LoL Universe Indexing and Search

Regardless of what he would later become, Varus was once a paragon of loyalty and honor. A skilled archer of the ancient Shuriman empire, he was appointed as a temple warden in the eastern states, and he held this duty sacred above all else.

During the earliest stages of the war with Icathia, even though it lay far from that cursed place, Varus’ homeland was attacked. While other wardens abandoned their posts to join the defense of the outlying villages, he alone remained, screaming in anguish with every arrow he loosed—for he had chosen to uphold his oaths rather than return home to protect his own family.

Emissaries from the Ascended Host found him kneeling in solemn meditation amid the corpses of his foes. It was said that his cold gaze unsettled even the god-warriors themselves, and yet, in recognition of his noble sacrifice, Varus was offered a place in their ranks.

As one of the great Ascended, he was utterly consumed by his pursuit of vengeance against the Icathians, and the voidling horrors they had unleashed. It is likely that Varus did not even fully comprehend Shurima’s ultimate victory in that war, so twisted had his mind become—nor the empire’s fall centuries later. Atrocity after atrocity blurred together, leaving him as a withdrawn, callous killer, reshaped and sent into battle countless times by his degenerate brethren.

Their name became feared throughout the known world.

The darkin.

Warring among themselves, they destroyed any other who stood against them. With his crystalline bow, Varus assassinated enemy commanders and champions, helping the darkin defeat entire mortal armies with ever greater ease.

Eventually, Varus was cornered by vastayan moon-stalkers and human mages in service of a golden-armored warrior queen of Valoran. They bound him within his bow, leaving him to howl in impotent rage. By then, the raw, corrupting influence of the darkin was known, and yet still the queen chose to wield the deadly weapon in the final days of the war, gladly sacrificing herself for a greater victory.

In the months that followed, the queen carried Varus to the First Lands—those that would later be known as Ionia. Now made monstrous by the bow’s power, her last act was to command her followers to bury her alive in a lightless well, sunk deep beneath a mountain temple overlooking the village of Pallas.

And there Varus was imprisoned, both by the natural magic of Ionia, and the ritual ministrations of the temple guardians.

The bow remained hidden for centuries, unknown, untouched, and all but forgotten, until Noxian invaders attacked the First Lands. Two beast hunters—Valmar and his heartlight, Kai—fought against the first wave at the Temple of Pallas. Though their courage was great and they drove off the attackers, Kai was mortally wounded, and a grief-stricken Val carried him inside, believing the well’s forbidden magic could restore him.

But the temple held only damnation, and both hunters were consumed by the unleashed power of the darkin within it. The very matter of their bodies was unraveled and bound together again to craft a new body, a body fit to free Varus from his imprisonment. What emerged from the well was a gestalt creature, pale and inhumanly beautiful, part human and part darkin. After more than a thousand years, Varus was reborn.

Even so, the human and darkin elements of this imperfect form are in constant flux, with each managing to wrest control for a short time before being reined in by the other. Varus fights to silence the two mortal souls once and for all, and wreak vengeance for the destruction of his race. Still, Kai and Val struggle against his malevolent influence, hoping against hope that their love can overcome the darkin’s hatred.

How long they can keep Varus conflicted is anyone’s guess—but should this sadistic and egotistical killer come to fully dominate his new host, it is certain he will seek to reunite with others of his kind, and reduce all of Runeterra to an ashen wasteland.

The earthquake had struck Terbisia at dawn, the earth bucking like an unbroken colt and splitting apart in gaping fissures. Lux rode Starfire through the toppled ruin of the defensive barbican, the thirty-foot high walls of sun-bleached stone looking like Noxian siege engines had bombarded them for weeks. She guided her horse carefully between fallen blocks of masonry, heading to where a makeshift infirmary had been set up within a blue and white market pavilion.

The scale of the devastation was unlike anything Lux had seen before. Terbisia’s buildings were crafted from hard mountain granite and Demacian oak, raised high by communal strength. And almost all of them had been completely destroyed. Dust-covered men and women dug through the shattered ruins with picks and shovels, hoping to find survivors, but instead, dragged corpses from the debris. Entire streets had simply vanished into the many smoking chasms now dividing the town’s districts.

Lux dismounted as she reached the pavilion, and pushed inside. She wasn’t a healer, but she could fetch and carry or simply sit with the wounded. She’d thought that seeing the scale of the devastation would prepare her for the suffering within the tent.

She was wrong.

Hundreds of survivors pulled from the wreckage lay on woolen blankets. Lux heard mothers and fathers crying for lost children, wives and husbands clinging to their dead loved ones, and, worst of all, bewildered, glassy-eyed orphans wandering lost and afraid. Lux saw a surgeon she recognized in a blood-stiffened apron washing his hands in a pewter bowl and made her way toward him.

“Surgeon Alzar,” she said. “Tell me how I can help.”

He turned, his eyes haunted and rheumy with tears. It took a moment for recognition to penetrate the fog of his grief.

“Lady Crownguard,” said Alzar, giving a short bow.

“Lux,” she said. “Please, what can I do?”

The physician sighed and said, “Truly you are a blessing, my lady, but I would spare you the horror of what has happened here.”

“Spare me nothing, Alzar,” snapped Lux. “I am Demacian, and Demacians help one another.”

“Of course, forgive me, my lady,” said Alzar, taking a fatigued breath. “Your presence will be a boon to the wounded.”

Alzar led her toward a young man lying stretched out on a low pallet bed near the back of the pavilion. Lux gasped to see the horror of his wounds. His body was broken, all but crushed by rubble, and his eyes were bound in bloody bandages. From his stoic refusal to show pain, she guessed he was a soldier.

“He dug a family from the rubble of their collapsed home,” said Alzar. “He rescued them, but kept looking for survivors. There was a second quake, and another building fell to ruin on top of him. The rubble crushed his lungs, and shards of glass put out his eyes.”

“How long does he have?” asked Lux, careful to keep her voice low.

“Only the gods know, but his time is short,” said Alzar. “If you would stay at his side, it would ease his passing into the arms of the Veiled Lady.”

Lux nodded and sat beside the dying man. She took his hand, feeling her heart break for him. Alzar smiled gratefully and turned back to helping those he could save.

“It’s so dark,” said the man, waking at her touch. “Gods, I can’t see!”

“Steady now, soldier. Tell me your name,” said Lux.

“It’s Dothan,” he said, wheezing with the effort.

“You’re named for the hero of Dawnhold?”

“Aye. You know the story? It’s an old tally against the savages.”

“Trust me, I know it well,” said Lux with a rueful smile. “My brother told it all the time when we were children. He always forced me to play the Freljordian corsairs while he played Dothan, defending the harbor single-handedly against the skinwalkers.”

“I tried to be like him,” said the young man, his breathing labored and his voice growing faint. A rivulet of blood leaked from beneath the bandage like a red tear. “I tried to live up to my namesake.”

Lux held his hand in both of hers.

“You did,” she said. “Alzar told me what happened. You’re a true Demacian hero.”

The lines on Dothan’s face eased a little, his breath rattling in his throat as his strength began to fail.

“Why can’t I see?”

“Your eyes,” said Lux slowly. “I’m so sorry.”

“What... what’s wrong with them?”

“Surgeon Alzar told me you have shards of glass in them.”

The man drew in a sharp breath.

“I’m dying,” he said. “I know that... but I should... have liked to behold the light of... Demacia... one last... time.”

Lux felt the magic stir within her, but whispered the mantra taught to her by the Illuminators to keep it from rising too close to the surface. Over the years, she’d learned to better control her power, but sometimes, when her emotions ran close to the surface, it was hard to keep the energies contained. She looked around and, satisfied no one was watching, placed her fingertips on the bloody bandage covering Dothan’s eyes. Lux eased the numinous radiance of her magic down through the man’s skull to the undamaged parts of his eyes.

“I can’t heal you,” she said, “but I can at least give you that.”

He squeezed her hand, his mouth falling open in wonder as Demacia’s light shone within him.

“It’s so beautiful...” he whispered.

The fire was crackling away nicely, spreading a warm glow throughout the forest clearing. Tristana lay on her back with her head pillowed on her pack, watching a comet streak across the starlit sky. The winking lights glittered prettily through a swaying canopy of birch and oak leaves. The humans liked to name the patterns in the stars – she’d seen some in an old book in Heimerdinger’s laboratory – but she decided it would be more fun to give them names of her own invention.

“You can be the Growling Badger,” she said, pointing to one group of stars. “And you can be the Cheeky Changeling. Yes, that’s much better than boring names like The Warrior or The Defender. And anyway, I can’t see those ones anymore.”

Her stomach rumbled and she sat up. Hunger was still something surprising to her, even though she’d ventured beyond Bandle City more than most of her kind. A pair of spitted fish were roasting nicely over the flames and the smell of them was making her mouth water. She’d shot them in the stream to the west of her campsite with a single, exceptionally carefully-aimed bullet from her cannon. Not a bad feat of marksmanship, even if she did say so herself. Too bad no-one was around to see it! She leaned over and patted the polished drakewood stock of her exquisitely crafted cannon; a weapon any sensible observer would say was far too large for someone of her diminutive stature to even carry, let alone shoot.

“Let Teemo have his cute little blowpipes, eh, Boomer?” she told the cannon. “I’ll stick to something with a bit more oomph, thank you very much.”

The fire crackled in a ring of stones, burning with cerulean flames, thanks to the pinch of her custom powder she’d sprinkled on the kindling to get it started. She knew now just how little she needed to use after her first time in the Upplands had cost her a perfectly decent pair of eyebrows. Sometimes it was hard to remember that things were so different in the human world compared to back home.

Deciding the fish were ready, she slid one from the spit onto a wooden plate she removed from her pack. She unwrapped a golden knife and fork from a rolled dreamleaf and cut the fish into slices. She might be on a mission, but that didn’t mean she had to eat like a savage. She took a mouthful of fish and rolled it around her mouth, savoring the taste and licking her lips in satisfaction. Mortal food was usually bland and tasteless compared to the smorgasbord of flavors she was used to, but the fish in this part of the world – Ionia, she’d heard it was called – wasn’t half bad. Perhaps it was the magic saturating every element of this landscape that made them extra tasty.

Tristana heard the crack of a twig. One of many she’d laid in a circle around her camp. The sound and type of twig told her exactly how far away the humans were and from which direction they were approaching.

She cleared her throat and called out, “I have another fish if you’re hungry.”

A man and a woman emerged from the forest in front of her. Both were tall and lean, with fidgeting hands and cold eyes. They didn’t look friendly, but she was still learning how to read human expressions and she’d been taught to always be polite. Human languages were so unsophisticated that she often wondered how they managed to communicate at all.

The man took a step forward and said, “Many thanks, old one, but we are not hungry.”

“Old one?” said Tristana with a playfully indignant grin. “I’m a young slip of a girl!”

The man blinked and she saw what might have been a look of puzzlement cross his face.

“The old crone’s insane,” said the woman, looking sidelong at her, as if not quite sure what to make of what she was seeing. Whatever it was, it certainly wasn’t her true form…

“You’re sure you don’t want a bit of fish?” asked Tristana, taking another bite. “It’s really tasty.”

“We’re sure,” confirmed the man. “But we’ll take any coin you’re carrying. As well as that gun of yours. I suspect it will fetch a pretty penny at auction.”

“You want to steal my Boomer?” said Tristana, sensing movement to either side. “You know, I just don’t see that happening.”

“No? You’re alone and there’s two of us,” said the man. “And we’re bigger than you.”

“Size isn’t everything,” said Tristana. “And there’s four of you. Why don’t you ask your two bandit friends to come out? Maybe they’re hungry?”

The woman shook her head. “He told you, we’re alone.”

“Oh, come on,” said Tristana. “What sort of commando do you think I’d be if I didn’t know you had two friends in the bushes with arrows aimed at me right now? You came in from the north and split up a hundred yards out. There’s a fat man to my left and a man with a limp to my right.”

“Good ears for one so old,” said the man.

“I told you, I’m not old,” said Tristana. “I’m actually pretty young for a Yordle.”

The man’s mouth dropped open in surprise as something of her true nature became apparent to him.

Finally! An expression she had no trouble in reading.

Tristana ducked and rolled to the side as a pair of black-fletched arrows slashed from the undergrowth. They passed harmlessly overhead as she swept up Boomer and chambered a round. She fired into the bushes to her right and was rewarded with a cry of pain.

“Blast off!” she cried, vaulting toward the nearest tree and bounding higher. Tristana landed on a branch halfway up its trunk. Another arrow flashed toward her, thudding into the bark a handspan from her head.

“Hey, you’re pretty fast for a human,” she said, racking Boomer’s crank and priming the barrel with a bunch of shells. She sprang away to another branch as the archer rose from the bushes – the fat one, which almost made it too easy. Tristana somersaulted from tree to tree and fired twice more. Both shots caught the man in his meaty thighs, and he fell back with a wail, loosing his arrow high into the air.

“Oh, don’t be such a baby,” she laughed. “I barely grazed you!”

Tristana landed by her fire as the two humans she’d first seen rushed her with drawn swords. They were likely fast by human standards, but to her they moved like lumbering giants.

“Time for some up and over!” shouted Tristana, unloading the rest of Boomer’s barrel in one almighty blast into the ground. She gave a wild, whooping yell as she sailed over their heads. Even as she arced through the air she was reloading. She pushed off from the trunk of a tree and spun back to the ground.

She landed right behind the bandits with a giggle.

“Boom! Boom!”

Tristana fired two blasts, and both humans cried out in pain as they each took a wound to the rump. The woman fell flat on her face, beating her britches as powder burn set them alight. She managed to pick herself up and flee into the bushes with her backside on fire. The man twisted as he dropped to the ground, scrambling away as she cranked Boomer’s loading arm.

He was making hand gestures he probably thought were some form of magical protection.

“You’re no old woman,” he said.

“I kept telling you that,” said Tristana.

The man opened his mouth to answer, but before he could speak the arrow loosed from the fat man’s bow finally came back down to earth. It thudded into the man’s chest and he fell back with a look of intense annoyance.

The other bandits were dragging themselves away as fast as their wounded limbs would carry them. She let them go, grinning as she gathered up her things before stamping down the fire.

“I was just trying to eat my dinner and have a quiet night,” she said to herself. “But I guess four bandits who won’t trouble anyone again soon isn’t bad going!”

Tristana slung Boomer over her shoulder and set off once more, whistling a jaunty tune as she looked for more stars to name.

The last survivor of a long-forgotten religious order, Yorick is both blessed and cursed with power over the dead. Trapped on the Shadow Isles, his only companions are the rotting corpses and shrieking spirits that he gathers to him. Yorick’s monstrous actions belie his noble purpose: to free his home from the curse of the Ruination.

Even as a child, Yorick’s life was never normal. Raised in a fishing village at the very edge of the Blessed Isles, he always struggled to find acceptance. While most children his age were playing hide-and-seek, young Yorick was making friends of a different kind—the spirits of the recently deceased.

At first, Yorick was terrified of his ability to see and hear the dead. Whenever someone in the village passed away, Yorick would lie awake all night, waiting for the chilling cry of a new visitor. He could not understand why they chose to haunt him, and why his parents believed the spirits to be nothing more than nightmares.

In time, he came to realize the souls were not there to harm him. They were simply lost and needed help finding their way to the beyond. Since only Yorick was able to see these spirits, he took it upon himself to be their guide, escorting them to whatever awaited in eternity.

The task was bittersweet. Yorick found that he enjoyed the company of ghosts, but each one he brought to rest meant saying farewell to another friend. To the dead, he was a savior, but to the living, he was a pariah. The villagers only saw a disturbed little boy who spoke to people who weren’t there.

Tales of Yorick’s visions soon spread beyond his village, and drew the attention of a small order of monks who dwelled at the heart of the Blessed Isles. Its envoys traveled to Yorick’s island, believing he could become an asset to their faith.

Yorick agreed to journey to their monastery, and there, he learned the ways of the Brethren of the Dusk and the true significance of their trappings. Every monk carried a spade as a symbol of their duty to conduct proper burial rites, which ensured souls would not lose their way. And each brother wore a vial of water drawn from the Blessed Isles’ sacred spring. These Tears of Life represented the monks’ duty to heal the living.

