Jax - LUIS

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Jax, Grandmaster at Arms

“Strength and will are what make a weapon.”
- Unknown (Possibly Sand-Troll)
Saijax Cail-Rynx Icath’un grew up in Icathia, a satrapy of the Shuriman empire. Ever since he was a boy, his father told him of when their home was a proud, independent nation, before it was ground under the heel of Shuriman oppression. He told him of the Kohari, heroes who protected Icathia and its Mage King. The Mage King had resisted Shurima’s conquest, but when he died in battle, his Kohari protectors followed him, committing ritual suicide. The Shuriman emperor displayed the Kohari’s decaying bodies for all to see, and the Mage King himself was impaled above the city gates, his bones left to molder.

Saijax’s father had witnessed this cruel act, and over time he passed down to his son the burning resentment that was growing in every Icathian heart. Even so, Saijax committed himself to the study of arms, learning from Shurima’s weapons masters as well as his own clan’s elders.

After many centuries of Shuriman rule, a massive earthquake struck the coastal province of Saabera. The destruction revealed something hidden deep beneath the earth, something dark and of great power—perhaps strong enough even to overcome Shurima’s god-like Ascended warriors. Saijax was entrusted with protecting the Icathian mages who encountered this discovery… which the guards just barely contained with brazier-staves that blazed with conjured elemental fire. Disturbed, he escorted the mages to the governing council so they could tell of what they’d learned.

They called this power the Void.

Immediately the council recognized its potential, but Saijax saw the doom the Void portended. As a master of weaponry, he knew the danger of using a weapon they could neither fully understand nor safely harness. He regretted that he didn’t kill the mages as they rode from Saabera. He would regret it even more in the days to come.

Confident that the Void could defeat their Shuriman overlords, the council crowned a new Mage King. The Kohari were rebuilt, with Saijax among the first to join their ranks. They triumphed in early engagements, and Saijax even killed one of the vaunted Ascended in battle, watching with pride as its corpse was paraded around the liberated city of Bai-Zhek.

When the Ascended Host approached Icathia, Saijax and his brethren assembled on the front lines. As the two armies churned the earth beneath them into crimson loam, Icathia’s mages and priests deemed the time had come to unleash the Void.

Ruin swept over the land, as Icathians, Shurimans, and even Ascended were unraveled from existence. The city’s walls collapsed as the Void swallowed thousands into cold, silent oblivion.

In moments, Icathia was lost.

Saijax rode to the ruined crater where the Void had been summoned, determined to fall upon his sword like the Kohari of old. But before he could take his life, he saw among the devastation a discarded brazier-stave that he recognized from Saabera—it still blazed with elemental fire that harmed the Void. This flame kindled a spark in Saijax’s heart. He took up the stave and left behind the ruins of his homeland, tending to this “last light of Icathia”, and the hope it represented.

Grieving and ashamed, Saijax Cail-Rynx Kohari Icath’un forsook his old name, and from that day was known only as Jax.

He became a wanderer, traveling across the known world and to places beyond any map. As he bore the elemental fire, Jax’s life extended beyond even the expectations of his long-lived people. Yet the farther he went from Icathia, the lower the flame burned, until it threatened to gutter out once and for all. Jax understood with grim resolution that he couldn’t run from his past. He had a duty to return, and fight. The advance of the Void had been halted by the last surviving Ascended, but its singular threat endured.

For centuries since, Jax has roamed, a vagabond warrior searching for those strong enough to rebuild the Kohari. Though he has fought countless times against beings of great skill, courage, and power, none have yet convinced him that they can march against the coming darkness. The fall of Icathia has plagued Jax with doubt, but one thing remains certain: when the final battle comes, Jax will stand against the Void.

Even if he has to face it alone.
None Shall Pass

And looked like he knew how to use it. Jax approved.
“You seem like a man who can hew ironbirch trees all day and still have energy left for a tavern brawl,” said Jax.
Zac

Zac is the product of a toxic spill that ran through a chemtech seam and pooled in an isolated cavern deep in Zaun’s Sump. Despite such humble origins, Zac has grown from primordial ooze into a thinking being who dwells in the city’s pipes, occasionally emerging to help those who cannot help themselves or to rebuild the broken infrastructure of Zaun.
A group of Zaunite children first encountered Zac when they were out skimming rocks over a sump pool and some of the stones were thrown back. The “Returning Pool” became well-known to Zaun’s Sump dwellers, and eventually drew the attention of a shadowy cabal of chemtech alchymists. Over the protests of the local residents, the alchymists pumped the contents of the pool into vats and carried the substance back to their laboratories for experimentation.
Via a series of experiments designed to test negative and positive reinforcement techniques, the alchymists discovered the coagulate mass within the pool appeared to have psychotropic tendencies. Simply put, it mirrored whatever stimulus was provided to it. If treated well, it responded with childlike glee and playfulness, but when its response to pain and aggression were tested, the alchymists lost numerous augmented sump-scrappers in the ensuing destruction.
Most of the alchymists attributed this to nothing more than a simple reflex response, but two among their number weren’t so sure. They questioned the morality of experiments that seemed entirely driven to produce a creature of unmatched aggression. When the pair dug further, they discovered the project was being funded by Saito Takeda, a Chem-Baron with a notoriously violent temperament and reputation for bloody gang warfare. The implication was clear; Takeda sought to develop a fighter who could shrug off mortal wounds, squeeze into places humans could not and who would obey any command. They also discovered the project’s true name; the Zaun Amorphous Combatant.
As they pondered the best course of action, the two dissenting alchymists saw more than just a mirroring of whatever stimulus was applied to the viscous gel. They saw behaviors manifest without any obvious stimulus - behaviors consistent with sentience. They came to know the creature as Zac and concluded that he exhibited the behaviors of a thinking, feeling being. They brought their findings to the spindle-limbed leader of their research team, but their concerns were ignored.
Unwilling to let the matter drop, they began their own covert efforts to counter the violent teachings of the rest of their team. They sought to show Zac right from wrong, exposing him to acts of altruism and generosity. Their efforts bore fruit, with Zac showing sadness when one of the researchers hurt her hand and reacting badly when another killed a rat in the laboratory. Eventually, they could no longer tolerate the cruel experiments being done to Zac by their fellow alchymists.
One night, during Zaun’s Progress Day remembrances, when the laboratory was empty, they drained Zac into a wheeled septic tank and dragged him to a far distant part of Zaun. When their act was later discovered, the footsoldiers of Baron Takeda sought them out. But Zaun is a big place, and the researchers were able to hide from their pursuers. They had thought to give Zac his freedom, but Zac did not want to be released, for he now considered the two researchers his family. They alone had shown him kindness, and he wanted to learn more from them. In truth, they were pleased by his reaction, for they had become so fond of Zac that they considered him their adoptive son.
To stay hidden from Takeda’s men, they changed their identities and appearance, taking up residence in a remote part of the Sump, far from prying eyes. Zac learned to mimic their voices, and quickly adapted to shift his gelatinous mass into the required shapes to form sound. He lived alongside his adoptive parents for many years, hiding when necessary in sump pools or in the cracks in the cliffside rocks. His ‘parents’ told Zac of the world in which he lived, how it could be beautiful and full of wonder. They showed him the moon rise over the Sun Gates, the play of rainbow light on the stained glass roofs of Zaun’s commercia halls, and the bustling, vibrant beauty of their city’s heart. They also explained how the world could be cruel and harsh, and Zac learned that people were sometimes mean and unkind, hateful and prejudiced. Zac rejected such behaviors and helped his parents where he could as they used their skills to aid the people around them without attracting undue attention.
They did what they could to treat the sick, mend broken machinery or otherwise put their chem-knowledge to benign use. These were golden years for Zac, and he roamed Zaun through its almost limitless network of pipes and through the many cracks in its bedrock. As much as Zac was a sentient being, too much stimulus from his environment could sometimes overwhelm his senses and cause him to temporarily absorb the dominant emotions around him, for good or ill. Oft-times he couldn’t help getting involved in aiding the oppressed and downtrodden against thuggish bullies; leading to rumors of his presence spreading through Zaun. Though the majority of tales were of him helping, others attributed destructive events to Zac; a factory destroyed or a crevasse ripping open in a Sump neighborhood.
Eventually, those rumors reached the ears of Saito Takeda, and he sent a band of augmented thugs to retrieve what he saw as his property. His alchymists had been attempting - without success - to replicate the process that had created Zac from droplets left behind in his vat. Takeda wanted the creature returned, and his augmented heavies surrounded Zac’s parents’ home and attacked. They fought back, for they were chemtech researchers and not without esoteric means of defending themselves, but their defiance could not last forever and eventually they were killed, despite Takeda’s order that they be taken alive.
Zac had been exploring subterranean seams far below Zaun, but sensed his parents’ distress and raced back through the pipes of the city to the rescue. He arrived too late to save them, and the fury that overwhelmed him upon seeing their bodies was unmatched by anything the baron’s men had ever seen. Zac attacked in a ferocious display of stretching, smashing, and crushing. In his grief and anger, he demolished dozens of nearby dwellings, and by the time the battle was over, all the augmented thugs were dead.
When the heightened emotions of battle drained from Zac’s consciousness, he was overcome with remorse for the homes he had destroyed, and vowed to continue the good work done by his parents. He helped rebuild what he had destroyed, but as soon as the work was done, he vanished into Zaun’s vast network of pipes.
Now Zac lives alone, dwelling in the tunnels and caverns threading Zaun, and bathing in the emotions of the city’s inhabitants. Sometimes this enriches him, but other times it saddens him as he takes on both the good and bad of the city. He has become something of an urban legend among the people of Zaun, a mysterious creature that sometimes emerges from cracks in the rock or a section of damaged pipework. Most times this is to help those in need, but in times of trouble, when the city’s moods turn grim, his appearance can be cause for trepidation.
Jayce

