LoL Universe Indexing and Search

It has been while, Mundo thought, stroking the massive purple tongue that hung from his mouth like an executed criminal swinging from gallows, since Mundo made a housecall.

He rolled out of his bed (a large wooden box filled with sharpened knives and rusty nails), brushed his teeth (with a nail file), and ate breakfast (a cat). Mundo felt exuberant. He felt alive.

Today was a fine day for practicing medicine.

He spotted his first patient hawking shimmerdrops just outside Ranker’s Limb Maintenance. The man limped around in a circle, shouting at everyone within arm’s length about how shimmerdrops would make their eyes roll into the backs of their heads and how if they didn’t buy some right now, right this second, then they were damn idiots and did you just give him a condescending look? Because he’ll kill you and your family and your family’s family.

Mundo took out his notepad, a tool he often used to mark down observations about his patients, both past and present. The notepad was large, yellow, and imaginary.

Patient exhibits signs of mania, Mundo would have written if he hadn’t been tracing random squiggles in the air with a meaty finger. Possible infection of nervous system via cranial virus, he might have inscribed if he were capable of such multisyllabic thought.

“MUNDO CURE HEAD AND FACE AREA GOOD,” he said to himself.

Rank was just about to pack up his shimmerdrops and head home for the night. He needed to get new shoes. These ones rubbed his feet raw when he walked, and at the end of a long day’s work, hadn’t he earned the soft leather of grayeels?

As Rank was thinking this, a huge purple monster jumped out of the shadows and yelled, “MUNDO HAS RESULTS OF YOUR BLOOD WORK.”

Mundo left his first patient more or less as he found him (save for a few limbs) and took to the Commercia Fantastica, a market specializing primarily in gearwork toys. Though most of the shops were closed, Mundo spied a lone Zaunite teetering to and fro as he stumbled down the path. The Zaunite sang a song of a Piltovan beauty and the shy boy from the undercity who loved her, except he seemed to have forgotten most of the words apart from “big ol’ eyes” and “gave it to her.” An empty bottle dangled from his hand, and he looked as if he hadn’t had a bath in months.

Was this man afflicted by the same disease that had ravaged the shimmerdrop dealer? Was this a virus? An epidemic in the making? Mundo had to act fast.

This was clearly a man in need of medical attention.

“TAKE TWO OF THESE AND TALK TO MUNDO IN MORNING,” the purple monstrosity said as he tossed a bonesaw into the drunk’s back.

Mundo descended into Zaun’s Sump level. If there was a virus going around, chances were it originated here. There must be a patient zero somewhere. If he could just cure the first sufferer of this mystery disease, Mundo knew he could cure the rest of Zaun.

But how was Mundo to find one specific patient in the sprawl of the Sump level? What steps would he take to isolate, quarantine, and fix this most suffering of Zaunites? How would he–-

Mundo heard something. Footsteps, and a rhythmic clang of metal against metal.

He followed the noise as carefully and quietly as he could –- wouldn’t want to spook the patient into running away and infecting even more people –- and found exactly what he was looking for.

A young boy. No older than fifteen, probably, with a shock of white hair and a large metal sword-looking-thing in his hand. He had some sort of hourglass tattooed onto his face. Maybe a warning? A symbol that he was not to be approached under any circumstances?

Mundo knew he’d found him. Patient zero.

It would be a complex operation, requiring skill, planning, a careful eye and–-

“YOU MIGHT FEEL A LITTLE STING,” the creature said, leaping out. His enormous purple form hurtling through the air, massive bonesaw in hand, tongue flapping in the wind.

The boy was surprised, but not unprepared. Anybody hanging out in the Sump knew to be ready for trouble at a moment’s notice, and the kid had plenty of time to prepare.

Nothing but time, in fact.

No two ways about it: this was a troublesome patient.

He refused to answer Mundo’s questions about his medical history, and continued to evade Mundo’s attempts to make him take his medicine. He repeated himself over and over again (perhaps suffering from a case of physical amnesia?) and had no respect for Dr. Mundo’s authority.

The two scuffled over the child’s sickness for what felt like hours. Mundo made what he thought were very salient points about the merits of treatment, but the child constantly evaded Mundo’s attempts to help him.

Mundo grew tired of arguing with the boy. He mustered up one final attempt at treatment, wielding his precision scalpel with the artistry of a Demacian duelist. The words of his medical vows -– “MUNDO FIX ALL THINGS, MUNDO DO MEDICINE VERY HARD” –- ran through his head again and again. His desire to cure this child filled him with purpose and determination.

He swung with all his might.

The treatment was a success.

But then –- somehow –- the treatment reversed itself. Whatever good Mundo had accomplished in his last attempt at a cure was suddenly undone. To Mundo’s utter confusion, the child scurried away, utterly uncured.

Mundo screamed in irritation.

“WHY CAN’T MUNDO SAVE THEM ALL?” he screamed to the sky.

Not every operation was a success. Mundo would be the first to admit that. Still, Mundo tried to focus on the positive: Apart from this most recent patient, Mundo had helped an awful lot of people. He’d done a full day’s work, and now it was time to rest.

As the sun came up, Mundo retired home and tucked himself into bed. Who knew what tomorrow might bring? Another patient to help. Another epidemic to stop.

A doctor’s work was never done.

In ages past, the oceans of Runeterra were home to civilizations far older than those of the land. In the depths of what is now the Guardian’s Sea, a great city once stood—it was here that the yordle Fizz made his home. He lived alongside the artisans and warriors of that proud, noble race. Even though he was not one of them, they treated him as an equal, and his playful nature and tall tales of adventures in the open sea made him welcome at any gathering.

But the world was changing. The oceans were growing warmer, emboldening fierce predators to rise up from the deepest trenches. Other settlements had fallen silent, but the rulers of the great city could still not agree on how to deal with the threat. Fizz pledged to roam the seas in search of survivors, or anyone who knew what had happened.

Then, one dark day, the gigalodons came.

These huge dragon-sharks stunned their prey with fell shrieking, and the avenues of the great city were soon clouded red. Thousands died in a matter of hours, the immense bulk of their killers crushing towers and temples in a monstrous feeding frenzy. Scenting blood in the water, Fizz raced back, determined to join the fight and save the city.

He was too late. There was nothing left of the city to save. When the debris finally settled, not a single living creature remained, nor any stone upon another, and the ravenous shoal had moved on. Alone in the cold depths, Fizz sank into mournful despair. As his yordle magic began to fade, he let himself be carried by the currents, drifting in a catatonic torpor, dreaming away the millennia…

It was only chance that reawakened him. A handful of copper coins fell from above, scattered to the seabed in the wake of a huge, wooden fish that swam upon the surface. This was no gigalodon, but Fizz was alarmed nonetheless—he knew little of the world overhead, but surely no fish could survive up there? He ventured up and peered into the salty air for the first time.

There were people, people who lived outside of the water and sailed in wooden fish of all sizes. Fizz found the thought both frightening and exciting, but the curious gifts they cast into the water made it clear that they wanted to be his friends. In time, following their movements to and fro across the oceans, he came to the port city of Bilgewater.

To the inhabitants of that lawless place, this strange and slippery creature quickly became something of a legend—the Tidal Trickster, a spirit of the ocean itself. It is said that he can summon great beasts to do his bidding, hole a ship’s hull with his stone trident, and breathe air or water as it suits him. Many a misbehaving child has been warned on a moonless night: “Go quickly to sleep, or the Trickster will come and feed you to the fishes…”

Fizz is good-natured, but mischievous even for a yordle, and delights in confounding the people of Bilgewater. The most seasoned fishermen know, just as the ocean may rise and fall, the Tidal Trickster is as likely to lead them into windless doldrums as to an easy catch that would fill their nets. Even so, Fizz does not take kindly to the greedy or selfish, and more than one haughty sea captain hoping to make a quick pile of silver has found that her mysterious guide has led her crew not to safety, but to shipwreck.

I told Zalie to charge it all to my uncle. He’s good for it.

Now I’m ready to explore!

Oh yeah, I probably should write down what I’m exploring. For posterity.

My uncle theorizes that Zaun was once a Shuriman port city called “Oshra Va’Zaun”, and that over the centuries the name got shortened. He doesn’t have much proof and no one believes him. So, I’ll be a good nephew, find proof, and then take all the credit.

My sources say industrial excavations opened up a crack somewhere deep in the Sump.

The plan is simple:
Tomorrow I will locate, and descend into, the crack.
Find proof (see above). Preferably an accursed urn or lost grimoire. Something earth-shatteringly cool.
Spelunk my way back to the surface.
Gloat to my uncle over dinner.
Profit?

I’m keeping this journal to document the process. The record of these events will probably end up in a museum, next to a marble statue of me.

(Note to self: get sculptor recommendations)

Hmm. This is one massive crack. I forgot to bring a lantern, so it’s a good thing my gauntlet glows pretty bright. When I peered down into the crack, I almost literally gasped. There’s a whole maze of dusty staircases and old passageways down there. It’s a veritable labyrinth. Going to descend. Will update from the other side.

Uncle Lymere’s probably going to be really jealous.

I’m only about a quarter of the way down, and I’ve run out of rope. This narrow ledge provides me a chance to rest, and reflect upon this most dire situation. I must decide: face starvation and continue downward, or abandon the whole thing and return empty-handed.

Excellent news! I found something!

A few ledges down from where I was resting was a door. Old, sandstone, very dusty. I brushed away centuries of grime to reveal some glyphs. Owls and stuff.

I deciphered what I could, but my ancient Shuriman is a little rusty. Best guess, it was something about a curse. A really bad curse that multiplies? Maybe a thousand curses? This is fantastic! Like I always say: if it’s not cursed, it’s not worth it.

Since I couldn’t locate any kind of ancient door knob, I resorted to the ultimate lockpick—my gauntlet. Sorry about your door, history, but what lies on the other side intrigues me more than a bunch of old glyphs.

This new antechamber is really intriguing. It’s impeccably clean, for starters and—

Sorry, I thought I heard something. Cracks? Footsteps?

With the benefit of hindsight, my gauntlet blast may have been too much for the support columns. Gotta go. No one remembers explorers who get smooshed.

Well, that was fun. I thought the tomb was going to collapse, because tombs always collapse, especially when I’m inside. But, what really happened? Well, the door didn’t lie, the antechamber was cursed.

Turns out, Oshra Va’Zaun housed the renowned Vault of Resplendent Holies. One of those “holies” is a relic that once belonged to the emperor’s personal spirit-banisher, Carikkan. Looks like he used to bind troublesome entities into inanimate objects, and use them for his own dark purposes. And he died right here, where Zaun now rests!

He also had one of those slow, dimwitteda whole army of fiery stone-warriors, who don’t like people touching old Carikkan’s stuff.

Don’t worry, I blasted them all to smoldering smithereens!

I was able to grab this wonderfully preserved golden stele, though. It’s inscribed with the legend of the “Day of Fire”, and Carikkan’s oath to protect the city of Oshra Va’Zaun. It’s like a whole secret history that I can fit right in my satchel! This is going to change the world!

(Hopefully not just the academic world. Nobody cares about the academic world.)

Ancient Shuriman curses really don’t mess around. Not only was there that one army of fiery stone-warriors (Oh wait, were they golems?) but all of a sudden water began rushing in through the cracks in the floor. I must be somewhere under the River Pilt.

Swam through so many tunnels. Lots of locked doors. Had to resist the urge to explore them all.

Think I’m close to the surface, which is good, because I saw some nasty-looking murk-eels a few tunnels back. Disgusting creatures.

Might be a while before I can check in again, but as long as I keep this stele wrapped up in cloth and protected, this whole trip will be completely worth all the life-threatening shenanigans and tragically soaked socks.

On a sadder note, I’ve used up the last of my Dapper Explorer Pomade.

Sitting in Zalie’s. It really is one of the best outfitters in Piltover—in fact, I’m here to take advantage of their excellent return policy. My jacket is torn to shreds. The boots weren’t waterproof at all. I could say it’s all defective… but Zalie has already graciously offered to tailor me some replacements.

The Explorers Guild is never going to take me seriously if I present this journal, and the stele, dressed like I’ve just lost a game of Krakenhand to a bunch of Mudtown buck-ringers! I have to look good. New jacket. Pants. Boots. Socks. Pomade.

Feels good to look this good. Trust me on that.

Let this official record show that I had NOTHING to do with the swarm of fiery critters that plagued the mercantile district of Piltover. I am blameless!

So, I hear you ask, who is to blame? The clerk at Zalie’s.

Never let the bumbling clerk at Zalie’s handle a potentially enchanted golden stele you laboriously retrieved from a lost vault in the depths of Zaun. Why? Because he will undoubtedly unwrap it, and set it on a windowsill in direct sunlight… which, of course, will conjure disembodied voices chanting in a hitherto unknown, arcane language. Then, your precious stele will begin to glow, before exploding into living shards of searing heat.

Yes. Turns out, when placed in the sunlight of an equinox, the stele unleashes old Carikkan’s infernus gremlins.

Okay, so I didn’t know today was the equinox. That’s on me. I should invest in an almanac.

(Note to self: invest in almanac. Not from Zalie’s.)

The earth is shaking. I probably should stop writing right now, because more of these little horrors are pouring out of the sewer grates. I shot a few of them with my gauntlet. They didn’t like that one bit, and winked out of existence pretty quickly. Result!

So, yeah. All the proof I have of the entire caper is this journal, and my own good word.

The preliminary hearing is set for next week.

Need to read up on Piltover’s libel and slander laws. I’ll be representing myself, obviously.

You, there! Yes, you! You look like a fine Demacian with working ears—one who might stay a stretch and heed the warnings of an old man who has seen the impossible. I’m on a quest, you see, at the bidding of the Wandering Caretaker, and you can help!

I must retrieve... Well, it’s best that I explain.

Come, now. Don’t shy away. Hear my tale, which is entirely true...

I was first awoken by the clanging of bells—my mother’s two-hundred-year-old wind chimes—screaming outside, beyond my window. She thought she was quite clever, my mother, convincing me their summer song would signal the coming of warm and sunny days. Even at my age, I can only count a handful of pleasant seasons in Valar’s Hollow. Ha! An adolescence marred by the endless chopping of firewood can attest to that. The night I speak of was no exception—a winter storm was raging.

I jumped to my feet when my door burst open and the rush of freezing wind filled my room. After scrambling to sheathe my trembling body in the thickest furs I owned, I made my way to the door, ready to slam it shut. But I hesitated. My mother’s chimes were still screaming in the wind. Though they mostly stirred memories of my harsh and laborious upbringing, they provided me with a sense of connection to her. I should not risk losing them, or worse—suffer no sleep from their incessant wailing.

Don’t get me wrong, the chimes did have a certain appeal. Stories of how they came into my family’s possession told of an incredible destiny and a celebrated past. They were forged from ingot—war metals—some of the rarest in the Freljord. Whenever a battle had been lost and won, the Collectors, my poor but resourceful ancestors, entered the battlefield and retrieved what had been left to rust in the blood-stained snow.

“How much ingot was out there, mother?” I asked once, as she gushed about ancient times.

“Centuries of it,” she replied.

“What did the Collectors do with it all?”

“Sold it to the Winter’s Claw,” she said, shrugging, “who made more weapons for wars to come.” Then she paused for a moment and smiled as her chimes began to sing. “But there was always a little we kept for ourselves—to make instruments of life, not death.”

