Search

All stories

Alone

Ian St. Martin

Lyvia had nearly found sleep when the light appeared.
The first night in the orphanage carried strange emotions for her, unfamiliar yet close to a past that she had once held. Life had taken trust from Lyvia, like it had taken everything else, but habits of survival waned here, their edges dulled by the safety of a roof overhead. Her cot, though narrow and thin, was still far removed from the cold cobblestones of the capital. Sleep beckoned, warm and enveloping, tenderly lowering her eyelids with the promise of true rest.
Then the door opened.
“Wake, child.” Lyvia recognized the voice of Cynn, the headmistress. “Come.”
Afraid to lose what respite she had found from the streets, Lyvia obeyed and sat up. Her legs swung over the side to land on the cold floor, and she walked into the light of the hall.
Blinking, Lyvia took her place alongside the other children. All of them, ranging from eight to ten summers, had arrived there today, freshly collected from the streets of Noxus. A pair of brothers, three scrawny urchin boys who clutched each other’s hands in grubby unity, and Lyvia. Both groups shuffled away from her, retreating to the familiar.
“I know the hour is late,” said Cynn as she walked down the line of little faces, “but there are many demands upon the time of our patron. Still, he wishes to welcome the newly arrived.” There was something within Cynn’s words that Lyvia could not place. “It is an honor.”
It was then that the children noticed him with a start, as though he had appeared out of thin air. Tall, slender, clad in a wealth Lyvia had never known, the patron approached them. Cynn demurred into the background, her expression impassible.
Slowly, the man walked from orphan to orphan, his pale eyes casting them in an odd scrutiny. He passed the brothers without a thought. Lyvia felt her pulse quicken as he paused, the eyes falling upon her, and felt it slow again as he continued on. The trio of urchins bunched together, each defending the others, and the patron barely spared them a glance.
“Her,” the man said to Cynn, his voice low, silken.
Cynn’s arm was on her shoulder now, leading her to another room. It was empty, but for a single chair. “No harm will come to you,” Cynn said, an attempt to dispel Lyvia’s fear. “It is an honor,” she repeated, closing the door behind her.
Lyvia crossed to the chair, and sat in it. She watched the door intently, the sole means of entry into the room, only to notice a moment later the shadow stretching out from behind her.
The patron.
“Please,” he said, raising his hands as she bolted to her feet.
Lyvia did her best to contain her fear, to remember what Cynn had told her.
“Think I am here to hurt you?” he asked, his voice languid, accent cultured.
Lyvia shook her head, but it was far from convincing.
He feigned puzzlement, laughing softly. “My dear, has life not done enough?” He circled around in front of her. “No, my child, I am only here to hear about your life, and what has brought you here.”
He gestured kindly to the chair, and slowly Lyvia took her seat.
“I’m from Drekan,” she began.
“Yes?” He nodded, urging that she continue.
“War took papa,” said Lyvia, trying to keep her voice level, to betray no weakness. “So we came to the city. Mama went out to find work, but after four days we stopped waiting for her to come back. It was just my sister Vira and I. I kept her safe.” She fought her voice but it faltered. “Then Vira took sick. I couldn’t protect her, and then I… I was...”
“Alone,” he said softly.
Lyvia’s chest swelled with a tide of pain. Of loss. “Alone,” she repeated, and a tear struck her cheek.
“There!” he breathed. She recoiled as he reached toward her.
“Close your eyes,” he said, his voice hypnotic. “Focus upon that feeling. The pain. It has mounted for you in this unforgiving world, nowhere to go but bottled up inside. Feel it rise up, above your neck, slipping up over your nose, your ears. It threatens to swallow you, but just at the precipice, it yields. Face it and feel it break against you. That is strength. Turn your mind upon it, and allow it to drain from you.”
She let the pain flow out of her in sobs, feeling the cold of glass against her cheeks, softly touching beneath each eye. A torrent of despair, taking her breath, then it was gone.
Lyvia opened her eyes.
“Thank you,” said the man, and Lyvia noticed a vial in his hands, “for sharing.”
“You,” Lyvia dared to ask, seeing something she could recognize in her patron despite everything else about him. “You’re alone, too?”
He took his eyes from the vial, glanced at her. “I have seen much of this world, over many years—yes, almost all of it alone.”
Livia sniffed, looking up at him. “Will it get better?”
“For you?” He smiled gently, his eyes glimmering for a moment in a gentle show of sadness. “No.”
“She is unharmed?” Cynn asked as Vladimir stepped into the hall.
Vladimir arched an eyebrow. “Were you harmed, Cynn, all those years ago when it was you in that room?” He tilted his head, producing a thin ampoule in his long fingers.
Cynn’s eyes locked to the slender tube of glass, its frosted length dulling the contents to a soft ruby. Cynn snatched the ampoule, her eyes darting as she secreted it in the sleeve of her robe.
“Until next time, my dear,” Vladimir chuckled, then he turned and left.
The moon was full that night, bathing the Noxian streets in radiant silver hues. Vladimir stopped at the fountain in the orphanage’s empty courtyard, dipping a finger into the still water. Whorls of crimson bloomed from his touch, rushing across the shallow pool until it was a depthless claret. Stepping briskly up to the lip of the fountain, Vladimir dropped into it without sound or splash.
Vladimir rose from another pool within the dark halls of his manor, emerging dry, it was as though he had never touched the liquid. A chill wound through the yawning cavern of shadow and stone arches, brushing over shuttered windows and priceless artworks collected over a thousand lifetimes. His step was light across thick rugs, barely disturbing the layers of dust that caked them as he ascended a staircase.
For a moment his thoughts lingered on the child, Lyvia. Doubtless tonight had been a strange experience, but he had seen enough mortals to know this night would not define her life. She would live, and then die, like all the other little sparks around him. Her name, her face, their interaction would slip away from him, as they always did, to where he wondered if they had ever existed at all.
People. The creatures surrounded Vladimir yet stood upon the opposite side of an impossible gulf, tantalizing and impermanent. A thin, crooked smile came to him. He was melancholy tonight. He rolled the vial of tears in his fingers.
The studio beckoned.
Maudlin thoughts aside, of all the countless mortal lives he encountered, there were a select few Vladimir refused to forget, and so he labored to do what his mind could not. To remember them, those brief moments their lives touched, what felt like an eternity ago. In this case it was less than a millennium, the memory springing suddenly into his mind despite the vast time since last they met. For this one, he chose paint.
It was nearly finished, a work most would not find out of place alongside the masterworks adorning his lonely walls. He had certainly had the years to hone a craft. All the details were done: the gentle tumble of auburn hair, the tanned skin, features that alone were commonplace, but combined effected a demanding, regal aura. The expression, unthinkable loss. It was all there, save the whites of his eyes.
Vladimir opened the vial, tipping it into a pot. The innocent tears mingled with the paint, and with the touch of his brush, came alive when laid upon the canvas. Nothing else, in all his travels, could match the splendor it wrought.
What was his name?
He found he could not remember. The absence stabbed at him, a name gone, but at least the face preserved. The whites of his eyes would keep his memory here.
Like a lonesome soul, he sought me out from beyond, Vladimir mused with a smile. More melancholy, but fitting perhaps.
After all, there was nothing in the world as beautiful as sadness.
Volibear

To some, he is the Thunder’s Roar, the Greatstorm, or Valhir. To others, he is Ruin, the Thousand-Pierced Bear, or He Who Stands. But to most of the tribes who still hold to the old ways, he is known as the Volibear.
Destruction, strength, and the storm made manifest, the Volibear represents the unstoppable power and fury of the Freljord itself. It was the Volibear and his demi-god kin who formed the land they called Vorrijaard long before the arrival of the mortal races. The sagas tell how he created the Five Fjords with one mighty swipe of his claws, and how his epic battle with the savage magma-serpent, Rhond, formed countless valleys and ravines. When the Volibear finally felled the beast, its blood became the first river in the Freljord, and its colossal corpse formed the Wyrmback Mountains.
In the days of the first tribes, wild magic ran rampant. The Volibear was venerated and worshipped by all, for they needed his indomitable strength to survive. Great wars were waged, and the Volibear took to the field alongside his followers, clad in rune-inscribed armor made by his brother Ornn, demi-god of the forge. At the time, the brothers’ bond was strong—they often fought at each other’s side, even though Ornn never had quite the same lust for battle. The Volibear reveled in hard-fought victories, and as ever more blood offerings were made to him, his power swelled.
In time, the Volibear and his kin drifted apart, each focusing on their own pursuits. Even so, there was no true division between them… until new ideas began to usurp the old beliefs.
Three sisters rose to power, seeking to control and impose order on the Freljord, and the demi-gods could not agree on how to proceed. A few, like Anivia, seemed inclined to work with the sisters, while the Volibear and the Iron Boar wanted to destroy them. Others would have been content to ignore them completely, since these feeble creatures would eventually die like all before them.
The Volibear looked to the most animalistic and savage of his followers, known as the Ursine. With them, he would defeat the three sisters. In preparation, he sought out Ornn to arm his warriors for battle.
But Ornn refused. He did not approve of the Ursine’s savage ways, and a terrible fight erupted between the two demi-gods. In the aftermath, the Volibear cursed his brother’s name, and cast off his rune-inscribed armor. He would fight from then on with just tooth, and claw, and might, and thunder. Far from being lessened, the Volibear found his full power was now unleashed.
With newfound rage, he confronted one of the mortal sisters who sought to steal the power of the demi-gods for herself. Before her entire army, he struck her down, blinding her—but he was unable to stop what she had already set in motion.
As the centuries rolled by, and despite the Volibear’s resistance, tribes began to venerate and worship the Three Sisters instead.
Many of the more ancient practices were forgotten. He saw tribes cowering behind stone walls rather than face the rawness of nature. He saw fields being tilled, and farmers herding cattle rather than hunting. He bellowed in fury to see great rivers dammed rather than be allowed to roar free. This was not his Freljord. The change had happened slowly—glacially—but the Volibear finally came to realize that the tribes had been cut off from the wild spirit of the land, making them frail, compliant, and soft. These weaklings had no reverence for the old ways, or old gods.
Anger and determination rumbled within him. He vowed to tear down all evidence of civilization and return the Freljord to its ancient state as a true wilderness. The people would become strong once more. He would again be honored and feared by all.
As the call of the Volibear reverberates across the mountains and plains of the north, more and more Freljordians are responding. Slowly, the old ways are being remembered and re-embraced, and his strength grows with each new follower.
A reckoning of blood awaits… and the Volibear is rushing toward it.
Stormbringer

Anthony Reynolds & Rayla Heide

“Valhir!”
The god-bear twitched in his sleep, but his eyes didn’t open.
It was an old name, and had not been spoken aloud for… how long? What he heard must have been a dream, or an echo of the past. With a snort, he burrowed his head deeper into the thick snow and continued his slumber of ages.
“Valhir, with your name, and with this blood, I call upon you!”
The demi-god’s eyes flicked open.
The voice was half a land away, but sounded as clear as if spoken directly into his ear.
With a low growl, the great bear rose, pushing himself to his feet. An avalanche of snow fell from his titanic form, making the earth rumble. He shook out his fur and turned his heavy head from horizon to horizon, nostrils flaring.
He could taste the blood tribute on the air, and a thrill ran through him. Somewhere, stones had been arranged to form his rune. A sacrifice had been made in his name. He felt the power of worship infusing his limbs.
“Valhir! We call on your fury! Give us your strength! Every death is an offering!”
With the promise of battle, slaughter, and worship, Valhir’s heart pounded in time to the war drums he could feel echoing across the land. He could hear the stamping of feet, the clash of blades, the cries of the dying.
It called to the body he wore. It called to him.
The Volibear reared onto his hind legs and roared to the heavens. The sound reverberated across the icy tundra, touching the soul of every living creature in the Freljord.

Hundreds of miles away, where the sun never rose, a spirit walker woke screaming, clawing at his face with hands twisted into immense talons.
Across the ice floes in a different direction, packs of rimefang wolves threw back their heads and howled, echoing the demi-god’s cry.
And elsewhere, far, far away, a group of tribesmen sitting around fires fell silent, hearts suddenly thundering. Friends eyed friends with hostile expressions. Blood would be spilled.

The Volibear dropped to all fours and surged forward, massive claws ripping up the frozen earth. Snow-covered boulders and trees were smashed out of his path, and the wind whistled through his thick fur as he picked up speed.
When next he paused, sniffing the air, he was hundreds of miles away. He was getting close. The storm clouds of his war-rage darkened the sky overhead.
“Valhir! We kill and die in your name!”
With an earth-shattering impact, the god-bear arrived.
High upon an icy rise, lightning flickering across his ivory fur, he gazed across the battlefield.
Two armies were engaged upon the blood-soaked plain below. The dead and dying were strewn across the snow. One of the forces was vastly outnumbered. They were fighting a losing battle.
The giant bear snorted. Something smelled wrong about the larger of the armies. Its humans were clad in black iron, and fought beneath a red banner. He growled as he realized they were not of the Freljord, but weaklings from a land where the snow no longer held sway. He bared his teeth, and lightning flashed. It struck in the midst of the battle with a deafening crash, sending charred corpses from both sides flying.
“Valhir! Valhir!”
The Volibear focused his fury-reddened gaze on the one who shouted his name. A mortal woman, clad in fur, stared up at him, her face splattered with gore. She raised a pair of bloodied axes to the sky in salute, a savage grin on her face.
Many of the other combatants had ceased fighting, staring at the demi-god in awe and horror, but the Volibear’s attention was fixed on the woman.
This was the one whose heart had called the storm.
“Valhir!” she screamed, thrusting her bloodied axes into the air once more. “With these deaths, we honor you!”
With a last deferent salute, the woman turned back to the fight, hurling herself into her enemy with renewed vigor.
The Volibear turned his gaze upon those the woman fought—the outsiders. The enemy. With a snarl, he charged.
“Vol kau fera!” he roared, making the heavens themselves shake.
He smashed into the enemy like a living battering ram, sending their frail troops flying. Bones crunched. Blood splashed. Voices wailed.
It was over in moments.
In the face of the unstoppable fury of the god-bear, the resolve of the enemy crumbled. The first of them turned to run. It quickly turned into a rout, then to butchery, as the Freljordians—now filled with the savage rage of the Volibear—fell upon the fleeing enemy like wolves, howling as they pursued them across the snow.
The Volibear watched the slaughter in satisfaction, blood dripping from his maw.
The woman that had called him dropped to her knees in reverence and bowed her head.
“Oh, great Valhir!” she cried. “I am Warmother Raetha, the Bloodied Hand. By your intervention, our village is saved!”
It was only then, as the Volibear’s battle-lust began to abate, that he saw the nearby farmsteads and stone houses, and his eyes narrowed. He turned his gaze back upon the kneeling woman.
He loomed over her, easily four times her height, but growing ever larger as his anger returned. His almighty form was crisscrossed with old scars and new battle wounds—all marks he bore proudly. His massive claws dripped with gore. The urge to rip and rend remained strong.
He snarled down at the warmother. “Vol t’svaag dakk skolj.”
She looked up at him in confusion. It was clear the old tongue had been all but forgotten.
“Stand,” he rumbled in the younger, bastardized language she spoke. “A warrior kneels to no one.”
His gaze settled on something further along the valley. A dangerous growl rose from deep within him, heavy with the promise of violence. The woman, Raetha, took a step back, suddenly wary.
“What. Is. This?” he bellowed, the air tingling with electricity as his anger grew.
The woman glanced over her shoulder, confused and uneasy.
“The… The dam?” she asked.
The Volibear’s lips curled back, exposing bloodied fangs. This was his river, and it had flowed free and wild since before the coming of humanity. That mortals dared block it, to hold back its power, was an abomination.
He stomped past the woman, his anger building with every step. By the time he reached the crude structure, his rage was a barely contained maelstrom, and the air around him crackled with power. Warmother Raetha and a collection of others shadowed him at a wary distance.
The god-bear splashed into the shallows below the dam. The water barely reached past his paws, and his anger redoubled. The river should be thundering.
With a roar, he tore down the stones and freed the waters.
Now it thundered, bursting forth in a great churning wave. The power of the river crashed around him.
There was screaming as it surged down across the floodplain. The god-bear watched in satisfaction as the first of the Freljordian’s houses was smashed aside, timbers shattering and stonework collapsing. People ran, clutching younglings, as the waters demolished the entire settlement.
Once all evidence of civilization was gone, the Volibear turned to the Freljordians. They stood aghast, shocked at what he had wrought.
“Today, you are free!”
He could taste fear in the air, but he also felt the awe and reverence of the onlooking mortals.
“Live!” he commanded. “Live wild! Hunt! Kill! Honor the old ways… and the old ways will honor you!”
Warmother Raetha was now standing tall and slowly nodding. This one had the spirit of a true warrior. And in his immortal heart, he knew most of the others would follow her.
The Volibear gave her a nod, and turned to the horizon.
There was much to be done.
Warwick

Warwick is a monster who hunts the gray alleys of Zaun. Transformed by agonizing experiments, his body is fused with an intricate system of chambers and pumps, machinery filling his veins with alchemical rage. Bursting out of the shadows, he preys upon those criminals who terrorize the city’s depths. Warwick is drawn to blood, and driven mad by its scent. None who spill it can escape him.
Though many think of Warwick as no more than a beast, buried beneath the fury lies the mind of a man—a gangster who put down his blade and took up a new name to live a better life. But no matter how hard he tried to move on, he could never escape the sins of his past.
Memories of that time come to Warwick in flashes before they’re inevitably lost, replaced by searing echoes of the days he spent strapped to a table in Singed’s lab, the mad chemist’s face looming above him.
His world a haze of pain, Warwick could not recall how he fell into Singed’s grasp… and even struggled to remember a time before the suffering began. The scientist patiently carved into him, installing pumps and hoses to inject chemicals into his veins, seeking what an alchemist always seeks: transmutation.
Singed would reveal his subject’s true nature—the deadly beast hidden within a “good man.”
The chemicals pumped into Warwick’s veins boosted his healing, allowing Singed to gradually and painfully reshape the man. When his hand was severed in the course of the experiment, Singed was able to reattach it, augmenting it with powerful, pneumatic claws, and bringing Warwick ever closer to his true potential.
A chemical chamber was installed on Warwick’s back and integrated with his nervous system. Whenever he felt rage, or hate, or fear, it would drive liquid fury deeper into his veins, fully awakening the beast within.
He was forced to endure it all, every cut of the mad chemist’s scalpel. Pain, Singed assured his subject, was necessary; it would prove to be the “great catalyst” of his transformation. Though the chemicals enabled Warwick’s body to heal through most of the physical damage, his mind was shattered by the unending agony.
Warwick struggled to recall a single memory from his past... All he could see was blood. But then he heard a little girl screaming. Screaming something he couldn’t understand. It sounded like a name.
He’d already forgotten his. He sensed that was for the best.
Pain soon overwhelmed all other thoughts. Blood was the only thing left.
Though his body and mind were broken after weeks on the slab, Warwick stubbornly resisted the chemicals transmuting him. Toxins leaked from his eyes in place of tears. He coughed up gobs of caustic phlegm that sizzled against his chest, before burning shallow holes in the floor of the lab. Restrained against the cold steel of the table, Warwick writhed in agony for hours on end, until his body finally gave out.
With the untimely death of his subject, Singed disposed of the corpse in a charnel pit deep in Zaun’s Sump, before turning his mind to the next experiment.
But death proved to be the true catalyst needed for Warwick’s transformation. As he lay cooling atop the pile of corpses, the chemicals could finally complete their work. The chamber on his back began to pump.
His body contorted unnaturally, bones bending and snapping, teeth growing, sinews tearing and then healing with a faint alchemical glow, dead flesh replaced by something new and powerful. By the time his heart started beating once again, the man Warwick had been and the lives he’d lived were gone.
He awoke to hunger. Everything hurt. Only one thing mattered.
He needed blood.
First, it was the blood of a nearby sump-scrapper, rooting through the charnel pile. And then a priestess of the Glorious Evolved, seeking a member of her flock. Then a Piltovan apprenta taking a shortcut, and a philter-faced merchant avoiding a gang, and a dram-dealer, and a tallyman, and a chem punk...
He set up a den not far from a place that itched at the back of his now-animal mind. There, he continued the slaughter, not caring who fell to his claws. So long as blood dripped from gnashing teeth, he would feel nothing but a smear of red on his conscience, the hunger in his gut overwhelming any concern for his random victims.
Yet, even as he surrendered to the beast, glimpses of his past began to haunt him. He saw a bearded man reflected in the eyes of a beggar as he tore out his throat. The other man looked somber, somehow familiar; there were scars on his arms. Sometimes, as he fed in dark alleys on stray gangers, the flash of knives would remind him of an old blade covered in blood. Blood passing from the blade to his hands. From his hands, to everything he touched. Sometimes, he remembered the girl again.
And still there was blood.
It had always been there, he realized, his entire life, and nothing he did could wash it off. He’d left so many scars that even if he didn’t remember his past, the city would. When he peered into the eyes of Zaun’s criminals—the gang bosses, murderers, and thieves—he saw himself. The chamber on his back would fill his body with hate. His claws tore out of his fingers.
He hunted.
No longer content to kill indiscriminately, Warwick now pursues those already covered in the stench of blood. Just as he was the day he was dragged to Singed’s door.
He still wonders if he’d truly wanted this. He can’t remember details, but he remembers enough. Enough to know Singed had been right all along—the good man had been a lie, before disaster had burned it away, revealing the truth.
He is Warwick. He is a killer.
And there are so many killers to hunt.
If They Run

