LoL Universe Indexing and Search

Whether through destiny or circumstance, Morgana and her sister were born to a world in conflict. The cataclysmic Rune Wars had ripped through most of Valoran and Shurima, and seemed poised to engulf even the peaks of Targon. Morgana’s parents, Mihira and Kilam, knew the legends of the great mountain granting divine power—they saw no other choice than to attempt the long and perilous journey, if their tribe was to be saved.

Even when they learned Mihira was with child, they could not turn back. Finally, where Runeterra touches the stars, Kilam watched in wonder and fear as Mihira was chosen to embody the Aspect of Justice.

The couple returned not only with the salvation they sought, but twin daughters—Morgana and Kayle. However, the celestial power that claimed Mihira began to overshadow her mortal personality and affections. She would often push the girls into their father’s arms, abandoning them to answer battle’s call.

For many months, uncertainty gnawed at Kilam. The wars still raged on countless fronts, and his beloved wife was slipping away. Fearing for his daughters’ safety, he waited for Mihira to leave once more, then fled Targon with them both.

Though their destination did not yet have a name, it would become known as a haven from magic and persecution: the kingdom of Demacia.

There the twins grew different as day and night. While Kayle studied the settlement’s growing set of laws, dark-haired Morgana became troubled by their distrust of new arrivals. Knowing what it was to be a refugee, she wandered the wilds, talking to wayward mages and others cast out for the dangers they might bring. At home, she felt her father’s heartbreak at leaving Mihira behind, and grew bitter at her mother for causing such pain.

Morgana’s fears that she and Kayle might carry some remnant of the Aspect’s power were eventually confirmed, when a great blade wreathed in shadow and starfire fell from the heavens. As it pierced the ground, splitting in two, feathered wings burst from the girls’ shoulders. Their father wept at the sight of them each taking up half of the weapon, and turned away even as Morgana reached out to comfort him.

While Kayle embraced their new calling, rallying an order of judicators to enforce the laws, Morgana resented her gifts… until the night their settlement was raided. Kilam found himself surrounded as the fighting spread. In that moment, Morgana rushed to shield him, burning his attackers to ash. Together, the sisters saved countless lives, and were hailed as the Winged Protectors of Demacia.

But Kayle grew more extreme in her ideologies, and Morgana increasingly found herself pleading the case of those who wanted to atone for their crimes. An accord was struck between the sisters and their mortal devotees—though it was uneasy, and did not last. Kayle’s most ardent disciple, Ronas, came to arrest Morgana herself. Attempting to protect her penitent followers, she shackled him with dark flame until he fell to the floor, dead.

Divine fire lit the city from above as Kayle swore to bring Ronas’ killer to justice, and Morgana met her sister in the skies.

They raised their blades, each matching the other with arcs of blinding light and burning darkness that lashed down at the buildings beneath them. It seemed certain that one of them would win… but Morgana faltered when she heard their father’s anguished voice. Kilam lay in the rubble, mortally wounded. Howling with grief, Morgana hurled her half of their mother’s sword at Kayle, and plunged to the surface like a meteorite.

She cradled her father, cursing their inheritance for the destruction around them. Kayle landed, dumbstruck, and Morgana demanded to know if the smiting of wicked mortals included Kilam, whose crime was stealing them away from their mother. Kayle gave no answer, but soared into the heavens without looking back.

Morgana’s wings became an inescapable reminder of her pain. She tried to cut them from her flesh, but could find no blade strong enough. Instead, she bound them with iron chains, resolving instead to walk the world of mortals.

Over the centuries, her tale fell into myth, and the name Morgana was all but forgotten. To this day, the people of Demacia venerate “the Winged Protector,” but recall only the glory and truth of one sister, while Morgana’s dark outbursts and belief in personal redemption became the mysteries of “the Veiled One.”

Through all of this, she still refuses to abandon those who would seek her aid. Bitter, betrayed, she bides her time in the kingdom’s shadows, knowing with certainty that Kayle’s light will someday return to Runeterra, and all will face her judgment.

As magic begins to rise again, Morgana sees that dawn is nearly upon them.

Quinn and her twin brother, Caleb, were born in Uwendale, a remote mountain hamlet in northeastern Demacia. It was a thriving village of hunters and farmers, protected by rangers who patrolled the wilderness and drove off any dangerous creatures wandering down from the high peaks.

When the twins were still young, King Jarvan III visited Uwendale on a tour of his kingdom. Quinn and Caleb thrilled at the pageantry of the knights in his entourage, resplendent in their gleaming armor. Their father, a weaponsmith in the village, later saw them pretending to bravely defend the land themselves, and fashioned simple weapons for them to play with.

But as they grew, they spent every moment they could outdoors with their mother—a warden among the local rangers. She taught them how to survive in the wilds, how to track beasts, and most importantly how to fight. Quinn and Caleb became a formidable team—with her keen eye for trails, his skill at baiting their prey, her aim with a bow, and his prowess with a hunting spear.

But one expedition ended in tragedy.

Quinn and Caleb, now rangers for Uwendale, were hired to accompany a party of nobles from the capital as they hunted a giant tuskvore—a predator known for its thick hide, long horns, and ferocious temperament. But they failed to kill the creature outright, and the wounded beast turned on them. The twins were quick to intervene, with Caleb’s spear putting out one of the monster’s eyes, and Quinn driving off the tuskvore with her arrows... but not before it gored Caleb with its deadly horns.

The leader of the party, Lord Barrett Buvelle, helped Quinn bury her brother near where he had fallen. But all could see his death had broken her.

Unable to move on, she would return to the gravesite, and the joy she had felt as a ranger began to dim. Her prowess in the wilderness waned, and she started making mistakes—she missed easy tracks, and her aim was off.

A few months later, Lady Lestara Buvelle visited Quinn’s family. The noblewoman was grateful that Quinn had saved her husband’s life, and asked what she could do to repay them. Quinn could think of nothing. She thanked Lady Buvelle, and politely turned her away.

A year to the day after Caleb’s death, Quinn returned to his grave, as she so often did. Lost in grief, she didn’t hear the approaching tuskvore, its one eye marking it as the very beast that had slain her brother.

The monster charged. Quinn fired arrow after arrow, but to no avail, and she knew it was her doom. Just then, a majestic bird swooped in—an azurite eagle, a breed long thought extinct. The eagle’s talons and beak ripped bloody gouges across the tuskvore’s face, but the creature was resilient, its horns tearing into the bird’s wing.

Quinn fired her last arrow as the monster charged her again. This time her aim was true, and the shaft flew right down its gullet, felling the creature in a heartbeat.

Though the eagle was injured, she approached with caution, for such birds had been known as vicious and untamable hunters—but instead, she saw in his eyes a deep well of kinship. Quinn bound the eagle’s broken pinion, and returned to Uwendale with him. She named him Valor, and the bond that formed between them rekindled the fire in Quinn’s heart. Once more, her thoughts turned to serving Demacia in battle, as a knight.

Her mother reminded her that this would require sponsorship, and that was far beyond their family’s humble means. But her father urged her to seek out Lady Buvelle, who had already offered recompense for service to her noble family, in the capital.

With his help, Quinn crafted a new weapon worthy of a knight, a finely wrought repeater crossbow capable of firing multiple bolts with a single pull of the trigger. Quinn and Valor then set out for the Great City together.

Lestara Buvelle gladly vouched for Quinn, even paying a personal visit to High Marshal Tianna Crownguard to petition for her. Within a week, Quinn took her oaths as a ranger-knight of Demacia.

Now, having brought renown to the rangers of Uwendale, she prefers to remain out in the hinterlands, never staying within the walls of the outlying towns for long. Quinn rarely pulls rank with the rangers who report to her, instead deferring to their specialized skills and experience in the field—a stark departure from the rigid hierarchy of the rest of the military.

Quinn and Valor have ventured far and wide in service of Demacia, risking journeys into the icy Freljord and deep within Noxian-held territory. And with each mission, their unique bond has helped ensure the security of the kingdom’s borders for generations to come.

Abris’ stomach tightened into knots as he waited on the steps of a shining temple. Standing watch before the temple doors was a statue of the Protector. The setting sun silhouetted its face, casting a radiant aura around its bowed head. It was carved in white stone that sparkled with flecks of gold. Great wings framed its shoulders as it held two swords against its chest. The statue’s helmeted expression was blank, austere, more perfect than any human. Hundreds of candles covered the plinth at its feet.

Abris leaned his sword and shield against the base of the sculpture. They were as pristine and unmarred as the stone swords above him. He was told that the Protector blessed virtuous soldiers of Demacia, and felt a strange comfort at its presence.

An elderly woman cloaked in white exited the door of the temple.

“Please, do you have a moment?” Abris called out to her.

She made her way, slowly, over to him.

“The Illuminators always stop for those in need. Tell me, what do you seek here?” Her face crinkled as she spoke, but her eyes were kind.

“I… I leave for battle tomorrow,” said Abris. He opened and closed his fists, nervous. “My sword arm is strong, and I am proud to defend Demacia's honor. But I wonder—how can I claim to be any better than the barbarians invading our lands if I slaughter them just the same? What good are our white walls and resplendent banners, if below them we spill their blood as they would ours?”

“Ah,” the Illuminator said. “Yes. Killing is not to be taken lightly, even as a soldier. Let me tell you a story.” She gazed up at the statue. “Will you light a candle for her as I speak?”

Abris knelt and took a flame from one of the votive candles at the statue’s feet, using it to light another.

The Illuminator’s voice cracked with age as she began the story, and Abris was reminded of his late grandmother, who’d often told him myths and histories of their people. He never knew which stories were true and which she had conjured from her fanciful mind.

“Long ago, in a land now lost to time and crumbling decay, a cruel king led his people into poverty. During a time of great famine, the king gathered everyone from across the realm into his castle courtyard. There, he declared he would cast aside the old laws in order to end their time of scarcity, as was his right. He took their gilded lawbook and cast it to the floor, naming himself the law. Whatever rules or decrees he spoke would become law, no matter what.

“Under guise of protecting the people, he announced his first decree. Since there were too many mouths to feed, the king said, the elderly had no right to food. They were to be killed, and there was no other way.

“The starving citizens had no strength left to fight this injustice, and the king’s guard forced the elderly folk to line up for slaughter.

“The first in line was a man with silver hair who stumbled as he stepped forward. He pleaded with the king. ‘I am a baker! Let me make bread for you and the people,’ he cried. ‘Spare my life!’

“But the king responded, ‘Can you be young again? Can you knead muscle back into your broken and sorry limbs? No? Well then, there is no redemption for you.’ And he motioned to his executioner, who raised his blade, and the baker’s head rolled to the floor.

“How deplorable!” said Abris, interrupting the Illuminator. “Did no one resist the king’s new laws?”

The Illuminator smiled. “Thankfully, there was one who stood against this grave injustice.”

“Our immortal Protector had not been seen in this land for centuries. But perhaps extreme injustice sends ripples that echo far beyond the realms unknown. In any case, at this moment she appeared. The heavens opened with blinding light, as if the stars themselves had focused all their beams in one place. The Protector emerged, wondrous and terrifying in her majesty. She confronted the cruel king, who stood still as stone at her sight.

“‘No king stands above the statutes of the law.’ she declared. ‘Speak thy name and prepare for judgment!’

“‘I am not merely above the law, winged beast, I am the law.’ With a nod, he motioned for his guards to advance. They did so in unison, raising their spears to the sky as one. ‘Because of me, my people have purpose. My people know their place. And my people thank me for it.’

“‘The law is justice given form; it is true and fair judgment writ in ink. It cannot be undone,’ said the Protector.

“She drew her swords, which blazed with holy fire, filling the air with the scent of truth and punishment. Her wings unfolded, which fanned the flames with great strokes, and soon they too were aflame. It was a fearsome sight to see.

“‘You say you lead your people. Be now the first to be judged by my blades,’ the Protector said.

“The cruel king looked upon the Protector’s blazing swords, and her wings of fire. But most fearful of all was the burning in her eyes, gleaming and grave with uncompromising wrath. He felt like he was staring at the sun, beautiful and terrible in her glory, and the King wept in fear. He appealed to the Protector’s mercy and fell to his knees, pleading at her feet.

“‘I can change,’ the king begged. ‘I see now the error of my ways. I was selfish and corrupt and did not deserve my crown. Let me live and I shall follow the rule of law.’

“The Protector watched him with a steely gaze. When he had finished speaking, she drew breath. It is said that her voice in this moment echoed as if the very gods were speaking through her.

“‘Can you undo your deeds of injustice, King?’ asked the Protector. ‘Can you unspeak your lies and unmake your false laws against fair and righteous judgment? No? Then there will be no redemption for you.’