Indeed, those precious chimes were instruments that brought wonderful music to our land. “Good fortune in bad times,” she told me. I prayed for that fortune when she fell ill, but it never came. The Wandering Caretaker was more concerned with his own wonderful music than helping the infirm, and I was left with her infernal chimes to remember them both by.

I digress.

Taking a deep breath, I pushed my way outside, but I was halted by an impossible sight: Floating in front of me, unaffected by the storm, was a small, translucent creature. Without wings or arms to hold it in place, it hung there, as if some eldritch magic had nailed it to a block of air. Two glowing white eyes like torches were affixed to its orbish head, and three twinkling stars in its belly began to churn and flicker. To my surprise, one of my mother’s chimes responded, and, like a child’s arm, it reached back to the shimmering creature, adopting its starry glow.

But then...

The chime cracked! And I heard its summer song deform. A fissure that was made etched its way up the chime’s side, and specks of gold light were drawn out from within it, as if certain materials that composed it were being stolen away. Those were not lights the thing was stealing; they were my mother’s tears, falling, as this beloved yet irritating heirloom was quickly being destroyed. I could not—I would not let that happen!

So I leapt into the blizzard and took hold of the chime. At its touch, I heard the blast of a horn in the distance. Why, I was not sure. I pulled back with all my might, but the creature’s magic was too strong to overcome. And worse, I felt my entire body jerk skyward, and my feet left the ground. Soon I was hurtling into the heavens, towed into the clouds by the befouled moppet!

CRACK! Another break scribbled its way down the chime. Then I saw something taking shape in the space between us—a shard, a piece of a whole, was materializing. Believing it would be the only thing to save me, I grasped it.

As I reached, I glanced back to the wicked creature, only to realize that it had disappeared. In its place, hovering before me in all his mystic glory, was the Wandering Caretaker. It had taken an entire lifetime of prayer for him to appear, and, as my mother had promised, the chimes brought him forth. The Bard seemed to stare back at me... into me... curious of my being there. But it was too late to explain.

There suddenly came a rush of wind and a wave of heat. I felt my arm stretch the length of a vine. My body followed, spinning and twisting, as I was being taken somewhere—an otherworldly place!

As to where I ended up, my mother’s old dulcimer here will aid me as I sing...

Dear Demacian, I have come a long way and farther still to warn everyone of the darkness that threatens to silence the music of this world. Runeterra is a bell—a world bell—that has been corroded by evil. Its fragments, its chimes, must be found to make it whole again.

And our first step is to place all precious metals in your possession in my basket. I will take them, inspect them, sing to them Bard’s divine music to remove any chimes of the world bell within them. Any chimeless pieces I will, of course, return to you.

No! Wait! Don’t walk away—what I tell you is true! Please, listen. There isn’t much time. The end of our world is nigh...

And only Bard and his meeps can save us.

Bilgewater isn’t particularly known for its cuisine, which makes Oyster Bill’s Oyster Bar an interesting conundrum. Located in one of the city’s poorer pockets, the establishment gained an impressive reputation over the years with the entire venture held aloft by “local celebrity” and proprietor Oyster Bill.

Along with the oyster-man’s love of seafood and exaggerated stories, he also enjoys renting an extra room above the restaurant to various drifters and vagabonds. One such person being his most recent guest: an ascetic warrior with few belongings and an unceasing ear-to-ear smile—who just kicked Malcolm Graves horizontally through the dining-room wall.

“I didn’t even do anything!” Graves moans, shifting his toothpick to the other side of his mouth. “You want one of the other ones. Senna maybe. Or Rango.”

“Your lack of foresight now threatens millions of innocents, Malcolm Graves,” replies a cheery-sounding voice in an unfamiliar accent. “I have questions about the little present you left on my shores. Viego of Camavor.”

The voice’s owner moves purposefully through the cloud of dust and debris, her liquid whip-blade suspended in a glittering arc around her. Each step illuminates the dingy restaurant as brilliant indigos and golds cast strange, dancing shadows over everything. Messy black hair frames a thin face and violet eyes, all underlined by an oddly exuberant expression, while at her side rests a glowing sphere held by two hands cast from a foreign metal. This is Nilah, and Graves has been trying to avoid her for weeks.

It hasn’t gone well.

Nilah arrived in Bilgewater seemingly overnight, and her presence immediately raised eyebrows across the city. From her odd habit of reciting various textual passages throughout the day—always while making complicated gestures with her palms—to her strange, seven-hand-motif armor, forged from a pearlescent metal no one recognized. Or her insistence that she hailed from Kathkan, even though the last full-blooded Kathkani hadn’t stepped foot on Valoran soil in over seven hundred years.

Then she started killing sea serpents—forty, fifty, sixty fathoms long. When any ship was threatened, Nilah rushed down to the docks and soared across the surface of the sea with a wide, calm smile, her wiry frame launching itself toward the writhing necks of her foes. As word spread about her, she began to ask the port’s grateful sailors if they knew anything about a so-called order of sentinels... and that was when Graves started running.

Now that Nilah’s found him, she doesn’t seem happy.

Or rather, she isn’t acting happy. She seems disconcertingly cheerful with her pleasant grin that never breaks and her demeanor and voice that stay locked in unnatural positivity at all hours of every day. It’s this peculiarity that makes most people unable to read her intentions—besides her pathological need to fight very big things—and that makes conversations with the woman hard to navigate.

“Don’t know nothing about Viego,” Graves lies, sifting through the rubble for his gun.

“I believe it was you who sealed him in Alovedra, am I correct?” Nilah smiles cheerfully, taking another two steps forward. Her legs move in a curious, artful pattern, like a coiled snake about to strike. “Don’t lie. You are man-sized. Killing you would be very easy for me.”

“Not that easy,” Graves snorts, New Destiny finally in hand. Savoring the moment to turn the tables, he fires three rounds directly into Nilah’s torso. Or, at least, he thinks he does. The bullets seem to move around her... Or maybe she moves around them. It’s like firing his gun into deep water—a thought Graves finds inexplicably unsettling.

Nilah’s wide smile twitches at the sides of her mouth. Unbeknownst to Graves, she is unable to feel anger, or any emotion beyond a radiant joyfulness—but she knows she would want to right now, were it possible. She whips the gun out of his hands and knocks it to the far side of the restaurant before bisecting a metal table next to his head with a brutal second strike of her whip-blade. For a brief moment, Graves swears he sees phantasmal blue hands in the air around Nilah... but maybe this is his imagination. He’s been getting hit in the head a lot lately.

“An interesting armament,” Nilah muses. “I imagine it works well against lesser opponents.”

“So what does that make you?” seethes Graves.

But Nilah doesn’t answer. Instead, she sheathes her weapon within the sphere, offering a brief recitation under her breath that Graves can’t quite make out. “My apologies. Based on your fighting style, you're not the sentinel I’m looking for.”

“Sweet Tommy Kench, ain’t you supposed to be some kinda hero?” Graves yells, sitting up among wood fragments and twisted metal. “I’m a hero too, when viewed in a certain light! So lay off, will ya?”

Graves exhales. “Damn... Nice magic, though. I gotta respect it.”

Nilah offers another recitation, her hands shifting as she mouths the words beneath her breath, smiling ominously in the dark. “Thank you, Malcolm Graves. I gave much to wield it.”

“I would prefer if you’d call me ‘Graves.’”

“I wouldn’t,” replies Nilah. “There is great power in a true name, Malcolm Graves. Remember that.”

"If you say so." Graves looks behind Nilah. "You folks in the back hear that, or should we speak up?"

Right on cue, a voice rings out from the street. “We’re here for the serpent slayer!”

Nilah turns to face a half-dozen mercenaries peeking through the hole she’d ripped in the wall. Her eyes drift past the men to a massive, pale something shifting on the planks behind them... and her heart skips a beat. She is often followed by disgruntled killers, but she hasn’t seen one of these before.

“I am she,” Nilah replies, her attention fixed on the creature. “What do you want, exactly?”

“You’re losing our bosses a lot of money. Think you can just flood the market with serpent catch? We own those docks and those ships, and as of now, we own you!”

“What is that creature?” Nilah asks Graves, ignoring the mercenaries.

“Deep eater,” mutters Graves. “They chow down on anchor graves that sink to the seafloor. Gives ‘em a taste for people. Mean and real dumb, so these idiots drag ‘em up and sic ‘em on marks they don’t like.”

Nilah’s eyes flash with excitement. “How big do they get?”

“I’unno. Ten, fifteen oars? That one looks pretty big.”

“Interesting,” she whispers. “An enemy of worth.”

“Hey!” shouts a mercenary. “When I’m talking, you listen or you die. Understand what I’m saying?”

“Yes, I believe I do,” replies Nilah, dipping her hand into the sphere at her side. “I am Nilah of the Seventh Layer. May our battle sing across history.”

Nilah whips her blade outward, its glimmering water forming two sharpened prongs that dance through the air with ghostly radiance. Whatever the mercenaries were expecting, it wasn’t this, and they mutter nervously as the weapon shifts and expands.

They don’t know it, but none of them will leave this encounter alive. The Seventh Layer is not simply a title, but a mythical order steeled to face opponents of unimaginable power and scale. Self-trained killers are merely pebbles on the road to true challenge, and tonight, this so-called “deep eater” is the only foe of worth—a massive isopod with sickly, flesh-colored plates and a mean-looking maw of bloody teeth.

From the depths of Nilah’s being, a hungry joy begins to swell.

What happens next is a blur. Nilah bounds across the room with frightening speed, cutting through her unassuming opponents while wearing that same cheerful, unmoving smile. Each strike of her blade connects with the force of a towering ocean wave, yet the dancing water is sharp as polished stone. Nilah glides between blows, beautiful and deadly, as her enemies are blasted apart.

In seconds, all that’s left is the deep eater. Considering that the words “ten oars” had suggested a beast of much larger proportions, this one isn’t too bad—about the size of a covered wagon. Not the most exciting opponent Nilah’s ever faced, but here in Bilgewater, it was something that would get people talking. They’d remember this victory, and that was all that mattered.

Nilah leaps onto its back, her formless blade flickering in the night air. “Beast of the deep! May you find Joy!” she sings, and she slices the monster clean in half.

“So, what exactly are ya lookin’ fer the sentinels for?” asks Graves, consigned to either having this conversation or being cut into little pieces. “We disbanded, mostly. And I pawned all my stuff, so you’re not getting those magic rocks or whatever.”

“Viego of Camavor will free himself someday,” Nilah replies, her smile now kind. Friendly, even. “The magic binding him is Helian, and it is weakening over time. My people are in unimaginable danger.”

“Hey, we beat him once,” replies Graves. “He’s strong, but we can probably do it again.”

“He is not the true threat, Malcolm Graves,” says Nilah. “His ruinations write new magic into the world... an act that drives demonkind berserk. Enough to stir their primeval forebears.

“Ten lords, long forgotten,” she continues, tapping the sphere at her side, “who must never be allowed to wake.”

“Demons, huh?” says Graves. “You’re not a demon, are ya?”

“No,” Nilah laughs. “Not entirely.”

The ascetic performs another hand gesture, reciting something under her breath. As she speaks, Graves gazes at her sphere of prismatic liquid, which seems to draw him in. An unconscious smile curls at the edge of his lips as high-pitched, whispering laughter rings in his ears. It seems like the metal hands are almost... offering it up to him.

“Don’t look too closely,” Nilah warns, and Graves snaps back to attention. “The beast is always hungry.”

Nilah claps her hands on her hips. “Ah, but the hour is late, and I fear you have no further answers to give me. I will retire to my room,” she says matter-of-factly, walking past a confused Graves as she circles the damaged dining room and climbs the restaurant stairwell. “If you encounter any monstrosities of note, come find me so I can slay them. If you encounter Oyster Bill, tell him that I apologize for tonight’s damage.

“It is good to meet a fellow hero, Malcolm Graves.”

A door closes upstairs, and the woman is gone.

Graves flicks his broken toothpick to the ground, bitten through in all the excitement. He reaches for a replacement but finds none, so instead gazes quietly out onto the street where six dead bodies and two halves of a giant marine louse are scattered.

“The sentinels ruined my life,” he says to no one in particular.

“Neat lady, though.”

Okay, I’ll admit slamming the door in their faces was a bit of an overreaction.

“Lulu.” I make the words come out calm and easy, but I can feel my palms go sweaty in the oven mitts I’m still wearing. Can’t forget about dinner. I keep my white-knuckle grip on the front door handle. Lulu stops her absent-minded twirl in the hallway, coming up to stand next to me. I take one more breath in and out before turning towards her. “Do you know why Ahri’s teammates are standing on the porch?”

“Yep,” she says, nodding her head. She draws herself up a little taller, “You said, ‘This is a man-da-tory Star Guardian council meeting.’”

Just my luck. I instinctively release the door handle, as I hear Lulu do an extra bubbly—but very stern—Lux impression enunciating each of those syllables.

I definitely said that.

To Jinx.

Who still isn’t here yet.

Lulu makes for the handle, the smile on her face positively beaming. “They’re Star Guardians, right?”

I nod dumbly.

“Super,” she says as she opens the door wide.

The three of them are still standing on the porch where I left them, although in decidedly different positions. Ez looks like he was mid-sentence trying to calm down a much more annoyed Sarah Fortune.

No, not ‘Sarah’, I remind myself. Sarah’s for friends. I learned that all too well from last summer’s outdoor adventure.

Miss Fortune’s usual smirk is now an angry grimace as she furiously texts something on her phone. Behind her, the quiet girl with mint green hair—Soraka—is carrying a bakery box from Pantheon’s Pastries. They look at me intently, probably wondering if I’m going to slam the door again. I can actually hear crickets in the bushes.

Lulu reaches out into the uncomfortable silence and takes Ezreal and Fortune by the wrists, pulling them inside. Fortune’s so surprised, she goes along with it, nearly dropping her phone. I can feel the pink climb up my cheeks as Ezreal flashes his trademark grin in my direction as he passes by. I wave meekly with one oven mitt.

Soraka leans in close and whispers “Cinnamon rolls” in my ear, like a spy password. She smiles, hands the heavy bakery box to me, and walks quickly to catch up with the others.

“Welcome,” I hear Lulu announce from the living room, “to our Star Guardian sleepover party!”

This is awkward.

I can hear the second hand of the clock in the kitchen tick off another minute that we’ve been uncomfortably quiet. Ezreal is wedged on the small couch between Fortune—still texting on her phone—and Soraka, who’s quietly watching Lulu while nibbling on a cinnamon roll. Janna and Poppy are sitting on the stiff dining chairs Lulu dragged in from the other room. Lulu is bent over the coffee table, folding a piece of paper into some complicated shape. I have no idea what she’s making, but her soft humming is the only other sound besides the clock.

And me, well, I’m pacing a well-worn path in the carpet.

The first to break the silence is Fortune. She stops texting, lets out a disgusted sigh, and finally puts her phone face down on her lap, the small pistol charms on the end jingling loudly. She looks around, taking in everything in the room from the faded pattern on the curtains to the beige-colored couch for the first time. Her disappointment is evident. As she sinks back into the cushion behind her, Ez leans forward.

“You all do this regularly?” he says. “Get together like this?”

