LoL Universe Indexing and Search

The Butcher Blades had hung the Jackdaw from a rusted marlinspike through his jawbone and left him for the quayside scavengers. This was the seventeenth murdered ganger the hooded man had seen tonight.

A slow night by Bilgewater's standards.

At least since the Corsair King had fallen.

Red-fanged wharf rats had already eaten most of the hanged man's feet and were perched on stacked kreels to tear at the soft meat of his calves.

The hooded man kept on walking.

“Help. Me.”

The words were wet, squeezed up through a throat clogged with blood. The hooded man spun, hands reaching towards the weapons slung on his wide belt.

Incredibly, the Jackdaw was still alive on the bone-handled spike. The Hooks stuck it deep into the wooden frame of a loading crane. No way to get the Jackdaw down without tearing his skull to splinters.

“Help. Me,” he said again.

The hooded man paused, considering the Jackdaw's request.

“What for?” he said at last. “Even if I get you down from there, you will be dead by morning.”

The Jackdaw carefully lifted his hand to a concealed pocket in his patchwork jerkin and removed a golden Kraken. Even in the dim light, the hooded man saw it was genuine.

The scavengers hissed and raised their hackles as he approached. Wharf rats weren't large, but meat as warm as this wasn't a prize to be surrendered lightly. They bared long, needle-like fangs, spitting diseased gobbets of saliva.

He kicked one rat out over the water. He crushed a second underfoot. They snapped and bit, but nimble footwork kept any from tasting his flesh, his every movement smooth and precise. He killed another three before the rest scattered to the shadows, sullen eyes glaring red in the darkness.

The hooded man stood beside the Jackdaw. His features were hidden, but the light of a rogue’s moon suggested a face that no longer smiled.

“Death is here for you,” he said. “Embrace it, safe in the knowledge I will ensure it is final.”

He reached into his coat and withdrew a glittering spike of silver. Two handspans long and engraved with curling symbols spiraling along its length, it resembled an ornate, leather-worker's awl. He placed the tip under the dying man's chin.

The man's eyes widened and his hand scrabbled at the hooded man's sleeve as he looked out over the vast expanse of ocean. The sea was a black mirror shimmering with the glow of myriad candles, quayside braziers and lamplight warped through salvaged glass from a thousand cliffside-hulks.

“You know what lurks over the horizon,” he said. “You know the horror it brings. And yet you tear at each other like rabid beasts. It makes no sense to me.”

He turned and hammered the heel of his palm against the flattened haft of the awl, driving the spike up into the man's brain. A last corpse rattle and the Jackdaw's pain ended. The gold coin fell from the dead man's fingers and rolled into the ocean with a soft splash.

The man withdrew the spike and wiped it clean on the Jackdaw's ragged shirt. He returned it to the sheath inside his coat and removed a golden needle and a length of silver thread dipped in waters drawn from an Ionian spring.

Working with the skill of one who had performed this service many times before, he sewed the man's eyes and lips shut. As he worked, he spoke words taught to him a lifetime ago, words first ill-spoken by a long dead king.

“Now the dead cannot claim you,” he said as he finished his work and replaced his implements.

“Maybe not, but we ain't leaving empty-handed, sure we ain't,” said a voice behind the hooded man.

He turned and pulled back his hood to reveal skin the color and texture of aged mahogany, cheekbones that were angular and patrician. His dark hair was bound in a long scalp-lock and eyes that had seen horror beyond measure surveyed the newcomers.

Six men. Dressed in aprons of blood-stiffened leather cut to display limbs of corded muscle wrapped with tattooed thorns. Each carried a serrated hook and wore belts hung with a variety of meat-workers’ knives. Petty thugs made bold by the fall of the tyrant who'd ruled Bilgewater with an iron fist. With him gone, the city was in chaos as rival gangs sought to carve out fresh territories.

Their approach hadn’t been stealthy. Hobnailed boots, offal-stench and muttered curses had announced their presence long before they'd revealed themselves.

“I don't mind a coin going to the Bearded Lady, sure I don't,” said the biggest of the Butchers, a man with a gut so prodigious it was a wonder he could get close enough to a carcass to gut it at all. “But one of ours killed Old Knock John there, fair and square, sure they did. So that gold serpent there was ours.”

“Do you want to die here?” asked the man.

The fat man laughed.

“You know who you're talking to?”

“No. Do you?”

“Go on then, tell me so I can carve it on the rock I'll use to sink your bones.”

“My name is Lucian,” he said, whipping back his long frock coat and drawing a pair of pistols wrought of knapped stone and burnished metals unknown to even the most reckless alchemists of Zaun. A bolt of coruscating light punched the fat Butcher from his feet with a scorched hole where his grotesquely swollen heart had been.

Lucian's second pistol was smaller, more finely crafted, and fired a searing line of yellow fire that cut another of the Butchers in half from collarbone to groin.

Like the wharf rats before, they fled, but Lucian picked them off one by one. Each burst of light was a killing shot. In the blink of an eye all six Butchers lay dead.

He sheathed his pistols and pulled the coat back around him. Others would be drawn by the sound and fury of his work, and he had no time to save these men’s souls from what was coming.

Lucian sighed. It had been a mistake to stop for the Jackdaw, but perhaps the man he had once been was not entirely lost. A memory threatened to surface and he shook his head.

“I cannot be him again,” said Lucian.

He isn't strong enough to kill the Chain Warden.

Olaf’s frostscale hauberk was covered in blood and viscera. He grunted as he swung his axe one-handed. Bone sheared and muscle parted before the weapon, its blade quenched on a bed of True Ice deep in the farthest reaches of the Freljord.

Bearing a spitting torch in one hand, he waded through the dripping innards of the Krakenwyrm, hewing deeper with every swing. It had taken him three hours to reach this far; cleaving through its enormous glistening organs and dense bones.

True, the beast was already dead, skewered a week ago after a month’s long chase down from the north. Over thirty harpoons cast by strong arms and broad backs from the deck of Winter's Kiss pierced its scaled hide, but it had been Olaf's spear that finally ended its fight.

Killing the beast in the heart of a churning storm outside Bilgewater had been exhilarating, and for one brief moment – as the ship heeled over and almost tossed him into the beast's maw – he'd thought this might be the moment he would achieve the glorious death he sought.

But then Svarfell the helmsman, curse his mighty shoulder, centered the rudder to right the ship.

And, sadly, Olaf had lived. Another day closer to the terror of dying peacefully in his bed as a greybearded ancient.

They'd berthed in Bilgewater, hoping to sell the carcass and strip it of battle trophies; vast teeth, black blood that burned like oil, and titanic rib-bones fit to roof his mother’s hall.

His fellow tribesmen, exhausted from the hunt, were sleeping aboard Winter's Kiss, but Olaf, ever impatient, could not rest. Instead, he took up his glittering axe and set to work in dismembering the colossal monster.

Finally he saw the beast’s inner maw, a ribbed gullet large enough to swallow a clan whole or crush a thirty-oar Longreaver in a single bite. Its teeth were chiseled fangs like obsidian boulders.

Olaf nodded. “Yah. Fit to ring a hearth circle of the wind-walkers and the readers of bones and ash.”

He jammed the spiked base of the torch into the meat of the Krakenwyrm’s flesh and set to work, hacking at the jawbone until a tooth came loose. Hooking the axe to his belt, Olaf lifted it clear and set it upon his shoulder, grunting at the enormous weight.

“Like a Frost Troll gathering ice for his lair,” he said, making his way out of the beast’s innards, wading knee-deep in blood and caustic digestive juices.

Eventually he emerged from the giant wound in the Krakenwyrm’s rear and drew in a lungful of slightly fresher air. Even after the innards of the beast, Bilgewater was a rank soup of smoke and sweat and dead things. Its air was heavy with the smell of too many people living packed together like swine in a midden.

He spat a rank mouthful and said, “The sooner I am in the north the better.”

The air of the Freljord was so sharp it could cut you to the bone. Every breath here tasted of rancid milk and spoiled meat.

“Hey!” shouted a voice over the water.

Olaf squinted through the gloom, seeing a lone fisherman rowing out to sea beyond a line of floating water markers hung with dead birds and bells.

“That beast just shit you out?” shouted the fisherman.

Olaf nodded and said, “I had no gold to pay passage on a ship, so I let it swallow me in the Freljord and bear me south.”

The fisherman grinned and drank from a cracked bottle of blue glass. “I’d sit and listen to that tall tale, right enough!”

“Come to the Winter’s Kiss and ask for Olaf,” he shouted. “We’ll share a keg of Gravöl and honor the beast with songs of doom.”

The air around the White Wharf usually smelled of gull-crap and rotten fish. Today it tasted of scorched meat and woodsmoke, a flavor with which Miss Fortune was coming to associate with ever more of Gangplank’s men dying. Ash darkened the sky and reeking fumes drifted westwards from burning vats of rendered leviathan blubber on the Slaughter Docks. Miss Fortune's mouth felt greasy, and she spat onto the crooked timbers of the wharf. The water below was scummed with residue expelled by the thousands of corpses sunk beneath the water over the years.

“You and your men had a busy night,” she said, nodding toward the smoke rising from the western cliffs.

“Aye, that we did,” agreed Rafen. “Plenty more of Gangplank’s men going under today.”

“How many did you get?” asked Miss Fortune.

“Another ten of his Cragside lads,” said Rafen. “And the Boneyard Scallys won’t be bothering us again.”

Miss Fortune nodded in approval and turned to look at the ornate bronze cannon laid on the quayside.

Jackknife Byrne lay inside the barrel, finally dead from the gutshot he'd taken on the day everything changed; the day the Dead Pool exploded in full view of Bilgewater.

A gunshot meant for her.

Now it was time for Byrne to go down among the dead men and she owed it to him to be there to see him go under. Around two hundred men and women had come to pay their respects; her own lieutenants, Byrne's old gang members, and strangers she thought might be former crewmen or curious gawkers hoping to see the woman who'd brought down Gangplank.

Byrne said he'd once run his own ship, a two-masted brigantine that was the terror of the Noxian coast, but she only had his word for that. Maybe that was true, maybe it wasn't, but in Bilgewater, more often than not the truth was far stranger than any tale spun by the city’s many chanty-men.

“I see you got them fighting each other out on the Slaughter Docks as well,” said Miss Fortune, brushing particles of ash from her lapels. Long red hair spilled from beneath a tricorn hat and gathered on the shoulders of her formal frock coat.

“Yeah, wasn’t hard to turn the Rat Town Dogs and Wharf Kings against each other,” said Rafen. “Ven Gallar's always had his eye on that patch. Says Travyn's boys took it from his old man a decade ago.”

“That true?”

“Who knows?” said Rafen. “Don’t matter, no-how. Gallar would say anything to get control of that part of the docks. I just helped him along.”

“Not much left to control over there now.”

“No,” agreed Rafen with a grin. “They pretty much killed the hell out of each other. Don't reckon we'll get trouble from either of them gangs any time soon.”

“Another week like this and there won't be any of Gangplank’s people left alive.”

Rafen gave her a strange look and Miss Fortune pretended not to notice.

“Come on, let's get Byrne sunk,” said Miss Fortune.

They walked over to the cannon, ready to roll it into the sea. A forest of wooden markers dotted the scummed surface of the water, ranging from simple wooden discs to elaborate sculptures of sea wyrms.

“Anyone want to say anything?” said Miss Fortune.

Nobody did, and she nodded to Rafen, but before they could tip the cannon into the water, a booming voice echoed over the wharf.

“I bring words for him.”

Miss Fortune turned to see a giant of a woman clad in colorful robes and acres of fabric striding down the docks towards them. A posse of tattooed menfolk accompanied her; a dozen youths armed with tooth-bladed spears, wide-mouthed pistols and hooked clubs. They swaggered like the cocksure gangers they were, standing with their priestess like they owned the docks.

“Seven hells, what's she doing here?”

“Did Illaoi know Byrne?”

“No. She knows me,” said Miss Fortune. “I heard that her and Gangplank used to...you know?”

“Really?”

“So the scuttlebutt goes.”

“By the Bearded Lady, no wonder Okao's men have been giving us such a hard time these last few weeks.”

Illaoi carried a heavy stone sphere that looked as if it weighed about as much as the Syren's anchor. The towering priestess carried it everywhere she went, and Miss Fortune assumed it was some kind of totem. What everyone else called the Bearded Lady, they called something virtually unpronounceable.

Illaoi produced a peeled mango from somewhere and took a bite. She noisily chewed the fruit with her mouth open and looked down the barrel of the cannon.

“A Bilgewater man deserves a blessing of Nagakabouros, yes?”

“Why not?” said Miss Fortune. “He's going down to meet the goddess, after all.”

“Nagakabouros doesn't live in the depths,” said Illaoi. “Only foolish paylangi think that. Nagakabouros is in everything we do that moves us along our path.”

“Yeah, how stupid of me,” said Miss Fortune.

Illaoi spat the fibrous mango pit into the water and swung the stone idol around like a giant cannonball, holding it up in front of Miss Fortune.

“You're not stupid, Sarah,” said Illaoi with a laugh. “But you don't even know what you are, what you've done.”

“Why are you really here, Illaoi? Is this about him?”

“Ha! Not even a little bit,” snorted Illaoi. “My life is for Nagakabouros. A god or a man? What choice is that?”

“None at all,” said Miss Fortune. “Bad luck for Gangplank.”

Illaoi grinned, exposing a mouthful of pulped mango.

“You're not wrong,” she said with a slow nod, “but you still don't hear. You let a razor-eel off the hook and you ought to stamp on its neck and walk away before it sinks its fangs into you. Then your motion will be gone forever.”

“What does that mean?”

“Come and see me when you figure it out,” said Illaoi, holding out her hand. Nestled in her palm was a pendant of pink coral arranged in a series of curves radiating from a central hub like a single, unblinking eye.

“Take it,” said Illaoi.

“What is it?”

“A token of Nagakabouros to guide you when you’re lost.”

“What is it really?”

“Nothing more than I say.”

Miss Fortune hesitated, but too many people were gathered for her to openly offend a priestess of the Bearded Lady by refusing her gift. She took the pendant and removed her tricorn to loop the leather thong around her neck.

Illaoi leaned in to whisper.

“I don’t think you're stupid,” she said. “Prove me right.”

“Why do I care what you think?” said Miss Fortune.

“Because a storm is coming,” said Illaoi, nodding at something over Miss Fortune's shoulder. “You know the one, so you best be ready to turn your prow into the waves.”

She turned and kicked Byrne's cannon from the dock. It splashed down hard and sank in a froth of bubbles before the fatty surface residue reformed, leaving only its bobbing marker cross to indicate who was below.

The priestess of the Bearded Lady marched back the way she had come, towards her temple in the cliff-crater, and Miss Fortune turned her gaze out to sea.

A storm was brewing way out in the deep ocean, but that wasn't where Illaoi had been looking.

She'd been looking towards the Shadow Isles.

Nobody ever fished Bilgewater Bay at night.

Piet knew why, of course; he’d known these waters all his life. The currents were treacherous, hull-splitting rocks lurked just below the surface, and the seabed was littered with the wrecks of ships whose captains had not accorded the sea its proper respect. But, more importantly, everyone knew the spirits of those drowned at sea were lonely and wanted others to join them.

Piet knew all this, but still needed to feed his family.

With Captain Jerimiad’s ship burned to cinders in the crossfire between Gangplank and Miss Fortune, Piet had no work and no coin to pay for food.

He’d drunk half a bottle of Scuttler’s Scrumpy just to pluck up the courage to push his boat out onto the water tonight, and the prospect of sharing a drink with the giant Freljordian helped steady his nerves.

Piet took another slug from the bottle, tugging the scruff of hair on his chin, then pouring a measure over the side to honor the Bearded Lady.

Warmed and numbed by the liquor, Piet rowed past the warning buoys and their dead birds until he came to a stretch of ocean where he’d had some luck the previous night. Jeremiad always said he had a nose for where the fish were biting, and he had a feeling they’d be gathering where the remains of the Dead Pool had drifted.

Piet pulled in the oars and stowed them before finishing off the Scrumpy. Then, making sure to leave a last mouthful in the bottle, he tossed it out to sea. With tired, drink-addled fingers he baited his hooks with grubs he’d scooped from a dead man’s eye and tied his lines to the gunwale cleats.

He closed his eyes and bent over the side of the boat, placing both hands in the water.

“Nagakabouros,” he said, hoping that using the natives’ name for the Bearded Lady might grant him a bit of luck, “I ain’t asking for much. Please help this poor fisherman and spare him a few morsels from your larder. Watch over me and keep me safe. And if I die in your embrace, keep me down among the dead men.”

Piet opened his eyes.

A pale face stared back at him, wavering just below the surface. It shimmered with cold, lifeless light.

He cried out and jerked back into his boat as, one by one, his fishing lines were pulled taut. They spun his boat around as thin coils of mist rose from the water. The mist thickened swiftly and soon the light from Bilgewater’s cliffs was lost to the darkness as coal-dark fog rolled in from the sea.

A cacophony of once-dead birds squawked from the warning markers, followed by the clamor of bells as their convulsing bodies swung the buoys back and forth.

The black mist...

Piet scrambled for his oars, fumbling in terror to fit them to the rowlocks. The mist was numbingly cold, and lines of necrotic black threaded his skin at its touch. He wept as the grave’s chill frosted his spine.

“Bearded Lady, Mother Below, Nagakabouros,” he sobbed. “Please guide me home. Please, this I beg of-”

Piet never finished his plea.

A pair of hook-headed chains erupted from his chest, droplets of vividly red blood streaming from their tips. A third hook punched through his belly, another his throat. A fifth and sixth gouged his palms and pulled them down hard, pinning Piet to his boat.

Agony surged through him and he screamed as a figure of purest malice emerged from the black mist. Emerald fire haloed its horned skull, and sockets gouged by vengeful spirits burned as they savored his pain.

The dead spirit was robed in ancient black vestments, and rusted keys scraped at its side. A chained corpse-lantern moaned and swayed with monstrous appetite from its clenched fist.

The glass of the infernal lantern opened to receive him, and Piet felt his spirit tear loose from the warmth of his flesh. The wails of tortured souls shrieked from its depths, maddened by their unending purgatory. Piet fought to keep his spirit within his body, but a spectral blade scythed and his time in the world was ended as the glass of the lantern snapped shut.

“A wretched soul you are,” said the reaper of his life, its voice like gravel on a tombstone. “But only the first to be claimed by Thresh this night.”

The black mist rippled, and the silhouettes of malefic spirits, howling wraiths and ghostly horsemen swelled within.

The darkness boiled across the sea and swept onto land.

And the lights in Bilgewater started to go out.

Miss Fortune snapped the barrels of her pistols shut and laid them down on the table next to her short-bladed sword. Scores of frantic bells and shouts of alarm echoed from the panicked city below; she knew well what they signified.

The Harrowing.

In defiance of the incoming storm, she’d kept the shuttered windows of her newly-acquired villa open, daring the dead to come for her. Muttering winds carried their hunger and a cold that settled bone-deep.

Perched high on Bilgewater’s eastern cliffs, the villa had once belonged to a hated gang leader. In the chaos of Gangplank’s fall, he’d been dragged from his bed and had his brains bashed out on the cobbles.

Now it belonged to Miss Fortune, and she’d be damned if she’d go the same way. She reached up and ran a fingertip around the curves of the pendant Illaoi had given her at Byrne’s sinking. The coral was warm to the touch, and though she didn’t truly believe in what it represented, it was a pretty enough bauble.

The door to her chamber opened and she let the pendant drop.

She knew who was behind her without turning. Only one man would dare enter without knocking.