Yet, no matter how he tried, Yorick could never gain the acceptance of the other monks. To them, he was tangible proof of things that should only be known through faith. They resented his power to easily perceive what they themselves had struggled their entire lives to understand. Shunned by his brothers, Yorick found himself alone again.

One morning, as he tended to his duties in the cemetery, Yorick was interrupted by the sight of a pitch-black cloud roiling across the surface of the Blessed Isles, devouring everything in its path. Yorick tried to run, but the cloud quickly enveloped him and plunged him into shadow.

All around Yorick, living things began to writhe and contort, corrupted by the foul magic in the Black Mist. People, animals, even plants began to transform into vile, ghoulish mockeries of their former selves. Whispers emanated from the turbulent air around him, and his brothers began ripping the vials of healing water from their necks, as if the objects were causing them great anguish. A moment later, Yorick watched in abject horror as the monks’ souls were ripped from their bodies, leaving cold, pale corpses behind.

Among the quieting screams of his brethren, Yorick alone could hear voices within the mist.

“Remove it. Join us. We will become one.”

He felt his fingers grasping for the vial at his neck. Mustering all his resolve, Yorick forced his hands away from his throat and commanded the howling souls to stop. The Black Mist writhed violently, and darkness overtook him.

When Yorick awoke, the winds had calmed, and the once-fertile lands had transformed into the grotesque hellscape of the Shadow Isles. Isolated tendrils of the Black Mist clung to him, trying to overtake the one living thing not yet corrupted. As the Mist wrapped itself around him, Yorick saw it suddenly recoil from the vial at his neck. Yorick clutched the blessed water, realizing it was all that kept him alive.

In the days that followed, Yorick scoured the islands for survivors, but found only the twisted remnants of what once lived there. Everywhere he walked, he witnessed wretched spirits rising from the bodies of the dead.

As he searched, Yorick slowly pieced together the events that led to the cataclysm: A king had arrived seeking to resurrect his queen, but instead, had doomed the Isles and everything on them.

Yorick wished to find this “Ruined King” and undo the curse he had unleashed. But he felt powerless in the face of the seemingly endless death that surrounded him.

Almost lost within his grief, Yorick began to speak to the spirits around him, attempting to find solace with them as he had as a child. Instead, as he communed with the Mist, corpses left their graves, guided by his voice. He realized the bodies he once laid to rest were now his to command.

A glimmer of hope shone from the heart of his despair. To free the dead of the Shadow Isles, Yorick would wield their power and their strength.

In order to end the curse, he would be forced to use it.

The colossal brazier flared to life, its flames reaching high into the air. In times past, the gathered tribes would use this as the mark of the festival’s beginning.

The harvest festival had always been the largest celebration of the year for the tribes, and one of the last before winter set in on the plains. As the fire was lit, cheers should have echoed up the frozen slopes of the mountains, calling down blessings from the Three Sisters. Now, though, the mass of gathered Avarosans remained silent as they turned away from the flames to look up to the stage where Ashe stood.

She let her eyes roam over them. No festival had ever seen so many gathered together, and she knew they had come to see her.

She grabbed her bow and unslung it, the now-familiar piercing chill of the True Ice surging through her body. The cold was still painful, even after all her time with the weapon—but now she welcomed it, using it to focus and block out distractions. She lifted her gaze from the crowd to the roaring flame, and took a deep breath as she pulled back the bowstring. All other sounds of the festival faded.

A crystal arrow of pure cold formed, beckoned forth by the deep magic coursing through the bow. Ashe held her breath as she let it continue to channel magic through her arms. The temperature on the stage plummeted, frost creeping out from beneath her feet.

When the cold threatened to finally overwhelm her, she released her breath and let the arrow fly.

It arced high over the crowd, and slammed into its target with a deafening crack. In an instant, the brazier was frozen over, the dancing shapes of the fire enveloped by the spreading ice. The setting sun shone through the crystalized flames and onto the crowd below, and finally the cheer broke out. The crowd invoked the blessings of the Three—Lissandra, Serylda, and Avarosa herself, reincarnated in Ashe.

Ashe kept her address short.

“Avarosans! Never before has a harvest festival seen so many. Sit with your kin from across the snows—we are one family now. Eat, drink, and enjoy!”

She smiled as the crowd cried out her name. She raised her bow high, and the cheers rose higher in response.

Inwardly, she grimaced. As so often, she wondered if it was her leadership that drew them all together, or the weapon she carried. It was the symbol of Avarosa, and many in the Freljord believed that, as its wielder, she was Avarosa reborn. Ashe slung the bow over her shoulder and shook the thought. Why they joined wasn’t as important as what they had become. She hopped off the stage and moved into the crowd as they dispersed to feast-laden tables.

The boisterous tribes mixed together, sharing food, drink, and tales of hunts past. The Stonepicks described the warm yet treacherous southern mountains. Ashe cheered with the others when the Red Snows recounted the defeat of the Noxian warbands that had tried to advance inland from the coast. A warrior from the Ice Veins, storied blizzard walkers one and all, clapped Ashe on the back as she passed, sending a strange chill through her.

All these and more had responded to her call and joined the festivities. All had pledged themselves to the Avarosans, and each tribe needed her to be something different. A prophet, a savior, a mediator. A Warmother.

Ashe would be them all if she could.

As she neared the far end of the feast, though, she froze. At the last table, sitting somber and removed from the rest, was a group of Iceborn that she knew all too well—the Snow Followers, vengeful zealots who had slaughtered a whole tribe only months ago.

A tribe whose only crime had been joining the Avarosans.

A large woman, doubtless their leader, rose and approached Ashe. “Warmother Ashe, Avarosa’s chosen, wielder of Her divine bow. My name is Hildhur Svarhem, truthbearer and Warmother of the Snow Followers.”

Ashe imagined the sight of the scorched huts again, the screams of her people dying in agony, and her fury ignited. The crowd around them quieted as Hildhur continued, whispers spreading quickly. All gathered had heard of what the Snow Followers had done.

“We swore an oath that no faith-traitors would ever again follow those falsely claiming to be Avarosa reborn. Your warriors fought bravely, but not well.” She unslung a large war-axe from her back, its blade coated in a thin but clear layer of True Ice. A true Iceborn, she bore the discomfort of the weapon’s chilling effect silently.

Ashe measured the woman’s wide stance, counted the few steps between them. Dried blood matted Hildhur’s armor—more Avarosan blood? Ashe’s muscles tensed as she prepared to move. She was ready for any attack.

What she was not ready for, however, was for the Warmother to kneel, lower her head, and offer up the war-axe with both hands.

“Forgive us, Warmother Ashe. I did not know then what I do now. I came to challenge you before all your followers, to unmask you as a false prophet. But the magic you wield is beyond any I have ever witnessed. None can deny that She speaks through you. I offer you my axe, Joutbane, and my head. Spare my people, that they may prove their worth by hunting, farming, and dying in your name.”

Each of the gathered Snow Followers followed their Warmother’s example, kneeling in deference.

At once, voices from the crowd called for vengeance. “Death to the raiders!” they cried.

Barely more than smoldering ruins when Ashe had arrived, the skeletal remains told the story of a village surrounded. The few warriors had been easily identified, for their bodies were untouched by fire, but hacked down and left for the crows. The rest of the tribe had hidden in their homes, praying for mercy, or simply a quick death.

They received neither…

Eyes welled up with fury, Ashe reached for the axe. She would take Hildhur’s head, as a warning to any who would—

As her hand clasped around it, and the True Ice sent the familiar spike of cold through her arm, Ashe felt her bow beginning to radiate against her back. A slow, chilling pulse, like a winter breeze.

Her mind calmed.

“Stand, Hildhur,” she said, looking down at the war-axe.

Hildhur rose, furrowing her brow in confusion. Ashe met her probing gaze.

“The Snow Followers have shed the blood of my tribe, and they are my enemies,” she continued. “But you have shown humility and remorse, here and now. You are not the Snow Followers any longer—from today forward, you are Avarosan, and that makes you family. You have nothing to fear from me, cousin.”

She thrust the war-axe back into the woman’s hands, and the tension in the air broke. Soon enough, the celebrations were underway again, the joyous feelings redoubled by forgiveness and mercy. Ashe walked to everyone seated at the table, welcoming each in turn.

As she turned from them and walked away, she was careful to keep her grief in check. Her heart still burned, but her people needed her to walk a different path than that of revenge. She played her fingers along the bowstring, seeking comfort in its chill.

She would be better. She must.

Each time Viego thought of her face, it looked a little different.

Sometimes, the eyes were just too far apart, or too close together. Or her cheeks were a little too thin or a little too wide. Sometimes, her hands lacked the calluses of a seamstress, but other times, they were gnarled and thick from long days holding scissors and needles. She wore a gown some days, and others, a simple work frock, and on others still, she wore nothing at all. She was never the same, but always the same, never there, but always present. A ghost of the heart Viego no longer possessed, rent open when... when...

Viego, on his shattered, blackened throne at the bottom of the world, slammed his king’s blade deeply into the rock beneath, cracking the obsidian and sending a brutal tremor across the entirety of the Shadow Isles.

To his left lay a painting he could no longer bear to look at, for the fair Isolde’s countenance had been too perfect to lay eyes upon, too lovely to grant him any peace or respite. He had torn her away, leaving only the image of a foolish young king who had believed the world was kind centuries before, but who now was rightfully dead.

Or if not dead, something else.

Viego could not remember much of his old country that was not twisted by shadows or anguish. In his memories, he stepped out upon the sandstone streets and only saw Isolde before him. Every fresco on every wall contained her within a painted world that only he could touch, only he could see. Yet when he went to reach for her, the illusion broke away, and he was here, surrounded on all sides by the putrid waters that had stolen her all over again.

Viego ripped his blade from the ground and stood, smashing its great heft into the floor and walls as he wailed. Then he was still for a long while, regarding the ancient painting from the old kingdom as if he had seen something new. Regarding himself as he was before the Isles had been swallowed up by darkness.

“Viego,” he said. “So handsome. So young. What became of you, Viego? Where have you gone?” He dropped the painting to the floor, its frame cracking awkwardly as the canvas crumpled beneath it.

“Where are you, Isolde?” said Viego. “Why won’t you come back to me?”

But he already knew the answer.

To most, the Black Mist is a plague, a vector for monstrous, life-sucking wraiths to assault the living and steal them away until the sun dies and the world crumbles into nothing.

To Viego, it is his great, unending sadness, pouring ceaselessly from his broken heart. A testament to his love, of better days long gone by, and a cruel reminder of what was taken from him so long ago.

It is this very Mist that scours the land, tendrils infecting everything with their grim power, draining the life from whatever they touch until all that remains glows with the soft, necrotic green of the Ruination. Yet this, too, has a purpose, for as Viego’s sadness ebbs and wanes, the Mist surges forward, searching as if drawn to something... something old, familiar, safe. The wraiths and spirits that travel within it do what they will, but the Mist itself, no—it grasps ceaselessly for her.

Everything Viego does is for her.

And now, it has found something, far from the shores of the Isles, far past the docks of Bilgewater and the coasts of Ionia. Something on the mainland, hidden within a modest city at the edge of a river. The object calls to Viego, screams for Viego, demands his attention at all costs. And though the people wail, though they run from the blanket of death that rolls softly across their homes and fields, though the wraiths shriek and the horrors stir to feed, Viego hears but one voice, and one voice alone.

“Viego,” he imagines it says, for he cannot make out the words.

The Ruined King bursts from the fog like a hungry shadow, tearing through the first guard he sees as he lifts his blade high above the ground. The man’s face contorts in pain as his body melts away and his spirit is absorbed into the Mist, but Viego barely pays him any attention before he brings his sword down upon the second. Everywhere around him, ghouls feast upon the living, tearing them apart as their souls are dragged away to join the king’s legions.

Searing flesh sails through the air, arrows tumble across space, swords clatter, and warriors fall.

It does not matter to Viego.

He raises a single hand before the city’s great wall, and the Mist rushes forward, stones falling away as the structure becomes tainted with decay. Viego simply steps across the threshold, and suddenly, he is through. He cuts down two more men as he moves silently toward the source of the voice, then another. They mean nothing. None of them bear any weight, and not one matters at all. Their spirits simply rise behind him, to do as he wills.

The ruler of this city now stands before him, a proud man protecting a treasure of some kind, Viego is sure. But as a fellow leader, as a skilled warrior, perhaps he would make a better vassal than hungry spirit.

“Stop,” says Viego, raising a single hand once more. The Mist, the wraiths, the horrors, the fighting—everything seems to freeze on the Ruined King’s command.

“Behind you is a treasure you could not fathom the importance of. I will see it returned to me, and in exchange, you will serve me personally.”

The man seems to stumble over his words, grasping at something he cannot quite muster the courage to speak. But Viego gives him time, and slowly, the words form on his lips: “If I give you this treasure, will you spare the city?”

The Ruined King seems disappointed. Whether he ponders an answer or reflects on the situation, this man will never know, as Viego suddenly appears above him, his great blade slicing down through the heart of this small, frightened warrior-king. His body slides harmlessly down the massive greatsword, as blackness spreads across his skin.

Viego rips the door behind him open, and there, the treasure lies.

An old, worn-down music box, a gift from Viego’s wedding day, whispering something he cannot quite hear. It seems possessed by grief, by boundless, immeasurable sorrow, but Viego simply holds it before his eyes, imagining the soft smile that will surely dance across Isolde’s face the day he sees her again.

“What have they done to you, my love?” he coos, as the man he slaughtered slowly rises from the earth, ghostly greens and blues throbbing from between the cracks in his skin.

“Do not worry,” he assures the music box. “I will find you. It is simply a matter of time.”

And with that, Viego is gone, vanishing as wraiths devour the city.

The weeks spent on the ocean had made Markus feel dizzy and weak, so he was glad to be back on dry land. The path leading from the basalt shore had a slick, oily quality, making it treacherous underfoot. The crooked trees to either side were wretched, blackened husks that wept yellowed sap from where it looked like some panicked animal had clawed them ragged. Soft light shimmered between the trees, dancing like the corpse candles that flickered over marshland and drew unwary souls to their doom. The branches were hung with what looked like canopies of ragged muslin, and it took Markus a moment to realize they were swathes of cobwebs.

Wiry bracken clogged the undergrowth on either side of the path, rustling with the motion of unseen creatures shadowing their passage through the forest. Perhaps the rats infesting the ship had followed them. Markus had never caught sight of one, beyond a fleeting glimpse of a swollen, black-furred body or the skittering sound of claws on wood. He’d never been able to shake the notion that it sounded as if these rats had a few too many legs than any normal rat should have.

The island’s air was heavy with damp, and his finely tailored tunic and boots were sodden with clinging moisture. He held a scented pomander beneath his nose, but it did little to disguise the stench of the island, reminding him of the charnel pits beyond the walls of Noxus when the winds blew in from the ocean. Thinking back to his homeland, he felt a brief twinge of unease. The revels in the catacombs far beneath the city had been a deliciously illicit thrill, a reward for following the secret symbol of the black-petaled bloom. Within the darkened sepulchers, he and his fellows gathered as devotees.

Where she awaited.

He looked ahead, hoping for a glimpse of the beguiling woman whose words had brought so many of them to this place. He caught a flash of crimson silk and swaying hips before the mist oozing between the trees obscured his sight of her. He’d thrilled to the sermons of her ancient god, and had been overjoyed when he and the others had been chosen to join her on this pilgrimage. It seemed like a grand adventure when they boarded the heavily laden barque at midnight, under the still gaze of the mute and hooded steersman, but being so far from Noxus had begun to dull his enthusiasm.

Markus paused and turned to look back along the path. His fellow pilgrims pushed past, like vacant-eyed cattle en route to the slaughterman’s hammer. What was wrong with them? Behind them came the steersman, gliding over the path as though his feet barely touched it. His robes were undulant with motion and suffocating fear flowered in Markus’s breast at the thought of being near this repellent figure.

He turned away, only to find himself face to face with her.

