LoL Universe Indexing and Search

While most look at Jinx and see only a mad woman wielding an array of dangerous weapons, a few remember her as a relatively innocent girl from Zaun—a tinkerer with big ideas who never quite fit in. No one knows for certain what happened to turn that sweet young child into a wildcard, infamous for her wanton acts of destruction. But once Jinx exploded onto the scene in Piltover, her unique talent for sowing anarchy instantly became the stuff of legend.

Jinx first gained notoriety through her anonymous “pranks” on the citizens of Piltover… particularly those with connections to the wealthy merchant clans. These pranks ranged from the moderately annoying to the criminally dangerous. She blocked streets on Progress Day, with a stampede of exotic animals freed from Count Mei’s menagerie. She disrupted trade for weeks when she lined the city’s iconic bridges with adorably destructive flame chompers. Once, she even managed to move every street sign in town to new and utterly confusing locations.

Though this unknown troublemaker’s targets seemed random, and her motivation nothing more than pure chaos, her actions always served to bring the city’s orderly bustle to a screeching halt.

Naturally, the wardens attributed some of her crimes to chem-punk gangs from the undercity. Having others get credit for her manic schemes didn’t sit well with Jinx, and so she made sure to make her presence known at every future crime scene. Rumors soon circulated of the mysterious, blue-haired Zaunite girl carrying chemtech explosives, a shark-mouthed rocket launcher, and a repeater gun. Still, the authorities dismissed these reports as preposterous. After all, how could a lowly street punk possibly obtain such lethal ordnance?

Jinx’s bombastic spree seemed endless, with the wardens’ attempts to catch the culprit thwarted at every turn. She began tagging her works of destruction with vivid graffiti, and other taunting messages directed at the city sheriff’s newest ally in the fight against crime, Enforcer Vi.

Jinx’s reputation grew, leaving the people of Zaun divided as to whether she was a hero for sticking it to the arrogant Pilties, or a dangerous lunatic for escalating existing tensions between their two cities.

After months of ever-increasing carnage, Jinx unveiled her biggest plan yet. In her trademark electric pink, Jinx daubed the walls of the Ecliptic Vaults—one of Piltover’s most secure treasuries—with a very unflattering caricature of Enforcer Vi, and the details of her own intention to rob the stores within.

An uneasy sense of anticipation settled on Piltover and Zaun leading up to the promised date of the heist. Many doubted even Jinx would have the guts to show up and risk almost certain capture.

When the day arrived, Vi, Sheriff Caitlyn, and the wardens prepared a trap for Jinx outside the treasury. But Jinx had already smuggled herself inside by way of an oversized coin crate that had been delivered days before. When Vi heard pandemonium erupt from inside the structure, she knew the wardens had been outclassed once again. She burst into the treasury, and the ensuing confrontation left the Ecliptic Vaults a smoldering ruin, and the merry mischief maker Jinx nowhere to be found.

Jinx remains at large to this day, and is a constant thorn in Piltover’s side. Her schemes have inspired copycat crimes among the chem-punks, as well as numerous satirical plays lampooning the incompetence of the wardens, and even a smattering of new colloquialisms throughout both cities—though no one has yet had the courage to call Enforcer Vi “Pretty-in-Pink” to her face.

Jinx’s ultimate endgame, and her obvious obsession with Vi, both remain a mystery, but one thing is certain: her crimes are continuing and growing in sheer audacity.

In Piltover, where anyone’s dream can become everyone’s progress, a star is born.

As a child, Seraphine always loved music, especially her father’s lullabies. The songs were beautiful, but sad. He’d brought them up to Piltover as he and Seraphine’s mother—two lifelong Zaunites—sought a better life in the City of Progress.

Leaning out the window of their hexcoustics workshop, where broken sound tech was made to play again, Seraphine sang along with the streets. The shanties of the Sun Gates, the whistling of apprentices, even the melody of conversation—in a bustling city like Piltover, she was never alone.

Over time, Seraphine realized she could sense songs too private, too personal, for any ordinary person to hear. And as she grew, so did the intensity of her gifts. She heard every person’s soul, loving or cruel—turning the streets she’d once loved into an overwhelming cacophony of conflicting desires. How could she make sense of the voices if none of them harmonized? Some days, she hid shivering in a corner, hands over her ears, unable to hear herself above the chaos.

Seraphine’s parents had left everything behind so she could be born in Piltover; they couldn’t bear seeing her struggle. Scraping together their savings to purchase a shard of a rare hextech crystal, they crafted a device that dampened her magical hearing. For the first time in years, there was silence.

Within that quiet, though, Seraphine heard something—someone. The crystal had a consciousness, born of brackern blood. Though hard to hear, and harder to comprehend, the voice was kind. In a hymn of distant deserts and ancient conflicts of ancestors, a thousand years of history sang in unison.

Seraphine, awed, asked for guidance. Overwhelmed by the yearnings around her, she worried she may have no song of her own. What if she was merely the voices of others?

“We are all forged through others’ voices,” the presence sang back.

And slowly, she learned to manage the noise. The voice rarely spoke clearly, but Seraphine felt its influence as it helped her understand how to resonate with a crowd, to sing with them, using her dampener less each day. The first time she performed in front of an audience, testing her skills, she was nervous beyond words. But she kept singing, and the crowds swelled. Soon, the biggest venues in Piltover had Seraphine’s fans spilling into the streets. Still, something was missing—in the crowds, and in herself. She resolved to seek perspective in the city her parents had worked so hard to leave: Zaun.

The first time she rode the clanging lift down, Seraphine felt somehow at home but still a stranger. In Zaun, she heard refrains of resilience and ambition much like above, yet with a thrum of freedom that was all their own. But as she spent more time below, she also sensed pain. Fear of the chem-barons who controlled every opportunity. Hatred of the spoiled, arrogant Pilties above. There was so much discord. She began to perform, and listened to these new crowds, their hearts singing their struggles. The two cities were divided by more than simple misunderstanding. She wanted to mend, to unite. But she kept hearing the same refrain: “It’s not that simple in Zaun.”

Eventually, Piltover started to feel less like home.

Her hextech crystal had sung an elegy of what hatred left unchecked could accomplish. Seraphine couldn’t let that happen to the cities she loved. Persuading her parents to help, she dismantled her dampener, and together, they gave the crystal a new home in its opposite—a platform that would amplify her gifts, not repress them, allowing her to hear others in all their complexity. Seraphine hoped the crystal’s voice would be among them. She rode this platform down as a stage of sorts, stepping out onto the Entresol between Piltover and Zaun. As the crowds gathered and the lights dazzled, she heard citizens from both worlds, mingled together to hear her.

This was a new song. Not just understanding—unity.

It wasn’t perfect. It might never be. But her voice mattered. And so, Seraphine realized, maybe she could help others find their voice, too.

Seraphine has become the premier star in both Piltover and Zaun. Empowered by her gifts and her hextech, she amplifies the voices of all with a fresh force of optimism, because to her, everyone deserves to be heard—especially those who are struggling. They inspire her, and she will do her best to inspire them in return.

Vi stifled a yawn as she moved through the gilded chamber at the heart of Piltover’s Hall of Law. Dawn was less than an hour old, and the place was quiet. A few drunks were sleeping it off in the shaming cells, and she’d heard there were a couple of chem-augmented thugs in the deeper, more secure lock-ups. She’d ask around later, see if she could provide any insight as to what they were doing up in Piltover.

She rolled her shoulders, the muscles there stiff after a hard night’s work. It had been a long shift, and her forearms were aching from the pressure of her powered gauntlets. All she wanted to do was go back home, get them off, and bathe her fists in ice water. Maybe throw back a few glasses of something strong and sleep some, but the pnuema-tube from Caitlyn had been full of imperatives about getting herself down to the district house on the double. Vi had cocked an eyebrow, tossed the message and given it an hour before leaving her cramped home in the dressmakers-quarter to answer Caitlyn’s summons.

“Hey, Harknor,” she said to the desk-warden when she reached the cells. “What’s so important Caitlyn has to drag me from an erotic dream about—”

“Ah, ah, stop right there,” said Harknor without looking up from his elevated desk as he ran a finger down the list of prisoners brought in during the night. “I’m not in the mood to hear another of your lurid fantasies.”

“You sure?” grinned Vi, leaning on his desk and blowing a loose strand of pink hair from her eyes. “This was a good one. Had a plot and everything.”

“Quite sure,” said Harknor, looking away and holding out the charge sheet. “Caitlyn and Mohan brought in a hextech thief last night. He hasn’t said a word to anyone, but she thinks you might be able to get him to talk.”

Vi arched an eyebrow as she scanned the page.

“Devaki? You’ve been a very naughty boy,” she said, rolling her eyes and curling her metaled fingers into a fist. “Yeah, Devaki and I knew each other back in the day. I’ll get him to talk.”

Harknor shook his head, saying, “Listen, Vi, I don’t want to have to call the surgeon back here again. Caitlyn wants this fella to able to speak when he goes before the procurator.”

“Where is she anyway?” asked Vi. “She isn’t even here to say hello?”

“Chasing down a lead at the docks,” said Harknor. “Said she figured you could handle this one on your own. She wrong about that?”

“Nope,” said Vi, turning and sashaying toward the cells. “Which cell’s Devaki in?”

“Number six. But remember, he’s got to be able to talk!”

Vi nodded and said, “Yeah, yeah...”

She reached cell six and slid back the locking bar. Normally, another warden would secure the door, but Vi didn’t need anyone at her back. She knew Devaki from the old days, even worked with him a few times before the job with the Factorywood Fiends went bad. Devaki was a thief, not a fighter, and if she needed backup to restrain his scrawny frame, then it was time to find a new line of work.

Devaki was sitting on the edge of the chipped hunk of stone they called a bed with his back to the wall and his knees drawn up to his chest. He cradled one arm close to his body, the limb ending at a bandaged stump where his hand ought to be. He looked up as she entered, and his eyes widened in surprise.

“Vi?”

“Piltover’s finest,” she said with a petite curtsey that, despite where he sat, made Devaki smile. “What happened to your hand?”

“Your damn sheriff shot if off,” he said. “What happened to yours?”