Poppy and Janna stare at him. Poppy still doesn’t understand why Ez was chosen as a Guardian. I keep telling her the First Star chooses each of us for a reason. She crosses her arms and watches him, clearly still not convinced.

“Yes, doesn’t your team?” Janna asks. She’s calm, at least on the outside, but there’s a slight breeze circling the room even though the ceiling fan isn’t on. I can tell she’s just as on edge about them being here as I am.

“Ahri…” Ez starts and then looks at Fortune. Fortune rolls her eyes, her perfectly feathered bangs rippling as she shakes her head. “Well,” Ez continues. “Ahri prefers to be out and about where there are people. She’s not much of a homebody herself, and she figures most trouble wouldn’t be either.”

Great. They think we’re homebodies. Could this get any worse?

“Is that why she and Syndra didn’t come? They have something better to do?” Poppy asks, her foot tapping out an impatient rhythm against the foot of her chair. Janna stiffens at the mention of Syndra.

Soraka jumps in and tries to change the subject. “Your friend, the one with the long red pigtails—”

“The loud one,” Fortune interrupts. “The one with a rocket launcher.”

“Yes, the one with the glitter bombs,” Soraka finishes. “Is she coming tonight?”

“Jinx? She’s always fashionably late.” I look at my watch. ”She just loves to make an entrance.” The words are barely out of my mouth when the front door opens and slams loudly. I hear the familiar sound of a tote bag full of Shiro, Kuro, and a handful of fireworks hitting the ground in the hallway.

“Luxy-Poo! Windchimes! Shortstop!” Jinx calls out in a sing-song voice. “I’m home!”

Jinx saunters into the living room just as Lulu triumphantly finishes the last fold in her project. Jinx lowers her sunglasses to the end of her nose. It’s dark outside. It has been dark outside for more than an hour. “Looks like you got the party started without me.” Jinx smiles, obviously enjoying all eyes on her, until her gaze finds Ez stuffed in the middle of the couch.

“Oh, he’s here too,” she says, the enthusiasm sucked out of her like a fast-leaking balloon. She tugs on the bow in Lulu’s hair and focuses on what looks like an oversized paper pincher in the young Guardian’s hands. “Whatcha got there, Loops?”

Lulu takes her hands out of the folds of paper and hugs Jinx around the waist. “I need another number.”

I stop my pacing to take a better look at the star-shaped object Lulu’s made. It’s a paper fortune teller. I haven’t seen one since primary school. The numbers on the flap show how many times the fortune teller should open and close it, with the last number chosen revealing some kind of mysterious destiny. My fortunes always ended in doom. Maybe because I always played with Jinx.

“Four,” I say. Maybe Lulu’s paper project can be over quickly.

“Twelve,” Jinx says.

“Two hundred forty-six,” Fortune says. Her satisfied smirk is back.

“Two hundred and forty-six it is.” Lulu smiles at Fortune and grabs a pen off the coffee table, scribbling the number onto one of the flaps. Lulu sits down at Soraka’s feet, offering up the paper oracle, encouraging her to pick a number to start the game.

“Do you braid each other’s hair too?” Fortune asks watching Lulu and Soraka, her words dripping with sarcasm.

“No—” I begin.

“Sometimes,” Poppy says at the same time, rushing to defend the unaware Lulu. Janna nods enthusiastically.

Ugh. Can neither of them play it cool?

“What I mean is, no, not all the time. We don’t braid each other’s hair all the time,” I stammer. “I mean, we discuss team stuff. Important Star Guardian matters.” I cough. “You know, saving the universe.”

“And braid each other’s hair,” Poppy adds truthfully.

Fortune rolls her eyes and goes back to her phone.

“How about we skip the usual slumber party stuff and talk serious Star Guardian matters?” I offer.

“Bor-ing,” Jinx says. She eyes Lulu as she slowly opens and closes the paper fortune teller for Soraka. “How about we play a faster game with more consequences?” I hear the trigger click of Shiro and Kuro waking up.

Ezreal claps his hands and rubs them together excitedly. “Sounds dangerous, I’m in.”

“Great. Let’s start.” Jinx smiles, but then quickly turns on Ez. “Truth. Or. Dare. Is it true that you have romantic intentions towards our Luxanna?”

“Jinx!” I shout.

Ez opens his mouth like a beached fish, definitely not having prepared for this particular game.

“Truth,” Janna says loudly, diffusing the rising energy in the room as if blowing out a candle. All heads snap towards her.

“Ez has to answer,” Jinx says watching the color rise in Ez’s face.

“First person to volunteer goes first,” Poppy says. “That’s the rule.”

“Fine,” Jinx says, obviously dissatisfied. “Is it true that you are older than Poppy’s hammer?”

I watch Janna’s look from Jinx to Poppy. Jinx is thrilled to see Janna momentarily flustered, while Poppy absently touches the handle of the hammer where she’s set it against her chair. Janna’s gaze settles on Soraka for a moment and then moves on. “False.”

Poppy eyes her hammer with a newfound awe and respect.

“Really?” Jinx raises an eyebrow. “But, it’s true that Short Stack’s hammer has more personality, right?”

“You can’t ask her another question, Jinx.” Poppy points out. “It’s Janna’s turn to ask a question. That’s the rule. Janna, go on, who are you going to pick?”

“Soraka,” Janna says gently. “Truth or Dare?”

Soraka is halfway through a cinnamon roll, staring attentively at Lulu opening and closing the paper fortune teller while counting under her breath. Shisa sits on Soraka’s shoulder monitoring the whole operation with a focused frown, at once completely confused at what Lulu is doing, but intent on making sure it happens with the utmost efficiency. Without missing a number—and to Shisa’s satisfied approval—Lulu nudges her elbow into Soraka’s knee, letting her know she’s been tapped into the group game.

“Yes,” Soraka smiles, a bit absent-minded. “That’s me.”

“Truth or dare?” Poppy repeats, taking her self-appointed position of game referee very seriously.

“Uh, truth,” Soraka says.

Janna thinks for a minute. “What do you remember—”

“Well,” Soraka jumps in, excited to be included in the game. “Ezreal and I went to Pantheon’s earlier. I had a cinnamon roll. He had an iced coffee, no milk because his tummy doesn’t like dairy—”

Poppy clucks her tongue. “Janna, it has to be an ‘Is it true’ question.”

Soraka sits up straight on the couch, tucking her legs beneath her, and waits. Zephyr floats in from the dining room and curls up in Janna’s lap. Janna rests a hand on her companion, a slight breeze rustling its fur.

“Soraka.” Janna’s voice is low and calm, barely above a whisper. “Is it true you can remember a time when the First Light was whole?”

“Oh, yes.” Soraka nods with her whole body. “I mean, true.”

The room goes eerily silent. She looks around. All of us are staring at her. Jinx can’t remember what she had for lunch today. Even Poppy and Lulu can only say what it was like when they were called. I’ve asked Janna about the First Light and especially its guidance, but the memories, even for her, are murky and broken.

“Wait, you all can’t remember?” Soraka’s voice wavers a bit. “But—”

“You have to pick one person to ask a question, Soraka,” Poppy says cutting her off with the rules of the game. “And they have to pick truth, and—”

“We get it, Smalls,” Jinx jumps in, changing the subject before Janna or I can ask more questions about Soraka’s memories. I’ll have to find a quiet moment later to talk to her.

“My turn to pick. Okay, mmm…” Soraka bites her bottom lip and then turns in her seat to face Ezreal. “Ez. I pick Ez!”

“No fair. I wanted to pick Ez,” Jinx pouts.

Poppy shakes her head. “You already went.”

“Ladies, please. There’s enough adventure to go around.” Ez tucks both hands behind his head and settles back on the couch. Fortune pulls out one the small throw pillows from behind her, fluffs it, and slams it back into the sofa and Ezreal, conveniently knocking the literal wind out his gallant sails in the process. I stifle a giggle into one of the oven mitts I’m still wearing.

Ez blushes and tries to recover his normal breathing gracefully.

“Dare,” he chokes on the words. “I choose dare.”

“I… dare… you…” Soraka pauses between each word, watching Poppy to make sure she’s getting it right. Poppy nods. Ez waits expectantly. “I dare you to do that thing you do,” she says finally.

Ez shrugs, totally not following whatever Soraka is talking about.

“You know, that thing you do. With Yuuto,” Soraka continues, clapping excitedly for him. “And the portal thing.”

“Oh, yeah. Cool. I can totally do that.” Ez reaches into his backpack and taps on the bright blue of his Guardian emblem. “Hey, bud—wake up. It’s showtime.”

“Portals? Portals sound dangerous.” Poppy asks as a white-winged familiar pounces into the room. It leaps into the air, wings spread, its bright blue eyes the same color as Ezreal’s.

“Portals are dangerous. Very dangerous. But lucky for you, you’ve got me. And this isn’t quite a portal. Technically it’s a shortcut through another dimension.” Ez flashes a lopsided grin at Poppy and starts looking around the room, eyeing a black ceramic bookend and a small potted plant. “Alright, Soraka, do you think that bookend is good enough for a demonstration of a little arcane magic?”

Soraka shakes her head, wrinkling her nose. Between Yuuto’s chirping loops, I can hear Lulu deep in concentration.

“Two hundred and forty-four. Two hundred and forty-five,” she counts. “Two hundred and forty-six!” she announces triumphantly. “It’s done, Soraka.” Lulu waves the paper oracle around in her hand.

“The fortune maker!” Soraka lets out a giggle. “I almost forgot.”

“Fortune maker it is!” Ez says, “Yuuto, let’s go. Time for a true display of skill.”

Yuuto arcs in the air, turning towards Ez. It looks like Yuuto is going to crash right into Ez, but at the last minute, Ez and Yuuto combine, granting Ez a brilliant set of white feathered wings that fill the room. Less than a second later, Ez disappears through a wavering portal to reappear hovering over Lulu. He plucks the paper fortune maker out of her hands.

“Just going to borrow this for a second,” he says and then a moment later he blinks back to the sofa, leaning comfortably back against the couch cushions with no wings and a happily purring Yuuto. He unfolds the flap and reads the fortune aloud. “‘Opportunity can’t knock if you don’t build a door.’ Huh. I like it, Lulu.”

Poppy groans. “She copied that from our takeout cookies last night.”

“That’s not her fortune,” Lulu says. She gestures to the flap to the right. “It’s the next one.”

Ez unfolds the second flap and reads it to the group. “Only in darkness can the light shine brightly.”

“The First Star told me that,” Lulu says.

“The First Star talks to you?” Fortune cocks her head in disbelief. “Still?”

“Yes,” Lulu’s face is a serene smile. “Ezreal, when you open a portal like that, where did you say you go?”

“Uh-oh,” Ezreal whispers.

“What’s ‘uh-oh’, champ?” Jinx leans over Ez as he struggles to keep a grip on the folded paper.

“We may need to get rid of this.” Ez gives a weak smile. “Like right now.”

Before anyone can make good on that suggestion, the paper oracle rips itself out of Ez’s hands. It tumbles around the room like a possessed autumn leaf. A high-pitched whine begins to grow. It seems like it’s coming from the fortune teller itself.

The paper folds and unfolds a dozen times, finally dumping out a small but squat, black and green, glowing creature. Everyone is on their feet.

“Did you just bring an annoying, interdimensional hitchhiking demon into Lux’s living room using your not-a-portal portal power?” says Jinx, watching the unruly little monster jump from the arm of the sofa to the carpet.

“I might have,” Ez whispers. “Arcane magic doesn’t come with an instruction manual.”

“Cool,” Jinx says.

Ez looks at me, mouthing the word Sorry.

“This has only happened once before,” he says.

Fortune elbows Ez in the side.

“Okay,” Ez corrects himself, “This may have happened more than once. Possibly six or seven times, but it’s totally not a big deal.”

The little creature jumps on the coffee table. All I can see is Poppy’s hammer rear back and take a wide swing. There’s a crack of wood and the coffee table splinters. That is definitely not going back together ever again. The dark shape darts away unscathed.

Janna stands up, her arms lifting in the direction of the creature. A breeze starts to build, shifting the debris of the coffee table and fluttering the pages of one of the books that had been sitting on it just a moment ago.

“I got this, Janna.” Jinx is returning from the hall, Shiro and Kuro nipping at her heels.

“No,” Fortune says. I snap my head around to see one of Fortune’s shiny white pistols leveled at my face.

“Woah, Sarah. Not so fast. That’s a little close quarters, don’t you think?” Ez tries to step closer to her to push her guns off their mark. I feel my stomach drop as adrenaline coats my insides. This was her plan all along. My luck’s run out. She is going to end me.

“Fortune—”

The words barely leave my lips before I hear the pull of a trigger.

“Time to say goodbye,” she says. There’s a sharp pop like a balloon. My hands go up to my nose and eyes, quickly checking them out that they’re all intact and where they belong. A second later, there is no demon, and fine bits of paper start to rain down on everyone as the fortune teller explodes into confetti. It looks like it is snowing in my living room. Lulu is dancing in it, of course.

“Look, now it’s a party,” she exclaims. Shiro and Kuro tumble each other in the remains of the coffee table, while Shisa looks very disturbed at their delight in wanton destruction.

Unfortunately, my relief at being whole is short-lived. An angry, beeping alarm begins to wail as a smoky haze creeps throughout the house, originating from the kitchen.

“Smells like burning,” Jinx says.

Oh, no. Dinner.

The air is thicker in the kitchen. What was dinner for the team is now charred ruins stuck to a metal baking sheet. I cough and wave the oven mitts I’m still wearing, trying to move the smoke haze around. I open the window, letting the cool fall air in. The alarm finally shuts itself off.

My eyes are starting to water. I tell myself it’s from the smoke and the mess in the oven, but I’m pretty sure it’s from the mess of things going on in the living room.

“Everything’s ruined.” My voice is small and pathetic even to my own ears.

Then I hear a shuffle of footsteps on the tile floor. Janna or Ez must have braved the smoke to offer some comfort. I wipe my eyes quickly, surprised as I turn around.

It’s Fortune.

“Well that’s definitely not edible,” she says.

I nod my head in agreement. “Definitely not.”

Fortune’s phone vibrates with a text message. Ahri, I’m sure, telling her what all the cool kids are doing.

“This is probably not the way you wanted to spend your Friday night,” I offer.

I pick at the burned bits of what was dinner on the aluminum foil. “Sorry Lulu dragged you into all this. Dinner’s ruined. The party’s ruined. I totally understand if you want to go. We’ll figure things out by ourselves.”

Ugh. Too many words. Why can I not stop talking around her? I take a deep breath and try to start more clearly.

“Fortune—”

“Sarah,” she interrupts. “You can call me Sarah.”

“I thought Sarah was for friends,” I say.

Fortune’s phone vibrates again. Instead of looking at it, she puts it in her back pocket. “I came in here to apologize. You looked pretty freaked out back there.”

“Have you ever been on the other side of one of your pistols?”

“No, I guess not,” she chuckles. Her voice takes a serious turn. “You need to understand I would never hurt another Guardian. Not ever.”

I nod. There’s something more behind her declaration, a pain she hasn’t quite put away.

“I know Ez kinda made a mess of things, he does that sometimes, but would you mind if we stayed? Soraka would be fine if dinner was nothing but cinnamon rolls, but Ez ordered some pizzas to say sorry for the little portal mishap. But I totally get it if you want us to go—”

I hold up an oven mitt-clad hand. It’s Sarah who seems to have too many words now.