I find her near the Black Lanes, where merchants and thieves do business. Anything is for sale. Everything is stolen. I could kill them all.
Do they think the shadows hide their misdeeds? The gleam of their knives? The deals they make, shrouded in darkness? I can smell the shimmerwine on a beggar’s breath from across this wretched city.
I know their crimes. I can taste them.
Then I see her. She’s taking a message from one of Baron Spindlow’s men—the lump-faced one, all scars and scowl—and placing it into a pneuma-tube. He mutters instructions to her.
Who knew the dob could even speak, let alone write a message? I’ve only heard him scream. The last time we met, I took his leg. Its replacement is already rusted.
The cogs clink as they pass from the thug’s meaty hand into the girl’s. I can smell the blood on the gear-shaped coins. The pain that passes from person to person. If you want something in this city, it doesn’t matter how many cogs you have. Pain is the true currency.
I remember a man who knew this—the blood and cogs on his hands—but that man is gone.
I growl, and the two figures flinch in surprise. Even the shadows seem to draw back as my augments cast a sickly, green glow. The girl takes one look and flees, but not deeper into the alley. She’s a pneuma-tube runner. She clambers up, into the darkness, taking a path few can follow.
Afraid. Fast, but vulnerable. Carrying a pneuma-tube with a chem-baron’s seal. The gangers will come for her.
She’s perfect…
I begin the hunt.
We move so quickly, the city is a blur—my claws cutting through the smoke, scrabbling for purchase as I leap across rooftops, following the pneuma-tube runner. Carving a path so deep through the city, it seems to bleed chemtech, toxic puddles gathering in the alleys.
She tries to double back, skittering beneath a cart full of tinctures. She knows the city almost as well as I do. She knows where I’m driving her. Away from sanctuary, toward a place all the runners fear, where only the Zaun Gray escapes.
I need to remind her to be more afraid of me than what lies in the darkness. I land ahead of her, roaring with rage, my claws tearing a chunk out of a steam conduit. She hesitates, but only for a moment, before turning back into the depths. Where I need her to run.
I can hear the gasps of effort as she scrambles up walls and slides down railings. She’s praying to the wind goddess to save her. Perhaps I should do the same. The animal inside me wants more than murder. It wants meat.
I could kill her right now. It would be so easy. I feel my claws emerging, greedy for flesh. I forget why I should spare her, until I draw closer. Close enough to see my reflection in her eyes, as she stumbles on a ledge and looks back.
Her eyes brim with tears.
It’s all so... familiar.
I pull back and howl into the darkness, driving the girl forward. She drops down into a maze of pipes built for the ancient pneuma system. I follow behind her, hanging back as she reaches the dead end.
The girl thinks I’m going to kill her. That her pale throat is the reason I bare my teeth. But she is only the bait. This is where she’ll lure out my true prey.
Those who’d prey on her.
“Well, well. Look what fell outta the Gray,” says a ganger emerging from the darkness. He and his friends surround the girl, their blades catching what little light survives in these depths. I recognize their tattered rags. The Gray Nails. A dead man once had dealings with them.
There was another girl...
I shake away the memories. I don’t want them.
“I know you,” says one of the Nails, her face ringed by piercings. “You run for Boggin, eh? One ’a Spindlow’s mugs. What’s that krovin’ psycho got to say that he don’t want us to hear?” She pokes the pneuma-tube with her dagger and smiles.
“Please, you don’t understand!” the girl sobs, scanning the gray darkness behind her and trying to rush past.
“Neither do you,” the first ganger says. “We’re gonna have some fun.”
I hesitate as the thug knocks the pneuma-tube from the girl’s hands. It’s worth more cogs than their own lives. It’s their ticket out of this miserable pit, to a slightly less miserable one.
I thought the pneuma-tube would distract them for the moment I needed. It cracks against the alley stones, Spindlow’s seal broken.
What have I done?
The runner cries out as a Nail grabs her roughly. There’s a struggle, a flash of steel, and then...blood.
Its scent enrages me.
The chamber on my back pumps, and I am lost.
A roar fills the darkness.
“It’s him! The Howler!” a Gray Nail cries out as I race into the clearing, trying to focus on the punk. I slash into him, and the alley wall steams with red mist. He crumples to the stones.
Where is the girl? I’ve lost track in the mayhem. Surrounded. Blades stabbing like clumsy teeth. Claws a metal blur. Jaws clamp down, and bones crack along with armor.
I taste blood. And still there’s more.
I see her now. One of the Nails hovers above the girl, his shiv raised. I can stop him.
But the machine pumps again, and my limbs surge with power.
The red haze fills my mind. Everything is a blur. Everything is forgotten.
Everything is blood.
I don’t know if I saved the girl. I don’t know if I killed her. I’m still biting through flesh when the surviving Nails flee into the darkness.
I turn, following them into the night. I have no choice.
They are the monsters I hunt. And I am one of them.
What Once Sailed Free

Michael Luo

The prisoner stands tall, his ankles chained to a wooden post, his wrists bound together with coarse rope. Blood trickles down his cheeks onto his black Noxian tunic, leaving small red puddles by his bare toes. Above him, the sky paints patches of gray against blue, unsure of its true colors.
A fence of tall jagged stakes surrounds the prisoner. Nearby soldiers run from tent to tent. Their hurried steps kick up dust, leaving grime on their boots they will be sure to clean before they face their commanders. The prisoner knows this, having observed their disciplined behavior over the past days. It is unlike any he has ever seen.
Around the camp, bright navy banners ripple in the wind, displaying the image of a sword dividing two spread wings—the sigil of Demacia.
Not long ago these were the black and crimson banners of Noxus. The prisoner remembers his orders: to reclaim Kalstead for the glory of the empire.
He failed.
And he knows the consequences. War does not forgive failure. This is the truth he is prepared to accept. For now, he awaits his fate. The first time he was held prisoner, he lost his home. This time, he will lose even more.
He closes his eyes as more memories flood his mind. There were two men, he recalls. His master he knew—he had turned a lost boy taken from his home into a fighter fit for the Reckoner arenas. The other was a stranger, claiming to represent the empire’s best interests. After they shook hands, he was sent west, under the shadow of the Argent Mountains, to Kalstead.
There were no goodbyes, no well wishes. But, he was not alone. Others like him shared a name, “soldiers-of-misfortune” as they were called back in Noxus. Ragtag groups of fighters sent to deal with tasks unworthy of a veteran warband’s attention. Not many had a say in the matter, their masters too willing to sell their talents to the military for the right price.
“You don’t look like you’re from Noxus,” a voice calls out, breaking the prisoner’s moment of reflection.
He opens his eyes and sees a Demacian man standing outside the enclosure. His garb is a mix of navy and brown fabric covered by chainmail, and a shortsword hangs by his waist. He has the bearing of a leader, the prisoner decides, but a junior one.
“What’s your name?” the soldier calls.
The prisoner thinks. Will his answer decide his fate?
“Xin Zhao,” he replies, his voice rough and dry.
“What?”
“Xin. Zhao.”
“That doesn’t sound like a Noxian name,” the soldier wonders aloud. “Noxian names are tough, like… Boram Darkwill.” He says the two words with a shudder.
Xin Zhao does not reply. He doubts this conversation is worth having before his coming execution.
“Come along, shield-sergeant,” says another Demacian. The young officer’s severe look commands the sergeant’s attention. She wears silver armor with gold trim adorning her shoulder pauldrons. A cape of vivid blue falls down her back.
“Don’t bother conversing with Noxians,” she advises. “They do not share our virtues.”
The sergeant bows his head. “Yes, Sword-Captain Crownguard. But if I might ask…”
The captain nods.
“Why is this one being kept by himself?”
She glances at the prisoner, her blue eyes stern with contempt.
“This one ended more lives than the others.”

Xin Zhao wakes to the sound of horns. He sits in the mud kicking his numb feet at the damp soil. Pressing his back against the post, he snakes himself up to a standing position and sees the sergeant from the day before approach, accompanied by four others dressed in similar attire. They open the gate to the enclosure and the sergeant walks through first, carrying a tray holding a bowl of hot soup.
“Morning. I’m Olber, and this is my watch unit,” the sergeant says. “Here’s your breakfast, Zen Jaw.”
Xin Zhao watches him set the tray on the ground. Who knew someone could mispronounce two syllables so cruelly?
A Demacian guard cuts through the rope binding Xin Zhao’s wrists with practiced motions. The sergeant and the others stand by, their hands resting on the hilts of their swords.
“Well, go on and eat,” Olber says.
Xin Zhao picks up the bowl. “They sent five of you.”
“We do as the captain orders,” Olber explains. “She’s a Crownguard, after all. They protect the king himself.”
The guards nod along and turn to each other.
“Aye, her father saved the last Jarvan at Storm’s Fang,” one mentions.
“Which Jarvan was that?” another asks.
“Second. We’re on the third one now.”
“That’s King Jarvan the Third,” Olber interjects. “Your king. And mine. You oughta show some respect, given he personally rode out here with us.”
They think highly of their king, Xin Zhao notes. While the soldiers continue to banter, he drinks his soup, one sip at a time, as he listens to their conversation. They speak of how foolish the Noxians were to venture this far west, of how easy it was for them to come to Kalstead’s aid, and of how their triumph was one achieved in the name of justice.
We were sent here to die, Xin Zhao realizes. He grips the empty bowl so tightly it cracks, the wood coming apart in his hands.
The Demacians turn their attention. Olber looks at Xin Zhao. “Hands.”
Xin Zhao offers his palms facing upward.
“You sure took a beating,” Olber remarks, tying new rope around Xin Zhao's wrists. The guards gather around. They see scars everywhere, running like rivers up and down his skin. Xin Zhao follows their gaze. He can no longer tell which scars came from which match. There were so many that he fought, and so few he cared to remember.
“Those aren’t recent wounds,” one of the guards observes.
“You’re right,” Xin Zhao says. His voice, clear and strong, grabs their attention. For a moment, they stand still, looking at him like he is no longer just another prisoner.
“What’d you do back in Noxus?” Olber asks.
“I fought in the arenas,” Xin Zhao answers.
“A Reckoner!” a guard exclaims. “I’ve heard of you savages. They fight to the death in front of thousands!”
“I’ve never heard of no Reckoner named Zen Jaw,” another mutters.
“Maybe he wasn’t a good one? Maybe that’s why he’s here, all beaten and tied up?”
“Hold on,” Olber chimes in. “Don't you Reckoners use different names in the arena?”
Xin Zhao almost smiles. This Demacian is smarter than he lets on. It is known, even outside the empire, that Reckoners often choose inventive titles. Some opt for the extravagant. Others have something to hide. For Xin Zhao, it was to remember the life he had before it was taken away.
“Viscero,” a guard says, holding an unfurled piece of parchment. “That’s what the other Noxians called him.”
Olber snatches the parchment. He examines it. A few long seconds pass before he looks up at Xin Zhao. “You're the Reckoner.”
Silence. Thin streaks of sunlight cut through the gray sky.
“Viscero,” Olber repeats, his voice tinged with awe. “The one who never lost.”
The guards look to each other. Then, together, they stare at Xin Zhao, their eyes now lit with recognition.
“I know you!” says a guard.
“Didn't you beat a minotaur?” says another.
Olber raises a hand to halt the idle chatter. “Why'd you say your name was Zen Jaw?” he asks.
Xin Zhao sighs. “Once I became a Reckoner, there was no more Xin Zhao. There was only Viscero.” He looks down at his bound wrists, at his chained ankles, and then back at the Demacians. “In the time I have left, I’d rather live by my real name.”
“But what’s a famous Reckoner doing fighting Noxus’ border wars?” Olber asks again.
“I was bought out,” Xin Zhao replies, “by the military.” He finds explaining all this rather strange. For so long, he had assumed his final moments would pass by quickly, in the arena, by spear or sword—not with a hot meal and questions about his past.
Is this fate offering its last sympathies?
Olber appears troubled. “You didn't have a choice,” he says.
Xin Zhao shakes his head.
“You have family left in Noxus?”
Xin Zhao thinks for a moment, then shakes his head again. He wonders if he has any family at all, anywhere.
“Well, I guess you're off to a new beginning.” Olber nods at a guard who pulls out a key and starts unchaining Xin Zhao from his pole.
Xin Zhao tilts his head, curious. “What do you mean?”
Olber smiles. “Let’s get you dressed.”

Xin Zhao sits upright in the new tunic given to him. The Demacian fabric feels soft on his skin. He looks about the tent, counting the straw beds and the empty bowls of soup. Remarks of gratitude fill his ears. He recognizes the earthy voices. They come from others who, hours ago, were prisoners like him.
One by one, they rise from their beds and thank the healers who mended their wounds. Armed Demacians enter the tent. Xin Zhao watches the prisoners be escorted out. He knows them well, having marched alongside them to Kalstead. On their journey, they spent much of their time trying to best each other in individual feats of strength, with the victors celebrating their might and the defeated left in shame. Those especially vocal would boast aloud how many Demacian soldiers they planned to kill. That was before they came face to face with a real army.
There was no battle. Maybe the Noxian military would have fared better, with its legions and siege weaponry, but they were not the military. They were conscripts, untrained in the ways of formal combat, facing a unified kingdom. Within hours, Kalstead cheered for its saviors.
We were sent here to die, Xin Zhao reminds himself. And yet, as fate would have it, they still lived. Not by the will of Noxus, but by that of Demacia.
Fate flows like the four winds, his elders had once said, and no man can know its course until he sails it.
An old healer walks by. Her pale robe matches the others working in the tent. “How are you feeling, child?” she asks.
“I'm fine,” Xin Zhao replies. “Thank you.”
“Do not thank me. Thank the king. It was by his royal decree that all prisoners be cared for.”
“The third Jarvan?” This king, again. How can one man inspire so much?
“Yes, our great Jarvan the Third,” she corrects him. “He granted you the opportunity to begin anew. To find peace.”
Xin Zhao looks down at the floor with his hands folded. Viscero could always find a place in the arena. And elsewhere, the peoples of Valoran would embrace him for his strength, that much he is certain. As for his birthplace—the First Lands beyond the sea he has not seen for decades—it is as foreign to him now as any distant fantasy.
Where could he find peace? Would he want it?
No, his chance at peace died long ago, when he took his first life and was rewarded with an extension on his own.
Xin Zhao turns to the healer. “I have one question, if I may.”
“What is it, child?”
“This king of yours. Who is he?”
The healer chuckles. “Why don’t you see for yourself?”

Xin Zhao walks behind Olber with four guards surrounding him. As they trudge through the camp, he peers into the passing tents, seeing Demacian soldiers pack their belongings and captains plan for their next deployment. Rumors tell that somewhere, not a week’s march away, another battle against Noxus is imminent. Xin Zhao ponders if that is where these people will head, following a trail of turmoil, righting wrongs wherever they go. They seem to serve a higher calling, something stronger than strength, and perhaps more valuable.
He imagines how that might feel, to be so clear in your convictions you would sacrifice your own life for them. There were times in the arena when his life meant nothing. Now, it is worth an audience with a king.
“Looks like you’re the last one,” Olber says, stopping the escort and pointing ahead.
Xin Zhao follows the sergeant's finger and spots a tent larger than all the others. The same bright navy banners grace its roof. Guards in gleaming armor stand in parallel lines outside its entrance. He sees a man, bearing Noxian tattoos on his face and neck, shuffle out carrying a small bag. The man bows his head multiple times before he is led away by one of the guards, and immediately, another Demacian steps in to fill the empty space.
“That's the king's tent,” Olber says. “We are to stay here. You go in, kneel, accept the provisions granted to you by the king, and then we'll collect you.”
The sergeant smiles. “The king said once you're in front of him, you're a free man… but you’ll still need us when you’re out. Captain Crownguard runs this camp, and she’ll not have enemy combatants walk alone. Not ‘til they leave Kalstead for good.”
Xin Zhao gives a knowing nod, and heads toward the tent.
“The king welcomes Viscero!”
The voice that hails him is deep and proper. Xin Zhao walks forth. Once inside, he kneels on his right leg and bows his head low. The floor is covered in cloth embroidered with depictions of winged knights and helmed warriors.
“You may look up,” another voice comes. Xin Zhao lifts his head and identifies its source. It is a man, not much older than himself, sitting on a raised oaken chair. He wears radiant, gold-plated armor embellished with ebony spikes. Atop his head is a crown adorned with jewels. By his right hand lies a great steel lance, its edges sharp like the teeth of some magnificent beast.
This is their king, Xin Zhao realizes. His eyes linger on the man for a second longer, sensing the air of majesty about him, paired with a raw physical presence he had not expected.
To the king's left stands Sword-Captain Crownguard, just as stoic as when Xin Zhao first saw her.
To his right, dressed in a royal tunic is a little boy. He sits on an oaken chair of his own with his small leather boots dangling over the edge. It is impossible not to notice the king’s likeness in him, both having strong noses and square jaws. Two additional guards surround these three, each holding a spear pointing upward.
“Viscero is quite an unusual name,” King Jarvan III says. “What is its origin?”
Xin Zhao peers downward, wondering how he should respond.
“You will speak when the king addresses you,” the sword-captain commands.
“At ease, Tianna,” the king says with a wave of his hand. “He is surely shocked by the events of these past few days. We would be right to offer this man his time, would we not?”
The sword-captain opens her mouth only to close it without a word, choosing instead to give a curt nod.
“It is a reminder of my home,” Xin Zhao answers.
“Oh, is that so?” the king says, intrigued. “I have studied much of Noxus, yet I have never heard of a place called Viscero.”
“It is not so much a place, but a memory… albeit one that changed meaning in Noxus.”
“Ah,” the king says, looking briefly at his son, “memories of one’s childhood are such—”
“But it is not my real name.”
“You dare interrupt the king?” the sword-captain roars. Her hand clutches the hilt of her sword.
Xin Zhao bows his head. Then, he hears laughter, hearty and full. Again, the voice of Jarvan III.
“You are the first one today to have caused Tianna such grievance,” the king says. “It is her inaugural battle leading the Dauntless Vanguard, though it was not much of a battle, I am sure you would agree.”
He pats the shoulder of the young prince, who has stayed quiet, attentively observing his father. “Please,” the king says. “Tell us your story, Viscero, whose real name has not yet been revealed to me.”
Keeping his gaze low, Xin Zhao takes a breath. “My birth name is Xin Zhao, given to me by my parents who I have not seen since I was a boy. They may be alive, or dead—I do not know.”
He swallows hard. “The place I was born is known as Raikkon, a coastal village in the First Lands, which the people here call Ionia. My childhood was spent on a fishing boat named Viscero, helping the elders with whatever they needed. Life was simple, peaceful… until the marauders came in their red and black ships.”
He closes his eyes for a second. No Demacian speaks.
“We didn’t stand a chance. I was taken. After months on the sea, I found myself in Noxus. Everything was… towering, oppressive, harsh. There was none of the natural beauty that filled my home.”
Xin Zhao thinks he hears hushed sounds of agreement. A resonant murmur, a tiny voice whispering.
“As any lost boy would, I did what was needed to survive. Things I’m not proud of that got the attention of those with power. They recognized my strength, and turned me into a fighter. From there, Viscero was reborn—as a Reckoner.”
He sighs as his voice grows soft. “I killed many, many foes. Some whose real names I didn't even know. The more I killed, the louder the crowds cheered, ‘Viscero! Viscero!’ as their gold filled the pockets of my masters. I thought that would be how I lived out my days, fighting in the arena for the thrill of others. That is, until Noxus offered my masters more gold than the arenas could ever bring.”
Xin Zhao’s shoulders slump. “That was all it took for me to end up here. Your soldiers know the rest.”
Jarvan III is quiet. Everyone waits for him to speak.
“You have lived quite the life,” the king finally says. He glimpses at his son before looking back at Xin Zhao. “Thank you for sharing with us your journey. It makes me, and all of Demacia, proud to be able to release you from the bonds of Noxus.”
The king nods toward one of the guards, who brings out a linen pouch and sets it down before Xin Zhao. It jingles with coin.
“This is the blessing of Jarvan the Third,” Captain Crownguard declares. “There is enough gold there to last you one week’s worth of travel. Know that you've erred to invade lands protected by the kingdom of Demacia, but as a show of good faith, our king has granted you a second chance. Use it well.”
Xin Zhao glances at the pouch. He does not budge. Is it that simple? Take this bag and walk out of here—in peace? Just now, he spoke more honestly about himself than he has ever done, to a stranger who could have ended his life with the wave of a hand.
However, that stranger cared to listen. And through that, he became a stranger no more.
There is no peace for me, but maybe there can be a cause?
“Well,” Captain Crownguard says, pointing two fingers toward the exit.
Xin Zhao lowers his head. “I have one request, if I may.”
“Speak,” the king says.
“I wish to join your guard.”
“Absurd!” Captain Crownguard shouts. The guards strike the ends of their spears against the ground in accord.
The king lets out a soft chuckle and turns to his sword-captain. “What an interesting proposition.”
“Surely, you can't—” Captain Crownguard begins, before she is silenced by her king’s hand once more.
“Let the man explain himself,” Jarvan III says with a grin. “I wish to hear his reasoning.”
Xin Zhao raises his head. His eyes meet the king's. “You have shown me mercy and honor,” he begins. “Two things I never knew until now. All my years in Noxus, I spent fighting for a cause not my own, and during that time I knew of only two truths. Victory meant survival and defeat meant death. That was what I learned, seeing other fighters fall in the arena or disappear never to be seen again after too many losses. But you and your people fight for something else. Something more.”
A breeze ruffles the tent. Two small leather boots shuffle. Xin Zhao clears his throat.
“And I'd rather die fighting for honor than live out my days regretting that I never made that choice.”
Jarvan III leans forward. All others know to remain quiet.
“You speak well,” the king replies. “Better than some of my own advisers, truth be told. Still, my wards endure years, decades even, of training. How am I to believe you are capable?”
Xin Zhao stares at the king, at the prince, at Captain Crownguard. A part of him knows what he could say; another knows what he could do. Is it his choice to make?
No.
Fate has made its choice.
He grabs the coin pouch and throws it at the sword-captain, hitting her in the face. While she recovers, he sweep kicks the guard to his left, knocking him to the floor. Xin Zhao snatches the Demacian’s spear, swinging it in a circle to trip the other guard to his right. His body moves on instinct, fluid and swift as his mind pretends he is back in the arena. With one final twirl of the weapon, he jabs it forward at Jarvan III, its blunt end stopping inches short of the king's throat.
The young prince gasps. The king's guard gather themselves. Soldiers rush in as the sword-captain draws her blade.
Xin Zhao falls to his knees. He lays the spear down without a sound and offers his neck. Finely crafted steel weapons touch his skin.
Tension fills the room. All eyes lock onto Xin Zhao, whose own eyes are closed, at peace, ready to accept whatever comes next.
The king straightens his cloak. “Stand down,” he commands. “My father once said Noxus wasted its talent in those arenas. Now I see the truth in his words.”
“My king,” Captain Crownguard begs. “He tried to kill you!”
“No, Tianna,” the king replies. “He showed me how I could be killed. Even in front of my own trusted guards.”
“My deepest apologies,” Xin Zhao says. His voice is calm and measured, a quiet tide not yet ready to flow ashore. “It was the only way I thought to demonstrate myself.”
“And demonstrate you did,” the king says. “To me, and these warriors of Demacia. It appears they could learn a thing or two from you.”
“I will not have the king’s guard be sullied by a prisoner!” Captain Crownguard exclaims.
“When this man entered my sight, he was a prisoner no more.” The king stands from his chair. “Demacia was founded long ago, by good people who sought refuge from the evils of this world. This man's story reminds me of those tales of old, of great Orlon and his followers. The very ones my father once told me.”
His gaze falls on the prince, who looks back, amazed. “My son, my life’s joy,” the king says, “how happy I am that you are here to witness this moment. To see for yourself why we must uphold our virtues, so others may aspire to do the same. Do you understand?”
“Yes, father,” the prince says, his voice small but firm.
The king steps forward. “Xin Zhao, you have touched me with your life and your courage, a rare thing I have not felt in some time.” He bends down to help Xin Zhao to his feet. “Though you may not have been born a Demacian, I shall allow you to travel back with us, to my kingdom, where you will then prove yourself and your loyalty as my personal guard.”
Xin Zhao feels the king's sturdy hands grip his shoulders.
“Do not take this opportunity lightly.”
Xin Zhao looks Jarvan III in the eye. And for the first time, in a long time, he feels joy, washing over his body like the waves that once carried Viscero free.

