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Sisterhood of War Part I: Old Wounds

Ian St. Martin

“Is anything you just heard unclear to you?”

Tifalenji knelt in darkness. She did not raise her head to the voice addressing her, because the voice was part of that darkness. It filled the chamber, swelling warm and sickly sweet, with a scent like rotting flowers. Such a thing was not particularly remarkable to one whose life was sworn to the weft and wane of runes—even a smith as young as Tifalenji did not question what surrounded her, now.

She knew when to accept that something was beyond her understanding.

“All is clear,” she answered.

“Excellent.”

The darkness rasped, as though drawing in breath. “Your mistress spoke highly of you. Resourceful,” it spoke the word in another voice, the voice of Tifalenji’s teacher, “and those who are resourceful can be of great use.”

Tifalenji swallowed. She felt the air displace, the temperature rise as though the chamber were now filled with people. Daring to look out the corner of her eye, she saw the hems of robed figures lining the walls, ringing her and the source of the voice.

“Watch the moon.” Suddenly there was a pulse of light, reflecting cold and silver against the floor. “See its course, how it turns.”

Her mind raced, considering what lay ahead, the moments available to her spilling away one by one, like grains of sand from an hourglass.

“Remember your task above all else.” A hand extended from the dark, cupping Tifalenji’s chin. “What we have entrusted you to find, to return to us, cannot be replaced.” The hand lifted Tifalenji’s head, and she looked up into a perfect reflection of her own face, grinning with another person’s smile.

“You, however, can be.”

Erath was a son of Noxus. From the first generation of his tribe to be born into the empire, his training had begun the day he took his first steps.

Fortitude. Discipline. Resolve.

He was raised among shepherds, tending flocks and beasts of burden, keeping them well until the time for harvest came. He learned to kill, quickly and cleanly, with the small knife he had been taught to never let leave his side. It was a lesson that would do him credit when the day came that Noxus would call upon him to serve.

He had been taught to kill his enemies, his empire’s enemies, but never to hate them. Because an enemy of the empire was never more than a ceremony away from being a wayward brother or sister, brought forth with honor and purpose into the arms of Noxus to stand beside Erath in the line. To make him stronger.

Kill them until they’re family, his father had once told him, when he showed Erath the dull purple trails of his old campaign scars. Erath had never hated his enemies, but here, looking around at the scope of what surrounded him, without even knowing who their enemy was, he pitied them.

The streets quaked with an endless procession, tens of thousands of soldiers passing down the boulevards and avenues of the Immortal Bastion. A dozen tongues overlapped in the primal shouted rhythm of battle chants, marching calls, and war song. The full unbridled might of the Noxian host was on display, with blades and the hands that wielded them from across the breadth of the empire. Tribal war parties sauntered down the roads, clad in skins and ceremonial dress, followed by tightly regimented cohorts of troops encased in blackened iron plate, and a contingent of brightly uniformed naval soldiers from Shurima.

And more after them, and on, and on.

Countless peoples, but a single empire. The spectacle, the sheer demonstration of strength, stilled Erath’s heart to see it.

Erath’s own tribe was in the midst of disembarking from the riverboat that had ferried them from the plains of Dalamor down south to the capital. He and his comrades had marveled over their oars at the sight of the Immortal Bastion, the towering central monolith of ancient stone visible two days out from their arrival. He looked up from watching his chieftain Yhavi squabble with a gaggle of quartermasters to behold it again, now within the boundaries of the city proper. The sun was trapped behind the trio of enormous towers at the center of the Bastion, locked away like a shining jewel.

The thought of their unknown enemy returned to Erath’s mind, and he smiled. What could stand before this?

Donnis, one of the spearmen, nudged Erath from his thoughts, nodding toward their chieftain who was beckoning Erath over. He quickly moved to stand before Yhavi, who had just been handed a ream of vellum inked with their orders.

“We move soon,” Yhavi began, speaking in their tribal tongue as he looked over their mandate.

“Have they said where the fighting will be, yet?” asked Erath, letting his excitement get the better of him.

“No,” Yhavi frowned, squinting at the Noxian script before looking at the boy. “But it won’t matter to you. You won’t be coming with us.”

“I don’t understand,” Erath adopted his chieftain’s frown. “I’m to be your blade squire.” Erath had won the honor in a blood trial before the tribe departed home. It was Erath’s right to bear Yhavi’s wargear on the battle train, to hone and oil his relic blade on the eve of battle, to arm his chieftain and bind his wounds, and should calamity pass, to see to Yhavi’s body if he fell. If not Erath, then who?

“You shall be a blade squire indeed,” said Yhavi. “Just not mine. You have been seconded elsewhere.” He sensed the confusion in Erath, and his tone hardened. “For Noxus.”

Erath straightened, pushing the questions from his thoughts, his features neutral and firm as he thudded a fist against his chest in salute. “For the empire.”

Yhavi returned the salute, and dipped his head in approval. “We all shall answer when called, blades sharp, minds ready.”

With a deep breath, Erath put his disappointment out of his mind. “I am ready.”

Yhavi’s grim facade cracked, and he offered the boy a warm grin. “I know you are, Erath. He would see you this day and feel pride, I know it.” Erath glanced down for a moment, and Yhavi handed him a small scroll, sealed and tightly rolled. “Proceed to the ninth gate of the Bastion, across the canal just ahead of us. The legionaries will stop you. Show them this.”

Even a mention of the Trifarian Legion made Erath stand straighter. He studied the scroll, brightly bleached paper compared to the rough vellum of his brethren’s mandate. He had never seen paper before. It felt delicate in his fingers.

“It seems fate has its own course for you to walk, enhasyi,” Yhavi favored Erath with the tribal expression for a warrior poised to make his mark on the warpath. He laid a scarred paw of a hand on Erath’s shoulder, before sending him on his way. “Walk it well.”

Erath navigated the bustling throng of a city readying itself for war. For a boy raised in a lonely shepherd’s village, the scale of everything was astounding. Towering monuments and buildings of stone, iron, and glass loomed over streets worn smooth by armies marching to the next campaign. Erath moved along the current of humanity, barely able to lift his arms within the crowd. He had never considered there could be so many peoples, so many languages. It was nearly overwhelming, but he kept his mind to his duty.

Few from the tribe were learned in Noxian, but Erath knew a passable amount of Va-Noxian, the unified spoken tongue, and a paltry understanding of the empire’s formal written language. He knew enough to guess at the signs and engravings to guide him along toward the ninth gate, just up ahead, where he was to report to his new commander.

Shouldering the sackcloth pack holding his kit, Erath reached into his jerkin, passing over the bone pendant he wore around his neck. He laid a reassuring hand on the pendant for a moment before touching his orders, inscribed on the tightly rolled sheet of bleached paper. The value of the tiny thing made his mind race as to who his new leader would be, and how important their mission. He was so lost in thought he didn’t notice falling under a pair of towering shadows cast over the courtyard of the gate.

“Khosis g’vyar!”

A sharp crash of iron froze Erath in place. He looked up from the ground, finding himself staring down the gleaming edges of twin halberds, each longer than he was tall and leveled at his heart. Wielding the spears were monsters of blackened iron plate, capes the hue of fresh blood billowing from their shoulders, glowering down at him from the impassive masks of spiked war helms.

Erath’s breath caught in his throat. Trifarian Legionaries. He noticed then that the gates weren’t barred. These two, of the Noxian warrior elite, they were the bars.

The challenge repeated, thundering from one of the legionaries, somehow deepened and projected to an inhuman degree by his mask. The words were unfamiliar, thick with a strange dialect.

Was it Va-Noxian? Erath squinted, remembering what he had learned. The warrior tilted his head, clearing his throat with a sound like rubble dislodging.

“Where go, little blade?” the legionary rumbled again, in more clipped tones.

Erath exhaled like a drowning man finally reaching the water’s surface, able to understand the words. Still his tongue defied him, thick and still behind teeth he desperately fought to keep from chattering. Slowly, he reached into his jerkin, wincing as he saw the legionaries tense, and produced the scroll.

The warriors exchanged a glance, and one of them, the one who had spoken, shouldered his halberd. He advanced on Erath with heavy, pounding bootsteps, stopping just a pace away from the boy. Erath looked up, barely reaching the man’s chest, and held out his orders.

The legionary plucked the scroll from Erath’s grasp, the paper looking ridiculous in his thick, gauntleted fingers. With a quick squeeze he crushed the seal in his fist, and the scroll unspooled in a small shower of broken bits of red wax. After studying it for a moment, the legionary spun on his heel and hammered the butt of his halberd three times against the polished stone floor, the boom of each impact ringing from the dark archway of the gate.

Within seconds, Erath heard the soft, echoing slaps of sandaled feet approaching. A robed figure emerged from the darkness of the gate, her features hidden in the shadow of a red cowl. She stopped before the legionary, completely unfazed by his menacing, armored bulk, and took the scroll from him.

“You will follow me,” she said to Erath without sparing him a glance, turning and setting off across the courtyard. Erath hurried after her, looking back over his shoulder to watch the legionary plod back to his place beside his fellow guard.

Erath followed the robed woman as they crossed over another canal and wound deeper into the bustling city. They kept to side streets, avoiding the larger boulevards packed with troop movements and hemmed by rows of barrack tents arrayed on either side.

Before long, Erath began to pick up strong scents on the air. Straw, cut grass, dung, smells that were familiar to any shepherd or beast herder. He heard the low baying of animals, some he recognized, many he did not.

The narrow alley they were walking ended, opening up into a wide open square filled with people tending animals. Massive pack beasts grazed on confined plots. Men and women checked pens of sheep and counted chickens in their coops. It seemed to Erath as though the area had served some other purpose, maybe as a park or public garden, but now had been requisitioned and was being used as part of the greater mobilization.

The comfort of familiarity washed over Erath, setting his mind at ease as they stopped before a tent at the periphery of the square. The robed woman returned the scroll to Erath and pulled the flap aside, gesturing for him to enter and disappearing as soon as he had.

Inside the tent the air was cold, and thick with the spicy tang of incense that made Erath’s eyes water. He wrinkled his nose as he stood at the entrance, squinting to try to study the interior. The only light came from a kneeling figure at the center of the tent, her arms weaving a strand of glowing green runes around a sword that hung suspended in the air above her.

Erath watched the magic, entranced by the elegant dance of the runes as they burned themselves into the blade of the sword and vanished one by one. He remembered watching the shamans of his tribe as a child, when they turned the air into fire for their rituals. He avoided staring directly at the symbols, as even out of the corner of his eye they made his teeth itch. The woman turned her head slightly as the last rune winked out, catching her blade as it fell and rising to her feet.

“Reporting for duty,” Erath snapped to attention and saluted. He extended the scroll to her. “My orders.”

The woman ignored him, moving as though in a trance to set her blade on an arming rack. She lit a lantern at the center of the tent, bathing them both in soft, amber light. She was tall, her dusky skin speaking of a home far from the chill northern reaches Erath hailed from. He saw the same green light from the runes flicker once in her eyes, as she glanced at him.

“Literate?”

Erath hesitated. Her Va-Noxian had a lilting, mellifluous accent, far different from the curt and guttural voices he had heard so far in the capital. The woman’s eyes narrowed.

“You are literate?” she asked again. She looked either fatigued or bored, and Erath couldn’t tell which.

Erath nodded. “I know some of the written word, mistress.”

“Did you read this?” she asked, holding up the scroll Erath realized was no longer in his hand.

“No, mistress,” Erath shook his head.

“Good,” she said sharply, tucking the roll of paper into her sleeve. “I am Tifalenji, and from this moment, my word is law to you. Read, think, and do what I say, when I say, and much unpleasantness will be avoided between us. Do you understand?”

Erath saluted again. “Yes, mistress.”

“Once we are clear of the capital, there will be no more saluting.” Tifalenji took up a ledger from a table, thumbing through its contents.

“May I ask a question, mistress?”

She looked up. “Do not make a habit of it.”

“How may I serve?” Erath asked. “What are to be my duties?”

Tifalenji snapped the ledger shut. “I needed someone versed in the care and upkeep of beasts, young and of hearty enough stock. You are from the plains of Dalamor, yes?”

“Yes, mistress,” he fought to keep anger from his voice. He had nearly had to kill his cousin to win his blood trial and become his chieftain’s second, and now he was back to tending beasts? “I was a shepherd there.”

She offered him a thin smile, and Erath could swear he could hear something snarling behind him, just within earshot. “The creatures under your care here may be more… exotic.”

The flap of the tent was thrown open in a snap of whipping canvas. Erath turned, his hand immediately on the grip of his knife.

“I wouldn’t,” said Tifalenji, as Erath discovered the source of the snarling.

Four drakehounds lined the entrance to the tent, sleek beasts of taut rippling muscle, bony carapace, and razor-sharp claws. Erath was told stories as a boy of when the tribes of the plains were brought into the Empire, that the chief of chiefs had been honored with a single drakehound pup, a gift worth more than three wagons of silver. He had never seen one up close, let alone a whole pack of them.

A woman in gleaming war-plate stood behind them, glowering from behind an armored mask. Her hair was a stunning, crimson red, bound at the top of her head and flowing like a crest down her back. The hounds parted as she stepped forward into the tent, a pair to either side.

“Arrel,” Tifalenji inclined her head. “You made good time, tracker.”

Erath beheld Arrel, still unable to imagine someone owning four drakehounds. “Are you of the nobility, mistress?”

Arrel flicked her eyes to Erath, as gray and cold as her armor, then back to Tifalenji.

“Our blade squire,” said Tifalenji to Arrel before looking at Erath. “We don’t send the nobility to Tokogol.”

“The western frontier,” said Erath. “How did you find Tokogol, mistress?”

“Cold,” Arrel grumbled. Her voice was low, her accent severe.

“I see,” Erath nodded. “And your journey here?”

“Long,” Arrel glanced back at Tifalenji. “Does it always talk this much?”

Erath started. “Have I displeased you, mistress?”

“Fourth,” Arrel called. One of the drakehounds snapped forward from Arrel’s side, placing itself between her and Erath. Barely restrained violence radiated from the beast’s muscled frame. Thin strands of saliva descended from its bony mask, pebbled with froth from a growling throat.

“If you had displeased me, blade squire,” said Arrel, “this hound would have made it known to you. And I am not your mistress.”

“Forgiveness,” Erath took a slow step back. “How would you have me address you, then?”

“Unless necessary, I would have that you not.” She tensed, as though speaking this much had made her throat sore. She flicked her wrist, signaling an end to the discussion.

“There is a quartermaster outside gathering our supplies,” said Tifalenji, handing Erath a requisitions order. “Go and find him.”

Erath exhaled, walking carefully around Arrel and her hounds to exit the tent. He heard Arrel ask a question as he left, the same one he still asked himself.

“Why am I here, runesmith?”

“Never seen a basilisk before, eh, boy?”

Erath barely heard the quartermaster, his attention consumed by the great, lumbering beast before him. A giant saurian, the basilisk’s green flesh was hard as iron, and bulging with bands of dense muscle from its tree-trunk limbs to its long, thick tail. It looked to Erath as though it could crush a man into a paste without ever realizing it had done so.

“What are you used to tending?” the quartermaster asked.

“Sheep,” Erath answered.

“Ah, don’t you fret,” the quartermaster clapped Erath on the back. “Just think of him like a big sheep, then. He’s still a baby so you’ll be fine with ’im. Time hasn’t made ’im mean, yet.”

“This,” Erath looked at the man, “is a baby?”

The quartermaster chuckled. “We use the bigguns to break down castle walls, son.”

Erath glanced at the requisitions order the runesmith had given him. Mercifully it was written in plain terms, mostly numbers, and the quartermaster had helped with anything he couldn’t understand. The basilisk would be carrying the better part of an entire campsite on its back, but it looked like they were carrying much more equipment than would be needed for three people, even with Arrel’s drakehounds.

“Everything in order?” Tifalenji appeared behind Erath. He noticed she was fully armored now, with her rune-etched sword on her back and a canvas rucksack at her feet.

“We’re getting him squared away,” replied the quartermaster. “Most everything but the waterskins are loaded, we’ll be takin’ care of that next and you’ll be on your way.”

“Good,” said the runesmith, checking the height of the sun. “We’ll link with the caravans leaving out the south entrance. We need to be on the road and clear of the city before sunfall.”

“The road?” Erath asked. Ever since he arrived at the capital, Erath had watched the armies and warbands of Noxus, including his own tribe, march to embark on great troop ships at the docks. “We won’t be traveling with the others across the sea?”

The runesmith shook her head. “No, we aren’t finished on the mainland, yet. There’s still someone we need to find first.”

They left the organized chaos of the capital behind. The towering silhouette of the Immortal Bastion lingered on the horizon as Erath, Arrel, and Tifalenji joined a massive procession of troops moving east across the southern steppe of Noxus. Like a gargantuan snake of red banners and dark iron they marched, traversing flat plains that reminded Erath of his home, back in Dalamor.

“There’s just too many of us,” a grizzled line sergeant had told Erath, waiting in the ration line as they camped one night. “The capital’s docks are huge and they could run them day and night—and they are—and it still wouldn’t be enough for the full mobilization.”

“That’s why we are going east?” Erath asked.

The sergeant grunted, smiling at his beaten tin cup as it was filled with stew and a hunk of hard brown bread. “While the rest of them get to share a damp boat’s innards with some rats for company, we get to stretch our legs a bit before we split off to berths across the coast.”

“And then where?” Erath nodded his thanks to the cook as he received his own portion. “Where are all of us going?”

“Nobody’s told you?” the line sergeant scoffed. “We’re going to Ionia, boy.”

Erath stumbled to a halt, his food nearly falling from numb fingers. He felt for his chest, finding the lump of the pendant he wore. Ionia.

“You’re holding up the line,” the sergeant frowned at him.

“The last time…” Erath said quietly. “The war. The empire, they levied half the men of my tribe to go fight.” He looked up at the sergeant. “None of them came back.”

“Sounds like you’re gonna get a chance to get some blood back.” The sergeant pulled the collar of his tunic down, revealing a wicked red scar that branched like lightning across his entire chest. “Magic. A lot of us got scores to settle over there, kid, and we’ve been patient. Now it’s time to collect.”

Erath offered the sergeant a thin smile he didn’t feel, and wandered back to his billet, suddenly not feeling hungry anymore.

The march continued on, brisk and uneventful. As the days went on, more segments of the battle train branched off, heading to ports they were assigned to deploy from. Erath continued to feel isolated from his companions, the runesmith Tifalenji aloof and Arrel hostile, so he focused instead on what he had been seconded from his tribe to do, and cared for the party’s hulking basilisk.

Despite the creature’s immense size and strength, the quartermaster back in the capital had been right. Erath found him docile and receptive to his care, something he hoped with time would extend to Arrel’s drakehounds, though he didn’t hang too much hope on that. The pack practically orbited the armored Noxian at all times, totally obedient to their alpha.

Erath had taken to calling the basilisk Talz, the name of his old herding dog when he had been a boy. The lumbering saurian responded to his new name as Erath led him to graze and kept him in line with the convoy.

A week into their journey, the runesmith gathered the party, announcing that while the main body was continuing east, they would be taking their own path down a southern branch.

“We make for the Bloodcliffs,” said Tifalenji, as Erath watched the convoy slowly shrink in the distance, still an unbroken column of Noxian warriors marching to the coast.

“What’s there?” he asked.

“Not what,” answered the runesmith, “but who.”

Erath nodded, remembering Tifalenji had mentioned someone else before. He looked back at the extra supplies loaded onto Talz’s back. “Who is it?”

“A haughty k’naad,” scoffed Arrel, pouring water from a flask into her palm to allow her hounds to drink. First’s ears perked up at the word, which Erath didn’t know but could guess as to its meaning. Arrel sneered at Tifalenji. “We are wasting our time, we don’t need her.”

“I’ll be the reckoner of that,” the runesmith replied flatly. She glanced at Erath, and sighed through her teeth. “Her name is Marit, blade squire.”

“Marit’s quite keen on reminding anyone within earshot that she was of the nobility before the revolution,” grumbled Arrel. “They stripped her family of their estate and power, though she hardly seems to realize that from talking to her.”

Arrel scanned the landscape. “She went on and on about these wondrous lands her family held.” She shook her head. “What a shithole.”

“She is an elite soldier,” countered Tifalenji. “Experienced and battle-tested. She will be an asset, and that is the end of this conversation.”

The road to the Bloodcliffs cut through arid plains and low, sunbaked hills. The heat was a new experience for Erath, far from the fog-blanketed chill of Dalamor. He took care to ration what water they had as they traveled beneath the glaring sun in a cloudless, blisteringly blue sky.

Arrel paused, and Erath patted Talz’s flank to bring him to a halt as he watched the tracker. She knelt, pressing a palm to the earth. “Something’s close.”

From atop Talz’s back, the runesmith drew a spyglass from her belt, extending the brass tube and looking through it. “Riders ahead,” she confirmed. “And they aren’t Noxian.”

Erath looked, seeing two tiny figures as they crested the top of a hill. He was just able to make out that they were on horseback. His pulse quickened, and his hand fell to the leather-wound haft of the short falchion at his hip. After so long on the road, day after day of monotony, the prospect of a skirmish was refreshingly welcome.

“Second, Third,” Arrel called, and the two drakehounds leapt forward.

“Wait,” said Tifalenji, now looking behind them. “There’s more.”

Erath turned, seeing more figures appear behind them, and then to either side. He barely heard the sharp note of a horn, as they descended the hills toward them.

“Raiders,” Tifalenji drew the runesword on her back. “Form a circle, now.”

The ground began to shake, soft at first but steadily climbing to thunder as the horsemen charged. Erath turned to Talz, trying to find some means to root him to the ground in case the basilisk panicked, and recoiled as Tifalenji struck him across the head.

“Focus!” she hissed.

Erath forgot Talz, pulling his falchion and gripping it tightly. He distanced himself from Arrel and the runesmith, trying to cover his third of the tiny perimeter they made. The raiders were in full view now, lightly armored with billowing cloaks and teal banners streaming from the tips of barbed lances.

The Noxians braced for the charge. Emerald fire lit the runes along Tifalenji’s blade. Arrel’s hounds howled.

At the last second, the horses peeled to either side, sprinting in a circle around them. The dust kicked up by their iron-shod hooves grew into a thick, whirling curtain, rising to cut them off from the world. Erath could just barely make out the silhouettes whipping around them.

The air whistled and Erath leapt to one side as a lance embedded itself where he’d just been standing. He heard Arrel bark a command and one of her hounds leapt into the dust. Tifalenji began chanting, the words hurting Erath’s ears as worms of green light shivered across her blade.

“Say-RAH-dech!” she roared, slashing with her blade and sending a wave of jade lightning through the wall.

Erath couldn’t tell if she hit anything. If Arrel’s hound was still alive. Everything was chaos. Noise. A keening wail split the air. The cyclone caging them shuddered. Erath heard something rip, and leapt back as a jet of dark blood burst from the wall of dust, coating his face and chest with hot crimson.

He stood there. Help them, you idiot.

The dust began to settle, and Erath summoned his courage. He focused on a shadow directly ahead of him and charged with falchion raised and the death cry of his tribe on his lips. He sprinted through the stinging grit, and as he opened his eyes he found what stood before him was no horse.

Whatever it was, its rider had a glaive at his throat in an instant.

“Now, now,” came a voice, smooth and cultured. “My dear steed feasted well today but she may yet have room for more.”

The speartip lifted Erath’s jaw, and he followed it up to the speaker. She was a tall, thin woman, her face hidden behind a mask of iron and black leather. A Noxian banner hung from her glaive, while a second tattered standard Erath didn’t recognize was gathered around her shoulders like a cloak.

She rode confidently upon a lithe, bipedal creature, all sleek muscle and lashing tail, somewhere between a lizard and a bird. Its vicious visage bared its blood-stained fangs in challenge. The dust had cleared now, revealing the dead raiders around them in various states of dismemberment.

Erath felt the penetrating gaze from behind the mask, studying him. Her eyes narrowed in amusement as she dipped her glaive to a dead raider, cutting his banner free with a flick of her wrist. Only then did he see the others dangling from her mount as Tifalenji and Arrel approached.

“Arrel, you icy k’naad!” the Noxian exclaimed, striding out confidently to meet the party. “Where did they dig you out of? Last I heard you were hunting bounties in that wretched stink-pit Zaun.” She shivered theatrically. “Like missing teeth, that city. Hideous!”

“Marit,” Arrel said flatly. Erath glanced at the tracker. Even for Arrel, the greeting seemed cold, and he saw something different in the steel grey of her eyes.

“And who are your friends here?” Marit regarded Erath and Tifalenji. “I find it hard to believe you would just happen to be passing through.”

“Hail,” said Tifalenji, dipping her head in greeting. “Your instincts are true enough. We come in the empire’s service. Our mandate.”

The runesmith handed Marit a scroll. The masked woman unfurled it, her dark eyes flicking up to regard Tifalenji several times as she read it.

“Under penalty of death,” Marit read dramatically, before handing the scroll back to Tifalenji. “Well this all seems to be in order. When do we leave?”

“Now,” answered Tifalenji.

“Fair enough,” Marit eyed Erath. “manservant, eh?”

He hesitated. “Uh, I’m a blade squi—”

“You may address me as ‘my lady,’ manservant,” Marit gestured to her mount. “And this is my glorious steed, the Lady Henrietta Eliza Vaspaysian IV of Orogonthis.” She looked at Erath, narrowing her eyes. “But you do appear quite stupid, so I suppose just Henrietta will suffice.”

Henrietta swung her long, muscled neck in Erath’s direction, breathing out a chittering hiss through her gleaming fangs.

“What does she eat?” asked Erath.

“People who get on my nerves,” said Marit as she turned away toward her pavilion. “Tend to her ends, little man, and speak when spoken to.”

Erath opened his mouth to reply, but Henrietta hissed again, and he bit down on his anger.

Together they worked quickly, striking Marit’s camp and loading it onto Talz. The basilisk bore the weight easily, as though he didn’t even notice the added burden. Erath was beginning to understand how a fully grown one could level fortifications.