“I got an upgrade,” said Vi, holding up her hextech gauntlets. They hummed with a low buzz and she turned them around to let Devaki see just how powerful they were. “Fully customizable with variant levels of hurt. I can punch through walls with these babies.”

“Yeah, I heard what happened to the Ecliptic Vaults,” said Devaki with an easy smile, as if he was talking to the old Vi, the Vi from the Lanes. He wasn’t bright enough to know that Vi wasn’t the one standing in front of him.

Devaki held up the arm ending in a stump. “I’m gonna need an upgrade too. This was a high-end augment from Bronzio’s. That sheriff didn’t need to shoot it off.”

“You can bill her,” said Vi, closing the distance between them in two strides and lifting Devaki off his feet. She threw him against the opposite wall, rattling his bones and sending plaster dust billowing into the air.

Devaki slid to the floor, shocked and gasping for breath. “They’ve been playing nice so far, but now they send you in? What gives?”

“I’m the one they send in when asking all polite doesn’t get you anywhere, cupcake,” said Vi, letting the power build in her gauntlets. “I’m the one who’ll go to town on you with these beauties. Unless, of course, you tell me what I want to know.”

“Whoa, wait! Vi, what are you doing?” spluttered Devaki, holding his remaining hand out before him as he scrambled to his feet.

“I’m interrogating you, what’s it look like?”

“But you haven’t asked me anything!”

Vi cocked her head to the side. “Yeah, I should probably get on that.”

She reached down and hauled Devaki to his feet, applying a growing pressure to his shoulder.

“So, who was gonna buy that stolen hextech?”

Devaki winced in pain, but didn’t answer.

“Come on, you’re tougher than that,” said Vi, releasing his bruised shoulder. “You want to see what happens to a face when I don’t pull my punches?”

“No!” cried Devaki.

“Then tell me what I want to know.”

“I can’t.”

Vi tapped a finger on her chin, as if weighing whether to punch him again. She smiled, the expression worrying Devaki more than the thought of her fists.

“Be a shame if word got round the Lanes that you’d been informing on all your criminal friends for the last couple of years.”

“What?” said Devaki, spluttering in pain and indignation. “That’s a lie!”

“Of course it is,” said Vi, “but I know all the right people to talk to down there. A lot of folk’ll listen if I let it slip that you’re in the wardens’ pocket.”

“I’ll be dead in a day if you do that,” protested Devaki.

“Now you’re catching on,” said Vi. “Tell me what I want to know. I’ll make sure it gets about you resisted arrest. Even give you a black eye so it looks like I beat it out of ya.”

Devaki’s shoulders slumped, knowing he had no defiance left in him.

“Fine, I’ll tell you what you want to know.”

“Excellent,” said Vi, “Now we’re getting somewhere.”

Vi remembers little of her childhood in Zaun, and what she does remember, she wishes she didn’t. Running with the sump-snipe gangs, she quickly learned to use her wits, as well as her fists, to survive. Everyone who encountered Vi knew she could talk—or punch—her way out of trouble. More often than not, she chose the latter.

None of the old-timers from her youth could tell her anything of her parents. Most assumed they had died in one of the industrial accidents that were, sadly, all too common in the undercity. Though she had ended up in the crumbling Hope House orphanage, a notoriously mad sump-scrapper claimed to have found her adrift in a bassinet large enough for two in the ruins of a collapsed chem-lab. In the end, Vi figured some things were best left unknown.

With her wild pink hair, she became a distinctive sight on the streets of Zaun—hightailing from angry shopkeepers in the boundary markets, swaggering through the colorful bazaars of the Black Lanes, or hitching rides up into Piltover aboard the hexdraulic conveyors. Wherever there was a scrape to be gotten into or a scam to be run, Vi was in the thick of it, though she never stole from those that couldn’t cover the loss… and never hurt those that didn’t deserve it.

As she got older, the capers of childhood became more audacious and daring, and Vi formed a gang of her own. Brash and quick to anger, she still relied on her fists a little too much, and was rarely without a black eye or split lip.

She found a mentor in the owner of a bar on the edge of the Lanes, who tempered some of her more self-destructive tendencies. He tried to reinforce her moral code, and showed her how to fight with discipline, as well as teaching her ways to better direct her simmering anger.

In time, Vi earned a reputation as someone who got things done, no questions asked.

Listening to the chatter of the Zaunite miners who frequented the bar, she came to learn when big deals were being made, and how payments were to be delivered. To a chem-baron, this was chump change—but to her and her friends, it would be a fortune. She planned a heist, but knew it would require extra bodies to pull off, so Vi reluctantly brought a rival gang, the Factorywood Fiends, in on her score.

Everything was going fine, until the leader of the Fiends killed the mine owner with a pair of oversized pulverizer gauntlets, and trapped the rest of the workers in the tunnels. Even as both gangs fled with the loot, Vi knew she could not leave these innocent people to die. She snatched up the gauntlets, the wrist mechanisms clamping down painfully on her arms, but she endured the agony long enough to smash open a path to free the miners.

The following day, Vi paid a visit to the Factorywood Fiends. Still wearing the powered gauntlets, she took on the entire gang, administering a beating so legendary that it is still spoken of in the Lanes to this day.

Vi eventually disappeared from Zaun during a time of great upheaval, when tensions with Piltover were running high. Rumors circulated between the gangs that she had been killed in a huge explosion in the heart of the undercity, or that she had turned her back on her friends and struck out for distant lands. The truth, however, finally came to light when Old Hungry’s Scars—a vicious gang whose murder sprees had spread topside—were brought down by a respected sheriff of Piltover and her new ally… Vi.

The former gang leader was now in the employ of the Wardens, and she had replaced the chem-powered pulverizer gauntlets with a pair of brand new hextech Atlas prototypes.

No one yet knows the exact reason why or how Vi came to be working alongside Caitlyn—but given the anarchic nature of the crime wave now sweeping Piltover, speculation runs rife that it might involve a certain blue-haired hellion from Zaun…

The waterways of Valoran are old, but far older still is the demon Tahm Kench. From muddy gambling tents along the Serpentine River, through the salt-crusted dice halls of Bilgewater, to the gilded wagering tables of Piltover and Zaun—all those who have given a covetous glance to another’s wealth know the unending hunger that comes from an encounter with the River King.

The first tales of the creature were told by a traveling people who plied the Serpentine. They warned of a giant fish with a cavernous mouth, who would lure in the dissatisfied with the promise of more. One such story was that of a young man renowned for his honesty. Though born to the ways of a raftsman, he desired a life beyond the poor banks he knew so well, and the River King promised him an unforgettable experience if only he would tell one little lie. It seemed harmless enough, so the raftsman bent the truth in conversation with his own brother. That night the demon appeared, revealing a fork in the river the raftsman had never noticed before. He followed it to a camp of foreign folk who offered him food and drink, and fresh companionship. As dawn neared, and the raftsman was full and ready to return to his people, the demon appeared again, promising an even greater experience for another lie. His interested piqued, the man accepted the bargain, telling falsehoods to his hosts. The river parted again and he followed it to an evening of even greater luxury. This continued, night after night, until the once-honest raftsman’s deceits came as easily as breathing.

When the river finally emptied into the sea, he found himself alone and lost—there was no one left to lie to. So many dark choices, all of them his own, had left the raftsman with no way back home.

The brackish rivers of the mainland carried the tales of the River King to the Blue Flame Isles, where the creature gained a name as his legend grew—Tahm Kench. In Bilgewater, fortunes are boom or bust, with as much wealth going out with the tide as comes in. Many a tavern yarn tells of ol’ Tahm, a demon of the water with an unending appetite for games of chance, such that the loquacious beast became a symbol for many of the city’s gambling dens and houses of sin.

Once the Sun Gates opened easy trade from Bilgewater to Piltover, tales of Tahm Kench became more common in the City of Progress and its underbelly, Zaun. There, children know Tahm as “Two-Coats,” a fish so monstrously large that he wears two fine jackets stitched together. With a jaunty top hat and a smile wider than the Pilt itself, he drives the jealousies of young artificers. It is said he came one Progress Day to a struggling Piltovan inventor, and offered her an idea certain to make a wealthy clan take notice. All he asked in return was a single lock of her hair. The ambitious woman made the trade and, true enough, her work landed her a lucrative contract. But one invention would not satisfy, and Two-Coats wandered by, this time asking for all of her lovely braids. Not wishing to disappoint her new patrons, the inventor agreed—and Two-Coats ate them up on the spot. Still the woman was unable to find the one great innovation that would make her name. The demon came again, offering a deal that would take the tip of one finger. The following week it was an ear. A year passed, and by then there was little left of the woman to give. Finally she called Two-Coats herself, begging him to make it all stop.

He laughed as he opened his jaws wide, telling her he would protect her from herself, and promptly swallowed her whole.

The River King. The Great Waddler. Old Yawn-Belly. Two-Coats. The demon Tahm Kench is known by many names, but all who speak them have learned a singular truth: no matter how alluring his words may be, in his mouth you will be lost.

Urgot always believed he was worthy.

As a headsman, an executioner of the weak, he was a living embodiment of the Noxian ideal that strength should rule, making it a reality with every swing of his axe. His pride swelled as the bodies piled ever higher behind him, and his intimidating presence kept countless warbands in line.

Even so, a single word was all it took to seal his fate. Sent to distant Zaun to eliminate a supposed conspiracy against the ruler of Noxus, Urgot realized too late the mission was a setup, removing him from the capital even as the usurper Swain seized control of it. Surrounded by agents of the chem-barons, and enraged that everything he believed was a lie, Urgot was dragged down into the chemtech mines beneath Zaun. He was defeated. He was enslaved. He was not worthy after all. He endured the mine’s hellish conditions in grim silence, waiting for death.

In the Dredge, death came in many forms…

The mine’s warden, Baron Voss, would sometimes offer freedom in return for a prisoner’s tortured confession—granting it with the edge of her blade. From the screams that echoed through the tunnels, Urgot learned about the wonders of Zaun. There was something special about the city, something marvelous and evident even in the secrets that spilled from slit throats. Urgot didn’t know what it was until he was finally brought before Voss, fearing that she would break him.