The night air is chilly this far north of Kalstead. There is still a week or so before he will gaze upon the walls of the Great City of Demacia, Xin Zhao thinks as he walks outside his tent. A familiar face stands by the entrance.
“Still awake?” Olber says.
“I'm going for a walk. Won't be long.”
Strolling through the camp alone, Xin Zhao takes in the spirit of his new allies. They are an orderly lot, quick to aid one another and ensure safety among their ranks. Seeing their disciplined manner brings a smile to his face. He rounds a corner to look up at the crescent moon when he feels a sudden force pulling him down.
His body collides hard against the ground.
After blinking a couple times, he regains his senses and realizes he has been dragged inside a dimly lit tent. The sword-captain glares down at him. Beside her stand fearsome soldiers dressed in heavy warplate.
“You may have won the king's favor, but you are no Demacian in my eyes,” she states.
As Xin Zhao stands on his feet, she unsheathes her sword. Like the pride following their lioness, those around her do the same.
“I will be watching you,” she warns. “Should anything happen to the king while you are sworn in his service—”
With two hands, Xin Zhao clasps the flat sides of her blade. “Take this as my oath to you.”
Tianna Crownguard looks on, stunned, as he pulls the sword’s tip toward his own throat.
“Should anything happen,” Xin Zhao says. “You may kill me.”
Where Icathia Once Stood

Graham McNeill

My name is Axamuk Var-Choi Kohari Icath’or.
Axamuk was my grandsire’s name. A warrior’s name, it means keeper of edges, and it is an auspicious title to bear. Axamuk was the last of the Mage Kings, the final ruler to fall before the Shuriman Sun Empress when she led her golden host of men and gods into the kingdom of Icathia.
Var is my mother and Choi my father. Icath’or is the name of the blood-bonded clan to which I was born, one with an honorable history of service to the Mage Kings.
I have borne these names since birth.
My name is Axamuk Var-Choi Kohari Icath’or.
Only Kohari is a new addition. The fit is new, but already feels natural. The name is now part of me, and I bear it with a pride that burns bright in my heart. The Kohari were once the life-wards of the Mage Kings, deadly warriors who dedicated their lives to the service of their master. When Axamuk the King fell before the god-warriors of the Sun Empress and Icathia became a vassal state of Shurima, every one of them fell upon their swords.
But the Kohari are reborn, rising to serve the new Mage King and reclaim their honor. I bear their sigil branded on my arm, the scroll-wrapped sword.
My name is Axamuk Var-Choi Kohari Icath’or. I repeat it over and over, holding onto what it represents.
I do not want to forget it. It is all I have left.
Was it only this morning I and the rest of the reformed Kohari marched through the streets of Icathia? It seems like a lifetime ago.
The wide thoroughfares were thronged with thousands of cheering men, women and children. Clad in their brightest cloth, and wearing their finest jewelry to honor our march, they had come to witness the rebirth of their kingdom.
For it was Icathia that was reborn today, not just the Kohari. Our heads were high, my chest swollen with pride.
We marched in step, gripping the leather straps of wicker shields and the wire-wound hilts of our curved nimcha blades. To bear Icathian armaments had been forbidden under Shuriman law, but enough had been wrought in secret forges and hidden in caches throughout the city, in readiness for the day of uprising.
I remember that day well.
The city had been filled with screams, as baying crowds chased down and murdered every Shuriman official they could find. Resentment for centuries of humiliating laws intended to eradicate our culture—and brutal executions for breaking those laws—came to a head in one blood-filled day of violence. It didn’t matter that most of these people were merely scriveners, merchants and tithe-takers. They were servants of the hated Sun-Emperor, and needed to die.
Overnight, Icathia was ours again!
Sun disc effigies were pulled from rooftops and smashed by cheering crowds. Shuriman scriptwork was burned and their treasuries looted. The statues of dead emperors were desecrated, and even I defaced one of the great frescoes with obscenities that would have made my mother blush.
I remember the smell of smoke and fire. It was the smell of freedom.
I held to that feeling as we marched.
My memory recalled the smiling faces and the cheers, but I could not pick out any words. The sunlight was too bright, the noise too intense, and the pounding in my head unrelenting.
I had not slept the previous night, too nervous at the prospect of battle. My skill with the nimcha was average, but I was deadly with the recurved serpent bow slung at my shoulder. Its wood was well-seasoned, protected from the humidity by a coat of red lacquer. My arrows were fletched with azure raptor feathers, and I had carved their piercing heads from razored obsidian sourced from the thaumaturges—the magickers of earth and rock. Long runs through Icathia’s lush, coastal forests and along its high mountain trails had given me powerful, clean limbs to draw the bowstring, and the stamina to fight all day.
A young girl, her hair braided with silver wire, and with the deepest green eyes I had ever seen, placed a garland of flowers over my head. The scent of the blossoms was intoxicating, but I forgot it all as she pulled me close to kiss my lips. She wore a necklace, an opal set in a swirling loop of gold, and I smiled as I recognized my father’s craft.
I tried to hold on to her, but our march carried me away. Instead, I fixed her face in my mind.
I cannot remember it now, only her eyes, deep green like the forests of my youth…
Soon, even that will be gone.
“Easy, Axa,” said Saijax Cail-Rynx Kohari Icath’un, popping a freshly shelled egg into his mouth. “She’ll be waiting for you when this day is done.”
“Aye,” said Colgrim Avel-Essa Kohari Icath’un, jabbing his elbow into my side. “Him and twenty other strapping young lads.”
I blushed at Colgrim’s words, and he laughed.
“Craft her a fine necklace from Shuriman gold,” he continued. “Then she’ll be yours forever. Or at least until morning!”
I should have said something to berate Colgrim for slighting this girl’s honor, but I was young and eager to prove myself to these veteran warriors. Saijax was the beating heart of the Kohari, a shaven-headed giant with skin pockmarked by the ravages of a childhood illness, and a forked beard stiffened to points with wax and white chalk. Colgrim was his right hand, a brute with cold eyes and a betrothal tattoo, though I had never heard him talk of his wife. These men had grown up together, and had learned the secret ways of the warrior since they were old enough to hold a blade.
But I was new to this life. My father had trained me as a lapidary—an artisan of gemstones and maker of jewelry. A meticulous and fastidious man, such coarse language was anathema to him, and unfamiliar to me. I relished it, of course, eager to fit in with these leather-tough men.
“Go easy on the lad, Colgrim,” said Saijax, slapping my back with one of his massive hands. Meant as a brotherly pat, it rattled the teeth in my skull, but I welcomed it all the same. “He’ll be a hero by nightfall.”
He shifted the long, axe-headed polearm slung at his shoulder. The weapon was immense, its ebony haft carved with the names of his forebears, and the blade a slab of razor-edged bronze. Few of our group could even lift it, let along swing it, but Saijax was a master of weapons.
I turned to catch a last glimpse of my green-eyed girl, but could not see her amid the tightly packed ranks of soldiers, and the waving arms of the crowds.
“Time to focus, Axa,” said Saijax. “The scryers say the Shurimans are less than half a day’s march from Icathia.”
“Are… Are the god-warriors with them?” I asked.
“So they say, lad. So they say.”
“Is it wrong that I can’t wait to see them?”
Saijax shook his head. “No, for they are mighty. But as soon as you do, you’ll wish you hadn’t.”
I did not understand Saijax’s meaning, and said, “Why?”
He gave me a sidelong glance. “Because they are monsters.”
“Have you seen one?”
I was filled with youthful enthusiasm, but I still remember the look that passed between Saijax and Colgrim.
“I have, Axa,” said Saijax. “We fought one at Bai-Zhek.”
“We had to topple half the mountain to put the big bastard down,” Colgrim added. “And even then, only Saijax had a weapon big enough to take its head off.”
I remembered the tale with a thrill of excitement. “That was you?”
Saijax nodded, but said nothing, and I knew to ask no more. The corpse had been paraded around the newly liberated city for all to see, proof that the Shuriman’s god-warriors could still die. My father had not wanted me to see it, fearing it would enflame the desire to rebel that had smoldered in every Icathian heart for centuries.
The memory of exactly what it looked like is gone now, but I remember it was enormous beyond belief, inhuman and terrible…
I would see the god-warriors later that day.
And then I understood Saijax’s meaning.
We formed up on the gentle slopes before the crumbling remains of the city walls. Since the coming of the Sun Empress, over a thousand years ago, we had been forbidden to reclaim the stone or rebuild the wall; forced to leave the rubble as a reminder of our ancient defeat.
But now an army of stonewrights, laborers and thaumaturges were hefting giant blocks of freshly hewn granite into place with windlass mechanisms that crackled with magic.
I felt pride at the sight of the rising walls. Icathia was being reborn in glory right before my eyes.
More immediately impressive was the army taking position athwart the hard-packed earthen road leading into the city. Ten thousand men and women, clad in armor of boiled leather and armed with axes, picks, and spears. The forges had worked day and night to produce swords, shields and arrowheads in the days following the uprising, but there was only so much that could be produced before the Sun Emperor turned his gaze upon this rebellious satrapy and marched east.
I had seen pictures of ancient Icathian armies in the forbidden texts—brave warriors arrayed in serried ranks of gold and silver—and though we were a shadow of such forces, we were no less proud. Two thousand talon-riders were deployed on either flank, their scaled and feathered mounts snorting, and stamping clawed hooves with impatience. A thousand archers knelt in two long lines, fifty feet ahead of us, blue-fletched shafts planted in the soft loam before them.
Three blocks of deep-ranked infantry formed the bulk of our line, a bulwark of courage to repel our ancient oppressors.
All down our line, crackling energies from the earth-craft of our mages made the air blurry. The Shurimans would surely bring mages, but we could counter their power with magic of our own.
“I’ve never seen so many warriors,” I said.
Colgrim shrugged. “None of us have, not in our lifetimes.”
“Don’t get too impressed,” said Saijax. “The Sun Emperor has five armies, and even the least of them will outnumber us three to one.”
I tried to imagine such a force, and failed. “How do we defeat such a host?” I asked.
Saijax did not answer me, but led the Kohari to our place in the line before a stepped structure of granite blocks. Shuriman corpses were impaled upon wooden stakes driven into the earth at its base, and flocks of carrion birds circled overhead. A silken pavilion of crimson and indigo had been raised at its summit, but I could not see what lay within. Robed priests surrounded it, each one weaving intricate patterns in the air with their star-metal staves.
I did not know what they were doing, but I heard an insistent buzzing sound, like a hive of insects trying to push their way into my skull.
The pavilion’s outline rippled like a desert mirage, and I had to look away as my eyes began to water. My teeth felt loose in their gums, and my mouth filled with the taste of soured milk. I gagged and wiped the back of my hand across my lips, surprised and not a little alarmed to see a smear of blood there.
“What is that?” I asked. “What’s in there?”
Saijax shrugged. “A new weapon, I heard. Something the thaumaturges found deep underground, after the earthquake at Saabera.”
“What kind of weapon?”
“Does it matter?” said Colgrim. “They say it’s going to wipe the gold-armored dung-eaters from the world. Even those thrice-damned god-warriors.”
The sun was close to its zenith by now, but a shiver worked its way down my spine. My mouth was suddenly dry. I could feel tingling in my fingertips.
Was it fear? Perhaps.
Or, maybe, just maybe, it was a premonition of what was to come.
An hour later, the Shuriman army arrived.
I had never seen such a host, nor ever imagined so many men could be gathered together in one place. Columns of dust created clouds that rose like a gathering storm set to sweep the mortal realm away.
And then, through the dust, I saw the bronze spears of the Shuriman warriors, filling my sight in all directions. They marched forward, a vast line of fighting men with golden banners and sun-disc totems glimmering in the noonday sun.
From the slopes above, we watched wave after wave come into sight, tens of thousands of men who had never known defeat, and whose ancestors had conquered the known world. Riders on golden mounts rode the flanks, as hundreds of floating chariots roved ahead of the army. Heavy wagons the size of river barques bore strange war-machines that resembled navigational astrolabes; spinning globes orbited by flaming spheres and crackling lightning. Robed priests came with them, each with a flame-topped staff and an entourage of blinded slaves.
At the heart of the army were the god-warriors.
Much else fades from my mind; the blood, the horror and the fear. But the sight of the god-warriors will follow me into whatever lies beyond this moment…
I saw nine of them, towering over the men they led. Their features and bodies were an awful blend of human and animal, and things that had never walked this world, and never should. Armored in bronze and jade, they were titans, inhuman monsters that defied belief.
Their leader, with skin as pale and smooth as ivory, turned her monstrous head towards us. Enclosed in a golden helm carved to resemble a roaring lion, her face was mercifully hidden, but I could feel her power as she swept her scornful gaze across our line.
A palpable wave of terror followed in its wake.
Our army shrank from the scale of the enemy force, on the brink of fleeing before even a single blow was struck. Steadying shouts arose from our brave leaders, and an immediate rout was halted, but even I could hear the fear in their voices.
I, too, felt an almost uncontrollable urge to void my bladder, but clamped down on the feeling. I was Kohari. I wouldn’t piss myself in my first battle.
Even so, my hands were clammy and I felt a sickening knot forming in my gut.
I wanted to run. I needed to run.
We could not possibly stand against such a force.
“Big bastards, aren’t they?” said Colgrim, and nervous laughter rippled through our ranks. My fear lessened.
“They may look like gods,” said Saijax, his voice carrying far and wide. “But they are mortal. They can bleed, and they can die.”
I took strength from his words, but I wonder now if he knew just how wrong he was.
“We are Icathians!” he roared. “We are the heirs of the kings and queens who first settled this land! It is ours by right and by birth. Aye, we are outnumbered, but the warriors our enemies have sent are slaves, and men whose only loyalty is to coin.”
He raised his weapon high and the sunlight shone from its polished blade. He was glorious in that moment, and I would have followed him to the very end of the world if he asked me to.
“We fight to live in freedom, not in slavery! This is our home, and it is a land of proud people, of free people! There is nothing stronger than that, and we will prevail!”
A cheer began in the Kohari ranks, and was swiftly carried to the other regiments in our army.
“I-ca-thi-a!I-ca-thi-a!I-ca-thi-a!”
It echoed from the rising walls of our city, and was carried to the Shuriman host. The god-warriors spoke swiftly to their attendants, who turned and ran to bear their orders to the wings of the army. Almost immediately, our enemy began to move uphill.
They came slowly, their pace deliberate. On every third step, the warriors hammered the hafts of their spears on their shields. The noise was profoundly unnerving, a slow drumbeat that sapped the will of we who were soon to feel the tips of those blades.
My mouth was dry, my heart hammered in my chest. I looked to Saijax for strength, to take courage from his indomitable presence. His jaw was set, his eyes hard. This was a soul who knew no fear, who rejected doubt and stood firm in the face of destiny.
Sensing my gaze, he glanced down at me. “Egg?” he said.
A pair of peeled eggs lay in the palm of his hand.
I shook my head. I couldn’t eat. Not now.
“I’ll take an egg,” said Colgrim, taking one and biting it in half. Saijax ate the other, and the pair of them chewed thoughtfully.
The Shurimans drew ever closer.
“Good egg,” noted Colgrim.
“I add a dash of vinegar as I boil them,” Saijax replied. “Makes them easier to peel.”
“Clever.”
“Thanks.”
I looked back and forth between them, unable to reconcile the mundane nature of their words as an all-conquering army marched upon us. And yet, I felt soothed by it.
I laughed, and that laughter swiftly spread.
The Kohari were laughing, and soon, without knowing why, our entire army was laughing. The fear that had threatened to undo us all now fled. Fresh resolve filled our hearts, and put iron in our sword arms.
The Shurimans halted two hundred yards from us. I tasted a strange texture to the air, like biting on tin. I looked up in time to see the spinning globes on the war-machines burn with searing light. The priests attending them swept their staves down.
One of the flaming spheres detached from the globe and arced through the air towards us.
It landed in the midst of our infantry, and burst in an explosion of pellucid green fire and screams. Another sphere followed, then another.
I gagged as the smell of roasting flesh billowed from the ranks, horrified at the carnage being wrought, but our warriors held firm.
More of the spheres arced towards us, but instead of striking our ranks, they wobbled in the air before reversing course to smash down in the heart of the Shuriman spearmen.
Amazed, I saw our thaumaturges holding their staves aloft, and crackling lines of magic flickered between them. The hairs on my arms and legs stood up in the shimmering air, as if a veil was being drawn up around us.
More of the searing fireballs launched from the Shuriman war-machines, but they exploded in mid-air, striking the invisible barrier woven around our force.
Cheers overcame the cries of pain in our ranks. I let out a breath, thankful that I had not been among the war-machines’ targets. I watched those piteously wounded men dragged to the rear by their comrades. The temptation to remain there must have been tremendous, but we Icathians descend from explorer kings, and not a single warrior failed to return to their place in the battle line.
The strain on our mages was clear, but their power was holding the Shuriman barrage at bay. I glanced over my shoulder to the pavilion atop the pyramid. There too, the priests were straining with all their power. To what end, I could not imagine. What manner of weapon lay within, and when would we unleash it?
“Stand to,” said Saijax, and I returned my attention to the army before us. “They’ll come at us now. A big wave to test us.”
I looked back at the Shurimans, who now came at us in a run. Arrows flashed from the lines of archers ranged before us, and scores of enemy warriors died. Bronzed plate and shields saved some, but the range was so close that many fell with shafts punched clean through their breastplates.
Another volley hammered the Shurimans, swiftly followed by another.
Hundreds were down. Their line was ragged and disorganized.
“Now!” roared Saijax. “Into them!”
Our infantry surged forward in a wedge, spears lowering as they charged. I was carried by the mass of men behind me, managing to drag my blade from its sheath as I ran. I screamed to keep my fear at bay, worrying that I might trip on my scabbard.
I saw the faces of the Shurimans, the braids in their hair, the gold of their crests, and the blood smearing their tunics. We were so close, I could have whispered and they might have heard me.
We struck their wavering ranks like a thunderbolt. Spears thrust and shivered, hafts splintering with the impact. Driven by sheer will and a thousand years of pent-up anger, the momentum of our charge clove deep into their ranks, splitting them and breaking their formation completely.
Anger gave me strength, and I swung my sword. It bit into flesh and blood sprayed me.
I heard screaming. It might have been me. I cannot say for sure.
I tried to stay close to Saijax and Colgrim, knowing that where they fought, Shurimans would be dying. I saw Saijax felling men by the dozen with his huge polearm, but could no longer see Colgrim. I soon lost sight of Saijax in the heave and sway of surging warriors.
I called his name, but my shout was drowned in the roar of battle.
Bodies slammed into me, pulling at me, clawing my face—Icathian hands or Shuriman, I had no idea.
A spear stabbed towards my heart, but the tip slid from my breastplate to slice across my arm. I remember pain, but little else. I hammered my sword into a screaming man’s face. He fell, and I pushed on, made fearless by fear and savage joy. I roared, and swung my sword like a madman.
Skill was meaningless. I was a butcher hacking meat.
I saw men die whose skill was much greater than mine. I kept moving, lost in the swirling tide of flesh and bone. Wherever I saw an exposed neck or back, I struck. I took grim pleasure in my killing. Whatever the outcome of this day, I could hold my head high in the company of warriors. More arrows flew overhead, and the cheers rising from our army were songs of freedom.
And then the Shurimans broke.
It began as a single slave warrior turning his back and running, but his panic spread like fire on the plain, and soon the whole formation was streaming back down the hill.
In the days leading up to this moment, Saijax had told me that the most dangerous moment for any warrior is when a regiment breaks. That is when the killing truly begins.
We tore through the routed Shurimans, spears plunging into exposed backs, and axes splitting skulls. They were no longer fighting back, simply trampling one another to escape. The bloodshed was appalling, yet I reveled in it as hundreds of bodies were crushed in the slaughter.
I saw Saijax again, then, standing firm, his polearm at his side. “Hold!” he yelled. “Hold!”
I wanted to curse his timidity. Our blood was up, and the Shurimans were fleeing in panic.
I did not know it at the time, but Saijax had seen how dangerous our position truly was.
“Pull back!” he shouted, and the cry was taken up by others who saw what he had seen.
At first, it seemed our army would not heed his words, drunk on victory and eager to plunge onward. We were intent on slaying every one of the enemy, wreaking vengeance upon soldiers who had held our land hostage for centuries.
I had not seen the danger, but all too soon I understood.
Screams and fountains of blood sheeted from the leading edges of our battle-line. Severed heads flew backwards, spinning like rocks skipped over a pool. Bodies soon followed, tossed aside without effort.
Screams and cries of terror erupted, and the songs of freedom were snuffed out.
The god-warriors had entered the fray.
Three of them surged into our ranks; some moving like men, others like ravenous beasts. Each was armed with a weapon larger than any man could lift, unstoppable and invincible. They waded through our ranks with sweeping blows that slew a dozen men with every swing. Icathians flew in pieces from their crackling blades, were crushed beneath their tread, or were rent asunder like bloodied rags.
“Back!” shouted Saijax. “Back to the walls!”
None could pierce the god-warriors’ armor, and their ferocity was so primal, so inhuman, that it froze me to the spot. Spears snapped against their iron-hard hides, and their bellowing roars cut me to the marrow with terror. One, a cawing beast with ragged, feathered wings and a vulture-like beak, leapt into the air, and searing blue fire blazed from its outstretched claws. I cried out at the sight of my fellow countrymen burned to ash.
The elation that had—only moments before—filled us with thoughts of victory and glory, now shattered like a fallen glass. In its place, I felt a sick horror of torments yet to come, the retribution of an unimaginably cruel despot who knows no mercy.
I felt a hand grab my shoulder, and lifted my bloodied blade.
“Move, Axa,” said Saijax, forcing me back. “There’s still fighting to be done!”
I was dragged along by the force of his grip, barely able to keep my feet. I wept as we streamed back to where we had first formed up. Our line was broken, and surely the day was lost.
But the god-warriors simply stood among the dead, not even bothering to pursue.
“You said we had a weapon,” I cried. “Why aren’t they doing anything?”
“They are,” said Saijax. “Look!”
What happened next defies my understanding. No mortal eye had ever seen such a thing.
The pavilion exploded with forking traceries of light. Arcing loops of purple energy ripped into the sky and lashed down like crashing waves. The force of the blast threw everyone to the ground. I covered my ears as a deafening screaming tore the air.
I pressed myself to the battle-churned earth as the wail burrowed deep into my skull, as though the world itself were shrieking in horror. I rolled onto my side, retching as stabbing nausea ripped through my belly. The sky, once bright and blue, was now the color of a week-old bruise. Unnatural twilight held sway, and I saw flickering afterimages burn themselves onto the back of my mind.
Slashing claws... Gaping maws... All-seeing eyes...
I sobbed in terror at the sight of such horrors.
Alone of all the things being stripped from me, this I gladly surrender.
A nightmarish light, sickly blue and ugly purple, smothered the world, pressing down from above and blooming up from somewhere far below. I pushed myself upright, turning in a slow circle as the world ended around me.
The Shurimans were streaming back from the city, terrified by whatever force our priests had unleashed. My enemies were being destroyed, and I knew I should be triumphal, but this... This was not a victory any sane person could revel in.
This was extinction.
An abyss that bled purple light tore open amid the Shurimans, and I saw their ivory-skinned general overcome by whipping cords of matter. She fought to free herself with wild sweeps of her blade, but the power we had unleashed was too much for her. The pulsing, glowing light spread over her body like a hideous cocoon.
Everywhere I looked, I saw the same slick coils rising from the earth, or from the very air itself, to seize the flesh of mortals. Men and women were swept up and enveloped. I saw one Shuriman clawing his way over the earth, his body seeming to dissolve as the tendrils of foul energy overwhelmed him.
I began to hope, to pray, that this doom was what had been planned all along.
I saw shapes in the flickering light, too fast and indistinct to make out clearly. Stretching, swelling limbs of strange, tar-like matter. Men were clawed from their feet and pulled apart. I heard the gurgling, hooting bellows of things never meant to walk the surface of this world.
As awful as this day had become, I wondered if this was the price of the great weapon our priests had unleashed. I hardened my heart to the suffering of the Shurimans and remembered the centuries of misery they had heaped upon us.
Once again, I had lost sight of Saijax and Colgrim. But I no longer needed their presence to steady me. I had proved myself worthy of my grandsire’s name, worthy of the brand on my arm.
I was Kohari!
The sky groaned and buckled, sounding like a vast sailcloth tearing in a storm. I turned and ran back to the city, joining up with other soldiers. I saw the same desperate, horrified looks on their faces I knew must be upon mine.
Had we won? None of us knew. The Shurimans were gone, swallowed whole by the terror we had unleashed upon the world. I felt no regret. No remorse. My horror had given way to justification.
I had lost my nimcha blade somewhere in the frenzy of the battle, so I took my bow from my shoulder and pumped it to the sky. “Icathia!” I yelled. “Icathia!”
The chant was taken up again by the soldiers around me, and we stopped to watch the enemy finally overcome. The seething mass of matter that had consumed them lay like a shroud over the flesh it had consumed. Its surface was undulant, and swelling blisters of glistening matter burst open with frothing birth-sacs that twisted and unfolded like newborn animals.
I turned as I heard a deafening grinding of rock.
Booming cracks echoed as more and more chasms tore the landscape open. I dropped to my knees as the earth shook, and the walls of Icathia, fallen once and now rising again, were shattered by a groaning bass note that split the earth.
Geysers of dust and smoke erupted from within the city. I saw men screaming, but could not hear them over the crash of falling rock and splitting earth. Towers and palaces that had stood since the first Mage King planted his star-metal staff were swallowed whole by the ever-widening chasms. Only rubble and shattered fragments remained, my beloved city reduced to a charred skeleton.
Fires spat skyward, and the wails of my people were somehow magnified by the canyons of the city as they fell into the hideous doom below.
“Icathia!” I cried one last time.
I saw a flash of movement, and flinched as something flew through the air above me. I recognized the vulture-headed god-warrior from earlier in the battle. Its flight was erratic, its limbs already partially ruined and unmade by the strange matter spilling from the rents in the earth.
It flew towards the pavilion with desperate beats of its ravaged wings, and I knew I had to stop it. I ran towards the towering creature, nocking an obsidian-tipped arrow to my bow.
The thing stumbled as it landed. Its legs were twisted and its back was alive with devouring tendrils. Feathers and skin sloughed from its head as it limped past the bodies of dead priests, whose own flesh bubbled and roiled with internal motion.
Fire built around the god-warrior’s hands, ready to burn the pavilion with the last of its power.
Saijax had said the Sun-Emperor had more armies, and we would need our weapon intact if we were to defeat them. I drew back the bowstring, an obsidian arrow aimed at the god-warrior.
I loosed, and the arrow sped true, punching through the dissolving matter of its skull.
The god-warrior fell, and the fire faded from its hands. It rolled onto its side, the flesh falling from its bones—I saw threads of sinewy, pallid matter forming beneath.
The god-warrior sensed my presence, and turned its vulturine head to me. One of its eyes was milky and distended by growths of a strange, fungus-like substance spreading across its skull. The other had my arrow protruding through it.
“Do you even... know… what you... have done… foolish… Icathian?” the blind god-warrior managed, its voice a wet growl of dissolving vocal chords.
I sought to think of some powerful words, something to mark the moment I had killed a god-warrior.
All I could think of was the truth. “We freed ourselves,” I said.
“You… have opened a door... to… a place… that should... never be opened…” it hissed. “You have... doomed us all…”
“Time for you to die,” I said.
The god-warrior tried to laugh, but what came out was a gurgling death-rattle. “Die…? No… What is to come… will be far worse… It will be… as if none of us… ever existed…”
I left the arrow embedded in the god-warrior’s skull. Men were limping back from the battle, bloodied and weary, with the same look of incredulous horror in their eyes. None of us truly understood what had happened, but the Shurimans were dead, and that was enough.
Wasn’t it?
We milled in confusion, none of us knowing what to say or do. The landscape before the city was twisting with unnatural motion, the flesh of the Shuriman army utterly obscured by pale, coiling ropes of hideous matter. Its surface was darkening as I watched, splitting where it hardened like some form of carapace. Viscous ichor spilled out, and more and more I had the impression that this was just the beginning of something far worse.
Light still spilled from the colossal rents torn in the ground, and alien sounds—a mix of shrieking, hissing and crazed howls—echoed from far below. I could feel tremors rising up from the bowels of the earth, like the slow grinding of bedrock that presages an earthquake.
“What’s down there?” said a man I didn’t know. His arm was all but encased in a translucent caul that was slowly creeping its way up the side of his neck. I wondered if he even knew. “Sounds like a nest. Or a lair, or… something.”
I did not know what hideous things lived down there. Nor did I want to.
I heard a voice call my name, and looked up to see Saijax limping toward me. His face was a mask of blood, thanks to a jagged wound that ran from above his right eye to his jawline.
I hadn’t thought Saijax could bleed at all.
“You’re hurt,” I said.
“It’s worse than it looks.”
“Is this the end?” I asked him.
“For Icathia, I fear it is,” he replied, moving away to grab the bridle of a cavalryman’s mount. The beast was skittish, but Saijax hauled its reins, and vaulted into the saddle.
“I would have given everything to see the Shurimans defeated,” I murmured.
“I fear we just did,” said Saijax.
“But… we won.”
“The Shurimans are dead, but I’m not sure that’s the same thing,” said Saijax. “Now find a mount, we have to go.”
“Go? What are you talking about?”
“Icathia is doomed,” he said. “You see that, don’t you? Not just the city, but our land. Look around you. That will be our fate too.”
I knew he was right, but the idea of simply riding away...? I didn’t know if I could.
“Icathia is my home,” I said.
“There’s nothing left of Icathia. Or, at least, there won’t be soon.”
He extended his hand to take mine, and I shook it.
“Axa...” he said, casting a glance back at the creeping horror. “There is no hope here.”
I shook my head and said, “I was born here and I will die here.”
“Then hold to who you are while you still can, lad,” he said, and I felt the weight of his sadness and guilt. “It’s all you have left.”
Saijax turned his mount and rode away. I never saw him again.
My name is Axamuk Var-Choi Kohari Icath’or.
I think… I think Axamuk was my grandsire’s name. It has meaning, but I can no longer remember what.
I wandered the ruins where a great city once stood. All that is left is an impossibly wide crater, rubble, and a tear in the fabric of the world.
I feel a terrible emptiness before me.
Axamuk was a king, I think. I do not remember where. Was it here? In this ruined, sunken city?
I do not know what Var or Choi mean. Icath’or should have meaning to me, but whatever it was is gone. There is a terrible void where my mind and memories once dwelled.
My name is Axamuk Var-Choi Kohari.
Kohari? What is that?
There is a mark on my arm, a sword wrapped in a scroll. Is it a slave mark? Was I the property of a conqueror? I remember a girl with green eyes and an opal necklace. Who was she? Was she my wife, my sister? A daughter? I do not know, but I remember the smell of her flowers.
My name is Axamuk Var-Choi.
I repeat it over and over, holding onto it as if it can stave off this slow dissolution.
I do not want to forget it. It is all I have left.
My name is Axamuk.
I am being erased. I know this, but I do not know why or how.
Something awful writhes within me.
All that I am is unravelling.
I am being undone.
My name is
My name
My
With Hell Before Them