“Elise…” he said, and the breath caught in his throat. He instinctively wanted to push her away and flee this awful place, but the intoxication of her dark beauty overpowered any thought of rejection. His sense of revulsion passed so swiftly he wasn’t even sure he’d truly felt it.

“Markus,” she said, and the sound of his name on her lips was divine, sending a surge of pleasure down his spine. Her beauty transfixed him, and he savored every detail of her perfect form. Her features were angular and sharp, framed by lustrous crimson hair, like that of a highborn girl he once knew. Full lips and eyes of dark radiance drew him deeper into her web with the promise of raptures yet to come. A cloak of sable secured by an eight-pronged brooch, mantled her rounded shoulders. It rippled with motion, though there was no wind to stir it.

“Is something the matter, Markus?” she said. Her smoky tones soothed his fear like a balm. “I need you to be at peace. You are at peace, aren’t you, Markus?”

“Yes, Elise,” he said. “I am at peace.”

“Good. It would make me unhappy to know you were not at peace when we are so close.”

The thought of displeasing her sent a jolt of panic through Markus and he dropped to the ground. He wrapped his arms around her legs, her limbs slender and alabaster white, smooth and cold to the touch.

“Anything for you, mistress,” he said.

She looked down on him and smiled. For an instant Markus thought he saw something long, thin and glossy shift beneath her cloak. The motion was sickening and unnatural, but he didn’t care. She hooked a sharpened, obsidian-black fingernail under his chin and drew him to his feet. A rivulet of blood ran down his neck, but he ignored it as she turned and led him onward.

He willingly followed, all thoughts save pleasing her vanishing like wind-blown smoke. The trees thinned out and the path ended before a rocky cliff carved with time-weathered symbols that made his eyes sting. A shadowed cave gaped like a vile maw at the base of the cliff, and Markus felt his certainty waver as a sudden sense of dread uncoiled in his gut.

Elise beckoned him inside, and he was powerless to resist.

The interior of the cave was unnaturally dark and stiflingly warm, a clammy, fever heat that reeked like offal swept from a butcher’s block. A voice deep inside was screaming at him to run, to get as far from this hideous place as possible, but his traitorous feet carried him still deeper into the cave. A droplet from somewhere high above landed on his cheek and he flinched at the sudden, burning pain of it. He looked up at the cavern roof, seeing pale, grub-like shapes hanging overhead and swaying with frantic, trapped motion. In the translucent surface of the fresh-spun web, a human face screamed in mute horror against the suffocating, silken net.

“What is this place?” he asked, the veils of deceit woven around him falling away.

“This is my temple, Markus,” said Elise, reaching up to unfasten the eight-pronged brooch at her shoulder and letting her cloak fall away. “This is the lair of the Spider God.”

Her shoulders squirmed as two pairs of slender, chitinous limbs unfolded from the flesh of her back; long, dark and tapering to razored talons. They lifted Elise up as a grotesque, bloated mass shifted in the darkness behind her. Colossal legs heaved its corrupt body forward, the faint light from beyond the cave reflecting on the myriad facets of its eyes.

The vast spider’s bulk was enormous, furred and scabbed with wet, mutant growths. The terror of its nightmarish appearance shattered the last of Elise’s hold on Markus, and he fled toward the cave mouth with her cruel laughter ringing in his ears. Ropes of sticky web struck the rock beside him. Glutinous strands struck his flailing limbs and his pace slowed as he became more and more entangled. He heard the clicking of clawed limbs in pursuit and wept at the thought of her touching him. Yet more strands of her web snared him as something sharp stabbed his shoulder with astonishing swiftness. Markus fell to his knees, paralyzing venom spreading through his body and locking him in a prison of his own flesh.

A shadow fell across him and he saw the mute steersman with his arms outstretched. Markus screamed as the steersman’s hooded robe collapsed, revealing that this was not a man at all, but a writhing nest of innumerable spiders given the semblance of a man. They fell upon him in their thousands, and his screams were choked to muffled grunts as they crawled into his mouth, clogged his ears and burrowed behind his eyes.

Elise swung into view above him, borne aloft by the jointed limbs at her back. She was no longer beautiful, no longer even human. Her features were alight with a ferocious hunger that could never be sated. The looming form of her monstrous spider god lifted Markus from the ground with its razored mandibles.

“You have to die now, Markus,” said Elise.

“Why…?” he managed with his last breath.

Elise smiled, her mouth now filled with needle-like fangs.

“So that I can live.”

The doctor stumbles on the slick bridge. His hand reaches out for the worn guardrail as his foot loses connection to the wiring in his ankle. For a moment, he is disoriented. His vision slips from the wet floor plates of the commuter overpass to the unending assembly of metal, glass, and perpetual light that is Upper Central.

He blinks away the brightness and reconnects his augmented foot. Etched in the circuit there is a faded memory from the last user—it was expensive…

Also a size and a half too big, his own mind echoes back sourly. The mod is a belittling, secondhand thank you from a rich upper-sector patient too scared to pay traceable credits to his back alley physician.

The doctor has scrubbed the processor half a dozen times since acquiring it, but there are still old impressions trapped in the silicon, like a fingerprint that can’t quite be rubbed off. He grunts and shakes off the recollection. It is a discomforting reminder of what happens when common anatomy tries to plug into technology above its pay grade.

Water drips through the strands of the doctor’s thinning hair and gets behind his micron-glasses, blurring the lights on the far side of the bridge. Condensing moisture hadn’t been listed in the morning’s announcements. Then again, the doctor hadn’t been prepared for much of what landed in his lap today. He pets the bio-inert plastic sleeve in his breast pocket. Weapons grade. Enough for the retirement he had promised himself twenty revs ago.

The doctor is alone on the thick span of metal and fiber-reinforced plastic that connects the lower sectors to the mechanized lifts of Upper Central. The commuter crowd he had come down with has disappeared quickly into the darkened stalls and shaded side alleys of the transition market. He grunts again and tries to hurry, continuing his hobbled pace across the bridge. He wipes a hand over the wetness now running in rivers down his face. He is old, but even he isn’t old enough to remember real rain—only this sad concentration of a hundred million organic breathing cycles stacked one top of another.

The magnetic thrum of the lift behind him slows as the doors prepare to release a new tide of enhanced humanity into the market mazes. The doctor gives his retirement package one more pat and ventures a quick look back.

The pneumatics hiss open, revealing the elevator’s darkness and a sea of unknown faces. The doctor releases the breath he was holding.

“Transition level. Proceed with caution,” a digitized voice announces.

The crowd engages their light shades and pulls up hoods of synthetic duvetyne to shield them against the drizzle and Upper Central’s oppressive glow. Like well-trained mice, they scurry eagerly onto the bridge.

And that’s when the doctor sees it: a predatory metal shadow that stands a head taller than the surrounding crowd.

His breath fogs his glasses in a growing rhythm of panic.

The shadow steps into the ambient light. Its lean shape is all dark, wiry muscles of carbon fiber braided over heavy servos. His jet-colored chest plating swallows the glare from above. The doctor recognizes the matted fur collar, coiled like a feral cat, around a neck of dark, anodized steel. But it is the contours of the shadow’s featureless mask, defined now only by the drip of falling water and the reflection of the pulsating holo-signs, that rattles the doctor to his inadequate, common bones.

Khada Jhin.

The doctor tries to back away. He slips again on the metal plating. The flesh of one set of knuckles scrapes on the handholds of the bridge as he catches himself. The crowd, focused only on getting out of the wet and the light, pushes the doctor down, indifferent to the fear that is choking him.

The doctor scrambles on his hands and knees. Real and metal feet crush his fingers into the bridge grating. He can’t keep up. The swarm of people giving the doctor cover begins to thin, exposing him to his pursuer. He wipes the moisture from his eyes with shaky hands, his glasses lost in the chaos. Blood mixes with tears. His vision clears for a moment; the sight of a moisture converter promises salvation. The vent is belching murky clouds of stale, humid air from the lower sectors.

He reaches the sanctuary just as the last of the crowd breaks away. He cowers, wheezing through barely parted lips. The labyrinth of the transition markets is just a few meters away. If he can make it there he can disappear, away from the shadow that haunts him.

The moisture converter slows its labored breath. The last commuter vanishes into the transition market, revealing a mirror-glass display in an abandoned stall. In its reflection, the doctor watches the metal shadow raise a long pulse rifle to its shoulder. The faceless mask winks to life in a pixelated slash of angry red.

The doctor tilts his head up to the glow of the upper sectors—anything to escape the focus now taking aim. He squints his eyes and begs, but the neon future is not listening. Especially not to such a small and solitary creature.

Through the rain, the doctor hears the unmistakable metal click of the pulse rifle’s safety. His hand goes to his chest, shielding the one real treasure he carries. Through the plastic sleeve of the package, he can feel his heart racing.

As the unflinching light from above bears down on him, it fills the doctor’s animal brain with one last mortal thought.

There is nothing the future will not take.

“Freeze playback.”

At my last performance hearing, I asked the reviewing officers what it took to make it in Central. One of them said you had to be ready to trade a piece of yourself—that every upgrade would take you higher up PROJECT’s command line, but would cost some more of who you were in the bargain. Rather bluntly I told them I didn’t think anyone in their right mind would pay that kind of price. Not for a little clean silicon, and a fancy logotype.

They all laughed. And then they promoted me.

Now, the image in front of me wavered as a ribbon of static washed through it. The tri-dimensional hologram of the doc’s body was suspended in what would be his last living moment. His face was tipped up to the sky, his features a mix of fear and acceptance. Centimeters from the back of his head was an arc of red from a pulse rifle. Another tick or two forward in time, and the concentrated plasma would melt a hole through the man’s head.

“You stopped before the best part, Vi.”

Mosley, my newly assigned partner, stretched and yawned. What could have been muscle in his early years had lost the fight against gravity and sagged down to his middle. Fighting crime behind a desk had ensured he hadn’t missed any nutritional breaks.

But he sure is hungry. I noted for the third time that Mosley couldn’t keep his eyes off my promotion data cube. My new captain had plunked it down on the desk that morning for me, tossing in her hearty congratulations and my new beady-eyed partner.

I watched as Mosley finally gave in to his greed. He picked up the small cube off the vid desk and tossed it absently between his soft hands.

“You still haven’t installed these new subroutines yet?” His voice was artificially light as he fidgeted.

I cracked my knuckles.

My ATLAS gauntlets were on the desk. They were the bulky, standard issue of enforcers in the lower sectors. Most recruits upgraded double-quick to something that put more distance between them and whoever they’d been told to bring in, but I never minded getting close. Their blunt power fit me like a glove, too, and with no permanent install there was zero chance of someone else’s memories wandering around in the wiring. Still, I had gotten a few looks during my Central training-check, but the signing officer stopped smirking when my right hook caved in the chest of a titanium test dummy.

“You’re wasting your time anyway,” Mosley continued. Unfortunately, he thought me not answering meant that he should keep talking. “A bad doctor met a bad end. End of case. Captain wants to know when we’re going to put that lift back in service. Can’t hold up the commuters much longer.”

I ignored him. In the lower districts, our bad ends didn’t usually involve cranial de-ionization at a hundred meters with an unregistered pulse rifle. This had been a professional hit. I turned my attention to the A.I. in the room.

“Resume review. Step back.”

“Specify time increment,” the artificial voice taunted. Even the vid-scanner didn’t seem to want to get with the program.

I could feel the rough edge of frustration vibrating through me. I had only been clocked on since 0600, and the upper sector regulations were already more annoying than wading through knee-high scrap in the assembly levels.

What I needed was a good chase. Maybe hit a few things along the way. That would have been just fine. I grunted and blew the loose hair out of my face.

First day, Vi. Best behavior. Make friends. Do not punch anything. I repeated my morning’s mantra and took a deep breath.

“Three—no, four ticks,” I told the machine as patiently as I could.

The image wavered again, this time the holographic model clicked back ever so slightly. I tracked the light ballistic as it entered the range of the security feed outside the elevator. Inside the lift was darkness. The security feed there had been tampered with. The spark of light that hung in the air was all I had to go on.

“Based on ballistic entrance, extrapolate height of suspect and weapon type,” I said.

Lights flickered in the dark, humming as the calculation churned. A polygonal outline was traced in thin rays of neon. The killer was on the tall side… but other than that, I didn’t have much to go on from the rendering.

“None of this is real,” I grumbled. In the lower sectors, we didn’t work cases through fancy holo-vids. “How are we supposed to find anything staring at a computer model?”

“Query error. Restate question.” I wondered if the A.I. had been programmed to be patronizing. Or perhaps this one had taken on personality traits of its maker.

Mosley laughed. “That’s how it works up here, detective.” He hit my new title harder, trying to drive home that I was free of the lower sector grind. “An occasional rat slips through the cracks, but as long as the lights stay on above us, it’s all good. And look at it this way, we stay nice and clean.”

The half-hearted consolation had me gritting my teeth. I looked up from the simulation at Mosley. I couldn’t blame him. Most of his attention was still focused on my data cube.

“So are you gonna install this or what?” he asked.

I shut off the holo-vid. I wasn’t going to get any more useful data out of projected light. “I don’t trust upgrades,” I said quietly.

He finally looked at me. “Kid, this isn’t some lower-sector hand-me-down.” He flashed the cube at me. “This is the real deal. It came from upstairs.” The lights of the vid console reflected off it, highlighting the upside-down triangle of PROJECT’s corporate lab. “You know it’s fresh, or at least been properly wiped.”

It was clear Mosley wanted it. I rubbed the back of my neck.

“I just had one, less than a cycle ago,” I lied. “Don’t want to overcharge.” I picked up my old gauntlets off the desk. “Besides, these still work just fine.” I held out a hand for the data cube.

The strain of social politeness glistened over him in a fine sweat. I figured he was fighting the urge not to shove the subroutines in right then. But he just frowned, and handed it over.

“My next upgrade is due in a cycle, if you decide you don’t want it after all…” he offered.

I turned away and started walking toward the exit

“I’ll let you know,” I called over my shoulder. “Partner.”

“Hey, where are you going?” There was a fraction of concern in Mosley’s voice, but not much.

I slipped my gauntlets on and stepped into the lift.

“To get my hands dirty.”

I stared at the inoperative security sensor while the levels counted down on the high-speed elevator. Its micron-glass eye was clouded and dull. Whoever had come for the doctor knew Central would be watching. I rolled my shoulders and stretched my arms out behind me, taking advantage of the empty lift. Normally the large, boxy conveyor would be packed to the brim with Central workers with credit accounts that couldn’t afford the rent upstairs. The elevator was out of service to civilians until Central closed the case on the doctor’s death.

Until I closed the case. To Mosley, an unlicensed doc’s murder wasn’t worth holding up the daily commute and the efficiency of Central’s machine. The lift accelerated and for a moment I felt weightless. I flicked the inertial dampeners off in my gauntlets out of habit, letting their mass ground me. A tick later the elevator came to a full stop and shoved me back into my body.

The door in front of me slid open. A digitized voice called out into the humid air. “Transition level. Proceed with caution.”

I engaged my light shade, stepping cautiously out of the darkness of the lift and into the bridge’s ambient glow. As usual in the lower sectors, it was damp. I could feel the moisture bead on my neck where the tips of my hair touched my skin.

The span of connecting metal was empty and the vendor stalls where the bridge met the market were also vacant. A commuter lift out of commission shut down all the surrounding business. No chance running into any witnesses, even if they would be willing to talk to the police.

I walked out onto the bridge a few paces and turned to face the lift. Set on manual mode, the elevator and its darkness would wait for my command before returning to Central. Given the approximate height calculated, this was where the killer stood when they fired. A step more and they would have been seen by the bridge’s security feed outside the elevator. The moisture converter the doctor had tried to hide behind was nearly a hundred meters away. The killer was definitely not an amateur.

I looked at the deck plates of the bridge. There were a few scrapes in the metal. I crouched down to take a closer look. They were recent. Anything more than a day or two would have more noticeable water oxidation. The elevator and bridge had been closed since the murder. I scanned the depth, a string of numbers appearing in the bottom corner of my light shade. If the marks had been made by the killer, then that individual was significantly heavier than a normal augmented humanoid.

I could almost hear the sector bulletin now. Central reports chop-shop doc vaporized by armed auto-laborer, or something equally convenient.

