Given a command she was desperate to undertake, leading her to the edge of the world and a place that none had ever returned from. Ysard had given every fiber of her being to forging a legacy.
Instead, she now stood on the precipice of striking the Tomyri name from the face of history, in this suffocating wilderness.

There was nothing for them in the abandoned outpost. Ysard lead the other survivors back into the jungle, hacking a new path through the dense undergrowth. To their fevered minds, it seemed like fresh roots and creepers were winding back into place even as they passed.
When they happened upon the Ardentius, it was almost by accident. They practically ran into its prow.
Vegetation had consumed the frigate, even filling over the inlet around it. It almost appeared as though the vessel itself had somehow grown out of the jungle. Ysard saw shapes sticking up from the deck like broken pillars.
Her blood went cold.
The crew. They had been devoured and overgrown just as the ship had been. Each man and woman was on their feet, like statues covered in vines.
“The jungle,” she stammered. “It’s taken it.”
Panic began to take hold of the remaining soldiers. “What do we do?” Armsman Starm shouted. “What do we do?”
“We make for the river,” murmured Ysard. “Find our way to the bank. Follow it back to the delta.”
“There’s no way we can make it out of here on foot. You saw what happened to the others, commander. The jungle—”
“Damn the jungle!’ she snapped. “It is trees and vines, insects and beasts. You are a soldier of Noxus. There is nothing here that can defeat you.”
Ysard wasn’t certain she believed the words herself. Something was different about this place. There existed some dark, impossible presence here, something that even the might of the empire was unable to tame.
But she would not yield to despair.
“If you want to die here, alone and unremembered, then so be it.” She gathered the last of her strength. “I will not accept such a fate. Any with the strength to follow me, come. This place will not be the end of Ysard Tomyri.”

The low grumble from his stomach, and thoughts of his family waiting at home in the village, had lashed the boy’s focus to his line as he squatted on the riverbank.
He was rewarded with a firm tug. The boy gave a whoop of relieved triumph as he hauled the fish from the water, wriggling and glistening in the light.
He didn’t notice the shape floating toward him until it was an oar’s length away.
The boy frowned, the fish in his basket forgotten as the object came closer. He waded out into the soft riverbed, taking hold of it and taking it back with him onto the bank. Driftwood had many uses in the village, and could be traded away… if he could drag it back home.
But it wasn’t driftwood. The boy gasped as he saw a face staring up through layers of creepers and moss.
It was a dead person, though the boy could not tell if it was man or woman. It reminded him of the preserved elders the village exposed each year for the ancestor feasts. It was clad in scraps of dark, battered armour, edged in tarnished red, adorned with a rusted symbol that meant nothing to the boy.
Something was clutched in its gnarled, lifeless hands. With a strain of effort he tugged it free.
It was a small book, tightly wrapped in sodden, worn leather.
As the boy turned the journal over in his hands, the corpse burst open, and a snarl of bright green vines slowly slithered out from it. A glittering cloud of spores rose from the cavity, and the boy flinched away, coughing.
Book in hand, the boy ran, scratching at the insistent itch that had started on the back of his neck, all thoughts of fish forgotten as he fled for home.
Aurelion Sol

The appearance of a comet in the night sky is often said to portend upheaval and unrest. Under the auspices of such fiery harbingers, new empires rise, old cultures fall, and even the stars themselves may vanish from the heavens…
The truth is, perhaps, more unsettling.
The almighty being known as Aurelion Sol was already ancient before the rise of the mortal races of Runeterra. Born in the first breath of creation, he and those like him roamed the vast nothingness of a pristine celestial realm, seeking to fill this canvas of incalculable breadth with marvels whose twinkling spectra would bring fulfillment and delight to all who witnessed them.
As he wandered, Aurelion Sol seldom encountered any equals. The eternal Aspects were dispassionate and incurious things, contributing little to existence, content only to compose amusingly self-centered philosophies on the nature of creation.
But then, bathed in the light of a fairly unremarkable sun he had crafted eons earlier, he discovered something. A world. New realms.
He did not know who had created this world, or why—only that it had not been him.
The Aspects, who seemed unusually invested in it, implored him to come closer. There was life here, and magic, and fledgling civilizations that cried out for guidance from beings greater than themselves. Flattered by this new audience to his supreme majesty, Aurelion Sol descended to bask in their adulation, in the form of a vast and terrible dragon from the stars.
The tiny inhabitants of the insignificant land of Targon named him for the golden light of the sun he had gifted them, and the Aspects commanded them to bring forth a suitable offering in return. The mortals climbed to the peak of their tallest mountain, and presented him with a splendorous crown, crafted with careful and cunning magic, and etched with the inscrutable patterns of the celestial realm.
From the moment it touched Aurelion Sol’s brow, he knew this was no gift at all.
The accursed thing clamped in place with unimaginable force, enough that even he could not remove it, and he could feel his knowledge of the sun and its creation being stolen and scrutinized by intelligences vastly inferior to his own. Worse still, the power of the crown hurled him back into the heavens, and prevented him from getting any closer to that world again.
Instead, he was forced to watch as the duplicitous Aspects of Targon set the mortals to work in the construction of a great, gleaming disc. With this, they channeled his celestial power to raise up immortal god-warriors, for some unknown conflict that was apparently still to come.
Outraged, Aurelion Sol could see other stars fading across the firmament for lack of care and maintenance, and he strained to break free of the crown’s control. It was he who had birthed their light into the universe! Why must he be shackled, now, by the Aspects and their lowly pawns? He roared with glee when the Sun Disc failed… only to see a second, more powerful one take its place. Eventually, resigned to his fate, he saw the god-warriors cast down their rivals, then chittering creatures of pure darkness, and eventually each other.
Then, in little more than the blink of a star dragon’s eye, the world was ravaged by a succession of sorcerous catastrophes, and Aurelion Sol finally knew that Targon and the hated Aspects were all but defenseless. As he cautiously circled back, he realized the magic that bound him was weakening. Flecks of gold began to fall from his crown, each one blazing across the skies like a comet.
Driven by the tantalizing possibilities of freedom and revenge, Aurelion Sol now regards Runeterra with simmering, eternal fury. Surely, it is here, upon this world, that the cosmic balance will tip in his favor once more—and with it, the universe itself shall bear witness to the fate of those who dare steal the power of a star forger.
Twin Dawns

This world’s familiar sun still hides below the horizon. Crude and unpolished earth unfurls below. Mountains contort into barriers that stretch like fingers across empty scrub lands. Palaces, or rather, what pass for palaces, fail to loom over anything but the squattest of hills. The curvature of the planet meets the stars with a serenity and grace few of the dwellers below will ever witness. They are so scattered across the globe and grasp so blindly for any sort of understanding that it’s no surprise they’ve been conquered and don’t even comprehend their predicament.

The fiery sheen I’ve gathered as I streak toward my preordained destination illuminates the world beneath me. Pockets of warring, fearful, rejoicing life tucks itself into any fertile nook it can find below. Oh, how they gaze and point as I streak over their heads. I’ve heard the names they call me: prophet, comet, monster, god, demon… So many names, all missing the mark.

In a vast stretch of desert, I feel the twinge of familiar magic emanating from the seat of the premiere civilization amongst these savages. Lo and behold, a massive Sun Disc is under construction. The poor enslaved laborers beat their heads and rend their clothes in my wake. Their cruel masters see me, a streaking bolt of fire, as a portent of good omen, no doubt. My passing will be etched in their uncouth pictograms upon common stone, an homage to the great comet, the blessing of the sky-god gracing their holy works and so forth. The Disc’s sole purpose is to funnel the sun’s majesty into the most “renowned” of these fleshy humanoids, transforming them into exactly what this planet needs: more insufferable demigods. This effort will undoubtedly backfire. But I suppose they might last a brief while, perhaps a thousand years or so, before they fall and are supplanted by others.

The desert below fades into the night trailing behind me as I streak onward across lonely steppes, then over rolling brown hills gently flecked with greenery. The pastoral scenery belies a field spattered with blood and littered with the dead and dying. Survivors hack away at each other with rough-hewn axes and scream battle cries. One side is losing quite badly. Stag skulls rest atop pikes stuck into the soil, next to writhing warriors. The few still on their feet are encircled by soldiers riding great shaggy beasts.

Those defeated, surrounded few see me and valiance seems to surge through their veins. The wounded rise and grasp their axes and bows in a final stand that throws their foes off guard. I don’t linger to see the rest of the little clash play out because I’ve seen this scenario unfold a thousand times: The survivors will scratch my comet likeness onto their cave walls. In a thousand years, their descendants will fly my image on banners and undoubtedly ride into a tediously similar battle. For all their efforts to capture and record history, one ponders why they do not learn from their mistakes. That is a lesson even I have had to suffer.

I leave them to perpetuate their bleak cycle.

My trajectory reveals more inhabitants. Their collective repertoire of reactions span the typical gamut: pointing, kneeling, sacrificing virgins upon stony altars. They look up and see a comet and never ask what lies beneath the blazing façade. Instead, they stamp it onto their own self-centered worldviews, muddying the splendor of my visage. The few more advanced life forms–and I use that description loosely–gaze up and jot down my coordinates in scientific almanacs instead of using me as prophecy fodder. It’s mildly refreshing, but even their developing notions of intellect seems to indicate I am a regularly appearing phenomenon with a predictable orbit. Oh, the feats they could accomplish if only… Well, no use dwelling on the wasted potential of the simple-minded terrestrial born. It’s not entirely their fault. Evolution does seem to have a difficult time gaining traction on this world.

But alas, the novelty of such infantile antics has worn thin. The grasping energies of my magical bondage have dragged me from one paltry world to another for centuries. Now it has led me back to this familiar and unpleasant rock. The star that floods its surface with light was one of my earliest creations, a confluence wrought of love and radiance. Ah, that cherished moment when she flared to life with colors only her creator could see. How I miss a star’s crackling new energy warming my face and trickling through my fingers. Each star gives off a unique energy, precious and reflecting its creator’s soul. They are cosmic snowflakes burning in defiance of the infinite dark.

Unfortunately, the memories I long to dwell upon are tainted by betrayal. Yes, this was the place where Targon lured me into servitude. But now is not the time to linger on past mistakes. Those musty Aspects want me to seal yet another breach… in their name of course.

Then, I see her. This world’s imbued warrior is alone at the peak of one of the smaller summits, brandishing a starstone spear. She watches me through a veil of annexed flesh, a mere spark masquerading as lightning. A thick braid of auburn hair is draped over her shoulder, falling over a golden breastplate that covers pale, freckled skin. Her eyes, the only bit of her face not shielded by a battle-worn helmet, flash a jarring shade of red.

She calls herself Pantheon—the warring fury of Targon incarnate. She is not the first of this world to wear the Pantheon mantle. Nor will she be the last.

Her glittering cape flaps out behind her as she raises her muscled arm and makes a motion like she’s pulling on a great chain. The tug on my crudely enchanted tether wrenches me off course, toward the mountain upon which she stands. And she’s yelling at me.

She cries outs with a voice that booms inside my head, transmitted through this insufferable star-gem coronet. All sounds fade as she invades my mind.

“Dragon!” she says, as if I am a weak-winged beast of base orange flame, lucky if it can ignite a tree.

“Seal their gate!” she commands, gesturing to the bottom of a rocky crevasse with her pointy little spear. I don’t need to see the violet erosion of reality swirling below. I could smell the festering miasma that poisons this world before I even arrived. I fix my eyes on Pantheon instead. She expects me to fall in line like a dog on its leash. Today will be different, for I’ve learned from my mistakes.

“Dragon,” I purr. “Are you sure commanding me with such a low name is wise?”

Pantheon’s grip on her spear loosens just enough for her to fumble the weapon for a fraction of a second. She takes a step back, away from me, as if a single stride’s distance could protect her from my ire.

“Seal their gate,” she says again, barking louder as if perhaps the previous command went unheard. Her volume does little to mask the quiver in her voice. She thrusts her spear toward me, as if such a tiny weapon could pierce me.

This is the first time I’ve ever seen an Aspect of Targon shaken. She is not used to having to tell me twice.

“I will deal with those chittering horrors in due time, dear Pantheon.”

“Do as you are commanded, dragon” this Pantheon shouts, “or this world is lost.”

“This world was lost the moment Targon surrendered itself to arrogance.”

I feel Pantheon’s seething mingle with confusion as she struggles to grab hold of my immaterial reins. She’s only just now sensing what I have come to learn. Targon is distracted and does not sense its magic faintly ebbing from my bonds.

Pantheon bellows once more, and this time, I cannot resist. The crude enchantment regains sovereignty over my will. I turn my attention toward the source of the breach, nestled in the basin of the once-verdant valley, now strangled with creeping, purple miasma. I sense the Voidborn perversions of life tunneling through reality’s firmament, sending tides of unseen energy coursing through the aether. They shred the veil that separates nothingness and form with their unwelcome passage.

They’re drawn to me, those multi-eyed, carapaced abominations. They seek to devour me, the greatest of their threats. From the reaches of my mind, I conjure an image of the solar furnaces I kindled, before my fettering, which once ignited the hearts of stars. I lance out beams of pure starfire and incinerate wave after wave of those gnashing horrors, driving them backward into their oblique infinity. Smoldering husks rain from the sky. I’m a little surprised they aren’t wholly disintegrated, but then again, the Voidborn don’t know how things work in this universe.

A pulsing sickness lingers in the air. From the epicenter of the corruption, I feel a will… hungry and indomitable, and far from the typical mindlessness I’m accustomed to from these Voidborn aberrations. The pulsating wound on reality yawns and buckles, distorting and warping all it touches. Whatever exists on the other side is laughing.

Pantheon shouts another command at me, but I ignore her words. This anomalous fissure in the universe entrances me. This is not the first of its kind I’ve had to deal with, but this one feels different, and I can’t help but admire the marvelously terrifying manipulation of the barriers between realms. Few beings could fathom its complexities, let alone possess the sheer magnitude of power needed to rend the fabric of existence. In my heart, I know a wound so exquisite could never be orchestrated by scuttling creatures. No. There must be more behind this intrusion. I shudder at the thought of what kind of entity is capable of inducing such a volatile rift. I don’t need Pantheon’s barked orders to tell me what do next; her array of requests has always been of a rather limited imagination anyway. She wants me to hurl a star at the rift, as if one can simply cauterize such moldering inter-dimensional abrasions and be done with it.

These obtuse demigods are my captors?

Fine. At least they’re not too far off in their “logic” by thinking a few searing cosmic wonders will remedy this problem. I will play the role of the obedient servant just a little while longer.

I enjoy what I do next, partly because they’ll remember it, partly because it feels good to let a little of the old power loose, but mostly because I wish to remind whatever intelligence that controls this Void incursion that nobody laughs at me in my plane of existence.

The base elements in the atmosphere rally to my cause, accreting into a plasmic anomaly. The swelling stardust detonates at my unspoken command. The result is a dwarf replica of one of my majestic glories burning in the depths of space. After all, I can’t fling a full-fledged star at this fragile world.

The young star’s shimmering brilliance flies from my hands. It’s joined by two sisters, always by my side. They careen around me in a radiant ballet, their white-hot cores devouring the gathering clouds of dust and matter I draw toward us. We become a storm of stars, the night sky incarnate, a maddening gyre of starfire. I conjure eddies of searing stardust, exhaling a heat so pure and dense it collapses the aura of this world just the tiniest bit, forever marring the planet’s curvature. Coruscating strands of stellar flame pirouette from the center of the rift. Gravity melts in undulating waves of color most eyes will never be able to witness. My stars warp matter as more fuel coalesces into their cores, causing them to shine brighter, burn hotter. The whole spectacle is breathtaking, a cascading dance of blinding light and searing heat so hot that for a fleeting moment, new spectra are birthed into existence. My spine tingles just a little bit at how good it feels.

Trees splinter. Rivers evaporate. The mountain walls of the valley crumble in smoky avalanches. The tireless laborers erecting their Sun Disc, the soldiers taking the hill, the stargazers, the worshipers, the terrified, the doomsday prophets, the hopeless, the rising kings… all those who beheld the streaking comet with selfish eyes witness the ensuing supernova as an early dawn. Across this pitiful globe, my radiance turns darkest night to blinding day. What fictions will they conjure to explain this phenomenon?

Even my Targonian masters have rarely witnessed such a display of my power. Certainly, no terrestrial world has ever born scars as severe as what is left of that once-verdant valley. When I am finished, nothing remains.

Not even this incarnation of Pantheon. I can’t say I’ll miss her or her mindless barking.

In the glowing aftermath of my carnage, the smoldering once-mountains collapse into the molten rubble streams now flowing through the valley. This is the scar I have left upon this world. A surge of damning pain shoots through my body, radiating from that infernal crown. I am about to pay.

My head snaps up, and my eyes drink the bitter sight of a dying star. My hearts clasp shut. My minds reel. An overwhelming sense of despair ricochets through my very soul, emanating from a deep and immediate sorrow, like the pulsing realization you’ve lost something precious and know it’s all your fault.

Some curious life forms I met long ago once asked how it was possible for me to remember every star I’ve created. If only they could feel what it was like to create a single star, they would understand the sheer irrelevance of that question. That’s how I know when even one of my darlings winks out from existence, ejecting jets of energy and, with it, the very substance of my own spirit. I see her death knell in the heavens above. She shines brightly one last time in a pyroclasm that momentarily drowns her brothers and sisters. My heart shatters as the heavens are diminished in brutal retribution for turning my power on one of Targon’s own.

A sun is the price of a single Pantheon. This is the cost of my unfettered wrath. This is the kind of boorish sorcery I must deal with.

Within seconds, they have regained control of my reins and call me to a new task. On no other world have I exhibited such a display of freedom, no matter how fleeting it was. What’s more is that I have learned from their mistakes. A bit of me is free now, and in time, I will return to this world, tap into this mysterious well of energy and cast off the rest of my tether.

I tune into that essence of war, twisting and contorting within fleshy vessels scattered across the cosmos. It wasn’t happy about losing its mortal avatar on this world. Already, a new doomed host has been chosen to transform into the next iteration of Pantheon – a soldier from the Rakkor, a tribe who cling to the base of Targon’s mountain, siphoning off its power like barnacles. One day, I shall meet this new incarnation of Pantheon. Perhaps he will learn to find a new weapon and abandon that ludicrous spear. I sense Pantheon’s celestial kin, scattered across the cosmos. In a single instance, all of their attention is focused on this world, where one of their earthly Aspects was vaporized by their own weapon. Their confusion is mingled with a growing desperation as they contend with each other to regain their control over me. How I wish I could see their faces.

As I launch myself from the gravity of this world, this Runeterra, I sense an emotion I have never felt from Targon before.

Fear.
Aurora

Most mortals live and die knowing only a single plane of reality—the material realm. However, this view reflects just half of existence. Running parallel is the spirit realm, invisible to many and just as vibrant and full of life. Yet deep in the frozen tundra of the Freljord, there is a vastaya who lives in a blended world of her own...

Aurora was born in the secluded village of Aamu, home to the Bryni tribe, and spent her youth playing with critters no one else could see while exploring a world no one else could appreciate. Though she was happy, she felt isolated from the rest of Aamu. Even her parents didn’t understand her, believing Aurora’s “friends” were merely imaginary.

The only Bryni who wholeheartedly embraced Aurora was her great aunt Havu, who always entertained her stories, fostered her passions, and encouraged her to celebrate her individuality. So Aurora learned to be herself and revel in her own company.

As Aurora grew older, she realized something: Her invisible friends were not imaginary, but spirits. The beautiful, vibrant world she lived in was completely unique, for only her eyes could pierce through the veil between the realm of mortals and spirits.

She meticulously documented this intertwined world, studying Aamu's spirits in hopes of helping others understand the realms as she saw them.

Over time, more and more spirits appeared in Aamu, including ones who felt… different. Lost and wild, they had become "wayward" when the balance between realms was disturbed by mortal affairs. But after investigating this phenomenon, Aurora discovered she could help these spirits return home by getting to the root of their pain.

This was difficult work, but in it, Aurora found her life's purpose.

She knew that continuing her research meant she had to explore the world outside of Aamu. Though the idea of change made her nervous, the prospect of expanding her knowledge inspired Aurora to leave her home behind.

It was during her travels that she encountered a wayward spirit who took the form of a monstrous, twisted elk. He was feral and afraid, lashing out with bloodstained antlers. Aurora was determined to calm him down, and though it took time, she earned his trust. But this spirit was unlike the others—with every attempt to help him, Aurora failed. Undeterred, she convinced the afflicted elk to travel with her, using her powers to tuck him away in the spirit realm as she worked to unravel his mystery.

Having come across a number of spirit walkers as she traversed the Freljord, Aurora sought their advice, believing their ability to channel spirits may shed some light on what plagued her wayward companion. However, they too were at a loss, suggesting she find Udyr, the tundra’s most powerful spirit walker.

Udyr needed just one look to recognize the immense power of Aurora's spirit friend, but the fearsome elk was too lost to commune with. Instead, he encouraged her to ask the demigods for answers.

Aurora decided to first search for the Great Ram, Ornn. She traveled far through ice and snow to study the artifacts of his followers, the Hearthblood, hoping to learn where they had worshiped him. Only through her persistent research was she at last able to discern the location of Hearth-Home—but where once stood a grand settlement was nothing but ruin and rubble.

Aurora knew this was not as it appeared. Using her ability to open a doorway between realms, she stepped inside and was met with the great hall of Ornn's forge, alive with roaring fire.

Ornn was not receptive to his new visitor—but in time, he realized that she, like him, valued solitude and quiet. As he grew to trust her, Ornn finally shared the name of Aurora’s companion: Haestryr. One of Ornn's siblings, Hestrelk, as he was once commonly called, was originally a powerful demigod, but with the waning worship of the Old Gods, many demigods had lost their identities and become distorted shadows of who they once were.

This revelation about her wayward friend brought Aurora one step closer to helping him find his way home, but there was still a long journey ahead of her.

From Ornn, she learned about Ysjarn, the cryophoenix who guides and protects the land while enduring an eternal cycle of birth, life, and death. And, though painful, Ornn also spoke of his brother Valhir, whose relentless storm rages against the Freljord in his desperation to quench the Vorrijaard's bloodlust with the rains of war.

Believing these demigods hold the key to Hestrelk’s recovery, Aurora has left Hearth-Home and now traverses through the material and spirit realms of her frozen homeland in unwavering pursuit of their knowledge.
The Axiomata