“Is everything ready to move?” asked the runesmith.

Erath nodded, and she signaled for them to move. Marit leapt up into a polished leather saddle on Henrietta’s back, binding the Noxian banner to her glaive and the second standard around her neck like a cloak.

“Come on then, Talz!” Erath called, urging the basilisk from where it drank and munched on the soft grasses of the watering ground.

Marit cocked her head to one side. “Wait, he named our pack animal?”

“He did,” said Arrel.

Marit scoffed. “Well, I suppose we can use the idiot’s tears to season the meat when we have to eat it on the trail.”

“Those riders,” said Tifalenji, nodding in the direction where she had watched them vanish over the horizon.

“Yes?” Marit leaned down from her saddle. “What about them?”

“Aren’t you concerned they’ll simply go back to raiding in your absence?”

Marit waved her hand. “Nonsense. These are my ancestral lands. If they choose to be good stewards of them then fine, and if they don’t, I’ll just kill them all when I return. Worry gives you frown-lines.”

A few days’ ride took them from the Bloodcliffs. The runesmith kept their pace brisk, having the party sleep in shifts along the trail and only stopping when absolutely necessary. Erath saw her each night, either on the road or at camp, sitting apart from the others with her eyes intent upon the moon.

They skirted east across the base of low mountains before arriving at their port of call at the Drakkengate, at the first light of dawn. Erath found the docks there to be just as bustling as any other, mired in the same organized chaos of armed mobilization that seemed to be taking place over the entire eastern coast of Noxus. Thousands of warriors, and the countless armorers, cooks, builders, menders, priests, and forge-smiths that attended to them, filed into the holds of great troop ships, ready to unfurl immense crimson sails and dip their oars for the voyage across the sea.

Erath set about hunting down supplies as soon as they arrived. While the ships were already provisioned for soldiers and more common animals for the crossing, their party had accumulated a variety of exotic creatures he was now responsible for. Luckily for Erath, the mandate the runesmith carried granted them swift passage through the congested queues and overruled any of the more obstinate quartermasters. Before midday, they were ready to board.

“There,” Tifalenji pointed toward the docks. “That is our ship. The Atoniad.”

Erath’s eyes fell upon the vessel. The Atoniad was a troop carrier of unmistakably Noxian design, from its strong lines and dark iron plating to the tightly bound red sails, eager to be unleashed and carry the ship forward onto the waves. The largest boat he had ever embarked upon was the river skiff that had borne his tribe to the Immortal Bastion, and comparing that to the Atoniad was like comparing a toothpick to a battle axe.

Lines of men and women were already boarding, filing up gangplanks, while other wider ramps admitted animals and pallets of tools, stone, and lumber.

“I don’t see many soldiers,” said Erath.

“We’ll be traveling with mostly laborers and stonemasons,” said Tifalenji. “The Atoniad is bound for Fae’lor, not the main islands.”

“Fae’lor?” Erath glanced at the runesmith. “We go to the great fortress, then?”

“What’s left of it,” muttered Arrel.

Word had reached as far as Dalamor of the tragedy at Fae’lor. Erath had gathered with the tribe around a fire as the shamans relayed how a cowardly band of Ionians had assaulted the Noxian fortress there. In their desperation, they had unleashed magic that was beyond their power to control, wrecking horrific damage to the defenses, there.

A fortnight later, the tribe had received the call to carry their spears to the capital.

All of their spears.

“We embark,” said Tifalenji. She pointed to the wider access points. “Take the beasts and get them aboard, blade squire.”

Erath dipped his head, looking over at Arrel. “Shall I take the hounds as well?”

All four drakehounds glared at Erath. They somehow managed to snarl at him in the exact same pitch, at the exact same time. A chorus of angry jaws.

“They will remain with me,” Arrel snapped a finger and the pack fell silent.

Erath gathered up the reins for Talz. Marit handed over the reins to Henrietta, favoring her steed with a final caress down her jawline.

“Make sure the good lady has her own accommodations,” called Marit as Erath led the beasts toward the ship. “If you put anything else in with her, she’ll be alone soon enough.”

The open air was cold, and sharp with salt spray. Twelve other ships sailed beside the Atoniad in the squadron, their red sails full and taut with a generous wind that at least for now handled the duty of the oarsmen below decks. Gossip aboard amongst bored soldiers had spread the rumor that they had passed through pirate routes at some point the previous night, though few of them could imagine any corsair fool enough to try their luck against a dozen Imperial warships packed from bow to stern with war-edgy killers.

Erath turned from looking out across the squadron as Arrel approached, nearly saluting before remembering he had been told not to. Arrel ignored the awkwardness. She glanced down, noting how tightly the boy held on to the railing. “Your first passage?”

The blade squire nodded. “Three days at sea, and still another three, they say, until we get to Fae’lor.” He waved a hand at the endless span of churning grey waves stretching all the way to the horizon, broken only by the salt-shrouded shapes of the other warships. “I never thought there could be this much water.”

Arrel grunted, noncommittal.

“You were in the war before,” Erath said, uneasy with the subject. “Ionia, what is it like?”

Arrel did not answer him at once. The tracker stared out over the ocean, reaching down to scratch the sleek, leathery skin behind Second’s bony crestmask. She breathed slowly. “It is a place of beauty, and of death.”

“All of Ionia is just one giant jungle raptor with its head cut off,” Marit appeared from behind them, strutting forward to lounge against the railing. “We decapitated it last time, and now it’s just thrashing about, making a mess, too stupid to realize it’s already dead.”

“I’ve hunted raptors,” said Arrel. “And even headless they can still gut you.”

“So it is war, then?” asked Erath. “Another war with Ionia?”

Marit shrugged. “Damned if I know, but the Grand General sure shoved a lot of boots across the ocean just to rattle swords. Just hope he has enough backbone to let us finish what we start, this time.”

Arrel walked away, and Erath looked back at the fathomless expanse of gently crashing waves. “What is the name of this ocean?” he asked.

“Who cares what it’s called?” Marit leaned over Erath’s shoulder before she stalked off. “It’s ours.”

Erath had never been so grateful to see dry land.

The fortress of Fae’lor grew in size and definition on the horizon before them. The Atoniad had made speed in her voyage to the island, but Erath had discovered he was far from suited for a life on the seas. The heaving, rolling motion of their warship had stolen many meals from his stomach, offered to the ocean in the queasy tribute of abrupt sickness. Everything was soaked, coated in a crackling crust of salt that burned his skin.

He had kept below decks for the most part, ensuring that the creatures in his care endured the passage with as much comfort as he was able to offer. Talz seemed fine, eating regularly and spending the majority of the time in his pen, sleeping. Lady Henrietta, however, had required more diligent attention. A nimble and energetic beast, Marit’s steed was clearly unhappy with the confines of the ship. Erath took extra care during her feedings, to ensure he did not become the meal himself, and looked forward to getting Henrietta off the Atoniad where she could stretch her legs.

When the call for land had gone out from the scouts at the ship’s bow, Erath hurried above decks to see. The top deck was crowded with Noxians eager for their own view. At first it was little more than a smudge in the distance, faintly more defined than the hazy stripe where the water met the sky, but the closer they came, the more distinct it grew. Erath glimpsed what appeared to be banks of fog surrounding the island, tinted a ruddy brown that upon closer inspection became red.

Fae’lor was surrounded by Noxian ships.

There were concentric circles of vessels ringing the island, defense pickets that were constantly shifting. The Atoniad was halted by the outermost patrols, a pair of frigates that lashed themselves to the larger vessel with boarding hooks as squads of naval soldiers came aboard.

Erath noted their stern countenances as they inspected the troop ship, weapons in hand as they pored over the captain’s mandate and manifest. They scoured every deck, and the blade squire watched as a trio of robed blood mages studied every soldier onboard, softly chanting as they looked every man and woman in the eye.

“What are they looking for, mistress?” he asked Tifalenji.

“Signs of subterfuge,” replied the runesmith. “Deceptions. Wild magic.”

To Erath it all seemed strange. “But we are all Noxian soldiers, on an imperial ship. Does this not seem paranoid?”

“Patience, boy,” said Tifalenji. “When we dock at Fae’lor, you will understand.”

After they had been over every inch of the Atoniad, a contingent of the soldiery remained aboard while the others returned to their frigate, and the ship was cleared to advance to the next ring of the blockade. The inspections and checks repeated with each checkpoint, the guard detail rotating each time the Atoniad was stopped. Erath had been poked, prodded, and scrutinized so many times that when they finally had the harbor in sight, he questioned whether any of his own comrades trusted him, or anyone for that matter.

And then he got a better look at Fae’lor, and understood why.

The fortress had been gutted. He could make out only echoes of the great ramparts that had once stood at its heart, the formerly impregnable fortifications reduced to shattered remnants that rose from the ground like blackened, broken teeth. But the extent of the devastation went far beyond the walls and towers. The very land itself was broken open, torn apart and ripped out, bearing all the hallmarks of some incredible natural disaster.

The Atoniad drew up to her berth, and Noxians leapt to work both aboard and on the dock as soon as she came to a halt. Craftsmen rushed out to their assigned posts, while raw materials and supplies were offloaded and taken ashore. Erath went below decks, trying to put the shock of the island from his mind as he went about getting Talz and Henrietta off the Atoniad.

Standing out against the herds of livestock and more mundane pack animals, Erath led his beasts up a wide ramp leading from the ship’s hold. Waiting as those ahead of him were processed and allowed into Fae’lor, he stood transfixed as he watched crews descend over the wreckage of another warship like a swarm of furious ants.

Great winches and chains hauled the wreck up out of the water, a piece at a time. Teams scrambled down within, pulling out the pale, bloated shapes of the fallen in droves. She was more than twice the tonnage of the Atoniad, and her hull had been broken in two, like a stick over a man’s knee.

What kind of power could have possibly done such a thing?

Erath thought back to when he stood in the shadow of the Immortal Bastion. The certainty he felt there, seeing the empire marching to war, that there was nothing in creation that could possibly stand against them.

For the first time, seeing what had befallen Fae’lor with his own eyes, he felt doubt creep into his heart.

Finally he reached the end of the ramp, stepping from soaked wood onto cracked rock. The air was thick, humid, and dusty. It smelled of spice, things Erath couldn’t place as he realized, at long last, that he was there.

This was Ionia.

Erath lost track of how long he was standing there, or how the leather of Henrietta’s reins was sliding through his fingers. By the time he was aware of it, Marit’s mount was loping into the camp.

“Hey!” The blade squire started to pursue her, before looking back at Talz. “Stay,” he warned, drawing his knife and pinning the basilisk’s reins to the ground with it before sprinting after Henrietta.

“Whoa,” he called to the roving saurian as she stalked between a line of billet tents. She stopped, her long neck swiveling to regard Erath. Henrietta hissed at him through the gleaming metal of her chanfron, what Marit called “her jewelry.” Enclosing her face and skull, it was part protective helm, part weapon, accentuating her already vicious fangs with sharpened iron blades.

“Easy, my lady,” Erath coaxed, arms wide as he slowly closed the distance between them. “Easy, now.”

“Control that thing!” bellowed a voice from a group nearby. Both Henrietta and the blade squire shot them a hostile glare.

“She’s been cooped up on a ship for days,” Erath barked at the soldiers. He took advantage of Henrietta’s diverted attention and grabbed hold of her reins, wrapping the leather around his forearm. “She needs exercise, you want to be it? Then stay out of the way!”

Erath stared down the soldiers and watched them disperse, only registering after a time that the runesmith was calling for him. He went back to gather up Talz’s reins and guided his charges along, tugging the basilisk forward and holding Henrietta back as he headed toward where Tifalenji waited with Arrel and Marit. He saw new tension in the runesmith’s companions as he approached, a tightness in their postures that hadn’t been there before.

“Take your time,” Marit sneered, snatching Henrietta’s reins from Erath. Arrel squatted down, fingers brushing over the rubble strewn over the ground as her drakehounds orbited her.

“This was old magic,” muttered the tracker. “Something long-sleeping, now roused.”

“Where did you learn to sense magic?” Marit arced a skeptical eyebrow.

“Here,” Arrel answered, barely above a whisper.

“Oh joy,” replied Marit. She glanced at Tifalenji expectantly. “Well?”

“The last member of our expedition is here, at Fae’lor,” the runesmith replied. “We simply need to find her.”

“Just look for a dueling pit,” said Arrel. “She won’t be far from the scent of blood.”

Erath nodded, growing accustomed to gleaning what he could from inferences and cryptic words. “Does she have a beast that I am to care for as well?”

“Oh, manservant,” Marit shook her head. “Teneff? She is the beast.”

Arrel was right. While Fae’lor was in the midst of its reconstruction, it still remained a Noxian military camp. They followed the sound of ringing steel, sharper than the rhythm coming from the forges’ hammers, leading them to where the warriors on the island trained.

Past rows of billet tents were dug a series of shallow pits, each of them occupied by a pair of dueling soldiers. With blunted swords, wooden staves, or bare hands they sparred, but one in particular had attracted a crowd. The party had to muscle their way through the watching soldiers to catch a glimpse into the pit.

Two Noxians circled each other in full war-plate. One wielded a training sword and buckler, the other a heavy iron hook mounted on a length of chain. The soldiers watching cheered the pair as they measured distance and exchanged feints.

The swordsman sensed an opening. He lunged forward, flicking his buckler into his opponent’s face while slashing low with his sword. The other fighter leapt back, just shy of the blade, while throwing her hooked chain to ensnare the man’s shield arm. She whipped her arm down, wrenching the swordsman forward into a brutal headbutt. He dropped to the mire like a stone, blood spraying from a ruined nose.

“That’s first blood to me,” she crowed, and the onlookers erupted in cheers.

“That was dirty, Teneff,” the swordsman snarled, pawing blood from his mashed nose with a wicked laugh. “Let’s make it second blood. I’m not done with you yet.”

“First blood was the agreement,” Teneff repeated, with no compromise in her voice. “We need you in the line, Cestus.”

The swordsman barked out a swear and stood, trudging up out of the pit. Teneff wound her chain around her forearm, looking up to find Erath and the party staring down at her. Her eyes widened in confusion. “Marit? Arrel?”

Marit chuckled. “Still cracking skulls, eh, Ten?”

Teneff spat a gobbet of phlegm onto the ground. “Some of us never stopped,” she said with a grin, taking the hand Arrel offered her to pull her up out of the pit.

Erath backed out of her way as she climbed out. Teneff bore the hallmarks of a shield-breaker, a warrior of the line at home when her enemy was within arm’s reach. Scars crisscrossed any flesh not covered in leather and iron armor, tales of blood and honor etched into her over a lifetime of battle. He wondered how many of the scars she bore were earned here in Ionia.

“The last time I saw either of you,” said Teneff, “we were all—”

“Here,” said Marit. Quiet descended between the soldiers for a few moments. There was a bond between them, Erath could see that clearly. But there was a void there as well, something unspoken, or even missing. He had lived around soldiers long enough to know not to prod.

“Well,” said Teneff, breaking the silence. “If you’re all coming from Valoran, then you’ve been eating ship’s slop for days. Our cook’s no artist, but they’re a damn sight better than that. Come.”

The sun had begun to sink into the horizon, painting the sky in dappled bands of gold, orange, and scarlet, drifting down into indigo. They made their way through the mess tent and then found seats around a fire as the air started to chill. The women talked amongst themselves, of what they had done since last they served beside each other, and of the old wounds endured together. Erath remained silent, and listened.

“And you, boy,” said Teneff, her attention shifting to the blade squire. “You blooded? Fought your principal yet?”

Erath straightened. “I served my principal, yes.”

Her aspect became serious, analytical. “Where?”

“It was a border skirmish west of the Dalamor plains,” Erath answered. “A quick action, pretty light.” He looked to each of them, seeing that his answer had not been enough. This was not the ignorant voyeurism of the civilian, eager to satisfy some fanciful idea of what it was like to fight in a war they would never experience. These were veterans, warriors who may find themselves beside him in the line, needing to know what he had seen and how he had carried himself.

“It was a shallow expansion through a fertile valley,” he continued. “They were big boys, farming stock, but they were brought up to till the soil, not turn it red. Once we got within a rapid drumbeat, running charge, we closed, rolled up their right side double fast. Opened them up quite quickly.”

“Any of them left afterward,” asked Arrel, “to till that soil?”

Erath shook his head. “We tried. After their elders came around, we brought in others to help them take up the work. Harvest needed planting, no time to wait.”

Marit tilted her head. “And how many of those big farm boys did you make the soil red with, eh?”

“Leave it alone,” said Tifalenji.

“I was rearguard,” Erath shrugged. “By the time the lines rotated to me, they were already broken. We mostly just finished off those too wounded to save, and dug graves.”

The memory surfaced in Erath’s mind without asking. Trudging through the aftermath of a broken shield wall, feeling someone take hold of his ankle. Looking down, seeing a man who had taken a spear thrust to the belly, croaking at him in words he didn’t know, but a message he understood clear enough.

Putting his speartip to the man’s throat. The man tilting his head back to accept it.

“When was this?” asked Teneff.

“This past spring,” Erath answered.

“An infant!” exclaimed Marit.

“I said leave it alone,” the runesmith growled. “He’s here to tend beasts, nothing more.”

Marit chuckled, her eyes narrowed in amusement. Teneff eyed Tifalenji. “What of you then, rune-shaper? Where have you served?”

“Far from here,” she answered, and the odd light in her eyes convinced Erath that was as much as they would hear of her experiences.

Sleep was a glorious thing to a soldier. Any span of uninterrupted rest was precious, rivaling a full belly or a pair of well-made boots to a fighting man or woman. Erath had tried to adjust to the endless rolling and pitching of the Atoniad, but sleep had only come to him in fits and starts. Back on solid ground, with his cloak laid out on a flat, dry patch near the animal pens and his duties done, the blade squire rested his head against his pack and savored the prospect of sleeping through the next handful of hours before the early morning feedings came.

It felt as though he had no more than blinked before he heard the voice, sharp and cold as the edge of the knife he felt against his neck.

“Do as I say, in silence, or I will cut your throat.”

Erath opened his eyes. Dawn’s light was still hours away, the moon a thin silver sickle overhead as he was jerked to his feet. His knife had been taken. They walked, Erath careful to keep his movements slow and hands in view as he was led to the edge of the camp.

A huddle of figures stood ahead. He heard the low snarling of hounds as they approached, the silhouettes materializing into Arrel and Marit with the kneeling figure of the runesmith between them.

“What are you doing in Ionia, boy?” demanded the voice as Erath was shoved to his knees beside Tifalenji. He was alert enough to recognize the voice behind him as Teneff’s.

“I—”

“He knows nothing,” said Tifalenji calmly. Teneff lifted the knife from Erath’s throat and rounded upon the runesmith.

“And what do we know about you, eh?” Teneff looked to her fellow veterans. “Documents can be forged, mandates concocted.”

“My mandate is quite genuine,” said Tifalenji, her calm eerie to Erath, “as is the power you are flirting with opposing.”

Marit tilted her head. “Does the boy even know who you say you’re hunting? Who you would have us hunt?”

“He knows what has been necessary for him to know, and nothing more.”

“Then perhaps it’s time he knew,” Teneff looked down at Erath. “You seek a ghost. A warrior who died in honor as a hero to Noxus. Our comrade.” She gestured to Arrel and Marit. “Our sister!”

“She lives,” said the runesmith.

“Lies!” Teneff hissed. “Tell me why I should believe a word from your mouth and not kill you right here?”

“Because the powers to which I answer do not make those mistakes. If they say she lives, then she lives. You all served alongside her in service of the empire. Now the empire commands that we find her, and bring her back to them. My authority supersedes that of the garrisons here, they do not know of our task, nor shall they.”

“What proof do you have of any of this?” demanded Marit.

“Her blade,” Tifalenji sighed. The women stiffened.

“What of it?” hissed Teneff.

“Did you know she tried to destroy it?” asked the runesmith. She drew in a deep breath, and her eyes pulsed emerald. “She failed, and the magic that infused it cried out at the desecration. My masters heard it, and they saw who was responsible, as clearly as if they were standing in the room with her. That is how we know.”

“If she yet lives,” said Teneff, “then she is a deserter, the very crime you now ask us all to commit. The punishment for which is death.”

Tifalenji met Teneff’s withering gaze. “Succeed in this task, aid me in hunting her down and return her for judgment in Noxus, and no censure will befall you. Look into yourselves, all that you sacrificed in this place, and tell me that her treason does not wound you. Tell me you would turn your backs on seeing justice done, and the wayward answer for the life she has led these past years.”

A dark silence hung over the gathering. Tension radiated from Teneff, Marit, and Arrel, the threat of violence balanced on a knife’s edge. Erath fought his nerves, the simmering rage of secrets and the idea he may die here, on Fae’lor, with no inkling at all as to why.

“We will go with you.”

All eyes fell on Arrel, her first words since Erath had been brought to them. Marit rounded on the tracker. “You speak for all of us, now?”

“I do,” Arrel said flatly. She cleared her throat, the effort sounding almost pained to Erath. “Because we are soldiers, all of us. And a soldier does their duty. But more than that, she was a sister to us. And sisters deserve answers.”

Marit glared at Arrel, her dark eyes slits of intensity, but she relented. “Answers,” she repeated.

Teneff gritted her teeth, looking to the other veterans who gave her solemn nods. She hauled the runesmith to her feet by her collar, but did not release her. “At the first inkling that what you have told us here are lies, witch, I will take your head.”

“I speak only the truth,” answered Tifalenji. “And more now that we can tarry no longer than we already have. We must cross into the heart of the First Lands, and we must do so now.”

Tifalenji looked to Erath now for the first time. “What I have said to them bears the same truth to you, blade squire. Go with us along this path, attend and serve, and you will be rewarded.”

“I am a loyal warrior of Noxus,” Erath proclaimed. “I do my duty, and need not shadowy promises or the threat of a slit throat to do it. The empire bids I serve you, so I do. I only ask one question.”

Tifalenji regarded Erath soberly. “Ask it.”

“Who is it?” asked Erath. “Who are we hunting?”

The runesmith drew her sword. “She may call herself something different now, some adoptive name for her new life in the First Lands.”

The runes Erath had watched her etch along the blade leapt from the iron into the sky, like a trail leading off into the dark mystic land that loomed ahead of them.

“But in Noxus, her name was Riven.”

More stories

  1. Sisterhood of War Part II: The Unquiet Dead

    Sisterhood of War Part II: The Unquiet Dead

    Ian St. Martin

    She cannot breathe.

    Her eyes are open, but there is nothing but a heavy, suffocating blackness. It crushes down on her. Her breath smothering. She draws in a slow, rasping breath. It fills her nose with the scents of blood and offal, a slaughterhouse stink. There is something else too, something thin, caustic, and sharp, coiling its way toward her lungs.

    The weight around her shifts. She hears something heavy tumble away, the muffled sound of lifeless limbs slapping into mud. The darkness wanes in patches, giving texture to her prison. Bloodied rags. Shattered plate. Cold, abused flesh.

    Bodies. She is buried under bodies.

    The urge to fight, to escape and survive, rises all-consuming. Adrenaline rushes through exhausted veins. She struggles, wrenching from side to side to force a cavity between herself and the mass. She sees a hairline crack, the faintest trickle of light spilling in. Hope feeds her frenzy. She scratches and claws. Eyesight blurring, rasping breath as she tears the gap wider.

    Her hand punches free. Cold air floods in, gulping it into her lungs, but that toxic, bitter something comes with it again. She gags as it coats her tongue, spilling down her throat. She pushes out an arm, beginning to haul herself out.

    Her head and arm are free. Gasping for breath but her lungs are twin lanterns ablaze. She can see the ground churned to mire, patches of it burning azure and silver, strewn with the dead. A felled tree’s trunk reaches out for its lost branches, the leaves screaming in tongues. The battle is over.

    She glimpses shapes wandering through pale, boiling fog. Creatures gather in the aftermath, wicked birds and gaunt dogs. The dead are carrion now. The vanquished, food.

    There is a body just ahead of her, the one she had heard fall away from atop the mound. A boy sprawled out on the ground, his armor broken open, the protection it once offered him gone.

    A dog feeds. The boy shudders like a marionette from the roving muzzle. She tries to shout, to drive the beast away, but razors line her throat. The fog covers everything in its acrid and corrosive touch. The boy’s head lolls to the side, the eyes meeting hers glazed over and lifeless.

    Then he blinks.

    Arrel sat up, placing her hands against the ground to stop her head from spinning. The smell of wet earth and grass asserted themselves over the blood and sour air of the dream. Rainwater trickled down through gaps in the tent over her head.

    She looked to her side and found Second sitting there, watching Arrel intently with her helm in his jaws. She stared at the drakehound for a moment, blinking away the afterimages of a starving beast’s maw lined with gore. She gestured, and he padded closer, releasing the helmet into her hands as the flap to the tent was pulled open a fraction.

    “Mistress,” came a familiar voice from outside. “It’s time.”

    Arrel replaced the helm, taking a slow, rasping breath and ignoring the pain it stitched down into her lungs before standing up. The damp fabric of her bedroll squelched beneath her feet as she stooped to leave her tent and stepped out into the rain. First trailed behind the tracker, joining the other three of the pack that waited outside as they followed obediently in her wake.

    Erath stepped back from the tent, eyeing Arrel carefully. Hers had not been a silent sleep, and they had been getting worse since they had left Fae’lor.

    “Are you alright?” he asked.

    “Strike the tent,” the tracker replied. Arrel looked out across a small clearing in the wooded hills they had chosen to make camp, shrouded in a gentle rain that glittered and shone with every color of the rainbow. Some of the drops struck the ground as rain should, others winked in the air like tiny stars, dissolving in a mote of light with the soft chime of a distant bell.

    She hated Ionia, and it pursued Arrel even into her dreams. She could swear, grasping back at the images, that Riven’s body was among the dead. It would have been so much simpler, if that were true.

    Arrel looked back over her shoulder at Erath. “Has she kept the scent?”

    The blade squire nodded once. “The runesmith’s blade still sings to her.”

    “Then I’ll range ahead,” said Arrel, already walking.