“What are you doing?” asked Rafen.

“What does it look like I’m doing?”

“Like you’re about to do something damned stupid.”

“Stupid?” said Miss Fortune, placing her hands on the table. “We shed blood and lost good people to bring down Gangplank. I’m not going to let the Harrowing just-”

“Just what?”

“Take this place from me,” she snapped lifting her pistols and jamming them into their custom tooled hip-scabbards. “And you’re not going to stop me.”

“We’re not here to stop you.”

Miss Fortune turned to see Rafen at the threshold of her chambers. A score of her best fighters waited in the vestibule beyond, armed to the teeth with a mixture of muskets, wheel-lock pistols, clanking bundles of clay splinter-bombs and cutlasses that looked like they’d been looted from a museum.

“Looks like you’re about to do something damned stupid as well,” she said.

“Aye,” agreed Rafen, walking over to the open window and slamming the shutters closed. “You really think we’d let our captain go out to face that alone?”

“I almost died bringing Gangplank down, and I’m not done yet. I don’t expect you to go with me, not tonight,” said Miss Fortune coming to stand before her men and resting her hands on the carved walnut grips of her guns. “This isn’t your fight.”

“Course it bloody is,” said Rafen.

Miss Fortune took a breath and nodded.

“There’s every chance we won’t live to see morning,” she said, unable to keep the hint of a smile tugging at her lip.

“This ain’t our first Harrowing together, Captain,” said Rafen, tapping the skull pommel of his sword. “And I’ll be damned if it’s our last.”

Olaf was in sight of the Winter’s Kiss when he heard the screams. He ignored them at first – screams were nothing new in Bilgewater – but then he saw men and women running from the quayside in terror, and his interest was piqued.

They scrambled from their boats and fled for the crooked streets as fast as they could. They didn’t look back and they didn’t stop, not even when a shipmate tripped or fell into the water.

Olaf had seen men run from battle, but this was something else. This was naked terror, the kind he’d only ever seen etched on the frozen corpses spat out by glaciers where the Ice Witch was said to dwell.

Shutters were slamming shut all across the wharf and the strange symbols he’d seen on every door were frantically being dusted with white powder. Enormous winches were lifting timber structures formed from bolted-together hulls of ships high up the cliffs.

He recognized a tavern-keeper who ran a drinking den where the beer was only slightly stronger than troll piss and waved to him.

“What’s going on?” shouted Olaf.

The tavern-keeper shook his head and pointed to the ocean before slamming his door. Olaf set the Krakenwyrm’s tooth on the stone wharf and turned to see what all the fuss was about.

At first he thought a storm was coming in, but it was just thick black sea fog, albeit fog that approached with unnatural speed and fluid motion.

“Ah, now,” he said, unhooking his axe from his belt. “This looks promising.”

The feel of the weapon’s battle-worn leather grip was pleasing in his callused palm as he passed it from hand to hand, rolling his shoulders to loosen the muscles.

The black mist swept over the farthest ships and Olaf’s eyes widened as he saw spirits plucked from the blackest nightmares writhing in the mist. A towering dreadknight, a monstrous chimera of warhorse and man, led them alongside a black-clad reaper limned in green fire. These lords of the dead left the spirit host to their sport on the quayside as they flew into Bilgewater proper with predatory speed.

Olaf had heard the natives speak in hushed whispers of something called the Harrowing, a time of doom and darkness, but hadn’t expected to be lucky enough to face it axe in hand.

The host of the dead tore into the wallowing galleys, merchantmen, and corsair ships with claw and fang, ripping them apart like an ursine with its snout in a fresh kill. Sailcloth tore and rigging lines snapped as easily as rotten sinew. Heavy masts splintered as boats were tossed into one another and smashed to kindling.

A host of screaming wraiths flew into the Winter’s Kiss and Olaf roared in anger as the Longreaver’s keel heaved and split, its timbers freezing solid in a heartbeat. The boat sank as swiftly as if its hold were filled with rocks, and Olaf saw his fellow Freljordians dragged below the water by creatures with cadaverous limbs and fish-hooked mouths.

“Olaf will make you wish you had stayed dead!” he yelled as he charged along the wharf.

Spirits boiled up from the ocean, icy claws slashing towards him. Olaf’s axe sang out, cleaving a glittering arc through the host. The dead screeched as his blade sundered them, its True Ice edge more lethal than any enchantment.

They howled as they died a second time and Olaf sang the song he’d written for the moment of his death with lusty vigor. The words were simple, but the equal of any saga told by the wandering poets of the ice. How long had he waited to sing these words? How often had he feared he might never get the chance?

A shimmering mist of snapping jaws swarmed him, specters and things of mist. Webs of frost patterned his hauberk and the deathly touch of voracious spirits burned his skin.

But Olaf’s heart was mighty and it fired his blood to heights of fury unknown to all but the berserker. He shrugged off the pain of the wraith touch, feeling reason recede and fury build.

Crimson froth built at the corners of his mouth as he bit the inside of his cheeks raw. He roared and swung his axe like a madman, caring nothing for pain, only that he slew his enemies.

That they were dead already meant nothing to him.

Olaf drew his axe back, ready to strike another blow, when a deafening crash of splintering columns and roof beams erupted behind him. He spun to face this new foe as a blizzard of smashed wood and stone cascaded onto the quayside. Bladed shards sliced his face and fist-sized chunks of stone pummeled his arms raw. Rendered fats and animal fluids fell in a rank drizzle as a horrendous groaning issued from the black mist.

Then he saw it.

The spirit of the Krakenwyrm arose from the remains of the Slaughter Dock. Titanic and filled with fury, its ghostly tentacles lifted into the air and smashed down like thunderbolts hurled by a wrathful god. An entire street was smashed to ruin in the blink of an eye and Olaf’s berserker fury surged as he finally beheld a foe worthy of claiming his life.

Olaf raised his axe in salute of his killer.

“Ya beauty!” he yelled and charged to his doom.

The woman was beautiful, with wide, almond shaped eyes, full lips and the high cheekbones common to Demacia. The portrait in the locket was a miniature masterpiece, but it failed to capture the depth of Senna’s strength and determination.

He rarely looked at her picture, knowing that to carry his grief too close to his heart made him weak. Grief was a chink in his armor. Lucian could not allow himself to truly feel her loss, so he snapped the locket shut. He knew he should bury it in the sand of this cave beneath the cliffs, but could not put her memory below the earth as he had her body.

He would shut the grief away until Thresh was destroyed and Senna’s death avenged.

Then, and only then, would Lucian mourn his lost wife with tears and offerings to the Veiled Lady.

How long had it been since that terrible night?

He felt the bottomless abyss of sorrow lurking in ambush and viciously suppressed it as he had so many times before. He drew on the teachings of his order, repeating the mantras he and Senna had been taught to close themselves off from emotion. Only then could he reach a place of equilibrium that would allow him to face deathly horrors beyond imagining.

The grief ebbed slowly, but it remained.

He’d opened the locket only reluctantly, feeling a growing distance between himself and Senna’s memory. He found he could no longer recall the exact sweep of her jawline, the smoothness of her skin or the precise color of her eyes.

The longer his hunt went on, the further away she felt.

Lucian lifted his head, letting the breath ease from his lungs, forcing his heartbeat to slow.

The walls of the cave were pale limestone, gouged from the cliffs upon which Bilgewater was built. The motion of water and the stone picks of the natives had crafted a labyrinth beneath the city few knew of or even suspected existed. The pale rock walls were etched with looping spirals, rippling waves and things that might have been unblinking eyes.

He’d learned these were symbols of the native religion, but whoever had carved them had not visited this place in many years. He’d found it by following the secret symbols of his own order, symbols that would guide him to places of refuge and succor in any city of Valoran.

Only dim reflections of light shimmered on the roof of the cave, but as his eyes followed the spiral of carvings, a shimmering radiance spread from his palm.

Let me be your shield.

Lucian looked down, the memory of her words as clear as though she stood next to him.

The locket glistened with lambent green flame.

He looped the chain of the locket around his neck and swept up his twin relic pistols.

“Thresh,” he whispered.

Bilgewater’s streets were deserted. The bells from the ocean were still ringing and cries of terror echoed from below. Rat Town was completely covered by the Black Mist, and howling storms raged over Port Mourn’s desolation. Fires burned all along Butcher’s Bridge and a shimmering fog clung to the cliffs above the Grey Harbor.

The people in the upper reaches of the city hid in their homes and prayed to the Bearded Lady that the Harrowing would pass them by, that grief would fall upon some other poor unfortunate.

Warding candles of ambergris burned in every window, shimmering through bottle green sea-glass. Burning roots of Empress of the Dark Forest hung from doors, shutters and nailed up planks.

“People really believe in the Empress?” asked Miss Fortune.

Rafen shrugged, his mouth a thin line and the creases around his eyes pulled tight as he searched the gathering mist for threats. He pulled out a smoldering length of identical root from beneath his shirt.

“It’s all about where you place your faith, isn’t it?”

Miss Fortune drew her pistols.

“I have faith in these and in us,” she said. “What else are you carrying?”

“This cutlass has kept me safe through six Harrowings,” he said, tapping its pommel again. “I offered up a bottle of ten year old rum to the Bearded Lady and this knife here was sold to me by a man who swore its edge was purest sunsteel.”

Miss Fortune glanced at the scabbarded knife, certain without even seeing the blade that Rafen had been swindled. The workmanship around the quillons was too poor to be Demacian, but she wasn’t about to tell him that.

“What about you?” he asked.

Miss Fortune patted her pouch of pistol shot.

“Every one’s been dipped in Myron’s Dark,” she said, loud enough for every one of her thirty-strong company to hear. “If the dead want a fight, we’ll meet them with spirits of our own.”

The oppressive gloom made it hard to laugh, but she saw a few smiles and that was about as much as she could expect on a night like this.

She turned and pushed down into Bilgewater, descending crooked stairs cut into the rock of the cliffs, crossing secret bridges of half-rotted rope and threading forgotten alleys that hadn’t known the tread of feet in years.

She brought them out into a wide square on one of the floating wharf-shanties, where swaying dwellings leaned together as though their twisted eaves whispered to one another. Every façade was a mishmash of driftwood, and patterns of frost clung to the skewed timbers. Frozen winds blew through the patchwork dwellings, freighted with sobs and screams from afar. Flaming braziers hung from hundreds of mast-lines strung between buildings, smoking with strange herbs. Pools of water rippled with reflections of things that weren’t there.

Most days this was a thriving marketplace, packed to the gunwales with stalls, rattling meat-vendors, drink-hawkers, merchants, pirates, bounty hunters and surly flotsam washed in from every corner of the world. Just about everywhere in Bilgewater had a view of this place, which was just how Miss Fortune wanted it.

Mist clung to every outcropping of timber.

Discarded figureheads wept frozen tears.

Mist and shadows gathered.

“Cutpurse Square?” said Rafen. “How did we get here? I ran this place as a wharf-snipe. Thought I knew every way in and out like any good little thief.”

“Not every way,” said Miss Fortune.

The counting houses on either side were silent and dark, and she resisted the impulse to look through the torn sheets of flapping canvas nailed over porthole windows.

“How do you know these routes and I don’t?”

“Lady Bilgewater and I are two of a kind,” said Miss Fortune, her gaze narrowing as black mist seeped into the square. “She whispers her secrets to me like an old friend, so I know her every hidden wynd and jitty like you never will.”

Rafen grunted as they spread into the empty square.

“What next?”

“We wait,” said Miss Fortune as they reached the center of the square, feeling terribly exposed.

The black mist twitched with things moving in its depths.

A disembodied skull of ghostly light stretched from the darkness, empty-eyed and with sharpened teeth. Its jaw stretched wider than any natural bone structure would allow and a keening wail built in its gullet.

Miss Fortune’s bullets punched through each of its eye-sockets and the skull vanished with a shriek of frustration. She twisted the wheel-lock on each pistol and ingenious mechanisms within reloaded each one.

For a moment, all was silent.

Then the black mist erupted in a screeching howl as the spirits of the dead surged into the square.

For the second time this evening, Olaf cut his way inside the dead Krakenwyrm. He wielded his axe like a crazed woodsman, hewing left and right with gleeful abandon. The beast’s vast limbs were insubstantial as mist, yet the ice of his blade clove them like flesh.

Tentacles flailed and slammed down on the stone of the wharf, but Olaf was fast for a big man. Slow warriors didn’t survive in the Freljord. He rolled and slashed with his axe, severing a suckered length of limb that faded from existence as it was parted from the monster’s body.

Even in the grip of the red shroud, Olaf saw the creature’s skull in the thrashing chaos of phantom limbs surrounding him.

Its eyes were afire with the enraged spirit of its life.

A moment of sublime connection passed between them.

The beast’s soul knew him.

Olaf laughed with joy.

“You see the taker of your life and we are now bonded in death!” he roared. “Mayhap if you kill me, we shall battle forever in the realms beyond mortal ken.”

The prospect of eternal war against so mighty a foe poured fresh strength into Olaf’s aching muscles. He charged towards the creature’s maw, caring nothing for his pain as each brush with the Krakenwyrm’s tentacles burned his skin worse than the splinter-winds of the Lokfar coast.

He leapt into the air, axe aloft.

He looked glorious death in the face.

A tentacle whipped out and lashed around his thigh.

It swung him around in a dizzying arc, lifting him high into the air.

“Come then!” bellowed Olaf, punching his axe skyward in salute of their shared destiny. “Unto death!”

A wraith-creature with grasping talons and a mouth of icy fangs lunged from the swirling mass of spirits. Miss Fortune put a bullet through its face and it vanished like smoke in a gale.

A second shot and another spirit vanished.

She grinned through her fear as she spun into cover behind a weather-worn stone bollard of the River King to reload. On impulse, she leaned over and gave his toothy grin a kiss.

It’s all about where you place your faith.

Gods, bullets or her own skill?

The grin fell from her face as one of the pistols jammed with a grinding crunch of metal. Her mother’s admonishing words arose from the dark recesses of memory.

“That’s what you get when someone else mixes your powder, Sarah,” she said, holstering the gun and sliding her sword from its sheath. She’d looted it from the captain of a Demacian galiot running north up the Shuriman rust-coast, and it was as fine an example of the artificer’s art as any she’d seen.

Miss Fortune spun from cover, firing her loaded pistol and slashing her sword through the mist creatures. Her shot plucked another specter from the air and her sword’s edge bit as if cutting flesh and bone. Did the spirits of the dead have a physical component to them that could be hurt? It seemed unlikely, but she was wounding something inside them.

She didn’t have time to think too hard on the matter and suspected that whatever power she’d tapped into would be undone if she did.

Men and women screamed as the howling storm of dead spirits filled Cutpurse Square, slashing with claws that froze their blood or reached into chests and sundered hearts with terror. Seven were dead, maybe more, their souls wrenched from their fallen corpses to turn on their comrades. Her heroic band fought with blades and muskets, shouting the name of the Bearded Lady, their loved ones, and even heathen gods of faraway lands.

Whatever works, thought Miss Fortune.

Rafen was down on one knee, his face ashen, breathing like a wharfside doxy after a long shift. Scraps of mist clung to him like cobwebs and the smoldering root around his neck burned with a fierce cherry red glow.

“On your feet, this fight isn’t done!” she said.

“Don’t tell me the fight’s not done,” he snapped, pushing himself to his feet. “I’ve been through more Harrowings than you could wrap a dead rat’s tail around.”

Before Miss Fortune could ask exactly what that meant, he leaned to the side and fired his pistol at something behind her. A conjoined spirit of wolf and bat screeched as it was banished, and Miss Fortune returned the favor as a spirit form of grasping hooks and snapping fangs lunged at her second in command.

“Everyone down!” shouted Miss Fortune, plucking a pair of splinter bombs from her belt and lobbing them into the howling mist.

They detonated in a deafening explosion of fire and smoke. Wood splinters and fragments of stone ricocheted. Broken glass fell in a glittering rain of daggers. Acrid fog filled the square, but it was man-made and entirely bereft of spirits.

Rafen shook his head and worked a finger in his ear.

“What was in that bomb?”

“Black Powder mixed with essence of copal and rue,” said Miss Fortune. “One from my special stash.”

“And stuff like that works against the dead?”

“My mother believed in it,” she said.

“Good enough for me,” said Rafen. “You know, we might just make it through-”

“Don’t say it,” warned Miss Fortune.

The mist began coalescing throughout the square, first in thin tendrils and wisps, then in glowing outlines of monsters; things with conjoined legs, fang-filled jaws, and arms that ended in hooks or pincers. The spirits they thought they’d killed.

Reforming, returning.

What was it folk said about plans and the contents of a privy?

“Turns out the dead are pretty hard to kill,” said Miss Fortune, trying not to let her fear show.

She’d been naïve to think petty trinkets and blind faith were enough to face the spirits of the dead. She’d wanted to show the people of Bilgewater they didn’t need Gangplank, that they could forge their own destiny.

Instead, she was going to get herself killed and leave the city to be torn apart.

A bass rumble rolled through the square. Then another.

Percussive thunder strikes, rising in a stalking storm.

It grew to become pounding hammerblows upon an anvil. Faster and louder until the ground shook with its violence.

“What in the nine deeps is that?” said Rafen.

“I don’t know,” said Miss Fortune as the outline of a spectral horseman in midnight plate emerged from the mist. He sat atop a strangely proportioned warhorse and his helm was worked in the form of a snarling demon.

“A dread knight,” said Miss Fortune.

Rafen shook his head, his face drained of color.

“That’s no knight,” he said. “That’s the Shadow of War…”

Paralyzing terror rippled through Miss Fortune’s company at the mention of this eternal nightmare of killing rage and endless fury.

The Shadow of War.

His name was once Hecarim, but no one knew if that were true or some ancient taleteller’s invention. Only fools dared recite his dark legend around the hearthfire, and even then only after enough rum to sink a Noxian war-barque.

As the Shadow of War emerged further from the mist, Miss Fortune saw he was no mere horseman. Cold dread settled upon her like a shroud at the sight of the monstrous creature.

Perhaps Hecarim had once been a knight, man and horse separate entities. But rider and mount were now one, a single, towering behemoth whose only purpose was destruction.

“They’re all around us,” said a voice.

Miss Fortune risked looking away from the armored centaur to see a whole host of ghostly knights, their outlines lambent with pellucid green radiance. They leveled lances or drew swords of dark radiance. Hecarim swept out a hooked and terrible glaive, its killing edge erupting with green fire.

“You know any secret ways out of here?” asked Rafen.

“No,” said Miss Fortune. “I want to fight that bastard.”

“You want to fight the Shadow of War?”

Before Miss Fortune could answer, a hooded figure leapt from the rooftop of a grain store and dropped into the square. He landed gracefully, a storm coat of worn leather splayed behind him. He carried two pistols, but they were like no weapons Miss Fortune had ever seen on her mother’s gun-table; bronzed metalwork braced around hunks of what looked like carved stone.

Light filled the square as he loosed searing bolts from each pistol in a fusillade that put the destruction of the Dead Pool to shame. The man turned in a tight spiral, marking targets and picking them off with whip-fast motion. The mist burned where his bolts struck, and the ghostly wraiths screeched as they were consumed.

The mist withdrew from Cutpurse Square, taking Hecarim and the death knights with it. Something told Miss Fortune this was but a temporary respite.

The man holstered his pistols and turned to look at Miss Fortune, throwing back his hood to reveal darkly handsome features with haunted eyes.

“The thing about shadows,” he said. “Bring enough light and they disappear.”

Olaf was not happy with this doom.

He hoped men would speak of his epic battle with the Krakenwyrm, not this ignoble fall to his death.

