A/N: Hi! Thank you for coming to read. First, a warning. This first chapter is a littttttle bit slow, but the hope is that it'll firmly plant you within my understanding of Syndra's character. This story takes place many years after she has first joined the League. Once we get out of poor Syndra's head, the action picks up dramatically, and we'll see far more adventure than we will of spiritual questing/questioning.

Enjoy!

~D

Chapter One: What You Cannot Understand

If you show patience, I'll rid you of this virtue.

If you fall asleep, I'll rub the sleep from your eyes.

If you become a mountain, I'll melt you in fire.

And if you become an ocean, I'll drink all your water.

-Rumi

There are days when Syndra contemplates why she ever joined the League.

This was worse than most.

Her vengeance could have been swift: exacted upon the Ionian elders with prejudice and extreme force. They would not have expected it. They would not have been prepared to deal with her onslaught. Not all of them, anyway. She would have had the pleasure of smashing them against the ground, crushing them beneath her orbs of darkness, and pummeling them until they were nothing more than bloody, bruised, and broken.

But she had waited. Deferred. She took to the skies to live aloof of a nation that disdained her and those like her. She had brooded, like a little girl, and she had trained, like a young woman, and she had hated, like a lover scorned. And as she did, ennui, like a virus, had infected her.

Plans? Tomorrow. Practice? She was already perfect. Hatred? They were beneath her.

Literally.

The League had been her remedy, at first. She had wanted to show them she was more than an inert sorceress, who sat idle atop her throne in the clouds. And she had. As a free agent, she was very desirable. Her services on the Fields of Justice were both renowned and coveted. There was a satisfaction in being wanted, though perhaps novelty was a better word.

She sometimes liked to pretend she didn't understand how it was that she had allowed herself to become a tool to fight other people's wars. She knew she had become a mercenary to fight her own stagnant inertia, and then to appease a human need she hadn't consciously admitted she'd had, and then finally, now, to appreciate the only kind of art that she knew how.

Every summons was an exhibition, crafted by her hand and for her pleasure. As she had ceased to care about winning, she had grown even stronger, driven by the ecstasy of performance to showcase the beauty of her art. On the battlefield, she was absolute power, her own will but a conductor's baton to be heeded or ignored as the demands of the piece allow. She was reckless abandon. But any battle was more than a matter of mere self-indulgence. She was watching constantly.

As she established her reputation and refined her art, she saw the world, painted in hundreds of styles, without ever truly leaving her home. By fighting with and against Runeterra's greatest "artists", she had learned to respect and despise brush strokes from places she had only ever read about. It gave her a reason to care, if only so slightly. There was certainly an aspect of solipsism to what she did. It was what others did, how they complimented and counteracted her, which forced her to acknowledge that for all her power, she was not everything.

The Noxians. Black and red. Unforgiving on the best of days. She was the envy of any Noxian, and she allowed herself to indulge in that truth. No one there had any qualms about power and its use, and who was she if not a model, the very archetype of what one might achieve through power? She could fly to Noxus right this moment, and have anything she ever- she wanted for nothing. She knew they would have accepted her, but despite that, she did not admire them. Her people were "accepting," and she knew that did not warrant admiration. She did not like her people, but mindless slaughter was not and would never be her prerogative. She had watched as her country had burned at their behest.

The Demacians, overflowing and grandiose, austere in their blues and golds. Justice, worn like a bleeding heart upon some imagined, societal sleeve. They were so totally confident, completely at ease with themselves, and absolutely… self-righteousness. That was a flaw which, if she was pressed, she might admit to having fallen victim to in her younger days. Or now.

Piltover. Overflowing with brass, gunmetal, and bad ideas. Ego. A city preoccupied with tomorrow. Its people were not unlike the Ionians, to her thinking. Technology was just another kind of enlightenment. Maybe that was why its people grated on her so.

Zaun: green, brown, and worse ideas. She had yet to meet a Zaunite in the arena that did something other than curdle her blood.

The Frejlord. Ice.

Bandle City- just the thought of it made her want to vomit, gouge out her eyes, and then eat squirrel.

There were other locales too. Shurima called to her, and Bilgewater reminded her of gnats in the summertime. The Shadow Isles, ever mysterious. The jungles of southern Valoran. But they didn't leave quite the impression that the other places did, as if their champions weren't quite so branded by their nationality. She wondered if the champions of the League thought of her as Ionian, despite her official lack of affiliation. Would they be right, if they deemed her such?

