For Those Who Have Fallen

August 13, 2019

When I land in the ruins of Nerimazeth, it does not feel as if I have leapt, celestial magic burning my path across the sky, but as if I have fallen.

I am, after all, only a man.

Around me on the swirling dunes, a cohort of Ra’Horak fights, Solari warriors far from the temples of Mount Targon. They have marched with fifty spears, three weeks into the desert—a distance I have crossed in moments—to investigate a power that grows, even as their own wanes. Here, the sun they worship is so constant, it is as if the shadows of the past are still burned into the desert, their outline all that remains of an empire long lost. Buildings, now covered in dunes. A sun, once meant to raise men into the heavens, now dulled and fallen to earth.

Shurima was born, and died here. It was in Nerimazeth that the first Ascended were created. Meant to defend Shurima against any threat, those that outlived the empire were driven mad by long centuries of conflict, becoming Darkin and laying waste to the world before being contained.

But, as I well know, some abominations birthed by Shuriman hubris live on…

The sound of metal rings in my ear, as a spear whips past my helm. Then another, and another. The ringing rises up into a full battlecry, as the Ra’Horak unleash their might. Yet, as steel fills the sky, a blast of magic tears through the spears’ path, carving a swath of destruction through the ruins.

Once the dust clears, I see it. The reason I have come. A creature looms, burning and broken like the empire it would rule. It is unlike any Ascended I have ever seen, a shattered god that has claimed this fallen city, and would see it rise again.

But once… it too was a man.

I will remind it what that means—to draw breath in the face of destruction. I will remind them all.

“The god-warrior!” one of the Ra’Horak cries. “We cannot defeat it!”

“Let me show you how a god dies!” I bellow in response, and I charge toward the creature, raising my spear. It is with their power that the spear glows—the power of the gods. The power of the stars. My muscles strain to bear the strange weight of the magic, as the creature unleashes another blast from within its shattered form. My spear is not burned away as the Ra’Horak’s were, but instead burns with its own light. It streaks like a comet at the Ascended, casting it to the earth, and its blast into the heavens.

Before me, only feet from the rent opened by the creature’s blast, a Ra’Horak cradles the body of a fallen warrior. Her own arm has been scorched by magic, where she sought to shield him from the attack.

“You… You are an Aspect,” she says, though in her eyes I can see the desperation. She is pleading, begging me to say yes, so that I can save her. So that I can save her friend. All around, the Ra’Horak lines are broken, along with their will to fight.

I do not answer as the spear is called back to my hand by the magic she so craves, its return an echo of my own thrust. The Ascended has left no blood upon its tip, only sand. It possesses no flesh other than magic and stone.

I want to tell her my name. That I am Atreus, that I too was once a Ra’Horak looking to the skies for the power to save me… But that man is dead. He died on Targon’s peak, along with his brother, Pylas. Slain by the Pantheon, and by his own failures. And no matter how hard I try, I can bring neither Atreus nor Pylas back. Even the god is gone, its constellation torn from the heavens.

Instead, I turn to face the creature once more.

“You must fight,” I tell the Ra’Horak simply. “You all must.” Around us, the ruined city burns, as the Ascended’s magic refuses to fade.

I run over sand fused into glass, each new blast of magic shaking the whole world, until it feels like the earth itself must fall apart. That only the heavens will remain. But I refuse to give up. I see ballistae, abandoned on the ground. The Ra’Horak raise their shields against debris cast from falling buildings, disappearing into dust.

“Fight! You must fight!” I yell louder, my voice carrying more of the gods’ authority than I would like, and then I am upon it, my spear slashing into the Ascended, cutting across the broken stone it boasts instead of a face. This close, its blasts crash into my shield, pushing me backward. I slash again, my spear trailing magic, and again, I raise my shield only just in time to deflect the Ascended’s wrath.

My feet dig into the dirt. I struggle to hold the beast at bay as the magic beats into me with the Ascended’s will, made only stronger by cruelty and rage. I push against it, snarling, and power lances off of the shield wildly in every direction—cutting through the ruins, the sky, and through the Ra’Horak still cowering beneath both. My hands begin to shake, and it is not to the warriors, but to myself, that I growl against lungs gasping for breath.

“Fight…”

The creature’s eyes narrow. It knows. The earth beneath me can no longer hold. My strength can no longer hold. As I fall back to earth, the magic in my spear dies, and the helm clatters from my coughing face.

I spit blood into the dirt, and struggle to raise my head. But all I can see of Nerimazeth is that one Ra’Horak warrior, framed by smoke and chaos—as she looks back at me, into eyes only now revealed… and for the first time, sees something other than an Aspect. The man who cradled Pylas, as snow formed from his dying breath.

I wonder if she recognizes the stars, and my destiny, tattooed upon my chest. The scar that cuts through them. It is no longer pleading that shows in her eyes, as I see the light grow on her face, the creature gathering power for one more blast. Though her arm is ruined, and though her friend lies still, she picks up her shield and begins stumbling toward me, as inevitable and determined as death.

“What… is your name?!” I cough through ragged breaths, and still, the light grows brighter.

“Asose,” she says firmly as she stands beside me, and turns her shield to face the blast.

The ruins fill with impossible brightness that promises to burn everything away, until it does, and only darkness is left. There is no more power, no more Aspect. Where Asose once stood, there is nothing. Only my memory.

But still, I can feel my scar, throbbing with pain. Reminding me I am alive, and of every moment that brought me here. My brother-in-arms, Pylas, telling me to stop getting blood on his victory… The barbarian raid, each of us near death… Collapsing upon Targon’s pinnacle… The Darkin blade, cutting through death to awaken me again… Empyrean wheat, clinging to the mountain… The mud on my hands as I put down the plow, and pick up the spear…

All of that would be nothing without a woman taking up her shield—knowing that she would not survive, but that she would fight. Her power, her sacrifice, so much greater than that of the stars. So much greater than mine, and the weapons of the Aspect that have kept me safe.

It will not be in vain.

As I struggle to my feet, broken, I see the shadow of the Ra’Horak, emerging from cover, eclipsing the Sun Disc cradle behind me at the center of the ruins. I rise with them, not as a god, but as a man. My pantheon, all who have fallen, earning me another moment. All who have lived, and all who have died facing a moment of truth where they must decide why they fight. Who they love. What they truly are.

What are gods before this courage? They are nothing.

“Asose!” I yell into the ruins, though my ribs dig into my lungs.

“Asose!” the Ra’Horak call back. They too stand amidst the rubble, their shadow looming all the larger as the Ascended gathers its magic again.

And though I am broken, and though the god is dead, I feel the power ignite once more in my spear, as the plume on my helm bursts alight. It is calling me to battle, as the Ra’Horak cast their spears once more.

And, for a moment, a star lost with the Constellation of War gleams brighter than the sun.

Her name was Asose.

More stories

Pantheon

Atreus was born on the hostile slopes of Targon, and named after a star in the constellation of War, known as the Pantheon.
From an early age, he knew he was destined for battle. Like many in his tribe, he trained to join the Rakkor’s militant order, the Ra’Horak. Never the strongest or the most skilled warrior, Atreus somehow persevered, standing up, bloodied and bruised, after each bout. In time, he developed a fierce rivalry with a fellow recruit, Pylas—but no matter how often Atreus was cast onto the stones, he stood back up. Pylas was impressed by his unrelenting endurance, and through the blood they spilled in the training circle, a true brotherhood was born.
Atreus and Pylas were among the Rakkor who stumbled across a barbarian incursion, surviving the ambush that left the rest of their patrol dead. When the Aspect of the Sun refused to destroy these trespassers, Atreus and Pylas swore to capture the power of the Aspects themselves by climbing to the peak of Mount Targon.
Like so many before them, they underestimated how arduous the ascent would be, with Pylas shivering his last upon finally reaching the summit. Only Atreus remained as the skies opened, making him host to a divine Aspect, with the power to take revenge.
But it was not a man who returned to the Rakkor afterward, spear and shield gleaming with celestial might. It was the Aspect of War itself, the Pantheon. Judging Atreus unworthy, a warrior who had known only defeat, it had taken control of his body to pursue its own ends—a task it considered too great for mortal men.
Cast into the furthest corners of his own mind, Atreus endured only vague visions as the Aspect scoured the world for Darkin, living weapons created in a bygone age.
Eventually, Pantheon was goaded into battle not far from Mount Targon by the Darkin Aatrox, who sought the mountain’s peak. Their fight raged into the skies, and swept through the armies of men beneath… until the impossible occurred. The Darkin’s god-killing blade was driven into Pantheon’s chest, a blow that carved the constellation of War from the heavens.
But as the Aspect faded, Atreus—the man it had considered weak—awoke once more. Impaled upon Aatrox’s blade, and with the power of the Aspect’s weapons dimming, he took a ragged breath, and spit in the Darkin’s face. Aatrox sneered, and left Atreus to die.
Hours later, as the crows descended, Atreus painfully stood back up, stumbling back to the Rakkor in a trail of blood. After a lifetime of defeat, his will to live, and his anger at betrayal, were enough to stave off the death that had claimed War itself.
Atreus recovered on Pylas’ homestead, nursed back to health by his friend’s widow, Iula. There, Atreus realized he’d spent his life looking to the stars, never considering what lay beneath. Unlike gods, mortals fought because they must, knowing that death lay in wait. It was a resilience he saw in all life, the threats unending.
Indeed, barbarian invaders now threatened the Rakkor’s northern settlements, including Iula’s farm. Though it was months before he could lift a spear, Atreus was determined to end this scourge himself, and eventually set out with the Aspect’s dulled weapons in hand.
Yet, when he arrived, he found his sworn enemies already under siege. He knew from their cries, from the overwhelming stench of blood… they faced Aatrox.
It was Aatrox who had driven the barbarians into Targon, Atreus realized. Though he’d considered them his foes, they were much like the Rakkor—mortals who suffered in the conflicts between greater powers. Atreus felt a cold rage at both the Darkin and the Aspects. They were no different. They were the problem.
Atreus put himself between the barbarians and Aatrox. Recognizing the battered shield and spear of the fallen Aspect, the Darkin mocked him—what hope had Atreus now, without the Pantheon’s power? But even though Aatrox’s blows cast him to his knees, Atreus’ own will reignited the Aspect’s spear, upon hearing the cries of the people around him… and with a mighty leap, he struck a blow that severed the Darkin’s sword arm.
Both blade and Darkin fell to the ground. Only Atreus still stood, and watched his namesake star blaze back to life in the heavens.
Though he often yearns to return to Iula’s farm, Atreus vowed that day to stand against Aspects, Ascended, demons, and any who wield power so great, it can only destroy. Forsaking his own name, he has become a new Pantheon—the Aspect’s weapons fueled by the will to fight that can only exist in the face of death.
For with the divine Pantheon gone, War must be reborn in man.
Leona

