The story of Kalista really intrigues me, and since there was not much that Riot gave away in the official lore, I decided to go deeper into her lore myself. This is how I picture Kalista's past, I hope all of you readers enjoy it -or even agree up to a certain degree, who knows D: - and have a good time reading it in general^^

If you enjoyed it or have something to say in general you can always leave a review, they help a lot!^^
Little side note, the update rate of this story will probably be slooooow, because this is just a side project I started next to A Thorny Relationship, my current main story that takes in lots of my attention and time, but every time I get inspiration, I'll get to it no matter what!

Enjoy!

The Lady of Vengeance Rises

...

Cold.

Alone.

Nothing more, nothing less than own awakening.

Own awakening, from beyond the veil of the living.

Awakening that should not be.

From one that should not have died.

Between the countless bodies of the fallen, ally and foe alike, one sole warrior opens eyes again.
Instead of clear, coloured irises, a bone chilling, spectral flame burned in the eyes of the human figure. The woman solemnly rose to her feet in an impassive movement, instinctive and without regard, her attention drawn to something else. With a passionless gaze, she let her eyes trail over the forsaken field, solely adorned with corpses, silent as only the dead can be. She had no clue how she got here, why she was here.

Who she was.

With a soundless growl, she wanted to take a deep breath, but suddenly noticed she didn't feel the need to breath anymore, and frowned her brows. As she inspected her own self, the woman was taken aback by the sight that was there for her to behold.
Her tall body, formerly hardened and strong, now felt numb and intangible. Her skin was once a healthy and toned shade because of the days and days of being out in the open, fighting, training. Now, it was nothing but an eerie, cold blueish tint, glowing in a spectral un-light.

Have I...died?

With the slender fingers of one hand, although now sharper and clawed, she brushed over her other arm, and felt the touch of the skin that should not be. It was almost like she dipped her fingers in a translucent ice. Although, she wondered how her fingers were still able to notice the feeling, or to touch. The warrior knew in the back of her mind that this skin shouldn't be able to be touched, but she figured that would be the case for other...entities.

Now, she moved her cold eyes to the second thing that captured her sight, and what would certainly had sent a rush of shock through her heart, if it still would be beating.

Pierced through the strong armour of her breastplate, a large spear protruded from her chest, its blackened surface almost glowing in a ghastly green hue. The ghostly shade came forth from her body, probably replacing what would be her blood.
Focusing her attention on the rigid weapon, she felt a cold hate well up inside of her, burning in the ghost of her heart, rushing through her mind, filling her being. The woman clenched her fists together in confusion, trying to track the source of the raging feeling.
She looked around again, to gaze at the wake of the battlefield, trying to remember.

Looking down, the woman noticed a kept intact halberd, laying not but a few steps away from her. With unexpectedly nimble steps for her height, she approached the spot. The woman bent forward, taking the long weapon in her hands. Unlike she had expected, with being a specter now, she could still interact with the object of the living world, firmly holding it in her hand.
As she had felt a strange connection with the weapon, so it felt well in her hands. She didn't need to search for a way to stab with it, or a manner of wielding the heavy stabbing weapon. Uttering a slight growl, she threw the weapon towards a lone shield in the distance, separated from its deceased owner in the heat of the fight. The halberd crashed into the object of defense, and although a halberd wasn't meant to be a throwing weapon, it still pierced through the iron in its collision.

Intrigued, the warrior looked around in search of different attributes, and found a sword, right next to its unfortunate owner. With evenly much ease, she let the weapon turn around in her hand. The woman made slashing and stabbing movements to no fixed target, just jumping around, to feel the different ways of working with a sword that almost naturally came up in her.

After a while, she threw the sword down, making the sword sink down a bit in the somewhat loose soil of the battleground. By now, she was more or less convinced she had been a gifted fighter, but the weaponry was not sufficient enough to lift the dark fog that clouded her memory. The woman felt as if those weapons were...inferior. Not satisfying enough. They might have made a connection in her memory, but it was just an unconscious feeling.
Nothing from which she could say "This...is me.".