An irregular air current pushed my wet hair against my face. Out of the corner of my light shade I could see the bridge was still empty. I sniffed. Ozone. The muscles in my shoulders tensed. I flicked the charging coupler in my gloves on and let one knee drop to the deck plating.

“You know, level six continuous stealth in a public commuter space is a violation of Central municipal codes,” I announced to the empty air.

A puddle of water trembled slightly in front of me. The vibration of power built inside my gauntlets. I launched one metal fist in a heavy uppercut, connecting against something solid. The smile barely had time to uncurl on my face before the wrist of my leading glove was caught in an unseen grip.

The momentum was too much. Locked in a tumble with an invisible assailant, I hit the metal grates of the bridge hard, my body paneling barely absorbing the impact.

The air wavered as my new friend uncloaked. On my back, I squinted to get a better look without the halo of light from above. It was a woman in weapons-grade elastomeric body armor. Long photon-bleached hair was gathered up in a tight tail, giving her a severe look. The light in her eyes was cold, and her wrist-mounted crossbolt was pointed directly at my forehead.

Her voice was a digitized growl, but I thought I heard a note of curiosity now that she had the upper hand—or rather, bolt.

She continued, “You knew I was a danger, and yet you still came at me.”

“Promotion’s been kinda stressful,” I said. “Maybe I just needed to punch something.”

“Your records list you were dispensed a PROJECT promotion cube this morning,” The woman gave my gear a secondary scan. “You haven’t installed the subroutine.”

“Whoa there, getting a little personal, aren’t you—”

“I have a need for it,” she interrupted.

“Are you over-charged?” I rubbed the back of my head with my oversized metal glove, roughing my hair into wet spikes. “I’m a tick away from hauling you off to Central.”

“You can try,” the woman said, her crossbolt still aimed at me.

I let out a bitter laugh. “Fair enough. How about a few pleasantries before we go exchanging gifts.” The sarcasm snapped in my voice processor. “Your name.”

“Classified.” The flatline of her lips broke into a predatory smile. “If I tell you, I would have to kill you.”

I decided she wasn’t the type to joke. I looked more closely at her suit and weapons and changed the subject.

“Doesn’t look like you need an upgrade.” I gestured to her wrist. “That pretty crossbolt alone is higher level than most of the pieces in Central’s standard arsenal.”

“I’m hunting something.”

“That makes two of us,” I said.

“The data cube.”

There wasn’t anything standard issue about her, but she still contained the one constant in Central: in the end, everybody wanted a piece of somebody else.

Before I could respond, a call came over my private comm. Static filled my earpiece.

“Vi? Vi, you there?” It was Mosley. Fear coated his voice like a cold sweat. “I-I think… I might need some backup… uh, partner…”

“Little busy, Mosley.” I read the time off the lower corner of my visor. “Shouldn’t you be clocked off?”

“Look, just come and help me out, okay?”

“I’m sure a local enforcer would be closer,” I said, watching the woman’s face in front of me. “They can handle—”

“I’m sending you my location.”

A pinprick of light showed up six sectors down. “The Heap’s a little out of Central’s jurisdiction, Mosley,” I sighed.

The Heap wasn’t so much a place as a rathole of unsavory outcasts. It was hard to track, as the congregation was seldom in the same spot for more than a cycle, mostly due to the fact it took residence in condemned structures about to be refactored. It was an easy place to pick up unregistered hackers, black market weapons, or “gently used” off-cycle upgrades. We tolerated its existence in the lower sectors because it made it easy to round up suspects when you needed them. But it was also an easy place to get yourself permanently wiped if you weren’t careful.

“I pick up jobs. You know, ‘off the record’ as far as the day job is concerned.” Mosley’s choked half-explanation was spiked with panic. It was hard to imagine his softness as hired muscle. “Listen, I know we just started together, but this guy’s going to kill me. I don’t have anyone else to call.”

Damn. “On my way. Stay—”

The connection clicked off abruptly. I hit the bridge with a gauntleted fist, denting the metal grating, and looked up at the weapons-grade mystery still standing over me. Her crossbolt hadn’t moved a micrometer.

I got up, taking my chances that she probably wouldn’t shoot me.

“I’ve got to go. There’s a lift down to the lower sectors on the other side of the bridge. If I disable the safety and manually ride the speed control, I can probably make it before my partner spills his drink on the wrong person.” I turned to leave. “Consider this a warning,” I added dryly. “Get that weapon of yours licensed, or next time I’ll have to write you an infraction.”

“The Heap will have your man dead before that lift reaches the next level,” the woman called after me. “How about something a little faster?”

An arcing crackle and a waft of ozone turned me around.

A personal combat hyper-cycle decloaked. The humid air was starting to condense into rain again, but the water repelled off the bike’s black aerographite panels. I could feel the pulse from the magnetic drive as she started it up.

I gave a low whistle. “That is definitely not registered.”

“Correct.”

“You don’t look like the kind that gives out free rides.”

“A ride for that promotion cube,” she said evenly, revving the engine. “Think of it as a speed upgrade instead.”

I looked into the woman’s eyes. She could have just shot me and taken what she wanted.

“I don’t trust upgrades,” I said.

I walked over and settled myself behind her on the bike.

“You shouldn’t.” She tipped the cycle’s wheel over the side of the bridge. “By the way, the name is Vayne.”

Six sectors passed in a blur of vertical neon. I tracked Mosley’s position in my light shade to keep from vomiting my last nutri-pack all over the back of Vayne’s pretty ride.

Vayne stashed the cycle on a fire egress overlooking the Heap, the only tell being a faint, acrid tang lingering in the air. I watched the coming and goings of the evening crowds through a pair of ultra-V binoculars.

It was busier than usual. It looked like someone rang the dinner bell for every mangey tomcat in the neighborhood.

“He’s in there.” I turned to Vayne and pulled the data cube from one of the tactical pouches on my hip. “Here. Before I forget my bus fare.”

“An honest cop. Not many of you left in the wild.” Vayne took the cube and sized up the latest incarnation of the Heap. “This rev seems less upstanding than the last one.”

I nodded. “Feels like it was only yesterday I was breaking up fistfights in joints like this.”

“It was.” Vayne’s cold smile was back. She checked the powercell of the larger crossbow she carried. “I take it you don’t want to go in the front door.”

“Where’s the fun in that?” I said. “You don’t have to come.”

“You’re not the only who feels like hitting something.”

I shrugged and walked around the back, examining the building’s structure for the non-load bearing walls. The building was condemned and I needed to be careful. It wouldn’t do Mosley much good if I brought the whole thing down on top of him while he was still inside.

I zeroed in on a sweet spot and charged the coupler in my gauntlet, hitting the wall with every kilogram of the day’s frustration.

The old carbon honeycomb crumbled with two solid hits. The hole was big enough to pass through in three. I brushed off the bits building as I stepped through into the darkness.

I had gotten lucky. It was a storeroom stacked floor to ceiling with aftermarket limbs. None of them looked remotely clean. But then again, actually buying personal upgrades fresh off the factory line was something for people in the sectors far, far above us.

I pushed aside some plastic sheeting to reveal a larger room pulsing with dim blue and violet fluorescents. The bass-heavy music vibrated in my chest plating. I gestured to a raised seating area.

“That him?” Vayne had hacked my internal comm and privacy-linked it with hers, so I heard her voice clearly in my mind. It was still low, but lacked the artifacts of her voice processor. She nodded at a bulky shape seated by himself at a low-light table.

“Hacking a Central officer’s private comm is a jailable violation,” I replied. “I’m not going to ask where you learned to do that.”

Vayne smiled. I looked over to see Mosley’s beady eyes reflected in the soft glow in front of him, and nodded.

“Yes, that’s him.”

I let just a little bit of energy cycle through my gauntlets, lighting the broken flooring in pools of orange. The Heap residents in front of me knew those lights and stepped aside with no questions.

I pulled a chair over to Mosley’s table. The table light flickered and I noted that the booth had also recently served as a makeshift medical bay for neural surgery, evidenced by the small bucket of teeth sitting next to Mosley’s drink. Those without Central sanctioned data ports jacked into whatever nerve bundles were available—the ones beneath the molars were especially easy to tap.

Mosley looked up at Vayne. “Y-you didn’t say you were bringing a friend, Vi.”

“An upgrade,” Vayne corrected.

I leaned forward, putting both gloved fists on the table, nearly upsetting the tooth bucket. I flipped my light shade up so I could look Mosley in his real, fragile eyes.

“Thought I might need some backup in a place like this. You don’t come to the Heap unless you’re looking for something. What were you looking for, Mosley?”

The knuckles of my gauntlets itched with unspent energy.

“He didn’t want what I had… and then I told him about your upgrade.” Mosley’s voice wavered and his eyes watered. “Figured if he was interested, I could get you to sell it to me. He said… he said if I could get you down here…”

“Where’s your buyer?” Vayne scanned the crowd of miscreants milling around.

A thin beam of red light flicked on, centered directly on the hollow of Mosley’s chest.

A preternaturally calm voice came over the building’s old crowd comm link. “Right here, my dear.”

I looked over to see Vayne’s face had erupted into a snarl. Every lower sector enforcer knew that voice pattern. “Jhin,” she growled.

“Special Lieutenant Vayne, what a delightful surprise. You’re looking so much better. Sad, what happened to your squad, but you do wear them so well. That crossbolt upgrade is especially nice.”

“Jhin? Your buyer is Khada Jhin, Mosley?” I looked at the simpering fool that was my newly assigned partner. He nodded meekly. Jhin was a notorious augment hacker with a taste for high-clearance upgrades. Word was, he had been a black-market tech that had almost gotten completely wiped in a rough job. Severe personality fragmentation. Last bulletin I downloaded said he’d been taking the shiny bits of other people ever since. Even if he hadn’t started out fragged, there couldn’t be much sanity left after so many pieces of other people had been plugged into him.

And it sounded like he and Vayne knew each other from a previous engagement.

“This day keeps getting better and better,” I said under my breath.

Jhin laughed. The psychopathy under the distortion sent a chill up my spine.

“I will break you piece by piece, you virus.” Vayne said to the disembodied voice. She was wire-taut.

“Maybe later, my dear. This is about what I want.” Jhin’s voice faded to a low, unnerving hum. “The upgrade.”

“It’s not hers to sell.” Vayne withdrew the data cube and held it up.

“Disappointing,” Jhin sighed. “I had so hoped you’d installed it first. Ah, well—I will have to rewrite the third act.”

There was a high-pitched whine as an arc of red plasma seared the air between me and Mosley. Without my light shade up, the high intensity light left me visionless. The background noise of people and tech stopped and was replaced with panic. The smell of fear and seared silicon filled my nose. My eyes teared up and I blinked to clear the neon burn.

Through the after-images, I could see the knuckles of one gauntlet were singed and there was a hole in Mosley that went right on through to the other side. I didn’t need a Central forensics kit to tell me it was the same weapon that melted the doc on the bridge.

“That rat is here,” Vayne said over our comm link, “and I’m going to kill it. He wants this.” She tossed me the promotion cube. “Try not to get shot.”

I caught the upgrade as Vayne vanished into stealth mode. The Heap was nearly empty. Nothing like a pulse of de-ionizing plasma to get people moving. I charged the coupler in my gauntlets and their amber glow lit up the darkness.

Jhin’s mechanized laugh echoed off the walls. There was a hiss of static in the crowd comm.

“Ah, ah, ah, detective. A cat in gloves catches no mice,” he purred.

“Khada Jhin,” I announced, “you are wanted on multiple counts of murder.” I watched the upper areas of an open loft, looking for the tell-tale red light. “And you melted my partner, too.”

“You didn’t like him anyway. What was it you said?” There was a crackle and another hiss as an audio file was searched. “Ah, yes. Here we are...”

The hissing stopped. I heard my own voice in the crowd comm. “I don’t trust upgrades.”

“Nice trick.” I stepped around the discarded piles of old tech, continuing my hunt. “I have what you want.”

“Your new friend didn’t like the gift?” More laughter echoed around me. Movement grazed the corner of a piece of mirror-glass that had cracked into a web of broken reflections. “She doesn’t like upgrades either. Did she tell you about her last partners? About her team?”

I did not reply. I continued to advance toward his last position.

“They all died.” I could hear Jhin’s dark smile. He was delighted, if a man that was mostly machine could still feel anything like that. “Especially Special Lieutenant Shauna Vayne. They rebuilt her of course. She was special.”

“Who?” I asked, hoping if I kept him talking, he would be more prone to mistakes. “Who rebuilt her?”

“PROJECT of course, you silly kitten. They rebuild all of us.” His cackle broke the high frequency and distorted painfully in my ear. “But they may have a much harder time with you when I’m done...”

A cylinder of metal shot out of the darkness. I dove out of the way—It hit a pile of debris, a small explosion ripping through the scrap, before bouncing and exploding against a second pile.

“Did she tell you how they died?” I could hear Jhin’s excited breathing over the comm. I stood up slowly, to find a pinpoint of red light centered on my belly. Fifty meters away, I could read the tall, metal shadow taking aim.

Jhin cackled with laughter again. “It was—”

“A trap,” Vayne’s voice came over our internal link, her outline decloaking right next to him.

I took off at a run, watching as Vayne’s crossbolt lit the dark once, twice, three times, but each time she tumbled away as Jhin returned fire. His weapon was less accurate at point-blank range, but still blew out the nearby walls quite effectively.

Vayne leapt towards him, taking the metal shadow down to the ground. I was almost to them.

“Are you ready, my kittens?” Jhin hissed. “It’s time to see how well you run.”

A digitized voice announced, “Manual override. Demolition sequence engaged. Sector refactoring imminent.” Amber lights and slumbering klaxons awakened under the grime of the condemned building. Ill-fated sectors like this one were regularly sealed and collapsed to provide new foundations for the towering structures above.

I couldn’t hear if there was more to the warning, as a series of small explosions began to rip through the Heap. Metal whined as concrete supports gave way.

Jhin and Vayne broke apart, and she rolled to her feet. I stopped short, completing the standoff. It was the first time I had seen Jhin up close. He reset a servo in his shoulder with an unsettling, mechanical pop. I don’t think there was any flesh left to the man. He had no face, only a spider-like drone seated on a neck of steel.

“Go on, lieutenant. Shoot me.” Jhin opened his arms wide as if he would embrace Vayne. “It’s what you’ve always wanted.”

She unslung the larger crossbow from her back, its metal arms unfolding from the barrel.

“Vayne!” I shouted over the din. “We have to go! Now!”

“This hunt is over,” Vayne growled, taking careful aim. “You are a dead man.”

“If only I were still merely a man,” Jhin said, too calmly.

She fired the bolt. It hit him in the chest, knocking him back off his feet and spearing him into a concrete column. He was pinned. Jhin’s metal skeleton gave a shocked vibration as it de-powered. His spider-like face went dark.

“Vayne!” I looked at her, but she didn’t see me. She didn’t see anyone but Jhin.

A tick later, the glossy black drone that was Jhin’s face lit up with spots of red neon. Servos disengaged and it scuttled down the body, looking to make its escape.

“Smash that thing!” Vayne yelled. She fired small bolts of plasma from her wrist, but the drone dodged them with insect-like reflexes.

It landed on a nearby column. I punched the concrete hard, the web of plastic mesh exploding, and the drone was launched towards the ceiling. Vayne continued shooting at the spidery thing as it skittered into a crack in the corner, and disappeared into the darkness.

Another piece of the ceiling came loose over Vayne’s head. There was no time to ask permission—I tucked my shoulder and ran at her, knocking her through a blacked-out window into a neighboring structure.

We landed hard, a shower of glass raining down. I watched in disbelief as the stacked weight of Central crushed the current Heap into a pile of nothing.

“Hell of a first day,” I murmured. I flexed the fingers of my gauntlets open to make sure they still worked. I was still holding the promotion upgrade. I offered it to Vayne. “I believe this is yours.”

She got to her feet, seething with waves of anger. The light in her eyes focused into points of intense rage. There was an arc and a hiss, and a final waft of ozone filled the air as Vayne vanished into the night.