    “No need,” said Erath. “Teneff and I found a village up nearby, we aim to stop there for supplies.”

    Arrel grunted, fists clenching as she came to a halt. “We ought to avoid them. We are not welcome here.”

    “Our provisions are growing scarce,” said Erath. “Teneff and I will go alone. She thinks Marit, Henrietta, and your hounds will attract attention we don’t desire. We shall return quickly and then be on our path again.”

    After a few moments, Arrel gave a nod.

    Erath did not know the name of the village. Like so much of Ionia, he simply assumed it would be something unknowably poetic, like a secret whispered between friends he could neither hear nor understand.

    He had thought the rain would make it easier to conceal themselves. The group of them had discarded as much Noxian gear as possible when they left Fae’lor, to avoid notice of both the locals and the empire as they conducted their mission, but they were still strangers in a strange land. As he followed Teneff down the muddy thoroughfare of the village, Erath felt every pair of eyes on him, dissuading him of any pretense of camouflage.

    “Stay close to me,” said Teneff, her gruff tones affecting a calm Erath attempted to adopt, though he didn’t feel it. Both of them were armed, but that was not unusual for anyone in Navori. Though Erath was beginning to come to the realization that not every weapon was one that he could see.

    “Hold on,” whispered Teneff, and the pair faded back to lean against the wall of a tea house. There was a scuffle developing ahead, a handful of warriors edged in red surrounding an Ionian elder. A small crowd of onlookers was gathering.

    “What are they doing here?” said Erath, his eyes locked to the Noxian soldiers.

    “We have an outpost not far to the south,” said Teneff quietly. “This might just be a patrol, or a reprisal sweep if we got hit in the night by a Brotherhood raid.”

    The pair moved closer, skirting around the periphery of the people who were watching the confrontation. Erath tugged his hood down further over his head, his fingers brushing against the bone pendant around his neck, then down to check the short blade at his belt. They stopped once they came close enough for the shouting to become words.

    “I come from festival,” the old man was trying to explain, his lips fighting to pronounce the Va-Noxian. “In Weh’le.”

    “Weh’le,” repeated the lead soldier. “That’s pretty far.” He eyed a paper-wrapped bundle the old man held.

    “T-tea.” The Ionian clutched the parcel to his chest protectively. “This tea, this blossom tea.”

    The soldier’s eyes narrowed. “All the way to Weh’le and back, for tea?”

    “I’ve heard of that festival,” remarked another of the Noxians. “It’s their death feast.”

    “Celebrating war heroes?” The lead Noxian took a step closer to the man. “Reminisce a little, dig up some old hurts—people can get crazy ideas in their heads doing that.”

    “Like setting fire to a stockade last night,” offered another soldier.

    “Nothing like that,” said the Ionian. Suddenly the packet he carried glimmered with a faint blue light. The Noxians sprang into combat postures, leveling their blades at the Ionian.

    “That is magic,” barked the lead soldier. “That is a weapon!”

    “No! This, this,” the old man struggled to find the words. “Ezari! Ezari, my… son. My wife, too old to go. I bring back for her, to see him.”

    “More lies,” snarled a Noxian.

    “Yeah, yeah, just like before,” another soldier hissed, her eyes glazed over with the scars of a hateful memory. “You all make nice, wait ’til our backs are turned before you whisper some curse and then boom! Boyod bursts into flame, Iddy’s legs gone, my friend Kron’s heart turned to salt in his chest! That’s what you do!”

    “This is getting ugly,” murmured Erath. “What should we do?”

    “Nothing,” answered Teneff, still brutally calm. “Not our fight.”

    “Surrender the weapon,” snarled the lead Noxian, the haft of his axe creaking in his grip.

    “Is no weapon,” the elder pleaded. He looked to the crowd, but their eyes were fixed on the blades carried by a dozen Noxian soldiers, and they did nothing to help him.

    “You heard him,” barked another soldier. She advanced, snatching at the parcel. The two struggled over it, and Erath heard the sound of paper tearing.

    The Ionian cried out, wordless anguish spilling from his lips as the tea scattered across the ground. He tried to save a measure of it, but the rain was already sweeping it from him.

    “Ezari…” croaked the old man as he sank to his knees, watching the tea disintegrate into the mud. Every raindrop that struck the powdered leaves elicited a pulse of radiant blue, each successive one growing fainter and fainter until it finally washed away.

    “Try something,” said the lead soldier to the crowd as the Noxians joined ranks and began to edge their way back. “Please. I’ll burn all this to ashes.”

    “Xiir!” the Ionian shrieked, his face turned up into the rain. “Xiir!”

    Erath felt a hand grip his shoulder.

    “We are leaving,” said Teneff, not taking her eyes from the soldiers as they marched the opposite way.

    “Do you see those Ionians?” said Erath. “Our comrades won’t make it out of this town alive.”

    “Not our fight,” Teneff said again. “You can sympathize for them on an empty stomach, blade squire. Now we’ll have to make due on the trail.”

    “That word he was screaming,” said Erath, looking back over his shoulder as he followed after Teneff. “What does it mean?”

    “Xiir,” Teneff repeated. “It is a curse that they use for those of us that come from ‘the Captive Lands’. It means locust.”

    Tifalenji was waiting for them just outside of the village. The runesmith’s sword was drawn, and faint traceries of emerald light ghosted across the surface of the blade.

    “What was all that?” she asked.

    “Our outpost near here got hit last night,” said Teneff. “Probably the Navori Brotherhood. Looks like the warleader there sent out troops to track down leads, or just cause trouble for the locals.”

    The runesmith absorbed her words for a moment. “Were you seen?”

    “No,” Teneff replied. “And from reading the town, it didn’t seem wise to linger and seek out barter.”

    “There speaks wisdom,” Tifalenji nodded. “Let us be off then.”

    Erath accepted the reins for Talz, the group’s hulking basilisk, from the runesmith. Patting the side of the creature, he glimpsed Arrel and her drakehounds. The tracker looked haggard to him, but he had learned better than to pry.

    “Where is Marit?” asked Teneff.

    “She said that waiting for you all was boring, so she rode ahead,” said Tifalenji.

    For a while they walked in silence, trudging through the ankle-deep mud and shimmering rain. Erath thought back to the village and the sequence of events that had unfolded. The anger, hatred, and fear he had seen on the faces of the Noxian soldiers. His hand strayed to the bone pendant around his neck.

    “Teneff?”

    The veteran looked back at him. “What’s on your mind?”

    “It’s just, those villagers, all the Ionians. How can we convince them to join the empire like that?”

    Teneff’s aspect darkened. She stopped, allowing Erath to catch up to her. “Do not judge your fellow Noxians, boy, until you have endured what they have endured, and seen what they have seen.”

    Erath looked at Teneff.

    “Each of them came here to bring the promise of the empire to those who they would call brethren,” she continued, “just as we did across Valoran, and in Shurima. This land is… different. It lays a great challenge upon the soul of every soldier in service to Noxus. We all strive to enlighten these people, to draw them to us and enrich us all by doing so, but it is not always a simple thing. Ionia is very much not a simple thing.”

    “So much is different here,” Erath agreed. “Do Ionians really turn into flowers when they die?”

    Tifalenji grunted. “A spirit blossom. The souls of the dead inhabit them, and when they bloom they call out to the living, if what I have been told is true.”

    “That holds with what I know,” said Teneff.

    “Is it only Ionians who inhabit the blossoms?” Erath asked Teneff.

    “I know not, why?”

    Erath reached under his jerkin, and took his pendant off. “During the war, all the fighters in our tribe came here. For years we heard nothing, until one day a woman came with this.” He held out the sliver of bone in his hands, lifting it up to show Teneff. “This is all that she said is left of my father. I wonder, could he be in one of the blossoms? Is his spirit still here, and could I find him?”

    “Even if there were,” Tifalenji interjected, “we have no time for such fancies. I need you focused now. Remember why you are here, blade squire. The purpose each of us is bound to carry out. Put all else from your mind.”

    Erath lowered his head. Unlike Tifalenji and the huntresses, his own purpose here felt elusive, a hard thing to balance against something as absolute as desertion. He dragged a thumb over the surface of the pendant. “Yes, mistress.”

    Teneff looked back over her shoulder. “If your father died here, then he died a hero for Noxus. That is all that matters.”

    Erath nodded, slowly slipping the cord and the pendant back around his neck.

    Does the rain here ever stop?

    Erath hauled one foot out of the mud, fighting to keep the mire from sucking the boot off him and only partially succeeding. Bouncing on one foot, he reached down to tug his boot up, shivering and at complete odds with the world surrounding him.

    The shimmering color of the rainfall made everything like a dream in a wavering, queasy way. He heard creatures make calls from the branches of trees the color of summer sunsets, sounds that didn’t seem like they could come from an animal. Maybe it was the trees themselves that were calling, as their leaves waxed and waned from orange to indigo.

    It was all so unreal.

    The only thing that felt truly real to Erath at that moment was the grumbling of an empty stomach. He wished they had managed to barter with the villagers before the soldiers had rendered their chance impossible. The whole scene had sat wrong with him, scattering his mind with jagged, uncomfortable thoughts. Is that how war was fought here? Was that how his father had fought it?

    Erath’s boots struck hard ground, and he breathed out a moment’s relief at the prospect of being free of the mud. He stretched the muscles in his arms as he led Talz forward across the stretch of pale stone ahead of them.

    As he walked, Erath took notice of the ground, seeing subtle shapes and lines that were somehow familiar to him. There was something intentional about the rock beneath his feet. An artfulness, even. His eyes grew wide.

    They were walking across a pair of cupped hands rendered from stone, half buried in the earth. Much of them was hidden beneath the surface, but the palms alone were wide enough to span a courtyard. Erath wondered about the size of the person they would be connected to, and where they might have come from.

    “I would like to know how anyone could make such a thing,” said Erath.

    “I’m rather more keen to know who could have destroyed it,” replied Tifalenji, her face stern as her gaze drifted over the scars and fissures where immense fingers had once been. “Or what.”

    “Hold,” Arrel warned, a low guttural chorus of snarls issuing from her hounds.

    She pointed.

    There was something lying in the center of the hands. It was a small shape, mewling softly in the rain. Erath pawed water from his eyes, squinting as he went nearer to it. Every time he blinked it was a different color.

    “Careful,” said the runesmith. Her eyes were on their surroundings, wary as she slowly drew her sword in a low rasp of steel.

    Curiosity pulled Erath forward. The creature was small, a little less than the length of his falchion’s blade. He glimpsed both feathers and scales, short coiling fronds that grasped feebly at the air and raised nubs that might one day sprout what appeared to be wings. The blade squire knelt, finding himself saying the same phrase he had repeated again and again ever since he had first set foot in Ionia.

    “I’ve never seen anything like it,” murmured Erath. He reached toward the creature. “Hey, little one. You hungry?”

    “No, no, no,” breathed Teneff, her eyes darting to and fro like the runesmith’s. “No, no, no.”

    Erath blinked. “But, what if it’s hurt? This is just a baby.”

    “Exactly,” Teneff agreed. Erath heard the links of her chain unravel from her arm. “Where do you think the mother is, then?”

    Something detached from the trees beside them. The already chilly air grew colder. Erath’s breath caught in his throat as a massive form revealed itself, and the rain began to fall upward.

    Like the tiny, helpless thing they had found it was part bird, part beast, and part sea creature. Grown to its full size, though, every facet was heightened to a fully monstrous extent. The baby’s grasping fronds were, on the “mother”, tentacles thick as a man’s arm, the subtle bumps razored talons. Half its form seemed to ripple in and out of solidity, as though it existed only partially in the same reality that Erath did.

    A deafening shriek slashed out from the forest of teeth and eyes that could have counted as the thing’s face. Erath cried out in pain, clamping his hands over his ears. The creature beat the rows of multicolored wings upon its back, buffeting Erath away from its progeny.

    “Back!” Teneff roared, not to the creature but to Erath. “Keep Talz safe!”

    Erath’s falchion was drawn but he did as she said, watching as Teneff spun her chain until it blurred into a blackened spiked arc. Arrel had ghosted behind the thing, her hounds slavering as they waited for her to unleash them. Tifalenji was chanting an uncanny litany that drew blood from her nose as her blade shuddered with emerald light.

    The beast screamed again, and was attacked from three sides.

    Arrel made a sharp series of hand gestures, and her hounds leapt upon the creature. Fangs and claws tore into its rippling hide. It writhed, twisting and undulating as it fought to shake them loose. The pack was hurled to the ground, but Third came away with a wing in his jaws.

    “Fr-ah deh-AHK!” Tifalenji bellowed, her blade trailing a constellation of burning jade as she swung. A pair of tentacles came free in a welter of incandescent blue blood, blurring into smears of dirty light before vanishing with a snap of air pressure. The oozing stumps twitched for a moment before sprouting, each appendage lost replaced by three new ones that formed like the branching limbs of a tree.

    Teneff charged. The beast wailed, lashing at her advance and raking the heavy pauldron on her left shoulder with its talons. She dipped her head behind the armor plating as a shower of sparks danced over her. She let loose her chain in a whirl of snapping links and it crashed against its flesh, but was quickly overwhelmed by slithering tentacles. The serpentine appendages pulled, seeking to yank Teneff off her feet, but she dug in her heels and held fast. She spun the short blade in her other hand, driving it into the creature’s flank again and again until the stone became slick with gore.

    The beast beat its wings, sending Teneff flying back. Her chain, still embedded in the creature’s side, snapped taut, wrenching her shoulder at an unnatural angle. With a bellow of pain she released her hold on its barbed links, hurtling backward to crash against the stone.

    Erath sprang toward Teneff, but was warded off by her outstretched hand. She glared back at him, her face a mask of blood from a gash across her forehead. Tifalenji launched herself at the monster, another incantation flowing from her lips, but she was smashed from the air by a clutch of tentacles.

    Every fiber of Erath’s being screamed at him to move, to do something. He shot Talz a glance, and set his jaw. It was time to pull his weight.

    Scrambling up the side of the basilisk, Erath took a tight hold of the reins and drove his heels into Talz’s flanks. The beast lumbered forward with a throaty grunt. Erath rode forward, placing himself between the creature and Teneff. A tentacle flicked at his face and he brought up his falchion in a blur of steel, slicing it away.

    Blood pounded in Erath’s ears as he deflected another slashing limb, making ready to charge. He pushed forward, slicing into a swarm of tentacles assailing him.

    “Stay clear of my manservant, beast!” came a voice from behind the creature.

    The sleek, agile silhouette of Lady Henrietta appeared from between the trees. The reptilian steed dashed forward, eager to coat her jewelry in a fresh kill. Seated upon her back, the masked figure of Marit laughed in equal eagerness, the blade of her glaive singing as it cut the air.

    With another piercing shriek the creature whirled around to face Marit in a disjointed, boneless spin.

    “Yes, that’s the spirit!” She flung out her glaive until she gripped the very end of it. She leaned back, spinning the spear in a wide arc before swinging it in closer. The blade slashed upward alongside the beast, shearing away an entire shoal of tentacles and two wings. The creature recoiled, and Marit hopped up to stand in a crouch on Henrietta’s saddle. Using her weapon for balance, she leapt up into the air before landing on the monster’s back.

    Clutching at a tentacle with her free hand, Marit scrambled up atop the beast as it bucked and rolled in a frenzied attempt to dislodge her. With a battle cry she plunged the tip of her glaive down into the base of the monster’s skull, and answered the steaming jets of glowing blood that splashed her with a sharp twist. The creature’s ear-splitting hiss was cut abruptly short as its limbs went slack and it toppled heavily to the ground. The rain fell normally again.

    The Noxians collected themselves, joining together in a loose circle around the dead creature. Erath climbed down from Talz’s back, still wary of sheathing his blade as he imagined the beast rising once more.

    Marit ripped her glaive loose with a grunt muffled by her leather mask. “I believe I am beginning to grow a touch weary of being your personal savior, runesmith.”

    “That creature,” said Tifalenji. “It came from the other realm.”

    “Indeed?” Marit raised an eyebrow. “Well, whatever part of it that is in this realm is dead.”

    The runesmith looked up at the rider. “When all this is finished, I shall craft you a weapon as savage as your spirit.”

    Marit matched her gaze. “I may just hold you to that.”

    “Well met, Marit,” Teneff dipped her head.

    “Yes,” Erath nodded hastily. “Thank you.”

    Arrel said nothing.

    “Of course,” Marit’s eyes smiled, and she gave a theatrical bow. “I’ll be damned if I have to endure any more of this adventure without the hired help.” She glanced back at the monster’s corpse. “Do you think this thing is good eating, or bursting with some ghastly poison?”

    “You want to try it?” scoffed Arrel. “Be our guest. Only fair as it is your kill, after all.”

    “I see,” Marit tilted her head. “What about the little one?”

    The Noxians all turned their attention to the smaller creature. Raising its head, the tiny monster trilled. It shivered for a moment before bursting into a cloud of snowflakes, which each then became a sound, and then nothing.

    Erath stared at the now empty space, releasing a breath slowly through his nose. “Someone tell me again, why do we want this place?”

    “The veil is thin here,” said Tifalenji, cuffing the trickle of blood from her upper lip as she sheathed her sword. “This land teems with the bizarre. Ignore it.”

    “This land is nothing but bizarre,” Erath muttered.

    Marit stepped gingerly onto the skull of the dead creature, snapping her fingers to draw Henrietta close. Sinking her glaive into the earth, she pushed down on the end of the haft, using it like a vault to swing herself over onto the saddle once more.

    “How long have you been up in that saddle, eh?” teased Teneff. “Why don’t you give Lady Henrietta a rest?”

    Marit scoffed. “I’m not touching Ionia any more than is absolutely necessary, thank you.”

    “Sounds like an awful long time to hold one’s piss,” Teneff grinned.

    “Hmm, well I’ve some jars stashed away here somewhere, if you’re in need of a fresh batch?” Marit began to rummage through her saddle pouches. Erath’s shoulders shook as he stifled a laugh.

    “Can we not?” asked Tifalenji, looking at both women in exasperation.

    Teneff shook her head. “You are no fun, runesmith.”

    “No fun at all,” echoed Marit. She looked to Erath, eyes narrowing into slits of cruel slyness.

    “Now, manservant, I don’t completely hate you yet, so whilst we are on the subject, a word of warning as you care for Lady Henrietta. Her urine is highly acidic, so no matter how desperate and overcome with thirst you might find yourself on our travels, you must look elsewhere, understand?”

    “Why?” Erath chuckled. “Is that what happened to your face?”

    Marit visibly tensed. Her eyes flashed wide for an instant, fingers digging into the haft of her glaive. “No,” she said coldly, winding Henrietta’s reins around her free hand and riding off without another word.

    The color drained from Erath’s face. “I—”

    “Let it be,” Teneff shook her head. “Just bide back a distance from her for a while.”

    Erath’s heart sank as he dragged himself back to Talz. After all this time, he had felt the faintest idea of being part of the group, of belonging. Now he felt it spill out between his fingers, like the elder Ionian’s tea.

    He had been so close, and he ruined it.

    The next week’s trek had been calm, or at least as calm as the wilds of Ionia could be to an outsider. The rains had ceased, and Erath savored marching over dry land for a change. The absence of bone-deep cold and the other miseries brought to a soldier by mud allowed him to truly see the natural splendour of Ionia in all its wondrous, breathtaking glory.

    Everything was in subtle motion, from the dancing of the birds to the gentle sway of the multicolored trees. Even the chase between the predator and its prey, glimpsed for only an instant at a time in the spaces between the trees, unfolded in a sort of graceful harmony. It was as though they were all moving in concert to some silent melody that was just beyond Erath’s ability to experience, a wider world he inhabited, but couldn’t see.

    They had been proceeding along the course of an immense river ever since they made landfall on Navori, never straying out of sight from its banks for too long. Not only had it served as a source of food and fresh water, but as a guide deeper into the interior, as the huntresses followed the eerie song that radiated from Tifalenji’s blade.

    “Night soon,” said Teneff, glancing over at the runesmith.

    Tifalenji’s eyes darted up at the swollen silver crescent of the moon, barely visible in the reddening sky. Erath thought he saw a moment of frustration flash across her features, before they become impassive and unreadable once more. “We’ll stop here, then.” She looked at Erath. “Make camp.”

    “Second,” murmured Arrel. The hound presented himself. “Find Marit, bring her back.”

    Second chuffed and turned, sprinting away into the deepening dusk. Marit had ridden ahead of the group since the incident after killing the creature, the thought sending a twist of regret in Erath’s gut.

    “I’ll go get some wood for a fire,” said Erath, drawing a hatchet from where it hung off Talz’s back.

    “Take care in how you do,” warned Teneff. “The trees here are alive.”

    Erath frowned. “Aren’t all trees alive?”

    “She means they’ll-kill-you alive,” said Arrel.

    Erath’s frown deepened.

    Night had fully descended, wrapping the world in a blanket of twinkling black velvet, by the time Erath had collected enough firewood. After the battle against the creature, he had opted to collect scattered branches from the ground rather than chop a fresh one loose and risk awakening some vicious animus within the tree that would seek one of his limbs to balance the scales.

    He returned to the campsite and made a fire. Once he was satisfied the embers were growing into a healthy flame, he slung a cooking pot and weighted net over his shoulder and made for the river. After checking how light their provision sacks had become, he hoped to return to camp with a fish.

    The minutes stretched by as he crouched on the river bank, staring into its glassy black surface. His pulse quickened as he saw motion in the water, and he flung out the net, cinching it tight and hauling it back onto land. The net wriggled and leapt with a captive carp.

    Breathing out a sigh of relieved triumph, Erath filled the pot with clear river water and dropped the carp inside.

    He walked back to camp, his step much lighter than when he had set off as he thanked the fish for its devoted service to the Noxian empire.

    “It’s ready,” said Erath as he portioned the soup out in each warrior’s tin cup. He was careful to drag the ladle across the bottom of the pot every time. When he had handed out the last cup he poured what was left for himself, and took a seat near the fire.

    For a while no one spoke, each of them content to enjoy the comforts of a hot meal and the crackling warmth of the fire. Erath was no exception, happy to fill his belly and give rest to sore feet and tired muscles.

    For that brief span of time, nothing else mattered.

    Each of the Noxians did their best to attempt some relaxation. Arrel was surrounded by her hounds, carefully inspecting their claws and teeth. Tifalenji had walked a short distance away, sitting cross legged beneath the light of the moon as she chanted and wrapped her levitating blade in magic. Teneff had taken out a battered pipe, slowly breathing out quivering rings of blue-grey smoke that crackled in the firelight.

    “You still use that thing, Ten?” Marit looked down from where she lounged atop Lady Henrietta’s back. “You do know that stuff will kill you.”

    Teneff shook her head. “This won’t be what kills me. Besides, I’m not allowing myself to die until this business is done.”

    Erath felt everyone’s thoughts coalesce, and cleared his throat. Teneff looked at him.

    “This person we’ve been sent to find,” said Erath.

    “Riven,” said Arrel softly.

    “You all knew her?”

    Tifalenji allowed her sword to drop into her hands. “Only by reputation.”

    “I shed blood alongside her, when first we came to these shores,” said Teneff, staring into the flames. “Tough little thing, you wouldn’t guess it by looking at her but she could haul a pair of legionaries down to her level, each by an ear. That sword of hers, took incredible strength to even lift it.”

    “Let alone the dancing she could do,” added Marit.

    Erath noticed the runesmith out of the corner of his eye, regarding Teneff carefully at the mention of the blade. The uncomfortable thought rose in his mind of how little he truly knew about Tifalenji, and how thoroughly his life depended on her now.

    “She was quiet at first,” said Marit, “mostly kept to herself.”

    “But stand together in the line with someone,” continued Teneff, “forge that bond with iron and blood…”

    “You become sisters,” Arrel finished.

    Silence descended, the three huntresses lost amidst their thoughts.

    “Why did she stay here?” said Marit, a thin edge creeping into the words. “All these years, everything that’s happened. Why did she betray us?”

    “We don’t know what happened,” said Teneff.

    Marit snorted. “Don’t play the imbecile, Ten. It does not suit you.”

    “You think I don’t seek to bring her to account?” Teneff stood and rounded on Marit. “Why else am I here?”

    “Years, she’s been here,” Marit replied, unmoving. “Years. Every opportunity to report back, and she didn’t. She is a deserter, and theirs is a weakness we cannot abide. A treachery we cannot forgive. We are here to seek vengeance.”

    “Don’t call it vengeance,” said Arrel. “This will be justice.”

    “Call it whatever you wish,” Marit replied. “Riven made her choice, and we are the consequence.”

    Erath tried to sleep, but despite his exhaustion it eluded him. He had seen the power the huntresses wielded when they worked together. Who was this person who was able to divide them without even being there? Who was Riven, who had left such a mark on each of them?

    The questions swirled around his head, though they slowly began to sink down beneath a promise of rest, before it was shattered by a voice.

    “Up!”

    Erath stirred. It was Teneff, standing watch.

    “Get up!” she bellowed again, clanging her short sword against her armor. “The river is flooding!”

    The Noxians scrambled to their feet. Erath turned to look at the riverbank, and his blood ran cold.

    Something had roiled the current, transforming it from a peaceful flow into a riot of churning rapids. Erath saw human faces take shape in the foaming walls of rushing water, boiling into being and mouthing silent, enraged curses before dissolving back. All the while it rose toward them, devouring the bank inch by inch.

    The river wasn’t flooding. It was alive.

    “Get to the treeline!” barked Tifalenji.

    Teneff was already running. Marit had only to spin into a riding position on Lady Henrietta before they were darting for the trees. Erath’s first thought was Talz.

    He hurried to the basilisk, taking hold of whatever he could from the camp as the ground beneath him turned to a marshy quagmire. Water rushed over his boots as he reached the massive reptile. He looked back just in time to see another great swell smash down over Arrel.

    And it looked like it had hands.

    Prying out the stakes rooting Talz in place, Erath started climbing onto his back before the basilisk charged. Erath clung to the straps and rigging on the beast’s flank for dear life as the water surged after them. He hauled himself up, his legs swinging free, head ducking as equipment, tools and what remained of their food supply tore loose.