Her glowing eyes sought across the ravage for a glimpse of recognition, but her mind remained blank. The only thing that sent a message through her mind was the spear pierced through her upper back. The weapon that ended her life.

Her expression still stoic, she strode back to her place of awakening, perhaps she'd find more answers there.

Around the spot where she had risen from the beyond, the woman found nothing but trivial things as blood, churned-up soil and unfamiliar weapons, until she halted at the exact spot where she had fallen in her former life. The warrior could almost see where her human body had sunk to the ground, defeated.

Betrayed.

A sharp whisper rasped through her mind in a unclear noise, familiar, yet unrecognized. She shook her head in slight discontent, almost tormented by the entanglement of the black hole where her memories should be.
Kneeling down, the woman went further to the ground where she had been laying. She brushed over the squashed grass, almost feeling the ghost of her former body. Suddenly, her fingertips hit something crusty, and she bent over to take a better look.
In front of her lay another pool of drying blood, but instead of all the insignificant blood she had found laying around, this one was hers. She could feel it, in the back of her mind. With her now very sharp edged fingertips, she scratched away the hardening crust, and to her surprise and satisfaction, she found blood that was still liquid.
She dipped her index finger in her now cold blood, blood that was hers, yet wasn't hers anymore, for she now was a being of another world. Looking at how the little stream of blood ran down her translucent forefinger, the woman suddenly felt a vision pulling at a little back door of her mind.

She faintly could see a grainy flashback, people fighting all around her with muted voices, the people that now lay all around her, with forever silent voices.

Traitors!

Now, the woman let out a ghostly gasp, her stoic expression changed into one of discomfort at the voice. The memory slashed through the thick fog in her mind, but it left as soon as it had appeared, making way for the fog to linger again. Determination brew in her as she began to search every centimeter of her former dying bed, until she hit something far more thrilling than a fragment of her human blood.

Half buried beneath the grass her body had squashed in its fall and the unsteady ground, the woman found a weapon.

Her weapon.

Forcefully pulling it from below some sods, she took in her hands a spear. Long and stiff, but slender and as deadly as could be in the hands of someone who could handle it.
And that someone was her. She knew it.
As soon as she touched the shaft of the weapon and grasped it in her hands, she felt a feeling like a pleasant electric shock surge through her, like the meeting of a long-lost, good friend.

The woman raised the weapon so that the tip of the spear was on eye level, and brushed away the strands of grass and dirt that befouled metallic edge. The filth didn't even stain her, as it just fell off her ghastly hands, not able to hold on to the spectral matter.
The clean, bright iron surface of the tip reflected her facial image, and she saw that her face now as well bore the same, translucent colour. To her pleasant surprise, one could still see she had been a woman, as her face might be of a ghastly, blueish tone, but it had kept intact her certainly not all that bad features. The thing what intrigued her the most was the change in her eyes. Now, they were cold, unforgiving and burning in a spectral tone. In life, her eyes had been soft and vivid, although they could be stern and fear-inspiring according to her fellow soldiers. A small smile escaped her undying lips at the memory.

At the memory.

She opened her mouth in confusion and quickly closed it again, trying to hold on to the small, oh so trivial memory.
Quickly, she took another look at her reflection, and once more a visage of her former self shone through the face of the apparition that now looked back at her. Mesmerizing, blue eyes, tanned skin and her black hair tied in a large ponytail, the tresses gently falling over her back. A regal attitude, yet a small smile lingered on the lips of her former self, knowing everything was alright at the time.

A flash of a room filled with people, faces, smiling and laughing flashed through her mind, reflecting on the moment the smile appeared.

