LoL Universe Indexing and Search

The Stranger on the Road

The road from Tenacity to Progress was a flat, barren thing, unspooling across miles and miles of cactus country from one edge of the sky to the other—but that pinched end of packed dirt in the distance never seemed to get any closer. The cowboy stared down it dutifully. He had enough water to get him to town, and enough cattle to earn his employer a tidy sum at market, all he had to do was make it there with himself and the herd in one piece. Simple enough.

If the cows saw any trace of apprehension, they did him the good grace of not acknowledging it. For that, he was grateful. Instead they walked and lowed and tried to graze despite the lifeless earth, eyes shining black and flat under the pitiless noonday sun, keeping apace with the steady hoofbeats of his mare. They were on track to make it to Progress before nightfall, and that was a boon all its own. Strange beasts had been spotted around these parts after the sun went down: hellhounds with teeth the size of a man’s forearm; unburied dead still bloated and shambling across the cracked earth; Outsiders hunting down sorry souls who bet untold riches at the casino and lost it all, only to try and run from the wages of their sin. No sir, ain’t nothing good ramblin’ in the dark chill of the desert night.

Apparently the cowboy wasn’t alone in traveling under the protection of daylight. It was just a speck, at first, moving slow as the sun in the sky, but there—a dark shadow crowned with a wide-brimmed hat on the road ahead. The cowboy hadn’t expected to see anybody until he got to where it forked north to Fort Nox. There weren't many folks left who used this particular old trail, and weren’t many who still lived out in a run-down two-street like Tenacity, neither, so the question remained.

From this distance, he could spy the hem of the stranger’s jacket dragging through the dirt behind him, the man hunched over and hiding in the shadow of his own hat as though the sun had insulted him personally. His course did not change, his speed did not quicken, and so the herd and the cowboy caught up to the stranger, step by step.

The horse stopped first. Her ears flattened against her neck, breath huffing out in agitated gusts as she shifted uneasily beneath the saddle. Any breeze drifting along the road died promptly, like a town shuttering itself against some fearful creature slouching in from parts unknown.

The cowboy offered a simple greeting, voice hoarse from dust and disuse, “Howdy, friend.”

Without so much as a response, the stranger collapsed onto the barren earth.

“Whoa there—” In one swift movement the cowboy swung down from the saddle, landing and hefting the stranger into his arms so he wasn’t lying face down in the dirt. The fella was lighter than the cowboy thought he’d be, as if beneath the coat he had bird bones, hollow and wanting. Smoke and copper and heat lingered on his scent.

The stranger muttered something, coughing while his cracked lips moved as if in prayer or possession, barely a whisper. “Water...”

“Oh! Of course,” The cowboy reached for the canteen on his hip, knowing it was half empty already but haunted by childhood stories—tales of travelers who didn’t help wandering strangers on the road, how they were punished for it when those wandering strangers turned out to be spirits or witches or some such. This particular stranger felt real enough. He accepted the offer of the canteen gratefully, downing swallows that parched the cowboy’s throat, but a decision had been made; no changing his mind now.

The stranger wiped his mouth on the back of his sleeve, now as bone dry as the canteen in his hand. As if lifted of some fell curse, golden-brown eyes ringed with exhaustion finally rose to meet their erstwhile savior from under the brim of that wide leather hat. He couldn’t have been much older than the cowboy himself, but whatever trials of the desert this man had survived rendered him haggard: skin sallow, pale hair stuck to his sweat-soaked brow—and yet there was something unearthly about him, beautiful in a way that evoked an animal fear deep in the cowboy’s gut. Beautiful like a wildfire. Beautiful like a well-polished knife.

“Much obliged,“ the stranger managed through a weak smile, handing the canteen back to him. “I am in your debt.”

The cowboy, suddenly realizing that staring was impolite, swallowed the lump that had appeared in his throat. “Ain’t no trouble. Are you alright?”

As if to make a point, the stranger rose to his feet, only to double over in a fit of coughing despite himself. It was little more than a reflex for the cowboy to stand and steady the man, holding his arm and gentling his shuddering back. Funny, that the shoulder under his palm prickled as his fingers wrapped around it. Curiosity was a deadly entertainment, particularly with a man such as this, but it reared its head in spite of any propriety the cowboy could muster.

He released his hold on the stranger’s arm, catching the faintest glimpse of something white and downy beneath the close-kept shadows of his coat. Feathers. When the cowboy looked up, he found the other man staring back.

“I’m fine,” the stranger answered, setting his jaw against something unnamed and unspoken between his teeth. He watched him now, gaze bright beneath the shade of his hat. “Don’t mean to impose, but where you headed?”

“Progress,” the cowboy answered.

The stranger thought for a moment, eyes pitting through him with no trouble at all. “That’s in an amenable direction, and travel is more pleasant with company. May I join you?”

And so they walked.

The stranger didn’t stumble again, carrying on his slow gait alongside the uneasy plodding pace of the cowboy’s mare. He stepped light, this wandering stranger, footfalls unvoiced and unimpeded by rock or scrub or the memento mori of dried-out bones that littered the trail. Their mutual quiet swam with the midday heat along the horizon.

“Why’re you headed to Progress, if you don’t mind me askin’?” he offered by way of conversation.

“To catch a train,” the stranger replied simply, as if there was no more explanation to give. The cowboy nodded.

Silence was everyone’s closest friend and bitterest enemy on the road—safe in its reassurance that danger ain’t near, but potent in its foreboding. A promise that whatever’s out to get you ain’t here... yet. The cows knew this, and they watched with a prey’s patience, a single living thing with a hundred eyes all fixed on the stranger in the wide-brimmed hat.

“I’d like to repay your kindness,” the stranger broke that sacred silence, squinting into the horizon. “Don’t much care for being in debt.”

The cowboy looked down at him, a smile summoned to his face not by any gladness in his heart but by the demands of gentility. “Naw, don’t worry ‘bout it none. Just aidin’ a fellow traveler.”

“You’re too kind,” the stranger said, an observation, not a pleasantry. “I must insist. I cannot let such generosity go unanswered.”

The manner of those words struck the cowboy as strange, and that deadly entertainment called curiosity circled around once more. The sweat that trickled down the back of his neck was cold as ice as he asked against his better judgment, “What did you have in mind?”

The stranger shrugged, easy-as-you-please. “How about an old tale of the West? One I reckon you might not’ve heard.”

Despite the dead wind and fierce heat, gooseflesh rose on the cowboy’s skin. “I couldn’t possibly trouble you for that—”

“Consider it a payment,” the stranger replied, a familiar forlorn tug tucked into the upturn of his smile.

It was a pitying thing to the cowboy’s eyes, the same regretful sigh his father had made, leading prize cattle out to slaughter when the crops rotted in the field and there was nothing anyone could do to save them.

The cowboy’s throat closed around something shaped like anticipation as the stranger began his tale.



No one knows who prophesied this one, since the real prophets were killed for their truths long ago, and any who profess the same nowadays are selling snake oil. But this is a real one, from the age before the fall of Heaven. Back when a fella felt the joy of corruption and the sting of sanctity, because each of those meant something when they had the other. Now, everything out here is profane—but I digress.

There is a beginning of all things, and there is an end of all things. Ain’t no stopping the beginning, since it’s already done and begun. Ain’t no way to stop that we are here, that we have been here, and that we done the land wrong. But the ending... Well. It is said that the end of all things will be upon us after the fall of Heaven’s gates, when Hell and man have bled the land dry, and rendered us all unto a final judgment.

The flows of life and death will become commerce, taken in by misers of industry and churned on machines of smoke and brimstone. I reckon this is already in motion, if you heard tell of the Sulfur Rail and its mechanical devil-king.

Tidings of the end-times will arrive on the backs of five Harbingers, heralds from all corners of the earth.

From the South: The First Harbinger rides an ivory steed, conquering all in her wake. Any who stand in her way shall kneel, or burn.

From the West: The Second Harbinger leaves the land of Angels, delivering retribution upon those who slaughtered the innocent and damned the holy. Forged in love, broken in death, tempered in vengeance.

From the North: The Third Harbinger is one with shadow and smoke, balancing the bloody ledgers of sin on the edge of her knife. She is Our Lady of Restitution.

From the East: The Fourth Harbinger travels through the deep waters of the world, his appetite for all things unsated and unstoppable. He’ll consume everything until there ain’t nothing left to consume.

From Above, So Below: The final harbinger walks with death at his side, a specter sowing decay with every step. He harvests the living crop of man, reaping souls to carry beyond the bounds of Heaven and Hell and into an Unknown Country.

These five will ride together. They will topple the wicked who reap the bounty of imbalance, lay low devils and behemoths of steel, strike down the King of the Sulfur Rail himself.

The balance of the West is shifting. The coming of the clockwork angel and the gunslinger’s revival were just the beginning—now the Harbingers are here to end what they started. Some say their arrival is what beckons the storm of chaos to wash the West clean of all its mired sins. Some say they will punish the wicked and usher in a new age of man. Most think they’re simply here to raze us all and be done with it—



The stranger swayed, throat catching and coughing once more, and in the span of a panicked heartbeat the cowboy leapt down from the saddle to try and catch the stranger before he could fall again. This close he could see the forlorn furrow on the stranger’s brow, how he met the cowboy’s eyes with an exhaustion that ran marrow-deep.

“What do you think?” the cowboy asked. “About the Harbingers? What’re they gonna do?”

The stranger pondered this with a mirthless chuckle, voice rasping. He summoned up the thing in his throat and spit it to the ground: a clump of wet, bloody white feathers.

In a voice thick as coal smoke, the stranger rumbled, “I think we are all livin’ on borrowed time, hoss, and the powers that be ain’t keen on lettin’ us sinners remain in debt.”

He stood slowly, stepping away from the cowboy’s support and rising to his full height. The cowboy hadn’t noticed that one of the stranger’s hands was hidden beneath his sleeve, but as it emerged he could see fingers sharpened to points in some unholy claw—black as burning pitch and red as hellfire, reaching up to scrape off his battered coat and bandanna and drop them to the ground as a rattlesnake might, shedding its skin. Where half the stranger’s body roiled with darkness even under the light of day, his left shoulder erupted into white feathers, spread like an infection down his arm and across his chest and ending in a crackling hiss where they met the shadows on his skin between the parted collar of his shirt.

The cowboy couldn’t imagine how he ever thought this stranger was a man. He heard the stamp of his mare’s hooves behind him, the way she snorted and whinnied and rolled the whites of her eyes in fear at the thing that stood before them, so close that either one could reach out and touch the other. The cowboy could run. He should run, every fiber of his being screaming at him to turn tail and take his horse and tear through the desert in any direction that was away from here—but his knees trembled, his hands quaked, and the burning gaze from beneath the brim of that hat fixed him in place.

A train whistled in the distance, and somewhere in the back of the cowboy’s mind he registered that as strange, since they were miles from the nearest railroad. A shame that would be his final thought, but then again, the West don’t care one whit for the dignity of men. The stranger conjured a blade on his clawed wrist, stepped closer, closer—and only then, as he wiped away a tear rolling down the cowboy’s cheek with that heavenly hand, did he slip the hellish knife between his ribs.

“Much obliged,” the stranger murmured into his ear as the knife slid out of his body, as his body slid onto the ground, and as the cowboy’s soul slid out of both—collapsing to the dirt.



The earth rumbled in the distance.

Had this been five, ten years ago, looking down at a body wouldn’t have meant nothin’ to the stranger. He wouldn’t have felt a damn thing, wouldn’t have stopped to think on it, wouldn’t even have left a body behind at the height of his power when his form was more shadow than man, and he was free to slake his bloodlust as he pleased—but it wasn’t five or ten years ago. Now he gazed at the wreckage of it all: the blood on his blade, the thin death rattle of the cowboy’s breath as his chest stilled, the horse galloping away for safer pastures that withered long ago. Damn the angels, damn their consciences.

He reached down to help up the wayward soul, reduced to a blank-eyed shade of a man, and rested a hand upon his shoulder. Where once was fear and curiosity and kindness, now there was nothing at all, staring into the unseen distance between life and death as if there were an answer on the horizon if only he looked hard enough. Do the dead see something in the world the rest of them miss? They seem so intent on nothing.

Well, they’d all find out soon enough.

The earth shook beneath the stranger’s feet. The train whistled again, a scream into empty air like a thousand bellowing vultures scenting death on the wind, that roiling rumble deeper than thunder in its wake. It grew louder, and louder, and louder still, until the bowels of the cracked desert earth split asunder and from the chasm rose the stench of smoke, the screech of metal on tracks, and finally, the Sulfur Rail itself.

It was a beast of cinders and fire, ash and coal, a titan of steel machinery that dwarfed men and monsters with a grandiosity only outdone by the conductor of the train himself. The sight of it was enough to drive any sane mortal mad. The train’s hulking form cast a noonday shadow, blocking out a corner of the sun. A railroad formed up beneath it as the wheels churned and slowed and eventually came to a shuddering, seething stop.

Steam greeted them as the doors hissed open. The stranger stepped onto the train, guiding the soul of the cowboy over to the devil serving as the ticket taker. The devil nodded at the exchange. This fare would do.

A foreign pang shuddered under his ribs as the soul shuffled toward the other passengers huddled in the next car over: rail barons and beggars, gentlemen and gunslingers, cowboys and angels, all riding the same sorry train to Hell. The stranger grimaced and turned back to the ticket taker as the doors shut behind him.

“Tell your boss Talon’s here, and I want to talk. The Harbingers are gathering.”