“In one quick motion, the Protector thrust her burning blade through the king’s heart, and he cried out as she impaled him on the gilded lawbook he had cast to the floor.

“The lawbook burst into flame which burned with the terrible heat of the heavens. This was a holy fire—one that would scorch the evil sinners from the land and cleanse the just, leaving them unscathed.

“The cruel king screamed as the Protector’s fire burned his guards and councilmen, his executioner and his servants. The fire did not stop as it spread throughout the land, fueled by the lies of the false king and his wicked followers. The survivors forever remembered this day of glory, for in the ashes of their society they were given a chance to rebuild in justice and honor.

“And, if the land ever returned to unlawful chaos, they were certain the Protector would descend from the heavens once more.”

The Illuminator smiled down at Abris.

“We must all act with virtue and honor,” she said, “from kings to bakers, servants to soldiers. For no one is above the law, and no one is above justice. The raiders who attack and invade our southern borders are lawless and malevolent. With every breath, as they march forward, they threaten the safety of our land. Your role as a shield for Demacia is a great honor, and a just endeavor. And the Protector looks kindly upon those with justice in their hearts.”

“Aye,” said Abris. He looked to his sword, unblemished by acts of war. He vowed that from his first strike to his last, each would be in the name of justice.

“If ever you feel uncertain, soldier, think on how the Protector would act. If you act with integrity and truth, as the Protector would, surely she will guide your blade. Even if you must wet it with blood.”

The Illuminator bowed and returned to her temple.

Abris watched as the candle he had lit flickered in the dark. He stood up to walk back to his camp for the night. As he turned to look toward the statue one last time, he thought he saw the shine of another flame, deep within the stone helmet of the Protector.

It was the stench of Bloodharbor that hit you first.

Like a gut-punch that took the wind right out of your sails.

The stink always got inside you, making you feel like you’d never get it out.

A noisome reek of opened leviathan bellies, dripping entrails you could crawl through, and weeks-old offal sticking to the cobbles like gory mortar left to rot in the sun. Mix that with the shit of ten thousand scavenging seabirds and the piss of the Slaughter Docks’ bloodied workers, and it was a smell strong enough to turn even the strongest stomach inside out.

You could wear a bandanna soaked in enough rum to souse the Bearded Lady herself, and it’d still get you.

Yes, it was awful, but Sarah Fortune loved what it represented.

It was the smell of prosperity, of a plentiful catch, and monster bounties earned.

A red tide meant people with coins in their pockets, ready to spend them all in the quayside taverns, gambling dens, and fleshpots, all of which paid a cut of their takings to Sarah.

Prosperity, yes—by the Bearded Lady, it was just the worst smell in the world.

Her small landing boat eased out into the sludgy water, its passage through the deepening evening lit by a storm lantern swaying from a wrought-iron tentacle at its bow.

Seated in the back of the boat, Sarah draped her hand over the gunwale and let her fingertips carve a path through the fatty layers on the water’s surface, drawing undulant spirals that rose and fell with the red tide.

“Even for you, that’s pretty damn reckless,” grunted Rafen, sweating as he leaned back and forth on the oars. Rafen was an old salt of the islands, with a craggy face weathered by ocean spray and hard winds, and a keen mind the rum hadn’t managed to take the edge off. He was, by turns, her conscience and right-hand man, and had seen pretty much every dark nook and cranny Bilgewater had to offer.

“How so?” asked Sarah.

“There’s ripper fish and flaying lampreys lurking just under the surface.”

“Scared I’ll get my fingers bitten off?” replied Sarah.

“Can’t pull a trigger without your fingers.”

“You worry too much, Rafen.”

“That’s my job, to worry about the things you don’t worry enough about.”

“Like this boat ride out to the Moon Serpent?”

“Exactly,” said Rafen. “I have a saying, and it ain’t steered me wrong none since I heard it at my papa’s knee. If it smells bad, leave it damn well alone, you idiot!”

Sarah shrugged. “Pretty much everything smells bad out here.”

“Maybe so, but that don’t change the truth of it,” said Rafen, glancing over his shoulder into the mist rising up from the water, where the Moon Serpent lurked like a dark secret. “The sea has an evil cast to it this night. Feels like hungry eyes are looking up from the deep.”

“Your bones talking to you again?”

“You mock, but I been listening to ’em for more’n forty years now, and I’m still alive, ain’t I?”

“Let it go, old man,” said Miss Fortune. “It’s a Captain’s Requiem, I have to be there. And if I have to be there in this ridiculous getup, then my second in command has to be there too.”

Said ridiculous getup consisted of a—literally—breathtaking whalebone corset of cobalt blue and golden lace beneath a gloriously long-tailed scarlet frock coat. In addition, she wore linen breeches of pale cream tucked into heeled boots of polished black leather with silver kraken buckles running from ankle to knee.

An absurdly impractical outfit, but in a gathering of captains it didn’t do to look anything less than obscenely wealthy. A poor captain was a weak captain, and like every kind of predator, Bilgewater reavers would ruthlessly prey on the weak.

Rafen hadn’t escaped the need to smarten up, either, and—under duress and threat of a demotion—wore a borrowed suit of sealskin leather, a scaled waistcoat whose buttons threatened to split from the fabric with every pull of the oars, and a stovepipe hat with a pressed tentacle headband.

“I might have to be there, but that don’t mean I got to like it,” said Rafen.

“True, but I need you to watch my back,” said Sarah. “Aligh had a large crew, and with him dead every captain will be circling like a wharf rat in heat. Last thing I need is his old crew going over to a rival captain or falling in with the likes of the Jackdaws or Butcher Blades.”

“Aye, there’s that,” begrudged Rafen. “Lot of powerful captains’ll likely be here to see Aligh off to the Bearded Lady, but do you really trust all of them to abide by the Truce?”

“Not even a little bit,” said Sarah, opening her coat to reveal a pair of exquisite ivory-handled pistols holstered under each armpit. “But it’s not like I’m going in unarmed.”

“They’ll take those off you, sure as eggs is eggs.”

“Please, you think they’re the only weapons I have?” she said, tapping the side of her head.

“Fair enough, but this still feels like a risk.”

“It surely is, but what’s life without a little risk?”

“I’ll remind you of that if this all goes under fast.”

Sarah grinned. “If it does, I promise you can haunt me from our watery grave.”

Rafen made a quick sign of the horns over his heart and shook his head, but returned his effort to rowing. He’d made his point, and Sarah had made sure he knew better than to press her when her mind was made up. Besides, she knew he was right, and there was nothing more irritating than a man who believed he was right.

But in deference to Rafen’s words, Sarah lifted her hand from the surface of the water and flicked the scum from her fingertips. Something toothy broke the surface where it landed and the old man raised his eyes in a told ya fashion.

Behind her, the ramshackle crags of Bilgewater shimmered in the fog, flickering anthills where people—her people—lived upon the flotsam and jetsam the ocean provided. Its structures clung to the rocks and mountains of the island chain like persistent barnacles that neither storm, Harrowing, nor the occasional probes of Noxian war-barques could ever entirely dislodge.

Like Sarah Fortune, Bilgewater was a survivor.

Since Gangplank’s death, she’d fought the unquiet spirits of the Shadow Isles and survived countless attempts on her life. Consolidating her rule over Bilgewater had been a messy, bloody affair, and her grip was still as shaky as an apprentice rigger on their first climb of the ropes. But she was still alive despite the venom—and firearms—aimed at her for putting her head above the parapet.

“Ship ahoy,” said Rafen.

Sarah looked past him to see a looming shape emerging from the rising mist.

Much like its former captain, the Moon Serpent was an old, unsubtle ship; broad in the beam and glowing with the dim light of dozens of hooded lanterns hanging from its many masts. The brigantine’s reinforced timbers were thickly caulked and carved with scales like a snake. Crusted salt in the grooves shone silver in the moonlight, and though its sails were still furled, Sarah knew they were woven from shimmering white cloth that must have cost Aligh a small fortune. Its ramming prow figurehead was a fanged serpent forged from the melted-down cannons of his enemies.

“By the Bearded Lady, I always forget how big it is…”

“She’s a beast sure enough,” said Rafen as the brigantine’s cold shadow fell across them.

“How in the world did a tight-fisted miser like Aligh pay for this?” said Sarah. “That cheapskate bastard never paid a kraken if he could spend a sprat. I heard he skipped out on his dues to the ocean, never so much as a drop of rum or a copper coin for the lords and ladies of the deep.”

“And ain’t that yet another reason for me to turn us around and not set foot on its deck,” said Rafen. “If even a bit of that’s true, then this here’s a doomed ship. The ocean needs its due, any captain worthy of the name knows that.”

“I gave a hex-carbine to the waters off White Wharf after claiming Jakmunt Zyglos’s bounty.”

“I remember,” said Rafen with a resigned shake of his head. “You promised that weapon to me.”

“Decent craftsmanship too. Wasn’t a Fortune Manstopper, but it was pretty nice.”

“Now you’re just being cruel.”

“A queen must be cruel only to be kind,” said Sarah with mock affectation, as Rafen eased the boat up to half a dozen others moored beneath a wide cargo net strung from the gunwale. The glossy hull of the Moon Serpent rose up like a black cliff and dark silhouettes moved through the lamplight high above.

“She’s sitting high in the water for such a big ship,” said Rafen, nodding toward the mottled green tide lines on the ship’s black hull as he tied the boat up with a loose slipknot.

“Her holds will be empty and most of the crew will be ashore getting three sheets to the wind on whatever cheap rotgut Aligh left them for his wake,” said Sarah.

“Lucky them,” said Rafen, pulling the oars in from the rowlocks and securing them along the gunwale. “You sure about this?”

Sarah rose and took hold of the cargo net, tipping her head back.

“Not really,” she said. “But when given the choice of going forward or back, a strong woman once told me that it’s always better to go forward, so let’s go.”

Hand over hand, Sarah and Rafen climbed to the Moon Serpent’s deck.

A pair of unsmiling twins in leather breeches and scaled shirts took Sarah’s guns and Rafen’s marlinspike dagger as soon as they clambered over the gunwale. Both women were heavily muscled and angrily sober, no doubt wishing they were ashore partaking in Aligh’s wake-rum instead of forming a skeleton crew for a bunch of captains who would, like as not, dance a jig to see one another dead.

One of the twins wore a helmet made from the skull of a scuttle-crab and matching patchwork armor of boiled shells, while the other had a face covered with tattoos of unblinking eyes. When the latter grinned at the sight of the gun-dame forged pistols, Sarah saw her mouth was filled with teeth prized from a razorscale’s jawbone.

Sarah followed them as they made their way to the raised foredeck, and marked which of the three chests they put the confiscated weapons into—cannonball dent in the right side.

An enormous bronze cannon sat on a carved ebony gun carriage just in front of the chests. The weapon’s flared muzzle was sealed with wax, and the sail-shrouded body of Captain Aligh would be entombed within, pickled in rum, vinegar, and camphor for its journey to the bottom of the sea.

“Shame to send something so beautiful to the deep,” said Sarah. “The cannon, I mean.”

“Aye,” agreed Rafen. “A finer thirty pounder I’ve yet to see, but it’s tradition, and you don’t go messing with traditions, right?”

“Right…” said Sarah, turning her attention to the broad-shouldered figure standing immobile next to the ship-wrecker. “Lady help us if we ever buck tradition, eh?”

He was swathed in a robe of iridescent scales with a wide-mouthed fish-head hood ringed in razor teeth. He carried a tentacle-wrapped billhook, and Sarah immediately knew him for what he was.

“A rare honor to have a serpent caller at a Captain’s Requiem,” she said.

“Amazing what enough gold krakens can buy you, eh?” replied Rafen.

Within the jagged hood, the serpent caller wore a mask of perforated coral over the lower half of his face, while his eyes and forehead were obscured by a dried-out squid’s body with crudely cut eye-holes through which the priest surveyed the gathered captains.

The wide deck was thronged with a host of Bilgewater reavers in all their finery: long coats, polished boots, tall hats, and archaic pieces of armor that would drag them straight to the ocean floor if they fell overboard. Sarah saw a wealth of gold and silver sigils and medals, Buhru fishhook amulets, and lucky talismans to honor the lords and ladies of the deeps.

Some captains she knew from fighting or drinking—often both—and some she knew only by reputation.

They, of course, all knew her.

With her blood-red hair, creamy skin, and confident swagger, Sarah Fortune would be a hard woman to miss in any circumstance, but on this ship she was a wild rose among poisoned thorns.

“Quite the gathering, eh?” said Rafen.

“Nothing like death to really bring people together,” said Sarah.

Rafen nodded and said, “Now I know how a fat waverider feels when it finds itself surrounded by a pack of hungry longtooths.”