But as the baron’s blade cut into his flesh, Urgot realized that his body was already wracked with agony, far beyond anything Voss could inflict. The Dredge had made him stronger than he’d ever been as a headsman.

Pain was Zaun’s secret. His laughter drove Voss back to the surface, and a reign of anarchy began in the depths.

Seizing control of the prison, Urgot reveled in new trials of survival. He found the parts of his body that were weakest, and replaced them with scavenged machinery, technology created by those who would die without it—necessity being the mother of pain.

The guards could no longer enter the areas Urgot had carved out of Voss’ grasp. The prisoners themselves were more afraid of their new master than they were of her. Many even grew to hold a fanatical respect for Urgot, as they were forced to hear his feverish sermons on the nature of power, his grip tightening around the necks of those who would not listen.

Only when a Noxian agent arrived in the Dredge was Urgot finally forced to confront his own past. Though the spy recognized him and sought his aid in escaping, Urgot beat him mercilessly, and hurled his broken body into the darkness.

It was not strength that ruled Noxus, Urgot now realized, but men… and men were weak. There should be no rulers, no lies, nothing to interfere with the pure chaos of survival. Starting a riot that ignited a chemtech vein within the mine, Urgot shook the city above, and cracked the prison open in an explosion that rivaled the birth of Zaun itself. Many prisoners died, with thousands fleeing into the Sump—but the worthy, as ever, survived.

From that day, Urgot’s reign of terror only grew. A hideous fusion of industrial machinery and Noxian brutality, he slaughtered chem-barons and their lackeys one by one, gathering a following among Zaun’s downtrodden masses. He was said to be a new savior, one who would lift the boot of the oppressor from the neck of every common Zaunite.

However, his actions did not make such distinctions, as Urgot tested the worthiness of the meek and the powerful alike. To any who found themselves spared in his deadly trials, his message was clear: he was not there to lead, but to survive. If others were worthy, they would survive, too.

When Urgot finally struck at representatives of the Piltovan merchant clans, the Wardens were forced to intervene, hauling him in chains to a fortified prison cell—though this merely seemed to confirm “the Dreadnought” as a legend among the gangers, the sump-snipes, and the forgotten.

For Piltover is not the first to shackle Urgot, and one must wonder if any cage can ever hope to hold him for long…

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.

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.

Helia, the Blessed Isles

Erlok Grael stood separate from his peers, awaiting the Choosing.

They waited within a small open-air amphitheater, the architecture all gleaming white marble and gold-encased capstones. Helia wore its opulence proudly, as if in defiance of the brutalities of life beyond the shores of the Blessed Isles.

The others joked and laughed together, their collective nervousness drawing them closer, yet Grael stood silent and alone, his gaze intense. No one spoke to him or included him in any of the whispered japes. Few even registered his presence; their gazes slipped over and around him as if he didn’t exist. To most of them, he didn’t.

Grael did not care. He had no desire to swap inane small talk with them, and he felt no jealousy at their juvenile comradery. Today would be his moment of triumph. Today he would be embraced into the inner circle, apprenticed within the secretive upper echelons of the Fellowship of Light. He had more than earned his place there. No other student present came close. They might hail from wealth and nobility, while he came from a line of illiterate pig farmers, but none were as gifted or as worthy as he.

The masters arrived, filing down the central stairs one by one, silencing the gaggle of hopefuls. Grael watched them, eyes burning with a hungry light. He licked his lips, savoring

the prestige and glory that were soon to be heaped upon him, anticipating all the secrets that he would soon be privy to.

The masters shuffled into place upon the lower tiers of the amphitheater, their expressions solemn, staring down at the cluster of adepts on the floor below them. Finally, after an overlong pause to build suspense, a pompous, toadlike master, his skin pale and wet-looking—Elder Bartek—cleared his throat and welcomed the graduating students. His verbose speech was heavy with gravitas and self-congratulatory asides, and Grael’s eyes glazed over.

Finally, the time came for the masters to choose which of the graduates would be taken under their wing as apprentices. There were leaders here from all the major disciplines and denominations of the Fellowship. They represented the Arcanic Sciences, the various schools of logic and metaphysics, the Blessed Archives, the Astro-Scryers, Hermetic Oratory, Esoteric Geometry, the Seekers, and other branches of study. All served, in one way or another, the greater purpose of the Fellowship—the gathering, study, cataloging, and securing of the most powerful arcane artifacts in existence.

It was an auspicious gathering of some of the world’s most brilliant minds, yet Erlok Grael focused on only one of their number: Hierarch Malgurza, Master of the Key. Her dark skin was heavily lined, and her once-ebony hair was now mostly gray. Malgurza was a legend among the adepts of Helia. She didn’t appear at every year’s Choosing ceremony, but when she did, it was always to embrace a new apprentice into the inner circle.

The Baton of Choosing was brought forth. It was passed first to Hierarch Malgurza, the most honored master present. She took it in one gnarled hand, causing a ripple of murmurs among the students. Malgurza would indeed choose an apprentice this day, and the ghost of a smile curled Grael’s thin lips. The elderly woman cast her hawkish gaze across the gathered hopefuls, who held their breaths as one.

Whoever was named would be marked for greatness, joining a hallowed, elite cadre, their future assured. Erlok Grael’s fingers twitched in anticipation. This was his moment. He was already half stepping forward when the hierarch finally spoke, her voice husky, like oak-aged spirits.

“Tyrus of Hellesmor.”

Grael blinked. For a second, he thought there must have been some mistake, before the cold reality of his rejection washed over him, like a bucket of frigid water to the face. There was a delighted whoop from the chosen student, along with a burst of whispers and gasps. The newly named apprentice stepped forward amid a flurry of slaps on the back and ran up the steps of the amphitheater to take his place behind Hierarch Malgurza, a broad smile on his smug face.

Grael made no outward reaction, though he had gone dangerously still.

The rest of the ceremony went by in a dull, surreal blur. The Baton of Choosing passed from master to master, each choosing a new apprentice. Name by name, the crowd of hopefuls around Grael dwindled, until he stood alone. The sea of masters and former peers stared down at him, like a jury ready to announce his execution.

His hands did not twitch now. Shame and hatred writhed within him, like a pair of serpents locked in a death struggle. With a click of finality, the Baton of Choosing was sealed back within its ceremonial case and borne away by golden-robed attendants.

“Erlok Grael,” announced Bartek, his eyes smiling. “No master has spoken for you, yet the Fellowship is nothing if not benevolent. A place has been secured for you, one that will, it is hoped, teach you some much-needed humility, and at least a modicum of empathy. In time, perhaps, one of the masters may deign to take you on—”

“Where?” interrupted Grael, eliciting murmurs and tuts, but he did not care.

Bartek looked down his bulbous nose at him. His expression was that of a man who had inadvertently stepped upon something distasteful. “You will serve as a minor assistant to the Wardens of Thresholds,” he declared, malice gleaming in his eyes. There were smirks and stifled laughter among his former peers. The Threshers, as the student body derisively called them, were the lowest of the low, both literally and figuratively, those who guarded and patrolled the lowest depths of the vaults beneath Helia. Their ranks consisted of those who had earned the ire of the masters, whether through gross political misstep or misdemeanor, and any others whom the Fellowship wished out of the way. Down in the darkness, they could be forgotten. They were a joke. An embarrassment.

Bartek’s patronizing voice droned on, but Grael barely heard his words.

In that moment, he swore that this was not the end. He would serve among the wardens and ensure that his worth was noticed, such that none of these pompous, sniveling masters or his snobbish peers could deny him. He would serve a year, maybe two, and then he would take his rightful place within the inner circle.

They would not break him.

And he would remember this insult.

Alovédra, Camavor

It was dark and cool within the hallowed Sanctum of Judgment, and Kalista appreciated the reprieve from the scorching Camavoran summer outside. Standing at attention, bedecked

in form-fitting armor and a high-plumed helm, she waited for judgment to be rendered.

Despite being out of the sun, the slender young heir to the Argent Throne, kneeling at her side, was sweating, and his breath was shallow and quick.

His name was Viego Santiarul Molach vol Kalah Heigaari, and he waited to see if he would be crowned king, or if this day would be his last.

Absolute rulership, or death. There could be no middle ground.

He was Kalista’s uncle, but she was more like an older sister to him. They had been raised together, and he had always looked up to her. He was never meant to be the next king.

That should have been Kalista’s father, the firstborn, but his unexpected death had placed Viego, his younger brother, next in line.

The sound of the massed crowds outside was muted within the cold walls of the sanctum. Hooded priests, their faces obscured by shadow and blank porcelain masks, stood anonymous in the gloom, forming a circle. The incense from their censers was cloying and acrid, their whispering chant monotonous and sibilant.

“Kal?” breathed Viego.

“I am here,” Kalista replied, standing at his side, her voice low.

He glanced up at her. His patrician face was long and handsome, yet in that moment he seemed younger than his twenty-one years. His eyes were panicked, like those of an animal caught between fleeing and fighting. Upon his forehead, three lines had been drawn in blood, coming together to a point just between his eyebrows. The blood trident was traditionally drawn only upon the dead, to help speed them on their way to the Beyond and ensure that the Revered Ancestors recognized them. It spoke of the lethality of what lay ahead.

“Tell me again of my father’s last words,” whispered Viego.

Kalista stiffened. The old king had been the Lion of Camavor, with a fearsome reputation in battle—and on the political stage. But as he lay dying in bed, he hadn’t looked anything

like the robust warrior-king who had so terrorized his enemies. In those final moments, his body was wasted and thin, all his vaunted power and vitality sapped from him. His eyes

had still radiated a small measure of the power he’d had in his prime, but it was like the last glow of a fire’s embers, one final glimmer before the darkness claimed him.

He clutched at her with the last of his strength, with hands that more closely resembled a vulture’s talons than anything belonging to a man. “Promise me,” he croaked, burning with

a desperate fire. “The boy does not have the temperament to rule. I blame myself, but it is you who must bear the weight, granddaughter. Promise me you will guide him. Counsel him.

Control him, if needed. Protect Camavor. That is now your duty.”