Jared Rosen

June 7th, 1868
The caravan has delivered me unto Dust.
It is a listless and dead-eyed town, as likely to be swallowed by the desert as any other two-street this far south of the rail line. I recall it was once something quite spectacular back in the days of the Great Expansion, but now there is little left save a filth-encrusted saloon and a handful of sunken homesteads. The people’s faces are weighed down by a certain heaviness—they look to me for some measure of salvation, but I am not a true angel, and I cannot answer their prayers.
I am unsure how long this place might weather the dark of the frontier, or if it will be here to greet me when I return. Regardless, I must press on.
My own goal is east, shadowed by sandstone arches and miles of open backcountry. No man in his right mind would settle in these lands, as dangerously hostile as it is even for the well-prepared, and the quarry I seek is leagues beyond simple bandits or stick-up gangs. To that end, a killer travels with me. Paid half upfront, and half when the deed is done.
He is a towering hulk of a creature, filled with that selfsame darkness endemic to his kind. I can almost feel the heat of his blood boiling within that blackened heart, but he is the quality of man this venture requires. No doubt. No hesitation. Only raw power and instinct. Thus the manhunter Darius has joined me in this, our ride into the lonely spines of the Black Canyon.
It is in the depths of that bleak place that we will hunt the devil, and kill him.

June 9th, 1868
It has been two days since we left the town of Dust, and Darius has scarcely spoken a word. His is a grim and unclouded resolve, fueled by some swirling anger clutched deep within his breast. He reminds me strongly of my creators in the east, but moreso of his forebears—men who years ago stormed the gardens of paradise, and slew the things within.
That is the great irony of this endeavor. A machine made in the image of the lost angels and a killer descended from killers, contracted to destroy the very product of mankind’s gravest sin. I am sure my companion is amused.
We ride against the wind, following the scent of brimstone ash, burning hoofprints, and brushlands singed by hellfire. Here the land goes on for a thousand leagues and a thousand more, an endless, open pastiche of dirt, grass, and wild lavender that meets the sky at its middle and continues on into forever. It is a blessed country; I have explored much of it in the time since my birth, and will explore more in the decades and centuries to come, should this shell of a body hold out for that long.
Sadly, the secrets of my creation were long ago lost; I stand the first and last of the artificial angels, fueled by the very blood of the old choirs. Their whispers still reach my ears, but the gods are dead and their attendants lay scattered across the frontier, words shorn of all power or consequence, until they, too, vanish completely from the world. That is why I keep this journal: so that those who remain when the old has been lost might not forget us, and know, at least, our story.
In time my own earthly form will rust and the being within will return to wherever the souls of angels are wont to go, perhaps a long way from here, and I sometimes wonder if, when my days come to an end, I will ever again look upon this land of such agonizing beauty.

June 11th, 1868
We smelled the ranch before we saw it. A two-story farmhouse and horse stable, both rendered down to black, ashen ruins. These are the unmistakable signs of the devil we hunt: trails marked with smoldering hoofprints and the incinerated bodies of animals and people, scattered about as if some sadistic giant had tossed them through the air before finally delivering them unto oblivion. Each creature’s burnt face twisted upward in horror and fear as they stared into the flames of some distant, devouring hell.
Damn these devils! Foreign horrors all, escaped from their prison of smoke and darkness. Some may have made this place their home; famously the great cattle-skulled stalker of the old world, prowling about this land since the time of the ancient progenitor deities. But the rest dwelt for eons within the bowels of the underworld, torturing the souls of the condemned and delivering pain upon the spirits of wicked and broken men. Then heaven fell in that first, great continental land rush, and paradise was lost to humanity for all of time.
Human souls, compromised as they were, had nowhere left to go but the great grinning maw of the pit.
Yet even hell could not hold all the wailing masses of mankind, and it burst open in a furious upwelling of flames and hatred—the devils finally rushing forth to join their cousins, the long-maligned demons. Those bestial creatures masquerading as snake-oil salesman, carnival barkers, and traveling undertakers, whose preference for plotting cruel and ironic downfalls of the desperate married happily with the newly expanded threat of hellfire and death.
Now heaven is empty, and hell has overflown, and these poor mortal souls can do fair little to save themselves from a damnation of their own making.
Still, Darius seems unmoved by the destruction that so often marks our path. He speaks of his obligation to me and to the success of our venture, yet wonders aloud what a mechanical angel might gain from fighting the long-concluded battle between good and evil. He does not seem ill at ease by my presence, nor does he expect the miracles of the angels to lighten his inner darkness. He seems rather unmoved by almost everything, save the fight ahead and the reward for his victory.
I trust the man, despite my misgivings about humanity. It is a feeling born of pragmatism, and I suspect he trusts me in kind.
I sometimes watch him in the dim hours when we camp for the evening, his eyes always drawn to the glittering coals within the firelight. Searching, perhaps, for something I cannot see.

June 14th, 1868
We have reached the mouth of the Black Canyon, after many days of tracking the black hoofprints of the devil’s dread riders. Darius’ horse refuses to move ahead, and so I will leave my own mount, Virtue, behind, and the two of us will continue on foot. In the end it could work to our advantage. The beasts will not spook this way, and cannot alert our target.
The manhunter carries with him a mighty hatchet, upon its hilt countless notches for countless claimed bounties. A man devoid of emotion is a man incorruptible by fear or weakness, unlike the marshals and their untoward aggression to anything less than human. His eyes are consumed with violent intent, always alert for the slightest sound or movement, even when there is nothing on the horizon—used to, as any seasoned killer is, the unpredictability of supernatural assailants.
The winds are soft, and no sound carries save the crunch of pebbles beneath our feet. Darius asks why a devil would make his home here. I tell him that for a devil, the only better place is hell itself.
We stand amid the bones of a god, slain by men not so long ago.
It was only fifty years prior that the deities who did not retreat into the Far West were hunted mercilessly by the government, gunned down by federal marshals and broken apart by skinners, tanners, and scavengers. The god’s colossal bones, too big for even these greedy men to lift, were left here—the rock quickly forming around them into what cartographers have deemed a canyon, though a canyon it is not.
Darius laughs, and the sound carries across the limestone walls and down into the open belly of the earth. Twisting and contorting, rolling across great slabs of rock as they collapse in upon one another, his voice terminates into whispers and then into nothing—and at this, the manhunter smiles.
How long do you think it took those men to kill a god? he asks me. Before I can answer, he shoulders his weapon, a new hunger apparent upon his face, and marches down the trail, his pace faster than ever before.

June 15th, 1868
Darius is beginning to worry me.
I took the manhunter on for his ruthlessness, but something about this place is awakening the coiled serpent deep within his heart, and now it has given way to even darker intention. He walks with purpose, the hilt of his axe gripped tightly in his hands. When he looks at me now, I no longer see a companion, but a challenger—a man who would split the world in two if only he could muster the strength. What he sees within me is a road to that power, barely holding himself back as the sky falls away and the air grows warm and still.
He mutters in the night about demons and devils, and what their bargains could offer.
Demons give you what you want, he likes to say. Devils give you what you need.

June ?, 1868
The true nature of the Black Canyon reveals itself the further down we journey. Whispers from within my blood grow muted within its vast stone walls, their jagged spines ripping into the rapidly vanishing sky. Dirt and dust have given way to ghostly vegetation—fields of odd white flowers contained within valleys that should not exist, ringed by mountains that defy geologic time. Night and day seem interchangeable with each passing hour, but still we move deeper into the bowels of the rock, and deeper still into the lair of the devil.
Darius grins, now and again, asking of gods and monsters, angels and demons. His questions are fueled by odd tics; he glances behind us as though someone might be there, batting at his ears as if an insect is buzzing about. I watch him carefully as we camp each night. His wild eyes glow as they stare into the burning coals, reflecting embers as they dance upward into the still air, and he interrogates me about the god who died here and how exactly it was slain.
Occasionally, as he sleeps, I will spot the grinning silhouette of an outsider watching us from some distance away. Though those strange gamblers would never test the patience of an angel, I know why they have come, sensing within this killer some vicious longing for an intractable bargain.
Darius is becoming a threat. But the devil is so close now—I can sense it, this thing we must slay… and no living creature can destroy one alone. Surely once the deed is done my charge will regain his proper senses, and perhaps the cloud over this place will finally lift itself forever.
I have prepared myself in the event that Darius turns on me. We need each other alive until we strike into the monster’s lair, but after…
Well, perhaps this man will find himself dead at the bottom of the world.
Or, if fate demands it, all three of us will.