Jayce is a brilliant inventor who has pledged his life to the defense of Piltover and its unyielding pursuit of progress. With his transforming hextech hammer in hand, Jayce uses his strength, courage, and considerable intelligence to protect his hometown. While revered throughout the city as a hero, he hasn’t taken well to the attention it brings. Still, Jayce’s heart is in the right place, and even those who envy his natural skills are grateful for his protection in the City of Progress.
A native son of Piltover, Jayce was raised to believe in the principles that made the city great: Invention. Discovery. Not going to Zaun if you could help it. With a knack for understanding machinery, Jayce earned the honor of being the youngest apprenta to ever be offered patronage by Clan Giopara, one of Piltover’s most respected ruling clans. Utterly unsurprised, Jayce took the offer, and spent most of his early years constructing potential hextech devices and designing transformable multi-tools for Piltover’s working class: a wrench that transformed into a prybar, a pickaxe that could morph into a shovel, a hammer that could turn into a demolition beam, if only it had a sufficiently powerful battery. Everything Jayce touched put his contemporaries to shame.
Most things came easy to Jayce, and he could never understand why his peers had so much trouble with what, to him, were simple concepts. As a result, nearly everyone who worked alongside Jayce found him arrogant, dismissive, and unwilling to slow his pace to help his colleagues catch up. As time went on, his patience became shorter, while at the same time, a chasm grew between decorum, charm, and Jayce’s natural demeanor.
Only one person ever managed to match Jayce’s intelligence while also maintaining a healthy indifference to his superior attitude.
His name was Viktor.
The two met at a mandatory Progress Day party, and immediately bonded over how little either of them wanted to be there. They started working together shortly after. Viktor expanded Jayce’s intellectual horizons and challenged many of his assumptions. While Jayce sought to improve humanity via versatile technology, Viktor sought to solve problems inherent to humanity itself, such as physical decay or illogical prejudices. They constantly argued with one another, but their conflicts never got personal – though their methods were different, the two colleagues knew their ultimate goals were very much the same. More than that, they both knew what it was like to be ostracized by their colleagues: Viktor because of his unconventional thinking, Jayce because of his rudeness.
Together, Jayce and Viktor invented a mechanized construction suit for Piltover’s dockworkers – something hearty enough to enhance the wearer’s strength, but light enough that its wearer wouldn’t immediately drown upon falling overboard. However, the two reached an impasse when Viktor’s design for the next version of the suit included a chemtech implant that would increase the wearer’s strength output by tenfold, while also preventing them from getting tired, panicking, or disobeying instructions from their superiors. While Viktor considered this feature a brilliant means of reducing the frequency of construction accidents, Jayce found its indifference toward free will immoral. The two nearly came to blows over the design and ultimately, after Jayce warned the academy of Viktor’s invention, Viktor was stripped of his honors and ostracized from Piltover’s scientific community.
Viktor was the closest thing Jayce had ever really had to a friend, and distraught over their falling-out, went back to working on his own. He grew more insular. His patience toward others grew even thinner.
As Jayce studied in solitude, Clan Giopara’s explorers discovered a raw, blue crystal deep within the Shuriman desert. Though Jayce volunteered to experiment on it (specifically by suggesting the clan’s other scholars wouldn’t be smart enough to get anything out of it), his lack of tact in doing so prompted Clan Giopara to give it to their better-mannered scholars as a form of punishment. Yet, after many months, the scholars reached a unanimous conclusion: the crystal was worthless. A power-drained hunk of rock. The disappointed clan leaders finally handed the crystal over to Jayce, assuming that even he, with his remarkable intelligence, wouldn’t be able to learn anything from it.
Something inside the crystal called to Jayce. No, more than that – it sang to him. He couldn’t explain why, but he knew the Shuriman gem still held mysteries yet to be discovered.
He spent many months running every variety of test on the crystal. He braced it into a cogwheel centrifuge; he superheated it and deep-froze it; he tinkered, and observed, and hypothesized, and beat his head against his copper pantograph. Quite simply, Jayce wasn’t used to working hard: this damned crystal was the first thing that had ever resisted his considerable mental aptitude. For the first time, he realized how his peers must have felt, trying so hard to solve a problem, only to bump against your own limitations. It felt frustrating. It felt unfair.
And it probably felt much, much worse if you were working alongside an arrogant inventor who dismissed your every effort.
Jayce realized that despite how dismissive he’d been toward his fellow scholars, none of them ever gave up. None of them ever stopped seeking the very things that defined Piltover: Progress. Discovery. If they wouldn’t give up, Jayce decided, he wouldn’t either.
And maybe he’d try to be nicer.
Maybe.
Jayce approached the problem from a completely different angle. Rather than trying to experiment on the crystal as a whole, he wondered, why not run more invasive experiments on a smaller shard? Jayce chiseled off a piece of the crystal and suspended it in a liquid alloy. As he sent a voltaic current through the liquid metal, Jayce’s eardrums nearly shattered from the booming baritone note that blasted from the shard. Heat radiated from the crystal and, with a flash, it glowed bright enough to nearly blind him. This was unexpected. This was potentially dangerous. But this was progress. Jayce couldn’t erase the smile from his face as he worked well through the night, into the dawn.
The next day, Jayce was surprised to find his old friend Viktor on his doorstep. Alerted by the massive power spike from the crystal shard, Viktor had a simple proposition.
Since his expulsion from the Piltovan scientific community, Viktor had commenced work on a secret project in Zaun. He’d finally learned how to achieve his dream – how to eradicate disease, hunger, hatred. If Jayce joined him, the two would accomplish more than anyone from Piltover or Zaun could have dreamed of: they’d save humanity from itself.
Jayce had heard a monologue like this before from Viktor. He never liked where it led.
Viktor told Jayce that he only needed one thing for his Glorious Evolution – a power source like Jayce’s crystal. Jayce disagreed, informing Viktor that what he truly needed was a moral compass. Viktor, who had long grown tired of Jayce’s rudeness, leapt upon him, grabbed the crystal and knocked Jayce unconscious with it. When Jayce awoke hours later, he noticed that though the Shuriman crystal was gone Viktor hadn’t seemed to notice or care about the smaller shard.
Jayce knew whatever Viktor was planning, he would only resort to these measures if he were close to completion. Even though he didn’t know what Viktor’s Glorious Evolution consisted of, it probably didn’t have a lot of respect for the free will of others. Without wasting a second, Jayce retrieved the suspended shard and installed it into a massive, transforming hammer – a demolitions invention he’d abandoned years ago for lack of a strong enough battery to power it. Though he had no idea where Viktor might have taken the crystal, he could feel the hextech hammer vibrate, pulling him not north, south, east or west, but down, toward the undercity of Zaun.
The shard, eager to be reunited with the crystal from which it was chiseled, eventually led Jayce to a warehouse in the depths of the sump. Within the cavernous building, Jayce found something horrifying. Dozens of corpses, their skulls sawed open and hollowed out, their brains transplanted into an army of immobile metal soldiers, hooked up to the now-pulsing crystal.
This was the first step in Viktor’s Glorious Evolution.
Jayce’s stride grew less confident as he approached Viktor. He and Viktor had not always seen eye to eye, but this was something else entirely. For the first time, it occurred to Jayce that he might have to kill his old friend.
He called out to Viktor, flinching as the army of robots stood to attention. Jayce asked him to look around – to see what he was doing. Whatever this was – this Evolution – wasn’t the progress they fought for in their youths. He even, to Viktor’s surprise, apologized for acting like such a jerk.
Viktor sighed. He had only two words in response: “Kill him.”
The automatons sprinted toward Jayce, breaking free of the wires connecting them to the crystal and introducing Jayce to another new emotion: panic. He gripped the hammer tight, realizing he’d never actually used it before. When the first golem was within reach, he swung as hard as he could, feeling the shard’s energy surge through his muscles, accelerating the hammer’s movement until Jayce was worried it might fly out of his hands.
It slammed into the automaton, all but exploding it into a hail of metal. Despite the obliteration of their comrade, the other machines didn’t even pause as they rushed at Jayce, trying to pummel him into unconsciousness.
Jayce analyzed the formation of the mechanical wave coming at him and attempted to quickly calculate how to take out the largest number of them with the fewest amount of swings. It was pointless; they were on him before he could swing even once. As he fell to the ground under a storm of their blows, Jayce saw Viktor looking on, not with triumph, but with sadness. He’d outsmarted Jayce and ensured humanity’s future, but he knew that future came at a cost: he couldn’t let his old friend live. Jayce vanished under a sea of swinging metal limbs.
That’s when Jayce, for the first time in his life, decided to stop thinking and just break stuff.
No longer caring for his own safety, Jayce used every last bit of strength he had to break free from Viktor’s automatons. He sprinted to the glowing crystal, and struck it with all of the hextech-enhanced force his hammer could muster, crushing the mystical object.
Viktor cried out in horror as the crystal shattered to fragments, the shockwave blasting them all backward as the army of automatons collapsed lifelessly to the floor. The very foundations of the warehouse shook, and Jayce barely managed to escape before the entire building toppled.
Viktor’s body was never found.
Upon his return to Piltover, Jayce informed his clan masters of Viktor’s nefarious plans. Soon, Jayce found himself a topic of discussion in both Zaun and Piltover alike. Hailed for his quick thinking in a time of crisis, Jayce became a beloved figure (at least, amongst those who hadn’t met him), earning himself a nickname: the Defender of Tomorrow.
Jayce cared little for the adoration of his fellow Piltovans, but took the nickname to heart. He knew that Viktor was still out there, plotting his revenge. One day – maybe someday soon – an awful lot of trouble was headed for Piltover.
And Jayce would be waiting.
The Thrill of the Chase

