.::The Relic::.
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"Lux aeterna luceat eis, Domine, et lux perpetua luceat eis"
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The wind howled as badly as it had when they'd crossed the frigid Abyss over an hour ago. it whipped his hair about and sliced across his exposed skin. The snow that was hurled along with it was as white as light glinting off a sharpened blade and hurt as bad as a roaring fire. He was almost grateful for the piles of snow layered on the ground, giving his feet reprieve from the wind above.
Yes, the cold here was brutal, but it was also something that just had to be ignored, considering the circumstances and the cruciality of his goal. Besides, his white-haired guide was dressed in much less than him, and she showed no signs of distress. So he grit his teeth against the frost and kept his eyes trained on her back. Her cape twisted and flew out from behind her, pitch-black against the storm of white, the striking negative of their surroundings. Symbols were etched in gold along the edges of the fabric, and though he couldn't make them out through the storm, he knew they were stitched in one of the most ancient languages of Runeterra, and probably told the lore of the great Freljord Queen Avarosa.
They trekked onwards in silence for what felt like hours to him, endless movement in unmeasurably deep snow. Were they moving forward? Had they turned around? He generally had a good sense of direction, but the blizzard had all but obliterated it. There were no footsteps to trace back from whence they came, no bright, flickering stars in the sky to guide them. All they could do was continue onward.
Finally, his guide came to a pause.
"We're nearly there, Piltoverian." She ran a hand through her snow-white hair, looking back towards him with eyes as storm-grey as the blizzard around them.
"Good." Ezreal's gloved left hand instinctively traced his amulet. Despite the cutting cold of the Freljord, the amulet was warm to the touch, and insulated his other arm quite nicely. This, too, was decorated in runic symbols, although in a different tongue and hailing from a climate much different than that of the snow-ridden Freljord lands. He nodded to his guide. "The sooner the better."
She stood still for a moment, assessing something about him (his integrity, perhaps) before heading forward once more. Ezreal plunged after her, boots sinking into the snow and flurries matting in his hair. He squinted. Through the white and grey of the blizzard, there was a vague trace of... Was it blue?
Has to be, he realized. It's near an old vein of crystals, after all. He sped up, moving as quickly as he could without becoming clumsy in the foul weather.
The closer they got, the more acutely Ezreal became aware of the enormity of what he was doing. Finding this place was just the tip of the iceberg. Centuries had passed since this place had been inhabited. And even if his research was right, and it really was last recorded here in the Freljord, there was no guarantee that it was actually still here... Others could have come and raided the whole place years before.
And that's what he was afraid of.
By now, they had gotten much closer to the vein of raw nexus crystals. It was just like it looked in the books he'd read: A tear in the Earth, and a looming castle - with high, angular towers and imposing arches, and made of an eerily purple-tinted material- that seemed to have been built from the depths of Hell. The amulet on Ezreal's arm pulsed lightly, registering the Nexus magic pouring from the vein.
Ashe stopped.
"This is as far as I will go," she said. Even with wind howling at her back and snow cutting at her face, she stood firmly on the snow-covered ground. She spoke like a leader, voice clear and projected. "I sense magic from this place, and it is not of a welcoming kind."
"I wouldn't expect it to be," Ezreal replied, moving forward to stand beside the leader of the Avarosan. His own voice was rougher, like the rest of him. An uncut gemstone, his geeky old techmaturgy professors would say. An untapped, crude resource. "Not here."
Ashe regarded him with curious eyes.
"Don't ask," Ezreal said in reply to her searching look. "I'll tell you if and ONLY if I actually find what I'm looking for."
"And if you don't?"
Ezreal scowled into the blizzard.
"Depends. I might tell you. Probably not, but if... There's reason to believe it's fallen into the wrong hands, I might."
Ashe said nothing.
He didn't know whether that meant she was going to be compliant or not.
"Trust me, it's in your best interest if you DON'T know." Ezreal wiped off some snow that had accumulated on his amulet.
"And for everyone involved, I really hope I DO find it."
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Luxanna Crownguard only vaguely recalled her childhood. Brief, fleeting glimpses of golden-framed memories. (They were mostly good. The vibrant gardens full of charming flowers with lovely aromas that dazzled her eyes and overwhelmed her senses. The high-towering arches of the Royal Chapel, with its shining windows of stained-glass and golden doorways and incense and chants said by men in dull blue robes. Chasing a butterfly that had wandered through the library window, laughing off the concern of her governess as she leapt and twirled between bookcases. Her brother, waving off their mother's concern at the bruise he'd received at training, enlisting Luxanna to support him in the argument.)
(The first time she'd noticed her propensity for light magic.)
But that was where her childhood memories ended. Soon after, her magicks caught the attention of the military, and her training began after that.
Her adult memories were much less golden-framed.