She felt more like the world's byproduct than an Ionian. She was driven by nothing but power, guided by self-righteousness, a font of ideas (some bad) and conviction. Her blood ran as cold as the north, and perhaps, just perhaps, she had finally begun to indulge in the comfort of substance as much as the yordles had. She looked at the marginally full glass of wine that floated beside the accompanying bottle, which was markedly empty. She willed it to her hand, she brought her hand to her face, and she drank deeply from it. She finished it. It was only adequate, despite having been imported. Ionians were better known for their spirits than their red wine, but her pursuit of finer quality didn't seem to have made any difference. She dropped the glass and it stopped before hitting the floor, suspended by half a thought and less of a care.

She rose into the air, adjusting her body to a "standing" position as she did. She began to glide through the halls of her home, her Celestial Fortress, thinking of how, if the mood ever struck her, she might stop the place from deteriorating further than it had.

She had been living here for years now, and being airborne exacts a toll upon structures initially intended for the ground. Her housekeeping had been exceptional. Whether it was as a passive hum to strain her while she trained or an active burden to consume her while she read, she had never lost sight of the importance of home maintenance. Until recently, anyway.

The halls themselves seemed to sag under the weight of the moisture which came from moving through the clouds. The wooden floors smelled musky, the carpets seemed to be molding, and the inked tapestries that spotted the walls were fading to the point where only her mind could fill in their blanks. It was quite possible that no one else who remembered their messages was still alive.

Zaun and Noxus had razed the village surrounding her prison.

Every now and then, she would pass a display case, foggy glass obscuring some dusty artifact or tome that no longer interested her. She had taken time, in the early days, to read every scroll, to decipher every book, and to examine every blade confined within them. She had returned the things she found useful, and burned the things that angered, confused, or worried her. She had exempted the tapestries on a whim, preferring covered to bare walls. The fire had burned for a long time, and there were many empty displays.

She came to her practice room, the former foyer of the old castle. It was four stories below her throne room. It had nothing in it. She did not need practice dummies. She did not need conduits through which to channel her power. She simply needed space, and so everything in the foyer had been slung out the front door a long time ago. She was still not in the mood to practice.

She turned her gaze to the front door and sailed to it, gently willing its massive doors apart. To fling them open at such an altitude might expose them to a sudden gust of wind, which would not do, as the doors could certainly be coerced from their hinges with sufficient force. She shuddered as the wind roared into her home, throwing her silver hair back. Her magic was not good for keeping her warm. While she didn't mind the draftiness of her home, the true might of the elements was something she preferred to remain outside.

The view from her front door did not captivate her, for all its grandeur. The setting sun, an orange semi-circle amidst a canvas of towering blue clouds, did nothing to make Ionia's west coast any different from any other evening. She counted herself lucky, at least, that the curve of the world kept Zaun's smog from debasing the scene's beauty, however little she was appreciating it tonight.

For all the sun's brightness, she felt very, very cold.

Her gaze fell, and she hugged herself in a vain attempt to cover the gaps in the sides of her gown. She contemplated falling frequently. Not because she was afraid, for she could stop herself mid-fall with a whim. She could do most things on a whim. But because when you live alone, in the clouds, there is really only one direction worth going.

To be a Sovereign, did you not need to have something you controlled, or led, or owned? She was unsure, really, if she met the qualifications.

Absolute power, as she knew she had, demanded control. The directionality of the control was the problem, and it was not one she felt she was particularly suited to solving. The answer was uncomfortable, and complicated, and murky. Who did she lead? No one. What did she own? Nothing that she hadn't stolen from someone else.

As she contemplated the forests below, her mind returned to her League-given title, and then the epithet that had haunted her for the past couple of years, the one she never wished to voice, lest someone out there hear her.

"Queen of Nothing…" She whispered. She couldn't even hear herself speak with the wind roaring around her. She floated back, and willed the doors shut. The words lingered on her tongue, and her jaw clenched.

It was a truly fantastic bit of foresight that there was nothing in this room that she could break, because she wanted to destroy something right now. Her arms fell to her sides, and she clenched her fists. A familiar feeling welled up in her chest, and she welcomed it.