“I promise, Grandfather,” Kalista said. “I promise.”

Viego waited expectantly, looking up at her. The faint roar of the crowd outside rose and fell like the crashing of distant waves.

“He said you’d be a great king,” Kalista lied. “That you’d eclipse even his great deeds.”

Viego nodded, trying to take comfort in her words.

“There is nothing wrong with being afraid,” she assured him, her stern demeanor softening. “You’d be a fool if you weren’t.” She gave him a wink. “More of a fool, I mean.”

Viego laughed, though the sound had an edge of hysteria to it and was too loud in the cavernous space. Priests glared, and the heir to the throne gathered himself. He pushed a wayward strand of his wavy hair behind one ear, and was still once more, staring into the darkness.

“You cannot let fear control you,” said Kalista.

“If the blade claims me, it will be you kneeling here next, Kal,” Viego whispered. He reflected on that for a moment. “You would make a far better ruler than I.”

“Do not speak of such things,” hissed Kalista. “You are blessed of the Ancestors, with power flowing through your veins that your father did not have. You are worthy. By nightfall you will be crowned king, and all of this will be just a memory. The blade will not claim you.”

“Yet if—”

“The blade will not claim you.”

Viego gave a slow nod. “The blade will not claim me,” he repeated.

There was a change in the air, and the priests’ incessant chanting quickened. Their censers swayed from side to side. Light speared down into the sanctum through a crystal lens

set in the center of the dome high above, as the sun finally moved into position directly overhead. Motes of dust and ribbons of cloying scented smoke drifted in the beam of light,

revealing... nothing.

Then the Blade of the King appeared.

Its name was Sanctity, and Kalista’s breath caught in her throat as she looked upon it. Hovering suspended in midair, the immense sword existed only in the spiritual Halls of the Ancestors, except when called forth by the rightful ruler of Camavor, or when summoned by the priests for the judgment of a new sovereign.

Every monarch of Camavor wore the Argent Crown, a belligerent tri-spiked circlet perfectly befitting the long line of belligerent rulers, but Sanctity was the true symbol of the throne. The primacy of whoever held Sanctity was undisputed, and to possess the Blade of the King was to be soul-bound to it—although not every heir to the Camavoran throne survived

the ritual of binding.

Kalista knew that was not some vague, mythical threat, either. Down through the line of history, dozens of heirs had perished here in the Sanctum of Judgment. There was a good

reason some called the blade Soulrender, and it was rightly feared by Camavor’s heirs and enemies alike.

The crowd outside had fallen silent. They waited in hushed anticipation, ready to welcome a new monarch or mourn his passing. Either the doors would be thrown open and Viego would stride forth in glory, blade in hand, or the bell atop the sanctum would toll one singular, mournful note, signaling his end.

“Viego,” Kalista said. “It is time.”

The crown prince nodded and pushed himself to his feet. The blade hung before him, waiting for him to take it. And yet, still he hesitated. He stared at it, transfixed, terrified. The priests glared, eyes wide behind their expressionless masks, silently urging him to do what they had instructed.

“Viego...” hissed Kalista.

“You’ll be with me, won’t you?” he whispered urgently. “I don’t think I can do this alone. Rule, I mean.”

“I’ll be with you,” said Kalista. “I’ll stand with you, as I always have. I promise.”

Viego gave her a nod and turned back to Sanctity, hanging motionless in the shaft of light. In seconds, the moment would be lost. The time of judgment was now.

The priests’ chanting reached a fevered pitch. Smoke coiled around the sacred blade, like so many serpents, writhing and twisting. Without further pause, Viego stepped forward

and grasped the sword, closing both hands around its hilt.

His eyes widened, and his pupils contracted sharply.

Then he opened his mouth and began to scream.

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What’s the difference between law and order?

Can you have one without the other? And what does either have to do with justice? Maybe it depends on who you ask. If you asked me, well, the young me, justice comes by cracking skulls.

Guess I’m feeling young today.

It’s still dark when I finally reach the Hall of Law. As is often the case, though not usually so early in the morning, I’m bringing guests with me. A pair of them, two from the seven I had caught vandalizing a row of shops and cafes down on Horologica Avenue. One is snoring from the light tap I gave him, but the other is wide awake, and quite the fan of colorful language.

“Pipe down—you’re disturbing my peace.” I tighten my metal fingers around his collar and nod to his accomplice, slung over my shoulder. “If I were you, I’d take a hint from your friend here.”

“This is brutality,” he hisses. “Where are we? In Noxus?”

“Noxus?” I have to stop myself from laughing. “I wish. If we were in Noxus, I’d be taking you to the Reckoning pits, not a shaming cell.”

The imagery gives him a jolt, and I get a few moments’ quiet before he’s back at it.

“You think you can silence us, but you can’t. We are going to expose your system of oppression and tear it down.”

“And breaking all the windows in a tea room accomplishes this, how? You’re just another bored, spoiled brat, looking for a reason to smash things. You aren’t helping anybody.”

“We’re speaking up for those without a voice!” he snaps. “For the poor and the downtrodden.”

I look at his clothes. New, clean. There hasn’t been a day he’s wanted for anything. “Well, I am one of those poor, downtrodden Zaunites, and my voice works just fine.”

“And now you’re part of the system.” He spits pink onto the street. “Put a few cogs in your pocket and you turn on anything. How do you sleep at night?”

There’s an itch I get, wearing these gauntlets. The urge to feel a ribcage wrap around my knuckles that on some days is damn near overpowering. Try as I might, his words have my blood getting hotter, and my hextech fists begin purring in response, ready for a scrap that’s usually sure to come. But I tamp it down.

“When I’m not rounding up idiots for smashing up tea rooms? I sleep like a baby.”

Mercifully we reach the doors.

“Here, help a poor Zaunite in need.” I use the talker’s head to knock. I confess letting a touch of my frustration slip into the last rap—it’s loud enough to get someone to work the lock from the other side.

“Warden Kepple.” I grin at the blinking face behind the slowly opening door.

“Getting an awful early start, eh, Vi?” he grumbles, pawing sleep from his eyes.

“Injustice never rests, my friend.” I drag my arrests through the door, giving Kepple the quick version of the morning’s events.

“I’ve apprehended two of them,” I finish. “Both suspects are…” I look at each of them, now both snoring in tandem. “Subdued.”

Kepple raises an eyebrow. “Sure seems like it. Sheriff Caitlyn’s already looking for ya, upstairs.”

“I trust you can handle the processing for this pair of recreational revolutionaries, then?”

“I’ll get it logged,” Kepple grunts as I dump one of the punks in his arms, and the mouthy one at his feet.

I flash a smile as I pass him. “You’re an asset to the force.”

Caitlyn’s office is a mess. The creaking wooden desk is smothered, hidden beneath a forest of brass pneuma-tube capsules and the endless forms, messages, and edicts that they contain. The sheriff is lost somewhere in that forest, rummaging through warrants and mandates and the demands of her bosses and the merchant clans. It doesn’t look like she’s left the room in days, leaving me to guess at how short her temper might be as I close the door behind me.

“Sit down,” she says without looking up, still digging around for something.

Straight to it, then.

“What, this about those punks?” I clear off a chair and sit, flexing the mechanical fingers of my right hand and propping my boots up on the corner of her desk. “They’ll be walking around again in a few days. If you ask me, I went easy on them.”

“This isn’t about that,” she answers, each word somehow more tired than the last. “There is something that has been brought to our attention, developments that are… complicated, that we need to look into. It’s about Zaun.”

I see then that it’s not all lack of sleep weighing Cait down. Something’s got her guard up, an apprehension that’s rare in a woman who can put a bullet through a silver cog from three streets away.

“Is it her?” I ask. Can’t keep the acid from my voice.

Cait finally stops hunting around her desk. Those sapphire eyes flick up to me. “No. This is something different. Something new.”

“New,” I repeat, though no more sense comes out of it.

Cait takes a slow breath. “Something is happening in the Sump.”

I cock my head. “That’s pretty damn far from our jurisdiction.”

“Ever since the split,” says Cait, “our cities have existed in symbiosis. Despite appearances, one can’t survive without the other, so a balance must be maintained.”

Split, they call it. Usually a split is clean and even. In this case, some rich merchants got excited about digging a canal, too excited to make sure the land was stable. They put half of Zaun under water. Drowning people in service of commerce, and the way that commerce has been divvied since, is pretty far from clean or even.

“A real easy way to break that balance would be to reach down into lower Zaun and start shaking things,” I point out. “But we aren’t talking about the Promenade here—there’s no overlap in the Sump where we can massage events after the fact and make matters slide.”

Cait sighs. “These are all topics that have been discussed and considered.”

“By who?” I ask. “Care to clue me in?”

“I am able to tell you as much as you need to know, and right now you don’t need to know that.”

“So what does this have to do with us?” I ask, fiddling with an empty pneuma-tube capsule. “What the undercity does is its own business.”

“Not this time.” Cait plucks the capsule from my hand, setting it down as she sits back against the desk. I frown. She isn’t normally this tight-lipped.

“What’s changed, then?”

“We don’t know,” Cait answers. “To find out, we need eyes down there, someone who knows Zaun. That’s where you come in.”

“This is all pretty vague, sheriff.” I shake my head. “What about the barons? You think they’re just gonna sit back and let Piltover send wardens down to their turf and start flipping tables?”

Cait gives me a tired grin. “Is that the big, bad Vi I hear, scared of a few little chem-barons?”

I cross my arms over my chest. “I just like to know who’s going to be looking for my scalp, is all.”

“The barons won’t be an issue.”

“Oh, really?” I raise an eyebrow. “And why is that?”

“Because they’re the ones asking for help.”

I sit up straighter at that.

“You’re right. This is new.” I shake my head. Something is very off with this, and I’m not getting anywhere close to the full picture. “Still a lot of bad blood between the barons and the Wardens. There’s a dozen ways this can go wrong.”

“I wouldn’t worry too much on that account,” she says, “because you won’t be going as a warden. Those kids you tuned up happened to have spawned from Clan Medarda, and their parents want your head.”

She holds up a sheaf of vellum missives. I can make out the calligraphy through the light coming in from the window. From that same window I hear the beginnings of a crowd gathering—an angry one.