Among the Rakkor tribes that dwell upon Mount Targon, the sun is sacred, and none venerate it more than the Solari. Children are raised from birth to honor it, and even to shed blood for it, until its Aspect returns, heralding a grave threat they all must face.
Leona was one such child. She took to the Solari faith as naturally as breathing, finding solace and warmth within its rigid structure. This manifested through her rapid achievement of excellence, her peers envious of her capability, willpower, and devotion. None doubted she would one day become one of the Ra’Horak, the holy warriors of the Solari.
Though Leona flourished, she could not help but see her masters struggle with their most exasperating student, an orphan named Diana. Her curiosity was welcomed at first, but soon the teachers began to perceive Diana’s questions as challenging the Solari ways. Leona watched Diana suffer punishment and isolation—but where others saw insolence, she saw a lost soul devoted to a search for meaning.
Leona found her purpose in the Solari teachings, and resolved to share it with Diana as even the most dutiful teachers forsook her. The two would debate late into the night, with Leona hoping to persuade Diana that everything she could ever want was there in the faith, waiting for her to accept it. Though she failed to win Diana over, Leona did find a friend.
One night, Diana confided a secret to Leona. She spoke of discovering a hidden alcove in the mountain, an ancient place where the walls were etched with depictions of strange symbols and forgotten societies. When Diana mentioned climbing the summit of Mount Targon to learn more, Leona urged her to stop. Seeking to protect her from the ire of the other Solari, Leona made Diana promise to abandon this search. Reluctantly, Diana agreed.
Time passed, and the two never spoke of Diana’s discovery again. Leona believed her friend had finally come to her senses.
Her belief was shattered late one night, when she glimpsed Diana slipping out of the temple. While her first instinct was to tell the elders, Leona thought instead of protecting her friend, wresting her back from the edge. Resolved, Leona set off after Diana…
To the summit of Mount Targon.
The ascent was a trial unlike any Leona had ever endured, straining every fiber of her being to its limit, and beyond. Her training, willpower, and concern for Diana was all that drove her on. The unblinking eyes of bodies frozen into the mountain's slopes watched her climb, their own journeys forever incomplete, but not even they could deter her.
After what seemed an eternity—and much to her own amazement—Leona reached the peak.
Exhausted, she beheld an uncanny landscape, and found Diana engulfed in a coruscating column of silver light. Leona saw her friend’s silhouette writhing in agony, the air rippling with her screams. Horrified, Leona rushed to her aid, when a golden radiance slashed down from the heavens to envelop her.
The sensation was indescribable, but rather than incinerating Leona, the illumination coursed into her, suffusing her with incredible power. She clung to her consciousness, fighting the current seeking to sear away her very being.
Ultimately, her indomitable will triumphed—and with that control came understanding.
With control came understanding. Leona was forever changed, imbued by the Aspect of the Sun. Destiny had selected her, and it was her duty to protect the Solari in the times to come.
It was then that Leona saw Diana, clad in gleaming silver war-plate, a strange reflection of the golden armor she discovered herself now wearing. Diana begged Leona to join her, to seek out answers the Solari could not offer. Leona demanded they return home, and present themselves for the priests’ judgment. Neither conceded, and they finally felt the weight of the weapons in their hands.
Their combat was swift, a blistering clash between sun and moon, ending with Diana’s crescent blade at Leona’s throat. But, rather than delivering the killing blow, Diana fled. Devastated, Leona descended Targon and hurried to her elders.
When she arrived, she found slaughter. Many Solari priests and their Ra’Horak guardians were dead, seemingly slain by Diana’s hand. The survivors were awed by the presence of two Aspects now in their midst, and Leona was committed to helping them navigate this new reality—the guiding light to her people, just as the sun had always been.
She has sworn to find Diana, to preserve the dominance of the Solari... but also to help her old friend control the Moon Aspect’s power before it destroys her.
In Battle, Broken

L J Goulding

To assume the Aspects act in the interests of Targon or its people is folly of the highest order.

When the first Rakkor climbed the Great Mountain, they did so to bring themselves closer to their holy sun, the divine source of all light and majesty in this world. But when they reached the summit, they found strange, otherworldly beings waiting there for them.

Not gods. There are no gods on the mountain, nor above it. The Aspects have never claimed this, and the Rakkor have never considered them as such. In spite of all their heavenly power, they had descended from the firmament of the celestial realm, yet were still unable to cross over into Runeterra unaided—and this was something for which they would be willing to bargain most dearly. Enough to use our own worst natures against us. Enough to betray the golden sun itself.

To this day, the Aspects strive to manipulate a world that is not theirs, for reasons we cannot fully comprehend, on a timescale that mocks even the grandest of mortal ambitions.

However, we can be certain that their motivations are not human, and their capacity for cruelty and deception is unmatched in all existence.

— from ‘Tribe of the Last Sun’, by the Hierarch Malgurza of Helia

Weary from the day’s labors, Iula wiped her stiff hands upon her apron, and raised a cup to the mantel.

“Here’s to you, my love,” she whispered, before bringing it to her lips.

A flood of sweetness. Warmth. The last rays of an autumnal sunset.

She measured the taste for a moment, letting it sit on her palate, breathing out slowly through her nose. Then she looked down into her drink and gently swirled the golden liquid around.

“How is it?” Hanne asked, as she heaved the farmhouse door closed behind her.

Iula shrugged. “It’s fine. Maybe it will age into something better.”

The younger woman set down two large sacks of grain on the floor beside the kitchen table, and poured a cup for herself. Iula watched her sniff it, and take a long swig.

Then Hanne coughed, and blinked hard, twice.

A third time.

“You can... You can really taste the smoke...” she managed. “Is mead always... like this?”

Iula smiled, running her fingers through the bunches of herbs hanging from the roof beams. “No, not always. Depends what you put in. For a traditional medu, I hoped the hedge-sage would come through a little stronger. Maybe next time we’ll use more. And fresh, not dried.”

“Are we still taking it to the market, though? Will it be ready by then?”

“It’s fine. We can backsweeten each jar with a little more honey, before I seal them.”

Hanne finished her cup with only the slightest hint of a grimace, before setting it down. “I think I saw one last honeycomb in the storehouse,” she said. “I’ll bring it in.”

“There’s no rush. I’m not doing it tonight. Need to start on the sourdough before bed.”

“It’s no trouble!” Hanne insisted. “I’ll go now, before I get this young man his supper.”

Little Tomis was still seated at the table, swinging his bare feet back and forth. Even though the day had been long, his eyes were still keen... and very much fixed on the drink in Iula’s hand.

“Can I have some?” he asked, the moment Hanne was gone.

Iula made a show of turning to face him with an expression of mock-confusion. “You mean this lovely stew that Hanne has made for us all?” she said, gesturing to the fireplace with her cup.

Tomis shook his head. “No. The medu.”

“Well, I don’t think that’s a good idea, is it?” she replied, stepping over the bench to sit next to him. Her knees and elbows creaked as she went—but her knees and elbows always creaked, so she had given up remarking on it years ago.

She tapped the large glass jar next to him.

“What about your fine batch of sun tea, eh? Wouldn’t you rather have some of that? We spent all day on it, and you’ve been very helpful! I’ve been looking forward to trying it.”

Tomis wrinkled his nose. “I don’t like sun tea anymore.”

“Oh, that’s not true! It’s a very special drink for a young Rakkor. It fills you up from top to toe with the blessings of the Sun. Don’t you want that?”

The boy went very quiet, and still. His eyes sank to the tabletop.

“Then why do you put your drink in the dark?” he murmured, plaintively. “Does that mean it’s bad?”

Iula was suddenly worried that she had gone too far. “Oh, no,” she chuckled, putting her arm around him, “it’s not bad. Not bad at all. My dear husband taught me how to make mead, when we were first married. It needs to sit in the dark for a while to... umm... to get more... sort of...”

Then she gave up trying to explain fermentation to a four-year-old, and playfully poked his nose.

“Look, my boy, some of the best things that grown-ups enjoy happen in the dark, all right? One day, when you’re older and taller, you’ll understand that. And then you can have a sip of mead! But for now, it’s sun tea for us both! Can you spare my tired old feet, and bring me two clean cups?”

Tomis giggled, and scurried away to the pantry. Iula watched him go, before craftily gulping down the last of her drink, just as the farmhouse door opened.

“Actually, Tam,” she spluttered, “bring three. Hanne’s back, and she’ll want—”

“Iula.”

Something in Hanne’s tone chilled Iula’s blood. She was on her feet before she realized it, moving to join the girl in the open doorway. “What is it?”

“There’s someone coming. I think... I think it’s a Solari.”

Iula strained her eyes into the twilight gloom of the valley, past the dusty yard of their simple homestead, and the fields of empyrean wheat beyond.

There.

True enough, she could just make out the distant, haggard form of a man clad in dulled, golden battleplate. He was moving slowly through the crop, but there could be no doubt as to his intended destination. Iula’s home was remote and secluded, the nearest neighbors several hours to the north.

She sighed, steeling her nerve, and strode into the yard.

“Greetings, friend,” she called out. “May the Sun’s light be upon you. I hope your journey through the mountains has not been too hard.”

The man did not respond, nor halt in his approach.

Iula continued. “I can offer you food and water, but I am sorry to say warriors are no longer welcome in the house that I once shared with my beloved. Perhaps you have heard of him? Pylas of the Ra’Horak. A worthy hero of the Solari, some forty years past. I have the countenance of the priesthood in recognition of his service. You will find no enemies here, I assure you.”

Still, the man did not respond.
He crossed the bottom ditch. He was now barely a hundred yards from the house.

“Hanne,” Iula said calmly, “please go get my husband’s sword.”

The girl did not move. Her wide eyes were fixed on the approaching figure.

Iula shot her a serious glance.

“The sword hanging above the fireplace. Bring it here. Now. And make sure Tomis is hidden.”

There was something curious about this warrior. As he drew closer, she could see that his deep blue cloak was ragged and stained from battle, and his shield hung limply at his side. His spear, the haft pitted and bent, dragged in the dirt behind him as though it might be a beggar-king’s plow.

Iula took a step back. She did not know why the man had come... but if he meant the three of them harm, she would be ready to fight back.

Hanne tumbled out of the house with the sheathed sword clutched to her chest, letting out a whimper when she saw the warrior heave himself onto the path that ran between the yard and the fields. He stumbled, and Iula noticed that his left sandal was flapping loosely from his bloodied foot.

Her heartbeat thundered in her ears.

“...Atreus?”

The warrior stopped at the sound of his own name. The spear slipped from his grasp.

And then he was falling.

Though neither of them consciously intended it, Iula and Hanne both lunged forward in a vain attempt to catch him; some instinctive, mortal reaction to seeing true divinity humbled and laid low.

But of course, they could not.

Atreus, once known as Pantheon and the Aspect of War, crashed face-first onto the flagstones, his helm seeming to ring like a cracked temple bell as it rolled away into the dusk.

On the fourth day, he awoke. Iula did not hear him climb from his bed, pulling on the freshly washed and dried tunic that she and Hanne had left out for him, nor creep down the gritty stone passageway to the kitchen.

The first she knew of his recovery, at all, was when the unmistakable smell of burning reached her nostrils.

She hauled herself out of her simple cot in a daze, her heart pounding.

“Hanne!” she yelled. “Hanne, get Tam!”

The floor was cold beneath her feet, but she did not think to look for her sandals. She threw the dividing curtain aside, cursing when her shoulder struck the wooden jamb as she passed beneath it.