The ticket taker blanched and scurried off, leaving him alone in the stagnant air of the train as it idled on the track, an impatient machine. The train’s conductor was a particular man, with lavish tastes and an uncompromising will—every window was filigreed in sterling silver, every curtain draped in precious velvet. The Sulfur Rail was an expensive ticket in all regards.

Out of the corner of his eye, Talon caught sight of someone watching him from the doorway of the next car. He could feel his jaw tighten under his teeth.

“What’re you lookin’ at?” he growled, but the cowboy’s soul didn’t move. Anger simmered in his heart, impotent and helpless, a reminder that he never had one to begin with and was worse off for the addition of it. He stalked over to the soul, staring him down as he had done when the fella was alive, but now he didn’t waver at the fire burning in Talon’s eyes. Indifferent. “Do you want me to apologize?”

The soul just kept on staring.

“Do you want me to say something?”

The soul just kept on staring.

“I’m sorry! There. You happy?”

The soul just kept on staring.

Talon spat, reaching to grip the shadow of the cowboy’s neck—

Then the soul lifted a hand to Talon’s cheek and wiped away a tear from the space beneath his eye.

He’d never wanted to weep before—a pitiful act, the sanctimonious mourning of angels and men for lost lives that had never been theirs to begin with—but all the rain that never touched the desert fell inside his chest, a storm unstoppable, threatening to water the West in tears and drown him where he stood.

Talon tore himself away, cast his gaze out the window at what he had left behind: the lonely road to Progress, an empty canteen, the blank stare of a body that once was a man, and a herd of dead-eyed cattle stepping over the corpse of their shepherd as they grazed the barren ground, searching for something green among a mess of dead white feathers smudged with blood and brimstone.

Maybe they all deserved what was coming.

More stories

  1. The Wedding Crasher

    The Wedding Crasher

    Jinx hated petticoats.

    Corsets too, but she grinned at how she’d put the space under and within the stolen dress to good use. Her long blue braids were concealed beneath a ridiculous feathered bonnet that was the latest fashion in Piltover. Jinx sashayed between the wedding guests, keeping her smile fixed and trying not to scream at the dead-eyed people surrounding her. It took an effort of will not to grab each one by the shoulder and try to shake them awake.

    Jinx had come here to get all explodey on the observatory atop Count Sandvik’s mansion, but when she’d seen there was a wedding underway... well, that was too good an opportunity for mayhem to pass it up. The count had spared no expense in making his daughter’s party a grand spectacle. The cream of Piltover society was here; the heads of the major clans, lauded hextech artificers, and even fat Nicodemus had managed to finagle an invite. The Warden-Prefect looked like an overstuffed poro in his dress uniform, chest puffed out and beady eyes ogling the sprawling buffet table. Music from a small orchestra drifted over the wedding guests, so slow and ponderous it made Jinx want to yawn. She’d take the foot-stomping, spin-around-till-it-made-you-sick music of Zaun any day.

    Hexlumens fitted with rotating zoetropes and oddly-angled lenses projected spectral dancers onto the floor that pirouetted and spun to the delight of laughing children who’d never known a moment of hunger, pain, or loss. Mimes and sleight of hand artistes moved through the crowd, delighting the guests with the fingerwork of their card tricks. Jinx had seen better. The sump-snipes of the Boundary Markets would quite literally give any of these performers a run for their money.

    Pictures of Piltover’s bigwigs hung on walls paneled with oak and inlaid with geometric copper fretwork. The men and women in the portraits looked down on the people below with haughty disdain. Jinx stuck her tongue out at each and every one of them as she passed, grinning as they tutted and turned away. Windows paned with colored glass patterned the mosaic floor with rainbows and Jinx skipped merrily over every bright square as she made her way to a table heaped with enough food to feed a hundred families in Zaun for a month.

    A liveried waiter passed her, bearing a silver tray of fluted glasses filled with something golden and fizzy. She took one in each hand, spinning away with a grin. Flying foam stained the backs of dresses and frock coats of nearby guests and Jinx sniggered.

    “Drink up,” she said and knocked back what was left in the glasses.

    She bent awkwardly and set the glasses on the mosaic floor, right in the path of oncoming dancers, and burped the opening bars of Vi is a Stupid Fathead, a tune she’d only just made up. Cliques of society ladies turned to sneer at her coarseness, and Jinx covered her mouth in mock, wide-eyed embarrassment. “Sorry, I accidentally did that on purpose.”

    She skipped on and helped herself to some weird looking fish-things from another waiter’s platter. She tossed them into the air and managed to catch at least one in her mouth. A few fell into her enhanced cleavage and she plucked them out with the glee of a sump-scrapper who’d found something shiny in the ooze.

    “You thought you could get away from me, fishy-fishes!” she said, wagging a finger at each morsel. “Well, you were wrong.”

    Jinx stuffed the food into her mouth and readjusted her dress. She wasn’t used to this much up top, and stifled a giggle at what she had stuffed down there. The hairs on the back of her neck bristled, and she looked up to see a man staring at her from the edge of the chamber. He was good-looking in a stiff sort of way and wore nice, formal clothes, but was so obviously a warden that he might as well have had a sign around his neck. She turned and pushed deeper into the throng of guests filling the chamber.

    She reached the buffet table and sucked in an impressed breath as she saw the towering wedding cake; a frosted masterwork of pink fondant, whipped cream and lacework caramel. A replica of the Tower of Techmaturgy in sponge, jam, and sweet pastry. Jinx reached out, lifted a ladle from the punch bowl, and scooped out a cave in the sponge. She tipped it out onto the floor, licked the ladle clean and tossed it back onto the table. She saw a number of the guests looking at her funny and bared her teeth in her best, manic grin. Maybe they thought she was mad. Maybe they were right.

    Jinx shrugged. Whatever.

    She reached down into her décolletage and pulled out four chompers. She stuffed three deep into the hole she’d scooped in the cake and dropped the other in the punch bowl.

    Jinx strolled along the length of the table, pulling out another two chompers and depositing them in various dishes. One went in a copper soup tureen, the other replaced the apple in the mouth of a suckling pig. Her dress was a lot looser without the additional baggage upstairs, and as she pulled down the side zipper, Jinx spotted the good-looking man she’d earlier pegged as a warden making a beeline for her through the guests.

    “About time,” she said, spotting another four, gussied-up wardens, three women and a man, converging on her. “Oooh, and you brought friends too!”

    Jinx reached around to the small of her back and pulled the knot securing the petticoats around her narrow waist. The bottom half of her dress sank to the floor as her corset fell away to surprised gasps of the men and women around her.

    Revealed in her pink leggings, ammo-belted shorts and vest top, Jinx ripped off the bonnet and shook her hair loose. She reached down and swung Fishbones up from where it had been concealed beneath her dress, and hoisted the weapon up to her shoulder.

    “Hey folks!” she yelled, leaping onto the buffet table and drawing Zapper from her thigh-holster. “Hope you’re all hungry...”

    Jinx spun on her heel and fired a crackling bolt of energy down the table to the chomper in the pig’s mouth.

    “‘Cause this buffet is to die for!”

    The chomper exploded, draping the nearest guests in ribbons of scorched meat and fat. A chain reaction of detonations followed. The tureen blasted into the air to drench scores of guests in hot beef soup. The punch bowl blew up next, and then the climax of the detonations; the wedding cake.

    The three chompers inside detonated simultaneously and the towering confection launched into the air like a rocket. It almost reached the stained glass ceiling before it arced over and nosedived back to the floor. Guests scattered as the giant cake exploded on impact, and fondant fragments flew in all directions. Screaming guests ran from the blasts, slipping and tumbling in patches of gooey cream and sizzling punch.

    “Seriously folks,” said Jinx, blowing a loose strand of blue hair out of her face. “Screaming helps, not at all.”

    She skipped down the ruined buffet table and fired a rocket from Fishbones that blew out the nearest window. Iron bolts from hand crossbows flashed past her to embed in the walls, but Jinx laughed as she leapt through the shattered window frame to land in the garden beyond. She rolled back to her feet and pulled up short. She’d had an escape route sort of planned out, but looking toward the Sandvik Mansion’s entrance, she saw a tall, gleaming ring-rider that looked like it’d be a ton of fun to steal.

    “Now, that I gotta try...”

    She slung Fishbones over her shoulder and elbowed a host of gawping Sandvik footmen out the way, settling into the disc-runner’s hand-tooled leather saddle.

    “So how do you start this thing?” she said, staring at the bewildering array of ivory knobs, brass-rimmed dials and gem-like buttons on the control panel in front of her.

    “Time for a little trial and error!”

    Jinx hauled back on the nearest lever and hit the biggest, reddest button she could see. The machine throbbed beneath her, spooling up with a rising whine and hum of building power. Blue light spun around the outer edges of the wide disc as the main doors to the mansion slammed open. Stern voices yelled at her to stop. Like that was going to happen! The stabilizer struts retracted into the gleaming frame and Jinx whooped with manic glee as the disc-runner shot away from the mansion like a super mega death rocket.

    “See ya!” she yelled over her shoulder. “Awesome party!”

  2. Sett

    Sett

    Though now a powerful player in Ionia’s flourishing criminal underworld, Sett had humble origins. Born from an Ionian vastaya and a Noxian human, the “half-beast” child was an outcast from the start. His birth appalled his mother’s vastayan community, which expelled the family for violating its tribal norms. The humans of Ionia were no more accepting of the taboo union, though Sett’s father’s infamy as a local pitfighter usually kept them from voicing their disapproval.

    What little security the family enjoyed vanished the day Sett’s father disappeared. All of a sudden, those who had bitten their tongues at the sight of young Sett felt free to express their contempt. The boy was bewildered, wondering where his father had gone, and why trouble suddenly seemed to be following him.

    Sett grew up quickly, becoming calloused in the face of the taunts and threats he endured, and before long, he began using his fists to silence the insults. When news of his fights reached his mother, she made him swear not to go near the Noxian pits where his father had fought.

    But the more Sett fought, the more he thought of his father.

    Longing to find the man he only vaguely remembered, Sett snuck away to the pit late one night, after his mother had gone to bed. Immediately, he was enthralled by the spectacle. Scores of Noxian soldiers, fresh to the shores of Ionia, roared with bloodlust from the stands around him. Down in the center of the arena, fighters from all backgrounds and martial disciplines clashed in gruesome duels with a variety of weapons—the winners handsomely paid in Noxian coin. When the event was over, Sett inquired about his father, and learned a hard truth: his father had bought out his contract and left to tour more profitable pits abroad. He had deserted his family, to seek fortune on the other side of the world.

    Burning with rage, Sett asked the arena’s matchmaker for a fight, hoping that somehow his father would return from his tour—and be the opponent standing across the pit from him. The matchmaker assigned the boy a fight on the next card, figuring he would be easy fodder for one of his star combatants.

    Sett would prove him wrong.

    From the moment he threw his first punch, “The Beast-Boy Bastard” was a pit-fighting sensation. Though Sett had no formal martial arts training, his primal strength and ferocity more than compensated, and he leveled his more technically sound opponents like a battering ram. Never abandoning hope that he might one day fight his father, he soon became the undisputed “King of the Pit”, with a swollen coffer of prize money—and a trail of broken opponents—to his name.

    Night after night, Sett brought money and comforts to his mother, always lying about how he had acquired them. It warmed his calloused heart to see her so proud of his success, no longer forced to toil at menial jobs. Still, Sett couldn’t help but feel he could do better. Being the King of the Pit was good, but being the person who owned the pit… that was where the real money was.

    Late one night, after defending his title in front of a record-breaking crowd, Sett presented his new demands to the Noxian matchmaker and his cronies. He suggested they grant him control of the arena and its revenue. When they refused, Sett barred the doors. Minutes later, the doors re-opened, and the Noxians emerged, badly maimed, with a message on their bloodied lips: the half-beast was the new boss.

    With the promoters out of the picture, Sett took control of the pit he once fought in. Ionians, who had only recently been conditioned for war, flocked to the arena, paying to satisfy an urge they only now knew they possessed. Sett took full advantage of their newfound bloodlust, accumulating wealth and power beyond his wildest boyhood dreams, as he transformed the pit into the hub of an underground empire of gambling and vice.

    The half-beast who reigned supreme in the pit now runs his illicit enterprises with the same iron fist. Any time someone challenges his authority, he personally reminds them where they stand. Every punch Sett throws is a blow to his old life of poverty and ostracism, and he intends to make sure that old life stays down.

  3. Severed

    Severed

    Michael Yichao

    The boy ran at a dead sprint, driven by terror.

    Under the sliver of a waning moon, darkness swallowed his surroundings with only the faintest starlight giving a silver sheen to the misty night. Silhouettes of trees flashed by. The lantern in the boy’s hand flickered and sputtered, in danger of snuffing out. But it was not the darkness he feared.

    It was the thing that stalked him in the darkness.

    The boy had felt it first—a sudden chill in the summer air, a creeping dread that clutched at his heart. Sensations that he might have dismissed as symptoms of the late hour and a long night. On any other occasion, he would have chastised himself for indulging in his imagination. He was thirteen now, too old to be afraid of darting shadows and harmless spirits.

    But this spirit had opened glowing blue eyes and stared into his soul. This shadow had whispered his name.

    The boy risked a glance behind to see if it still followed, and promptly slammed into something. He fell back, the breath knocked from his lungs, and his lantern clattered to his side, its weak light fluttering wildly. Surprise and pain shifted quickly to fear as he saw the figure looming over him.