Even three bells after the Sun Gate had closed, Piltover was still full of life - life that was currently getting in her way. Caitlyn sprinted down Mainspring Crescent, weaving a path between midnight revelers strolling down the fashionable promenade of cafes and bistros. The supper clubs were emptying, as were the nearby theaters inside the Drawsmith Arcade, so this street was going to get a whole lot busier. If they didn’t catch up to Devaki soon, they were going to lose him.
“Do you see him?” shouted Mohan from behind.
“If I could see him, I’d already be drawing a bead on him!”
The hextech rifle slung over Caitlyn’s shoulder was loaded and ready to shoot, but she needed a target, and Devaki was more nimble than a spooked doe. He’d robbed three clan workshops (that they knew of) in the last five weeks, and Caitlyn had him pegged for two others. Working a hunch that something big was in the works, she and Mohan had been keeping watch on one of House Morichi’s workshops, and sure enough, Devaki had shown. Though they hadn’t known it until the city lighters had worked their way down the street to ignite the glow-lamps and Caitlyn caught his reflection in the glass of the cafe across the street. Devaki had seen her in the same instant, and took to his heels like a startled wharf-rat.
Caitlyn skidded to a halt at the next junction. The caged flames atop the fluted lampposts bathed the dozens of surprised people staring at her with a warm, amber light. Her pale blue eyes darted from person to person, seeking Devaki’s distinctive silhouette.
A young man crossed the street toward her, his cheeks ruddy with a night’s enjoyment. He waved at her.
“You looking for a man on the run?” he asked. “Fella with a big hat?”
“Yes,” said Caitlyn. “You saw him? Where did he go?”
The young man pointed left and said, “Down that way at a good clip.”
She followed his gaze and saw cheering theater-goers spilling from the Drawsmith Arcade, a vaulted structure of colored glass and ironwork columns. They mingled with stall-holders selling refreshments and promenade-girls looking for a wealthy mark. Mohan finally caught up to her, sweating and breathing hard. He bent at the waist and propped himself up with his palms on his knees. His blue uniform coat was askew and his hat tipped back over his head.
“Figures he’d try to lose himself in the crowd,” he said between gulps of air.
Caitlyn took a moment to study their public-spirited helper. His clothes were finely-tailored and must once have cost him a pretty penny, but the cuffs were frayed and the elbows worn. Her eyes narrowed as she took in last season’s colors and a collar that hadn’t been in style for a year.
Wealthy, but down on his luck.
Mohan turned toward the busy street and said, “Come on, Caitlyn! Let’s go or we’ll lose him.”
Caitlyn dropped to one knee to look at the street from a different perspective. The cobbles were slick from the evening rain and were well trodden. From this angle, she saw the scuffs of heel marks on stone that only a running man would leave. But they weren’t heading left, they were heading right.
“How much did Devaki give you to tell us that?” said Caitlyn to the unfashionably dressed young man. “If it was less than a gold hex, you were swindled.”
The young man put his hands up and said, “It was five, actually,” before turning tail and running toward the crowds with a laugh.
“What the...?” said Mohan, as Caitlyn sprinted in the opposite direction. She’d lost valuable seconds, but knew exactly where Devaki was going now. She soon left Mohan behind, her sometime partner a little too fond of the sugared pastries the District-Inspector’s wife made for her husband’s officers.
Caitlyn ran a winding path through the city, along seldom-traveled alleyways and crooked paths between the gables of tall, brick-fronted warehouses. She cut across busy streets, drawing cries of annoyance from those she barged out of her way. The closer she came to the great canyon bisecting Piltover, the narrower the streets became, but she was betting she knew the shortcuts of Piltover better than Devaki. After a dozen twists and turns, she emerged onto a crooked street of undulating cobbles that followed the jagged line of the cliff. Known locally as Drop Street thanks to the wheezing hexdraulic conveyer at the end that ran late into the night, it was deep in shadow.
The iron-framed cabin hadn’t yet opened, the lozenge-patterned grille still in the closed position. A group of fifteen Zaunites, a great many of whom were intoxicated, gathered around the ticket booth. None of them were the man Caitlyn was looking for. She turned and dropped to a crouch, resting the barrel of her rifle on a packing crate bearing the brand of Clan Medarda. Stolen property, no doubt, but she didn’t have time to check it.
Caitlyn thumbed the rifle’s primer switch to the upright position. A gentle hum built within the breech as she worked the action to ready a shot. She pulled the butt of the rifle hard against her shoulder and slowed her breathing. Her cheek pressed into the walnut stock and she closed one eye as she took aim through the crystalline lenses.
She didn’t have long to wait.
Devaki swung around the corner, his long coat billowing out behind him and his hat a tall silhouette. He appeared to be in no hurry, but then, he believed he had shed his pursuers. He held a heavy brass-cornered case in his metal-clawed hand; a crude thing Vi said he’d had done in one of Zaun’s ask-no-questions augmentation parlors when he was a foolish youth.
Caitlyn focused her aim on the pneumatic monstrosity and squeezed the trigger. A searing flash of orange-red exploded from the weapon’s muzzle and Devaki’s hand vanished in a pinpoint blast. He cried out and fell back, his hat toppling from his head as the case fell to the ground. Devaki looked up, his eyes widening in pain and surprise as he saw Caitlyn. He turned to run, but Caitlyn had been waiting for that. She toggled a thumb-switch on the breech and pulled the trigger again.
This time the beam struck Devaki in the back and exploded in a web of crackling energy. Devaki’s back arched and he fell, twitching, to the ground. Caitlyn powered down her rifle and slung it over her shoulder as she walked toward the fallen Devaki. The effects of the electro-net were dimming, but he wouldn’t be getting up anytime soon. Caitlyn bent to retrieve the case he’d dropped and shook her head with a tut-tut sound.
“H-h-h...how?” said Devaki, through the spasms wracking his body.
“How did I know where you were headed?” asked Caitlyn.
Devaki nodded, the movement jerky and forced.
“Your previous thefts were meaningless in themselves, but when I looked at them as part of a larger scheme, it seemed like you were gathering components to build a version of Vishlaa’s Hexylene Caliver,” said Caitlyn.
She knelt beside Devaki to place a hand on his rigid body.
“And as we all know, that weapon was outlawed as being too dangerous, wasn’t it? No one in Piltover would dare touch that kind of banned hex, but someone, maybe in Noxus? They’d pay handsomely for that, I imagine. But the only place you could get something like that out of the city is through one of Zaun’s less reputable smugglers. This is the only quick route down into Zaun that’s still running at this time of night. Once I saw you weren’t going to try and hide out in Piltover, all I had to do was get to the conveyor before you and wait. So you and I are going to have a long talk, and you’re going to tell me who you’re working for.”
Devaki didn’t answer, and Caitlyn grinned as she reached over his prone body.
“Nice hat,” she said.
The Host