There was smoke in the passageway.

“Hanne!”

Wincing, cradling her shoulder, she drummed a fist on the rough stone wall of Hanne’s small room all the way down to the kitchen, before remembering that the girl would have left for market hours earlier. Iula would have to deal with this alone.

Then she turned the corner, and stopped abruptly.

Atreus was crouched before the bread oven in the fireplace, frantically fanning a small blaze with his shield. His eyes were raw from the smoke, his hands smeared with flour and soot.

He looked over his shoulder at Iula.

“Forgive me,” he choked. “I... I don’t know what I...”

She let out a cry of exasperation and grabbed a flagon of water from the pantry.

“Get out of the way, you big oaf!”

Steam billowed from the oven as the fire was quenched. Iula coughed and wheezed, dropping the flagon so she could cover her mouth and nose with her nightsmock. She glared at the warrior standing sheepishly in the middle of the room.

“What are you waiting for? Get the damn door open,” she snapped at him, even as she hobbled over to the window and pushed the shutters outward. The morning sun streamed into the gloom, becoming almost solid bars of light in the haze.

Atreus opened the door, then thought for a moment, and started moving it back and forth to waft fresher air inside. Iula shot him a withering glare, before lowering herself to her knees in front of the oven, to inspect the damage.

“Well, that’s the whole batch ruined,” she muttered, gingerly plucking one of the sodden, blackened loaves from the mess. The stone base groaned and ticked as it cooled, with a slurry of ashes and water splattering down onto the floor beneath the open grate. “And the fire’s dead too. It took me a whole day to get it up to the right heat, you know.”

She jabbed a thumb over her shoulder, in Atreus’ direction.

“I told you last time you were here—you will never be a baker. Just give up.”

He continued to waft with the door, as if it were the most important task in the world. “The girl,” he murmured. “She asked me to mind the bread. Before she left.”

Iula got back to her feet with some effort. “You spoke to Hanne?”

Atreus nodded. He looked around for something to prop the door open, before shrugging and using his shield. Even when he stood again, she noted that he would not look her in the eye, and kept his gaze on the floor between them.

And she could not quite shake the sense that he looked somehow... lesser than she remembered. Diminished, perhaps. In the past, he had always radiated a kind of stubborn defiance, one that reassured his allies and unsettled those who might seek to oppose him.

That was gone, now.

He ran his fingers through his beard, apparently trying to find a specific combination of words that he wanted to speak. “I wanted to... I want to find a way to repay you, Iula. For all your many kindnesses to me, over the years.”
She scoffed. “Well, we’ll have to find something outside of the kitchen, won’t we. Maybe I’ll let you till the fields before I sow again, next season. Not even you can set mud on fire. At least, I hope not. Maybe I’m wrong.”

A glimmer of a smile crossed his features, but it was only a glimmer.

Then his gaze darted past her, to the passageway.

Iula looked to see Tomis standing there, peering around the corner, gripping the edge of the wall with his little fingers. She smoothed out her smock, and beckoned to him.

“Come here, Tam. Come and say hello. This is the man we’ve been helping. His name is Atreus—we’ve been friends for a long time. A very long time. Although you wouldn’t know it from looking at him, eh?”

The boy did not move. Neither did Atreus.

Sighing, she trudged over and scooped Tomis up, letting him lean into her bruised shoulder as she carried him into the kitchen. “He’s a little afraid of you, I think. You’re the first soldier he’s seen, since...” The words died on her lips. She smiled down at the boy, and blew an affectionate raspberry into his hair. “Well. He’s an orphan. These past few years have not been kind to the folk of the high valleys.”

Atreus looked from Iula to Tomis, and back again.

“He is not yours?”

Iula laughed. “Are you being serious? I am never quite sure with you.”

Atreus’ eyes fell to the floor again. “I... I don’t...”

“No, Atreus. I can tell you this very young boy is not my son. And before you ask, no, Hanne is not my daughter either. I’m sixty-eight years old, and I know I look it, so don’t try to flatter me into forgiving you for the burned bread, either. I know you don’t ever seem to age, but the rest of us mortals bloody well do.”

Then she looked at the warrior standing before her, a man she had known almost all her life, and saw something she had never seen before.

His eyes were brimming with tears. He was trembling.

She made to take a step toward him, but Tomis squirmed uncomfortably in her arms at the prospect, and she lowered him to the floor instead. “Go on, young man. Back to your room. I’ll bring you some breakfast shortly.”

In spite of her reassuring smile, the boy still edged out of the kitchen most warily. Iula turned back to Atreus, who had stooped to pick up the flagon.

“You’ve been gone so long,” she said, reaching out to place a reassuring hand on his arm. “I was beginning to wond—”

Atreus reacted to her touch as though struck by summer lightning.

“Get away from me!” he bellowed, recoiling with such force that he crashed over the low wooden bench, and split his forehead on the corner of the table.

Iula started away, almost losing her balance as well.

Atreus covered his face with one hand, and tried to regain both his footing and his composure. He backed into the space behind the open door, and brought his knees up like a wall between him and the rest of the world. “Don’t touch me, don’t touch me, don’t touch me,” he repeated again and again, under his breath.

It had pained her to see him physically broken, but Iula knew now that the wounds he must recently have suffered ran far deeper than his flesh.

And that, that hurt her more than anything else she could imagine.

She folded her arms tightly across her chest, sobbing gently, grasping the fabric of her smock, and sank down to sit opposite him on the floor.

They sat there for some time. Iula said nothing for a goodly while, watching the sunlight through the window move slowly across the gray tiles, and not thinking about the rheumatic ache in her joints, or the chill in her toes.

Eventually, when Atreus seemed to have calmed enough to let his head sink a little, she wiped her eyes with her sleeves and cleared her throat.

“What happened to you, old friend?” she asked.

“I don’t know. I don’t... I don’t really remember.”

“What do you remember? Do you recall the last time you were here? The last time we saw each other?”

He frowned a little. “I think so. How long ago was it?”

“Six years, Atreus. I haven’t seen you in six years.”

Her words seemed to hang in the air longer than she had intended. She watched him attempt to process them in light of whatever it was he wanted to tell her.

“I... I think I went back to the peak,” he murmured. “I think I climbed the mountain again.”

Iula’s eyes widened. “But...”

“I know. It shouldn’t be possible. And yet, there it is.”

It was beyond anything she had ever considered. Certainly, there were legends that pre-dated even the empire of Shurima, of climbers who reached the summit of Mount Targon and yet were claimed by no Aspect, who then managed against all odds to make their way back down and return to their people; whether in shame or triumph, it was often unclear in the telling, and usually considered nothing more than fanciful allegory.

But the notion that any mortal, even an Aspect’s host, might make the climb twice...

It was unheard of.

She laughed, clapping her open palm on the floor. “My old friend,” she beamed, “if ever someone was going to rewrite the rules of the world, it would be you!”

Atreus shook his head, and Iula felt all levity fade.

“No,” he replied. “It wasn’t me.”

“Then who—”

“Viego.”

Even though she had never heard it before that moment, the name sent a shudder through her. She did not like to think that words, or names, could have power over the living. Maybe it was simply the way Atreus had spoken it, his gaze haunted and thin.

“Viego. The ancient king who brought the Black Mist to our lands. I tried to fight him, but he... uhh...”

Atreus rubbed absently at his scalp.

“He made me his puppet, Iula. I think I’ve done some terrible, terrible things.”

Iula was numb. She recalled Atreus’ disheveled state when he stumbled back into the valley, and how she and Hanne had not dared imagine what foes he must have faced to blunt the weapons and dull the armor of an Aspect.

Had they even been foes at all?

She hauled herself up onto her knees, and found she could not stop shaking her head in disbelief at the injustice of it all. “I’m sorry. I know how hard it was for you to be controlled by the Pantheon, all those years ago. This must have been... Oh, Atreus. I’m so truly sorry for what has happened to you, my friend.”

Slowly, cautiously, she reached out to him again. This time he did not flinch, but his face creased in pained sorrow.

“Oh, Atreus,” she said again, and took him in her arms, rocking gently back and forth with him on the kitchen floor. He clutched at her clothing with his scarred hands, his face pressed against her chest—not so very different from young Tomis in those early days after he first came to the homestead.

Close to tears herself, Iula closed her eyes.

“Tell me what you need, old friend,” she whispered. “Whatever I can do for you, I will. You know that.”

Atreus took a deeper breath to steady himself.

“I need you to tell me it’s okay to give up,” he replied.

Iula felt suddenly cold. “What?”

“There is too much evil in the world. You and I have both seen it. I’ve fought it for so long, I can’t remember what came before... but I’m tired. I’m so damn tired, Iula. How can mortals hope to win out against undying kings, or fallen god-warriors? The Aspects and their slaves. Demons from the spirit realm. Runeterra is becoming their playground. I thought all I needed to do was keep getting back up, no matter what. But if I can be made an enemy too, then simply being able to endure is no longer enough.”
He gritted his teeth, and looked her dead in the eye.

“And worst of all, I’ve lost whatever power I still held after my Aspect was slain. Viego must’ve seen to that. Whatever it was that connected me to the celestial realm, it’s gone. I am... I am just a man. So I need you to tell me that it’s okay for me to leave all this behind. You’re the only person I—”

Iula pushed him away, and clambered shakily to her feet. Adrenaline surged in her veins. She saw that this wasn’t just the absence of his comforting defiance, which for so many years had made her feel safer, just knowing he was out there, somewhere in the world.

He had actually given up.

“How dare you,” she murmured.

Atreus rose, confused, towering over her. He wiped his face with the back of his forearm.

“I don’t underst—”

“How dare you!” Iula shrieked. “How can you even think to ask that?”

He faltered, his fists clenching involuntarily. “I can’t do this anymore. Please.”

A sour taste rose in the back of her throat. Her anger was so fierce, so hot, that she couldn’t feel the floor beneath her feet anymore.

“Damn you,” she spat. “Damn you. Coward. How dare you say that to me.”

“Iula, please, listen to—”

She slapped him, hard, across the face.

And again.

He did not try to defend himself, but only stared down at her, dumbfounded, his cheek reddening quickly.

Iula could not weep. She was too enraged. “He loved you, Atreus! Pylas loved you more than any brother. He was my husband, but he went with you up that accursed mountain, even though I begged him not to. He was mine, and you lost him up there!” She let out a wordless cry of pain, and dug her nails into her forearms. “You got to hold him, Atreus. You got to hold him as he died. And what did I get?”

She pointed to the mantel, where Pylas’ blade hung.

“I got a sword. Nothing more.”

Iula squared her jaw and looked up into the clear, open sky she imagined beyond the ceiling beams.

“Don’t you dare tell me about what you’ve lost, and how you can’t go on anymore. You don’t get to retire. You don’t have that option. This isn’t about you. It never has been. I helped you because that’s what Pylas would have wanted. I even tried to become a soldier and follow you on the battlefield after he was gone. He died for you, so you could become something greater than any Ra’Horak. Greater than any mortal.”

Atreus shook his head. “But I’m not.”

