Author's note: I noticed there's a lack of good Kench or Varus fics out here. That in itself is a bit surprising. Now this particular idea has been boiling in my head for a while now, but I was only able to pen it through recently due to work -_- I still hope you guys enjoy it.
THE PRICE OF VENGEANCE
"It is the heart from which the darkest water flows"
This was the end.
The psyche of their perverted trinity had always been a battleground; an uneven one to be sure, where Valmar and Kai waged a guerilla effort against the Darkin's overwhelming influence.
All things die, it would whisper. All things die.
In their common mind where it was the dominant triumvir, there was no escape from it.
In their shared perspective with the darkness they had unwittingly released on their day of greatest desperation, they had paid the price a thousand times over with a fate they would never wish on their worst enemy.
Every day was a struggle not just to survive but to exist.
Every day, a war of wills.
Both of them beyond the point of nakedness to the demon, where it knew everything there was about them, where it had in fact become part of them as much as they had become a part of it.
They felt a bit of themselves vanishing with each passing second, but until that moment came they vowed that they would fight the monster with all that they had.
There was only one thing left to them that had not and could never be stolen by the demon, the unholy thing that went by the name of Varus.
So insignificant it seemed, but they understood even in their tormented purgatory that it was their love that held the monster at bay and kept them alive in a fashion.
But in the end they were only human, just two men deeply and irrevocably in love.
They could not explain how the corruption, that festering darkness that shackled their essences to this tormented existence, gained the strength to finish the job it had been attempting since the day they had released the demon Varus from the pit.
Countless tendrils of rot pierced them with finality, and pain beyond words shattered every fiber of their shared essences.
But Valmar and Kai were not afraid.
This was the end, they knew, and only felt their love for each other burn brighter than it ever had.
They used to jest that they were one soul in two bodies; how curious now that at the edge of oblivion, they were one. Two lovers in one body. Two souls with one beating heart.
What remained of Valmar and Kai locked lips and a final embrace.
It was a small gesture that felt more real than anything they had ever experienced in life, an evanescence they wished could last forever.
The fetid air of the swamp enveloped its domain in a noxious, suffocating blanket, an invisible shroud composed of rank and rot.
The moon, silver and radiant, appeared a sickening pink through the feverish atmosphere; a drowned man's bloated eye somehow plastered on the black ceiling that was the sky.
The swamp itself seemed a rotting corpse; the exotic vegetation the colonies of countless microbes slowly decomposing the body and the waterways the putrid veins through which sludge ebbed and flowed.
The usual chorus of the countless creatures of the night was absent. It was an eerie silence unheard of perhaps since the dawn of time.
As if the very life within the swamp vanished into the foggy air.
In the heart of that corpse-swamp was a hollow, and in that hollow he stood knee deep in the green-brown muck.
The pale skinned being took his first real breath in countless ages.
The reek would have made hardened men gag and vomit, but he took it in. Savored every bit of it. Allowing its fester to permeate every part of him.
It was the least he could do for himself.
He was his own master again.
He no longer heard their voices.
He no longer felt their constant, ever-present torment gnawing at his essence. He no longer felt anything was holding him back.
No more voices. No more others. No more Kai. No more Valmar.
No more…
He was truly reborn.
I am…Varus.
Almost.
Ah, he longed for the day when his true form would burst through this one. How he longed to once again speak his own name in the only tongue that could. It would take time, but he was Darkin; he could afford to wait.
His current face, a model of perfection that no sculptor could ever hope to emulate and much less surpass, twisted in a smile that could barely hint of the darkness within.
In his mind's eye—for it was now truly his mind—he was already raining down a storm at this realm and razing it to the ground with the fires of his hate.
This pitiful world that went by the name of Runeterra.
The mortals saw him an angry demon.
He would be to them a vengeful god.
They would know his suffering. They would know what real retribution was.
"Satisfied?"
The words seemed to come from all around him. The corpse-swamp itself spoke in a deep, oily, taunting bass that pierced his fevered fantasy like a soap bubble.
"My price is small," he remembered it saying "for so large an endeavour."