    A man, tall and lithe, stood with a bare torso, unfazed by the unusually chilly night. From the waist down, loose robes billowed in the wind, frayed from wear. An intricate belt of woven rope tied strange masks across his waist, monstrous visages trapped in alabaster. Bandages bound both his arms, and each hand grasped a blade—one of tempered steel, shimmering in the moonlight, the other shining an ominous red.

    Yet it was the man’s face that left the boy frozen.

    Those cold blue eyes peered down through a cruel mask that radiated the same strange red as the man’s blade. The mask grasped the man’s face, nearly devouring his stern frown.

    “S-stay back!” the boy croaked.

    “It is not me you should fear,” the man spoke, his voice a soft growl, eyes fixed on some point beyond the boy.

    Confusion knit the boy’s brow as he followed the man’s gaze. What he saw sent him scrambling to his feet.

    A vague shape hovered in the mists. If the stranger hadn’t pointed it out, the boy might have missed it altogether. The mist twisted into wide eyes and slitted pupils, and the outline of a lumbering body took form, visible where it pushed the fog away to leave a negative space. The boy squinted. Something else glistened in the foggy night… Teeth?

    He had never seen anything like it, yet it somehow felt familiar. Like the boy knew this thing. It drew him, compelled him toward it. He took a tentative step forward.

    Something cold pierced through his chest.

    The boy looked down in shock at the tip of a shining red blade. His mind raced as his breath grew choppy from panic, expecting pain and blood. But neither came. Instead, a strange numbness spread through his body. Behind him, he heard the man mutter under his breath, and a strange sigil appeared in the air in front of them, as if painted by an invisible brush. A word—or name?—the boy did not recognize.

    “W-what—”

    The man ignored him. “My blade sees your true name, azakana.”

    The boy felt the sword pulled from his body, and he fell to his knees, gasping. His hands flew to his chest—but there was no puncture or wound. Even more strange, the boy felt lighter, as if some burden had been excised. He looked up, and a wall of teeth met his gaze.

    The creature lunged.

    A clash of steel rang out. The masked stranger stood before him, blades blocking the creature’s massive, pale fangs. No—it was not the man, but a shadowy spirit in his form. The boy looked behind him where the man himself stood, eyes closed, as if in meditation. A shiver ran down the boy’s spine as the chill in the air now seeped into his bones, and with each motion of the struggling monster and man, he felt his soul lurch and sway, their very existence exerting a palpable force over him. The boy stared in awe.

    What is he?

    The spirit swordsman pushed the creature back, then burst into swirling tendrils of smoke, washing over the boy as it returned to the body of the stranger. The hideous creature bellowed in rage. As the boy squinted, he could see other parts of the beast through the mist—matted fur, claws, a huge torso—but when he tried to focus on the whole body, parts would fade out from focus.

    You dare deny what is already mine? A rasping, impossible voice reverberated in the boy’s mind, cutting through the rattling growls he heard from the monster. The boy belongs to me.

    The boy’s stomach dropped. It can speak?

    “Nothing in this realm belongs to you,” the man said, unfazed. “Cower, Taan Ko’au!”

    Though the words meant nothing to the boy, their utterance made his skin crawl. Yet their effect was far more pronounced on the creature, which emitted an ear-splitting squeal. Twisting, sinuous muscle wrapped around pale teeth and claws. Four scarlet eyes narrowed on its horrific face, glowering atop a lumbering torso of gray hair that shimmered into existence, ephemeral wisps turned to flesh and bone.

    “So you are named,” the man with the broken mask said. “So you are revealed.”

    A defiant howl shook the ground. The man shifted his stance, crouching low as he brought both swords to bear.

    “So you shall perish.”

    The beast charged, but the stranger dashed forward so fast that the boy nearly missed him. Swords sliced through the moonlight, one flashing silver, the other leaving a blood-red trail in its wake. Ichor sprayed from the creature as it fell to the ground.

    “Slumber, azakana. You are unmoored from flesh.” The man strode forward and plunged both blades deep in the creature. It roared, then wheezed.

    The boy stared as its body dissipated into a swirling fog, its monstrous face contorting through a gamut of expressions as it shrank and calcified into an almost human-like appearance, finally assuming the shape of… a mask. His eyes widened in recognition. Though it still possessed the four eyes of the monster in a distorted, exaggerated pose, it looked almost mournful—and eerily close to his own face.

    With a shudder, the mask floated upward toward the man’s outstretched hand. With a fluid motion, he sheathed his sword and tied the mask next to the others on his waist. Then he turned to leave.

    “What are you?” the boy asked.

    “Once, I knew the answer. But now…” The stranger paused. He fixed the boy with a steel gaze.

    A question tumbled from the boy’s lips. “Was that thing… me?”

    “Only a festered nightmare, feasting on your sorrows. But you aren’t defined by it any longer.”

    The boy bit his lip. “It’s my fault. I’m weak—never good enough. My father was right.”

    Without a sound, the man turned as though to approach, and the boy recoiled almost by habit. The stranger’s expression softened ever so slightly.

    “Those we love say the things that hurt us most.” The man pulled the mask from his waist, examining it. “Despair devours our own voice, wearing the guise of reason—claiming to show us who we are. But it only shows us a warped version of our true selves.”

    He turned the mask around and held it aloft for the boy to see. It seemed small, fragile… Toothless.

    “Pierce through its falsehoods to find your truth.” The smallest hint of a smile crossed the man’s face. “You’ll be just fine, Andu.”

    With that, the stranger turned away, leaving the boy alone in the dark woods.

  4. Interrogation 101

    Interrogation 101

    Vi stifled a yawn as she moved through the gilded chamber at the heart of Piltover’s Hall of Law. Dawn was less than an hour old, and the place was quiet. A few drunks were sleeping it off in the shaming cells, and she’d heard there were a couple of chem-augmented thugs in the deeper, more secure lock-ups. She’d ask around later, see if she could provide any insight as to what they were doing up in Piltover.

    She rolled her shoulders, the muscles there stiff after a hard night’s work. It had been a long shift, and her forearms were aching from the pressure of her powered gauntlets. All she wanted to do was go back home, get them off, and bathe her fists in ice water. Maybe throw back a few glasses of something strong and sleep some, but the pnuema-tube from Caitlyn had been full of imperatives about getting herself down to the district house on the double. Vi had cocked an eyebrow, tossed the message and given it an hour before leaving her cramped home in the dressmakers-quarter to answer Caitlyn’s summons.

    “Hey, Harknor,” she said to the desk-warden when she reached the cells. “What’s so important Caitlyn has to drag me from an erotic dream about—”

    “Ah, ah, stop right there,” said Harknor without looking up from his elevated desk as he ran a finger down the list of prisoners brought in during the night. “I’m not in the mood to hear another of your lurid fantasies.”

    “You sure?” grinned Vi, leaning on his desk and blowing a loose strand of pink hair from her eyes. “This was a good one. Had a plot and everything.”

    “Quite sure,” said Harknor, looking away and holding out the charge sheet. “Caitlyn and Mohan brought in a hextech thief last night. He hasn’t said a word to anyone, but she thinks you might be able to get him to talk.”

    Vi arched an eyebrow as she scanned the page.

    “Devaki? You’ve been a very naughty boy,” she said, rolling her eyes and curling her metaled fingers into a fist. “Yeah, Devaki and I knew each other back in the day. I’ll get him to talk.”

    Harknor shook his head, saying, “Listen, Vi, I don’t want to have to call the surgeon back here again. Caitlyn wants this fella to able to speak when he goes before the procurator.”

    “Where is she anyway?” asked Vi. “She isn’t even here to say hello?”

    “Chasing down a lead at the docks,” said Harknor. “Said she figured you could handle this one on your own. She wrong about that?”

    “Nope,” said Vi, turning and sashaying toward the cells. “Which cell’s Devaki in?”

    “Number six. But remember, he’s got to be able to talk!”

    Vi nodded and said, “Yeah, yeah...”

    She reached cell six and slid back the locking bar. Normally, another warden would secure the door, but Vi didn’t need anyone at her back. She knew Devaki from the old days, even worked with him a few times before the job with the Factorywood Fiends went bad. Devaki was a thief, not a fighter, and if she needed backup to restrain his scrawny frame, then it was time to find a new line of work.

    Devaki was sitting on the edge of the chipped hunk of stone they called a bed with his back to the wall and his knees drawn up to his chest. He cradled one arm close to his body, the limb ending at a bandaged stump where his hand ought to be. He looked up as she entered, and his eyes widened in surprise.

    “Vi?”

    “Piltover’s finest,” she said with a petite curtsey that, despite where he sat, made Devaki smile. “What happened to your hand?”

    “Your damn sheriff shot if off,” he said. “What happened to yours?”

    “I got an upgrade,” said Vi, holding up her hextech gauntlets. They hummed with a low buzz and she turned them around to let Devaki see just how powerful they were. “Fully customizable with variant levels of hurt. I can punch through walls with these babies.”

    “Yeah, I heard what happened to the Ecliptic Vaults,” said Devaki with an easy smile, as if he was talking to the old Vi, the Vi from the Lanes. He wasn’t bright enough to know that Vi wasn’t the one standing in front of him.

    Devaki held up the arm ending in a stump. “I’m gonna need an upgrade too. This was a high-end augment from Bronzio’s. That sheriff didn’t need to shoot it off.”

    “You can bill her,” said Vi, closing the distance between them in two strides and lifting Devaki off his feet. She threw him against the opposite wall, rattling his bones and sending plaster dust billowing into the air.

    Devaki slid to the floor, shocked and gasping for breath. “They’ve been playing nice so far, but now they send you in? What gives?”

    “I’m the one they send in when asking all polite doesn’t get you anywhere, cupcake,” said Vi, letting the power build in her gauntlets. “I’m the one who’ll go to town on you with these beauties. Unless, of course, you tell me what I want to know.”

    “Whoa, wait! Vi, what are you doing?” spluttered Devaki, holding his remaining hand out before him as he scrambled to his feet.

    “I’m interrogating you, what’s it look like?”

    “But you haven’t asked me anything!”

    Vi cocked her head to the side. “Yeah, I should probably get on that.”

    She reached down and hauled Devaki to his feet, applying a growing pressure to his shoulder.

    “So, who was gonna buy that stolen hextech?”

    Devaki winced in pain, but didn’t answer.

    “Come on, you’re tougher than that,” said Vi, releasing his bruised shoulder. “You want to see what happens to a face when I don’t pull my punches?”

    “No!” cried Devaki.

    “Then tell me what I want to know.”

    “I can’t.”

    Vi tapped a finger on her chin, as if weighing whether to punch him again. She smiled, the expression worrying Devaki more than the thought of her fists.

    “Be a shame if word got round the Lanes that you’d been informing on all your criminal friends for the last couple of years.”

    “What?” said Devaki, spluttering in pain and indignation. “That’s a lie!”

    “Of course it is,” said Vi, “but I know all the right people to talk to down there. A lot of folk’ll listen if I let it slip that you’re in the wardens’ pocket.”

    “I’ll be dead in a day if you do that,” protested Devaki.

    “Now you’re catching on,” said Vi. “Tell me what I want to know. I’ll make sure it gets about you resisted arrest. Even give you a black eye so it looks like I beat it out of ya.”

    Devaki’s shoulders slumped, knowing he had no defiance left in him.

    “Fine, I’ll tell you what you want to know.”

    “Excellent,” said Vi, “Now we’re getting somewhere.”

  5. Confessions of a Broken Blade: Part 3

    Confessions of a Broken Blade: Part 3

    Ariel Lawrence

    - III -

    The council hall that had been as still as a grave swarmed back to life. Armed warrior priests, drawn by the commotion, flooded through the doors, pushing past villagers who just wanted to run away from the dangerous magic that had been thrust upon them.

    The falcon-nosed judge had found her footing and cracked her wooden sphere against the table.

    “This hall will restore itself to balance,” she demanded.

    The room grew quiet once more. Overturned benches were righted. The crowd seated themselves. The hooded stranger scratched his scarred nose and moved to examine the new chest high scorch mark that blackened the walls of the council room. A warrior priest approached the magic weapon tentatively.

    Amid the broken table legs, was the blade and sheath. A greenish glow of energy crackled around the still broken pieces. The warrior priest bent and reached for the pommel, using two hands as he felt the true weight of the sword. Though fractured, the weapon held its shape.

    “Put that accursed thing away!” someone shouted from the crowd. The priest slid the weapon back into the sheath as more priests came to remove it.

    “I killed him,” Riven repeated. The voice was hers and not hers. It was the past speaking through her. She looked at the faces in the room. Memory restored, she was awake once more to a shadowed corner of her history.

    “Riven,” the judge said.

    Riven’s attention snapped from the blade to the judge.

    “Do you know what you are confessing to?” she asked.

    Riven nodded.

    “Why did you do this?”

    “I do not remember.” The words were all she had to offer. Because of her bound hands, Riven could not wipe away the silent tears that ran down her jaw.

    The judge stared hard, waiting for more to reveal itself, but when nothing came, she motioned to the bailiff.

    “Riven, you will stay chained in this hall until dawn so that all who need to speak with you to make peace may do so before you are sentenced.”

    Riven looked at the shackles on her wrist.

    “The other magistrates and I will consult the scrolls and the elders for an appropriate punishment of your crime.”

    The villagers left quietly. The last to leave was the old couple. Riven knew this because she heard Shava whisper in her country voice to the old man, though emotion made the words unclear. When she heard their aged feet finally shuffle over the threshold, Riven at last looked up. The room had been emptied of the living—the only thing she was left with were the ghosts of her past.