Hate.

It didn't come often any more. She sometimes wondered, in periods of long absence, if she had lost it, like an old friend (she had none) that one day did not write back. But it was always there when she needed it. Like a crutch, or an excuse. And when she thought about those, she only became angrier, for she didn't even walk and never gave reasons for her actions. She accelerated her pace away from her training room, hastily making her way through the halls on the other side of the castle. The first display case she encountered was dust instantly, along with its contents. She passed over it and up the stairs.

The next display case she lifted from the ground and methodically smashed into everything else that lined the halls. Only at the end of the hallway did she stop and turn to survey her progress. It looked like a war zone. She'd somehow punched holes in the floor too. It served them right for being so useless. Even so, as she ascended another set of stairs, she let her hands relax.

This was the floor where she slept: the floor where she had always slept. She moved to the door to her room, turning the nob and ducking her head to enter.

Her room had not changed much. A tiny cot, meagre sheets, a closet filled with acolyte robes. A table for eating, writing, and reading, and a mat upon the floor for meditating. Her bedside table contained a small dresser where she kept her undergarments, stockings, and gloves. She had made room for a couple formal gowns in her closet, and a pedestal for her headdress sat on the table. She dropped her headdress on the table, shook out her matted hair, and flung herself onto her bed, which creaked loudly in protest right before it snapped under her weight.

Lying there atop her thin mattress and sheets, now randomly perforated by splinters from her former bedframe, she froze.

Somewhere above her, she could hear glass shattering.

She couldn't breathe.

She was lying in a heap in the remnants of her bed. She had no idea how to function.

She felt incandescent with rage and aghast and quite affronted that her bed would have the nerve and a little bit sad and just so… tired.

When she remembered how to breathe, she was laughing. She tried to push herself off from her bed, instead of floating out of it, and realized that her arm was useless for lifting things. This was also quite funny.

She tried using both arms to a bit more success, and slung her feet onto the ground. Having regained something like composure, she stopped laughing by taking a deep, deep breath. She was in the habit of letting her laughter get away from her, but normally, she was cackling at her opponents' futile attempts at combat and not giggling like a little girl. She teased the ground with her toes, which were uncovered by her stockings. It was… strange to have her feet touch anything. After a moment, she picked up each of her feet in turn and eased off her stockings. Then she plucked off her gloves. She unclasped the skirt of her gown, balled it up with her stockings and gloves, and lobbed it feebly across the room.

She then unfastened the lower portion of her gown from the upper, and peeled off the top. She took careful lengths to ensure her hair did not get caught in the attached pauldrons, which always made undressing an ordeal. She placed the top of her gown on the floor gently, and pushed herself up slightly so she could slip the under-portion out from beneath her.

Something had to change, but she was far too young to be having a mid-life crisis.

Whatever it was she was doing – nothing? – was no longer working.

If ennui were a virus, her hatred was a parasite, and she was beginning to think that it was running out of food. Somewhere along the way, she'd been hollowed out.

She tried to stand, and immediately fell back onto her bed. A splinter lodged itself firmly in her ass. She leapt into the air with a yip and tried again to balance on her feet. She found them lacking, and fell on her face, catching herself ever so barely with her arms. She banged the floor with both hands, and her bed disintegrated under the sudden appearance of two dark orbs. Fuck splinters. She would always have some hatred for splinters. Gingerly, she took a hand and rubbed her butt, to see if it was stuck.

It wasn't, which was good for the future of all trees everywhere. Whatever she was about to do, she had a feeling that its usefulness would be highly diminished if it involved tree genocide. She got up to her knees, and crawled her way over to her table. There, slowly this time, she got to one foot, and then the other, all the while steadying herself against it. She was glad she didn't keep a mirror in her room, because she was sure she looked delightful.

With one hand, she loosened her underwear, and being sure to steady herself, she kicked them off, one foot at a time. She stood stark naked for a second, and then took a step away from the table. She wobbled uncertainly, and she knew she was cheating subconsciously with her magic when her legs didn't crumble beneath her again. Baby steps, for the first time in twenty-five years. There was no doubt that this was easier. Absolute power made walking absolutely simple… if one hadn't let the walking machinery wither away with the years. She knew that if she walked this way the muscle would come back with time, and she would still be able to move about in the meanwhile.