The woman lowered the spear again, knowing what to do.
The weapons brought forth the muscle memories, the blood the memory of the fight, her smile the memory of former smiles. But all so faint...She let out a sigh without a breath and planted her spear in the ground, letting it stand up straight as she made her hands free. The eyes of the warrior trailed down again to the object that had already filled her with an indescribable feeling of hate the moment she saw it.
With her two hands, she took hold of the large spear protruding from her chest with a resolute storm raging in her cold eyes. The squealing sound of metal filled the dead silence of the forced graveyard as she pulled out the black spear. The ghostly green smoke trailed along with the way the spear moved out of her body.
Now with a hole in the middle of her chest where the green mist slowly lingered inside, she forcefully drove the weapon down with the tip buried in the ground.

She wanted to release the shaft, but the form of the spear she beheld in full view now struck her, gluing her hand to the shaft. Her fingers were clasping the weapon so tight it would've pained her, would she still be alive. The black weapon seemed to suck up her attention, piercing her mind and storming through the mist that clouded it. A loud and rasping scream came rolling from far away in her mind, pulled her back, to beyond the black mist...

The loud cracking of the rolling thunder in the distance boomed over the battlefield, as if it was an omen of bad luck, and it invoked a feeling of dread and angst throughout the troops. She overlooked the sinking morale of the soldiers with her crystal clear blue eyes and grasped her spear tight.

'Men! Do not see the coming of the storm as an omen of death!'

Her long, black hair fluttered in the upcoming wind as her stern voice overruled the clatter of the soldiers' armours and pierced through the sound of the storm. She caught their attention with her solemn eyes, which kept each and every one of them captured in their blue gaze.

'Instead, see it as a possibility! Those who can tame the nature, can tame their opponents with ease! So go forth, fellow swordsmen, and ride on the onset of the thunder! Show them what it is like to clash with forces they cannot comprehend!'

The woman's clear voice seemed to boom over her men, almost visibly surged through mind and invigorated their hearts. The tones of her voice made the warriors straighten their backs and gripping their weapons with newfound strength as they turned to their opponents. As one, they marched into battle, driven and lead by their commander, a legendary warrior in her own right.

As the armies clashed, she clenched the spear in her hand, one of her most trusted weapons, tight. Her comrades knew that for every throw, someone got the brunt, and the payment was, most of times, death.
Of course, a spear wasn't sufficient enough in a longer fight, she knew that all too well. Therefor, the woman also wore a sword, several times shorter, but not less deadly, in a sheath on the belt around her waist. In case her beloved weapon didn't end the conflict, she drew the second weapon, to be an equally strong opponent for her rivals.

She swiftly worked her way through the battlefield, partly thanks to her unique way of fighting. Unlike her peers and opponents, she had taken on a martial poise which made it possible to move in any direction without losing her stance or target. She didn't break her fighting posture when she was halted or had to move, instead, she just darted to a side, not even losing a split-second of attention.

Now, she faced one of the opposing commanders who had a key leading position in the enemy's army. Not paying attention to the provoking smile of the man, she readied her spear with a grim expression.
In her favour, the man still stood a few meters away from her, giving her the chance to wound or even kill him before he could actually fight back. The woman clenched the shaft of her weapon tight, already moving her arm backwards as she suddenly caught a wild movement in the corner of her eye.

It was one of her men, dashing towards her, arms frantically moving, pointing to her and then to her fellow commanders behind her.
She could not understand what he was yelling through the noise of the battle and tried to focus, but before she could even ask anyone else what was happening, she saw the man being pierced by an arrow, instantly killing him.
She growled a bit at his ignorance, one must never run and scream around, for you make yourself a free target then. But as his corpse sank to the ground, she saw the colours of the feathers and the insignia on the shaft of the arrow.

It was one of their own arrows.

The woman wanted to turn around to demand an answer to what was happening, but suddenly felt a burning pain in her chest, one like she had never felt before. Stumbling forward, she looked down to see the source of the pain, and saw a sturdy, black spear protruding from her chest, pierced right through the breastplate, slowly getting soaked in the blood that now ran freely from the wound.
Just like with the arrow, she recognized the weapon as one of their own.

Even worse, she recognized the weapon as the one of a fellow commander.