Exasperated, she stomped to the fireplace and snatched down the blade, wrenching it from its sheath and pressing it to Atreus’ heart in one sweeping motion.

“Then we don’t need you! We may as well just let the Aspects have their war, and let that be the end of everything!”

The tip of the sun-tempered steel parted the threads of his tunic, and drew a trickle of blood from his breast. He looked down at the small crimson spot slowly spreading across the fabric.

Then he looked back to Iula.

“What war?” he asked, his voice sounding weak.

She tightened her grip on the sword, realizing only then that she did not know how she expected this to end.

“The Solari, Atreus. They see heresy everywhere. And they’re not just killing anyone they suspect of being a Lunari—but anyone suspected of harboring them, too.” Unable to take a hand off the hilt, she nodded instead toward the open passageway. “Tomis’ entire settlement. The Ra’Horak butchered them. This, this is what happens when the Aspects cloak themselves in mortal superstition. Your former brethren have been driven into darkness by the blinding light of their new savior.”

Something like recognition flickered across Atreus’ features, as if he were trying to recall a fading dream. “And the Aspect of the Moon... Of course, she has not yet stepped forward to lead the Lunari.”

“And how much worse will it all get, once she does?” Iula hissed. “You swore that you would stand against them, Atreus. That you would not let this world’s fate be decided by such inhuman monsters, even when they choose to do nothing. I am sorry for what has happened to you, I truly am... but I cannot let you break your oath. Not now.”

Atreus slowly, deliberately closed the fingers of his right hand around the sword blade. “Killing either the Aspect of Sun or Moon will not end the conflict in Targon. Just as the death of War did not lead to eternal peace.”

“Shut up. Stop trying to justify what you want, and do what you know you should. That little boy was absolutely terrified of you when you arrived, and yet he wanted to wear your helm and pick up your spear from the moment he saw them. If you won’t act now, then that’s the only future he has—growing up to fight and die like too many Rakkor before him.”

She forced as much conviction into her voice as she could muster.

“You need to get back up, Atreus. I didn’t want to be a widowed farmer. I didn’t want to inherit all this. I had to give up my life and my love, so now you need to prove you’re worthy of the faith my husband had in you. You need to honor the sacrifices we’ve all made. You need to stop the Aspects from destroying our people entirely.”

Atreus gripped Iula’s leading hand, gently urging her to drive the blade onward, his expression resolute.

“I can’t,” he whispered, his voice cracking. “I’m not strong enough.”

That was it. Iula was done.

She threw down the sword and barged past him, heading for Tomis’ room. “Well, if you’re going to just lay down and die, please pass on my love to my husband when you see him,” she yelled over her shoulder, before scooping up the startled child and hurrying out of the farmhouse in tears. She did not look back to see if Atreus was following them.

“Where are we going?” Tomis asked.

Iula winced as her bare feet were cut raw on the stony path, but did not slow her pace.

“We’re going to cut some more firewood, my boy,” she managed to smile. “We’re going to bake bread again today.”

When they returned, Atreus was gone.

Iula ignored the handwritten note that had been carefully placed beside Pylas’ sheathed sword on the kitchen table, and went to close the door.

Telling herself she was merely looking out for Hanne on her way back from market, she scanned the distant trackways that led up and out of the valley, but saw no sign of anyone.

She took a deep breath to calm herself, letting it out slowly as she walked back to the fireplace, and knelt before the cold oven with a grunt of discomfort. Then, without reading it, she balled up the note and stuffed it into the grate, and began to hum an old song from her youth as she stacked fresh kindling on top.

She genuinely hoped that would not be the last time she saw her old friend; that he would find his way out of the shadows, for all their sakes, by whatever path he had chosen.

But until then, she would sharpen her husband’s blade, and prepare to meet whatever was still to come.
The Spear of Targon

Anthony Reynolds

A lone figure awaited the armed convoy, standing silhouetted against the sun. His heavy cloak and the long plume atop his helm billowed in the hot, dry desert wind. A tall spear was held at his side.
The convoy was thirty strong. Most of its number were hired mercenaries—rough, warlike men and women garbed in hauberks, leather, and chain, bearing crossbows, halberds, and blades. They walked the dusty path alongside heavily laden mules, though they came to a halt, crude insults and jokes dying on their lips, as they saw the warrior standing motionless before them.
The dark-clad leader of the expedition frowned as he pulled his coal-black steed to a halt. While the others were from lands far away, he knew this place and its inhabitants, for he once counted himself one of them. While he had been raised among the mountain people of the Rakkor, he had long ago turned away from them. Now he returned, after many years of absence, drawn by the lure of the priceless wealth he knew awaited in the Seer’s temple above.
He knew and respected the fighting prowess of his former people, but a single warrior? Not even the Ra’Horak could survive such odds.
Even so, the figure atop the rocky outcrop made no move to stand aside.
“You come with murder in your hearts,” the warrior said, his voice as hard as iron. “I am of the Mountain. Turn back, or I will gladly destroy you. The choice is yours.”
The mercenaries smirked and scoffed.
“Piss off, madman,” one of them shouted, “lest we plant your head on a spike to mark our passing.”
“You are a long way from home, friend,” the leader of the convoy said. “We journey to the mountain ourselves. There need be no blood spilt here.”
The lone Rakkoran warrior was unmoved.
“We are simple pilgrims, and still have far to go,” said the leader. “And besides, there is no way back for us now. Our ships have sailed, see?” He gestured behind him.
Behind the convoy, less than a mile distant, the sea glittered like dragon scales in the dying light. A trio of galleys could be seen, sails unfurling as they turned north on the long journey home.
“We come with no ill intent, I assure you,” the leader continued. “We merely seek wisdom.”
“Your tongue is forked, serpent,” said the lone warrior. “You seek the blood of the Seer, and it will be your end. You were born on the mountain, and now you will die in its shadow.”
The leader’s frown deepened, and he turned away with a dismissive shrug.
“We shall see,” he said. “Kill him.”
In an instant, crossbows were hefted to shoulders and the air was filled with loosed bolts. The warrior of the Rakkor was not punched from his feet, however; the bolts clanged as they ricocheted from his heavy, circular shield. Then he began to advance.
He appeared to be in no hurry. He strode forward with grim resolve, still silhouetted against the sun, the tip of his spear lowering toward his enemies. Another flurry of crossbow bolts. Again they were turned aside by his shield.
The first of the snarling mercenaries launched herself toward him, a jagged-bladed scimitar arcing in for his throat. She died in the blink of an eye, the warrior’s spear buried in her chest. The next two died almost as quickly, a crimson line slashed across one man’s throat, and another falling with a broken skull.
“Take him!” roared the expedition’s leader, drawing an exquisite, bespoke pistol from his waistband.
A cloud passed in front of the sun, allowing the warrior to be seen more clearly. His armor was wrought with celestial imagery,and it seemed as if stars gleamed in the shimmery fabric of his midnight-blue cloak. That starlight also glittered in his unrelenting gaze, shadowed within the visor slits of his helm. For a moment, it seemed like his armor and speartip gleamed with what could only be described as divine power, and sudden dread filled the leader of the raiders, for he had heard of this power in his childhood, but had long since dismissed it as myth and legend.
The lone warrior moved like liquid, every movement smooth, efficient, and deadly. He was impossibly fast—faster than any man should be. More mercenaries died, their blood staining the dry desert ground. None could land a blow upon the deadly fighter. He moved effortlessly through the battle, closing inexorably on the horseman. One by one, the mercenaries were slain. In moments, those still standing turned and fled in the face of this unstoppable foe.
The leader of the mercenaries leveled his pistol at the lone warrior and fired. Impossibly, he swayed aside at the last moment, and the shot merely scraped across the side of his helm. The leader swore and cocked his pistol for another shot… but he was too slow.
The warrior’s shield took him square in the chest, and he was hurled from the saddle. He fell heavily and grimaced as the warrior’s foot came down on his torso, pinning him to the ground.
Staring up, the leader of the raiders realized with a shock that he knew the face of his opponent. A name surfaced in his memory, from a time when he had still lived among the Rakkor.
“Atreus,” he said. “Is it you?”
In answer, the Rakkoran’s spear drove down, punching through the leader’s chest.
“Atreus is gone,” said the warrior. “I am the Pantheon, now and forever.”
Blood bubbled from the dying man’s lips, and he shuddered. When finally he was still, Pantheon pulled his weapon clear and turned away. Twilight had given way to dusk, and countless stars lit the night sky.
A comet of burning fire streaked down toward the distant mountains, a hundred miles east.
Pantheon’s eyes narrowed. “It is time, then,” he said to the darkness, and began the long journey back to Mount Targon.
Kai'Sa

Perhaps the most remarkable thing about the fearless hunter of the Void known as Kai’Sa is how unremarkably her life began. She did not descend from tribal warriors hardened by generations of battle, nor was she summoned from distant lands to fight the unknowable menace lurking beneath Shurima. Rather, she was just an ordinary girl, born to loving parents who called the unforgiving southern deserts their home. This was where she would spend her days playing with friends, and her nights dreaming about her place in the world.

In her tenth summer, the young girl Kaisa’s destiny would be changed forever. Had she been older, she might have noticed more of the unusual events that had begun to unfold in the villages—every day, her mother urged her stay home, for fear of strangers wandering the land, demanding tribute to dark powers below. Kaisa and her friends did not believe it, until one evening they came upon a pen of sacrificial goats bought from nomad herdsmen. Using the knife her father had given her on her eighth birthday, she cut their tethers and set the animals free into a nearby canyon. It seemed like a harmless prank, until the unthinkable happened. The ground began to quake, flashes of light scorched the sky, and the children ran for their lives.

The Void had been awakened. A great rift split the bedrock, swallowing up Kaisa’s village and everyone in it, leaving nothing behind but sand pierced with twisted columns as black as night.

Kaisa regained consciousness to find herself trapped underground. She was filled with crippling fear, but there was still hope; she could hear the faint cries of other survivors. They called out to each other feebly, repeating their names one by one like a mantra. Sadly, by the third day, hers was the only voice left. Her friends and family were all gone. She was alone in the darkness.

It was only when all seemed lost that she saw the light.

She followed it down.

Along the way, she found meager sustenance. Amid the debris left by the collapse were ragged waterskins, rotting peaches—anything to keep starvation at bay. But, eventually, Kaisa’s hunger was replaced by fear once again. She found herself in a vast cavern, illuminated by an otherworldly purplish glow, and she could see she was no longer alone.

Skittering creatures swarmed in the depths. The first that came for Kaisa was no bigger than her, and she clutched her knife in both hands, ready to defend herself. The voidling horror knocked her to the ground, but she drove the blade into its pulsing heart, and the two of them tumbled deeper into the abyss.

The creature was seemingly dead, but its unnatural skin had taken hold upon the flesh of her arm. The dark shell tingled, but was hard as steel to the touch. In a panic, Kaisa broke her knife trying to remove it. But when the larger beasts came, she used it as a shield to make her escape.

Soon enough, she realized the shell was becoming part of her. As her daily struggle to survive drew out into years, this second skin grew with her, and so too did her resolve.

Now she had more than hope, she had a plan. Fight hard. Stay alive. Find a way back.