“Lucky for you,” Cait says with a smile, “I talked them down. You can keep your head, so long as you’re out of the Wardens. You’re leaving town, going home to reflect and reconnect with your roots.”

“Cute story.” The word home sticks out, whether she meant it to or not. All these years here, guess I’m still a visitor—one who’s getting the boot for doing her job, because someone has enough cogs to think they’re above the law. “Convenient, too.”

“This means you’ll be on your own down there.” The levity drops from her voice. “No backup. And appearances must be kept up. I’ll need your badge, and your hands.”

“Go down to Zaun…” I work the clasps on my gauntlets and take them off. “Don’t know what I’m looking for, only that it’s bad enough that the chem-barons can’t handle it.” I drop the bulky hextech fists on Cait’s desk with a thunk that crushes capsules and scatters papers onto the floor. “And I can’t even bring my hands. This is getting better by the minute.”

“There’s no one else I could trust to do this,” Cait says.

“So you’re really not gonna tell me who’s pulling the strings on this one?” I ask, biting back on my temper. “Not every day I’m asked to provoke an international incident.”

“I’ve told you all I can, Vi. Believe me.”

“You could always come with me,” I say with a grin. “Take a little working vacation to Valoran’s most scenic tourist destination.”

Cait doesn’t answer, but she doesn’t have to. I know she can’t go, but it’s always fun to tease. And it keeps me from punching a hole in the wall.

Dawn settles into morning by the time I reach the Rising Howl. The crowds outside the Hall of Law gave me jeers and a few tossed stones as I left, but they knew better than to get too close. They clung to the Hall where they could stay seen, and keep their teeth in their heads.

It feels strange to walk the city without my gauntlets, my hands still wrapped up from the day before. I left anything that could tie me to the Wardens back at the Hall, anything to tie me to Piltover, really. I’ll need to lay low—I’m far from forgotten in Zaun, and there are plenty of folks whose memories I’d rather not refresh. I’ll go down, see what’s got the barons so spooked, and be back in a few days, tops.

The conveyor fills near to bursting as the conductor whistles herself hoarse and the doors finally lock. Hexdraulic winches loosen their grip on the great chains holding us, and the descent begins. I find a seat on the bottom level of the pod, staring out through the bottle-green window panels as we sink.

The morning light has spilled across all of Piltover, glittering off towers of iron and glass, but only teases the lips of the chasms. The light will reach the Promenade—Zaun’s highest level—but won’t be much more than a glimmer any lower than that.

I shift my boot, seeing a symbol scratched crudely into the floor. Some kind of spider.

The air already starts to slicken as the conveyor slides through the Promenade, and I taste chem fumes and feel a low sting in my nostrils. The new spire comes into view, a giant tower of pale stone and shimmering glass starting all the way down at the Entresol. Mechanicians, laborers, and menials toil in its base levels, synthesizing and refining their hex-crystals before shipping them up to the city above. Of the process, all that remains in Zaun is the concentrated runoff, more dangerous than the Gray by tenfold, at least by the smell of it.

I’m not sure who owns this spire—Ferros isn’t the only player in the synthetic hex-crystal game anymore, though they still make the strongest, purest kind. Word is even chem-barons, like the Poingdestres, are trying to make their own brands of cheap knock-offs, without the merchant clans. But most likely, this spire is yet another joint venture between the barons and the clans.

As we descend to the Entresol, something catches my eye through the window. The conveyor shafts are no stranger to graffiti, but one mark stands out bright and new against the faded tags it’s covering.

A spider.

I look down at the floor. The mark is the same. My eyes go back to the window and I find it again, and again.

I stand up, pressing my back to the wall as the Howl shudders to a stop at the Entresol. The conveyor empties, and more than one pair of eyes look at me with alarm when I don’t exit.

A bell chimes, a signal the Rising Howl is due to depart. The conductor descends the stairs, peering this way and that before spotting me.

“Lift’s going down soon,” she says, the unease clear in her voice. “You’re heading Sumpward, then?”

I take a look around, seeing an empty platform beyond the doors. “Looks like I’m the only one.”

“May not pay to be unique in this regard, dear.” She takes a step closer, pushing her goggles up to her brow. I can see the fear in her eyes. “Sump’s not right these days. Best to stay further up.”

“You know anything about it?” I ask.

The conductor looks down, fidgeting with her sonophone. “Enough not to trifle with it.”

I consider her for a moment. “I think I’ll take my chances.”

She lingers, hoping I’ll have a change of heart, before giving a slow nod and clambering back up the stairs. Soon the Howl begins its slow rumble downward, down to the Sump, where I will see what everyone is so afraid of.

The light gets poorer once you clear the Entresol. Chem-lamps appear fewer and fewer, like fireflies rising up the farther down we go. The light from the Howl itself is enough to see the immediate surroundings of the conveyor, though the worth of that might be dubious.

The Sump has never been pretty. Maybe a long way back, before the Flood turned half of it into a graveyard and the other half became a landfill, it might have been different. But that’s long gone, and from what I see, even compared to what I remember, it’s only getting worse.

Make the wrong enemies, break one too many promises, back a loser with your last cog, you’ll end up down here. Desperate people scratching out a living, safe from those above who won’t stoop to look for them. That makes it almost a haven for them, if not from each other.

The lights flicker out. I stand, walk over to the window, and lean against the railing to glimpse through the green glass. After a few moments, the lights return, bathing the conveyor shaft in enough illumination to show me what’s covering every inch of it.

Spiders. Nothing but spiders.

That same crude mark as before, but where above it was rare, here it has been etched, carved, or sprayed over everything. An unending swarm, as though marching and climbing up from the dark they had already claimed as theirs.

I feel something cold in my stomach, a tiny flare of adrenaline. Whatever it is that Cait sent me down here to find, it has to be connected to this.

“This is as far as I’ll go,” I hear the conductor’s voice scratch from the sonophone as the Rising Howl comes to a halt in a groan of protesting iron. The doors unlock and I peer out at an abandoned platform, the only light a single chem-lamp pulsing faintly at the far end. I step onto the platform and the doors lock fast behind me, the conveyor already rising as I look back at it over my shoulder. Soon it’s just one more firefly, rising from the chasm.

There’s no such thing as silence in Zaun, even down in the Sump. I hear steam coughing out of corroded pipework, factories and scrapyards growling in the distance… and a trio of voices muttering in the dark.

The spider symbol crawling all over the conveyor shaft is on the gangers, too, splashed on threadbare clothes, still raw and red on their faces and necks from new tattoos. They’re armed, and making no effort to hide it. One has a chain, another a length of pipe. I see the dull sheen of a tarnished blade in the hand of the last.

They’re young, young enough not to recognize me. Whatever gang this is, these are new pups, the most likely to do something stupid in order to prove themselves.

“You lost?” one of them says, the one holding the knife.

“Can’t say that I am,” I answer, playing off a bored calm as I take in every detail. Posture, health, temperament. I know in a few seconds which of them take the orders and which one gives them. Which are most likely to run, and who is willing to spill blood.

I make to pass them. The blade flicks out ahead of me, catching the yellowed light from the chem-lamp.

“I think you are.” He looks me over. “Tell me, sister, have you come to hear the Voice?”

I take a slow quarter step to keep all three of them in view. “Whose voice might that be?”

Knife wrinkles his nose. “Believers and pilgrims would know, and that’s all who’s welcome here.”

“Time to turn around and go back home, sun-stained filth.” Another of them spits. He gets a hissing chorus of agreement from his mates.

I could probably get more out of them. The name of their gang, who this Voice belongs to, how exactly they have the whole of the Sump running scared. But the urge to lay hands on them wins out.

“Boys, boys.” I shake my head, smiling. I make a fist, and my knuckles crack loud enough for them to hear. “I am home.”

A quick side glance to each other and they rush me. My eyes go to weapons, flicking from blade to chain to pipe to see who I need to drop first. The air tastes like ammonia and grease as the tension cracks open.

Adding a splash of blood won’t hurt.

I throw the first punch, forgetting I had left my hands behind. Wear them long enough, and you get used to the power a pair of hextech Atlas fists can give you. When my knuckles find the side of Knife’s skull, I feel something flex sideways, between my fingers. The pain is sharp and immediate, making me hesitate enough for the pipe to swing in low and take me in the ribs.

The third circles, chain lashing my legs, but my focus is on the blade. My punch had sent him to all fours. A knee to the jaw and he sprawls.

I snatch hold of the chain, wrenching the ganger holding it into a headbutt. His nose mashes flat against my forehead. He topples, clutching at his face. The whistle of the pipe makes me duck, throwing its owner off balance, and I add to his momentum to send him crashing into a wall.

Pipe springs up to his feet, and freezes. His eyes dart from me to Knife, back to me, then to Chain. The pipe pings as it hits the ground, almost drowning out the pounding of his boots as he runs for it. I lunge after him, but I’m stopped cold by a spike of pain in my ribs squeezing my lungs shut. I let him go.

Knife and Chain aren’t worth the trouble. I snap the blade beneath my boot and fling the weapons off the platform, ignoring my ribs as I start making my way deeper into the Sump.

They say that when something’s hurt and on the run, it heads back to what’s familiar. A nest or warren, some kind of sanctuary where you know you’ll have some walls to put around you.

Precious few sanctuaries in the Sump, for me at least. There might have been a handful of places I could go, but now everywhere I look there’s that mark, the spider that’s swallowed everything. I need somewhere to catch my breath, and down here there’s only one place I can think of.

I’m hazy on when and how I first ended up at Hope House for Foundling Children. I haven’t thought about the orphanage in awhile, but I still know the way by heart. You always remember how to get home, even if you ran away from it.

I stay out of the open, keeping to shadows and side streets to avoid any more encounters. I watch clots of gangers moving around, every one of them armed, but no chaos. They aren’t breaking or wrecking a thing down here.

Why smash up what you already own?

My hand is getting distracting, joining my ribs with a sharp poke each time my heart beats. I can feel it swelling up under the wraps, not broken but damn near close. I just pull them tighter.