Amanda Jeffrey

I’m going to die.
Every halting breath is agony. It feels like someone has torn open my chest with a rusty saw and filled the cavity with teeth. Because someone has.
He has.
I can’t look at what he’s done to me. I stare through watering eyes at a tiny vault light in the brick ceiling, desperate to see anything but what I’ve become. Beyond lies Zaun—my city—but of the thousands of bustling souls there, not one will have noticed I’m missing. No one is looking for the man I was before.
click
The recording device has clicked on, the wax cylinder turning steadily, and my breath catches again, this time against a sob. He speaks.
“Subject ‘Thinker’ is functionally impaired. Yet hearing and recognition still present.”
click
Between the tears in my eyes and the warping effect of the thick greenish glass of the observation window, the nameless man looks like a half-melted waxen nightmare. Sunken, mismatched eyes dripping across a contorted pallid face, the bandages over his mouth growing and shrinking as he restlessly paces behind the window to get a better look at my condition.
His good eye flicks from me to the source of a deep groan in the corner of my cell. I turn to look at a hulking form, rousing itself from unconsciousness. Glowing pipes and tubes snake around and through its forearms, making them more than double their already considerable size.
As I am now, withered and... changed, the brute could snap me in half without thinking.
click
“Subject ‘Breaker’ regained consciousness at six past fourth bell. Earlier than expected. Promising! Experiment begins at... seven past fourth bell.”
click
No. No, no! Not another experiment.
click
“Establishing the baseline. Subject Thinker, answer the following questions as quickly and as accurately as possible.”
“Wha—”
“First question: what is your full name?”
“I’m not doing this! Do you hear me? I demand you release me at once. I refuse to participate in whatever sick, twisted...” My words trail off.
click
He puts down the mouthpiece of his recording device, and moves to a set of valves at the edge of the window. Without even glancing at me or the thing in the corner, he spins one open, and high-pressure, ice-cold sump water slams me into the wall.
I think I’m screaming.