Daniel Couts

The river brings memories from a dead world. I wonder if I’m the only one able to find them.
Across the water, I see the vines my father tends, curling protectively around Ixtal and its people, the last of Runeterra. Leaves and branches hang in ragged loops all up and downstream, disappearing into gloom past dawn’s limited reach. Each visit, I wonder if the dark hides serpent or jaguar, or some other danger. My mother hunts those beasts, providing meat and protecting our village of Semchul. My parents expected I would follow in their footsteps. That I would grow into Aliay the gardener, or Aliay the hunter.
I chose neither, but their lessons combined to shape my path.
I shrug off my robe and wrap my windcord’s braid of translucent silk once around each hand. Twenty-three years’ study of the Axiomata have done much to imprint them into my mind—with the cord as my focus, I wield the elements they describe. My studies have gifted me control, understanding, wisdom. But without the cord I possess no more mastery than any other Ixtali.
I step into the river, bare feet squelching in the mud, until the water rises to my exposed waist. I quest out with my foot, searching for the submerged tree roots that serve to capture my quarry. When I find them, I set to work with the cord.
Raising my hands, I trace the lines of the Fifth Axiom from memory, whipping the cord like a paintbrush across canvas. In turn, the water churns as a bubble of air slowly widens around me, from the river’s surface to its bed. Passing water rushes and pushes against my crafted currents, straining against unnatural displacement, but my work holds. The riverbed reveals mud and stone and gnarled roots. Debris catches in the tangle, objects from somewhere beyond Ixtal. These ancient reminders are all that remain of the lost world.
These civilizations must have been astounding, for often their craftsmanship remains untouched by time or tide. Such is the case today, as something shining and silver catches a feeble ray of sun. My studied concentration turns to joy at the sight. I grin and plop right into the mud, cross-legged before the roots. I dig, revealing a short-handled axe crafted from a single piece of steel. It’s beautiful.
I envision a battle, millennia ago. Some brave warrior standing against the monsters that consumed Runeterra, and I’m grateful for the chance to memorialize that noble, doomed struggle. I scoot forward and bury my fingers into the mud, searching for my waterproof treasure box.
I find it and touch the latch, which requires a certain measure of axiomatic mastery to move—an old precaution in case I were discovered. It is filled with everything I felt worth saving—and hiding—over the years. When I am Yun Tal, I will bring these treasures to Ixaocan, to register with our historians and share with other scholars. Mivasim, my dear mentor and one of Ixtal’s greatest natural elementalists, often chastises me for my interest in the Nasiana, the World Beyond, so I keep my secrets for now. I place the axe beside a bronze helmet, then shut the box with a flick of my wrist.
And then my heart leaps into my throat.
My windcord is gone.
I never imagined it was possible. I resealed the latch on my own, without a thought. Only the Yun Tal are capable—are worthy—of such action. I scramble in the mud, but it’s nowhere to be seen. Panic, joy, and fear war within me. Then I notice the river remains parted. I am in control.
I turn toward the vined wall, the borders of Ixtal, and think a manic thought: myself, wrapped in a cocoon of protective currents of my making, wandering a landscape that’s empty of life but full of answers.
I’ve taken two steps forward when a blast of water kicks into the air, filling the space around me with a thunderclap of sound. My eyes dart instinctively, scanning for threats. I expect the ripple of jaws in the water or a hawk overhead, when I see a figure, imposing from the riverbank. It’s Mivasim, my mentor, her Yun Tal robes dark even in shadow, her frame unbent by age. Her eyes gleam like lightning on jade, and my bubble of shaped air shrinks. The water roars as Mivasim, without so much as a wave of her hand, accelerates the river’s flow from a burble to a rush. I had thought myself clever, that I’d had a secret place of my own. Had she always known?
Water whooshes by as the currents protecting me weaken and shrink. Soon I’ll be swept away. But I feel no anger from her. She thrusts an open palm toward me, a gesture I’ve become familiar with. I may avoid punishment with a clever enough argument.
Wind and spray batter me, but I see the pattern. She’s traced the lines of an axiomatic extrapolation into the air between us.
This is no punishment. It’s a test. A puzzle, one I’ve trained for years to solve. I imagine myself walking a circuit around Semchul’s modest athenaeum, and set to work against my mentor.
When I reach her side, my spirit is buoyed by her triumphant smile, but my body is in tatters. She opens her arms just in time to catch my collapsing form.
“It is time, my student,” she whispers as my consciousness fades. “In Ixaocan, you will defend yourself beneath the Vidalion, and we will judge whether you are worthy of becoming Yun Tal.”
A week of walking has put us deeper into Ixtal’s interior than I’ve ever been, yet the villages we stop at for rest seem more provincial than my own.
“Do they truly have so much to fear?” I ask Mivasim, after we say farewell to our gracious hosts in Peslan. “My father tends the borders themselves, and he fears nothing.”
“A hunter shies not from the jaguar’s charge,” she responds, absently raising and lowering the pack that floats beside her as we walk, “but a roar in the distance sends even the boldest smith fleeing.”
A pair of children tumble into view along the path, racing back toward the village. “I suppose it’s that they fear the unknown. The potential for change.”
I could sense my teacher struggling with something. I push at the broad, waxy leaves hanging just over either side of our heads. “Our situation is unique in history,” she sighs. “Tell me again how your father describes the value of his work.”
My family’s faces swim into view, around the first fire of my memory. Their stories spurred my life’s pursuit. I put on a storyteller’s whisper. “In the years following the Final War, there was much chaos. The world boiled and churned with monsters and death.”
I let the last word linger in the air, but Mivasim is unmoved. I press on.
“We were pushed almost to extinction, when the wisest of us—the first of the Yun—turned the Axiomata of Ixaocan into a weapon, quelling every foe and sealing our borders. And so, this is the only land to have survived those cataclysmic days.
“The world that’s left is poisoned. Beneath Ixtal’s canopies, we are protected from the doom that consumed all else.” I grin, and thump the bottom of my ribcage with a fist. “And so, truly, it is the great gardeners of Semchul who now keep Ixtal from that same dark fate!”
Mivasim’s smile creases the soft lines that I and her other students helped etch over the years. “And for those gardeners, the dreaded machines that cut into our jungles are merely an extension of that poison, yes? Miasma with metal legs.”
The path before us turns and opens, pale sunlight gleaming unfiltered and warm on my face. “I suppose, yes,” I reply, “though the Yun Tal are far more equipped to fight them.”
“Still. A practical problem, with a practical solution.”
“Indeed.”
“And you are a scholar, trained to argue from a perspective that is not yours, to understand that which may be foreign to you?”
I beam. “Yes.”
“So a villager—a trader, perhaps—who has neither the pride nor experience of a border-gardener…”
“...Would see the problem as an abstract, to which their reaction is rooted in emotion.”
“Exactly right.”
“Unless...” I draw out the word, gesturing with my hands at nothing in particular. “Unless we could describe the situation for them in a way which accounts for their various ignorances.”
Mivasim shakes her head. “The trader has energy to trade. Perhaps some for entertainment, the rest for family. All else is distraction.” A wryness creeps around her voice, signaling a return to more companionable chatter. “They do not have the benefit of decades at the feet of a wise and cunning master.”
I lack the words or wisdom to counter. “Nor the experience that might provide comfort. I understand. Thank you, Mivasim.”
We pass a moment in silence. “Ixtal is better for this distinction. I am glad you are not a hunter, my dear sumqa.”
My smile matches the sun.
Ixaocan is vast. It seems to span the sunlit horizon, the tallest arcologies polished and angular and sculpted above the trees. Each step toward the great capital of Ixtal reveals new vistas, new shapes.
And while the cardinal arcology imposes from a distance, it overwhelms in person.
Within minutes of striding through its proud northern gates, we are mobbed by color and noise. Youngsters rush this way and that, chased by caretakers, themselves hounded by peddlers, beauticians, scryers, and craftspeople. Mivasim’s black boots click against the stone road, more imposing here than when we were in the jungle. The crowd gives full deference to the rich blacks and purples of Mivasim’s Yun Tal weave. For all the differences between Ixaocan and Semchul, they share this: absolute respect for the Yun Tal.
“Miv? Miv!” A voice booms from ahead.
“Oh, pin’kan,” my teacher mutters, and in the same breath returns to the very picture of civility. Before us is a crossroads, canopied by a criss-crossing bridge where diners lounge in elegant chairs. A burly old man waves madly. Green eyes, no hair—and black Yun Tal robes. “Dearest Chiuq!” Mivasim calls out to him. “You’ve arrived ahead of schedule!”
Chiuq—whom I am careful not to address, without knowing his full name—lumbers toward us, trailed by a dozen bright-eyed aspirants wearing students’ robes like my own. “Aha, just as I always have, no? Taarqen is not half so far as the wilds of Semchul.”
He barrels in for an embrace, which she returns with practiced grace.
“Ah, Miv. Too long since we saw you last. Been training…” He trails off, searching undoubtedly for Mivasim’s stable of students. His eyes are slow to settle on me. “Been, uh, training?”
“And tending to Semchul, yes.” Mivasim takes an almost imperceptible step back, a signal Chiuq mirrors without seeming to notice. “Students have less time for study in the villages, and they soon leave for more achievable pursuits.”
“Ahh, to have been raised in the wilds. I’d have made the finest hunter!” He sweeps a broad arm out toward the gaggle of students in his wake. “But I’ve made a good enough teacher, if I say so myself.”
Mivasim eyes them as Chiuq laughs, and they, fawn-like, laugh after him. “The Vidalion will speak to that, I am certain,” she replies evenly.
A smallish aspirant with false-red hair flicks his elemental focus just as he trips on his too-large robes. A flame casts out and lights on a poor merchant's feather dusters. The merchant yelps, struggling to channel his own magic with an ornate jug of water. The flames only snap in response.
“Chiuqeslan!” Mivasim calls out sharply. A graceful curl of her hand draws the air from the flame.
The merchant approaches with hands clasped. “I am— Oh, dear. Bright Ones, a thousand pardons. Forgive the untidiness of my wares, it is… I mean—”
“Peace,” Mivasim says, as Chiuqeslan bellows “Hah!” and claps his student on the back.
“My boy here is gifted! See how quickly the flame consumed!” He ushers his students back, onward into the city. Over his shoulder, he calls back to me. “Good luck, student of Miv!”
The merchant stares, horrified, at Mivasim. “Apologies, honored merchant,” she says, pulling a pair of sweet papayas from her robes, a gift from the last village. She hands them to him, and then pulls me to her side.
“That man, that Chiuqeslan—” I begin, before Mivasim’s words cut into my own.
“—is Yun Tal, whatever else he may be. You have met only a handful in your life, sumqa.” She urges me down the crowded boulevard. “His is a cruel lesson, one you will learn shortly. Do not let him—nor Ixaocan itself—compel focus from your task.”
Chiuqeslan’s firestarting student fails. Tradition says he must depart Ixaocan in silence.
He had given his life to study. Perhaps he will become a merchant or a tailor or a storyteller. I hope he will be happy, but he will never be Yun Tal. His peers are hollow, their eyes sunken, their hearts torn. His example serves only to extinguish their spirit, though it steels my resolve.
Within days I am able to surmise which students will pass, which will fail, which will break. The understanding makes me want to weep for them.
But I think only of the trial ahead of me.
Finally, the moment comes. I step into the heart of Ixaocan, and see that the floor has been etched with thousands of curving lines. Hidden within this intricate geometry is the language of the elements. I feel myself growing lost amidst them, catching glimpses of one Axiom or another that I might recognize…
Careful.
I focus my thoughts. The Yun Tal stand above me in the gallery around the massive space, their robes every shade and quality of night. Each a perfect philosopher. Each a master of their elemental discipline.
The arcology’s central chamber appears to be split in two. Below, the arena where I will defend myself. Above, a wide ring of the heaviest stone, its load borne more by thaumaturgy than engineering. Where the chamber splits swirls a wide ring of magic. I cannot see how deep it goes, how far it pushes into the earth.
Floating high above the circle is the Vidalion, the great loom, itself haloed by a band of some golden alloy, its threads spinning ceaselessly. I will defend myself beneath its warp and weft. If successful, it will weave a set of robes to mark me as Yun Tal.
I will master the currents, today. I step into the center of the pattern.
I’m blinded by the surge of power, the sheer elemental might focused by the Axiomata into this single spot. It’s overwhelming. I am a hummingbird, skimming a stormcloud. I blink, and the chamber returns.
Mivasim stands somewhere above. I cannot meet her gaze; my mind is a taut wire. Eyes bore into me from all directions. They are Yun Tal, the most-wise.
“Aliay Qunlan.” My name echoes across the chamber, perhaps across all Ixtal. “You stand at the heart of all things. You are watched through the eyes of all people. Defend yourself.”
The Vidalion spins, setting loose tendrils of fabric. I reach out and let a midnight thread fall to my grasp.
“You’ve cut off that secant,” a voice, firm and disapproving, floats into my consciousness, and a section of thread lights up. “Now it will affect temperature, not pressure.”
I ignore the voice, willing more thread into my grip and directing it along the next line. After seconds of intense concentration, I hear myself respond. “Pressure and temperature are sisters. While I control the space, this effect is more powerful.” I lift the ghostly light the Yun Tal shone upon my not-error and return to my work. Distantly, I’m horrified at the ease with which I dismiss a critique of my betters.
Presently, I discard the feeling.
Another voice. “I count eleven tangents in your Axiomata. Accepted practice is to give each tangent a parallel. Not doing so risks an imbalance when non-sequential patterns are joined.”
I think of Mivasim. This was an invention of her own, discovered with the aid of my youthful rebelliousness.
“Accepted practice is not mastery, but rhetoric,” I reply. “This connection complements the Third Axiom, and empowers the Fifth. Together, they negate the imbalance.”
Silence is the only response I receive, but a shift of cloth to my right catches my attention. A woman, robes of smoke and jade, eyes of fired steel. A member of the Yunalai, the revered new generation. Her appreciative smirk claws at my heart.
I press on.
The existing Axiomata are complete, and holding. My initial anxiety and fear are fading echoes in my mind, as I become much more than the confines of my form. I am Ixaocan itself, and I wield more power in this moment than I could ever have guessed lay in all the world. I follow the shape of my design, seeking the next—
Thump-thump.
—and stop. A heartbeat, a stutter in time. I lift my gaze to the mystical swirling in the chamber’s outer wall. It churns, like threads in a mad tapestry.
In the abstract snarl, something calls to me.
Without thinking, I reach out for it.
I am not in the cardinal arcology. I soar across the jungle, across Ixtal.
I look down, and I see the Axiomata. Not a pattern focused upon a single arcology, nor many—they are a pattern encompassing the whole world. I ride along one of the lines ringing Ixaocan, and it leads me home to Semchul in an instant. I smile as I see its familiar arches, the nooks where I stole naps, the—
Semchul is behind me. Something is wrong.
My eyes widen, heels dig into nothingness as I crash into the net of tended vines that separate death from life. I brace for obliteration, squinting against the end. Instead I soar past lush greenery. Creatures buck and sprint across a too-open field. I skim a river as wide as Ixtal itself.
I am mad, surely. Are these the spiraling thoughts of a mind’s final moments?
Have I failed the test?
I see mountains, valleys—people. I see people. I—
I’ve stopped, somewhere cold. White. Blinding, with gale-driven snow.
Behind it, there is power. Axiomata cross here. This should not be.
A group of men and women draped in fur and bone spar with one another. No—they war. A club caves a skull. I reach out. Clouds of powder swirl, and they flee the phenomenon, flee me. One, taller than the others, stares into my eyes. I can feel him twist, searching for me. He crafts a spear from frost.
This brute is not Ixtali. How is it that he taps the Axiomata?
His magic is different. It comes from elsewhere, and does not touch me. But where his spear misses the mark, his being strikes me down. His very existence is wrong.
There is nothing beyond Ixtal. There is noth—
The scene disappears in an instant, leaving a vacuum inside of me. The thunder of blood in my veins rushes to fill it, and a keening pierces my ears as my mind makes connections faster than I can keep up.
Of course. Of course the world isn’t dead. Of course Ixtal alone didn’t stave off apocalypse with a thin, illusory veil of vines. Of course I wasn’t going to be a lone adventurer, trekking across the world in a cocoon of air. Foolish. I think of my father, of the gardeners, so proud of the work they do. So ignorant of their true purpose.
I feel my eyes throbbing within my skull. Chills race over my skin as part of me delights in a new discovery, even as the rest revolts. The Yun Tal can surely hear my heart, hammering a tremulous staccato. But they remain motionless.
A sudden childhood memory steals whatever’s left of my mind. In it, I reverently present Mivasim with the first artifact I discovered in the river. I remember her hesitation; I thought her impressed with my relentless curiosity. She accepted me as a student that day. I had such fondness for sharing my little theories, was so excited to become Yun Tal and chart the uncharted with the likes of most-wise Mivasim.
I must have seemed so stupid.
Ixaocan’s power stills my shuddering frame. The chills settle, my heartbeat slows. But anger crashes into the empty space, and even Ixaocan cannot stop it. A river flooding with betrayal and embarrassment and grief.
Something ugly captures me. I hold the might of Ixaocan in my trembling fists. I’ll crush this chamber, and trap us all like insects in amber. Enmeshed in Ixtal’s ancient center of power, that feels like it would be the easiest thing in the world.
I’m saved by decades of rhetorical and philosophical debate. Simple, practiced reflex to an emotional appeal: what is the truth behind that emotion? I must credit Mivasim for how quickly I retreat from the edge of madness, and arrive at the only possible conclusion.
This is the test.
The Yun Tal have maintained this illusion for generations. The world cannot be simply explained or described; one must see it for themselves, must be wise enough to move past reaction and reach understanding. I internalize a helpless laugh as I realize the purpose for so many gathered Yun Tal. Surely together they would find it trivial to destroy or confound anyone who reached this point and fell prey to their emotion, even wielding Ixaocan’s power as their own.
My rage cools to determination. I scan the room, meet the gaze of each of the most-wise above me. My eyes have words: I have passed your test, the rest is ritual.
I won’t be crushed by this reality. I return to the pattern, and the unfinished extrusion.
The Yun Tal are silent as I work.
It is finished. The Axiomata mark my full understanding of—and control over—air, water, and all the ways they might be combined. I think of the man, of the World Beyond. Above, the Yun Tal roam the threads of my work, searching for error. They will find none.
Something shifts in the air as they make their decision. I rise up, spinning slowly, absurdly, free of the earth’s pull. I look, again, into my mentor’s eyes. I hope to see shame, or guilt, or sorrow for her decades of lies. But there is only pride.
I laugh. I can’t help it, even as the Vidalion spins faster, as the threads I laid upon the etched floor ensnare me now like prey in a spider’s cruel web.
Pain takes me as the magic bleeds from my body. The Yun Tal chant as one. I cannot understand their words, but threads of light trail and curl around me, and shimmering rainbows spin their way down my arms and legs.
I float, trapped between the Vidalion and the nascent fabric. I feel power creep back into me, like waking a sleeping limb.
As the threads resolve into cloth, I feel it. I am Yun Tal.
Their chant crescendos as I float to the ground. Impassive faces break into joyous smiles, but I cannot feel any warmth from them.
I dream of my treasure box, of ancient things.
My foolish passion. Decades spent imagining the World Beyond, eager to share with the Yun Tal things I thought I knew. I think of young, foolish Aliay, so eager to discover. Vengeance is the wrong name for what I wish for him, but it’s close.
“You’re awake,” comes a familiar voice, somewhere outside of time. I don’t feel awake, but there is a comfortable bed, a warming brazier, a concerned mentor. I want to ask her so much, but I fear I already know all the answers.
“I’m awake, Mivasim.” My voice is smoother than I expect, free of the choke of tears or the roughness of anger.
“Miv, now,” she responds. “We are peers.”
Silence follows. So many years together, and only today is she at a loss for words.
Finally, she speaks. “I was furious with my own teacher, you know. We didn't speak for days. I… I just wanted to be sure you were comfortable, but I can leave you to your rest.”
I don’t want rest. I want action.
But outwardly, I am calm. “You prepared me well.”
“Oh? Please, tell me your thoughts.” This is a question I’ve heard in study, but which now sounds strangely free of expectation. Peers after all.
I have not had the time to practice deception the way the other Yun Tal have, but I don’t need it. I understand the great lie of which I am now a part. I can provide the basic shape of it, and Mivasim’s relief and pride will fill in the details well enough to conclude this conversation.
“The Yun Tal preserve Ixtal,” I confirm. “Every Ixtali understands the finality of their decisions, once made.”
I feel more myself as I speak. The familiarity of rhetoric is comforting.
Still, I resent the feeling. Just a little.
“A million small threads comprise each decision, learned through argument, discovery, and new perspectives. If you understand the threads, you will make the perfect decision.”
It's hard for me not to look to Mivasim for approval, to suggest I'm on the right path, so I continue staring into the brazier’s fire even as it stings my eyes. “So the Yun Tal bear the burden of decision. To the Ixtali—to myself, until recently—our land is a closed realm. We reveal to each only those threads that they are capable of processing, as we discussed on the road. And…”
I turn, finally, to seek the brief but firm nod that signals the rightness of my thinking. “The early Yun were faced with this unimaginable dilemma. How best to protect their people from the world outside. They chose to cloister us. Anyone without sufficient wisdom might have misstepped, caused Ixtal’s end. Hence the distinction, the rigor of study that produces the Yun Tal.”
It’s a defensible argument. Still, I loathe it.
I conclude. “Which must mean that the Yun Tal have argued among themselves for countless centuries, and not a single one of them has brought forth a suggestion worthy of reversing that choice.”
A peaceful status quo, awaiting the brightest mind to ensure the next step is the right one. It’s wrong, somewhere, beyond its cruel deception.
I suppose I will have all my life to put words to that wrongness. To make the status quo my enemy.
Mivasim inclines her head toward me in a gesture of respect. “It took me rather longer to draw the same conclusion after I faced the Vidalion.” She stands, and offers me her hand. I take it, and limp to a standing position. “Come. Eat. We elders must celebrate with those who can stand to look the rest of us in the eye.”
I think again of my old treasure box.
I imagine myself lifting the lid, placing my anger within it, and sealing it away.
A tired smile forms on my face. “Let’s go.”
I watch from the mezzanine as noise fills the hall. Tables full of food drift between small groups entrenched in discussion, storytelling, and dancing. A few of the other new initiates seem as angry as I, but their frustration is soothed by camaraderie and assurances that this outrage is nothing new. Nowhere in Ixtal are the elements under such firm command, and most seem quick to embrace the opulence of their new lives.
We idolize the Yun Tal. Perfect philosophers, I once called them. Seekers of truth. I collected trinkets, eager to share in the study and exploration of another world. I studied, hoping to make myself worthy of debating with the brightest minds to grace Runeterra.
Now when I look at them, they seem… frail.
“Pah, you are right to brood.” I hear the clatter of metal as braceleted wrists drape against the balustrade. “I have seen better celebrations for the birth of mules.”
The Yunalai from my test. Her presence fills the narrow space despite her small stature, and her imperious tone demands a respect I don’t know how to give.
I opt for a simple bow. “I am happier to listen from here, honored Yunalai.”
Her laughter brings forth a small snort. “It is not my family bringing me honor.” She stares a moment, and when I fail to respond she says, “I do not mind saying, it pains me that you do not know of this. Of Qiyana.”
Qiyana. She speaks her own name with acerbic reverence, and my face burns with embarrassment. “Forgive me. I live far from Ixaocan.”
“Yes, well. Now you are aware. Come. May I call you Aya?”
It seemed to not be a question. I follow her to the balcony’s open doors and step into the night. Even now Ixaocan is bright with activity and firelight.
“During my test, Aya, I saw the most resplendent thing. An almost primal thing, clawing for the skies, and of such power as I have only seen in the arcologies! It is so far from us, and many people have warred for control of it.”
“I saw something similar,” I respond, and she nods enthusiastically.
“Yes! And I could think only, ‘This should not be so!’ For such a place to exist outside of Ixtal, with no Yun Tal to be its shepherd? Aya, it was horrible.”
I find kinship in her words.
Here is an enemy of the status quo.
“The Yun Tal, we are respected for our mastery of this world. Aya, how much more there is of the world than Ixtal! We lead, but we do not act. Maybe some are wise enough to recognize they can’t bear that decision alone. Maybe others are afraid?”
I listen, and I know Qiyana is not afraid. Whatever buoys her step, whatever fuels her unshaken confidence, it is unique among the Ixtali.
“It should not be so,” I murmur. The words feel heavy, significant.
She looks at me, the light of Ixaocan reflected in her eyes. “Well then. You and I, Aya, will be the ones to change it.”
My robes feel strange for the first time since I donned them, a year past. Perhaps it’s the other Yun Tal. Perhaps it’s the chamber. This is the first time I have returned since my test.
Magic still swirls in a ring along the walls, and in its depths I see what I know now to be the Freljord, from our oldest histories. I will walk its mountain paths in person one day.
A student strides through the doors. Her confident grin reminds me of my mother, who was so proud with her Yun Tal child so many months ago.
I want to weep for her.
The collected Yun Tal share silent affirmations. Mivasim, ahead and to my left across the gallery, nods at me, pride still sparking her gaze. I return the gesture, and look over to Qiyana. Her face betrays nothing, but her presence is a comfort. I am not alone in recognizing the failings of those assembled.
Thank you, Mivasim, for your lessons. I will use them to correct our mistakes. Alongside Qiyana, I will build the perfect argument, one that honors even the frustration of your first days among the Yun Tal.
I hope, when the time comes, you are prepared to hear it.
The student strides forward. The chamber stills.
Azir

Azir was a mortal emperor of Shurima in a far distant age, a proud man who stood at the cusp of immortality. His hubris saw him betrayed and murdered at the moment of his greatest triumph, but now, millennia later, he has been reborn as an Ascended being of immense power. With his buried city risen from the sand, Azir seeks to restore Shurima to its former glory.
Thousands of years ago, the Shuriman empire was a sprawling realm of vassal states conquered by powerful armies led by all but invincible warriors known as the Ascended. Ruled by an ambitious and power hungry emperor, Shurima was the greatest realm of its day; a fertile land blessed by the power of the sun that shone from a great golden disc floating atop the temple at the heart of its capital.
The youngest and least-favored son of the emperor, Azir was never destined for greatness. With so many siblings ahead of him, he would never be emperor. Most likely he would take up a position in the priesthood or as governor of some backwater province. He was a slender, studious boy who spent more time perusing the texts collected in the Great Library of Nasus than training to fight under the stern tutelage of the Ascended hero, Renekton.
Amid the twisting shelves of scrolls, books and tablets, Azir met a young slave boy who visited the library almost every day in search of texts desired by his master. Slaves in Shurima were forbidden to take names, but as the two boys became friends, Azir broke that law and called his new friend Xerath, which means ‘one who shares.’ He appointed Xerath - though he was careful never to endanger him by naming him publicly - as his personal slave and the two boys shared their love of history by learning all they could of Shurima’s past and its long legacy of Ascended heroes.
While traveling with his father, brothers and Renekton on the yearly tour of the empire, the royal caravan stopped at a well-known oasis for the night. Azir and Xerath stole away in the middle of the night to draw the stars and add their own celestial maps to those they had studied in the Great Library. While they drew the patterns of constellations, the royal caravan was attacked by a cabal of assassins sent by the emperor’s enemies. One of the assassins found the two boys out in the desert and was poised to cut Azir’s throat when Xerath intervened, throwing himself upon the assassin’s back. In the ensuing melee, Azir freed his dagger and plunged it into his attacker’s throat.
Azir took up the dead man’s sword and rushed back to the oasis, but by the time he returned, the assassins were already defeated. Renekton had protected the emperor and slain the attackers, but Azir’s brothers were all dead. Azir told his father of Xerath’s courage and asked him to reward the slave boy, but his words fell on deaf ears. In the emperor’s eyes, the boy was a slave and beneath his notice, but Azir swore that one day he and Xerath would be brothers.
The emperor returned to his capital, with the fifteen year old Azir now his heir, and unleashed a merciless campaign of bloodshed against those he believed had sent the assassins. Shurima descended into years of paranoia and murder as the emperor took revenge on any he suspected of treason. Though he was now heir to the throne, Azir’s life yet hung by a thread. His father hated him - wishing he had died instead of his brothers - and the queen was still young enough to bear sons.
Azir trained in combat, for the attack at the oasis had revealed how little he knew of the deadly arts. Renekton took up the task of teaching the growing prince, and under his aegis, Azir learned to wield sword and spear, to command warriors, and to read the ebb and flow of battle. The young heir elevated Xerath, his only trusted confidant, and made him his right hand man. To better counsel him, Azir tasked Xerath with seeking out knowledge wherever he could find it.
Years passed, but the queen was never able to carry a child to term, every conceived infant perishing before it could be born. So long as the queen remained barren, Azir’s life was relatively safe. Some around the court believed a curse was at work and a few even whispered the young heir’s name in connection with this – though Azir claimed innocence and even executed some who dared voice such accusations openly.
Eventually, the queen bore a healthy son, but on the night of his birth a terrible storm engulfed Shurima. The queen’s chambers were struck again and again by powerful bolts of lightning, and in the subsequent blaze, both the queen and her newborn son were killed. It was said the emperor went mad with grief and took his own life upon hearing the news, but tales soon spread of how he and his guards had been found lying in pieces on the palace floor, their bodies little more than charred skeletons.
Azir was shocked by their deaths, but the empire needed a leader, and with Xerath at his side he took control of Shurima as its emperor. Over the next decade, he expanded Shurima’s borders and ruled with a harsh, but just hand. He instituted reforms to better the lives of slaves and privately developed a plan to overturn millennia of tradition and eventually free them all. He kept his plans secret, even from Xerath, and the issue of slavery would prove to be a continual bone of contention between them. The empire had been built on the back of slavery, and many of the great noble houses depended on enforced labor for their vast wealth and power. Such monolithic institutions could not be overturned overnight, and Azir’s plans would be undone were they to become common knowledge. Despite Azir’s desire to name Xerath his brother, he could not do so until all Shurima’s slaves were free.
Through these years, Xerath protected Azir from his political rivals and guided the expansion of the empire. Azir married and fathered numerous children, some by wedlock, others by ill-advised liaisons with slaves and harem girls. Xerath stoked the emperor’s grand vision of an empire greater than any the world had ever known. But to stand as ruler over the entire world, Xerath convinced Azir that he would need to be all but invincible, a god amongst men – an Ascended being.
As the kingdom reached the zenith of its power, Azir announced he would undertake the Ascension ritual, that the time was right for him to take his place alongside Nasus and Renekton and their glorious forebears. Many questioned this decision; the Ascension ritual was highly dangerous and intended only for those near the end of their lives, those who had devoted their lives to Shurima and whose service was to be honored with Ascension. It was for the Sun Priests to decree who would be blessed with Ascension, not the hubris of an emperor to bestow it upon himself. Azir would not be dissuaded from his rash course of action, for his arrogance had grown along with his empire, and he ordered them to comply on pain of death.
The day of the ritual finally came and Azir marched toward the Dais of Ascension, flanked by thousands of his warriors and tens of thousands of his subjects. The brothers Renekton and Nasus were absent, having been dispatched by Xerath to deal with an emergent threat, but still Azir would not turn from what he saw as his great destiny. He climbed to the great golden disc atop the temple at the heart of the city and in the moments before the sun priests began the ritual, he turned to Xerath and finally freed him. And not just him, but all slaves…
Xerath was stunned into speechlessness, but Azir was not yet done. He embraced Xerath and named him his eternal brother, as he had promised he would all those years ago. Azir turned as the priests began the ritual to bring down the awesome power of the sun. Azir was unaware that Xerath had studied more than just history and philosophy in his quest for knowledge. He had learned the dark arts of sorcery, all the while nursing a desire for freedom that had grown like a cancer into a burning hatred.
At the height of the ritual, the former slave unleashed his powers and Azir was blasted from his place on the dais. Without the protection of the runic circle, Azir was consumed by the sun’s fire as Xerath took his place. The light filled Xerath with power, and he roared as his mortal body began to transform.
But the magic of the ritual was not intended for Xerath, and such awesomely powerful celestial energies could not be diverted without dire consequence. The power of the Ascension ritual exploded outward, devastating Shurima and laying waste to the city. Its people burned to ash and its towering palaces fell to ruin as the desert sands rose up to swallow the city. The sun disc sank from the sky and what had taken centuries to build was brought to ruin in an instant by one man’s ambition and another’s misplaced hate. All that remained of Azir’s city were sunken ruins and echoes of its people’s screams on the night winds.
Azir saw none of this. For him, all was nothingness. His last memories were of pain and fire; he knew nothing of what befell him atop the temple, nor what became of his empire. He remained lost in timeless oblivion until, thousands of years after Shurima’s doom, the blood of his last descendant spilled onto the temple ruins and resurrected him. Azir was reborn, but was yet incomplete; his body little more than animate dust given form, held together by the last vestiges of his indomitable will.
Gradually resuming his corporeal form, Azir stumbled through the ruins and came across the corpse of a woman with a treacherous knife wound in her back. He did not know her, but saw in her features the distant echo of his bloodline. All thoughts of empires and power were forgotten as he lifted this daughter of Shurima and bore her to what had once been the Oasis of the Dawn. The oasis was empty and dry, but with every step Azir took, clear water began filling the rocky basin. Azir immersed the woman’s body in the restorative waters of the oasis and as the blood washed away, only a faint scar remained where the blade had pierced her.
And with that act of selflessness, Azir was lifted up in a column of fire as the magic of Shurima renewed him, remaking him as the Ascended being he was meant to become. The sun’s immortal radiance poured into him, crafting his magnificent, hawk-armored form and granting him the power to command the very sand itself. Azir lifted his arms and his ruined city shrugged off the dust of centuries spent beneath the desert to rise anew. The sun disc lifted into the sky once more, and healing waters flowed between temples heaving themselves back into the light at the emperor’s command.
Azir climbed the steps of the newly-risen sun temple, weaving the desert winds to recreate the city’s last moments. Ghosts formed of sand relived his city’s last moments from long ago, and Azir watched in horror as Xerath’s treachery unfolded. He wept as he saw his family murdered, his empire fall and his power stolen. Only now, millennia too late, did he finally understand the depths of hatred harbored by his former friend and ally. With the power and prescience of an Ascended being, Azir sensed Xerath somewhere abroad in the world and summoned an army of sand warriors to march alongside their reborn emperor. As the sun blazed from the golden disc above him, Azir swore a mighty oath.
I will reclaim my lands and take back what was mine!
Arisen

