My first attempt at one of these, so please review it and let me know what you did and didn't like about it. Any constructive feedback would be greatly appreciated.
Cheers -VN
It had been a long journey from the walls of Demacia to the foot of the desolate mountain range that served as a barrier between Noxus and The Tempest Flats, and Shauna Vayne was inhumanly weary. Before setting out on what should have been a rather simple journey, she had gotten wind of a report that Noxian troops had been seen moving near the Mogron Pass and, believing it foolish to chance an encounter with them, she decided to follow the coast around the mountains and down towards the ruins of Urtistan, then work her way along the southern side of The Great Barrier. Unfortunately this had added almost a week onto her original travel time, meaning she'd had to travel night and day to reach her destination within a reasonable time frame and along with the seemingly endless travel, Vayne had had the strangest feeling that, ever since passing through what had once been Urtistan, something had been watching her. She remembered the stories of the destruction of Urtistan from her childhood, from before she had lost everything she loved, the stories of how an attacking army had levelled the entire city, with the exception of the large clock tower in the centre of the town. The tales from travellers who had passed by the area swearing that in the night, they could hear screams emanating from somewhere inside the lone tower. Vayne was not a naturally fearful person, she wouldn't have survived long in her chosen profession if she was, but just the same, she had made sure to give the tower a wide berth. Now, however, that feeling, and nearly all others, had been eclipsed by the complete exhaustion of nigh on seven days without sleep. Vayne found a small cave near the base of the range and settled herself in to get a good nights' rest before beginning the final stage of her journey, the beginning of the end for the creature she was hunting.
Vayne awoke with a sudden jolt. She had always had an almost preternatural ability to sense when she was in trouble, and right now that sense was going berserk. In a sudden flurry of movement she leapt up and dived towards the back wall of the cave, aiming it so that she would be able to pick up her crossbows on the way. Her crossbows, however, were gone. Reaching the end of her dive, she quickly scanned the back of the cave to make sure no one had been loitering in the shadows there, and seeing nothing, spun to face the entrance to the cave, simultaneously drawing her silver belt knife. Something felt wrong though, all her movements felt sluggish, like the energy was slowly being drained out of her. The strange part was that her cat-like night vision could not detect anyone else. Vayne quickly scanned the interior of the cave, hoping to spot whatever else had entered but everything else seemed in order, until she noticed the floor. It had turned a horrible shade of blood red, and while remaining solid under her feet, it seemed to bubble and swirl, being in constant motion. Suddenly though, the strange, bubbling mass on the floor began to recede back towards the entrance of the cave, stopping just short and slowly rising up from the ground, forming into a human shape, slowly shifting and reforming, gaining more definition with each second until it finally became recognizable as the shape of a man. This was however, no ordinary man. Dressed in some form of blood red archaic aristocratic wear, he was tall, and in an eerie way handsome, with a large shock of bright white hair which formed into a point near the back of his head. The most striking feature about him though had to be his blood red eyes, which seemed to shine like rubies. In that instant Vayne knew that this was the monster she had been hunting, and he had found her first.
"You know," he said, in a voice that seemed to both charm and terrify in equal amounts "It's very rude to show up to someone's home uninvited." He then raised his hand towards her and Vayne felt a sudden, stabbing pain all through her body. She could feel her blood boiling beneath her skin and slowly trying to force its way out. The pain was all too much and Vayne slowly collapsed into the void of unconsciousness.
Vayne awoke to find herself dressed in an ancient tattered ball gown and seated at a long dining table set out in a large banquet hall. The table was set with a great feast, or what had once been a great feast, for it had clearly been set out an age ago and left to the ravages of time so that what had once been an amazing selection of various delicacies was now no more than a rotting mass polluting the air with its stench. Vayne tried to push her chair back and stand up, but the very effort of planting her feet to push back left her head spinning. As her vision refocused and her mind cleared, she heard a soft low laugh just behind her as her captor slowly stepped into her field of vision.
"You've lost a lot of blood" he drawled "I wouldn't try moving for a while yet, otherwise you might pass out again and as my guest you should always try to be present to provide entertaining conversation.
"But where are my manners? My name is Vladimir and I assume by your armaments that you've heard of me, or at least, what I can do." He slowly moved round to the far end of the table and took a seat there.
"Sadly your identity is a mystery to me though, and since it's not every day that a beautiful armed woman appears on my doorstep; I feel I must ask for your name."