She was transformed, from frightened girl to fearless survivor, from prey to predator. For almost a decade, she has lived between two worlds in an attempt to keep them apart—the Void hungers to consume not only the scattered villages of Shurima, but the whole of Runeterra. She will not allow that to happen.

Though she has slain countless Void-constructs, she understands that many of the people she protects would see her as a monster herself. Indeed, her name has begun to pass into legend, an echo of the ancient horrors of doomed Icathia.

No longer Kaisa… but Kai’Sa.
Ouroboros

Ryan Verniere

Nasus walked at night, unwilling to face the sun. The boy followed in his wake.
How long had he been there?
Those mortals who caught a glimpse of the monstrous vagabond always ran, all save the boy. Together, they wove a path through the bygone tapestry of Shurima. Self-imposed isolation chipped at Nasus’s consciousness. The desert wind howled around their malnourished frames.
“Nasus, look, above the dune sea,” said the child.
Stars guided the pair’s sojourn across the desiccated expanse. The old jackal no longer wore the armor of the Ascended. The golden monuments lay buried with the past. Now a hermit dressed in tattered fabric, Nasus scratched at his matted fur before slowly raising his head to observe the night sky.
“The Piper,” said Nasus, his voice low and graveled. “The season will change soon.”
Nasus put a hand on the boy’s tiny shoulder and looked down into his sunburnt face. There, he saw the soft lines and curves of Shuriman lineage, worn ragged by travel.
When did it become your place to worry? Soon we will find you a home. Wandering between the ruins of an extinguished empire is no life for a child.
This was the nature of the universe. Brief moments unfolded into the endless cycles of existence. The heady philosophy weighed upon him, but it was more than just another stone in his endless tally of self-imposed guilt. In truth, the boy would inevitably be changed if he was allowed to follow. Remorse darkened Nasus’s brow like a thunderhead. Their companionship sated something deep within the ancient hero.
“We can reach Astrologer’s Tower before dawn. But we’ll have to climb,” said the boy.
****
The tower was close. Nasus pulled himself up the cliff face hand over hand, the climb memorized to such perfection that he took great liberties with each handhold, tempting death. The boy clambered up by his side, his agile form utilizing every nook and cranny offered by the blemished rock.
What would happen to this innocent if I gave in to death? The thought troubled Nasus.
Wisps of fog rolled through the crags of the upper cliffs, each threading the narrow rocks like tiny mountain paths. The boy scurried over the top first. Nasus followed.
In the distance, metal clanged against stone, and voices could be heard through the haze — they spoke in a familiar dialect. Nasus was shaken from his reverie.
The well at Astrologer’s Tower occasionally attracted nomads, but never this close to the equinox. The boy stood perfectly still, his fear palpable.
“Where are the fires?” asked the boy.
A horse’s whinny pierced the night.
“Who goes there?” asked the boy. The words rolled through the darkness.
A lantern sparked to life, illuminating a band of riders. Mercenaries. Raiders.
The jackal’s eyes snapped wide.
He saw seven of them. Their curved blades remained sheathed, but the look in their eyes spoke of martial training and guile.
“Where is the caretaker?” asked Nasus.
“He and his wife are asleep. The cool evening prompted them to retire early,” replied one of the riders.
“Old jackal, my name is Malouf,” said another rider. “We have been sent by the Emperor.”
Nasus stepped forward, betraying the briefest hint of anger.
“Does he seek acknowledgement? Then let me give it. There is no emperor in this fallen age,” said Nasus.
The boy stepped forward defiantly. The dark messengers backed away from the lantern. Long shadows obscured defensive stances.
“Deliver your message and leave,” said the child.
Malouf dismounted and stepped forward. He reached a calloused hand into the folds of his shirt and produced a dark amulet bound to a thick, black chain. The geometry of the metal sparked recollections of magic and destruction in Nasus’s mind.
“Emperor Xerath sends offerings. We are to be your servants. He welcomes you to his new capital at Nerimazeth.”
The mercenary’s words fell on Nasus like a hammer on glass.
The boy promptly knelt and snatched up a weighty rock.
“Die!” cried the boy.
“Take him!” said Malouf.
With a heave, the boy hurled the rock through the air, its perfect arc threatening to shatter mercenary bone on impact.
“Renekton, no!” roared Nasus.
The riders abandoned their half-hearted deception. Nasus knew then that the caretaker and his wife were dead. Xerath’s greeting would come in the form of cold steel. Truth began to eclipse illusion.
Nasus reached for the boy. The child tore into shadows of memory that dissipated across the starlit ground.
“Goodbye, brother,” whispered Nasus.
Xerath’s emissaries fanned out, their horses bucking and snorting. The Ascended was flanked on three sides. Malouf did not hesitate, drawing his blade and piercing Nasus’s side with it. Pain rippled through the ancient curator’s body. The rider attempted to withdraw his weapon, but it wouldn’t budge. A clawed hand gripped the blade, keeping it agonizingly buried within Ascended flesh.
“You should have left me to my ghosts,” said Nasus.
Nasus tore Malouf’s sword from his hand, shattering fingers and tearing ligaments.
The demigod pounced on his attacker. Malouf’s body cracked under the jackal’s enormous weight.
Nasus leapt to the next rider, pulling him from his saddle; two strikes ruptured organs and stole the wind from his lungs. His broken form spun off into the sand, a ruined mass of agony. His horse reared and fled into the desert.
“He’s mad!” said one of the riders.
“Not any longer,” said Nasus, approaching the mercenary leader.
A strange fragrance filled the air. Dead flowers spinning on lavender colored threads followed in his wake. Malouf twisted on the ground, the broken fingers of his right hand withered, skin sagging like wet parchment. The barrel of his chest caved in on itself like a rotting spine fruit.
White-knuckled panic overtook the remaining mercenaries. They struggled to keep their mounts under control, if only to retreat. Malouf’s body lay abandoned in the sand.
Nasus turned east toward the ruins of Nerimazeth.
“Tell your ‘emperor’ his cycle nears its end.”
Everything We Should Have Said

Michael Luo

K’Sante wipes his forehead, his bloodied fingers catching sweat and dirt. He stands with his back hunched, and wounds fresh, but still towers over the tensome attackers surrounding him. Beside them, fallen bodies lie baking in the Shuriman heat—all crazed followers of the Ascended who’ve been seeking K’Sante’s death.

The remaining zealots raise their swords. K’Sante sees glints of light on their blades. He knows the sun is watching overhead, its gaze awaiting his next move. He entertains the thought of dying here and spits on the ground. It was a simple ambush. He hadn’t become the Pride of Nazumah just to perish in the very savanna where his ancestors had overcome even grander foes. These were raiders at best—lost in some deranged sorcerer’s delusions of conquest.

The zealots holler and charge, shrublands echoing the rumble of their feet. K’Sante watches their movements. There’s no strategy here—only bloodlust. He grits his teeth, and, despite his battered legs, a bruised chest, and the taste of his own blood in his mouth, braces himself.

Metal clashes against metal. K’Sante’s ntofos block a lethal slash. He growls as he pushes against the zealot’s blade, the weight of his own weapons working in his favor. K’Sante had constructed them with that in mind, their hefty rectangular structure built from cobra-lion armor—one of the strongest materials in all of Shurima.

A zealot sneaks in with a sword and slices K’Sante’s cheek. He grunts from the pain and shoves his ntofos into the foe he’s blocking, causing them to collapse, then swings his weapons in an arc, striking the zealot who’d cut him. He chuckles. Somehow, slaying a Baccai seems easier now than fending off wave after wave of the Ascended’s zealots.

“Kill the nonbeliever!” cry his enemies. “The Magus demands it!”

K’Sante has many words he wishes to say about Xerath, but telling the Magus’ followers would be a waste. They’ll soon join their companions, unable to pass on any messages, and he’d rather speak to Xerath himself to let the Magus know it was he who slayed the Baccai abomination. To think the Magus, a self-declared “god,” would create a cobra-lion to terrorize innocent people...

K’Sante’s stomach churns in disgust. His people, his culture—they are his pride. And, unfortunately for the Magus’ followers, that pride fuels his survival. Eyes forward, he grips his weapons tighter as his enemies push their assault.

The zealots plunge toward him, attacking from all angles. How many are there? Four, five, six? His vision fades in and out—maybe due to heat, maybe due to exhaustion—and he steps forward, but his right knee buckles beneath him. Using his ntofos, he steadies himself and blocks strikes from above and below. His enemies are piling against him, now. They must think he’s hit his limit.

Hardly.

With a roar, he knocks them back and hefts himself onto his feet again. But before he can retaliate, three arrows fall from the sky and land dead center in three zealots’ throats. Stunned, K’Sante watches his foes stagger and gasp for air before toppling over.

“Take them out!” a voice commands.

K’Sante turns, seeing a tall, armored warrior wielding a bow and leading three other archers, each nocking fresh arrows. They wear matching patterns of green and gold, but the leader’s face is hidden behind an ornate mask.

“Worry not, Nazuman,” the leader says. “We are no friends of the Ascended.”

K’Sante glances at the arrows stuck in the dead zealots’ bodies. “I see that.”

The leader laughs. His voice is warm and rich and somehow familiar. K’Sante can’t see the man’s face, yet is reassured.

The zealots rush once more while K’Sante’s unexpected allies gather together.

“Ready, Nazuman?” the leader asks.

“Always.”

K’Sante slams down his ntofos. The ground before him ruptures, sending cracks rippling through the dirt and gravel surging upward from the impact, which knocks back the foes closest to K’Sante. The ntofos’ outer layers shatter. Their now-exposed centers shimmer in the sun, revealing twin obsidian blades. K’Sante reverses his grip and aims the sharpened edges ahead. He knows he only has a brief time before his weapons regenerate their defensive coating.

K’Sante leaps forward. Mustering all his strength, he uses his momentum to spin midair, heaving one leg across his front to land a devastating roundhouse kick on three of his foes. As they tumble back, he lands with a thud and slices his ntofos across their chests, tearing through armor and flesh.

The zealots scream.

K’Sante’s allies roar.

A hail of arrows falls around him, blocking the zealots who’ve flanked to his sides.

“Take no prisoners!” the leader declares.

K’Sante nods. Red runs down his face—whether it’s his blood or his enemies, he isn’t sure. With clenched teeth and furrowed brow, he pushes ahead, thrusting his blades into the hearts of his enemies. One by one, they fall.

When the dust settles, the zealots lie still, finally among their previously fallen companions.

“It is over,” the leader observes, satisfied.

“Yes,” K’Sante says. “For now.” He stands upright, but just barely, his face and body stained crimson. The ntofos in his hands begin to regenerate as he stares at the lifeless zealots’ bodies.

“You haven’t changed one bit, K’Sante,” the leader says.

K’Sante looks up. Mask now in hand, a smiling face looks back. It's an expression K’Sante assumed he’d never see from this man—from Tope—ever again.

“I’m sure you have questions. But for now, come with us.” Tope gestures loosely into the distance with his hand. “Our camp is nearby, and you look dreadful.”

K’Sante can’t stifle his strained breathing. Even though he’s unsure, the idea of rest is too enticing. K’Sante nods slowly and takes a step closer, but the world spins around him, and he collapses to the ground.