“Wait, you want to stay?”

Sarah opens her mouth, but is interrupted by an ecstatic Lulu skipping into the kitchen, a bouquet of pastel fabric and ribbons spilling out onto the floor around her. She shoves an armful of trimmed white flannel into both Sarah and my hands.

“These are for you,” she chirps before skipping back out of the kitchen.

“Lulu, dear,” I call after her. “What are these?”

Sarah holds hers up by its shoulders, inspecting Lulu’s handiwork.

“You’re right,” she says, smiling. “This is not how I usually spend my Friday nights, but I think this whole pajama party thing might actually be a little fun.”

“Really?”

“Well, yeah.” Her grin takes on a particularly mischievous bend. “And, I’ve always wanted to see what Ezreal looks like with braided hair.”

“I have never seen the forgotten god. My grandmother told me these tales, but she never saw the forgotten god either—nor did her grandmother before her, or hers before her, a thousand times over. His legends endure only around crackling fires and meals of roasted fish. The further back we trace our ancestors, the truer the tales become.”

The children’s weary faces lift a little higher. Firelight dances on their cheeks, but pain lives in their eyes.

“Gods dwell around us, in the sky, in between clumps of soil, and behind the veil of stars. We need only to seek their favor, to channel their being into our hearts and deeds. For instance, on the sea, it is so cold that your eyeballs might freeze solid in their sockets. No, it’s true! But when sailors rub blubber on their faces and think about the Seal Sister, whose true name is forgotten, they are protected from the icy ocean winds.

“Others, such as Volibear, refuse to allow their own legends to fade, and still stalk this world. He demands sacrifice and forces obedience, much like the Ursine…”

They have all heard tales of the half-bear abominations. Fear makes the children lean closer to the fire.

“Oh yes, little ones—we may speak later of the bearskinned storm-bearer, but the less said about him the better.”

Like grandmother used to say, once they lean closer to the fire, they’re yours.

“Instead, these stories concern the firstborn of the gods…”

Ornn was the firstborn of his brothers and sisters. He leapt into the world, itching for a fight. This was not so easy, however. Trees were weak adversaries, snapping far too easily. Icebergs melted at his touch, running away into the sea.

Frustrated, he punched a mountain. The mountain did not yield. Ornn was pleased by this, so he challenged the land itself to a good-natured brawl.

As Ornn wrestled with the land, he dented and bruised it, shaping all of the Freljord that we know today. He headbutted mountains from the planes, and pounded down deep valleys. When he was tired, Ornn thanked the land for the glorious match. The land responded by opening a fiery pit, showing him its very heart, and he was honored to see it was a reflection of him: a fiery ram. The land had deemed Ornn worthy, and bestowed its secrets to him, gifting him the strength of primordial flame, for fire is the true agent of change.

He looked at the landscape that was the result of his fight and nodded. It would do. After this, Ornn set himself to building tools and weapons.

My ancestors must be smiling, for at this moment, a light snow begins to fall. Gentle flakes settle on the children’s furred hoods, and they stick out their tongues.

“Did you know that there used to be no snow in the Freljord?” I ask them. The children look confused. “It’s true. Our lands have always been the coldest in the entire world, but in the early days there was only bitter, dry air, and no such things as stormclouds…”

It was during the early, cloudless and cold days that Ornn built a house. He made it of the finest lumber. The magnificent home spanned three valleys. Can you imagine that? After completing his majestic Horn Hall, Ornn appraised his work.

“Good,” he said. These were the days before language, so this was a compliment indeed.

Now, his sister Anivia was annoyed. Ornn had felled her favorite perching trees to build his home. So she decided to teach him a lesson.

While Ornn was sleeping, she flew in through his bedroom window. Then, she tickled his nose with one of her feathers, causing him to sneeze a gout of flame that set fire to the bedsheets! The bedsheets set the floor ablaze! Anivia panicked, and flapped her wings to fly away, but this only stoked the fire hotter with the dry Freljord air. Soon, all of Horn Hall was alight.

The fire raged for days, darkening the skies with ash. Of course, Ornn slept through the whole thing. He awoke atop a pile of ashes in a very bad mood, for he had not had a restful sleep. But he did not know what Anivia had done. And to this day, she has never told him the truth.

“I complimented my own handiwork, and look where it got me,” said Ornn, surveying the damage. “Never again will I pat myself on the back. I shall let the quality of the work speak for itself.”

Ornn had one goal in particular for his next home: he did not want it to be flammable. He fashioned himself a spade, a lever, and a fork. With these tools, he could dig for ore, move mighty pillars, and eat the delicious spiced cherries he so enjoyed.

He hammered and shaped chunks of ore until a black mountain stood. Inside was a great forge that channeled the primordial molten flame from deep within the earth. He was pleased with his Hearth-Home—but it was too hot inside to dwell comfortably, even for Ornn.

So he dug a trench from the sea, straight to the mountain. The Seal Sister allowed cold waters to rush through the trench and cool the Hearth-Home. Great plumes of steam rose up. It took three days for the mountain to cool enough for Ornn. In that time, the ocean that fed the river dipped several inches.

By then, so much steam had risen from the waters that the perpetual blue sky was mottled with darkening gray clouds. As these new puffy forms gathered and cooled, they grew heavier and heavier until they burst with snow.

It snowed for a hundred years. This is why the Freljord still has so much snow today.

One of the children frowns at me. “If Ornn did so much for the world, then why is it only you who knows the stories about him?” she asks. The girl is young, but has already seen so much hardship that her hair has several shocks of silver running through it.

“There is one tale that answers this very question,” I reply. “Would you like to hear it?”

The children’s eager faces say it all.

Once, there were Three Sisters who needed Ornn’s help in saving their world. Ornn, however, did not care to help anyone save any world, anywhere. It was for personal reasons, and he did not elaborate on the matter. But this did not stop the Three Sisters journeying many days and nights to ask.

“There are creatures of great and wicked magic that stalk our tribes,” the First Sister said. She had fierceness and war in her eyes. “They want to destroy all things and claim the world for themselves!”

“This sounds like a problem,” Ornn said. He did not look up from his forging.

“Then will you fight with us, and use your strength to slay the monsters?”

Ornn grunted. This grunt meant “no” in such a way as to halt any more discussion. This was understood by all. If you heard this grunt, you would have thought the First Sister wise for not pressing the matter further.

“These beings watch our every move,” the Second Sister said. There was hope and wisdom in her voice. “I would ask you to take the spade that once dug your mighty river, and use it to dig the deepest trench in all the world. Then we can lure the monsters into the pit ourselves, and solve our own problem.”

Ornn grunted. The sound of this grunt meant “I will dig that hole,” and that everyone should stop talking immediately. This was understood by all. If you heard this grunt, you would have thought the Second Sister wise for not pressing the matter further.

So Ornn dug them a trench, for a very deep hole can add much to a landscape. Also, he had planned on digging one anyway, and the proposed location was a fine spot. When Ornn was finished with the trench, he left the three sisters with nary a word, for he had already said far too much to them.

“That is one deep hole,” the Second Sister said. “I pray it is deep enough.”

Wind blew up from the freshly dug abyss with an otherworldly howl, as if to say that it was deep enough. If you had heard the abyss’ howl, you would have thought it wise that no one climbed down to measure its depth.

Several years later, the sisters returned. They looked as if the battles with their foes had taken a toll.

This time, the Third Sister spoke. Her icy breath reminded Ornn of the cold and dry days, long ago. “Ornn, Builder of All Things,” she began.

“I did not build all things,” Ornn grumbled. Again, he did not look up from his forging. “Just some of them.”

The Third Sister continued. “We come now to ask you one simple favor. The pit you dug is so deep and so wide that we cannot build even a single bridge across it. Teach me how to build a bridge that can never break, and I will do the work myself.”

Ornn raised an eyebrow. He studied the Third Sister’s eyes. He did not trust her, for she had a scent of magic about her, and magic always makes sturdy things weaker. “There are many able bridge builders. Go and bother them.”

“The other builders cannot make a bridge with the type of stone we have,” the Third Sister replied. “They claim it fell from the sky, and they cannot forge it for all their efforts.” She then presented a chunk of star metal.

If you had seen the star metal, you would think it wise that only Ornn could possibly ever shape this material, for it was almost as stubborn and unyielding as him. Ornn agreed, but he would do the work alone, and required the star metal itself as payment.

The Third Sister gave it to him, and he used it to forge a tool to help build the bridge.

With that tool, and only that tool, Ornn built the bridge. The Second Sister felt bad about the Third Sister’s lie—for they did not need a bridge at all. She asked Ornn what sort of tool it was.

“I used it to hammer,” Ornn said. “So I will call it ‘Hammer.’ I have said enough.”

When he was out of sight, the Third Sister walked the length of the bridge, reciting strange incantations across the entire span. This turned the bridge into a crossbar that sealed the beasts below within the abyss. However, Ornn had been right, and the addition of magic ruined the quality of his work. Had the Three Sisters left it well enough alone, it would have lasted forever. Instead, the enchantment would slowly eat away at the masonry. It would take ages, though, so nobody paid it much mind, and the Three Sisters vowed never to speak of Ornn again.

Ornn, meanwhile, realized he did not like people asking him favors, and threw his spade as far to the west as he could. Where it landed, no one knows, and its fate is lost to darkness.

Then he turned east and threw his favorite eating fork as far as he could. It landed in the Great Sea. Some say, later, a mer-king found a powerful trident at the sea-bottom, and still uses it to rule his kingdom.

Ornn was ready to throw his hammer into the night sky, but he could not bear to do it and decided to keep it. Were you to see Ornn and ask him if it is his favorite tool, he would scold you for thinking like a child. But in secret, he favors Hammer above all other things he has made.

“Dawn brings the plumpest berries and the meatiest fish,” I say to the children. “We need to be rested.”

They groan in unison and plead with me for one more story. Just one more story.

“There is only one more story about Ornn left,” I tell them. “We should save it for another night…”

Only when they pledge to do every chore and not complain about being too tired, do I relent.

Everyone knows that you never challenge a troll to a drinking contest, don’t they? Even you little ones know not to make a bet with a troll, for trolls are sneaky and will always win. Also, everyone in the Freljord knows that the uglier a troll is, the luckier and more cunning it can be.

Unfortunately, Ornn did not know any of these things.

Grubgrack the Hideous was the oldest troll-kin in the world. His chest hair was so long, it got tangled up in his gnarled toes. Ugh! He would often trip over it and break his nose, which was bulbous and misshapen from being broken so many times. He only had two good teeth, one bad eye, and one worse eye. Warts and pimples covered his rotund belly. I will not tell you how he smelled. If I did, you would never eat fermented fish stew again.

“Build me a door that will keep my treasure safe from thieves forever,” Grubgrack said to Ornn outside Hearth-Home, “and I will give you ten casks of my trollmead. It’s a family recipe.”

Ornn dismissed his guest, but Grubgrack stuck out his foot to stop the door from closing. Ornn did not want the troll’s bunion-covered toes ruining the paint, so he let the creature go on.

“Let us make a wager,” said the truly un-beautiful troll. “Whoever can finish a cask of trollmead first owes the other a debt.”

“If it will make you go away, okay.” Ornn had never been beaten in a drinking contest. Everyone knew this back then, and now you do, too.

“At least it will be good to have a drink,” Grubrack replied, and his smile warped one of the Hearth-Home’s pillars. While Ornn’s back was turned, the troll slipped a shard of True Ice into a cask and handed it to his challenger.

They toasted in the jovial manner of the Freljord and drank. Ornn found the trollmead watered down, and he did not like it. However, Grubgrack was halfway through his cask. With his own cask still almost at the brim, Ornn tipped his head back further and drank until he thought he would drown.

But Grubgrack slammed his empty cask down and belched, and the fire in the oven turned a sickly green! Ornn coughed and spluttered.

“What is wrong?” Grubgrack teased him. “Are you choking?”

Then Ornn noticed the True Ice in his drink. It was perpetually melting and watering down the trollmead. No matter how much he chugged, the True Ice had replaced it. He smashed the cask with one hand.

“You cheated,” Ornn said. His angry voice set off an earthquake that sunk a few islands.

“Of course! What other advantage would an ugly troll like me have against the mighty Ornn?” In truth, the ugliest trolls have almost all the advantages in the world, but Ornn did not spend much time with ugly trolls, so he wouldn’t know that, but now all of you little ones do. “A deal is a deal,” Grubgrack reminded him.

“My word is as good as Hammer,” Ornn grumbled. “Even if I was cheated.”

So Ornn labored for ten days and built the single best door anyone had ever built. He adorned it with a ram’s head, like his own, and the one at the heart of the Freljord. It was impervious to magic and lock-pickers alike. Grubgrack was so impressed with the quality of the door that he was speechless, which is very rare for a troll.

Ornn fastened the door in front of the troll’s cave, which was on top of the troll’s mountain, and where all the ugliest troll-kin in history had hid their treasure.

With a grunt, Ornn trundled off, leaving Grubgrack admiring his new door.

When he had regained his wits, Grubgrack realized it had been a day since he last counted his gold, and he was growing anxious. But he could find no way to open the door! None at all.

Grubgrack tried brute force. The ram-faced door did not budge. Then, he tried to strip the paint with his foul breath. Again, the door did not budge. Lastly, he tried to pry the hinges from the cave wall but, alas, the door was fixed to the mountain so firmly that the troll only hurt his shoulders trying to shake it loose. He was locked out.

Grubgrack stormed into Ornn’s forge. “What trickery is this?” he shouted. His breath was so bad, the forge fire nearly flickered out.

“There is no trickery,” Ornn replied, stoking the flames back to life. “You told me to build a door that would keep your treasure safe from thieves forever, and I did. This door will stand longer than the mountain it is on. No one can break it. I made it just as you asked.”

“But I cannot get inside!” Grubgrack cried. “And I stole nothing from you!”

“Time is more valuable than gold,” Ornn said. “So you are a thief, and my work is as good as my word.”

Grubgrack tried for years to get back inside for his treasure, but the door never opened for him, and he could not even find the keyhole. With each attempt, the ram-headed door stared back at him, an eternal reminder of the time he cheated Ornn.

And if you listen carefully, up in the mountains, you can hear greedy old Grubgrack’s wails of anguish before any avalanche, even to this day.

The children are fast asleep, snuggled into each other around the fire. I carry them one by one to the orphans’ tent. Our tribe hasn’t much to share, but we are not the Winter’s Claw.

The last child is still awake by the fire. He lies on his side.

“Those stories aren’t real,” he says with the tiniest voice.

It’s the legless boy. We found him half-dead after our own village had been raided. We couldn’t leave him—I couldn’t leave him—so I wrapped his wounds in bandages, and carried him on my shoulders.

“I think they are made up. Or… changed to help us go to sleep.”

“A story is as real as we believe it is,” I tell him, as I settle down next to him.

“There is a god who is good, but he doesn’t care about us.”

I nod slowly. “I can see why you would think that, but it is not true. There is one more story I can tell you. It was the last story my grandmother told me before I blossomed into womanhood. She wanted me to be ready, for it is not like the others. But I think you have seen enough to be ready. What do you think?”

The boy nods. I draw him close to my chest and begin.