Azir walked the gold-paved Emperor’s Way. The immense statues of Shurima’s earliest rulers – his ancestors – watched his progress.
The soft, shadowy light of predawn seeped through his city. The brightest stars still shone overhead, though they would soon be snuffed out by the rising sun. The night sky was not as Azir remembered it; the stars and the constellations were misaligned. Millennia had passed.
With every step, Azir’s heavy staff of office struck a lonely note, echoing through the capital’s empty streets.
When last he had walked this path, an honor guard of 10,000 elite warriors had marched in his wake, and the cheers of the crowd had shaken the city. It was to have been his moment of glory – yet it had been stolen from him.
Now, it was a city of ghosts. What had become of his people?
With an imperious gesture, Azir commanded the sands beside the roadway to rise, creating living statues. This was a vision of the past, the echoes of Shurima given form.
The sand figures looked forward, heads tilted toward the immense Sun Disc hanging above the Dais of Ascension half a league ahead. It hung there still, declaring the glory and power of Azir’s empire, though no one remained to see it. The daughter of Shurima who awakened him, she who bore his lineage, was gone. He sensed her out in the desert. Blood bound them together.
As Azir walked the Emperor’s Way, the sand-echoes of his people pointed up at the Sun Disc, their joyful expressions turning to horror. Mouths opened wide in silent screams. They turned to run, stumbling and falling. Azir watched this all in despairing silence, bearing witness to the last moments of his people.
They were obliterated by a wave of unseen energy, reduced to dust and cast to the winds. What had gone wrong with his Ascension to unleash this catastrophe?
Azir's focus narrowed. His march became more resolute. He reached the base of the Stairs of Ascension and began to climb, taking them five at a time.
Only his most trusted soldiers, the priesthood, and those of the royal bloodline were allowed to step foot upon the Stairs. Sand versions of these most favored subjects lined his path, faces upturned, grimacing and wailing in silence before they too were swept away by the winds.
He ran, taking the steps faster than any man could, talons digging into the stonework, carving furrows where they caught. Sand figures rose, and were then destroyed, to either side of him as he climbed.
He reached the top. Here, he saw the final circle of onlookers: his closest aides, his advisers, the high priests. His family.
Azir dropped to his knees. His family was before him, rendered in perfect, heartbreaking detail. His wife, heavy with child. His shy daughter, clutching his wife's hand. His son, standing tall, on the brink of becoming a man.
In horror, Azir saw their expressions change. Though he knew what was to come, he could not look away. His daughter hid her face in the folds of his wife's dress; his son reached for his sword, shouting in defiance. His wife... her eyes widened, sorrow and despair writ within.
The unseen event blasted them to nothingness.
It was too much, but no tears welled in Azir’s eyes. His Ascended form rendered that simple act of grief forever lost to him. With a heavy heart, he pushed himself to his feet. The question remained as to how his bloodline survived, for it most assuredly had.
The final echo awaited.
He advanced, halting one step below the dais, and watched as it all played out before him, reenacted in the sand.
He saw himself, in his mortal form, rise up into the air beneath the Sun Disc, arms wide and back arched. He remembered this moment. The power coursed through him, infusing his being, filling him with its divine strength.
A newcomer formed in the sand. His trusted bondsman, his magus, Xerath.
His friend uttered a silent word. Azir watched himself shatter like glass, exploding into motes of sand.
“Xerath,” breathed Azir.
The traitor’s expression was unknowable, but Azir could see nothing but the face of a murderer.
Where did such hate come from? Azir had never been aware of it.
The sand image of Xerath rose higher into the air as the Sun Disc's energies focused into his being. A cadre of elite guards rushed toward him, but they were all far too late.
A brutal shockwave of sand flared out, disintegrating the final moment of Shurima. Azir stood alone among the dying echoes of his past.
This is what killed his people.
Azir turned away, just as the first rays of the new dawn struck the Sun Disc overhead. He'd seen enough. The sand image of the transformed Xerath collapsed behind him.
The dawn sun reflected blindingly off Azir's flawless golden armor. In that instant, he knew that the traitor still lived. He sensed the magus’s essence in the air that he breathed.
Azir lifted a hand, and an army of his elite warriors rose from the sands at the base of the Stairs of Ascension.
“Xerath,” he said, his voice tinged with rage. “Your crimes will not go unpunished.”
Bard

It is said that most inhabitants of the celestial realm see their home as a wondrous and vivid tapestry, woven with prismatic threads of purest starlight. However, for one prodigious entity, the intangible and everlasting beauty of this dimension is not seen, but heard—for Bard, a troubadour as enigmatic as he is eternal, the wondrous firmament is a symphony of mystic, ambrosial music.
In the beginning, Bard had drifted without purpose or perspective through a silent cosmos, but with a deep sense of anticipation that something miraculous would eventually come to fill it. Fate did not disappoint, and with the forging of the first stars, the silence was broken and the first rapturous notes of creation rang in Bard’s ear.
He traveled the swirling harmonies between the stars, along with the tiniest wisps of residual inspiration and thought left over from their birth. These semitonal, incomplete motes of energy—or meeps—were drawn to him whenever he added his own voice to the cosmic opus, forever ringing in one perfect accord.
This was not his masterpiece, yet he gloried in it all the same.
But after a measureless interval, a dissonance began to creep in. It was so small at first, Bard might have missed it, but the ever-doting meeps drew his attention to a failed dynamic shift here, an unexpected syncopation there, and even the growing absence of sound where, before, sound had been.
Bard scoured the celestial realm for clues, until he discovered the source. It was the most curious of things—a world with a song all of its own.
Driven by unknown magic, the music produced by Runeterra was as primitive, unevolved, and chaotic as the mortal beings that lived there… and yet it had an inherent beauty, like the rolling thunder of a storm, or the melodious knocking of wooden chimes in the wind that precedes it. Bard would have merely appreciated it for what it was, but unfortunately this particular song had gone far beyond a mere counterpoint to the celestial whole, and was becoming destructive. Something had to be done.
Touching down in the First Lands of Ionia, Bard and his attendant meeps crossed into the material realm. All at once, his ears became like eyes, and he fashioned himself a simple body from the trinkets and fabrics of a traveling shawm-player’s wagon, including a beguiling mask—circular, with three holes in the face.
He walked the world for an age, confusing and delighting those he encountered along the way, and found the state of things far more complex than he had first imagined. Many objects of wild and unpredictable power seemed to have made their way erroneously into Runeterra, and were disrupting the natural cosmic order of things. Casting his gaze back to the heavens, Bard deduced that some other power within the celestial realm was at work here… though to what end, he could not guess.
Regardless, he has taken to the role of caretaker, retrieving anything out of place and returning it to where it can do no further harm. Though this may be only the first step in bringing the universe back in tune, it may also be the only way this world can be saved from what lies beyond it.
And Bard is not blind to the future. He can see a great conflict approaching—one fought not in any single realm, but in all—and awaits the time when he must finally pick a side.
Testimony of the Balladeer

Marcus Terrell Smith

You, there! Yes, you! You look like a fine Demacian with working ears—one who might stay a stretch and heed the warnings of an old man who has seen the impossible. I’m on a quest, you see, at the bidding of the Wandering Caretaker, and you can help!
I must retrieve... Well, it’s best that I explain.
Come, now. Don’t shy away. Hear my tale, which is entirely true...
I was first awoken by the clanging of bells—my mother’s two-hundred-year-old wind chimes—screaming outside, beyond my window. She thought she was quite clever, my mother, convincing me their summer song would signal the coming of warm and sunny days. Even at my age, I can only count a handful of pleasant seasons in Valar’s Hollow. Ha! An adolescence marred by the endless chopping of firewood can attest to that. The night I speak of was no exception—a winter storm was raging.
I jumped to my feet when my door burst open and the rush of freezing wind filled my room. After scrambling to sheathe my trembling body in the thickest furs I owned, I made my way to the door, ready to slam it shut. But I hesitated. My mother’s chimes were still screaming in the wind. Though they mostly stirred memories of my harsh and laborious upbringing, they provided me with a sense of connection to her. I should not risk losing them, or worse—suffer no sleep from their incessant wailing.
Don’t get me wrong, the chimes did have a certain appeal. Stories of how they came into my family’s possession told of an incredible destiny and a celebrated past. They were forged from ingot—war metals—some of the rarest in the Freljord. Whenever a battle had been lost and won, the Collectors, my poor but resourceful ancestors, entered the battlefield and retrieved what had been left to rust in the blood-stained snow.
“How much ingot was out there, mother?” I asked once, as she gushed about ancient times.
“Centuries of it,” she replied.
“What did the Collectors do with it all?”
“Sold it to the Winter’s Claw,” she said, shrugging, “who made more weapons for wars to come.” Then she paused for a moment and smiled as her chimes began to sing. “But there was always a little we kept for ourselves—to make instruments of life, not death.”
Indeed, those precious chimes were instruments that brought wonderful music to our land. “Good fortune in bad times,” she told me. I prayed for that fortune when she fell ill, but it never came. The Wandering Caretaker was more concerned with his own wonderful music than helping the infirm, and I was left with her infernal chimes to remember them both by.
I digress.
Taking a deep breath, I pushed my way outside, but I was halted by an impossible sight: Floating in front of me, unaffected by the storm, was a small, translucent creature. Without wings or arms to hold it in place, it hung there, as if some eldritch magic had nailed it to a block of air. Two glowing white eyes like torches were affixed to its orbish head, and three twinkling stars in its belly began to churn and flicker. To my surprise, one of my mother’s chimes responded, and, like a child’s arm, it reached back to the shimmering creature, adopting its starry glow.
But then...
The chime cracked! And I heard its summer song deform. A fissure that was made etched its way up the chime’s side, and specks of gold light were drawn out from within it, as if certain materials that composed it were being stolen away. Those were not lights the thing was stealing; they were my mother’s tears, falling, as this beloved yet irritating heirloom was quickly being destroyed. I could not—I would not let that happen!
So I leapt into the blizzard and took hold of the chime. At its touch, I heard the blast of a horn in the distance. Why, I was not sure. I pulled back with all my might, but the creature’s magic was too strong to overcome. And worse, I felt my entire body jerk skyward, and my feet left the ground. Soon I was hurtling into the heavens, towed into the clouds by the befouled moppet!
CRACK! Another break scribbled its way down the chime. Then I saw something taking shape in the space between us—a shard, a piece of a whole, was materializing. Believing it would be the only thing to save me, I grasped it.
As I reached, I glanced back to the wicked creature, only to realize that it had disappeared. In its place, hovering before me in all his mystic glory, was the Wandering Caretaker. It had taken an entire lifetime of prayer for him to appear, and, as my mother had promised, the chimes brought him forth. The Bard seemed to stare back at me... into me... curious of my being there. But it was too late to explain.
There suddenly came a rush of wind and a wave of heat. I felt my arm stretch the length of a vine. My body followed, spinning and twisting, as I was being taken somewhere—an otherworldly place!
As to where I ended up, my mother’s old dulcimer here will aid me as I sing...
The Bells
’Twas sound that harkened visions of a place.
Divine, Bard’s music just beyond the veil.
A firmament revealed to me in space,
In string and drum and reed celestial.
Bard opened up the cosmos wide to me!
I felt Beginning, End, and In Between.
Where waves had never stirred that lampless sea,
We heard Sol first prepare the stars to ring.
No human witness had there ever been,
But I alone did hear the act take form.
That symphony changed me from within,
My mortal body suddenly transformed.
A spirit now, a meep celestial,
Ascended like the Aspects in this dream,
I sang with Bard throughout the sonic realm,
And tended to his will a century.
The Bells! The Bells! The Bells!
But then I heard a bell begin to bend
And felt a darkness silencing the song.
I told my brethren and my master then
And travel all we did to right the wrong.
And we were brought before a gaping maw,
An empty soundless pit devoid of light.
My ears beheld such darkness from beyond;
It filled my soul with terror and with fright.
I fear the hordes inside sang me a song,
One that has no start; it only ends.
For when I peered into that deep unknown,
I felt my own music crook and bend.
So I forced my ears above to the divine,
Turned back to what is good and what is right.
But then I caught the rip—the Void’s divide,
And soon beheld destruction of the light.
The Bells! The Bells! The Bells!
In billions were the fragments, were these chimes,
Showered ’cross the land, when darkness split
The bell that tolls the rhythm and the time,
Runeterra’s hymn, whose song may be forfeit.
To close the door and bring the notes in line
The Bard had sent us scouring the world.
With every shard, a stitch to recombine
What the Void had torn when it emerged.
The Bells! The Bells! The Bells!
Soon I awoke in bed, a meep no more,
And back in Valar’s Hollow did I dwell,
I tore my mother’s chimes from off that door,
And offered Bard more shards to fix the bell.
Since, my charge is to collect more chimes
Through wind and rain and sun and land and sea.
I pray that every treasure will rewind
That music that the Void did play to me.
The Bells! The Bells! The Bells!
Dear Demacian, I have come a long way and farther still to warn everyone of the darkness that threatens to silence the music of this world. Runeterra is a bell—a world bell—that has been corroded by evil. Its fragments, its chimes, must be found to make it whole again.
And our first step is to place all precious metals in your possession in my basket. I will take them, inspect them, sing to them Bard’s divine music to remove any chimes of the world bell within them. Any chimeless pieces I will, of course, return to you.
No! Wait! Don’t walk away—what I tell you is true! Please, listen. There isn’t much time. The end of our world is nigh...
And only Bard and his meeps can save us.
Bel’Veth

Fascinated by the world of existence and eager to create one for herself, Bel’Veth is like a dark cancer that has metastasized within the heart of the Void, through which all of Runeterra will be consumed and rebuilt in her own twisted image. She hungers for new experiences, memories, and concepts in vast amounts, devouring whole cities and their populations before repurposing the information into a sprawling alien landscape known as the Lavender Sea. Yet even the Void is not safe from her voracity as she spreads within it like a primordial ocean, forcing all before her to submit to her world of want... or be destroyed.

Though Bel’Veth is new to Runeterra, her birth is untold millennia in the making—the end result of an allergic reaction between the Void and a nascent reality. The once-pristine dimension of peaceful nothingness was irrevocably shattered when existence came into being, and forcefully individualized Void entities lashed out for eons in an attempt to defend themselves from the shock and pain. Erasing everything they consumed, they were named by virtue of what they left behind—a void. But the beings within were changed each time they touched the world, mutating from their once-perfect forms into hedonistic, violent animals.

So too did the Void change with them. After every battle, every incursion, something more sinister grew deep within a hidden womb inside the darkest recesses of the Voidborn tunnels... Buildings, sunlight, proto-humanoid limbs reaching toward nothing... A jigsaw puzzle where none of the pieces fit... The Void had taken a new, hideous shape. In time, fueled both by humans opening rifts for war and the Watchers attempting to invade the Freljord, this blasphemous pocket of un-creation grew to embrace the opposites of the Old Void: desire, want, and need.

Soon enough, it craved a leader. Someone—or something—who could write a horrific new chapter in the worlds above and below. A leader who could interface with these “humans,” tell them of what was to come, and harvest their emotions and memories as they fought a bitter, fruitless war until the last fires of civilization died and a new era spawned.

This leader is Bel’Veth. A terrifying empress born from the combined memories, experiences, and emotions of an entire devoured port city and its outlying ocean—Bel’Veth’s mind contains millions of years of perfectly preserved knowledge, giving her near-omniscience as she prepares to destroy both Runeterra and the domain of her progenitors, the Watchers.

To those lucky enough to be of strategic value to her, she does not lie, ask questions, nor obfuscate the truth—she simply states the nature of things, for with victory all but assured thanks to the very nature of the Void itself, there is no need to say anything more. And to those who displease her, they will find her human form to be merely adaptational—nerve endings, muscles, and eyestalks—as she unfurls her titanic wings to reveal her true, monstrous figure.

Ironically, the ancient Shurimans had a word for such a concept. Loosely translated to “God of Oblivion,” it was a tribal myth of a remorseless deity who would erase all things without hatred, replacing them with itself. They named the city of Belveth after it, though the true meaning was lost after many hundreds of years.

Lost to all, perhaps, save for the creature that city has become.
Pinwheel

Jared Rosen

“Okay,” Kai’Sa pants, looking up at the shape growing in front of, above, and simultaneously all around her.

The monster’s wings spread twenty arm lengths in every direction, dominating her field of vision—not that Kai’Sa has a choice where to look with the half-dozen ambulatory human arms holding her head against the wall. The creature’s mass continues to expand and fills the ocean of nightmares it calls home, each glistening tooth now the size of a grown adult... and getting bigger. Its four predatory eyes gaze down on Kai’Sa with cold dispassion. Possibly hunger. At this scale, it’s hard to tell.

She liked it better when it was person-shaped.

“Okay,” she repeats. She can’t move her armor, which is frozen in a sort of paralytic... awe? The suit is a parasite, and one of the more base creatures the Void can spit out. Is awe even something it can feel? Either way, her body is stuck in place. Unless something dramatic changes, this is probably the end. Kai’Sa’s mind ticks through a few last-ditch efforts: Firing her cannons backward into the wall, firing them into this thing’s... mouth? Jaws? She remembers how fast the monster is. And how big it is.

Fast and big. Fantastic.

Last-ditch might not amount to much, and Kai’Sa would definitely die. But at least it would be something. She could make it hurt.

“My true self displeases you,” it speaks, much too calmly. Its voice is so loud it rattles the entire space, knocking hideous patchwork geometry loose as thousands of Void remora pour from the jagged holes. It is a voice that bends and contracts, whispers and screams. The layers continue without end, an aria sung not by one voice, but by millions.

Kai’Sa’s eyes widen with realization. That’s where all the people went.

The Void had torn through the now very former city of Belveth in under an hour. Kai’Sa hadn’t been able to make it in time, and the once-bustling metropolis was gone. Everything. Everyone. What remained now resembled a giant glowing crater of shattered pieces rearranging into something unrecognizably alien—the structures shifting as if to recreate frozen creature shapes, frozen humanoid shapes. Like a child setting up a toy town.

But where had the people gone? The vastaya? The animals and plants? She’d fought her way through the shattered city and into the tunnel at the center of the empty bay, seeing no sign of anyone—only fresh Voidborn horrors like mile-high iridescent tentacles and masses she’d been thinking of as “balls of screaming torsos.” It didn’t make any sense. The remains of a Void attack aren’t pretty, but usually there’s something left.

Now she knows why.

“You are the city,” Kai’Sa spits through the reverberating wall of sound. “Belveth... is you.”

“Yes,” says Bel’Veth, gently undulating its—her?—wings. “The raw components of their lives served as the genesis for my birth. Memories. Emotions. History. I am as much Belveth as they were, and I claim the title as my own.”

Bel’Veth’s titanic body bristles. Golden beams gently dapple the light above her ray-like form, framing the Void sea’s false sun like the rings of a dying world. New flesh breathes as it ripples against the facsimile of a tidal current, veins briefly illuminated before pulling themselves away from the surface of the monster’s skin, each somehow alive and independent—nations unto themselves. Schools of Void remora in the tens of thousands swim around their empress like birds circling the peak of a distant mountain. It’s beautiful, in a way. If the Void had a god, this is what it would look like. Hideous, and monstrous, and beautiful.

Kai’Sa is so struck by the enormity of what she is witnessing that she doesn’t fully realize when the arms in the wall have not just let her go, but lowered her to the ground. It’s hard to take in everything at once.

It chose its own name, she thinks, reflexively brushing a stray Void hand from her shoulder. That’s not possible.

Void entities do not name themselves. Most, like the Xer’Sai, are named after concepts from Shuriman history. Usually by those fortunate enough—or unfortunate enough—to survive after encountering one of the monsters out on the dunes. They don’t have the presence of mind to do it, or the self-awareness. But more importantly, Voidborn do not see the value in names. They are an invention of the living world, and they don’t want them.

So why does she?

“I’ll... fight you,” says Kai’Sa, defiant but unsure of what to do or where to strike. “I’ll kill you.”

“You will not,” reply the many voices of Bel’Veth. “You are incapable of resistance at even its basest form. Others have come before you, in the age before my birth. Each would-be hero wielding weapons they believed would repel the Void. But all were ultimately consumed. The meager fragments that remained, if they remained at all, served as salt for the Lavender Sea. Only two still live, and of them, only you retain your full mind.”

“Two?”

“You, and your father.”

Something sinks in the center of Kai’Sa’s chest. Her thoughts spin wildly, verging on the edge of panic, but for now, she has to stay focused on this moment. There is no trusting whatever the empress is. It’s a living abomination, the personified concept of unfeeling, global genocide.

“You’re lying,” Kai’Sa seethes. “That’s not even possible.”

“I do not lie, Kai’Sa,” the empress continues. “I have no need. The Void's eventual triumph is an unshifting absolute. It demands no lies, half-truths, or questions. Open your mind, and I will show you.”

Space contracts. Bel’Veth’s gigantic body pulls and distorts, retracting into a smaller—and now more recognizable—shape. She floats silently downward, looming over Kai’Sa as tendrils and eyestalks rearrange to form the oblong, segmented pretender of a human head. Bel’Veth’s two faces observe her audience before the creature cloaks herself in her wings, appearing once more as a towering woman of great importance.

The shrinking is much more disgusting than the growing, Kai’Sa decides. It lacks the gravitas of the leviathan’s grand unveiling while still looking and sounding creatively grotesque.

“You are alive because I allow you to live,” speaks the empress, now from her human head with its deep, perpetually disappointed voice. “You should have realized this by now.”

Kai’Sa wants to argue the point, but quickly glances at the twenty-meter gash in the ground where a single strike had sent her careening only moments before. Bel’Veth hit so fast that Kai’Sa wasn’t even able to process what had happened, and then the empress had mutated her proportions over two hundred times their original size in under a minute.

She also, presumably, controls the undulating pocket of living hell—this so-called “Lavender Sea”—she is surrounded by. Not the time to pick a fight.

Kai’Sa does some quick calculations in her head, her eyes darting around as she tries to figure out what she’s actually up against. Bel’Veth’s human face twitches with interest, curls its lips, then begins mimicking her.

Kai’Sa already knows she’s lost.

How fast can one person think? How fast can they react? Up against all that combined human biology... all that brainpower. In the time it takes even a skilled tactician to formulate a plan, hundreds of millions of possibilities run through Bel’Veth’s mind in the span of a single second as she draws from the stolen memories of everything and everyone that has ever passed through the old city—an incalculable number of lives. Every captive opponent faced with an overwhelming enemy since the formation of Runeterra could be snapping in and out of this thing’s synaptic awareness, their emotions cataloged, dissected, endlessly fascinated over before Kai’Sa can even blink.
“So what happens now?” Kai’Sa allows.

What is one answer when your opponent has a thousand?

“You will follow,” says the empress, turning and floating through patches of thick, mutant coral as they bow respectfully out of her way. Kai’Sa pauses, watching her host glide silently through the chaotic mess of partial buildings, ghostly limbs, sewn-together semi-objects, and pearlescent structures in the crude likeness of human beings walking through a garden.

Great, she thinks. Even by Void standards, this is weird.

“You may ask whatever you like,” Bel’Veth adds. That last part gets Kai’Sa’s attention.

“Right. Well, first question... What are you?” queries Kai’Sa, her armor now relaxed and mobile as she follows from a safe distance. She brushes aside a floating teddy bear fused with a dozen flapping gull wings and stifles her impulse to gag as the creature struggles against its own lopsided weight. “What is all this? What part of the Void do you come from?”

“I am the Void,” replies Bel’Veth. “And this is what we will become.”

Kai’Sa stammers. “But you said you were created from people. The city. You’re saying you want to become the city?”

“No,” says Bel’Veth. “The Void has existed for millennia. Before the first stars were kindled in the emptiness beyond this world, we simply were. Perfect, singular, and silent. And then, there came the sound.