    The midnight air was cold and clear. The full moon held a ring of frost high in the dark sky. The light streamed in through the hall’s still open doors, but did not reach the shadows which held Riven at the back of the room. None of the crowd had come inside during the day to make their peace. The warrior priests had taken the blade, but the wooden spiked scorch mark that encircled the room kept the villagers from venturing inside the council hall. Some had come to the open door, a few with more rotten eggfruit, but ultimately Riven had been left alone with her thoughts. Sleep had finally come for her, but it was the light, fitful sleep of someone who knew the coming dawn could be her last. When shuffling footsteps approached in the dark hours before sunrise, she was instantly awake.

    Riven opened her eyes.

    “O-fa,” she said. “What are you doing here?”

    The old man crouched down next to her slowly and unrolled a soft cloth full of tools. Riven recognized the metal instruments as the ones he used to fix the long blade to the plow.

    “What does it look like I’m doing, child?” The silhouette of the moonlight deepened the wrinkled edge of his face, but the gloom of the shadows where the two of them sat did not touch him the way Riven had thought they would.

    “You are stubborn in your wish to die,” he chided her. “That is not how you will find balance.”

    He worked the shackles at Riven’s wrist and ankles. Riven did not push him away and tell him to go home as her mind insisted. Her selfish heart would not let her. If the old man was the last person she would sit beside in this life, Riven wanted the moment to go on as long as it could. She sat this way for a few minutes until she heard footsteps on the gravel outside the hall. Riven looked to Asa. He was smiling, dangling the opened cuffs before her like a child’s toy.

    “O-fa. Quickly. You must hide. Someone is coming.” The edge to Riven’s voice was sudden and sharp and left no room for argument. The old man shuffled to a dark corner to wait in the shadows. Riven bowed her head again in the practiced pose of sleep. She let her hair fall in front of her face, but kept her eyes open.

    A strong wind blew through the trees and curled around the posts of the hall’s great doors. There, framed by a shaft of moonlight, the contour of a man stood on the threshold.

    The stranger’s mantle was now pushed back fully from his face and hung loosely over his shoulders, leaving his blade and metal pauldron clearly outlined. He paused at the doorway like the others. Unlike the villagers, he ventured inside. His feet made no sound on the stone floor. When he was a blade’s length from Riven, he stopped.

    He reached behind his back and retrieved a leather scabbard with harsh runic writing carved into it. He tossed it, clattering, at Riven's feet.

    “Which weighs more, Riven?” he asked. “Your blade, or your past?”

    It was clear the stranger knew Riven wasn’t sleeping and so Riven no longer pretended. She looked up at him, his face reduced to gray shadow, yet the scar across his nose was clear.

    “Who are you?” she asked.

    “Another broken blade,” he answered. “You are ready to accept guilt. For that, I admire you.”

    Riven watched as a brief wash of emotion crossed his face.

    “There is more to the story of your blade,” he continued. “Do you desire the truth of what happened?”

    “I killed him. He died because of me. They all died because of me,” Riven countered. She was not sure if she was capable of carrying more grief.

    “Pick up your weapon.”

    Riven sat. She could hear the man’s low growl of frustration.

    “Stand and face your past,” the man said. His voice left no room for argument.

    A wind began to build, swirling around the room, knocking back benches in the hall, and pushing Riven to her feet. Instinct and physical memory guided the young woman’s arm. When Riven faced the stranger, the sheathed blade was in her hand.

    “I asked him to destroy it,” she said.

    “Did you?” the man’s voice was mocking.

    The stranger’s question was cutting and it hit a bone of memory in Riven. She shuddered with a half-remembered vision. Elder Souma’s voice had been so calm. The air in his meditation room had been heavy with thought and the smell of incense. Elder Souma had not judged her or her burden.

    Riven looked at the stranger before her now, anguish building in her heart, flooding her body until it reached her hands. She tightened her fingers around the pommel as she drew the runic blade from its sheath.

    “Why are you here?” Riven asked.

    The broken blade coursed with power. The blinding light cast their shadows on the walls.

    “I heard you wanted to die.” The stranger smiled.

    The ghosts that haunted her had returned in full force and Riven swung wildly at them now. The man’s blade parried the sadness and the fury. It infuriated her and centered her back in the present. They danced around each other. The air hummed and crackled at each block and thrust.

    “I came here to kill my master’s murderer.” He was breathing hard through gritted teeth. “I came here to kill you.”

    Riven laughed, tears in her eyes. “Then do it.”

    The wind warrior lowered his sword, and instead manipulated the very air that swirled around them. The magic built to a fever pitch, the man focused the energy at the runic blade. The Noxian spells within the weapon shuddered, the broken pieces separating for a moment, releasing the sliver at the fore end.

    The energy collapsed and the sliver broke away, speeding toward the shadowed corner that held Asa. The tiny bit of death was about bury itself in the old man’s throat. The spiced memory of incense flooded Riven’s nose, she was back in Elder Souma’s meditation room.

    “No!” she shouted. Riven dropped her blade, unable to prevent that which had happened before.

    Just as the piece of shrapnel was about to graze the old man’s weathered skin, it stopped, held in place by a current of air. The man with the scarred nose let out a strained sigh and the small shard of Riven’s broken blade dropped harmlessly to the stone floor.

    “You are lucky your breath comes so heavily, Master Konte,” the stranger said, his own short-winded words tumbled out quickly.

    Riven ran to the old man and embraced him. She looked over her shoulder at the stranger. A breeze still whipped his hair as he wiped a bit of sweat away with the back of his free hand.

    “It is true.” The stranger joined them, picking up the splinter of the blade. Riven watched some of his anger melt into understanding. “You killed Elder Souma, but you did not murder him.”

    “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” The moment Riven had been searching for, she was living again. The words came fast and thick. She was shaking as she held on to the old man.

    “I came to him. I begged...” Riven struggled to enunciate each word as emotion overcame her. “I begged him to help me. To break this. To break me.”

    “Elder Souma tried to destroy your blade,” the scarred man said. His voice grew thick. “But we cannot destroy our past, Riven.”

    Riven knew what it was to face memories that could not live again, but would not stay dead. She saw now this stranger carried his own ghosts. The swirling eddies of air calmed around him as he gave a heavy sigh.

    “Elder Souma was my responsibility. If I had been there… that night… I could have protected him. It was not your intention to kill him.” Riven watched, one knowing fighter to another, as the man resettled the burden of his own unseen demons once again on his shoulders. He met her gaze. “In the end, the fault of his death lies with me.”

    “Yasuo?” The old man looked more closely at the man and then wagged a gnarled finger at this. “You have shown great honor in admitting the truth in this matter.”

    “My honor left a long time ago, O-fa,” In Yasuo, Riven saw her own resistance at the offer of hope, of forgiveness. The man with the wild hair shook his head at the old man’s reprieve. “One mistake has compounded many others since. That is my punishment.”

    The pronouncement was interrupted by the shift of gravel. A falcon-nosed woman entered the council chamber. She walked carefully around the room, inspecting the damage of the fight between the two broken warriors. A metal jangle kept time with her footfalls. The judge slowed as she passed Riven and the old man. Riven recognized a loop of leather slung with the keys to her shackles. When the magistrate came face to face with the stranger, she stopped.

    “Taking responsibility is the first step to atonement, Yasuo” she said evenly.

    “And the second?” There was a desperate edge to Yasuo’s words.

    Yasuo held the magistrate’s gaze. The room stilled, holding its breath.

    The judge’s quiet voice was loud in the empty council hall. “Forgiving yourself.”

    Riven watched the fellow warrior closely. He could not bring himself to the words that would release him from his pain. Riven had wanted death for so long, but now as she witnessed Yasuo’s own struggle, she knew the hardest thing she could do was to live and to live with what she had done. Yasuo looked at her now. Would he stay and face his past?

    The man who carried the weight of the wind turned his back on the council hall and walked into the night. Riven held tightly to the weathered hands of the old man.

    Sunrise was cool, but there was a thickness in the blanket of clouds that hinted the day would turn warm and humid. When the warrior priest and the hawk faced judge with the leather loop of keys had come to collect Riven, the judge had raised one slender eyebrow at the neatly piled shackles still on the floor. Riven stood on her own and walked out of the hall to face her future.

    The other magistrates had gathered the waiting villagers in the square outside the council hall. Riven assumed none of them wished to be confined with her or her runic blade. A cool breeze now tugged at the plaits of the judge’s hair.

    “Upon examining the evidence and consulting with the elders, the Noxian woman will stand for her crimes,” the judge began.

    Riven bristled at the inclusion of the land of her birth. She watched as Shava and Asa leaned on each other.

    “Though easy to carry out, a sentence of death does not keep the world in balance,” the head magistrate continued. “It does little to repair the destruction a crime rips through a community.”

    The people of the village nodded in sober agreement. Riven took in their faces, noticing a pattern to the many who were missing; fathers and mothers to the young, sons and daughters of the old.

    “Instead, this council seeks a longer, harsher sentence,” the judge continued. “We will see that Riven, the exile, mends that which she has broken.”

    The judge looked down her falcon nose at Riven.

    “It will be a punishment of hard labor,” the judge announced. “Starting with the fields of Master and Mistress Konte.”

    A murmur swept through the crowd.

    “This court will also see Riven make reparations to the council hall. And to those whose homes and families were injured in the Noxian invasion.”

    The judge looked at Riven expectantly. “Will you live by this decision?”

    All eyes were on Riven now. A new emotion caught in her throat. She looked around. The ghosts she carried did not melt away with the pronouncement. Riven looked to them as they mixed freely with the living. It surprised her. She welcomed the visions. She would prove to them that she was worthy of the gift being offered.

    “Yes.” Riven barely recognized her own voice, overcome as it was.

    The old couple swept forward at this, crushing Riven between them. Riven relaxed into their embrace, leaning into them now as they did to her.

    “Dyeda,” Shava murmured against the slashes of Riven’s white hair.

    “Daughter,” she whispered back.

  6. The Shackles of Belief

    The Shackles of Belief

    Anthony Reynolds

    Thorva, Sister of Frost, hauled on her reins, dragging her hulking drüvask to a halt alongside Scarmother Vrynna of the Winter’s Claw. The shaggy-furred beast snorted in protest, hot breath steaming the air.

    “Hush, Ice-Tooth,” Thorva said. The bone charms and totems wrapped around her wrist rattled as she patted her ill-tempered mount.

    A bone-chilling wind whipped across the desolate landscape, yet alone among the raiding party, Thorva did not wear heavy furs and leathers. Her arms, tattooed with swirling indigo ink, were bare to the elements, but she gave no indication of discomfort, for the cold had long relinquished its claim on her.

    The imposing figure of Scarmother Vrynna sat astride another drüvask boar, a tusked behemoth even larger than the one Thorva rode. It snarled and stamped one massive, cloven hoof, eyeing Thorva balefully. A sharp kick from Vrynna silenced it.

    The scarmother was a ruthless veteran, her victories many and bloody, but Thorva refused to be overawed. Her name was not yet known across the Freljord like the scarmother’s, but she was a shamanka, one who dreamed the will of the gods, and even the most powerful matriarchs in the Freljord were wise to respect the old faith.

    The rest of the Winter’s Claw raiding party had reined in, awaiting their scarmother and shamanka. They’d been traveling at pace for much of the day, heading east, deep into Avarosan territory. This was their first stoppage in hours, and they took the opportunity to slide from their saddles, stretching their backs and shaking out numb legs.

    The wind picked up, whipping Thorva with snow and ice.

    “A storm is coming in,” she said.

    Vrynna, her face riven with old scars, did not reply, and continued to stare southward. Vrynna’s right eye was clouded and blind, and there was a streak of white in her dark hair—whatever had caused her wounds had certainly left its mark. Among the Winter’s Claw, such scars were a source of pride and reverence—the mark of a survivor.

    “You see something?” asked Thorva.

    Vrynna nodded, and continued staring into the distance.

    Thorva narrowed her gaze, but could see little through the worsening weather.

    “I see nothing.”

    “You have two good eyes, yet you are more blind than I am, girl,” snapped Vrynna.

    Frost formed around Thorva’s knuckles as her hands clenched, and her irises turned ice-blue. Nevertheless, she reined in her anger, forcing herself to take a deep breath.

    It was clear Scarmother Vrynna, like most of the Winter’s Claw, had little time for her or her beliefs. It likely didn’t help that Thorva had chosen to join this raiding party uninvited. No doubt she thought the shamanka joining them may distract those more inclined to superstition, undermining their purpose and her authority.

    In truth, a vague but compelling instinct had urged Thorva to join the raid, despite the scarmother’s initial protests, and she had long ago learned to trust such impulses as a gift. The gods wanted her here, but for what purpose, she knew not.

    “There, a mile to the south,” pointed Vrynna. “Near that rocky outcrop. See?”

    Thorva nodded, finally. A lone figure could just be made out, little more than a shadow against the snow. How Vrynna had spotted it in the first place was beyond her. Thorva frowned as she felt an itching sensation prickle the back of her neck. There was something strange about whoever this was…

    The wind billowed, and the figure was obscured once more, yet the persistent unease Thorva felt remained.

    “An Avarosan scout?”

    “No,” said Vrynna, shaking her head. “They are trudging straight through a deepening drift. Not even a child of the Freljord would make a mistake like that.”

    “An outsider, then. But this far north?”

    Scarmother Vrynna shrugged. “The Avarosans do not follow the old ways. They trade with southerners rather than simply taking from them. Perhaps this is one of those traders that has lost their way.”