Vayne knew better than to indulge a monster. Instead she simply stared at him, looking deep into his haunting ruby eyes. She was well aware that most of the creatures she hunted were terrifyingly mentally unstable, hating it when their prey did not submit to their will, and while pushing one of them over the edge of madness might make it far more dangerous, it would also make it more vulnerable. This one, however, was different. Instead of being enraged by her defiance, he simply returned her gaze, seeming to stare right through her into her soul. Then, a slow, deadly smile crept across his pallid lips and they released a soft chuckle.
"Ah well, have it your way. You know, there are writings here that tell of how ancient haemomancers could know a person simply by consuming their blood.
"Most of them are just legends as far as I can tell, however, I did come across one scroll that gave quite a detailed description of how a haemomancer like myself might go about acquiring knowledge from someone by forcing blood into or out of certain parts of the brain."
With this revelation, he stood up and began to circle back around the table towards her.
"I must admit, my earlier attempts to perform this particular . . . operation in the field have been what some might call 'unsuccessful', but here in my home my powers are greatly enhanced.
"Sadly you are very short on blood, and if I were to try it now you would assuredly die."
He placed a hand on her shoulder and leaned in close to her ear
"It looks like we'll have the pleasure of each other's company for a few days yet. Rest up; you're going to need it."
And with that he shifted his hand so that his fingers pressed on her carotid arteries, and she felt the inky depths of unconsciousness envelop her again.
Vayne awoke in total darkness on what she could only assume was a rather thin bed. The air around her was heavy and musty with age, seeming to press in on her, making it harder to breath. Vayne tried to whistle as a way to gage the size of the room by the echo, but something about the air seemed to restrict the noise, making it almost impossible to make an accurate guess. She could feel that her hands and feet had been restrained along with her head, which she felt had a large strap running across her forehead and down around her chin to hold her in place. Slowly she began to test the restraints on her right hand, tugging softly at first, almost as a test of whether her strength had returned, and then gradually strengthening the motions as she realized that she had recovered. When this yielded no results, she slowly worked her way round all the other straps, testing each one as thoroughly as she could, but to no avail. Left alone in the dark, the memories of why she hunted creatures like Vladimir came flowing back to her. She remembered all too clearly the night when her picturesque childhood had been destroyed. Her father, a wealthy Demacian merchant with a heart of gold, had become the object of desire of a witch, however, when he ignored the witch's advances, she decided that if she couldn't have him, nobody could. Vayne had awoken that night to the sound of muffled emanating from her parents' bedroom. She crept along the hall towards the door of her parents' room, hearing the screams grow louder and louder. When she reached her destination she found the door slightly ajar, and, as quietly as she could, she pushed it open. The sight that greeted her haunted her to this day. Her mother, Xanthe, a beautiful and soft spoken woman, was suspended in the air in the centre of the room by chains of garish, yellow light. Her father was pressed against the wall, his arms out to either side with bolts of the yellow light shot through each hand with slowly drying blood crusting the wall behind each one. As she watched, a tall thin woman with long black hair and deathly pale skin wearing an austere black dress moved into view behind her mother. "So, Jarid" The stranger hissed "This is the whore that you spurned me for."
"Please, Myra!" Her father's voice was racked with both pain and sorrow "Let my family go, I'll do whatever you want, just . . ."
"You had your chance!" The woman screamed, cutting her father's plea off mid-sentence "And now you get to watch the woman you 'love' die slowly and painfully."
"Stop! Just think about what you're doing t. . . "
"Enough!" The woman, Myra, quickly raised her hand and unleashed a burst of yellow light that slapped tight across Jarid's mouth, leaving him only able to emit muffled grunts as he struggled helplessly against his bindings. "Now, Jarid, you will learn that you should never have disrespected me."