Nonetheless, Luxanna believed in what she'd been taught. She fought for justice, and as an extension of Demacia, she was to perform all things with direction, discipline and diligence. She was a formidable opponent and capable ambassador, and she recognized it. Furthermore, she'd had great success in covert operations.
Danger lurked around every corner.
(It thrilled her.)
Even with everything that had happened, she still clung with all her being to her teachings. Direction, discipline, dilligence. She'd taken the only direction she could, had used as much discipline as she could muster, and somehow, she was here, in the poisoned bowels of the Kumungu jungle.
How very dilligent of her. Garen would be proud.
She stood, beaten, dishevelled, in the center of a pond. Behind her, a stream emptied into it from a slight incline, angled to pour delicately into the water below. The gentle gurgling sound made her sharp, ragged breathing stand out, as if her very life intruded upon something ethereal.
She supposed that it did, in a sense.
Her armor was chipped and covered in things - blood, dirt, grass, her tears - and she was grateful for the cold pond water, thankful as it cooled the burning of her wounds, as it washed her clean of pain and sin and death.
Her knotted hair was still golden, but it was most assuredly a cruel (imitation? Parody?) of its normal shade. She hadn't used a comb in a week, at least. And her eyes - Oh, her EYES...
Light fell through the trees shrouding the pond, bathing her in golden sunlight. It warmed her head and skin.
Memories of her childhood spent at the Cathedral swept over her trembling body. The repetitive chant she learned from the monks that she said late at night, finding comfort in the simple words as she repeated them over and over through her ruthless training and terrifying espionage missions. They found their way now to the tip of her tongue, and she said them, over and over and over.
This, too, shall end. This, too, shall end, and forever is near. This, too, shall end.
She wept.
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Surprisingly, the stairs were carved into the crystal veins. They took sharp turns and jagged dips, but the stairs showed no signs of wear. Ezreal knew they had been around for at LEAST centuries. It was difficult to carve Nexus stones. To do so meant they had to be painstakingly repressed while the stone was harvested, and then put back together under the sight of a specialized mage. Plus, Nexus stones ran out. They were notoriously short-lived. They had a fairly short half-life of eight years, meaning they had to be replaced ridiculously often. (It was part of what fueled the flames of war between Demacia and Noxus, what made making treaties between nations such a difficult task.) The veins containing the crystals were rare and always contested.
The crystals themselves had a set amount of magic. Their power was limited.
To be so pristinely preserved here meant the crystal veins ran deep and tapped into enormous loads of power, power that seeped into the surrounding rocks and coated the carved stone. The blue shining on the surface and decorating the mountainside like an inverted waterfall was barely a hint of the treasure trove within.
The snow that landed on the winding stairs seemed to disappear on contact. It wafted down - wafted was the wrong word, for this weather; pelted was honestly the best word - and then, suddenly, when it was perhaps an inch or two above the glowing steps or carved mountainside, it halted, shivering as if chilled by its own cold, before disappearing in the blink of an eye. It gave the stairway a foggy appearance, with snow seeming to gather and fade the way it was.
Ezreal knew better than to think it was a strange fog: Nexus magic was transporting the snow elsewhere. He didn't know where, exactly. But it was definitely going somewhere.
In any case, he had no desire to follow the snow to somewhere else entirely when he'd come all this way to get past it, so he took the only alternate route: the jagged cliffside left uncarved and unblemished by the raw power of the Nexus vein.
It was a perilous journey, even for someone as prepared as he was. Bad weather, bad vision, bad timing - literally anything could go wrong at a moment's notice, and he'd find himself meeting a swift and probably painful end.
He lived for this.
He'd tied off rope to secure him (and added some safety magic and techmaturgy precautions, just to be sure) as he descended into the pit, painstakingly climbing down, down, down. One misstep, and even with the rope, things could go wrong. He could slip and cut the rope against the sharp rocks; he could lose his balance and the wind could rip him away from the wall; or the wind could batter him against it. If he didn't plan where he moved his hands and feet, he could wind up wasting time and energy trying to reposition himself. He could plumb run out of energy completely, collapsing from exhaustion.
So he was careful.
He thought the cold had seeped into his skin long before, but gradually he got even colder. The farther down he went, the worse it got. His amulet began to visibly pulse, sending out warm waves of magic. It helped. The stairwell built from the Nexus vein grew larger and brighter across the canyon from him.
And the battlements of the castle grew closer.
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AN: This is just the prologue. I hope you all find it intriguing! This has been spinning around in my head for a while. Let me know what you think! Personally, I love the League lore. I'd like to see more done with it. Game-wise, I'm only a so-so player, so lore really helps me enjoy the game more. Anyway, summer's starting for me, so whoop whoop! Party hard, summoners!
xoxoPigTails