When K’Sante wakes, he’s lying on a wooden bed beneath soft blankets. He runs his fingers along the verdant threads, feeling their gentle, sinewy fibers—a trademark of Marrowmarkan fabric.

The tent overhead shields him from the sun’s heat, but he can still hear the bustling camp outside its walls. Iron being forged, steel being hammered—sounds that remind him of his own weapons. K’Sante quickly scans his surroundings and, to his relief, sees his now fully regenerated ntofos leaning against the bedpost, polished and cleaned. He studies the cobra-lion inlay along their sides, images he carved and painted himself based on some of Tope’s old drawings. He wonders if Tope noticed. Would he say something, even if he did? What if Tope made the wrong assumption? That was years ago, after all. K’Sante tries to remember. Exactly how long has it been?

“Two whole days,” a voice says. “You were out like a baby armordillo.” Dressed in a Marrowmarkman tunic of greens and golds, Tope stands by the entrance of K’Sante’s tent, his arms crossed. Seeing his grin, K’Sante offers a half-smile in return.

“No mask today?” K’Sante asks, sitting up.

“We both know, had I not been wearing a mask, you wouldn’t have let me help with those zealots.”

K’Sante opens his mouth to protest, only to close it again with a sigh. Despite his recent efforts to curb his more audacious tendencies, he knows there’s still truth in that statement.

“Word spreads fast,” Tope explains. “Over the past few months, the Ascended forces have encroached farther south. I expected them to be by the savanna. And I expected Nazumah to send its finest. What I didn’t expect was to see you. Just you. Fighting twenty-plus of their soldiers.”

“I thought I could take them.” K’Sante stumbles out of bed. He grabs his armor from beside his weapons and grunts as he puts it on, his body aching everywhere.

“Of course you did,” Tope mutters under his breath. “And I’m sure you would have.” He shakes his head. “Well, if you can walk, you can eat. Why don’t you thank me over lunch? I won’t have the Pride of Nazumah returning home on an empty stomach.”

K’Sante gingerly follows Tope out of the tent. Before him, the camp stretches wide. Warriors spar and restring bows, and among them are some faces he recognizes from Tope’s rescue party. Nearby, chefs stir various cast-iron pots. K’Sante smells something comforting and familiar wafting out from one of them: Cassava, yams, and cornmeal. And from another, tomatoes, onions, goat meat, and peppers over rice.

Tope pulls a couple chairs up to an open table. A young man wearing armor two sizes too large rushes over with filled glasses.

“Palm wine?” Tope offers.

K’Sante is tempted. It is the favorite drink of his home. But, he passes. He wishes to keep his mind sound for wherever this conversation might lead. “Water,” he answers. “Please.”

Tope beams at the attendant. “You heard the man.”

The young man scurries off.

“So,” K’Sante asks, “what do they call you here?”

“King or Lord, mostly,” Tope says, face static. K’Sante hesitates. Tope slaps the table with a grin. “I’m joking! You think, after all these years, I’d crown myself like a mad Ascended?”

“I don’t dare guess what your aunty might think,” K’Sante says.

“Oh, that woman would have me disowned,” Tope assures. “Publicly—so our ancestors would not be offended,” he explains in his aunty’s voice.

K’Sante chuckles.

“That’s no joke.” Tope continues, chuckling in tandem. “Your parents would do the same.”

He pours water for K’Sante and himself as the attendant returns with two plates of food. K’Sante’s stomach growls at the sight of peppered rice, dyed bright orange by spices, with fiery scents steaming off its top.

“Please,” Tope says. “Dig in.”

As K’Sante eats, he examines Tope and the surrounding camp. Everyone here seems happy, even amid warfare. Laughter travels from nearby people exchanging battlefield tales. Men and women come and go, offering their well-wishes as they jog between stations. The atmosphere is busy and driven, but whenever Tope asks for more food and drink, it’s delivered without complaint.

“Looks like you’ve made it,” K’Sante observes.

Tope sips his wine. He then raises an arm and motions to the rest of the camp with a sweep of his hand. “Yes, leading my own band of fools. So far, no one’s removed me from command. Can you believe it?”

“You’re too stubborn for that.”

“Does the cheetah call the leopard spotted?”

Both men smile. K’Sante notices the roughened edges on Tope’s face—marks of age and a few scars. Are they new? Or were they part of what he failed to notice before? K’Sante searches for something. Anger, sadness, pain? His body stiffens with guilt. He continues to eat and glances around the camp, the busy clamor filling the pause in their conversation.

“Commander,” Tope says. “That’s what they’re supposed to call me. I don’t like it, so I command them not to.”

“At least you’re not the Pride of Marrowmark,” K’Sante says.

“Ha! That title always fit you better than it did me. Say, I hear there’s going to be a celebration in your name?”

K’Sante humbles himself. “Uh, yes. At Hunter’s Hall in Nazumah.”

Tope looks impressed. “Right where we used to train. That’s fantastic! Your mother and father—I assume they’re going?”

“I couldn’t drag them away.”

“I would like to see you try.”

K’Sante chuckles.

“When is it?” Tope asks.

K’Sante swallows another bite of peppered rice. “It’s next month. The first weekend.”

“Oh, right around my wedding!” Tope chirps cheerfully.

K’Sante wavers, searching for words. Quickly, he smiles. “Congratulations!”

“Thank you,” Tope smiles back, unaware of K’Sante’s fluster. “Looks like we’ll both miss each other’s special occasions.”

K’Sante chuckles again. After all these years, Tope still has his wit. That’s what had attracted him to Tope in the first place. How, in their interactions, there was always laughter. On hunts, at dinner, in bed. The timeless parts of their romance were the joys they shared.

K’Sante misses it. And yet, he knows it was the right choice for them to separate. That final cobra-lion hunt—it broke them. They were young. They were strong. And they couldn’t agree on anything. That’s the funny thing about pride. Sometimes, it reveals the worst version of your best self.

Out of all the things K’Sante expected, the last was this meal with the man sitting across from him. But he isn’t unprepared. Years ago, he had promised himself that should this day happen, there would be no blame. The past was the past. In fact, he’s more curious now about the present and the future.

K’Sante stares up from his food. “How did you two meet?”

“Ah, funny story,” Tope responds. “I met him at school.”

“School?”

“Yes,” Tope says, then pauses. “After the cobra-lion, I went back to Marrowmark. Back to school. You know that I always loved studying the intricacies of combat. So, I took a couple years to learn everything, such as strategies from faraway cultures. Noxus, Demacia, and those cold, sad warriors in the Freljord.”

K’Sante feigns surprise. “And that was enough to convince them to make you commander?” He exhales through closed teeth with exaggerated gravity. “War really does make people desperate.”

Tope snickers. “I’m glad you’ve not lost your humor.”

He leans back in his chair. “We’ve both come far, K’Sante,” Tope observes. “From two young hunters with... What did they used to call us? All talent, no discipline?”

K’Sante nods. “Now we’re some talent with some discipline... sometimes.”

Tope laughs, loud and free. K’Sante is reminded of the warmth of that booming sound—how Tope always made those around him feel accepted. K’Sante sighs, relaxes his shoulders, and, for the first time during this meal, he too leans back against his chair.

“You know, I never got the chance to say this,” Tope begins, “probably because I didn’t believe it back then, but now... I'll regret it if I don’t. So here goes.”

K’Sante watches Tope pick at his nails before he continues.

“I’m sorry,” Tope finally says, sitting up tall. “I didn’t support you back then. During the cobra-lion battle, I mean. At least, not the way you wanted. I hadn’t realized what it meant for you to—”

“No,” K’Sante interjects.

He’s thought about this conversation many times over. A few years ago, it was the only thing he could think about. Rehashing what he felt, and why. Then, later on, it started to come up less frequently and felt more like a lesson. A reminder of how their relationship had evolved him, and how it allowed him to finally acknowledge the damage his pride could do.

It took him even longer to understand that, even now, his pride is a force—one that drives off others and turns tides in battle. In love, it is... not so different. Killing enemies is straightforward. Resolving conflicts is not.

These days, K’Sante hasn’t thought about this conversation much, if at all. Again, he certainly hadn’t expected to be having it now, but all those years spent thinking about it allows him to say what comes next.

“No,” K’Sante repeats firmly, and sits forward. “I hurt you.”

He exhales. “Yes, the cobra-lion was damning. And yes, it meant everything to me to slay it—to prove that I could be Nazumah’s greatest warrior. But I didn’t need to do it in a way that belittled you. In fact, I used your notes. You discovered it was Baccai. That’s what allowed me to finish what we had started. For that, I’m grateful.”

K’Sante looks down at their plates, both half-eaten. A sign of deep conversation. His eyes rise to meet Tope’s. “I could’ve been a better partner to you, too. And for that, I’m sorry. I truly am.”

He senses the cool desert air on his skin as he watches Tope’s face soften. The sun must’ve set. When it dropped from the sky, he can’t recall.

He takes a breath and smiles. “But you should also thank me.”

“Oh?” Tope says, amused. He sips his wine as he considers K’Sante. “And why’s that?”

“By doing what I did, it seems I’ve helped you in both your career and your love life.”

Wine spurts from Tope’s nose. He throws his head back, howling with laughter. It’s contagious. The merry sounds of both men intertwine with nearby campfire songs and dance.

“That pride of yours,” Tope says, “has never truly gone away.” Smiling and sighing, he wipes droplets of wine off the table. “It is your greatest strength, and I, for one, think the Nazumans are lucky to have you. In times like these, there is no better Pride of Nazumah.”

K’Sante sits back and enjoys the wide, open evening sky. He had imagined this conversation going a million different ways. Seeing Tope’s success, hearing his acceptance, and feeling his maturity—coupled with K’Sante’s own growth—is a relief.

He grabs the pitcher of palm wine and pours himself a glass. “And no better commander of Marrowmark.”