He hoped someone might have seen him charge the sea beast.

He prayed at least one observer had seen him lifted high into the air by its ghostly tentacle, then fled before seeing him hurled away like an unworthy morsel.

Olaf crashed down through the roof of a building bolted to the side of the cliff. Maybe it was a ship’s hull? He fell too fast to make it out. Crashing timbers and earthenware tumbled with him in his headlong plunge through the building. He glimpsed astonished, shouting faces flash past him.

Olaf smashed through a floor. A support beam drove the wind from him as he tumbled down Bilgewater’s cliffs. He bounced from an outcrop of rock and went headfirst through an open window, crashing out again through yet another floor.

Angry curses followed him down.

He spun out into a trailing forest of ropes and pulleys, flags and pennants. He thrashed as he fell, tangling his limbs and weapon. Fate was mocking him, wrapping him in a folded shroud of canvas sailcloth.

“Not like this, damn it!” he roared. “Not like this!”

“Who are you and where can I get a pair of guns like those?” said Miss Fortune, offering her hand to the new arrival.

“My name is Lucian,” he said, warily taking her hand.

“Damn glad to know you, friend,” said Rafen, clapping him on the back as if they were old shipmates. Miss Fortune saw Rafen’s familiarity made Lucian acutely uncomfortable, like he’d forgotten how to be around others.

His eyes scanned the edges of the square, his fingers dancing on the grips of his pistols.

“You’re a welcome sight, Lucian,” said Miss Fortune.

“We should move.” he said. “The Shadow of War will return.”

“He’s right,” said Rafen, giving her an imploring look. “It’s time to get inside, batten down the hatches.”

“No. We came out to fight.”

“Look, I get it, Sarah. We won Bilgewater and you need to fight to hold onto it, to show everyone you’re better than Gangplank. Well, you’ve done that. We went out into the Black Mist and we fought the dead. That’s more than he ever did. Anyone who risks lookin’ out a window is gonna know that. Hell, even the ones who ain’t looking will hear about it. What more do you want?”

“To fight for Bilgewater.”

“There’s fighting for Bilgewater and then there’s dying for Bilgewater,” said Rafen. “I’m all up for the first, not so much the second. These men and women followed you down into hell, but now it’s time to climb back out.”

Miss Fortune faced her company of fighters, every ragged, cutthroat one of them. None of them could be trusted not to sell their own mothers for a shiny trinket, but they’d done everything and more she’d asked of them. Venturing out into the Black Mist was just about the bravest thing any of them had ever done and she couldn’t repay that by leading them to their deaths for the sake of her vengeance.

“You’re right,” she said, taking a breath. “We’re done here.”

“Then may fortune follow you,” said Lucian, turning away and drawing his strange pistols once again.

“Wait,” said Miss Fortune. “Come with us.”

Lucian shook his head. “No, there is a mist wraith I need to destroy. The one they call Thresh, the Chain Warden. I owe him a death.”

Miss Fortune saw the lines around Lucian’s eyes deepen and recognized the expression she’d worn ever since her mother’s murder.

“He took someone from you, didn’t he?” she said.

Lucian nodded slowly, and said no more, but his very silence spoke volumes.

“This clearly isn’t your first tussle with the dead,” she said, “but you won’t survive the night if you stay out here alone. I’m guessing that might not mean much to you, but whoever this Thresh took from you, they wouldn’t want you to die here.”

Lucian’s eyes flicked downwards, and Miss Fortune saw a silver locket just visible round his neck. Was it her imagination or a trick of the mist that made it shimmer in the moonlight?

“Come with us,” said Miss Fortune. “Find somewhere safe till morning and you’ll live to do it again.”

“Safe? Where is safe in this city?” said Lucian.

“I think I might know a place,” said Miss Fortune.

They left Cutpurse Square and were traveling west up towards the Serpent Bridge when they found the Freljordian. He hung from a crooked spar like a shrouded corpse on a gibbet. Unlike most corpses, however, this one was thrashing like a landed fish.

A splintered pile of debris lay scattered all around him, and Miss Fortune looked up to see how far he’d fallen through the cliffside dwellings.

A long way was the answer, and that he was still alive was nothing short of a miracle.

Lucian leveled his pistols, but she shook her head.

“No, this one’s actually on the right side of the grave.”

Muffled cries came from within the shroud, curses that would get a man beaten to death in a host of different lands, shouted in a thick, Freljordian accent.

She placed the tip of her sword against the canvas and sliced downwards. Like a newborn sea-calf pulled from a ruptured birth-sac, a hugely bearded man spilled onto the cobbles. The reek of fish guts and offal clung to him.

He climbed unsteadily to his feet, brandishing an axe with a blade like a shard of diamond ice.

“Which way to the Slaughter Docks?” he said, weaving like a drunk. He looked around, confused, his head a mass of lumps and bruises.

“Ordinarily I’d tell you to follow your nose,” said Miss Fortune, “but I’d be amazed if you’ve any sense of smell left.”

“I’ll kill that Krakenwyrm ten times over if I have to,” said the man. “I owe it a death.”

“Lot of that going around tonight,” said Miss Fortune.

The Freljordian named himself Olaf, a warrior of the rightful mistress of the ice, and, after shaking off his concussion, declared his intention to join them until he could fight the most dangerous spirit within the Black Mist.

“Do you want to die?” Lucian asked him.

“Of course,” said Olaf, as though the very question was the height of foolishness. “I seek an ending worthy of legend.”

Miss Fortune left the madman to his dreams of death. So long as he swung that axe in the right direction, he was welcome to join them as they pushed onwards.

Three times the mist closed in on them, and each time it took an unlucky soul from their company. Spiteful laughter echoed from the sides of buildings, the sound of a whetstone over rusted steel. Ranks of carrion birds cawed from rooftops in anticipation of a flesh banquet by the light of the moon. Welcoming lights danced in the darkness of the mist, like beguiling corpse-candles over sucking marshland.

“Don’t look at them,” warned Lucian.

His warning came too late for one man and his wife. Miss Fortune didn’t know their names, but knew they had lost a son to ocean-ague less than a year ago. They walked from the cliffs following a vision in the lights only they could see.

Another man took his hooked hand to his throat before his friends could stop him. Another simply vanished into the mist without anyone seeing him go.

By the time they reached Serpent Bridge, their company numbered less than a dozen. Miss Fortune couldn’t feel sorry for them, she’d told them not to come with her. If they’d wanted to live forever, they should be shuttered behind closed doors and protective carvings, clutching spiral talismans of the Bearded Lady and praying to whatever gave them solace.

But against the Harrowing, even that was no guarantee of safety.

They’d passed countless homes smashed open with splintered shutters and doors hanging limply from leather hinges. Miss Fortune kept her eyes fixed forward, but it was impossible not to feel the accusing gazes from the frozen faces within or sense the terror of their last moments.

“The Black Mist will have its due,” said Rafen as they passed yet another charnel house, the families within cold and dead.

She wanted to be angry at such acceptance of horror, but what good would that do? After all, he was right.

Instead, she focused on the hazed outline of the structure across the bridge. It sat in the center of a gouged crater in the cliff, as if some mighty sea creature had taken a vast bite from the rock. Like most places in Bilgewater it was constructed from the ocean’s leavings. Its walls were driftwood and branches from faraway lands, its windows the scavenged remains of ships swept up from the seabed. It had a peculiar quality of possessing not a single straight line anywhere in its construction. The curious angles gave it a sense of being somehow in motion, as if it might one day choose another place to set down temporary roots.

Its spire was likewise crooked, fluted like the horn of a narwhal and topped with the same spiral symbol Miss Fortune wore around her neck. A shimmering light wreathed the icon, and where it shone the darkness was held in abeyance.

“What is that place?” asked Lucian.

“The Temple of the Bearded Lady,” she said. “The House of Nagakabouros.”

“Is it safe?”

“It’s better than staying out here.”

Lucian nodded and they set off across the winding length of the bridge. Like the temple it approached, the bridge was an uneven thing, its cobbles undulant like something alive.

Rafen paused at the crumbling parapet and looked down.

“Getting higher every year,” he said.

Reluctantly, Miss Fortune joined him and looked over the edge.

The docks and Rat Town were smothered beneath the Black Mist, and even the web of gun’dolas was barely visible. Bilgewater was choking in the grip of the mist, its tendrils seeping ever deeper into the city. Screams of terror drifted upwards, each one a life ended and a fresh soul for the legion of the dead.

Rafen shrugged. “A few years from now there won’t be anywhere in Bilgewater beyond its reach.”

“A lot can happen in a few years,” said Miss Fortune.

“This happens every year?” asked Olaf, one foot perched on the parapet with a reckless disregard for the dizzying drop.

Miss Fortune nodded.

“Excellent,” said the Freljordian. “If I am fated not to die this night, I will return here when the Black Mist rises again.”

“It’s your funeral,” replied Rafen.

“Thank you,” said Olaf, slapping an enormous palm on Rafen’s back, almost knocking him from the bridge. The Freljordian’s eyes widened as a host of ghostly tentacles rose from the mist, uncoiling to smash down on the dwellings of Rat Town.

“The beast!” he cried.

And before anyone could stop him, he vaulted onto the parapet and hurled himself from the edge.

“Mad bastard,” said Rafen as Olaf’s dwindling form vanished into the mist below.

“All the ice-dwellers are mad,” said Miss Fortune. “But he was madder than most I’ve met.”

“Get everyone inside,” said Lucian.

She heard the urgency in his voice and turned to see him facing a towering figure in stitched black robes hung with hooked chains. Sickly green light wreathed the specter as it lifted a swaying lantern in one pallid hand. Fear touched Miss Fortune, fear like nothing she’d known since she’d watched her mother die and stared down the barrel of the killer’s gun.

Lucian drew his pistols. “Thresh is mine.”

“He’s all yours,” she said, and turned away.

Her gaze was drawn upwards as shadows closed around the temple. The breath caught in her throat as she saw Hecarim and his death knights at the crater’s ridge.

The Shadow of War raised his fiery glaive and the ghostly horsemen urged their hell-steeds downward. No mortal rider could make that descent, but these were riders of death.

“Run!” shouted Miss Fortune.

The end of the bridge thickened with noxious green light. The Chain Warden hid his corpse features beneath a rotted hood, but the light of his lantern hinted at the remains of ravaged flesh, gaunt and drained of all emotion, save sadistic relish.

He moved softly, like all his kind. Pained moans sighed from his robes as he moved. Thresh lifted his head a fraction, and Lucian saw the glint of too-sharp teeth widen in a grin of anticipation.

“Mortal,” said Thresh, rolling the word around his mouth like a sweetmeat.

Lucian knelt, reciting the mantra of clarity to steel his soul for the battle to come. He had prepared for this moment a thousand times, and now that it was here, his mouth was dry, his palms slick with sweat.

“You murdered Senna,” he said, standing and lifting his head. “The only person I had left in the world.”

“Senna...?” said Thresh, the sound wet and gurgling, as though squeezed from a throat once crushed by a hangman’s noose.

“My wife,” said Lucian, knowing he should not speak, that every word was a weapon the wraith would turn against him. Tears blurred his vision as grief washed away every preparation and every shred of logic. He lifted the silver locket from around his neck and snapped it open, needing the wraith to understand the depth of all he had lost.

Thresh grinned, his needle teeth glinting as he tapped the glass of the lantern with a yellowed nail.

“I remember her,” he said. “A vital soul. Not yet barren and cold. Ripe for torment. Hope for a new life. It bloomed in her, you know. Fresh, new, like a spring flower. All too easy to pluck and ruin those with dreams.”

Lucian lifted his pistols.

“If you remember her, then you will remember these,” he said.

The toothed grin never faltered beneath the ragged cowl.

“The weapons of light,” he said.

“And light is ever the bane of darkness,” said Lucian, channeling every scrap of hatred into his relic pistols.

“Wait,” said Thresh, but Lucian was done waiting.

He loosed a pair of blinding shots.

A conflagration of purifying fire engulfed the Chain Warden and his howls were music to Lucian’s ears.

Then the howls changed to gurgling laughter.

A nimbus of dark light faded around Thresh, drawn back into his lantern and leaving him utterly untouched by the fire.

Lucian fired again, a storm of radiant bolts, each perfectly aimed, but every one wasted. Each shot dissipated harmlessly against a shimmering haze of dark energy from the lantern.

“Yes, I remember those weapons,” said the wraith. “I tore their secrets from her mind.”

Lucian froze.

“What did you just say?”

Thresh laughed, a wheezing, consumptive rasp.

“You don’t know? After all the reborn order learned of me, you never once suspected?”

Lucian felt cold dread settle in his belly. A horror he had never acknowledged for fear he would go insane.

“She did not die,” continued Thresh, holding up his lantern.

Lucian saw tortured spirits twisting in its depths.

Thresh grinned. “I ripped her soul out and kept it.”

“No...” said Lucian. “I saw her die.”

“She screams still inside my lantern,” said Thresh, drifting closer with every choked-out word. “Her every moment of existence is sweet agony. Listen...can you hear her?”

“No,” sobbed Lucian, his relic pistols falling to the stones of the bridge.

Thresh circled him, chains snaking from his leather belt and slithering over Lucian’s body. The hooks cut into his storm coat, seeking the soft flesh beneath.

“Hope was her weakness. Love her undoing.”

Lucian looked up into Thresh’s ravaged features.

His eyes were voids, dark holes into emptiness.

Whatever Thresh had been in life, nothing now remained. No compassion, no mercy and no humanity.

“All is death and suffering, mortal,” said the Chain Warden, reaching for Lucian’s neck. “No matter where you run, your only true legacy is death. But before then, there is me.”

The breath hammered in Miss Fortune’s throat as she ran for the temple. Her lungs fought to draw breath, and her veins felt sluggish with ice. Coils of enervating mist reached up to the rock of the temple, drawn by the presence of the two lords of the unliving. Brilliant flashes of light flared behind her, but she didn’t look back. She heard the thunder of hoof beats on rock, seeing sparks above them in the darkness.

She imagined the breath of ghostly steeds on her neck.

The space between her shoulder blades burned hot where she expected the stabbing thrust of a spectral lance.

Wait, how can they make sparks when they’re ghosts?

The absurdity of the thought made her laugh, and she was still laughing as she slammed into the warped timber doors of the temple. Rafen and her ragged band were already there, hammering fists and palms against the door.

“In the name of the Bearded Lady, let us in!” he yelled.

He looked up as Miss Fortune joined him.

“The doors are shut,” he said.

“I noticed,” she gasped, wrenching the pendant Illaoi had given her. She placed her palm flat on door, with the coral pressed hard against the wood.

“Illaoi!” she shouted. “I’m ready to stamp on that damn eel’s neck. Now open the bloody door!”

“Eel?” said Rafen. “What eel? What are you talking about?”

“Never mind,” she snapped, battering her palm bloody against the wood. “I think it was a metaphor.”

The door swung outwards as if it had been unbarred the whole time. Miss Fortune stepped back to allow her fighters inside first, and finally turned around.

Hecarim reared up and swung his fiery glaive for her skull.

A hand grasped her collar and hauled her backward. The tip of the weapon sliced an inch from her throat.

She fell hard on her backside.

Illaoi stood in the doorway, holding her stone idol out before her like a shield. White mist clung to it like corposant.

“The dead are not welcome here,” she said.

Rafen and the others hauled the door shut and dropped a heavy spar of seasoned oak into place on the rusted anchors to either side. A huge impact slammed into the door.

Wood split and splinters flew.

Illaoi turned and walked past Miss Fortune, still sprawled on a mosaic floor of seashells and clay fragments.

“You took your sweet time, girl,” she said as Miss Fortune climbed to her feet. The temple was filled with at least two hundred people, maybe more. She saw a wide cross section of Bilgewater’s denizens: its native population, pirates, traders and assorted sea-scum, together with travellers unlucky or unwise enough to seek a berth so close to the Harrowing.

“Is that door going to hold?” she asked.

“It will or it won’t,” said Illaoi, heading towards a many-tentacled statue at the centre of the temple. Miss Fortune tried to make sense of it, but gave up when her eye kept getting lost in the many spirals and looping curves.

“That’s not an answer.”

“It’s the only one I have,” said Illaoi, setting her idol in a concave depression in the statue. She began moving in a circle around the statue, beating a rhythmic pattern on her thighs and chest with her fists. The people in the temple joined her circling, beating palms against bare skin, stamping their feet and speaking in a language she didn’t understand.

“What are they doing?”

“Giving some motion back to the world,” said Illaoi. “But we will need time.”

“You’ll have it,” promised Miss Fortune.

Lucian felt the spectral hooks bite deep into his flesh, colder than northern ice and twice as painful. The Chain Warden’s hand closed on his throat and his skin burned at the wraith’s touch. He felt his strength drawn from him, the beat of his heart slow.

Thresh lifted him from the ground and held his lantern aloft, ready to receive his soul. The moaning lights within swirled in agitation, ghostly faces and hands pressing against the glass from within.

“Long I have sought your soul, shadow hunter,” said Thresh. “But only now is it ripe for the taking.”

Lucian’s vision greyed at the edges, feeling his soul peel away from his bones. He fought to hold on, but the Chain Warden had been harvesting souls for countless lifetimes and knew his craft better than any.

“Struggle harder,” said Thresh with monstrous appetite. “Your soul burns brighter when you fight.”

Lucian tried to speak, but no words came out, just a soft stream of warm breath that carried his soul.

A glittering scythe floated in the air above Lucian, a murder-soaked reaper of souls. Its blade shivered with anticipation.

Lucian...

That voice. Her voice.

My love...

The murder-edge of Thresh’s blade turned, angled to better part soul from flesh.

Lucian drew back his breath as he saw a face resolve in the glass of the lantern. One among countless thousands, but one with more reason than any to push herself to the fore.

Full lips, wide, almond shaped eyes, imploring him to live.

“Senna...” gasped Lucian.

Let me be your shield.

He knew what she meant in a heartbeat.

The link between them was as strong as it had been when they hunted the creatures of shadow side by side.

With the last of his strength, Lucian reached up and snapped the locket from around his neck. The chain glittered silver in the moonlight.

The Chain Warden saw something was amiss and hissed in anger.

Lucian was faster.

He spun the chain like a slingshot, but instead of loosing a lead bullet, he lashed it around the arm holding the lantern. Before Thresh could shake it off, Lucian drew the silver awl from its sheath in his long coat and plunged it into the specter’s wrist.

The Chain Warden screeched in pain, a sensation he had likely not felt in millennia. He dropped Lucian and thrashed in agony as the myriad souls trapped in his lantern suddenly found a means to strike back at their tormentor.

Lucian felt his soul snap back into his body and drew in heaving gulps of air, like a drowning man breaking the surface.

Hurry, my love. He is too strong...

His sight returned, clearer than ever before. Lucian snatched his pistols from the ground. He caught the briefest glimpse of Senna’s face in the lantern and etched it on his heart.

Never again would her face grow dim in his memories.

“Thresh,” he said, aiming his twin pistols.

The Chain Warden looked up, the voids of his eyes alight with outrage at the defiance of his captive souls. He held Lucian’s gaze and extended his lantern, but the rebellious souls had dispelled whatever protection it once offered.

Lucian fired a blistering series of perfect shots.

They burned through the Chain Warden’s ghostly robes and ignited his spirit form in a searing inferno of light. Lucian marched towards Thresh, his twin weapons blazing.

Shrieking in agony, the Chain Warden retreated from Lucian’s unending barrage, his wraithform now powerless to resist these weapons of ancient power.

“Death is here for you,” said Lucian. “Embrace it, safe in the knowledge I will ensure it is final.”

Thresh gave one last howl before leaping from the bridge, falling like a burning comet to the city below.