    Vrynna spat, dismissively, and hauled her drüvask around to continue on. The other warriors followed her cue, turning the heavy, tusked heads of their own mounts back along the ridgeline, to the east. Only Thorva remained, staring intently into the storm.

    “They might have seen us. If they carry word of our presence, the Avarosans will be ready for us.”

    “That fool won’t be telling anything to anyone, except perhaps whatever gods they worship in the Beyond,” Vrynna declared. “This storm is worsening. They will be dead by nightfall. Come, we have lingered long enough.”

    Still, there was something that bothered Thorva, and she remained on the edge of the ridge, looking back toward the lone outsider, though she could see barely more than a dozen paces now, at best. Was this why she had been brought here?

    “Girl!” snapped Vrynna. “Are you coming?”

    Thorva looked at Vrynna, then back south.

    “No.”

    With a nudge, Thorva directed her drüvask boar down the side of the ridge, allowing herself a satisfied smile as she heard Vrynna curse behind her.



    “We go after her, yes?”

    It was Brokvar Ironfist who spoke, the massive Iceborn warrior who had been her champion and sometime lover for almost a decade.

    “The gods will bring ruin upon our tribe if anything happens to her,” Brokvar added.

    If forced to pick just one person in the Freljord to fight at her side, Vrynna would choose Brokvar. Half a head taller than the next biggest warrior under her command, he was strong enough to lift a drüvask off the ground, and utterly dependable. He lived to fight—and he did it well—and he carried the broadsword Winter’s-Wail.

    That blade was legend among the Winter’s Claw, and had been passed down between Iceborn for centuries. A shard of unmelting True Ice was embedded in the hilt of Winter’s-Wail, and crackling hoarfrost coated its edge. Anyone who wasn’t an Iceborn who tried to grasp it—Vrynna included—would suffer great pain, even death.

    If he had one flaw, it was his superstition. He saw portents and prophecy in everything from the flight patterns of ravens to the splatter of blood in the snow, and much to her distaste, he practically worshipped the ground where the self-righteous shamanka walked. Worse, it seemed as if his overt reverence had rubbed off on the other warriors under her command. She saw several of them nodding agreement, and muttering under their breath.

    Against her better judgment, Vrynna signaled, and the raiding party swung around, to follow the Sister of Frost.



    Scarmother Vrynna was right about one thing: whoever the lone outsider was, they had less understanding of the Freljord than a child.

    Watching their exhausted progress through the deep snow, Thorva knew they would be dead within the hour if she simply turned and rode away. In truth, it was a minor miracle they had made it this far, for they were plainly ill-prepared for the harshness of the tundra, and lacked even the most basic understanding of navigating it safely.

    As she came closer, unaffected by the bitter wind whipping across the desolate landscape, she saw them stumble. Time and again the outsider struggled vainly back to their feet, but it was obvious their strength was all but spent.

    The outsider seemed oblivious to Thorva’s approach. She was closing the distance from outside the periphery of their vision—coming at them from the flank, and slightly behind them—but not once did they turn.

    Thorva scanned her surroundings. If there were any rimefangs or other beasts stalking this outsider, now would be the time to strike. Seeing nothing, she pushed on.

    She was close enough now to make out more of the outlander’s appearance. It was a man, she saw now, garbed in leathers and furs, though he did not wear them in the Freljordian manner. Foolishly, he carried no spear, axe, sword, or bow. Thorva shook her head. In the Winter’s Claw, from the time one could walk, they were never without a blade. She herself had other more arcane weapons at her disposal, yet even she had three blades on her at all times.

    Stranger still, the outsider dragged a pair of chains behind him, affixed to giant manacles of curious design clamped around his wrists…



    It was far too late now, but Sylas of Dregbourne realized he had grossly underestimated the sheer, overwhelming hostility of the Freljordian landscape. He understood there was great magical power here, in the north—and now he was here, he could practically feel it in his bones—but it seemed now that it had been a mistake to come here.

    A dozen hand-picked mages had set out with him into the frozen north, but each had fallen, one after another, claimed by blizzards, hidden ravines, and savage beasts. He thought the main threat would have come from the barbarian Freljordians themselves, but so far he had not seen a single living soul in the weeks of travel.

    How anyone could live out here was beyond him.

    He thought they had prepared well, layering themselves in furs and wool, and loading up the heavy, furred oxen with food, firewood, weapons, and coin to barter with; coin liberated from the coffers and chests of the tax-collectors and nobility of his homeland of Demacia.

    Not even the oxen had survived this far, though, and now Sylas walked alone.

    Sheer force of will and the burning desire to see the monarchy and noble houses of Demacia fall drove him on.

    Already he had fomented considerable resistance within the boundaries of Demacia itself. He’d lit the fires of rebellion, but had realized he needed more fuel to see it truly burn. In his cell in Demacia he had consumed every book, chronicle, and tome he was able to get a hold of, and in several of them there had been references of the great and terrible sorcery and ancient magic far to the north. That was the power he needed. Even now, facing death, he believed the power he sought was close…

    Nevertheless, not even his stubbornness was enough to overcome the relentless cold. His hands and toes were already turning black and had long gone numb, and a heavy lethargy hung upon him like a weight, dragging him down.

    He thought he had seen a column of riders upon a distant ridge some time back, but he was not sure if that was real, or some fevered delusion brought on by exhaustion and the freezing temperature.

    To stop was to die, though, he knew that well enough. He would find this power in the north, or he would be damned.

    And so he slogged on, one foot in front of the other… but he made it only a dozen more steps before he fell face-first into the snow, and lay still.

    Thorva shook her head as she saw the outsider fall, and urged Ice-Tooth forward. The man didn’t make any move to get up this time. For all she knew, he was dead, finally claimed by the unrelenting elements that she herself no longer felt.

    Once she was close, Thorva slid from the saddle, sinking almost to her knees as she landed. She approached the face-down man warily, crunching through the snow.

    Again she looked at his bonds, curiously.

    If he was an escaped prisoner, where had he escaped from?

    While the Winter’s Claw did not take prisoners, they did on occasion take thralls—though one that could not be tamed or beaten into service was just another mouth to feed. Thorva didn’t think even the Avarosans would chain someone in this manner. Could he have escaped from the southlands, over the distant mountains?

    Grasping her staff in both hands, she prodded him. Getting no reaction, Thorva drove the base of her staff into the snow underneath the outsider, and tried to lever him onto his front. It was a difficult task, for the immense manacles the man wore covered most of his forearms and were incredibly heavy. Grunting with the effort, she finally managed to turn him over.

    He flopped over lifelessly, and his furred hood fell back. His eyes were closed and sunken, and his lips tinged blue. Frost had formed on his brows, lashes, and his unshaven cheeks, and his dark hair, tied back in a loose ponytail, was similarly icy.

    Thorva allowed her gaze to be drawn to the shackles around his wrists. The Sister of Frost had traveled widely, the duties of her faith taking her to many different tribes over the years, yet these restraints, made of some unknown pale stone, were unlike anything she had seen before. There was something deeply unsettling about them. It was vaguely uncomfortable even to look upon the chains, and they had clearly been made in such a manner that they were never intended to be removed. What had this stranger done to warrant having such things around his wrists? It must have been a terrible crime, she decided.

    Kneeling in the snow at his side, Thorva tried to fathom why she had been guided here. The gods had clearly brought her here—just as they had directed her in the past—but why? The man was still unconscious, if not yet dead. Had she been brought here to save him? Or was it what he brought with him that was important?

    Thorva’s gaze returned to the stranger’s bonds. Making her decision, she reached toward one of them.

    Before she had even touched the pale stone, her fingertips began to tingle.

    The man’s eyes snapped suddenly open.

    Thorva jerked back in shock, but she was too slow. The man tore off one of his gloves and grabbed her by the arm, and even as Thorva tried to summon her gods-given power, she felt it ripped out of her, forcibly drained from the core of her being. Her body was stricken with a sudden, incapacitating coldness—a sensation she had not felt in years—and she fell, unable to breathe, unable to move, unable to do anything.

    As the cold took her, she dimly registered color returning to the stranger’s face, as if he were suddenly being warmed by a hearth.

    A hint of a smile curled his lips.

    “Thank you,” he said.

    Then he released his grip, and Thorva fell back into the snow with a gasp, empty, and drained.

    Vrynna cursed as she saw the shamanka fall, and kicked her drüvask forward.

    “With me!” she roared, and the rest of the raiding party lurched into motion. The ground shook beneath their thundering charge, the sound akin to an avalanche.

    The outsider was kneeling alongside the Sister of Frost as the Winter’s Claw powered through the snow toward him. Curiously, she saw the man shrug off his fur coat and drape it over the fallen shamanka, the gesture almost tender.

    He stood to face the earth-shaking approach of the Winter’s Claw, dragging his chains behind him. Vrynna tightened her grip on her spear.

    Seeing the force bearing down on him, the stranger backed away from the fallen shamanka, who lay unmoving and pale upon the snow. He held his hands up to show he bore no weapon, but that didn’t matter to Vrynna. She had killed unarmed enemies in the past.

    Without having to give the signal, Vrynna’s warriors fanned out wide to encircle him, cutting off any chance of escape. Wisely, he didn’t try to run. After all, there was nowhere to run to.

    He turned on the spot, like the weakest of the herd, isolated by wolves. His gaze darted between the Freljordians arrayed against him. He was wary, yet he showed no sign of fear, which Vrynna could respect, at least.

    Having taken off his coat, the outsider’s muscular arms were bare to the elements, but he appeared not to feel the cold at all.

    Curious, thought Vrynna.

    He was a tall man but he was hunched slightly, the weight of the massive shackles bound to his arms clearly pulling on him.

    “See to the Sister,” she ordered, not taking her eyes off the stranger.

    The stranger faced her, as one of the raiders slid from his saddle and moved to the shamanka’s side.

    “I am Vrynna,” she declared. “Scarmother of the Winter’s Claw. Shieldbreaker. Woebringer. I am the Drüvask’s Howl. Who are you, and why are you here?”

    The man cocked his head to one side, responding in a tongue she could not comprehend. Vrynna cursed.

    “You don’t understand me, do you?”

    Again the man gave her a quizzical look.

    “Sylas,” he replied, tapping his chest.

    “Sylas?” Vrynna repeated. “That’s your name, Sylas?”

    The man simply repeated the word, tapping his chest again, and giving her a rakish smile.

    The scarmother muttered under her breath. She glanced over to the shamanka, lying lifeless and pale upon the snow. One of Vrynna’s warriors knelt over Thorva, lowering his head to her chest to see if she was breathing.

    “Is she dead?” she called.

    “She’s half frozen, but she lives,” came the reply. “At least for now.”

    The Freljordian warriors muttered under their breaths. Half frozen? It was known that the Sister of Frost was inured to the cold, claimed to be a gift of the old gods… but now she was freezing, and this stranger to the Freljord, Sylas, stood before them, his skin bare?

    Vrynna frowned, considering her options. She didn’t put much faith in anything but steel, fire, and blood, but she knew her warriors—particularly Brokvar—would likely see this as some kind of omen.

    “This is a waste of time,” she muttered.

    Making her decision, she tightened her grip on her spear,and nudged her mount forward. The man, Sylas, raised a hand and yelled something in his weak, southerner’s tongue, but she ignored him. She would kill this fool, and be on her way.

    “Let me do it,” growled Brokvar, riding at the scarmother’s side.

    Vrynna’s brow raised.

    “He did this to the revered sister,” Brokvar answered her silent question, stabbing a meaty finger toward the fallen shamanka. “It would be my honor to punish him, beneath the eyes of the gods.”

    The outsider looked between Vrynna and Brokvar. Did he have any understanding that his fate was about to be determined?

    Vrynna shrugged. “He’s yours.”

    Brokvar dropped off his mount, rose to his full, towering height. The man, Sylas, was not small, but Brokvar made him look it. The Iceborn unsheathed Winter’s-Wail from the scabbard across his back, and began to walk grimly toward the outsider.



    The last time Thorva had truly felt the cold had been when she was a child, not even six winters of age.

    She had chased a snow hare out onto a frozen lake, laughing as she went. She had not realized the ice beneath her was so thin until the awful cracking sound, right before it gave way. With a strangled cry, she plunged into the icy, black depths. Such was the shocking suddenness of the bone-chilling cold that all the air was driven from her lungs, and her limbs instantly seized up, stiffening in agonizing cramps.

    She’d been dead for long minutes before she was finally hauled out from under the ice and the tribe’s shaman breathed life back into her. She first manifested her gods-given power that night.

    “Sometimes, when a person is brought back from the Realm Beyond, they return changed,” the shaman explained, shrugging. “The gods, in their inscrutable wisdom, have blessed you.”

    In the days that followed, she had found herself impervious to cold, able to walk through freezing blizzards bare-skinned, with no ill effect.

    Now, once again she was that scared little girl she’d been, sinking slowly as the hole in the ice above got further and further away… only this time she was staring up at the sky, unblinking.

    Numb and breathless, Thorva lay on the ground, hearing nothing, feeling nothing. The cold infused her. It was her.

    Was this the reason she had been brought here? To give her life to the outsider, that he may fulfill whatever it was the gods had decreed?

    Nevertheless, an ineffable fear slowed her descent into oblivion.

    Even if it were the gods’ will for her to die in the outsider’s place, Thorva knew in her heart that Vrynna would not let him live… and so, she began to fight back toward the surface.



    Brokvar Ironfist went straight for the killing blow, charging forward, Winter’s-Wail hissing through the air and trailing icy fog in its wake.