    They made it to the trees, and Erath climbed as the water battered them. Talz clawed himself up to his hind legs to keep his head above the surface, each fresh surge crashing higher up his back and neck. Erath looked back. Teneff and Marit were clear, but Arrel and her hounds were caught in the swamp their camp had become, slowly being sucked back into the river.

    Erath braced as another swell struck him like a hail of stones. The tree next to him sagged, nearly snapping from its trunk. He looked from the tree to back at Arrel, and dropped down into water that reached his waist.

    Grabbing the hatchet from Talz, he swung, chopping into the wet bark of the ailing tree. He swore he heard some mournful note rasp from its leaves as it finally broke, smashing down at an angle toward the river. Erath watched a cluster of shapes approach it.

    Arrel’s hounds. They were paddling in a circle around her, dragging her up onto the tree. But there were only three of them.

    The waters began to recede as the first light of day broke through the foliage in bars of copper and gold. They glittered across the water. A horrific sound, like a dirge being played by a drowning man, filled the air as the tide slid back into the river.

    Marit galloped back, and Teneff climbed down, all of them converging on Arrel and the fallen tree. She had followed the bank, scanning the becalmed waters with her pack.

    “Second!” she called, pausing. “Second…”

    “He was carried beneath the water, Arrel,” said Teneff. She laid a tentative hand on her shoulder. “I’m sorry.”

    Arrel’s hand shook. She balled them into fists and set her jaw into a hard line.

    “We’re wasting time here,” the tracker croaked, shrugging off Teneff’s hand. She stood, sharply gesturing to bring the other hounds from their somber watch on the riverbank. Fourth lingered a second longer than the others, but a glare from Arrel brought him trotting to her.

    Erath flinched as the sunlight faded. He held out his hand, feeling heavy drops as they struck his palm. Their short reprieve from the rain was over.

    Within minutes the sun was gone, hidden behind heavy black stormclouds. The rain was joined by howling gales, whipping the downpour into twisting sheets of freezing water. The cold sliced through Erath to the bone. He could barely see an arm’s length in front of his face. It even forced Marit to dismount from Lady Henrietta.

    Tifalenji held her sword aloft. With a whisper, the blade burst with emerald flame, forcing back the storm’s blinding winds a fraction. Teneff retrieved a length of rope from Talz, looping it around each of their waists to bind them together.

    Leaning into the wind and lashing rain, the Noxians wandered forward behind Tifalenji, a tiny capsule of green light in the maelstrom. Time blurred for Erath as he trudged on. He couldn’t tell if it had been minutes or hours before Tifalenji spoke up.

    “We have to stop,” she roared over the wind.

    “Look!” Marit pointed with her glaive. “There’s light up ahead!”

    Erath could make out the faintest cluster of lights, like a constellation in the heavens.

    “This is wild country,” warned Teneff. “It could be bandits, or a Brotherhood camp for all we know.”

    “Then we kill them all,” hissed Marit. “The rune-witch is right. We have no supplies, and if we do not take shelter, this storm will end us.”

    Teneff spat out a mouthful of rainwater, and nodded. Together they fought the storm, putting one foot ahead of the other, until they reached the lights.

    The trees overhead formed an overhang, absorbing the worst of the storm. A village materialized before them, small and isolated amidst the woods. It looked like an extension of the forest itself, the tall, thin dwellings appearing woven and sculpted. They could just see them over a wall of intertwined branches barring their way, as though the land itself had formed a stockade. The branches shuddered, peeling apart enough to create a small passage.

    A dozen men and women stepped through the opening. They wore hand-spun robes, faces hidden behind hoods raised against the storm. The huntresses noted the axes and swords in their hands, the broad slab-like blades chipped and worn. The battered remnants of armor plating they were clad in.

    The huntresses formed a line, with Erath and Talz behind them.

    “Those are Noxian weapons,” said Teneff.

    “And those are Noxians carrying them,” added Arrel.

    As one they sank into battle postures. Arrel’s hounds snarled.

    “Lower your weapons,” said the lead villager in perfect Va-Noxian. He pulled back his hood to reveal a scarred face, his dark hair and beard shot through with streaks of silver. “We don’t want a fight.”

    “Well, you are deserters,” sneered Marit. She spat upon the ground.

    “Remember what’s behind us,” Teneff grumbled under her breath.

    “Realize what’s in front of us!” Marit snapped.

    “Stop!” Erath pushed his way between the huntresses. There was something about the man, hearing his voice. He stepped forth with trembling hands. He regarded the lead Noxian with wide eyes.

    A single tear descended the curve of his cheek.

    “Father?”

    The man led Erath out of the storm into one of the huts, passing onlookers, Noxian and Ionian alike, their faces expressing a spectrum of shock and anger to fear. Erath followed him, as though in a trance, struggling to believe that this was Jobin, his father.

    Alive.

    “You look like you’ve missed a meal or two,” said Jobin. The two sat down around a fire pit. Jobin opened a steaming pot, scooping out a measure of rice into a pair of wooden bowls and handing Erath one. “My son, what are you doing here?”

    They talked, of Erath’s journey, of home. He omitted much, careful as he spoke with a man he thought was dead.

    When they were done, Jobin’s eyes gleamed in the firelight. “Look at you. You’re a man now. My little enhasyi.” He paused. “How is your mother?”

    “Still mourning you,” Erath said, trying to keep the bitterness from his voice. He removed the bone pendant from his neck. “Who even is this?”

    “Me,” Jobin raised a hand, showing where one finger ended in a stump. “A sacrifice we all sent back, that we hoped might bring you peace.”

    “Peace,” Erath exhaled the word.

    After weeks traversing a realm of wild magic, of illusion and the uncanny, he had to ask the obvious question.

    “Are you real?”

    Jobin leaned forward. “What?”

    “Are you real?” Erath said again. “Or a spell to make it appear my father is not truly dead? If it is deception I would thank you, I truly would, for all that the alternative would mean.”

    For a few moments, neither spoke. The silence stretched.

    “The world used to be so small,” said Jobin, finally. “You never knew it. We tended our herds, we traded with our neighbors, we raised families. We had simple lives and we were happy. Then the empire came, and our little world became so much bigger, and so much darker.”

    He glanced out the door of the hut. “Being here, seeing this place, it brought me back to that.”

    “And that was worth treachery?” asked Erath.

    “Against what?” Jobin looked back at him. “Against some distant ruler I would never meet, pushing markers across maps? Those markers are people, Erath. Noxian people, Ionian people. We should have never begun this war.”

    “But we are stronger together,” Erath insisted. “Noxus didn’t put us in chains, it set us free. No more herds growing thinner every year, no more raids from those same neighbors. And we can do the same here. You’ve been gone a long time, it isn’t the Noxus you remember. We’ve truly become part of something greater.”

    “I don’t believe much has changed,” Jobin shook his head. “We came here believing what you believe, that this place needed Noxus. ’Rath, I don’t think they need our help, and they don’t need our rule, but we can coexist. I didn’t have to kill them, to become family. Once I understood that, I knew I couldn’t return.”

    Erath processed his father’s words, and hung his head. “Everything you taught me was a lie.”

    “I’m sorry, my son.” Jobin laid a hand on Erath’s shoulder. “I was deceived myself by it. But there is always time for something different. Something better. There is a place for you, here.”

    “A lie,” Erath repeated. Slowly, he looked up. “So why should I believe you now?”

    Jobin visibly sagged. “My son…”

    “No,” Erath’s eyes were hard. “You don’t get to do that. You lost a finger, I lost you! And now you sit there and preach, as you hide in the woods? We had an excuse before we joined the empire, of being blind to the wider world. We don’t have that ignorance anymore. Now you are either working to unite the world, to make it better, or you’re running.”

    Erath stood.

    “I’m not running.”

    Erath and Jobin emerged from the hut. The blade squire looked up, seeing the clouds thinning through the canopy of the trees. The rain had slackened as well.

    “Think upon what I’ve said, my son,” said Jobin.

    “I have,” Erath replied, stepping away to stand beside the huntresses.

    Jobin swallowed, and cleared his throat. “We have offered you shelter. Now that the storm is passing, we will offer you a portion of our harvest. We ask in return only that you leave us in peace, and forget you ever found this place.”

    Teneff eyed the runesmith. She tilted her head, and the huntresses stepped back to confer amongst themselves.

    “The only question worth asking,” said Marit, “is if we kill them all.”

    “His father is among them,” Teneff nodded toward Erath.

    “His father is a traitor,” Marit replied.

    “He isn’t the only one,” said Arrel. “Close to half of this village are Noxian… or were.”

    “Scared of getting your hounds dirty?” Marit ran a finger down the edge of her glaive.

    “Slaughtering cowards and villagers finds us Riven how?” the tracker retorted.

    Erath looked to Tifalenji. The runesmith held the lives of these villagers—the life of his father—in her hands. For the life of him, Erath couldn’t decide what he wanted her to say, and that more than anything turned his heart to a lead weight in his chest. The huntresses studied her too, trying to parse her impassive features for her judgment.

    Teneff rested a hand on her chain. “What’s it to be, then?”

    “We move on,” Tifalenji stated. “Our task is to find one deserter, and these are not her.” She eyed Marit. “It is not a discussion.”

    “As you wish,” she shrugged, walking back to her mount. Tifalenji looked sternly upon Erath.

    “Were the circumstances different, I would not condone leaving them here alive.”

    “I understand,” Erath replied.

    “Now make haste,” ordered Tifalenji. “Time is against us, and you know what lies ahead.”

    The huntresses gathered and began the march out of the village. Erath spared a final look back as they passed through the unfolding stockade, then touched Teneff’s arm. “What lies ahead?”

    Her face turned grim, and her eyes distant. “The place where all this started.”

    They marched in silence, though troubled thoughts made it feel as though Erath were pushing his way through a crowd. He couldn’t reconcile the man who raised him with the one he discovered living in that village. A son is raised in the image of his father, but does he end up the same person?

    The bone pendant around his neck grated against his chest.

    The landscape changed, growing more arid and dry, as did the dispositions of the huntresses. Postures stiffened, reflexes had them twitching at the slightest sound, and all three had their weapons drawn, clutched in white-knuckle grips. Erath could smell a faintly acrid tang in the air.

    The Noxians crested a hill, and witnessed a dusty expanse of dessicated plains ahead. A marker was erected at the border to the plain, little more than a stone totem marked with Ionian script. He could not decipher it, but the meaning behind it was clear to Erath.

    It was a warning, to stay away.

    They found an old man sitting by the marker. Quietly he hummed to himself, flicking a necklace of chimes he wore looped around his shoulders. His eyes grew wide as the Noxians approached, and using a cane for support, he slowly pushed himself to his feet.

    “Travelers,” he raised a hand. “I have no part in any quarrel, and serve no master. I keep vigil here, at the threshold of a terrible place, to ward off those who might seek to cross.”

    The huntresses were silent. Erath had never seen such tension radiating from them. Tifalenji stepped forward.

    “We wish no harm to you, gatekeeper,” she said. “But do not seek to bar our passage.”

    “I beg you,” the Ionian clasped his tiny hands together, “go no further. You cannot imagine the pain that occurred here.”

    “We don’t have to,” answered Teneff, as she walked past.

    Erath followed, passing the dejected Ionian by. “I will sing for you,” said the gatekeeper. “For your pain.”

    The first step onto the dusty plain, and Erath felt like he had been transported somewhere alien, even for Ionia. It was absolutely devoid of life. The ground had a sickly, greenish tint, and the air was sour, stinging his nose and throat. His eyes and lips tingled.

    A profound sense of loss emanated from the earth like a haze, stabbing into Erath.

    Teneff stopped, slowly taking in the landscape.

    “This is where it happened.”

    “It was here,” breathed Tifalenji, the runes along her blade pulsing. She blinked. “She was here.”

    “We had been fighting for years,” said Teneff. “Everything ground to a stalemate. They said they had a way to break through, brought us some mad Zaunite and his concoction.”

    “Chemical fire,” Arrel murmured.

    “Something so caustic it would strip the life out of anything it touched,” said Marit. “We were safeguarding the payload, moving it up to the line, when it all went wrong.”

    Erath looked from one huntress to the next as their words flowed over each other.

    “We were ambushed…”

    “…so many of them…”

    “Riven called out for support…”

    “They couldn’t have known where we were.”

    “They fired—”

    “—and the jars ignited.”

    Marit reached behind her head, undoing the clasps that kept her mask in place. The straps slackened, came loose, and Erath swallowed.

    Her entire face and skull was a mass of hairless, glossy red scar tissue. Erath had seen things killed by burns, the way the flesh looked afterward, but this was different. Black veins threaded the tissue like cobwebs. Erath could not fathom what pain she must endure, even now.

    Only her eyes remained unscathed. She looked at Erath, holding his gaze in cold silence.

    Arrel removed her own helm. Erath glimpsed wounds around her lips and neck. The tracker hacked and spat a gobbet of blood phlegm.

    She must have breathed it in, Erath realized.

    “It was chaos,” said Teneff. “Comrades, enemies, boiling away, screaming themselves dead. I never saw Riven again. I believed that she died here, like all the rest.” She looked at Erath. “Do you understand? If we can find her, the thought that we can make something good from all this—”

    Then she stopped, her eyes on the horizon. Erath looked, seeing a group of figures appear on the hill. They were Ionian, clad in lightweight armor and festooned with blades of all kinds. Their faces were hidden behind masks and hoods the color of dark iron.

    “Calm is the ocean before the storm,” shouted one of the Ionians. “Stand to account, xiir! If any are to control this land, it will be us.”

    “Navori Brotherhood,” Teneff bared her teeth, speaking the words like a curse.

    “Full warparty,” said Marit, her voice calm and level despite an edge for the violence sure to come.

    “The village you stole from,” said the Brotherhood warrior, spreading his arms wide. “They were all so eager to speak of you. To help us fulfill our promise.”

    Erath’s blood ran cold.

    “We should have killed them,” Marit snarled, rage twisting the ruin of her face as she pulled her mask back on. A light rain began to fall from the iron-gray sky.

    “This forsaken rain,” hissed Arrel.

    The Brotherhood warrior took a step down the hill. “We promised to find you, the xiir, wherever you might be in the First Lands. We promised to hunt you, stalk you, to cleanse our homeland of those who have destroyed the balance between the twin realms.”

    The Ionians roared, raising weapons, many of which coursed and shivered with magic.

    “We make these promises to all those you have taken before their time, those whose limbs you have taken, whose peaceful dreams you have stolen and replaced with terror and broken memory. These promises we will keep, so long as our hearts beat life within us!”

    A dozen warriors descended the hill, coming within a handful of paces of the Noxians with weapons ready.

    “Tell me,” said the Ionian. “What will you promise?”

    Teneff breathed, slowly shut her eyes and opened them. “I promise… to make this hurt.”

    “You promise blood, then,” the warrior smiled beneath his hood. “We accept.”

    Teneff roared, hurling her hooked chain. It struck one of the Brotherhood in the temple. The force of the blow smashed him to the ground. Teneff stomped on his chest, tearing the hook free in a spray of blood. More flecked from the hook as she spun it again.

    Arrel flung out her hand and her hounds attacked. First tackled one of them, clamping down around the woman’s neck. The drakehound shook savagely, wrenching her body back and forth until she went limp, then moved on to another.

    The two groups closed into melee. Tifalenji thrust her sword into an Ionian’s midsection. She spat a curse and the blade ignited, setting the man ablaze with screaming jade flame. Marit strafed through their midst. Her glaive was a blur, never ceasing as it cut, stabbed and slashed in tandem with Lady Henrietta’s snapping jaws.

    Erath watched the opening strikes. This place had awakened something in them, unleashed a rage that they had crushed down deep within themselves for years. The runesmith had waded in, knowing the only way to achieve her goal was to eliminate the Ionians in her way. Talz’s reins slipped from his hand, replaced by his falchion.

    Teneff locked blades with the Brotherhood leader, their faces inches apart.

    “This ground pains you,” he taunted. “The xiir you lost, would you like to see them again?”

    As if on command, a young Ionian who had remained halfway down the hill began to sing. It was a lilting, haunting melody, a tune that no living thing should be able to make. It stilled the Noxians for an instant, the absolute wrongness of it.

    Erath’s footing slipped as the earth shook. Tiny things appeared up from the ground, like seedlings but pulsing with a sickly, intermittent unlight. Erath realized after a moment that they were fingers.

    Soon hands emerged, arms bursting through the soil. Insubstantial silhouettes of ragged men and women clawed their way up from below, dressed in incorporeal rags of Noxian garb, all radiating the same cold spectral darkness.

    “The dead here are not at peace,” hissed the Ionian, grappling with Teneff.

    “Madness,” Teneff snarled.

    The Brotherhood warrior leapt back, drawing a blade. “And you will join them!”

    The youth continued to sing, and more pale phantoms clawed their way up from the earth. Erath found himself surrounded, and slashed out in a wide arc. The spirits boiled away at his blade’s touch, only to resolve like a sickened wind. He struck again, carving an opening to see the wider battle.

    The Brotherhood numbers were thinning from the fury of the huntresses, but the dead were massing, dredged back into being by that hellish melody. Erath recoiled, sensing that even these Ionian’s kin would condemn the evil they were unleashing. They had but moments until they were overwhelmed, and it had to be stopped.

    He made for the hill. A Brotherhood warrior leapt in his path, wielding a pair of long daggers. Shouting an Ionian curse, he lunged at Erath. The blade squire parried the first dagger going low for his gut, but saw the flash of the second seeking his throat. He backpedaled, losing his balance and falling to the ground.

    The Ionian dived atop him. His mask slipped free, revealing a young determined face trying to drive one of the daggers into Erath’s chest. His falchion had slipped from his grasp in the fall. He fought the man, gripping his wrists as the dagger’s tip pierced his flesh. With a roar of pain and anger, Erath rolled, reversing the positions as he drew his knife.

    Erath dropped his weight down, driving the knife into the Ionian’s gut. Grunting, he twisted it sharply, and felt the strength leave the Ionian’s grip. Tugging the blade free he collected his falchion and stepped over the dying man.

    Rain and blood turned the ground to mire. Erath ran, weaving between clashes of blades and the moaning hordes of lost Noxians reaching for him. Their touch numbed his flesh, as though they were filling his veins with ice water. He gasped for breath as his side was raked by translucent claws.

    The singer’s eyes were closed, the lids twitching as he wept blood. Trickles of ruby issued from his nose, ears, and lips as he stood transfixed and dirged. He didn’t see Erath coming. The blade squire surged forward, pushing against cold, grasping hands. He was bent double, crying out in agony as one climbed on top of him. He thrust himself upright, throwing the ghoul back. Breathless, his vision narrowing like a collapsing tunnel, he charged forward and with the last of his strength brought his blade down.

    The Ionian’s song fell silent as he collapsed, his lifeblood emptying out from where Erath’s blade had split him from collar to sternum. The phantoms shrieked, their forms elongating as they were drawn violently back down into the earth. Within moments, all that remained of them was a pale, sickly fog, and the echoing cries of the unquiet dead.

    Erath turned, stumbling like a drunkard as he returned to the fight still raging below. The Navori Brotherhood warparty was down to their final warriors. They had clearly chosen to die rather than flee, save for one. Arrel’s hounds ran him down, and tore him apart. Lady Henrietta feasted, her jewelry stained crimson. Blood sizzled and snapped where it touched the runes of Tifalenji’s blade.

    Erath arrived in time to see Teneff with the leader of the warriors. She had encircled his neck with her chain and drove his face into the quagmire, a boot on his back as she watched him suffocate.

    All of them bled from a dozen wounds. Teneff looked up at Erath as he approached. She stood up straight sharply, snapping the Ionian’s neck, and stumbled back. She sank to one knee, overcome by the bone-deep exhaustion of prolonged fighting hand to hand.

    Erath looked down. The earth fizzed and fumed wherever blood had seeped into it. His skin burned from the dust, already reddened and peeling.

    “Insanity,” snapped Marit, flinging blood from her glaive. “Ionians claim to revere the dead, and yet do this?”

    “We aren’t their dead,” murmured Arrel. “Even still…”

    “Insanity,” Marit repeated.

    “We can’t stay here,” panted Tifalenji. “The toxin is still in the ground. And who knows what further ruin their necromancy has wrought.” She stood beside Teneff.

    “I had almost hoped to see Riven among them,” she said, looking up at the runesmith. “I had wished that you were wrong.”

    The runesmith offered her hand. “I am not.”

    After a moment, Teneff took it.

    For once the rain was a blessing. Cool and cleansing, it washed the blood and poisoned earth from their bodies as they left the site of the chemical attack behind. They could all see the runesmith’s sword was shining now, humming to her.

    “She’s close,” Tifalenji whispered, eyes locked to the runes. “So very close.”

    She nodded to Marit and Arrel, and the two began ranging ahead.

    Erath felt his chest as they walked. Gingerly avoiding his dagger wound, he pulled his pendant out from under his jerkin, rubbing a thumb slowly over its surface. “He gave us up. My father gave us up.”

    “He may have been coerced,” said Teneff. After a while she shook her head. “It doesn’t really matter.”

    “I was only a child. They told me that he died, he’s gone, he’s never coming back, I’ll never see him again. Then I do see him, and everything I knew about him was a lie.” He looked at Teneff, taking a shaking breath. “What do I do with that?”

    Teneff reflected for a moment. “You can let him go.”

    Erath cuffed away a tear. “How does that help, after everything?

    “It’s not about helping everything.” She gripped his shoulder. “Just you. So long as Noxus endures, you will always have a family, Erath.”

    Erath paused. He let the words and memories of the past days wash over him. Exhaling, he pulled at the pendant until the cord around his neck snapped. He stared down at it, and slowly tilted his palm until the sliver of bone fell to the ground.

    Without looking back he jogged off to catch up to the others, as the pendant quickly vanished beneath the earth.

  2. Sisterhood of War Part III: Irreparable

    Sisterhood of War Part III: Irreparable

    Ian St. Martin

    The light is dying.

    Above me, the sky fades to black as the sun sinks beneath the horizon, leaving ripples of dappled red trailing above it, the last warm echoes of the day. There is red trailing from me, too, from my armor, my sword. The last warm echoes of the lives I’ve taken today. In the first days I would work in the aftermath to cleanse myself of it, to wash and scour the blood and death away, but was never truly able to. After a time, I stopped trying.

    I hear the swish of a crimson cloak as someone drops into the bulwark beside me. From the corner of my eye I see the markings of rank.

    “Captain,” I say, beginning to stand.

    “Please,” she waves me back. I forget that I lead my warriors now, that she and I are equals, but it feels false. She is nobility, I am an orphan sword.

    I know her, the cavalry officer we’ve been escorting into the hills, some attempt to break the stalemate bleeding us white. Proud, skilled, furious. As though the eyes of our empire watch her every move. She considers me for a second. “You look like you need rest.”

    I glance up. “They use bombs that mimic the sound of children screaming to rob us of our sleep, or they come by night to slit our throats, with only the stars to bear witness.”

    The captain’s eyes trail off, in thought. “I heard an officer from the Ninth cohort, saying that they can kill you through dreams.”

    “Dreams?” I ask.

    She nods.

    I exhale. “What do you do if they kill you in a dream?”

    She shrugs, and offers me a tired grin. “Try not to remember it, I suppose.”

    I hear no beast nearby, and know this one is never far from hers. “Where is your mount?”

    Her face darkens. “That ground we took last week… Their witch…”

    I swallow, closing my eyes for a moment to block the memory.

    “Before she died,” she continues. “The witch whispered something to my steed, probably meant for me. A wasting disease. This morning he could not stand.”

    “I’m sorry.”

    “He was suffering, so I eased it.” She looks at me. “Are you suffering?”

    I meet her gaze, and she chuckles softly.

    “Relax, the empire needs you. I refer to that.”

    She inclines her chin toward my sword, its massive blade sunk into the earth beside me, still trailing red.

    “That blade is a gift,” she says, her words cautious. “I have seen you wield it with skill, but time can so often make a gift into a burden. You have been so strong through all this. If the burden you bear has become too heavy, I would carry it for you.”

    “No.” My hand reflexively goes to it, its terrible weight reassuring. “This thing I carry is mine. I would wish it on no one else. Even as it breaks me.”

    In silence she studies me, her eyes cold for a moment, before she smiles. “I meant no shame upon you—as I said, we need you. We have shed blood together here, and that act makes us sisters.”

    A child’s scream slices open the early night. It hangs, gouging the air with unnatural length. Sleep seems like a thing from another life, impossible here.

    “This truly is a horrible place. Together, we’ll make it better.” She rises, and presses a fist to her chest. “For Darkwill.”

    “For Darkwill,” I return the salute. “Thank you, captain.”

    She shakes her head. “You can call me Marit.”

    Riven blinked sweat from her eyes. The sting brought her out of the memory, and back to the calm of the field. Her senses adjusted to now, the rich smell of earth and crops ready for harvest, the crisp spice on the air as the leaves turned crimson, the heat of the sun on her skin.

    She walked between the rows of the crop, sunlight peeking in golden bars through broad leaves and stalks. For a moment Riven was a child again, growing up tending the fields, though the barley she grew in her youth didn’t rise up past her head, or shimmer with the traceries of magic that suffused every part of the First Lands. Every few paces there would be a gap, the light flooding in to highlight a patch that had been harvested in stark relief, the prize portions of the crop that had already been taken to market. She paused each time, standing in the sun, allowing its heat to wash over her, as her insides twisted.

    The sun had reached its zenith, the hottest part of the day. Riven drew a forearm across her brow, and tried to clear a parched throat. Her thoughts turned to water.

    Emerging from between the stalks, she found Asa, his eyes kind as he waited for her with a skin in his hands. Riven had been distant from her adoptive father since they had returned from the market, wanting to give him his privacy to think, to feel.

    To bury his wife.

    “Soup will be ready soon,” he said. Then he looked down. “I think I made too much again. I forgot.”

    Riven’s eyes darted to the shrine they had built for Shava Konte, the closest thing she had ever had to a mother. “Forgive me, fair.”

    “For what?” Asa tilted his head, regarding her.