Lucian watched him fall until the Black Mist swallowed him.

He slumped to his knees.

“Thank you, my love,” said Lucian. “My light.”

The temple walls shook with the violence of the assault. Black mist oozed between ill-fitting planks and through cracks in the scavenged glass of the windows. The door shuddered in its frame. Grasping claws of mist tore at the wood. Screams echoed as a howling gale battered the mismatched timbers of the roof.

“Over there!” shouted Miss Fortune as a host of mist-creatures with burning red eyes poured through a broken section of wall that had once been a series of tea-chests from Ionia.

She leapt into the midst of the wraiths. It felt like jumping naked into an ice hole cut in a glacier. Even the lightest touch of the dead leeched warmth and life.

The coral pendant burned hot against her skin.

She slashed her looted sword through the creatures and felt the same bite she’d felt before. Her bullets might be useless against the dead, but this Demacian blade hurt them. They fell back from her, screeching and hissing.

Could the dead know fear?

It seemed they could, for they fled the sword’s glittering edge. She didn’t let them go, stabbing and slashing the mist wherever it poured in.

“That’s it! Run!” she yelled.

A child screamed and Miss Fortune sprinted over as the mist reached to claim him. She dived and snatched the boy in her arms before rolling to safety. Chill claws plunged into her back, and Miss Fortune gasped as numbing cold spread through her limbs.

She stabbed behind her and something dead howled.

A woman sheltering behind an overturned pew reached for the boy and Miss Fortune let him squirm to safety. She pushed herself to her feet, weakness spreading through her body like a raging infection.

Everywhere was gunfire and clashing steel, deathly howls and screams of terror.

“Sarah!” shouted Rafen.

She looked up to see the oaken locking bar securing the door split along its length. Rafen and a dozen men had their backs braced against the bludgeoning assault, but the doors were bulging inwards. Cracks spread and grasping hands of mist reached inside. A man was snatched backwards and his piteous screams were abruptly cut off as he vanished into the mist.

Another had his arm ripped off as he reached to help him.

Rafen spun and rammed his dagger through the gap.

Clawed hands tore the useless weapon from his hand.

A howling body pushed itself in through the disintegrating door and plunged its hands into Rafen’s chest. Her second in command roared in pain, his face draining of color.

She staggered over to him, her strength all but gone. Her blade hacked through spectral arms, and the creature shrieked as it vanished. Rafen fell into her, and they collapsed back into the nave together.

Rafen gasped for breath, his features as slack as hers.

“Don’t you die on me, Rafen!” she wheezed.

“It’ll take more than the dead to kill me,” he grunted. “Bastard thing just winded me.”

Glass broke somewhere up above. Coils of black mist coalesced overhead, a boiling mass of snapping teeth, claws and hungry eyes.

Miss Fortune tried to get to her feet, but her limbs burned with exhaustion. She ground her teeth in frustration. Barely a handful of her company remained, and the people sheltering in here weren’t fighters.

The dead were getting in.

Miss Fortune looked back at Illaoi.

The priestess was surrounded by her people, all of them still circling the statue and performing their fist-thumping, palm-slapping ritual. It didn’t appear to be achieving anything. The strange statue remained unmoving and impotent.

What had she expected, that it would come to life and drive the dead back like some clanking iron golem from Piltover?

“Whatever it is you’re doing, do it faster!” shouted Miss Fortune.

A section of the roof ripped loose and spun off into the tempest surrounding the temple. A swirling column of spirits boiled inside and touched down like a tornado. Wraiths and things that defied understanding spun from the unliving vortex to fall upon the living.

Finally the door gave out and exploded inwards, the timbers dry and rotted by the touch of the dead. The skirling blast of a hunting horn filled the temple, and Miss Fortune’s hands flew to her ears at its deafening echoes.

Hecarim rode into the temple, crushing the men who’d been bracing the door with their bodies. Their souls were drawn up into the Shadow of War’s flaming glaive, and the cold fire of its edge illuminated the temple with loathsome radiance. His death knights rode at his back, and the spirits already within the temple drew back in recognition of Hecarim’s terrible glory.

“I said the dead are not welcome here,” boomed Illaoi.

Miss Fortune looked up to see the priestess towering over her, stout and majestic. Pale light clung to her limbs and sparkled on the stone tablet she held in trembling hands. Veins stood out like hawsers on her neck, and her jawline was taut with effort. Sweat ran in runnels down her face.

Whatever Illaoi was doing was costing her greatly.

“These mortal souls are mine,” said Hecarim, and Miss Fortune felt herself recoil from the iron syllables of his voice.

“They are not,” said Illaoi. “This is the house of Nagakabouros, who stands in opposition to the dead.”

“The dead will have their due,” said Hecarim, lowering his glaive to point at Illaoi’s heart.

The priestess shook her head.

“Not today,” she said. “Not while I still move.”

“You cannot stop me.”

“Deaf as well as dead,” grinned Illaoi as a swelling radiance built behind her. “I didn’t say I was going to stop you.”

Miss Fortune turned and saw the spiraling statue bathed in blinding radiance. White light smoked from its surfaces, and shadows fled from its touch. She shielded her eyes as the light billowed outwards like writhing tentacles and where it met the Black Mist it stripped it bare, exposing the twisted souls within. The sinuous light pulled the dead onwards, purging the baleful magic that cursed them to undeath so very long ago.

She expected screams, but instead the unbound dead wept with joy as their souls were freed to move on. The light spread over the cracked walls of the temple, and as it touched her, Miss Fortune cried out as the deathly numbness in her flesh was banished in a rush of heat and life.

The light of Nagakabouros closed on Hecarim, and Miss Fortune saw his fear at the thought of what transformations it might work upon him.

What could be so awful that it was better to remain cursed?

“You can be free, Hecarim,” said Illaoi, her voice strained to the limits of endurance by what she had unleashed. “You can move on, live in the light as the man you always dreamed of being before his grief and folly remade you.”

Hecarim roared and swept his glaive at Illaoi’s neck.

Miss Fortune’s blade intercepted it in a clashing flare of sparks. She shook her head.

“Get out of my city,” she said.

Hecarim’s blade drew back for another strike, but before the blow could land, the light finally pierced his veil of darkness. He bellowed in pain and fell back from its burning touch. The dark rider’s outline shimmered, like two picture box images wavering in candlelight on the same backcloth.

Miss Fortune caught a fleeting glimpse of a tall rider, armored in silver and gold. A young man, handsome and proud with dark eyes and a future of glory ahead of him.

What happened to him?

Hecarim roared and galloped from the temple.

His death knights and the darkness went with him, a shrieking host of tattered spirits following in their wake.

The light of Nagakabouros spread over Bilgewater like the coming dawn. None who saw it could ever remember so sweet a sight; the first rays of sunlight after a storm, the first hint of warmth after a bitter winter.

The Black Mist withdrew before it, roiling in a churning maelstrom of panicked spirits. The dead turned on one another in a frenzy, some fighting to return from whence they had come as others actively sought out the light’s release.

Silence fell as the Black Mist drew back over the ocean, drawn to the cursed island where it claimed dominion.

True dawn broke over the eastern horizon, and a cleansing wind blew through the city as the people of Bilgewater let out a collective breath.

The Harrowing was over.

Silence filled the temple; the utter lack of sound a stark contrast to the mayhem of moments ago.

“It’s done,” said Miss Fortune.

“Until the next time,” said Illaoi wearily. “The Black Mist’s hunger burns like a sickness.”

“What did you do?”

“What I had to.”

“Whatever it was, I thank you.”

Illaoi shook her head and put a powerful arm around Miss Fortune’s shoulder.

“Thank the goddess,” said Illaoi. “Make an offering. Something big.”

“I will,” said Miss Fortune.

“You better. My god dislikes empty promises.”

The veiled threat rankled, and for a moment she thought of putting a bullet through the priestess’ skull. Before she could do more than inch her hand to her pistols, Illaoi crumpled like a ripped topsail. Miss Fortune grabbed for her, but the priestess was too enormous to hold upright alone.

They went to the seashell floor together.

“Rafen, help me get her up,” she said.

Together they propped Illaoi up against a broken pew, grunting with the effort of shifting her colossal bulk.

“The Bearded Lady rose from the sea...” said Rafen.

“Don’t be stupid all your life,” said Illaoi. “I said Nagakabouros doesn’t live under the sea.”

“So where does she live?” asked Rafen. “In the sky?”

Illaoi shook her head and punched him in the heart. Rafen grunted and winced in pain.

“There is where you find her.”

Illaoi grinned at the obliqueness of her answer and her eyes drifted closed.

“Is she dead?” asked Rafen, rubbing his bruised chest.

Illaoi reached up and slapped him.

Then started snoring like a stevedore with lung-blight.

Lucian sat on the edge of the bridge and watched the city emerge from Black Mist. He’d hated Bilgewater on first sight, but there was a quality of beauty to it as the sunlight bathed its myriad clay-tiled roofs in a warm amber glow.

A city reborn, like it was every time the Harrowing receded.

An apt name for this dread moment, but one that carried only a fraction of the sorrow of its origins. Did anyone here really understand the real tragedy of the Shadow Isles?

And even if they did, would they care?

He turned as he heard footsteps approaching.

“It’s kind of pretty from up here,” said Miss Fortune.

“But only from up here.”

“Yes, it’s a viper’s nest alright,” said Miss Fortune. “There’s good people and bad people, but I’ve been making sure there’s a lot less of the bad.”

“The way I hear it, you started a war,” said Lucian. “Some might say that’s like burning down your house to kill a rat.”

He saw anger touch her, but it passed quickly.

“I thought I was making things better for everyone,” she said, straddling the parapet, “but they’re only getting worse. I need to do something about that, starting now.”

“Is that why you were out in the Black Mist?”

The woman thought for a moment.

“Maybe not at first,” she said. “I let a razor-eel off the hook when I killed Gangplank, and if I don’t take hold of it and get it back on, it’s going to bite a lot of the good people.”

“A razor-eel?”

“What I mean to say is that when I brought the Pirate King down, I had no idea what would happen when he was gone. I didn’t much care,” she said. “But I’ve seen what’s happening down there without someone in control. The city’s tearing its own throat out. Bilgewater needs someone strong at the top. No reason that someone can’t be me. The war’s just starting, and the only way it’ll end quickly is if I win it.”

The silence between them stretched.

“My answer is no.”

“I didn’t ask anything.”

“You’re going to,” said Lucian. “You want me to stay and help you win your war, but I can’t. Your fight isn’t my fight.”

“It could be,” said Miss Fortune. “The pay’s good and you’d get to kill a lot of bad people. And save a lot of innocent souls.”

“There is only one soul I need to save,” said Lucian. “And I won’t save it in Bilgewater.”

Miss Fortune nodded and held out her hand.

“Then I’ll say farewell and good hunting,” she said, standing and dusting her britches. “I hope you find what you’re looking for. Just know that you can lose yourself to revenge.”

Lucian watched her limp back to the sagging ruins of the temple as the survivors within emerged, blinking, into the daylight. She thought she understood what drove him, but she hadn’t the first clue.

Vengeance? He was far beyond vengeance.

His beloved was held in torment by an undying wraith, a creature from ancient days that understood suffering like no other.

Miss Fortune did not understand even a fraction of his pain.

He rose and lifted his gaze out to sea.

The ocean was calm now, an emerald green expanse.

People were already moving down on the docks, repairing ships and rebuilding their homes. Bilgewater never stopped, even in the aftermath of the Harrowing. He scanned the forest of swaying masts, looking for a ship that wasn’t too badly damaged. Perhaps one desperate captain could be persuaded to take him where he needed to go.

“I am coming, my light,” he said. “And I will free you.”

The fisherman grunted as he worked the stern-windlass to haul the big man from the water and onto his boat. The rope was frayed and he sweated in the cold air as he worked the crank.

“By the bristles of her bearded chin, you’re a big bastard, right sure ye are,” he said, snagging the big man’s armor with a gaffing hook and pulling him around over the rolling deck. He kept a wary eye out for predators, above and below the surface.

No sooner had the Black Mist withdrawn over the horizon than scores of boats put out to sea. The waters were awash with plunder, and if you weren’t fast, you ended up with nothing.

He’d spotted the floating man first and had already fought off six sewer-jacks trying to reach him. Damned if wharf-scum like them were going to steal this ocean bounty from him.

The big man had been drifting on a bed of what looked like the remains of a giant Krakenwyrm. Its tentacles were pulped and bloated with noxious gasses, which was all that had kept the big man’s armored form afloat.

He dropped his catch to the deck and laid him out along the gunwale before casting an appraising eye over his body.

A heavy iron hauberk of ring and scale, rugged, fur-lined boots and, best of all, a magnificent axe tangled in the straps of his armor.

“Oh, yes, make a few Krakens out of you, me beauty,” he said, dancing a happy jig around his boat. “A few Krakens indeed!”

The big man coughed up brackish seawater.

“Am I still alive?” he asked.

The fisherman stopped his happy jig and slid a hand towards the long knife at his belt. He used it to open fish bellies. No reason he couldn’t use it to open a throat. Wouldn’t be the first time a salvager had helped someone on their way to the Bearded Lady to claim a prize.

The big man opened his eyes.

“Touch that knife again and I’ll cut you into more pieces than that damned Krakenwyrm.”

Raised in the wharf alleys of Bilgewater, Malcolm Graves quickly learned how to fight and how to steal, skills that would serve him very well in all the years ahead. He could always find work hauling contraband up from the smugglers’ skiffs that came into the bay each night—with a tidy side-gig as hired muscle for various other unsavory local characters, as they went about their business in the port.

But the alleys were small-time, and he craved more excitement than they could offer. Still little more than a youth, Graves stole a blunderbuss and smuggled himself aboard a ship headed out of Bilgewater to the Shuriman mainland, where he stole, lied, and gambled his way from place to place along the coast.

Across the table of a high-stakes—and highly illegal—card game in Mudtown, Graves met a man who would change the course of his life, and his career: the trickster now known to many as Twisted Fate.

Each immediately saw in the other the same reckless passion for danger and adventure, and together they formed a most lucrative partnership. Between Graves’ raw brawn and Twisted Fate’s ability to talk his way out of (and occasionally back into) almost any situation, they were an unusually effective team from the outset. Their mutual sense of roguish honor grew into genuine trust, and together they stole from the rich, swindled the foolish, handpicked skilled crews for specific jobs, and sold out their rivals whenever they could.

Though at times Twisted Fate would blow all their shares and leave them with nothing to show for it, Graves knew that the thrill of some new escapade was always just around the corner…

On the southern borderlands of Valoran, they set two renowned noble houses of Noxus at each other’s throats as cover for the rescue of a kidnapped heir. That they pocketed the reward money, only to ransom the vile young man to the highest bidder, should really have come as no surprise to their original employer. In Piltover, they still hold the distinction of being the only thieves ever to crack the supposedly impenetrable Clockwork Vault. Not only did the pair empty the vault of all its treasures, they also tricked the guards into loading the loot onto their hijacked schooner, for a quick getaway through the Sun Gates.

In almost every case, only once they and their accomplices were safely over the horizon were their crimes even discovered—usually along with one of Twisted Fate’s trademark calling cards left where it would be easily found.

But, eventually, their luck ran out.

During a heist that rapidly turned from complex to completely botched, Graves was taken by the local enforcers, while Twisted Fate merely turned tail and abandoned him.

Thrown into the infamous prison known as the Locker, Graves endured years of torture and solitary confinement, during which time he nursed his bitter anger toward his old partner. A lesser man would surely have been broken by all this, but not Malcolm Graves. He was determined to have his revenge.

When he finally clawed his way to freedom, with the prison warden’s brand new shotgun slung over his shoulder, Graves began his long-overdue pursuit of Twisted Fate.

The search led him back home to Bilgewater, where he found that the wily old cardsharp had acquired a few new bounties on his head—and Graves would be only too happy to claim them. However, just as he got Twisted Fate in his sights, they were forced to put aside their differences in order to escape almost certain death in the ongoing conflict between the reaver king Gangplank and his rival ship captains.

Once again, Graves found himself escaping his hometown… only this time, he had his old friend in tow. While both of them might have liked to pick up their partnership where they left off all those years ago, such resentment couldn't simply be forgotten overnight, and it would be a while before Graves could bring himself to trust Twisted Fate again.

Still, he feels Bilgewater calling to him once more. Maybe this time around, the pair of them will find their stride and be able to pull off the ultimate heist…

It was the stench of Bloodharbor that hit you first.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“How so?” asked Sarah.

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

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

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

“You worry too much, Rafen.”

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

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

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

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

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

“Your bones talking to you again?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Like Sarah Fortune, Bilgewater was a survivor.

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

“Ship ahoy,” said Rafen.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Now you’re just being cruel.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

They, of course, all knew her.

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

“Quite the gathering, eh?” said Rafen.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“So I heard.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rafen saw him too and gripped her arm.

“Remember the Truce,” he hissed urgently.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cannonball dent in the right side.

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

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

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

Captain Petyr Harker.

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

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

Her pistol balls.

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

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

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

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

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

Rafen appeared on her left, dragging her off Petyr.

“Easy, captain,” he said. “Easy now…”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Is that supposed to be funny?”

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

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

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

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

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

“Why are you here, Petyr?” she asked.

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

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

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

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

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

“Looks expensive.”

“It was.”

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

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

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

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

“And how’s that working out for you?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I didn’t know you knew Aligh.”

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

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

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

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

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

Rafen duly poured her a measure.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Moon Serpent sailed onward, deeper into the fog.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I’ll drink to that,” said Petyr.

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

Where in the eight seas is Rafen?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sarah looked back down the cannon barrel.

And then she knew.

“Oh no…”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Aligh, you treacherous bastard!” she yelled.

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

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

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

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

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

She knew she wouldn’t make it.

The silver flame lit the oiled touchpaper.

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

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

Her second was that the Moon Serpent was still afloat.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But not everyone was dead.

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

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

Rafen! Where’s Rafen?

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

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

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

Petyr Harker.

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

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

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

You’re alive, damn it! Do something!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sarah risked a glance behind her.

Cannonball dent in the right side…

This was her chance to even those odds.

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

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

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

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

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

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

No, no, no…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“You killed them!” he cried.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What’s out there…?

And then she saw it.

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

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

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

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

This is impossible.

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

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

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

Even his name was said to be a curse.

“Nautilus…”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Aligh pulled his way along the cannon toward her.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Let them all drown.

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

In moments, nothing would remain on the surface.

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

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

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

She couldn’t shake him loose.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Right indeed,” said Rafen.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“You’d never believe me,” said Sarah.

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

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

“Fair enough.”

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

“Aligh’s sigil,” said Rafen.

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

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

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

A hunched wretch in an expensive kraken-skin coat.

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

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

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

The Rat Town slaughter docks; they smell as bad as their name suggests.

And yet here I am, hidden in the shadows, breathing the blood-and-bile stink of butchered sea serpents.

I melt deeper into the darkness, pulling the brim of my hat down low over my face as heavily armed members of the Jagged Hooks stalk by.

They’ve got a reputation for savagery, these boys. In a fair fight, they might take me down, but I’m not big on playing fair, and I’m not here to fight. Not this time.

So what brings me here, to one of the foulest districts in Bilgewater?

Money. What else?

It was a gamble, taking on this job, but the payout is big enough that I couldn’t pass it up. And besides, I cased this place to stack the deck in my favor.

I don’t intend to linger. I want to be in and out as quickly and as quietly as possible. Once the job’s done, I aim to collect my payment and be gone before dawn. All goes well, I’ll be halfway to Valoran before anyone knows the damn thing’s missing.