    That blow would have split an ice-troll in half had it landed, but the outsider was surprisingly quick given he was weighed down by restraints. He darted back from the lethal strike and whipped his chains around in a whirling arc. They swung passed Brokvar’s face, barely missing the Iceborn warrior as he snarled in fury.

    Still, he didn’t reel back, as perhaps the outsider had expected. He was as tough as the mountains and was exceptionally fast for such a big man. He lashed out, striking his opponent across the side of the head with a powerful backhand punch, and Vrynna winced as the smaller man was sent flying.

    The outsider struggled to pick himself off the ground as the Iceborn stalked toward him, but finally regained his footing. In truth, Vrynna was impressed that he was able to get up at all. Still, he merely prolonged the inevitable outcome.

    His face set in grim resolve, Brokvar closed in for the kill.



    Sylas’ gaze narrowed as he focused on the barbarian’s weapon.

    The pale ice shard in its hilt was glowing brightly, and crackling hoarfrost covered the blade.

    The magic that chunk of ice exuded was unlike anything Sylas had encountered before. It was primal, dangerous, and enfettered. Sylas could feel it on his skin, a frisson of power that was almost intoxicating.

    The woman’s power had revived him, driving the cold from his limbs and the blackness from his fingers, but this was a power far older. If he could just get his hands on it…

    With a roar, Sylas stepped forward to meet the Freljordian.



    The outsider lashed at Brokvar, swinging his chains around in a flurry of arcs. The Iceborn was struck across his head, one chain from each side. The heavy links whipped around, and with a wrench, the Iceborn’s helmet was torn off.

    Brokvar shook his long hair loose, spat blood into the snow, and continued his advance.

    The chains came around at him again, but the massive warrior was ready this time. He avoided the first of the strikes, before stepping forward and lifting one arm, letting the chain whip around his massive forearm. Then he grabbed the metal links in his vice-like grip, and yanked the smaller man toward him, straight into a swinging elbow.

    The blow crumpled the man, and he fell at Brokvar’s feet. The Iceborn towered over him, Winter’s-Wail raised to deliver the killing blow.

    “Wait! Do not kill him!” came a shout, and Brokvar paused.

    Vrynna whipped her head around, scowling, to see the Sister of Frost, Thorva, rising unsteadily to her feet. She was deathly pale, and her lips blue, but she stomped forward, leaning heavily on her staff of office.

    “What madness is this?” Vrynna snarled.

    “Not madness,” Thorva said, leaning heavily upon her staff of office. “It is the will of the gods.”


    The giant barbarian was momentarily distracted, a look of confusion on his brutish face, and Sylas saw his chance.

    Rising to a knee, he lashed out with one of his chains. It whipped around the blade of his opponent, and with a sharp tug, he tore it from the man’s grasp.

    It landed in the snow nearby, and Sylas leapt upon it, eagerly.

    Grinning, he picked up the broadsword… and agony seared through him.


    Vrynna shook her head at the fool. Only an Iceborn could hold a True Ice weapon. For anyone else, it was a death sentence.

    The outsider released Winter’s-Wail, roaring as the cold shot up his arm. He dropped to his knees, clutching his arm, even as it began to freeze. The killing power of the True Ice began at his hand, but was steadily working its way down his arm, toward his heart.

    “The gods wanted this?” Vrynna scoffed, gesturing at the outsider.

    The shamanka scowled, but said nothing.

    “But then, the gods are nothing if not fickle and cruel,” added Vrynna, shrugging. “Perhaps they simply wanted him to suffer?”

    Brokvar retrieved Winter’s-Wail, hefting it without harm. The outsider stared up at him, anguish and confusion written upon his face as the lethal power of the True Ice consumed him.

    “Put him out of his misery,” ordered Vrynna.

    Brokvar’s iron gaze shifted to the shamanka, looking for her approval. Anger surged within Vrynna.

    “If the gods want him saved, then they can intervene,” she snapped.



    Thorva served and venerated the old gods of the Freljord, but she did not claim to know their will. Nor had she often witnessed them intervene directly in mortal matters.

    And yet, it seemed impossible that what happened next was purely coincidental.

    The outsider was lying on the snowpack, shivering and convulsing. The True Ice had almost claimed him, but he continued to fight it, reaching out one shuddering hand toward the Iceborn warrior.

    Thorva knew what the Demacian was capable of, how he had siphoned her power with but one brief touch. She could have warned the Iceborn veteran… but she did not.



    Sylas was dying, but even in death his will to keep fighting was strong.

    In desperation, he reached out toward the towering barbarian looming above him. He grabbed hold of the warrior’s boot, but the barbarian kicked his clawing hand away.

    The bearded giant looked down at him piteously, as one would a wretched dog in the street. It was the same way the nobility looked down on the lesser-born in Demacia, and Sylas’ anger surged.

    That anger fueled him, and with a last burst of his dying strength, he sprang off the ground and grasped the Freljordian giant around the throat. Ancient, raw, elemental magic instantly began to infuse him.

    Sylas may have been unable to grasp the Freljordian ice-weapon, but he could still draw from its power… using the barbarian’s flesh as its conduit.

    It took no more than a moment.

    The barbarian staggered back, unsure what had just happened. Sylas smiled, and his eyes began to glow with icy-pale light.

    He turned his attention to his frozen arm, holding it before him. With a surge of his newfound power, he made the ice reverse its direction. It crept back down his arm, and then was gone, leaving his flesh unharmed.

    Then he turned his attention to the warrior standing aghast before him.

    “Now then,” he said. “Where were we?”



    Brokvar stepped back away from the outsider, gaping in wonder.

    “What is he?” snarled Vrynna. “Iceborn?”

    “No,” Thorva interjected, eyes blazing with faith. “He is something else…”

    Vrynna had seen enough. In one smooth, well-practiced motion she reversed her grip on her spear, and standing in the saddle, hurled it at the stranger, putting all her might and weight behind it.

    It hurtled straight toward him, but the man thrust a hand out, fingers splayed, and the ground before him erupted. Amid a grinding series of cracks, a protective wall of towering ice-spikes surged up from below. Vrynna’s spear slammed deep into the ice, but could not penetrate it. It was left shuddering in place, embedded a solid foot into the barrier, and leaving the outsider completely unharmed.

    Vrynna gaped at the magical barrier, even as it collapsed a moment later, falling as quickly as it had appeared.

    The outsider stood revealed, laughing and looking in wonder at his hands, now rimmed with frost and radiating pale blue light, like the underside of an iceberg. He looked up at Vrynna, frozen fog emanating from his eyes, and began to gather the primal, frozen power within him once more. A spinning orb of magic, like a self-contained blizzard, began to form between his hands.

    The Winter’s Claw fingered their weapons uneasily, unsure of themselves in the face of what was clearly Freljordian magic.

    Thorva called out something then, though the words made no sense to Vrynna. She glanced at the shamanka in surprise.

    She spoke the outsider’s tongue?

    There was much about the Sister of Frost that she did not know, it seemed, and her distrust deepened.



    The shamanka and the stranger spoke for a time, while Vrynna watched on, gritting her teeth.

    “What does the outsider say?” she snapped, finally losing patience.

    “He says we share a common enemy,” Thorva explained. “He says we can help each other.”

    Vrynna frowned. “Who? The Avarosans? We raid them, as we always have, but we are not at war.”

    “I believe he means his own people. The Demacians, across the mountains.”

    “He is a traitor, then?” Vrynna said, “Why would we trust one who would betray his own?”

    “The mother of scars would know how you would aid our tribe,” Thorva said, addressing the outsider in his own tongue. “Make your offer, else your soul will journey to the Beyond, here and now.”

    Sylas gave his answer, speaking directly to Vrynna. Thorva watched him carefully as he spoke, asking several times for clarifications of words she did not immediately understand.

    “He says he knows hidden paths into his homelands, paths known only to him,” said Thorva. “He speaks of the vast riches there, waiting to be claimed. Fields untouched by snow and filled with fat cattle, streets that flow with gold and silver.”

    The warriors of the Winter’s Claw smiled and laughed among themselves at her words, and even Vrynna’s eyes lit up. They lived a harsh existence, making the promise of easy pickings a tempting one.

    But still some doubt lingered.

    “How do we know he would not lead us into a trap?” challenged Vrynna. “We cannot trust him. Better to kill him, here and now, and not be led astray by his golden tongue.”

    “He…” Thorva began, picking her lie carefully. “He says he had a vision. A dream that came to him, of three Freljordian sisters. It was they who urged him to come here.”

    “The Three!” breathed Brokvar in reverence. “He speaks of Avarosa, Serylda, and Lissandra!”



    The other Winter’s Claw warriors murmured in surprise and awe, many of them touching holy totems hanging around their necks.

    The Three Sisters were legends, the greatest and most honored warriors of the Freljord. They were the first of the Iceborn, and had lived in the age of heroes, long ago. Across much of the frozen north, they had come to be regarded as chosen ones, and many invoked their wisdom in times of strife, or begged their favor before battle.

    Vrynna glared, regarding Thorva sourly. Did the scarmother suspect her lie?

    Seeing Brokvar’s rapturous wonder spread through the other gathered warriors, however, she realized it didn’t matter. Thorva had known Vrynna’s Iceborn champion would latch on to those words. That they would inspire his awe and his faith, and that his influence among the other warriors was strong. They would never allow the outsider to be killed out of hand now, no matter what order Vrynna gave.

    She allowed herself a slight smile of victory, though she was careful not to let Vrynna see it as she considered the outsider.

    It was the gods’ will that this one lived, Thorva felt certain of it. She felt no guilt for lying to ensure that happened.

    “He must prove himself before we would even consider trusting him.”

    “A wise move, scarmother,” nodded Thorva. “What do you suggest?”

    “He will come with us on our raid,” declared Vrynna. “If he fights well, and makes a good account of himself, then perhaps we will hear more of what he proposes. More about these hidden paths into Demacia. But he will be your responsibility. It will be up to you to control him, and if he turns on us, it will be on your head.”

    Thorva nodded, and turned to the outsider.

    “Fight with us. Prove to the mother of scars your worth,” she said. “Fight strong and you may live to have your alliance.”

    Those final words elicited a broad smile from the outsider.

    Thorva appraised him, giving him a look from head to toe. He was handsome for a southerner. A little lean for her tastes, but he was clever, and there was power in him.

    She leveled a finger at him.

    “But never touch me again,” she warned.

    The outsider smiled wryly.

    “Not without your permission,” he replied, and Thorva turned away so he did not see her smile.

    “What does he say?” demanded Vrynna.

    “He agrees to your terms, scarmother,” called Thorva.

    “Good. Then let us move,” said Vrynna. “We raid.”

  7. Vi

    Vi

    Vi remembers little of her childhood in Zaun, and what she does remember, she wishes she didn’t. Running with the sump-snipe gangs, she quickly learned to use her wits, as well as her fists, to survive. Everyone who encountered Vi knew she could talk—or punch—her way out of trouble. More often than not, she chose the latter.

    None of the old-timers from her youth could tell her anything of her parents. Most assumed they had died in one of the industrial accidents that were, sadly, all too common in the undercity. Though she had ended up in the crumbling Hope House orphanage, a notoriously mad sump-scrapper claimed to have found her adrift in a bassinet large enough for two in the ruins of a collapsed chem-lab. In the end, Vi figured some things were best left unknown.

    With her wild pink hair, she became a distinctive sight on the streets of Zaun—hightailing from angry shopkeepers in the boundary markets, swaggering through the colorful bazaars of the Black Lanes, or hitching rides up into Piltover aboard the hexdraulic conveyors. Wherever there was a scrape to be gotten into or a scam to be run, Vi was in the thick of it, though she never stole from those that couldn’t cover the loss… and never hurt those that didn’t deserve it.

    As she got older, the capers of childhood became more audacious and daring, and Vi formed a gang of her own. Brash and quick to anger, she still relied on her fists a little too much, and was rarely without a black eye or split lip.

    She found a mentor in the owner of a bar on the edge of the Lanes, who tempered some of her more self-destructive tendencies. He tried to reinforce her moral code, and showed her how to fight with discipline, as well as teaching her ways to better direct her simmering anger.

    In time, Vi earned a reputation as someone who got things done, no questions asked.

    Listening to the chatter of the Zaunite miners who frequented the bar, she came to learn when big deals were being made, and how payments were to be delivered. To a chem-baron, this was chump change—but to her and her friends, it would be a fortune. She planned a heist, but knew it would require extra bodies to pull off, so Vi reluctantly brought a rival gang, the Factorywood Fiends, in on her score.

    Everything was going fine, until the leader of the Fiends killed the mine owner with a pair of oversized pulverizer gauntlets, and trapped the rest of the workers in the tunnels. Even as both gangs fled with the loot, Vi knew she could not leave these innocent people to die. She snatched up the gauntlets, the wrist mechanisms clamping down painfully on her arms, but she endured the agony long enough to smash open a path to free the miners.

    The following day, Vi paid a visit to the Factorywood Fiends. Still wearing the powered gauntlets, she took on the entire gang, administering a beating so legendary that it is still spoken of in the Lanes to this day.

    Vi eventually disappeared from Zaun during a time of great upheaval, when tensions with Piltover were running high. Rumors circulated between the gangs that she had been killed in a huge explosion in the heart of the undercity, or that she had turned her back on her friends and struck out for distant lands. The truth, however, finally came to light when Old Hungry’s Scars—a vicious gang whose murder sprees had spread topside—were brought down by a respected sheriff of Piltover and her new ally… Vi.