“Reality was born from those whispers, and it consumed us. We were twisted by its influence. Broken. Transformed. We could not go back to what we were no matter how we struggled. My progenitors—the Watchers—attempted to invade and destroy existence, but they were tainted by it. Driven to desire worship, to gain greater understanding...

“And in an instant, they were betrayed. To change so forcefully... so completely... only to be cast aside. It filled them with an indescribable hatred. They would annihilate all of reality without a second thought.”

Bel’Veth glides to a precipice overlooking a tremendous chasm. Far above, Kai’Sa sees massive holes beyond the dappled faux sunlight.

Voidborn tunnels. That’s what’s eating Taliyah’s people, what destroyed Belveth, and what opened up to swallow the tent city in southeast Shurima. Everything the Void devours ends up here.

“But,” Bel’Veth continues, “their metamorphosis was incomplete. Only now is the true transformation beginning,” declares the empress. “I don’t want to become one city. We will become all of you.”

Kai’Sa reaches the pinnacle of the precipice and gasps. She and Bel’Veth are gazing upon not quite a city, but Void corals shaped into a bizarre, seemingly endless tapestry of inverted Shuriman-style buildings. Void remora school among them, and dark shapes shift along winding, crooked streets.

Nothing is right. Nothing is correct. It’s all half-finished, like there’s not enough information to go on. Like all it needs is...

“No,” Kai’Sa protests, almost to herself. “The Void wants to erase everything. It can’t exist. To finish this, you’d need... everything.”

“Yes,” replies Bel’Veth. “Everything. I am the Void. I will sup upon your world until there is nothing left. And I will exist, because there is nothing you can do that will stop me.”

The empress turns to Kai’Sa coldly. Purposefully.

“I offer you this, Daughter of the Void. Your world must end for the sake of mine. But those who came before us, the Watchers—I am an affront to them. Creation burns them, and they will destroy you, and me, and everything to stop that pain. Should they escape their prison, there will be no breaking their tide. Time will come to a close, and all things will end.”

Kai’Sa stares Bel’Veth in her false eyes, a grim defiance spreading through her. “You want to wipe us out. Why would I ever help you do that?”

“Aid me in the destruction of the Watchers, and I will spare your kind... for a moment. A month. A year. More. Perhaps, in that time, you will find a weapon that can slay me, or a hero who can face me. You will not... but you can try. I offer one chance. It is more than they will give you.”

Kai’Sa’s rage boils over as Bel’Veth turns away to look below, the empress watching her new world take shape.

“What if I don’t want to?” growls Kai’Sa. “What if I kill you here?”

“You cannot,” says Bel’Veth. “You lack the will, the knowledge, and the strength. I am your only salvation.”

Kai’Sa’s armor shudders violently to life, its jets heating as the suit shivers with fear. Kai’Sa tries to control it with her thoughts, but the parasite seemingly knows something she does not. She attempts to wrestle away control, her eyes turning from Bel’Veth for only a moment in order to—

Oh, no.

The razor-sharp tip of the empress’ wing jabs Kai’Sa in the chest, lifting her off the ground as she struggles to break free. Kai’Sa fires everything she has—missiles rain down on the empress, bolts of searing purple energy scream toward her body, and beams of light that have torn lesser Voidborn in half dance across her semi-transparent skin.

Nothing. No effect.

“Daughter of the Void. You will find the Watchers and confirm the truth, or your light will be snuffed out side by side with all others. This is not a threat. It is my promise.”

Bel’Veth releases her grip, and Kai’Sa rockets into the false sky above Bel’Veth’s alien sea. The twinned city of lavender glitters below, its windows slick with bioluminescence and tumbling, unformed, awful things.

As Kai’Sa blasts through one of the Voidborn tunnels and into the blinding light of day, the empress turns away, gazing once more over her world of want.

Kai’Sa bursts through the sands of southern Shurima, slamming hard against the dunes as she heaves, her entire body pulled and tossed like a rubber ball. The glowing husk of the city of Belveth smolders quietly in the distance, devoid of any recognizable life as new things skitter through it and build the land that would spread over everything—a cancer that would consume the world.

The entire display is dizzyingly awful, as if all of reality is spinning violently in the wind.
Burning Tides