Sarah shook her head. “You have it backward, old man. I’m the longtooth here.”

Rafen didn’t reply as Sarah marched to the ship’s centerline and back, adjusting each stride for the motion of the ship’s deck. Just as every pistol had its own unique character, so too did every ship; its own way to crest the tides and heed the wind. She moved with the anchored ship’s roll and sway, letting the creak and groan of seasoned timbers tell their secrets from her boots on up.

“A shallow-riding wallower,” she said. “Surprising for such a wide-beamed vessel.”

“I like ’em broad in the beam,” said Rafen, instinctively adjusting the width of his stance.

“So I heard.”

“Not as nimble as a cutter,” said Rafen, ignoring her jibe, “but I’ll wager a bottle of Myron’s Dark she’ll hold you tight to her bosom in rough seas.”

“That she will, Rafen,” said a slender woman dressed in a long coat of pale blue, with gold edging at the cuffs and bronze fringed epaulettes. “She’s a grand old dame, right sure. Sank Darkwill’s Glory and even poked a few holes in the Red Noxtoraa before the Mudtown fogs closed in and saved its cursed hide.”

A salt-stiffened bicorn flopped at a rakish angle on the woman’s shaven head, and the state of her eyes—two poached eggs wobbling in a bowl of fish soup—told Sarah she’d been hitting the rum hard already. Her skin had the waxy, yellowish complexion of someone only recently returned from a long sea voyage.

“Captain Blaxton,” said Rafen. “I heard you were dead.”

“Rumors of my death fly around Bilgewater with every sunset,” said the woman. “And with them, men weep, and their wives curse the morn of their disproving. I assure you, I am in the rudest of health.”

She turned to Sarah and gave her an elaborate bow before offering her a hand.

Sarah took it and was instantly on guard. Despite Blaxton’s drunken appearance and feather-light grip, she felt hard-earned calluses and powder burn ridges on the heel of her palm.

“Marla Blaxton, at your service, Captain Fortune,” she said, releasing Sarah’s hand. “Recently returned from a year of raiding the Amarantine Coast, where the sea is clear, the sky blue, and the coastal settlements fat with more gold than a captain could spend in ten lifetimes.”

“How wonderful,” said Sarah. “Why would you ever choose to return from that?”

“Good times can only last so long, you know. The inhabitants of said settlements had some strange ideas about ‘ownership’ and ‘not being dead’. Also, they were able to summon some curious mage-types who turned the sea and sky against me in ways I’d never seen before.”

“Ah, so you lost all your ships,” said Rafen.

“A few,” allowed Blaxton, waving her hand dismissively. “A temporary setback, Rafen. One from which I expect to bounce back any day now.”

“Perhaps with a new crew and a shallow-riding wallower of a brigantine?” suggested Sarah.

Blaxton laughed and said, “Anything is possible,” before giving her another bow and rejoining a group of captains gathered around a leaking barrel of rum by the foremast.

And Sarah’s heart skipped a beat as she saw a face she recognised, an enemy face.

Rafen saw him too and gripped her arm.

“Remember the Truce,” he hissed urgently.

Sarah didn’t answer, too focused on the man before her.

She pulled her arm free and strode toward him, keeping her face expressionless.

Blond hair, tied back in a rough ponytail, a loose strand hanging, just so, over his handsome, clean-shaven features. He looked up and met her gaze, the ice in his eyes frosting at her approach.

“Sarah,” he said, opening his arms to her. “Look, I know we—”

She didn’t let him finish, hammering her fist into his gut without breaking stride.

He buckled like he’d been hit by one of the twenty-four pounder balls, and his handsome face met her rising knee with a sickening crunch of bone.

He flew back and Sarah pounced on him before he could rise, straddling him and reaching for her pistol before remembering it was locked in a chest next to the mainmast.

Cannonball dent in the right side.

Instead of shooting him, she hauled his head up by his collar and cocked her fist back for another punch. He coughed blood, and lifted a forge-crafted hand of whirring bronze cogs, leather straps, and clicking mechanics out in front him.

“Please,” he wheezed through a broken nose and a mouthful of blood.

“Hello, Petyr,” she said. “I told you what would happen if I saw you again, didn’t I?”

Captain Petyr Harker.

The last time she’d seen him, he’d been cradling the splintered, bloody ruin of his hand, the hand he’d always boasted killed the Crimson Blade.

Petyr, along with Captains Crow and Bragg, had conspired to strip her of her hard-won gains in the wake of her killing Gangplank. Both Crow and Bragg were now dead, one from a pistol ball to the head, the other with one lodged in his liver.

Her pistol balls.

Walking out of the gunfight at MacGregan’s Killhouse, she’d promised to take more than Petyr’s other hand if she ever saw him again.

The Truce of the Sinking Soul was a long-standing tradition in Bilgewater.

More of an unwritten rule than a strictly enforced custom, but it allowed rival crews to gather without bloodshed when their captains attended the all too frequent funerals of old sea-legends.

That violent men and women would abide by such an archaic custom always struck Sarah as somewhat quaint, and until now she’d always kept it in the if it ain’t broken… part of her mind.

An iron grip seized her right elbow and pulled her clenched fist back.

Rafen appeared on her left, dragging her off Petyr.

“Easy, captain,” he said. “Easy now…”

Part of her wanted to land another punch, but by the time Rafen had her back on her feet, the anger had gone out of Sarah. She’d made her point, and so let herself be pulled away.

“Upon our last descent,” said a rum-sodden voice in her ear. “All gathered heed this oath.”

“Peace be upon us all,” she repeated automatically. “No harm to body or soul.”

“No shot nor blade, no serpent nor spell,” added Rafen.

“Observe the Truce of the Sinking Soul!” finished Petyr, scrambling away from her.

Sarah let out a long breath, and turned to see who, along with Rafen, had pulled her off.

A hunched wretch in an expensive kraken-skin coat, fresh octopus-tentacle tie, and glistening stingray flat-cap that was well above the tattered sackcloth she normally saw him wearing.

“Thorne?” she said, shrugging off Rafen’s touch.

“It’s Captain Thorne these days,” he said, spitting a wad of expensive dried-seaweed tobacco to the deck and missing the polished toe of her boot by a finger’s breadth.

Sarah laughed. “You? A captain? Since when?”

Thorne preened, looking like a powder monkey with a freshly stolen mango. “Got me a ship now, and a crew of hearty sea-rats off the back of what you done to Crow and Bragg.”

His breath was like a bucket of rotten clams. Thorne could parade in expensive clothes, but he could never change who he truly was.

“You always were a bottom feeder, weren’t you?” said Sarah. “Now get out of my way.”

Thorne stood aside, and said, “Mark my words, Sarah Fortune, you’ll get what’s comin’ to ya.”

“Promises, promises,” said Sarah, and in two quick steps she was standing over Petyr Harker.

She held her arm out and rippled her fingers, like she was flipping a coin along her knuckles.

“Can I give you a hand?” she said with a grin.

“Is that supposed to be funny?”

“It is funny,” said Sarah. “Look how I’m smiling.”

Petyr looked at her gloved hand through an eye that was already swollen and purple. Despite the obvious pain of his bleeding nose and winded gut, he grinned.

“If I give you my good hand, are you going to shoot it off?” he asked.

“I’m not planning to, but the day’s yet young.”

He took her hand, and Sarah hauled him to his feet.

“Why are you here, Petyr?” she asked.

“There might not be a Corsair’s Conclave anymore, but traditions need to be upheld, yes?”

“So I keep hearing,” said Sarah, glancing at Rafen.

She pulled a handkerchief from her coat and handed it to Petyr. He nodded gratefully and wiped the blood from his lips and chin before handing it back.

“Keep it,” she said, then nodded admiringly at his new hand. “Nice work. Doesn’t look like Bilgewater craft.”

“It’s not,” said Petyr. “Well, it is and it isn’t. A new apprentice down at Bitterbelt’s forge made it for me. Zaunite lad named Gysbert.”

“Looks expensive.”

“It was.”

Sarah looked him up and down, taking in his tailored clothing, the well-fed cheeks, and the empty scabbard that looked like it might hold a fine blade. Whatever had become of Petyr after losing his hand, he’d clearly bounced back well enough.

“I keep wondering if I should have killed you back at MacGregan’s,” said Sarah.

“I’ve often wondered why you let me live,” said Petyr. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad you didn’t kill me, but let’s be honest, I’m just the sort of fellow to seek dramatic revenge in some stupidly elaborate scheme.”

Despite herself, Sarah laughed. “That you are, Petyr, that you are. But if you want the truth, I didn’t kill you because killing you would have been Gangplank’s way of doing things, and I always try to be better than he was.”

“And how’s that working out for you?”

“It’s a work in progress,” admitted Sarah as Rafen stepped between them, holding tin mugs hooked over his fingers in one hand, and a large bottle of rum in the other.

“Here,” he said. “If the Truce is holding, and we’re not going to start killing each other, then we might as well have a swig of Aligh’s rum, eh?”

Sarah passed a mug to Petyr before taking one for herself as Rafen poured them all two fingers of the syrupy brown liquid.

“Keep your powder dry and your cutlass sharp,” said Rafen.

“And the world will turn,” finished Sarah, and the three of them touched mugs.

Sarah tipped her head back and took a mouthful, wincing at the gritty, overly sweet taste.

“Oh, that’s bad. That’s really bad,” she said. “You sure they didn’t put Aligh’s body in the rum barrel instead of the cannon barrel?”

“Aligh was known for many things—being a cruel old bastard, a ruthless captain, and a seasoned killer—but one thing he wasn’t known for was his largesse in vittles,” said Petyr, pouring the remains of his rum onto the deck.

“I didn’t know you knew Aligh.”

Petyr shook his head vigorously. “I didn’t. I mean, I knew him by reputation, of course, but it’s not like I ever set foot on the Moon Serpent before today.”

“The man was an enigma,” said Thorne, sidling up to Rafen and holding out his own mug. “A regular man of mystery, but who cares about that? He’s dead, and we ain’t.”

Sarah shrugged and nodded to Rafen, who poured Thorne a generous measure.

“Aye,” continued Thorne. “There’s none here gathered who knows much of the man. They say he never came ashore neither. Always sent one of them vicious twins. So, did you hear how he died?”

“I heard he was stabbed in his sleep by a cabin boy who’d taken one too many beatings,” said Captain Blaxton, arriving mug in hand.

Rafen duly poured her a measure.

“May all your lookouts be sober,” she said, taking a drink. “Ah, some of the good stuff.”

“That’s what you heard?” said Sarah. “I heard he choked to death on a barb-squid that wasn’t quite dead in his dinner.”

Rafen shook his head. “No, that’s just what the cutters on the Slaughter Docks are saying. I heard it from one of the chandlers down the grottoes that he was so drunk he fell overboard. His pockets were so laden with gold that he sank all the way down, straight into the waiting grasp of the Bearded Lady.”

Instinctively, they all looked over the gunwale to the ocean far below.

The waters swirled around the ship, deep and black like a liquid mirror. She saw her wavering reflection, splintered by the water and lapping at the barnacled hull. Hard waves broke against the hull—the kind you saw when something large was coming up from below.

“Told you it had an evil cast to it tonight,” said Rafen.

Sarah let out a breath and tapped her left eye twice with her right thumb, an old sailor’s tradition to ward off evil influences.

“Ach, he was an old man, maybe he just died,” said Sarah. “That’s what old men do best.”

“Fog’s rolling in,” said Blaxton, nodding out to sea.

A chill passed through Sarah as she saw the fog was coming in from the southeast; cold, clammy, and freighted with the smell of the deepest ocean trenches.

“Don’t matter none how the old bastard died,” said Thorne. “All that matters is what happens to his ship and his crew. That’s why we’re all here, ain’t it? Every one of us wants to claim that big prize, don’t we?”

All four captains studied one another, each knowing that was exactly why they were here.

“No one ever found his serpent sigil, did they?” said Blaxton.

“His sigil?” scoffed Rafen. “Like as not, it’s sealed away in that cannon with him. Doesn’t matter anyway, no one pays any heed to a captain’s sigil these days.”

“Maybe they should,” said Sarah. “Maybe there’d be a lot less bloodshed if you could just claim a ship and crew with the previous captain’s sigil.”

“Scared of a little blood, are ya?” grinned Thorne. “Not got the stomach for it, eh?”

Sarah took a step toward him and said, “Truce or not, talk to me like that again and I’ll show you how much stomach I have for bloodshed.”

“Didn’t mean to go upsettin’ ya, Captain Fortune,” laughed Thorne, exposing black teeth and rotten gums. “Just wondering how many of ’em here gathered would have even the slightest hesitation of trying to claim Aligh’s crew if they could get their hands on that sigil…?”

