Disclaimer: I don't own League of Legends
Greetings all;
I've been playing LoL for about four months now, and I decided to add my own contribution to the archive for it we have here on FF. Now, I'm going to go ahead and assume that the pairing for this story isn't as popular as, say, Gar x Kat or Trynd x Ashe, but I'm going to go ahead and ship this one anyway.
I hope you all like it, and please drop a comment or to on whether I should continue with this oneshot collection or not.
Sincerely,
Toph the Trickster
Sweet Corruption:
Pure Damnation
Sona Buvelle sat in the comfort of her late mother's bedroom – now hers as per Lestara's will; her slender fingers running across the steel strings of her etwahl; contemplating.
The discovery of her instrument's darker purpose had not been pleasant in the least: the revelation coming in the form of her adopted mother's demise at the hands of the very music that the older woman had adopted Sona for.
Yet despite her sorrow at the loss of her guardian, Sona came to a sickeningly cruel realization as she passed her hands over the lacerations that bled the elder Buvelle's lifeblood unto the polished wooden floor:
The blood, the gore, the sheer brutality with which her mother's life was taken had fascinated her in a way her music seemed to be unable to; for as she mourned the loss with her tears, she was subconsciously examining the injuries while trying to study how badly they damaged the body and imagining how the blades might have looked like had they been solid.
When the realization that she had been examining her mother's corpse like a doctor would have during an autopsy of someone totally unrelated to them, she refused to touch her etwahl for weeks following Lestara's death, and kept the strange instrument in its case in the deepest parts of her wardrobe. It shook her to think that she had found interest in something so unwholesome, something so destructive and damaging. It had come to such a point that she had moved the instrument's case to the attic where it remained for another three months.
During this three months of absence from her preferred field, Sona felt herself constantly accompanied by a chill; a chill that she first felt when she arrived at Buvelle manor the day of her mother's death, and seemed to remain with her up till then.
Even outside the feeling followed her, making her spine shiver – with excitement or foreboding she could not ascertain – as she hosted Lestara's wake and funeral, and even gripping her in the depths of her sleep like a caressing hand running down her neck and back, never allowing her a moment's peace and waking her in cold sweat to waves of hunger and pent-up pressure that screamed for release.
But she could not speak and thus could not beg for that release, and was always left gazing into the black void, deprived of sleep for the rest of the night.
This had gone on for weeks, working on until months where it occurred on a daily basis and left the musician indisposed to receiving any visitors, and most of the household servants wary of crossing her. Many in Demacia, Ionia, and even Noxus assumed this was because she had still been grieving her mother's loss, but Sona understood that they could not have been more wrong.
Yet one night during the more terrible months following the passing of Lestara Buvelle, Sona had slept with more peace than she ever had; still feeling the chill with her yet no longer being tormented with its touches and she woke the following morning feeling more rested than she had since the ordeals began. At that point in time, she had not known what had protected her from the chill's ministrations, but had immediately come to odds with herself when she opened her wardrobe to change.
There, with her numerous shoes, sandals, and slippers, sat the heavily-decorated case of her etwahl.
It was the very same etwahl that had been locked up in the attic the day of her mother's funeral with the only key to the aforementioned room hanging from Sona's neck.
Had it been her close proximity to the etwahl that kept the strange chilling presence at bay?
Even then, how did it leave the attic when it was only she that held the key to it?
The latter of the two questions held no true answer, but did indeed confirm to the musician some of her mother's stories about the etwahl returning to her whenever it was lost or separated from Sona for long periods of time.
The night immediately following, Sona decided to test out her newly-formed theory and climbed up the creaky stairs that lead to the manor's attic, deposited the instrument there, locked the door, and turned in for the night.
And true to her suspicions, she would not find sleep granted to her for the cold caresses returned full force and she was once again left awake, on the verge of peaking and consumed by a wanting for things she did not know.
It was after that night that Sona Buvelle resolved to - despite the bad memories brought about by the sight of the etwahl – keep the instrument inside the wardrobe whenever she turned in for the night and the attic during the rest of the day.
Weeks passed, her outward disposition improving with the longer hours of rest and allowing for visitors to pay her visits; some long-time friends of her adopted mother that had missed the funeral and wished to pass their condolences, and others colleagues from the music industry inquiring about her coming return to work from the hiatus she took to mourn her mother's loss.
The former, she received with grace and thanked with great poise, while the latter, she spoke with cordially and answered with hidden trepidation.
She found it difficult to return to her work knowing that the instrument that she had supposedly been brought to the Ionian orphanage with was capable of taking lives on its own and in ways more gruesome than should be mentioned.
But she also loved her music, and she was left at a quandary as painful as the sight of her mother being ripped apart by notes of music invisible to the naked eye.
The need for music won out, however, and she had finally decided to once again take up the etwahl after nearly half a year on hiatus. She did not immediately return with a concert though, much to the surprise of her many fans, but instead began to practice in isolation within the manor grounds; playing tunes in the garden, the veranda and even the little shade on the rooftop that held a breathtaking view of the Conqueror's Sea.
She had taken to playing her music on the rooftop more frequently than other places over the course of the weeks following, mainly because of the warm air blowing in from the shadow Isles despite the fact that it was winter across the rest of Valoran. If it would help ward off that chill that remained with her even then, it was a welcome change.