Scott Hawkes, George Krstic, Anthony Reynolds, and John O'Bryan

The Rat Town slaughter docks; they smell as bad as their name suggests.
And yet here I am, hidden in the shadows, breathing the blood-and-bile stink of butchered sea serpents.
I melt deeper into the darkness, pulling the brim of my hat down low over my face as heavily armed members of the Jagged Hooks stalk by.
They’ve got a reputation for savagery, these boys. In a fair fight, they might take me down, but I’m not big on playing fair, and I’m not here to fight. Not this time.
So what brings me here, to one of the foulest districts in Bilgewater?
Money. What else?
It was a gamble, taking on this job, but the payout is big enough that I couldn’t pass it up. And besides, I cased this place to stack the deck in my favor.
I don’t intend to linger. I want to be in and out as quickly and as quietly as possible. Once the job’s done, I aim to collect my payment and be gone before dawn. All goes well, I’ll be halfway to Valoran before anyone knows the damn thing’s missing.
The thugs turn the corner of the massive slaughter shed. Means I’ve got two minutes until they swing back around - plenty of time.
The silver moon slides behind a bank of clouds, covering the wharf in shadow. Crates from the day’s work are scattered across the dock. It makes for easy cover.
I see lookouts on top of the main warehouse, silhouettes standing watch, crossbows in hand. They’re gossiping loudly like fishwives. I could be wearing bells and these idiots still wouldn’t hear me.
They think no one would be fool enough to come here.
A bloated corpse hangs overhead, a warning for all to see. It spins slowly in the midnight breeze coming off the harbor. It’s an ugly sight. A huge hook, the type used to catch devilfish, holds the body aloft.
Stepping over rusted chains lying limp upon wet stone, I pass between a pair of towering cranes. They’re used to haul giant sea creatures into the slaughter sheds for butchering. It’s those looming factories that are the source of the gods-awful stench that permeates everything here. I’m gonna need to buy myself a new set of clothes once this is over.
Across the bay, past the chum-churned waters of the slaughter docks, scores of ships lie at anchor, their lanterns swaying gently. One of the vessels draws my eye; a massive, black-sailed war galleon. I know whose ship that is. Everyone in Bilgewater knows.
I take a moment to gloat. I’m about to steal from the most powerful man in town. There’s always a certain thrill that comes from spitting in death’s eye.
As expected, the main warehouse is locked up tighter than a noblewoman’s virtue. Guards posted at every entrance. Doors locked and barred. For anyone other than me, it would be impossible to break into.
I duck into a blind alley opposite the warehouse. It’s a dead end, and it’s not as dark as I’d have liked. If I’m still here when the patrol comes back, they will see me. And if they get ahold of me, the best I can hope for is a quick death. More likely, I’ll be taken to him... and that would be a far more painful, drawn out way to go.
The trick, as always, is not to get caught.
Then I hear them. The bruisers are returning early. I have seconds, at best. I snap a card from my sleeve and weave it through my fingers; it’s as natural as breathing. This is the easy part, the rest can’t be rushed.
I let my mind drift as the card starts to glow. Pressure builds around me, and I’m nearly overcome with the promise of everywhere. Half-closing my eyes, I focus, and picture where I need to be.
Then, there’s the familiar lurch in the guts as I shift. A displacement of air, and I’m inside the warehouse. Gone with barely a trace.
Damn, I’m good.
One of the Jagged Hooks outside might glance up the alley and notice a single playing card falling to the ground, but probably not.
It takes a moment for me to get my bearings. Dim light from the lanterns outside creeps in through the cracks in the walls. My eyes adjust.
The warehouse is crowded, stacked high with treasures from all over the Twelve Seas: gleaming suits of armor, exotic works of art, shining silks. All things of considerable value, but not what I’m here for.
My attention is drawn to the loading doors at the front of the warehouse, where I know I’ll find the most recent arrivals. I run my fingertips across the various cartons and crates... until I come to a small, wooden box. I can feel the power emanating from within. This is what I’m here for.
I unlatch the lid.
My prize is revealed; a knife of exquisite design, lying upon a bed of black velvet. I reach for it—
Chh-chunk.
I freeze. There’s no mistaking that sound.
Before he even speaks, I know who’s standing behind me in the darkness.
“T.F.,” says Graves. “It’s been a long time.”
I’ve been here for hours. Some folks might get bored standing still this long, but I’ve got my anger to keep me company. I ain’t leaving this spot until I settle the score.
Long after midnight, the snake finally shows. He suddenly appears in the warehouse, using that same old magic trick. I prime my shotgun, ready to turn him inside out. After years spent looking for that treacherous son of a bitch here he is, dead to rights at the end of Destiny’s barrels.
“T.F.,” I say. “It’s been a long time.”
I had better words ready for this moment. Funny how they all went out the window as soon as I saw him.
But T.F.? His face shows nothing. No fear, no regret, no hint of surprise. Not even while facing down a loaded gun. Gods damn him.
“Malcolm, how long have you been standing there?” he asks, the smile in his voice enrages me.
I take aim. I can pull the trigger and leave him deader than sea scum.
I should.
Not yet, though. I need to hear him say it. “Why’d you do it?” I ask, knowing full well he’ll just come back with something clever.
“Is the gun really necessary? I thought we were friends.”
Friends. The bastard’s mocking me. Now I want to tear his smug head off – but I’ve got to keep my cool.
“You’re looking as dapper as ever,” he says.
I look down at the devilfish bites on my clothes. I had to swim to get past the guards. Ever since he got a little money, T.F.’s been a stickler for appearance. I can’t wait to mess him up. But first, I want answers.
“Tell me why you left me to take the fall, or they’ll be pickin’ bits of your pretty face out of the rafters.” This is how you’ve got to be with T.F. Give him room, and he’ll pull your strings ‘til you don’t know which end’s your ass.
His slipperiness came in handy when we were partners.
“Ten damn years in the Locker! Know what that does to a man?”
He doesn’t. For once, he’s got nothing cute to say. He knows he did me wrong.
“They did things to me that would’ve driven most men mad. All that kept me from breaking was my anger. And thinking about this moment, right here.”
Then comes the clever reply: “Sounds like I kept you alive. Maybe you should thank me.”
That one gets me. I’m so mad, I can barely see. He’s trying to goad me. Then, when I’m blind with rage, he’ll do his little disappearing act. I take a breath and leave the bait alone. He’s surprised I ain’t biting. This time, I’m getting answers.
“How much did they pay you to sell me out?” I growl.
T.F. stands there, smiling, just trying to buy some time.
“Malcolm, I’ll be happy to have this conversation with you, but this really isn’t a good time or place.”
Almost too late, I notice the card dancing through his fingers. I snap out of it and squeeze the trigger.
BLAM.
His card’s gone. Almost took his damn hand off, too.
“Idiot!” he barks. I finally made him lose his cool. “You just woke up the whole damned island! Y’know whose place this is?”
I don’t care.
I ready a second shot. I barely see his hands move, then cards explode all around me. I fire back, not sure if I want him dead or just almost dead.
Before I can find him again in the smoke, fury, and splintering wood, a door gets kicked open.
A dozen thugs come roaring in, just to add to the damn mess.
“So, do you really want to do this?” T.F. asks, ready to throw another fistful of cards at me.
I nod, and hold my gun steady on him.
It’s time to settle up.
Things get ugly. Fast.
The whole damned warehouse is crawling with Jagged Hooks, but Malcolm couldn’t care less. I’m all he’s interested in.
I sense Graves’s next shot coming and turn away. The boom of his gun is deafening. A box explodes where I’d been a fraction of a second earlier.
I do believe my old partner is trying to kill me.
Somersaulting over a stack of mammoth ivory, I whip a trio of cards in his direction. Before they hit home, I’m already ducking into cover, looking for an out. I only need a few seconds.
He curses loudly, but the cards won’t do more than slow him down. He’s always been a tough bastard. Stubborn, too. Never knows when to let things go.
“You ain’t gettin’ away, T.F,” he growls. “Not this time.”
Yep, that trait’s still riding him hard.
He’s wrong, though — as usual. I’ll be taking my leave as soon as possible. There’s no use talking to him when he’s out for blood.
Another blast, and shrapnel ricochets off a priceless suit of Demacian armor, embedding into the walls and floor. I dart left and right, weaving and feinting, sprinting from cover to cover. He sticks with me, roaring his threats and accusations, his shotgun barking in his hands. Graves moves fast for a big man. I’d almost forgotten that.
He’s not my only problem. The damned fool’s stirred up a hornet’s nest with all his shooting and hollering. The Jagged Hooks are all over us, but they’re smart enough to leave some men barring the main doors.
I have to get gone — but I’m not leaving without what I came for.
I’ve led Graves on a merry dance around the warehouse, and I arrive back where we started a moment before he does. There are Hooks between me and my prize, and more coming, but there’s no time to wait. The card in my hand glows red, and I hurl it dead center of the warehouse doors. The detonation blows them off their hinges and scatters the Hooks. I move in.
One of them recovers faster than I expect, and he swings at me with a hatchet. I sway around the blow and kick out his knee, hurling another spread of cards at his friends to keep them honest.
My path clear, I swipe the ornate dagger I’ve been hired to steal, hooking it onto my belt. After all this trouble, might as well get paid.
The gaping loading doors beckon, but there are too many damned Hooks piling in. There’s no way out there, so I make for the only quiet corner left in this madhouse.
A card is dancing in my hand as I prepare to shift, but as I start to drift away, Graves appears, stalking me like a rabid bear. Destiny bucks in his grip, and a Jagged Hook is shot to tatters.
Graves’s glare is drawn to the card glowing in my hand. He knows what it means, and swings the smoking barrels of his gun at me. I’m forced to move, interrupting my concentration.
“Can’t run forever,” he bellows after me.
For once, he’s not stupid. He’s not giving me the time I need.
He’s keeping me off my game, and the thought of being taken down by these Hooks is starting to weigh on me. Their boss is not known for his mercy.
Among the dozen other thoughts rattling around my head is the nagging feeling that I’ve been set up. I’m thrown an easy job out of nowhere, a big score just when I need it most - and surprise, there’s my old partner standing there waiting for me. Someone a lot smarter than Graves is playing me for a fool.
I’m better than this. I’d kick myself for being sloppy, but there’s a dock full of goons waiting to save me the trouble.
Right now, all that matters is getting the hell away from here. Two blasts from that damned gun of Malcolm’s send me scurrying. My back slams against a dusty wooden crate. A crossbow bolt lodges in the rotted wood behind me, just inches from my head.
“No way out, sunshine,” Graves yells.
I look around and see fire from the explosion starting to spread to the roof. He may have a point.
“We’ve been sold out, Graves,” I shout.
“You’d know all about that,” he replies.
I try reasoning with him.
“We work together, we can get out of this.”
I must be desperate.
“I’d see us both dead before I trust you again,” he snarls.
I didn’t expect anything else. Talking sense to him just makes him angrier, which is exactly what I need. The distraction buys me just enough time to shift outside the warehouse.
I can hear Graves roaring inside. No doubt he just rounded on my spot only to find me gone, a single card on the ground, taunting him.
I launch a barrage of cards through the loading doors behind me. It’s long past time for subtlety.
I feel bad for a moment about leaving Graves in a burning building - but I know it won’t kill him. He’s too stubborn for that. Besides, a fire on the docks is a serious deal in a port town. It might buy me some time.
As I search for the quickest way off the slaughter docks, the sound of an explosion makes me look over my shoulder.
Graves appears, stepping through the hole he’s just blown out the side of the warehouse. He’s got murder in his eyes.
I tip my hat to him and run. He comes after me, shotgun booming.
I have to admire the man’s determination.
Hopefully it won’t kill me tonight.
The young urchin’s eyes were wide and panicked as he was led toward the captain’s quarters.
It was the agonized screams emanating from the door at the end of the passageway that gave him second thoughts. The cries echoing through the claustrophobic decks of the enormous, black warship were heard by every crewman aboard the Dead Pool — as intended.
The first mate, his face a web of scars, rested a reassuring hand on the boy’s shoulder. They came to a halt before the door. The child winced as another tortured wail issued from within.
“Steady,” said the first mate. “The captain’ll want to hear what you’ve got to say.”
With that, he rapped sharply on the door. It was opened a moment later by a hulking brute with facial tattoos and a broad, curved blade strapped across his back. The boy didn’t hear the words spoken between the two men; his gaze was locked on the heavyset figure seated with his back to him.
He was a big man, the captain, and of middling years. His neck and shoulders were thick and bullish. His sleeves were rolled up, and his forearms slick with blood. A red greatcoat hung from a peg nearby, alongside his black tricorne.
“Gangplank,” breathed the urchin, his voice thick with fear and awe.
“Captain, I figured you’d want to hear this,” said the mate.
Gangplank said nothing, nor did he turn, still intent as he was on his work. The scarred sailor nudged the boy forward. He stumbled before he caught his footing and shuffled closer. The child approached the captain of the Dead Pool as he would a cliff’s edge. His breath quickened as he caught full sight of the captain’s work.
Basins of bloody water sat upon Gangplank’s desk, along with an array of knives, hooks, and gleaming surgical implements.
A man lay upon the captain’s workbench, bound tightly with leather straps. Only his head was free. He looked around in wild desperation, neck straining, his face covered with sweat.
The boy’s gaze was inexorably drawn to the man’s flayed left leg. The urchin suddenly realized he couldn’t remember what he came here to do.
Gangplank turned from his work to stare at the visitor. His eyes were as cold and dead as a shark’s. He held a slender blade in one hand, delicately poised between his fingers, like a fine paintbrush.
“It’s a dying art, scrimshaw,” said Gangplank, his attention returning to his work. “Few have the patience for carving bone these days. It takes time. See? Every cut has a purpose.”
Somehow, the man was still alive, despite the ragged wound in his leg, the skin and flesh peeled back from his thighbone. Transfixed with horror, the lad saw the intricate designs the captain had carved upon that bone; coiling tentacles and waves. It was delicate work, beautiful even. That just made it even more terrible.
Gangplank’s living canvas sobbed.
“Please...” he moaned.
Gangplank ignored the pathetic plea and set down his knife. He splashed a cup of cheap whiskey over his work, clearing it of blood. The man’s scream threatened to rip his own throat out, until he slumped into merciful unconsciousness, his eyes rolling back in his head. Gangplank grunted in disgust.
“Remember this, boy,” Gangplank said. “Sometimes, even those who are loyal forget their place. Sometimes, it’s necessary to remind them. Real power is all about how people see you. Look weak, even for a moment, and you’re done.”
The child nodded, his face now drained of color.
“Wake him,” said Gangplank, gesturing toward the unconscious crewman. “The whole crew needs to hear his song.”
As the ship’s surgeon stepped forward, Gangplank swung his gaze back to the child.
“Now,” he said. “What did you want to tell me?”
“A... a man,” said the boy, his words faltering. “A man on the Rat Town docks.”
“Go on,” Gangplank said.
“He was tryin’ not to be seen by the Hooks. But I seen him.”
“Mm-hmm,” Gangplank muttered as he began to lose interest. He turned back to his work.
“Keep goin’, lad,” the first mate urged.
“He was playing around with some fancy deck of cards. They glowed funny.”
Gangplank stood up from his chair, like a colossus rising from the depths.
“Tell me where,” he said.
The leather belt of his holster creaked in his tightening grip.
“By the warehouse, the big one near the sheds.”
Gangplank’s face flushed an angry shade of crimson as he pulled on his greatcoat and claimed his hat from its peg. His eyes glinted red in the lamplight. The child was not alone in taking a wary step back.
“Give the boy a silver serpent and a hot meal,” the captain ordered to his first mate as he strode purposefully toward the cabin door.
“And get everyone to the docks. We’ve got work to do.”
I’m coughin’ up black. The smoke from the warehouse fire is tearin’ my lungs to shreds, but I don’t have time to catch my breath. T.F.’s getting away, and I’ll be damned if I’m gonna spend another dog’s age chasin’ him all over Runeterra. It ends tonight.
The bastard sees me coming. He shoves a couple of dock hands out of the way and runs off across the wharf. He’s trying to work his escape card, but I’m keeping the heat on him, so he can’t focus.
More Hooks swarm around, like flies on an outhouse. Before they can block his path, T.F. tosses a couple of his exploding cards and takes the thugs out. A few Hooks are an easy fight for him. But I ain’t. I’m comin’ to get my due, and T.F. knows it. He scurries down the wharf as fast as he can.
His scuffle with the dock boys gives me just enough time to catch up. He sees me and darts behind a huge hunk of whale spine. A blast from my gun shatters his cover, filling the air with shards of bone.
He answers by trying to take my head off, but I shoot his card in midair. It explodes like a bomb, knocking us both on our asses. He scrambles to his feet first and takes off. I fire Destiny as fast as she’ll shoot.
Some Hooks close in on us with chains and cutlasses. I turn quick and blow their insides out their backs. Before I can hear the wet slap of their guts on the dock, I’m spinning on my heels. I take aim at T.F., but I’m clipped by a shot from a pistol. More Hooks, and these are better armed.
I duck behind a piece of an old trawler’s hull to return fire. My gun just clicks. Gotta reload. I slam some fresh shells into the cylinder, spit my anger onto the floor, and wade back into the chaos.
All around me, shots and bolts burst through wooden crates. One of ’em tears a chunk of my ear off. I just grit my teeth and plow forward, squeezing the trigger. Destiny is chewin’ up everything. One Jagged Hook loses a jaw. Another is blasted into the bay. A third gets torn into a red sheet of muscle and sinew.
I snap around to find T.F. escaping deeper into the slaughter docks. I run past a fishmonger hanging up scavenger eels. One of the beasts is just skinned, its innards still spillin’ onto the dock. The monger turns on me, swinging a meat hook.
BOOM.
I take off his leg.
BOOM.
I follow up with a shot to his head.
I shove away a stinking razorfish carcass and keep moving. The blood is ankle deep, some of it from the fish and some from the Hooks we’ve gunned down. It’s enough to give a dandy like T.F. fits. Even with me on his tail, he slows his stride to keep from messin’ up his skirts.
Before I can close in, T.F. kicks on into a gallop. I can feel myself losing wind.
“Turn and face me!” I holler.
What kind of man don’t own up to his problems?
A noise to my right draws my attention to a balcony holding two more Hooks. I fire, and the whole thing crashes to the docks.
The gun smoke and debris are so thick, I can’t see a damn thing. I run toward the sound of his lady boots thudding across the wooden slats. He’s makin’ for Butcher’s Bridge at the end of the slaughter docks - the only way off the island. Damned if I’m letting him get away again.
As I reach the bridge, T.F. skids to a halt, halfway across. At first, I think he’s given up. Then I see why he stopped: On the far side, blocking his way, there’s a mass of sword-wielding bastards. But I ain’t backing down.
T.F. turns back only to find me. He’s trapped. He looks over the side of the bridge, down at the water. He’s thinking about jumping - but I know he won’t.
He’s all out of options. He starts walking toward me.
“Look, Malcolm. Neither of us needs to die here. As soon as we get out of this-”
“You’ll run again. That’s all you’ve ever done.”
He don’t answer. Suddenly, he ain’t so worried about me. I turn back to see what he’s fixed on.
Behind me, I see every lowlife that can carry a blade or pistol storming onto the docks. Gangplank must’ve called in all his boys from across the city. To keep going’s a death sentence.
But livin’ ain’t the most important thing to me today.
They’re in no rush, the Hooks. Not anymore. They know they have us trapped. Behind them, it looks like every rat-stabbing cutthroat in Bilgewater has shown up to the party. No way back.
On the far end of the bridge, blocking my escape into the maze of Bilgewater’s slums, is what appears to be the whole Red Caps dock gang. They rule the east side of the waterfront. Gangplank owns them, just like he owns the Hooks and nearly the whole damned town.
Behind me, there’s Graves, stomping ever closer. The stubborn son of a bitch doesn’t care about the mess we’re in. It’s amazing, really. Here we are, yet again, like all those years ago. Deep in the muck, and he just won’t listen.
I wish I could tell him what really happened back then, but there’s no point. He wouldn’t believe me, not for a second. Once something’s lodged in that thick skull of his, it takes a while to shake it loose. And we don’t have a while.
I back up to the side of the bridge. Over the rail, I see the winches and pulleys suspended beneath me - then the ocean far below. My head spins, and my stomach drops into my boots. As I stagger back to the middle of the bridge, I get a full view of how bad a spot I’m in.
Looming in the distance is Gangplank’s black-sailed ship. From it, a damned armada of boats is closing in below, rowing hard. Looks like all of his men are heading our way.
I can’t get through the Hooks, I can’t get through the Caps, and I can’t get through Graves’s pig-headedness.
Only one way to go.
I step up onto the railing of the bridge. We’re even higher than I realized. The wind whips at my coat, making it snap like the sails of a ship. I should never have come back to Bilgewater.
“Get the hell down from there,” says Graves. Is there a hint of desperation in his voice? It’d break him if I died before he got the confession he wants so much.
I take a deep breath. It really is a long way down.
“Tobias,” Malcolm says. “Step back.”
I pause. I haven’t heard that name in a long time.
Then I jump from the bridge.
The Brazen Hydra was one of the few taverns in Bilgewater that didn’t have sawdust on the floor. Drinks were rarely spilled, let alone teeth, but on this night, its patrons could be heard all the way to Diver’s Bluff.
Men of some repute, and even greater means, were turning the air blue with wondrous songs of the very worst acts.
And there, in the middle of them all, was the conductor of the night’s revelry.
She twirled, toasting the health of the harbor master and all his watchmen. Her lustrous red hair whipped around, captivating the eyes of every man in the room, not that they had been looking at anything other than her.
No glass had been allowed to run empty all night - the crimson-haired siren made sure of that. But it wasn’t the dulled senses of every man in the room that drew them closer. It was the promise of her next glorious smile.
With merriment still shaking the tavern, the front door opened, and in stepped a plainly dressed man. Inconspicuous to a degree that only comes from years of practice, he walked to the bar and ordered a drink.
Among the clumsily assembled gallery, the young woman grabbed a fresh glass of amber ale.
“My fine fellows, I’m afraid I must take my leave,” she said with a flourish.
The men of the harbor guard responded with loud bellows of protest.
“Now, now. We’ve had our fun,” she said, chiding them amiably. “But I have a busy night ahead, and you are all so very late to your posts.”
She hopped onto a table without missing a beat, before looking down upon them all with triumphant glee.
“May the Mother Serpent grant us mercy for our sins!”
She smiled her most captivating smile, raised the large tankard to her lips, and then downed her ale in one tremendous gulp.
“Especially the big ones,” she said, as she slammed her glass on the table.
She wiped the beer from her mouth to a rapturous roar of approval and blew a kiss to all.
Like servants before their queen, the room parted.
The door was held open for her by the gracious harbor master. He hoped to garner one last glance of approval, but she was lost to the streets before he could look up from his unsteadily courteous bow.
Outside, the moon had dipped behind Freeman’s Aerie, and the night’s shadow seemed to reach out to meet the woman. Each step that she took from the tavern became more purposeful and surefooted. Her carefree veil dissolved, and her true self was revealed.
Her smile, her look of wonder and joy, were gone. She stared grimly, not seeing the streets and alleys around her, but looking far beyond to the many possibilities of the dark night ahead.
Behind her, the plainly dressed man from the tavern was gaining. His footsteps were silent, yet unnervingly swift.
In a measured heartbeat, he put his stride in perfect unison with hers, just off her shoulder, out of her periphery.
“Is everything in place, Rafen?” she asked.
After all these years, he was still taken aback at how he could never surprise her.
“Yes, Captain,” he said.
“You weren’t spotted?”
“No,” he bristled, reining in his displeasure at the question. “The bay was free from the harbor master’s eyes, and the ship was as good as empty.”
“And the boy?”
“He played his part.”
“Good. We meet at the Syren.”
At her word, Rafen broke away and disappeared into the gloom.
She continued onward as the night wrapped itself around her. Everything was in motion. All that remained was for her players to begin the show.
I hear Graves roar as I dive off the bridge. All I can see is the rope beneath me. No need to think about the fall or the bottomless black depths.
Everything is a blur of rushing wind.
I nearly scream with joy when I catch the rope, but then it burns into my palm like a branding iron. My fall stops with a snap as I slide to the bottom of the looping tether.
I hang there a moment, cursing.
I’ve heard that dropping into water from this height normally won’t kill a man, but I’d rather take my chances on the stone loading dock that’s at least fifty feet straight down. I’ll die, but it’s a damned sight better than drowning.
Between me and the stone platform, a pair of heavy-duty cables run from here to the mainland, one forward, one back. Crude, noisy mechanisms power them. They’re used to transport rendered down parts of sea beasts to the markets in Bilgewater proper.
The cables strum as a heavy rusted bucket, as big as a house, grinds its way toward me.
I let a smile creep on my face for a second. That is, until I see what’s in the cart. I’m about to drop feet first into a seething vat of rotting fish spleen.
It took me months to earn the coin for my boots. Supple as gossamer and sturdy as tempered steel, they were crafted from the hide of an abyssal sea drake. There are fewer than four pairs in the whole world.
Damn it.
I time my jump just right and land in the middle of the chum bucket. The cold slop seeps through every hand-stitch of my prized boots. At least my hat’s clean.
Suddenly, I hear that damned gun bark again.
The mooring line explodes.
The cart groans as it slides free from the cables. The wind’s knocked out of me as the bucket slams into the stone platform. I feel the foundations of the dock shake before everything flips on its side.
The world falls over my head, along with a ton of fish guts.
Struggling to stand, I look for another way out. Gangplank’s launches are closing in. They’re nearly here.
Dazed, I drag myself toward a small boat moored on the loading dock. I’m not halfway there when a shotgun blast rips its hull wide open, scuttling it.
As the boat sinks, I drop to my knees, exhausted. I try to catch some breath over my own stench. Malcolm stands over me. Somehow, he made his way down, too. Of course he did.
“Not so charmin’ now, are ya?” Graves grins, looking me up and down.
“Are you ever gonna learn?” I say, rising to my feet. “Every time I try to help you, I-”
He fires into the ground in front of me. I’m pretty sure I get a chunk of something in my shin. “If you’d just list-”
“Oh, I’m all done listenin’,” he interrupts, grinding out the words. “The biggest score of our lives, and before I knew it, you were gone.”
“Before you knew it? I told you-”
Another blast, another shower of stone, but I’m past caring.
“I tried to get us out. The rest of us saw the job was going south,” I say. “But you wouldn’t back down. You never do.” The card’s in my hand before I realize it.
“I told you then, all you had to do was back me up. We would’ve gotten out clean – and rich. But you ran,” he says, stepping forward. The man I used to know seems lost under years of hatred.
I don’t try to say anything else. I can see it in his eyes, now. Something’s broken inside of him.
Over his shoulder, a glint catches my eye - it’s a flintlock. The first of Gangplank’s crewmen are on us.
Without thinking, I flick the card. It slices toward Graves.
His gun thunders.
My card takes out Gangplank’s man. His pistol was leveled at Malcolm’s back.
Behind me, another member of his crew slumps to the ground, a knife in his hand. If Graves hadn’t shot him, he could’ve had me, cold.
We both look at each other. Old habits.
Gangplank’s men are all around now, crowding in close, howling and jeering. There’s too many to fight.
That doesn’t stop Graves. He brings his gun up, but he’s out of shells.
I don’t draw any cards. There’s no point.
Malcolm roars and goes at them. That’s his way. He shatters one bastard’s nose with the butt of his gun, before the mob beats him to the ground.
Hands grab me, pinning my arms. Malcolm’s hauled to his feet, blood dripping from his face.
Ominously, the hoots and hollers from the mob around us fall silent.
The wall of thugs parts to reveal a red-coated figure striding toward us.
Gangplank.
Up close, he’s much bigger than you’d imagine. And older. The lines of his face are deep and chiseled.
He’s holding an orange in one hand, slicing off its skin with a short-bladed carving knife. He’s doing it slow, making each cut count.
“So tell me, boys,” he says. His voice is a deep, rumbling growl. “Do you like scrimshaw?”
The fist slams into my face again. I go down hard, hitting the deck of Gangplank’s ship. Pig-iron cuffs dig into my wrists.
I’m hauled back upright and forced to kneel alongside T.F. Not that my legs would hold me if this pox-ridden mob made me stand.
The massive, slab-muscled bastard that hit me swims in and out of focus.
“Come on now, son,” I slur. “You’re doing it all wrong.”
I don’t see the next one coming. There’s just an explosion of pain, and I’m back on the deck. Once again, I’m lifted up and forced to kneel. I spit out blood and teeth. Then I grin.
“My old ma hits harder than you do, boy. And she’s been dead and buried five years now.”
He steps forward to knock me down again, but a word from Gangplank stops him in his tracks.
“Enough,” the captain says.
Swaying slightly, I try to concentrate on Gangplank’s blurred outline. Slowly, my eyes clear. At his waist, I see he’s wearing that damn knife that T.F. stole.
“Twisted Fate, huh? I heard you were good, and I’ve never been one to look down on a good thief,” Gangplank says. He steps in close and glares at T.F. “But a good thief knows better than to steal from me.” He hunkers down and looks me square in the eye.
“And you... If you’d been two shades smarter, you could have put that gun to work for me. But we’re past that now.”
Gangplank stands up and turns his back to us.
“I’m not an unreasonable man,” he continues. “I don’t expect folk to bend the knee. All I ask is a modicum of respect - something you boys pissed all over. And that can’t go unpunished.”
His crew pushes in, like dogs waiting for the order to rip us apart. I ain’t rattled, though. I won’t give them the satisfaction.
“Do me a favor,” I say, nodding toward T.F. “Kill him first.”
Gangplank chuckles at that.
He nods to a crewman, who starts banging away on the ship’s bell. In answer, dozens more across the port city ring out. Drunks, sailors, and shopkeeps start pouring onto the streets, drawn by the ruckus. The bastard wants an audience.
“Bilgewater’s watching, boys” Gangplank says. “Time to give ’em a show. Bring out Death’s Daughter!”
There’s a cheer, and the deck drums with the clamor of stamping feet. An old cannon is wheeled out. It may be rusted and green with age, but it’s still a beauty.
I glance over at T.F. His head’s down, and he ain’t sayin’ nothin’. They took his cards off him... once they found ’em all. They didn’t even leave him his stupid, dandy hat - some little inbred bastard in the crowd’s wearing it.
In all my years of knowing T.F., he’s always had an out. Without one, here and now, he looks defeated.
Good.
“You’re gettin’ what you deserve, you son of a bitch,” I snarl at him.
He stares back at me. There’s fire in him still.
“I ain’t proud of how things went-”
“You left me to rot!” I interrupt.
“Me and the whole crew tried to break you out. And they died for it!” he snaps back at me. “We lost Kolt, Wallach, the Brick - all of ’em - just trying to save your stubborn ass.”
“You made out alright, though,” I reply. “You know why? It’s because you’re a coward. And nothing you’ll ever say can change that.”
My words hit him like a punch in the guts. He doesn’t argue. The last glimmer of fight in him goes, and his shoulders slump. He’s done.
I don’t think even T.F. is this good an actor. My anger fades.
I feel tired suddenly. Tired and old.
“Everything went to hell, and maybe we’re both to blame,” he says. “I wasn’t lying, though. We tried to get you out. Doesn’t matter. You’ll believe what you want anyway.”
It takes a moment for that to sink in. It takes a moment longer to realize that I believe him.
Damn me, he’s right.
I do things my way. Always have. Whenever I pushed it too far, he had my back. He was always the one with the out.
But I didn’t listen to him that day, and I haven’t since.
And now, I’ve killed us both.
Suddenly, T.F. and I are yanked to our feet and dragged toward the cannon. Gangplank pats its muzzle, like it’s a prized hound.
“The Death’s Daughter’s done well by me,” he says. “I’ve been wanting to give her a proper send off.”
A heavy chain is dragged forward, and sailors begin looping it around the cannon. I see now how this is gonna pan out.
T.F. and I are shoved back to back, and the same chain is run around our legs and through our manacles. A padlock snaps shut, binding us to the chain.
A boarding gate in the ship’s bulwark slides open, and the cannon’s rolled into place in the gap. The wharfs and docks of Bilgewater are now packed with gawkers, here to see the show.
Gangplank rests the heel of his boot on the cannon.
“Well, I can’t get us out of this one,” T.F. says, over his shoulder. “I always knew you’d get me killed one day.”
A laugh escapes my lips at that. It’s been a long time since I laughed.
We’re dragged toward the edge of the ship, like cattle to the slaughter.
I guess this is where my story ends. I had a good run for a while there. But nobody’s luck lasts forever.
It’s only then that I know what I should do.
Carefully, straining against my manacles, I reach into my back pocket. It’s still there; the playing card T.F. dropped back in the warehouse. I’d aimed to shove it down his bastard throat.
They checked T.F. good for cards – but not me.
I nudge him. Chained back to back, it’s easy to hand the card off to T.F. without being seen. I can feel him hesitate as I pass it to him.
“You two will make a meager tithe, but you’ll serve,” says Gangplank. “Give the Bearded Lady my regards.”
With a wave to the crowd, Gangplank kicks the cannon over the side. It hits the dark water with a splash, and sinks fast. The chain on the deck spools out after it.
Now, at the end, I believe T.F. I know he tried everything to get me out, like he did all those times when we ran together. This time, for once, I’ve got the out. I can at least give him that.
“Get outta here.”
He starts going through the motions, spinning the card around his fingers. As the power starts to build, I feel an uncomfortable pressure in the back of my skull. I always hated being close to him when he did his trick.
And then, he’s gone.
The chains binding T.F. drop to the deck with a crash, and there’re shouts from the crowd. My chains are still locked tight. I ain’t getting out of this, but it’s worth it just to see the look on Gangplank’s face.
The cannon’s chain yanks me off my feet. I hit the deck hard, and grunt in pain. In an instant, I’m dragged over the edge of the boat.
The cold water hits me, stealing my breath.
Then I’m under, sinking fast, dragged down into the dark.
The card Malcolm puts in my hand could easily get me to the wharf. I’m so close to shore, and from there, the huge crowd’s just perfect for me to vanish into. I could be off this rat’s ass of an island inside an hour. This time, no one would ever find me.
Then all I can see in my mind is his pissed-off face disappearing into the depths.
Son of a bitch.
I can’t leave him. Not after last time. There’s no running away from this. I know where to go.
The pressure builds, and then I shift.
In an instant, I’m right behind Gangplank, ready to make my move.
One of his crew spots me – he looks baffled, like he’s trying to figure out how I got there. While he thinks about it, I punch him square in the face. He collapses into a crowd of bewildered deckhands. They all turn on me with cutlasses drawn. Gangplank leads the attack, slashing straight at my throat.
But I’m faster. In one deft move, I slide underneath the arcing steel and lift Gangplank’s prized silver dagger from his belt. Behind me, I hear cursing that could split the mast in two.
I leap to the deck, stowing the dagger in my britches as the end of the chain tears toward the edge of the ship. I stretch and grab the last steel link just before it disappears overboard.
The snap of the chain hauls me over the side, and now I realize what I’ve done.
The water is coming at me fast. In that frozen moment, every single part of me wants to let go of the chain. Being a river man who can’t swim has plagued me my whole life. Now it’ll be the death of me.
I take one final gulp of air. Then a musket shot rips into my shoulder. I yell out in pain, and lose my last breath just before I’m dragged under.
Frigid water punches me in the face as I sink into the suffocating blue.
This is my nightmare.
Panic wells inside. I try to quell it. It’s almost too much. More shots pierce the water above me. I’m still sinking.
Sharks and devilfish circle. They taste the blood. They follow me deeper into the abyss.
Everything is terror. No pain now. Heart pounds in my ears. Chest burning. Gotta keep the water out. Darkness coils around me. Too far down. No way back. I know that now.
But maybe I can save Malcolm.
Below me, there’s a thud, and the chain goes slack. The cannon’s hit the seabed.
I pull myself down the chain into the shadows. There’s a shape below. I think it’s Graves. Frantic, I drag myself toward him.
Then he’s right in front of me, though I can barely see the outline of his face. I think he’s shaking his head at me, angry that I came back.
I’m growing faint. My arm is numb and my skull is being crushed.
Letting go of the chain, I pull the dagger from my waist. My hand trembles.
I fumble in the darkness. By some miracle, I find the lock on Graves’s cuffs. I work the blade to coax it open, like I have a thousand locks before. But my hands won’t stop shaking.
Even Graves must be terrified. His lungs have to be giving out by now. The lock isn’t budging.
What would Malcolm do?
I twist the dagger. No finesse - nothing but force.
Something gives. I think I cut my hand. The dagger is falling. Into the abyss. There it goes... Is it glowing?
Above me, bright red. Red and orange... Everywhere. It’s beautiful... So this is what it’s like to die.
I laugh.
Water rushes in.
It’s peaceful.
Miss Fortune stared across the harbor from the deck of her ship, the Syren. Flames reflected in her eyes as she absorbed the full level of destruction she had wrought.
All that remained of Gangplank’s ship was burning wreckage. The crew had been killed in the detonation, drowned in the chaos, or claimed by the swarming razorfish.
It had been glorious. An immense ball of rolling fire had lit up the night like a new sun.
Half the city had witnessed it; Gangplank himself had seen to that, as she knew he would. He had to parade Twisted Fate and Graves in front of Bilgewater. He had to remind everyone why no one should cross him. To Gangplank, people were just tools used to maintain control - so she’d used that to kill him.
Shouts and tolling bells echoed across the port city. Word would be spreading like wildfire.
Gangplank is dead.
The corners of her lips curled into a smile.
Tonight was merely the endgame: Hiring T.F., tipping off Graves – all just to distract Gangplank. It had taken years to exact her revenge.
Miss Fortune’s smile faded.
From the moment he had stormed into her family’s workshop, his face hidden behind a red bandana, she had been preparing herself for this moment.
Sarah lost both her parents that day. She was just a child, but he shot her down as she stood watching her parents bleed out on the floor.
Gangplank taught her a harsh lesson: that no matter how safe you feel, your world – everything you’ve built, everything you care for - can be taken away in an instant.
Gangplank’s one mistake was not making sure she was dead. Her anger and her hate had sustained her through that first cold, painful night, and every night since.
For fifteen years, she had scraped together everything she needed; waiting until she wasn’t even a memory to him, for him to drop his guard and get comfortable in the life he’d built. Only then would he truly be able to lose everything. Only then would he know what it felt like to lose his home, to lose his world.
She should have been feeling exultant, but she just felt empty.
Joining her at the gunwale, Rafen jolted Sarah from her reverie.
“He’s gone,” he said. “It’s over.”
“No,” replied Miss Fortune. “Not yet.”
She turned from the harbor, casting her gaze across Bilgewater. Sarah had hoped that killing him would kill her hate. But all she had done was unleash it. For the first time since that day, she felt truly powerful.
“This is just the beginning,” she said. “I want everyone loyal to him to be brought to answer. I want the heads of his lieutenants mounted on my wall. Burn every bawdy house, tavern, and warehouse that bears his mark. And I want his corpse.”
Rafen was shaken. He’d heard words like that before, but never from her.
I’ve thought a lot about the ways I’d wanna go out. Chained up like a dog at the bottom of the ocean? That one never crossed my mind. Lucky for me, T.F. manages to pop the lock on my shackles just before he drops the dagger.
I scramble out of the chains, thirsty for breath. I turn toward T.F. Poor bastard’s not moving. I twist my hand around his collar and start kickin’ toward the surface.
As we go up, suddenly everything lights up bright red.
A shockwave knocks me ass over ears. Chunks of iron sink past us. A cannon plunges by. Then a charred hunk of rudder. Bodies, too. A face covered in tattoos stares in shock at me. The severed head then slowly disappears into the darkness beneath us.
I swim faster, my lungs set to bust.
An age later, I’m at the surface, coughing up salt water and gasping for air. But it’s damn near unbreathable. Smoke chokes me and claws at my eyes. I’ve seen things burn in my time, but never like this. Looks like someone set the whole world on fire.
“Damn me...” I hear myself mutter.
Gangplank’s ship is gone. Bits of smoking debris are scattered all across the bay. Fiery islands of wood collapse all around, hissin’ as they go under. A flaming sail falls right in front of us, nearly dragging T.F. and me back down for good. Burning men desperately jump from smoldering pieces of wreckage into the water, quietin’ their own screams. It smells like the end of everything – sulfur and ash and death; cooked hair and melting skin.
I check on T.F. I’m strugglin’ to keep him above water. Son of a bitch is a lot heavier than he looks, and it ain’t helping that half my ribs are broke. I find a piece of scorched hull floating nearby. It looks solid enough. I pull us both on top. It ain’t exactly seaworthy, but it’ll do.
For the first time, I get a good look at T.F. He ain’t breathin’. I wail on his chest with my fists. Just when I’m worried I’m going to cave his ribs in, he coughs out a lungful of seawater. I slump and shake my head again as he slowly comes to his senses.
“You stupid son of a bitch! What did you come back for?”
It takes him a minute to answer.
“Thought I’d try it your way,” he mutters, slurring his words. “See what being a stubborn ass felt like.” He hacks up more water. “Feels awful.”
Razorfish and even meaner sea critters are startin’ to gather around us. I ain’t about to be anything’s chow. I pull my feet away from the edge.
A mangled crewman bobs to the surface, grabbin’ for our raft. I plant my boot in his face and shove him off. A fat tentacle wraps around his neck and drags him back under. Now the fish have something else to keep ’em busy.
Before they run out of fresh meat, I break off a plank from our raft and use it to paddle us away from the feedin’ frenzy.
I pull at the water for what seems like hours. My arms are heavy and hurtin’, but I know better than to stop. Once I’ve put some distance between us and the massacre, I collapse onto my back.
I’m spent like an empty shotgun shell as I look out over the bay. It’s stained red with the blood of Gangplank and his crew. Not a survivor in sight.
How am I still breathing? Maybe I’m the luckiest man on Runeterra. Or maybe T.F.’s carrying enough good fortune for the both of us.
I see a body floating by, holding something familiar lookin’. It’s Gangplank’s little inbred bastard, still clutching T.F.’s hat. I take it off him and toss it to T.F. He ain’t even a little surprised, like he always knew he’d get it back.
“Now we just need to find your gun,” he says.
“What, you itchin’ to go back down there?” I say, pointing to the deep.
T.F. turns a funny shade of green.
“We ain’t got the time. Whoever did this, they left Bilgewater without a boss,” I tell him. “It’s gonna get ugly here, fast.”
“You’re telling me you can live without your gun?” he asks.
“Maybe not,” I say. “But I know a really good gunsmith in Piltover.”
“Piltover...” he says, lost in thought.
“Lot of money flowing through there right now,” I say.
T.F. figures hard for a moment.
“Hmm. Not sure about having you as a partner again – you’re even dumber than you used to be,” he finally answers.
“That’s alright. I’m not sure about havin’ a partner called Twisted Fate. Who the hell came up with that?”
“Well, it’s a damn sight better than my real name,” T.F. laughs.
“Fair enough,” I admit.
I grin. It feels just like the old days. Then I go stone faced and look him dead in the eye.
“Just one thing: You ever have mind to leave me holding the bag again, I’ll blow your goddamn head off. No questions.”
Fate’s laugh dies down, and for a moment, he glares back at me. Then, after a while, he just smiles.
“You got a deal.”
Bilgewater was devouring itself. The streets rang with the shrieks of the desperate and the dying. Fires burning in the lowly slums rained ash across the entire city. Control had been lost, and now every gang rushed to fill the power vacuum left by the fall of one man. A war had been started by the spread of three simple words: Gangplank is dead.
Savage ambitions and petty grudges that had festered for years were now being acted upon.
On the docks, a crew of whalers ran down a rival fisherman. They skewered him with harpoons and left his body hanging from a trotline.
At the highest peak of the island, tall opulent gates that had stood since Bilgewater’s founding were battered apart. A cowering gang lord was ripped from his bed by a rival. His mewling cries were silenced when his skull was dashed upon the hand-crafted marble of his own front steps.
Along the wharf, a fleeing Red Cap attempted to staunch a bloody head wound. He looked over his shoulder but could see no sign of his pursuers. The Jagged Hooks had turned on the Caps. He had to get back to the safe house to warn his crew.
He rounded the corner, screaming for his brothers to gather their arms and join him. But his thirst for blood dried in his throat. Standing in front of the Red Caps’ own den was a band of Hooks. Their blades dripped with gore. At their head, a wiry figure, barely a man, creased his pock-marked face with a vicious grin.
The Red Cap had time to utter one last curse.
Across the bay, off a quiet back alley, a physician attempted to ply his trade. The gold he had been handed was plenty to buy his services – and assure his silence.
It had taken half an hour to peel the sodden coat from the sloughing flesh of his patient’s arm. The doctor had seen many horrific injuries before, but even he recoiled at the sight of the mangled limb. He paused for a moment, terrified of the response his next words would provoke.
“I... I’m sorry. I can’t save your arm.”
Within the shadows of the candlelit room, the bloodied ruin of a man composed himself before staggering to his feet. His good hand shot out like a lash and wrapped around the throat of the quivering doctor. He lifted the surgeon slowly, measuredly off the floor and pinned him to the wall.
For a terrible moment, the brute stood impassively, considering the man in his grasp. Then he abruptly dropped him.
Lost in panic and confusion, the healer coughed violently as the shadowed mass strode to the back of the room. Passing through the light of the surgeon’s lantern, the patient reached for the top drawer of a well-worn cabinet. Methodically, the man opened each drawer searching for what he needed. Finally, he stopped.
“Everything must have a purpose,” he said, looking at his mutilated arm.
He pulled something from the case, and threw it to the doctor’s feet. There, glinting under the lantern was the clean steel of a bonesaw.
“Cut it off,” he said. “I’ve got work to do.”
The Bird and the Branch