“You took a piece of my vengeance from me, detective,” her voice echoed in my mind. “An upgrade cannot settle that debt.”

The area around the collapsed structure is quiet . The rough blanket of crushed carbon and bent steel crumbles, giving way to a small, insect-like creature emerging from the chaos. Black spider legs push out from a collapsed burrow. The gloss of its carapace is dusty, but intact. It turns to the cardinal directions, reorienting itself to the world. Spatters of condensation start to fall, washing it clean, but never clean enough.

A tall, metal shadow steps over the rubble and kneels before the insect drone.

The alloy spider crawls up a leg of braided carbon fiber, past a dusty and matted fur collar, and seats itself on the spine of anodized steel. Bathed in the ambient, ever-present glow from the upper sectors, the drone’s circuitry reconnects with its body.

The metal shadow raises its arm, pushes aside the fabric panels of the vest it wears, and digs a finger into its own body plating. The probing exploration extracts a short bolt from the carbon fiber mesh. The pulsing tip is still intact. Strong fingers carefully crush the bolt’s casing, revealing a thin ribbon of circuitry. With a surgeon’s precision, the ribbon is connected to a small port behind the creature’s face. The smooth, black contours of the mask flash to life in a pattern of red light.

A digital humming builds from within the metal shadow, erupting in a clipped harmonic of sadistic laughter. It echoes, bouncing back and forth across the sheer verticality of the sector until it reaches the very top.

“Through my work,” Jhin whispers to the maze of neon above. “You shall transcend.”

“You the marshal?” the river man said, his features an unreadable patina of lowland dust and dried bottlebrush needles, caked together by mud from the bottom of an old lakebed. He stood in the doorway of Lucian's private train cabin, small and large at the same time, dressed in gold-panning rags that had been picked from a dead claim jumper on the outskirts of Progress.

The river man didn't breathe in or out. Didn't have to.

Lucian had heard about them before, the river men, but never seen one up close. They needed moisture or they'd dry out, never venturing far from the mudholes and gulches they spawned in. If a traveler was unlucky enough they’d try to fill a flask with a river man's putrid water, or dig a pan into the silt where one lived. Without warning, it would snap up like an alligator, pulling you into the suffocating muck with wide, earthen arms, and just like that you were gone. Another ghost of the Old West.

“Not anymore,” said Lucian.

Lucian looked at the river man and the river man looked back, the gunslinger comfortably resting against the floral draperies of his cabin. Flecks of light occasionally entered through the curtains as their train rattled along, illuminating the river man's dark, piscine eyes, nearly hidden beneath the earthen cracks in his face.

“I want your badge,” he said.

Lucian nodded. A federal's badge would get the thing past Fort Nox, away from its government monster hunters, and down by way of caravan to the mangrove swamps just south of Bandle. Probably thought it could take up shop there, now that more and more east coasters were settling the low desert. Didn't make the creature's gamble less desperate, but Lucian appreciated when the stakes were clear.

“Must not be many of you left,” said Lucian.

“Ain't too many of anything left,” said the river man.

The boxcar's springs clicked once as they compressed against a couplet of uneven rail lines, and in the instant that the cabin shifted, the river man spread his arms wide, the mud on his face giving way to dozens of needle-sharp teeth as great spines burst from his shoulders. Before the springs clicked again a gunshot rang out, a thin ray of hellfire erupting through the side of the train and into the setting sun, and before the river man hit the floor Lucian's sidearm was already back in its holster.

The creature's head, split down the center and burnt beyond recognition, smoldered with the faint scent of sulfur and blackthorn. Its body contorted on the ground, flame roasting its membranes from the inside, and Lucian straightened his hat as he leaned back into the darkness of his room. The darkness shuddered softly around him, and smiled.

No one came to check on Lucian. No one came to take the dessicated body of the river man. The two traveled in silence together, door open, all the way down to the last stop at Angel's Perch.

And then out to the preacher who spoke with the dead.

Progress had been alive with whispers that this was the lawman what tangled with the devil and lost, and now he was headed up to New Eden to meet with the holy reverend. Both were ill portents in the Old West, so nobody would deny the aims of the man with the grinning shadow. They didn't need another Twin Reeds or Redriver, entire towns swallowed up and gone with some foul twist of happenstance. They needed Lucian out of their settlement and fast, and would give him anything he needed with all speed.

This had been the game ever since his last job with the federals, when they'd sent him out to reckon with the devil himself and drag him back to civilization. They would ‘put the devil on trial’—or that was the play, at least—and prove to the world that the frontier was safe to claim.

Of course, Lucian knew there wasn't just one devil, but the public thought better in singulars. He’d seen how the desert was crawling with strange creatures from every end of the world: demons in clean pressed suits, angels holed up in mountain crags, witches and ghosts and all manner of beast that might cloak itself in moonlight and tear an unsuspecting pilgrim to ribbons. The western natives and their alien weaponry; the skull-faced colossi who fed on ripened flesh; the mechanical men built by human hands, long gone rogue. And always, always devils.

This devil, though, was different. He went by many names—The Reaper, The Slaughter God, Old Turnkey, and Great Horn. He collected souls, or so the stories said, and went from town to town conducting his dark business, tearing the spirits out of the living and leaving their flayed skins behind. A creature of the Old World and demon of the wild frontier who, like his kin, sated his terrible hungers on an endless river of fresh-faced pioneers. Enough so that folks were starting to take notice, and for a government aimed on expansion, folks taking notice was bad for business.

Three marshals were dead at his hands, all told. Lucian had known two of them.

“They call it Thresh,” his handlers revealed. “Think you can catch him?”

Lucian looked over the sketches, noting the monster’s brazen, bovine skull, alight with the flames of all seven hells. He figured the lantern hanging curiously nearby was the source of its power, and if he could get in a clean shot, the fight would be over before it started.

Yet it was never that easy with devils, especially devils with a federal bodycount. He remembered tangling with a particularly nasty specimen near Chuparosa that moved with the speed of a desert storm, kicking up whirlwinds as it went. It was too fast to hit with a bullet, and if it hadn’t been for the timely intervention of his partner, Lucian might not have made it out alive. This hunt required backup.

“Not alone,” said Lucian. “I’ll need Senna.”

“Last stop, Angel’s Perch,” the conductor uttered, so gently it was almost a whisper. The heat of the journey had shriveled the river man’s corpse nearly into rawhide, but in the long shadows of the cabin a worse creature had perched itself upon Lucian’s seat.

It was smoke and fire, teeth and flames, its arms the artillery of a demon general cast up from the bottom of the abyss. It had the rough shape of a man, were a man made from campfire ash, with the glowing sigil of the federal marshals inverted upon its breast. Its legs were the incinerated spires of ancient, burning elms. Its red heart pulsed with the rage of all the earth.

“God,” spoke the conductor, not knowing which god he was invoking. The thing stood on its curious, spindling legs, leaning against the train’s still air. Its face seemed to peel apart, mouth broken in horrific ecstasy, as hellfire illuminated a ragged, mocking grin.

In that moment the ash fell away, and Lucian stepped out from the darkness.

“Sorry, friend,” he spoke. “Didn’t mean to scare you.”

The conductor quivered in silence for a long while before Lucian brushed past, down the steel halls of the cabin car and out into the twilit evening. He figured the man would make a good story of it.

Angel’s Perch. A boomtown at the edge of civilization, where the trees grew tall and the air was thick with the scent of honey and wine. No one knew what lay beyond the ring of gargantuan pines at the foot of the mountains west of town, but they did know they had enough guns and men to hold off anything the far frontier could throw at them. Or at least they assumed. The creatures who made a home of Angel’s Perch would only reveal so much about what lay beyond, and no other living thing what had ventured that far west had returned sane, or at all.

Lucian made his way through the Perch’s bustling train station and into the center of town, past no less than three snake oil salesmen, each hucking the artificial magic ointments of the industrial east, and a saloon girl with the body of a cobra. Her milky eyes were hidden behind a veil, lest a paying customer turn to granite before they ever sat down to drink.

Near the mouth of main street, beyond the loggers and lamplighters, the general stores and the brothels, and the reclusive gunsmith rumored to be a fallen deity, there stood the town’s famed saloon. Popular myth held it had been in business since the founding of the settlement, or perhaps even before. It was called The Earthly King: be you man, woman or beast with a fate to outrun, its kingdom was open to you… as long as you had cash to spare.

It was, in many ways, the kind of place where a man might lose himself. But Lucian didn’t have much of himself left to lose, always feeling the tug of invisible strings against the weight of his soul, the shadow grinning behind him. He couldn’t stay for long.

Humans had little knowledge of settlements in the far west, and creatures living in town wouldn’t spill their precious secrets without a fight. The natives, if they spoke at all, would never reveal anything about anything, the few who tolerated settlers busying themselves with their strange machines.

Lucian had to rely on friends. Most could have been counted among the federal marshals, but they didn’t take kindly to demons, and like it or not that was what Lucian was fast becoming. He had to reach even further back, before the government contracts and the cobblestone streets of St. Zaun, to his days as a brash young gunfighter for hire. There he’d met many friends who lived and died with a revolver in their hand, but one figure remained as steadfast and obstinate as always, too big to kill and too old to die. He wasn’t a man per se, but he’d been fighting long before the first ships landed on the continent, and would probably be fighting long after everything else was dust and whispers.

Lucian stepped through the wide-set doors of the King and, for a moment, the bar grew quiet as its unsightly patrons sized up the harrowed stranger. “I’m looking for the longhorn,” he said, and they at once turned back to their card games and beer, the high shrill of an out of tune piano crashing against a dozen incomprehensible hoots and hollers.

Lucian soon spotted the longhorn at the far end of the bar—his massive bulk was hard to miss, even amid the carousing of the King’s clientele. Despite his frame he liked to keep to himself, though it was not uncommon for cocky young fighters to call him out over some perceived slight, hoping to down the beast for fame and glory. This never ended well, and more nights than not a boisterous challenger would have their skull pulverized with a single, swift butt to the head.

Alistar was a minotaur, easily ten feet tall and six feet wide. If you picked a fight with him, you got what was coming.

“Longhorn,” said Lucian.

“Marshal,” replied Alistar.

“I’m making my way to New Eden,” said Lucian.

“Aren’t we all,” replied Alistar, as Lucian sat beside him.

Alistar was old, now—few of his kind remained, and he would no doubt outlive them all. He spent his days as a glorified thug for other, weaker creatures, and his nights on a bar stool built for beings half his size.

The pair gazed solemnly ahead. Not a man came to Angel’s Perch without a reason, and fewer still walked through the doors of The Earthly King unless that reason was dire. It was the drinking hole of renegades and dead men, a drain where the aimless slowly circled downward, and those seeking a final battle spilled their coin before vanishing into the wilderness.

Lucian was heading deep into the uncharted northwest, where no trains ran and vicious gods walked among the trees, seeking a rumor on borrowed time.

Both knew the stakes, and the favor, though none had been asked.

“What do you think she’ll say?” asked Alistar. “When you get there.”

“I don’t know,” answered Lucian. “I don’t rightly know.”

The longhorn sighed into his drink, a thick aluminum tankard about the size of a child. He never had liked long goodbyes.

“Let me draw you a map.”

Lucian had first met Senna at the end of a gun—her gun—during a bloody shootout in one of Buzzard Gulch’s most squalid drinking parlors. Not that shootouts in Buzzard Gulch were uncommon, but this one had involved some fool bounty hunter drawing on an Outsider with his back turned. It got ugly.

The Outsiders, so they claimed, were from everywhere and nowhere at once, creatures in clean pressed suits whose love of gambling had made them infamous among outlaw clans and desperate homesteaders. Beating one meant riches beyond compare, conjured from nothing and guaranteed by an Outsider’s wax seal—itself worth a small fortune. Losing was another matter, as they accepted no wager less than a man’s most deeply cherished possession. Farms, watches, children, souls… a favorite knife—the bet was always steep, even if you didn’t know it yet.

Rumor had it this specimen had beaten Jeremiah James, a millionaire railroad baron Lucian had once done small jobs for. Jeremiah was a giant, and a mean one at that, who’d posted a sky-high bounty the moment he lost whatever dire prize he so foolishly put up for collateral—enough to bankrupt him twice over.

And as almost every gunfighter knew, once a reward swung out of the piss-pot, gully stabbing, prairie-shotgun-ambush fare of Buzzard Gulch’s wanted board and into the realm of jilted industrialists, bounty hunters would come calling. The whole lot of them loved money and killing, and not much else.

The hunter drew with little warning, and instantly the room went quiet. The Outsider sipped his whiskey with a calm that suggested the absence of all intent. Senna, a handful of federal marshals and the longhorn were present, among the town’s usual collection of heavily armed scoundrels and murderers. Everyone waited to make a move.

“Now, friend,” the hunter cooed, her voice sugar tinged with blood, “I know you’ve got what I came for. Turn it over, and everybody walks out the way they came in.”

The Outsider said nothing—his face was as placid as a porcelain doll, unmoved and unperturbed by the threat of his assailant’s twin six-guns. He’d known she was coming the whole time. Probably knew before she even took the job. But in the heat of the low sun, plied with drink at the edge of the world, it was hard to tell who was itching for a fight, and who was just bluffing.

The hunter broke the silence with a bullet, and a heavy round exploded from her pistol and into the center of the creature’s chest. The Outsider’s body billowed outward, the hole rippling black smoke in the shape of crows, and from the smoky mass a great, vicious claw burst into a table of poker players. Cards, chips, and searing blood sprayed across the room as the hunter started unloading.

Lucian drew on the hunter, the marshals drew on Lucian, and the longhorn tore through the bar to get as many pieces of the action as time would allow. Every gun in the place lit up, and as bullets ripped through fastgun and marshal alike, Lucian took cover behind a pool table—where he found himself in quite a different predicament.

“Hello, stranger,” said Senna, her gun squarely aimed at Lucian’s forehead. Her eyes were the color of a gentle prairie, mottled with specks of black, and Lucian almost forgot he was speaking into a loaded firearm.

“Ma’am,” he replied.

“I assume you choose to associate with these upstanding individuals?” she asked, as the lead-riddled body of a barkeep collapsed limply beside them. Black smoke drifted softly out of his mouth.

“Some of them,” Lucian answered.

Senna ducked as another shell ripped past the backside of the bar, taking a chunk of a pool table with it. The motion was so quick Lucian almost didn’t see it—then again, he’d never seen anyone dodge a bullet. Certainly not with such confidence, and Senna had plenty to spare.

She smiled warmly, her badge glinting in the light. The star of a chief marshal, one of the deadliest quickdraws in the known world.

“Well, to each their own,” she grinned, gingerly confiscating Lucian’s pistol. “Don’t worry, I’ll give it back… if you’re not dead when this is over.”

And with two quick shots from cover, she swung back into the fight, leaving Lucian wondering what had just happened.

The rest of the shootout was a blur. At one point the bounty hunter ripped some sort of oil-soaked object from the Outsider’s roiling body and ran out the saloon doors, and the creature went screaming after her. With most of the clientele dead and nobody left to shoot, the survivors went across the street to finish their drinks. Buzzard Gulch never found itself wanting for corpses or liquor.

It was there, the marshals like to say, that Lucian decided to hang up his hat and hunt monsters for the government.

Though they’ll also mention it was less about saving people from beasts, and more about a pretty girl who dodged a bullet with a smile.

The longhorn’s map had been useful, if sloppy. Lucian had followed it on foot for what seemed like a hundred years, further north from Angel's Perch than most living souls would ever dare to venture. Here colors seemed more vivid, the air itself breathed with strange magics, and when Lucian drifted off, he could swear gargantuan creatures lurked just beyond the edge of his vision, watching. Yet Lucian did not feel afraid. He made camp as the sun dipped over the horizon, and steeled himself. The shadow grew strongest at night.

He would sense its evil dragging him downwards, pulling him out of himself. Soon Lucian’s skin would itch and flake away, his mouth twisted into a hungry grin. He would feel the flames, hear the demon whisper in his own voice. He would drown in the crackling inferno of indigo sagelands erupting into a sea of hellfire. And he would feel the anger. The terrible, ageless anger, the shame, the disgust. Hateful bile born the from the darkness of his own soul. Only then would the battle begin—the demon assuming Lucian’s body, while what was left of the man tried to wrestle it back.