Round a corner and there it is, Hope House, in all its dull, crumbling glory. It was far from in good shape when I left it, and the years since haven’t been any kinder. I’m amazed it’s still standing. For a second I’m a kid again, coming home banged up from a scrap or a heist. I can’t keep the smile off my face seeing it.

Kids chase each other around the front of the building, the faster, healthier children outpacing those with a missing limb or wheezing through third-rate esophilters. They see me coming and scatter. Trust is a hard thing to come by this far down, one of the first lessons the abandoned are forced to learn.

One of them makes for the front door. He hurries up the worn steps leading to the entrance, nearly stumbling face first before reaching it. His fist pounds on the door until it opens, and a young woman looks down, too young to be his mother, but old enough to be responsible for him.

“Now what did I tell you about playing on those stairs?” she scolds, thumbing away a smudge of grime from the boy’s cheek. “I’ve told you they’re tricky, and if you’re not careful, one of these days—”

“One of these days,” I say, stopping at the foot of the steps, “you’ll collect a crack in your skull.”

Her eyes go wide. I knew her voice the second I heard it, and it’s enough to sting my own eyes a touch. My mind fights to reconcile the young woman standing there with the shy little girl I once knew.

“I used to have to warn a little girl here about that all the time.” I smile. “She was trying her hand as a tumbler, when her head wasn’t buried in a book.”

“Gave up on the tumbling,” she replies, gently guiding the boy through the door before stepping outside and closing it behind her. “But I still like to read, when I can find the time.”

“Roe?” The first stair creaks under my weight as I place a foot on it. “Is that you? Can’t be.”

“It’s me.”

I climb another stair. “You can’t be Roe. Roe’s just a kid, barely reaches my hip. Look at how you sprouted.”

“Nobody stays a kid down here for long,” she says. “You should know that better than anyone.”

Another stair. “It’s good to see you. Been a long time.”

“Yeah, well.” She looks down. “I’m not the one who went anywhere.”

I stop my climb, and take a step back. The hurt is clear in her voice. When I left, she was just a kid, one I had looked after from the day she first showed up at Hope House. I had never let her run with me, kept her clear of the scraps and the stealing and the gangs. I protected her.

And then I left.

“Heard you’re with the law now,” Roe says, leaning back against the door.

“You see a badge anywhere?” I spread my arms out wide. “I was a warden for a little while, yeah, but we’ve gone our separate ways of late.”

“Seems to happen a lot.”

I dip my head. “Hey, if you wanna brawl, we can brawl. You’re old enough now.”

Despite herself, a thin smile slips through.

“Maybe. Can it wait until I get back?” Roe asks. “I’m gonna go in just a moment.”

“Go where?”

Roe looks back toward the door, then to me. She is silent for a moment, considering me. I glance at her and notice a pin on her collar, little more than an etching on a chip of scrap metal. It’s of a spider.

“Have you ever heard the Voice?”

I leave with Roe, walking through the crumbling neighborhoods toward the gathering. I listen to her talk about her life, learning about this new person she’s blossomed into. The shyness is still there, and she’s still smart from all those nights I saw her with her head hidden in books, but there’s more to her now. There’s conviction in her, an intensity that shines in her eyes.

I stick to asking questions, skirting around mentioning what I’m doing down here. All the talking starts a coughing fit that nearly doubles me over.

“What?” Roe laughs. “Spent too long up out of the Gray, huh?”

“I took a pipe to the ribs.” I wince, pressing a hand to my side. “A message of welcome from your friends when I stepped off the Howl.”

Her smile dulls. “We all want the same thing. An end to the oppression. Liberation from the barons and the clans. Clean air. Just not everybody agrees on how we should get there. Most are coming from life in the gangs, so they’re on edge. There’s great people here, kind people who just want a better future for us.”

I’d spent years in Piltover, walking among those who saw Zaun as nothing but a prison, a wasteland, an underworld. Piltover looked down and saw Zaun’s eyes looking back at them, and they either pitied them or hated them—or tried to speak for them, like that punk I arrested.

“They certainly seem preferable to the lot I’ve met already,” I say.

Roe nods. “I’ll show you.”

The closer we get, the more people we see. There are all kinds, young and old, members of rival gangs who were out to slit each other’s throats only weeks ago, all walking together. Every one of them has the spider on them, on a patch or tattoo or on a pin like Roe’s. They’re filing into an old factory with only three walls upright, and no ceiling, waiting in patient lines to gain entry.

We reach the door, barred by a pair of brutes. They are armed, one augmented with a claw of burnished iron, but they know each person by name, greeting them warmly as they come in.

“Roe, my sister, you are welcome,” one of them says, his voice low and soft despite his aggressive bulk. He then looks to me. “But this one, no.”

“Let her in,” Roe tells them. “She’s with me.”

“She is sun-stained,” says the other, lifting his chin with a sneer. “Not to be trusted.”

They want to turn me away for the joke of a tan I’ve gotten upstairs in Piltover, not because I joined the Wardens. These guys must be new.

“She has come to hear the Voice. I vouch for her, Togg.” Roe stares the guard in the eye, not backing down. “Get out of the way.”

The pair convene, muttering, before turning back to us. “The Voice is for all to hear, so you are welcome, too. But we will be watching.”

I feel their eyes on me as we step inside, and the static’s enough to have me taking in the room for ways out if this goes wrong. The place is a wreck, full of holes and collapsed masonry. If things turn red, I can get out. The only question is whether Roe will run with me, or after me.

There’s no pomp or ceremony. No music or votive candles, no dish passed hand to hand for contributions to the cause. There’s just a mass of people, surrounding a mound of rubble in the center where a man sits, calmly waiting.

“Is that him?” I whisper to Roe. “The Voice?”

She nods. I look over at him, this man who conquered the Sump, and I don’t understand.

He’s young, barely older than Roe, little more than a kid himself. Scrawny and gaunt, he has the look of a ganger in his eyes, eyes that have seen his share of horror. But there’s a strange warmth there, too, like he has a secret to tell, just to you. The last of the assembly enters, and the Voice begins to speak.

“I see many new faces.” His voice is gentle, almost quiet, though it carries to every ear. “You are all welcome here. Each one of us found our own way to this place, countless paths leading to where they become one. Know now that you are no longer alone.”

I scan the crowd. All are hanging on his every word. I wonder how many have never had those words spoken to them before. The rejected and abused, the forgotten, seen as people for the first time.

“We all bear scars,” the Voice continues. “The marks of the lives we’ve had to live, our trials and our suffering. The world has done all it can to beat us down, to convince us to stay there and be grateful for what little we have. That has been the reality here for far too long, and it is time that changed.”

Murmurs of affirmation wash over the gathering. You don’t need to have worked as a warden to feel the tension ratcheting up. The Voice is dredging up wounds, making them raw again. He isn’t lying—these people have borne more than their share of hurt, but I can see the game he’s playing, hidden beneath that truth.

“How long have their boots been on our throats?” His voice begins to rise, its edge sharpening. “The chem-barons. They use our home to build their wealth, and what do we get from it? We get poison in the air we breathe, in the water we drink. Sickness, pain, death—is this what we deserve?”

“No!” The crowd is angry now, playing right into his hands. I glance at Roe beside me, and see the same rage on her and every other face. Maybe it’s the contrarian in me, but I feel like they should have found a theater to hold this performance.

“I say, no more,” growls the Voice. “No more will we weep for brothers and sisters too weak to stand, or watch our children’s lives waste away. The barons will pay for what they’ve done, but more than that, we will bring justice to those they truly serve.”

Here it comes.

The Voice stabs an accusing finger skyward. “The corrupt merchants in that city towering over us. A city where the sun shines so bright it blinds them to the crimes they have committed here. The pain they have caused you, and the ones you love. They hide in that blindness, because they think it will protect them. But it will not, not after he arrives.”

Awed whispers fill the room, like he has just spoken of a god. Roe brushes a tear from her eye. They’re all drawn in, but nothing about this feels right, and I’ve yet to trust a word that’s come from this Voice.

“Who is he talking about?” I ask, but Roe nods back to him as he continues.

“I am his Voice, and we are all of us his sons. I have seen his face. I have heard his words and survived his test. He laid his hands upon me as his chosen, to seek out his flock and make ready for his return. That day is soon to dawn, my brothers and sisters. Not one of retribution, but of justice.”

“And who will pay the blood price for that?”

Silence descends. All eyes turn to me as I find myself standing.

“What are you doing?” Roe hisses, tugging at my hand.

Damn my temper. Vi, you’re a terrible spy. Well, no going back now.

“I’ve heard this kind of talk before,” I say, both to the Voice and the crowd. “Glib talkers who prey on the pain of the wronged and the dispossessed. They rile them up in the name of justice, when all they want is to see their puppets dance, because they want to be a god.”

The Voice listens, without any change to his patient facade. “I have not seen you here before, sister. You are new to our ways—none can fault you for not seeing them clearly.”

“I see clearly.” I glare at him. “I see a cult getting whipped up to spill blood. I see a liar promising freedom and prosperity, but putting armed thugs at every entrance to his territory.”

“They are what will win our freedom,” he answers plainly. He looks me over. “If our brothers attacked you, then I am sorry. You must understand that a dog can only be kicked so many times before he bites back. We’ve waited and we’ve waited, but now there is another way.”

He walks down from his mound of rubble, slowly approaching with his arms spread wide.

“I see much pain in you, a hurt you keep hidden behind your eyes. I see a child of Zaun who has strayed from her rightful home. Piltover has its corruptive mark all over you. You think strength lies in helping our oppressors to change, but they won’t ever change. You have strength, strength that could be used to help liberate these people.”

He certainly has a way with words. I realize I’ve made fists, and exhale to slowly release them. As much fun as making a crater out of his head would be, I wouldn’t last five seconds after.

“Whatever pain I have is mine.” I thump a fist against my chest. “I carry the weight of the choices I made. I don’t push them onto others. I don’t make scapegoats, and I don’t believe the wrongs done to me justify my inflicting them on someone else.”

The Voice looks down, chuckles softly before meeting my gaze again. “He would like you. But, if this is not your path, then leave now, and no harm will come to you. Return, though, and I can make no promises.”