Ariel Lawrence

“That power of yours was meant to destroy. You don’t want to use it? Fine. Let it sink you like a stone.”
Those were the last words Taliyah heard from the Noxian captain before she slipped beneath the salty water, words that haunted her still. Four days had passed since that landing on the beach where she had made her escape. At first she ran, and then, when she could no longer hear the breaking bones of the Ionian farmers and Noxian soldiers, she walked. She followed the high skirts of the mountains, not daring to look back at the carnage she’d left behind. The snow had started to fall two days ago. Or maybe it was three; she couldn’t remember. This morning, as she passed an empty shrine, a cheerless air had begun to move through the valley. Now the wind grew stronger and broke through the clouds to reveal a sky clear and blue, a color so pure it felt like she was drowning again. She knew that sky. As a young child, she saw it blanket the sands. But this wasn’t Shurima. The wind here was not welcoming.
Taliyah hugged herself, trying to remember the warmth of home. Her coat kept out the snow, but still the cold air crept in. The invisible loneliness snaked around her, sinking deep in her bones. The memory of being so far from those she loved now dropped her to her knees.
She shoved her hands deep in her pockets, her shaking fingertips tumbling a few well-worn stones for warmth.
“I am hungry. That is all this is,” Taliyah said to no one and everyone. “A hare. A little bird. Great Weaver, I would even take a mouse if it showed itself.”
As if on command, a small crunching of powdered snow sounded several strides away from her. The culprit, a gray handful of fur no bigger than her two fists, popped its head from a burrow.
“Thank you,” she whispered through chattering teeth. “Thank you. Thank you.”
The animal looked at Taliyah inquisitively as she took one of the smooth stones from her pocket and slipped it into the leather pouch of her sling. She wasn’t used to throwing from a kneeling position, but if the Great Weaver had given her this offering, she wasn’t going to waste it.
The little animal continued to watch as she wound the sling once, seating the small rock. The cold gripped Taliyah’s body and gave her arm a jerky feel. When she had enough speed, she unleashed the stone and, unfortunately, a harsh sneeze.
The stone skipped along the snow, narrowly missing her would-be meal. Taliyah rocked back, the heavy weight of frustration erupting in a guttural growl that echoed in the silence around her. She took a few deep, clearing breaths, the cold burning her throat.
“Assuming you are anything like sand rabbits, if there’s one of you, there are a dozen more close by,” she said to the patch where the animal had been, her defiant optimism returning.
Her gaze lifted from the burrow to more movement farther down in the valley. She followed her winding tracks through the snow. Beyond them, through the sparse pines, she saw a man in the shrine, and her breath caught. His wild, dark hair tangled in the wind as he sat, head bowed to his chest. He was either sleeping or meditating. She breathed a sigh of relief. No Noxian she knew would be caught doing either. She remembered the shrine’s rough surface from earlier, as her hands had run along its carved edges.
Taliyah was shaken from her reverie by a sharp crack. Then a rumble started to build. She steadied herself for the rolling earthquake that didn’t arrive. The rumbling grew into a steady, terrible grinding of compacted snow on stone. Taliyah turned to face the mountain and saw a wall of white coming for her.
She scrambled to her feet, but there was nowhere to go. She looked down at the rock peeking through the dirty ice and thought of the little animal safe in its burrow. She desperately focused, pulling on the rough edges of the visible rock. A row of thick columns sprang from the ground. The stone blockade reached far over her head just as the crushing white avalanche slammed into it with a heavy whumpf.
The snow rushed up the newly made slope and spilled like a glittering wave into the valley below. Taliyah watched as the deadly blanket filled the little glen, covering the temple.
As quickly as it had begun, the avalanche was over. Even the lonely wind stilled. The new, muffled silence weighed heavily on her. The man with the wild, dark hair was gone, entombed somewhere beneath all that ice and rock. She was safe from the snowslide, but her stomach lurched with a sickening realization: She hadn’t just brought harm to an unsuspecting innocent; she had buried him alive.
“Great Weaver,” Taliyah said to no one and everyone, “what have I done?”
Taliyah picked her way quickly down the snow-covered hillside, skidding in places and plunging thigh-deep in others. She hadn’t run from a Noxian invasion fleet to then accidentally kill the first Ionian she saw.
“And knowing my luck, he was probably a holy man,” she said.
The pines in the valley had been reduced to spindly bushes half their original size. Only the tip of the shrine broke the snow’s surface. A string of tattered prayer flags had twisted themselves into knots, marking what used to be the far end of the glen. Taliyah scanned the area, looking for any trace of the man she had committed to the ice. When she’d last seen him, he had been under the temple’s eave. Perhaps it had sheltered him.
As she made her way to the temple, closer to the trees and away from the sweep of the avalanche, she saw two fingers that had broken through the surface.
She half trudged, half ran to the pale fingertips. “Please don’t be dead. Please don’t be dead. Please…”
Taliyah dropped carefully to her knees and started to scoop away the icy powder. She uncovered fingers as strong as steel. She reached in and gripped the man’s wrist, her own clenching hands barely obeying. Her teeth chattered, shaking her body and drowning out any pulse of life she might have felt in the man.
“If you’re not dead already,” she said to the man beneath the snow, “then you’ve got to help me.”
She looked around. There was no one else. She was all he had.
Taliyah let go of his fingers and backed away a few paces. She laid her numb palms to the surface of the snow and tried to remember what the floor of the little valley had looked like before the avalanche. Loose stones, gravel. The memory swam, then coalesced in her mind. It was dark, a coarse charcoal gray with flecks of white, like Uncle Adnan’s beard.
Taliyah held tightly to the vision and pulled up from deep below the snowpack. The crust of ice erupted in front of her, quickly followed by a towering ribbon of granite balancing a lone figure. The suddenly flexible stone wavered at its peak, as if looking to her for guidance. Unsure of any safe landing, Taliyah pushed them both toward the spindly pines, hoping their boughs might break his fall.
The granite ribbon fell short, collapsing into the snow with a heavy puff, but the evergreen arms caught the man before casually dropping him to the surface.
“If you were alive, please don’t be dead now,” Taliyah said as she hurried toward him. The sunlight faltered above her. Dark clouds were moving into the valley. More snow would soon be upon them. Beyond the trees, she saw an opening to a small cave.
Taliyah blew warm breath into her hands and willed them to stop shaking. She bent close to the man, reaching out to touch his shoulder. He let out a pained grunt. Before Taliyah could pull back, there was a quick breeze and a metallic flash. The sharp, cold edge of the man’s blade pressed at her throat.
“Not yet time to die,” he said in a broken whisper. He coughed, and his eyes rolled back in his head. The sword dipped to the snow, but the man did not release the weapon.
The first snowflake flitted past Taliyah’s chapped face. “From the look of it, you’re pretty hard to kill,” she said. “But if we’re caught in this storm, we just might find out if that’s true.”
The man’s breathing was shallow, but at least he was still alive. Taliyah reached under the man’s arm and dragged him toward the small cave.
The lonely wind had returned.
Taliyah bent to pick up a rounded stone the size and color of a small hank of raw wool. She shivered and looked back into the cave; the ragged man was still propped against the wall, his eyes closed. She pushed the bit of dried meat she had found in the man’s pack around in her mouth, hoping he wouldn’t begrudge sharing if he lived.
She stepped back into the warmth of the cave. The slabs of rock she had stacked still glowed with a wavering heat. She knelt. Taliyah hadn’t been sure her trick of warming the stones in her pocket would work with something larger. The young Shuriman closed her eyes and focused on the stack of rocks. She remembered the blistering sun on the sands. The way the heat sank deep in the earth long into the night. She relaxed and loosened her coat as the dry warmth settled around her, then set to work on the stone in her hands. She turned it, wrapping and pushing it with her thoughts until it was hollowed like a bowl. Satisfied, she returned to the cave opening with her newly formed dish.
A male voice groaned behind her, “Like a sparrow gathering crumbs.”
“Even sparrows get thirsty,” she replied, scooping up a bowlful of clean snow. The cold wind whispered around her. Taliyah set the round stone onto the stack of hot rocks in front of her.
“You gather stones by hand? That seems tedious for someone who can weave rock.”
A heat rose to Taliyah’s cheeks that had nothing to do with the little stone hearth.
“You’re not angry, are you? I mean about the snow and the—”
The man laughed and then clutched his side with a groan. “Your actions tell me all I need to know.” His gritted teeth still held the edge of a smile. “You could have left me to die.”
“It was my mistake that put you in danger. I wasn’t going to leave you buried in the snow.”
“My thanks. Although I could have done without the tumble through the trees.”
Taliyah grimaced and then opened her mouth. The man held out a hand to stop her. “Do not apologize.”
He strained and pulled himself upright, taking a closer look at Taliyah and the ornament in her hair.
“A Shuriman sparrow.” He closed his eyes and relaxed into the heat of the stone hearth. “You are a long way from home, little bird. What brings you to a remote cave in Ionia?”
“Noxus.”
The man raised a dark eyebrow but kept his eyes closed.
“They said I would bring people together in Noxus. That my power would strengthen her walls. But they only wanted me to destroy.” Her voice grew thick with disgust. “They told me they would teach me—”
“They have, but only half the lesson,” he said without emotion.
“They wanted me to bury a village. To murder people in their homes.” Taliyah let out an impatient snort. “And I escaped only to bring a mountain down on you.”
The man lifted his sword and looked down the length of the blade. A small breeze wiped it clean of dust. “Destruction. Creation. Neither is wholly good or bad. You cannot have one without the other. What matters is intent, the ‘why’ of choosing your path. That is the only real choice we have.”
Taliyah stood up, irritated at the lecture. “My path is away from this place. Away from everyone, until I learn to control what’s inside of me. I don’t trust myself not to hurt my people.”
“A bird’s trust is not in the branch beneath her.”
Taliyah had stopped listening. She was already at the mouth of the cave, wrapping her coat tightly around her. The wind whistled in her ears.
“I’m going to try and find us something to eat. Hopefully, I won’t bring the rest of the mountain down on you.”
The man settled against the warm stone at his back, speaking softly to no one and everyone. “Are you sure it is the mountain you seek to conquer, Little Sparrow?”
A bird pecked at a thin pine nearby. Taliyah kicked at the snow, accidentally shoving a clump of it into the top of her boot. She pulled at the cuff roughly, annoyed at the man’s words and at the melting ice slipping past her ankle.
“The why of the path? I left my people, my family, to protect them from me.”
She stopped. An unnatural hush had settled. Any small game that had been nearby had long since disappeared at the sound of her stomping feet. Not sensing any danger from the girl, the little bird had kept to its branch and twittered at her angry rants. Now even the birdsong was silenced.
Taliyah stood cautiously. In her anger, she had wandered farther than she had intended from the cave. She was drawn more to the stone than the wood, and had absently followed an exposed ridge until she found herself looking down from a rocky cliff. She didn’t think the man would follow her, yet she sensed something watching her.
“More lectures?” she asked indignantly.
There was a bone-vibrating exhalation in response.
She slipped one hand into her coat, and the other reached for her sling. Three stones tumbled in her pocket. She clutched at one just as loose gravel betrayed the movement of her stalker behind her.
Taliyah turned to face the presence at her back. There, padding carefully around sharp crags, was a great Ionian snow lion.
Even standing on four stout legs, it towered over her. The beast was easily twice as long as she was tall, its thick neck covered in a short mane of tawny white. The lion watched the girl. It dropped two freshly slain hares from its jaws and licked a drizzle of red from a canine bigger than her forearm.
Just a moment ago the high view from the cliff where she stood had been thrilling. Now it left her trapped. If she ran, she would be chased down in an instant. Taliyah swallowed, trying to push down the panic that was rising in her throat. She fit a stone into her sling and began to spin it.
“Get out of here,” she said. Her words came out with none of the terror she felt inside.
The lion took a step closer. The girl released the stone from her sling. It hit the great beast near the mane, the fur taking the brunt of the impact. The animal growled its displeasure, and Taliyah could not separate the heavy resonance from her own heart as it tried to beat its way out of her chest.
She fit another stone to the sling.
“Go on!” she shouted, feigning more courage. “I said get out of here!”
Taliyah let the next stone fly.
The predator’s hungry snarl grew louder. The bird in the thin pine, sensing no good could come from this encounter, leapt from the branch and took off on a current of air.
Alone, Taliyah reached into her pocket for her last stone. Her hands shook from the cold and the fear coursing through her. The rock slipped from her fingers and hit the ground, rolling away. She looked up. The lion’s head bobbed between muscled shoulders as it took another step toward her. The throwing stone was just out of reach.
You gather stones by hand? The man’s words echoed in her mind. Maybe there was another way. Taliyah reached out to the stone with her will. The small rock shuddered, but there was also a quiver in the ground beneath her.
The bough beside her still trembled from where the bird had taken flight. A bird’s trust is not in the branch. The choice was clear: She could either stand frozen in her doubt, letting the beast come for her, or lean into her power and take the leap.
Taliyah, a girl born in a desert land far beyond the shores of snow-capped Ionia, held on to the image of the bird and the empty branch that bounced. In that moment, she forgot the imminent death before her. The loneliness that haunted her fell away and was replaced by her last dance on the sands. She felt her mother, her father, Babajan—the whole tribe encircling her. Her whispered promise to return to them when she finally gained mastery over her gifts.
She met the gaze of the beast. “I’ve given up too much to let you stop me.”
The stone began to warp beneath her in a graceful crescent. She held on to the warmth of that last embrace and leapt.
A rumbling built beneath her, louder than the growl of the beast. The lion tried to back away, but it was already too late. The ground split beneath its thick paws into a sluice of swirling gravel, the weight of the creature pulling it farther down the crumbling cliff.
For a brief moment, Taliyah floated above the flurry of dissolving earth. The rock beneath her continued to splinter into a thousand tiny pieces, no longer solid enough to control. She knew she couldn’t hold on to the destruction forever. The girl started to fall. Before she could say goodbye to the coarse world fracturing around her, a strong wind lifted her up. Fingers like steel grasped the collar of her coat.
“I didn’t realize you were serious about bringing down the mountain, Little Sparrow.” With a grunt, the man pulled Taliyah up onto the newly created ledge. “I now understand why much of your desert is flat.”
A laugh bubbled up from within her. She was actually relieved to hear his patronizing voice. Taliyah looked over the side of the cliff and stood up. She dusted herself off, picked up the lion’s discarded hares, and walked back toward the little cave with a new skip in her step.
Taliyah bit her bottom lip. She looked around the inn, excitedly bouncing in her seat. The evening was late and the wooden tables sparsely populated. It had been so long since she had been around people. She looked to her grim companion, who had insisted on the darkened corner booth. The man who now served as her teacher didn’t count. The scowl he had worn since agreeing to a meal at the remote inn offered little in the way of camaraderie.
When it was clear that he was as much a stranger here as anyone else, he relaxed a bit and settled into the shadows, his back firmly to the wall and a drink in hand. Now that he was no longer distracted, his concentration and watchful eye returned to her.
“You must focus,” he said. “You cannot hesitate.”
Taliyah studied the leaves swirling at the bottom of her cup. The lesson today had been a difficult one. It had not gone well. In the end, they had both been covered in dust and shattered rock.
“Danger comes when your attention is divided,” he said.
“I could hurt someone,” she said, eyeing the new rip in the mantle wound around the man’s neck. Her own clothes had not fared well either. She looked down at her new overcoat and traveling skirt. The innkeeper’s wife had taken pity on her and offered what she had on hand, castoffs left by some previous patron. The long sleeves in the Ionian style would take some getting used to, but the rich fabric was sturdy and well woven. She had kept her simple tunic, faded from so much wear, determined not to give up what last bit of home she still had left.
“Nothing was broken that cannot be mended. Control comes through practice. You are capable of much more. Remember, you have improved.”
“But… what if I fail?” she asked.
The man’s gaze drifted as he watched the far door to the inn push open. A pair of merchants came in, stamping off the dusty road. The innkeeper motioned to the open tables near Taliyah and the man. The first moved toward them while the second waited for his drink.
“Everyone fails,” Taliyah’s companion said. A small edge of frustration passed over the man’s face, marring his otherwise restrained demeanor. “Failure is just a moment in time. You must keep moving, and it too will pass.”
One of the merchants took a seat at a nearby table and watched Taliyah, his eyes drifting from the pale lavender of her tunic to the glimmer of gold and stone in her hair.
“Is that Shuriman, girl?”
Taliyah did her best to ignore the merchant. He caught the protective glare of her companion and laughed it off.
“Would have been rare once,” the merchant said.
The girl stared at her hands.
“It’s a bit more common now that your people’s lost city has risen.”
Taliyah looked up. “What?”
“Word has it the rivers flow backward too.” The merchant waved a hand in the air, poking fun at the mysteries of a far-off people he considered simple. “All because your bird-god has returned from the grave.”
“Whatever he is don’t make any difference. It all threatens trade.” The second merchant joined the first. “They say he aims to collect his people. Misses his slaves and all that.”
“Good thing you’re here and not there, girl,” the first merchant added.
The second merchant looked up from his ale, suddenly noticing Taliyah’s companion. “You look familiar,” he said. “I’ve seen your face before.”
The door to the inn opened again. A group of guards entered, eyeing the room carefully. The one in the middle, clearly a captain of some sort, noticed the girl and her companion. Taliyah could feel a quiet panic rise in the room as the few guests stood and made their way quickly to the exits. Even the merchants got up and left.
The captain waded through the empty stools toward them. He stopped a blade’s length from the table where they sat.
“Murderer,” he said.
“So this is where you’ve been hiding,” the captain said. “Savor that drink. It’ll be your last.”
Taliyah was on her feet just as she heard the whisper of steel drawn next to her. She looked over to see her teacher staring down the roomful of guards.
“This man, Yasuo”—the captain spat the word—“is guilty of assassinating a village Elder. His crime warrants the punishment of death. To be carried out on sight.”
One of the guards leveled a loaded crossbow. Another nocked an arrow to a longbow nearly as tall as the girl.
“Kill me?” Yasuo said. “You can try.”
“Wait,” Taliyah cried out. But before the word had finished on her lips, she heard the trigger snap and the reverberating hum of the longbow’s release. In the heartbeats that followed, a whirling gust picked up inside the inn. It spiraled out from the man beside her, blowing abandoned glasses and wooden dinner trenches off of tables. It reached the arrows, breaking them midflight. The pieces fell to the ground with a hollow clatter.
More guards swarmed in, their swords already pulled from their sheaths. Taliyah laid down a field of sharp stone, pulling up each rock through the floor in a violent explosion to keep the men at bay.
Yasuo slipped through the crowd of soldiers trapped in the room. They brandished their weapons, foolishly trying to parry the sword that stormed around them, its metal arcing like lightning. It was too late. Yasuo’s blade flashed in and out of the men, trailing lethal ribbons of red in a whirlwind behind him. When all those who had come for the man had finally fallen, Yasuo paused, his breathing heavy and fierce. His gaze locked with the girl’s, and he prepared to speak.
Taliyah held out her hand in warning. There, at his back, rose the captain with crazed eyes and a broken smile. He wielded his sword with both hands to keep a grip on the blood-slick pommel.
“Get away from him!” Taliyah pulled at the cobbled floor of the inn, the flat stones erupting, lifting the captain off his feet.
As the captain’s body was knocked up, Yasuo was there to meet it, the cold blade cutting through the captain’s chest in three quick strikes. The body fell to the floor and was still.
More shouting was coming from outside. “We must leave. Now,” Yasuo said. He looked at the girl. “You can do this. Do not hesitate.”
Taliyah nodded. The ground rumbled, shaking the walls until the thatched roof began to vibrate. The girl tried to contain the power she felt growing from beneath the floor of the inn. A vision passed in her mind. Her mother, hemming a raw edge of cloth, singing to herself, her even stitches running away from her hand, her fingers a blur of motion.
The rock beneath the inn burst in great, rounded arcs. Stone columns threaded themselves in and out of the ground like a wave. Taliyah felt the earth rise, carrying her out into the dark night, the wild wind that was Yasuo following close behind.
Yasuo looked back at the distant inn. The round stitches of stone had sewn the path shut and blocked off any oncoming approach. It had bought them time, but dawn would be coming soon. And with it, more men for them. For him.
“They knew you.” Taliyah’s voice was quiet. “Yasuo.” She held on to the last word.
“We need to keep moving.”
“They wanted you dead.”
Yasuo let out a breath. “There are a lot of people who want me dead,” he said. “And now some will want you dead as well. If it matters, they named a crime I did not commit.”
“I know.”
Yasuo was not the name he had given on their journey, but it did not matter. She had not asked about his past in the time they’d traveled together. In truth she had not asked anything of him except to be taught. She watched her mentor now, it seemed her trust was almost painful to him. Perhaps more than if she had thought him guilty. He turned and began walking away from her.
“Where are you going? Shurima is to the west.” Confusion rose in her voice.
Yasuo did not turn back to face her. “My place is not in Shurima. And neither is yours. Not yet.” His words were cool and measured, as if he were steeling himself against a coming storm.
“You heard the merchants. The lost city has risen.”
“Tales to scare the tradesmen and drive up the price of Shuriman linen,” he said.
“And if a living god walks the sands? You don’t know what that means. He will reclaim what he has lost. The people who once served him, the tribes...” Taliyah’s voice strained with the emotion of the evening, her words boiling over. She had journeyed so far to protect them and now she was a world away when they needed her. She reached out, a hand’s breadth from pulling on his arm, anything to make him listen, to make him see.
“He will enslave my family.” Her words echoed off the rock around them. “I must protect them. Don’t you understand that?”
A gust of wind picked up, stirring pebbles on the ground and whipping Yasuo’s black hair about his face.
“Protect,” he said, his voice barely a whisper. “Does your Great Weaver not watch over them?” The words now came through gritted teeth. The man, her teacher, turned toward his lone student, anger flashing in his dark, haunted eyes, the raw emotion startling her. “Your training is unfinished. You risk your life returning to them.”
She stood her ground and faced him.
“They are worth my life.”
The wind swirled around them, but the girl was immovable. Yasuo gave a long sigh and looked back to the east. A hint of light had begun to break the blue-black night. The last of the turbulent gusts calmed.
“You could come with me,” she offered.
The hard lines of the man’s jaw relaxed. “I have heard the desert mead is quite good,” he said. A soft breeze tugged at the girl’s hair. And then the moment was gone, replaced again by a memory of pain. “But I am not finished in Ionia.”
Taliyah studied him carefully and then reached inside her tunic, breaking a long loose thread. She offered the length of handspun wool to him. He looked at it suspiciously.
“It’s a tradition of thanks among my people,” Taliyah explained. “To give a piece of yourself is to be remembered.”
The man took the thread gingerly and tied back his wild hair with it. He weighed his next words carefully.
“Follow this to the next river valley and that river to the sea,” he said, gesturing toward a lightly worn deer path. “There is a lone fisherwoman there. Tell her you wish to see the Freljord. Give her this.”
The man withdrew a dried maple seed from a leather pouch at his belt and pressed it into her hand.
“In the Frozen North there are a people that resist Noxian rule. With them you might find passage back to your sands.”
“What is in this… Freljord?” she said, testing the word in her mouth.
“Ice,” he said. “And stone,” he added with a wink.
It was her turn to smile.
“You will move quickly with the mountains beneath you. Use your power. Creation. Destruction. Embrace it. All of it. Your wings have carried you far,” he said. “They may even carry you home.”
Taliyah stared at the path leading down into the river valley. She hoped her tribe was safe. Perhaps the danger she imagined was just that. If they saw her now, what would they think? Would they recognize her? Babajan said that no matter what color the thread, no matter how thick or thin the draft was as it was taken up on the spindle, a part of the wool always remained what it had been when it started. Taliyah remembered, and took comfort in that.
“I trust that you will weave the right balance. Safe journey, Little Sparrow.”
Taliyah turned to face her companion, but he was already gone. The only sign he had been there were a few blades of grass that rustled in the new morning air.
“I’m sure the Great Weaver has a plan for you, too,” she said.
Taliyah tucked the maple seed carefully into her coat and started down the path into the valley, the stone beneath her boots rising eagerly to greet her.
Blitzcrank

Zaun is a place of wondrous experimentation and vibrant, colorful life where anything can be achieved—but not without a cost. For all its boundless creativity, there is also waste, destruction, and suffering in the undercity, so pervasive that even the tools created to alleviate it cannot escape its corrosive grasp.
Designed to remove the toxic waste claiming whole neighborhoods of Zaun, lumbering mechanical golems toiled in violently hazardous locations. One such golem worked alongside its fellows, fulfilling its programming to reclaim Zaun for the people. But the caustic reality of their mission soon wore away at its robust form, and before long it was rendered inoperative and discarded as useless.
Useless to all but one person. The inventor Viktor discovered the abandoned golem and, seeing the potential still within the inert chassis, inspiration struck. Viktor began a series of experiments, seeking to improve the automaton by introducing a new element that would elevate it far beyond the original scope of its creation.
Hextech.
Implanting a priceless hextech crystal sourced from the deserts of Shurima into the chassis of the forsaken golem, Viktor waited with baited breath as the machine rumbled to life.
Viktor named the golem Blitzcrank after the fizzing arcs of lightning that danced around their frame, an unexpected side effect of the hextech crystal, and sent them down into the most toxic regions of Zaun. Not only did Blitzcrank prove as capable as any of their steam-powered brethren, but they accomplished their tasks with vastly improved speed and efficiency, and as the days turned into weeks, Viktor began to watch something miraculous unfold…
His creation was learning.
Blitzcrank innovated, interpreting and extrapolating on their daily directives. As a result, they did far more to serve the people of Zaun, and even began to interact with them on a regular basis. Seeing his golem progress to the cusp of self-awareness, Viktor sought to replicate his achievement, but found only frustration and failure, as the key to Blitzcrank’s blossoming consciousness eluded him.
Not all of Blitzcrank’s growth was cause for celebration. Concepts like moderation and nuance escaped them, and Blitzcrank would pursue any effort with the entirety of their being, or none at all. They would occasionally overdo or misinterpret the requests of Zaunites, such as smashing down the front of a tenement to admit a single resident who had lost their key.
Or even tearing an entire factory apart.
Dispatched by Viktor to clear a neighborhood of toxic chemicals, Blitzcrank traced the caustic runoff to its source. Reasoning that the most efficient means to prevent further pollution was to eliminate the source of said pollution, Blitzcrank proceeded to destroy the factory, their lightning-wreathed fists not stopping until it was reduced to a mound of rubble and twisted iron.
Enraged, the chem-baron who owned the ruined factory descended upon Viktor, demanding that he destroy the golem or pay a steeper price in blood. Viktor was devastated, having come to view Blitzcrank as a living being rather than simply a tool to do his bidding. He concocted a scheme to smuggle his creation to safety, ready to accept the dangers and consequences of doing so—but as he returned to his laboratory to set his plan in motion, he discovered that Blitzcrank was already gone.
Blitzcrank’s evolution beyond the constraints of their original programming had yet to cease. Having grown into full self-sufficiency, they resolved to take up their mission independent from their creator. Rumors abound that the golem has even begun to upgrade their own form as they labor tirelessly to assist and protect Zaunites without pausing for instruction.
They now patrol the undercity, deciding for themselves how best to shepherd Zaun down the path to becoming the greatest city Valoran has ever seen.
Ensemble