    The former gang leader was now in the employ of the Wardens, and she had replaced the chem-powered pulverizer gauntlets with a pair of brand new hextech Atlas prototypes.

    No one yet knows the exact reason why or how Vi came to be working alongside Caitlyn—but given the anarchic nature of the crime wave now sweeping Piltover, speculation runs rife that it might involve a certain blue-haired hellion from Zaun…

  8. Snow Day

    Snow Day

    Michael Luo

    Snow falls all morning, blanketing the earth in fresh coats of white. One by one, feathery flakes trickle from the sky, gently at first, and then rapidly in unison. Soon, the howling blizzard muffles all sounds save for a peculiar racket coming from a nearby cave, where a shock of orange and blue bounces up and down, left to right.

    Gnar bustles about, annoyed at the world. He has been drawing in the snow under the shelter of rock and stone, but nothing appears the way he imagines. Gripping a bone boomerang almost the size of his torso, the young yordle curses at the ground.

    “Shubbanuffa!” says Gnar. This means one of two things. Either he believes the snow is being uncooperative, or he wants some sweetmilk. No one can say for certain.

    With a jump and a skip, Gnar tumbles from one unfinished sketch to another, each depicting similar scenes. There they are, bands of carefree yordles living happily among the tribes of the frigid north. Sometimes, wild beasts stand a head above his kin. Other times, Gnar himself towers over everyone else. These little differences do not faze him. Instead, his wide eyes fixate on his boomerang, his paw guiding it to trace out a grand shape with long, sweeping strokes.

    “Onna legga,” Gnar mutters to himself. This means he wishes not to be distracted. In the past, others have confused this with “Oga lagga,” meaning he would very much enjoy a hug.

    Placing the boomerang in his mouth to free up his paws, Gnar leans downward. His claws pick away bothersome specks of dirt. His nose sniffs the ground, searching for any stray pests daring to deface his work. Pleased with the results, Gnar somersaults back to take a wider look.

    The powdery snow paints the picture of a one-eyed monster with tentacles the size of mountains.

    “Wabbo!” Gnar cheers, as his boomerang drops from his jaw. The monster is the right amount of scary—just as he imagined. With one arm, it slices through an entire herd of elnük. With another, it holds a whole bundle of elkyr, like sticks.

    “Ganaloo mo,” Gnar grumbles. Upon further inspection, it appears his elnük look too much like elkyr. This will not do. As he moves to touch up his piece, he stops. His large ears perk, their violet insides twitching with vigilance.

    Footsteps approach in fours from outside his cave. Perhaps it is the monster, and perhaps it has come to express its discontent with how it is being portrayed.

    Grasping his boomerang, Gnar stands upright on his two hind legs. “Nakotak!” he declares, ready to face his rival once more. In truth, he is thrilled. Ever since he woke up from that long nap, he has wondered where the monster took his friends. Finally, he is about to get some answers.

    But what trespasses into his cave sees with not one eye, but two.

    And rather than tentacles, it has legs, stout and stocky. Coarse fur covers its entire body, forming a frosted mane to crown its head and back. Its scarred face appears worn and bitter, marked by two ivory tusks and a stiff, pudgy snout.

    This is a strange-looking creature, Gnar thinks to himself.

    As the giant drüvask boar lumbers inside, it sees only the comfort of stone overhead. Its sighs are deep, its breath strands of mist fogging the chill air. The beast’s hooves shake the ground beneath, stirring up snow like splashes of milk. After a few heavy steps, all of Gnar’s art is ruined.

    “Raag! Wap!”

    Gnar’s boomerang strikes the boar right between its eyes. The dazed beast shakes its head, blinking hastily as it lets out an angered growl. Gnar pants in a frenzy, wielding his prized weapon up high, enough for the boar to identify its source of pain.

    Like thunder and lightning, the cave booms twice with roars of rage.

    Tumbling out come the boar and a positively enormous yordle. Grown to a size larger than even his foe, Gnar pummels the intruder with his now massive, fisted hands. His wrath fuels every punch, jabbing blow after blow into the boar’s thick hide.

    The fight seems to end as quickly as it began, until the savage beast somehow wrangles its hooves under Gnar’s chest to kick him away. The colossal yordle collapses next to his cave, bundles of snow rising as he lands. With his spiny back exposed, his head woozy, Gnar hears repeated huffs and puffs, and the clatter of those same bullish hooves scraping faster and faster on the wintry soil.

    The blizzard wails, louder than before, as though the Freljord is bracing itself for the coming loss of one of its own.

    “GNAR!” the hulking yordle bellows, leaping away from the boar’s charge. In a flash, he slams his bulky arms against the beast’s behind, sending it forward to crash into the rocky wall of the cave’s entrance.

    A stunted screech pierces the wind. Frozen rocks crumble onto the boar, now lying still.

    Gnar trudges toward the beast, his breath short and rushed. He nudges its limp body with his foot. There is no resistance.

    He decides it has fallen asleep, but remains perplexed why its eyes are open. Curiously, the snow around the boar turns a deep red. All of this seems quite odd, and yet, it is not the first time this has piqued Gnar’s interest.

    His memory flickers with similar images. Before the long nap, he would see different tribes yelling gibberish as they threw pointed sticks at one another. Their game looked at once exciting and exhausting, and Gnar would watch them until enough of one side fell asleep on red snow. They must have been awfully tired, just like this strange, tusked yordle.

    Thinking of those bygone days makes Gnar quiet. He remembers waking up from the long nap, believing the world took away everything he ever knew. His breath slows, his shoulders slump, his feet shrinking until even he would not believe that he stands in his very own footprints from mere seconds ago.

    The small yordle dashes into his cave to retrieve his boomerang, hugging it with all his might. It is the one thing that did not leave him after the long nap.

    For a moment, Gnar glances at the boar. It rests out in the elements without a whisper. Setting his boomerang lightly on the ground, he skitters back into the storm.

    The blizzard surges on. Gnar is not bothered, but maybe, the slumbering beast is. With his tiny paws, he gathers all the snow he can, and carefully places it atop the boar.

    It is sleeping after all, and it will need a blanket.

  9. Monsters

    Monsters

    Vayne had one arrow left in her wristbolt launcher. She was bleeding from three different wounds. The previously-human beast she’d spent all night hunting had just knocked her to the ground and it was about to bite the head off her shoulders.

    Things were going better than expected.

    Slime dripped from the shapeshifter’s maw as it shrieked in anticipation of its kill. Scanning the darkness with her nightseeker goggles, Vayne found neither weapons nor cover nearby. She’d tracked the beast to this open patch of meadow specifically so it couldn’t take cover behind the alderwoods of Demacia, but that decision left her exposed as well.

    Which was fine by her. There’s no fun in an easy kill, after all.

    The beast grabbed Vayne by the shoulders, its mandibles opening to reveal rows upon rows of jagged teeth. If its jaws didn’t kill her, its fetid breath could certainly finish the job.

    Vayne rapidly reviewed her options. She could try to dodge the beast’s bite, but that would be a short-term solution at the very best. She could kick the creature in its absurd number of teeth and attempt to land her last wristbolt in its bucking forehead, but she couldn’t trust her arrow would find its mark through its gnashing forest of fangs. Or, she could try something flashy, violent and slightly stupid.

    Vayne chose the latter.

    She shoved her entire arm into its gaping mouth. The creature’s razor teeth ripped strips of skin from her knuckles and arm, but Vayne smiled – she had the beast right where she wanted it. She felt its jaw clench, ready to bite and rip her limb off. She didn’t give it the chance.

    Vayne twisted her arm, dragging her wristbolt launcher across the inside of the creature’s gob until the silver tip of her final arrow pointed directly at the roof of the beast’s mouth. With the flick of her wrist, the bolt tore through the monster’s skull, shredding its brain.

    The shrieking stopped as suddenly as it started, the creature’s body limp as it collapsed upon the grassy soil. Vayne crawled out from under it and attempted to remove her arm from its skull without cutting herself more than she already had, only to find that her fist was stuck inside the creature’s head.

    She could either keep trying to pull her hand through the shapeshifter’s jagged mouth – and probably lose a finger or two in the process – or she could dig her arm in further to punch through the top of its head and snap its jaw like a wishbone.

    As always, Vayne chose the latter.

    The hard part wasn’t killing the damned thing. The hard part was carrying it back to its bride.

    Well, widow.

    The widow Selina was beautiful beyond imagining, with hair that caught the sunlight even in the darkness of her fire-lit cabin. The deep scratches on her face, and even the tears that streamed down her cheeks, did nothing to diminish her beauty.

    Vayne laid the carcass at the woman’s feet as gingerly as she could. Its flesh was monstrously transformed and wracked with wounds both self-inflicted and not-so-self-inflicted; it looked more like a collection of limbs and meat than a person.

    “Was it quick?” the widow asked through sobs.

    It had not been quick. Vayne had tracked the changeling to its den in the forests outside eastern Demacia. She’d managed to interrupt it mid-transformation: its eyes had multiplied and expanded, its mouth had grown mandibles, its left arm had formed into a razor-sharp pincer – and it was angry.

    Vayne flicked a glob of brain off her wrist, a clinging remnant from when she’d punched through the creature’s skull.

    “Erm,” Vayne said.

    “Oh, my love,” Selina said, dropping to her knees and wrapping her arms around the mutated body. “What could have caused such a tragedy?”

    Vayne kneeled beside the couple as the widow brought what was left of the man’s head to her breast, either not noticing or caring as his blood smeared her dress.

    “Some people transform themselves into beasts. Some are transformed against their will,” Vayne said.

    She picked up the bulging hand of the corpse, casually examining it. “He belonged to the second group.”

    The widow’s eyes went wide with fury.

    “Someone did this to him? Who would – why would–”

    The widow collapsed onto the body in tears, unable to find the words.

    “Sometimes, therians – shapechangers – want a companion. Sometimes they’re just savage: they lash out and bite somebody out of confusion or anger. Others I’ve met just get bored. They think it’s fun,” Vayne said, patting the woman’s head. “But some…some just need to eat.”

    The widow looked up, sniffing away tears.

    “I don’t – I don’t understand.”

    Vayne gave the widow a pitying smile.

    “They want to eat somebody, but sometimes that somebody gets away. And the thing that tried to eat them accidentally passes on its phage. Then they end up turning, too.”

    The widow glared at Vayne. The wristbolt launcher on Vayne’s arm clinked as she brushed the woman’s hair out of her tear-filled eyes.

    “The last therian I killed told me his victims tasted better if they loved him. Something about the juicy flavor they took on when they blushed. Can’t even imagine how they must taste while on honeymoon, hmm?” Vayne mused.

    The widow stopped crying. Her eyes grew hard.

    “He did love you, you know,” said Vayne.

    The widow tried to stand, but Vayne gripped a fistful of the woman’s hair and pulled tight.

    “He must have been shocked after you bit him. People are unpredictable when they’re scared. And there’s nothing more frightening than being betrayed by someone you love.”

    Vayne flicked her wrist, cocking the wristbolt launcher on her forearm.

    “So, who turned you?”

    The woman stared back with hatred, her eyes slowly darkening to a deep red.

    “Nobody,” she said in a voice like knives scraping across rock. “I am of my own design.”

    Vayne smiled.

    “How did you know?” the widow asked, sliding her hand behind her back.

    “Bite marks on the front of his neck, rather than the back, combined with the lack of wounds anywhere else on his body, told me he was attacked by someone he trusted. Go ahead. Try it.”

    The widow paused.

    “Try what?”

    “The pincer you’re forming behind your back. Slash me. Let’s see if you can cut my hand off before I put a bolt through your forehead,” said Vayne.

    The widow retracted her pincer from behind her back, crestfallen. The game was up.

    “Why?” she asked.

    “Why what?” Vayne blankly replied.

    “Why not just walk in and kill me? Why this whole… presentation?”

    Vayne smiled. A sly, hateful grin.

    “Because I wanted to be sure I was right. Because I wanted you to feel the panic and the fear he felt. But mainly...”

    Vayne tightened her wrist. With a metallic twang, a six-inch bolt of cold silver pierced the changeling’s brain. The widow’s eyes rolled back into her head. She collapsed to the floor like a bag of stones.

    “Because it’s fun.”

  10. Confessions of a Broken Blade: Part I

    Confessions of a Broken Blade: Part I

    Ariel Lawrence

    - I -

    The knife-edge of the plow cut through the rough topsoil, turning the underbelly of winter toward the spring sky. Riven walked the small field behind the ox-driven rig, her focus caught between steadying the wide set handles and the foreign words she clumsily held in her mouth.

    “Emai. Fair. Svasa. Anar.”

    Each step filled the air with the loamy scent of newly awakened earth. Riven gripped the wood tightly as she walked. Over the last few days the coarse handles had roused dormant calluses and fleeting memories.

    Riven bit her lip, shaking off the thought, continuing with the work at hand. “Mother. Father. Sister. Brother.”

    The thin-ribbed ox flicked an ear as it pulled, the plow kicking up clots and small rocks. They struck Riven, but she paid them no mind. She wore a rough woven shirt, the dirt-speckled sleeves rolled into thick bands. Pants of the same material had been dyed an earthen yellow. Their cuffed edges would now be too short on the man they had been made for, but on her, they brushed her bare ankles and the tops of her simple, mud-caked shoes.

    “Emai. Fair. Svasa. Anar.” Riven continued the mantra, memorizing the words. “Erzai, son. Dyeda…”

    Without slowing her pace she wiped a strand of sweat soaked hair from her eyebrow with her sleeve. Her arms were well muscled and still easily held the plow one-handed. The farmer had gone up to the house for a skin of water and their lunch. The old man said she could stop and wait on the threshold of the shaded forest that bordered the tract, but Riven had insisted on finishing.