Sarah looked past Thorne at the other captains gathered on the Moon Serpent’s deck, wondering the same thing. Most of them were small fry, with crews that were too green to make a serious play for Aligh’s ship, but the three drinking rum with her… Now that was a motley crew indeed, and any one of them might be a rival she needed to worry about sticking a knife in her back.

Before any of them could say anything in answer to Thorne’s question, Sarah felt the deck shift underfoot, a slow roll and dip.

She reached inside her coat and pulled out a silver coin, flicking it over the side of the ship.

Thorne watched it tumble end over end to the waters, and for a moment she wondered if he might dive in after it.

“Why’d ya do that?” he said. “This ain’t your ship.”

“Someone has to,” said Sarah, as the Moon Serpent’s white sails unfurled. “We’re getting underway.”

The ship sailed eastward out of Bilgewater Bay, taking a gently curving route to avoid the many jagged reefs, treacherous sandbanks, and jutting wrecks that could see a ship foundered. The fog Blaxton had spotted had fully enveloped them now, and the ship sailed in an almost dead silence, interrupted only by the occasional shout between the skeleton crew.

Despite the awfulness of the rum, Sarah, Rafen, Thorne, Petyr, and Blaxton worked their way through the rest of the bottle. After a couple of shots, the sweetness became bearable, and Sarah felt her mood loosening.

With the bottle empty, Rafen threw it overboard and Sarah sent him below deck to find another.

The Moon Serpent sailed onward, deeper into the fog.

More theories as to how Aligh had died were offered, each more ridiculous than the last, and Sarah found herself wiping tears of laughter from her eyes as Petyr finished a preposterous tale of Aligh falling afoul of the Trickster and being led out to sea in a golden narwhal costume only to be carved up by the Bloodharbor Ripper in a tragic case of mistaken identity.

A distant voice, muffled by the fog, called out from the crow’s nest.

“What did he say?” she asked, peering up through the rigging. She held on to the gunwale rail as her vision spun a tad. The rum was bad, but it was strong. Time to ease up.

“I think he said ‘Land ho!’ or possibly ‘Sand Lo!’” said Blaxton, bleary eyed from the rum.

Sarah blinked. “Sand Lo? Why would he say that?”

“I believe it’s a traditional Shuriman greeting,” giggled Petyr, taking another belt of rum.

Sarah fought the laughter bubbling up from her gut as she heard the clatter of iron chains spilling off the deck, swiftly followed by the heavy splash of an anchor hitting the water.

“We’re here,” said Thorne, spitting a viscous wad of tobacco into the sea.

Sarah peered through the mist, seeing a craggy spur of black rock rearing out of the water. Salt crystals glittered in the weak light of the stars.

“Moonshard Reef,” she said. “Why in the name of the Lady’s Beard are we here?”

“Aligh always claimed he was part Marai on his mother’s side,” said Petyr.

“Horse dung!” said Thorne. “The man’s never even seen a Marai, let alone been birthed from one.”

“Makes for an exotic tale though,” said Blaxton. “Mystic origins, magical blood, that sort of thing. Kind of backstory every captain wishes they had. Wish I’d thought of it.”

The thumping of wood on wood halted further discussions, and Sarah turned to see the serpent caller hammering the raised foredeck with his tentacle-wrapped billhook.

In his other hand, he held a flaming torch that burned with a brilliant silver light.

“The sea is this world’s cemetery, and its souls sleep best without monument,” said the serpent caller, his voice a grating hiss through the coral mask. “All other graveyards show symbols of distinction between great and small, rich and poor—but the king, the fool, the prince, and the peasant are all the same to the ocean. Now, fellow travelers of the Sea… heed my words, it is time to pay the ocean its due!”

“About damn time,” said Sarah. “Let’s get this done and go home.”

“I’ll drink to that,” said Petyr.

Sarah and the other captains gathered before the wax-stoppered cannon as the serpent caller’s eyes swept over them all. She felt the potency of the rum swimming around her body, and saw a number of the other captains swaying with more than the motion of the ship.

Where in the eight seas is Rafen?

She didn’t want any more rum. She just wanted him here by her side.

The twins who’d met her and Rafen as they came aboard to confiscate their weapons worked a block and tackle over to the center of the deck. An enormous hook on a thick rope loop was lowered and secured to the lifting ring on the cannon just behind the oiled fuse.

“What a waste,” said Blaxton, tears streaming down her face.

“I didn’t realise you and Aligh were close,” said Sarah.

“What? Gods, no! I mean the cannon. That’s an Orban thirty pounder,” said Blaxton. “Probably one of only a handful left in existence. One hit from that would punch a hole clean through a Noxian warship from stem to stern. Crying shame to see it go to waste.”

Thanks to her mother’s teachings, Sarah knew more about pistols and rifles than she did about the intricacies of ship-borne weapons, but even she had to agree the bronze cannon was far too good for the likes of a miserly soul like Aligh. Was that a final insult to those left behind, that his most beautiful weapon would serve as his tomb and never belong to anyone else?

Something niggled about that, though—a nagging feeling she was missing something.

Crab Hat secured the hook to the cannon, then she and her twin stood back as the serpent caller began to speak.

“Captains of Bilgewater, it does my heart proud to see so many of you here today,” he said. “The best and the worst, the scum and the cream of our city’s reaver-kind.”

A few mutters went through the captains at so harsh an opening, but serpent callers were known to be touched by the Bearded Lady, and their ways were unknowable to most people.

“Our fair isles stand at a pivotal moment in their history, and many paths lead into the future, as tangled and inconstant as the many limbs of Nagakabouros, but I have seen the way forward! On many of these paths, I see the peaks and coves of the Serpent Isles ablaze, its people dying as our enemies close in. But on one path, one singular path, I see us proud, stronger than ever, a united people under a great leader!”

Sarah’s brow furrowed. Yes, the serpent callers were a strange bunch, but this was beyond anything she’d heard any of them say before.

“You have gathered here to see Captain Aligh down to the depths, a man whose boots none of you were fit to clean. A man of vision, a man who knew what needed to be done!”

The twins began hauling on the pulley ropes to lift the cannon, their muscles bunching and straining as the rear end of the cannon, gun carriage and all, began lifting from the deck. The barrel tilted downward, and were it not for the waxed stopper, Sarah felt she could have looked right down its length to see Aligh’s dead body.

“You all have failed Nagakabouros! You all have fought and betrayed one another, like Rat Town scum scrabbling over a copper sprat. None of you has the vision to raise a fleet like the ones of old and make Bilgewater ruler of the waves! You all throw your coins and your tributes into the water, and for what? For safety? A blessing? No, it’s a sacrifice you’re offering, a blood price for the ocean to lend you its wrath. But what does the ocean care for copper coins or the smallest fish of the catch? No, for Bilgewater to prosper, it needs a red tide of offerings!”

Sarah surreptitiously glanced around at the other captains to see what they were making of the serpent caller’s lunacy, but clearly the rum had numbed them to just how insane this was. She felt eyes upon her and saw Petyr looking right at her.

He gave her a terse smile, and her unease ratcheted up several notches.

She saw he was easing, half-step by half-step, toward the gunwale.

Sarah looked back down the cannon barrel.

And then she knew.

“Oh no…”

She ran toward the raised foredeck, tearing off her hat and reaching up to pull out twin stilettos masquerading as hairpins. Each was a slender needle of blackened steel with a rounded skull-pommel, and she knew just where to stick them to kill a man stone dead.

“So I offer the sea your blood, your sacrifice!” screamed the serpent caller, tearing off his mask and hood so everyone could see him. So everyone would know who had brought them here to die.

Sarah saw a grey-bearded face, furrowed by old age and aglow with madness. A long scar bisected his leathery face from right eyebrow to left cheek, and the wisps of his beard were twisted into thin braids entwined with pearls and fishhooks.

His eyes were the eyes of a man who never paid a kraken if he could spend a sprat.

Who skipped out on the ocean’s tithe on every voyage.

A man she knew from reputation and decades of bloody legend.

“Aligh, you treacherous bastard!” she yelled.

The twins saw her coming, but couldn’t yet release the chains holding the cannon’s rear aloft.

Time slowed for Sarah, her heartbeat like the slow tolling of the bell upon the Widow’s Manse whenever a ship was lost to the ocean. It felt like she was running knee deep in sticky guts in the carving bays of the Slaughter Docks.

“You’re too late, Captain Fortune,” said Aligh.

He swept the torch down to the back of the cannon, and roared in triumph.

She pulled back her hand to throw one of her stilettos.

She knew she wouldn’t make it.

The silver flame lit the oiled touchpaper.

And the world exploded in a deafening blast of fire and thunder.

That she wasn’t dead was Sarah’s first surprise.

Her second was that the Moon Serpent was still afloat.

A cannon that big ought to have holed the ship all the way down to the ocean, and broken its keel.

She couldn’t hear anything, not really. Her ears were filled with a high-pitched whine, maddeningly shrill and muffled at the same time.

She rolled onto her side, wincing as she felt blood streaming down her arm.

A dull awareness of foggy, distant sounds coming from behind made Sarah turn her head.

A scene of utter carnage, worse than anything she’d seen in a long time.

And suddenly she knew why the ship wasn’t sinking. The cannon had been primed with canister shot.

It was a load designed to shred and maim flesh, but leave a vessel intact, and it had worked its lethal power with horrifying potency.

Sarah’s mad dash toward Aligh had carried her mostly clear of the wide fan of red-hot fragments, but the other captains weren’t so lucky.

Men and women lay sprawled on a deck slick with blood.

Those closest to the gun were almost unrecognisable, transformed from living, breathing human beings into scraps of bloody meat. Shorn arms and legs lay scattered in gory heaps, and it was all but impossible to tell which limb belonged to which body.

But not everyone was dead.

Those captains toward the rear of the throng writhed in agony, bleeding from scores of deep lacerations and screaming the name of the Bearded Lady. Sarah could still barely hear them.

She saw Blaxton lying in a lake of blood, her fine blue coat cut to pieces, as if someone had given her a hundred lashes from a barbed cat-o’-nine-tails. Sarah couldn’t tell if she was dead or alive, but she was lying very still. Thorne slithered out from beneath her, and with the luck typical of that lowlife, it looked like he’d escaped the worst of the blast using Blaxton as a human shield.

Rafen! Where’s Rafen?

She couldn’t see him, and could only hope that he’d found a way to survive.

He must have, he’s Rafen. He survives everything, doesn’t he?

Then her eyes settled on a figure lying sprawled against the railings, bloodied, but mostly unhurt.

Petyr Harker.

He grinned, and hate filled Sarah as she knew that somehow, in some way, that smug, conniving sea-slug had known about Aligh’s trap. He had to have been part of setting it up, a glittering, silver-tongued lure for captains who didn’t know him well enough to send him packing.

Sarah saw the deck hatch swing open, and the skeleton crew that had sailed them out to Moonshard Reef emerged with long gutting knives to finish what their vile captain had begun. They moved as if in a languid dream, skewering bellies and cutting throats with sadistic relish.

Anger surged through Sarah, and she sat upright, blinking through tears of pain.

You’re alive, damn it! Do something!

With that thought blazing in her mind, sounds rushed back and her vision cleared.

The screams of the dying drove her to her feet, and she swept up her stilettos once again.

Aligh stood far behind the smoking cannon, arms aloft and surveying his bloody handiwork with the eyes of a zealot. Sarah sprinted toward him again, but this time the twins rushed past their captain to intercept her.

She vaulted over the cannon, and hammered her boots into the face of the twin with the tattooed eyes all across her skull. Razorscale teeth splintered under Sarah’s iron hard boot-heels, and sent the woman flying backward.

Sarah landed lightly and leapt to the side as Crab Hat swung a monstrous, fang-toothed club at her head. It smashed the deck boards to splinters, and Sarah rolled to her feet hammering her daggered fist into the woman’s back. The crab-shell armor was hard and smooth and the stiletto slid clear without penetrating.

The woman wrenched the club from the deck and spun around, the weapon slashing just over Sarah’s head. Her tattooed twin was back up, blood streaming down her face of many eyes, turning it into a hideous grimace. She held a pair of long punch daggers with razor-toothed sawfish blades.

She came at Sarah in a flurry of blows, elbows, and high kicks.

Sarah tried to parry and dodge, only barely avoiding each killing blow. She could hold her own in a fight, but she’d take a pistol over a pair of thin daggers any day. By the time they’d backed up toward the cannon, Sarah’s shirt was soaked in blood and she was seriously reconsidering the wisdom of her plan to fight hand to hand.

From the corner of her eye she saw the armored twin winding up for another strike.