The thugs turn the corner of the massive slaughter shed. Means I’ve got two minutes until they swing back around - plenty of time.

The silver moon slides behind a bank of clouds, covering the wharf in shadow. Crates from the day’s work are scattered across the dock. It makes for easy cover.

I see lookouts on top of the main warehouse, silhouettes standing watch, crossbows in hand. They’re gossiping loudly like fishwives. I could be wearing bells and these idiots still wouldn’t hear me.

They think no one would be fool enough to come here.

A bloated corpse hangs overhead, a warning for all to see. It spins slowly in the midnight breeze coming off the harbor. It’s an ugly sight. A huge hook, the type used to catch devilfish, holds the body aloft.

Stepping over rusted chains lying limp upon wet stone, I pass between a pair of towering cranes. They’re used to haul giant sea creatures into the slaughter sheds for butchering. It’s those looming factories that are the source of the gods-awful stench that permeates everything here. I’m gonna need to buy myself a new set of clothes once this is over.

Across the bay, past the chum-churned waters of the slaughter docks, scores of ships lie at anchor, their lanterns swaying gently. One of the vessels draws my eye; a massive, black-sailed war galleon. I know whose ship that is. Everyone in Bilgewater knows.

I take a moment to gloat. I’m about to steal from the most powerful man in town. There’s always a certain thrill that comes from spitting in death’s eye.

As expected, the main warehouse is locked up tighter than a noblewoman’s virtue. Guards posted at every entrance. Doors locked and barred. For anyone other than me, it would be impossible to break into.

I duck into a blind alley opposite the warehouse. It’s a dead end, and it’s not as dark as I’d have liked. If I’m still here when the patrol comes back, they will see me. And if they get ahold of me, the best I can hope for is a quick death. More likely, I’ll be taken to him... and that would be a far more painful, drawn out way to go.

The trick, as always, is not to get caught.

Then I hear them. The bruisers are returning early. I have seconds, at best. I snap a card from my sleeve and weave it through my fingers; it’s as natural as breathing. This is the easy part, the rest can’t be rushed.

I let my mind drift as the card starts to glow. Pressure builds around me, and I’m nearly overcome with the promise of everywhere. Half-closing my eyes, I focus, and picture where I need to be.

Then, there’s the familiar lurch in the guts as I shift. A displacement of air, and I’m inside the warehouse. Gone with barely a trace.

Damn, I’m good.

One of the Jagged Hooks outside might glance up the alley and notice a single playing card falling to the ground, but probably not.

It takes a moment for me to get my bearings. Dim light from the lanterns outside creeps in through the cracks in the walls. My eyes adjust.

The warehouse is crowded, stacked high with treasures from all over the Twelve Seas: gleaming suits of armor, exotic works of art, shining silks. All things of considerable value, but not what I’m here for.

My attention is drawn to the loading doors at the front of the warehouse, where I know I’ll find the most recent arrivals. I run my fingertips across the various cartons and crates... until I come to a small, wooden box. I can feel the power emanating from within. This is what I’m here for.

I unlatch the lid.

My prize is revealed; a knife of exquisite design, lying upon a bed of black velvet. I reach for it—

Chh-chunk.

I freeze. There’s no mistaking that sound.

Before he even speaks, I know who’s standing behind me in the darkness.

“T.F.,” says Graves. “It’s been a long time.”

I’ve been here for hours. Some folks might get bored standing still this long, but I’ve got my anger to keep me company. I ain’t leaving this spot until I settle the score.

Long after midnight, the snake finally shows. He suddenly appears in the warehouse, using that same old magic trick. I prime my shotgun, ready to turn him inside out. After years spent looking for that treacherous son of a bitch here he is, dead to rights at the end of Destiny’s barrels.

“T.F.,” I say. “It’s been a long time.”

I had better words ready for this moment. Funny how they all went out the window as soon as I saw him.

But T.F.? His face shows nothing. No fear, no regret, no hint of surprise. Not even while facing down a loaded gun. Gods damn him.

“Malcolm, how long have you been standing there?” he asks, the smile in his voice enrages me.

I take aim. I can pull the trigger and leave him deader than sea scum.

I should.

Not yet, though. I need to hear him say it. “Why’d you do it?” I ask, knowing full well he’ll just come back with something clever.

“Is the gun really necessary? I thought we were friends.”

Friends. The bastard’s mocking me. Now I want to tear his smug head off – but I’ve got to keep my cool.

“You’re looking as dapper as ever,” he says.

I look down at the devilfish bites on my clothes. I had to swim to get past the guards. Ever since he got a little money, T.F.’s been a stickler for appearance. I can’t wait to mess him up. But first, I want answers.

“Tell me why you left me to take the fall, or they’ll be pickin’ bits of your pretty face out of the rafters.” This is how you’ve got to be with T.F. Give him room, and he’ll pull your strings ‘til you don’t know which end’s your ass.

His slipperiness came in handy when we were partners.

“Ten damn years in the Locker! Know what that does to a man?”

He doesn’t. For once, he’s got nothing cute to say. He knows he did me wrong.

“They did things to me that would’ve driven most men mad. All that kept me from breaking was my anger. And thinking about this moment, right here.”

Then comes the clever reply: “Sounds like I kept you alive. Maybe you should thank me.”

That one gets me. I’m so mad, I can barely see. He’s trying to goad me. Then, when I’m blind with rage, he’ll do his little disappearing act. I take a breath and leave the bait alone. He’s surprised I ain’t biting. This time, I’m getting answers.

“How much did they pay you to sell me out?” I growl.

T.F. stands there, smiling, just trying to buy some time.

“Malcolm, I’ll be happy to have this conversation with you, but this really isn’t a good time or place.”

Almost too late, I notice the card dancing through his fingers. I snap out of it and squeeze the trigger.

BLAM.

His card’s gone. Almost took his damn hand off, too.

“Idiot!” he barks. I finally made him lose his cool. “You just woke up the whole damned island! Y’know whose place this is?”

I don’t care.

I ready a second shot. I barely see his hands move, then cards explode all around me. I fire back, not sure if I want him dead or just almost dead.

Before I can find him again in the smoke, fury, and splintering wood, a door gets kicked open.

A dozen thugs come roaring in, just to add to the damn mess.

“So, do you really want to do this?” T.F. asks, ready to throw another fistful of cards at me.

I nod, and hold my gun steady on him.

It’s time to settle up.

Things get ugly. Fast.

The whole damned warehouse is crawling with Jagged Hooks, but Malcolm couldn’t care less. I’m all he’s interested in.

I sense Graves’s next shot coming and turn away. The boom of his gun is deafening. A box explodes where I’d been a fraction of a second earlier.

I do believe my old partner is trying to kill me.

Somersaulting over a stack of mammoth ivory, I whip a trio of cards in his direction. Before they hit home, I’m already ducking into cover, looking for an out. I only need a few seconds.

He curses loudly, but the cards won’t do more than slow him down. He’s always been a tough bastard. Stubborn, too. Never knows when to let things go.

“You ain’t gettin’ away, T.F,” he growls. “Not this time.”

Yep, that trait’s still riding him hard.

He’s wrong, though — as usual. I’ll be taking my leave as soon as possible. There’s no use talking to him when he’s out for blood.

Another blast, and shrapnel ricochets off a priceless suit of Demacian armor, embedding into the walls and floor. I dart left and right, weaving and feinting, sprinting from cover to cover. He sticks with me, roaring his threats and accusations, his shotgun barking in his hands. Graves moves fast for a big man. I’d almost forgotten that.

He’s not my only problem. The damned fool’s stirred up a hornet’s nest with all his shooting and hollering. The Jagged Hooks are all over us, but they’re smart enough to leave some men barring the main doors.

I have to get gone — but I’m not leaving without what I came for.

I’ve led Graves on a merry dance around the warehouse, and I arrive back where we started a moment before he does. There are Hooks between me and my prize, and more coming, but there’s no time to wait. The card in my hand glows red, and I hurl it dead center of the warehouse doors. The detonation blows them off their hinges and scatters the Hooks. I move in.

One of them recovers faster than I expect, and he swings at me with a hatchet. I sway around the blow and kick out his knee, hurling another spread of cards at his friends to keep them honest.

My path clear, I swipe the ornate dagger I’ve been hired to steal, hooking it onto my belt. After all this trouble, might as well get paid.

The gaping loading doors beckon, but there are too many damned Hooks piling in. There’s no way out there, so I make for the only quiet corner left in this madhouse.

A card is dancing in my hand as I prepare to shift, but as I start to drift away, Graves appears, stalking me like a rabid bear. Destiny bucks in his grip, and a Jagged Hook is shot to tatters.

Graves’s glare is drawn to the card glowing in my hand. He knows what it means, and swings the smoking barrels of his gun at me. I’m forced to move, interrupting my concentration.

“Can’t run forever,” he bellows after me.

For once, he’s not stupid. He’s not giving me the time I need.

He’s keeping me off my game, and the thought of being taken down by these Hooks is starting to weigh on me. Their boss is not known for his mercy.

Among the dozen other thoughts rattling around my head is the nagging feeling that I’ve been set up. I’m thrown an easy job out of nowhere, a big score just when I need it most - and surprise, there’s my old partner standing there waiting for me. Someone a lot smarter than Graves is playing me for a fool.

I’m better than this. I’d kick myself for being sloppy, but there’s a dock full of goons waiting to save me the trouble.

Right now, all that matters is getting the hell away from here. Two blasts from that damned gun of Malcolm’s send me scurrying. My back slams against a dusty wooden crate. A crossbow bolt lodges in the rotted wood behind me, just inches from my head.

“No way out, sunshine,” Graves yells.

I look around and see fire from the explosion starting to spread to the roof. He may have a point.

“We’ve been sold out, Graves,” I shout.

“You’d know all about that,” he replies.

I try reasoning with him.

“We work together, we can get out of this.”

I must be desperate.

“I’d see us both dead before I trust you again,” he snarls.

I didn’t expect anything else. Talking sense to him just makes him angrier, which is exactly what I need. The distraction buys me just enough time to shift outside the warehouse.

I can hear Graves roaring inside. No doubt he just rounded on my spot only to find me gone, a single card on the ground, taunting him.

I launch a barrage of cards through the loading doors behind me. It’s long past time for subtlety.

I feel bad for a moment about leaving Graves in a burning building - but I know it won’t kill him. He’s too stubborn for that. Besides, a fire on the docks is a serious deal in a port town. It might buy me some time.

As I search for the quickest way off the slaughter docks, the sound of an explosion makes me look over my shoulder.

Graves appears, stepping through the hole he’s just blown out the side of the warehouse. He’s got murder in his eyes.

I tip my hat to him and run. He comes after me, shotgun booming.

I have to admire the man’s determination.

Hopefully it won’t kill me tonight.

The young urchin’s eyes were wide and panicked as he was led toward the captain’s quarters.

It was the agonized screams emanating from the door at the end of the passageway that gave him second thoughts. The cries echoing through the claustrophobic decks of the enormous, black warship were heard by every crewman aboard the Dead Pool — as intended.

The first mate, his face a web of scars, rested a reassuring hand on the boy’s shoulder. They came to a halt before the door. The child winced as another tortured wail issued from within.

“Steady,” said the first mate. “The captain’ll want to hear what you’ve got to say.”

With that, he rapped sharply on the door. It was opened a moment later by a hulking brute with facial tattoos and a broad, curved blade strapped across his back. The boy didn’t hear the words spoken between the two men; his gaze was locked on the heavyset figure seated with his back to him.

He was a big man, the captain, and of middling years. His neck and shoulders were thick and bullish. His sleeves were rolled up, and his forearms slick with blood. A red greatcoat hung from a peg nearby, alongside his black tricorne.

“Gangplank,” breathed the urchin, his voice thick with fear and awe.

“Captain, I figured you’d want to hear this,” said the mate.

Gangplank said nothing, nor did he turn, still intent as he was on his work. The scarred sailor nudged the boy forward. He stumbled before he caught his footing and shuffled closer. The child approached the captain of the Dead Pool as he would a cliff’s edge. His breath quickened as he caught full sight of the captain’s work.

Basins of bloody water sat upon Gangplank’s desk, along with an array of knives, hooks, and gleaming surgical implements.

A man lay upon the captain’s workbench, bound tightly with leather straps. Only his head was free. He looked around in wild desperation, neck straining, his face covered with sweat.

The boy’s gaze was inexorably drawn to the man’s flayed left leg. The urchin suddenly realized he couldn’t remember what he came here to do.

Gangplank turned from his work to stare at the visitor. His eyes were as cold and dead as a shark’s. He held a slender blade in one hand, delicately poised between his fingers, like a fine paintbrush.

“It’s a dying art, scrimshaw,” said Gangplank, his attention returning to his work. “Few have the patience for carving bone these days. It takes time. See? Every cut has a purpose.”

Somehow, the man was still alive, despite the ragged wound in his leg, the skin and flesh peeled back from his thighbone. Transfixed with horror, the lad saw the intricate designs the captain had carved upon that bone; coiling tentacles and waves. It was delicate work, beautiful even. That just made it even more terrible.

Gangplank’s living canvas sobbed.

“Please...” he moaned.

Gangplank ignored the pathetic plea and set down his knife. He splashed a cup of cheap whiskey over his work, clearing it of blood. The man’s scream threatened to rip his own throat out, until he slumped into merciful unconsciousness, his eyes rolling back in his head. Gangplank grunted in disgust.

“Remember this, boy,” Gangplank said. “Sometimes, even those who are loyal forget their place. Sometimes, it’s necessary to remind them. Real power is all about how people see you. Look weak, even for a moment, and you’re done.”

The child nodded, his face now drained of color.

“Wake him,” said Gangplank, gesturing toward the unconscious crewman. “The whole crew needs to hear his song.”

As the ship’s surgeon stepped forward, Gangplank swung his gaze back to the child.

“Now,” he said. “What did you want to tell me?”

“A... a man,” said the boy, his words faltering. “A man on the Rat Town docks.”

“Go on,” Gangplank said.

“He was tryin’ not to be seen by the Hooks. But I seen him.”

“Mm-hmm,” Gangplank muttered as he began to lose interest. He turned back to his work.

“Keep goin’, lad,” the first mate urged.

“He was playing around with some fancy deck of cards. They glowed funny.”

Gangplank stood up from his chair, like a colossus rising from the depths.

“Tell me where,” he said.

The leather belt of his holster creaked in his tightening grip.

“By the warehouse, the big one near the sheds.”

Gangplank’s face flushed an angry shade of crimson as he pulled on his greatcoat and claimed his hat from its peg. His eyes glinted red in the lamplight. The child was not alone in taking a wary step back.

“Give the boy a silver serpent and a hot meal,” the captain ordered to his first mate as he strode purposefully toward the cabin door.

“And get everyone to the docks. We’ve got work to do.”

I’m coughin’ up black. The smoke from the warehouse fire is tearin’ my lungs to shreds, but I don’t have time to catch my breath. T.F.’s getting away, and I’ll be damned if I’m gonna spend another dog’s age chasin’ him all over Runeterra. It ends tonight.

The bastard sees me coming. He shoves a couple of dock hands out of the way and runs off across the wharf. He’s trying to work his escape card, but I’m keeping the heat on him, so he can’t focus.

More Hooks swarm around, like flies on an outhouse. Before they can block his path, T.F. tosses a couple of his exploding cards and takes the thugs out. A few Hooks are an easy fight for him. But I ain’t. I’m comin’ to get my due, and T.F. knows it. He scurries down the wharf as fast as he can.

His scuffle with the dock boys gives me just enough time to catch up. He sees me and darts behind a huge hunk of whale spine. A blast from my gun shatters his cover, filling the air with shards of bone.

He answers by trying to take my head off, but I shoot his card in midair. It explodes like a bomb, knocking us both on our asses. He scrambles to his feet first and takes off. I fire Destiny as fast as she’ll shoot.

Some Hooks close in on us with chains and cutlasses. I turn quick and blow their insides out their backs. Before I can hear the wet slap of their guts on the dock, I’m spinning on my heels. I take aim at T.F., but I’m clipped by a shot from a pistol. More Hooks, and these are better armed.

I duck behind a piece of an old trawler’s hull to return fire. My gun just clicks. Gotta reload. I slam some fresh shells into the cylinder, spit my anger onto the floor, and wade back into the chaos.

All around me, shots and bolts burst through wooden crates. One of ’em tears a chunk of my ear off. I just grit my teeth and plow forward, squeezing the trigger. Destiny is chewin’ up everything. One Jagged Hook loses a jaw. Another is blasted into the bay. A third gets torn into a red sheet of muscle and sinew.

I snap around to find T.F. escaping deeper into the slaughter docks. I run past a fishmonger hanging up scavenger eels. One of the beasts is just skinned, its innards still spillin’ onto the dock. The monger turns on me, swinging a meat hook.

BOOM.

I take off his leg.

BOOM.

I follow up with a shot to his head.

I shove away a stinking razorfish carcass and keep moving. The blood is ankle deep, some of it from the fish and some from the Hooks we’ve gunned down. It’s enough to give a dandy like T.F. fits. Even with me on his tail, he slows his stride to keep from messin’ up his skirts.

Before I can close in, T.F. kicks on into a gallop. I can feel myself losing wind.

“Turn and face me!” I holler.

What kind of man don’t own up to his problems?

A noise to my right draws my attention to a balcony holding two more Hooks. I fire, and the whole thing crashes to the docks.

The gun smoke and debris are so thick, I can’t see a damn thing. I run toward the sound of his lady boots thudding across the wooden slats. He’s makin’ for Butcher’s Bridge at the end of the slaughter docks - the only way off the island. Damned if I’m letting him get away again.

As I reach the bridge, T.F. skids to a halt, halfway across. At first, I think he’s given up. Then I see why he stopped: On the far side, blocking his way, there’s a mass of sword-wielding bastards. But I ain’t backing down.

T.F. turns back only to find me. He’s trapped. He looks over the side of the bridge, down at the water. He’s thinking about jumping - but I know he won’t.

He’s all out of options. He starts walking toward me.

“Look, Malcolm. Neither of us needs to die here. As soon as we get out of this-”

“You’ll run again. That’s all you’ve ever done.”

He don’t answer. Suddenly, he ain’t so worried about me. I turn back to see what he’s fixed on.

Behind me, I see every lowlife that can carry a blade or pistol storming onto the docks. Gangplank must’ve called in all his boys from across the city. To keep going’s a death sentence.

But livin’ ain’t the most important thing to me today.

They’re in no rush, the Hooks. Not anymore. They know they have us trapped. Behind them, it looks like every rat-stabbing cutthroat in Bilgewater has shown up to the party. No way back.

On the far end of the bridge, blocking my escape into the maze of Bilgewater’s slums, is what appears to be the whole Red Caps dock gang. They rule the east side of the waterfront. Gangplank owns them, just like he owns the Hooks and nearly the whole damned town.

Behind me, there’s Graves, stomping ever closer. The stubborn son of a bitch doesn’t care about the mess we’re in. It’s amazing, really. Here we are, yet again, like all those years ago. Deep in the muck, and he just won’t listen.

I wish I could tell him what really happened back then, but there’s no point. He wouldn’t believe me, not for a second. Once something’s lodged in that thick skull of his, it takes a while to shake it loose. And we don’t have a while.

I back up to the side of the bridge. Over the rail, I see the winches and pulleys suspended beneath me - then the ocean far below. My head spins, and my stomach drops into my boots. As I stagger back to the middle of the bridge, I get a full view of how bad a spot I’m in.

Looming in the distance is Gangplank’s black-sailed ship. From it, a damned armada of boats is closing in below, rowing hard. Looks like all of his men are heading our way.