An eternity later, I’m trembling on atrophied hands and knees, gasping for air. I fumble at the floor, seeking purchase through the slowly draining water, when I somehow catch my wrist on something, and my elbow buckles reflexively, slamming me face first onto the ground.
I’m still for a moment, cradling my arm where the pain is hot and alien—then I feel movement between my chest and the floor. Sharp wriggling, like I’ve fallen on a Uloan scorpion and it’s about to claw through me to escape. I roll, but it follows me. It’s on me, on my bare skin, scratching and squirming, and the skittering noise repulses me. I’m kicking and clawing and yelling and desperately trying to get it off me!
“Tiresome.”
My hands are bloodied and there’s something wrong with my wrists and I can’t get the thing off me. It’s all barbs and claws and it’s like it’s burrowed into my—my chest.
The teeth in my chest.
I remember now. There isn’t an arachnid on me. He did this to me. He carved me up and turned me into something else, something with sucking fangs grafted onto each wrist, and two columns of hungry, flexing pincers from neck to waist. And he wants me to use them to bite the thing in here with me.
He’d once strapped us both down on a rusted iron gurney, needle moving quickly and without mercy as he joined us together. Then he waited. Waited for the “process” to start, for the instincts he’d given me through surgical and chemtech sins to kick in.
When it didn’t happen—when I wouldn’t do it—everything went black.
And now I am locked in this chamber with my intended “host”.
click
“Subject found initial stimulus unpleasant. Resuming baseline questions. If the Thinker subject does not state its full name—”
“Stop, I beg you. Have mercy!” I yell.
“Duration and intensity will be increased by a factor of two. Strike that—make it three.”
click
He’s looking right at me. If he’s smiling beneath those wraps, it doesn’t reach his eyes. He seizes the valve again, and I realize what’s next. There’s nothing to hide behind, nothing to grab a hold of, and as the pipes rumble, all I can do is curl up as small as I can, and take a deep breath.
The blast of water hits so hard, so cold, the air is ripped from my lungs. I smash against surfaces I can’t identify, and up and down are meaningless. There’s a shooting pain from my ankle, and when the assault eventually ceases, I twist and drop to the floor. Once the heaving stops, I lie motionless, feeling weaker than I can ever remember as the last of the water drains from the room.
I’m going to die.
Slam. I flinch when my chem-doped cellmate smashes into the observation window. It is fury incarnate—huge, empowered fists hammering at the glass, incoherent primal yells tearing from its throat.
The glass, and the monster behind it, is unmoved.
Though each movement costs me dearly, I quietly drag myself to the other side of the floor, away from the raging beast called Breaker. It’s still smashing at the glass, knuckles bloodying, despite there being no sign of weakening the barrier. Stubborn or stupid, it keeps hitting. Even when its roaring diminishes and shifts to wordless sobs, those swollen fists won’t stop.
click
“Physical strength of subject ‘Breaker’ is within expected range of pneumatochem-muscular enhancements, but he exhibits limited to no problem-solving capabilities.”
click
Emotionlessly, our torturer taps on the glass opposite the smears from Breaker’s self-inflicted wounds. Then, with a scowl, he turns to look at me.
click
“Subject ‘Thinker’, on the other hand, may have been named hastil—”
“My name’s Hadri! Hadri Spillwether. I’m a person—not this ‘Thinker’ you keep calling me.” I reach out, desperate to touch some grain of empathy in my captor’s heart, no matter what fabrications I have to concoct. “I have a son! He’s... he’s two years old, and he must miss me terribly.”
“A son?” The bandaged man raises an eyebrow. “What’s his name?”
“L-Locke. Little Locke Spillwether—cute as a button and twice as—”
“Enough. You have no family. They perished from the same hereditary disease you yourself suffer from, characterized by accelerated aging and all the miserable infirmities that come with it. For the last thirteen years you’ve been making a nuisance of yourself to anyone who’d listen at the Zaun Academy of Sciences, seeking—no, begging for—a cure.”
His words hammer into me, cold and crushing like the water.
“And yet you repay my extraordinary gift with defiance and bad data.” Now he’s angry. “Your estimates give you five years left to live. More lies, but this time to yourself. You have three wretched years at best before you become a drooling invalid. And there’s no one to take care of you as you did your sister and father.”
There’s nothing I can say. He’s right. What little hope I had for finding a cure was just that: hope. The Academy wouldn’t help me—a swarming mass of the world’s finest minds, each unreachable and distant. Everyone had their own desperate or greedy agenda, and I was just another lost cause. Pitiful. Alone.
I’m going to die.
“But you need not die.”
My gaze snaps to his. I feel... revulsion? Loathing? Outrage? Hope. How dare he say such a thing. How dare he. How—
“How?” I choke out the question. I hate that I’ve asked it.
He doesn’t reply with words. He just slowly nods his head toward the hunched form of the thing I’m locked in with—toward Breaker. The brute is cradling his bleeding hands, rocking back and forth, avoiding eye contact with either of us. Maybe he’s incapable of speech. He’s at least three times my weight, all of it muscle, and that’s before whatever those augments on his arms are doing.
I remember when we were strapped down on the gurney. Similarly trapped together. Equally helpless despite his monstrously augmented strength. The bandaged man wants me to latch on to Breaker, to use him as a... support? A living prosthesis?
My own thoughts make me gag, and I dry heave as I scramble backward, away from Breaker.
“Disappointing.” Our torturer sounds bored. “Perhaps three years is still too remote a negative outcome for you, Thinker. Let me make it more compelling—in your weakened state, you’ll likely suffer multiple fractures each time I apply this negative stimulus. Within four more applications, I’d expect you’d be classifiable as only minimally mobile, and face down in the water, you’ll very slowly drown.”
He’s leering through the glass at me. “From previous observations, I’m led to believe it will be quite excruciating.”
click
The room’s too small. I can barely breathe. My heart is throwing itself against my ribcage like Breaker pummeling the observation window.
I look to Breaker and catch his gaze on me—he immediately looks away. There was little understanding in those eyes, but I saw shared fear and something akin to sympathy. It’s the first real human connection I’ve felt in years. Far more human than our captor.
Without turning to meet his cold, calculating stare, I ask, “And what happens if I do it? If I...?”
click
“Once an ectoparasitic melding is established, I’ll run tests on the nature of the pairing, on the extent of the parasite’s behavior-altering capabilities on the host and so on, and on the resilience of the resulting merged superorganism. The experiment will be concluded, and all this...” He waves airily at the chamber, the pipes and valves, the glass observation window. “All this will be done with.”
click
I nod absentmindedly, as if this is the most normal thing in the world, but my mind suddenly reels with realization. Testing the resilience of the organism. What a clean way to say torturing to death under a scalpel.
This is no cure—not for me. It’s a death sentence.
Finger width by finger width, I manage to pull myself to my feet, hugging the cold brick wall for support. I gasp and wobble for a moment—my ankle is broken already—before turning to face my enemy through the window.
“No.”
There’s a long pause. I can hear the sounds of Zaun—water dripping from the pipes, distant pumps, and the low, comforting rumble of never-sleeping machinery. At the very edge of my senses, I fancy I can hear fifth bell chiming.
I expect nothing of my captor. Still I’m surprised when he reaches out—
click
“Subject is... uncooperative.”
click
He spins the water valve to full strength.
Pain. The water hits like a mountain and slams me against the walls, ceiling, and floor without preference. I don’t know which is which anymore. There’s only noise. There’s only darkness. There’s only agony.
Then there’s light.
A flash so bright that the world behind my eyelids turns gold. A lung-hammering boom.
And then nothing.

