Timeless
Riure
Everyone dreams of time travel. Until it becomes a nightmare.
1 / Legacy
"Okay, I understand that we should be respectful and what not," Syndra complained, her commanding voice breaking, "but why again do we have to work with these two after they just kicked our asses in our match?" She pointed towards Ahri and Leona, drawing their gaze.
"It's simply a matter of paying your dues," Riven muttered, not looking up from her work. "And learn some humility." Ahri smirked, poking fun at Syndra, who was clearly frustrated. She muttered something under her breath, and continued on sorting through the papers of Zilean's research and journals he's kept throughout the years.
Not a single person in the league expected it, but roughly a month ago, the Chronokeeper had traveled back in time in order to correct an "anomaly" as he called it. He had never returned, and there was no noticeable change in the present, so it was natural to assume the worst. While most stayed eager and optimistic for his eventual return, others had given up hope and aimed merely to salvage his work, and his legacy. Whatever was left, and if there'll be anything for them in the future.
And so here they were, the four champions assigned to finding some reason, some purpose, some explanation he may have left behind for his abrupt departure so the Institute could rest with peace of mind. The room was painfully dusty after a month of being left vacant, and half of the lighting fixtures barely even worked, forcing Leona and Ahri's magic to be the main source of light for their little "investigations". Albeit, not too thrilling ones.
The door to his office opened, a light breeze rushing through the room as a familiar archer entered the room. "How's the work going? Any luck?" Ashe asked the evidently bored group. They shook their heads indifferently.
"Yeah, look, sorry you guys had to do this," Ashe sympathized. "But since your match finished, we figured you'd probably have some free time before you all got some rest, and the higher-ups are pretty eager to get to the bottom of this, you know?" The group merely nodded and mumbled, completely indifferent and disinterested for the time being. The awkwardness of silence was almost painful to Ashe.
"Well anyway, good luck, and sorry again," she repeated as she left the room and closed the door behind her. The painful boredom formed again.
"Anyone find anything yet?" Leona asked with a sigh, finding almost nothing herself. A group of resounding "no"s followed, and then more fiddling of old papers and folders as they scoured hundreds of years worth of Zilean's work. Most of the work was just comprised of notes on some studies he was interested in, match statistics and his own personal journals of which none of the ladies cared to look into thoroughly, as they just seemed to be of his daily muses about life.
Syndra sighed, filing paper by paper, the most interesting thing she found being a doodle of a map of the Rift that Zilean did himself. Not too bad, but not necessarily worth an afterthought. Proportions were off, a little asymmetrical on the jungles, too much overcompensation for the little details - the things you notice when you've got nothing else to think about, except maybe dinner in a few hours.
"Hey," Ahri chirped, breaking the awkward monotony in the room. "Found something, I think." She flipped through a packet of parchment papers, yet finding all of the pages but the first three were completely blank. The others gathered around as they inspected the documents, eager to make a resemblance of progress.
"Timeless," Ahri mused, nodding at what seemed to be the title of the document. Leona grabbed the packet from her, looking at the pages more closely.
"Does it say anything about his departure?" Riven asked.
Leona shook her head. "It... looks like an instruction manual," she concluded.
"Instructions for what, exactly?" Riven asked curiously. Syndra still seemed disinterested, doodling away on a blank sheet of paper to see if she could top Zilean's Rift map.
"Don't know, it's kind of vague..." Leona appeared to be deep in thought, staring at the paper. Ahri and Riven closely looked over her shoulder, also trying to make sense of it. After a solid two minutes of staring, Riven broke the silence.
"Shit," Riven muttered, taking the papers from Leona. She looked at them incredulously, flipping through the pages. "Guys, it's a method of temporal relocation. What does that mean?"
"...Time travel," Leona whispered, brushing her auburn hair aside as she put the pieces together. Their eyes widened. "That old geezer kept a time machine hidden away here for the longest time. Think we can use it to try to find him?"
"We could probably at least find out what happened," Riven added.
Syndra suddenly perked up excitedly. "We've gotta try. This could be fun," Syndra crooned with an excitement nowhere to be seen minutes ago. She seemed overly eager for some mischievous intent.
"Syndra, we're going back to wherever Zilean went to find out what happened. Nothing more, nothing less," Leona instructed. Ahri still seemed hesitant.
"What if we screw something up? This whole thing seems pretty fishy," Ahri complained.
"Oh, don't worry about it," Syndra assured her, taking command. "Don't you trust Zilean? We'll be fine."
Ahri looked at the others skeptically. They looked upon her eagerly, as if pushing her to "at least try" it with them. Even Riven, the stoic warrior, looked on at her almost pleasingly. She gave it some thought, and concluded it was probably their best option to get to the root of this as quickly as possible. It would be wrong to say there's no harm in trying, but she felt it was an acceptable risk worth taking.
"Fine," she said. "Let's do this."