Two to one, this fight would only end badly for Sarah.

Tattooed Eyes slashed her dagger low, and Sarah grunted as it cut a line of fire across the side of her thigh. She dropped to one knee as a reverse stroke came for her throat.

She lifted her arm to parry, and the slashing blade cut straight through the fabric of her coat.

The impact sent searing bolts of pain up Sarah’s arm, but the iron rods specially woven into the back of the sleeve halted the blade before it bit flesh.

Her foe let out a “Ha!” of triumph, but the grin fell from her face as she realised Sarah was unhurt.

“Gedian and Sons, Battle Tailors and War Clothiers,” said Sarah, and hammered her stiletto up through the soft flesh on the underside of her foe’s jaw. Her eyes flew wide in shock, and Sarah saw the black needle of the blade behind her razor teeth as it punched up into her brain.

Sarah rose and kicked the dead body away as her twin screamed in anguish.

Stiletto versus war-club—bad odds. Really bad odds.

Sarah risked a glance behind her.

Cannonball dent in the right side…

This was her chance to even those odds.

The armored twin launched herself at Sarah in fury, her huge, toothed club rising up for a strike. The weapon slashed down in an executioner’s arc, and Sarah dived aside at the last instant.

The iron head of the club smashed the chest behind Sarah apart. She spun inside the twin’s guard and drove her blade into a gap between the plates of crab-shell armor.

The woman grunted and stumbled backward, tearing the weapon from Sarah’s hand.

Sarah turned and began frantically searching through the shattered ruin of the chest, sweeping aside damaged knives, brass-knuckles, and iron-tipped cudgels.

“Come on, come on, where are you…?” she hissed, hearing the scrape of a club being lifted from the deck. A broken handle, a bent blade.

Had one of the twins hidden them somewhere else, hoping to keep them for themselves…?

No, no, no…

And then her palm closed on the smooth, ivory-handled grips she knew better than anything.

Sarah spun the twin pistols into her grip, and snapped the firing mechanism into place.

She twisted and dived to the side, pulling the triggers in a storm of shot.

Crab-shell armor was proof against blades and hooks, but against gun-dame-forged weapons, the tattooed woman might as well have been naked.

Red-hot pistol balls blasted through her armor, and she toppled over the cannon, leaking vital fluids from more than a dozen neat holes.

Sarah rose to her feet and tensed as she felt the roll and sway of the deck change. It was a subtle change, almost unnoticeable, a change in the angle of the anchored ship’s prow as the swell of the ocean shifted…

“Oh, now that’s not good…” she said, as Aligh limped toward her, distraught at the sight of the dead twins.

“You killed them!” he cried.

Sarah fired a shot into each of his kneecaps. “That’s for all the captains you killed tonight.”

Aligh screamed, writhing on the deck. He wept and feebly tried to swing his billhook at her.

Sarah easily batted it aside and jammed a pistol under his chin.

“Any last words?” she asked. “Now this really is your funeral.”

The deck shifted again, and a deathly silence fell over the ship.

Even the wounded seemed to recognize the strange quality of the darkness closing in around them as a deep rumbling sound rose up from the water.

Sarah sensed fearful tremors running through the ship’s timbers.

“What’s happening?” she demanded, jabbing the pistol harder into Aligh’s throat. “What else did you have planned tonight?”

“This is none of my doing,” wept Aligh, and despite his obvious agony, he laughed with the hysteria of a man who knew his time had come. “My bill to the sea is due. And you’re going to pay it with me…”

Sarah had felt something like this in the bones of a ship once before.

Nine years ago, just north of Bilgewater and making the last, hooking sprint to the inner bay. They’d been returning from a bounty run up by Drakkengate and spotted a smuggler running a slimmed-down carrack out of the Ironwater coves, fleeing the Serpent Isles with treasures looted from a Buhru temple.

She still remembered the mournful rumble of the titanic serpent horns as they echoed over the ocean, and the terror as her crew watched an abyssal kraken rear up from the water to smash the carrack to matchwood and drag all aboard to their deaths.

The shift in the deck as the kraken had passed under their ship felt just like this.

She ran to the gunwale and searched the fog and ocean.

The sea swirled around the crags of Moonshard Reef, dark and keeping their secrets. No one knew just how deep it got around here, but any ship that sank out this way was never seen again, never washed up on the isles.

What’s out there…?

And then she saw it.

Two hundred yards out, huge and unyielding, a titan rising from the deep.

The vast dome of its helmeted head broke the water, twin eyes glowing with the orange light of a smelting furnace. The water boiled around it, frothed to madness by a dark miasma surrounding its wavering outline, and leaving an oily slick in its wake.

Its body was huge, encased in plates of corroded iron, looped with chains torn from countless sunken vessels. Across one shoulder it carried a colossal, hook-bladed anchor, dripping with black water and garlanded with rotten weeds from the deepest, darkest abyss.

Sarah’s mind refused to process what she was seeing.

This is impossible.

It was a dark legend come to life, a scare story told around the beer-soaked tables of the wharf-side taverns by drunken rakes hoping for a free drink. She knew its name, had even laughed at the impossibility of its existence.

But here it was, rising from the ocean with booming, ponderous strides.

The drowned tallyman, come to claim the ocean’s due.

Even his name was said to be a curse.

“Nautilus…”

The water exploded as Nautilus hurled his anchor at the Moon Serpent.

A tidal wave made stagnant and rotten by its time in the darkness washed over the ship, as the anchor crashed into the deck. It smashed clear through the timbers, and the ship tilted wildly to port as the impossible weight of it pulled it over.

Sarah fell against the railing and jammed her pistols home in their shoulder holsters as the ship tilted downward. Crew screamed as they slid down the angled deck or were thrown overboard. The anchor ripped clear of the ship’s side, and the ship violently righted itself. Sarah looked up at the sound of splintering masts overhead. Silver sails billowed as the topmast and mizzen snapped like twigs, falling to the shattered deck to crush a dozen men or more.

She struggled to her feet, hearing the groan of a keel bending under stresses it had never been designed to endure. Caulked timbers split and geysers of black water erupted all along the length of the deck.

Sarah turned to Aligh, who clung to the bronze cannon that ought to have served as his tomb.

“You did this!” she yelled, as the looming shadow of Nautilus reared up from the water.

The carved wooden railing smashed to splinters as a massive hand, surely too large to have once been mortal, slammed down on the foredeck. Another swiftly followed, trailing a length of chain that slithered with a black, oily substance.

“He’s not real!” screamed Aligh, his mind undone by the sight of Nautilus. “It was just a story!”

“He looks pretty damn real to me!” shouted Sarah over the cacophony of smashing wood, tearing sails, and terrified screams. Fiery heat washed over her as Nautilus hauled his bulk over the gunwale, and turned his infernal gaze upon her.

She felt the deathly heat of it crawling over her skin, its touch loathsome and invasive, as if the titan of the deeps could see into her very soul.

His titanic weight heeled the ship over again, and Sarah grabbed hold of the looped pulley ropes as the deck tilted crazily. The front of the cannon slid sideways as the block and tackle swung wildly and its knotted end strained to bear its colossal weight. The wooden pegs securing the wheels of the gun carriage in place creaked ominously.

Aligh pulled his way along the cannon toward her.

“I won’t go alone!” he screamed. “If the ocean wants me, I’ll drag you down with me!”

The man was a lunatic, like the crippled sailors raving in Bilgewater’s alleys with a mind destroyed by the foulest rotgut. His fraudulent serpent caller robes had come loose, and dangling from his neck on a leather thong was a silver-and-brass sigil of three intertwined serpents.

Swinging on the pulley, Sarah tried to kick him away, but he had a madman’s strength, clawing at her throat with his free hand. Cracked fingernails drew blood, and she struggled to find purchase as the ship tipped over onto its side, its port side now completely underwater.

Far above them, Nautilus drew back his anchor once again and brought it down like a colossal woodsman’s axe.

Its unnatural mass sheared through the deck amidships, and Sarah heard the thunderous crack of the keel finally splitting. The vessel’s stern rose up sharply, and the sounds of Aligh’s screaming crew echoed in the mist.

On the ocean, we are all equal, went the old saying, but right now Sarah didn’t give a wharf-rat’s shit for those murderous, traitorous bastards.

Let them all drown.

The front half of the ship sprang up with the force of the blow, then slammed back down onto the ocean, tilting back upright as seawater poured into the bow section. The weight of it was dragging the prow deeper underwater with every passing second.

In moments, nothing would remain on the surface.

A body slammed into the deck next to her; Aligh’s tattooed daughter, the one with Sarah’s stiletto still jammed in her brain.

Slicks of black fluid spilled from her mouth and swirled in her eyes.

With a groan of screeching metal, Nautilus reached for Aligh with a massive, corroded gauntlet. His crushing grip fastened on the treacherous captain’s torso and pulled. Aligh held fast to Sarah with lunatic strength, as though they embraced like lovers.

She couldn’t shake him loose.

“All because you wouldn’t pay the damn tithe,” snarled Sarah, as Aligh fought to hold on to her.

“The ocean will take you as well as me!” he screamed.

“Not today,” said Sarah, reaching up and back to grip the skull-pommel of the stiletto wedged in the soft tissue under the tattooed twin’s jaw.

She pulled hard, and the blade slid free in a welter of fluids.

“You want him?” said Sarah, reversing her grip on the weapon. “He’s all yours!”

She rammed the blade into the side of Aligh’s neck, driving it hard through to the other side. His head snapped back and Sarah’s hand flashed out to catch a falling leather thong cut loose from around Aligh’s throat. His grip spasmed, and the metal titan wrenched him back just as the deck hook securing Sarah’s rope loop snapped.

The full weight of the cannon yanked on the block and tackle, lifting Sarah away from the weapon and Aligh. Swinging wildly above the sinking ship, she watched as Nautilus turned and sank back into the ocean, the screaming Aligh clutched in one iron fist.

The water closed over him, a trail of frantic bubbles following Aligh down as Nautilus returned to the darkness below with his bounty. As Aligh was dragged down, Sarah took grim pleasure in seeing the look of terror in his eyes at his fate; condemned to an eternity in darkness without so much as a pauper’s marker to his name.

The Moon Serpent’s prow rose almost vertically in the ocean, and Sarah swung on the rope to reach the jutting, serpent figurehead. Her booted feet caught the silver fangs, and she managed to remain upright as the ship slowly sank into the ocean.

With a moment’s pause, she saw the back half of the boat was almost entirely underwater, with only a few sailors crowded in around the upright stern, so close she could likely have swung over to reach them. One of the survivors was Petyr Harker, and she felt bilious hatred rise in her gorge.

“I did tell you I was just the sort of fellow to seek dramatic revenge in some stupidly elaborate scheme,” said Petyr. “Admittedly, I didn’t quite see it turning out like this, but at least—”

Sarah didn’t give him a chance to finish, throwing the rope loop toward him like a lasso, and no harpooner had ever cast so perfect a throw.

The loop settled around Petyr’s neck like a noose, but before he could lift it clear, Sarah drew her pistol and aimed upward.

“Say hello to Aligh on the way down, Petyr,” she said, and pulled the trigger.

The shot smashed the block and tackle straining to hold the cannon’s enormous weight, and it immediately fell into the ocean. Sarah had a fraction of a second to savor the look of horror in Petyr’s eyes before the rope snapped taut and wrenched him from his perch.

His scream was cut short as he hit the water and vanished into the depths as the cannon dragged him all the way down.

Standing atop the serpent figurehead, Sarah watched the Moon Serpent’s stern finally go under in a swirl of foaming water and cracking timbers. The few sailors still clinging to the wreckage paddled frantically on the surface before the suction of the wreck finally pulled them down with it.

Looking down, she reckoned she had a few seconds at best before the prow did the same to her.

“Shame to send something so beautiful to the deep,” said a voice behind her, and Sarah smiled.

She looked over her shoulder to see Rafen in their landing boat, soaked to the skin and covered in cuts, bruises, and bites. The storm lamp on the prow bobbed like a welcome beacon of safety.

“Thank you kindly, old man,” she said.

“I meant the cannon,” said Rafen, carefully rowing toward her. “A finer thirty pounder I’ve yet to see.”

“Aye,” agreed Sarah, “but it’s tradition, and you don’t go messing with traditions, right?”

“Right indeed,” said Rafen.

“So where in the name of the Bearded Lady did you get to?” asked Sarah, “I needed you on the damn deck when everything went to shit.”

Rafen shrugged and said, “Went below to get another bottle of rum and ran into Aligh’s crew fixing to get a-murderin’. They didn’t take kindly to being discovered and tried to cut my damn head off. Managed to gut a couple with some borrowed steel, but had to jump out of a gunport before they shanked me good. Swam around to get our boat, getting feasted on by all that lives under the surface, thank you very much. But I’m here now, so do you want to get on board or are you planning to go down with the ship?”