Once, long before the splintering of the Freljord, Ornn had a legion of smiths who lived at the base of his mountain. They claimed to worship Ornn, but if you were to ask him, they were misguided, for he would say he had no followers. Still, it is true that they built themselves a little town and that it was filled with folk who wished to make the finest things in all the world.

There were thousands of them. They made tools. They made plows. They made carts and armor and saddles. They built furnaces and homes. They called themselves the Hearthblood, for they never felt the biting cold of the Freljord, and could tolerate the immense heat bubbling beneath their bare feet on the slopes of Hearth-Home. They became the finest craftspeople in the world, and their workmanship was surpassed in quality only by Ornn’s.

Occasionally, he would appraise their work. If he liked what one of the Hearthblood had wrought, he simply said “Passable.” This was a mighty compliment from Ornn, who had learned long ago to let good work speak for itself. Do you remember that tale?

Ornn never admitted that he admired the Hearthblood but, deep inside his chest, his volcanic heart churned with respect for the hardworking people. They did not kneel or offer him sacrificed flesh. They did not turn his words into scriptures and spread them across the land to people who did not want to hear them. Instead, they focused on their work in silence. They were imaginative, resourceful, and hardworking. These Hearthblood folks made Ornn smile, although nobody knew because they couldn’t see the smile underneath his beard.

One day, Volibear came to visit his brother Ornn.

This was no friendly stop, for Ornn and his brother were never friendly, nor had they ever visited one another before. The great bear was going to make war and needed weapons for his army. Ornn saw the army—fierce aberrations, men twisted into other shapes by their efforts to please Volibear. They were simple, and fierce, and quick to anger.

“Give them swords and axes,” Volibear demanded, with wicked intent. “Give them armor, and I will make it worth your while.”

“No,” said Ornn, for he wanted no part in Volibear’s warmongering.

“Fine,” said Volibear. “Have your followers do it instead. I do not care. Do this. I am your brother.”

This irked Ornn so much that his great horns flared with molten heat. “The people in the town below do not follow me. They build for themselves. They are quiet and work hard. That is all.”

But Volibear saw beneath his brother’s words to the fiery heart in his chest. For all his flaws, Volibear was very good at reading others.

“They are a reflection of your own image.”

Ornn’s horns grew red hot, and then white hot. “If I see you again, Volibear, I will beat you within an inch of your life,” he growled. If you had heard this threat, you would think it wise for Volibear to leave and never return.

But Volibear loved fighting, and he was not wise, so he took a piece of armor from the walls of Ornn’s forge.

“If you will not make me what I want, then I will take it.”

With that, Ornn charged at Volibear and smashed him with his horns. It was so powerful a blow, the summit of the mountain shook.

This was exactly what Volibear wanted. For centuries, he had grown jealous of the love the Hearthblood freely gave to his brother. It enraged the war-bear.

They fought for eight days. They fought so hard, the base of the mountain trembled. So fierce was their fighting that molten stone exploded from the peak of Hearth-Home. Lighting strikes barraged the mountainside, and geysers of flame gushed from the cliffs. The skies grew black and red. The blood of the world ran through the highlands as the ground shook. People all over the Freljord saw the results of the battle between Volibear and Ornn.

When the smoke cleared, the mountain had lost its peak. But worse, the Hearthblood were all dead, and their town was nothing but smoldering ruins and a fading memory.

For many centuries, the half-mountain once called Hearth-Home has stood silent. Every now and then, a plume of smoke rises from the crater where the peak once stood. Some say it is Ornn, lighting his furnace to keep the fires under the surface of the world from going out. Others say he is building a great weapon that he will one day unleash.

And there are others still, who believe Ornn was killed by Volibear, for he has not been seen in the Freljord since.

“And so, Ornn’s name and tales have been lost to time and written out of the histories. These few stories, passed on around our meals of roasted fish, are all that remain.”

“That is a sad tale, which means it is the truest,” the legless boy says, looking up at me. There is a tear in his eye. “What do you believe happened to Ornn?”

“I believe when the Great Builder returns,” I tell him, “it will be to remake the world.”

The boy laughs. “I would like to see that day.”

“Maybe you will. Do not weep for the Hearthblood. Weep instead for the stories lost to war and time, for once they were more numerous than the stars. Repeat these tales so our children’s children can still hear our ancestors’ voices, and stoke the fire of the forge in our hearts.”

In my own heart, I can feel my grandmother’s smile.

It warms me. I feel no cold beneath my bare feet.

Kai’Sa peers out from the mouth of the tunnel and feels like she’s standing at the edge of the world.

A chasm, so deep that sunlight doesn’t hit the bottom. Surrounding it are the openings of dozens of other tunnels. All are carved into rock that sits deep below the surface, now exposed and crumbling.

Once, this had been home to a vast colony of Void creatures. These had been their burrows, formed with the randomness of unmade matter. Sharp corners, dead ends, coils upon coils... all constructed without a plan beyond “eat the world.” That is the Void—mindless organic machines, driven by instinct to fight and consume and unmake with no thought beyond the present. She’s killed enough to know there is nothing deeper to the creatures than that.

But the tunnel Kai’Sa stands in is different. It is not random unmaking. It is practically a straight line running north, one she’d followed for nearly four days. This tunnel, this passage, was made with intention. With a goal. It doesn’t make sense...

Kai’Sa would make it make sense, starting with where this passage led.

So far, it has led to this chasm.

Kai’Sa eyes the openings on the opposite side. Hard to tell how deep any of them go. But she would bet her second skin that one of them is a piece of the same passage she stands in now.

She rolls her shoulders. Her living armor wakes, pulling its flesh tightly against her own. It has been her only constant, growing with her from the time she was a little girl. It had been one of the voidling beasts that killed her family, her village. Covered in its carapace, Kai’Sa would always be seen as a monster. But without it, she could not keep the world safe from the Void.

Without it, she would be nothing.

The scaly pods at her shoulders flex, and the embedded crystals illuminate as she selects her first target. The heat from the crystals spawns a plasma missile; she launches it down the mouth of a tunnel deep below the surface. It takes six seconds to cross the chasm. Massive. Another second, and the missile hits a curve. Nope. Not what she’s looking for.

From here, it’s point and shoot, over and over. Most missiles hit something a second or two in. But Kai’Sa is nothing if not patient. She will go at this as long as it takes.

She finds the tunnel she’s looking for just as the sun begins to set. She waits for her missile to cross the chasm, then starts the count. One. Two. Three.

Four. Five. Six. This is it. This one’s the other end of the passage.

Grinning, she fires a barrage around the opening to mark it. Her earlier missile is still going... until she hears the horrible screech from whatever it struck.

She turns her shoulder pods inward, pressing them together to hide their light. She waits silently for her prey to show itself.

Another screech. A voidling creature emerges from the other side of the passage. Kai’Sa has spent years fighting and observing and cataloging voidlings. This is not one she’s seen before. The creature’s smooth, rounded body, injured from her missile, deforms as it opens its long lower jaw. Its mouth is filled with translucent needle-like teeth jutting out at dangerous angles. Its sides expand and contract like it’s breathing.

Or taking in scent, she thinks as it turns. No eyes, but it can still find me. She takes aim as the sun dips below the horizon. The voidling begins... to glow. Something—a tongue?—emerges from its mouth and emits a soft bluish light, looking like the hanging lamps in humans’ mines. Haven’t seen a voidling do that before. She notices that its injury is glowing, too.

Guess I’ll call it a Lamplight. She lets a missile fly. The Lamplight’s posture changes. It lets out a high, sustained shriek and dodges Kai’Sa’s blast. Dammit. Kai’Sa lines up another shot.

The entire tunnel behind it blooms with blue light. Hundreds of Lamplights join the first, mouths open, tongues raised and glowing. Kai’Sa forces herself to breathe slowly. She’s fought worse odds. All in one spot. Excellent. Kai’Sa unleashes a barrage, hoping to take out all the voidlings at once.

In the time it takes the missiles to cross, the voidlings spill out like dust, clinging to the walls of the chasm as the barrage whistles past them harmlessly.

What...

Led by the injured Lamplight, they move as one. Toward Kai’Sa.

... the hell?

She raises her hands and fires rapidly at the swarm. She hits a few, but not enough to make a dent in their numbers. And they are already a quarter of the way to her. Kai’Sa looks around wildly. Not many options. Fight from her current location. Run back down the passage. Take her chances and dive down. Try to climb, fight them from the surface.

She glances above, then at the swarm. They’re halfway around. Climb. Kai’Sa shoots into rock four times in a zigzag—one for each of her hands to grip and her feet to balance. Pulling herself up, she begins the climb.

Shoot, grab, pull. Shoot, grab, pull. As fast as she can, Kai’Sa makes her path. Her shoulder pods shoot at the swarm. They’re near, but Kai’Sa’s pace is good. She’s more than halfway to the—

And her hand hits sand.

She shoots again. There’s nothing for her missile to pierce. It blows through the sand, and more seeps down to fill in the empty spot. There’s nothing to grab. Can she jump the rest of the way? Jaw clenched, Kai’Sa turns toward the monsters. If she’s going to die, she’ll take as many of them with her as she can.

Suddenly, the wall around the voidlings cracks.

And crumbles.

Hundreds of Lamplights drop with the falling stone, their light swallowed by the darkness of the chasm. Only three of them still rush toward Kai’Sa. That’s a number she can handle. They’re close enough that she can see barbs on their tongues.

Three shots fire. Two Lamplights fall. One left.

It smacks its thorny tongue against Kai’Sa’s ribcage. Her ribs crack beneath her armor as she slams against the rock. She struggles to take a breath while the suit repairs over her injury. Gripping the wall with her left hand, she grabs the creature’s tongue just below the barbs with her right. Violet power surges. The Lamplight’s tongue melts around her hand. Screaming, it backs away. Kai’Sa takes aim.

This time, she doesn’t miss.

Okay. Kai’Sa breathes. Okay. Next step. She’ll have to find a way to the surface.

That’s when she notices the stone cube sticking out from the sand.

That wasn’t there before. Kai’Sa reaches out and grabs—it is exactly the right size for her hand. She tests part of her weight on it. It holds. Curious, she leans to one side and looks farther up. Jutting out every armspan or so is another one of these stone cubes. She’ll question this turn of good luck later.

Kai’Sa scrambles up, one cube at a time, until she’s out. Looking around in the moonlight, she sees no landmarks, just dunes and rocky cliffs. A sand storm kicks up in the distance. She glances down into the chasm. If she squints, she can almost make out a glow...

The wind gets loud. Storm’s approaching fast. She turns to face it. At the center of the storm is...

A girl?

The ground explodes under Kai’Sa’s feet. She hurtles through the air toward the storm, an arm in front of her broken ribs. She shifts position mid-air, her shoulder pods folding in front of her like a battering ram. If Kai’Sa’s attacker wants to bring her closer, that’s their mistake.

Something wraps around her shoulder pods and wrists, pulling her down, slamming her to the ground. Her ribs feel like they’re on fire, and her helm cracks where her head meets the earth.

She gets to her feet and forces her wrists apart. A red scarf, studded with stones, falls away. With a guttural yell, she sets her hands alight.

She’s stopped by the look of surprise and horror on the girl’s face. Even all these years later, she is still taken aback when someone looks at her and sees only a monster.

Push past it, Kai’Sa. She brings her hands up again, ready to attack...

“You’re human?”

Kai’Sa realizes she’s looking at the girl through the crack in her helm. Oh.

“You... see me?” It doesn’t matter. Humans are always afraid of her, whether or not they know she is one of them. But the girl’s expression gives Kai’Sa a foolish hope. Maybe this time could be different. Cautiously, Kai’Sa lets the helm pull away from her head, revealing the rest of her true face.

The girl drops to her knees, and Kai’Sa’s breath catches in her throat. “I am so sorry,” the girl says. “I thought you were—”

“A monster?”

“Well, yeah.” The girl gestures toward the chasm. “People tend not to survive long in these collapses.” She gazes at Kai’Sa’s second skin. “And you don’t... look human? At first glance.”

The girl is not as young as she’d thought; she must be around her own age, or older. Kai’Sa stares as the scarf lifts from the ground by its stony ends. “The stones,” she says quietly. “You control the stones.” The girl nods as the scarf wraps itself around her neck as though by magic. “You made those cubes come out of the sand.”

The girl shrugs, smiling. “I could feel someone was down there with those monsters. So I tried to help.” Her smile slips. “It’s all I’ve been doing for weeks now. Months? Hard to keep track.”

Kai’Sa blinks, eyes suddenly stinging. Someone else is fighting the Void, she realizes. Not the same way I am, but... “Who are you?”

The smile returns. “My name is Taliyah.”

The tents, cobbled from scraps of fabric and solid slabs of rock, look like Taliyah’s work. A group of thirty or forty, mostly children and elders, surround a large firepit at the center of the camp. The way they look at her—silently, with wide eyes and hunched shoulders—is horribly familiar.

Fear. Kai’Sa doesn’t meet anyone’s gaze. It’s for their comfort. But really, it’s for her own.

Taliyah’s arms are open wide as she introduces Kai’Sa, diving into a dramatic retelling of their meeting. The only movement in the crowd is the flickering of flames. Stillness, and silence, is their only response as Taliyah finishes her tale.

“I don’t have to stay,” Kai’Sa mumbles.

Taliyah shakes her head. “You’re injured. I can’t send you back out there when you haven’t eaten or rested. I won’t.”

A child half her height, a red cowl wrapped around his shoulders, stands. “You sure she’s human?” He squints. “Maybe it’s just some kinda disguise.” He almost falls backward from the force of two older girls pulling him down into his seat.

Taliyah laughs. “Have you seen a Void monster that can smile, Samir?” she retorts. “I haven’t.”

Everyone looks at Kai’Sa expectantly. She does her best approximation of a smile, close-lipped so as not to look too aggressive. It doesn’t seem to scare the children. A victory.

The boy, Samir, stands again. “Fair enough,” he says as he walks toward Kai’Sa. He offers her a half-eaten piece of meat on a stick. “Want the rest of my sandsnake?”

Everyone else seems to breathe easier as Kai’Sa accepts the food. She rips the meat from the stick and swallows without chewing, her suit purring in relief. Zaifa, one of the older girls with jade beaded through her hair, offers her more. This time, Kai’Sa slows down enough to appreciate the flavoring of cinnamon, sour lemon, and smoky ul-tawaat berries.

The taste brings back old memories, of life with her parents, of her father cooking over an open flame while her mother ground the ul-tawaat with her pestle...

Kai’Sa shakes her head to clear her mind—no good can come from dwelling in those memories. She really doesn’t need the rest, and she’s already eaten enough for her ribs to start healing.

But the camp has already started to relax, with people chatting over their own meals. Some have even turned their back to her. A show of trust. And the hope in Taliyah’s eyes is unmistakable. Please stay, they seem to say. Don’t leave us yet.

“I’ll stay awhile,” she concedes. “To heal.”

The passage will still be there tomorrow.

They are dead. Killed by the Void, as my own family was. Kai’Sa does not say what she is thinking.

Some of the elders speak of the sun-blessed Ascended warriors. Others tell the story of the last emperor, and the chaos that followed his death. Zaifa describes the darkness that infected the Ascended and drove them to madness and evil. None are believable, but Kai’Sa listens intently.