Lately, the transformations were beginning to last longer than Lucian liked.

He felt his skin begin to prickle, and watched as it cracked against the cool night air. Lucian rested himself against an old log, as comfortably as he could. His muscles froze in place—awaiting the change, and the struggle, and the promise of morning.

His eyes glazed over. The sky twisted into deep crimson—overtaken by a perpetual sundown, ringed with flame, and the trees around him stood as ghastly totems against thick, otherworldly fog. Only the campfire illuminated the world as it was, the greens and browns of patchy grassland. The change had begun.

Or if not the change, something worse.

Deep in the forest, a train whistle sounded. It rang hollow, a warped and yawning sound that spilled out from the demonic vision’s umber mist. This was something new, a creature Lucian had not prepared to face—and locked in combat with himself, he could not turn or draw. He tried to stand as thick metal legs splintered the primeval woodlands like they were toys, dragging a colossal torso awkwardly behind them. He could not move, nor turn his eyes from the glowing core of hungry coals, or grisly flesh, or smoke from bulbous locomotive valves that lined the shoulders of a long-dead giant.

A devil, Lucian thought. Another devil.

The hulking thing stepped before him, still obscured by fog, and bent its massive legs down until a familiar face leaned into view of the firelight.

“Lucian,” it spoke.

Lucian recognized it—him—instantly. The millionaire, long thought missing or dead, who so many years ago had wagered his own heart in an Outsider’s game of chance.

“Jeremiah?”

The old industrialist chuckled. He was hideously malformed—gone were even the last glimpses of his humanity, replaced instead by infernal steamwork and the gutted skeletons of a dozen ruined cargo trains. His belly swelled with heat of a devil’s furnace, and the campfire between the two travelers seemed to draw towards it, as though Jeremiah were breathing it in.

“I have shed that name, my good marshal,” he spoke, his voice melting over the land as Lucian sat paralyzed before him. “You may call me Urgot now, for that is the name I have taken.”

“I know what you are wondering,” he continued. “Understand that I was laid low in my efforts to civilize this desperate land, and divorced from my plans for a great steel empire. No, I made a mistake of hubris—I took a deal, as you once did… and paid so, so dearly for it.”

The colossus motioned towards where his heart might have been, now nothing but a tangled mass of white-hot copper. The rumors had been true. Jeremiah had died.

“It was not death,” he said, as if snatching the thought from the air. “Though by the time my treasured property was returned, it was far too late to call myself alive. My body was abandoned at the edge of the desert by some… associates… who have come to know the dire price of treachery. Yet as you are aware, there are many devils… and unlike the monster you failed to destroy, I was visited by one with a particularly tantalizing offer.”

Urgot was close now, the campfire pouring endlessly upwards into his stomach. The grinding of a thousand starving gears echoed from somewhere within him, and Lucian imagined a devouring maw, chaining the sky down before swallowing it whole.

“I know you will lose the duel within yourself, marshal. I did. Brought low by my losses I turned to common banditry, and the darkest hollows of my sadly mortal imagination. When you follow me down that trail—and you will—I intend to meet with the creature wearing your body. We have… a great many things to discuss.”

With that, the enormous metal legs pulled Urgot away, until even his illuminated hellmouth disappeared from view. The sky buckled, and broke—bitter sun replaced once more by cold, lightless midnight, and Lucian was alone.

The shadow would claim him soon.

He had to move quickly.

Lucian had been careless.

Forgetting what a devil was, the kind of power one could wield, he and Senna had rushed into an alpine tundra on horseback, determined to take Thresh with a single shot. Lucian was one of the greatest marshals the outfit had ever seen; Senna was the greatest. They were brave, and impetuous, and in love—and Thresh had been waiting for them.

The devil called Thresh was not an ordinary monster of the high frontier. Ravenous and cruel, he had lived for eons before the men of the Old World landed on his continent’s eastern shores.

The cosmic beings who birthed the gods grew old and died, their ancient bodies fell to earth to become the mountains and valleys and primordial seas, but Thresh continued on, his unnatural life sustained by a bottomless, ravenous thirst for destruction. Before spoken word could give shape to his name, all living things knew his face—the skull of a beast, hateful and burning, gazing balefully down upon them. His malice was woven so deeply into his ancient form that it could never be purged, and he walked across the broken bodies of the vast things he had outlived, devouring the souls of their sad and forgotten children.

Lucian didn’t even see his opponent before a razor whip sliced cleanly into his shoulder, knocking him from his mount and crippling his shooting arm. Senna leapt for her lover’s pistol, but she too was struck low by the devil’s power, walls of flame erupting from the earth as laughter echoed from his bleached, lidless skull. His voice rattled within their heads, a deep and primordial howl, and Lucian saw in his mind the beast sinking his blade deep into Senna’s throat. The fight had lasted only seconds, and already Thresh had won.

The devil stood over Senna, flames within his ancient body twisting against the chill air, and he drew a jagged blade from somewhere inside of his ragged, billowing coat. Lucian had seen the skinned corpses of a dozen frontier towns on the way to Thresh’s den, and the piles of twitching muscle where unlucky wagon trains had drawn his hellish gaze. Lucian was prepared for the devil to take him, and always had been—but he would not let Senna share the fate of a young and foolish gunfighter.

And perhaps, momentarily amused after so many years of dark, sumptuous slaughter, that was why Thresh offered him a deal.

Such a simple thing, Lucian had thought. So easy to accept.

His soul for the life of the girl.

Then the shadow took hold, the hate and shame within the young marshal coming alive, hijacking his senses, his body corrupting before Senna’s pleading eyes. The bargain had been struck, the pact sealed. As Lucian’s vision turned to flame, he watched the monstrous devil he had been sent to hunt turn to Senna’s defenseless body—laughing hideously as he ripped out her heart.

The holy reverend of New Eden was little known or understood, but the rumors of his supposed power had spread even as far as the eastern territories. A man who could speak with the dead, as many liked to say, though few did survive the pilgrimage into the unexplored northwest to see if the rumors were true. Those who struck out for New Eden never returned—and now, looking down upon the enclave from a nearby hill, Lucian understood why.

Untouched by the elements and unspoiled by the beasts of the forest, the modest church commune was small and thriving, surrounded by bountiful crops and quaint homes that seemed to swell with life. Children ran across dirt roads as shopkeeps and townspeople passed peacefully by, far removed from demons and Outsiders, gorgons and giants, and the machinations of bandit clans that should have long ago picked every building clean. It was a place from a storybook, bright and clean. Lucian wondered for a moment if he had lost the duel with the demon already, and this was his reward.

He descended from the hill, and the villagers turned to see the newcomer in their midst.

“You’ve come to meet the holy reverend?” asked a fresh-faced young man.

Lucian nodded.

“Then hallelujah, stranger,” he smiled. “You’ve come home.”

No town in Lucian’s memory accurately compared to the sights of New Eden. A bakery filled his nostrils with the scent of fresh bread, as young women danced and fiddlers played in the street. Songs of salvation drifted from mead halls that had never for a moment known the Old West’s violent madness. Ordinary people greeted him as he passed by, offering him food and water, asking where he came from and where he was going.

The demon raged inside him, but in the light of day Lucian could overpower it, control it. And there was something about this place that calmed him, in a way he hadn’t felt in a long, long time.

“No one fears death here,” someone spoke. Lucian turned to find a kindly old man, dressed in a modest preacher’s frock, possessing a youthful glint in his now-faded eyes. “A fear of death is a fear of life. We accept death for what it is, and live a life free from the snares of its uncertainty.”

Lucian liked the way the man spoke. His speech lilted softly, like a song.

“I don’t know if I believe that,” replied Lucian.

The man smiled. “Of course.”

He continued on, walking in no particular direction. Lucian followed.

“We live in a land of angels and demons. We see their influence every day, for good or evil, and the calamities they wreak. The world is old, but many of our gods are still alive, watching over their progeny even now.”

He motioned to the center of town, where a picturesque church with white walls and a blue roof stood. The building was immaculate—even the stained glass windows seemed to glow, polished to a radiant sheen. Villagers milled in and out, talking and laughing, as children crowded around their legs. The building could have been erected yesterday.

“And they bestow the faithful with many gifts. The gift of life, the gift of love.”

The man turned to Lucian, a knowing smile upon his face.

“And the gift of death.”

Something rang curiously in Lucian’s ears. It was the way the man said death, the way the sound was shaped by his lips, much like a secret whispered to a lover. The passersby, too, had become still, their eyes closed as if dreaming, and they only opened them again when the odd melody had finished washing over them.

“Meet me inside, when you’re ready,” he said. “They call me Reverend Karthus, and I have so much I want to show you.”

The interior of the church was clean and white—its pews were polished, its pulpit modest. Karthus shooed the rest of his congregation outside, and they looked lovingly at Lucian as they passed. Some whispered a passing “welcome,” others clapped their hands together in quiet reverence. To Lucian, New Eden seemed to be a sleeping child that hadn’t yet awoken to the monsters in the world outside its door. The fact that it stood at all was testament to whatever powers Karthus claimed to possess, real or not.

Deep within Lucian, the shadow raged. He once again felt the itch beneath his skin, the flames bubbling up from some dark corner of his soul, and his mouth twisting into a forceful, mocking grin. But something was different—the creature was frightened, and Lucian couldn’t understand why.

“My, my,” Karthus spoke, a smile still crossing his face. “We can’t have that now, can we?”

The reverend picked up a small, black-bound book, emblazoned with the symbol of a golden key. With a gentle wave and some intangible words, the demon was suddenly silenced—but not before Lucian felt something else, something the creature had not done before. It whispered softly in his ear, the low and crackling whimper of a dying fire.

“They are monsters.”

“In a land of angels and demons, I wonder what you will become?” continued Karthus, resting a faded stole over his shoulders. The reverend then motioned for Lucian to kneel before him, and to Lucian’s surprise, he did.

“Why do you fight this battle? What do you have to gain?”

Lucian did not answer. The light had begun to fade, as New Eden’s hopeful music slowly twisted into a strange, lopsided dirge. Karthus nodded slowly, his smile widening, and Lucian kept his eyes locked ahead. A curious skittering echoed from the floorboards behind him. It was a sound he knew well.

“We give so much of ourselves to fear,” spoke Karthus, his voice growing deeper and darker. “And you have given most of all.”

Energies swirled about the old man—luminescent blues and greens in the rough shapes of friends Lucian had lost, things he had killed. They danced against the rafters of the now decrepit church, its paint peeling away to reveal black, moldering rot.

Lucian sensed the presence of at least a dozen shapes behind him. Some were crouched on all fours, others clambered softly over the warped and ruined pews, and still more waited outside the church, their human disguises melting away. Lucian now knew why the town lay untouched, why its people seemed so good and kind: they weren’t people at all. Or if they had been, they’d been dead a very long time.

Lucian’s hands moved slowly towards his pistols.

The reverend now loomed over him, lifting off the ground as he gripped the book with the golden key, his sermon exploding into a rapturous chorus of overlapping voices: “Our souls will be purified in the cool waters of death! Our broken spirits will be repaired, the things we lost shall be returned!”

The creatures behind Lucian crawled forward, slavering and starved, as Karthus floated ever upwards, his arms outstretched, ascending into the musty air. Images of Lucian’s past twirled all around him, men and women whose deaths played out again and again.

A familiar voice brushed against his ear, almost a word, but not.

“Do you hear her?” asked Karthus.

Lucian listened.

The sound was crackling sage, the ashes of a campfire, the striking of a match. It spoke of Senna’s death, and how Lucian had fallen into despair. For years the ruined marshal had wandered from place to place, dead in everything but name and emptied of all joy. As each day had passed, another small, cruel thing filled his mind, and the shadow had grown wild within him, his inner darkness yearning to seize control. Any offer of peace had to be investigated, no matter how dangerous or foolish.

Lucian had heard of a man who could speak with the dead, and gone without question. He had given himself to a shadow that took the shape of his own monstrous hatred, and allowed it to rule him utterly.

Lucian found himself alone with the demon—away from the church, and far from the streets of New Eden. The two stood apart, facing one another, in a moonlit field of white flowers. Lucian could feel the cool air against his skin. He could see the distant lights of a town, high in the mountains, and the moon hanging low in the sky. Beneath the demon the flowers burned, but the creature stood calmly, its face twisted into a familiar, ravenous grin.

Lucian breathed. So much of himself had been lost to the shadow—to Thresh, and the spectre of the unforgiving west. But he still ruled his own soul, half-corrupted as it was, and the shadow was a part of it—a part of him.

It drew closer, slowly, each step burning more flowers away.

Lucian reached out his hand, and the shadow rested a charred limb upon it. It whispered: “Would you cast your enemies into the fire?”

Lucian was silent. His skin crackled at the shadow’s touch, but he said nothing. It already had its answer.

It whispered once more, now in Lucian’s own voice, as its ashen body bonded with his mortal flesh: “Then we will go together.”

“Do you hear the love you have lost?” Karthus sang.

Lucian drew his pistol. “No.”

His arm elongated, stretching into the hellish cannon of the demon within him, and a ray of unholy flame ripped through Karthus’s forehead. As the preacher’s body fell, Lucian spun around, melting into shadow as a screaming ghoul leapt at him from one of the broken pews. He fired again, obliterating the creature, and launched a third shot into the crowd of its shriveled, wide-mouthed brethren—the fiddlers and bakers, dancers and farmers now shrunken, twisted, and hollow. The bullet exploded among them, blasting their bodies apart, and at once a swelling sea of horrors flowed in through the doors, windows, and broken cracks in the church’s ruined facade. New Eden had risen to greet him.

Lucian’s body gave way to the shadow, and it lifted its arms high as a stream of liquid fire tore through the crowd of monsters. The demon shrieked with joy, its voice melding with Lucian’s own, and it soared into the air as hellfire sprayed in every direction. Burning wood fell from the ceiling as shots tore outward through the church’s brittle walls and across the sprawling wastes of New Eden, setting the town alight. Ghouls shrieked in terror, their hordes turned to flee, but the demon was quick—springing through the crumbling roof and into the delipidated streets, firing the cannons of hell into the creatures’ still-open mouths.

Then, Lucian surged outwards from within the demon’s form, its body bursting into ashen mist. He clapped his pistols together as the undead hordes scattered in every direction. Artificial magics woven into the gunmetal bubbled, their intricate filigrees spiraling outward as the barrels hungrily fused. A concentrated beam of light surged from somewhere within them, cutting across the plains as screaming undead melted beneath its fury.

Soon the light faded, and the metal unwound itself as Lucian scanned his surroundings.

He waited. The shadow within him was quiet now. No more ghouls lept from the burning, derelict homes, or rose from the beds of rotten crops. Karthus lay dead as his church collapsed around him, flames consuming even the memory of his fell magic. Though from the corner of his eye Lucian swore he could see the old preacher, grinning among a crowd of New Eden’s townsfolk, as the burning roof finally caved in over their heads.

The former marshal turned back towards civilization and began to walk, the shadow grinning close behind.

He’d been close to speaking with Senna again. Closer than he’d ever been. But Lucian no longer needed the comforts of old rituals and incantation—he would see his love once more, one way or another, the day he was lowered into the dirt. That was the rightful end of a true and valiant gunfighter. Until then, there were terrible things lurking in the darkness, which could only imagine the demon soon to knock upon their doors.

Out there, somewhere in the wild expanses of the great frontier, Lucian had a devil to kill.

Quinn ran through the forest, moving softly and swiftly. It was past dawn, though the sun had not yet risen over the mountain peaks to the east. The light was cold and pale, casting everything in shades of gray. Quinn fogged the air with every measured breath.

There were no paths through the untamed woodlands that spread like a blanket across the foothills of the Eastweald Mountains. Ferns and ivy concealed moss-slick rocks, rotting logs, and wild tangles of roots, but Quinn was more at home here than she was in any city or town, and was not slowed by the rough terrain. Despite her speed, there were only a handful of rangers in Demacia—all of them trained by Quinn herself—who would have had any hope of tracking her, so light was her step.