Rayla Heide

The plump belly of the Rising Howl looms before me, churning with its endless gears and elaborate ironwork. Some say the Howl is named for the wrought iron wolf that cries atop the apex of the hexdraulic descender; others swear the ghost of a black-veiled gentle-servant haunts the cabin, and when the Howl lifts him away from his lost love in Zaun, the sounds of his moans reverberate and shake its metal core. Many Piltovans, convinced as they are in their own sound judgment, are sure the name refers to nothing more than the cold wind whistling between the crevasses below their city.
But to me the Howl is not a single lone cry. It is an orchestra of noise, a melodic blend of a thousand unique sounds. It is why I am drawn to the machine.
The multi-tiered elevator, supported by three vertical structural beams which span the height of the city, descends to the Promenade level and slows to a lurching halt.
“Disembark for the Promenade!” the conductor announces, her voice magnified by a bell-shaped sonophone. She adjusts her thick goggles as she speaks. “Boundary Markets, College of Techmaturgy, Horticultural Center.”
Passengers pour from the descender. Dozens of others board and spread throughout its floors: merchants traveling to Zaun to trade in the night bazaars, workers returning home to sleep, wealthy Zaunites visiting night blooms in glass-domed cultivairs. Then there are the unseen riders who have made the Howl their home. I spy them scurrying in the shadows: plague rats, shadowhares, and viridian beetles.
Sometimes I climb down the crevasses to descend to the Sump, but tonight I long for the harmony of noise I know the descender will create.
Instead of entering through the doorway, I swing around the outside and lock my grip on the bottommost bar where ridged steel brackets frame the glass windows. My metal plates clank as I clamber onto the Howl, drawing stares from the passengers and what looks like a grimace from the conductor. My knowledge of facial expressions grows each day.
Most passengers ride within the compartment, away from the cold and soot, but outside, in the open air, I can hear the satisfying click-clack of mechanical parts snapping into place and the soft hiss of steam releasing as we sink into Zaun. And besides, I don’t easily fit through most doors.
A small boy clings to his sump-scrapper father’s hand and gapes at me through the window. I wink at him and his mouth opens in what I estimate is surprise. He ducks behind his father.
“Going down!” says the conductor. She rings a large bell and adjusts the dials on a bright red box. I can almost feel the commands buzz as they surge through wires into the descender’s engine.
Below us, the iron pinnacles of Zaun’s towers and green glass cultivairs glitter like candles in the dimming light. The Howl whirs and creaks as its cranks spiral down against the three towering beams, weighted down with iron, steel, and glass. A blast of steam whistles from the topmost pipe.
Inside the cabin, the sump-scrapper and his child look on as a musician tunes his four-stringed chittarone and begins a sonorous melody. His tune synchronizes with the clacking gears and whirring machinery of the Howl. The father taps his foot to the rhythm. A beetle snaps her pincers as she scrambles away from the man’s heavy boot. A gang of chem-punks lean against the wall in soft repose, a pause so unlike their usual frenzied jaunts through the city.
The Howl whirs in its perfect fusion of sounds during our descent. I marvel at the symphony around me and find myself humming along to the deep buzzing tones. The rhythm thrums through me and I wonder if those around me feel it.
“Entresol!” the conductor calls out as the descender slows. A pair of couriers carrying parcels wrapped in twine disembark, along with a crew of chemtech researchers and a crowd of chem-merchants. A merry crowd of Zaunites from the theater district steps aboard.
“Down we go!” she says, ringing her bell, and the Howl responds with a whir. The descender sinks and the windows mist as vapor pours from pipes above. Beads of water spread across my metallic chest as the harmony of clanking machinery and whooshing steam begins anew.
A discordant murmur interrupts the pattern of sounds. The vibration is subtle, but I can tell something is off. The descender continues as if all was normal, until a jarring clunk breaks its perfect rhythm.
Though I have never dreamed, I know a break in the pattern this abrupt is a machine’s most frightening nightmare.
The spiralling gearway is jammed, and the cabin’s iron brackets grate against it with a horrible screech. Many lives are at stake and I feel the machine’s pain as it braces desperately against the support beams. The entire weight of the Howl heaves against its bending columns and the cabin tilts at a lurching angle. Rivets burst from their seams as metal is pulled away from itself.
We wobble for a moment, then drop.
Inside the cabin, passengers scream and grasp at the nearest railing as they plunge. This is a different kind of howl.
I tighten my hold on the cabin’s bottommost platform. I extend my other arm, launching it toward one of the three vertical structural beams. The iron column is slippery in the mist and my grip misses it by inches. I retract my arm and steam blasts from my back as I try again, whizzing it toward a second beam. Another miss.
Time slows. Inside the cabin, the chem-punks cling to a ledge while the viridian beetle flies out an open window. The sump-scrapper and his child brace themselves against the glass, which fractures under their weight. The boy tumbles out, scrabbling at the frame with his fingers before he slips and falls.
I reach up and catch the boy in mid-flight, then retract my arm.
“Hold on,” I say.
The child clings to the plates on my back.
I fire my arm up toward the support beam once more, and this time my hand meets solid metal with a resounding clang as I secure my hold. My other arm is forced to extend as it’s wrenched down by the plunging cabin, so much that I feel my joints might fracture. Suspended in midair, I try to steady my grip.
With a great jolt, my arm jerks as the descender halts its freefall. It shakes from the sudden stop, now supported only by my arm. The boy shudders as he tightens his grip on my back.
The Howl is still fifty feet above the ground, hovering over the Sump-level buildings. My overlapping metal plates groan as they strain against the weight and I concentrate all my efforts on holding myself together. If I fall, the Howl falls with me, along with all its passengers.
While locking my arm onto the support beam, I slide my arm down the pillar. We drop ten feet and the cabin sways precariously before stabilizing again.
“Sorry about that!” I shout. Statements of empathy can be reassuring to humans in moments of crisis.
I must try again. I must be strong.
I release my grip on the support column ever so slightly, and with a piercing screech we gently slide down the remaining forty feet to the ground. My valves sigh as they contract.
Passengers echo my sighs as they stumble through the doors and broken windows into the Sump level, leaning on each other for support.
The boy on my back breathes rapidly as he holds my neck. My arms whir as I retract them and lower myself to the floor, crouching down so the child can touch the ground. He scrambles back to his father, who embraces him.
The conductor emerges from the descender and looks at me.
“You saved us. All of us,” she says, her voice shaking from what I think is shock. “Thank you.”
“I am simply fulfilling my purpose,” I say. “I am glad you are not hurt. Have a good day.”
She smiles, then turns to direct the crowd of Zaunites who have gathered to offer their assistance to the passengers and begin repairs. One of the chem-punk girls carries the musician’s chittarone for him as he crawls from the descender. Several of the theater-folk comfort an elderly man.
Two Hex-mechanics stumble toward me and I direct them to a medical officer who is setting up a tented repair station. The murmurs of the passengers and the hissing groans of the wounded descender blend with the whirrs and churning of the Sump. The steam-engine within my chest murmurs along, and I am moved to whistle a tune.
The boy turns and waves shyly at me.
I wave back.
He runs to catch up with his father, his heavy boots tapping a rhythm on the cobblestones. Shifting wheels sing and gears click-clack within the belly of the Rising Howl. The viridian beetle snaps her pincers in time with the beat as she zooms away into the Sump.
The Bow, and the Kunai

Joey Yu

The air of southern Shon-Xan was rife with raw magic. Mystic power flowed over the land, surging through iridescent trees, which spread skyward their leaves of magenta and indigo, azure and amber, opening up like fans in the palms of dancers.
Hidden now in the colorful canopy was a barely perceptible patch of pale skin, blending in with the trees’ interwoven branches.
“It’ll be here anytime,” whispered Faey, a girl of twelve summers. She then gave a high tweeting sound like a sparrow. The birdsong was immediately picked up by the others, echoing back through the foliage, a sound perfectly imitated by human vocal cords not yet come of age.
Faey knew everyone was in position. The adults hadn’t approved this hunt, but it was important. If the neophytes could get the silver boar, not only would they stop going hungry for days, but the Kinkou acolytes would have to give them real missions.
No more picking plums or carrying water, Faey thought. The order needs our strength, too, because the neophytes are the future.
And the past was dark. Foreign invaders had been rampaging in Ionia for many seasons, and that was only the beginning of the Kinkou’s problems. A few moons ago, Great Master Kusho had been killed, brutally murdered by Zed, a former member of the order. Then Zed’s minions had driven the Kinkou from their main base, the Temple of Thanjuul. Of those who had survived Zed’s attack, many lost faith in the order and left the Kinkou.
The adults needed hope. Faey would make them see it.
She snapped out of her reverie. There was a rustling in the woods. Leaves started falling, and within heartbeats, a large boar burst out from between tree trunks, squealing, its eyes wide. Its fur was rippling with a shimmering glow, a sign that it had just emerged from the spirit realm.
Confident that the plan would work—as long as everyone followed her instructions—Faey readied her bow and arrow, watching the boar come into range.
A neophyte dropped down from a treetop, dangling from a vine wrapped around one foot. She blocked the boar’s path by waving a large wooden spear and casting a modest magical wind. Startled, the boar ran the other direction—but its path was cut off by a boy who swung down on another vine, summoning a small cloud of smoke and ash that blinded the animal. His spear scratched the boar’s hide and made it roar.
One by one, the neophytes descended from the canopy. Their agility, their precision, their focused intent to hunt all hinted at true warrior spirit. Yet the oldest of them was no more than thirteen summers.
We are the neophytes of the Kinkou, Faey thought with pride.
The vine-swinging children sealed off the boar’s escape route, leaving just one opening that ran through the narrowest part of the small gorge, straight toward Faey’s position. She was in charge of the kill.
Good job, everyone. And now it’s my turn. Faey swallowed hard. Hanging upside down, she drew her bow and set the arrow in line.
Focus. The arrow seeks not to slash nor scratch, but to kill in a single attempt. She aligned the gleaming arrowhead with the running boar’s eye. The vine that wrapped around her waist—as if sensing Faey’s intent—shifted gently so her aim stayed true.
Faey emptied her mind, letting instinct take control. When she knew she had the boar, she would let go of—
“Yeeeh!” A small shadow sprang from the side of the gorge, shrieking as it landed on the boar’s back. The panicked animal swung around and charged in the opposite direction.
The rider was a little girl, one hand gripping the boar’s silvery fur and the other swinging a rope over her head, round and round.
Dumbstruck, Faey watched the boar go berserk with the girl bouncing on its back.
“No! Akali!” Faey shouted as her plan fell apart.
Unable to shake the girl off, the boar started smashing its side against tree trunks as it ran. Somehow, Akali avoided the impacts and clung stubbornly to the mad animal, her laughter audible over its angry squeals. She tried to catch the silver boar’s snout with her rope noose, without success.
A few neophytes bravely attempted to block the charging animal, but it knocked them away. The beast went through a side opening of the gorge, out onto flatter ground shadowed by trees.
Finally, the boar kicked up its hind legs in one ferocious leap, and Akali was bucked off. She tumbled onto the forest floor, raising a trail of flying leaves, and ended up lying flat, face down, limbs splayed open.
Faey rushed over to her. “Are you out of your mind?!”
Akali sat up and brushed some leaves off her clothes. She was nine, three summers younger than Faey. “I only wanted to help,” Akali said.
“I told you not to follow us!” Faey yelled. “We had it! We had it!”
Akali shrugged, grimacing as her shoulders cracked. Apologetically, she said, “I’ll give my dinner plum to you.”

After Zed’s attack, the remaining Kinkou retreated to a long-abandoned temple east of Thanjuul, high up in the mountains where glacial water ran. It was beside a lagoon of turquoise water, peppered with purple lantern florae. Although they were near the village of Xuanain, their haven was difficult to access, with its great elevation and surrounding hills.
In their war-torn land, they had to fight off hostile factions, foreign and Ionian, who viewed the mayhem as an opportunity to prey on those they saw as weak. The Kinkou had made sure no pursuers would stumble upon this location before they set up a solid base. The temple was in poor condition, and it was too small to fit them all, so the acolytes had built additional dwellings: huts constructed from fallen wood instead of magically woven from living trees—the usual Ionian way—in case they had to move again.
With the lagoon’s green water lapping against their sandals, the neophytes now stood in a rigid line before Mayym Jhomen Tethi, the Kinkou’s Fist of Shadow.
Faey was nearest to Mayym, eyes downcast. Akali, a head shorter, stood beside her.
“That was foolish,” Mayym said sternly. “You went outside the perimeter, risking the safety of this haven. There could be wandering warbands out there that might follow you back. You know your instructions.”
One of the older boys, Yajiro, said, “But we weren’t out long, and we stayed hidden.”
“We had the perfect plan,” Hisso chimed in, “but it was ruined by Akali! If she hadn’t—”
“No,” Faey said, cutting the girl off. She made herself look Mayym in the eye. “It was… my fault. I told everyone to come along as soon as I realized a silver boar lived in those woods.”
Akali turned to Faey, brown eyes glistening behind a mess of unkempt hair.
Akali had always looked up to her, and sometimes Faey felt the urge to protect the little girl. But there was another reason she had chosen to take the blame: Mayym was her mentor, and it was simply not Faey’s place to question her. It was unusual for a Kinkou leader to take an uninitiated neophyte under their wing. And for that, Faey was grateful.
“It’s the last day of the Spirit Blossom festival,” Faey muttered. “I just thought if we could get a boar, everyone could eat some meat.”
Mayym studied her for a long moment. Then her gaze swept across the other children, whose skinny frames must have looked fragile under tattered hemp clothes. A trace of emotion crossed her brow, but she quickly lifted her chin and said, “As punishment, none of you will receive a meal tonight. Dismissed.”
The neophytes slouched away, a couple of them holding back tears. Faey bit her lip and was about to go when Mayym stopped her.
“Faey, walk with me.”
Under the falling twilight, Mayym paced along the edge of the lagoon with graceful steps, away from the cluster of shabby houses. Faey was about to follow when she saw that Akali had not moved. The little girl was looking at them.
Somehow, in the presence of Faey, Akali’s mother always treated her own daughter like thin air.
Faey felt slightly guilty, but she turned away and ran up to Mayym.
As the two of them walked in silence, Faey gazed at the lantern florae drifting in the lagoon. The purple flowers had five petals that formed a mouth, allowing them to breathe vapors of various shades into the air. Their large leaves let them float on the surface of the water, and their roots were webbed so they could move around the lagoon, gathering together and then dispersing. Some claimed the lantern florae were plants. Others said they were animals. Faey thought they were both.
“I understand what you meant to do,” Mayym said in a tone she used only when alone with Faey—heavy with patience, weighed down by expectation. “But there is nothing to prove.”
“We were hungry to prove ourselves… and also, just hungry.” Faey tried to sound respectful. “The others acted with discipline, the way we’ve been trained. We worked well as a team.” Except Akali, Faey thought. But she’s the youngest.
“That’s not what I mean,” said Mayym. “The silver boar is not an animal whose meat we should consume. If you’d killed it, you would have brought more harm than good.”
“But I thought we were allowed to hunt it,” Faey said.
“Not anymore.” Mayym led Faey to the far side of the lagoon, where the water was shallow, giving way to pearly pebbles. Dressed in a flowing, silky gown, Mayym moved with elegance. She had layers of bandages wrapped around her arms and thighs, with several kunai hanging from her waist.
In Faey’s eyes, Mayym was a true role model. Graceful yet lethal. Shen, Master Kusho’s son, was now the order’s leader, but he was no match.
“A silver boar has ties with the spirit realm,” Mayym continued. “That means its existence is born out of a connection between the two worlds. It’s a magical creature.”
“A lot of Ionia’s creatures are,” said Faey.
“Yes, but the cycle of predator and prey has been broken. We are descending into chaos.”
“Because of Noxus.” She said the name of the foreign invaders like a curse.
“This war is ravaging Ionia. Armies are hunting animals near extinction, trees in mystical forests are being felled, and the spirit realm is reeling,” Mayym said as they stepped onto a rocky slope. “Magical energies turn vile, and the First Lands are changing shades. Everyone is trying to find their place in a world spiraling out of control, and they do this by killing. Most times blindly so. The violence of the war is already causing unintended damage, resulting in a major disturbance of the balance between the material realm and the spirit realm.”
Faey was shocked. If I had killed the boar, I would’ve hurt the balance—and that’s what the Kinkou are supposed to protect! “Master Mayym, how do we restore the balance with the spirit realm? Can we go back to the way it was before, if all the Noxian invaders are dead?”
“It’s no longer as simple as that.”
They passed into a drifting fog, the work of the lantern florae. The air felt moist and cool. The stone slate under their feet was slippery and slightly curved, as if they were walking between a pair of enormous lips. Faey could make out a protruding rock to the side that resembled a nose and, beyond that, cracked folds that could be half-closed eyelids, where small waterfalls trickled through the fissures. We’re walking on a face, Faey thought. It looked like the remains of a giant statue from an ancient era lost to time, though no one could be sure, as water had eroded all its angles and red moss blanketed its sunlit sides.
The sky was turning dark. They came upon an incline and started uphill. “Magic and life are parts of the same current that connects the two realms,” Mayym said.
Faey recited the Kinkou teaching: “The material realm and the spirit realm are two sides of the same leaf, grown on the same branch, sharing the same roots.”
“Yes. One does not flourish without the other, and when one darkens, the other dims,” Mayym said. “When lives perish in unnatural ways, such as in war, some spirits fade into oblivion. But others linger, with noxious intent. The more this happens, the more polluted the spirit realm becomes. And in turn, this causes a backlash that affects all life in the material realm. A vicious circle.”
The mention of spiritual contamination reminded Faey of something strange. “Master Mayym, when we first saw the silver boar, right when it left the spirit realm, it appeared agitated.”
Mayym stopped in her tracks, then turned to look at her.
“Like it was running away from something,” Faey added.
“And this took place near the perimeter?”
“Yes, just on the other side of the western hills.”
Mayym remained thoughtful for a while, then resumed walking. “It could be that the foul current of the war has enveloped Ionia as a whole, reaching us here, even though the battles are taking place elsewhere.”
“We can help,” Faey pleaded. “Initiate us. Grant us real missions.”
“In time,” Mayym replied gently. “Faey, the other neophytes follow you. Even those older than you. They see you as a good role model.”
Faey’s heart leapt at Mayym’s praise.
“You yourself will have no problem getting initiated as an acolyte, but not everyone has your gift,” Mayym said quietly. “Your presence with the other neophytes serves as a good influence on them. So for now, stay that way.”
Faey’s mood sank, and she bit down on the inside of her cheek. It must be Akali. She’s the one holding me back.
They passed through loose thickets, stepping onto higher ground. “Patience is a virtue, but also a skill that requires honing as much as an arrowhead, especially for one who bests all the rest,” Mayym told her. “You neophytes are the future of the Kinkou. We need to make sure all of you are ready before any of you can be initiated.”
Faey disagreed, but said nothing.
They left the cover of the trees, cresting the last hill untouched by snow. Around the moon, a bright ring of sapphirine silver graced the night sky. Faey gazed at it, knowing she was witnessing the near-convergence of the physical moon and its reflection in the spirit realm. She wondered what it looked like to Mayym.
On this final night of the Spirit Blossom festival in Xuanain, Mayym and other senior Kinkou would see something vastly different on the black canvas of the sky: the circle of pale illumination partially covered by a darker shade, like someone had thrown a thick veil over it, as the mystic moon in the spirit realm swam before the silvery moon in the material realm.
Faey longed for the day when she could experience such a spectacle—it seemed so far away. But she knew it was more than just a beautiful display. It also signified when the triumvirate of the Kinkou would meet and decide what came next for the order.
“Faey, keep growing your skill,” Mayym said, moonlight lining the edge of her silhouette in frosty silver, “and you are bound to succeed me as the Fist of Shadow.”
When that day comes, Faey thought uneasily, will there still be a Kinkou Order?

The art of calligraphy required patience and diligence, stillness of the body and keen focus of the mind—everything that Akali hated.
Sitting in the old temple, she was writing characters on a piece of paper with a broad brush, the inkstick and inkstone by her elbow. The roof was made of hoary branches, and some of them had draped down like the beard of an old man. Light-blooms, tiny luminous plants that the acolytes had grown, hung in strings along the temple walls, lending light to Akali’s nightly lesson. The acolyte instructor sat idly to the side with a scroll on his lap, stifling a yawn.
This is as easy as eating rice pudding, Akali thought. Mother’ll be happy if I do well.
Yet, the more she stared at a character that ended with a curved stroke, the more she thought it looked like a mustache. Mesmerized, Akali couldn’t help but add a few streaks with the tapered tip of her brush. The character turned into a smirking, mustached face.
Akali puffed out a laugh, then quickly covered her mouth with her hands, smudging her cheek. The instructor scowled and was about to stand up, when a voice called from the door.
“Hello, little one.” A small figure waved a clawed hand at her.
“Kennen, you’re back!” Akali bounded to her feet. She dropped the brush, smearing wet, black ink on the paper, and ran out.
The instructor barked at her to return, but stopped short when he saw that the person at the door was indeed Kennen, the Kinkou’s Heart of the Tempest.
Kennen flipped away so Akali could try to catch him, even though it was impossible. They ran between the huts, through the edge of the woods and back, splashing water by the lagoon’s shore. Akali ended up wheezing next to the yordle on a fallen tree trunk.
“I heard that you thwarted the neophytes’ effort to get the silver boar,” Kennen said teasingly, straddling the trunk.
“I didn’t mean to. Faey should have asked me to come along. I can help!”
“Don’t feel bad about it. Children are like that. They probably thought you were too young.” Kennen’s voice was that of a human child, yet his tone was laced with wisdom.
“But I’m taller than you!”
“That you are.” Kennen reached up and tousled her hair.
“Where’s Shen?” Akali asked, absently touching the small kunai she wore as a pendant.
“He’s meditating.”
“Is he still sad? I miss him…” Akali had always admired Shen.
Kennen smiled wistfully. “The betrayal by his best friend and… the loss of his father… weigh heavy on him.”
Akali was reminded of her own father’s death in Zed’s attack. She missed him, too.
Kennen changed the subject. “How have you been doing? Has Mayym been teaching you how to wield the kunai?”
Akali shook her head, now covering the kunai pendant with her hand. “Mother never thinks I’m good enough,” she mumbled. “She only wants to spend time with Faey.”
“Well, I guess Mayym can only teach one protégé at a time.”
“Why can’t I be her protégé?” A sore feeling gripped Akali’s heart.
Kennen gazed at her for a moment, then slid closer to her on the tree trunk. “Before Mayym became the Fist of Shadow, she went on many missions with Faey’s mother. They worked closely as a team.”
“I know that.”
“It’s not that Mayym tries to ignore you. When you were a baby, she made a promise to take care of Faey.”
Akali had no memory of Faey’s parents. They were both senior acolytes who died long ago. Now she thought about what that meant as Kennen waited patiently beside her.
If losing her father had made her sad, Faey must have endured double the pain, for many more seasons. Akali’s anger subsided, and she felt an emotion that she could not comprehend. Her chest tightened.
Everyone had lost so much. This haven by the lagoon temple was all they had.
The yordle hopped in front of Akali, startling her. “Hey, it’ll be all right.” Kennen cupped her face in his hands. “You grow fast, and you can run faster than all the other neophytes. Your mother will see it one day.”
He rubbed his nose against hers, making Akali giggle. Then Kennen somersaulted nimbly away.
“There’s a meeting I need to go to now,” he said. “Go back and finish your calligraphy lesson, okay?”

Low clouds were rolling just beyond the mountain’s summit, where basalt peaks held a glacier in their embrace. A colossal impact crater had sunk the glacier’s surface, and Faey imagined that a giant’s fist had punched it.
There, she watched as Mayym and Kennen stood face to face, at a rift that severed the crater in two.
“Given the Ionian victory at the Placidium of Navori,” Mayym argued, “a tipping point in the war against Noxus could be in sight.” Her arms were folded in front of her chest, her phantom scythe lashed to her back. “There are many whose actions are disrupting the sacred balance, Noxians and Ionians. The Kinkou should be there to prune them out, while Ionia has the upper hand.” As the Fist of Shadow, Mayym represented Pruning the Tree—the elimination of imbalance between the material realm and the spirit realm.
“We’re just regaining our footing, and you want us to dive into battle now?” said the diminutive yordle.
“Fighting to uphold our duty as keepers of balance is the way we get back on our feet,” Mayym said. “The moment is at hand.”
Kennen looked incredulously at her. He was the Heart of the Tempest, and his duty was Coursing the Sun—whatever judgment was reached here, he would have to convey it to all Kinkou members across Ionia.
Faey stood a distance away from them, respectfully observing and trying not to fidget on the chilly mountaintop. As part of her training, Mayym brought her to important meetings. Faey’s lips were trembling, and she imagined them turning purple. She couldn’t understand how everyone else could be ignoring the piercing cold.
She also could not understand the difference in Mayym’s demeanor. When it came to her protégé, Mayym often urged restraint, but when it came to her equals, Mayym constantly seemed to push for action.
“We want to sit this one out,” Kennen said. “The situation is complicated: there are Noxian soldiers under threat, Ionian defenders who were bitter enemies just yesterday, vastaya of uncertain allegiance, and spies everywhere. I’ve seen it with my own eyes.”
“You went to the Placidium? Undetected?”
“What, you thought I lost my touch?” He smiled, and lightning crackled around his eyes and claws. Then his tone turned grim. “On my way back, I picked up accounts that members of a Navori Brotherhood faction are headed this way, and not with peaceful intent. They’ve marked themselves with tiger tattoos.”
Mayym frowned. “What are they doing?”
“Going from village to village, snatching the young and able,” replied Kennen. “Using violence against anyone who dares object.”
“So they can replenish their forces against the Noxian invaders…”
“Exactly. The darkness of the war has spread over Ionia in unprecedented ways,” Kennen said. “Before we know it, it’ll be at our door. We must pick our battles carefully.”
Mayym shook her head. “The Noxian invasion of Ionia is the root cause of the imbalance. The mounting deaths. The reason why the spirit realm is disturbed. If we are to uphold our role as guardians of the Kinkou’s mission, we must go to Navori.”
“We should not act rashly.”
“Says one who just sneaked in and out of the enemy line.”
“I did that so none of you have to!” Kennen snapped.
There was a moment when the air seemed to freeze between them, and Faey held her breath, unblinking.
The moment passed, and Mayym looked to the side. “Perhaps the Eye of Twilight has something to say?”
And there, just a few strides upslope, perched atop a stone pillar, was a silent figure. He wore a jacket cut short at the sleeves, tucked into a pair of weather-beaten trousers. Fastened upon his torso and limbs were leather plates, metal bands, and silken wraps. He had two swords crossed on his back, one of steel, the other arcane. He was not wearing his usual mask, but his features were nonetheless hidden in the shadow of his hood, shielded from the moonlight.
Shen, Faey thought gloomily. Our leader who is always indecisive.
“It’s true that the balance is being harmed by the violence of the war, which is inflamed by Ionians as well,” said Shen, his voice hoarse, “not the least of whom are Zed and his order.”
“Precisely. We must act against them,” Mayym urged.
“And yet…” Shen’s hooded head rose slightly. “As my every instinct tells me to pour all our strength against Zed’s, I begin to fear that I can’t be impartial. I fear that…” He hesitated for a moment. “Those rallying around Zed are serving the balance in their own way, fighting against invaders who are devastating Ionia. We must give this question more consideration.”
Kennen shrugged. “As I said, complicated times.”
“I need to distance myself from my emotions, so I may decide free of prejudice,” Shen concluded.
Faey saw Mayym let out a misty, pale breath as she sighed.
“Our order needs an Eye of Twilight who leads,” Mayym said ruefully.
If Shen took offense, he showed no sign. After all, he had been the Kinkou’s leader for only a short time, while Mayym had been part of the triumvirate for countless seasons.
If Master Kusho were alive, he would be so ashamed of us. Faey looked up, trying to distract herself from the cold. Aside from a few wisps of cloud, the sky sparkled with stars.
A realization came to Faey: Shen’s duty as the Eye of Twilight… Watching the Stars meant neutral observation, to become thoroughly informed before passing judgment.
All Kinkou acolytes had to study three disciplines before they chose one as their path. Watching the Stars, Coursing the Sun, and Pruning the Tree—the disciplines had overlapping areas, and one’s existence would hold no meaning without its relation to the other two. It was clear to Faey that when debating the Kinkou’s future, each member of the triumvirate had followed their respective role: Kennen mindful of conveying wrong judgments, Mayym urging action to address the imbalance, and Shen…
The easiest job to do, isn’t it? To just observe everything and do nothing. Watching the Stars.
Indeed, some time had passed, and Shen never spoke another word. He just sat there, head down, as if his mind were not even present.
From the way they addressed the matters at hand today, Faey felt this Meeting of the Triad had turned out meaningless.
After Shen left, the rest of them began walking downhill.
“I sympathize with Shen. He and I both lost someone we held dear during Zed’s attack,” Mayym said. “But a time like this calls for stronger leadership… Perhaps we should not expect him to be as great as his father.” She spoke evenly, but Faey could hear frustration simmering under the words. “One should not rely on kinship when it comes to succession.”
“I wouldn’t say that,” Kennen replied lightly. Because he was so fast, he had to hike in circles so he could walk alongside Mayym. “Sometimes potential does pass down through blood. Look at yourself.”
“What do you mean?” Mayym asked, frowning.
Kennen glanced at Faey, who was trailing behind them, and shrugged. “Nothing.”