The story told by Kadira, an older girl with rocky arm braces, is by far the most outlandish. She talks of a place called Xolan, across the Sai Kahleek, that has been magically protected for millennia. “It is said to be a paradise,” she sighs. “With libraries, and gardens, and water that flows as far as the eye can see. And everyone is safe, without fear.”

Kai’Sa does not realize that she has scoffed until Kadira and the children look at her. “No place is safe from the Void,” Kai’Sa says. “Especially so close to the Sai Kahleek. It’s a myth.”

“It’s real,” Kadira insists. “Where do you think we’re all headed?”

Without another word, Kai’Sa stands and leaves the storytellers to their tales.

She finds Taliyah leaning against one of the tents, deep in conversation with Zaifa and Samir, lit more by moonlight than by firelight. Zaifa traces her finger across an open scroll.

“You aren’t actually searching out this Xolan.” Kai’Sa doesn’t frame it as a question. “You’d be putting yourselves in real danger, crossing the Sai Kahleek over a fantasy.”

Taliyah exchanges a look with Zaifa, who hands Kai’Sa the scroll—a map of eastern Shurima. She points to a dot to the north of the Sai Kahleek. Xolan. North. The same direction as the passage. Kai’Sa frowns.

“It’s the best chance we have of finding safety for these people,” Taliyah explains. “Their homes have been destroyed, their families... separated. They need hope that things will be okay.”

“False hope helps no one. When it comes to the Void, the only thing you can do is run and hope you’re fast.”

Taliyah shakes her head. “If we go around the sai, we’ll run out of food. Stay where we are, we run out of food. Go back, and all we’ll find are the towns that fell. Where else do we run?”

Kai’Sa stares at Taliyah. “Do you know what lives in the Sai Kahleek? What hunts there?”

“The xer’sai. We’ve all heard the stories.”

“No. Xolan is a story,” Kai’Sa says. “The xer’sai are real. I’ve fought them before, many at a time. This is their nest. Trying to cross it is a death sentence.”

“I’ve fought Void creatures too. Or did you forget that I saved you?”

“Those weren’t xer’sai.”

“Whatever they were, I defeated them when you couldn’t.” Kai’Sa can see determination in the set of Taliyah’s jaw. “If Xolan is our only hope, then that’s where I’m going to lead everyone.”

“Besides, we’ve got a plan,” Samir says, excited. “Taliyah’s going to build a bridge or wall or something over the sand, and we’ll take people across together.”

He can’t be that much older than I was when the Void took me. Aloud, she asks, “What, can you move stone too?”

“I’m the best rock hopper you’ve ever met,” Samir says with a confident grin. “None of those monsters can move as fast as my sandboard. And if they try?” He mimes a blast from the ground. “Taliyah drives ’em back with some rock-splosions.”

“You sound like a child,” Kai’Sa spits. Samir’s smile drops. “The children of Rek’Sai... all they do is devour. Anything that gets in their way? Gone.” She leans in close. “When they hear you, they hunt you. They don’t stop until their teeth close around your bones.”

“You’re scaring him,” Zaifa accuses as she puts a steadying hand on Samir’s shoulder.

“Good. He should be.”

“So come with us,” Taliyah says confidently. “You can help keep everyone safe.”

“No. Because you’re not going.” Kai’Sa points to Samir. “You are not putting these children in that kind of danger. They’ll die. Make your way around the sai. Take as many as you can. Leave the slowest behind, use their rations to—”

“We won’t!” Samir stands toe to toe with Kai’Sa, glaring up at her. “Taliyah will protect us. I will protect us.” He puffs out his chest. “I’m going to help these people, and they’re all going to make it across because... because each of their lives means something.” He stomps back toward the firepit, with Zaifa chasing after him.

“It’s your only chance,” Kai’Sa says quietly. “Otherwise, you’re condemning them all to death.”

“No.” Taliyah steps in front of Kai’Sa, refusing to let her look away. “Our world is a tapestry, and every life is a thread of a different color. Each one makes the whole more beautiful.”

Ugh. Metaphors. “Then the Void is a flame,” Kai’Sa replies. “It unmakes everything it touches. If your tapestry catches fire, the entire thing will burn... unless you cut the smoldering threads away. Then you still save most of it.”

“You’re wrong. Any threads that drop make it all unstable, easy to unravel.” Sunlight appears at the horizon, and Taliyah’s eyes flash gold. “I’m not willing to let any of them go.”

Taliyah collapses the stone structures back into the earth, leaving little sign that they were ever there. Kai’Sa watches and nibbles at her bread, trying to make it last.

“I don’t suppose you’ve changed your mind,” Taliyah says, “and decided to join us.” Kai’Sa sees the sheen of sweat on the girl’s brow. This exhausts her more than she lets on.

“No. I have somewhere else to go.” She sighs. “And you haven’t changed yours.”

Taliyah shrugs. “I have somewhere to go, too.” She turns back to her work. “I’m disappointed. You know what you’re doing with these Void monsters. You could help these people.”

The best way I can help is to figure out what made that Void passage. It was made with a purpose in mind... and that scares me. But she doesn’t say that. Instead, she says, “I hope you can help them yourself.”

Except it feels lonely now. Kai’Sa wonders if she shouldn’t have spent so much time with Taliyah. She’s been alone for more than half her life, just her and the Void monsters that dwell below the surface world. She didn’t realize how good it would feel to be a person again.

Alone with her thoughts, she hardly notices the time pass. Soon, she sees older tunnels, enormous holes punctuating the passage walls and leading elsewhere. Xer’sai tunnels. I’m below the Sai Kahleek. But she still doesn’t see or hear any xer’sai.

She spots a bluish glow down one of the tunnels. Quietly, and with as little motion as possible, Kai’Sa peers down the opening into the darkness.

She sees a few smaller xer’sai of a kind that she has encountered and named before. A group of Callers, reedy bipedal creatures with four prehensile jaw-talons, chirp softly to one another. Their shrieks can cut through the desert, alerting others to the presence of fresh prey. Spiky hatchlings, already larger than the Callers and due to grow much larger still, stand beside them. Together, they encircle dozens of Lamplights.

One of them has a glowing blue mark like a burn on the side of its body. That’s the one I shot, Kai’Sa realizes in horror. Taliyah’s attack didn’t kill it. It might not have killed any of them...

As she watches, one of the hatchlings stalks over to the marked creature. It extends its tongue and touches it to the hatchling’s horn.

A soft blue light engulfs the hatchling. It glows.

The sudden chattering of Callers drowns out Kai’Sa’s gasp. What are they doing? Her heart beats in her throat as more hatchlings and Callers go toward the Lamplights to receive their own glow. Are they making the xer’sai more powerful? She shakes her head to clear her thoughts, and takes aim at the marked creature.

Whatever it is, I’m going to stop them.

That’s when a loud boom shakes the earth.

An enormous xer’sai Dunebreaker cuts through the stone wall with the bladed horn above its eight eyes. The talons along its jaw scratch into the rock, leaving deep gashes. Every step shakes the ground to drive fear into its prey. It hisses, swiping its horn at the Lamplights. It slices three of them at once, their deflated bodies leaking bright blood.

The Dunebreaker doesn’t like what the Lamplights are doing.

The Lamplights screech and flee toward the passage—toward Kai’Sa. She feels the familiar rush of power as she and her suit become invisible just in time for the Lamplights, then the Dunebreaker, to rush northward past her. The Dunebreaker’s horn rips a deep gash through the top of the passage. It bows inward.

The passage is going to collapse.

She dashes ahead, trying to keep up with the massive xer’sai while it can’t see her. I need to know where this leads. I have to understand.

But then, from somewhere behind her... Screams. Human screams.

Kai’Sa drops her invisibility and dashes up toward the surface before everything crumbles beneath her. She blinks as her helm readjusts to the sunlight. The dust clouds make it hard to see, and the crash of rockfall pierces her ears, but she can still hear the sounds of panic. She runs toward them.

Ahead of her, she sees the crevasse that formed where the Dunebreaker’s horn tore through the ceiling of the passage. A stone platform is dangling over the edge, though most of it remains on the sand, refusing to fall into the fissure. The people standing atop the platform are screaming, but a lone figure remains calm. Taliyah. Her stone bridge. She’s the only thing keeping it up. Her arms shake from the strain, but slowly, she lifts the front of the platform back toward the surface.

A child’s shout comes from below. Someone fell into the passage.

Kai’Sa sprints toward Taliyah. “You need to get back!” she shouts as the bridge rises. “The whole thing is going to collapse beneath you all if you don’t move!”

“Samir’s down there!” Taliyah screams as the bridge finally makes it to the surface, settling onto the ground with a thud. “I’m not going to leave him!”

She lets out a strangled yell and pushes against air with one hand. The bridge groans as it scrapes away from her, pushing it a good distance away from the collapse. Then she dives into the crevasse.

Kai’Sa stares over the edge. She’s going to die down there if I don’t help her.

Kadira and Zaifa come running from the bridge. Kai’Sa fires at their feet.

“What are you doing?!” Kadira shouts, jumping back.

“That huge xer’sai could turn back any minute,” Kai’Sa says. “Get the others out of here.”

“We’re not going anywhere until we know Taliyah and Samir are safe,” Zaifa says with clenched fists. “We can help you.”

I don’t have time for this, Kai’Sa thinks as her shoulder pods unfold, crystals crackling with power. If I kill these two, the others will run.

Kadira and Zaifa join hands, but they do not move. Kai’Sa remembers the stories they told around the firepit. The food they shared with her. Their fear of her, and how it left them over the course of the night.

... I don’t want to hurt them. “I’ll go down and help them. Please, go back to the others. They need someone to be strong for them.”

“Fine. But you have to bring them both back,” Zaifa spits out as she and Kadira run back toward the bridge.

I will. I promise. Without glancing back, Kai’Sa leaps into the growing hollow below.

Her feet hit the bottom hard enough to snap any normal person’s bones. In the distance, she sees glowing voidlings—not just the Lamplights, but the hatchlings and Callers they’ve converted—surrounding a smooth stone dome. That must be where Taliyah and Samir are.

She hears a subtle shift in the rumbling sound from afar. The Dunebreaker’s turned around, she realizes. If it’s after the Lamplights... it’ll be coming right back here.

Kai’Sa digs deep into the power of her living armor. Her wrists are surrounded by violet light, until they’re not. Invisible again.

She fires on the Callers. All five die without making a sound. The hatchlings turn, looking for the source of the attack. Only the blind Lamplights, tasting the air, can sense her. Before they can pinpoint her, she’s already taken out the hatchlings.

Now she’s in trouble. Dozens of Lamplights rush toward her. She fades back into visibility and dashes away as fast as she can.

They’re on her in a matter of seconds. She fires wildly, but only a few of them drop. One catches her by the ankle, slicing through her suit with the barbs on its tongue. She falls as she attempts to dodge more attacks. But they slice at her from all sides, faster than her suit can knit itself back together. Blood drips from her arms, her legs, her cheek. She tastes the tang of copper as it runs over her lips...

And then something explodes from beneath. The Lamplights are propelled back and away.

They pause, confused. Kai’Sa looks beyond them. Taliyah’s head pokes through the top of the dome. She’s shouting something. Kai’Sa’s helm reforms, and she hears Taliyah shout, “Come toward me!”

Kai’Sa crouches. “Give me a running start!”

The earth explodes beneath her, propelling her through the air, over the voidlings and toward Taliyah. She lands on her good ankle, and tries to sprint—she can’t. So she dips back into her suit’s power, letting it drain her reserves of energy to speed the healing of her ankle. She can’t run for long.

But she’ll try to make it count.

As the monsters get closer, Taliyah propels Kai’Sa toward her again. The ground she lands on is different, with sharp bumps dotting the earth. Kai’Sa runs over them, trying to get the Lamplights to follow her rather than go toward Taliyah. The one in front bears her mark, and gets close enough to reach for her again...

An explosion tears it to pieces, staining the earth with glowing blood. Kai’Sa stops in shock.

“Keep running!” Taliyah shouts. “That’s what triggers the explosions!”

So she does, circling around Taliyah.

A few Lamplights get too close. Taliyah’s “rock-splosions” tear through them. The others seem to learn, slowing down, but they become a target for Kai’Sa’s missiles.

It doesn’t take long to thin their ranks. But the rumbling grows louder as the Dunebreaker bores its way back. We don’t have much time.

There’s only a handful left. Kai’Sa stands near the dome, exhausted, and fires the last missiles she has the energy to make. Slowed by the minefield, each voidling takes the hit.

Grinning, she turns to Taliyah. The girl is pale, coughing from the dust in the air. Her arm is around a frightened Samir’s shoulders, as he struggles to keep her upright.

“I can’t...” Taliyah pants. “The ground... It’s unstable. Can’t keep holding it up...”

Kai’Sa takes Taliyah in her arms. She beckons for Samir to cling to her back, then runs toward the walls of the hollow. I’m at my limit. I don’t know if I can make it up to the surface like this.

Suddenly, Taliyah twists out of Kai’Sa’s grip and leaps, summoning a rising platform beneath her feet. She pulls Kai’Sa toward her and propels them all upward. Her strength gives out just short of the surface. Kai’Sa and Taliyah grab the ridge and do their best to hold on...

A dozen hands reach down, covered in dirt and dust. Is this real? Kai’Sa wonders as she stretches up toward them. Two hands pull her up. It is. She looks up, recognizing some of the faces from Taliyah’s camp. One of the hands around her wrists belongs to Kadira. I’m being rescued.

“Zaifa!” Taliyah cries once they’re all on solid ground again. “Kadira! You came back for us!”

“And brought help.” Kai’Sa nods at them both. “Smart. Thank you.”

Below, the Dunebreaker bursts back into the hollow. Kai’Sa holds a finger to her lips and mouths don’t move. Dunebreakers can only sense things they can hear or feel or see moving. If we stay still and quiet, we’ll live.

The creature prods the deflated bodies of the Lamplights with its horn. It shuffles around, finding the corpses of the glowing Callers and hatchlings.

Satisfied that its enemies are dead, it burrows back through the rock and down into the earth.

Kai’Sa waits until they can’t hear it anymore before she lets anyone move. Then Taliyah, exhausted and pale, lifts another bridge of stone from the ground and takes them all back toward the others. A drained Kai’Sa and an only somewhat humbled Samir bring up the rear.

“I would have made it back up on my own,” Samir says with a tired grin at Kai’Sa. “But it was nice of you to come help. What with me slowing everyone down and all.”

Kai’Sa gives the kid a sidelong glance, and can’t help but smile. “Couldn’t sit back and lose the best rock hopper I’ve ever met, could I?”

Kai’Sa lies beyond the light, not willing to let on how sore her body still is. Better to rest than to eat, she thinks miserably, the scent of charred cabbage floating toward her.

Taliyah sits and silently offers Kai’Sa a bowl full of cabbage and millet. Kai’Sa pushes it away.

“You’re not hungry?” Taliyah asks.

“I’m angry.”

Taliyah looks surprised. “Why?”

“You should have listened to me,” Kai’Sa says bitterly. “Instead? You couldn’t protect your people—those voidlings you thought you killed were the ones attacking us. You almost lost everyone. If I hadn’t been there, you would have.” She sees the regret in the twist of Taliyah’s lips, the set of her jaw. “And when they needed you most, you abandoned them. You left them all to die so you could try to maybe save one person.”