I can’t get through the Hooks, I can’t get through the Caps, and I can’t get through Graves’s pig-headedness.

Only one way to go.

I step up onto the railing of the bridge. We’re even higher than I realized. The wind whips at my coat, making it snap like the sails of a ship. I should never have come back to Bilgewater.

“Get the hell down from there,” says Graves. Is there a hint of desperation in his voice? It’d break him if I died before he got the confession he wants so much.

I take a deep breath. It really is a long way down.

“Tobias,” Malcolm says. “Step back.”

I pause. I haven’t heard that name in a long time.

Then I jump from the bridge.

The Brazen Hydra was one of the few taverns in Bilgewater that didn’t have sawdust on the floor. Drinks were rarely spilled, let alone teeth, but on this night, its patrons could be heard all the way to Diver’s Bluff.

Men of some repute, and even greater means, were turning the air blue with wondrous songs of the very worst acts.

And there, in the middle of them all, was the conductor of the night’s revelry.

She twirled, toasting the health of the harbor master and all his watchmen. Her lustrous red hair whipped around, captivating the eyes of every man in the room, not that they had been looking at anything other than her.

No glass had been allowed to run empty all night - the crimson-haired siren made sure of that. But it wasn’t the dulled senses of every man in the room that drew them closer. It was the promise of her next glorious smile.

With merriment still shaking the tavern, the front door opened, and in stepped a plainly dressed man. Inconspicuous to a degree that only comes from years of practice, he walked to the bar and ordered a drink.

Among the clumsily assembled gallery, the young woman grabbed a fresh glass of amber ale.

“My fine fellows, I’m afraid I must take my leave,” she said with a flourish.

The men of the harbor guard responded with loud bellows of protest.

“Now, now. We’ve had our fun,” she said, chiding them amiably. “But I have a busy night ahead, and you are all so very late to your posts.”

She hopped onto a table without missing a beat, before looking down upon them all with triumphant glee.

“May the Mother Serpent grant us mercy for our sins!”

She smiled her most captivating smile, raised the large tankard to her lips, and then downed her ale in one tremendous gulp.

“Especially the big ones,” she said, as she slammed her glass on the table.

She wiped the beer from her mouth to a rapturous roar of approval and blew a kiss to all.

Like servants before their queen, the room parted.

The door was held open for her by the gracious harbor master. He hoped to garner one last glance of approval, but she was lost to the streets before he could look up from his unsteadily courteous bow.

Outside, the moon had dipped behind Freeman’s Aerie, and the night’s shadow seemed to reach out to meet the woman. Each step that she took from the tavern became more purposeful and surefooted. Her carefree veil dissolved, and her true self was revealed.

Her smile, her look of wonder and joy, were gone. She stared grimly, not seeing the streets and alleys around her, but looking far beyond to the many possibilities of the dark night ahead.

Behind her, the plainly dressed man from the tavern was gaining. His footsteps were silent, yet unnervingly swift.

In a measured heartbeat, he put his stride in perfect unison with hers, just off her shoulder, out of her periphery.

“Is everything in place, Rafen?” she asked.

After all these years, he was still taken aback at how he could never surprise her.

“Yes, Captain,” he said.

“You weren’t spotted?”

“No,” he bristled, reining in his displeasure at the question. “The bay was free from the harbor master’s eyes, and the ship was as good as empty.”

“And the boy?”

“He played his part.”

“Good. We meet at the Syren.”

At her word, Rafen broke away and disappeared into the gloom.

She continued onward as the night wrapped itself around her. Everything was in motion. All that remained was for her players to begin the show.

I hear Graves roar as I dive off the bridge. All I can see is the rope beneath me. No need to think about the fall or the bottomless black depths.

Everything is a blur of rushing wind.

I nearly scream with joy when I catch the rope, but then it burns into my palm like a branding iron. My fall stops with a snap as I slide to the bottom of the looping tether.

I hang there a moment, cursing.

I’ve heard that dropping into water from this height normally won’t kill a man, but I’d rather take my chances on the stone loading dock that’s at least fifty feet straight down. I’ll die, but it’s a damned sight better than drowning.

Between me and the stone platform, a pair of heavy-duty cables run from here to the mainland, one forward, one back. Crude, noisy mechanisms power them. They’re used to transport rendered down parts of sea beasts to the markets in Bilgewater proper.

The cables strum as a heavy rusted bucket, as big as a house, grinds its way toward me.

I let a smile creep on my face for a second. That is, until I see what’s in the cart. I’m about to drop feet first into a seething vat of rotting fish spleen.

It took me months to earn the coin for my boots. Supple as gossamer and sturdy as tempered steel, they were crafted from the hide of an abyssal sea drake. There are fewer than four pairs in the whole world.

Damn it.

I time my jump just right and land in the middle of the chum bucket. The cold slop seeps through every hand-stitch of my prized boots. At least my hat’s clean.

Suddenly, I hear that damned gun bark again.

The mooring line explodes.

The cart groans as it slides free from the cables. The wind’s knocked out of me as the bucket slams into the stone platform. I feel the foundations of the dock shake before everything flips on its side.

The world falls over my head, along with a ton of fish guts.

Struggling to stand, I look for another way out. Gangplank’s launches are closing in. They’re nearly here.

Dazed, I drag myself toward a small boat moored on the loading dock. I’m not halfway there when a shotgun blast rips its hull wide open, scuttling it.

As the boat sinks, I drop to my knees, exhausted. I try to catch some breath over my own stench. Malcolm stands over me. Somehow, he made his way down, too. Of course he did.

“Not so charmin’ now, are ya?” Graves grins, looking me up and down.

“Are you ever gonna learn?” I say, rising to my feet. “Every time I try to help you, I-”

He fires into the ground in front of me. I’m pretty sure I get a chunk of something in my shin. “If you’d just list-”

“Oh, I’m all done listenin’,” he interrupts, grinding out the words. “The biggest score of our lives, and before I knew it, you were gone.”

“Before you knew it? I told you-”

Another blast, another shower of stone, but I’m past caring.

“I tried to get us out. The rest of us saw the job was going south,” I say. “But you wouldn’t back down. You never do.” The card’s in my hand before I realize it.

“I told you then, all you had to do was back me up. We would’ve gotten out clean – and rich. But you ran,” he says, stepping forward. The man I used to know seems lost under years of hatred.

I don’t try to say anything else. I can see it in his eyes, now. Something’s broken inside of him.

Over his shoulder, a glint catches my eye - it’s a flintlock. The first of Gangplank’s crewmen are on us.

Without thinking, I flick the card. It slices toward Graves.

His gun thunders.

My card takes out Gangplank’s man. His pistol was leveled at Malcolm’s back.

Behind me, another member of his crew slumps to the ground, a knife in his hand. If Graves hadn’t shot him, he could’ve had me, cold.

We both look at each other. Old habits.

Gangplank’s men are all around now, crowding in close, howling and jeering. There’s too many to fight.

That doesn’t stop Graves. He brings his gun up, but he’s out of shells.

I don’t draw any cards. There’s no point.

Malcolm roars and goes at them. That’s his way. He shatters one bastard’s nose with the butt of his gun, before the mob beats him to the ground.

Hands grab me, pinning my arms. Malcolm’s hauled to his feet, blood dripping from his face.

Ominously, the hoots and hollers from the mob around us fall silent.

The wall of thugs parts to reveal a red-coated figure striding toward us.

Gangplank.

Up close, he’s much bigger than you’d imagine. And older. The lines of his face are deep and chiseled.

He’s holding an orange in one hand, slicing off its skin with a short-bladed carving knife. He’s doing it slow, making each cut count.

“So tell me, boys,” he says. His voice is a deep, rumbling growl. “Do you like scrimshaw?”

The fist slams into my face again. I go down hard, hitting the deck of Gangplank’s ship. Pig-iron cuffs dig into my wrists.

I’m hauled back upright and forced to kneel alongside T.F. Not that my legs would hold me if this pox-ridden mob made me stand.

The massive, slab-muscled bastard that hit me swims in and out of focus.

“Come on now, son,” I slur. “You’re doing it all wrong.”

I don’t see the next one coming. There’s just an explosion of pain, and I’m back on the deck. Once again, I’m lifted up and forced to kneel. I spit out blood and teeth. Then I grin.

“My old ma hits harder than you do, boy. And she’s been dead and buried five years now.”

He steps forward to knock me down again, but a word from Gangplank stops him in his tracks.

“Enough,” the captain says.

Swaying slightly, I try to concentrate on Gangplank’s blurred outline. Slowly, my eyes clear. At his waist, I see he’s wearing that damn knife that T.F. stole.

“Twisted Fate, huh? I heard you were good, and I’ve never been one to look down on a good thief,” Gangplank says. He steps in close and glares at T.F. “But a good thief knows better than to steal from me.” He hunkers down and looks me square in the eye.

“And you... If you’d been two shades smarter, you could have put that gun to work for me. But we’re past that now.”

Gangplank stands up and turns his back to us.

“I’m not an unreasonable man,” he continues. “I don’t expect folk to bend the knee. All I ask is a modicum of respect - something you boys pissed all over. And that can’t go unpunished.”

His crew pushes in, like dogs waiting for the order to rip us apart. I ain’t rattled, though. I won’t give them the satisfaction.

“Do me a favor,” I say, nodding toward T.F. “Kill him first.”

Gangplank chuckles at that.

He nods to a crewman, who starts banging away on the ship’s bell. In answer, dozens more across the port city ring out. Drunks, sailors, and shopkeeps start pouring onto the streets, drawn by the ruckus. The bastard wants an audience.

“Bilgewater’s watching, boys” Gangplank says. “Time to give ’em a show. Bring out Death’s Daughter!”

There’s a cheer, and the deck drums with the clamor of stamping feet. An old cannon is wheeled out. It may be rusted and green with age, but it’s still a beauty.

I glance over at T.F. His head’s down, and he ain’t sayin’ nothin’. They took his cards off him... once they found ’em all. They didn’t even leave him his stupid, dandy hat - some little inbred bastard in the crowd’s wearing it.

In all my years of knowing T.F., he’s always had an out. Without one, here and now, he looks defeated.

Good.

“You’re gettin’ what you deserve, you son of a bitch,” I snarl at him.

He stares back at me. There’s fire in him still.

“I ain’t proud of how things went-”

“You left me to rot!” I interrupt.

“Me and the whole crew tried to break you out. And they died for it!” he snaps back at me. “We lost Kolt, Wallach, the Brick - all of ’em - just trying to save your stubborn ass.”

“You made out alright, though,” I reply. “You know why? It’s because you’re a coward. And nothing you’ll ever say can change that.”

My words hit him like a punch in the guts. He doesn’t argue. The last glimmer of fight in him goes, and his shoulders slump. He’s done.

I don’t think even T.F. is this good an actor. My anger fades.

I feel tired suddenly. Tired and old.

“Everything went to hell, and maybe we’re both to blame,” he says. “I wasn’t lying, though. We tried to get you out. Doesn’t matter. You’ll believe what you want anyway.”

It takes a moment for that to sink in. It takes a moment longer to realize that I believe him.

Damn me, he’s right.

I do things my way. Always have. Whenever I pushed it too far, he had my back. He was always the one with the out.

But I didn’t listen to him that day, and I haven’t since.

And now, I’ve killed us both.

Suddenly, T.F. and I are yanked to our feet and dragged toward the cannon. Gangplank pats its muzzle, like it’s a prized hound.

“The Death’s Daughter’s done well by me,” he says. “I’ve been wanting to give her a proper send off.”

A heavy chain is dragged forward, and sailors begin looping it around the cannon. I see now how this is gonna pan out.

T.F. and I are shoved back to back, and the same chain is run around our legs and through our manacles. A padlock snaps shut, binding us to the chain.

A boarding gate in the ship’s bulwark slides open, and the cannon’s rolled into place in the gap. The wharfs and docks of Bilgewater are now packed with gawkers, here to see the show.

Gangplank rests the heel of his boot on the cannon.

“Well, I can’t get us out of this one,” T.F. says, over his shoulder. “I always knew you’d get me killed one day.”

A laugh escapes my lips at that. It’s been a long time since I laughed.

We’re dragged toward the edge of the ship, like cattle to the slaughter.

I guess this is where my story ends. I had a good run for a while there. But nobody’s luck lasts forever.

It’s only then that I know what I should do.

Carefully, straining against my manacles, I reach into my back pocket. It’s still there; the playing card T.F. dropped back in the warehouse. I’d aimed to shove it down his bastard throat.

They checked T.F. good for cards – but not me.

I nudge him. Chained back to back, it’s easy to hand the card off to T.F. without being seen. I can feel him hesitate as I pass it to him.

“You two will make a meager tithe, but you’ll serve,” says Gangplank. “Give the Bearded Lady my regards.”

With a wave to the crowd, Gangplank kicks the cannon over the side. It hits the dark water with a splash, and sinks fast. The chain on the deck spools out after it.

Now, at the end, I believe T.F. I know he tried everything to get me out, like he did all those times when we ran together. This time, for once, I’ve got the out. I can at least give him that.

“Get outta here.”

He starts going through the motions, spinning the card around his fingers. As the power starts to build, I feel an uncomfortable pressure in the back of my skull. I always hated being close to him when he did his trick.

And then, he’s gone.

The chains binding T.F. drop to the deck with a crash, and there’re shouts from the crowd. My chains are still locked tight. I ain’t getting out of this, but it’s worth it just to see the look on Gangplank’s face.

The cannon’s chain yanks me off my feet. I hit the deck hard, and grunt in pain. In an instant, I’m dragged over the edge of the boat.

The cold water hits me, stealing my breath.

Then I’m under, sinking fast, dragged down into the dark.

The card Malcolm puts in my hand could easily get me to the wharf. I’m so close to shore, and from there, the huge crowd’s just perfect for me to vanish into. I could be off this rat’s ass of an island inside an hour. This time, no one would ever find me.

Then all I can see in my mind is his pissed-off face disappearing into the depths.

Son of a bitch.

I can’t leave him. Not after last time. There’s no running away from this. I know where to go.

The pressure builds, and then I shift.

In an instant, I’m right behind Gangplank, ready to make my move.

One of his crew spots me – he looks baffled, like he’s trying to figure out how I got there. While he thinks about it, I punch him square in the face. He collapses into a crowd of bewildered deckhands. They all turn on me with cutlasses drawn. Gangplank leads the attack, slashing straight at my throat.

But I’m faster. In one deft move, I slide underneath the arcing steel and lift Gangplank’s prized silver dagger from his belt. Behind me, I hear cursing that could split the mast in two.

I leap to the deck, stowing the dagger in my britches as the end of the chain tears toward the edge of the ship. I stretch and grab the last steel link just before it disappears overboard.

The snap of the chain hauls me over the side, and now I realize what I’ve done.

The water is coming at me fast. In that frozen moment, every single part of me wants to let go of the chain. Being a river man who can’t swim has plagued me my whole life. Now it’ll be the death of me.

I take one final gulp of air. Then a musket shot rips into my shoulder. I yell out in pain, and lose my last breath just before I’m dragged under.

Frigid water punches me in the face as I sink into the suffocating blue.

This is my nightmare.

Panic wells inside. I try to quell it. It’s almost too much. More shots pierce the water above me. I’m still sinking.

Sharks and devilfish circle. They taste the blood. They follow me deeper into the abyss.

Everything is terror. No pain now. Heart pounds in my ears. Chest burning. Gotta keep the water out. Darkness coils around me. Too far down. No way back. I know that now.

But maybe I can save Malcolm.

Below me, there’s a thud, and the chain goes slack. The cannon’s hit the seabed.

I pull myself down the chain into the shadows. There’s a shape below. I think it’s Graves. Frantic, I drag myself toward him.

Then he’s right in front of me, though I can barely see the outline of his face. I think he’s shaking his head at me, angry that I came back.

I’m growing faint. My arm is numb and my skull is being crushed.

Letting go of the chain, I pull the dagger from my waist. My hand trembles.

I fumble in the darkness. By some miracle, I find the lock on Graves’s cuffs. I work the blade to coax it open, like I have a thousand locks before. But my hands won’t stop shaking.

Even Graves must be terrified. His lungs have to be giving out by now. The lock isn’t budging.

What would Malcolm do?

I twist the dagger. No finesse - nothing but force.

Something gives. I think I cut my hand. The dagger is falling. Into the abyss. There it goes... Is it glowing?

Above me, bright red. Red and orange... Everywhere. It’s beautiful... So this is what it’s like to die.

I laugh.

Water rushes in.

It’s peaceful.

Miss Fortune stared across the harbor from the deck of her ship, the Syren. Flames reflected in her eyes as she absorbed the full level of destruction she had wrought.

All that remained of Gangplank’s ship was burning wreckage. The crew had been killed in the detonation, drowned in the chaos, or claimed by the swarming razorfish.

It had been glorious. An immense ball of rolling fire had lit up the night like a new sun.

Half the city had witnessed it; Gangplank himself had seen to that, as she knew he would. He had to parade Twisted Fate and Graves in front of Bilgewater. He had to remind everyone why no one should cross him. To Gangplank, people were just tools used to maintain control - so she’d used that to kill him.

Shouts and tolling bells echoed across the port city. Word would be spreading like wildfire.

Gangplank is dead.

The corners of her lips curled into a smile.

Tonight was merely the endgame: Hiring T.F., tipping off Graves – all just to distract Gangplank. It had taken years to exact her revenge.

Miss Fortune’s smile faded.

From the moment he had stormed into her family’s workshop, his face hidden behind a red bandana, she had been preparing herself for this moment.

Sarah lost both her parents that day. She was just a child, but he shot her down as she stood watching her parents bleed out on the floor.

Gangplank taught her a harsh lesson: that no matter how safe you feel, your world – everything you’ve built, everything you care for - can be taken away in an instant.

Gangplank’s one mistake was not making sure she was dead. Her anger and her hate had sustained her through that first cold, painful night, and every night since.

For fifteen years, she had scraped together everything she needed; waiting until she wasn’t even a memory to him, for him to drop his guard and get comfortable in the life he’d built. Only then would he truly be able to lose everything. Only then would he know what it felt like to lose his home, to lose his world.

She should have been feeling exultant, but she just felt empty.

Joining her at the gunwale, Rafen jolted Sarah from her reverie.

“He’s gone,” he said. “It’s over.”

“No,” replied Miss Fortune. “Not yet.”

She turned from the harbor, casting her gaze across Bilgewater. Sarah had hoped that killing him would kill her hate. But all she had done was unleash it. For the first time since that day, she felt truly powerful.

“This is just the beginning,” she said. “I want everyone loyal to him to be brought to answer. I want the heads of his lieutenants mounted on my wall. Burn every bawdy house, tavern, and warehouse that bears his mark. And I want his corpse.”

Rafen was shaken. He’d heard words like that before, but never from her.

I’ve thought a lot about the ways I’d wanna go out. Chained up like a dog at the bottom of the ocean? That one never crossed my mind. Lucky for me, T.F. manages to pop the lock on my shackles just before he drops the dagger.

I scramble out of the chains, thirsty for breath. I turn toward T.F. Poor bastard’s not moving. I twist my hand around his collar and start kickin’ toward the surface.

As we go up, suddenly everything lights up bright red.

A shockwave knocks me ass over ears. Chunks of iron sink past us. A cannon plunges by. Then a charred hunk of rudder. Bodies, too. A face covered in tattoos stares in shock at me. The severed head then slowly disappears into the darkness beneath us.

I swim faster, my lungs set to bust.

An age later, I’m at the surface, coughing up salt water and gasping for air. But it’s damn near unbreathable. Smoke chokes me and claws at my eyes. I’ve seen things burn in my time, but never like this. Looks like someone set the whole world on fire.