???
I wonder if I will remember my death.
The thought haunts me, at times. I remember my birth quite well—the sensation of being pulled from someplace very far from here, and awakening surrounded by the creaking and clattering of old machines. I was a miracle, I was told. Built from some archaic plan found in a great, silver city, and filled with the essence of the things that had lived there but now do not. Their whispers began to touch my ears, then, and I knew how painful it was to be the first and the last of something I could only half recall.
Yet I know when I die I will remember the devil Hecarim, his skull burning within the canyon’s otherworldly darkness.
My companion had regained himself after we reached the bottom of the crevasse, where the still air broke into a calm wind, and the deep unease that had dogged us thus far seemed to finally dissipate. We found ourselves standing before the mouth of a great opening in the rock, its entrance blasted jet-black as small fires flickered across the ground, and we knew our quarry was finally within reach. The hateful riders, that roving pack of demonic horsemen that seemed to follow Hecarim everywhere, would surely meet us inside. Weapons at the ready, we entered the cave to find—
Nothing.
A dark tunnel lay before us, but the riders did not make their presence known. How long had we prepared? How long had we been down here? It was difficult to say. We followed the path for a time, into the gloom, into the heat of that furnace, lit only by the glow of crackling ash that lined the edges of the cave floor. Far ahead was some sort of clearing, some opening on the other side of the canyon wall, and in it the flickering red-yellow tongues of fire that were the telltale signs of a devil awaiting his audience.
For while we had hunted the devil, he had hunted us in turn. That was and always has been the nature of the creatures. Devils are the great kings of hell, and they demand an audience with the pomp and circumstance of any old world nobility or government man from the eastern territories. Demons may lie, and trick, and deceive. They may give mortals the things they want, and extract their prices once the terrible weight of their gifts is finally appreciated. But a devil is never caught unaware, and is always prepared to give its pursuers exactly the thing they need.
Darius sneered, his eyes lit with the glimmer of so many burning coals, and I knew he had found whatever he saw within the heart of the fire.
We emerged into a barren outcropping of molten stone and searing heat, ringed by a tower of flame that seemed to climb the very walls of the canyon itself. In its center was Hecarim, his body that of a great black stallion and the monstrous torso of a man, wearing the face of a skinless, burning horse skull. From it jutted a single wicked horn, cloaked in thick smoke, and he spoke with the voice of a mountain slowly tearing itself open:
Why have you come?
My companion said nothing. The question was not meant for him to hear, but for me, since his answer had already been given. Perhaps in his sleep, in the recesses in his own dark dreams, or whispered in the echoes of rocks and dust as they crunched beneath our feet in this long journey down. Power, he had said. I must have power. And he turned as if to answer for me, raising his axe high above his head, the weapon glowing with some bedeviled, red-hot flame, that he might bring it crashing down upon me.
Two arrows I did fire into his heart, and two arrows struck true. Darius fell to earth before his pact could be sealed: the power to slay everything before him, given at any cost.
Without a word, the manhunter was dead… or so I believed.
As I drew another arrow against the devil, Darius rose once more, his face twisted into a hateful grin, his axe glowing with the newly gifted powers of hell. And through the flames behind him rode the host of demonic horsemen. Hecarim’s trap had been sprung.
Through the tunnel I fled, up the winding paths of the Black Canyon toward my steed and open prairie. Pursued by the legions of hell, and the blackened heart of that wicked, brutal man. For monsters are drawn to such power, changed by it, made into a force that in time will burn the continent and everything in it to dust.
I ride for the border town of Angel’s Perch. There is a man there, a slayer of devils and an ally of those who once called the frontier home, who can rally the wild soul of such chaotic rabble against the threats allied against them. Perhaps they would not fight for the fate of mankind, who have cast us all into damnation with their lot. But they may yet fight for themselves.
If you have found this journal, I ask that you join us. Our forces muster at the edge of the world. There is precious little time.
Hell is coming. We must rise as one, or lose the west forever.
Xayah

As a child of the Lhotlan tribe, Xayah loved listening to her father sing folk-hymns about ancient vastayan heroes. The haunting melodies transported her to a long-forgotten time, when magic danced freely through the island of Qaelin, imbuing the Lhotlan with immense power.
Yet with each new generation, humans encroached farther into all the vastaya’s ancestral tribelands, disrupting their raw essence. The tribes began to fade, losing vitality as they were gradually cut off from the spirit of the First Lands, and were forced to negotiate with their mortal rivals.
Xayah watched in frustration as, time and again, her tribe’s juloah ambassadors made treaties with mortals that were swiftly broken. Most disturbingly, humans had discovered the secrets of towering constructs known as quinlons, and were using them to inhibit Ionia’s natural magic in order to protect their expanding settlements.
Even though Xayah and others like her urged their people to fight back, the Lhotlan instead withdrew into themselves, shunning the mortal world as they clung to what little they had left. Yet this would not protect them, and they were eventually driven from their homes.
The Lhotlan became rootless nomads. Xayah became a freedom fighter.
And she was not alone. Vastayan rebellions were growing across Ionia, seeking retribution against mortals. The time for negotiation was over. Xayah was determined to use her lethal quills in battle, to release the land’s wild magic.
Flitting in and out of the most fortified strongholds and leaving a trail of bodies in her wake, she earned the sobriquet “the Violet Raven”. Her dedication to the cause was unmatched, as she focused only on the next mission, and the next step toward freedom for her kind. Though she cherished her rebel allies, she usually acted alone, believing she could do the job better than any other.
But then she met another vastaya who would change her life forever.
After she entered the remote mountain town of Vlonqo in search of a stolen artifact, she was struck by the sight of a braying crowd of humans. Onstage before them stood a preening, flamboyant performer, who sang old vastayan songs for his captivated audience. As he finished his show with a dazzling array of cheap tricks, the crowd erupted and chanted his name: Rakan! Rakan! Rakan!
He took a theatrical bow. Xayah dismissed him as a buffoon. A fellow Lhotlan he might be, but this Rakan seemed like nothing more than a foolish mu’takl.
Xayah willed herself to ignore him, and completed her mission... which she couldn’t deny had become far easier thanks to Rakan distracting the locals.
Before Xayah could flee into the wilderness, Rakan accosted her. After making a series of failed attempts to charm her with flattery, the brash vastaya asked for news of the Lhotlan tribe. When she told him they had lost their lands, his plumage darkened, and she was surprised at the depth of his rage. Perhaps there was more to Rakan than she’d thought.
When she told him of her true cause, he begged to join her. Seeing potential in his ability to create diversions, if nothing else, Xayah agreed.
When they began their travels, she saw Rakan as a useful—but annoying—asset. The showboating battle-dancer would leap and pirouette through enemies with ease, distracting them before Xayah struck them down. Indeed, this fighting style almost compensated for his irritating inability to remember Xayah’s meticulous plans.
Rakan helped Xayah in other ways as well. While she was blunt and abrasive, he was insightful and charismatic, able to use charm and persuasion where she would have resorted to violence. She was impressed by his uncanny ability to assess people’s emotions and trustworthiness. She sometimes questioned Rakan’s compassion for mortals, but never doubted his devotion to the rebel cause.
Eventually, Xayah realized her feelings for Rakan were changing. There was a lightness to him and his free-spirited ways that she found aggravatingly alluring. Over time, she grew to welcome his company, and—though she was initially loath to admit it—the world didn’t feel so broken and lonely. They became inseparable.
In all the years since, the two of them have become formidable champions of the vastaya, and word of their deeds is spreading. In the wake of the Noxian invasion, Ionians are undeniably more aggressive and dangerous—especially the peoples of Navori, and the hated “Order of Shadow”. Even so, this has enabled Xayah and Rakan to rally countless more vastaya to their side, and their dream of rebellion is coming to fruition.
Together, they will fight to reclaim the First Lands, so that the tribes may thrive once again.
Puboe Prison Break

Matt Dunn

Rakan is the worst.
He’s not listening. He’s fixated on his own golden feathers—as if they’d changed from when he cleaned them this morning. I’m going to have to repeat the plan. Although, thinking it over again, it probably was too complicated for a rescue mission. Simple is better.
“They will kill me if they catch me,” I tell him.
“Who?!” He looks ready to kill at the thought of anyone harming me.
“The guards,” I say. “It’s always guards.”
“Then I’ll distract them!” He puffs his chest out. “When?”
“Look for a green flash before the sun sets. Then draw the guards away from the western walls while I run along the ramparts to the cells.”
“I put on a show the moment the sun sets,” he says like it was his idea. “Where do we meet?”
“At the gate. I’ll throw a golden blade into the sky. But you have to be there in ten breaths.” I pull one of his feathers from his cloak. It’s warm on my fingers. A memory floods back of me lying in his arms by the Aphae Waterfall. The sun filtering through the leaves, catching the edges of our feathers as they lay atop each other. That was a lovely day.
“I will be at the gate the moment you throw the blade,” he swears.
I take his hand in mine and lean close. “I know.”
That smug, confident grin cracks his face. I want to slap him. Or kiss him. Or both.
“Now, darling—if I were you, I would stay behind the cover of the tree line, so you’re not spotted.”
Our embrace is so warm I wish it would last all night. But the sun is dangerously close to the horizon, and our esteemed consul isn’t going to escape a dungeon guarded by a horde of shadow acolytes on his own.
Rakan tells me to be careful as he wanders away, looking at the sky. Every time he leaves, my heart sinks. I’m sure it won’t be the last time I see him. Although, one day, it might.
“Remember, my heartfire,” I whisper after him. “Sunset.”
I dart in between the fortress’ parapets unseen. Years of avoiding the stares of humans taught me their many blind spots.
Six acolytes guard the gate leading to the dungeons. They carry double-firing crossbows, swords tucked in their belts, and who-knows-what-else in the pouches fastened around their waists. I slink along the inner wall behind them to get within striking distance. I pluck five of my feathers and stack them neatly in my palm, holding them in place between my index finger and thumb, ready to send them flying.
There’s a noise from outside the walls. The crash of a gong. Shouts. Confused men. It has to be Rakan.
The prison guards hear it, too. Worry chokes my heart. I hope my love is okay. I know he’s going to be okay. He’d better be okay, or I will force a necromancer to resurrect him so I can murder him myself. He knows I’ll do that, too. I’ll figure it out.
The guards are distracted from their posts. He’s early, but it’s perfect timing. I can get in without needing to fell a single one of them.
I almost reach the dungeon door, when I see another guard climb the parapet and take deadly aim with his rifle. Nobody aims anything at my Rakan. I’ll have the still-beating heart of anyone who dares to harm as much as one of his feathers. It’ll make a cute beating-heart necklace.
I stop. The prisoners won’t be going anywhere. I’ve got time to turn this guard into a sieve.
I leap back toward the parapet. The first feather I throw slices off the barrel of the gun. It clatters loudly to the floor. The rest slice through his chest. He drops like a bag of turnips.
“Intruder!” one of the guards at the gate shouts.
I duck and roll as crossbow bolts ping off the stone wall behind me, or stab into the wooden posts. Staying low, I race straight toward the acolytes who are fanning out to get better angles. I leap. They shoot where they think gravity will take me, instead of where I am: hovering in the air.
I throw another handful of feathers, shaping them into blades mid-flight.
Five of the guards drop, my quills sticking out of their chests. The remaining acolyte narrows his eyes and squares his shoulders, ready to fight. His sword is out before my feet touch the ground.
“Your soul will serve me forever,” he grunts. I can feel the shadow magic bound up in his blade, the essence of every life it has taken.
I laugh. “I killed more people in the last twenty paces than you have in your entire life.”
The acolyte hesitates before slashing wildly in my direction. His little sword leaves wavering trails of darkness. I don’t have time for this, the sun is setting. I turn my back.
With a snap of my fingers, my quills tear free of the corpses behind the acolyte, and fly back toward me.
I hear the sword clang to the floor a moment before the dull thud of his body. I’m sure the Order of the Shadow will find some way to harness these men’s souls into a slingshot or something. I don’t really know how these guys work, but good on them for being so economical. One shouldn’t waste life essence.
I take Rakan’s feather and launch it high into the air. It hangs in the sky, a golden message that should turn some heads. But there’s only one who knows what it means.
Meanwhile, I have a date in the dungeons with the consul.
He looks terrible sitting in a cage. Emaciated. Weak. Beaten. He doesn’t look up, figuring me for one of the guards. He and his mate are Sodjoko, but his entourage are vastaya from other tribes. Their harrowed eyes thank me more than their tongues. They know as well as I that this is no time for gratitude. We’re not out of the fortress yet.
As I lead the prisoners toward the eastern gate, I’m perplexed by the appalling lack of guards. Nearly every post is deserted. Isn’t this supposed to be a fortress? Who makes their schedules?
We round past the armory and the barracks. There’s the gate. Looks like Rakan found the guards. Dozens of them. They’re surrounding him. My feathers bristle. Heartbeat necklace, here I come!
Rakan reaches us. His smile turns from confident to bemused as he speaks with the consul. Akunir is one of my father’s oldest friends, and the most important of our ambassadors. I have much to discuss with him once we’re out of this.
“All of you, run for the tree line,” I command.
They’re panicked, but thankfully Rakan took out the riflemen. More of us will survive crossing the field. “Run!” I yell.
Akunir’s too slow. Rakan begins to lead him toward the forest.
The consul grabs at Rakan. “No. Please, protect Coll.” Rakan turns back toward her.
I shake my head. Rakan understands. He drags the consul behind him.
I nod to the strongest-looking juloah. He lifts Coll in his arms. She calls him Jurelv, and he pledges on his horns to keep her safe.
He makes it ten paces before the first arrow strikes him, but he doesn’t stop. He carries Coll into the forest. The shadow acolytes surge forward after them.
“Xayah!” Rakan yells. “Bowtube or tubebow?!”
I wish I had time to play, but I don’t.
Instead, I join the fight.
And it’s not pretty.
For the acolytes.
We were safe under the forest canopy by the time Jurelv’s body could ignore its wounds no longer.
Coll kneels next to his corpse. His blood is on the leaves. We have already prayed that his spirit finds our ancestors in joy and peace. His family will mourn for moons.
I’m used to death. It doesn’t move me as it once did. Rakan takes it hard; I have to be strong for him.
At least the consul is safe. After taking his hand off his wife’s shoulder, he turns to me.
“I have friends in the south,” he says. “The Kinkou must be informed.”
“Humans broke the pact.” I feel my blood rising. “How can you not see this as a grievous trespass? To them, magic is power. To us, it is life. They will never respect our boundaries.”
“Humans are a splintered race, Xayah. Only Zed and his shadows broke the pact. They do not speak for all men.”
“You are naïve. Your friends in the south will betray you. Then, they will turn on us all.”
“The Kinkou are honorable. They will believe me. I trust them.”
“So you’re not naïve, you’re an idiot.” Akunir is shocked that I dare speak to him like this. I reject the notion of being diplomatic. Diplomacy will not restore life to the dead.
Coll stands up. Her face is a mask of grief and anger. “I will go back north, Akunir. I will tell them what was done to us.”
I honestly didn’t think she had it in her.
The glow fades from Akunir’s eyes. “Coll, no.”
“I will bear word of Jurelv’s fate to his kin, and mourn with them. Then, I will muster arms and prepare the tribe to fight.”
“You cannot do that!” the consul proclaims.
Coll ignores him. “I forsake my claim to you. I forsake your claim to me.”
“Coll… please.” His voice falters.
“No,” she says.
The consul takes a step toward her, but Rakan stops him.
“I will speak with my mate,” Akunir says to Rakan. To his guards.
But Coll is already turned away. She looks at me, and I no longer see a diplomat’s wife. I see a warrior. She gathers those loyal to her—all but two of the consul’s entourage.
“Thank you, Xayah,” Coll says before she turns north and walks farther into the forest.
Akunir and his guards watch her leave, then wordlessly set off to the south.
Rakan moves in close to me. I feel his heart beating in time with my own.
“Promise me nothing will come between us like that, mieli,” I say.
“We’re not like them, miella.” Rakan assures me. “We’ll never be like them.”
I watch Coll as she disappears among the trees.
“Where to now, Xayah?”
“Let’s just stay here a moment longer,” I murmur.
I bury my face in his chest. He drapes his cloak and arms around me. My head rises and falls with his breath. I could stay here forever.
“Repeat it back to me,” I tell him.
“We are not like them,” he says. “We are not like them.”
He smiles and kisses my forehead. The vows we took at the Aphae Waterfall spring to mind. His heart beats for me, and mine for him. Home is within his arms, his breath, his smile.
There is no one better than Rakan.
Xerath

Xerath is an Ascended Magus of ancient Shurima, a being of arcane energy writhing in the broken shards of a magical sarcophagus. For millennia, he was trapped beneath the desert sands, but the rise of Shurima freed him from his ancient prison. Driven insane with power, he now seeks to take what he believes is rightfully his and replace the upstart civilizations of the world with one fashioned in his image.
The boy who would eventually be called Xerath was born a nameless slave in Shurima thousands of years ago. He was the son of captured scholars, with only the prospect of endless servitude ahead. His mother taught him letters and numbers, while his father told him tales from history in the hopes that such skills might allow him a better life. The boy vowed he would not end up bent-backed and whipped like every other slave.
When the boy’s father was crippled during the excavations for the foundations of a monument to the Emperor’s favorite horse, he was left to die at the site of the accident. Fearing her son would suffer a similar fate, the boy’s mother begged an esteemed tomb architect to take him on as an apprentice. Though at first reluctant, the architect was impressed with the boy’s eye for detail and innate understanding of mathematics and language, and accepted. The boy never saw his mother again.
He was a swift learner and his master dispatched him on errands to the Great Library of Nasus to retrieve specific texts and plans on an almost daily basis. On one trip, the boy met Azir, the least-favored son of the emperor. Azir was struggling to read a difficult passage in an ancient text, and, despite knowing that to talk to royalty was to invite death, the boy paused to help the young prince with its complex grammar. In that moment, a tentative friendship was established, and over the coming months that friendship only grew stronger.
Though slaves were forbidden names, Azir gave one to the boy. He named him Xerath, which means ‘one who shares,’ though that name was only ever spoken between the two boys. Azir saw to it that Xerath was appointed to his household’s slaves, and made him his personal attendant. Their shared love of knowledge saw them devour texts from the library and become as close as brothers. Xerath was Azir’s constant companion, learning all he could from this new proximity to culture, power and knowledge, finally daring to dream that Azir might one day free him.
On the annual tour of the emperor’s dominion, assassins struck the royal caravan as it spent the night at a well-known oasis. Xerath saved Azir from an assassin’s blade, but Azir’s brothers were all slain, leaving the young prince a heartbeat away from Shurima’s throne. As a slave, Xerath could expect no reward for his deed, but Azir promised that one day they would be as brothers.
In the wake of the assassination attempt, Shurima endured years of horror and fear of the emperor’s retribution. Xerath knew enough of history and the workings of the Shuriman court to understand that Azir’s life hung by the slenderest of threads. That he was heir to the throne meant nothing, for the emperor hated Azir for living while his more beloved sons had died. Of more immediate danger, the emperor’s wife was still young enough to bear other children, and thus far she had borne many healthy sons. The odds were good that she would produce another male heir for her husband, and as soon as she did, Azir’s life was forfeit.
Though Azir was a scholar at heart, Xerath persuaded him that to survive, he must also learn to fight. This Azir did, and in return the young heir elevated Xerath, insisting he continue his education. Both youths excelled, and Xerath proved to be an exceptionally gifted pupil, one who took to the pursuit of knowledge with gusto. Xerath became Azir’s confidant and right hand man, a position unheard of for a mere slave. This position gave him great - and some said, undue - influence over the young prince, who came to rely on Xerath’s judgement more each day.
Xerath bent his every effort into seeking out knowledge wherever he could find it, no matter the cost, no matter its source. He unlocked long-sealed libraries, delved into forgotten vaults and consulted with mystics entombed deep beneath the sands; all to further his knowledge and ambition, both of which grew with unchecked rapidity. Whenever the whispers around court that spoke of his delving into unsavory places grew too loud to ignore, he would find cunning means to silence them. That Azir never mentioned these whispers was, to Xerath, tacit approval of how he was keeping his emperor safe.
Years passed, and Xerath took ever darker steps to keep the emperor’s wife from carrying a child to term, using his nascent magical abilities to corrupt every infant in the womb. Without rivals to the throne, Azir would be safe. When rumors of a curse arose, Xerath ensured they were never spoken again, and oft-times those who had voiced such suspicions vanished without trace. By now, Xerath’s desire to escape his roots as a slave had become a burning ambition to achieve power of his own, though he justified every murderous act by telling himself he was doing it to keep his friend alive.
Despite Xerath’s best efforts to thwart the queen’s midwives, a new prince of Shurima was brought into the world, but on the night of his birth, Xerath used his growing magical powers to summon the elemental spirits of the deep desert and craft a terrible storm. Xerath brought bolt after bolt of lightning down upon the queen’s chambers, reducing it to burning rubble and killing the queen and her newborn son. The emperor rushed to his queen’s chambers, only to be confronted by Xerath, his hands ablaze with arcane power. The emperor’s guards attacked, but Xerath burned them and the emperor to cindered skeletons. Xerath ensured that the mages of a conquered territory were blamed for these deaths, and Azir’s first act upon taking the throne was to lead a brutal campaign of retribution against its people.
Azir was crowned emperor of Shurima with Xerath at his side, the boy who had once been a nameless slave. Xerath had long dreamed of this moment, and expected Azir to end slavery in Shurima before finally naming him brother. Azir did none of these things, continuing to expand his empire’s borders and deflecting Xerath’s overtures regarding the end of slavery. To Xerath, this was further proof of Shurima’s moral bankruptcy, and he raged at Azir’s breaking of his promise. Azir’s face was thunderous as he reminded Xerath that he was a slave and should remember his place. Something once noble died in Xerath that day, but he bowed in supplication, outwardly accepting Azir’s decision. As Azir continued his campaigns of conquest, Xerath remained at his side, but his every action was carefully designed to increase his influence over a realm he now planned to take for himself. To steal an empire was no small thing, and Xerath knew he needed more power.
The famous legend of Renekton’s Ascension revealed that a mortal did not have to be chosen by the Sun Priests, that anyone could rise up. So Xerath plotted to steal the power of Ascension. No slave could ever stand upon the sun disc, so Xerath fed the Emperor’s vanity, inflating his ego and filling his head with impossible visions of a world-spanning empire. But such a dream would only be possible if Azir could Ascend as the greatest heroes of Shurima had before. In time Xerath’s perseverance paid off, and Azir announced he would undertake the Ascension ritual, that he had earned the right to stand alongside Nasus and Renekton as an Ascended being. The Sun Priests protested, but such was Azir’s hubris that he ordered them to comply on pain of torture and death.
The Day of Ascension arrived and Azir marched toward the Dais of Ascension with Xerath at his side. Nasus and Renekton were absent from the day’s events, for Xerath had arranged a distraction for them by weakening the seal on a magical sarcophagus containing a beast of living fire. When that creature finally broke its bindings, Renekton and Nasus were the only warriors capable of defeating it. Thus Xerath had stripped Azir of the only two beings who might save him from what was to come.
Azir stood beneath the sun disc and in the final moment before the priests began the ritual, events took a turn Xerath had not anticipated. The emperor turned to Xerath and told him that he was now a free man. He and all Shurima’s slaves were now released from their bonds of servitude. He embraced Xerath before naming him his eternal brother. Xerath was stunned. He had been given everything he desired, but the success of his plans hinged upon Azir’s death and nothing was going to dissuade him from acting. Too many pieces were in motion and Xerath had already sacrificed too much to turn back now – no matter how much that part of him wanted to. The emperor’s words pierced the bitterness enclosing Xerath’s heart, but came decades too late. Unaware of his peril, Azir turned as the priests began the ritual and brought down the awesome power of the sun.
With a roar of anger and grief combined, Xerath blasted Azir from his place on the dais, watching through tears as his former friend burned to ash. Xerath took Azir’s place and the light of the sun filled him, reshaping his flesh into that of an Ascended being. But the power of the ritual was not his to take, and the consequences of his betrayal of Azir were devastating. The unbound power of the sun all but destroyed Shurima, sundering its temples and bringing ruination upon the city. Azir’s people were consumed in a terrifying conflagration as the desert rose up to claim the city. The sun disc fell and an empire built by generations of emperors was undone in a single day.
Even as the city burned, Xerath held the sun priests in the grip of his magic, preventing them from ending the ritual. The energies filling him were immense, alloying with his dark sorcery to create a being of incredible power. As he drew ever more of the sun’s power into his body, his mortal flesh was consumed and remade as a glowing vortex of arcane power.
With Xerath’s treachery revealed, Renekton and Nasus rushed to the epicenter of the magical storm destroying the city. They bore with them the magical sarcophagus that had imprisoned the spirit of eternal fire. The Ascended brothers fought their way to the Dais of Ascension just as Xerath fell from the deadly radiance engulfing the city. Before the newly-Ascended Magus could react, they hurled his crackling body within the sarcophagus and sealed it once more with blessed chains and powerful sigils of binding.
But it was not enough. Xerath’s power had been great as a mortal, and that power - combined with the gift of Ascension - made him all but invincible. He shattered the sarcophagus, though its shards and chains remained bound to him. Renekton and Nasus hurled themselves at Xerath, but such was his newfound strength that he fought them both to a standstill. The battle raged throughout the collapsing city, destroying what had not already sunk beneath the sands. The brothers were able to drag Xerath toward the Tomb of Emperors, the greatest mausoleum of Shurima, a vault whose locks and wards were impossible to break and which answered only to the blood of emperors. Renekton wrestled Xerath within and called upon Nasus to seal the vault behind them. Nasus did so with heavy heart, knowing it was the only way to prevent Xerath’s escape. Renekton and Xerath fell into eternal darkness, and there they remained, locked in an endless battle as the once-great civilization of Shurima collapsed.
Uncounted centuries passed and, in time, even Renekton’s mighty strength waned, leaving him vulnerable to Xerath’s influence. With poisoned lies and illusions, Xerath twisted Renekton’s mind, filling him with misplaced bitterness toward Nasus, the faithless brother who had - in Xerath’s fictive narrative - abandoned him so long ago.
When the Tomb of Emperors was finally discovered beneath the desert and broken open by Sivir and Cassiopeia, both Xerath and Renekton were freed in an explosion of sand and rubble. Sensing his brother still lived, Renekton charged from the ruins, his distorted mind leaving him little better than a savage beast. After an age lost to legend, Shurima was reborn, and as it rose majestically from the desert, Xerath felt another soul return to life beneath the sand, one he had thought long dead. Azir was also newly resurrected as one of the Ascended, and Xerath knew there could be no peace for either of them while the other yet lived.
Xerath sought the heart of the desert to regain his strength and understand how the world had changed in the millennia since his imprisonment. His stolen power grew with every passing moment, and he beheld a world ripe for conquest, a world brimming with mortals ready to worship at the feet of a new and terrible god.
Yet for all his newfound power, however far he has come from that nameless slave boy, a part of Xerath knows he is still in chains.
Unbound