I regain consciousness face down on the floor, battered and crushingly cold. I look up.
Something’s changed. Water still gushes out of the vents, though at a lower pressure. Light streams in from a hole punched near the ceiling. A way out? There are more flashes of yellow, followed by distant booms.
A keening wail pierces through the ringing in my ears. With horror, I realize it’s coming from Breaker—he’s cradling his face, blood weeping between his fingers. He charges into the wall, spins, and tumbles into the water.
The water. It’s rising.
In a panic, I try to drag myself closer to the hole, but I’m not moving. The fangs on my wrists rake across the stone beneath the water, setting my teeth on edge, but even with my aching fingers clawing at the floor, I make no headway.
I twist around to see if I’m caught on something, and blanch.
A slab of fallen debris—probably the exact piece that opened that treacherous escape route—is crushing my lower back. I kick at it, and nothing happens. I push it, and nothing happens. I try everything, squirming and screaming and flailing weakly. Slowly the block tumbles from me and splashes to the side. Around me, the rising waters flush red.
I can’t feel my legs.
“Experiment ends at... two, no, three past fifth bell.”
I turn just in time to watch the bandaged man walk away from the window and out of sight. A heartbeat later, the lights go out. The sudden explosions, my paralysis, or my defiance—I wonder which variable rendered his precious experiment worthless to him, worthy only of flushing.
Curse him.
I pull myself to a sitting position against the debris, my blood now black in the dim Zaun light. It feels like the heat is being sucked out of my core, and I’m being frozen from the inside out. I have nothing left.
Sobbing. I hear sobbing from Breaker, a boulder of despair hunkered in the corner, the tubes on his arms creating their own faint green illumination.
I keep my voice low. “H-hey.”
His head snaps up. Black streaks surround his ruined eyes, underlit by what that monster behind the glass did to his arms. An expression of anguish and loss twists on his face as he frantically angles his head to listen.
“B-Breaker?” I’m shivering. It’s hard to get the words out. “Hey, I’m s-s-sorry I don’t know your real—”
Breaker rises, splashing and stumbling, his chemtech implants casting wild shadows. He charges toward me—I squeeze my eyes shut, awaiting the impact.
Suddenly I feel a hand, hot and enormous, on my head. I open my eyes, and Breaker is crouched in front of me, clumsily patting my face and shoulders, as if to make sure I’m real.
A distant flash through the gap in the ceiling, like amber lightning, illuminates him. Under the blood and swelling, he looks so innocent. So alone.
I’m going to die.
But maybe Breaker doesn’t have to.
“Breaker? B-Breaker, you ha-have to listen to... me.” He takes my hand and turns his head to point an ear my way. “There’s a way—a way out,” I tell him. “A hole in the ceiling. You w-want to get out of here, right?”
Still holding my hand, he nods so vigorously that he jerks my body back and forth. The pain is white hot against the ice cold filling me. I almost welcome it.
“Aah! All right. Good. L-listen. Listen! Now, you’re g-going to have to let go of my ha—”
His refusal is clear in his death grip on my fingers.
Water is now lapping against the column of weakly flexing barbs on my chest. They gnash, eager to latch on to a host, as if they know their intended target is near. But I’ll die before I do that to myself. Or Breaker.
With so much of my blood swirling in the water around me, I don’t have long. I have to hurry.
I bring up my other hand and gently unwrap his. “Y-you’re going to be fine, B-B-Breaker. I promise. I just need you to... to make sure it’s safe first.” Breathing’s harder now. “Y-you can do that for me? Then we can b-both get ou-out.”
Lies, but it’s enough to get him to release me.
I nudge his elbow, guiding him to stand. Stretching despite the pain, I give him a tiny shove forward, toward the blown-open gap.
I let my arms fall back into the ice-cold water, realizing that his was probably the last warmth I’ll ever feel.
“J-j-just listen to my voice. I’ll g-guide you!” The water’s at my neck now, and I’m shaking so much it’s hard to see straight. “Forward, just a few steps. Careful, th-there’s d-debris, and—” He smashes his shin into a fallen piece of wall and yelps. “All right, y-y-y-you’re all right. S-step up onto it. Good. Now r-reach out to the w-w-wall. Feel it? Good. That’s good. There are cracks between the bricks. Use them to cl-climb. Now reach up. Reach up, Breaker. That’s it—that’s the w-way out.”
I tilt my head back to get a breath of air, the water at my jaw. At least I can’t feel most of my body now.
“Climb, B-Breaker,” I gasp. Then I stretch my neck and splutter, “Goodb-b—”
The water’s over my face, and despite everything, I’m holding this last breath. My heart beats loud in my ears. It occurs to me that I like the sound of it. I’ll miss it.
My lungs start to burn. This is it. My heart roars. My numb arms thrash. My eyes flicker open and my chest heaves, hungry for air. I cough out part of that last breath and gobble a mouthful of bitter sump water.
There is only panic.
My hand hits something, and I instinctively try to push off from it. Up. Anywhere. But I’m caught. I can’t move. There’s no air and I can’t move. Suddenly my whole vision is taken up by Breaker’s face. No! Not him, too! I struggle, but there’s nothing. My body is giving up. I’m giving up. My vision narrows and darkens; grayness fills it. I see Breaker turning, and distantly hope he’ll make it.
Something’s wrong. Or right. I can’t tell. There’s warmth and movement. I feel myself being lifted up. My body convulses and my vision turns sharp for just one beat of my weakening heart. Through the water, I see the back of Breaker’s head. My chest, no, the things in my chest sense the spine pressed against them, and flex back to strike, stretching like a too-big yawn. A welcome pain.
No. Yes. No!
... I don’t want to die!
As the barbs in my chest clamp down, I plunge my fangs deep into the sides of his neck—
CRUNCH.
I/we live!
We’re still submerged, but our lungs are full of air (and empty). Our limbs are strong and powerful (and weak and broken). We can see again (like always).
I/we push off for the faint light through the water. I/we bring up our hand to shove a metal bar out of the way. Our hand is shockingly big, and farther left than we expected, and we almost overshoot. Adjust. We’ve got it now. It’s so easy to push. The bar goes flying back. We kick upward and swim toward the hole in the ceiling, pulling ourselves up the last distance. We flop onto the roof, outside.
Air.
We cough up the water in our lungs, while our other lungs breathe deeply.
No, not our lungs... my lungs. My hearts beat hard and fast. My minds reel.
I climb down the side of the building with my powerful arms. When my feet touch the ground, it seems at once far away and slightly closer, offset to the side. I can hear with a depth and precision I couldn’t have imagined.
It smells like we’re deep in Zaun. I’m surrounded by leaking containers and heaps of wriggling, sodden trash, in a courtyard behind an old factory. High above, some distance away, a segment of fallen tower is precariously leaning against a chasm wall, yellow flashes and rumbles still issuing from secondary explosions.
The source of my freedom. Of my creation.
I start at the sound of a piece of rubble falling from the cell wall behind me, and I’m reminded just how close I came to death. At his hands.
I can’t stay here (fear!).
Before I know it, I’m running.
It’s exhilarating. I’m shocked by how fast the world goes by, how easily my legs move. Quick as a flash, I duck down an alley. There’s a gate blocking my path, but I’ve already spotted an outcropping of pipes I can vault from, and a hanging railing I can use to swing over it.
Neither of my past selves could have done this, but I can. It’s so easy.
I land lightly, and barely slow down. The impact hurts—one of my spines is broken, but it’s distant, no longer a devastating injury. Now, my strengths complement each other, my weaknesses recognized and supported. I’ve never felt this way before—greater than I was, more complete. At ease with myself.
I lope onward, exiting the alleyway and running straight into a small crowd leaving a Church of the Glorious Evolved–a mass of mechanical legs, breather masks, extraneous metal arms, and other, stranger augments.
But each and every one of these unsettling, augment-obsessed cultists stops dead in their tracks to stare at me.
“He’s got something on his back,” a mechanical-eyed man says.
“What is that?” a woman with a back-mounted prosthetic lung asks.
“It’s feeding on him!” an unseen third hysterically yells from the rear of the crowd.
Expressions change from shock to revulsion. I back up, but I’m surrounded.
Someone shoves me from behind. I try to tell them to stop.
“Pleas— —eave me— —lone.”
“—ASE. LEA— —E ALO—”
The words tumble out on top of each other, issuing from two mouths. I’ve never heard my new voice before, and it sounds both familiar and strange. The Evolved don’t seem to understand. A rock flies past my head.
“STOP-op. I HAVE-haven’t done anything-THING to you-YOU,” I beg. My words are still out of sync—it’s like talking through an echo. My voice won’t do what I want, and these people won’t listen!
A yellow-haired man steps forward from the group, attaching a heavy hammer-like prosthetic to his augmented wrist. He raises it to attack.
“I said leave me alone!” It’s my true voice. Clear as a bell—harmonious in the discord. But words won’t help me now.