Bringing up all of the strength that hadn't left her yet, she forced herself back up and turned around and saw him standing there, a smug smile adorning his face. Behind him, the two others stood, the other male commander with an expression of grief, the other female commander hiding her feelings behind a supercilious look, like the haughty woman she had always been, but both shared the same grim determination like the man in front of her.

'W-Why...' she felt herself utter, her voice already slipping away.

'Because it will bring us much more than what we have now, Kalista...It will bring ME much more that what I have now. And with you dead, one of our strongest opponents will be gone...'

Her vision suddenly dropped a reasonable amount of centimeters, and she figured she must've sunken to her knees in exhaustion.

'I-I won't let this treason...Unavenge-...I will come back...for you...' the woman rasped as she collapsed and fell to the ground.

'I'm very sorry, Kalista, you were such a beautiful lady...'

The tone in his voice almost sounded truly sad, but the sarcastic laughing of the man that followed up his last sentence kept echoing in her dying mind as she slipped away...

Kalista...

...

The spectral woman felt herself being sucked out of the memory and found herself standing on the ravaged battlefield again, staring at the black spear her left hand was still trying to strangle.

'Kalista...' she said, out loud now, sounding unnaturally loud in the dead silence the carnage left behind. Her voice was grave cold, but the remnants of her old voice still lingered through. Faintly, but present. Now, she also recognized the sharp whispers that had run through her mind. It was her own voice, trying to bring her to remember.
And now, she remembered. Her life, the trainings she had followed, the friendships she made and lost. The hardships they had to go through, the way they had worked as one, her rise to being a commander...all the others.

She turned her attention back to the weapon in front of her, the contemptible weapon that ended her life. Slowly, she released it from her grip.

Kalista could still clearly see the faces of her former comrades, all the different expression of the foul betrayers. The panicking face of the poor soldier that tried to warn her. But most of all, she could now remember the oath she had sworn with her dying breath.

Around the woman, a soft, barely visible blanket of black fog started to gather as she put her mind at a glance.

She would go after him. After them all. She would not let this abhorrent act of betrayal go unavenged.

Kalista steadily began to be surrounded by clouds of black mist, streaming in from places beyond.

The woman herself took another look at the weapon in front of her, and with a slow movement of her hands, she solemnly took the shaft of the weapon in front of her in her hands and lifted the weapon from the ground. Without a change in expression, she shove the weapon back in place with another shrieking sound of tortured metal.
The spear would from now on be the symbol of their betrayal and her oath of vengeance.

Kalista reached out for her own spear and took the oh so familiar weapon loosely in her hand. With a grim expression, she let spectral flames consume the artifact, until she held a sharp, green weapon in her hand, glowing in an eerie un-light. Like herself, she had now taken along her trademark weapon to the next world, and it would now aid her cause.

She was Kalista, The Spear of Vengeance.

And she would not rest until she had found all of her betrayers and let them pay for their treason with their lives. And she would take all of them.

One.

She readied her spear and suddenly pierced her own chest with the sharp backside of the weapon, pushing the weapon through and letting it rest there, as a sign for the life she had to take in her revenge.

By one.

A second ghastly spear appeared in her hand, and once more, she pieced it through her chest.

By one.

A final, third spear formed in her hand, and with a grim expression, she pushed this one in as well, leaving all three of them protruding from her chest, spreading their ghastly glow.

Now, Kalista straightened herself again and observed the veil of Black Mist that now completely surrounded her. Without a word, the Lady of Vengeance stepped into the gloomy fog, onwards, to places only she knew.

…

That was it for the first chapter!^^
I apologize for the short length, but this was more of a burst of inspiration, and I felt it had to have this length. Forcing it to stretch out most of the times leads to parts that don't feel good -next to the rest of the pieces that perhaps don't feel good for the reader x)- so I'll let it as it is now.
I hope you have enjoyed it, and I wish everyone a good day/week/time further on! :D

ADamnGoodName out.