This was the moment.
The singular moment that had cost him so much, that had taken a lifetime of planning. A corrupt empire and its strutting princeling would be struck down under the blankly idiotic sun symbol they both so trusted. The key to immortality, jealously guarded and miserly offered, would be his alone, stolen in front of the entire world. A singular moment of perfect vengeance that would finally free the slave known as Xerath.
Though his master's helm revealed no human expression, and knowing that the lovingly etched metal could not respond in kind, Xerath smiled up at the soulless hawk's face just the same, his joy genuine. A life spent in servitude, first for a mad emperor and now a vain one, endless manipulations for and against the throne, a near-damning quest for barely remembered knowledge that almost consumed him – all of it led to this grotesque masquerade of Ascension.
The very word when spoken aloud was an assault: We will Ascend, while you are chained to the broken stone as the sands of time swallow you all. No. Not anymore, and never again. The chosen golden lords will not be taken into the sun’s embrace and made gods. A slave will do this; a simple slave, a boy who once had the misfortune to save a noble child from the sands.
And for this sin, Xerath had been punished with a horrible, maddening promise: Freedom. Unobtainable. Forbidden. Should the thought even dart through a slave’s mind, it would be punished by death, as the Ascended could gaze past flesh and bone, deep into one’s very soul, to see its dim traitorous glow. And yet, there it was, spoken by the young princeling he dragged from the embrace of the mercurial mother-desert. Azir, the Golden Sun, vowed that he would free his savior and new friend.
A promise unkept to this day. The words of a grateful child, innocently oblivious to the impact they would have. How could Azir upend thousands of years of rule? How could he fight tradition, his father, his destiny?
In the end, the young emperor would lose it all by not honoring his word.
And so, Xerath was elevated and educated, eventually becoming Azir's trusted right hand – but never a free man. The soured promise ate into what he was, and what he could have been. Denied a small, simple thing, the right to live his life, Xerath decided to take everything, all of the things denied to him, all of the things he deserved: the empire, Ascension, and the absolute purest form of freedom possible.
With each step taken toward the offensively grandiose Dais of Ascension, positioned respectfully behind his emperor and flanked by the inept sentinels who supposedly protected Shurima, Xerath felt an unknown lightness he was genuinely shocked by. Was this joy? Does vengeance bring joy? The impact was almost physical.
At that very moment, the overwrought suit of golden armor that was his tormentor abruptly halted. And turned. And walked toward Xerath.
Could he know? How could he possibly know? This spoiled, self-obsessed boy? This righteous, falsely benevolent emperor whose hands were just as bloody as Xerath's own? Even if he did, there was no staying the killing blow that was already in motion.
Xerath had planned for every contingency. He had bribed, killed, out-maneuvered, and plotted for decades – he even tricked the monstrous brothers Nasus and Renekton into staying away from the event – but he had not planned for this...
The Emperor of Shurima, the Golden Sun, Beloved of Mother Desert, soon to be Ascended, took off his helmet, revealed his proud brow and smiling eyes, and turned to his oldest and most trusted friend. He spoke about the love of brothers, the love of friends, of hard fights won and others lost, of family, of future, and finally... of freedom.
At these words, the guards flanked Xerath, moving in, weapons drawn.
So the princeling did know. Had Xerath's plans had been undone?
But the fools in armor were saluting. There was no menace to them, they were honoring him. They were congratulating him.
On his freedom.
His hated master had just freed him – he had freed them all. No Shuriman would ever wear chains again. Azir's last act as a human was to unfetter his people.
The foundation-shuddering roar of the assembled masses drowned out any response Xerath could have had. Azir donned his helmet and strode out onto the Dais, his attendants preparing him for the godhood that would never come.
Xerath stood in the shadow of the monolithic Sun Disc, knowing that an empire-destroying doom was but seconds away.
Too late, friend. Too late, brother. Far too late for us all.
Aftermath

Anthony Reynolds

The first rays of dawn brushed the rooftops of the Great City, turning pale stone to gold. The air was still, and the only sounds filtering up to the high garden terraces on the east side of the citadel were the gentle chorus of morning birds and the hushed murmur of the waking city below.
Xin Zhao sat cross-legged upon a stone dais, hands resting upon his spear, laid across his lap. He stared down across the lower garden tiers, over the battlements and out across Demacia’s capital beyond. Watching the sun rise over his adopted homeland normally brought him peace… but not today.
His cloak was charred and splattered with blood, and his armor dented and scratched. Strands of his iron-gray-streaked hair—no longer the full inky black of his youth—hung wild over his face, having escaped his topknot. Under normal circumstances he would have already bathed, washing away the sweat, blood, and stink of fire. He would have sent his armor to the battlesmiths for repair, and secured himself a new cloak. Appearances mattered, particularly as the seneschal of Demacia.
But these were far from normal circumstances.
The king was dead.
He was the most honorable man Xin Zhao had ever met, and he loved and respected him above all others. He was oath-sworn to protect him… and yet Xin Zhao had not been there when he was needed most.
He took a deep, wracking breath. The weight of his failure threatened to crush him.
The mage uprising the day before had taken the whole city by surprise. Xin Zhao had been wounded in the running battles as he fought to make his way back to the palace, but he felt nothing. For hours, he’d sat here, alone, letting the cold of the stone seep into his bones as the shroud of grief and shame and guilt descended upon him. The palace guards—those that hadn’t been killed in the attack—had left him to his misery, keeping clear of the tiered garden where he sat in silence through the hours of darkness. Xin Zhao was grateful for that small mercy. He didn’t know if he could cope with the accusation in their eyes.
The sun reached him, finally, like the light of judgment, forcing him to squint against its glare.
He sighed deeply, steeling himself. He pushed himself to his feet, and took one final glance across the city he loved, and the garden that had always before brought him solace. Then he turned, and walked back toward the palace.
Many years ago, he had made a promise. Now he intended to keep it.

Lifeless and hollow, Xin Zhao felt like a wraith haunting the location of its demise. Death would have been preferable. Falling while protecting his lord would at least have been honorable.
He drifted along corridors of the palace that seemed suddenly cold and lifeless. The servants he saw did not speak, shuffling along in shocked silence, their eyes wide. The guards he passed wore mournful expressions. They saluted, but he looked down. He did not deserve their acknowledgment.
Finally he stood before a closed door. He reached out to knock, but paused. Did his hand tremble? Cursing his weakness, he rapped sharply on the solid oak, then stood to attention, planting the butt of his spear sharply to the floor. The sound echoed along the corridor. For a long, drawn-out moment, he remained motionless, staring at the door, waiting for it to open.
A pair of patrolling palace guards turned a corner and marched past him, armor clanking. Shame kept him from looking at them. Still, the door remained shut.
“I believe High Marshal Crownguard is in the North Ward, my lord seneschal,” said one of the guards. “Overseeing increased security.”
Xin Zhao sighed inwardly, but gritted his teeth and nodded his thanks to the guard.
“My lord…” said the other guard. “No one blames you for—”
“Thank you, soldier,” Xin Zhao said, cutting him off. He didn’t want their pity. The pair saluted, and moved on their way.
Xin Zhao turned and marched down the corridor in the direction the guards had come, toward the northern wing of the palace. It was no reprieve that the High Marshal, Tianna Crownguard, was not in her office. It merely drew out this matter.
He walked through a hall hung with pennants and banners, pausing briefly beneath one of them—a standard depicting the white-winged sword of Demacia on a field of blue. It had been woven by the king’s late mother and her handmaidens, and even though almost a third of it had been destroyed by fire, it was a work of astounding beauty and artistry. It had fallen at the battle of Saltspike Hill, but King Jarvan himself had led the charge to reclaim it, Xin Zhao at his side. They’d cut their way through hundreds of fur-clad Freljordian berserkers to reach it, and Xin Zhao had been the one to lift it high, even as flames licked at its embroidery. The sight of the reclaimed standard had turned the tide that day, rallying the Demacians, and securing an unlikely victory. Jarvan had refused to allow it to be repaired on its safe return to the palace. He wanted all who looked upon it to remember its history.
Xin Zhao passed a small room, a remote library in a little-used corner of the palace that was one of the king’s favorite places to spend his evenings. It was his place of escape, where he could get away from the fussing of servants and nobles. Xin Zhao had spent many long nights here with the king, sipping fortified honey-wine, and discussing the finer points of strategy, politics, and the now-distant memories of their youth. Jarvan was ever the stoic, stern leader in public, yet here, in this inner sanctum—particularly in the early hours, when they were deep in their cups—he would laugh until tears ran down his face, and speak with passion about his hopes and dreams for his son.
Fresh pain wracked Xin Zhao as he realized he’d never hear his friend laugh again.
Without having noticed it, Xin Zhao found himself passing by the halls of training. He’d probably spent more hours there over the last twenty years than anywhere else. That was his real home, where he felt most himself. There, he’d spent untold hours training and sparring with the king. That was where, to the king’s amusement and delight, his son had adopted Xin Zhao into the family. Where Xin Zhao had taught the young prince to fight with sword, spear, and lance; where he’d consoled him, wiping away his tears and helping him back to his feet when he fell; where he’d laughed with him, and cheered his successes.
Thought of the prince struck him like a blade to the gut. Xin Zhao might have lost his dearest friend the previous day, but young Jarvan had lost his father. He’d already lost his mother in childbirth. He was now alone.
With a heavy heart, Xin Zhao made to walk on, but a familiar sound gave him pause: a blunted blade slamming against wood. Someone was training. Xin Zhao’s brow furrowed.
A sickening feeling grew in the pit of his stomach as he slipped through the heavy doors leading within.
At first he couldn’t see who was there. The arches and pillars around the edge of the vaulted room conspired to keep them obscured. The sound of sword strikes echoed loudly around him.
Rounding a cluster of pillars, he at last saw the prince hacking at a wooden practice dummy with a heavy iron training sword. He was covered in a sheen of sweat, and his chest was heaving with exertion. His expression was one of anguish, and he attacked wildly.
Xin Zhao paused in the shadows, heart aching to see the young prince so raw and hurt. He desperately wanted to go to him, to console him, and help him through this awful time, for the prince and his father were the closest Xin Zhao had ever had to family. But why would the prince want him here? He was the king’s bodyguard, and yet he lived while the king lay dead.
Hesitancy was not familiar to Xin Zhao, nor a feeling he was comfortable with. Not even in the Fleshing pits of Noxus had he ever second-guessed himself. Shaking his head, he turned to leave.
“Uncle?”
Xin Zhao cursed himself a fool for not having left immediately.
They were not blood relatives, of course, but the prince had started calling him uncle soon after Xin Zhao had come into the king’s service, twenty years earlier. Jarvan had been just a boy, and no one had corrected him. The king had been amused by it, at first, but over the years Xin Zhao had become as close as blood kin to the royal family, and he had watched over the king’s son as if he had been his own.
He turned slowly. Jarvan was a boy no longer, standing taller than Xin Zhao. His eyes were red-rimmed, and surrounded by dark rings. Xin Zhao guessed he was not the only one to have had no sleep.
“My prince,” he said, dropping to one knee and bowing his head low.
Jarvan didn’t say anything. He just stood there, looking down at Xin Zhao, breathing hard.
“My apologies,” said Xin Zhao, his head still lowered.
“For interrupting, or for not being there to protect my father when he was murdered?”
Xin Zhao glanced up. Jarvan glowered down at him, heavy training sword still in hand. He had no good way to answer, to say all that he felt.
“I failed him,” he said at last. “And I failed you.”
Jarvan stood for a moment longer before turning and striding to one of the many weapon racks arranged around the room.
“Rise,” Jarvan ordered.
As Xin Zhao did, the prince threw him a sword. He caught it reflexively in his off-hand, still holding his spear in his right. It was another training blade, heavy and blunted. Then Jarvan was coming at him, swinging hard.
Xin Zhao jumped backward, avoiding the blow.
“My lord, I don’t think this is—” he began, but his words were cut off as Jarvan lunged at him again, thrusting his sword at his chest. Xin Zhao batted it aside with the haft of his spear, and stepped back.
“My prince—” he said, but again Jarvan attacked, more furiously than before.
Two strikes came at him this time, one high, one low. Jarvan may have been using a training blade, but if those blows struck, they would break bone. Xin Zhao was forced to defend himself, deflecting the first with a side-step and an angled spear, the second with the blade of his own sword. The impact rang up his arm.
“Where were you?” snarled Jarvan, pacing around him.
Xin Zhao lowered his weapons. “Is this how you want to do this?” he said, in a quiet voice.
“Yes,” said Jarvan, his anger simmering, his sword held in a deathgrip.
Xin Zhao sighed. “A moment,” he said, and moved to put his spear on a rack. Jarvan waited for him, hand clenching and unclenching on the hilt of his sword.
As soon as Xin Zhao returned to the center of the room, Jarvan attacked. He came in a rush, grunting with effort. There was little finesse to the strikes, but fury lent him strength. Xin Zhao turned those blows aside, using Jarvan’s power against him, not wishing to meet the heavy blows directly.
At any other time he would have berated the prince for his poor form—he was thinking only of attack, and leaving himself open for ripostes and counter-strikes—but Xin Zhao would not interrupt the prince’s justified anger. Nor would he take advantage of the gaps in his defense. If the prince needed to beat him bloody, then so be it.
“Where—were—you?” Jarvan said between strikes.

“I should have done this long ago,” the king said, not looking up from his desk, where he sat penning a letter.
Every dip of the quill was an irate stab, and he wrote in fast, furious bursts.
It was rare to see to see the king’s emotions so close to the surface.
“My lord?” Xin Zhao said.
“We have been so fixated on that which we fear,” the king said, still not looking up, though he did pause from his angry scratching for a moment. “We’ve been fools. I’ve been a fool. In trying to protect ourselves, we’ve created the very enemy we sought to protect ourselves from.”

Xin Zhao blocked a heavy blow aimed at his neck. The force of the strike drove him back a step.
“You have nothing to say?” demanded Jarvan.
“I should have been with your father,” he answered.
“That is no answer,” snarled Jarvan. He turned away abruptly, tossing his sword aside with a sharp, echoing clang. For a moment, Xin Zhao hoped the prince was done, but then he retrieved a different weapon from its place upon one of the racks.
Drakebane.
Now the prince leveled the lance toward him, his expression hard and unflinching.
“Get your spear,” he said.
“You are not armored,” protested Xin Zhao.
Training weapons could easily break limbs, but the slightest mistimed parry with a combat blade could be lethal.
“I don’t care,” Jarvan said.
Xin Zhao bowed his head. He bent to retrieve Jarvan’s discarded training sword, and placed it carefully upon a rack, along with his own. Reluctantly, his heart heavy, he retrieved his spear and moved back out into the open area in the center of the hall.
Without a word, Jarvan attacked.

“I’m not sure I follow, my lord,” said Xin Zhao.
The king paused, looking up for the first time since Xin Zhao’s arrival. In that moment he looked suddenly old. His forehead was deeply lined, and his hair and beard had long since gone to gray. Neither of them were young men anymore.
“I blame myself,” said King Jarvan. His eyes were unfocused, staring off into empty space. “I let them have too much power. It never sat right with me, but their arguments were convincing, and they had the backing of the council. I see now I was wrong to have ignored my own judgment. With this letter, I am commanding the mageseekers to halt their arrests.”

With a deft flick, Jarvan extended Drakebane toward Xin Zhao. The legendary weapon’s haft almost doubled in length, its lethal blades slicing blindingly fast toward Xin Zhao’s neck.
The seneschal swayed aside, deflecting the deadly strike with a circular turn of his spear, careful the blades did not hook his own weapon.
Even in the brutal contests of the Fleshing, Xin Zhao had never seen a weapon like Drakebane. In truth, the secret of how to fight with it had been lost in the reign of the first kings of Demacia, and in unskilled hands it was as deadly to its wielder as to the enemy. As such, for centuries it had been little more than ceremonial, an icon of the ruling family. However, when the prince was still just a boy, he had dreamed of fighting with it, like the heroes of old he idolized, and so Xin Zhao had promised to teach him when he was ready.
Jarvan leapt forward, bringing the lance down in a scything blow. Xin Zhao turned it aside, but the prince followed up instantly with a spinning strike that missed him by scant inches, the bladed tip slicing by his throat. Jarvan was not holding back.
Before Xin Zhao could teach the young prince how to wield the weapon, however, he had to master it himself. With the king’s approval, he began training to learn its secrets. Surprisingly light in the hand and perfectly balanced, it was a sublime weapon, created by a master at the peak of his abilities.
Forged in Demacia’s infancy by the renowned weaponsmith Orlon, the lance was a revered icon of Demacia, as much a symbol of its greatness as its towering white walls or the crown of the king. Wrought to defeat the great frostdrake Maelstrom and her progeny who had plagued the early settlers of Demacia in ages past, it had long been a symbol of the royal line.
For years, Xin Zhao had practiced with the lance every day before dawn. Only when he felt he understood it well enough had he begun to teach the teenage prince how to wield it.
Jarvan grunted with effort, lunging at Xin Zhao. The seneschal thought only of defense, stepping neatly away and always aware of his surroundings. His spear was a blur before him, knocking the lance from its intended course each time it came at him.
Young Jarvan had already been learning the uses of sword and spear and fist—as well as the more cerebral arts of military history and rhetoric—it was on his sixteenth birthday that he was finally presented with Drakebane by his father. He trained hard, sustaining countless self-inflicted injuries along the way to mastery, but he eventually fought with the weapon as if it were an extension of himself.
Jarvan pressed Xin Zhao hard, striking furiously. He gave the seneschal no respite, each attack blending seamlessly into the next. A foiled lunge became an upward, sweeping slash, which in turn came around in a pair of scything arcs, first in a low, disemboweling cut, then back across the throat. All were avoided by Xin Zhao, his body swaying from side to side, and his spear flashing to turn each strike aside.
Nevertheless, while Jarvan had long been Xin Zhao’s student, the prince was younger and stronger, and his tall frame gave him a greater reach. No longer was he an awkward aspirant; he’d been hardened by battle and training, and Jarvan’s skill with Drakebane now easily outstripped his own. Jarvan harried him mercilessly, forcing him to retreat with every step.
It took all of Xin Zhao’s considerable skill to remain unscathed… but it could not last.