The chill's efforts had come to a head weeks after she had finally settled into her routine for the season; it had happened one night when she was playing on the rooftop during the winter solstice – the longest night of the year, and by far the coldest one she had ever experienced in her life – at a little past the twenty-third hour: Sona Buvelle's dainty fingers danced atop the steel strings, plucking and rubbing them to forge a tune that sought to calm the minds of everyone yet desired to bring her peace in particular.
She had felt restless all day, the cold washing over her in waves of dark pleasure such that she found it impossible to settle any affairs and nigh unable to play any music. And once again – in private where no one would ever hear or see her – she bemoaned her inability to find release.
Once again, it stopped just as she was about to crescendo.
The frustration was mounting, clawing at her very core even while she tried to find solace in her music.
In blew another gale from the north-west, this time the expected warm air cold with the same desolate death that has been haunting her for the past half-year. She felt herself react to the feeling as it brushed her collar and lower back, Sona's fingers clenching at the strings as her arced backwards at the sensation with her brows furrowed and her mouth open in a silent scream.
She did not hear the sound of one of the wooden pillars shredding beneath the weight of her music's wrath as she was granted the blessed release that she had been denied the past six months. She savored the feeling and reveled in finally being given it, drowning herself in the high as the wind seemed to swirl around her.
When Sona came down from her high, she found herself looking at the shredded column while she was on her knees, each hand on an opposite side of the instrument with her legs splayed under her and cold sweat breaking out from every part of her body while she shook with helplessness that she had never felt before.
It thrilled her, seeing the destruction she had unknowingly caused, and the odd effect it had on her.
In the days following leading up to the end of the week, she returned to the roof every night to try and replicate the event she had undergone during the solstice.
She succeeded in recreating the destruction of the etwahl, once again laying waste to another column and finally making the kiosk unsafe for use until repaired, but she had failed to experience the crescendo she underwent that night and she went to sleep for the first time in her life, wanting – not for release, but for the blessed sensation that came before it.
The days went by, Sona beginning to regularly practice her newfound power, and eventually turning into weeks when she made her first return concert in Demacia and accepted to perform another concert at a Goodwill event for the League of Legends in Noxus the month following. She had come to a startling realization:
Since the night of the winter solstice, the chill had not come for her in the night's darkest hours even when the etwahl was kept in the attic; in fact, it seemed to have left her completely. Her bed was warm and welcoming during the night, and she no longer felt the invisible, cold hands praising her neck and back.
She found no sleep that night, and instead chose to return to the roof where she continued to hone the etwahl's musical blades until the sun came up the next day and she was too tired to mind being unable to quench her growing hunger.
In the three weeks to come after that night before her journey to Noxus, Sona accepted that she was beginning to forget how it felt; despite her need's continued growth, it was difficult to remember anything based solely on a sensation without a face to recall it with.
The night before the journey, she closed her legs together with one of her arms between them and her other free arm pulling the said legs closed to her chest; then she wept for a reason she could not fathom.
The evening following, she performed at Noxus as she did at every other concert she had done: with a smile on her face and an atmosphere of pleasantry that the audience was carried away on her singing strings.
During her playing of the night's last song – once composed and presented in honor of the late Lestara Buvelle – however, Sona froze as she was about to begin the last eight or nine notes. She shivered as she unknowingly clenched her thighs together as she finally felt her mind recall what her body apparently failed to forget.
The chill she had come to miss was back, reaching into her core and bringing her pent up wanting into chaotic upheaval; her breathing grew labored, her fingers clenched at the etwahl's steel strings as she leaned against the instrument for support, her powers in disarray and shredding the wood of the stage around her while her head swept across the audience in search of the source of the cold touch that she so missed.
There, atop one of the buildings on the outer edge of the clearing where the audience sat, a pair of red eyes outshining even the full moon that floated behind him.
It was him. The face and form that haunted her darkest dreams, the face that matched the cold touch and chilling breath.
When all was done that night, she sought him out; her body and instrument hidden beneath a long red cloak that dragged across the grimy stone walkways as she trudged through the night in search of him.
She dared not float as she usually did for fear of being recognized by others.
It was at the alley's end that she found him, surrounded by three corpses of fellows of no consequence, whose bodies had been mutilated with far more brutality then she could ever hope to emulate.
At the center of the three piles of flesh he stood, his tall form shrouded from the light that illuminated the ones at his sides, but with his eyes flashing the same red she saw just hour earlier.
Seeing him, she felt no fear; seeing him she felt to uncertainty or doubt for her safety.
This was he, she knew through the sudden welling up of her desires: her heavy breaths and staggered steps as she drew even closer to he who just stood there and awaited her arrival as she had awaited their reuniting encounter.
When she had joined him in the darkness, Sona placed her hands against his iron chest and rested her head against it, her hood dropping and her blue hair falling down her back; she sighed into him, but still he did not move. She knew though that his eyes were on her, red flashing with the same recognition they did when their eyes met earlier during her concert.
She looked up, her right hand reaching for the etwahl bound to her side and plucking a single string in question at him.
The solitary note sounded flat and seemingly bearing no message, but she knew he understood; he always seemed to understand.
When he spoke, his voice seemed to have the same effect his presence had on her: building her up to near-climax.
"You are to call me 'Murder Emperor.'"
And Sona Buvelle knew then that she was damned.