Frantic, I look around and find a steam pipe near me, bridging the alleyway from above. Just before my would-be attacker strikes, I leap up, hauling the pipe down to block. The hammer pierces it, and scalding vapor blasts into his face. He falls backward, screaming.
I hear their yells and threats as I run away. I don’t know where I’m going as I charge down the dark cobblestone streets. I run past tenement blocks and corner stores, past a pair of stilt-walking chem-jacks and a spring merchant. I take stairs and corners at speed. I’m sprinting across one of the smaller bridges, iron clanging beneath my boots, when I catch a half-familiar whiff from one of the street vendors. I duck behind an empty stall and inhale deeply.
From a distant corner of my mind, I remember the smell—I remember coming here with... with Mama. She’d give me two washers for the porridge lady, and I’d carry a steaming bowl home.
Home. My eyes well up at the thought. Somewhere I can hide, somewhere I can rest, somewhere safe.
It’s not far from here!
This time, I’m running with heartsick purpose. Up three flights of stone steps on the chasm side, past the old broken glasshouse, then down two streets to the edge of the Factorywood.
Before I know it, I arrive at what was once my home. A charred husk remains, long since abandoned. My mind tries to make sense of it. This was my home (no, it wasn’t). I lived here with my mama and brother (no, I didn’t). She’d painted the walls yellow and said it was liquid sunshine (I’ve never been here).
I carefully make my way up warped stairs sodden from countless rainstorms. The railing feels familiar (alien) to my hand.
I push open the ruin of the door, and my vision swims. My happy memories of bright smiles clash with the reality of burnt remains and debris. Tears stream down my faces. Something terrible happened here, but I can’t remember.
The door to the back room has long fallen from its hinges, and the roof is collapsed in, but my eyes are drawn to the left corner, where I once slept—a small cot lies blackened with soot. I approach, and for the first time, I read the name scratched into the wall beside it:
“Palo.”
That’s me. My name is Hadri—I mean, Palo. I was both, but the me that lived here, that was Palo. Hadri’s mother died in childbirth, but Palo was raised by his mama.
What happened? An accident? An attack? Did Mama anger the wrong chem-baron? Did... did I do something without realizing?
Mama’s desk is a drenched wreck, but something glints in the pile of wood. Her hand mirror. It’s cracked, likely from the heat. I pick it up. When I was Hadri, I couldn’t bring myself to look at what the bandaged man had turned me into, but that was a lifetime ago. I’m different in so many ways, and I have to know.
I look.
A nightmare looks back. A beaten, bloodied, and blinded man stands there—forearms encircled and pierced by glowing green tubes and cables. Hooked on to his back is a sickly parasite, its shriveled arms wrapped around his neck, their syringe-like fangs barely concealed. Its withered legs dangle uselessly. Bloodshot, beady eyes peer from behind the man’s shoulder, widening in horror at what they see.
Revulsion washes over me. I drop the mirror, and my largest hands scramble to tear the parasite from its host. I’m hideous. (I’m smart now!) I’m just a failed experiment. (I’m better now!) No one could ever love me. (I love my new self!) I’ll always be alone. (I don’t want to be alone!)
Alone. I was so alone.
The bitter loneliness of two lives hits me, and I throw back my heads and howl. No one person should ever feel this. No one person can. I howl for losses doubled, and losses shared. I howl in sympathy for myself, and for the depth of loss in another. Across Zaun, I hear others take up the cry—animals, humans, and something in between—who for one moment, paradoxically, are together in their loneliness.
I collapse to my knees, my feet uselessly brushing against the floor behind me.
I will live. Not as Palo or Hadri. Not as Breaker or Thinker. I’m both, or all of them. I’m better this way.
I tear one of the half-burned curtains from the wall and throw it over my shoulders, careful not to obscure my vision.
My memories are too strange, too complex, too confusing. I can’t stay here. I walk out the door and down the steps as I try to decide where a monster like me can possibly go.
click
“In spite of, or perhaps due to, unexpected and explosive complications, stage one of the host experiment has finally completed.”
click
I freeze. My captor stands on the narrow street in front of the house, a pneumatic-powered dart gun leveled at me. Vials on his belt clink menacingly, filled with unknown liquids (it burns!), and a bag on his back suggests he has many more terrible things at hand.
He did this to me.
I can feel the fury swell in both of my chests, my hearts thumping against each other with just ribcages between them. I take an instinctual step toward him.
“I don’t think so!” he warns. He casually flicks the dart thrower to the side, pulls the trigger, and spears a large viridian beetle straight through. I watch, horrified, as the liquid in the dart releases into its body, dissolving it almost immediately, its screams all too audible in my four ears.
His gun is already reloaded, and it’s aimed at me again. I raise two of my hands.
click
“The following questions are for the Thinker entity. Answer quickly, or I’ll apply motivational pressures.”
“What?”
“Quiet. First question: what is your full name?”
The dart gun doesn’t waver as his long, stained finger hovers over the recording device’s switch.
“Hadri Spillwether.” I look around for a way out. Somewhere to run. Anything.
“Good. Next question. What was your father’s name?”
My father? I didn’t know my—wait, no, I did have a father. I looked after him when the disease worsened. His name... his name was...
“Hurry up. Answer the question!” the bandaged man demanded.
“Arvon! Arvon Spillwether!” I sounded more relieved than I expected. More desperate.
“Hmph. Faster! Where did you live? What was your profession? What did I call myself when we first met at the Academy?”
“Here! I lived he—no, wait. I... I don’t... Four-five-one! Room four-five-one at the Smellbloom Lodging House! Profession? I... Was I a clerk? I can’t... I don’t remember. It was so long ago!” I’m sweating, shaking my heads. It’s all mixed up.
click
“Pathetic. What a waste. Devolved into some sort of gestalt entity, contaminating the purity of the primary mind. Unsuitable for further exploration,” he mutters. Then he turns on his heel and starts to walk away.
I feel my faces scrunch into masks of pure rage.
He made me what I am. He set my house ablaze with chemical fire—I remember now how it burned. He exploited my hope for a cure.
And now, he will pay.
I’m four paces away from him. Now two. Then he spins on the spot and smashes a vial of something at my feet. I barely take another step when I find that my boots are glued fast to the ground. He’s two fingertips out of my reach, and I claw at the air uselessly.
“So much for being a Thinker,” he says. “I really was too optimistic. I certainly won’t make that mistake again.”
He takes a long step backward, and turns to head down a narrow alleyway. Leven Wynd—I remember it clearly. The second he’s out of sight, I hunker down and quickly untie my laces, loosening them enough to step out of my boots. With one strong leap, I’m padding barefoot after him down the wynd.
It’s dark in the alley, but my hearing is sharpened. I can hear him at the end of the first turn, still muttering to himself about subjects and sources. It stinks here, and I try not to think about what I’m stepping in as I navigate past the narrow gaps and boarded-up doorways. By the time I reach the corner, he’s halfway down the next stretch, barely visible in the gloom and the smog. I lean down to wrench a broken pipe from the ground as a weapon, and feel a rush as I straighten.
He’s gone.
Impossible! I lope onward, checking doorways as I go. The air is nasty, and I try to muffle my coughs with my curtain, but I can only cover one mouth. I’m getting dizzy, and I turn around to look back the way I came. It’s hazy—too hazy.
He’s using some kind of gas! I wrap the curtain around one of my mouths and bury the other into my shoulder, trying to breathe as little as possible. This is a trap.
I try to stagger back toward home—the corner looks farther away than I remember. I need to make it. I start to run, but one of the doors—red, metal, and spiked—suddenly opens, smashing into my face. I fall.
My limbs, all of them feel so heavy. So heavy. I think I’m crushing myself with my own weight on my back, but it’s already so hard to breathe.
I’m going to die.
The bandaged man stands over me. Tears streaming from my faces, I look up at my murderer, and I remember.
Overlaid upon his face, I see a face from before—with tinted glasses and a clean-shaven jaw. When I first met him, years ago, he strode down the hallway from lab to lecture hall, master of his environment, looked upon with admiration, envy, and something I hadn’t recognized (fear!). In his wake was the faintest scent of cologne. He had stopped and looked at me—not with pity, as I was used to, but with a shadow of excitement and anticipation. He’d introduced himself.
“Singed. You said you were Professor SIN-Singed.”
The harmony drops from my voices, and in my last moment, I am alone again.
Crushingly, painfully, deeply alone.
Singed scrambles madly among his things, desperately searching for something. A cure? A mercy?
His recording device. He clicks it on and drops to his haunches to observe.
“Oh, well done, Thinker Four. That puts you... yes... more answers than even Thinker Two! You’ve been most helpful.”
He clicks off his recording device.
It’s the last thing I hear.
House on Emberflit Alley