    “I should have gone alone to market,” Riven continued. “You weren’t here when—”

    “It is not upon your shoulders that the weight of the world be laid,” Asa shook his head slowly. “Nor the path that the stars turn in the heavens, or the dance that happens across the veil. Their accordances are great, they are beyond our influence.”

    “Yet I still feel guilt.”

    “Our responsibility rests upon our own actions, the choices made by our hearts.” Asa offered Riven the skin of water. “I know your heart, dyeda. It is pure.”

    “Not all of it,” Riven took the skin, but her gaze lingered over the shrine. “I miss her, fair.”

    “As do I,” Asa stood at her side. “Yet I do not grieve my beloved Shava, because she is not lost to us. She was at peace when we found her. No pain, and the fortune of passing in her sleep. I treasure her, as someone certain that when the blossoms return next, I will see her again.”

    Riven felt a tear slide down her cheek. “Do you think her blossom will be hard to find?”

    “My wife?” Asa smiled broadly. “I don’t believe a single blossom can contain her spirit. That woman, she will be an orchard.”

    Riven smiled, looking up at Asa but finding the joy had vanished from his face. She turned, following where he stared transfixed upon a small group of figures that had appeared in the distance.

    Her blood went cold. Her heart was stilled by an utter certainty within her, an inevitability she could no longer hope to hide from. The smell of a campfire welled in Riven’s nose, the words of the mender they had met upon the road echoing sharply in her mind.

    “Fair,” said Riven, her hands clenching into fists. “Hide.”

    “Farming,” Marit sighed. “Really.”

    Erath followed the huntresses as they looked out across the stretch of land ahead of them. Great columns of natural stone lined the east, like the broken ribs of a long-dead god left exposed. To the west was forest, hued in a thousand shades of crimson, and nestled in between, a humble solitary farmstead.

    “Perhaps the war truly did break her,” said Tifalenji. Her blade’s hum had become a full-throated song as they traveled from the bleached site of the chemical attack. Now, here, it was felt rather than heard, a sensation that shivered the bones and caused gums to ache. “She seeks to grow and create, some kind of attempt to assuage her past.”

    “She grows crops, nourishing them, and then she harvests them. Cuts them away and sells them,” Marit snorted. “I’m sure a poet could do something with that.”

    “Remember,” grumbled Arrel, reaching down to scratch First’s scalp. “We want her alive.”

    “Alive,” echoed Marit. “Such a malleable term. How many limbs is ‘alive’?”

    “Marit…” warned Teneff.

    “She betrayed us.” Marit glared down from atop Lady Henrietta. “Not the army, not even Noxus, us. No mercy for deserters and traitors. Or have you forgotten that?”

    Teneff met her gaze. “I haven’t forgotten. But we walk into this clear-headed, and we walk out back to the empire with her in chains. Understand?”

    Erath listened, reaching for Talz and patting the basilisk’s flank. He was outside of their conversation but still he felt a part of it, especially Marit’s barb about deserters. Rather than anger at her, though, after all that had happened, he found himself agreeing with her. His father’s betrayal was still lodged tightly in his chest, jagged and insistent.

    Teneff lingered back a few steps, allowing Erath to catch up to her.

    “I doubt she will come peaceably—there will almost certainly be a confrontation,” said the warrior, hefting the chains wound around her forearm.

    “You sound excited at the prospect,” Erath replied.

    Teneff gave a wry smile. “Just be prepared. Simply do as you did before, you acquitted yourself well in the last battle.”

    “Was I supposed to sulk and be maudlin at the prospect of taking an enemy’s life?” Erath scoffed. “What am I, some Demacian girl?”

    As one, the women turned around and stared at him.

    “What?” Erath looked at each of them. “I said Demacian.” They turned back around.

    Arrel glanced at Tifalenji, scowling at the noise rippling from her sword. “Is that still necessary?”

    “No.” The runesmith grinned. She ran a hand over her rune-etched blade, and the sound ceased. “We require the scent no longer. I can feel it myself, for the quarry is now in sight.”

    The Noxians advanced upon the farm. Erath heard the huntresses mutter amongst themselves, the subdued talk of tactics on the march to war. Where they would stand, angles and landmarks, who would do what if the need for bloodletting arose, all discussed in a bored, almost horrifically calm manner. All the while their hands tightened over their weapons.

    The huntresses spoke as though they were laying siege to a fortress, or meeting an entire army in the field. They were wary of Riven, mindful of the devastation she was capable of, filling Erath’s head with a vision of a ruthless warrior queen wielding an enchanted sword, drenched in the blood of the slain enemies strewn around her.

    It was a vision that he found hard to reconcile with the lonely farm they were approaching. There was serenity here, a pocket of calm tucked away from the grandeur and chaos Erath had encountered in Ionia along the way. He considered for a moment if it was the reality that his journey had reached its destination that was really jarring. He thought back to the Immortal Bastion, staring up at its towers what felt like a lifetime ago.

    Whoever that Erath had been, the one here now was ready to do his duty to the empire, and bring this traitor to justice.

    Talz grumbled, making a deep choking sound. Frowning, Erath peeled back the creature’s gums, searching around and finally drawing his arm out, clutching a spittle-slick chicken bone.

    “When did you have chicken?” he murmured.

    Talz grunted. Erath stared at the beast for a moment. “Come on,” he said, giving a tug on the basilisk’s reins before flinging the bone away.

    A rough dirt road led to the farm. Erath studied the land as they approached, a house in the same woven, organic style inherent to Ionia, a barn big enough for an ox or two, a small plot with rows of grain, some patches of it already cut down and harvested. He made himself think like the huntresses did, like his training had taught him. Where could an ambush lie? Where was the best open ground for a fight, and where could we fall back to if that fight turned bad?

    Erath saw no ambush, no band of farmers armed with whatever they had to protect their land. Only a woman, standing alone in muddy clothes at the end of the road.

    The huntresses stopped a short distance from her, eyeing her carefully.

    “Who is that?” Erath asked.

    Teneff took a slow breath. “That is Riven.”

    Erath blinked. “That’s her?”

    “That is her,” replied Arrel.

    He looked closer. “She’s not what I imagined.”

    “Appearances aren’t everything, manservant,” said Marit. “You look like an idiot, for example.” She mulled her words for a second. “Perhaps that is a bad example.”

    “Where is it?”

    All eyes turned to Tifalenji.

    “What?” asked Teneff.

    “Her blade,” the runesmith said through gritted teeth. “I sense it, not in one place but in many. Something is wrong.”

    “Well she isn’t wielding it,” said Marit. “That is surprising. Maybe she’s beaten it into a plowshare.”

    Tifalenji glared at Marit. The rider chuckled, though there was no mirth in it.

    “I know, I hope not either.”

    For a few moments, nobody said anything. Riven stood before the door to her farmhouse, the huntresses arrayed before her. Erath stayed a pace behind with Talz, peering between the women to see what was happening.

    The silence stretched, untenable, and finally broke.

    “Hello, sister,” called Teneff.

    “Teneff.” Riven’s voice was low, almost soft but with an edge of sadness. Erath detected no rage in it, no fear, only pain. Anguish coated the speaking of her former comrade’s name. Riven’s eyes flicked quickly to the other Noxians, taking each of them in before settling on the tracker and her hounds. “Arrel. Pups have grown.”

    Arrel inclined her head.

    “So she does remember the life she cast aside,” Marit exclaimed, looking to the other huntresses, then back at Riven. “The ones she betrayed.”

    Surprise flickered over Riven’s features at hearing the masked woman’s voice. “Marit?”

    “Scars and all,” the rider sneered. Lady Henrietta hissed. “Surely you must have known this day would come.”

    Riven let out a breath. “It was a matter of time, I suppose.”

    Teneff took a step forward. “And now, that time is here. You are alone?”

    “Yes,” she answered.

    Arrel’s eyes narrowed. “Should we believe you?”

    “There was another,” Riven gestured to a death shrine beside the farmhouse door. Erath could see it was newly made. “She passed, now it’s only me.” Her eyes grew hard. “What do you want?”

    “You, Riven,” said Marit, leaning down from the saddle. “We have come for you.”

    Erath could see Riven visibly tense. The bands of lean muscle in her arms twitched, fingers tightening around the grip of a sword she wasn’t holding. The blade squire’s hand dropped to rest on the pommel of his sheathed falchion.

    “Do you plan on giving us any trouble, sister?” Teneff allowed the barbed chain in his hand to slacken, the heavy iron hook striking the ground with a thud. “Remembering who you really are?”

    “I’m not that person anymore,” Riven said quietly. “That is all far behind me.”

    “Not far enough,” said Arrel.

    Silence held for a handful of heartbeats, radiating with tension. Erath looked between the huntresses and Riven, waiting for either of them to make the first move, for the traitor’s blade to magically manifest in her hand and furious combat to begin.

    “Well,” said Marit, surprising Erath by swinging her leg over and dismounting from Lady Henrietta, handing him the reins. “Are you going to be a polite host and invite us in? We have so much catching up to do.”

    Riven was still for a moment, before she stepped back beside the open door, gesturing inside. “Please.”

    The huntresses stepped over the threshold and into the farmhouse, each setting their weapons down beside the door. “Stay,” Arrel bade her hounds, and the trio huffed and whined before sitting on either side of the entrance. Erath made to follow them, only to find Tifalenji’s hand on his arm.

    “Not you,” the runesmith murmured, her fingers digging into his flesh. Her brow was furrowed, her eyes darted about. Erath noticed her head tilt slightly, as though she were straining to hear a sound just beyond earshot. “You will come with me.”

    Riven watched as the huntresses seated themselves at the table, the three of them together on one side. Waves of emotion rolled out of them, crashing against her in a storm of alarm, dread—and in some small corner of her, relief.

    These were the women she served beside, the sisters she made in fire and blood. The essence of them was clear to her, but each had changed, overlaid with scars she never saw inflicted. Riven knew that she had changed as well, the span of the table a rift yawning between them. They were almost like strangers, wearing masks of the comrades she used to know.

    Marit was literally wearing a mask. She caught Riven staring at it.

    “Oh, this?” The rider reached back, undoing the clasps behind her head. She pulled the mask free, and Riven’s heart sank at the sight.

    “What’s the matter, sister?” Marit leaned forward. “Don’t remember what happened? The fire, the screams? You were there, after all.”

    Riven’s eyes stung. “What happened to you, Marit?”

    “I survived.” Marit’s ruined visage twisted in a cruel lipless grin. “Hmm, perhaps if you had stuck around, you would know.”

    Riven looked away. “I thought you all were dead.” The words were genuine, until this day they had been fact to her, now she couldn’t tell if she was uttering them to convince the huntresses, or herself.

    “We aren’t,” croaked Arrel, clearing her throat painfully. “How hard did you look?”

    “It all happened so quickly,” said Riven, lost in the memory. “Emystan, when she fired on us—”

    “Do not speak that name to me,” snarled Teneff. Marit shot the warrior a glance. Teneff rose. “And do not seek to cast blame upon others. You ran.”

    “What do you remember,” said Arrel, coughing wetly, “of that day?”

    Riven closed her eyes. Broken images flashed across her mind, her ears swelling with fire and screams. Her nose stung from burnt flesh and poison. Agony, pressure, fingers clawing at her boots, begging her to save them. But she couldn’t.

    “Little,” Riven finally replied. “Fragments, here and there. I don’t know how I lived, something with my sword.”

    “You do look quite unscathed,” said Marit.

    “I am not,” Riven said firmly. “I have my scars.”

    “We all do,” said Teneff. She locked her withering gaze upon Riven. “Why did you run?”

    Erath followed close behind Tifalenji, the runesmith moving as though in a trance. Sweat trickled down Tifalenji’s face as she walked, eyes closed, the tip of her sword flicking and waving in the air as its runes glimmered and pulsed. Erath spared a glance back at the farmhouse, wondering what was happening inside, and nearly collided with Tifalenji as she came to a halt outside the barn.

    “In here,” she murmured. “Something.”

    Erath’s curiosity peaked. They had succeeded in tracking the traitor down by following the runic magic infused within her sword, so it had to be here somewhere, hidden away. After witnessing what Tifalenji was able to do with her own weapon, the blade squire was eager to see such a powerful relic first hand.

    The barn was small, occupied only by a thin-ribbed ox munching contentedly on straw in a stall. Erath thought back to Talz and Lady Henrietta where he had hitched them outside, happy he had not chosen to house them here. Talz was far too big, and likely to bring the structure down, while Lady Henrietta would have taken an interest in the ox… and it was a lot of work to clean all that jewelry.

    The tip of Tifalenji’s sword stopped abruptly over a heap of straw. “There,” she breathed, stooping down. “A pox on her life, to keep a blade like hers in a place like this.”

    Tifalenji dug, her fingers clawing away at heaps of straw and dried grass. Finally she held her blade over it, whispering a sharp string of syllables that boiled the chaff away, revealing a flat piece of metal, about the size of Erath’s fist. He could make out a portion of a rune, etched into the dark material, cut off by the edge of the fragment where it appeared to have been shattered from the whole.

    “No,” Tifalenji’s breath caught in her throat as she touched it. “No, no, no…”

    Erath took a step back, feeling the runesmith’s rage rolling off her like a heat haze. “Is that part of the sword? How could something of such power be broken?”

    “She did it.” A tear streaked down Tifalenji’s face as her fingers closed over the shard. “She actually did it.”

    Erath looked back at the farmhouse, thinking of the deserter inside with the huntresses. What had happened to this woman?

    Tifalenji bolted upright and rounded on Erath in a single swift motion, her eyes smoldering. “There are more pieces like this,” she hissed. “I can feel them, and you and I are going to find them. Every single one.”

    Riven ladled soup into bowls, placing one in front of each of the huntresses before filling one for herself.

    “You certainly made a lot,” Marit remarked, glancing at the large pot simmering over the fire. “You must have quite the appetite, Riv.”

    Riven swallowed a spoonful of broth. “I eat some of it fresh. The rest can sit over the fire for a week or so.”

    Marit stirred the contents of her bowl. “How quaint.”

    “You didn’t answer me,” Teneff pressed, her food untouched. “Tell me why you abandoned everything you had pledged your life to. You owe us that much.”

    Riven stopped eating, placing her spoon on the table. “I was an orphan. Father died fighting far from home, I was never told where. Mother died having me. When Noxus called, I leapt at the chance—not for adventure, or a desire to spill blood.” She looked at the huntresses. “For family. For a chance to finally feel like I belonged somewhere. That changed that day in Navori, when the rain caught fire set by those we called ally.”

    Riven took a breath, fighting to keep the memory from resurfacing. “We didn’t mean anything to them. We never did.”

    “Noxus is not the same empire that you abandoned,” said Teneff. “It has evolved. Changed. Darkwill is dead, the nobility torn down.”

    Riven noticed Marit’s eyes narrow, her mask of scar tissue twitch involuntarily.

    “The empire is now a place where any with the strength to thrive can do so,” Teneff continued. “Where we all work as one to bring the same freedom and meaning to everywhere the sun touches.”

    Riven considered her words. “If this new Noxus is some different place, then why does it still care about me?”

    “We care about you,” said Arrel.

    “We all thought you were dead,” added Marit. “A fallen hero. And instead we had to learn from others that you not only are alive, but have turned your back on those who would have died for you.”

    “I met a mender here,” said Riven. “A healer of broken things, pottery, stone. She would sing to them, play charms, help guide the edges back to one another to become one again. She told me the spirits within all things want to be whole, but I don’t know if I believe that. I believe, sometimes, that which is broken cannot be pieced back together. It can’t go back. It is irreparable, and that is how it should stay. How it must stay.”

    As Tifalenji roved around the farm, murmuring to herself as she hunted for more fragments, Erath approached the door to the cellar on her instructions. He stopped beside the death shrine that had been recently built, studying the graceful architecture of the small structure.

    For a moment he thought to search it for a fragment, but found himself unwilling to risk desecrating the shrine. Tifalenji had found other shards of the blade, mourning each discovery like the body of a dear friend. If she detected one within the shrine, Erath had no doubt the runesmith would not share his misgivings.

    Erath had heard nothing from within the farmhouse. No shouts, no sounds of violence. He was intensely curious to know what was happening inside, where the huntresses would find the answers that had driven them across Ionia to find Riven, but knew well enough he was not welcome there. What occurred within those walls was between the four sisters, and nobody else.

    Yet Erath could not help but wonder how long it would stay that way.

    Squatting down, he took hold of the cellar door and swung it up and open. Cool, moist air wafted up toward him, revealing a set of rough stone steps leading down into the gloom. Peering into the dark, Erath wished he had his own runeblade, for no other reason than to light the way.

    Instead, he relied on more traditional methods, walking over to Talz. After checking both his and Lady Henrietta’s hitchings, making sure both strong creatures would be unable to break loose and cause him even more trouble, Erath used the materials borne on the basilisk’s back to fashion himself a small torch.

    Now able to see, he descended the cellar steps. He played the light of his torch in front of him, only able to clearly determine what existed inside its flickering glow. The vague impressions of stacks of sackcloth, shelves lined with sealed jars made of clay and stone, farmer’s tools.

    Erath heard a noise—a short, sharp rustle in the dark.

    Immediately his knife was in his hand. The cellar was cramped, the quarters too tight for his falchion. He froze, straining his hearing, and slowly moved his torch around him.

    The light granted shape and texture wherever Erath brought it. He focused on the location of the sound, his breathing low and even, as steady as his grip on his knife. Then he came to an abrupt halt, as he discovered the light of the torch glittering back in a pair of wide, frightened eyes.

    It was no runic blade fragment. It was a man.

    “Do you think we will accept that?” Marit had still not touched her food, her mind on anything but her appetite. “After what we endured to find you, the blood we spilled? You think we will just turn around and leave you be, like nothing ever happened?”

    “Much has happened,” Riven slowly shook her head. “Too much. Go back and tell them I’m dead. There is truth enough in that, the Riven you knew is dead. I’m someone else, someone broken who this land still holds to account.”

    “That is a lie,” rasped Arrel. “We are the ones who hold you to account.”

    “It is your life here that is the lie, Riven,” said Teneff. “You cannot run away from this, not anymore. Be the Noxian we once knew, our sister. Return with us to the empire, stand tall and finally face justice. If you truly see yourself as broken, home is where you will find the last piece to make you whole again.”

    Marit gave a crooked grin. “They may not even execute you.”

    “Much has changed,” Arrel said. “But the soul of Noxus has not. Join us, and put a knee to the ground. Or stand against us, and we’ll put you underneath it.”

    Teneff shot her comrades an angry look, before turning back to Riven. “Embrace the new Noxus, devote yourself to the empire and be reaffirmed in its eyes, and they will value your strength. I know it’s still within you, Riven. It is not too late for you.”

    Riven looked away. She hesitated, hearing a truth in their words she did not want to acknowledge. What if Noxus was different? After everything that had happened, was there still a life for her there? And now that the empire had found her, would they ever stop?

    Riven looked at each of her sisters, adamant in their mission. What would she have to do to stop them? And if they failed in their task, Noxus would just send more. How many innocent lives would be lost before they finally tore her away from this place?

    Submission loomed heavy in her heart. Go with them, it said. Let no more Ionian blood be shed because of you. No more people dying before their time for the sake of your soul.

    People like Asa. Your fair.

    “Riven! Come out, now!”

    The four women jolted at the voice from outside the farmhouse. Riven stood, and the huntresses followed suit, their postures growing taut.

    “What is this?” she asked.

    Teneff glanced at Arrel and Marit, then back at Riven. “Let’s go find out.”

    Erath watched Riven appear from inside the farmhouse, flanked by the huntresses. They stepped into the daylight, finding him and Tifalenji standing there, their weapons drawn, with the Ionian man Erath had discovered kneeling between them.

    “Dyeda,” gasped Asa.

    “Fair!” Riven started toward him, stopping short as Tifalenji rested her rune blade against the man’s throat. “Release him,” she demanded. “He has no part in this!”

    “Your deception has made him a part.” Tifalenji’s face was hard, her eyes cold. “Now we can dispense with the tears of reunion and get to the true matter at hand.”

    Erath looked to Tifalenji. Riven’s eyes narrowed. “What?”

    “I have someone you want,” said the runesmith, indicating Asa. “And you have something I need.” She showed Riven the broken fragments in her other hand. “Bring it to me.”

    Riven hesitated, her eyes flashing between Tifalenji and Asa.

    “I grow weary of these games,” snarled Tifalenji, pressing her blade hard enough for Erath to see a trickle of blood from Asa’s throat. “I am not asking, and you know of what I speak. Bring it to me, now… or there will be another death shrine, here.”

    The moment stretched as Riven looked to Asa. Erath maintained his calm, carefully studying Riven. He watched her push a breath out between her teeth, and slowly turn back to the farmhouse.

    “Ensure she does not flee,” commanded Tifalenji. Arrel gestured to First, and the drakehound loped around behind the farmhouse, while the other two guarded the front corners of the structure.

    “What is this, runesmith?” said Teneff. She looked at Erath. “Who is this man?”

    “I found him in the—”

    “Be silent,” snapped Tifalenji. “This is my business.”

    Riven reappeared, stepping out into the field carrying something wrapped in a blanket. All eyes were fixed upon it, especially Tifalenji’s.

    “Show me,” the runesmith ordered. “Now.”

    Her face tight, Riven slowly unwound the blanket, letting it fall to reveal the hilt and crossguard of an enormous broadsword. A jagged portion of the blade was still attached to it, like a chipped tooth, inscribed with the same runic script Erath had seen on the fragments they had collected.

    “Damn you,” Tifalenji breathed, her voice shaking at the sight of it. Her fingers tightened around the blade fragments. “Do you have any idea what you have done?”

    “This sword was entrusted to me,” said Riven, her slender fingers slowly closing around its leather-bound grip. “It is my responsibility, and no other’s. Let him go.”

    “It should have never gone to you,” hissed Tifalenji. “Too long has that mistake gone uncorrected, but no longer. Surrender it now.”

    Holding the sword, even broken, Riven seemed stronger. Erath could see the defiance growing within her.

    “You cannot have it,” said Riven. “This weapon will never return to those who forged it. I will not allow that to come to pass.”

    “Then he will die,” said Tifalenji simply. “And so will you. Even desecrated as it is, the blade is what is important. You are nothing but a parasite, clutching for its radiance to give meaning to a broken, worthless existence.”

    “So, this was never about me.” Riven shot an accusing glare at the huntresses. “Was it?”

    Erath stared at Tifalenji. Were they really only here for a blade?

    “Your life was forfeit the moment you turned against my masters, and the blade ceased to be wielded to their purpose,” Tifalenji seethed. “You died in that moment of betrayal, Riven. I am merely here to take back what is ours.”

    “You mean to kill her?” Teneff stepped forward, the chains of her hook rattling. “This was not what we agreed upon, runesmith.”

    Arrel gestured, and her trio of hounds rushed around her, snarling.

    “You’ll defy me now?” Tifalenji scoffed. “You have deserted, soldiers. Return to Noxus without my protection and you will be executed—or do as I say, and live. There is no alternative.”

    “She’s right.”

    Teneff and Arrel turned, watching Marit as she walked to the door of the farmhouse and retrieved her glaive. Riven watched as she passed her by, going to stand at Tifalenji’s side.

    “Rune-witch,” said Marit. “You promised me a blade when all this was done. But I am feeling impatient, I think I’ll just have Riven’s instead.”

    “Prove your worth, then,” said Tifalenji. “Strike her down and take it from her, and it shall be yours.”

    “Marit, listen to me,” Teneff pleaded. “We cannot do this. We all agreed, she must return to Noxus to face justice.”

    “I’ll be Noxus’ justice!” Marit snapped, leveling her glaive at Riven. “That sword always should have been mine, you never possessed the strength to do what needed to be done with it. With the blade reforged, and wielded by my hands, I will rise—my name and lineage will not die forgotten in the darkness. All that was stolen from me will be restored, won back by the edge of that blade!”

    Erath studied the two women, watching the sunlight play across the gleaming edge of Marit’s glaive.

    “Look at you.” Marit spat on the ground before Riven. “A broken sword, for a shell of a woman. Could you have even lifted it now?”

    Tifalenji cried out as the shards whipped from her hand, leaving it bloody. The fragments sliced through the air toward Riven, shimmering with emerald light. Weaving above her, the broken segments came together, bound by crackling runic energy into an immense, fractured union.

    “Lift it?” Riven spun the massive blade once, kicking up dust and bits of gravel into the air. “Oh, yes, my sister. I can still lift it.”

    Marit’s gruesome visage twisted in a smile as she sank into a fighting stance. “My whole life was taken from me, you threw yours away. Come on, then! The blood we spilled to find you… You owe me this, Riv!”

    Teneff took a step toward Tifalenji, with Arrel at her side. “Do not interfere,” the runesmith hissed, raising her sword. She shot a glance at Erath, and gestured to the old man. “Hold him.”

    Erath laid a hand on the Ionian’s shoulder, his falchion in his other fist. He tried to split his attention between ensuring the man didn’t run, and the alarming division forming between Teneff, Arrel, and Tifalenji.

    What if he had to choose a side?

    Erath’s mind raced at the prospect. What would he choose? Marit’s vindication against betrayal? Teneff’s steadfast duty to the empire? Or the safety of Tifalenji’s authority, despite her secrets?

    Would the ones he rejected try to kill him? Could he kill them?

    All this while the conflict was poised to begin in front of him, and Erath was unable to take his eyes off Riven’s incredible blade.

    “Marit, sister, do not do this,” Riven said through gritted teeth. “Don’t make me kill you.”

    Marit spun her glaive. “Don’t worry, Riven. You won’t.”

    The two began to circle. Erath took note of their postures, Marit fluid and aggressive, Riven stoic and reserved. Their weapons occupied the space between them, the edges flicking and making tiny circles but never touching…

    …until, finally, Marit struck.

    Sensing an opening, the rider leapt forward, her glaive a whirling blur of steel. Riven backpedaled, using the hulking length and width of her sword’s blade to deflect the flurry of blows in showers of sparks and emerald runic energy. Marit sidestepped, throwing out the haft of her glaive against Riven’s sword to knock it aside, and lunged for her throat.