She caught a flicker of movement to her right, and dropped into the undergrowth, instantly motionless. Her eyes were golden, unblinking, and intense, missing nothing.

For ten breaths she remained still, all but invisible among the brush. She glimpsed movement again, and tensed... until she saw it was a greathorn stag. Big one, too, with a rack of antlers easily two arm spans across. Already its fur was starting to change, turning pale and silvery in anticipation of the rapidly approaching winter.

Some said that encountering a greathorn was a good omen. Quinn was not sure that was true, but she’d take it. These days, Demacia needed as many good omens as it could get.

In recent months, Quinn had been helping the Eleventh Battalion hunt rebellious mages—emboldened by the king’s murderer, Sylas of Dregbourne—through the wildlands of northern Demacia. Her rangers were too few, however, and the Eleventh’s strength did not lie in chasing an enemy that didn’t stand and fight. There had been running battles and skirmishes, but it was like trying to grasp smoke.

Quinn had lost three rangers in the last weeks, and their deaths weighed heavily upon her. Thus, it did not sit well with her that she had been ordered away from the hunt for rebel mages, and tasked with escorting Garen Crownguard and a detachment of the Dauntless Vanguard on some diplomatic mission beyond Demacia’s borders. She was due to meet up with them three days hence, on the south side of the Greenfang Mountains.

It hardly seemed the time for such an exercise, and Quinn would much rather have reassigned this mission to one of the others in her command—Elmheart, perhaps. However, the writ of order, delivered by swiftwing, had named Quinn specifically.

And the seal of High Marshal Tianna Crownguard brooked no argument.

She watched the giant stag a moment longer before pushing herself back to her feet. The greathorn saw her now. It held its ground, unafraid.

“Honor and respect, noble one,” she said, with a nod.

It was a long way to the Greenfang Mountains, but the skies were clear. She was confident she would get to the rendezvous point ahead of schedule.

The sun had finally climbed over the peaks, with golden light filtering through the canopy and dappling the forest floor, when the wind changed. It carried a distant, familiar scent.

Smoke.

A keening cry cut through the morning air. Quinn glimpsed Valor above the canopy, through the branches of the immense firs.

“What do you see up there, little brother?” she breathed.

The azurite eagle circled twice, then struck eastward like a blazing blue arrow loosed toward the rising sun. Without pause, Quinn turned and followed.

A short time later, she stood atop a ridge, where a rare break in the trees revealed a valley below. It was partly cleared, and scattered livestock could be seen in dry-stone partitioned fields. Under other circumstances it would have been a peaceful, picturesque view, but Quinn’s gaze was drawn to the smoke rising from the dark shape of a cabin. Her expression hardened.

She began picking her way down the steep incline, descending into the valley.

Quinn warily circled the smoking cabin. She’d known bandits to light fires like this to lure unsuspecting targets, and so she would not approach until she was certain it was not a trap.

She had her repeater crossbow in hand, bolts loaded. It was a one-of-a-kind weapon, lovingly crafted. It was nowhere near as powerful as a traditional heavy crossbow, but she could wield it one-handed, on the move, and without the need to reload after each shot, which made it worth ten times its weight in gold to Quinn.

She frowned as she came across a series of tracks on the ground. There’d been a lot of activity around this cabin in the last day or so, but it seemed she was alone here now. Quinn approached cautiously, crossbow at the ready.

The cabin was a humble abode, but had been built with obvious care. She pushed open the heavy front door—still smoldering, and hanging off its hinges—and stepped over the threshold.

A simple ceramic vase stood upon a fire-blackened hardwood table, holding a handful of wilted wildflowers. The remnants of hand-sewn curtains, mostly burned away, hung mournfully from window frames. Those curtains had been drawn shut, Quinn noted, and the surviving shutters pulled closed. The fire had started after dark.

On a solid oak door frame, Quinn noticed tiny notches carved into the wood. That brought a memory long forgotten, of Quinn’s parents doing something similar to record the growth of her and her brother.

This was not some rarely used hunting cabin—this was a family’s home.

Chairs and cabinets had been overturned and smashed. Drawers had been ripped open, and their contents strewn across the floor. Nothing of value remained. On the wall above the hearth, Quinn noted the sun-bleached outline of a shield.

As she turned, something in the ashes glinted in the sunlight streaming through a hole in the burned roof. Kneeling, she saw an object—a coin, perhaps?—wedged between the hearth and the blackened floorboards. Quinn holstered her crossbow, and used the tip of her hunting knife to pry it free. Likely, it had fallen down there, and been lost—she’d only seen it because the fire’s heat had twisted the floorboards out of shape.

Finally, it came loose, and Quinn saw it was a palm-sized silver shield that bore the winged sword emblem of Demacia. There were words engraved on its reverse: Malak Hornbridge, Third Battalion. Demacia honors your service.

It was a Shield of Remembrance, given to the families of soldiers who fell in the line of duty. Quinn had delivered more than a few of them to grieving spouses and parents herself.

Pocketing the medallion—it didn’t feel right to leave it amid this destruction—Quinn continued looking through the cabin. In what was clearly the family bedroom, which had escaped the worst of the fire, delicately woven garlands were strung across the rafters above the main bed.

In a corner, a smaller, child-sized bed had been overturned, and Quinn’s eyes narrowed as she knelt beside it. Charcoal markings were drawn onto the floorboards where the cot had once stood. The symbols were barbaric, of a sort not generally seen within Demacia. Bones and small pebbles were placed at intentional positions upon the runes, and she was careful not to disturb any of the lines. She had seen such runes before...

Valor’s piercing call sounded, high above, drawing Quinn away from the strange and unnerving display. Keeping low, she returned to the cabin’s main room, and pressed her back against a wall. With a quick, careful glance, she peered through one of the burned-out windows.

A cloaked and hooded man was approaching the front of the cabin, a rangy, pale gray hound loping along at his heels. The dog gave a low growl, but he silenced it with a word.

Moving soundlessly, Quinn repositioned herself in the shadow behind the smoldering front door. The man stepped inside, then froze, like a deer tensing as it feels an unseen predator’s eyes upon it.

“That you, boss?” he asked the seemingly empty room.

Quinn smiled. “What gave me away?”

The man turned, lowering his hood. He had the look of someone who spent most of his time outdoors, his face tanned and his short beard unruly. Just outside the threshold, the hound whined in excitement. “Don’t see many azurite eagles anymore,” he explained with a grin.

“True enough,” admitted Quinn.

“It’s good to see you, boss.”

Quinn knelt on the ground outside the cabin, ruffling the hound’s ears. It had been over a year since she had last seen the Greenfang warden, Dalin, and his faithful dog, Rigby.

The warden had given Quinn his assessment. He’d arrived at the cabin only an hour before her, and after a quick look around, had set out to speak to those living nearby.

“A woodsman saw a group moving through the trees last night, about half a mile up the valley,” said Dalin, pointing. “The moon was full, else he wouldn’t have seen them at all. Raiders, it looks like.”

“Setting a cabin on fire is not a good way to remain unseen,” observed Quinn. Rigby rolled onto his back, looking up at her with adoring, eager eyes.

“Perhaps they were more concerned about alerting anyone to their approach than remaining unseen afterwards? Or perhaps they lit the fire to draw attention to it, while they slipped off?” Dalin glanced over his shoulder. “Careful now—I think someone’s getting jealous.”

Valor was staring at her, unblinking, from a branch of a dead tree.

“Valor knows he’s my one true love,” she said, looking at the azurite eagle, her eyes smiling, even as she vigorously scratched the hound’s exposed belly. “Has there been much banditry in these parts of late?”

Dalin shook his head. “Been mercifully quiet, until this. The unrest spreading from the capital has got people nervous, but the sight of so many soldiers has driven most of the brigands into hiding. Small blessings, I guess. I hear you and yours have been busy, though, back west. Bad times.”

“Bad times,” agreed Quinn. Her jaw clenched, and she changed the subject. “A soldier’s widow and her child lived here. Anyone know where they are?”

The warden gave her a look, then shook his head with a laugh. “I shouldn’t be surprised you already figured that out,” he said. “The woman’s name is Asta. Her man died fighting mages when everything flared up in the Great City. She lives alone with her daughter.” He glanced back at the cabin, and sighed. “I didn’t see evidence of bloodshed when I looked around here earlier, but it doesn’t seem good.”

“No friends or family nearby who they could be with?”

“Seems not,” said Dalin. “The woman’s foreign-born. Keeps to herself. Her husband was from Lissus, back west. No family in these parts.”

“Foreign-born?”

“One of the independent nations to the east, apparently. No one seems to know exactly where.”

Quinn grunted and stood. She turned around on the spot, considering, then looked back toward the forest. She paced toward the tree line, studying the ground as she went.

“Here,” she said, coming to a halt. Dalin joined her, and she indicated a number of confusing, overlapping scuff marks. “They came out of the forest, and stopped here.”

Dalin dropped to his haunches, nodding. “At first I figured they were watching for the right moment to approach,” he said. “But then I saw these tracks here.”

Quinn circled around the tracks that Dalin indicated, careful not to let her own footsteps obscure them.

“A second set, lighter than the others,” she murmured. “Our widow and her child.”

“My guess is she confronted them—then they looted and burned her cabin.” Dalin’s eyes narrowed. “I couldn’t find the woman’s tracks returning to the house...”

“They don’t,” agreed Quinn, her expression grim. “Looks like they took her with them. Her and the child. See there? The little girl’s footsteps stop. Someone picked her up.”

She looked back at the cabin. “But these raiders didn’t approach the cabin, either. The ones who burned it approached from the other side. It’s possible the raiders split into two groups before their attack.”

Dalin folded his arms, thinking. “There’s something else,” he said. “I don’t know if there’s any truth in it, but it seems at least some folk ’round these parts believe the woman was... different. A mage.”

Quinn thought of the runes drawn onto the floor underneath the child’s cot. They seemed more like archaic superstition than sorcery... though she could not be certain. This was not her area of specialty.

“The local gossip is that the raiders were allies of Sylas,” continued Dalin, “and they came to collect one of their own. It could explain why it doesn’t look like there was a fight, but why burn the cabin?”

Quinn frowned. She was missing something, she was sure of it. “Could be retaliation,” she mused, “for her husband fighting against mages. Perhaps they were looking for some payback.”

“Killing him wasn’t enough?”

Quinn shrugged.

“Whatever the case, I’ll be going after them,” said Dalin. “They’re at least half a day ahead, but if they’re carrying the child, they’ll be slowed.”

Quinn glanced at the sun, judging the time and how far she still had to travel to rendezvous with Garen. It would be cutting it fine, but...

The woman, Asta, had been made a widow by the mage conflict, and it seemed likely she’d been abducted. Quinn could not in good conscience ignore that.

“I’ll come with you,” she declared. “There’s at least five of them, by my count. You’ll need help.”

“Mighty pleased you happened by, boss.”

“Let’s get going, then,” said Quinn. “And don’t call me boss.”

Technically, as a ranger-knight, Quinn was Dalin’s superior, but rigid hierarchy and honorifics had always made her uncomfortable.

“Whatever you say, boss,” Dalin said with a wry grin, knowing exactly how uncomfortable it made her. “C’mon, Rigby! Let’s move!”

Rigby loped alongside his master, tongue lolling seemingly of its own volition, while Valor sliced between the trees, flying low overhead.

The majestic azurite eagle streaked past the two running rangers, tucking his broad wings to avoid branches. In the blink of an eye, he was gone, disappearing into the distance. A few minutes later, Quinn and Dalin found him perched on a branch, waiting. The eagle watched impassively as they ran below him. Only when they were almost out of sight did he launch back into flight, zigzagging at blinding speed, once again shooting by them.

It wasn’t hard to follow the outlaws, particularly with Rigby chasing their scent. There were five of them with the widow, and they’d made no attempt to cover their trail, choosing speed over stealth. The rangers tracked them over a ridge to the north, into a neighboring valley of unbroken forest. The trail then cut due east, following an icy stream that writhed its way down from the mountains.

For hours, Quinn and Dalin ran, closing the distance. The land gradually rose as they climbed higher into the foothills. They didn’t speak, only pausing to check that they were still following the trail. Rigby happily bounded back and forth on these occasions, snuffling through the undergrowth, while Valor watched the dog aloofly.

When the sun was just past its zenith, Quinn stopped, kneeling in the soft loam beside a few boulders. Some moss had been scraped away from one, most likely by a careless boot. Quinn inspected it, and picked something off a flat rock, looking closely.

“They broke bread here,” she said. “I’d say it was only an hour ago. Maybe a little more.”

“We’re getting close,” said Dalin, sitting down and sucking in deep breaths. Rigby was taking the moment’s respite to lap from the nearby stream, while Valor watched. “We’ll overtake them by sundown.”

“Not fast enough,” said Quinn, balling her fists in frustration. “They’ll be over the border by then.”

“You think they’re trying to leave Demacia?”

Quinn shrugged. She pulled a hard trail biscuit from her pack, bit off half, and tossed the remainder to Dalin. He caught it deftly and nodded his thanks. The rations didn’t taste the best—in truth, Quinn could imagine sawdust had more flavor—but they’d sustain them. After a moment, she broke out a second biscuit, and launched it at Rigby. The pale dog snatched it out of the air, jaws snapping, devouring it instantly.

“It’s possible,” she said. “If they were just trying to hide, they’d have done better turning north. There are chasms and ravines up there that would take weeks to scour.”

Dalin chewed his tasteless biscuit thoughtfully. “The closest border crossing’s half a day’s march to the south, though,” he said. “And there’s no way they’d get through. The gates have been locked since the king’s murder. There’s nought but sheer cliffs and watchtowers this way.”

“Unless there’s another crossing we don’t know about,” said Quinn. She glanced down at the dog, now panting beside Dalin. “You think your master can keep up, Rigby, or should we ditch him?”

The hound looked at her quizzically, turning his head to the side.

Dalin snorted. “Funny,” he said. Then, with a groan, he pushed back to his feet.

A short time later, Quinn and Dalin stood on a bluff, overlooking a ravine. A massive rocky spire rose above the forest canopy in the distance.

“There,” said Dalin, pointing.

Climbing around the circumference of the spire was a group of people. It was hard to make out any details—at this distance, they looked like ants—but it was clear that they would reach the border before the rangers.

“If I can get in front of them, I can slow them,” said Quinn.

“The only way you’d be able to do that is if...” started Dalin, but his words trailed off as he saw Quinn staring at him, a half smile on her face.

“Oh,” he said. “Right.”

Quinn soared through the air, borne aloft by Valor. The eagle’s bladelike talons were latched tightly around her shoulders, and she squinted against the biting wind as they sailed over the trees.

“Take us around to the north,” Quinn shouted as they approached the spire. She leaned her weight in that direction, and Valor obligingly angled their descent.

The raiders had circled around to the south of the spire and disappeared into the trees, but Quinn didn’t intend to follow their path directly. No, she needed to get in front if she was to slow them long enough for Dalin and Rigby to catch up. Two rangers against five were not great odds, but it was better than confronting them alone.

Valor continued to come down, and Quinn lifted her legs to avoid hitting the highest branches. The spire loomed before them, and Valor banked around its northern flank, gaining a little height as updrafts buoyed them. Then the rocky ground rose rapidly to meet them. Spying a likely place to land, Valor shifted their approach, and angled his wings back to slow their descent.

Two powerful beats of his wings, and Quinn’s feet touched down, ever so gently.

“Thank you, brother,” she breathed as Valor released his grip. Then she was running again, into the cover of the forest. The azurite eagle, unshackled by her weight, took to the air once more.

Quinn leaped over tangles of roots and burst through stands of ferns and hanging lichen. She ran along the length of a fallen tree, using it as a bridge to traverse a cascading waterfall, before bounding off it and charging up the rise on the other side.

This was not her usual, mile-eating pace that she could sustain for hours on end. This was a full sprint, and her heart was hammering in her chest. After racing up the hill, she hurled herself to the ground, concealed among the bracken. Elbowing herself to the edge of the rise, she peered down into the hollow bellow.

A lone figure appeared, bow in hand. It was a man, bearded and bedecked in furs. A bronze torc around an upper arm glinted in the dappled light filtering through the trees, and Quinn glimpsed swirling warpaint or tattoos on his pale flesh.