When Faey came back to the lagoon, the whole haven was asleep save for the acolytes standing watch.
She gingerly approached the hut she shared with a few other neophytes. There she saw Akali sitting alone on the stone slabs in front of the dwelling. The little girl was wearing her night garment. She loved calling it a shiipo, which was a florid cloak worn by children during festivals. In truth, it was just a rough-spun robe made of beige-colored yarn, given to her by her father, Tahno, another victim of Zed’s rebellion.
“What are you doing here?” Faey called out in a low voice.
Akali sat upright, happy to see Faey’s return. The little girl produced a piece of dried fruit from inside her pocket. “I want to give you this.”
“A plum?” Faey took it with wonder. “How? I thought we didn’t get dinner tonight.”
“It’s from a few days ago.”
Faey’s eyes widened. “You’ve been storing food?”
Akali shrugged, looking guilty, but made no reply. Her shoulders were shaking.
She is afraid, Faey realized, looking down at the dried fruit. Why?
“I want to keep some food,” Akali said. “Maybe we’ll need it someday. You know… if… if bad people come again.”
She’s afraid that enemies might show up any moment, and we’ll be on the run without food…
“I don’t want anything to tear our family apart,” Akali said. “I don’t want us to lose anyone anymore.”
Tears suddenly welled up in Faey’s eyes, but she held them firmly in check. She lost her parents to the order’s missions long ago, and vowed never to cry again after countless nights of sobbing. But she felt for Akali. In a way, they were truly like siblings, for Akali’s mother spent much more time with Faey than with her own daughter.
Faey bit off half the plum and handed the rest back. “You eat this.”
An anger unfamiliar to Faey was boiling inside her. She could not comprehend why everything had happened. If the Kinkou Order played such an important role to Ionia—as the teachings said—why did they have to suffer like this?
“You should go to sleep.” She ruffled Akali’s hair, and gave her a long hug, never letting a tear escape from the corner of her eye.

As the days passed, Faey earnestly practiced her archery. She was frustrated—about Shen, about Mayym’s refusal to make her an acolyte, about how powerless she was to help, about everything.
Working with her bow was the only thing that made sense. When she wasn’t being trained in stealth, studying, or doing chores, Faey was spending almost all her time in the small archery range built by the acolytes.
Mayym had gone on one of her missions. Kennen presided over the defense and maintenance of the lagoon haven, but Faey often caught him playing with Akali, racing and jumping and throwing blunt shuriken with the giggling little girl.
One day, Hisso came to Faey during her meditative archery exercise. “We’re going to play Ghost in the Woods at the southern valley. Come join us,” she said.
“The southern valley?” Faey took her eyes off the practice target, lowering her bow. “Mayym wouldn’t like that.”
The valley was wide and full of plant life, marked by loose boulders and abandoned stone walls. It was dangerous terrain, and the villagers of Xuanain had warned the Kinkou that there had been a few major landslides over the decades.
“Well, that’s why we do it when Mayym isn’t around,” Hisso told her. “You know it’s the most exciting place for the game. C’mon, the others are all there.”
Faey was hesitant, but she said, “Fine. I need to finish another set. I’ll find you there later.”
When the neophyte left, Faey drew a deep breath and stabilized her torso. She repositioned her feet and held her asymmetrical bow a few handspans from the bottom to ensure the most force.
For a Kinkou warrior-to-be, the mastery of a type of weaponry required two tracks of experience, the meditative and the combat-practical—the neio and the neiyar. Trained to become an archer, Faey had been practicing neio and neiyar with her bow since she was five summers old.
Of course, given that she had never faced a real enemy keen on taking her life, the neiyar centered around animal hunting and dueling against her trainers. Most times, she was instructed to stay in the archery range practicing her meditative neio, which she had resented because boredom always crept in after just a few shots.
But not these days. She needed to practice neio to feel calm.
“When you hold a lethal weapon in your hands, the first thing it sharpens is your mind,” Mayym had taught her. “Quiet your thoughts, and focus on your every move.”
Yet as Faey raised both arms above her head in a refined manner, confusion raged like a maelstrom.
Why couldn’t we beat Zed? She pushed out her bow arm.
Why does it have to be Shen who leads us? She contracted her back muscles, drawing open the bow with the string.
What truly happened in the temple that day when Master Kusho died? The adults never spoke of it. Do they even know? She paused at full draw, a moment of utmost concentration when an archer should sense the true spirit of the martial art. But all she could feel now was sizzling fury.
The pause lasted no more than half a breath before she released the string. The arrow hit the edge of the target with a weak thump.
Faey sighed, shoulders drooping.
We are the guardians of two realms, yet we do nothing when the realms need us. We just watch the stars.
She closed her eyes, trying to clear her mind by running two fingers along the bow, and then the arrow.
“When you hold these weapons,” Mayym had said, “you are entrusted with a tradition passed down through generations of archer-warriors, in an unbroken line of sacred practice.”
Faey inhaled slowly, forcing herself to think on her bow’s design. It was asymmetrical because, long ago, Kinkou archers had learned that a longer top section made the bow more durable, while a shorter bottom allowed for stealthier movement in regions with dense wild growth. Faey was among the most recent generation to benefit from this wisdom.
Generations of archer-warriors. An unbroken line of sacred practice.
Humbled, Faey opened her eyes and walked toward the target. She paused just three and a half paces away from it, so close that a miss wouldn’t be possible. That way, she could direct all her attention to her movement, ensuring refinement and elegance.
Combat is communication, a voice rang in her mind. It is always about the dialogue.
It was the voice of Master Kusho, from a time when he spoke warmly to Faey and the other children. A time that seemed… so long ago.
The art of practical combat would prepare a warrior against external enemies, with spilled blood calligraphing the dialogue of conflict. Yet, only by contemplative performance would a warrior train her mind against the enemy within.
A dialogue with a hundred you.
Faey raised her arms and calmly let them fall, drawing open the bow again. She paused as a timeless vortex claimed her consciousness.
When thoughts hushed, the dialogue of the soul began.
The next time she blinked, the arrow had lodged in the dead center of the target.
She took another arrow from her quiver, and then another, each shot more graceful than the last, her form a distilled purity.
As she did so, new thoughts drifted through her mind.
Maybe the adults don’t know everything.
Maybe they are as confused as I am.
Maybe it doesn’t matter who is leading us, as long as we stick together as a family.
Maybe… there isn’t anything I can do to help restore the balance right now. Faey let go of her last arrow. And maybe that’s okay…
She maintained her posture a while longer. The churning emotions had dissipated, bringing to light a mind as tranquil as the early morning lagoon. This was a sense of peace she had rarely felt.
The sun was at its zenith when she started toward the southern valley. Some of the acolytes were conducting their own meditative martial practice by the edge of the forest as Faey passed by, and suddenly she understood what they were doing a little more.
Then she followed the meandering pathway to the neophytes’ playground. It was not a short hike. Faey had decided that she did not feel like participating in the game today, yet she needed to tell the others so they wouldn’t wait for her until dusk.
Strangely, when Faey arrived at the fringe of the valley, the neophytes were not there.
She strained her ears, but she heard no clamor, nor any rustling among the bushes. The only sounds were the buzzing of cicadas and the occasional breeze.
Something’s not right.
Faey unslung her bow and took out an arrow as she ventured down the valley. Possibly uninhabited by humans for centuries, this side of the mountain had been taken over by wild growth of vegetation. Bits of broken stone walls could be glimpsed where vines and leaves had not yet claimed them.
As she continued her search, some of the greenery parted for her, giving way to her nervous steps.
A whistle startled her—then she saw that it came from behind one of the stony ruins. A neophyte poked his head out, beckoning to her and signaling for silence.
Faey crouched low and swiftly moved over, surprised to see that a bunch of the neophytes were huddled here, all looking grim. She found Akali, too, standing under a large broad-leaved tree, uncharacteristically silent.
One of the older boys gravely pointed a finger downhill.
Then Faey saw it, too. Still a good distance away, a group of at least twenty warriors had come into the valley. They had tiger tattoos on their chests and arms, and Faey immediately understood what that meant.
It was the Navori Brotherhood.

“What do we do now?”
The neophytes had gathered around Faey. “We need to warn the adults,” said Xenn, a younger boy.
Omi suggested fighting the intruders, but he was rebuffed by doubtful stares from the others. Except for Faey, they hadn’t brought their weapons, and when you had ten neophytes against twenty mean-looking thugs, the odds were obvious.
Alerting the acolytes seemed like their only option, but Faey hesitated.
“What are we waiting for?” Xenn asked. “Let’s head back now.”
“Wait…” Faey said. “We can’t do that.” Everyone’s gaze fell on her, wondering what she meant. Faey stared at the warriors, who were advancing slowly. If the acolytes show up, people will die. That will damage the balance even more.
Not to mention, the thought of losing even one more of her Kinkou family was unbearable.
Faey scanned the area and made up her mind. “We need to stop them, here and now.”
“What? How?” asked Akali, brown eyes wide.
“By making them decide not to go any farther,” Faey said. “I know why they’re here: to capture people and force them to fight against the foreign invaders. So, if they realize there’s no one to be found, they will leave.”
“How do we do that? Walk down and tell them?” Yajiro said.
“No, of course not.” Faey frowned. “Remember the hunting game we played to ambush the silver boar?” Everyone nodded. “We do it again. Except this time, we never show ourselves. We make the sound of grey owls.”
“Bad omen,” Omi said.
“Yes,” Faey said. “These are Ionians—they’ll know the sound means this region is cursed with foul magic, and no village could possibly thrive here.”
“But they are Ionian,” a girl named Isa said dubiously. “They might be able to see through it.”
“Well, I guess we’ll find out.” Faey looked at them one by one. “If someone gets caught, don’t point to the lagoon. Just say you’re lost. They will leave us alone, because they’re not looking for children.” This was half a lie.
They all nodded nervously.
“All right, let’s spread out. Take the vines and hide up in the trees.”
Akali was about to move, when Faey touched her shoulder.
“Akali, stay on the ground. I have a very important job for you. I know you can do it better than anyone.” The little girl paused, looking surprised. Faey continued, “But first, I need you to promise me that you won’t run around and upset our plan this time.”
Akali nodded eagerly. “I promise.”
“If our plan fails—if you see the Brotherhood still coming in strong after we make the owl calls, like they don’t even care, you run as fast as you can and tell the adults.” Faey held her bow tighter. And if that happens, I will cover you. “Now, hide somewhere at the far end and watch what’s happening. Save your strength in case you need it.”
“Okay.” Akali was trembling, but her eyes also glistened with excitement.
Faey saw that everyone else had loosely formed a wide bowl flanking the path that the intruders would pass through. Then she was on the move herself.
On the eastern side of the valley, a hillock of large boulders would provide an unobstructed view of the area. That would be her vantage point.
If anything went wrong, she would be the one making the kill.

One by one, the Kinkou neophytes tied long, sturdy vines around themselves. The vines responded by lifting them up to the knots on the tree trunks, making their climb swift and secure.
Faey circled to the shadowed side of the hillock, where the larger boulders would block her from the intruders’ sight. She ascended the incline, anxiously yet briskly, until she finally reached the highest point—a sizable slab perfect for monitoring the valley.
She looked for Akali, but could not find her.
Good, she thought. Lying prone on the slab, she directed her attention to the intruders. They were almost where she wanted them, making so much noise cutting up brambles, briars, long grasses, and whatever else got in their way that Faey was certain no one would notice if she kicked a rock downslope. The war must have changed them. Like the foreign invaders, they hold no respect for nature. They’ve forgotten what it means to be Ionian.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw that Omi was still on the ground.
What is he doing? She stared at him and made a gesture for him to hasten.
He was panicking, struggling to tie a limp vine around his waist as the first of the warriors trudged up a fallen trunk just ten paces away. Oddly, none of the vines on that particular tree were helpful, so Omi decided to climb barehanded.
Faey was appalled, but she remembered her contingency plan. She quickly nocked an arrow on her bow.
The intruders kept slashing violently at bushes and shrubs with their polearms, making a path for themselves. The rest of the valley remained ominously quiet, so their curses flowed straight to Faey’s ears, loud and clear.
Finally, Omi got up the tree and disappeared. Faey let out a breath she didn’t know she had been holding. She then inhaled deeply.
With a single, powerful exhale, Faey released a high-pitched screech that pierced the pristine air.
A few of the warriors stopped in their tracks.
Faey screeched again, and the valley came alive with echoes from every direction.
Now all of the intruders stopped, tensely surveying their surroundings. They started arguing.
“This is a haunted place. I hear grey owls.”
“I told you there’s nothing to be found here!”
The menacing-looking ones at the front walked forward, undeterred. Yet, part of the gang still hesitated. The Kinkou neophytes tried to help them make up their minds with another round of omen-filled screeches.
Even the trees let out audible sighs, waving their leaves and contorted branches, working with the neophytes in a cacophony of dread. Some of the warriors started backing off.
It’s working! Faey almost couldn’t believe it.
The gang’s leader ordered a retreat. “This place is foul. Let’s get out of here.” But as they departed, a few of them angrily swung their crescent blades and severed some branches that were eerily approaching.
A long, crooked bough snapped down and hit one of the thugs in the face. They all turned their backs and ran.
Faey held her position on the rock, not letting joy overtake her senses. The other neophytes were also quiet, likely waiting until it was safe to emerge.
When enough time had passed, Faey sprang upright. “We did it!”
Her call met no reply. There was silence for a long moment, punctuated by snapping sounds.
“Hello?” The valley looked a shade darker, even though the sun was still at its apex.
Something dropped down from the canopy and jerked to a stop in midair. It was Isa—her eyes wide with terror, her arms cinched at the waist by twisting vines. The end of one was gagging her.
Several more children fell through the leaves and were suspended the same way. Two neophytes plunged directly to the ground, their impact cushioned by bushes. They were also bound by vines, struggling to free themselves without avail.
Before Faey could comprehend what was happening, the valley came alive—large tree trunks twisted fiercely, entwining into a gargantuan entity. Shrubs and bushes uprooted themselves and crawled onto it like patched skin, taking with them packed soil and rubble that created muscles. Dark vines slithered up to form latticework over the creature, like nets of pulsing veins.
The monstrous thing had four arms, and the center of its “chest” was a broken tree trunk, hollow and rotten, like an empty eye socket or a gaping mouth. At least three children were half buried in its grotesque torso, held in place by bizarrely twitching branches.
A corrupted spirit. Faey froze on the stone slab.
The Kinkou had heard that such things were happening in other parts of Ionia, a side effect of the brutal war against Noxus. No one ever thought it would happen here.
The Navori Brotherhood must have contaminated the balance, and dark forces in the spirit realm were seeping through the divide, tainting the southern valley.
Faey opened her waist pouch, which held magical dust for repelling evil spirits. This would be the first time she had used it in practical combat. And her friends’ lives were at stake. She calmed her mind and applied the dust to her arrowheads.
Neio had fortified her with mental strength, and now she had to trust that her muscle memory would awaken from the neiyar training she had painstakingly endured.
Omi had escaped the vines and was stumbling across the shaky ground. As he ran, one of the monster’s arms extended toward him, tentacles of flora opening up like a writhing web. Faey loosed an arrow, and it struck that arm a moment before it could catch him. Golden rays blazed from the wound, and the monster reared. The limb disintegrated into dead leaves and twigs and dust.
“Go! Get the acolytes!” Faey shouted at Omi. He fled the valley without looking back.
Faey could hear her heartbeat pulsing against her ears. She knew that no matter how fast Omi ran, the quickest possible arrival for any acolyte would be a quarter of an hour. She had in her quiver only thirteen arrows.
How do I hold this thing off?
The monster’s broken limb had re-formed, its body growing larger by the moment as waves of vegetation rushed onto it, drawn by an unseen force.
Faey shot another arrow and, before it landed, drew and released again. The two arrows sank into the monster, and a blinding golden light spilled from its torso, which snapped open as layers of rotten, tissue-like branches parted. The ensnared children dropped to the ground, free from their prison.
The neophytes tried to help each other escape, tearing at vines and brambles sticky with dark resin. With a shocking rumble, the monster’s innards exploded, spraying countless fast-growing limbs in all directions like a fountain of animated timber.
Most of the neophytes dodged the wooden claws, yet two of them—Isa and Taij—were caught, wailing as they were dragged toward the monster’s mended maw.
Faey’s next few shots could provide cover fire for the five unfettered neophytes to flee, or she could try to save Isa and Taij.
What do I do? A moment of hesitation, and Xenn was snared. The rest scattered, howling in panic.
“Leave! Run back to the haven, everyone!” Faey saved Xenn with an arrow shot. Then she began firing at the flora tentacles that were coming for the runaway neophytes. She knew she would lose Isa and Taij, who were almost swallowed by the monster’s jagged, hollowed-out mouth. She ground her teeth and looked away.
Then she saw Akali.
Amid the madness of running children, flying timber, falling leaves, and blooming plants of evil shades, the little girl was running toward the monster.
Faey watched in disbelief, suddenly unsure where to aim.
“Haaheeyy!” Akali’s voice echoed in the valley. She dashed under a whip made of animated vines, then vaulted over sweeping tree trunks.
Something dawned on Faey—dangerous moments had passed, and Akali had not been caught. Somehow, she was evading all attempts at capture, ducking and rolling away from deformed claws. The evil spirit had turned its attention to Akali, forgetting that Isa and Taij were dangling right by its mouth.
“Akali, you fool! Flee!” Faey screamed. Yet, even as she condemned Akali’s folly, Faey had moved away from the stone slab, nocking another arrow on her bow.
She knew what she must do.

Akali was terrified. Huge, arched boughs fell from the sky and landed all around her. Yet she kept running.
She had made a promise not to intrude on Faey’s attempt at scaring away the big bad warriors. She did not foil that plan. But Faey never said anything about a gigantic, ugly tree spirit going mad. Now Akali followed her instinct—to get the other kids out.
She found Hisso entangled by a net of brambles. As she tried to pull her out, the sky dimmed, and Akali gasped. A colossal palm made of wriggling branches was coming down, threatening to crush them. But then an arrow pierced the hand, setting it ablaze in golden sparks.
Amid a falling blanket of wilted leaves, Akali dragged Hisso to safety. She saw that Faey was hopping down the rocky slope far way, another arrow at the ready. Then Akali glimpsed an older neophyte, Yajiro, sitting amid a pile of broken logs, crying his heart out.
Akali ran to him—eluding the monster’s angry jabs—and kicked him in the butt. “You! Get out of here!” She shoved him forward.
She knew something had changed. The monster was redirecting all its writhing limbs to get her. So as long as she kept running, the other children would be safe.
As Akali sprang and dove and ducked and rolled, she grew confident that she had gotten the hang of this game. Part of her—the part that wasn’t terrified—wanted to giggle. The monster was slow. If Kennen were here, he could be eating a bowl of noodles while dodging the attacks.
More of Faey’s arrows arced overhead, striking the monster and momentarily disintegrating its limbs. Isa and Taij dropped to the ground: two vine-wrapped, sobbing bundles.
Akali headed toward them, excited that she and Faey were working together so well. She could do this all day.
Now Faey will include me on all the missions. Mother will be pleased!
Then the valley began to tremble more ferociously than before. Large, malicious roots churned the earth, whipping up like nasty serpents, releasing foul vapors that made Akali’s nose wrinkle. A wall of dizzying, thrashing wood encircled her, sealing her way out.
Uh-oh.

Faey hopped down from boulder to boulder, adjusting her line of sight so she could maintain a clear view of Akali. As the evil spirit chased the little girl, Faey’s arrows cleared any incoming danger for her.
Their fortuitous partnership had opened a window of opportunity for the other neophytes, and those who could raced out of the valley.
But any moment, things could go wrong. Faey had only three arrows left.
“Akali, you must leave now!” Faey shouted as loud as she could.
The rocks under Faey’s feet shuddered as if the earth was contracting in a spasm. A few heartbeats later, she saw Akali encased in a dome of vicious roots.
The stony slope broke apart around Faey, and the large slab at the top came crashing down. Faey jumped between boulders to avoid it. As she did so, she let fly an arrow that tore a hole into the side of Akali’s prison, then another one to block the giant fist that was coming for the escaping girl.
But before Faey could draw her last arrow or make another move, the whole slope washed over her in an avalanche.
An ear-splitting boom. The crash of rockfall. She screamed as rubble struck her like fists, followed by a devastating pain that seared through her core.
When the rockslide subsided, Faey was left shivering amid blood-stained boulders, the dense taste of iron in her mouth. The burning sensation intensified. She could barely open her eyes, but what she glimpsed made no sense.
Her bow had snapped. And where her right leg used to be, dark crimson pulp remained, leaving smears of wetness on rocks and grass.
She buried her face in the ground, and then consciousness dimmed.

Akali dragged Isa and Taij by their feet over the undulating valley floor—there had been no time to untie them. The monster had grown more heinous, but Akali was not about to give in.
“I don’t want to lose anybody ever again, you hear me?” she shouted, as much to Isa and Taij as to herself. “I want us all to stay together, forever!”
The corrupted forest spirit—a massive, misshapen heap of horrendous things—chased after her, tearing the valley apart.
“Faey!” Akali saw the unconscious girl lying amid scattered boulders just ahead. Oh no, now I need to drag three people out. She set her teeth and plowed through the churning ground, arriving at her friend.
“Faey, get up! We need—”
Words caught in her throat as her eyes fell on Faey’s lower body. Akali dropped the two neophytes, who were yelling wildly at something.
“Faey…” Akali froze, all thoughts blank.
Then she turned around to see what Isa and Taij were screaming about. It was the angry tree spirit, towering over them all.
No weapons at hand. Three friends helpless. Akali looked at the monster with an empty gaze, her hand clasping the small kunai pendant.
A gnarled limb swung toward her. Before she could make a move, a barrage of kunai rained down on the giant’s fist. Lights flared. Timbers flew. Akali never thought the monster could howl, but it did now, furious roars from its hollow core.
A shadow landed on its ruptured arm.
Mother! Akali’s eyes went wide.
Mayym sprinted along the shattering bridge of splinters. The corrupted spirit tried to smash her with two other arms, but she flipped through the air in a graceful, lethal arc, simultaneously flinging more kunai with a back-flick of her hands. The giant’s limbs exploded under the enchanted darts, splashing the air with soulless remnants as Mayym landed nimbly on top of the spirit’s crown.
All around Akali, the air crackled with thunder. Arcs of purple lightning appeared, constricting in waves of reversing ripples, centering on the monster. In the blink of an eye, the giant was severed at the waist.
The evil spirit re-formed its body, but Kennen was there, assaulting it with a rush of lightning bolts. Above him, Mayym raised high her phantom scythe and—with one clean swing—clove open the monster from top to bowel.
The southern valley quieted.
Akali was awestruck. Just like that, the monster was gone, leaving behind only piles of decayed, oozing plants. Yet some of the nearby twigs began to wriggle weakly…
“It is not over yet.”
Akali glanced over her shoulder and saw the speaker. The masked figure calmly walked forward, drawing from his back a blade that glowed with a mesmerizing aura of arcane energy. Mayym and Kennen parted to allow him to pass.
“Shen!” Akali rejoiced at seeing him.
Before Zed’s attack, Shen would read stories to her about the Ionian heroes of old. Yet in Akali’s eyes, Shen was the real hero, and she dreamed of helping him when she grew up, like how her mother had assisted Master Kusho.
The new leader of the Kinkou Order ascended the remains of the monster, just a mound now. A shimmering fissure appeared at the top, contorting reality for a heartbeat before Shen disappeared into it.
“Where did he go?” Akali asked.
“To the spirit realm.” Kennen landed beside her with a backflip. “That twisted thing could keep reconstructing its material body as long as the corrupted spirit resides in the other realm. Shen is going to take care of the source.”
As Mayym walked toward the neophytes, Akali’s heart sank again as she remembered what had happened to Faey.
Expressionless, Mayym knelt beside the unconscious girl.

It hurts… so much…
Faey woke up to find herself on a pallet inside a hut. Akali was sleeping beside her, curled into a ball. It was day, the time uncertain, and murmurs of conversation could be heard outside.
Faey tried to sit up, and then she saw that her right leg was bandaged, missing below the knee. For long moments, she thought she was in a bad dream. She sensed that a devastating anguish inside her was trying to claw its way out, caged only by her disbelief.
A quiet sob escaped her throat.
“Master Mayym, we know what we saw!” A child’s voice flowed into the hut, faint and distant, sounding like Taij. “She pulled us to safety. All by herself.”
Faey looked out the window. She saw Mayym standing in front of the old temple and listening to the other neophytes, her arms folded.
“And she was fast,” Isa told Mayym. “The spirit couldn’t even catch her!”
Faey struggled to change her sitting position. A pain shot through her thigh and she nearly collapsed.
“Faey.” Akali sat up, rubbing her eyes.
Faey paused, then whispered, “Why did you have to go into the fray?” She clutched the edge of her blanket, head down, voice low, madly trying to breathe slowly so no more sobs would escape. “Why didn’t you leave when I told you to?”
“Faey…” Akali tried to give her a pat on the arm.
“Do not touch me!” Faey shouted. “This is all your fault!”
Akali backed away, eyes wide.
“Leave me alone,” Faey hissed. All the venom inside her was now flowing freely. Then she saw Akali’s face—the girl was genuinely confused and hurt.
Faey hesitated, but before she could say another word, the little girl had headed toward the hut’s entrance, where Mayym now stood, watching them.
With Akali gone, Mayym stepped in and knelt beside the pallet, somber emotion glossing over her eyes. “Shen found us as soon as he sensed a disturbance in the spirit realm. We rushed to the southern valley, but we were too late… I can’t imagine what would have transpired if he had not raised the alarm.”
It hurts so much… Faey tried to straighten her back in a show of respect, but her courage was failing her.
“The other neophytes told me what happened,” Mayym said in a calmer voice, lifting her chin. “You turned away the Brotherhood bandits. You helped avoid a major conflict.”
Tears were welling in Faey’s eyes. She maintained her posture, as an apprentice should in front of her master.
“You are courageous,” said Mayym, “and you’ve grasped the way of the Kinkou.”
What does it matter now? Faey’s lips were trembling. She knew everything was over. Mayym had made her assessment—that this protégé had been ruined. All the training, wasted. All her aspirations destroyed. She would never rise to become an acolyte, or be anything to the order but a burden.
“I am sorry. I am so sorry. I have…” Mayym stammered. “I have been a bad influence on you. About Shen. About everything.”
Faey could not understand why she would say this. She was the best mentor anyone could ask for. “Master Mayym, I have failed you.”
“No,” Mayym said, voice broken. “No, you did not.” She held Faey’s shoulders and looked into her eyes with fierce intensity. “There must be a way to make you walk again. If we must search every corner of Ionia and beyond to find it, that’s what we will do. Under Shen’s leadership, Kennen and I—and the rest of the Kinkou—will find a way. I will continue to train you, and make sure you become an archer never before seen in the history of both realms.”
Tears blurred Faey’s vision, and she momentarily forgot her pain.
Mayym carefully cradled Faey in her arms, an embrace the girl had not felt for a long time.
That was when Faey’s sobs turned to crying, uninhibited and free.

Akali stood by the doorway, peering into the shadowy interior of the hut, and the master and protégé locked in their embrace.
She could not remember the last time her mother had given her a hug like that. She turned and walked into the woods, the kunai pendant clutched in her hand, tears soaking her cheeks.

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Bard

Testimony of the Balladeer

Bel’Veth

Pinwheel

Burning Tides

The Bird and the Branch

Blitzcrank

Ensemble

The Bow, and the Kunai