    Crying out, Riven swept her blade in an arc, sending a gale of lashing wind at Marit and hurling her away. Marit skidded back, her free hand digging into the earth to slow herself.

    “Cute,” she said with a grin. She rose, and began her attack anew.

    As they progressed, Erath noticed Riven’s defensive guise begin to slip. Something was awakening within her, the warrior spirit that had made her one of the deadliest soldiers in Noxus. Slash by slash, strike after parry, she ceased to be on the back foot. Erath began to see something overtake her features, replacing calm.

    He saw rage.

    Riven started attacking. Her runeblade made a sizzling thrum as it chopped and slashed against Marit’s defenses. Marit’s scarred features twisted in concentration as she used every bit of her incredible skill to ward off Riven’s assault—but every counter was swept aside, every attempt to spin inside Riven’s guard rebuffed.

    For the first time, Erath considered that Marit could lose. In the shade of a massive tree, its leaves red as blood, Riven was winning.

    The two were sheened in sweat. Marit’s movements had lost their grace as exhaustion set in, with an edge of desperation. Where Marit was fading, Riven surged, her eyes smoldering as she delivered increasingly powerful blows. Throwing Marit back against the tree, Riven raised her sword for an overhead strike. Marit brought up the haft of her glaive, and Riven’s blade cleaved it in half.

    “You’ll never escape what makes you broken, Riven,” Marit smiled coldly, throwing away the lower half of her weapon. “No matter where you go, it will always be with you.”

    Marit lunged with her broken glaive. Roaring, Riven drove her own blade forward. Blood burst around it, snapping and burning to a mist against the runes as she ran Marit through, pinning her to the tree.

    In an instant, Riven’s eyes widened. She tore the blade back and Marit slowly slid to the ground, clutching her chest but unable to stem the flow of blood spilling over her fingers.

    The rage vanished from Riven’s face as she beheld Marit. Her grip on her sword slackened. “Sister, forgive me.”

    Marit stared up at Riven, blood trickling down the corner of her mouth. Her strength fading, Marit used the last of it to seize the collar of Riven’s shirt, hauling her down close to look her in the eye.

    “No,” Marit hissed, the contempt in the word costing her what life she had remaining to her as she slumped into the dirt.

    Silence descended. The shock radiated through all present, especially Erath. Marit had always seemed invincible to him, surviving the chemical attack that had disfigured her, triumphing in every battle across their journey. He could not fathom that he had just watched her fall.

    And for what? he thought. What are we really doing here?

    “Regrettable,” said Tifalenji, “but not unexpected.”

    Riven recoiled as her blade was torn from her exhausted grasp, whirling her around to see the runesmith now holding it, wielding a runeblade in each hand.

    “Through all of this, on the path here, I truly debated whether to let you live after I had taken back what is ours. But after this…” She tightened her grip on Riven’s blade. “…sacrilege, I cannot leave here while your heart still beats.”

    “Enough!” cried Teneff, and she and Arrel advanced on Tifalenji. Asa whimpered at the sight, struggling to be free of Erath’s grip.

    The runesmith crossed her blades and swung them out, punching the huntresses from their feet in a storm of energy. Arrel’s hounds bayed, charging to their master’s defense. Tifalenji uttered a verse and the three were suspended in mid-air, sealed inside capsules of runic energy. Erath watched the scene play out, his heart climbing into his throat, the grip of his falchion growing slick in his hand.

    “You think you can stop this now?” Tifalenji roared. “Nothing will stop it! I will kill every single one of you and sleep peacefully tonight, for I am righteous, and you all are—”

    The air was driven from Tifalenji’s lungs as the tip of a blade emerged from her chest. For an instant the runesmith sagged, as though weightless, before she began to fall. The twin runeblades tumbled from lifeless fingers, and the bloodied falchion held her up for a second before it was pulled free, revealing Erath holding it behind her.

    The drakehounds dropped to the ground, dazed but unharmed. Arrel and Teneff hauled themselves to their feet, staring at Erath in surprise, as though looking at him for the first time.

    “No more betrayal,” whispered Erath. “No more secrets. After everything we’ve been through, everything questioned and twisted, all that is constant is honor. Our duty to Noxus.”

    Teneff stepped forward. Riven watched her stoop down, and retrieve both runeblades. Riven’s had fallen apart once more, the pieces scattered over the ground. Arrel collected them, before the two huntresses stood over Riven.

    “He’s right,” said Teneff. She eyed Riven not with vengeance or hate, but grim resolve. “Honor is all that we have. I gave my oath to Noxus that you would see justice, sister. I will see that carried out.”

    “Just leave us be,” Asa croaked, tears streaming down his face. “You do not have to take her.”

    Erath looked to the huntresses, to Riven. Would there be further bloodshed before this was done?

    “I will go.”

    “Dyeda, no…” Asa pleaded, shocked to hear those words coming from Riven’s mouth.

    Riven released a shuddering breath. “No more, fair—no more will suffer here because of me. Our responsibility rests upon our own actions, the choices made by our hearts.” She looked at him. “This is my choice.”

    Asa’s mouth opened, then closed. He breathed, shakily, and stood tall. “Wherever you go, whatever you do, you will always be my dyeda. Always.”

    “You will always be here, fair.” Riven’s hand fell to her heart. She looked up at Teneff. “Leave him in peace, and I will go with you.”

    Teneff was still for a moment, before dipping her head a fraction. “I swear it.” She nodded to Erath, and the blade squire immediately released Asa.

    The Ionian stood shakily, a look from Riven leaving him to hang his head as he stumbled toward the farmhouse. Asa slid down against the doorway, racked with sobs as he watched Teneff put Riven in chains.

    Erath’s mind suddenly went to the beasts. He whirled around, relieved to see Talz still hitched in place, eating grass without a care in the world.

    But Lady Henrietta had slipped her reins.

    Panic surged in Erath’s chest, until he saw she hadn’t gone far. He found the reptilian steed in the shade of the tree, trying to awaken Marit with gentle nudges from her snout. Slowly, carefully, he closed the distance to them.

    Henrietta hissed at Erath, baring her fangs and putting herself between him and Marit’s body as he reached out.

    “I know,” Erath whispered, gently running a hand down Henrietta’s neck. “I know.”

    Henrietta hissed again, softer this time. Erath reached for her reins, and the beast did not pull away.

    Arrel finally gave voice to the question in all their heads. “How will this end? The runesmith is dead, her mandate does nothing for us now.”

    “She died on the route of her expedition.” Teneff stared at Tifalenji’s body. “In service to the empire. In her name we continued on, and succeeded in her task, bringing a fugitive to justice.”

    “That is what you will tell them?” asked Arrel.

    Teneff was unmoving. “That is the truth.”

    “Well, then,” said Arrel. “You and the blade squire seem to have everything in order.”

    Erath looked at the tracker, realization dawning. “You aren’t coming with us.”

    “This was important.” Arrel shook her head, handing Teneff the shards of Riven’s blade. “But it is done, and I serve Noxus better on my own.”

    Teneff slowly extended a hand. “Until we meet again, sister.”

    Arrel looked at it for a moment, before grasping it, wrist to wrist. “Until then.” She gestured and her hounds padded to her side, as they began to walk the dirt road away from the farm.

    “Just the two of us, then,” said Erath, watching Arrel disappear.

    “You aren’t coming either,” said Teneff.

    Erath stared at her, at Riven, confused.

    “This duty is mine alone now,” she said. “My search is over—but not yours.” She nodded to Lady Henrietta. “Now go. Find your betrayer.”

    At first, Erath said nothing. After witnessing Riven’s power he didn’t want to leave Teneff alone with her, but he knew in his heart that it was the right choice. And she was right, there was something left that he had to do here.

    Erath straightened, hammering a fist proudly against his chest. “For Noxus.”

    Teneff returned the salute. “For Noxus.”

    Erath helped Teneff drape Marit’s body in her family’s standard, and load it onto Talz before retrieving his own things. “Grow big and strong, Talz,” he patted Talz’s flank. “Keep Ten out of trouble.”

    The basilisk swung his head playfully, nearly knocking Erath off his feet. He smiled, feeling his eyes sting. He turned away, wiping away a tear with his thumb, and turned to Lady Henrietta.

    Inching toward her, Erath pictured every person he had witnessed Lady Henrietta kill. Every shriek of reptilian fury, every strangled cry ripped from the throats of her prey. Every time he had cleaned the gore from her jewelry. Softly humming he approached, reached out, and gently ran a hand over her scaly hide. She twitched, but did not recoil from him. Encouraged, he tested her reins, and after a moment Erath climbed into the saddle on Lady Henrietta’s back.

    She accepted him.

    Riven and Teneff watched Erath ride away down the road. Riven’s manacles clinked, and she realized this was the second time she had been dragged from the farm in chains. She remembered how she had felt then—the fear and the panic, allowing it to wash over her and ebb away. It would not be the same as it was before. This time was different, but so was she.

    Teneff turned to Riven. “You are my captive, but you are also my sister. I will treat you with respect due. Are you ready?”

    Riven exhaled, sparing one last look at Asa and the home she would never see again, and gave a nod. “Yes.”

    “Good.” Teneff helped Riven onto Talz’s back, looking out at the long road ahead of them. “To Noxus.”

    Erath rode through the night. After the hardships of the journey to find Riven on foot, the speed of covering ground with Lady Henrietta was exhilarating. Were his purpose different, he would have allowed the joy of riding to overwhelm him. But his heart was heavy, like a stone sitting in his chest, as the distance to his destination whittled away to nothing.

    The natural stockade did not open for him. Erath drew his falchion, clashing it against his armor.

    “I am Jobin’s son!” Erath bellowed. “Let him show himself, or stand aside so that I might face him.”

    After a few moments’ silence, the barrier peeled apart wide enough to admit him. He trotted into the village, feeling the frightened eyes of Ionians and wayward Noxians upon him.

    “Jobin!” Erath called. “Father, face me!”

    “Peace!” An elder emerged from the crowd. Erath recognized him as the old man who had watched over the site of the chemical attack. “Be at peace, my child. I will take you to him.”

    Exhaling, Erath sheathed his falchion, and dismounted Lady Henrietta. The elder led Erath to Jobin’s hut, and the two entered. Ionians gathered a distance from Henrietta, singing calming melodies. Henrietta spat at them.

    The hut was dark. The Ionian lit a few candles, granting enough illumination for Erath to see the shape at the center of the room, draped in a shroud.

    “Your father,” said the elder.

    Erath drew a breath. He knelt, trying to keep his hands from shaking as he drew back the shroud, revealing the pale, cold face of his father. It was scarred, bruised, and discolored.

    “Why did you return?” asked the Ionian.

    “I came,” Erath’s voice shook, “to hear why he betrayed me and my companions to the Brotherhood.”

    “Betray?” Sadness flooded the elder’s features. “My child, he did not.”

    Erath’s eyes fell over the wounds, taking in every bruise, tracing every laceration.

    “The Brotherhood came not long after you departed,” said the Ionian. “They demanded we reveal your path. He defied them, and for his defiance he endured torture. They took his life.”

    Erath barely heard the words. His breath caught in his throat. Emotions collided over him. His journey. Denied from fighting for his tribe, enduring the hardships to find his place in another. Discovering their own broken family. Seeing it torn apart and pieced back together.

    He touched his father’s face. A tear fell, striking Jobin’s cheek. The weight in Erath’s chest vanished, the stone melting away beneath warmth.

    “You could stay,” the elder ventured. “We would welcome Jobin’s son here. Wait for the blossom festival to come once more.”

    “No,” Erath shook his head. “His spirit is at peace with me.”

    The Ionian stepped back, dipping his head in understanding.

    “Help me wrap him,” said Erath, taking hold of the shawl. “He’s coming with me.”

    “Where will you take him?” asked the elder.

    Erath looked at the Ionian, and smiled. “Home.”

  3. Syndra

    Syndra

    As a young child of Navori, Syndra was prone to distraction. She would often get lost in the magical beauty of a pond eclipsed in shadow, or a trail of sugarbeetles climbing the wall. Whenever her chores at home went unfinished, she was scolded harshly by her mother for her lack of focus. Syndra was even blamed when the milk soured, or when any other minor misfortunes befell the family.

    Her older brother, Evard, teased her more than anyone. Syndra often fled to her favorite hiding spot—the ghost-willow, a tree sacred to the people of her village. Alone, she would whisper to the tree for hours, seeking solace. Unbeknownst to her, one warm evening, Evard and his friends followed her in secret. They snickered at her childish tears. Her shame and rage grew as she tried to ignore their insults, until one of them threw a clump of dirt at her head.

    Syndra could no longer control her emotions. All her anger erupted from deep within her, in the form of darkly shining magical orbs, heavy with the weight of her anguish.

    This powerful ability had been dormant until now. It flared with volatile strength, the orbs like pearls of negativity that leached the spirit magic from the world around her, draining the ghost-willow of its life essence. Evard and his friends backed away in horror as the ancient tree twisted, its bark withering to a tarry black.

    Deprived of the ghost-willow, the villagers grew concerned that their connection to the Spirit of Ionia had been severed, and Syndra’s family was to blame. Forced to move on in search of a new home, all had become fearful of her magic.

    After months of travel, they reached the coast and encountered a hermit-priest named Konigen. He spoke of his home on the island of Fae’lor, where he taught those who wished to learn to control their wild magic, and Syndra’s family could see no other option—perhaps he could succeed where they had not. Young Syndra climbed the steps to a cliffside temple, crafted long ago from dark stone, and overlooking the sea. Though she missed her old life, she tried to embrace her teacher’s wisdom, and put all her effort into tempering her emotions.

    However, Syndra grew frustrated as, instead of gaining more control, over the years her magic seemed to weaken. Konigen now locked himself away each morning, meditating in solitude rather than teaching her anything new, and so she confronted him. His teeth gritted with exhaustion, he confessed that he was deliberately dampening her power, for her own safety. Such negativity had a strange, unpredictable effect on reality, and Syndra had grown far beyond his ability as a mentor.

    She felt more betrayed than she ever had before. Konigen tried to calm her, which only fueled her anger… and in that moment, his focus was lost.

    The foundations of the temple shook. The morning light seemed to pale. Syndra rose from the floor, as her frustrations surged within her. She snatched dark orbs from the air, and cast them through her mentor’s body, forcing him to feel all of her bitter outrage as he died.

    The ceiling gave way, rubble raining down, burying the sacred gardens in dust. Syndra turned her powers against what was left of the temple, sending shockwaves throughout Fae’lor, and draining raw magic from the island itself.

    Never had such negative energy been so concentrated in one place, and it was the Spirit of Ionia that swelled to counter it. The bedrock opened up beneath Syndra, dragging her down to a cavern deep underground—roots pulled her into a pool of living water to suppress her powers, and trap her in a magical slumber.

    Syndra dreamed for what seemed an eternity. Most of the world forgot she had ever existed.

    War with the Noxian empire divided the people of Ionia, and Syndra was eventually awakened by those who had once stood guard over Fae’lor. Some came to kill her, while others hoped she would aid them against Noxus, but she unleashed chaos upon them all. She refused to be a pawn in someone else’s game. Ripping apart the walls of the fortress that had been built on top of her island prison, Syndra raised the greatest tower into the skies to carry her far away.

    She would not be controlled. Not ever again.

  4. Vex

    Vex

    In the black heart of the Shadow Isles, a lone yordle trudges through the spectral fog, content in its murky misery. With an endless supply of malaise and a powerful shadow in tow, Vex shields herself from the pep and happiness of the outside world, and all of the irksome “normies” who occupy it.

    Growing up in Bandle City, Vex never felt she belonged. The whimsy and color of the yordle realm was cloying to her. Despite the best efforts of her parents, she never seemed to find her “yordle spirit” or any like-minded friends, and chose to spend most of her time sulking in her room.

    There, she found an unlikely soulmate in her own shadow. It was black (her favorite color), and it didn’t talk—the perfect companion for the sullen youth. She learned to entertain herself with the shadow, performing gloomy pantomimes for her own amusement.

    Alas, it was just a shadow, incapable of shielding Vex from the loathsome cheerfulness that surrounded her. Surely something more lay in store. Something darker. Something sad. Something just like her.

    That something arrived in the form of a Harrowing, thick clouds of Black Mist that billowed through Bandle City, stirring its residents to panic. While most yordles fought valiantly to beat back the Mist, Vex was intrigued by the foul miasma and began to follow it to its source.

    When she arrived in the Shadow Isles, Vex couldn’t believe her eyes. Vast tracts of land and sea, devoid of all life and color, stretched out before her. Here, she could finally sulk, unbothered by the laughter and merriment of others.

    As the days passed, Vex realized the Black Mist was having a strange effect on her. Her shadow had taken on a new ghostly persona—much more lively and expressive than its host—and her benign yordle magic had transformed into something far more sinister. Vex could now spread her misery far and wide.

    “Who made this wonderfully awful place?” she wondered.

    Her question was soon answered when the Ruined King, Viego, appeared in the Isles, seeking to spread his Mist to all corners of Runeterra. Upon meeting Vex, Viego realized the yordle had a unique ability to spread despair, making people more vulnerable to his Harrowing. Vex, in turn, was inspired by his vision for a world covered in Black Mist. The two became fast allies and set out to turn the entire world into a harrowed wasteland.

    Before Viego’s vision could be fully realized, Vex discovered his ulterior motive: to reclaim the soul of his dead queen Isolde, and reunite with her in matrimonial bliss. She shuddered in disgust, feeling betrayed that the man she had trusted to kill the world’s happiness had, in fact, been seeking it himself. Vex left Viego to be defeated by the Sentinels of Light, his dreams of a matrimonial reunion dashed upon the stones of the Camavoran wreckage. Alone once more, she watched in disappointment as the world returned to the bright, colorful place she had always hated. Finding a lasting melancholy was going to be tougher than she’d thought.

    She knew one last place she could go—a surefire way to achieve the misery she craved. She paid a visit to her parents in Bandle City, eager to show them who she had become and bask in their disapproval.

    The young yordle watched as her parents turned dumbstruck, still as tree stumps. Their expressions changed from shock, to denial, to reluctant acceptance.

    “Honey. We don’t understand... this,” said her mother, motioning with her finger at Vex’s entire being.

    “But we love you unconditionally,” said her father. “And if you’re happy, we’re happy for you.”

    Rolling her eyes, Vex released a loud, exasperated sigh. “You guys are the worst,” she moaned.

    She trudged out of her parents’ living room, anxious to return to the Shadow Isles where she could sulk undisturbed.

  5. The Dreaming Pool

    The Dreaming Pool

    Anthony Reynolds

    The darkening forest was full of beauty, but the girl saw none of it as she stomped along the winding path.

    Glowing flitterwings danced through the twilight, leaving trails of luminescence in their wake, but she swatted them out of her face, oblivious to their fleeting grace. Eyes downcast, she kicked a rock, sending it skidding over the roots twisting across her path, blind to the glorious sunset glimpsed through the canopy. The delicate violet petals of a blooming night-sable unfurled to release its glowing pollen into the warm evening, but she reached out and twisted the flower off its stem as she passed.

    Her face burned with shame and anger. The scolding from her mother still lingered, and the laughter of her brother and the others seemed to follow her.

    She paused, looking back at the broken petals on the path, and frowned. There was something strangely familiar about all of this… almost like she’d lived it before. She shook her head and continued on, deeper into the forest.

    Finally, she stood before the sacred ghost-willow. Its limbs moved languidly, as if underwater, accompanied by the faint, musical whisper of bone chimes.

    While the anger still coursed through her, hot and fierce, she closed her eyes and forced her fists to unclench. She breathed in, slowly, just as the old master had taught her, trying to push back her rage.

    Something hit her, hard, in the back of the head, and she fell to her knees. She touched a hand where she’d been struck, and her fingers came away bloody. Then she heard the laughter, and her fury surged to the fore.

    She stood and turned towards her brother and the others, her eyes dark and glaring. Her breathing was heavy and short, and her hands clenched into fists at her side once more, all the effort to calm herself a moment before lost in a flash of anger. As it built within her, compounding and growing like a malignant sickness, the air around her seemed to shimmer, and the ghost-willow began to fade and wither behind her. It wept red sap, its leaves curling and blackening.

    Since time immemorial the magic of this land had nourished the ghost-willow, just as it in turn nourished the land and its people, but now it was dying, its supple limbs turning bone-dry and brittle, its roots curling in pain. Its chimes tolled a mournful death-rattle, but the girl didn’t hear it, lost in the moment of her seething fury.

    As the ancient, primordial tree perished, the little girl began to lift off the ground, rising into the air. Three light-swallowing spheres of absolute darkness began to orbit around the child.

    Her tormentors were not laughing now...

    Kalan stood upon the battlements of Fae’lor, looking across the narrow sea towards the mainland of the First Lands—what humans now called Ionia.

    It was a dark, moonless night, but he saw as clearly as if it were daylight, the pupils of his feline eyes fully dilated. Occasionally, they caught the gleam of torch-light and reflected it back brightly; the mirrored eyes of a night predator.

    Kalan was vastaya, of the ancient bloodline. His fur was russet-red and hung down his back in long, intricate, knotted braids that now had more than a few streaks of grey in them. His proud face was akin to that of a great hunting cat, and criss-crossed with scars from a lifetime of battle. The left side of that face was furless, and angry red welts bore evidence of the horrible burns he’d suffered as a young warrior. Curling horns sprouted from his temples, each engraved with spiralling runic patterns, and his three tails swished behind him, each covered in segmented plate. The armor he wore was Noxian dark iron, and he wore the trappings of his adopted empire with a scowl.

    Some called him a traitor, both to Ionia and his vastayan heritage, but he didn’t care. What they thought didn’t matter.

    The fortress of Fae’lor was built upon the westernmost island of Ionia. Highly defensible, this place had remained for centuries, standing against countless foes, before being finally overrun after a long siege during the Noxian invasion.

    That was before Kalan had joined Noxus, before the fateful Battle of the Placidium when he’d pledged himself to Swain. Before he’d requested this post as governor of Fae’lor as reward for his service.

    The Noxians laughed at him behind his back, he knew. He could have had a far more prestigious posting—but he had chosen Fae’lor, at the forgotten edge of the empire.

    They didn’t understand, and that mattered nothing to him. He needed to be here.

    Noxus had not won the war, of course… but nor had Ionia. Nevertheless, many seasons after the end of the campaign, Fae’lor remained under the invaders’ control.

    Thirty-three warships were currently docked here, as well as perhaps half that number of trader vessels and merchant ships. Over a thousand warriors of Noxus—a mix of veteran warbands hailing from the far corners of the empire—were stationed here under his leadership.

    A guard patrol stomped along the battlements. They saluted, fists crashing against breastplates, and he gave a nod in return. He didn’t fail to miss the dark looks they gave him as they marched by. They hated him almost as much as his own people did, but they feared and respected him, and that was enough.

    He turned to look back across the sea once more, brooding on the past. Why was he here? It was a question he saw in the eyes of his subordinates every day, and one that crept up on him the darkest of nights, those nights when the forest, and the hunt, called to him. The answer was simple, however.

    He remained here to keep watch over her.

    A pair of dark-clad figures—one female, one male—emerged from the sea, unseen, and as silent as death. Swiftly, moving like spiders, they scaled the near-vertical hull of the warship Crimson Huntress, and slunk over its gunwale. Their blades glinted, and the ship’s night wardens were silently dispatched, one after another, without any alarm being sounded.

    Within moments, all five Noxians were dead, their lifeblood leaking out onto the deck.

    “Neatly done, little brother,” said one of the pair, now crouched in the shadow of the upper deck. Of her face, only her eyes and the swirling indigo tattoos that surrounded them were visible.

    “I had a passably decent teacher,” replied the other. He too was fully clad in black and crouched in shadow, though in place of his sister’s swirling tattoos, his skin was a solid block of etched flesh.

    “Passably decent, Okin?” she replied, one eyebrow rising.

    “No need to feed your ego, Sirik,” her brother replied.

    “Enough fooling around,” said Sirik. She opened a black leather pouch at her hip and delicately removed an object, tightly bound in waxed leather. She unwrapped it, gingerly, revealing a fist-sized, black crystal.

    “Is it dry?” whispered Okin.

    In answer, Sirik gently shook the crystal. A hint of an orange glow lit it from within for a brief moment, like a fanned ember.

    “It would seem so. I’ll find a suitable place for it,” she said, nodding to the nearby door leading below deck. “You signal the others.”

    Okin nodded. Sirik ghosted below deck, and her brother moved silently back to the gunwale. He leaned over the edge and beckoned. Seven other black-clad figures rose from the dark water below, climbing soundlessly up onto the deck of the ship, hugging the shadows.

    They were the dispossessed—the last remaining warriors who had served here at the fortress of Fae’lor, before the Noxians had wrested it from them. The shame of that defeat still burned in their hearts, as did the desire to see every Noxian pushed from their ancestral homelands.

    Once all were on deck, they waited a moment for Sirik, who emerged after a few minutes.

    “It is done,” she said.

    The nine dispossessed Ionians flowed over the ship’s side, following the leading pair. They moved as fluidly as water, and ran lightly along the stone dock towards the fortress of Fae’lor.

    From shadow to shadow they darted, like specters, until they reached the first wall. Hugging the darkness, they remained utterly motionless as a patrol marched by, the Noxian warriors speaking in their guttural language and laughing, utterly oblivious to the nigh-invisible Ionians crouched mere feet away.

    As soon as the patrol turned a corner, the infiltrators snapped into motion once more, climbing the sheer surface of the wall, moving swiftly, hand-over-hand. They made it look easy, like climbing a ladder, though in truth there were virtually no handholds.

    Sirik reached the crenellations first. She peered over, then ducked swiftly back and went perfectly still, clinging one-handed to the battlements. The others below her froze, then hurriedly climbed to join her as she made a series of swift hand-movements. She made a fist, before climbing atop the wall, joined by her brother, Okin. None of the Noxians saw the pair of Ionians ghosting along behind them, hopping lightly across the top of the battlements in their wake.