“This ship’s captain’s already gone with her,” said Sarah, stepping casually from the figurehead to the landing boat.

With her safely aboard, Rafen rowed them away from the doomed Moon Serpent as the figurehead and its topmost mast finally went under in a swirl of bubbles, rope, and broken spars.

Sarah moved to the back of the landing boat, now seeing she wasn’t the only passenger Rafen had picked up. A bloodied body in a lacerated coat of pale blue, gold cuffs, and frayed bronze epaulettes lay slumped in the landing boat’s bilges.

“Blaxton?” said Sarah. “She’s still alive?”

“Just about,” said Rafen. “She’s a blowhard, but she didn’t deserve to go down with scum like Aligh. Didn’t feel right to leave her to drown, right?”

Sarah said nothing, too exhausted to do more than nod.

“So you going to tell me what in the eight seas happened up there?” asked Rafen.

“You’d never believe me,” said Sarah.

“I’m guessing it was you that sank the ship firing the damn cannon into the deck?” said Rafen.

“Wasn’t me. What happened up there was all Aligh’s doing,” said Sarah, with a look that told him not to ask more.

“Fair enough.”

“Though I did manage to get this.” She opened her palm to reveal a disc stamped with three intertwined serpents of silver and brass.

“Aligh’s sigil,” said Rafen.

“Might not mean much these days, but we’ll see what happens when I show it to the rest of his crew, once they’ve sobered up.”

Rafen grinned. “Well, at least this trip wasn’t a total waste of time.”

Sarah slumped in the back of the boat and watched as the rearing crag of Moonshard Reef began to fade into the mist. She narrowed her eyes as she saw a lone figure climb from the water and shake itself dry.

A hunched wretch in an expensive kraken-skin coat.

“Thorne,” she whispered. “It’s always the bloody rats that make it out.”

“What’s that?” said Rafen, mid-row. “Someone else made it out?”

“No,” said Sarah, turning away. “No one at all.”

Separate, but never parted, Kindred represents the twin essences of death. Lamb’s bow offers a swift release from the mortal realm for those who accept their fate. Wolf hunts down those who run from their end, delivering violent finality within his crushing jaws. Though interpretations of Kindred’s nature vary across Runeterra, every mortal must choose the true face of their death.

Kindred is the white embrace of nothingness and the gnashing of teeth in the dark. Shepherd and the butcher, poet and the primitive, they are one and both. When caught on the edge of life, louder than any trumpeting horn, it is the hammering pulse at one’s throat that calls Kindred to their hunt. Stand and greet Lamb’s silvered bow and her arrows will lay you down swiftly. If you refuse her, Wolf will join you for his merry hunt, where every chase runs to its brutal end.

For as long as its people have known death, Kindred has stalked Valoran. When the final moment comes, it is said a true Demacian will turn to Lamb, taking the arrow, while through the shadowed streets of Noxus, Wolf leads the hunt. In the snows of the Freljord, before going off to fight, some warbands “kiss the Wolf,” vowing to honor his chase with the blood of their enemies. After each Harrowing, the town of Bilgewater gathers to celebrate its survivors and honor those granted a true death by Lamb and Wolf.

Denying Kindred is to deny the natural order of things. There are but a wretched few who have eluded these hunters. This perverse escape is no sanctuary, for it only holds a waking nightmare. Kindred waits for those locked in the undeath of the Shadow Isles, for they know all will eventually fall to Lamb’s bow or Wolf’s teeth.

The earliest dated appearance of the eternal hunters is from a pair of ancient masks, carved by unknown hands into the gravesites of people long-forgotten. But to this day, Lamb and Wolf remain together, and they are always Kindred.

The prisoner stands tall, his ankles chained to a wooden post, his wrists bound together with coarse rope. Blood trickles down his cheeks onto his black Noxian tunic, leaving small red puddles by his bare toes. Above him, the sky paints patches of gray against blue, unsure of its true colors.

A fence of tall jagged stakes surrounds the prisoner. Nearby soldiers run from tent to tent. Their hurried steps kick up dust, leaving grime on their boots they will be sure to clean before they face their commanders. The prisoner knows this, having observed their disciplined behavior over the past days. It is unlike any he has ever seen.

Around the camp, bright navy banners ripple in the wind, displaying the image of a sword dividing two spread wings—the sigil of Demacia.

Not long ago these were the black and crimson banners of Noxus. The prisoner remembers his orders: to reclaim Kalstead for the glory of the empire.

He failed.

And he knows the consequences. War does not forgive failure. This is the truth he is prepared to accept. For now, he awaits his fate. The first time he was held prisoner, he lost his home. This time, he will lose even more.

He closes his eyes as more memories flood his mind. There were two men, he recalls. His master he knew—he had turned a lost boy taken from his home into a fighter fit for the Reckoner arenas. The other was a stranger, claiming to represent the empire’s best interests. After they shook hands, he was sent west, under the shadow of the Argent Mountains, to Kalstead.

There were no goodbyes, no well wishes. But, he was not alone. Others like him shared a name, “soldiers-of-misfortune” as they were called back in Noxus. Ragtag groups of fighters sent to deal with tasks unworthy of a veteran warband’s attention. Not many had a say in the matter, their masters too willing to sell their talents to the military for the right price.

“You don’t look like you’re from Noxus,” a voice calls out, breaking the prisoner’s moment of reflection.

He opens his eyes and sees a Demacian man standing outside the enclosure. His garb is a mix of navy and brown fabric covered by chainmail, and a shortsword hangs by his waist. He has the bearing of a leader, the prisoner decides, but a junior one.

“What’s your name?” the soldier calls.

The prisoner thinks. Will his answer decide his fate?

“Xin Zhao,” he replies, his voice rough and dry.

“What?”

“Xin. Zhao.”

“That doesn’t sound like a Noxian name,” the soldier wonders aloud. “Noxian names are tough, like… Boram Darkwill.” He says the two words with a shudder.

Xin Zhao does not reply. He doubts this conversation is worth having before his coming execution.

“Come along, shield-sergeant,” says another Demacian. The young officer’s severe look commands the sergeant’s attention. She wears silver armor with gold trim adorning her shoulder pauldrons. A cape of vivid blue falls down her back.

“Don’t bother conversing with Noxians,” she advises. “They do not share our virtues.”

The sergeant bows his head. “Yes, Sword-Captain Crownguard. But if I might ask…”

The captain nods.

“Why is this one being kept by himself?”

She glances at the prisoner, her blue eyes stern with contempt.

“This one ended more lives than the others.”

Xin Zhao wakes to the sound of horns. He sits in the mud kicking his numb feet at the damp soil. Pressing his back against the post, he snakes himself up to a standing position and sees the sergeant from the day before approach, accompanied by four others dressed in similar attire. They open the gate to the enclosure and the sergeant walks through first, carrying a tray holding a bowl of hot soup.

“Morning. I’m Olber, and this is my watch unit,” the sergeant says. “Here’s your breakfast, Zen Jaw.”

Xin Zhao watches him set the tray on the ground. Who knew someone could mispronounce two syllables so cruelly?

A Demacian guard cuts through the rope binding Xin Zhao’s wrists with practiced motions. The sergeant and the others stand by, their hands resting on the hilts of their swords.

“Well, go on and eat,” Olber says.

Xin Zhao picks up the bowl. “They sent five of you.”

“We do as the captain orders,” Olber explains. “She’s a Crownguard, after all. They protect the king himself.”

The guards nod along and turn to each other.

“Aye, her father saved the last Jarvan at Storm’s Fang,” one mentions.

“Which Jarvan was that?” another asks.

“Second. We’re on the third one now.”

“That’s King Jarvan the Third,” Olber interjects. “Your king. And mine. You oughta show some respect, given he personally rode out here with us.”

They think highly of their king, Xin Zhao notes. While the soldiers continue to banter, he drinks his soup, one sip at a time, as he listens to their conversation. They speak of how foolish the Noxians were to venture this far west, of how easy it was for them to come to Kalstead’s aid, and of how their triumph was one achieved in the name of justice.

We were sent here to die, Xin Zhao realizes. He grips the empty bowl so tightly it cracks, the wood coming apart in his hands.

The Demacians turn their attention. Olber looks at Xin Zhao. “Hands.”

Xin Zhao offers his palms facing upward.

“You sure took a beating,” Olber remarks, tying new rope around Xin Zhao's wrists. The guards gather around. They see scars everywhere, running like rivers up and down his skin. Xin Zhao follows their gaze. He can no longer tell which scars came from which match. There were so many that he fought, and so few he cared to remember.

“Those aren’t recent wounds,” one of the guards observes.

“You’re right,” Xin Zhao says. His voice, clear and strong, grabs their attention. For a moment, they stand still, looking at him like he is no longer just another prisoner.

“What’d you do back in Noxus?” Olber asks.

“I fought in the arenas,” Xin Zhao answers.

“A Reckoner!” a guard exclaims. “I’ve heard of you savages. They fight to the death in front of thousands!”

“I’ve never heard of no Reckoner named Zen Jaw,” another mutters.

“Maybe he wasn’t a good one? Maybe that’s why he’s here, all beaten and tied up?”

“Hold on,” Olber chimes in. “Don't you Reckoners use different names in the arena?”

Xin Zhao almost smiles. This Demacian is smarter than he lets on. It is known, even outside the empire, that Reckoners often choose inventive titles. Some opt for the extravagant. Others have something to hide. For Xin Zhao, it was to remember the life he had before it was taken away.

“Viscero,” a guard says, holding an unfurled piece of parchment. “That’s what the other Noxians called him.”

Olber snatches the parchment. He examines it. A few long seconds pass before he looks up at Xin Zhao. “You're the Reckoner.”

Silence. Thin streaks of sunlight cut through the gray sky.

“Viscero,” Olber repeats, his voice tinged with awe. “The one who never lost.”

The guards look to each other. Then, together, they stare at Xin Zhao, their eyes now lit with recognition.

“I know you!” says a guard.

“Didn't you beat a minotaur?” says another.

Olber raises a hand to halt the idle chatter. “Why'd you say your name was Zen Jaw?” he asks.

Xin Zhao sighs. “Once I became a Reckoner, there was no more Xin Zhao. There was only Viscero.” He looks down at his bound wrists, at his chained ankles, and then back at the Demacians. “In the time I have left, I’d rather live by my real name.”

“But what’s a famous Reckoner doing fighting Noxus’ border wars?” Olber asks again.

“I was bought out,” Xin Zhao replies, “by the military.” He finds explaining all this rather strange. For so long, he had assumed his final moments would pass by quickly, in the arena, by spear or sword—not with a hot meal and questions about his past.

Is this fate offering its last sympathies?

Olber appears troubled. “You didn't have a choice,” he says.

Xin Zhao shakes his head.

“You have family left in Noxus?”

Xin Zhao thinks for a moment, then shakes his head again. He wonders if he has any family at all, anywhere.

“Well, I guess you're off to a new beginning.” Olber nods at a guard who pulls out a key and starts unchaining Xin Zhao from his pole.

Xin Zhao tilts his head, curious. “What do you mean?”

Olber smiles. “Let’s get you dressed.”

Xin Zhao sits upright in the new tunic given to him. The Demacian fabric feels soft on his skin. He looks about the tent, counting the straw beds and the empty bowls of soup. Remarks of gratitude fill his ears. He recognizes the earthy voices. They come from others who, hours ago, were prisoners like him.

One by one, they rise from their beds and thank the healers who mended their wounds. Armed Demacians enter the tent. Xin Zhao watches the prisoners be escorted out. He knows them well, having marched alongside them to Kalstead. On their journey, they spent much of their time trying to best each other in individual feats of strength, with the victors celebrating their might and the defeated left in shame. Those especially vocal would boast aloud how many Demacian soldiers they planned to kill. That was before they came face to face with a real army.

There was no battle. Maybe the Noxian military would have fared better, with its legions and siege weaponry, but they were not the military. They were conscripts, untrained in the ways of formal combat, facing a unified kingdom. Within hours, Kalstead cheered for its saviors.

We were sent here to die, Xin Zhao reminds himself. And yet, as fate would have it, they still lived. Not by the will of Noxus, but by that of Demacia.

Fate flows like the four winds, his elders had once said, and no man can know its course until he sails it.

An old healer walks by. Her pale robe matches the others working in the tent. “How are you feeling, child?” she asks.

“I'm fine,” Xin Zhao replies. “Thank you.”

“Do not thank me. Thank the king. It was by his royal decree that all prisoners be cared for.”