Slowly, almost taunting him, Myra raised her right hand out beside her as a long, thin blade of light extended around it. She then reached around so that the blade was positioned at the base of Xanthe's abdomen, "Say goodbye to your wife Jarid." And with that she drew the magical blade across, slicing Xanthe's gut wide open and letting her intestines spill out onto the floor. Xanthe let out an ungodly scream as Myra cackled insanely. Jarid set to struggling even harder than before, sending new streams of blood spurting from his hands and down the wall. Myra had not, however, finished with Xanthe. She allowed the blade to dissipate, then slowly began to push her hand up into the now empty cavity that once contained a large amount of Xanthe's vital organs, working her way up to her elbow before she seemed to reach what she was looking for. Xanthe was no longer screaming, either having escaped into the merciful clutches of death, or because the pain was so great that it was no longer possible. Myra fished around for a short while longer, then, with a violent twist, she withdrew her arm and held aloft Xanthe's heart. Even through the magical gag, Jarid's scream of pain was terrifying to hear, and that chord of terror struck something deep inside Vayne. Before she knew what she was doing, she had started running, not with any destination in mind but simply running to escape the horrors that she had just seen. She did not remember much after that, up until she had been found by a member of the night watch in the streets on the far side of town and taken to the funeral of her parents. It was then that Vayne had resolved to wipe out all the monsters that stalked the night, so that no one need ever suffer the way she had. Reinvigorated by these memories, she began her struggles again with renewed resolve, fighting as hard as she could to break the bindings that held her. Alas, even with all her might applied to them, the bindings refused to break. With nothing but her memories and the feeling of utter helplessness crashing down on her, Vayne finally let the tears that she had held back since her childhood come pouring forth.
After what felt like an age, having regained her composure, Vayne heard movement somewhere nearby. Suddenly, the room she was in was bathed in eerie red light and Vladimir sauntered into view to stand at the foot of what Vayne now realised was a padded slab in the centre of a large room with pillars running down both the walls she could see. "You sounded sad before" he mused "I wonder; was it something you'd like to share?" When she remained silent he smiled "No matter, all shall be revealed in due time." While he spoke, he slowly shuffled around the table to position himself by her head.
"I found the old scroll detailing how to move the blood around a brain so that the subject must tell the truth; it's a fascinating process really. You see, lies are created in a certain part of the brain called the pre-frontal cortex, which is just behind here." He reached out and tapped her on the forehead. "This means that the first part of my job is to severely limit the blood flow to here to stop you from being able to come up with any misleading statements." As he spoke he slowly positioned the fingers of his left hand in various spots across her brow. Slowly the area just behind his fingers began to give off a dull pulsing ache.
"The main trick to this part though" he continued "Is to cut it off in such a manner that this part of the brain can still register the question, but not actually form a response.
"That being done, the next part is even trickier." He placed his right hand on the side of her head as he spoke "Now I have to over stimulate the part of the brain known as the temporal lobe so that I can force the information you registered in the pre-frontal lobe through to here." He let out a soft chuckle then, as he shifted his fingers into a set pattern on the side of her head "But why the temporal lobe you ask? Well, that's the part of the brain responsible for both speech and memory.
"The hard part is doing it in a way that won't cause your brain to haemorrhage and turn you into a vegetable, but don't worry yourself, I think I have it figured out. Well, you'd better hope I have, anyway." And with that, Vayne felt a horrible thumping just behind her ears.
"Now" smiled Vladimir "Let's start with something easy: What is your name?"
Vayne didn't so much hear the question, as feel it reverberate within the pounding in her head. A sluggish thought tried to push its way through, tried to stop her responding, but the urge to answer was too strong, "My name . . . is Shauna . . . Vayne." She managed to force out through the grinding pain in her mind. Vladimir smiled at this "Very good, Shauna. And why did you come here?"
"I came . . . to kill a . . . monster."
"Interesting, and are there others like you, others who will come to find you?"
"I . . . hope so . . . but . . . I don't . . . know"
"Hmm, that's not quite the answer I was hoping for but it will have to suffice for now. Now, why were you crying before?"
"I was . . . remembering."
"Remembering what exactly?"
"The night . . . my parents . . . were killed."
"Ahh," Vladimir's face seemed to light up at this "Is that why you do this?"
"Yes"
"Well, that was enlightening, but now I've reached my final question, so be careful how you answer. I can sense a great power in you, strength unlike any other I've ever found. Something about this strength makes the thought of you deeply appealing to me and it would be such a shame to have to kill you" He stopped to frown at this thought, then continued "So, my question to you is this: Will you become like me, and live with me as my queen?"
"Never"
"I'll really think you should reconsider, think of all the power that you'll have, you will have the ability to control life and death! You'll never have to worry about all the petty quarrels of humans again"
"Never"
Vladimir's face seemed to lose the thin veneer of calm, only to have it replaced by a kind of cold indifference. "Very well, have it your way" he slowly removed his hands from her head and she felt the blood rush back in and the throbbing subside. "I will give you one final chance to accept my offer, but you must beg for my forgiveness."
"My father tried begging a monster. She killed the woman he loved most in the world, and then she killed him. So no, I will not beg you for anything."