“Then let us toast,” Tope declares. “Ascended, empires, or beasts—”

“None shall threaten our homes while we still stand!”
Invocation

The sword-wife stood amid the burnt out ruin of her home. Everything and everyone that mattered to her was gone, and she was filled with fathomless grief... and hate. Hate was now all that compelled her.
She saw again the smile on his face as he gave the order. He was meant to be their protector, but he’d spat upon his vows. Hers was not the only family shattered by the oath-breaker.
The desire to go after him was strong. She wanted nothing more than to plant her sword in his chest and watch the life drain from his eyes... but she knew she would never be able to get close enough to him. He was guarded day and night, and she was but one warrior. She would never be able to fight her way through his battalion alone. Such a death would serve no purpose.
She took a shuddering breath, knowing there was no coming back.
A crude effigy of a man, formed of sticks and twine, lay upon a fire-blackened dresser. Its body was wrapped in a scrap of cloth torn from the cloak of the betrayer. She’d pried it from her husband’s dead grasp. Alongside it was a hammer and three rusted nails.
She gathered everything up and moved to the threshold. The door itself was gone, smashed to splinters in the attack. Beyond, lit by moonlight, lay the empty, darkened fields.
Reaching up, the sword-wife pressed the stick-effigy to the hardwood lintel.
“I invoke thee, Lady of Vengeance,” she said, her voice low, trembling with the depth of her fury. “From beyond the veil, hear my plea. Come forth. Let justice be done.”
She readied her hammer and the first of the nails.
“I name my betrayer once,” she said, and spoke his name aloud. As she did so, she placed the tip of the first nail to the chest of the stick-figure. With a single strike, she hammered it in deep, pinning it to the hardwood door frame.
The sword-wife shivered. The room had become markedly colder. Or had she imagined it?
“I name him twice,” she said, and she did so, hammering the second nail alongside the first.
Her gaze dropped, and she jolted in shock. A dark figure stood out in the moonlit field, a hundred yards in the distance. It was utterly motionless. Breathing quicker, the sword-wife returned her attention to the unfinished task.
“I name him thrice,” she said, speaking again the name of the murderer of her husband and children, before hammering home the final nail.
An ancient spirit of vengeance stood before her, filling the doorway, and the sword-wife staggered back, gasping involuntarily.
The otherworldly being was clad in archaic armor, her flesh translucent and glowing with spectral un-light. Black Mist coiled around her like a living shroud.
With a squeal of tortured metal, the spectral figure drew forth the blackened spear protruding from her breastplate — the ancient weapon that had ended her life.
She threw it to the ground before the sword-wife. No words were spoken; there was no need. The sword-wife knew what was being offered to her — vengeance — and knew its terrible cost: her soul.
The spirit watched on, her face impassive and her eyes burning with an unrelenting cold fury, as the sword-wife picked up the treacherous weapon.
“I pledge myself to vengeance,” said the sword-wife, her voice quivering. She reversed the spear, aiming the tip inward, towards her heart. “I pledge it with my blood. I pledge it with my soul.”
She paused. Her husband would have pleaded for her to turn away from this path. He would have begged her not to condemn her soul for theirs. A moment of doubt gnawed at her. The undying specter watched on.
The sword-wife’s eyes narrowed as she thought of her husband lying dead, cut down by swords and axes. She thought again of her children, sprawled upon the ground, and her resolve hardened like a cold stone in her heart. Her grip tightened upon the spear.
“Help me,” she implored, her decision made. “Please, help me kill him.”
She rammed the spear into her chest, driving it in deep.
The sword-wife’s eyes widened and she dropped to her knees. She tried to speak, but only blood bubbled from her lips.
The ghostly apparition watched her die, her expression impassive.
As the last of the lifeblood ran from her body, the shade of the sword-wife climbed to her feet. She looked down at her insubstantial hands in wonder, then at her own corpse lying dead-eyed in a growing pool of blood upon the floor. The shade’s expression hardened, and a ghostly sword appeared in her hand.
An ethereal tether, little more than a wisp of light, linked the newly formed shade to the avenging spirit she had summoned. Through their bond, the sword-wife saw her differently, glimpsing the noble warrior she had been in life: tall and proud, her armor gleaming. Her posture was confident, yet without arrogance; a born leader, a born soldier. This was a commander the sword-wife would have willingly bled for.
Behind the spirit’s anger, she sensed her empathy — recognition of their shared pain of betrayal.
“Your cause is our cause,” said Kalista, the Spear of Vengeance. Her voice was grave cold. “We walk the path of vengeance as one, now.”
The sword-wife nodded.
With that, the avenging spirit and the shade of the sword-wife stepped into the darkness and were gone.
In Sight of Land

Ian St. Martin

The waters were eerily still at night. Their surface was so undisturbed, one might mistake it for dark glass mirroring the starlit skies above. Moonlight bathed everything in cold, silver light, though its radiance was slowly dying.
The moon was being suffocated. The sky between it and those who looked upon its beauty had been overtaken by questing tendrils of shadow that branched across the night like living, malevolent storms. Their like had been seen many times before, and many were the souls carried off within them into fathomless torment, but never had they grown so large, or reached so far.
For all their horror, the world had grown used to Harrowings, tempests of darkness teeming with monstrous wraiths that emanated from the horrid Shadow Isles. Those in their path learned how to watch for the signs, how to survive their wailing fury, and how to mourn those taken by them. But what was happening now, what was reaching up to swallow the sky, was something different.
Almost like there was some unseen hand guiding it.
Tonight, though, one could still glimpse the world and the stillness of the sea. Tonight, its perfection was marred only by tiny islands of splintered wood, torn cloth, and the bobbing forms of the newly dead.
Tudre tried not to look at them. In the first hours after their doomed flight and the desperate struggle to abandon the ship, he had screamed himself hoarse, calling out in hope that anyone else might have survived. But it was in vain. He was alone.
And so Tudre marshaled his remaining strength to cling to a hunk of driftwood, and resist the icy waters seeking to carry him down to their lightless depths. He could almost hear the deep calling up to him to join all the others, her silver tongue carrying the promise of sleep, if he would just draw her water into his lungs.
The sea had numbed his legs, but Tudre willed himself to move them. He shut out the clarion call of despair that tugged at his boots with the gentle comforts of death. Tudre had not reached this far in life through submission, and he would not start now.
He just had to get to land. Tudre had sailed with all speed to make for Fallgren, a small island off the Valoran mainland. They had gotten so close—it couldn’t be far.
Though exhaustion and the cold blurred his vision, Tudre caught movement out of the corner of his good eye. He focused, revealing it to be a scrap of oiled vellum drifting close to the splintered sanctuary he held fast to. Tudre peered at it. The marks and ink on its surface were marred and smeared by water, yet still intelligible.
It was a piece of their navigation chart. Scrawled onto it was a rough, timeworn map of trade and shipping routes and measurements of maritime distance. The names of known places, and even a few secret ones. Crude drawings of clouds with faces, breathing out gusts from between their lips to mark the best lanes where the winds might bless a ship with speedy passage, for those who dared—
“You’re insane.”
Tudre snorted, reaching up to catch the swinging lantern that was the cabin’s sole source of light. The seas were getting rougher, and he had no time to suffer his quartermaster’s nonsense.
“Gettin’ soft in yer old age, Mister Bowsy?” Tudre grinned his big, cunning grin as he baited the old corsair next to him. “No shame if ye are. Y’can tell me, though do me a kindness and say so now. I would need someone else in your spot, to keep the crew in line.”
“I ain’t scared.” Bowsy steadied himself to spit a wad of phlegm onto the deck through the gap made by a missing tooth. “But I see sense. This’ll get us killed, skipper. And I ain’t the only one who thinks so.”
“We go fast, we get rich.” Tudre stabbed a finger down at the old map set on the table before them. He swept aside a tiny puddle that had collected on it from a drip above their heads, and then traced a route denoted in dull red ink. “Every other ship around is docked, crews actin’ like they be back on dear ol’ mum’s teat. But commerce ne’er sleeps, Mister Bowsy. Think on what’s sittin’ out there, unguarded! We make a run, we can get what they’re all too craven to collect.”
“They’re tied to dock because it’s a damn Harrowing.” Bowsy crossed his thick, tattooed arms over his chest. “Biggest anyone’s seen, mind you, even the oldest ones. Whatever’s out there ain’t worth bein’ swept up in that, I’m tellin’ ya!”
Tudre straightened, finding some of the red ink had come off the map to stain his finger. He stared his quartermaster in the eye. His voice dropped, settling into the colder tone that meant the discussion had run its course. “Anyone wants out can go, no repercussions. Less hands means a greater stake for those with the grit to be going out. And we are going out, make no mistake.”
Bowsy tried, one last time. “At least let it be put to a vote. Let the crew have their say in it.”
“Not this time.”
Tudre’s good eye bored into the quartermaster, unyielding. Bowsy held his gaze for a moment that stretched into another, but no further. He looked away.
“Now.” Tudre’s grin returned, full and cunning. “You in or not?”
Shaking his head, Tudre tried to banish the memory from his mind, but the effort left him dizzy. The unwelcome remembrance held fast despite his efforts, clinging behind his eyes like pitch. Or as though something was holding it there, forcing him to see.
He felt a strangeness fall over him then, almost like mist curling up off the water. A sailor’s life was fraught with omens and ill portents, gut feelings and lucky breaks. Tudre had long become attuned to a world that existed side by side with his own, and every now and then the walls between them thinned. It was happening to him now, like a dull throb. An insistent sense of dread and anger, seeking to work guilt into his bones. But he’d have none of it.
“Boat’s made fer sailin’, ask any man,” Tudre wheezed through chattering teeth. “I done that run dozens o’ times. See a chance at fortune, ya take it. Can’t live this life if ye ain’t the darin’ sort!”
Tudre’s words bore the hallmark bravado he had carried so well in his life, a bounty of natural grit and ruthlessness that had seen him not only rise to captain his own ship, but keep it. The high seas were unkind to the weak, as was Bilgewater and any big port whose doors he had ever darkened. Pass on an opportunity, and you might look back and see it was the last chance you had to hold onto your stake, or keep your guts in your belly.
But out in this night, and this cold, there was no one to be cowed by his speech. Only the dread that rolled up from the deep. It persisted, undiminished.
“Land is close,” Tudre told himself. “It has t’be.”
Tudre had not realized he was moving. His hunk of driftwood lived up to its name, lazily edging forward into a tangled field of debris. The corsair looked over the floating collection of scraps and splinters, but found no better means to keep from drowning. There was a bolt of sailcloth among it, but Tudre knew it would prove more a hazard than a savior. He had seen more than one panicked sailor ensnared by such in a storm, as good as chains if the winds and spray carried them over the side.
Concern creased Tudre’s weathered features as the sailcloth came closer. He put out a hand, trying to push it away, but his arm sank into it to the elbow, stealing his balance. He snarled through clenched teeth, fighting the sails—
“Hold fast!” Tudre bellowed, trying to raise his voice above the storms. “Secure that line!”
He couldn’t tell if anyone could hear him as he moved about, shouting orders. Rain and spray and shadows lashed the deck, the sails, the crew. Gales roared over and around them, not with wind but with voices. A howling choir of the harrowed damned had befallen Tudre on the last leg of his run. His ship was fast, but not fast enough to stay ahead of it.
Their hold was swollen with treasure. Goods pilfered from coastal stores, trade ships at anchor, all of it easy taking as their keepers had abandoned their posts to flee the Harrowing. That fortune was slowing them now. Bowsy would have admonished Tudre for not believing him, if he hadn’t been the first man plucked up by the darkness bearing down on them.
“Skipper!”
Tudre whirled around, hearing the boy Flir and seeing him grappling with a bolt of sail. Flir was fighting desperately to lash the sail to the mast, to keep it from stripping and snapping loose, but he was losing that fight.
Tudre locked eyes with Flir, the boy pleading for his help as the oiled cloth whipped and defied his every attempt to secure it to a spar of timber. Tudre weighed going toward him, but then saw splinters fly from the base of the spar, and all doubt fled.
“Skip—”
The timber snapped, carrying Flir up into the roiling dark. Tudre saw his eyes, wide in terror as he flew into a cloud of twisted faces and outstretched, clutching hands. A heartbeat later the boy vanished, just one more scream added to the choir.
“Better him than I,” Tudre snarled against the silent accusation of the sea. He felt the pressure of it inside his skull, the feeling of being watched even though he was alone.
The sailcloth tangled around his forearm, holding tighter the more he tried to escape.
“Better him,” he repeated, glaring down at the scrap of sail clinging to his hand, “than I.”
Why? The cloth encircling his wrist seemed to ask.
Tudre shivered, but not from the cold. The mind was playing tricks now, beaten and worn out and desperate as he was. He tried to yank his arm free, but stopped midway as he nearly lost hold of the driftwood.
“Because I be the damn captain!” Tudre spat. “’Tis my ship, and my charge. Mine’s a duty to every lad and lass aboard, not just Flir the boy. I run off to aid him, get snatched up too, what then? What becomes of the rest of me crew, without me there?”
For a moment, anger got the best of Tudre. He twisted, pulling his arm back sharply, and the sail finally relinquished its hold. But it swung him around, putting his back to the driftwood, and it was another second until his grip left him and he was under the water.
Silence rushed over him, and shocking cold. Tudre flailed for a few heartbeats before asserting control over himself. He was a seasoned man of the sea, not some green deckhand. He looked up, seeing the surface just above him, and tried to pump his arms, his legs, to raise himself back up. But he couldn’t move.
It was more than just tired muscles numbed by cold. Tudre’s good eye flicked this way and that, seeing only faint silhouettes in the waning moonlight. More debris, the lighter bits of a ship that had yet to settle down into the inky deep. And bodies. Bodies of women and men who called him captain.
Who relied upon you...
The words struck Tudre, a feeling rather than a sound.
... and you betrayed them.
Tudre broke free of whatever had been holding him, panic lending the strength he needed to surface. He gasped for air, twisting about in search of the driftwood. He spotted it and grabbed hold, embracing it like his first love.
It was only then, as his fingers sought purchase on its slick shape, that Tudre realized what it was. It was part of a lifeboat. One of the lifeboats—
“Into the lifeboats!” someone was screaming. “Abandon ship!”
There were things on board the ship now. Wretched, horrible, blighted beasts that had detached from the storm like lice shed from a dog. They stalked through the torrent without effort, undisturbed by the chaos as they butchered Tudre’s crew with fang and claw.
Tudre and his mates had earned monikers over their careers. Privateers, merchants, businessmen, all true, but just as true were pirates, corsairs, reavers. They were not strangers to violence, and every one of them walked the decks with more weapons strapped to them than they had hands to carry.
But they fell to the wraiths like wheat before the scythe. Men and women Tudre had seen brawl, hunt great leviathans of the deep, fight in the vanguard of boarding actions braving cannon and steel, begged like children to monsters that couldn’t understand a thing like mercy, much less provide it. All they provided was the severance of body and spirit.
Tudre punched and shoved his way through the mass of panicked faces crowding around the few leaky lifeboats the ship had. Several had been left behind at port to reduce weight so they could load more spoils, and now men and women packed the tiny wooden craft, far more than the boats could carry.
“Make way!” Tudre cuffed a shipmate aside, swinging one leg onto the closest lifeboat.
“Hold!” a man called out from the bow of the lifeboat. “This one’s full up! Any more, and she’ll roll us all down below.”
“Cast off!” said Tudre, fingers tightening on the hilt of the cutlass at his waist.
“Can’t risk it with this many on ’er now!” the man replied.
Tudre put a hand on the back of the man’s neck, pulling him close as though to whisper a secret in his ear. Instead the captain’s cutlass found his gut, steel bursting out the man’s back in a welter of blood rendered black by the madness swallowing them all. In one smooth motion, Tudre withdrew his blade and pitched the lifeless body over the side.
“There,” he hissed. “One body fewer. Now cast off!”
“I be a survivor,” Tudre argued, though the strength was missing from his words. “The strong live on, and the weak die. I chose life, a chance at it, for everyone in that boat, rather than capsizing it and leaving all to drown. They at least had the chance.”
He didn’t know who he was trying to convince anymore. The sense of guilt that had become a voice was now many, thundering in his mind like broadside cannon.
... you did this...
... our lives forfeit...
... your greed...
... killed us all...
... murderer...
... turncoat...
Tudre lowered his head, resting his brow against the wreckage of the lifeboat, buckling under the weight of their silent condemnation. “Stop.”
The moon’s light was nearly gone. Tudre looked up, seeing a faint blurred strip on the horizon. His soul flared with delirious hope.
“Land,” he gasped.
Nervous, hysterical laughter bubbled from Tudre’s lips, overcome with relief and the prospect of seeing the sun rise over another day. The laughter stopped abruptly, when something jostled him from behind.
He noticed then the dark shapes all around him. He could have sworn none of them had been near just moments before. Yet here they floated, bobbing gently, the still flesh of his crew surrounding him.
“I never did you ill,” said Tudre, his voice shaking. “Anythin’ we did was for yer fortune as much as mine. All of you knew the risks. You’d have done the same as me!”
The voices assailing Tudre seemed to emanate from the corpses. Their cries buffeted him, stripping his nerves bare.
“Stop!” he pleaded. “I beg ye!”
But they would not cease. They merged into a single terrible chorus, repeating a single word like a dirge to drive down and bury in Tudre’s heart.
BETRAYER!
“No!” he screamed in denial, the sound carrying over the lightless water.
As one, the spirits of Tudre’s crew sat up, peeling away from their bodies. Flir, Bowsy, all of them staring at him with slack faces and clouded eyes. No sound left their blue lips, but Tudre’s head was filled to bursting with their rage.
“No,” he wailed, screwing his eyes shut. “Just leave me be!”
Suddenly the driftwood sank a fraction, as though under added weight. Tudre forced open his eyes, and found himself staring up into the face of death.
It was a woman, tall and lithe, standing atop the driftwood with a balance that was as effortless as it was impossible. Where her flesh should have been was instead smoldering, spectral blue energy. She was clad in battered armor and a helm with a long, black plume. A trio of spears had been driven through her chest, and she had another gripped in her hand.
The sight of her turned Tudre’s insides cold and leaden. Everyone knew the legends, the whispered things a man could laugh off as stories meant to scare children. Stories of an avatar of revenge, appearing wherever injustice had been done and voices cried out for vindication.
They cried out for Lady Vengeance, and with spear in hand, she would answer with damnation.
Tudre’s crew came closer, the woman’s eerie light reflected in their blazing, sapphire eyes.
“No,” Tudre pleaded, as the sight before him, cutting him off from the promise of land ahead, wrenched away the last of his resolve. “I was only tryin’ to make me way in this world. My crew didn’t deserve their fate, no, but nor do I deserve this. You don’t know what it be like, leading those in your command to their doom, to be responsible for the damnation of their very souls!”
Sudden life was brought to her cold, unreadable features, almost as if there was a sound in the distance that only she could hear. The woman glared down at Tudre, boring into the core of him. Rage twisted her face in a rictus for an instant, and then it was gone.
Slowly she lowered her spear, resting it just under Tudre’s throat. She pushed, though not with enough pressure to pierce his flesh and impale him. Just enough to separate him from the driftwood, and push him under the water.
Tudre’s mind screamed to fight, the urge to survive willing him to rise, but he could not. The spear tip at his throat held him beneath. Tudre looked up at that shimmering, dispassionate visage. Lady Vengeance had come for him at last.
The voices had all gone silent. His crew sank down with him, closing around him like fingers making a fist. All light faded. Tudre finally succumbed to the deep, and drew her into his lungs. The last bubbles slipped from his lips as he drifted lower into the darkness, and he went down, just in sight of land.
Wukong