“The third Jarvan?” This king, again. How can one man inspire so much?

“Yes, our great Jarvan the Third,” she corrects him. “He granted you the opportunity to begin anew. To find peace.”

Xin Zhao looks down at the floor with his hands folded. Viscero could always find a place in the arena. And elsewhere, the peoples of Valoran would embrace him for his strength, that much he is certain. As for his birthplace—the First Lands beyond the sea he has not seen for decades—it is as foreign to him now as any distant fantasy.

Where could he find peace? Would he want it?

No, his chance at peace died long ago, when he took his first life and was rewarded with an extension on his own.

Xin Zhao turns to the healer. “I have one question, if I may.”

“What is it, child?”

“This king of yours. Who is he?”

The healer chuckles. “Why don’t you see for yourself?”

Xin Zhao walks behind Olber with four guards surrounding him. As they trudge through the camp, he peers into the passing tents, seeing Demacian soldiers pack their belongings and captains plan for their next deployment. Rumors tell that somewhere, not a week’s march away, another battle against Noxus is imminent. Xin Zhao ponders if that is where these people will head, following a trail of turmoil, righting wrongs wherever they go. They seem to serve a higher calling, something stronger than strength, and perhaps more valuable.

He imagines how that might feel, to be so clear in your convictions you would sacrifice your own life for them. There were times in the arena when his life meant nothing. Now, it is worth an audience with a king.

“Looks like you’re the last one,” Olber says, stopping the escort and pointing ahead.

Xin Zhao follows the sergeant's finger and spots a tent larger than all the others. The same bright navy banners grace its roof. Guards in gleaming armor stand in parallel lines outside its entrance. He sees a man, bearing Noxian tattoos on his face and neck, shuffle out carrying a small bag. The man bows his head multiple times before he is led away by one of the guards, and immediately, another Demacian steps in to fill the empty space.

“That's the king's tent,” Olber says. “We are to stay here. You go in, kneel, accept the provisions granted to you by the king, and then we'll collect you.”

The sergeant smiles. “The king said once you're in front of him, you're a free man… but you’ll still need us when you’re out. Captain Crownguard runs this camp, and she’ll not have enemy combatants walk alone. Not ‘til they leave Kalstead for good.”

Xin Zhao gives a knowing nod, and heads toward the tent.

“The king welcomes Viscero!”

The voice that hails him is deep and proper. Xin Zhao walks forth. Once inside, he kneels on his right leg and bows his head low. The floor is covered in cloth embroidered with depictions of winged knights and helmed warriors.

“You may look up,” another voice comes. Xin Zhao lifts his head and identifies its source. It is a man, not much older than himself, sitting on a raised oaken chair. He wears radiant, gold-plated armor embellished with ebony spikes. Atop his head is a crown adorned with jewels. By his right hand lies a great steel lance, its edges sharp like the teeth of some magnificent beast.

This is their king, Xin Zhao realizes. His eyes linger on the man for a second longer, sensing the air of majesty about him, paired with a raw physical presence he had not expected.

To the king's left stands Sword-Captain Crownguard, just as stoic as when Xin Zhao first saw her.

To his right, dressed in a royal tunic is a little boy. He sits on an oaken chair of his own with his small leather boots dangling over the edge. It is impossible not to notice the king’s likeness in him, both having strong noses and square jaws. Two additional guards surround these three, each holding a spear pointing upward.

“Viscero is quite an unusual name,” King Jarvan III says. “What is its origin?”

Xin Zhao peers downward, wondering how he should respond.

“You will speak when the king addresses you,” the sword-captain commands.

“At ease, Tianna,” the king says with a wave of his hand. “He is surely shocked by the events of these past few days. We would be right to offer this man his time, would we not?”

The sword-captain opens her mouth only to close it without a word, choosing instead to give a curt nod.

“It is a reminder of my home,” Xin Zhao answers.

“Oh, is that so?” the king says, intrigued. “I have studied much of Noxus, yet I have never heard of a place called Viscero.”

“It is not so much a place, but a memory… albeit one that changed meaning in Noxus.”

“Ah,” the king says, looking briefly at his son, “memories of one’s childhood are such—”

“But it is not my real name.”

“You dare interrupt the king?” the sword-captain roars. Her hand clutches the hilt of her sword.

Xin Zhao bows his head. Then, he hears laughter, hearty and full. Again, the voice of Jarvan III.

“You are the first one today to have caused Tianna such grievance,” the king says. “It is her inaugural battle leading the Dauntless Vanguard, though it was not much of a battle, I am sure you would agree.”

He pats the shoulder of the young prince, who has stayed quiet, attentively observing his father. “Please,” the king says. “Tell us your story, Viscero, whose real name has not yet been revealed to me.”

Keeping his gaze low, Xin Zhao takes a breath. “My birth name is Xin Zhao, given to me by my parents who I have not seen since I was a boy. They may be alive, or dead—I do not know.”

He swallows hard. “The place I was born is known as Raikkon, a coastal village in the First Lands, which the people here call Ionia. My childhood was spent on a fishing boat named Viscero, helping the elders with whatever they needed. Life was simple, peaceful… until the marauders came in their red and black ships.”

He closes his eyes for a second. No Demacian speaks.

“We didn’t stand a chance. I was taken. After months on the sea, I found myself in Noxus. Everything was… towering, oppressive, harsh. There was none of the natural beauty that filled my home.”

Xin Zhao thinks he hears hushed sounds of agreement. A resonant murmur, a tiny voice whispering.

“As any lost boy would, I did what was needed to survive. Things I’m not proud of that got the attention of those with power. They recognized my strength, and turned me into a fighter. From there, Viscero was reborn—as a Reckoner.”

He sighs as his voice grows soft. “I killed many, many foes. Some whose real names I didn't even know. The more I killed, the louder the crowds cheered, ‘Viscero! Viscero!’ as their gold filled the pockets of my masters. I thought that would be how I lived out my days, fighting in the arena for the thrill of others. That is, until Noxus offered my masters more gold than the arenas could ever bring.”

Xin Zhao’s shoulders slump. “That was all it took for me to end up here. Your soldiers know the rest.”

Jarvan III is quiet. Everyone waits for him to speak.

“You have lived quite the life,” the king finally says. He glimpses at his son before looking back at Xin Zhao. “Thank you for sharing with us your journey. It makes me, and all of Demacia, proud to be able to release you from the bonds of Noxus.”

The king nods toward one of the guards, who brings out a linen pouch and sets it down before Xin Zhao. It jingles with coin.

“This is the blessing of Jarvan the Third,” Captain Crownguard declares. “There is enough gold there to last you one week’s worth of travel. Know that you've erred to invade lands protected by the kingdom of Demacia, but as a show of good faith, our king has granted you a second chance. Use it well.”

Xin Zhao glances at the pouch. He does not budge. Is it that simple? Take this bag and walk out of here—in peace? Just now, he spoke more honestly about himself than he has ever done, to a stranger who could have ended his life with the wave of a hand.

However, that stranger cared to listen. And through that, he became a stranger no more.

There is no peace for me, but maybe there can be a cause?

“Well,” Captain Crownguard says, pointing two fingers toward the exit.

Xin Zhao lowers his head. “I have one request, if I may.”

“Speak,” the king says.

“I wish to join your guard.”

“Absurd!” Captain Crownguard shouts. The guards strike the ends of their spears against the ground in accord.

The king lets out a soft chuckle and turns to his sword-captain. “What an interesting proposition.”

“Surely, you can't—” Captain Crownguard begins, before she is silenced by her king’s hand once more.

“Let the man explain himself,” Jarvan III says with a grin. “I wish to hear his reasoning.”

Xin Zhao raises his head. His eyes meet the king's. “You have shown me mercy and honor,” he begins. “Two things I never knew until now. All my years in Noxus, I spent fighting for a cause not my own, and during that time I knew of only two truths. Victory meant survival and defeat meant death. That was what I learned, seeing other fighters fall in the arena or disappear never to be seen again after too many losses. But you and your people fight for something else. Something more.”

A breeze ruffles the tent. Two small leather boots shuffle. Xin Zhao clears his throat.

“And I'd rather die fighting for honor than live out my days regretting that I never made that choice.”

Jarvan III leans forward. All others know to remain quiet.

“You speak well,” the king replies. “Better than some of my own advisers, truth be told. Still, my wards endure years, decades even, of training. How am I to believe you are capable?”

Xin Zhao stares at the king, at the prince, at Captain Crownguard. A part of him knows what he could say; another knows what he could do. Is it his choice to make?

No.

Fate has made its choice.

He grabs the coin pouch and throws it at the sword-captain, hitting her in the face. While she recovers, he sweep kicks the guard to his left, knocking him to the floor. Xin Zhao snatches the Demacian’s spear, swinging it in a circle to trip the other guard to his right. His body moves on instinct, fluid and swift as his mind pretends he is back in the arena. With one final twirl of the weapon, he jabs it forward at Jarvan III, its blunt end stopping inches short of the king's throat.

The young prince gasps. The king's guard gather themselves. Soldiers rush in as the sword-captain draws her blade.

Xin Zhao falls to his knees. He lays the spear down without a sound and offers his neck. Finely crafted steel weapons touch his skin.

Tension fills the room. All eyes lock onto Xin Zhao, whose own eyes are closed, at peace, ready to accept whatever comes next.

The king straightens his cloak. “Stand down,” he commands. “My father once said Noxus wasted its talent in those arenas. Now I see the truth in his words.”

“My king,” Captain Crownguard begs. “He tried to kill you!”

“No, Tianna,” the king replies. “He showed me how I could be killed. Even in front of my own trusted guards.”

“My deepest apologies,” Xin Zhao says. His voice is calm and measured, a quiet tide not yet ready to flow ashore. “It was the only way I thought to demonstrate myself.”

“And demonstrate you did,” the king says. “To me, and these warriors of Demacia. It appears they could learn a thing or two from you.”

“I will not have the king’s guard be sullied by a prisoner!” Captain Crownguard exclaims.

“When this man entered my sight, he was a prisoner no more.” The king stands from his chair. “Demacia was founded long ago, by good people who sought refuge from the evils of this world. This man's story reminds me of those tales of old, of great Orlon and his followers. The very ones my father once told me.”

His gaze falls on the prince, who looks back, amazed. “My son, my life’s joy,” the king says, “how happy I am that you are here to witness this moment. To see for yourself why we must uphold our virtues, so others may aspire to do the same. Do you understand?”

“Yes, father,” the prince says, his voice small but firm.

The king steps forward. “Xin Zhao, you have touched me with your life and your courage, a rare thing I have not felt in some time.” He bends down to help Xin Zhao to his feet. “Though you may not have been born a Demacian, I shall allow you to travel back with us, to my kingdom, where you will then prove yourself and your loyalty as my personal guard.”

Xin Zhao feels the king's sturdy hands grip his shoulders.

“Do not take this opportunity lightly.”

Xin Zhao looks Jarvan III in the eye. And for the first time, in a long time, he feels joy, washing over his body like the waves that once carried Viscero free.

The night air is chilly this far north of Kalstead. There is still a week or so before he will gaze upon the walls of the Great City of Demacia, Xin Zhao thinks as he walks outside his tent. A familiar face stands by the entrance.

“Still awake?” Olber says.

“I'm going for a walk. Won't be long.”

Strolling through the camp alone, Xin Zhao takes in the spirit of his new allies. They are an orderly lot, quick to aid one another and ensure safety among their ranks. Seeing their disciplined manner brings a smile to his face. He rounds a corner to look up at the crescent moon when he feels a sudden force pulling him down.

His body collides hard against the ground.

After blinking a couple times, he regains his senses and realizes he has been dragged inside a dimly lit tent. The sword-captain glares down at him. Beside her stand fearsome soldiers dressed in heavy warplate.

“You may have won the king's favor, but you are no Demacian in my eyes,” she states.

As Xin Zhao stands on his feet, she unsheathes her sword. Like the pride following their lioness, those around her do the same.

“I will be watching you,” she warns. “Should anything happen to the king while you are sworn in his service—”

With two hands, Xin Zhao clasps the flat sides of her blade. “Take this as my oath to you.”

Tianna Crownguard looks on, stunned, as he pulls the sword’s tip toward his own throat.

“Should anything happen,” Xin Zhao says. “You may kill me.”

For most of her life, Ahri's origins were a mystery to her, the history of her vastayan tribe all but lost save for the twin gemstones she has carried her entire life. 

Ahri's earliest memories are of running with icefoxes in the northern reaches of Shon-Xan. Though she knew she was not one of them, they clearly saw her as something of a kindred spirit, and came to accept her within the pack.