I glance down at Roe, at every face staring at me. “I’ll go, and so should all of you. There is no one coming, no great being to deliver you. All I see is a man, looking for lost people to do his bidding.”

Again that soft smile, almost sad and without a hint of malice. “No, my child. He is very real. And soon enough, you won’t have to rely on my words to know that.”

True to his claim, no one touches me when I leave. Not even a threat. I don’t hear a harsh word until I am clear of the place, and Roe catches up to me.

She cuts me off. “Who do you think you are?”

“I—”

“You left,” Roe snaps. “Years pass, and all of a sudden you just walk back in and think you know what’s best for me?”

“I heard enough. You can’t tell me you actually believe all of this.”

“What’s so hard to believe? That there’s someone out there who gives a damn about what happens to the Sump?”

I take a deep breath. “I know a demagogue when I hear one, Roe. They talk, and they say anything to spin folks up, but in the end it’s never their hands that get bloody. He’s manipulating all of you.”

“He’s trying to help us.” She shakes her head bitterly. “Do you even remember what it’s like down here? You got out, but the rest of us aren’t so lucky. We stay separate and alone, and nothing will ever change. He’s going to set us free!”

“How?” I try like hell not to sound like a warden just now. “And how many are going to be left alive when it’s done? Do you know what he plans to do? If you know something, Roe, please, it is very important that you tell me.”

Something changes in her eyes. “Why? Who are you going to tell it to? Why are you even here?”

“I want to understand what has happened.” I raise my hands, trying to walk back the suspicion curdling our talk. “What is happening now, so that I can keep two cities from falling apart.”

Roe laughs, but it comes out as half a sob. “You’ve been in the sun too long. You’ve lived up there for all these years, you say you care, but what the hell have you done for us?”

“Roe.”

“Just name something,” she presses. “One single thing you’ve done to help these people, to help me, instead of keeping us all locked where we are.”

“It’s not that easy.”

“Why not?”

It’s a simple question, but it hits me like a knife in the gut. A child might ask it, trying to figure out why the world doesn’t make sense.

“Forget it. Go back up. You don’t belong here. He’s coming, Vi, and then you’ll see. All of you up there will see.”

“Who?” I grip her shoulder. “Roe, who is he?”

Her expression goes cold. “Everyone knows who the Voice is talking about. Everyone but you. It’s the Dreadnought.”

“Dreadnought?”

It’s night up in the Promenade. Cait’s left behind anything that might make her stand out, to be recognized as a sheriff of Piltover in the bustle of where the two cities touch.

“Mean anything to you?” I ask.

Cait shakes her head once. “I’ll do some digging, see what I can turn up. What else can you tell me?”

I explain all that I had seen. The marks on every wall. The complete control over the Sump. The Voice’s words when they gathered.

“They are organized,” I tell her, “and they are angry. It’s not a matter of if this boils over, but when.”

“Okay.” She takes a breath, processing. “And when it boils over, do we know where, or how?”

“I don’t know.”

Cait’s voice changes with the next question. It’s lower, quieter. “Have you heard any of them mention hextech?”

“Hextech?” I frown. “What does that have to do with—”

“Hextech,” she repeats, locking my gaze to hers. “You hear anyone start talking about gems, crystals, magic, that is news I need to know immediately.”

A question surfaces in my head, one I don’t want to ask, but will stay lodged there until I do. “Do you already know what you’re looking for, Cait?”

She looks at me. “We’re on the same side here, Vi.”

“And what side is that?” The fact she has to say such a thing puts me even further on edge. “It isn’t just the barons involved with this, is it? We’ve watched them feud with the gangs for years, and never lifted a finger. Suddenly there’s a new player on the scene that the barons can’t keep on a leash, and now you’re talking about hextech. The clans get spooked about their margins, so they need us to go down and keep Zaun in line?”

Cait doesn’t answer. My blood’s up, and I push out a slow breath. “Guess I’ll have to find out myself.”

“I told you what I could, what you needed to know.” She looks me over, her eyes falling on my hand. “You’re hurt.”

“I’ll manage.” I stand, and start walking.

Dawn’s light doesn’t reach this far down. The flickering chem-lamps make a poor substitute as I climb the steps to the front door of Hope House, where that little boy sits, alone.

“Hey,” I say softly. “Remember me? I’m Roe’s friend. My name’s Vi. What’s yours?”

Both of us are careful as I close the gap. He’s pouting, cheeks flushed and arms crossed over his chest. “Yulie.”

“Yulie,” I say, stopping a few stairs shy of him. “Do you know where Roe is, Yulie?”

He nods his head. “She’s gone.”

Something goes cold in my stomach. “Gone where, Yulie?”

The boy looks at me, the hurt making his eyes shiny in a grimy face. “She came home mad. Then she left with some of her friends.”

“Now, Yulie, this is very important.” I reach out, very slowly, and place a hand on the stair he’s sitting on. He watches me, but doesn’t flinch away. “Do you know where they went?”

“She said they were done waiting.” Yulie sniffles. “I wanted to go, but she said I had to stay here.”

“Where did they go?” I try to keep my voice soft so as not to spook him, but I’m getting impatient.

“The new tower.” Yulie nods up toward the Entresol. “She told me they make the magic rocks there. I asked if she would bring me one, and she promised that, when she got back, she’d have enough for everyone.”

I’m already running.

It takes time to make it up to the Entresol, but once I’m there, I know where to go.

The spire. A symbolic and literal image of the common Zaunite’s oppressors. It spans both cities, but while all the sweat and blood are shed in Zaun, most of the money is spent in Piltover. At the very tip of the spire is a dome, where the merchant clan’s representatives lord over the workers below.

What a sight will greet them today, if they bother to look down. To see the base of their tower turned red with blood.

The ground is already thick with dead when I arrive. Piltover may be the destination for the hex-crystals, but the chem-barons get their cut for having the spire on their turf, and they make sure they have enough brutes on hand to keep the factory secure.

The cult must have run at the gates, dragging down the guards like a tide. I see corpses from both sides littering the way. The security force had chemtech weapons, training, and experience, but they couldn’t stop a wall of fanatics, armed with little more than blunt objects and the chance to get a little payback.

The gates have been thrown open, and I see men and women that I recognize from the gathering, hauling crates and inspecting racks of round metal canisters. I keep my distance, blending into the crowds. I find my way to where most of them are massing, around a pile of crates seized from the spire. I can’t see Roe anywhere.

Standing atop the crates is the Voice. His face is bloodied and bruised, his clothing torn. He looks like he had been in the thick of the fighting. Using a pry bar, he levers open the nearest crate, revealing racks of small, gleaming blue stones.

Synthetic hextech crystals.

“This is a momentous day!” The Voice holds up one of the crystals in triumph. “Behold, the instrument of our freedom. For so long we have given everything, and received nothing in return. Today, with these, we will balance those scales, and take what is rightfully ours!”

His celebration is interrupted by the terrible screech of metal against stone.

All eyes turn upward to the walls of the spire, where a dark shape can be seen descending in a great shower of dirty sparks. Even from a distance it is enormous, an entire arm replaced by a massive cannon, the body perched upon a multitude of splayed mechanical legs, segmented and ending in sharpened claws gouging deep wounds into the spire. As it gets closer, I can see that the top portion is vaguely human, pallid flesh fused to metal and lambent green medical tubing, but the legs belong to a monster.

Or a spider.

Dreadnought. I hear the name flicker through the crowd, whispered like a prayer.

I had believed that the Voice was deluded, or a charlatan. That the creature was something he had conjured up to rally an army for himself. But he is real. Things have suddenly become far more dangerous.

The Dreadnought crashes down to the ground, making impact in a cloud of dust and rock splinters. The people fall to awed silence, parting before him as his clicking spider legs bring him to loom over his prophet.

“You’re here,” the Voice says, an ecstatic whisper. “You’re finally here.”

“Indeed, my witness.” His true voice is thunder, rendered through furnace iron. “I am here.”

I push into where the onlookers are thickest, my eyes darting, going from searching for Roe to watching what is unfolding. The Voice leaps down from the crates, his hands full of hex-crystals.

“Mighty Dreadnought,” the Voice says, beaming, “I offer these, hard won with the blood of your children. The key to our liberation.”

The Voice pours the crystals into his master’s flesh hand, stepping back in preparation for praise.

“Why do you bring these before me?” The Dreadnought tilts his hand, and the crystals spill to the ground.

Silence. Then: “I don’t understand,” the Voice stammers, watching the priceless gems scatter into the dust.

“That is clear.”

“We’ve won you a fortune. With these we can buy weapons, armies.”

“You think as they do.” The Dreadnought says it like an accusation. He looks out to the crowd. “Hate Piltover for what they have become, but revere their forebears. Industrious, committed, those people possessed the strength to harness the magic within our world, and bend it to their will. Truly they were mighty.”

I can feel the crowd’s confusion, because I share it. Of all the things they expected their savior to say, I can’t imagine it was this.

“Yet over time, the tool they had forged bore more weight. It became a crutch, and then it became their master. They have made themselves into slaves. They awoke so shackled to these gems that in their absence, the civilization they had inherited would end.”

He turns to the Voice. “Wealth is a vice—it is not strength. The boy I found that day appeared worthy. Was I mistaken?”

Unease sweeps over the crowd. We all become very aware that nearly every facet of the Dreadnought is lethal, bladed, and weaponized as his hand cups the Voice’s jaw.

“I was chosen,” the Voice pleads. “That day. You spared me.”

“Indeed.” The monster nods slowly. “Though I am not infallible. I can only seek out my failures, and correct them.”

The Voice screams, a sharp, short sound. A yelp of agony and it’s over. The Dreadnought discards the body, immediately forgotten.

“I am Urgot,” the creature says, turning to address the crowd. “And I have heard you, Zaun. The whispers of your hearts, the things you have hoped and dreamt for me to be. The names, the titles. A liberator. A god. I speak before you now to say that I am none of these things. I am greater. I am an idea.”