Taliyah is quiet for a moment. “Not that I’m not grateful, but... you know you did the same thing when you came down to help me, right?”

Kai’Sa doesn’t know how to respond to that.

“Don’t go toward Xolan,” Kai’Sa says after a few moments of awkward silence. “The Void passage that collapsed, the one I’ve been following, was directly below your route there. I’m pretty sure that Xolan is where it leads. That means the Void already has it.”

Taliyah nods, her shoulders slumping. “I’ll tell them they need to find another place.”

“They? What about you?”

“Well. I’m going to Xolan.”

“Taliyah—”

“That’s where you’re going, right?” Taliyah sighs. “I thought I could protect these people. Get them to safety. But you were right—there is no safe place. So... we’ll have to make one.”

“Uh. What do you mean?”

“If the Void is in Xolan... then we take it back! Make it safe enough to lead everyone to it... and try to help whoever is already there.” Taliyah sounds so optimistic.

“If the Void has taken the town... there’s not going to be anyone left to save.”

“We can’t know that from here. Even if there’s one person who needs our help, that will be worth it to me.” Taliyah steps forward and takes Kai’Sa’s hands in her own. They feel warm and calloused, even through Kai’Sa’s second skin. “I can’t do it without you, Kai’Sa. I didn’t kill those Lamplights on my own... but I was able to when you were there with me. Let’s find this place together.”

If she had been there when my home fell to the Void... maybe I could have been something different. Kai’Sa looks at the hope in Taliyah’s eyes, the strength in it. But I am who I am. The world needs me like this. So does she. I’ve seen what we can do together. I think I need her, too.

So does whoever might still be alive in Xolan.

Kai’Sa takes a bite of the charred cabbage and nods. “Fine. Another thread for the tapestry.”

“Be safe and be well,” Taliyah had said, hugging her tightly. “The blessings of the Great Weaver upon you all.”

Now, they are out of sight. She turns back to Kai’Sa, her only companion for the next leg of this journey. I know she’s happy to have the company, Taliyah thinks with a secret smile. Even if she won’t admit it.

Together they set out across the Sai Kahleek on a floating stone bridge, their destinies momentarily woven into one.

I watch the worm wriggling its way up from the sand.

Its fronded head sways this way and that as it tastes the air, sensing the ewer of water I keep by my bedside amid the pile of scrolls, bone styluses, and ink pots. The water is two days old, gritty with dust from a well that is dry more often than not—but the worm won’t care.

I admire its courage, emerging from its home beneath the sand before a creature hundreds, if not thousands, of times its size. It must surely know I could crush it beneath my sandaled foot, but it has no fear of me. A hair-fine tongue emerges as the worm eases itself through the hole in the threadbare rug covering the floor of my humble abode.

The rug was a last gift from my mother before I left Kenethet as an apprentice stonemason in the employ of Arch-Mason Nouria. Even as a young man, my skill with a chisel, rasp, and file was well known, and had earned me first place in the annual Feast of the Ascended, where I carved a likeness of Setaka.

It had also drawn the attention of the Arch-Mason, whose great carvings adorned the carved frontage of Magyett Sadja’s silk palace in Nashramae, and the Sun Temple of Bel’zhun. Some said she had even sculpted the likenesses of great men and women across the ocean in a city where the streets were paved in gold and great machines of magic did the work of ten strong men. I do not know if I truly believe these latter tales, for Nouria never speaks of any work she has done beyond the sands of Shurima.

I remember the moment she lifted my statue vividly, though it is close to twenty years ago now...

“How did you choose the look of the queen of the god-warriors?” she asked, her voice not yet worn thin by the years and her lungs not yet ravaged by the dust of her great work. “No true likenesses have ever been found of Setaka.”

I had been prepared for that question and replied with my carefully rehearsed answer.

“I dreamed of her,” I said, with the earnestness of youth. “I dreamed I saw her lead the Last Charge, and she turned to me just before I awoke, her head haloed by the setting sun.”

“A fine answer, young man,” she said, “but I happen to recognize this face. If I’m not mistaken, this is a sand-maiden working in the employ of Benida-Marah.”

I blushed, caught in my lie.

But Arch-Mason Nouria only laughed and said, “Don’t be abashed, boy. You’re not the first artist to use their lover as a model.”

She turned my sculpture this way and that, running her fingertips over the stone and nodding, judging my work and, apparently, finding it worthy.

“How would you like to be my apprentice?” she asked.

I left Kenethet the next day, following the Arch-Mason across the northern reaches of the Sai Kahleek, to Xolan.

To where the faceless god awaited.

I pour a small amount of water onto the ground near the worm before strapping my tool belt around my waist. It hangs loose over my hips, and I fear I may need to use my awl to punch another hole in the leather. Our food is not plentiful, and if the trade caravans do not pass our way, we sometimes go weeks with our meager supplies strictly rationed.

I leave the worm wriggling happily in his little pool, pleased to have been able to help him survive. Every living thing deserves its chance to exist. I am reminded of the mendicant preacher who passed through our town last year, and told me that even the smallest creatures are part of the Great Weaver’s plan.

I wonder what became of her, for she seemed in a great hurry.

Putting her and the worm from my mind, I head outside, feeling the heat of the day even though the sun is still to fully rise. The sky is a velvety blue, a few stars still glittering in pleasing patterns above.

A gust of cold air disturbs the stone dust that swoops in playful spirals along the street. The wind carries the smell of something foul, like spoiled meat or rancid milk, and I wonder if some wild animal is lying dead somewhere nearby.

The ground hereabouts is rocky and mostly inhospitable, but there are signs it was once abundantly fertile and used to raise crops and graze animals. The Shuriman desert is far from the lifeless wasteland many outsiders believe it to be; it has a vibrant ecosystem of flora and fauna, some dangerous, some entirely harmless. Thankfully, we are untroubled by dangerous predators or bandits in Xolan, in part thanks to our remoteness, but also because the elder stonemasons tell us Xolaani herself watches over us, protecting us so that we might restore her to glory.

Work starts early, and scores of yawning masons are already making their way to the great cliff to carry out their assigned tasks. We share morning greetings before scattering to our assigned duties around or upon the great statue.

And though I have seen it every day for the last two decades, it still has the power to take my breath away.

The rock rises vertically in a solid escarpment, a towering wall of ochre stone, layered in wind-worn knife-like outcroppings. Some of those we have cut from the cliff to create our canvas, others we have left as great windbreaks to better preserve our work.

And what work it is! The statue of Ascended Xolaani is, quite literally, a towering achievement.

Around three hundred yards from her carven feet to her shorn neck, the statue carved into the cliff had been all but worn away by centuries of neglect when I first laid eyes upon it. A passing traveler might even have missed it, were their eyes fixed too warily on the horizon.

The wind softened the detail of the sculpted robes wrapped around her legs, and a long-ago rockfall smashed portions of the kaftan billowing around her outflung arms like wings.

But most grievously of all, some ancient wound slashed clean through her carven stone face, leaving no hint as to the god-warrior’s true likeness. This legend from Shurima’s past has remained faceless for uncounted centuries, but we—the stonemasons of Xolan—are poised to finally restore her to glory once more.

If only we could agree on her true face.

“Water and shade to you, Arch-Mason,” I say, climbing onto the lift platform at the base of the cliff.

“Water and shade to you, Mennas,” Arch-Mason Nouria replies, without looking up. “You’re late.”

She says this to me every morning now, a habit she has fallen into lately, though I have never given her a reason to accuse me of tardiness.

“I was slaking the thirst of a worm,” I say.

“A worm?”

“Yes, it comes by every morning, looking for water.”

“And you give it some?”

“I do.”

She shakes her head, but I can see the idea of me keeping a worm as a pet amuses her.

I crane my neck, looking up the length of the statue. This close to the cliff, it is impossible to make out the details, but as we rise we will be able to see the stonework.

A network of scaffolding clings to the face of the cliff like the web of a spider, the wood brought at great expense from the jungles of the east, and the greener lands south of the mountains. Tempered ironwood beams and steps hammered into the rock allow masons to climb to where they need to work. A series of pulleys and ropes serve as an elevator to reach the highest portions of the statue.

It is there that Arch-Mason Nouria and I will be working today.

“Ready?” she asks.

“I am.”

I untie the loops of ropes securing the lift mechanism, and allow the counterweight rope to pull free of its moorings on the lift platform. The whole contraption judders, and I count the knots as we ascend, each one marking a twelve-foot interval.

I sit at the edge of the platform, relishing the increasing sense of height as we rise.

The town of Xolan is not large, a collection of perhaps two hundred souls clustered around a murky lake and patches of greenery that provide a little shade and some fruit from time to time. To live so far from the cities is hard, but what we do here is more important than any human comforts we might miss. Our dwellings are all finely made, as you would expect from a community of stonemasons, each uniquely crafted by the artisans within and reflective of their character and style. My own house is humble, its understated aesthetic reminiscent of my mother’s home in Kenethet.

A work-yard lies at the sunward edge of our town, filled with rock cut from the cliff, fallen boulders, and larger pieces of new, decorative stonework that have yet to be lifted into place.

Were we all to vanish tomorrow, its many statues, carvings, and master-worked blocks would stand as a testament to our life’s work.

A wide channel cuts through the heart of our town, running from the rubble-choked base of the cliff in a zig-zagging manner before disappearing beneath the sands of the Sai Kahleek. Shards of stone and sand fill its length, but I have seen pictures that show this channel was once awash with running water.

If the stories of the Hawk Emperor restoring the ancient city of Shurima to life are true, then little of his liquid bounty has come our way. But when we have restored the faceless god, the channel will once again flow with healing waters, and we will be lauded for our part in the land’s restoration.

“Tell me of Xolaani,” says Nouria, her eyes somewhere far away.

I have been waiting for this, and turn to smile at her.

This is another habit she has fallen into—having me recite the history of the god-warrior as we ascend. I do not mind indulging her, for it is good to remember why we do this, why we have all devoted our lives to restoring the face of the Ascended, even if much of what we know is fragmentary.

“Xolaani was said to be the daughter of a healer,” I begin, closing my eyes and tilting my head to the east, “a child born under the Aspect of the Protector at an auspicious passage of the sun. She lived in a time of great change for Shurima, when the war against the vile thaumaturges had just begun, and the armies of the emperor had suffered a great defeat before the walls of Icathia.

“Great was the suffering, and Xolaani worked tirelessly to save as many lives as she could, speaking out against the folly of emperors that still drove the tribes of the sun to make war with one another.”

Nouria nods, her eyes drifting over the horizon, as if seeing something I can not.

Is it my imagination, or do I detect a milkiness to the once sapphire-blue of her eyes...?

Sensing my scrutiny, she turns away. “Go on.”

“It is said that she saved hundreds, maybe even thousands of lives, but mourned that they were saved only to be sent back into the fighting. Some say she even spoke out against the emperor, calling him a warmonger and a despot.”

“Your tone tells me you find that unlikely,” says Nouria.

“If she spoke out against the emperor, why would he later agree to her being gifted with Ascension?”

“It was not the emperor who decreed who would rise to meet the sun, but the priests who read the augurs and charted the course of the future in the beams of its golden light. Rare would it be for any emperor to defy the will of the sun.”

“But not unheard of?”

She coughs, her lungs still weak from the fever that struck her last winter.

“No, not unheard of,” she says finally. “All too easy for one to manipulate the other. But keep going. Tell me what became of Xolaani when Shurima fell. Tell me about the conflict that followed.”

I’ve never needed to tell this part of the story. We always reach our destination before the details of Xolaani’s history grow more obscure. But now, with us bound for the missing face of the god-warrior, I have no choice but to continue.

The Arch-Mason catches my hesitation. “You have studied this, yes?”

“I have,” I assure her, “but many of our scrolls are incomplete, or wilfully opaque, filled with stories that are clearly exaggerated, or possibly entirely fabricated.”

“Tell me anyway.”

I nod and try to piece what fragments I have been able to gather into a coherent narrative, but I already know I will disappoint her.

“It is said there was a war. That without the Hawk Emperor, Azir, to guide them, a great conflict erupted between the Ascended Host—one the scrolls say almost tore the world apart.”

“Do you believe that?”

“I do not know,” I say, honestly. “History is full of conflicts that speak of world-ending threats, and while I am sure they would have been terrible to live through, the idea of them all being so cataclysmic feels... unlikely.”

“You may be right, but the long passage of the years has a tendency to dim the fires of such wars in the memory. What part did Xolaani play in this conflict?”

“Nothing certain,” I reply. “I have found little mention of her taking part in the wars between the god-warriors and those who would become known and feared as Darkin. There are veiled references to a being known as Ta’anari begging her to intervene and save the lives of the fallen. In some tellings she refuses, but others say she chose to bestow her healing gifts on those she deemed worthy, that she knew the innermost secrets of blood so deeply she could even return the dead to life. A final tale speaks of how she angered the most vicious of the Darkin, who struck her a fateful blow that laid her low for many centuries.”

Nouria knows much more of Xolaani than I, but likes to hear me tell the stories, as though being reminded helps carve them deeper into her memory.

In truth, I wonder if her mind has reached the point where these retellings are new to her each day... if she has begun the slow descent into her dotage.

I am spared further questions when the lift arrives at our destination.

Locking the ropes in place and hauling the restraining bar into position, we carefully step out onto the rocky ledge that runs around the colossal shoulders of the faceless god-warrior.

When the work is finally complete, the ledge will be hacked away and smoothed off, but for now it serves as our vantage point. I look down, unfazed by the dizzying drop.

I imagine what Xolan would look like were the waters to flow again.

A faded illustration in one of the elder stonemasons’ books shows water tumbling from the top of the cliff and falling in graceful arcs to either side of the great statue. In that picture, the small lake at the heart of our community is wide and full, its waters a wondrous shade of cerulean blue that narrows until it becomes a river flowing out into Shurima.

It is my hope that if we can divine the true face of Xolaani, that river will live again.

I hope to see the water soon.

Whatever fears I might harbor regarding Arch-Mason Nouria’s mind, she has lost none of her skill with the tools of her trade. Her hands may be tanned and leather-tough from years of practicing her craft, but they are graceful like no others when it comes to working the stone.

We are applying the last touches to the collar, layering in deeper folds that will cast a shadow that can be seen from the ground. It is an illusion, an old stonemason’s trick she taught me the first day I worked the rock of the cliff.

Today’s labors are more suited to that of a journeyman than a skilled mason like Nouria—but I sense that she needs to be working with her hands today, to be close to the stone.

All that remains to be carved is the statue’s face, but what features she should possess is a question upon which none of the stonemasons of Xolan can agree. The illustration depicting the waterfall is the only guide we have, and the face behind it is indistinct, hidden by the spray of water. Every mason within the village has sought to bring forth the truth of her visage in dreams, in drink, in prayer, but no consensus has yet been reached.

By mid-afternoon, there is little left for us to do, so we sit on the lip of the ledge, looking out over the undulant horizon. The sky is now a lush azure, the sun a copper disc descending in the west. The dunes ripple in the heat, as if disturbed from below.

In the deepest desert, sandswimmers leave hissing grooves in their wake—but here the bedrock is too close to the surface for them, so we rarely see the sand spouts that mark their passing.

“How do you think the meeting will go tonight?” asks the Arch-Mason, breaking my train of thought.