The king looked down, reading over his letter. He let out an audible sigh.
“Had I the courage to do this earlier, perhaps this day’s disaster could have been averted,” he said.
He signed the letter, before dripping heated royal blue wax next to his name and stamping his personal seal into it. He blew on it, then held the letter up, shaking it lightly in the air to aid its cooling.
Satisfied the wax was dry, the king rolled the letter before sliding it into a cylindrical case of cured white leather, and sealing the lid.
He held it out to his seneschal.

Xin Zhao barely avoided a vicious slash, turning his face at the last moment. The jagged blades of Drakebane sliced across his cheek, drawing blood.
For the first time since they began, Xin Zhao wondered if the prince was actually trying to kill him.
There was a certain balance in dying to the son of the man he had failed to protect.
Jarvan slapped Xin Zhao’s spear aside with the butt of Drakebane and turned swiftly, bringing the weapon around in a tight arc, the blade seeking his neck.
It was a perfectly executed move, one that Xin Zhao had taught the prince himself. Jarvan’s footwork to set up the strike was sublime, and the initial hit to his weapon was weighted just enough to knock it aside, but not so hard that it slowed the final strike.
Even so, the seneschal could have blocked it. It would have been a close thing, but he trusted his speed—even tired as he was—to have ensured the strike did not land.
And yet, he made no move to do so. His will to fight was gone.
He lifted his chin ever-so-slightly, so that the strike would be true.
The blades of Drakebane hissed in. The blow was delivered with speed, skill, and power. It would slice deep, killing him almost instantly.
The killing blow stopped just as it touched Xin Zhao’s throat, drawing a series of blood-beads, but nothing more.
“Why will not you say where you were?” said Jarvan.
Xin Zhao swallowed. A warm trickle of blood ran down his neck. “Because I am at fault,” he said. “I should have been there.”
Jarvan held the blade at Xin Zhao’s throat for a moment longer, then stepped back. He seemed to wilt suddenly, all the fire and fury draining out of him, leaving just a grieving, lost son.
“My father ordered you away then,” he said. “And you do not wish to blame him for your absence.”
Xin Zhao said nothing.
“I’m right, am I not?” said Jarvan.
Xin Zhao sighed, and looked down.

Xin Zhao remained silent and unmoving. He eyed the sealed letter the king held out to him, but did not reach out to take it.
The king raised his eyebrows, and Xin Zhao finally accepted it.
“You wish me to give this to a runner, my lord?” he said.
“No,” said Jarvan. “I will trust its delivery only to you, my friend.”
Xin Zhao nodded gravely, and attached it to his belt.
“Who is it for?”
“The head of the mageseeker order,” said the king. He held up a finger. “And not to one of his lackeys, either. To him directly.”
Xin Zhao bowed his head. “It will be done, as soon as the streets are clear and the whereabouts of the escapee have been determined.”
“No,” said the king. “I want you to go now.”

“He could be so stubborn,” said Jarvan, shaking his head. “Once his mind was set, there was no changing it.”
“I should have been there,” said Xin Zhao, weakly.
Jarvan rubbed his eyes.
“And defy your king’s order? No, that’s not you, uncle,” said Jarvan. “What was it he had you doing?”

Xin Zhao frowned.
“My place is by your side, my lord,” he said. “I would not wish to leave the palace. Not today.”
“I want you to deliver that message before events worsen,” said the king. “It’s imperative that the mageseekers are reined in before this escalates. This has gone far enough.”
“My lord, I do not think it wise for me to—” Xin Zhao said, but the king cut him off sharply.
“This is not a request, seneschal,” he said. “You will deliver this decree. Now.”

“Delivering a letter,” said Jarvan, flatly. “That’s why he ordered you from his side?”
Xin Zhao nodded, and Jarvan let out a bitter laugh. “How very like him,” he said. “Always thinking of state matters. You know he missed my blade ceremony, on my fourteenth birthday, because of a meeting of the Shield Council. A meeting about taxation.”
“I remember,” said Xin Zhao.
“You delivered this letter, I take it?”
“No,” Xin Zhao said, shaking his head. “I turned as soon as I heard the bells. I made my way back to the palace as swiftly as I was able.”
“And ran into trouble in the streets, by the looks of it,” said Jarvan, indicating his battered appearance.
“Nothing that could not be dealt with.”
“Mages?” said Jarvan.
Xin Zhao nodded. “And others who had thrown their lot in with the murderer.”
“We should have executed them all,” hissed Jarvan.
Xin Zhao looked at the prince in alarm. He’d never heard him speak with such vitriol before. Indeed, he knew the prince had always been troubled by Demacia’s treatment of its mages. But that was before.
“I do not believe your father would share that view,” said Xin Zhao, in a measured voice.
“And they killed him,” snapped Jarvan.
There was nothing helpful for Xin Zhao to say, so he remained silent. That moment’s fire was extinguished within Jarvan almost immediately. Tears welled in his eyes, even as he tried to hold them back.
“I don’t know what to do,” he said. In that moment, he was a boy again, scared and alone.
Xin Zhao stepped forward, dropping his spear, and took Jarvan in his arms, hugging him tightly. “Oh, my boy,” he said.
Jarvan cried then, deep wracking sobs that shook his whole body, and tears he had not yet shed now ran freely down Xin Zhao’s face as well.
They stood clinging to each other for a few more moments, held together by shared loss, then stepped apart. Xin Zhao turned away to pick up his fallen spear, allowing them both a moment to gather themselves.
When he turned back, Jarvan had thrown off his sweat-stained shirt, and was pulling on a long, white linen tunic emblazoned with a blue-winged sword. Already he looked more composed.
“Now you will do what you were born to do,” Xin Zhao said. “You will lead.”
“I don’t think I’m ready,” said Jarvan.
“No one ever does. At least, not the good ones.”
“But you will be with me, uncle. To help me.”
A coldness clawed at Xin Zhao’s heart. “I… regret that will not be possible,” he said.

Xin Zhao was conflicted. He was sworn to King Jarvan, and had never once defied an order from him, not in twenty years of service.
“My place is here, protecting you, my lord,” he said.
King Jarvan rubbed his eyes, looking suddenly tired.
“Your duty is to Demacia,” the king said.
“You are the king,” said Xin Zhao. “You are Demacia.”
“Demacia is greater than any king!” snapped Jarvan. “This is not up for debate. It is an order.”
Xin Zhao’s inner sense for danger was screaming, but his devotion to duty silenced it.
“Then it will be done,” he said.
With a bow, he turned and strode from the room.

“I made a promise, long ago,” said Xin Zhao. “If harm ever befell your father, my life was forfeit.”
“And how many times did you save my father’s life?“ said Jarvan, suddenly stern. In that moment he seemed so much like his father, in Xin Zhao’s eyes. “I personally witnessed you do so at least three times. I know there were others.”
Xin Zhao frowned.
“My honor is my life,” he said. “I could not live with the shame of going back on my word.”
“To whom did you make this pledge?”
“High Marshal Tianna Crownguard.”
Jarvan frowned.
“When you entered my father’s service, you pledged yourself to Demacia, did you not?” he said.
“Of course.”
“Your pledge was to Demacia.” said Jarvan. “Not my father. Not anyone else. Your duty to Demacia overrides all.”
Xin Zhao stared at the prince. He is so like his father.
“But what of the High Marshal?”
“I will deal with Tianna,” said Jarvan. “Right now, I need you to do your duty.”
Xin Zhao let out a breath that he didn’t realize he had been holding.
“Will you serve as my seneschal, as you served my father?” said Jarvan.
Xin Zhao blinked. Moments earlier he’d been certain Jarvan was going to execute him… and he didn’t feel that would have been unjustified.
He hesitated, his emotions in turmoil, his mind reeling.
“Xin Zhao… Uncle,” said Jarvan. “Our kingdom needs you. I need you. Will you do this? For me?”
Slowly, as if expecting Jarvan to change his mind at any moment, Xin Zhao dropped to one knee.
“It would be my honor… my king.”

Jarvan walked with Xin Zhao up through the palace, toward the council room. His father’s advisors—no, his advisors, Xin Zhao corrected himself—awaited.
Soldiers were everywhere. Demacia’s most elite battalion—the Dauntless Vanguard—had been brought in to supplement the palace guard, and they stood at every doorway, watchful and disciplined.
Jarvan’s expression was stern, his bearing regal. Only Xin Zhao had witnessed the outpouring of emotion down in the training room. Now, in front of the palace servants, the nobles, and the guard, he was in complete control.
Good, thought Xin Zhao. The people of Demacia need to see him strong.
Everyone they passed dropped to one knee, bowing their heads low. They continued on, striding purposefully.
Jarvan paused before the great council doors.
“One thing, uncle,” he said, turning to Xin Zhao.
“My lord?”
“The letter my father wanted you to deliver,” he said. “What happened to it?”
“I have it here,” said Xin Zhao. He loosened it from his belt, and handed the leather case over.
Jarvan took it, broke the case open, and unfurled the sheet of vellum within. His eyes flicked back and forth as he read his father’s words.
Xin Zhao saw Jarvan’s expression harden. Then he crushed the letter in both hands, twisting it as if he were wringing a neck, before handing it back.
“Destroy it,” Jarvan said.
Xin Zhao stared at him in shock, but Jarvan was already turning away. He nodded to the guards standing on either side, and the council doors were thrown open. Those seated at the long table within stood as one, before bowing low. Flames crackled in the ornate fireplace set against the south wall within.
There were a number of empty seats at the table. The king was not the only one who had fallen in the previous day’s attack.
Xin Zhao was left holding the crumpled letter, stunned, as Jarvan moved to the head of the table. He looked back at Xin Zhao, still standing in the door.
“Seneschal?” said Jarvan.
Xin Zhao blinked. At Jarvan’s right, High Marshal Tianna Crownguard stared at him, her gaze dangerously cold. On Jarvan’s other side, his gaze equally icy, was Tianna’s husband, the intended recipient of the king’s letter—the head of the mageseeker order. Xin Zhao’s gaze passed between them, then returned to Jarvan, who raised his eyebrows questioningly.
Without further pause, Xin Zhao strode into the room, and threw the letter into the flames.
Then he took his place, standing behind his ruler. He hoped none of the deep concern he suddenly felt was visible.
“Let us begin,” said Jarvan.
Xin Zhao

Rumored to have never lost in one-on-one combat, Xin Zhao spent much of his life fighting an uphill battle. Some of his earliest memories are of the Viscero, an Ionian fishing boat he served aboard off the coast of Raikkon. A diligent cabin boy, he obeyed his elders’ every request—from cleaning grimy decks to fixing tangled nets—and enjoyed a peaceful existence… until the day they unknowingly ventured too deep into foreign waters.
A pair of privateer ships from Noxus chased down the smaller vessel. Their commander cited the glory of the empire as he boarded, claiming the Viscero and its crew as his rightful property. They were mostly ageing fishermen, unfit for military service, but they would be taken back to Noxian territory regardless.
After enduring a tough journey across the open ocean, Xin Zhao found himself in a strange new land. There was no delicate beauty in the waters here, no magic in the trees. Imposing gateways and fortified stone walls unlike anything he had ever seen lined the streets, and the people were crammed into every available inch of space. He learned this was the capital of Noxus, and it was from here that a man known as “Darkwill” ruled the vast empire. Separated from the rest of the Viscero’s crew, and with no means of returning home, Xin Zhao entered the service of the man who had taken him prisoner.
His skill with a spear did not go unnoticed, and soon he was promised a better life—with meals served on plates—in exchange for his martial prowess. Noxus celebrated strength, and his patron deemed him to be a strong fighter.
Having nothing to lose, the young man accepted. He shed his ragged clothes for crude armor, and entered the Reckoning arenas.
Truly, this was a strange form of entertainment. Mighty warriors, known by even mightier titles, fought each other before ravenous crowds, who cheered for displays of skill and showmanship as often as they did for blood. Xin Zhao, taking the name “Viscero”, was catapulted into success. His bouts soon filled the seats of every arena… and also the pockets of his sponsors. In only a few short years, Viscero became a celebrated name—one that audiences adored, and other Reckoners came to fear.
But this good fortune did not last.
Beyond the distractions of the Reckoner circuit, the empire faced difficult times. Hostile nations encroached upon its territories, provoking rebellion all along the Noxian frontier. It was rumored that Darkwill and his advisors had offered a fortune in gold for the private release of mercenaries, prisoners, and Reckoners alike, to be conscripted into the empire’s warhosts. With little more than a handshake, Xin Zhao and his fellows were bought out, and placed on a transport ship heading west.
Here, at the coastal fortress of Kalstead, the names and reputations of even the most well-known Reckoners counted for little. They were hurled into battle against the elite forces of King Jarvan III of Demacia, who was determined to curb Noxian influence on Valoran… and Xin Zhao quickly learned that war was unlike any arena duel.
While many of the former Reckoners deserted in the face of inevitable defeat, Xin Zhao held his ground, staining his spear with the blood of hundreds. When the king’s Dauntless Vanguard—some of whom were silently impressed by his skill—finally surrounded him, still he refused to run. Xin Zhao stood tall, welcoming his execution.
However, Jarvan thought differently. Unlike the arena crowds, the king of Demacia took no pleasure in needless killing. He granted the defeated Noxians their freedom, if they would swear to leave Kalstead in peace. Surprised by this show of mercy, Xin Zhao thought about what awaited him back in Noxus. He could return to a society where his life had meant little beyond the gold he earned for his patrons… or he could fight for those who embodied the virtues to which he, himself, aspired.
Compelled by honor, he knelt before Jarvan III, pledging himself to the king’s service.
In the decades that followed, Xin Zhao proved his loyalty time and again. As a seneschal of the royal household, he became bodyguard and advisor not only to his friend and master, but also to the king’s son—young Prince Jarvan, who would one day inherit the crown. Xin Zhao’s path to becoming a Demacian may have been unusual, yet never once did he falter in his commitment to the kingdom and its ideals. This was not from a sense of duty, he reasoned, but by choice.
However, his greatest test came when a mage insurrection threatened the capital. With the nefarious Sylas of Dregbourne wreaking havoc throughout the Great City, Xin Zhao stood ready to defend his liege, but the king commanded him to leave on a personal mission of critical importance. With a heavy heart, Xin Zhao reluctantly obeyed.
It was only when the palace bells tolled that he knew the true gravity of his mistake. By the time the seneschal fought his way back, King Jarvan III was dead.
Xin Zhao believed his life would be forfeit… but instead, Prince Jarvan reminded him of the pledge he had once made, and accepted a renewal of his service to the kingdom.
For now, more than ever, Demacia needs its seneschal. The throne lies vacant, as the other noble houses fear that the prince may not yet be fit to rule. Xin Zhao has no such concerns—he is utterly devoted to Jarvan, and determined to guide him in the perilous days to come.
Yasuo

As a child, Yasuo often believed what the others in his village said of him: on the best days, his very existence was an error in judgement; on the worst, he was a mistake that could never be undone.
Like most pain, there was some truth to it. His mother was a widow already raising a young son, when the man who would be Yasuo’s father blew into her life like an autumn wind. And, just like that lonely season, he was gone again before the blanket of Ionian winter settled over the small family.
Even though Yasuo’s older half-brother, Yone, was everything Yasuo was not—respectful, cautious, conscientious—the two were inseparable. When other children teased Yasuo, Yone was there to defend him. But what Yasuo lacked in patience, he made up for in determination. When Yone began his apprenticeship at the village’s renowned sword school, a young Yasuo followed, waiting outside in monsoon rain, until the teachers relented and opened the gates.
Much to the annoyance of his new peers, Yasuo showed natural talent, and became the only student to catch the attention of Elder Souma, last master of the legendary wind technique. The old man saw Yasuo’s potential, but the impulsive pupil refused his tutelage, remaining unbridled like a whirlwind. Yone pleaded with his brother to set aside his arrogance, gifting him a maple seed, the school’s highest lesson in humility. The next morning, Yasuo accepted the position as Souma’s apprentice, and personal bodyguard.
When word of the Noxian invasion reached the school, some were inspired by the great stand that had been taken at the Placidium of Navori, and soon the village was bled of the able bodied. Yasuo longed to add his sword to the cause, but even as his classmates and brother left to fight, he was ordered to remain and protect the elders.
The invasion became a war. Finally, one rain-slicked night, the drums of a Noxian march could be heard in the next valley over. Yasuo abandoned his post, foolishly believing he could turn the tide.
But he found no battle—only a raw grave for hundreds of Noxian and Ionian corpses. Something terrible and unnatural had happened here, something that no single blade could have stopped. The land itself seemed tainted by it.
Sobered, Yasuo returned to the school the next day, only to be surrounded by the remaining students, their swords drawn. Elder Souma was dead, and Yasuo found himself accused not only of dereliction, but of murder. He realized the true killer would go unpunished if he did not act quickly, so he fought his way free, though he knew this would all but confirm his apparent guilt.
Now a fugitive in war-torn Ionia, Yasuo sought any clue that might lead him to the murderer. All the while, he was hunted by his former allies, continually forced to fight or die. This was a price he was willing to pay, until he was tracked down by the one he dreaded most—his own brother, Yone.
Bound by honor, they circled each other. When their swords finally met, Yasuo’s wind magic overcame Yone’s dual blades, and with a single flash of steel, the outcast cut his brother down.
He begged forgiveness, but Yone’s dying words were of the wind techniques responsible for Elder Souma’s death, and that his brother was the only one who could have known them. Then he fell silent, passing on before he could grant any absolution.
Without master or brother, Yasuo roamed the mountains distraught, drinking away the pain of war and loss, a sword without a sheath. There in the snow, he met Taliyah, a young Shuriman stone mage who had fled the Noxian military. In her, Yasuo saw an unlikely student, and in himself, an even more unlikely teacher. He trained her in the ways of elemental magic, wind shaping stone, embracing at last the teachings of Elder Souma.
Their world changed with rumors of a risen Shuriman god-emperor. Yasuo and Taliyah parted ways, though he gifted her the treasured maple seed, its lesson now learned. As she returned to her native desert sands, Yasuo set out for his own village, determined to put right his mistakes and find his old master’s true killer.
Within the stone walls of the council hall, Elder Souma’s death was revealed to have been an accident, one brought about by the Noxian exile known as Riven—and one for which she felt deep remorse. Even so, Yasuo still could not absolve himself of the choice he had made to abandon his master or, worse yet, how that choice had ultimately led to Yone’s death.
Yasuo eventually journeyed to the spirit blossom festival in Weh’le, though he held little hope that its healing rituals would ease his heart. It was there he encountered a demonic creature that sought to devour him, an azakana that fed on his pain and regret.
Yet a masked intruder intervened, striking down the creature with righteous fury, and Yasuo realized he knew this man—it was Yone.
Fully expecting his brother to take vengeance, Yasuo was surprised when Yone let him go with little more than a bitter blessing.
With nothing left for him in the First Lands, Yasuo has embarked on a new adventure, though he knows not where it will lead, his sense of guilt the only thing weighing down the free wind.
Brotherhood