This finally seemed to push Vladimir over the edge "You stupid, stubborn little girl! I offer you eternity and this is how you treat me? Shun my offer and call me a monster." With that he reached behind his back and drew a long, thin dagger. "I could simply pull your blood right out through your skin, but that would be too easy, too quick. No, I'm going to do this another way." Vladimir lined the dagger up directly above her heart then brew back above his head for the final strike. Vayne closed her eyes, and waited for the final blow to land. Somewhere she could hear a faint ticking noise and she would have laughed at the irony of her only noticing the clock as her own time was running out, had she not been so set on showing the monster no emotion. Strangely though, the ticking seemed to be getting louder. Vayne wondered if everyone heard this before they died, it was almost starting to annoy her now, she wished Vladimir would just end it already. Opening her eyes to see what he was waiting for she suddenly realised that things were not as she had believed. Vladimir was still towering above her, knife at full swing above his head, but he seemed to be frozen in that position, at least his body was, His eyes blazed with the kind of fury that only eyes as sinister as his could, and they roamed the room searching for something, perhaps the elusive ticking sound that now seemed to be almost on top of them. As the ticking reached a crescendo, Vladimir's eyes seemed to alight on something across the room and as Vayne tried to turn her head to see what it was, a figure appeared in the corner of her vision. He was an elderly man, with a long, unkempt beard and hair and a gigantic clock strapped to his back. He glided ethereally over to Vayne's slab and began to quickly undo all the fastenings, assisting her up when he had finished. "Follow me quickly, child, we don't have much time before he manages to free himself from my spell."
"Who are you?" gasped Vayne, as she trailed after her mysterious saviour
"My name is Zilean, I'll explain more as we go, but you really must hurry up." And with that he speed away, forcing Vayne to almost sprint to keep up.
"So how did you find me?" Vayne inquired as they sped down a maze of hallways
"I saw you from my tower when you passed by Urtistan." He replied
"So that's been you following me this whole time."
"You looked to be in a hurry and I thought it would be helpful if I bent time to speed your travelling up a bit."
"But what were you doing in Urtistan anyway? No one's lived there for years."
"Except me. Long before your time an army came to destroy Urtistan. I tried to stop them using chronomancy, but my plan backfired and I was put in stasis along with my clock tower. When I finally broke free my home lay in ruins, everything I knew had been destroyed.
"Fearing the outside world, a world that had moved on without me, I sealed myself back in my clock tower with nothing but the memories of what I once had, and the visions of what will yet be. Of course, I was not overly keen on the idea of others seeing me, so I made sure to frighten away any inquisitive travellers when they got near."
"Ok, that makes sense, but why did you help me?" As the raced down a long corridor and out into the cold night air Zilean slowed his pace and turned to look at her.
"Before I lost everything, I had a family. A wife who I loved more than life itself, and a daughter who meant the world to me. They were both killed when Urtistan was destroyed, but you remind me so very much of my daughter. I couldn't let you wander off alone, not with what I'd seen in your possible future."
Vayne was taken aback by this idea that maybe someone else understood her pain and had known something similar to it. "I'm sorry for your loss, Zilean. But thank you for saving me."
"You're not out of the woods yet, child. He's almost free now, and he's far more powerful than I'd anticipated. I can cast a spell on you that will get you home safely, but I'll need to stay here to slow him down."
"No, I'm staying to help you, I can fight him."
"You have none of your weapons. If you stay you'll only get in the way."
"But what'll happen to you? I can't just leave you!"
"I'll be fine. As the saying goes, I've got time on my side."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"It means I'm a lot harder to kill than most people. Now go, before he gets here, or I doubt I'll be able to stop him."
"Not until you promise me we'll meet again!"
"We will, I've seen it. Now go!"
With that, everything around Vayne seemed to suddenly slow down. Zilean raised his hand to usher her away but the motion was unbelievably slow, as if he were pushing through molasses while he moved. She gave him one final glance, appraising the old man who had saved her, then, before she could second guess herself, she started running. She stopped once to look back when a slow boom washed over her, turning to see the now distant mountain range lit with a bright explosion followed by darkness and silence. The rest of her journey was a lonely one, but it seemed to go rather quickly, and when she arrived at her destination, she felt a strange sense of being home for the first time in a long while. The spell seemed to have finally worn off, and so, Vayne slowly climbed the steps of the lone clock tower in Urtistan and settled in to wait for her new friend to return.
The End.