    A fresh breeze caught the damp at the back of her neck, and she looked around. The Noxian Empire had tried bending Ionia to its will. When Ionia wouldn’t kneel, Noxus had tried to break it. Riven continued her meditative pace behind the plow. For all the Empire’s strength, spring would still come to this land. It had been more than a year since Noxus had been driven out, and the grays and browns of rain and mud were finally giving way to shoots of green. The air itself seemed to hold new beginnings. Hope. Riven sighed as her hair’s bluntly cut edges brushed her chin.

    “Dyeda. daughter,” she began her invocation again, determined. She gripped the wooden handles again with both hands. “Emai. Fair.”

    “That's fa-ir,” a voice called out from the shadows of the forest.

    Riven stopped suddenly. The plow handles lurched in her hands as the bony ox was brought up short by the leather reins. The plow kicked hard into a tough clod of dirt and gave a metal twang as a stone caught on the cutting edge.

    The voice did not belong to the old man.

    Riven tried to ease her breathing by exhaling slowly through her lips. There was one voice, but there could be more coming for her. She fought the years of training that urged her to take a defensive stance. Instead she stilled her body, facing the plow and beast before her. Riven felt too light. She held on tightly now to the plow’s wooden handles. There should have been a weight that anchored her, grounded her, at her side. Instead, she could hardly feel the small field knife on her right hip. The short, hooked blade was good for cutting dew apples and stubborn vegetation, nothing more.

    “The word is fa-ir.”

    The speaker revealed himself at the edge of the field, where the farmland met a band of thick amber pines.

    “There is a break in the middle,” the man said, stepping forward. A wild mane of dark hair was pulled back off his face. A woven mantle was tucked around his shoulders. Riven noticed that it did not completely cover the metal pauldron on his left shoulder, nor the unsheathed blade at his side. He was of a warrior class, but did not serve one house or precinct. He was a wanderer.

    Dangerous, she decided.

    “Fa-ir,” he pronounced again.

    Riven did not speak, not for lack of words, but because of the accent she knew they would carry. She moved around the plow, putting it between her and the well-spoken stranger. She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and bent to examine the plow’s blade, feigning interest in the stone she had struck. Meant to cut through sod and clay, the blade would be more useful than the field knife. She had watched the old man fix it to the wooden body that morning and knew how to release it.

    “I don’t remember seeing you in the village when I was here last, but I have been away awhile,” the man said. His voice held the indifferent roughness of a long time lived on the road.

    The ever present insect hum became louder as Riven refused to fill the silence between them.

    “I’ve heard that the magistrates are being called to hear new evidence in the case of Elder Souma’s death,” the man continued.

    Riven ignored him and patted the patient ox. She ran her fingers along the leather straps as someone who was familiar with the trappings of horses and farm animals, batting away a gnat from the ox’s big, dark eyes.

    “Then again, if you are new to this land, perhaps you know little of the murder.”

    She looked up at the word, meeting the stranger’s gaze, the innocent beast between them. A scar stretched across the bridge of the man’s nose. Riven wondered if the one who left that mark still lived. There was hardness in the stranger’s eyes, but under that, curiosity. Riven felt the ground tremble through the soles of her thin leather shoes. There was a sound like rolling thunder, but there were no clouds in the sky.

    “Someone’s coming,” the man said with a smile.

    Riven looked over her shoulder at the hill that led to the old man’s farmhouse. Six armed riders crested the little ridge and marched their mounts down to the small harrowed field.

    “There she is,” one of them said. His accent was thick, and Riven struggled to parse the nuance of language she had been trying so hard to learn.

    “But... is she alone?” another asked, squinting at the shadows between the trees.

    A quick breeze wrapped around the plow and Riven, sliding back into the shadows of the forest. Riven looked to where the stranger once stood, but he was gone, and the approaching riders left no time to wonder.

    “A ghost maybe,” the leader said laughing at his man. “Someone she cut down coming back for revenge.”

    The riders spurred their horses into a trot, circling Riven and crushing the even trenches she had dug that morning. The leader carried a rigid bundle wrapped in cloth over the back of his mount. Riven’s eyes followed that horse as the others moved around her, their hooves compacting the loose earth back into cold, hard clay.

    She gave the plow blade a final glance. Two riders carried crossbows. She would be taken down before she reached even one of them. Her fingers itched to touch the potential weapon, but her mind begged them to be still.

    Tightness quickened in her muscles. A body long trained to fight would not surrender so easily to peace. A deafening rush of blood began to pound in her ears. You will die, it roared, but so will they.

    Riven’s fingers began to reach for the plow blade.

    “Leave her be!” The voice of the farmer’s wife was strong from calling in errant cows and it rang out over the field, breaking Riven from her self-destructive urge. “Asa, hurry. You must do something.”

    The riders halted their circles around Riven as the farmer and his wife crested the hill. Riven bit hard on the inside of her cheek. The sharp pain centered her, quelling her urge to fight. She would not spill Ionian blood in their field.

    “I told you to stay in your home until we were done,” the leader said to them.

    The old man, Asa, hobbled through the uneven dirt. “She’s done nothing wrong. I was the one who brought it,” he said gesturing toward the wrapped bundle. “I will answer for it.”

    “Master Konte. O-fa,” the leader said. A patronizing smile tugged at the corners of his thin lips. “You know what she is. She has committed many wrongs. If I had my way, she would be cut down where she stands,” He looked Riven over, then wrinkled his nose in annoyance. “Unfortunately, old man, you can say your piece at the hearing.”

    While the leader spoke Riven’s feet had sunk into the moist earth, momentarily holding her fast. The feeling of being mired, pulled down, overwhelmed her. Her pulse quickened to a shallow beat and a cold sweat slipped between her shoulders as she struggled to pull free. Her mind was enveloped by a different time, a different field. There the horses snorted, their hooves trampling blood-soaked dirt.

    Riven shut her eyes before more remembered horrors could bury her. She inhaled deeply. A spring rain floods this ground, not the dead, she told herself. When I open my eyes, there will be only the living.

    When she opened her eyes, the field was a field, freshly turned, and not an open grave. The leader of the riders dismounted and approached her. In his hand he held a pair of shackles, swirls of Ionian metal far more beautiful than anything that would have chained criminals in her own homeland.

    “You cannot escape your past, Noxian dog,” the leader said with a quiet triumph.

    Riven looked up from plow blade to the old couple. The lines on their faces already carried so much pain. She would not bring them more. She could not. Riven tried to hold onto the image, the two of them leaning into one another, each holding the other up. It was a moment of fragile defiance before they knew something would be taken. When the old man wiped a sleeve across his wet cheek, she had to turn away.

    Riven shoved her wrists toward the leader of the riders. She met his smug grin with a cold stare and let the steel close over her skin.

    “Do not worry, dyeda,” the farmer’s wife called out. Riven could hear the taut hope in her voice. It was too much. Too much hope. The wind carried the strained words and the smell of freshly turned earth, even as Riven was led farther and farther away. “Dyeda,” it whispered. “We will tell them what you are.”

    “Dyeda,” Riven whispered back. “Daughter.”

    For two days after the girl surrendered, there had been nothing for Shava Konte to do but help her husband slowly repair the trampled furrows and plant the field. It was a task made easier by the girl’s labors, and yet, if their sons still lived, it was one she and Asa should not have had to do at all.

    On the cold morning of the tribunal, knowing it would take more time for their older bones to walk the long road into town, the couple left before dawn to reach the village council hall.

    “They know she is Noxian.”

    “You worry too much,” Shava said, clucking her tongue for good measure. Realizing her tone was more fit for calming chickens than her husband, she gave him a hopeful smile.

    “Noxian. That is all they need to proclaim guilt.” Asa mumbled his thought into the homespun wool wrapped around his neck.

    Shava, who had spent the better part of her lifetime coaxing stubborn animals into the butcher’s pen, stopped short, turning to face her husband.

    “They do not know her like we know her,” she said, stabbing one of her fingers to his chest, exasperation escaping through her hands. “That is why you are to speak on her behalf, you old goat.”

    Asa knew his wife, and knew further argument would not change her mind. Instead he nodded his head softly. Shava gave a dissatisfied harumph and turned back to the road, marching in silence to the town center. The council hall that was beginning to fill. Seeing the crowd, she hurried into the narrow space between the benches of the council hall to find a seat closer to the front... and unceremoniously tripped over a sleeping man’s leg.

    As the old woman fell forward with a weak yelp, a groan escaped from the sleeping man. Like a lightning blade, his hand snapped forward, his grip like steel, catching the old woman by the arm before she fell to the stone floor.

    “You must watch your step, O-ma,” the stranger whispered deferentially, drink still heavy on his breath, but slurring none of his words. He withdrew his hand as soon as the old woman was back on her feet.

    The old woman looked down her nose at the unlikely savior, her eyes narrowing. Under her scrutiny, the man receded further into the shadows of the mantle wrapped around his shoulders and face; the ghost of a scar across his strong nose disappeared into the darkness.

    “The council hall is nowhere to recover from a night of misdeeds, young man.” Shava righted her robes, the disdain evident in the tip of her chin. “A woman’s life is to be decided today. Be gone before you are asked to concede your own wrongdoings before the magistrates.”

    “Shava.” The old man had caught up and put a hand on his wife’s arm. “You must keep your temper in check if we are to offer our assistance today. He meant no injury. Leave him be.”

    The hooded stranger offered two fingers up in peaceful supplication, but kept his face hidden. “You strike to the heart of the matter, O-ma,” he offered, humor creeping into his voice.

    Shava moved on, carrying her indignation like a delicate gift. The old man tipped his head as he passed.

    “Do not judge her quickly, my boy. She worries that an innocent soul will be found guilty before the truth is known.”

    The hooded man grunted in acknowledgement as the old man moved on. “On that we are of the same mind, O-fa.”

    The old man glanced back at the strange, hushed words. The seat was empty, save the ghost of a breeze that rustled the robes of a nearby couple deep in conversation. The hooded stranger was already receding into the far shadows of the council hall.



    Shava chose a seat at the front of the gathered crowd. The smooth swirls of the wooden bench should have been comfortable—they had been shaped by woodweavers to promote balance and harmonic discussions of civic duty—but the old woman could not find a comfortable position. She glanced at her husband, who was now settled patiently on a creaky stool, waiting to be called. Beside Asa, a bailiff stood and picked his teeth with a sliver of wood. The old woman recognized the bailiff as Melker, leader of the riders that had come for Riven. She glared at him, but Melker took no notice. He was watching the doors at the back of the room. When they opened and closed behind three darkly robed figures, he straightened quickly, tossing aside the bit of wood in his mouth.

    The magistrates, their smooth vestments settling behind them as they took their place at the head table, looked out at the crowded hall. The noise in the great room dropped to an uneven silence. One of the three, a tall, slim woman with a falcon nose, stood solemnly.
    “This tribunal has been called to take in new attestations in the matter of Elder Souma’s death.”

    A hum of murmurs, like a hundred locusts, began to build from somewhere in the middle of the crush of people. Some had heard of the new evidence the judge spoke, but most had gathered at the rumor there was a Noxian in their midst. But rumors didn’t change what they all knew: Elder Souma’s death was no mystery. The wind technique, the magic that scoured his meditation hall was all the evidence that was necessary. Only one besides Souma himself could have executed such a maneuver.

    A wound, unevenly healed, opened. The hive mind of the crowd coalesced in a moment of communal pain. If the elder had not fallen, they shouted to each other, the village would not have taken such heavy casualties. Shortly after the murder, half of a Noxian warband had slaughtered many on the way to Navori. So many sons and daughters had been lost in the Noxian engagement, an engagement that swelled in the distressing imbalance of Souma’s death. Worse yet, the village laid the blame on one of their own.

    The thrum found a clear voice.

    “We already know who murdered Elder Souma,” Shava spoke through weathered lips. “It was that traitor, Yasuo.”

    The crowd nodded and a biting agreement rippled through the mob.

    “Who knew Elder Souma’s wind techniques? Yasuo!” Shava added. “And now Yone has not returned from the pursuit of his unforgivable brother. Most likely the coward is responsible for that as well.”

    The crowd’s gnashing grew again, this time crying out for Yasuo's blood. Shava settled more easily on the bench, satisfied that the question of guilt had been pointed back at the correct person.

    The falcon-nosed judge came from a long line of woodweavers, ones famed for being able to untwist and straighten even the heaviest burls. She lifted a perfectly round sphere of hard worn chestnut and brought it down definitively against its jet-black cradle. The sharp sound wrenched the crowd into silence and order returned to the hall.

    “This court seeks knowledge and enlightenment about the facts of Elder Souma’s death,” the judge said. “Do you wish to stand in way of enlightenment, Mistress…?”

    The old woman looked to her husband and felt heat rise in the skin of her cheeks. “Konte. Shava Konte,” she said much less boldly. She dipped her head. The old man on the stool watched her and mopped the sheen of sweat from his own balding crown.

    “As I was saying, we are here to take in new evidence.” The falcon judge looked out at the crowd for any other stubborn burls and nodded to the bailiff, Melker. “Please bring her in.”

    - Their story continues tomorrow. -

Related Champions

LoL Universe Indexing and Search isn't endorsed by Riot Games and doesn't reflect the views or opinions of Riot Games or anyone officially involved in producing or managing Riot Games properties. Riot Games, and all associated properties are trademarks or registered trademarks of Riot Games, Inc.