    Then Sirik and Okin leapt among the enemy, and the four guards were killed before a single one drew a blade.

    The last of them clutched his throat, blood welling beneath his hand, and teetered on the edge of the wall. Sirik grabbed him, like a lover enfolding her paramour in her arms, and lowered him gently to the ground; if he’d fallen, the sound would undoubtedly have raised the alarm.

    Two other guards nearby were swiftly dispatched, silently and without mercy, as the other Ionians came over the wall. Then, as one, the nine moved on, darting across an open courtyard and scaling a second, inner wall.

    Each of them knew their target, and each knew the precise layout of the fortress, for it had been their own people who had constructed it. The Noxians were merely its current occupants.

    They scrambled up the inner wall, and flowed over the parapet, their timing almost preternatural as they avoided two pairs of sentries atop the wall. They ducked into the shadow of the jutting stone bluff Fae’lor abutted, and became as one with the darkness.

    That was when a shout sounded, echoing up from the docks.

    Okin cursed under his breath. “They know we’re here,” he hissed.

    “I had hoped to be further in before they discovered the first body,” said Sirik, “but this changes nothing. We continue as planned.”

    The first shout was echoed by others, and a bell began to toll, sounding out across the fortress.

    “Time for our distraction,” said Sirik. She closed her eyes and silenced her inner thoughts. In her mind’s eye, she saw the black crystal she’d secreted below the deck of the Noxian warship, and she reached out to it, fanning it to life.

    She was no conjurer or soul-mage, but like many of her people, she could feel and subtly manipulate the magic of the land in minor, fairly insignificant ways. Hers was just a small, common gift, akin to that of the farmers of her village who spun a little magic into their crops. To outsiders this was shocking, but among her people, such simple gifts were not at all unusual, nor regarded as anything to be held in awe. It was like being able to whistle, or curl your tongue—some people could do it, others couldn’t.

    Sirik deepened her breathing, and intensified her silent entreaties, encouraging the fyrestone to do what was it its nature to do.

    Her gift might have been minor, but the effect of it as she nudged the crystal to life was not. That had more to do with the volatile nature of the fyrestone crystal than any innate power of her own, of course, but nevertheless, the result was impressive.

    In the harbor below, the Noxian warship Crimson Huntress exploded, lighting up the night in a billowing fireball. Soldiers who were responding to Fae’lor’s warning bells stopped in their tracks, turning towards sudden inferno.

    Sirik opened her eyes. “Let’s go,” she said.

    Kalan stalked onto the stone dock, flanked by guards, his three tails swishing dangerously.

    “The work of Ionian saboteurs, I would guess, my lord,” said a nervous-looking officer, trotting to keep up with Kalan’s long strides. “A black powder detonation, most likely.”

    Kalan halted and frowned deeply as he surveyed the mayhem on the docks.

    The Crimson Huntress was no more, reduced to the waterline. What timbers remained still burned. Three other nearby vessels were ablaze, and while crews worked to put out the flames, Kalan could see at a glance that at least one of them was a lost cause, and he snarled in frustration, exposing his teeth.

    “We’ve secured the docks, and a thorough search of all other ships is currently underway,” said the nervous officer. “If there are more explosives, they will be found.”

    Kalan ignored him, eyes narrowed. He dropped to one knee and scratched at the ground, then lifted his hand to his nose, sniffing.

    “If they are still here, lord, we’ll find them,” said the officer, clearly uncomfortable with his superior’s silence. “I’d guess they are long gone, though.”

    Kalan stood, and looked back along the dock, away from the sea, towards the towering walls.

    “A cowardly act,” the officer remarked. “They know they can’t take us in a siege, so they try to hurt us in other ways. But we will not be deterred! We are Noxus! We—”

    “Be silent,” growled Kalan. He was looking at the officer for the first time now, his yellow eyes unblinking. The man paled under his gaze, and seemed to shrink a little, like a toad retreating into its hole. “It was fyrestone, not blackpowder. And they are still here. This was not an act of cowards.”

    The officer gaped silently, like a landed fish. “No?” he managed, finally, his voice little more than a squeak.

    “No.” Kalan swung away from him, and strode back towards the fortress of Fae’lor. “This is a distraction.”

    Kalan seethed. He would deal with that fool later. Right now, he had something far more important to focus on.

    “They are going for the Dreaming Pool,” he snarled.

    Sirik kept her hand clamped across the Noxian’s mouth until his struggles ceased, then dropped his lifeless body to the ground. She wiped her bloody dagger clean on his tunic and glanced around to see her brother and the others deal with the remaining Noxians within the lower level of the tower.

    They were close, now. A rocky bluff reached up to the night sky in the courtyard beyond their position, and Sirik’s eyes were drawn to its peak. A jutting structure, blotting out the stars, marked their target.

    Tolling bells were sounding the alarm, echoing all across Fae’lor.

    Sirik led the way out into the courtyard, breaking from the tower and sprinting towards the stone steps carved into the bluff. She didn’t care who saw them now. The time for subterfuge was passed. Now speed was the best ally.

    Shouts erupted from above, and arrows chased the Ionians as they darted across the open space. None hit home, skidding off the cobbled stone at their feet. A handful of guards emerged from a nearby gate, rushing to intercept them. Sirik and her companions didn’t even slow as they drew weapons; curved swords, sickles, poisoned darts and bladed fans. In a heartbeat they were among the Noxians, sliding under and somersaulting over heavy blows, dancing through them, blades wreaking a bloody toll.

    The first of the Ionians fell, then, hacked down by a heavy halberd blow to the neck. Sirik pushed her instant pang of grief within, and pushed on, breaking through the enemy with her brother at her side, leaving a handful of them bleeding in their wake.

    They reached the carved, uneven steps—far older than the fortress itself—and began sprinting up, toward the peak, taking the stairs three at a time. Votive lanterns carved into the rock on either side of the stairs remained dark.

    Before Noxus had taken this holy place, those would never have remained unlit, day or night.

    Another Ionian fell, two arrows thudding into his chest. Without a sound, he toppled from the path, falling to the courtyard below. On and on, the remaining Ionians ran, climbing the spiralling path encircling the stone bluff towards its peak. More arrows clattered against the rock wall beside them, but thankfully no more of her companions were struck.

    They rounded the curve at speed. A flash of metal in the night was all the warning Sirik had, and she threw herself instinctively into a roll. A heavy spear, thrown with great force, sliced scant inches over her to strike one of her companions behind. It took him in the chest and lifted him off his feet, hurling him off the bluff.

    Two guards stood before the entrance to the shrine at the top of the bluff. Both were immense slabs of muscle and heavy black armor, with huge shields and heavy, jagged cleavers clutched in their brutish fists.

    The six remaining Ionians attacked as one, sprinting, leaping and somersaulting towards the towering Noxians, blades glinting.

    Moving at speed, Sirik ran up onto the side of the bluff, taking two steps across its vertical surface before leaping off, her short blades seeking the neck of the first guard, even as her brother attacked low. Okin rolled under a heavy swinging blow and came up behind the Noxian, slashing a backhanded blow across his foe’s leg, making him stumble. Sirik speared through the air, leading with her blades, carving a pair of deep furrows through the solid meat of the Noxian’s neck.

    Still, he did not fall, and as Sirik landed lightly in a low crouch, one hand touching the ground for balance, the injured warrior roared and smashed one of the dispossessed Ionians to the ground with the flat of his tower shield. Before Sirik could intervene, the brute slammed the ridge of that shield down onto her fallen comrade’s neck, killing him instantly.

    The other Noxian was proving equally difficult to put down, bellowing like a wounded bull and flailing about wildly, even as she bled from wounds that would have killed most, lesser individuals.

    Okin hacked into the Noxian’s ribs, just to the side of her heavy breastplate, and danced aside as his enemy turned on him. Sirik darted in then, landing another strike, and as her enemy swung in her direction, another of her companions did likewise, hitting the Noxian from behind. They fought like a pack mercilessly taking down large prey, and at last the other Noxian dropped to her knees, lifeblood leaking out onto the stones. She stayed upright for a moment more, spitting curses, then fell facedown and was still.

    Her companion roared in grief and anger, and hacked one of the dispossessed down with a brutal sweep of his cleaver. Then he ran to his fallen comrade, dropping to his knees and cradling her in his huge arms. All the fight had gone out of him, and he let out a terrible, anguished wail to the night sky.

    Okin and the others encircled him to land the killing blow, but Sirik shook her head. “Leave him be,” she said. “Come. Let’s finish this.”

    The Noxian didn’t understand her words, but recognized their intent. He looked up with grief-filled eyes, and regained his feet, picking up his blade. Then, with a cry, he launched himself at Sirik. He was cut down before he went more than a few steps—as he’d likely expected—and he dropped beside the other Noxian. With his last breath, he reached out to her, then went limp.

    His death saddened Sirik, for all that he was an enemy. Were they kin, these two? Lovers? Friends? With a deep breath, she pushed those feelings aside, so as to focus on the task at hand.

    With a silent nod, she led the four remaining dispossessed Ionians into the shrine known to her people as the Dael’eh Ahira—the Dreaming Pool.

    Fae’lor was not originally intended as a fortress. Far from it, it was once a center of tranquility and guidance, where gifted young Ionians came, from far and wide, to learn how better to harness their own innate gifts. All that had ended years before Sirik had been born, and the island that had once been teeming with life, study and peace, became little more than a barren prison. Barely any vegetation grew on the island around the fortress now—only dry, brittle thorn-bushes and ghost-gray lichen was able to thrive. Birds and other wildlife, so abundant on the nearby islands, also shunned it now, except for the dark, hateful crows and ravens that had come with the Noxians.

    For all of Sirik’s time here, before the invasion, she and other guards had stood sentinel, watching over the Dael’eh Ahira. It was their duty to ensure that the one held within it was never released.

    Sirik led the way down into the darkness within the rock, holding aloft a glass sphere filled with glowing flitterwings to light the way. She shivered, skin prickling, as the temperature dropped the deeper they went.

    The stone steps were slick with moisture, but she picked her way down swiftly, for it would not be long before the Noxians arrived in overwhelming force. None of them had expected to make it back from this mission; all that mattered was completing the task they’d come to achieve, and ending the threat imprisoned down here within the Dreaming Pool once and for all.

    They reached the deepest point of the Dael’eh Ahira, finally, sliding down the uneven rocks the final ten feet, and landed with a splash in the shallow waters below.

    Once, this shrine had been beautiful, but disaster had brought the cavern down in years past.

    Here was imprisoned the one they had guarded for so many years.

    The one Sirik now came to kill.

    Kalan leapt toward the top of the the stone bluff in powerful bounds, clearing ten steps with each one, quickly outpacing his soldiers. He arrived at the peak alone, and growled in frustration as he saw the corpses there: two Noxian, two Ionian.

    Without waiting for his warriors, he plunged into the Dael’eh Ahira. Into the darkness he descended, his feline eyes instantly adjusting. He could taste the scent of the humans on the air, leading him on.

    Padding silently into the gloom, Kalan began the hunt.

    The darkening forest was full of beauty, but the girl saw none of it as she stomped along the winding path.

    Glowing flitterwings danced through the twilight, leaving trails of luminescence in their wake, but she swatted them out of her face, oblivious to their fleeting grace. Eyes downcast, she kicked a rock, sending it skidding over the roots twisting across her path, blind to the glorious sunset glimpsed through the canopy. The delicate violet petals of a blooming night-sable unfurled to release its glowing pollen into the warm evening, but she reached out and twisted the flower off its stem as she passed.

    Her face burned with shame and anger. The scolding from her mother still lingered, and the laughter of her brother and the others seemed to follow her.

    She paused, looking back at the broken petals on the path, and frowned. There was something strangely familiar about all of this… almost like she’d—

    Dark shapes appeared in her peripheral vision, and she looked around, trying to see them clearly. There were four of them, but she could only just make them out if she didn’t look directly at them.

    Her brow furrowed in confusion. This wasn’t how it was meant to be.

    Something was very wrong.

    Sirik and her three companions stood in a circle, looking down into a deeper section of the water. A woman lay there, beneath the surface, her pure white hair, long and flowing, drifting around her languidly.

    Syndra. That was her name; a byword for destruction, for giving in to your darkest fears and anger. A name still cursed throughout the provinces.

    Sirik pulled off the dark hood hiding her face and tossed it aside. The delicate, indigo tattoos surrounding her eyes seemed to writhe in the shifting light emitted by the flitterwings in the glass sphere she held aloft. The others removed their head-coverings as well. All of them bore similar tattoos upon their faces, tattoos that marked them as guardians of Fae’lor. All of them looked down at Syndra, their expressions hard.

    The roots of an ancient tree—the only thing holding the immense stones from crashing down upon this already half-collapsed cavern—curled around her limbs. They might have been cradling her, like a protective mother, or holding her down, trapping her, depending on your point of view. She could easily have been mistaken for being dead but for the steady rise and fall of her chest as she breathed the water.

    Syndra didn’t look at all dangerous, but Sirik knew well how deceiving such an impression was. This one had been responsible for the destruction of the once-peaceful temple at the heart of Fae’lor. She had only been contained when the spirit of the land itself had drawn her down here, pulling her in and ensnaring her within this strange, suspended existence.

    Sirik had once voiced aloud her confusion as to why they let Syndra live. Why not just end her life, and end the threat of her waking from her slumber? Her old master had smiled, and asked her why, if the land wanted her dead, did it sustain her? Sirik had no answer to that, not then and certainly not now. Her old master talked of balance, but he was dead, killed by a Noxian blade, along with almost all of those who had served here as this slumbering woman’s jailors, yet the one they had guarded still lived. Where was the balance in that?

    As long as she lived, Syndra was a threat, yet that threat was contained while she and the others had stood watch over the Dael’eh Ahira. Now that it was within Noxian control, however… The fools would likely release her, either accidentally or in some ill-advised attempt to utilize her destructive power.

    No, that danger was too great to risk. Syndra must die. Tonight.

    Sirik tossed her flitterwing-filled glow-globe to her brother and stepped into the deeper pool, blade drawn.

    “Wait,” said Okin.

    “We have no time, brother,” said Sirik. “The Noxians will be upon us momentarily. We must end this now.”

    “But she may be our best weapon against them.”

    Sirik froze, then turned slowly towards her brother, her expression one of disbelief.

    “She is Ionian, after all,” continued Okin. “She could be a great ally. With her, we could push Noxus from Ionia, once and for all!”

    “And what then, brother? You think she could be controlled?”

    “We wouldn’t need to control her.” Okin stepped forward, his voice full of passion. “We could strike against Noxus, in its heartland! We could—”

    “You are a fool, brother,” Sirik interrupted him, her voice thick with derision. She turned away, and began to wade towards the motionless figure of Syndra.

    “I can’t let you do that, sister. We can’t let you.”

    It was only then Sirik realized her brother and her other two companions had fanned out around her, weapons drawn. “You can’t let me?” she said.

    “Don’t make us do this, sister.”

    Her gaze flicked between them, judging their distance from her, and whether she would be able to kill Syndra before they reached her. It would be close.

    “I’m not making you do anything,” she said. “We came here to end a threat to Ionia—not unleash it.”

    “This could be our chance to—”

    “No,” said Sirik. “Don’t you see? This sort of division within Ionia is killing us, and it’s playing into the Noxians’ hands. We are all divided, arguing and working against each other, when we need to pull together.”

    “So work with us,” begged Okin.

    Sirik pointed at the motionless figure of Syndra. “She is a greater threat to this land than Noxus. It’s a foolish act of desperation to think otherwise.”

    “Just stop being so stubborn, for once in your life!”

    “You’re not going to convince me, brother,” she said. “So what now. You’re going to kill me?”

    “Please, don’t let it come to that,” said Okin.

    The four of them stood frozen for a second, none quite ready to escalate the situation just yet.

    Then a shadow detached itself from the surrounding darkness, and sprang at them with lethal intent.

    Sirik gave a shout of warning and lurched forward. The move surprised Okin and their other two companions, who raised weapons, thinking she was attacking. One flung a pair of throwing blades with a sweep of his arm, the move instinctual and reactionary.

    Sirik swayed aside from the first dagger, but the second struck home, imbedding itself deep in the meat of her shoulder, making her hiss in pain as she stumbled backwards, falling awkwardly in the water.

    Too late, Sirik’s attacker realized the real threat was behind him. The Ionian was lifted from his feet, a blade bursting from his chest, having been driven completely through him. Then he was hurled aside, and the shadowy attacker moved on, abandoning his sword and turning on Okin.

    It was a vastaya, garbed in Noxian armor, and he roared, lips curling back to reveal his predator’s teeth. The sound reverberated painfully within the cavern.

    Sirik recognized him, of course, as she struggled to regain her feet. This was Kalan, reviled traitor of the Placidium, who had turned away from his people and Ionia to join the enemy. He’d been given Fae’lor as his prize, a bone thrown to a loyal and subservient pet. She and her brother had lost more than a few friends at his hands.

    “Noxian lickspittle!” said Okin, crouched low, blade at the ready. “You betrayed our people! You betrayed Ionia!”

    Kalan gave a bitter laugh as he padded in towards Okin. He flexed his hands, and long talons emerged from his fingertips, as well as along the ridge of his forearms.

    “There is no Ionia,” snarled the vastayan warrior. “There never was. A thousand mortal cultures are scattered across the First Lands, each with their own beliefs, customs, history and feuds. Your people have never been unified, never stood as one.”

    “Then perhaps it is time that changed,” said Okin. “Though you have chosen the losing side.”

    “Losing? The war is far from over, child,” said Kalan.

    With a grimace, Sirik tore the throwing dagger from her shoulder, her blood leaking out into the water like a crimson ribbon wafting in a breeze. She tossed it deftly into the air, spinning it end over end, and caught it by its blade. With a swift flick of her wrist, she hurled it at the betrayer closing in on Okin.

    It took him in the side of the neck, sinking deep, though Sirik cursed herself, for her aim was slightly off. It was not a killing blow. Nevertheless, Okin and their last companion took advantage of the moment, leaping in to strike.

    Okin dashed forward, lunging, but his strike was turned aside by the flat of Kalan’s hand, who then knocked him away with a sharp kick. Their last companion came in fast from the flank, bladed fans slicing through the air, but the vastaya, even injured, was too fast, and too powerful.

    He swayed aside, first one way, then the next, as the fan-blades sliced at him. Then, he lunged forward and grabbed his foe by the tunic with both hands, and slammed her head-first into a wall. An awful crack sounded as her neck broke.

    Kalan’s yellow cat eyes turned back to Okin.

    Sirik was too far away to help, she knew that instantly. Instead, she turned and began to slog back towards Syndra. She would do what she came to do. She had not expected to escape this venture with her life anyway, but she was determined their deaths would not be in vain.

    She heard her brother shout in defiance, and the vastaya roar, but she dared not look back. She plunged deeper into the water, and reached down, fingers closing around Syndra’s throat. Her skin was warm to the touch. In her other hand, Sirik’s blade drew back for the killing blow.

    This wasn’t how it was meant to be.

    Something was very wrong.

    The girl could still hear the sounds of the night forest around her. She could still see the ferns and twisted roots, and the last colors of the sunset beyond the thick canopy overhead.

    But at the same time, she could hear shouts and roars, though they were muffled, as if she was hearing them from a distance… or from underwater?

    For a moment, she felt her throat filled with liquid, and a sudden panic rose within her. She was drowning! But no, that was impossible. She was here, a child in the twilight forest outside her village. She was nowhere near water.

    A shadowy form appeared before her, like a night-terror given insubstantial form. She felt a sudden constriction around her throat, and she struggled for breath.

    Her eyes flickered. She glimpsed a young woman, her face covered in twisting tattoos. The vision was strange, and vague, however, as if she were looking at this person through water. A hand gripped her throat, choking her, and a blade was raised, ready to plunge down into—

    No.

    She was back in the forest. She was having some kind of awful waking dream. She’d just run here, shame and anger coloring her cheeks. She was going to the ghost-willow, to calm the rage surging within her.

    No, she’d already done that. She’d done that over and over, hundreds and thousands of times. Reliving that moment, again and again.

    What if this was the dream, and the other vision was real?

    The darkness of Syndra’s hatred and anger surged within her.

    And she woke from her endless dream.

    Sirik saw Syndra’s eyes snap open.

    With a desperate cry, she stabbed down with her blade, but struck nothing, for she was hauled into the air by some sudden, unseen force. She struggled against it, flailing wildly, but might as well have been trying to fight the rising tide. She was as helpless as a kitten in the mouth of its mother.

    Syndra slipped free of the twisting roots that had ensnared her limbs for so many years, and emerged, gasping. Water streamed off her as she rose into the air, hovering several feet above the surface of the pool, shimmering and pulsing beneath her. Dark power radiated from one hand as she kept Sirik held aloft, floating helplessly, and her eyes burned with cold fire.

    As Sirik watched, both horrified and fascinated, a helm—or perhaps a crown—grew into existence upon Syndra’s head. It coiled around her brow, like darkness given life, to form a pair of tall, curving horns. A bead of pure shadow formed at its center, becoming as hard as a gemstone, and burning with the same power that bled from her in waves.

    Sirik twisted in the air as her brother Okin broke from Kalan’s grasp. As he did so, he saw Syndra, his expression one of awe. For his part, the vastaya looked almost as stunned, feline lips curled back in a hiss, his eyes wide.

    With a horrible, sucking sound, three orbs of utter darkness materialised in the air around Syndra, and began to slowly orbit her. They seemed to swallow the scant light in the cavern, and pull at Sirik’s soul, a vile sensation of loathing and despair clutching at her.

    “How long?” Syndra demanded, her voice cracked and unsteady from lack of use. “How long have I been imprisoned here?”

    “Years,” spat Sirik. “Decades. We should have killed you long ago.”

    She felt Syndra’s hatred surge as a painful stab within her, and she gasped. Then Syndra snarled in fury, and with a gesture sent Sirik hurtling across the cavern.

    She smashed against a wall some twenty feet distant, and fell heavily, splashing painfully to the floor. Then Syndra’s dark gaze turned upon Okin and the Noxian creature.

    Sirik grimaced in pain. Her left leg and more than one rib were broken, she judged, wincing as she struggled to push herself upright. She cried out as she saw her brother Okin stumble forward into the water, holding his hands up in entreaty.

    “No, brother…” she managed, weakly.

    “I am not your enemy!” Okin called out. “We are both children of Ionia! Join us!”

    Syndra looked down upon him, her gaze radiating power.

    “The Noxians attacked our lands, and slaughtered our people!” he continued. “We pushed them back, but they still have a foothold in our ancestral lands. They are not done with us yet! Ionia is divided, and vulnerable! You must help! Help us fight against this new tyranny!”

    “I do not know who these Noxians are that you speak of,” Syndra replied. “But if they killed my people, then perhaps I owe them thanks. The only tyranny I experienced was at the hands of those I once called kin.”

    Okin’s face was mask of horror, perhaps finally realizing his own foolishness, and he slumped to his knees, defeated.

    With a sickening tearing sound, Syndra conjured another dark sphere—all of her bitterness, resentment and anger made manifest. It hovered above her hand, slowly spinning.

    “And if you are Ionian, then you are my enemy,” she mused.

    Sirik screamed, but there was nothing she could do. With a flick of her wrist, Syndra sent the orb hurtling toward, then through, her brother. He gasped, all the color draining from his flesh, and sank beneath the waters.

    Kalan attacked then, leaping from the shadows, claws extended, but another gesture from Syndra sent the three spheres surrounding her hurtling from their orbits towards him, throwing him backward.

    “You…” said Syndra, tilting her head to the side, as if trying to place him. “I recognize your soul. You shadowed my dreams.” Her expression darkened even more. “You were my jailor. You… You kept me here.”

    From her position, Sirik saw the vastaya push himself to one knee.

    “You are an abomination,” he hissed.

    Syndra’s hand stabbed out, and the snarling creature was lifted into the air.

    The waters of the Dreaming Pool were churning, and Sirik stared in wonder as the roots that had held Syndra began reaching out to reclaim her.

    “Kill me, then!” Kalan snarled. “But do so in the knowledge that you will never find peace. Wherever you are, you will be hated and hunted. You will never live free.”

    “Kill you?” said Syndra, her lip curling in rage. “No. That would be too clean an end for you.”

    With a sweep of her arm, Syndra sent Kalan hurling down into the waters, into the grasp of the writhing roots. They clamped around his limbs reflexively, holding him under. He screamed, air bubbles billowing around him… and then went still.

    Sirik stared defiantly at Syndra, knowing that she likely had only moments to live, but to her surprise, the powerful sorceress paid her no mind. Instead, Syndra turned her attention skyward. Both hands were wreathed in dark energy, and with a shout she lifted them high. The stone cracked, and a tumble of dust and rocks fell into the pool, sending crazy ripples spreading out in all directions.

    With a violent cutting motion of her arms and a deafening boom, Syndra ripped apart the rock overhead. Huge chunks of stone fell around her, crashing down with titanic force, and Sirik pushed herself backwards desperately, each movement sending searing pain flaring up her leg and side.

    Stars blinked in the sky far above, and Syndra began to rise, floating up towards freedom. She glanced back down, once, toward the motionless, submerged figure of Kalan, ensnared by roots.

    “Your turn to dream, jailor,” she whispered, and with a sweep of her arms, she entombed him completely beneath the fallen rocks.

    Wincing with every movement, Sirik crawled further away, certain she would be crushed at any moment…

    The island rumbled, as if wracked by an earthquake. It went on for what seemed like an eternity.

    And, when it finally ceased, an unnerving silence fell across Fae’lor.

    Sirik crawled from the gloom, breathing in fresh air, and stared about her, eyes wide in shock. Easily half of the fortress was gone.

    Her gaze drifted up. At first, she saw nothing but darkness where there should have been stars. With a sharp intake of air, she realized she was looking at the silhouette of the greatest towers and ramparts hanging against the night sky. It hadn’t collapsed into the sea—it had been ripped from the island, and lifted toward the heavens.

    She stared, her mouth gaping. She had known Syndra was powerful, but this? This was power she could never have imagined.