“Much like the others, I suspect.”

“I hear that Elder Bourai believes he is close to a likeness we may all agree upon.”

“You said that about Mason Ulantor’s proposal last month.”

“I did?”

“Yes, and Master Regouma’s the time before that.”

“Ah, yes, I did, didn’t I?” she says sadly. “All the more reason for this night’s meeting to be different.”

“What do you mean?”

“I will present this to the elders tonight,” says Nouria, pulling a folded scroll from her robes and holding it out to me.

“What is that?” I ask, almost reluctant to take it.

“Look,” she urges. “Then you’ll see.”

Taking the scroll, I hesitantly unfold it. My eyes widen as I see the charcoal sketch she has drawn. Had she not been called to the stone, Nouria could almost certainly have become one of Shurima’s greatest artists.

She has drawn a face, one that is beyond compare, a chimeric blend of the inhuman and the sublime. There is deep wisdom in the dark pools of its hooded eyes, infinite compassion, but also the capacity for lethal violence inherent in each of the god-warriors.

“It’s... incredible. How did you do this?”

“It came to me in a dream,” she says, with an impish grin that takes decades from her wind-worn face. “Just as you did with your sculpture of Setaka, remember?”

“But I was lying. Is this really the Ascended Xolaani?”

Nouria shrugs. “It might as well be.”

“What does that mean?”

She sighs, and I see the toll the years have taken on this brilliant woman. The stiffness in her fingers, the weariness deep in her bones, and—yes, now that I look harder—the growing mist in her eyes. She twists her head to look up at the scarred rock where the face of the Ascended should be.

“This will be my last sculpture,” says Nouria. “There is a sickness in my heart. My mother had it, as did hers before her. I am older now than when they died, so I will count myself fortunate if I live to see the year’s end. I do not wish to pass before seeing my greatest work completed.”

“But is it real?” I ask. “If the elders accept this and we carve it, will it be real?”

She takes back the picture, her face betraying her disappointment in me, and looks down at the gray-brown lake.

“I just want to see the blue waters flow,” she says. “One last time.”

I lay on my bed, but sleep eludes me. I watch the moonlight move across my mother’s rug as the lonely hours of the night pass without the elders coming to a decision. The voices echoing from the Mason’s Hall are as strident as when they first began, but I suspect I already know what the outcome will be.

Respect for Arch-Mason Nouria holds powerful sway in our community, and her drawing is more magnificent than any yet presented to the elders.

I believe they will accept it as a true likeness, because it is miraculous.

They will accept it because they are tired of not knowing.

We all want the work to be completed in our lifetimes, to know that the face of the god who has watched over us for all these years will finally be finished.

We all want to see the waters flow once more.

For decades, we have bickered and debated, but every interpretation we have attempted to place upon Xolaani is hamstrung by our so-very-mortal sensibilities.

How can we, beings so far removed from the time of the Ascended, ever hope to know them, or imagine their likenesses? They are beings wrought by the power of the sun, raised up to godhood by powers both ancient and divine.

To imagine that any of us could set down their form is arrogant beyond words, and I feel a simmering resentment knot my gut at Nouria’s presumption. I am gripping the edge of my bed, a turbulent storm of emotions churning in my gut.

My mouth is dry with fear and unease.

For a moment, I dearly want the Arch-Mason’s drawing to be real, but how can I be sure?

I scoop up a handful of water from the ewer and splash it over my face. It tastes old and the flecks of stone dust wear at my teeth. I run my tongue over my gums and spit a gritty mouthful back onto the dusty floor.

To have spent so long working the stone only to falter at the last for the sake of convenience seems inherently wrong to me. I understand Nouria’s desire to see the work completed before she dies, but to present her vision as truth...?

What if we finish the great work on a lie? I do not like where this thought will lead, and so I stand, pulling on a woolen cloak to keep the night’s chill at bay.

Something crunches beneath my foot.

The frond-mouthed sandworm is dead beneath my sandal.

Its flattened, segmented body is faintly luminous in the moonlight, and my eyes fill with tears. It is only a tiny worm, but I feel an aching sadness at its needless death.

I chide myself for mourning the passing of a worm, when a whisper of warm breath sighs through my window, bearing a sound I have not heard since leaving Kenethet.

I cannot be certain, but it sounds like the pygmy owls that used to nest in the night-woods at the edge of the Sai Kahleek, luring insects with their clicking chirps. I climb the ladder to the roof of my home and open the bolted shutter, feeling the cool night air chill my skin, even through my cloak.

Standing on the flat roof, knowing I will surely not see a pygmy owl, I search the night sky all the same.

There is no owl of course, but lowering my gaze, I see something far stranger.

The lake at the center of our community is gone.

Its levels rise and fall with the seasons, yes, but there is always water.

Now it is gone, simply an empty, rocky basin, its exposed banks and lakebed patterned with a curious spiral, as though the water had carved the mud before vanishing.

The warm wind emanates from where the lake once lay, and I look up at the faceless god carved in the cliff.

“Xolaani, show me the way,” I whisper as I drop from the roof to the sand and make my way toward the vanished lake.

It chills me to see the lakebed emptied, not because we relied upon it for our water, but because to see it vanished on the very night we may finally know the face of Xolaani feels portentous.

Kneeling at the edge, I run my fingers over the mud on its sloping banks. I expect it to be moist and pliant, but it is hard and glassy—like glazed clay after being fired in a kiln.

“What could have done this?” I whisper. The entirety of the lakebed has been vitrified to the same enameled consistency.

Once again, I hear the strange sound that drew me from my house, like chattering birds in the high branches of palm trees. It seems to be coming from the center of the lakebed, and I carefully make my way down the ridged slopes.

The bottom is flat, filled with broken shards of stone, fragments carelessly discarded by the craftsmen above. I see a stone-cut hand with two of its fingers missing, a foot with the heel broken off.

I see faces too. Some are half-sunk into the strangeness of the glassy lakebed, some split open down their length, others looking like they are pressing up from beneath the surface. Their faces are grotesque horrors, their mouths stretched in contorted grimaces. I cannot imagine any of the stonemasons of Xolan having carved such monstrous things, but understand why they would wish to be rid of them.

I give these ghastly things a wide berth.

Moonlight skitters over the rippled glass beneath my feet, sending fractured reflections all around me. Is it my imagination, or is the surface of the lakebed glowing with a soft, inner radiance? The full moon makes it hard to be sure, but then a cloud passes over its face and I am suddenly certain; there is a faint light pulsing from the ground.

It takes a moment for me to realize it is precisely in sync with the beating of my heart.

My steps carry me towards the center of the lakebed, which I now see is the source of the light and the whispering, chattering birds. The ground at the center of the spiral is cracked, split open, and ever so slightly sunken. Hairline cracks radiate outward, and when the wind changes, my stomach heaves as I catch the same rancid smell from earlier this morning.

It is the stench of an opened grave, of meat and fruit left to rot in the sun.

I take a single step back, then another.

Before I can take a third, my eyes narrow as I see a long flat shard of stone, like a mask made for a giant.

The moon emerges from behind the clouds, and the exposed stone’s surface shines like polished porcelain. The beauty of the face carved into the stone takes my breath away, blended as it is with an inhuman, but alluringly wise mien of something atavistic.

Its eyes seem to glimmer with a wisdom far beyond anything I could conceive, and I try to memorize its every contour, knowing that Xolaani herself has guided me to this revelation. I neither know nor care how this thing came to be submerged beneath our lake, that it is here and has been revealed to me on this singular night is enough for me.

I kneel beside the softly glowing stone, reaching to touch it with trembling fingertips.

Faith brought me to Xolan all those years ago, and now my faith has been rewarded.

I must bring the elders to see this miracle...

No sooner has the thought formed in my mind than the ground at the center of the lake breaks apart with a splintering crack like the clean hammer-cut of a block. Portions of the lakebed fall inwards, drawn down into the growing sinkhole.

I scramble backward as the cracks spread wider and wider.

The charnel stench billows up from below, and I feel the night grow still, the wind dropping away and the stars holding their breath.

Something emerges from the hole at the center of the lakebed, a pale, spindle-thin appendage that reminds me of the frond-mouthed worm in my home. It is swiftly followed by another and, together, they haul the pulsating, segmented body of a... a thing from below.

It is the size of a hound, its soft grub-like body tapered, wet, and glistening.

Just looking at it leaves a bilious taste in my mouth.

A multitude of black orbs ripple into existence on the surface of its head, and its skin splits apart as a circular, fang-rimmed mouth rips open. Black ichor drips from the toothed orifice. As it turns its misshapen head towards me, terror fills my veins with ice.

Another creature hauls its insect-like bulk to the surface, its form just as horrible as the first, an unnatural assembly of bladed limbs, dripping teeth, and chitinous armor. More are following, and my mind screams in terror.

But the sound they make is enough to melt the ice in my veins.

Pushing myself upright, I turn and run, no thought but escape burning in my mind. I hear them behind me, a skittering cacophony of sharp claws on the glassy lakebed. Their hissing, rasping cries echo strangely from the rock.

It is a sound not of this world.

Breathless with terror, I climb the slopes of the empty lake, scrabbling for purchase and finding none. The ground is glass, not mud, and my fingers are slick with fear-sweat. I kick off my sandals, and the bare skin of my feet gives enough grip to haul myself over the lip of the banks.

I scramble onto my knees, risking a swift glance over my shoulder.

The lakebed is filled with the hideous, chittering beasts, hundreds of them now. They swarm together—blind, idiot things, hooting and braying, hissing and spitting as they boil up from the ground. Dozens more emerge from the widening sinkhole with every passing second.

I weep as I see the porcelain face obscured by their monstrous forms, the stone flowing like wax, as though their very presence is anathema to its beauty.

With tears in my eyes and sobs wracking my chest, I turn and run for the Mason’s Hall, screaming a warning at the top of my lungs.

“Monsters! Flee!”

I cannot tell if I have been heard, but my foolish urge to look back has cost me dear.

Something sharp and hooked slashes over the back of my thigh, and I fall, going down in a graceless tangle of limbs. I roll, feeling a terrible burning heat spread from the wound as blood pours down my leg. I try to stand, but the leg is useless beneath me.

I hear voices—panicked, terrified cries as the stonemasons of Xolan see the hundreds of terrible things swarming toward them.

Someone rings a warning bell, but it will do no good.

I roll onto my back as one of the creatures rears over me. Its chest splits open down its length, revealing a fleshy red cavity of toothed tentacles and barbed fangs. It falls on me, the gaping maw of its body fastening on my stomach and devouring me in a frenzy of ripping teeth.

It is agony beyond imagining as the thing eats me alive.

But I cannot die looking at this nightmarish creature, and so with the last of my strength, I turn my head to look up at Ascended Xolaani.

“They said you watched over us...”

I almost expect her to reply, but she has no face and so she says nothing.

Hear! Upon the Great Mountain,

The beloved of the Sun sing to Her,

A song of Love and Devotion,

Of Battle and Glory.

The golden Sun, Her Light ever shining,

Bathes our faces in warmth

And scorches our enemies,

Burning them to holy ash.

Yet even the radiant Sun must rest.

And so we are left without Her,

Cold and naked and alone,

At the mercy of those who stalk in the Dark.

We mourn for Her as She slumbers,

Knowing She never wishes to part from us,

The last wink of twilight,

Her fading farewell kiss.

Yet the night we would miss Her most dearly,

The Darkness long and bitter,

We persuade Her to stay longer

And dance with us to Her own music.

Twilight’s kiss extended,

A roaring flame that thaws through winter’s grasp,

The Sun stays awake all through the night,

Whispering Her sweet secrets until the dawn.

We battle the lull of Darkness for Her,

For the love She bears us,

And we gaze upon Her glory

As we show Her our own.

Hymn of the Dawn

My Dayblessed parents,

I pray that my letter finds you both well, and that young Aidonel and Kespina are healthy and happy. I respect your desire for more correspondence, and so I write to you today with nothing much to say, certainly nothing of great import.

The instructors have begun their lessons on the Nightless Eve. I look forward to the shift in our waking hours as I and the other shield-aged prepare to face the Darkness together. To Mother’s question, I do not yet know whether I will attend in the company of another acolyte, nor whether I wish to do so. I understand that you doubt my honesty in these matters, Mother, but truly none have yet caught my eye. I assure you that you needn’t ask further, and that I will tell you plainly should that answer change.

Oh! I performed admirably upon the Wargames field this past week. Our trainer, Initiate Priestess Nycinde, praised me highly and asked the others to observe my footwork and swordsmanship. She has said that my shield suits me, though I must learn to use it in support of my allies on the field, not simply as a means to protect myself. I take her tutelage seriously and have asked Hyterope and Sebina to continue to train with me after our schooling has finished for the day. I expect to continue to improve.

My academic pursuits are going well, though I feel I am lacking in my oration skills. I have spoken with Sunsworn Priestess Nemyah, and she says that I am well on my way, yet on this I do not agree with her. I do not mean to say that I am disrespecting my instructors! More that I wish to better my skills, and it does not appear that Sunsworn Priestess Nemyah will offer any additional support.

There is a girl in my Oratory class whose arguments are concise and well-constructed, but her views and lines of thought do not always connect to what the instructors have taught. Yet she is always prepared, and other acolytes find their arguments fall to pieces under her scrutiny. Perhaps she is someone I could approach for assistance in this matter. I know you believe me capable of becoming a leader, and I will not fail you in this.

In the Love of Her Light,
Leona

Dayblessed Diana,

Are you often busy after our Middle Rakkoric instruction? I sense that I am not doing as well in Oratory as I could be, and humbly ask that you help me grow my skills in constructing and delivering convincing arguments.

The content of your arguments notwithstanding, you are more skilled at constructing the logic behind them than anyone else in our year, and likely in our temple. You have heard some of the end-of-year debates and presentations that the older acolytes have made in years past, have you not? I believe you are better suited to train me in this than any of them.

I know your time is limited, so I would not ask that you spend much of it on me. But I would greatly appreciate it if you could look over my notes before our next rhetorical exercise, and help me grasp what it is I am not yet understanding.

And please know that I do not ask this lightly. If there is anything you are struggling with, anything that I can do to assist you where you need it, I pledge myself to it in return.

In the Light,

Leona

How I could ask someone to attend the Festival with me

—A note? Is that too childish? Not straightforward enough? Lots of notes as it is... but I love getting notes from her. She always makes time to answer, always very thoughtful and smart

—Ask her to take a walk with me? When? I have skirmishes every night this week

—Flowers? Don’t know if she likes flowers, or which flowers she likes

—A meal? Never shared a meal together, might be too public. What if the meal is gross? Bad omen?

—Offer to train her with her shield? She doesn’t use her shield much, that could work! Or maybe she doesn’t like using her shield? She doesn’t seem to like skirmishes

—Debate some scripture? Good chance to talk in person, get to see her at her best, be brilliant... try to impress her? Maybe tell her you need help with a big project for Oratory? No, she’s in the same class as you, this is stupid

—Pray together? Good excuse for privacy, but she would never say yes to that

—Ask her if she already has plans? Be casual, doesn’t have to be as more than friends, she probably doesn’t want to go alone. What if she’s already going with someone? Who would she go with

—Tell her I don’t have a companion? This is not a terrible option

—Don’t ask, just see her there and ask her to dance with you? Also not a terrible option

Why is this so hard