Walking was charming.

She awkwardly waddled to her dresser and selected a new pair of underwear. She grabbed the table, as her bed was no longer existent, and slid them on. She had never been fond of bras: absolute power assuaged the physical difficulty of being well-endowed. Her eyes fell upon her closet. She closed the distance, looked for the cleanest acolyte's robe, and wrapped it around herself.

She hadn't worn white in years. It was a simple thing. There was a strand of fabric to tighten it around her waist, which currently hung loosely from the belt loops that held it in place. She crossed the left over the right, and tied it. It fell to a little past her knees. She had grown a little bit, but not much, since it had been her size.

Her walk back to the front door was tedious. She opted to not use the hallways that she had previously destroyed, for fear that her feet would encounter further examples of nature's personal war against her. It really sank in just how disgusting her carpets and floors were getting, not that it really mattered any more. She entered her training room and with a flick of her wrist, an orb of darkness punched out her front doors. They sailed off into the air, presumably to terrify or maim some unsuspecting woodland wildlife. She strode straight out of the hallway, and started to fall.

She was accustomed to flying. Flying was fine and dandy.

Falling was for lunatics.

She had never once willingly fallen. She tried, at first, to affect a face of composure. She failed, and just gave into screaming until her lungs ran out of air. Then she took a deep breath, and started screaming again. The second scream was enough to calm her nerves sufficiently. She wasn't exactly afraid that she'd miraculously forget how to stop herself. It was more an issue of surrender. She trained to be capable of surrendering to power, and in turn, she had mastered it. She had less experience surrendering to gravity. She hadn't surrendered to it in years, and certainly never like this.

She let the air whip her head around, and she saw her castle rapidly shrinking over her shoulder. With an effort, she brought her head back to bear on her destination: the ground. She eased into the landing, and slowed down as though all she had been doing was floating down from on high. Her feet hit the ground gently, but they still bent a little much as she tried to find her walking gait. The clearing that she'd landed in was grassy and a bit overgrown. Forest stretched out in every direction, and a tiny pond sat tucked neatly in the center. She was about to take a step when she realized he was coming.

"Zed." She snapped her head around and found the ninja posed on the surface of the pond. He was almost certainly resting the tip of his foot on a lilypad, for such was the nature of his relatively shallow sense of humor.

"My queen." The sarcasm rolled freely from behind his mask, and he slipped into a deep bow. Syndra dropped an orb on his location, but he was already gone. From behind her, she heard, "I can't say I fancy the change of wardrobe. Or your new predilection for the ground. What brings you to this shitty, broken country's surface?"

"That is none of your business, Zed." She started walking off in the direction of the first destination that had come to mind.

"You know I have a way of discovering secrets. Wherever you wander, I'll be informed by some shadow or another." He swiftly sidestepped another flying orb, before reappearing right in front of her. Syndra stopped. "You know, if you finally wanted to slay the Ionian elders, might I recommend not walking in the direction which will carry you farther away from them? You could turn yourself one-hundred-and-eighty degrees and set out on your mission of revenge quite easily." He darted away as soon as he saw Syndra's hands begin to clench, and collided with a sphere that arose in his newest location. He swore, and planted his feet.

"Fine. Have it your way. Just know, when you return, I'll be here."

"I was planning on it." She quietly snapped her fingers. "Good-bye, Zed."

"May the shadows guide you." She didn't bother to look if he had left. She sincerely hoped he was watching her, though, and not the sky above him.

She was several minutes into the forest when the entire world seemed to shake. Birds scattered from the trees, and she took a second to pause. She doubted the Master of Shadows had just been crushed by her former abode, but she couldn't help but smile at the thought. How do you get an obnoxious man out of your life? Simple. You drop a building on him. Even if you don't kill him, he doesn't stick around much longer.

She was feeling more comfortable walking already. That was a good thing. She had a long way to go. She didn't know quite where that was yet, but she did know that she was getting there by boat. She exited the forested area an hour later, and rubbed her feet.

No splinters.

A/N: Well, how about that? No splinters. That's not to say her feet aren't going to be filthy when next we see her. In the next chapter, Syndra finds a boat, and a pirate hunter to go with it. They set out to the mainland together!

Toodles~