“Damn me...” I hear myself mutter.

Gangplank’s ship is gone. Bits of smoking debris are scattered all across the bay. Fiery islands of wood collapse all around, hissin’ as they go under. A flaming sail falls right in front of us, nearly dragging T.F. and me back down for good. Burning men desperately jump from smoldering pieces of wreckage into the water, quietin’ their own screams. It smells like the end of everything – sulfur and ash and death; cooked hair and melting skin.

I check on T.F. I’m strugglin’ to keep him above water. Son of a bitch is a lot heavier than he looks, and it ain’t helping that half my ribs are broke. I find a piece of scorched hull floating nearby. It looks solid enough. I pull us both on top. It ain’t exactly seaworthy, but it’ll do.

For the first time, I get a good look at T.F. He ain’t breathin’. I wail on his chest with my fists. Just when I’m worried I’m going to cave his ribs in, he coughs out a lungful of seawater. I slump and shake my head again as he slowly comes to his senses.

“You stupid son of a bitch! What did you come back for?”

It takes him a minute to answer.

“Thought I’d try it your way,” he mutters, slurring his words. “See what being a stubborn ass felt like.” He hacks up more water. “Feels awful.”

Razorfish and even meaner sea critters are startin’ to gather around us. I ain’t about to be anything’s chow. I pull my feet away from the edge.

A mangled crewman bobs to the surface, grabbin’ for our raft. I plant my boot in his face and shove him off. A fat tentacle wraps around his neck and drags him back under. Now the fish have something else to keep ’em busy.

Before they run out of fresh meat, I break off a plank from our raft and use it to paddle us away from the feedin’ frenzy.

I pull at the water for what seems like hours. My arms are heavy and hurtin’, but I know better than to stop. Once I’ve put some distance between us and the massacre, I collapse onto my back.

I’m spent like an empty shotgun shell as I look out over the bay. It’s stained red with the blood of Gangplank and his crew. Not a survivor in sight.

How am I still breathing? Maybe I’m the luckiest man on Runeterra. Or maybe T.F.’s carrying enough good fortune for the both of us.

I see a body floating by, holding something familiar lookin’. It’s Gangplank’s little inbred bastard, still clutching T.F.’s hat. I take it off him and toss it to T.F. He ain’t even a little surprised, like he always knew he’d get it back.

“Now we just need to find your gun,” he says.

“What, you itchin’ to go back down there?” I say, pointing to the deep.

T.F. turns a funny shade of green.

“We ain’t got the time. Whoever did this, they left Bilgewater without a boss,” I tell him. “It’s gonna get ugly here, fast.”

“You’re telling me you can live without your gun?” he asks.

“Maybe not,” I say. “But I know a really good gunsmith in Piltover.”

“Piltover...” he says, lost in thought.

“Lot of money flowing through there right now,” I say.

T.F. figures hard for a moment.

“Hmm. Not sure about having you as a partner again – you’re even dumber than you used to be,” he finally answers.

“That’s alright. I’m not sure about havin’ a partner called Twisted Fate. Who the hell came up with that?”

“Well, it’s a damn sight better than my real name,” T.F. laughs.

“Fair enough,” I admit.

I grin. It feels just like the old days. Then I go stone faced and look him dead in the eye.

“Just one thing: You ever have mind to leave me holding the bag again, I’ll blow your goddamn head off. No questions.”

Fate’s laugh dies down, and for a moment, he glares back at me. Then, after a while, he just smiles.

“You got a deal.”

Bilgewater was devouring itself. The streets rang with the shrieks of the desperate and the dying. Fires burning in the lowly slums rained ash across the entire city. Control had been lost, and now every gang rushed to fill the power vacuum left by the fall of one man. A war had been started by the spread of three simple words: Gangplank is dead.

Savage ambitions and petty grudges that had festered for years were now being acted upon.

On the docks, a crew of whalers ran down a rival fisherman. They skewered him with harpoons and left his body hanging from a trotline.

At the highest peak of the island, tall opulent gates that had stood since Bilgewater’s founding were battered apart. A cowering gang lord was ripped from his bed by a rival. His mewling cries were silenced when his skull was dashed upon the hand-crafted marble of his own front steps.

Along the wharf, a fleeing Red Cap attempted to staunch a bloody head wound. He looked over his shoulder but could see no sign of his pursuers. The Jagged Hooks had turned on the Caps. He had to get back to the safe house to warn his crew.

He rounded the corner, screaming for his brothers to gather their arms and join him. But his thirst for blood dried in his throat. Standing in front of the Red Caps’ own den was a band of Hooks. Their blades dripped with gore. At their head, a wiry figure, barely a man, creased his pock-marked face with a vicious grin.

The Red Cap had time to utter one last curse.

Across the bay, off a quiet back alley, a physician attempted to ply his trade. The gold he had been handed was plenty to buy his services – and assure his silence.

It had taken half an hour to peel the sodden coat from the sloughing flesh of his patient’s arm. The doctor had seen many horrific injuries before, but even he recoiled at the sight of the mangled limb. He paused for a moment, terrified of the response his next words would provoke.

“I... I’m sorry. I can’t save your arm.”

Within the shadows of the candlelit room, the bloodied ruin of a man composed himself before staggering to his feet. His good hand shot out like a lash and wrapped around the throat of the quivering doctor. He lifted the surgeon slowly, measuredly off the floor and pinned him to the wall.

For a terrible moment, the brute stood impassively, considering the man in his grasp. Then he abruptly dropped him.

Lost in panic and confusion, the healer coughed violently as the shadowed mass strode to the back of the room. Passing through the light of the surgeon’s lantern, the patient reached for the top drawer of a well-worn cabinet. Methodically, the man opened each drawer searching for what he needed. Finally, he stopped.

“Everything must have a purpose,” he said, looking at his mutilated arm.

He pulled something from the case, and threw it to the doctor’s feet. There, glinting under the lantern was the clean steel of a bonesaw.

“Cut it off,” he said. “I’ve got work to do.”

Varus followed a river running through the desert. Its water was gritty, but drinkable. The new body he had wrought to bear his bow was beautiful, fast and strong, but it came with the weaknesses of flesh. It hungered. It thirsted.

Days earlier, a crook-backed creature with a withered arm and birdlike features had told him this was Shurima, but that couldn’t be true. The Shurima Varus remembered had been a desolate wasteland.

“Was I imprisoned for so long?” he wondered.

He despised the human noises his new mouth made. It sounded bestial and primitive, but at least he could speak aloud once more. As to how long he had been imprisoned... it was hard to say. He retained no concept of how mortals measured time, and the bird creature hadn’t recognized what he was. She had no idea how far back the Darkin War had been fought.

“My kind all but destroyed this world,” he said. “And now we have been forgotten? How is that even possible?”

With enough time, even the greatest horrors can fade.

The voice echoed in his skull, impossible to ignore. Which one was it? Kai or Valmar? He suspected Val, but mortal minds were so simple and muddy that it was hard to tell one from another.

“Any race that can forget staring into the abyss of its own extinction does not deserve to live,” said Varus.

We don’t forget. This was Valmar, decided Varus. Horrors become myths so we can bear to hear them, so we can learn from them and not go mad.

Such a notion was ridiculous, and Varus knew he would never allow the doom of his kind to fade from memory. He was about to say so, when he heard noises from around a bend in the river ahead; shouting voices, braying animals, and the sound of tools on stone. He darted forward, into the shadow of a toppled obelisk, and scanned ahead.

The new river had exposed the sunken ruins of an ancient structure comprised of pillars and statues of the oldest Ascended. Yes, this was the source of the magic he had sensed. Old magic. The kind the flame-haired queen used to enslave his kind.

The kind used to imprison him beneath the rock of Ionia.

Tanned, wolf-lean men worked the ruins, digging out hidden reliquary chambers as thick-limbed beasts of burden dragged excavated rocks from deeper inside the structure. Warriors wearing boiled leather breastplates and carrying hook-bladed spears guarded the perimeter. Varus grinned and vaulted onto the obelisk, drawing back on his bow as he landed. Violet light built in the living weapon as it flexed, and a coruscating arrow of lightning formed in the air.

Why must you kill them? This was Kai. He hated unnecessary killing.

Varus felt his hands tremble as Kai fought to make him lower the bow.

“Your people destroyed my kin,” said Varus, exerting his will to steady his aim. “That’s the only reason I need.”

He sighted along the crackling arrow as a burly warrior with a forked beard and shaven scalp saw him, and yelled a warning.

So everyone you see must die?

Varus exhaled, and in the space between breaths loosed the shot. It flashed through the air to pierce the bearded warrior’s heart, burning a hole clean through him. He dropped to his knees, his mouth wide with shock. Others hurled spears, but Varus was already moving. He sprang from the obelisk, sending a hail of blood-red bolts toward them, and hit the ground running.

A hook-spear swung at him. He dove to the side, rising to his feet and sending a pair of crimson shots through his attacker’s chest. Varus sprinted, leapt, and dashed through the ruins, blazing shafts of light striking his targets with absolute precision.

In seconds it was over. Sixteen dead, and he hadn’t even broken a sweat. He felt the anguish of Valmar and Kai within him, and grinned. Every death gnawed at them, weakened them, and made them less able to fight him.

The men excavating the ruined city fled, throwing down their tools and running for the river. Varus let them go. They were an irrelevance, and the killing of mortals without weapons always provoked the two souls within him to greater rebellion.

Varus entered the ruined structure, briefly glancing at a pair of canine and crocodilian statues as he passed. Inside, it was cool and dark, the walls covered in vivid bas-reliefs depicting wide discs spreading golden rays over a bountiful land. The stone floor was inscribed with a magical script that had been old even before Icathia’s rebellion.

“Warding sigils. Potent once, but faded,” said Varus, crossing the inscribed flagstones to where a towering statue of a great, serpent-headed god-warrior had once stood sentinel. Some past catastrophe had toppled it, and beyond its sandstone remains lay a lightless chamber.

He entered, the glow from the smoldering light at his heart revealing nothing but bare stone, burned black and glossy by ancient fire.

Varus sighed. “Where are you, sister...?”

The herald of a new age of technology, Viktor has devoted his life to the advancement of humankind. An idealist who seeks to lift people to a new level of understanding, he believes that only by embracing a glorious evolution of technology can humanity’s full potential be realized. With a body augmented by steel and science, Viktor is zealous in his pursuit of this bright future.

Viktor was born in Zaun on the borders of the Entresol level, and, encouraged by his artisan parents, discovered a passion for invention and building. He devoted every waking minute to his studies, hating to interrupt his work even to eat or sleep. Even worse was having to rapidly relocate if there was a nearby chemical spill, accidental detonation or incoming chem-cloud. Abandoning his work, even for a short time, was anathema to Viktor.

In a bid to impose a level of order and certainty on his world, Viktor researched Zaun’s many accidents and came to realize that almost all of them were the result of human error, not mechanical failure. He offered his services to the local businesses, developing inventions that made them far safer working environments. Most turned him away, but one - the Fredersen Chem-forge - took a chance on this earnest young man.

Viktor’s inventions in automation reduced the number of accidents in the forge to zero within a month. Soon, other establishments sought his work and Viktor’s designs became common in Zaun, improving production with every innovation that removed human error from a process. Eventually, at the age of nineteen, he was surprised to be offered a place in Zaun’s prestigious Academy of Techmaturgy. But Viktor’s work had attracted the eye of Professor Stanwick of Piltover, who convinced him to leave Zaun and travel to Piltover’s academy instead. There, he could work in the most advanced laboratories and gain access to all the resources the City of Progress could offer. Thrilled to be singled out, Viktor accepted his offer and took up residence in Piltover, where he refined his craft and sought to perfect his theorems in ways that would benefit everyone.

Viktor worked with Piltover’s best and brightest; including an insufferable genius named Jayce. The two were equally matched in intellect, but where Viktor was methodical, logical and thorough, Jayce was flamboyant and arrogant. The two worked together frequently, but never truly became friends. Often, the two would butt heads over their perceptions of intuition vs logic in the process of invention, but a level of mutual respect developed as each saw the flawed brilliance in the other.

In the midst of his studies in Piltover, a major chem-spill devastated entire districts of Zaun, and Viktor returned home to offer his help in the rescue efforts. By grafting a sophisticated series of cognitive loops upon existing automata-technology, he crafted a custom-built golem, Blitzcrank, to help in the clean-up. Blitzcrank was instrumental in saving scores of lives and appeared to develop a level of sentience beyond anything Viktor had envisioned.

Even with the spill contained, Viktor remained in Zaun to help those afflicted by the released toxins. With the golem’s help, he attempted to use his techmaturgical brilliance to save those whose lives had been blighted by the spill. Their attempt was ultimately unsuccessful in preventing more deaths, and the two parted ways. Though Viktor was distraught at the loss of life in Zaun, the work taught him a great deal about the merging of human anatomy with technology and how mortal anatomy could be enhanced with technology.

When Viktor returned to Piltover, weeks later, it was to find that Professor Stanwick had held a symposium on Blitzcrank and presented Viktor’s researches as his own. Viktor lodged formal complaints with the masters of the college, but his impassioned claim that he had designed Blitzcrank fell on deaf ears. He turned to Jayce to verify his claims, but his fellow student refused to speak up, further widening the rift between them, and the matter was decided in Professor Stanwick’s favor.

Bitter, but resigned, Viktor returned to his studies, knowing that his ultimate goal of making people’s lives better and enhancing humanity was more important than one stolen project and a bruised ego. He continued to excel, finding ever new ways to eliminate human error and weakness from his work, a facet of his researches that came to dominate his thinking. He saw human involvement in any part of a process as a grossly inefficient aberration - a view that put him at odds with a great many of his fellow students and professors, who saw the very things Viktor sought to remove as the source of human ingenuity and creativity.

This came to a head during a reluctant collaboration with Jayce to improve the diving suits used to keep Piltover’s docks clear of underwater debris and lingering chemical waste. Viktor and Jayce’s enhanced suits allowed the wearer to go deeper, remain underwater for longer, and lift heavier weights. But many wearers claimed they saw phantom corpse lights in the depths or suffered from chem-induced hallucinations. When divers experienced such symptoms, they panicked and often got themselves or their fellow divers killed. Viktor saw the problem was not technical, but with the wearer’s nerves unraveling in the inky depths. He devised a chem-shunt helm that allowed an operator on the surface to bypass the wearer’s fear response and, effectively, control the diver. A heated discussion between Viktor and Jayce on free will and mental enslavement turned bitter - almost violent - and the two vowed never to work together again.

Jayce reported the incident to the college masters, and Viktor was censured for violating basic human dignity - though, in his eyes, his work would have saved many lives. He was expelled from the college, and retreated to his old laboratory in Zaun, disgusted by the narrow-minded perceptions of Piltover’s inhabitants. Alone in the depths, Viktor sank into a deep depression, enduring a traumatic period of introspection for many weeks. He wrestled with the ethical dilemma he now faced, finding that, once again, human emotion and weakness had stood in his way. He had been trying to help, to enhance people beyond their natural capabilities to avoid error and save lives. Revelation came when he realized that he too had succumbed to such emotions, allowing his naive belief that good intentions could overcome ingrained prejudice to blind him to human failings. Viktor knew he could not expect others to follow where he did not go first, so, in secret, he operated on himself to remove those parts of his flesh and psyche that relied upon or were inhibited by emotion.

When the surgery was done, almost no trace of the young man who had traveled to Piltover remained. He had supplanted the majority of his anatomy with mechanical augmentations, but his personality had also changed. His idealistic hope to better society was refined into an obsession with what he called the Glorious Evolution. Viktor now saw himself as the pioneer of Valoran's future - an idealized dream where man would renounce flesh in favor of superior hextech augmentations. This would free humanity from fatal errors and suffering, though Viktor knew it was a task that would not be completed easily or quickly.

He threw himself into this great work with a vengeance. He used technological augmentations to help rebuild Zaunites injured in accidents, perfected breathing mechanisms, and worked tirelessly to reduce human inefficiency by decoupling physicality from emotion. His work saved hundreds of lives, yet seeking Viktor’s help could be dangerous, as his solutions often brought unexpected consequences.

But if you were desperate, Viktor was the man you went to.

Some in Zaun, hearing fragments of his philosophy and seeing the successes of his work, saw him as a messianic figure. Viktor couldn’t care less for them, viewing their quasi-religious cult as an aberration; yet another reason to eliminate emotional foibles and the belief in that which could not be empirically proven.

After a toxic event in the Sump saw hundreds of men and women in the Factorywood transformed into rabid psychotics, Viktor was forced to use a powerful soporific to sedate the victims and bring them back to his labs to try and undo the damage. The toxins had begun to eat away portions of their brains, but Viktor was able to slow the degenerative process by opening up their craniums and employing machinery to slowly filter their bloodstreams of poison. The technology available to him wasn’t up to the task, and Viktor knew many people were going to die unless he found a way to greatly enhance his purgative machinery.

As he fought to save these people, he detected a surge in hextech energy from Piltover and saw immediately that this could give him the power he needed. He followed the powerful energy surge to its source.

Jayce’s lab.

Viktor demanded Jayce hand over the source of this power, a pulsing crystal from the Shuriman desert. But his former colleague refused, leaving Viktor no option but to take it by force. He returned to Zaun and hooked the strange crystal to his machinery, readying a steam golem host for each afflicted person in case their body gave out under the stress of the procedure. Empowered by the new crystal, Viktor’s machines went to work and, gradually, the damage from the toxins began to reverse. His work would save these people - in a manner of speaking - and had Viktor retained more than a fragment of his humanity, he might have celebrated. As it was, the barest hint of a smile was all he allowed himself.

Before the process could complete, a vengeful Jayce burst in and started smashing the laboratory with an energized hammer. Knowing an arrogant fool like Jayce would never listen to reason, Viktor ordered the automatons to kill Jayce. The battle was ferocious, and only ended when Jayce shattered the crystal Viktor had taken, bringing the entire warehouse down in an avalanche of steel and stone, thus ending the existence of those Viktor was trying to save. And for this, Jayce returned to Piltover, feted as a hero.

Viktor escaped the destruction of the laboratory, and returned to his mission of bettering humanity by ridding it of its destructive emotional impulses. In Viktor’s mind, Jayce’s impetuous attack only proved the truth of his cause and strengthened his desire to unburden humanity of the failings of flesh. Viktor did send chem-augmented thugs to raid Jayce’s laboratory not long afterward. This was - Viktor told himself - not for revenge, but to learn if there were any more shards of the Shuriman crystal he could use for the advancement of mankind. The raid was unsuccessful, however, and Viktor thought no more of Jayce.

Instead, he intensified his efforts to find ways in which humanity could be shepherded beyond their emotional weaknesses and brought into a new, more reasoned stage of their evolution. Such researches sometimes transgress the boundaries of what would be considered ethical in Piltover (and Zaun), but they are all necessary steps in bringing about Viktor’s Glorious Evolution.

Maokai is a rageful, towering treant who fights the unnatural horrors of the Shadow Isles. He was twisted into a force of vengeance after a magical cataclysm destroyed his home, surviving undeath only through the waters of life infused within his heartwood. Once a peaceful nature spirit, Maokai now furiously battles to banish the scourge of unlife from the Shadow Isles and restore his home to its former beauty.

Long before living memory, a chain of islands erupted from deep beneath the ocean tides as blank slates of rock and clay. With its creation, the nature spirit Maokai was born. He took the form of a treant, with his tall body covered in bark and long limbs resembling branches. Maokai felt the profound loneliness of the land and its potential for teeming growth. He wandered from island to island in search of signs of life, growing ever more forlorn in his solitude.