Within Ionia’s magical forests dwells a tribe of vastaya known as the Shimon. A cautious people, they see life as an evolutionary climb to wisdom—upon death, they believe they become stones, returning to the soil to begin the climb of life anew.
Impulsive, clever, and easily bored, young Kong never had much in common with other Shimon. For countless years, they endured his pranks… until the day he arrived in a panic, insisting that a great elemental dragon was coming to burn their woodland home.
But Kong only chuckled as his tribe began to flee. Realizing he had fooled them, and with their patience finally at an end, the Shimon named him outcast. Kong, for his part, was ambivalent. He would seek out people with a better sense of humor.
Living as something of a charlatan, he proclaimed himself “the Monkey King” and often challenged mortals to duels, or games of cunning. He claimed to be undefeated—until he crossed a Noxian headsman in the hinterlands of Zhyun. The Noxian and his comrades chased the Monkey King deep into the wilderness, where he hid, only emerging again after the invaders left the shores of the First Lands for good.
And in time, Kong saw the brutality Noxus had inflicted upon his homeland.
He set out to meet the fabled combat-masters of Wuju, but found that their village had been annihilated. The only living soul was a man sitting quietly among the ruins, so Kong challenged him to a good-natured fight. In a single motion, the man stood, knocked the vastaya down, then resumed his meditation.
For weeks, Kong returned again and again, determined to defeat this dour man—but the Monkey King was always outmaneuvered, no matter if he approached from behind, above, or below. The warrior could sense whenever Kong was about to attack, even when the vastaya tried to distract him with hilarious jokes, and he somehow knew not to drink his tea when Kong laced it with stupefying spirits.
Eventually, the Monkey King knelt before the man and begged to learn his ways. Kong wanted to be the greatest warrior, but he also sought something more. He just couldn’t quite put it into words.
The man saw Kong’s humility, and knew the vastaya was ready. He introduced himself as Yi, the last master of Wuju, and agreed to train Kong in its virtues of discipline and patience. He could help channel Kong’s recklessness and impulsiveness into a lethally swift and surprising fighting style.
The two grew to respect each other, yet Yi refused to speak much of his past, or why he would not leave the ruined village. Kong made a proposition. The two would engage in a friendly sparring bout. If Kong won, Yi had to reveal why he’d stopped fighting. If Yi prevailed, Kong wouldn’t speak for four full seasons.
Yi eagerly accepted.
When Kong had first arrived at Wuju, he crept through a field of smokepoppies, and he lured his master back there now. Each time Yi attacked, the agitated flowers would burst around him—until finally he struck out through the growing haze at what he believed was Kong, but instead hit a straw decoy. Kong seized his opportunity, and grappled Yi to the ground.
Finally, Yi told Kong the truth. He and his fellow disciples had gone to defend Ionia during the war, bringing the wrath of Noxus down upon Wuju in turn. He blamed himself for the death of every last villager, and watched over the ruins as penance.
This, Kong realized, was what he sought. Although his tribe had cast him out, he wanted to defend the Shimon, who had sheltered him for so long, and set him on the path to wisdom and enlightenment. Proud of his student, Yi also felt a renewed sense of purpose—he granted Kong an enchanted staff, crafted by the legendary weaponsmith Doran, and a new honorific, reserved only for the brightest students of Wuju.
From that day forward, he was known as Wukong.
Though the war is long over, Noxus’ influence continues to defile Ionia. Roads have been carved through the ancient forests, self-styled “tax collectors” hound peaceful folk who have nothing left to give, and the great festivals of renewal have been slowly declining, year after year.
But the great warriors Wukong and Master Yi are ready. Side by side, they roam the First Lands, resolved to combat injustice and hatred wherever they find it.