The ranger-knight instantly knew this was no Demacian rogue mage or bandit. This was no Demacian at all.

The raider paused, surveying the way ahead, and Quinn felt his gaze flit over her. She resisted the urge to crawl back, knowing the movement of the ferns would draw more attention than if she remained motionless.

Seemingly satisfied, the outsider lifted a hand and gestured forward before continuing on. Quinn stayed where she was, waiting as the rest of the group appeared. One of them had a gleaming Demacian shield strapped across his back. That was the shield that had been stolen from above the cabin’s hearth—a shield that had belonged to a noble soldier who’d fallen in battle. Seeing an outsider wearing it as a trophy filled her with a cold-burning anger.

It wasn’t hard to pick out the widow. While the others were bedecked in furs and leather, she was wearing a simple but elegant woolen dress, rolled up to free her legs. A fur shawl was wrapped around her shoulders, and she wore a pair of practical, tall boots. She looked exhausted, stumbling forward with her head down. With a breath of relief, Quinn saw the child, a toddler with a mass of golden curls, asleep in the thick arms of one of the marauders.

The ranger-knight watched them for a moment longer, then crawled slowly backward, a plan formulating in her mind. She knew where they were going, for she’d been here before, years earlier.

In her youth, she and her twin brother, Caleb, had roamed the wilds around their home of Uwendale, several days’ march to the northwest. The pair had often disappeared into the wilderness for weeks at a time, exploring the forests and mountain foothills, hunting for their own food, and sleeping under the stars. Their father had been none too excited about it, but their mother had always encouraged them. She was a big believer in the importance of self-reliance and resourcefulness, and both children had accompanied her on hunts from a young age.

Their father had come around eventually—it probably helped that the family larder was always well stocked with venison and boar after they returned—though he never stopped worrying for them.

And it turned out he’d been right to worry.

Quinn had been here only once, a month before Caleb’s death. And so she knew that if the outsiders continued on their path, they’d have to make their way up through a narrow ravine, half a mile farther on.

Running low and fast, hidden by the crown of the rise to her right, Quinn sprinted on a path parallel to the raiders. She made it to the ravine before they did, and ran up the side. She’d just set herself up at the top of it, her back against a concealing rock, when she heard the first of the outsiders begin his ascent.

Quinn took measured breaths, slowing her thumping heart. She left her repeater crossbow holstered, but drew her large hunting knife. The blade was long and broad, almost the size of a shortsword.

The outsider was good—he made almost no noise as he climbed steadily up the rocky gulch—but not good enough to realize Quinn was waiting for him. As he hauled himself up the final, steep climb, Quinn stepped from concealment. She was to his side, and he didn’t see her until the last moment. He tried to turn, drawing back the string of his bow, but he was too slow. Quinn struck him in the temple with the pommel of her knife, and he dropped without a sound.

She hastily dragged him out of view. He was bleeding, but he was alive. With swift, practiced movements, the ranger-knight bound the unconscious man’s wrists, before yanking them back and tying them to his ankles. Then she resumed her position, back against the rock. She drew her crossbow, and flipped the knife around in her other hand so that its point was down.

With a quick glance, she peered down the ravine before ducking back. Three raiders were climbing the steep rise below, with the widow between them. The one Quinn presumed was their leader—he was bigger than the others, and alone among them wore chainmail under his furs—was at the front. He was the one who bore the Demacian shield upon his back.

Quinn ground her teeth in frustration. There should have been four of them left. Where was the last one? Was he simply acting as a rearguard, or could he be approaching from an unexpected angle? She closed her eyes, and took a deep breath. It was too late to change her plan. She’d deal with him if and when he appeared.

As the leader of the outlanders neared, Quinn stepped out in front of him, crossbow leveled at his throat.

It took him a moment to register her presence. His eyes widened and he halted, reaching instinctively for his axe, hanging over his shoulders.

“Don’t,” warned Quinn. She wasn’t sure the man would understand her, but the shake of her head was a universal language, and the outlander’s hand froze.

He was a big man, two heads taller than Quinn, and easily twice her weight, but she had the higher ground, and was unintimidated. She’d brought down far bigger prey in her time.

His hair was straw-colored and long, hanging in elaborate plaits, and his beard, streaked with gray, was bound with bones and stone beads. His eyes were like slivers of slate, and he stared up at her without blinking.

There was a shout of alarm from the raiders half hidden behind his bulk, but the big man barked something over his shoulder in his own clipped, harsh language. He looked past the ranger-knight, searching. Probably trying to see what support she had.

His gaze returned to her. He licked his lips, and Quinn knew he was judging the chances of closing the distance without taking a fatal bolt.

“You speak my language?” asked Quinn. “You understand my words?”

The outlander stared at her for a moment before giving a slow nod.

“Let the woman and child go,” said Quinn, “and we won’t have to see how long it takes you to bleed out from a bolt to the throat.”

The big man snorted in amusement. “You’ve been tracking us? Alone?” His voice was deep and heavily accented. “You may kill me, if you are lucky, but my men will tear you apart. I do not think I will do as you ask.”

“I wasn’t asking,” said Quinn.

The outlander grinned. Two of his teeth were made of gold. “There is steel in you, Demacian. I like that.” His smile dropped abruptly. “Where’s my scout?”

“Alive,” said Quinn.

“Good. He is my brother, by oath. My wife would be angry if I had let him get killed.”

“What’s going on?” the widow called up.

The leader of the outlanders barked a response in his own language, though Quinn did recognize something amongst that garble of words: Asta. The widow’s name.

The woman begged. “Please, I don’t want any—”

“Be silent!” shouted the leader, half turning, his face flushing a deep crimson. When he looked back at Quinn, his expression was angry. “You should not have tried to stop us by yourself.”

Out of the corner of her eye, Quinn saw the fifth raider rising to his knees atop the ridge to her left, bow in hand. Quietly he nocked an arrow and drew the string, weapon leveled at her.

Quinn, still holding the leader’s gaze, gave him a smile. “What makes you think I’m alone?”

There was a flash of blue, moving like a thunderbolt, and the bowman gave out a strangled cry. His arrow, loosed in haste, sailed into the undergrowth, and he fell back, clutching at his bleeding hand.

The widow screamed, and everyone broke into motion.

One of the warriors threw a hand axe, sending it hurtling end over end toward Quinn. She swung aside, dodging it, but that was enough of a distraction for the leader. He sprang forward, swinging his axe off his shoulders. Quinn loosed two bolts in quick succession, but the first missed its mark, slicing harmlessly by his head. The second took the raider in the meat of his shoulder, embedding itself there, but it did nothing to slow his charge.

With a roar, he brought his weapon around in a lethal arc. It was a heavy, double-handed axe, and the strike was meant to hack Quinn in two. She swayed back from the wild swing, then reversed her momentum—she was far quicker than the outsider, for all his power—and stabbed him in the chest. It should have been a killing blow, delivered right to the heart, but the tip of her knife caught in his chainmail, stopping it from sinking deep.

The big man drove Quinn back with a swinging elbow, sending her reeling, then brought down his axe in a heavy overhead blow. Diving to the side, Quinn avoided the strike, and let loose a bolt at close range as she rolled. The bolt plunged into his flesh just above the knee, and the warrior collapsed with a growl of pain.

Quinn was on him instantly, knife at his throat.

That gave the other raiders pause, and they traded glances, unsure what to do. One of them was still cradling the woman’s child, though the infant was now wailing loudly.

The widow scrambled forward on her hands and knees. “No, no, no,” she cried. “Please, don’t hurt him!”

Quinn blinked. “You... know this man?” she asked, looking at the exhausted, tearful woman before her.

“Of course I do,” the widow said. “He’s my brother.”

“My husband was in the capital when the king was murdered,” said the widow, Asta. She held her daughter in her arms, and was gently swaying back and forth, trying to calm her. “He was defending the palace. The mages killed him.”

“I’m sorry for your loss,” murmured Quinn, as she bound a length of cloth around the outlander leader’s leg. His name was Egrid. His chest wound was only minor—his chainmail had saved him from worse harm there—and he’d torn out the bolt from his shoulder himself.

The other warriors were sitting on rocks nearby. One had some ugly cuts on his hand, and was staring balefully at Valor, perched on a branch overhead, while the one Quinn had tied up was rubbing gingerly at the side of his head.

Standing near Quinn, a deep frown on his face, was Dalin.

“I met Malak when a diplomatic contingent came to my homeland, six summers back,” said Asta. “In Skaggorn, I was a chieftain’s daughter, but when Malak returned to Demacia, I came with him as his wife.”

Quinn finished tying the bandage, then sat back to inspect her work.

“You are fast, and strong, and you stitch wounds well,” said Egrid with a grin, his golden teeth flashing. “Marry me, and come back to Skaggorn with us, yes?”

Quinn didn’t even dignify that with an answer. “But why try to leave Demacia now?” she asked Asta. “You must have known that would bring trouble down upon you.”

“My people left the Freljord many generations ago,” said Asta, “traveling over the mountains and settling in Skaggorn. Yet the old blood still runs in my veins. My grandmother was a seer, one you would call a mage, or a witch. I do not have that power, but what if my daughter develops the sight? I have heard what is going on. She would be taken from me. The Frost-Bringer knows what would happen to her. I could not risk that, so I sent word to my family by hawk, begging them to get us out.”

“Mageseekers,” Quinn hissed, shaking her head.

She closed her eyes and pinched the bridge of her nose. If the child manifested arcane powers, the mageseekers would take her. Were she in the widow’s shoes, Quinn would likely have already taken her child far beyond the reach of that insidious organization. She couldn’t blame Asta for what she was attempting.

“You understand we can’t let you go,” said Dalin. “The borders are closed. No one is allowed to leave without express permission from the high council itself. It’s the only way to ensure the traitor Sylas and his associates don’t slip away, and escape justice.”

“My husband died fighting against the traitor!” said Asta. “Everything here reminds me of Malak. Without him, I don’t wish to stay. And the small-minded farmers of our valley hate me. They already think I’m a witch.”

“You didn’t ransack your own home when you left, did you,” said Quinn. It was a statement, not a question. “And you didn’t set it ablaze, right?”

“What? No, of course not.” Asta paused. “Did someone truly do that?”

Quinn nodded. “And the markings under your daughter’s cot,” she said. “They were not of a... sorcerous nature, were they?”

Asta laughed, shaking her head. “A blessing of protection. A mark all Skaggorn mothers make for their children.”

Quinn nodded again, finally understanding. “But that runic blessing might seem like sorcery to those who wouldn’t know any better. Even I was suspicious of it.”

“I was careful to keep the old traditions to myself, but my neighbors were always wary of me,” Asta said. “And with all that’s been happening...”

It seemed clear now that the second set of tracks leading to the cabin had not belonged to any warrior of distant Skaggorn. Maybe the locals were seeking evidence of Asta’s sorcery. If so, perhaps they saw those charcoal runes, and set the house ablaze in a clumsy attempt to burn away what they thought was dangerous magic.

Quinn sighed, shaking her head. On the whole, Demacians were good, honorable people, but fear and distrust were spreading like a plague, and bringing out the worst in the kingdom’s scared citizens. It needed to end.

“I found something that I think you should have,” Quinn said, remembering what she had recovered in the wreckage. She handed over the Shield of Remembrance, and tears appeared in Asta’s eyes.

“Thank you,” she said, clutching the medal to her chest. “I thought it had been lost. It broke my heart to leave without it.”

“I’m sorry, but we cannot allow you to leave,” said Dalin.

“We are leaving, Demacian,” growled Egrid, pushing himself unsteadily to his feet. “Do not try to stop us.”

“Egrid, enough!” snapped Asta. “These two rangers are just doing their duty.” She turned to Quinn. “But please, I beg you, at least let my daughter go. She should not have to suffer for something beyond her control. Let her go with my brother, and I will return with you.”

Dalin and Quinn traded a look. The law was firm. No one was allowed to leave Demacia, not Asta, her daughter, or the Skaggorn warriors.

“I’m afraid that’s not possible,” said Dalin.

“If we let them go, then we are the ones violating the law,” whispered Dalin.

The two rangers walked behind as the group trekked eastward.

“We need to know how they got across the border,” replied Quinn in a low voice.

Dalin looked troubled, but he gave a clipped nod and fell into silence.

It wasn’t long before they reached the cliffs marking the edge of Demacia. The Skaggorn party led them to a secluded location, tucked just out of view of the guard towers to the north and south. Every inch of these cliffs should have been visible to one of the dozens of Demacia’s watchtowers, but clearly this was a blind spot.

Quinn leaned over the edge. The drop was several hundred feet, but heights had never bothered her. She could see pitons hammered into the rock. “You approached the base of the cliff at night, so as not to be seen by the sentries?” she asked.

Egrid nodded. Quinn grunted, impressed.

“Quite the climb to make, even in daylight,” she said. She looked down at the big man’s strapped leg. “Sorry about the knee. Are you going to manage it?”

“Of course! We of Skaggorn are strong,” boasted Egrid. “You are strong, too. You should return with us. The two of us, we would make strong warrior children. Yes?”

Quinn stared at him without speaking, her expression unreadable. Eventually, he shrugged and turned away.

“Worth asking the question,” he muttered. With a shout, he ordered his men to retrieve the ropes, hidden in the undergrowth nearby.

“I thought you just wanted to find out how they crossed into Demacia unseen,” hissed Dalin, taking Quinn aside. “We’ll be breaking our oaths if we allow them to go!”

“I’m uncomfortable with forcing a woman to stay and risk having her child taken simply because of a quirk of her bloodline,” she said, her voice low. “Besides, our first oath is to protect Demacia.”

“And letting them go protects Demacia?”

Quinn flashed him a fierce glance. “If we try to stop them, this plays out in one of two ways,” she whispered. “Either they kill us and leave anyway, in which case Demacia has lost two of its best rangers—or we defeat them, and Demacia gains an enemy, for the people of Skaggorn will know we are holding a chieftain’s daughter against her will.”

Dalin glanced at the big warriors, and conceded the point. “Doesn’t make it right, though,” he muttered. “And still makes us lawbreakers.”

Quinn regarded him. “If you want things to be simple, then you’d be better off in the regular infantry. Things are always more complicated out on the fringes.”

“The laws—”

“The laws be damned,” snapped Quinn. “It does not weaken Demacia in any way to let them go, but it will if we try to stop them.”

“But—”

Quinn rarely enforced the power her rank allowed her... but she did so now.

“Stand down, soldier,” she growled. “I am letting them go. That is an order.”

He stiffened for a moment, then gave her a sharp salute.

“As you will it, ranger-knight.”

The sun was starting to set as the Skaggorn party commenced climbing down the cliff. Quinn waited till they were all on their way—tied to each other, with the widow Asta’s child strapped tightly upon Egrid’s back—before she turned away. As good as their word, Egrid’s men removed the pitons they’d hammered into the stone as they descended.

Quinn had less than three days to get to the meeting point with Garen. She’d be forced to run through the night to make it in time, but had no doubt that she would. She gathered herself, readying for the journey ahead.

Before she left, Quinn paused, glancing over at Dalin, who was sitting near the cliff’s edge, Rigby at his side. He was looking eastward, away from her. They had barely spoken since the Skaggorn began their descent.

“I don’t expect you to feel good about it,” Quinn said, “but letting them go was for the best.”

He looked at her. “I understand,” he said. “Matters just aren’t as straightforward as I’d like them to be, I guess.”

“For some, they are,” said Quinn, shrugging. “But we are rangers.”

The Greenfang warden gave a slow nod, then stood to see Quinn off.

“You watch out for her, Valor, you hear?” he said, addressing the azurite eagle perched nearby. “Demacia needs her.”

Valor clacked his beak in reply.

“Speak to the local garrison,” Quinn said. “See that they build a watchtower here. Best make sure this gap in our defenses is closed for good.”

“Pulling rank on me again, boss?”

Quinn snorted, and scratched Rigby behind the ears. “Something like that.” She looked the warden in the eye. “Stay safe, and stay vigilant, Dalin,” she said. “Demacia needs you, too.”

Then she turned, and started running once more.