Every person there flocks to him, ringing his monstrous form like a congregation. He reaches for one of the metal canisters, and I notice dozens more of them within the gates. “I am a reflection of this world, an echo of the great contest between strength and weakness waged in each of our souls, with every breath we draw. I cannot be a god to you—that offering is not within my power. What I can offer you is a test to learn if you bear the strength needed to be your own god.”

A sick feeling creeps up my spine. Urgot gestures to the medical tubing linking his mechanical body to the mask covering his mouth and nose, and holds up the canister. It’s covered with warning sigils: toxic, poison.

“What lies within this metal shell is the very air I have come to breathe. I took it in, and conquered it, for true liberation comes from within. That is the message we will take to our enemies, our would-be oppressors.”

Urgot scans the crowd. “Who among you has the strength to follow me? To take this misery within yourself, and endure?”

Every one of them sinks to their knees, yearning to be baptized.

“Urgot!” they roar. “Urgot! Urgot!”

“Very well.” Urgot closes his hand over the canister’s safety valve, pale fingers forming a claw. “Let us see.”

The gas bursts out from between Urgot’s fingers as he crushes the valve. He tears a rent in the canister, and a green cloud rushes out to envelop his followers. I’m near the back, away from the greatest concentration of it, but almost immediately people begin to die.

“Roe,” I whisper, pushing through the crowd as panic begins to set in. Men and women collapse, pinkish froth boiling from lips and noses. I find a breather mask discarded by the wreck of an equipment shed, and pull it on as I feel the air begin to claw at my throat.

Visibility devolves into a putrid greenish haze. I see silhouettes all around me, shivering and thrashing and toppling over. I have to find Roe. I have to get her out. I have to find her.

And I do.

She is kneeling with a group of others, tendrils of mist rolling up their chests as it finally reaches them.

“Roe!”

She looks up, seeing me. The shy little girl I used to know. Roe stares me in the eye, vision clear with absolute belief, and breathes in.

“No!” I skid to her side. Her skin begins to blacken, dark webs of corrupted veins filling with poison. She gags. Bloody foam rings her lips. I tear the breather mask from my face, trying to press it to hers. Roe spends the last of her strength fighting me, even as she sags to the ground. Her conviction, that ironclad belief, never leaves her eyes until the life does.

Less than half of them are still alive when the cloud finally dissipates. Many of the survivors are those who are half augmented, their jaws bracketed in clunky brass esophilters and prosthetic windpipes. My mouth tastes like blood and burnt sugar. Tears cut through the grime on my face.

“Arise.” Urgot lifts a hand, and his army clambers to their feet. “Those who have passed the test bear the right, and the duty, to grant that trial to the world.”

He turns his eyes to the peak of the spire. “For too long have they been separated from the full fruits of their labor. It is time we return it to them.”

Urgot had sealed the spire, his followers opening every canister inside the air-filtration system. The toxic mist is coiling up the tower like a sickly green snake to fill floor after floor with choking, paralyzing death.

I had managed to sneak in before they locked the gates. My heart pounds as I climb the stairs toward the top, clutching the breather mask to my face. I don’t know how many dead I pass on the way, but a feeling settles in my gut that I may join them before this day is done.

If that’s the cost of a reckoning, then I’ll pay it.

It’s a race now. The cult and their monstrous leader are swarming up to reach the dome. The men and women at the peak are clan folk, and if they die, so will many more from both cities. The symbiosis, that fragile peace, will end, and those waiting for an excuse to use violence will finally have one. That’s not a fight Zaun ever wins.

I’m ready to give my life to see that prevented, to protect these people so that the true innocents might be spared. But when I throw open the doors to the clan’s sanctum, all I see makes me want to hate them.

The peak of the tower is a shimmering glass dome, painted in painstaking detail to resemble a clear, clean sky. Opulence is heaped upon opulence, from the richly appointed furnishings to silver trays of sugared fruit. The clan representatives here do not reside in a laboratory or workspace—they are in a palace.

I hurry toward the knot of frightened Piltovans, trying to suppress my anger, when a familiar face steps forward from their midst.

“Cait?”

The sheriff tips her cap. “Up here in the Promenade, it can get murky where Zaun ends and Piltover begins. Sometimes you just aren’t sure where your jurisdiction is.”

I tell her of what has happened, of what is coming.

“Well, then.” She produces a bulky case and hands it to me. “You’re going to be needing these.”

The gauntlets purr as they come to life. I make a fist, my aching bones a memory as I wait for the scrap that’s coming. Toxic mist tumbles in, immediately stinging the eyes and biting the lungs. Several of the clan folk begin to vomit.

Cait’s face goes stony and her rifle snaps up high, faster than I can track. I hear the shot and the ring it leaves in my ears. I feel the air tear as the bullet strikes the reinforced glass of the dome.

Cracks radiate out from the hole left by the bullet, rushing across the surface like lightning. The dome shatters. Colored glass rains around us, spinning and slicing. The pressure change lashes at the gas, whipping it out of the tower.

It buys us a second to breathe, but no longer. The mist fills the entrance, darkening as cultists skulk through. They pace and rattle their weapons, but hold back, waiting.

The doorway darkens again, this time entirely. It solidifies into Urgot’s titanic silhouette as he arrives, stooping to enter the dome’s bucolic splendor, his followers parting before him.

Urgot watches the gas dissipate and chuckles, a sound like gravel and slipping gears. “You think you have denied these people their test? That you have denied yourselves? No. I shall deliver it to you, and after you are destroyed, I shall deliver it to them.”

Cait grips her rifle, the hextech crystal in its chamber pulsing with rose-tinted light. She looks over her shoulder at the Piltovans behind her. “Get clear, now. Take the bridge to the Promenade. We’ll handle this.”

Energy dances across my gauntlets as I crash them together. “Behold!” Urgot cries, gazing at me. “Such precious weapons. Your masters give you strength, but underneath you are broken. Weak.”

“I don’t need these to be strong.” I laugh, bitter and quick. “I won’t need them to break you. They’ll just make it more fun.”

“I saw you with the girl.” Urgot gives a slow nod. “You cling to two worlds, child of Zaun. The day will come when you will have to choose.”

“I’m tired of listening to you talk.” My rage finally slips. “I’m tired of doing anything other than beating you to death for what you did.”

I can’t tell if the fight lasts seconds or hours. I only remember it in flashes. Crushing metal. Ribcages wrapping around my knuckles. Thunder from Urgot’s cannon-arm, stitching explosions. The sound of blood, fizzing and popping as it cooks on my gauntlets.

Between Cait and me, we whittle down Urgot’s followers, until it’s only him left standing, a metal monster of fire and bullets and slashing chains. It’s unclear who will leave the broken dome alive, until Cait sees an opening with her bola net.

Urgot roars as it envelops him, pinning his arms to his sides and distracting him just long enough for my charge. I put everything into the blow, sending him teetering off the edge of the dome. But I won’t let him fall, not yet.

I gather up the end of the net, straining against his appalling weight as my boots slip and skid to the edge. I want to look him in the eye once more, before I drop him.

“Let’s see how fast a spider flies.”

“Wait!” I hear Cait shout behind me.

“This ends here, Cait,” I hiss.

Cait stops beside me, a metal spar in her hands. “True strength is being able to choose whether you use it. You let him die now, you make us no different than he is.”

She threads the spar through the net to pin Urgot to the tower. I don’t want to listen to her. I want justice. But I know it won’t replace what he has taken.

I spit, and hammer the spar into the ground.

It would take a very generous perspective to call the stacks of wind-blown rock just off the isthmus islands. Barren and lashed by salt-spray, they’re far from any place someone would want to make their home. Seems a few generations back, someone in a position of authority in Piltover agreed, and built a prison there.

After my reinstatement into the Wardens, I told Cait that I trusted her to see that Urgot would be transported and interred to the letter. I was headed for the Sump, to visit Hope House and use these heavy hands to build instead of break. But I think she saw what it meant to me, and she wanted me here to see with my own eyes that he would face justice.

“I know this was difficult for you,” Cait says. “But I wanted you to see the end result of all that you did. So you know that you made a difference.”

Difference. The word catches in my throat, and my head fills with the image of all those people, suffocating on the poison left in the wake of progress.

“Putting him away, we saved both Piltover and Zaun a lot of chaos.”

“Do you ever think that something better might come out of that chaos?”

She looks at me, sighing softly. “Maybe, or maybe something even worse. A lot of people would have to die for anyone to find out, and I can’t let that happen. So we fight, and we do what we have to, to keep things together. That’s what the law does, what we do. We preserve order.”

Law. Order. Can you have one without the other? And what does either of them have to do with justice? If you had asked the younger me, she might have had an answer. Ask me now, and I’m not so sure anymore.

“Urgot’s following will wither,” Cait says. “Ambitious folks will fracture it, looking for power. They’ll be too busy fighting each other to give us any trouble.”

“You weren’t there, Cait.” I shake my head. “Not like I was. You didn’t see the numbers, the commitment. We aren’t finished with them, not by a long shot.”

We’re standing on a gantry overlooking the cell block. Cells flank us on either side, the cages cleared as wardens and prison guards bring Urgot down a central passage to his new home, an immense tube of reinforced iron running from floor to ceiling like some gigantic piston.

Urgot is in chains. He makes no move to resist as the procession reaches his cell.

“How much of him can we remove before he dies?” Cait asks me, loud enough for the Dreadnought to hear. “I bet most of him.”

“Step forth and test your theory, then.” Urgot’s eyes glimmer. “Unless all you have brought with you are idle threats.”

“Let’s speak plainly.” Cait slings her rifle. “You exist here on our sufferance alone. You will eat when we tell you, sleep when we tell you, breathe when we tell you. Nothing more, nothing less. Deviate from this in any way, and I will have you destroyed. Is that clear?”

Urgot laughs. “You believe you have the power to destroy me? You don’t. You never did. That is a door that will never be open to you.”

“Well, I suppose I’ll just have to settle for closing this one.” Cait nods to a technician. He throws a switch and the tube descends over Urgot, clanging to the floor and locking fast.

I can still hear him laughing through the iron as we walk away. I pause at the door to the cell block, looking back over my shoulder, a dread I can’t shake sneaking up my spine.

Urgot didn’t look like a prisoner to me.

He looked like a spider, waiting patiently in his web.