In that wild, predatory existence, Ahri nonetheless felt a deeper connection to the forests around her. In time, she came to understand that this was the magic of the vastaya that coursed through every fiber of her being, and the realm of spirits that lay beyond. With no one to teach her, instead she learned to call upon this power in her own ways—most often using it to quicken her reflexes in pursuit of prey. If she was careful and close enough, she also found she might soothe a panicked deer, so that it remained serene and calm even as she and her packmates sank their teeth into its flesh.

The world of mortals was as distant and unsettling to Ahri as it was to the icefoxes, but she felt drawn to it for reasons she could not explain. Humans in particular were coarse, gruff creatures… and when a band of huntsmen camped nearby, Ahri watched them from afar as they went about their grim business.

When one of them was wounded by a stray arrow, Ahri could feel his life seeping away. Knowing nothing but the instincts of a predator, she savored the spirit essence leaving his body, and through it gained brief flashes of his memories—the lover he had lost in battle, and the children he had left behind when he came north. Ahri subtly pushed his emotions from fear to sorrow to joy, and comforted him with visions of a sun-soaked meadow as he died.

Afterward, she found that human words now came to her easily, like something from a half-remembered dream, and Ahri knew the time had come to leave the pack behind.

Keeping to the fringes of society, she felt more alive than ever. Her predatory nature remained, but she was caught up in a riot of new experiences, emotions, and customs across Ionia. Mortals, it seemed, also became fascinated by her in return—and she often used this to her advantage, draining their essence while charming them with recollections of beauty, hallucinations of deep longing, and occasionally dreams colored by raw sorrow.

She grew drunk on memories that were not her own, and exhilarated in ending the lives of others even as she felt the grief and woe she brought to her victims. She experienced heartbreak and elation in tantalizing flashes that left her craving more. It was overwhelming, but she sensed her own power fading whenever she tried to stay away, and could not help but partake again and again… 

In time, she began to see herself as mortals did: a monster.

Until one day, an artist stumbled upon her, hunched over a man as she drained his life essence from him. Where others would run, he stayed, offering his own life essence in exchange for her heart. For the first time in her life, Ahri let herself fall in love and be loved, wholly and completely.

Their days passed in warmth and laughter, Ahri curbing her hunger by feeding on her lover. She was truly happy... until she lost control, draining her lover completely.

Ahri fell into despair, her grief consuming her as she mourned the loss of the first and only person she's ever truly loved. The first and only person who ever truly loved her. Retreating even further from society, she became consumed with learning more about where she came from, in hopes that it would help her control her abilities.

With her twin sunstones in hand, she set out in search of others like her, a journey that would take her out of Ionia and across Runeterra, eventually leading her to the discovery of her ancestors, the Vesani, a vastayan tribe that brought innovation and magic to the world before being wiped out.

Inspired by their memories, Ahri has set off to travel the world in search of other remnants of the Vesani. She hopes to carry their legacy forward, bringing good into the world like they did. No longer burdened by the heavy weight of her regrets, she also hopes to finally leave her stolen memories behind and create new memories of her own making.

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.

Magga was about to die for the fourteenth time. She had bitten into a rotten apple–yet again. Its putrid flesh had, as always, infected her with carrionshade. The actress went through the motions of stumbling to her death while shouting her final words for all to hear.

“Oh, but how wondrous a dream is life? Only now—too late!—do I wake to see its myriad of splendors,” she bemoaned.

With a puff of smoke and glittering powder, Kindred made a grand entrance upon the stage. As per tradition, they were played by one actor, his head covered by two opposing masks. He approached Magga, the white mask of the Lamb facing her.

“Hark! Do I hear a plea for my keenest arrow? Come, child, let the warmth of your heart fade into the cold embrace of oblivion.”

Magga refused, as she had thirteen times before. Any nuance in her performance was buried beneath the ear-splitting delivery of her scream. On cue, Lamb spun around, revealing the second mask–that of the Wolf.

“There is naught ye can do to stave off thine end,” growled Wolf.

“I am but a poor young maiden! Please, let my piteous cry fall on all four of thine ears.”

The audience seemed enraptured by the unfolding dramatics of the Orphellum Mechanicals. With the twin threats of plague and war on the tongues of those in neighboring protectorates, death dramas were all the rage.

Denji, the actor portraying both Lamb and Wolf, descended upon the young actress, awkwardly baring wooden fangs. Magga offered her neck. At the threat of Wolf’s bite, she triggered the device sewn into her blouse’s collar. Ribbons of red fabric unspooled to the delighted pips and yelps of the audience. They’d gotten what they paid for.

By the time the Mechanicals had staggered back to their wagon and set off in the direction of Needlebrook, there were no stars to be seen. Instead, a veil of clouds stretched across the night sky.

Needlebrook always delivered a good audience, Illusian, the company’s owner and sole dramaturg, explained once more. He staggered around, drunk on his own accolades—as well as the wine Parr had grifted from the locals.

The night wore on, and the troupe had descended into bickering. Tria and Denji lambasted their playwright over the quality of his plots, which fell into a predictable structure: tragedy strikes maiden, death finds maiden, death takes maiden. Illusian argued that complicated plots detracted from a good death scene.

Magga, the youngest of the bunch, agreed with Tria and Denji’s diagnosis, but kept her mouth shut. Had she not stowed away in the wandering troupe’s wagon, she would certainly be somewhere far more miserable. Luckily for her, the Mechanicals had recently lost several actors due to Illusian’s insistence on complete artistic control. Because of his attitude—and obvious mediocrity—they were facing a drought of fresh faces. And so, the Orphellum Mechanicals agreed to contract Magga to die in all their dramatics for the foreseeable future. For which she had been grateful.

Illusian was still smarting from Denji and Tria’s words when he motioned to Parr, their wagoner, to stop and make camp. The inebriated auteur set out his bedroll in pride of place next to the wagon. He then threw the rest of the bedding into the long grass nearby.

“Ungrateful players can sleep in the wilds,” Illusian spat, “where they shall hopefully find their manners.”

The rest of the troupe built a fire and swapped stories. Denji and Tria had fallen asleep in each other’s arms while whispering potential names for their unborn child into each other’s ears. They had nattered on about the day the traveling company would stop in Jandelle, a town so perfect and peaceful they would set aside their vagabond ways to raise their child.

Magga moved closer to the crackling fire so its pops and whistles would drown out the irksome affections of her traveling companions.

But sleep never came. Instead, Magga tossed and turned, thinking about the looks on the audience’s faces as the coiled spurts of blood unfurled from her neckline. A pretty maiden struck dead by her own naïveté was all the theatrical pomp Illusian could muster, but the crowd lusted after the gruesome façade.

Eventually, she left her bedroll and set out into the woods to soothe her unsettled mind.

In the dead of night, Magga came upon a low grassy mound with slabs of standing stone at its base. Although she could not read the inscriptions, her fingers traced the familiar etching of Kindred’s twin masks. This was a place of the dead, a burial site built long ago.

She felt a chill on the back of her neck that compelled her to look up. She was not alone. Magga immediately understood what she saw, for she’d encountered a crude impersonation of them night after night. But poor Denji couldn’t begin to instill the dread washing over Magga. Before her, perched on a weathered barrow-archway, was Lamb herself, flanked by her ever-faithful counterpart, Wolf.

“I hear a beating heart!” said Wolf, his black eyes twinkling with delight. “May I have it?”

“Perhaps,” replied Lamb. “I sense she is afraid. Speak, beautiful one. Tell us your name.”

“I-I would have yours first,” stammered Magga, stepping backward. Her slow escape was halted by the speedy Wolf, who materialized unsettlingly close behind her.

He spoke directly in her ear. “We have many names.”

“In the West, I am Ina to his Ani,” said Lamb. “In the East, Farya to his Wolyo. But we are Kindred everywhere. I am always Lamb to Wolf, and he is always Wolf to Lamb.”

Wolf reared up and sniffed at the air.

“She is playing a boring game,” said Wolf. “Let us play a new game, one of chasing and running and biting.”

“She is not playing, dear Wolf,” said the Lamb. “She is frightened and has lost her own name. It hides behind her lips, afraid to come out. Worry not, dear child, I have found your name. We know it as you know us, Magga.”

“P-please,” Magga stammered. “Tonight is not a very good night for—”

Wolf’s great pink tongue lolled out of the side of his mouth, and he proceeded to cackle.

“All nights are good nights for pouncing,” said Wolf, laughing.

“All days are, too,” Lamb said. “With light comes a clear shot.”

“There is no moon tonight!” cried Magga. She used what Illusian had taught her—to gesture grand, so those in the back could see her movements. “It is hidden by a blanket of clouds, tucked away from my eyes and yours. Without the moon, what would be the last thing I would see?”

“We see the moon,” replied Lamb, as she caressed her fabled bow. “It is always there.”

“There are no stars!” said Magga, trying again, this time gesturing smaller and speaking quieter. “No menagerie of twinkling diamonds, glittering in the midnight hue. What more beautiful view could one hope for whence one meets Lamb and Wolf?”

“This Magga-thing is playing a new game,” growled Wolf. “It is called ‘stalling.’”

Wolf stopped moving and cocked his head to the side. He turned his sideways snout toward Magga before speaking. “Can we play ‘Chasing the Magga-Thing and Bite Her to Bits?’?” Wolf clacked his fangs together loudly for effect.

“Let us ask her,” said Lamb. “Magga! Do you prefer Wolf’s chase, or my arrow?”

Magga was trembling now. Her eyes raced to take in every last detail of the world around her. It wasn’t such a bad place to depart. There was grass. There were trees. There was the ancient archway. There was stillness to the air.

“I would prefer Lamb’s arrow,” she said, looking at the rough crusts of bark on the trees. “I’ll imagine myself climbing to the highest boughs, like when I was a child. Only this time, I will never stop climbing. Is that what it is like to go with you?”

“No,” said Lamb, “though it is a nice thought. Fear not, little maiden, we are just having our fun. You have come to us tonight; we have not come for you.”

“I cannot chase Magga-thing,” said Wolf, with a hint of disappointment in his voice. “But there are other things nearby. Other things ripe for the chasing and the biting. Hurry, Lamb. I am hungry.”

“For now, know that your theatrics have pleased us, and we will watch them until the day we meet again.”

Wolf passed over Magga and disappeared into the woods. The shadowy beast snaked away through fields of tall grass. Magga looked back toward the weathered barrow. Lamb was gone.

The actress fled.

When Magga returned to the encampment, she found it in utter ruin. The wagon she had only just begun to call home had been ransacked and reduced to a smoldering husk. Bits of clothing and ruined props lay strewn across the campsite.

She found Denji’s body near where he’d slept. He had died protecting Tria, whose corpse lay behind him. Judging from the trails of blood, their deaths had not been slow. They had dragged themselves toward each other, their fingers entwined in one last caress before death.

Magga noticed that Illusian had managed to kill two of the bandits before being burnt to a crisp along with Parr in the wagon.

The only thing that remained untouched were Denji’s Lamb and Wolf masks. Magga picked them up and held them in her hands. She placed the Lamb mask over her own eyes and heard the voice of Wolf.

“Chase the Magga-thing.”

The maiden ran the distance to Needlebrook, never once looking back.

The Golden Round was filled to the brim with a sea of twinkling eyes, all glittering in excitement at the velvet curtain. The king sat in the theater with the queen and their advisers, all eagerly awaiting the onset of the dramatics. Everyone hushed as the black curtain lifted to reveal the actors.

Magga sat in a quiet dressing room under the stage. She heard the crowd fall silent as she studied herself in the mirror. The luster of youth had faded from her eyes years ago, and left her with a long shock of silver running through her hair.

“Madame!” said the stagehand. “You’re not in costume yet.”

“No, child,” Magga said, “I only dress at the last moment.”

“It is the last moment,” said the young stagehand, holding the two final pieces of Magga’s costume: the same Lamb and Wolf masks from her days with the Orphellum Mechanicals.

“May your performance be blessed tonight,” the stagehand said.

Magga prepared to leave for the stage. She slipped the masks over her head. The old chill from the dark barrow crept down her spine. She welcomed it—as always.

She enthralled the audience as she glided onto the stage, embodying Lamb’s graceful movements. She thrilled the crowd with her rendition of Wolf’s playful savagery. She, as the twin deaths personified, eased the suffering of her fellow actors, or ripped it from their throats, until the crowd stood on its feet and erupted in thunderous applause.

It was true. All audiences loved a good death, and they loved Magga’s more than any other.

Even the king and queen were on their feet in praise of her work.

But Magga heard no applause and saw no ovations. She didn’t feel the stage beneath her feet, nor the hands of her fellow mummers in hers as they bowed low. All she felt was a sharp pain in her chest.

When Magga looked out over the audience, every single face was either a lamb or a wolf.