Ariel Lawrence

The source of the crying is a boy. Six, maybe seven summers.
He sits cross-legged with his back to me, in front of a tall sapwood. The weeping settles into sniffling, wet hiccups. I stop at the edge of the trees, and look back at the shade of the road below. The midday sun is merciless, streaming bright into the boy’s meadow. He doesn’t seem hurt. The clearing is open. Unprotected.
You’re not needed. Keep to your path.
The voice rings clear in my head, though I haven’t heard it spoken aloud for some time. I turn, but about-face at the sound of a deep, racking sigh, ending in renewed little sobs.
When I am about three sword lengths away, I step on a dry twig to announce my arrival. The boy starts at the sound.
“Teo, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean…” The boy’s rushed apology is muffled by the swipe of his sleeve across his face. He stops dead at the sight of me.
He retreats so quickly that his back thuds against the tree.
“Emai paid the Brotherhood,” he stammers. “I wasn’t playing on the road.”
At the mention of the group, my hand goes to my blade. The boy stares at me; his crying gives over to a series of shallow gasps. Of course. He thinks I’m some Navori thief coming to take something from him.
He thinks you’re a criminal.
I release my grip, trying to appear more friendly. “No, I’m not with the Brotherhood,” I say. “I heard someone from the road. Sounded like they were having a tough time.”
The boy wipes his wet cheek with his sleeve again, trying to save face in front of the stranger standing before him.
“Know anyone like that?” I ask.
The boy starts to shake his head slowly, but the truth tumbles out of him.
“It was me,” he admits, shame roughing his voice. “I… I just wanted to play with it.” He points up. There among the tree’s uppermost branches is an old festival kite, its silk tails fluttering in the light breeze. “It’s Teo’s.”
His eyes start to water again. He shows me the palms of his hands, covered in sap, darkened with dirt and bark.
“I tried climbing the tree, but it’s too tall. Teo’s going to be so angry with me. He told me not to.”
A moment passes between us. “Brothers often say that,” I murmur.
There is a small pile of broken soil in front of the boy. I kneel, wiping away the top layer to reveal a newly sprouted sapwood nut.
“My emai is a woodweaver. I’m learning. I thought…” The boy hangs his head, embarrassed at the idea. Woodweaving even a sapling would take far longer than an afternoon.
I keep the smile from my lips. “An admirable effort.”
The boy’s gaze lingers on the fluted edges of my pauldron.
“That pattern isn’t from our village,” he says, caution edging into his voice. “Or the village in the next valley.”
“I’m on my way to Weh’le,” I reply. “I was making good time on the Noxian road. Even if the stone is a bit hard on the feet.” I try to smile, but with the thought that Noxus could leave us anything of value, I know it comes off a grimace.
“Can you help me?” he asks.
I look up at the kite sitting delicately in the high branches. “It’s been a while since I’ve climbed a tree, kid.”
“Joab,” he says. “My name is Joab.”
I offer him my hand, my own name hesitant on the tip of my tongue. It’s been too long since I've said it with anything but shame.
Come on. You’ve been called worse.
“Yasuo,” I say, and pull him up from the ground.
I step from the shade of the tree, and back into the sunlight of the clearing to get a better view. The day is hot and still. I close my eyes to feel the tiny currents of air lingering at the edges of the meadow. A small breeze picks up, pushing the wisps of hair from my face.
“I wish I could just blow it down. Woodweaving is useless,” Joab mutters, frowning from the kite to his sapwood seed. “There was an elder once who could move the wind, but he’s dead. And his student could too, but emai says he’s dangerous, that he killed the elder…”
I reach for the blade at my side. As I draw the weapon, I focus the magic. Eddies of wind swirl around it, gathering in tighter and tighter whirls. Dust and dead leaves dance on the blade until I shape the whirlwind to my liking, then release it with a flick of my wrist.
The invisible force hits the tree dead-on, the trunk shuddering with the impact. The branches shake as if some unseen spirit rises through them, finally reaching the kite. The colorful silk lifts off gently as the air returns to the sky above, and drifts slowly into my outstretched hand.
The boy’s mouth hangs open a bit, but he closes it quickly. The fear is back.
“You?” he asks. “The elder’s student?”
All of Ionia knows what you are.
Joab looks to the forest road, maybe for someone to come hunting for me. “Did you escape?” he whispers, but I shake my head. “Did they let you go then? I mean, were you pardoned?”
“I can’t be forgiven for a crime I didn’t commit.” It’s just a technicality, but I say it before the voice in my head can.
But you killed the others…
I take a deep, steadying breath, concentrating on the cool breeze at my back and the kite in my hand to keep the memories at bay. Joab chews on his own thoughts for a moment.
Just as his mouth opens for another question, a glint of metal emerging from the forest catches the sun.
I raise my blade in anticipation, only to find a slightly older mirror of Joab carrying a small farming tool attached to a long rope. I lower my weapon quickly, but too late—fear and wariness settle into the meadow.
Too fast to react, too slow to stop.
Never enough for him. It’s my whole life in miniature.
Joab’s brother watches us. He does not leave the safety of the forest edge.
“Joab,” the older boy calls out. Joab runs over obediently, but stops when he sees the tool and the rope. I pull on the light breeze, straining to hear.
“What’s that for, Teo?” Joab asks, realization turning to anger. “You knew I would take the kite?”
I shake my head. Of course he knew.
Big brothers always know what little brothers will do.
“Yeah, always the exact opposite of whatever I tell you, Joab,” the older boy says, still watching me. “Who’s that?”
Joab glances back, then leans over and whispers in his brother’s ear. Teo’s eyes grow wide for a moment, then relax into a dismissive scowl.
“Emai says it’s time to eat,” Teo says as he turns to leave. Joab pulls on his arm, trying to slow him down. He whispers again in Teo’s ear.
I try to quiet the wind that carries the next words, to stop listening, but it’s too late.
“No, he can’t come,” Teo says. “He’s xiiri.”
Xiiri.
The word catches in my throat as the wind finally stills around me. Xiiri is something unwanted. A misfortune brought by outsiders or greed. A little pest that follows big brothers around…
The sun beats down, heating the blade at my side. It’s a word I’ve heard all my life.
You’re not needed. Keep to your path.
I steel myself, and walk to the brothers.
“Listen to him, kid,” I say, handing the precious silk bundle to Joab. “Brothers know best.”
Before either of them can answer, I walk on, returning to the road ahead.
Yone

In life, Yone adhered to a strict code of honor and duty. Even as a child, his love for his family led him to assume the mantle of protector, motivated in no small way by the loss of his father. This was in stark contrast to his half-brother, Yasuo, who was brash and reckless where Yone was patient and disciplined.
Still, the two were inseparable—and when Yone began his studies at the renowned sword school near their village, Yasuo followed.
As they trained, Yone was often forced to temper his younger brother’s impulsiveness. However, when Yasuo refused the personal tutelage of Elder Souma, master of the legendary wind technique, Yone gifted him a maple seed—a symbol of humility—as a sign of his support and encouragement.
Yone was proud of his brother, but he had doubts about the wise master’s judgment, fearing that Yasuo’s impulsive nature would make him a poor student. But Elder Souma was well respected, and did not make careless decisions.
Putting his concerns aside, Yone continued to practice with dual blades, his prowess quickly earning the respect and admiration of his fellow disciples. Though Yone’s skill was unmatched, Yasuo’s use of the wind technique made their sparring sessions a sight to behold, and a joy to the brothers themselves.
But that joy did not last long. War came to Ionia.
Yone, along with many other disciples, left to defend against the approaching Noxian forces while Yasuo reluctantly stayed behind to protect his master. But one fateful night, Elder Souma was discovered dead—slain by the very wind technique that he taught.
When Yone returned, he found that Yasuo had fled.
This shook Yone to his core. His fears were proven true—Elder Souma had been wrong.
Yone blamed himself. If Yasuo had murdered Souma, Yone had failed to teach him the righteous path. If Yasuo had simply abandoned his post and allowed his master to die, then Yone had failed to instill him with discipline. Either way, Yasuo had already killed several of those who pursued him—and to Yone, their blood stained his own hands as much as his brother’s.
He tracked Yasuo down. When their swords finally crossed, Yone’s steel was unmatched… but Yasuo’s mastery of the wind cut his brother down.
Death, however, was not the end. When Yone awoke within the spirit realm, the weight of his failure crushed him. His fury flared, and he pounded his fists on the ground in rage.
A rumbling laugh pierced his thoughts. He turned, and beheld a monstrous, humanoid spirit with a blood-red blade. It was a powerful azakana, a predatory entity that had long stalked Yone from beyond the veil.
Before Yone could speak, it struck.
He drew the spiritual echoes of his blades to his side just in time to block the attack. He once again found himself in a duel where his swordsmanship was unparalleled, but he was overwhelmed by magic.
Anger consumed him. A lifetime of honor and duty snapped. In one furious moment, Yone wrested the azakana’s blade from it and ran the creature through.
The last thing he heard before a new darkness took him was that same rumbling laughter…
As he came to, Yone found himself back in the material realm, though it was a grim shadow of what it had been. He struggled to his feet, the spirit realm hazy in his mind, and a blood-red sword in his hand. Upon his head, a mask had coalesced in the form of the azakana’s face—he could not remove it, but he could now see other azakana through its eyes. They were not yet true demons, content to feed on negativity before eventually manifesting to devour their hosts. But, as Yone would discover, if an azakana’s name was learned, they could be reduced to inert masks of personified emotion.
Even so, he could not tell if—or when—the azakana he wore would reawaken to consume him. In life, Yone had worn the mask of protector, brother, and disciple for so long that it had become his identity. But now, in moments of stillness, he swears he can feel the mask shifting upon his face, his own past and unresolved conflict with Yasuo now paling in comparison to this new threat.
Yone hunts these insidious creatures in an attempt to understand what he has become—with each name bringing him a step closer to uncovering that of the one whose laughter still haunts him.
Nothing else matters. There is only the chase of truth.
Severed

Michael Yichao

The boy ran at a dead sprint, driven by terror.
Under the sliver of a waning moon, darkness swallowed his surroundings with only the faintest starlight giving a silver sheen to the misty night. Silhouettes of trees flashed by. The lantern in the boy’s hand flickered and sputtered, in danger of snuffing out. But it was not the darkness he feared.
It was the thing that stalked him in the darkness.
The boy had felt it first—a sudden chill in the summer air, a creeping dread that clutched at his heart. Sensations that he might have dismissed as symptoms of the late hour and a long night. On any other occasion, he would have chastised himself for indulging in his imagination. He was thirteen now, too old to be afraid of darting shadows and harmless spirits.
But this spirit had opened glowing blue eyes and stared into his soul. This shadow had whispered his name.
The boy risked a glance behind to see if it still followed, and promptly slammed into something. He fell back, the breath knocked from his lungs, and his lantern clattered to his side, its weak light fluttering wildly. Surprise and pain shifted quickly to fear as he saw the figure looming over him.
A man, tall and lithe, stood with a bare torso, unfazed by the unusually chilly night. From the waist down, loose robes billowed in the wind, frayed from wear. An intricate belt of woven rope tied strange masks across his waist, monstrous visages trapped in alabaster. Bandages bound both his arms, and each hand grasped a blade—one of tempered steel, shimmering in the moonlight, the other shining an ominous red.
Yet it was the man’s face that left the boy frozen.
Those cold blue eyes peered down through a cruel mask that radiated the same strange red as the man’s blade. The mask grasped the man’s face, nearly devouring his stern frown.
“S-stay back!” the boy croaked.
“It is not me you should fear,” the man spoke, his voice a soft growl, eyes fixed on some point beyond the boy.
Confusion knit the boy’s brow as he followed the man’s gaze. What he saw sent him scrambling to his feet.
A vague shape hovered in the mists. If the stranger hadn’t pointed it out, the boy might have missed it altogether. The mist twisted into wide eyes and slitted pupils, and the outline of a lumbering body took form, visible where it pushed the fog away to leave a negative space. The boy squinted. Something else glistened in the foggy night… Teeth?
He had never seen anything like it, yet it somehow felt familiar. Like the boy knew this thing. It drew him, compelled him toward it. He took a tentative step forward.
Something cold pierced through his chest.
The boy looked down in shock at the tip of a shining red blade. His mind raced as his breath grew choppy from panic, expecting pain and blood. But neither came. Instead, a strange numbness spread through his body. Behind him, he heard the man mutter under his breath, and a strange sigil appeared in the air in front of them, as if painted by an invisible brush. A word—or name?—the boy did not recognize.
“W-what—”
The man ignored him. “My blade sees your true name, azakana.”
The boy felt the sword pulled from his body, and he fell to his knees, gasping. His hands flew to his chest—but there was no puncture or wound. Even more strange, the boy felt lighter, as if some burden had been excised. He looked up, and a wall of teeth met his gaze.
The creature lunged.
A clash of steel rang out. The masked stranger stood before him, blades blocking the creature’s massive, pale fangs. No—it was not the man, but a shadowy spirit in his form. The boy looked behind him where the man himself stood, eyes closed, as if in meditation. A shiver ran down the boy’s spine as the chill in the air now seeped into his bones, and with each motion of the struggling monster and man, he felt his soul lurch and sway, their very existence exerting a palpable force over him. The boy stared in awe.
What is he?
The spirit swordsman pushed the creature back, then burst into swirling tendrils of smoke, washing over the boy as it returned to the body of the stranger. The hideous creature bellowed in rage. As the boy squinted, he could see other parts of the beast through the mist—matted fur, claws, a huge torso—but when he tried to focus on the whole body, parts would fade out from focus.
You dare deny what is already mine? A rasping, impossible voice reverberated in the boy’s mind, cutting through the rattling growls he heard from the monster. The boy belongs to me.
The boy’s stomach dropped. It can speak?
“Nothing in this realm belongs to you,” the man said, unfazed. “Cower, Taan Ko’au!”
Though the words meant nothing to the boy, their utterance made his skin crawl. Yet their effect was far more pronounced on the creature, which emitted an ear-splitting squeal. Twisting, sinuous muscle wrapped around pale teeth and claws. Four scarlet eyes narrowed on its horrific face, glowering atop a lumbering torso of gray hair that shimmered into existence, ephemeral wisps turned to flesh and bone.
“So you are named,” the man with the broken mask said. “So you are revealed.”
A defiant howl shook the ground. The man shifted his stance, crouching low as he brought both swords to bear.
“So you shall perish.”
The beast charged, but the stranger dashed forward so fast that the boy nearly missed him. Swords sliced through the moonlight, one flashing silver, the other leaving a blood-red trail in its wake. Ichor sprayed from the creature as it fell to the ground.
“Slumber, azakana. You are unmoored from flesh.” The man strode forward and plunged both blades deep in the creature. It roared, then wheezed.
The boy stared as its body dissipated into a swirling fog, its monstrous face contorting through a gamut of expressions as it shrank and calcified into an almost human-like appearance, finally assuming the shape of… a mask. His eyes widened in recognition. Though it still possessed the four eyes of the monster in a distorted, exaggerated pose, it looked almost mournful—and eerily close to his own face.
With a shudder, the mask floated upward toward the man’s outstretched hand. With a fluid motion, he sheathed his sword and tied the mask next to the others on his waist. Then he turned to leave.
“What are you?” the boy asked.
“Once, I knew the answer. But now…” The stranger paused. He fixed the boy with a steel gaze.
A question tumbled from the boy’s lips. “Was that thing… me?”
“Only a festered nightmare, feasting on your sorrows. But you aren’t defined by it any longer.”
The boy bit his lip. “It’s my fault. I’m weak—never good enough. My father was right.”
Without a sound, the man turned as though to approach, and the boy recoiled almost by habit. The stranger’s expression softened ever so slightly.
“Those we love say the things that hurt us most.” The man pulled the mask from his waist, examining it. “Despair devours our own voice, wearing the guise of reason—claiming to show us who we are. But it only shows us a warped version of our true selves.”
He turned the mask around and held it aloft for the boy to see. It seemed small, fragile… Toothless.
“Pierce through its falsehoods to find your truth.” The smallest hint of a smile crossed the man’s face. “You’ll be just fine, Andu.”
With that, the stranger turned away, leaving the boy alone in the dark woods.
Yorick

The last survivor of a long-forgotten religious order, Yorick is both blessed and cursed with power over the dead. Trapped on the Shadow Isles, his only companions are the rotting corpses and shrieking spirits that he gathers to him. Yorick’s monstrous actions belie his noble purpose: to free his home from the curse of the Ruination.
Even as a child, Yorick’s life was never normal. Raised in a fishing village at the very edge of the Blessed Isles, he always struggled to find acceptance. While most children his age were playing hide-and-seek, young Yorick was making friends of a different kind—the spirits of the recently deceased.
At first, Yorick was terrified of his ability to see and hear the dead. Whenever someone in the village passed away, Yorick would lie awake all night, waiting for the chilling cry of a new visitor. He could not understand why they chose to haunt him, and why his parents believed the spirits to be nothing more than nightmares.
In time, he came to realize the souls were not there to harm him. They were simply lost and needed help finding their way to the beyond. Since only Yorick was able to see these spirits, he took it upon himself to be their guide, escorting them to whatever awaited in eternity.
The task was bittersweet. Yorick found that he enjoyed the company of ghosts, but each one he brought to rest meant saying farewell to another friend. To the dead, he was a savior, but to the living, he was a pariah. The villagers only saw a disturbed little boy who spoke to people who weren’t there.
Tales of Yorick’s visions soon spread beyond his village, and drew the attention of a small order of monks who dwelled at the heart of the Blessed Isles. Its envoys traveled to Yorick’s island, believing he could become an asset to their faith.
Yorick agreed to journey to their monastery, and there, he learned the ways of the Brethren of the Dusk and the true significance of their trappings. Every monk carried a spade as a symbol of their duty to conduct proper burial rites, which ensured souls would not lose their way. And each brother wore a vial of water drawn from the Blessed Isles’ sacred spring. These Tears of Life represented the monks’ duty to heal the living.
Yet, no matter how he tried, Yorick could never gain the acceptance of the other monks. To them, he was tangible proof of things that should only be known through faith. They resented his power to easily perceive what they themselves had struggled their entire lives to understand. Shunned by his brothers, Yorick found himself alone again.
One morning, as he tended to his duties in the cemetery, Yorick was interrupted by the sight of a pitch-black cloud roiling across the surface of the Blessed Isles, devouring everything in its path. Yorick tried to run, but the cloud quickly enveloped him and plunged him into shadow.
All around Yorick, living things began to writhe and contort, corrupted by the foul magic in the Black Mist. People, animals, even plants began to transform into vile, ghoulish mockeries of their former selves. Whispers emanated from the turbulent air around him, and his brothers began ripping the vials of healing water from their necks, as if the objects were causing them great anguish. A moment later, Yorick watched in abject horror as the monks’ souls were ripped from their bodies, leaving cold, pale corpses behind.
Among the quieting screams of his brethren, Yorick alone could hear voices within the mist.
“Remove it. Join us. We will become one.”
He felt his fingers grasping for the vial at his neck. Mustering all his resolve, Yorick forced his hands away from his throat and commanded the howling souls to stop. The Black Mist writhed violently, and darkness overtook him.
When Yorick awoke, the winds had calmed, and the once-fertile lands had transformed into the grotesque hellscape of the Shadow Isles. Isolated tendrils of the Black Mist clung to him, trying to overtake the one living thing not yet corrupted. As the Mist wrapped itself around him, Yorick saw it suddenly recoil from the vial at his neck. Yorick clutched the blessed water, realizing it was all that kept him alive.
In the days that followed, Yorick scoured the islands for survivors, but found only the twisted remnants of what once lived there. Everywhere he walked, he witnessed wretched spirits rising from the bodies of the dead.
As he searched, Yorick slowly pieced together the events that led to the cataclysm: A king had arrived seeking to resurrect his queen, but instead, had doomed the Isles and everything on them.
Yorick wished to find this “Ruined King” and undo the curse he had unleashed. But he felt powerless in the face of the seemingly endless death that surrounded him.
Almost lost within his grief, Yorick began to speak to the spirits around him, attempting to find solace with them as he had as a child. Instead, as he communed with the Mist, corpses left their graves, guided by his voice. He realized the bodies he once laid to rest were now his to command.
A glimmer of hope shone from the heart of his despair. To free the dead of the Shadow Isles, Yorick would wield their power and their strength.
In order to end the curse, he would be forced to use it.
Last Rites

“Help… me,” begged the shipwrecked man.
Yorick couldn’t say how long the survivor had been lying there, bones broken, bleeding into what remained of his wrecked sailing vessel. He had been moaning loudly, but his cries were drowned out by the multitude of wailing souls that haunted the isle. A maelstrom of spirits gathered around him, drawn to his flickering life force like a beacon, hungry to reap a fresh soul. The man’s eyes widened in horror.
He was right to be scared. Yorick had seen what happened to lost spirits taken by the Black Mist, and this—this was warm flesh, a rarity in the Shadow Isles. It had been how long—a hundred years?—since Yorick had seen a living being? He could feel the Mist on his back quivering, eager to wrap this stranger in its cold embrace. But the sight of the man stirred something in Yorick he had long forgotten, and whatever it was would not allow him to surrender this life. The burly monk heaved the damaged man onto his shoulders and carried him back up the hill to his old monastery.
Yorick studied the face of the injured man as he groaned in agonized protest with each step the monk took. Why did you come here, live one?
After completing the climb, Yorick carried his guest through several corridors in the abbey, before coming to a stop in an old infirmary. He eased the shipwrecked man onto a massive stone table and began to check his vitals. Most of the man’s ribs were shattered, and one of his lungs had collapsed.
“Why do you waste your time?” asked a chorus of voices, speaking in unison from the Mist on Yorick’s back.
Yorick remained silent. He left the table and made his way to a heavy door in the rear of the infirmary. The door resisted as he pushed, his hand doing little but leaving a print in the thick layer of dust. He pressed his shoulder against the wood and heaved his entire weight into it.
“So much effort for naught,” sneered the Mist. “Let us have him.”
Again, Yorick answered it with contemptuous silence as he finally forced the door open. The heavy oak dragged across the stone tiles of the monastery floor, revealing a chamber full of scrolls, herbs, and poultices. For a moment, Yorick stared at the artifacts of his former life, struggling to remember how to use them. He picked up a few that looked familiar—bandages, yellow and brittle with age, and some ointment that had long turned to crust—and returned to the man atop the stone table.
“Just leave him,” said the Mist. “He was ours the moment he came ashore.”
“Quiet!” snapped Yorick.
The man on the table was now gasping for breath. Knowing he had little time to save him, Yorick tried to bind his wounds, but the rotten bandages fell apart as quickly as he could apply them.
As his breath grew more ragged, the man convulsed. He grabbed the monk’s arm in agonized desperation. Yorick knew there was only one thing that could save the man’s life. He uncorked the crystal vial at his neck, and considered the life-giving water it contained. There was precious little left. Yorick was unsure if it was enough to save the man, and even if it did…
Yorick was forced to face the truth. In trying to save the man, he was just chasing the memory of his former life, when this cursed place was called the Blessed Isles. The souls in the Mist had taunted him, but they’d taunted him with the truth. This man was doomed, and if Yorick used the Tears of Life, he would be too. He closed the vial and let it rest against his neck.
Stepping back from the table, Yorick watched the man’s chest rise and fall one last time. The Black Mist filled the room, spirits clawing out from it in anticipation. The Mist shivered eagerly, then ripped the dead man’s soul from his body. It uttered a faint, feeble cry before it was devoured by its new host.
Yorick stood motionless in the room and uttered a barely remembered prayer. He looked at the soulless husk on the table, a bitter reminder of the task he had yet to complete. While the curse of the Ruination remained, anyone who came to these isles would suffer the same fate. He had to bring peace to these cursed islands, but after years of searching, all he had found were whispers about a ruined king.
He needed answers.
With a single motion of Yorick’s hand, a thin strand of Mist poured into the man’s body. A moment later, it rose from the table, barely sentient. But it could see, it could hear, and it could walk.
“Help me,” said Yorick.
The body shambled out the door of the infirmary, its sloughing footsteps echoing through the halls of the monastery. It continued out into the foul air of the cemetery, walking through the rows of emptied graves.
Yorick watched as the corpse trudged toward the center of the isles until it disappeared into the Mist. Perhaps this one would return with the answer.

All stories

Alone

Volibear

Stormbringer

Warwick

If They Run

What Once Sailed Free

Where Icathia Once Stood

With Hell Before Them

Xayah

Puboe Prison Break

Xerath

Unbound

Aftermath

Xin Zhao

Yasuo

Brotherhood

Yone

Severed

Yorick

Last Rites