On a hilly isle covered in soft, rich soil, Maokai sensed a boundless energy radiating from deep beneath the ground. He plunged his great roots downward until they reached a spring of magical, life-giving water and drank deeply. From this potent liquid, he grew hundreds of saplings and planted them across the islands.

Soon the land was shawled with verdant forests, groves of towering virenpine, and tangled woods, all steeped in wondrous magic. Magnificent skytrees with expansive canopies and thickly winding roots covered the isles with lush green foliage. Nature spirits were drawn to the lavish vegetation, and animals reveled in the fertile greenery.

When humans eventually came to the islands, they too thrived in the land’s abundance and formed an enlightened society of scholars devoted to studying the world’s mysteries. Though Maokai was wary of their presence, he saw how they respected the sanctity of the land. Sensing the deep magic within the woods, the humans built their homes in areas not heavily forested, to avoid disturbing any nature spirits. Maokai occasionally revealed himself directly to those he trusted and blessed them with knowledge of the verdant isles, even its greatest gift – the underground spring that could heal mortal wounds.

Centuries passed, and Maokai lived in idyllic contentment until a fleet of soldiers from across the sea beached upon the shores of the isles. Maokai sensed something was terribly wrong. Their grief-maddened king bore the corpse of his queen and in hopes of reviving her, bathed her decayed flesh in the healing waters. Reanimated as a rotting corpse, the queen begged to return to death. The king sought to reverse what he had done, unwittingly casting a terrible curse upon the land.

From leagues away, Maokai felt the first ripples of the disaster that would soon devastate the isles. He sensed a horrific force gathering beneath the soil, and a bitter chill washed over him.

As the ruination spread, Maokai desperately plunged his roots deep into the ground and drank of the healing waters, saturating every fiber of his being with their magic. Before the cursed water reached him, Maokai withdrew his roots, severing all connection to the pool. He howled in rage as the sacred reservoir he had entrusted to men was fully corrupted – the spiraling coils churning underwater until nothing pure remained.

Moments later, the mists surrounding the islands blackened and spread over the land, trapping all living things in an unnatural state between life and death. Maokai watched in helpless agony as all he knew – plants, nature spirits, animals, and humans alike – twisted into wretched shades. His fury grew; the great beauty he had cultivated from tiny saplings fell to ruin in an instant at the careless hand of man.

The enervating mist coiled around Maokai, and he wept as the bright flowers adorning his shoulders crumbled and fell to dust. His body shuddered and contorted into a mass of gnarled roots and tangled branches as the mist leached life from him. But Maokai’s heartwood was saturated with the precious waters of life, saving him from the terrible fate of undeath.

As grotesque wraiths and horrific abominations flooded the land, Maokai was overcome by a host of lifeless men. He struck the spirits with his branchlike limbs in manic violence, realizing the force of his blows could shatter them to dust. Maokai shuddered with revulsion: he had never killed before. He flew at the breathless shapes in a frenzy, but hundreds more overwhelmed him, and eventually he was forced to retreat.

With his home all but decimated and his companions turned to deathless horrors, Maokai was tempted to try and escape the nightmare of the isles. But from deep within his twisted form, he felt the sacred waters giving him life. He had survived the Ruination by carrying the very heart of the islands within him, and he would not abandon his home now. As the Blessed Isles’ first nature spirit, he would remain and fight for the soul of the land.

Though surrounded by endless hosts of malicious foes and darkening mist, Maokai fights with furious vengeance to conquer the evil that plagues the isles. His only pleasure comes from dealing savage violence to the soulless wraiths who roam his land.

Some days, Maokai subdues the mist and its deathless spirits, breaking their hold on a grove of trees or a small thicket. Though new life has not bloomed in such cursed soil for an age, Maokai strives to carve havens, however temporary, free from regret and decay.

So long as Maokai continues to fight, hope remains, for steeped within his heartwood are the uncorrupted waters of life, the last remaining chance of restoring the isles. If the land returns to its joyous state, Maokai, too, will shed his twisted form. The nature spirit brought life to these isles long ago, and he refuses to rest until the isles bloom once more.

Ancient roots, sinuous trees and thickly-leafed vines clinging to the rocks all but obscured the path through the lush jungle. Three men sweated as they hacked their way onward, driven by hearts filled with greed and dreams of untold wealth. For six days the jungle had defied them, but now the temple reared from the undergrowth. Its facade was carved into a colossal stone outcropping, with blossoms of red and blue spreading around its base. Serene statuary filled golden alcoves and garlands of golden orchids were entwined around its eaves.

“You see, Horta?” said Wren. “Didn’t we tell you the temple was real?”

“So long as the treasures inside are real,” said Horta, tossing aside the blunted hatchet and drawing a freshly sharpened sword. “You both staked your lives on that, remember?”

“Don’t worry, Horta,” said Merta, with a rasping cough. “You’ll be able to buy your own palace after this.”

“I’d better,” said Horta. “Now draw your blades. Kill anyone who gets in our way.”

The three brigands approached the temple, weapons glinting in the setting sun. Horta saw its corners were not sharp and defined; every edge flowing together instead of meeting at angles. As they made their way inside, they passed between two magnificent Ionian Whipwillows, their trunks curved to form an entranceway, with bark so white it seemed painted.

“Why aren’t there any guards?” he asked, as he stepped inside.

The question went unanswered as his eyes adjusted to the sepulchral gloom of a chamber hewn into the rock. The arched roof was carved with bas-relief, and every wall glittered with colored chips of glass to form a mosaic of vivid landscapes that rippled with light and life. Ivory tablets engraved with ancient Shojin parables were situated upon pillars of carved bronze, and gem-studded idols of jet stood watchfully in sunken alcoves. Statues of warrior-gods, each trimmed with gold, stared down from plinths of porphyry and jade.

Horta grinned. “Take it. Take it all.”

Wren and Merta sheathed their swords and flung open their packs. They began filling them with everything they could reach: statues, idols and gemstones, whooping with glee as they dragged a fortune in gold behind them. Horta circled the chamber, already planning their deaths when they got back to civilization, when he noticed that one of the statues was moving.

At first glance, he’d thought it to be a painted idol of a warrior monk, seated with his legs crossed and his hands resting on his knees. His back had been toward Horta, but now the man stood and turned on the spot with the fluid ease of a coiled snake. Lean and powerfully muscled, he wore loose-fitting trousers and a red bandanna across his eyes.

“Not so empty after all,” said Horta, flexing his fingers on the leather-wound grip of his sword. “Good. I was hoping I’d get to cut someone up.”

The monk cocked his head to the side as though listening to sounds only he could hear and said, “Three men. One with a blighted lung, another with a weak heart that will not see out the year.”

The sightless monk turned and stared directly at Horta, though there was surely no way he could see him through the thick fabric bound across his eyes.

“You have a twist in your spine,” he said. “It pains you in the winter and forces you to favor your left side.”

“What are you, some kind of seer?” demanded Horta, nervously licking his lips.

The monk ignored the question and said, “I am Lee Sin.”

“Is that supposed to mean something?” asked Horta.

“I give you this one chance to put back what you have taken,” said Lee Sin. “Then leave this place and never return.”

“You’re in no position to make demands, my blind friend,” said Horta, letting the tip of his sword scrape across the stone floor. “There are three of us and you aren’t even armed.”

Wren and Merta gave nervous laughs, wary of the monk’s confidence even in the face of their advantage of numbers. Horta gestured with his free hand, and his two companions moved to flank the monk, each drawing a curved blade from leather sheaths.

“This is a sacred place,” said Lee Sin, with a rueful sigh. “It should not be desecrated.”

Horta gave the others a nod. “Put this sightless fool out of his misery.”

Wren stepped forward. Lee Sin was moving before his foot hit the ground. The monk went from being utterly still to a blur of motion in the blink of an eye. His arm whipped around and the hard edge of his hand struck Wren’s neck. Bone crunched and the bandit dropped, his head twisted at an unnatural angle. Lee Sin swayed aside as Merta slashed with his sword. The blow was wild, and the reverse stroke flashed over Lee Sin’s head. The monk dropped flat, twisting as he fell to sweep his shin out and scythe Merta’s legs out from under him. The bandit collapsed, his weapon skittering away over the tiled floor. Lee Sin sprang to his feet and hammered his heel down on Merta’s sternum.

Merta gave a strangled cry as his ribs cracked and the splintered ends were driven into his weak heart. Stolen gemstones spilled from his fallen pack as his eyes bulged in agony and he fought for breath like a landed fish.

“You’re fast for a monk,” said Horta, slicing his sword through the air in a series of blindingly swift maneuvers. “But I’m no slouch with a blade.”

“You believe you are fast?” asked Lee Sin.

“Trained by the best, so you won’t find me as easy to beat as those two idiots,” said Horta, nodding toward the bodies of his former companions.

Lee Sin made no reply as they circled one another. Horta watched as the blind man tracked his every motion. The monk’s steps were fluid and precise, and Horta had the uncomfortable feeling that every passing second was revealing more of his own abilities to his opponent.

He roared and threw himself at the monk, attacking in a blistering series of high slashes and lunges. Lee Sin swayed aside, moving like a wind-blown sapling as he dodged, deflected and spun away from Horta’s desperate strikes. He kept his blade in constant motion, forcing Lee Sin back with every attack. The monk hadn’t even broken a sweat. His impassive mouth, covered eyes and casual disdain infuriated Horta.

He gathered himself for one final attack, drawing on every scrap of training, fury and strength he could muster. His sword cut the air around the monk, but never once made contact.

Lee Sin spun away one last time and bent his knees, his body taut.

“You have speed and not a little skill,” he said, sinews pulsing beneath his skin, “but anger colors your every thought. It has consumed you and has led to your death.”

Horta felt the air in the chamber grow warmer as streamers of energy coalesced around Lee Sin. A fiery vortex engulfed the monk and Horta backed away in terror, his sword falling from his grip. Lee Sin was trembling, as though fighting to control energies more powerful than he could contain. The chamber reverberated with the sound of a rising wind.

“Please,” said Horta. “I’ll put it back. I’ll put it all back!”

Lee Sin leapt, propelled by the blitzing hurricane of energy. His foot hammered into Horta’s chest, hurling him backward. Horta slammed against the wall and stone cracked under the impact. He fell limply to the floor, every bone in his spine shattered like broken pottery.

“You had a chance to avoid this, but you did not take it,” said Lee Sin. “Now you pay the price.”

Horta’s vision greyed at the edges as death approached, but not before he saw Lee Sin return to his seated position. The monk’s back was to him, and, as his posture relaxed, the vortex of lethal energies began to dissipate.

Lee Sin bowed his head and resumed his meditation.

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.

Azir was a mortal emperor of Shurima in a far distant age, a proud man who stood at the cusp of immortality. His hubris saw him betrayed and murdered at the moment of his greatest triumph, but now, millennia later, he has been reborn as an Ascended being of immense power. With his buried city risen from the sand, Azir seeks to restore Shurima to its former glory.

Thousands of years ago, the Shuriman empire was a sprawling realm of vassal states conquered by powerful armies led by all but invincible warriors known as the Ascended. Ruled by an ambitious and power hungry emperor, Shurima was the greatest realm of its day; a fertile land blessed by the power of the sun that shone from a great golden disc floating atop the temple at the heart of its capital.

The youngest and least-favored son of the emperor, Azir was never destined for greatness. With so many siblings ahead of him, he would never be emperor. Most likely he would take up a position in the priesthood or as governor of some backwater province. He was a slender, studious boy who spent more time perusing the texts collected in the Great Library of Nasus than training to fight under the stern tutelage of the Ascended hero, Renekton.

Amid the twisting shelves of scrolls, books and tablets, Azir met a young slave boy who visited the library almost every day in search of texts desired by his master. Slaves in Shurima were forbidden to take names, but as the two boys became friends, Azir broke that law and called his new friend Xerath, which means ‘one who shares.’ He appointed Xerath - though he was careful never to endanger him by naming him publicly - as his personal slave and the two boys shared their love of history by learning all they could of Shurima’s past and its long legacy of Ascended heroes.

While traveling with his father, brothers and Renekton on the yearly tour of the empire, the royal caravan stopped at a well-known oasis for the night. Azir and Xerath stole away in the middle of the night to draw the stars and add their own celestial maps to those they had studied in the Great Library. While they drew the patterns of constellations, the royal caravan was attacked by a cabal of assassins sent by the emperor’s enemies. One of the assassins found the two boys out in the desert and was poised to cut Azir’s throat when Xerath intervened, throwing himself upon the assassin’s back. In the ensuing melee, Azir freed his dagger and plunged it into his attacker’s throat.

Azir took up the dead man’s sword and rushed back to the oasis, but by the time he returned, the assassins were already defeated. Renekton had protected the emperor and slain the attackers, but Azir’s brothers were all dead. Azir told his father of Xerath’s courage and asked him to reward the slave boy, but his words fell on deaf ears. In the emperor’s eyes, the boy was a slave and beneath his notice, but Azir swore that one day he and Xerath would be brothers.

The emperor returned to his capital, with the fifteen year old Azir now his heir, and unleashed a merciless campaign of bloodshed against those he believed had sent the assassins. Shurima descended into years of paranoia and murder as the emperor took revenge on any he suspected of treason. Though he was now heir to the throne, Azir’s life yet hung by a thread. His father hated him - wishing he had died instead of his brothers - and the queen was still young enough to bear sons.

Azir trained in combat, for the attack at the oasis had revealed how little he knew of the deadly arts. Renekton took up the task of teaching the growing prince, and under his aegis, Azir learned to wield sword and spear, to command warriors, and to read the ebb and flow of battle. The young heir elevated Xerath, his only trusted confidant, and made him his right hand man. To better counsel him, Azir tasked Xerath with seeking out knowledge wherever he could find it.

Years passed, but the queen was never able to carry a child to term, every conceived infant perishing before it could be born. So long as the queen remained barren, Azir’s life was relatively safe. Some around the court believed a curse was at work and a few even whispered the young heir’s name in connection with this – though Azir claimed innocence and even executed some who dared voice such accusations openly.

Eventually, the queen bore a healthy son, but on the night of his birth a terrible storm engulfed Shurima. The queen’s chambers were struck again and again by powerful bolts of lightning, and in the subsequent blaze, both the queen and her newborn son were killed. It was said the emperor went mad with grief and took his own life upon hearing the news, but tales soon spread of how he and his guards had been found lying in pieces on the palace floor, their bodies little more than charred skeletons.

Azir was shocked by their deaths, but the empire needed a leader, and with Xerath at his side he took control of Shurima as its emperor. Over the next decade, he expanded Shurima’s borders and ruled with a harsh, but just hand. He instituted reforms to better the lives of slaves and privately developed a plan to overturn millennia of tradition and eventually free them all. He kept his plans secret, even from Xerath, and the issue of slavery would prove to be a continual bone of contention between them. The empire had been built on the back of slavery, and many of the great noble houses depended on enforced labor for their vast wealth and power. Such monolithic institutions could not be overturned overnight, and Azir’s plans would be undone were they to become common knowledge. Despite Azir’s desire to name Xerath his brother, he could not do so until all Shurima’s slaves were free.

Through these years, Xerath protected Azir from his political rivals and guided the expansion of the empire. Azir married and fathered numerous children, some by wedlock, others by ill-advised liaisons with slaves and harem girls. Xerath stoked the emperor’s grand vision of an empire greater than any the world had ever known. But to stand as ruler over the entire world, Xerath convinced Azir that he would need to be all but invincible, a god amongst men – an Ascended being.

As the kingdom reached the zenith of its power, Azir announced he would undertake the Ascension ritual, that the time was right for him to take his place alongside Nasus and Renekton and their glorious forebears. Many questioned this decision; the Ascension ritual was highly dangerous and intended only for those near the end of their lives, those who had devoted their lives to Shurima and whose service was to be honored with Ascension. It was for the Sun Priests to decree who would be blessed with Ascension, not the hubris of an emperor to bestow it upon himself. Azir would not be dissuaded from his rash course of action, for his arrogance had grown along with his empire, and he ordered them to comply on pain of death.

The day of the ritual finally came and Azir marched toward the Dais of Ascension, flanked by thousands of his warriors and tens of thousands of his subjects. The brothers Renekton and Nasus were absent, having been dispatched by Xerath to deal with an emergent threat, but still Azir would not turn from what he saw as his great destiny. He climbed to the great golden disc atop the temple at the heart of the city and in the moments before the sun priests began the ritual, he turned to Xerath and finally freed him. And not just him, but all slaves…

Xerath was stunned into speechlessness, but Azir was not yet done. He embraced Xerath and named him his eternal brother, as he had promised he would all those years ago. Azir turned as the priests began the ritual to bring down the awesome power of the sun. Azir was unaware that Xerath had studied more than just history and philosophy in his quest for knowledge. He had learned the dark arts of sorcery, all the while nursing a desire for freedom that had grown like a cancer into a burning hatred.

At the height of the ritual, the former slave unleashed his powers and Azir was blasted from his place on the dais. Without the protection of the runic circle, Azir was consumed by the sun’s fire as Xerath took his place. The light filled Xerath with power, and he roared as his mortal body began to transform.

But the magic of the ritual was not intended for Xerath, and such awesomely powerful celestial energies could not be diverted without dire consequence. The power of the Ascension ritual exploded outward, devastating Shurima and laying waste to the city. Its people burned to ash and its towering palaces fell to ruin as the desert sands rose up to swallow the city. The sun disc sank from the sky and what had taken centuries to build was brought to ruin in an instant by one man’s ambition and another’s misplaced hate. All that remained of Azir’s city were sunken ruins and echoes of its people’s screams on the night winds.

Azir saw none of this. For him, all was nothingness. His last memories were of pain and fire; he knew nothing of what befell him atop the temple, nor what became of his empire. He remained lost in timeless oblivion until, thousands of years after Shurima’s doom, the blood of his last descendant spilled onto the temple ruins and resurrected him. Azir was reborn, but was yet incomplete; his body little more than animate dust given form, held together by the last vestiges of his indomitable will.

Gradually resuming his corporeal form, Azir stumbled through the ruins and came across the corpse of a woman with a treacherous knife wound in her back. He did not know her, but saw in her features the distant echo of his bloodline. All thoughts of empires and power were forgotten as he lifted this daughter of Shurima and bore her to what had once been the Oasis of the Dawn. The oasis was empty and dry, but with every step Azir took, clear water began filling the rocky basin. Azir immersed the woman’s body in the restorative waters of the oasis and as the blood washed away, only a faint scar remained where the blade had pierced her.

And with that act of selflessness, Azir was lifted up in a column of fire as the magic of Shurima renewed him, remaking him as the Ascended being he was meant to become. The sun’s immortal radiance poured into him, crafting his magnificent, hawk-armored form and granting him the power to command the very sand itself. Azir lifted his arms and his ruined city shrugged off the dust of centuries spent beneath the desert to rise anew. The sun disc lifted into the sky once more, and healing waters flowed between temples heaving themselves back into the light at the emperor’s command.

Azir climbed the steps of the newly-risen sun temple, weaving the desert winds to recreate the city’s last moments. Ghosts formed of sand relived his city’s last moments from long ago, and Azir watched in horror as Xerath’s treachery unfolded. He wept as he saw his family murdered, his empire fall and his power stolen. Only now, millennia too late, did he finally understand the depths of hatred harbored by his former friend and ally. With the power and prescience of an Ascended being, Azir sensed Xerath somewhere abroad in the world and summoned an army of sand warriors to march alongside their reborn emperor. As the sun blazed from the golden disc above him, Azir swore a mighty oath.

I will reclaim my lands and take back what was mine!