    As Sirik watched, frozen by the sight, she saw one of the Noxian warships moored in the harbor below lifted from the sea. Men tumbled from its deck like so many ants, falling to their deaths on the rocks below, as the ship was lifted ever higher. Then it fell, smashing back down upon two other vessels, crushing them to splinters. The destruction was catastrophic.

    The ruined castle in the sky began to drift northwards. Alone at the sundered peak of the Dael’eh Ahira, Sirik watched it go, until the first rays of dawn crept over the horizon.

    The import of the night weighed upon her heavily. Her brother, and the last of the guardians of Fae’lor were dead. All but her.

    And while the destruction wrought against the Noxians this night would have been cause for great rejoicing at any other time, her heart was heavy.

    Syndra was back in the world.

    They had failed.

    Kalan knelt, motionless and silent, as he waited for the seer to speak. She was a curious creature, violet-skinned, and with a pearlescent single horn growing from her forehead. Some may have mistaken her for one of his bloodline, the children of the Vastayashai’rei, but any of the kin would know otherwise.

    The seer was of a people older even than his ancestors.

    When she opened her eyes—those strange, kind, golden-flecked eyes that saw far more than they should—he saw they were tinged with sadness, and his heart sank.

    “You are faced with an impossible choice,” she said, her voice as quiet as the rustle of autumn leaves.

    “Then tell me what I must do,” said Kalan.

    “That is not for me to say. Two paths lie before you, but you can only take one. I warn you, though—both lead to tragedy and sadness.”

    Kalan didn’t blink. “Tell me.”

    “The first path. You fight the invaders. At the Placidium of Navori, a great battle will be fought. While it will be bloody, you will be victorious. You will be proclaimed a hero. You and your heartlight live in peace for many years. You are happy. And yet, you are destined to outlive both your cubs, who will be taken before their time.”

    Kalan took a deep breath. “And the other?” he said.

    “You fight alongside the enemy. You never see your heartlight again, nor your children. They call you traitor, and curse your name. Your path is one of darkness, and bitterness, and revilement. You will be hated by your kin, and despised by your invader allies. After they are defeated at the Placidium, you must stand vigil on the isle of Fae’lor, guarding over the place of dreaming. And there you will stay.”

    “And my little ones?”

    “They live. They prosper. If not in this land, then another. But you will never look upon their faces again, and if you ever deviate from this dark path, they will be lost.”

    Kalan nodded, and pushed himself to his feet. Sadness threatened to drag him down, but he suppressed it, pushing it deep inside himself.

    As he looked around, taking in the details of the seer’s shrine, he felt that there was something strangely familiar about it… a vague sense that he’d been here before, that he’d felt this awful sense of grief and loss more than once.

    He shook his head. To be trapped in this accursed moment forever? Now, that would be a fate far worse than death.

    “I am sorry, my child,” said the seer. “It is a terrible choice you must make.”

    “No,” said Kalan. “The choice is a simple one.”

  6. Fiora

    Fiora

    As the youngest daughter of the noble Laurent family, Fiora seemed destined for a life as a political pawn, to be married off in Demacia’s grand game of alliances. This did not sit well, and from an early age she deliberately defied every expectation placed upon her. Her mother had the finest craftsmen of Demacia fashion the most lifelike dolls for her to play with—but Fiora gave them to her maids, and took up her eldest brother's rapier, forcing him to give her lessons in secret. Her father obtained a set of dressmaking mannequins for her personal seamstress to craft wondrous gowns—but Fiora merely used them to practice her lunges and ripostes.

    Despite her years of quiet resistance, a politically advantageous marriage was eventually arranged with an outlying branch of the Crownguard family, after her eighteenth birthday. Plans were set for a summer wedding. It would take place in the capital, and King Jarvan III himself was to attend.

    On that day, as the invited guests began to arrive, Fiora stood up and declared that she would sooner die than allow someone else to decide the course of her life. Her betrothed was publicly shamed by this outburst, and his family demanded satisfaction in the old manner—a duel to the death.

    Fiora immediately agreed, but her father Sebastien implored the king to intervene. Jarvan had done much to end such feuding among the nobility, but in this case his hands were tied. Fiora had already accepted.

    There was only one option left. Sebastien invoked his right to fight in her place.

    High Marshal Tianna Crownguard likewise named a champion to fight for her kinsman, selecting a veteran warrior from the Dauntless Vanguard. Sebastien’s defeat seemed almost certain. The Laurent name would be ruined, and Fiora exiled in disgrace. Presented with so stark a choice, he made a decision that could damn his family for years to come…

    The night before the duel, he attempted to slip his opponent a draught that would dull his senses and slow his reactions—but he was caught in the act, and arrested.

    The law was clear. Sebastien Laurent had broken the most fundamental code of honor. He would be humiliated upon the executioner’s scaffold, hanged like a common criminal. On the eve of his death, Fiora visited his cell, but what passed between them remains a secret known only to her.

    The next day, Fiora approached the king’s dais in full view of the crowd. She knelt before him, and offered up her blade—with his blessing, she would claim the Laurent name from her father, and justice would be served. The duel was blindingly swift, a dance of blades so exquisite that those present would never forget what they witnessed. Fiora’s father was a fine swordsman in his own right, but he was no match for his daughter. They said farewell in every clash of steel, but in the end Fiora tearfully buried her rapier in her father’s heart.

    Solemnly, King Jarvan ruled that Sebastien had paid for his crimes in full. Fiora would be his successor. The quarrel between the families was resolved, and that would be an end to it.

    Even so, such scandals are not easily forgotten. Fiora took to her new duties at court with her customary clarity and directness, but found that rumors and gossip continued to follow her at every turn. She had usurped her brothers’ claims to the family name. What could this arrogant child bring to the Great City of Demacia but more strife and bloodshed, if she would not take a husband?

    Rather than demand more justice at the edge of her sword, Fiora instead turned to her wider family—cousins and more distant relatives, with many renowned swordmasters among them—and silenced her critics by granting noble status to all in her household. Together, they were dedicated to the refinement of bladecraft within the kingdom. Dueling was an ancient art, but need not always end in death.

    And if any care to disagree with that notion, Fiora will be only too happy to test the strength of their conviction in combat herself.

  7. Leaving Weh'le

    Leaving Weh'le

    Michael McCarthy

    “Ah— Hey! Bo’lii!” I cry out. “Cut me a little deep, don’t you think?”

    I crane my head up and around from the wicker mat I’m lying prone on to stare right into the eyes of the vastaya kneeling over me. I can feel the blood sliding down my back.

    “How about you be a little more careful?” I add.

    Bo’lii pulls his qua’lo and mulee away from my shoulder, the tools of a tattoo artist, like a hammer and chisel, made from serpent bone. Some use other animals or metal, but the serpent bones are just hollow enough to give the ink the fine line that a master like Bo’lii demands in his work. A little more of my blood drips off the mulee and onto my back. He smiles, dabs it with a swatch of old linen and shakes his head. Then he holds up his hands and shrugs, as if to ask, You want me to stop?

    The words don’t come. Noxian soldiers took most of his tongue long before I began coming here, but I know him well enough to know what a look can say. His work is more than a fair trade for a little discomfort.

    And the blood? I can take a little blood. A lot, if it’s not my own.

    “Just clean it up a little, okay? I don’t think we have much time,” I tell him.

    Bo’lii begins tapping the mulee with the qua’lo and adding the ink. He has the best inks, rich colors made from crushed Raikkon wild berries and the enchanted flower petals found only on the southern faces of the Vlonqo cliffs. He is a master, and I am honored to be his canvas.

    I started coming to Weh’le not long after I stopped listening to Shen. All those years in the Kinkou Order “treading carefully”? No. Shen was wrong about that. About me.

    Restraint has never been my thing.

    I turn back around on the mat and rest my chin on top of my hands. Keeping my eyes trained on the door that leads into Bo’lii’s tavern. His place is clean, but the air hangs heavy with guilt. The tavern is home to a collection of thieves, rogues, and bad decisions. People come to Bo’lii’s to arrange a way out of Weh’le. Out of Ionia. Because getting into Weh’le is hard… but getting out is even harder.

    Weh’le is a phantom port, a hidden coastal village, protected by the mystical properties of Ionia. Unlike Fae’lor, she doesn’t welcome outsiders, and you won’t find her on the maps. Should Weh’le appear at all, it is always on her own terms, daring people into doing very dumb things.

    Most approach from the sea, dreaming of riches, discovery or maybe just a new start, only to have their hopes dashed in an instant. First, the shoreline that once called to them vanishes behind a dense wall of cobalt fog crackling with arcane power. The sea rises and falls violently before unleashing torrents of crushing waves. As the survivors cling to their splintered vessel, the fog pulls back for the briefest of moments, allowing them one look at the flickering lanterns of Weh’le cruelly saying goodbye just before the water pulls them down to the bottom of the Breathless Bay.

    I can’t do anything about those people. Not my people. Not my problem.

    Bo’lii stops tapping. I’m here for someone else entirely.

    I feel my satchel against my thigh. It puts me at ease, although I would rather have it on me. From there, I could fire three kunai into three hearts on instinct. Three kills without a thought. Where it is now, I’d have to think a little.

    I look up just in time to see the man come through the front door. He is flanked by three guards in their battle dress.

    “Well, that makes it easy… I wonder which one I’m supposed to kill?” I mock.

    Bo’lii laughs. He can still do that, even without a tongue. It sounds a little weird, but it’s real. He shakes his head again, and does that thing he always does. With a series of hand movements and head nods he tells me to try and do my business outside this time, after they leave his establishment.

    “You know I can’t promise that,” I say as I check my satchel, and turn towards the din of the tavern.

    I pause at the doorway and turn back to him.

    “I’ll do what I can,” I say, before lifting the mask over my face. I don’t mind them seeing me, but if they saw me laughing at them, I think it would be just too much.

    The guy with the guards is my people—a high councilman from Puboe, a place not far from the Kinkou Order. But, like many, he sold out his people to the invaders for gold and safe passage to Weh’le, and beyond. So now he is my problem.

    But this is as far as he will get. Sure, I could’ve taken him out in his sleep at the inn, or when they made camp along the road to Weh’le, but where’s the fun in that? I want him to taste the salt air. I want him to feel a sense of relief before the end comes. But I also want the others to see him pay for his crimes, and know that this will not stand.

    Actions have consequences.

    I approach without a sound. His hands are shaking as he raises a mug of ale to his lips. His guards stand in his defense when they notice me. I’m impressed.

    “Nice to see manners around here for a change,” I say with a smile they cannot see.

    “What’s your business, girl?” One of them asks through a plate of pitted and tarnished steel.

    “Him,” I say pointing with my kama. It glistens with hues of the magic it was forged in. “He’s my business right now.”

    The guards draw their weapons, but even before they can step towards me, they disappear in a thick ring of blinding smoke. The kunai begin to fly, hitting their targets with a satisfying flesh and bone THUNK.

    One. Two. Three.

    Footsteps.

    I send two more kunai in that direction. A clang of metal, followed by the THUCK-THUCK of them ricocheting into the walls.

    More footsteps.

    “Aw, you’re gonna bleed!” I call out, flinging a single shuriken from my hip, and flipping across the room, following in its wake.

    I break through the smoke to see the last guard splayed out on the ground next to the door. The three prongs are lodged deep in his windpipe—I can see his chest rising and falling ever so slightly. I grab him by the collar, raise him up, just to be sure.

    “Almost…” I whisper.

    At that moment, I hear a gurgling behind me. I turn to see the councilman through the receding smoke, bleeding out on the floor. His eyes are open, darting back and forth across the tavern, wondering what just happened.

    He looks so peaceful now.

  8. In Sight of Land

    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.

  9. Protection

    Protection

    The golden hour between fifth and sixth bell. That’s my favorite time of day. It’s when most people in the Factorywood finish their work shifts. They’re bone tired, but they’re done for the day. Work is behind them. A hot meal and home are ahead. The people here are nice, and I always feel good squeezing my gelatinous body through the cliff-cracks seaming the rocks around the Factorywood. I feel love emanating from a man going home to his newborn son. I relish the anticipation of a married couple looking forward to a romantic dinner in the Boundary Markets.

    Their thoughts soak into me. It’s nice, like a warm bath, though I tend to stretch out pretty thin when things get too hot. There’s always a few people in the mix who aren’t so happy. After all, life in Zaun can be hard. Some people are nursing broken hearts, while others can’t stomach the thought of another shift and feel nothing but seething resentment. I absorb the good and the bad, because that’s the way I was made. The bad feelings sometimes make me angry, but there’s nothing I can do about that. My parents taught me it’s okay to feel bad sometimes. Without the bad you can’t properly savor the good.

    I follow the crowd until people start to go their separate ways. A few lingering bad feelings drift through my thoughts, so I decide to do something good to push them out. I seep down through a network of cracked vents I’ve been meaning to fix for a while, but just hadn’t gotten around to. I collect fragments of metal in my body as I go, extruding them from my amorphous form wherever there’s a crack, then heating my outer layers to weld them in place. With the cracks sealed, clean air from the pump station higher up in Piltover flows once again. Which hopefully means fewer cases of lung blight in a good many of the streets below.

    The bottom of the pipe brings me out in the upper reaches of the Sump level. Things aren’t so nice here. Lots of people don’t have much of anything, and there’s plenty who want to take even that from them. The sump pools, full of toxins and runoff from the chem-forges, remind me of the time I spent alone as a specimen in a laboratory. I try not to think of that time, because it makes me angry. And when I get angry I sometimes break stuff, even though I don’t mean to. I don’t like feeling like that, so I ease myself into my favorite cleft in the rock, the one running beneath the twisting rookeries of the Skylight Commercia. It’s always nice there. People out together, browsing the galleries, meeting friends, dining or going to see one of the companies of players that tour the undercity with their satirical works. The atmosphere warm and friendly, it’s the perfect place to bask in all that Zaun has to offer.

    But as I pass beneath the outlying streets, a spike of anguish ripples through me. A tremor of fear and pain disturbs my liquid flesh. I don’t like it. It feels out of place, like something I’d expect to find deeper down in the Sump. That’s the place where bad things happen more often than good things. It shouldn’t be happening here! I get angry as more of the bad feelings soak into me. I follow them down, wanting to stop them from spreading.

    I push my body from the corroded pipes running below a metalsmith’s shop. My bulk fills the space under the warped floorboards. Light shines in angled beams through the louvers of a grille set in the floor. Angry voices come from above. Shouts and the sound of a weeping man. I press my body against the grille. My gelatinous mass breaks apart, only to reform on the other side. I push hard and quick, re-establishing my form inside the shop.

    The owner of the shop is on his knees beside a woman who bleeds from a deep wound in her belly. He kneels at her side, one arm outstretched toward the four men standing in the wreckage of his shop. I know these kinds of men. I see them all the time in the Sump; thugs who force good-hearted people to pay up or face seeing their livelihoods smashed.

    The interior of the shop is lit by chem-lanterns, one of which is held by a man wearing a butcher’s apron and who has a meat-hook crudely fixed to the stump of his other hand. The other three are mere brutes, slab-muscled simpletons in canvas overalls and thick magnifier goggles. Their eyes grow stupidly wide with shock at the sight of me rising over them. I bloat my body, greenish limbs swelling with power as I form a mouth where I think it ought to be.

    I want to really hurt these men. I know it’s their emotions I’ve been feeling, but I don’t care. I just want to hurt them as badly as they hurt these people.

    “This is gonna get messy,” I say.

    My right arm shoots out, smashing the first thug from his feet. He slams into the metal stanchion by the door and doesn’t get back up. A second thug swings a heavy iron club, a sump-scrapper’s oversized wrench. It hits me in my middle and is promptly swallowed by my pliant flesh. I reach down and pluck him from the ground, hammering him up to the latticework girders of the ceiling. He drops back down, his limbs bending in ways even I can tell they shouldn’t. The third thug turns and runs, but I reach up and stretch my arms toward the girders. I spring forward and hammer my feet into his back. I squash him to the ground as their leader slices the blade of his butcher’s hook down the center of my back.

    It hurts! Oh, how it hurts. The pain causes my body to lose cohesion. I fall to the floor in a shower of liquid green ooze. For a moment, I lose all sense of spatial awareness, seeing and feeling the world from a thousand different perspectives. The thug stands over me, a gap-toothed smile splitting his stupid face. He’s glad he killed me, filled with pride at his destruction of a living thing.

    His pleasure at this destruction courses through me like a hateful elixir. I don’t want to feel like this, it’s not what I was taught, but to help these people I need to use the wrath that fills me. I must turn it against these men. My scattered globules reform in the time it takes him to realize he hasn’t killed me as thoroughly as he thought. I surge from the floor and crash into him, altering my density to that of a thundering piledriver. We smash into the wall of the establishment, the flesh and bone beneath me disintegrating at the force of impact.

    I peel myself from the bloody wall, feeling the anger slowly drain from me. I form my body into something man-shaped as I feel the mixed emotions emanating from the couple behind me. The man looks at me with a mixture of fear and trepidation. His wife smiles at me, though I can feel her tremendous pain. I kneel beside her and she takes my hand. It is soft. I am immediately soothed by her gratitude.

    I nod and place my hand on her stomach. Heat spreads from me as I ease a sliver of my form into her wound. I’ll be leaving a piece of me behind, a piece I’ll never grow back, but I give it willingly, knowing she will live because of me. The portion of my body within her repairs damaged flesh, knits ruptured tissue and stimulates regenerative growth in her stomach lining. Her husband wipes his hand over her wound, and gasps to see her skin is pink and new.

    “Thank you,” she says.

    I do not answer. I cannot. Expending such power drains me, leaves me thin. I allow my cohesion to loosen, flowing back down the grille and into the pipes. It is all I can do to maintain my form as I pour down through the cracks in the rock, heading toward the places I know will be awash with good emotions. I need to renew myself. I need to feel all the good Zaun has to offer.

    I need to feel alive.

    I need to feel.

  10. Milio's Super-Special Adventure Reports

    Milio's Super-Special Adventure Reports

    Elyse Lemoine

    Greetings, family! It is I, Milio, with my first official Adventure Report!

    I can't believe it's been three whole days since I left home. I made it safely to my first village and I'm ready to sleep in a REAL bed tonight. No more jungle floor! I can smell dinner too, mmm... (But your cooking is way better, Mamá! Yours too, Meli!)

    When I got to the village, your letters were waiting for me! I miss you all SO MUCH. How's Cousin Javi? Is Tomasin helping Papá with the farm? How are the animals doing? Cousin Jaime, I can't believe your and Xalvadora's baby is coming soon! How is she doing? Tell me everything! Also, Luca, you're not allowed to get married until I get home, okay? (Say hi to Cedro for me!)

    ANYWAY, I bet you're all wondering about my journey. Well, guess what? Your favorite Milio has become super tough and rugged camping under the stars, hehe. The jungle isn't as scary as it looks, especially when I have my fuemigos to keep me warm at night. Plus, now I don't have to share my bedroom anymore!

    The fuemigos are doing really well! My furnasita is keeping them nice and cozy, and they've done so much good work, lighting my path and even healing little jungle critters. (I helped too, of course!) Omele Lupé, I've been practicing my axiom every day and I'm getting stronger, just like you told me. The Vidalion won't stand a chance!

    This is the farthest I've ever been from home... but every day has been new and exciting! I'm doing REEEEEEALLY well too, by the way. I already made three new friends in the village, and we're eating together tonight!

    Speaking of, I gotta go eat. My fuemigos and I are STAAAAARVING. I'm leaving again tomorrow morning, but I'll write you as soon as I reach the next village.

    Love you all! My next letter is coming soon!

    The Tough and Rugged Milio



    Hi, family! It's Milio again, safe in the next village and ready to tell you all about my newest adventures!

    Thank you all for your letters. I wish I could write more often... Maybe I could train one of my fuemigos to deliver my letters for me? Can they even travel that far? Let's find out!

    I'm back! They can't...

    So Cousin Isabella was injured? How's she doing? I bet she'll be back on her feet in no time with one of Cousin Junot's poultices. Auntie Alba, I wish I could hear your new songs! I bet the whole village loved them.

    OH, you'll never guess who I met today! Okay, so picture this: I was wandering through the jungle when I saw an injured kitten. It was so cute and soft and fluffy, and it needed my help, so my fuemigos and I jumped into action and healed it! I got so many cuddles, and it was purring SOOOO much. We were napping in a sun spot when Nidalee found us!

    You remember the stories about the "Kashdaji Queen," right? About how she's half-woman, half-cat, and half-ghost? How she stalks the jungle at night, waiting to pounce on kids out past their bedtime? Well, her real name is Nidalee, and she's the best EVER. Definitely not a scary ghost who eats kids! Actually, she doesn't even like people that much. But she CAN turn into a cat! Isn't that amazing?

    Omele Lupé, I think you’d really like her. She's super strong, just like you!

    She didn't really like me at first, but I won her over. So she let me travel with her pack for a little bit, because I helped one of their kittens! (She taught me they're called "pakiti," and the Kashdaji are actually called "pakaa.") It was really fun getting to travel with Nidalee and her pack.

    We're kinda like a pack, right? We might not be pakaa, but we have each other. It would be fun if we were traveling together, too. Also, cuddle puddles!

    I hope I see Nidalee again. If you ever see her, say hi for me! She might SEEM distant at first, but she's actually super sweet, hehe.

    Time for me to go! The village is having a bonfire tonight and I wanna check it out.

    Love you all!

    Milio, the Honorary Pakaa



    Hi, family, it's Milio again! I miss you all a ton... You miss me too, right?

    I'm so glad I got your letters. Hearing what you've all been up to makes me REALLY happy, almost like you're traveling with me! And it gives me something to look forward to when I reach each stop on my way to Ixaocan.

    I definitely needed them today... When I got to the village last night, there was a lot going on. A bunch of people were hurt pretty bad. Luckily, me and my fuemigos were there to help! But... one person didn't make it.

    His family told me there wasn't anything I could have done. That I did SO much and made his last moments warm, but...

    I should have been able to save him.

    I guess it was pretty amazing helping everyone and showing them just how comfy and cozy fire can be. My fuemigos love being in the spotlight, too! And I helped a lot of people... But, I dunno...

    OH, Cousin Jaime, Xalvadora, I read about your baby! I'm so happy for you!!! I wish I could be there to meet her. Tell her all about Uncle Milio, okay? And give her a bajillion kisses and cuddles for me until I get home!

    Omele Lupé, I'm sorry. Next time, I'll do better. I promise.

    I'm gonna go now! I wanna check on everyone before I leave.

    Love you all!

    Milio



    Co-'om se-henna, family!

    "Milio, what does that mean?" Good question! It means "smile forever." I learned it from a new friend, hehe. (I'll tell you more soon!)

    It's been FOREVER since my last letter! My fuemigos and I are marching on, meeting so many new people and seeing so many new things.

    First, did you know there's a lady made of PLANTS in the jungle? I heard a lot of whispers about her in the last village, but I thought it was just scary stories for babies or something. Boy, was I wrong!

    I actually saw her one night! She was covered in petals and vines and leaves and everything! But her little seed friends looked really sharp... Don't worry, Mamá, Papá, I didn't go say hi. But I kinda wish I had...

    Also, I saw a mountain? Or at least a giant, moving rock! I noticed it through the trees and I was so confused, because it wasn't on my trusty map, so I went to investigate. And it seemed like a normal rock-mountain until I noticed... it had a FACE! And it was... moving? I reeeeeeally wanted to say hi, but I think it would’ve stepped on me if I’d tried. Next time!

    I made a new best friend, too. Her name is Neeko! She's so cute and nice and can shapeshift! She tried to play a prank on me by turning into ME, but my fuemigos knew it was a trick. I'm so proud of them.

    So yeah, Neeko smelled Nidalee's pakaa on me and wanted to investigate. (Apparently they're super-duper close!) (Also, Mamá, Papá, I PROMISE I shower every night. Well, most nights...)

    I learned a lot from Neeko, like how to say a bunch of new things and how she's trying to form a tribe for anyone who needs a home. I wish I could help her, but I gotta join the Yun Tal, first. Maybe one day?

    I've been traveling through Ixtal for so long now. It feels like I never run out of new things to see. Every day is fun and different, even if the jungle floor still isn't all that comfortable, hehe.

    Anyway, me and my fuemigos are pooped. It's so late here... What time is it for you? How's my new niece? (I can't believe I'm not the baby of the family anymore!) Tell Tomasin that she better be talking to the animals every night. They sleep better after you read them a bedtime story.

    Omele Lupé, I'm almost at Ixaocan! I'm training every day so I can face the Vidalion and make you proud.

    Also, I'm doing okay, I promise. I'm big and strong, so you don't need to worry about me.

    Love you all!

    Your Best Friend, Milio



    Greetings from Ixaocan, family!

    Can you believe I finally made it? I was starting to think I'd be traveling through the jungle FOREVER. Is it weird I kinda miss it?

    There's so much to tell you! But now that I can write to you every day, I'll send even more letters about what I’m up to in the capital. (Still no luck with my fuemigo delivery service... but more about that some other time.)

    The capital is HUGE. Omele Lupé, I can't believe you used to live here! I've already gotten lost a couple times... oops. Everything is ginormous, and there are a ton of people. I've seen so many things and learned a bunch of new ways to use the axiomata, too!

    At first, I was worried about finding a place to stay, but a super kind family took me in! They're earth elementalists and use the axiomata to make ceramics. Isn't that amazing? They're letting me stay in their spare room for free as long as I help them with chores in their ceramics shop. Good thing I’ve got lots of practice helping people!

    Even though Ixaocan is so different from our cozy village, there are some things that remind me of home, too. All the people in my neighborhood are really friendly and welcoming. Almost like a family! And there's a daily market nearby with food that tastes almost like Mamá’s! Almost.

    I keep getting this weird feeling in the pit of my stomach, though. Kind of like when I was back with the pakiti, and they were all play-hunting and tracking me through the forest, but I feel it... here? I mean, it's probably just me getting used to my new life, right?

    Anyway, I'll be facing the Vidalion any day now! Until then, I'm gonna keep training and exploring.

    Wish me luck!

    Love you all!

    Milio, the Vidalion's Next Challenger



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