Rayla Heide

Viktor’s third arm emitted a thin ray of light that welded metal into his left arm with steady precision. The smell of burning flesh no longer bothered him, nor did the sight of his left wrist splayed open, veins and sinewy muscle fused with mechanical augments. He did not wince. Instead, he felt a sense of achievement gazing at the seamless blend of synthetic and organic materials.
The sound of children shouting gave Viktor pause. Rarely did anyone venture down the fog-bound confines of Emberflit Alley. He had chosen this location for that very reason — he preferred not to be interrupted.
Keeping his left arm immobile, Viktor adjusted a silver dial on his iridoscope. The device contained a series of mirrored lenses that angled light to allow him full view of the street outside his laboratory.
Several children were violently shoving a malnourished boy toward Viktor’s wrought iron gates.
“I doubt Naph will last a minute in there,” said a girl with imitation gemstones embedded above her eyes.
“I bet he comes back with a brass head,” said a boy with a shock of red hair. “Maybe then his brain won’t be dull as the Gray.”
“You better return with something we can sell, or we’ll be the ones to give you a new head,” said the largest one, grabbing the small boy by the neck and forcing him forward. The other children backed away, watching.
The young boy trembled as he approached the towering gate, which screeched as he pushed it open. He passed the front door encrusted with interlocking gears and shimmied through an open window. An alarm blared as he fell to the floor.
Viktor sighed and pressed a switch that quieted the ringing.
The skinny boy stared at his new environment. Glass jars, containing organic and metal organs floating in green fluid, lined the walls. A leather gurney stained with blood, upon which lay a mechanized drill, sat in the center of the chamber. Dozens of automatons stood motionless against every wall. To Viktor, his laboratory was a sanctuary for his most creative and vital experiments, but he could imagine it might seem frightening to a child.
The boy’s eyes widened in shock when he saw Viktor at his workbench, arm splayed open on the table. He ducked behind a nearby crate.
“You will not learn anything from that box, child,” said Viktor. “But on top of it, you will find a bone chisel. Hand it to me, please.”
A trembling hand reached to the top of the crate and grasped the handle of the rusted metal tool. The chisel slid across the floor to Viktor, who picked it up.
“Thank you,” said Viktor, who wiped off the instrument and continued work on his arm.
Viktor heard the boy’s rapid breathing.
“I am replacing the twisting flexor tendons — ahem, the broken mechanism in my wrist,” Viktor said, reaching into his arm to adjust a bolt. “Would you like to watch?”
The boy peeked his head around the crate.
“Doesn’t it hurt?” said the boy.
“No,” said Viktor. “When one eliminates the anticipation and fear of pain, it becomes entirely bearable.”
“Oh.”
“It also helps that my arm is almost completely mechanized. See for yourself.”
The boy stepped away from the crate and sat across from Viktor without a word, eyes fixed on his arm.
Viktor resumed welding a new boltdrive onto the tendons beneath his skin. When he had finished, he sealed the flaps of dermis onto his arm. He drew the beam of light across the seam, cauterizing his flesh and fusing the incision.
“Why did you do that?” the boy asked. “Didn’t your arm work fine as it was?”
“Do you know what humanity’s greatest weakness is?”
“No...” said the boy.
“Humans consistently ignore the endless infinity of possibilities in favor of maintaining the status quo.”
The boy gave him a blank stare.
“People fear change,” Viktor said. “They settle with fine when they could have exceptional.”
Viktor walked to his stovetop. He mixed a blend of dark powder and Dunpor cream into a saucepan, heating the liquid with his laser.
“Would you like a glass of sweetmilk?” said Viktor. “A weakness of mine, but I have always enjoyed the anise flavor.”
“Um... you’re not going to saw off my head and replace it with a metal one?”
“Ah. Is that what they think of me now?” Viktor asked.
“Pretty much,” said the boy. “I heard one kid had theirs replaced just because they had a cough.”
“Did you get this information directly?” said Viktor.
“No, it was my neighbor Bherma’s cousin. Or uncle. Or something like that.”
“Ah. Well in that case.”
“Would replacing someone’s head even get rid of a cough?” asked the boy.
“Now you are asking the right questions,” said Viktor. “No, I imagine it would not be much of an upgrade. Coughing stems from the lungs, you see. And to your earlier point, I am not going to saw your head off and replace it with a metal one. Unless, of course, you want that.”
“No thanks,” said the boy.
Viktor poured the thick liquid into two mugs and passed one to the boy, who stared longingly at the hot drink.
“It is not drugged,” said Viktor and took a sip from his own mug. The boy gulped down the sweetmilk.
“Are the others still watching outside?” said the boy through stained teeth.
Viktor glanced through his iridoscope. The three children were still waiting by the front entrance.
“Indeed they are. Do you wish to give them a scare?” Viktor said.
The boy’s eyes lit up, and he nodded.
Viktor handed him a sonophone and said, “Scream as loud as you can into this.”
The boy gave an exaggerated, blood-curdling shriek into the sonophone. It echoed along Emberflit Alley, and the other children jumped in terror, quickly scattering to hide. The boy looked at Viktor and grinned.
“I find that fear is more often than not a limiting emotion,” said Viktor. “Tell me something that scares you, for example.”
“The Chem-Barons.”
“The Chem-Barons are feared because they project an air of dominance and often the threat of violence. If no one feared them, people would stand up to them. And then where would their power go?”
“Uh...”
“Away. Exactly. Think of how many Chem-Barons exist compared to how many people live in Zaun. Fear is used by the powerful few to control the weak because they understand how fear works. If someone can manipulate your emotions, they can control you.”
“I guess that makes sense. But I’m still afraid of them,” said the boy.
“Of course you are. Patterns of fear are carved deep into your very flesh. Steel, however, has no such weakness.”
Viktor retrieved a vial containing miniscule silver beads floating in milky fluid.
“That is where I may be able to assist,” he said. “I have developed an augmentation that eliminates fear altogether. I could let you try it out for a short time.”
“How short?”
“The implant will dissolve in twenty minutes.”
“You’re sure it’s not permanent?”
“It can be, but not this one. You might find that without fear, your friends out there lose their grip. Bullies feed on fear, you see. And without it, they will starve.”
The boy nursed his drink, considering the offer. After a moment he nodded to Viktor, who inserted a thin needle into the vial and injected one of the silver beads into the skin behind his ear.
The boy shuddered for a moment. Then he smiled.
“Do you feel your weakness falling away?” Viktor asked.
“Oh yes,” said the boy.
Viktor walked him to the door and twisted a dial to unlock it before waving him out.
“Remember, you can always return if you wish a more permanent solution.”
A wave of fog created a ghostly silhouette around the boy as he emerged from the laboratory. Viktor returned to his workbench to watch the experiment through his iridoscope.
Emberflit Alley was empty, but as soon as the boy walked out his companions emerged.
“Where’s our souvenir?” asked the red-haired boy.
“Doesn’t seem like little Naph has held up his end of the deal,” said the girl.
“Guess we have to punish him,” added the large boy. “We did promise him a new head today, after all.”
“Don’t you touch me,” said Naph. He raised himself to his tallest height.
The bully reached for Naph’s neck, but Naph turned and punched him square in the face.
Blood streamed from the bully’s nose.
“Grab him!” the bully screamed.
But his companions were no longer interested in grabbing him.
Naph stepped toward the bullies. They stepped back.
“Get away from me,” he said.
The bullies eyed each other, then turned and ran.
Viktor closed his iridoscope and returned to his work. He stretched the fingers of his newly repaired arm and tapped them on his desk in satisfaction.

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