'Twas a voice which had haunted him since that fateful day.
"Your yearning for freedom, for revenge...are appetites I would see fulfilled."
The reborn Darkin did not even open his eyes but scowled in scathing acknowledgment of its source, "Let us do away with niceties here, River King."
The murky water, so still until then, seemed to tremble in the presence of an intangible power while the foggy air twisted and condensed in ghastly concert.
Soon enough, a deep rumbling noise from the swamp's filthy depths heralded the emergence of an immense head, smooth and slimy in its countenance bearing two beady, phosphorescent yellow eyes, a barbeled, gargantuan shark-toothed mouth twisted into a leer, and most unusually, a tiny black bowler hat perched on its top.
"My friend," the swamp-thing chastised Varus, "after all the help I've given you, this rudeness is definitely not warranted."
The reborn Darkin's jaw stiffened as he turned to face the newcomer, biting back a series of retorts. It would be most unwise, Varus knew, to challenge this creature here in its domain.
Especially not when the swamp-thing had effortlessly done for him what he had tried for years—what he, a Darkin, could not.
"My boy," the River King chuckled, "I think you could use a lesson in proper manners. Watch how I do it. Welcome to my humble abode."
The hoary creature then rose further from the water as it gestured amicably towards its fetid realm, revealing a huge, rotund body wearing a ragtag but still somehow fine silk coat the size of a marquee untouched and unblemished by the rot of the swamp.
"The—pleasure is—mine", Varus forced himself to say, gratitude foreign and abrasive on his tongue.
"See," his monstrous host guffawed, "now ain't that a little better?"
"Alright," his pale skin glinted under the sickly pink rays of the moon, "I have kept my end of the bargain. I have paid you in full, River King. Every soul I have slain, I have offered up to you."
Those last words were minced with a bitterness and—try as Varus might want to deny it— a begrudging awe of the demon's power.
The River King's broad mouth twisted upwards into a sinister grin, "My palate definitely has had its fill, child. But I can tell you have much more to say. Come now, let's mince words. You know how open I am to making new deals."
The Darkin's jaw clenched. He hesitated in flat out refusing the River King's offer.
He certainly was in no mood to make new deals.
Despite the thing's obsequious laid-back manner, he knew that the swamp-thing wielded tremendous power that possibly surpassed his own. He told himself he was not afraid, and the reborn Darkin actually believed himself...not noticing that he was watching the monstrous siren's every move, not noticing that his inhuman heart pounded ever faster, not noticing the white-knuckled grip he kept on his bow.
The creature raised his eyebrow quizzically as if knowing what was already inside Varus' rushing mind, "Come again? I didn't hear you all the way over–here."
Before Varus could process anything, an immense razor toothed grin set in a looming shadow with glowing yellow eyes literally appeared in front of his face. His nostrils took in the thing's breath, hot and fetid and so indescribably foul that it made the miasma of the swamp seem like ambrosia.
He could not help but take a few steps back in both shock and revulsion.
"You were sayin', boy?" it teased.
"I said, no more," indignation and rage allowed him to find his strength, all pretense of courtesy forgotten, "we are done, demon"
A mirthless laugh escaped the River King's sizeable maw, "Done? Done? Don't lie to me. Not that you could. To covet is to starve, and the only real sin...is to deny a craving. You child, have a craving I can see clear as day."
His newly reclaimed mind was a blessing, and he wasted no time using it while pacing knee deep through muck and water, never keeping his eyes off the River King who unblinkingly watched him in return with a slimy leer.
"What do you want?" Varus threw the question back at his erstwhile host.
"What do I want?" the thing chuckled, "Oh, child...you know what I want. What I really, really want."
He could not remember the last time he was forced to actually talk his way out of an engagement. Much less actually feel uneasy while doing so. But he knew that the longer the River King would talk, the more likely he was to make it out alive.
The sheer malice in the creature's voice was chilling, and what it implied—something Varus had known from the day he had made his deal—even moreso. He already had a plan in mind and he only hoped it would work.
"I have provided you all the souls you could want," he said, trying to keep the creature stalled, as he discreetly gathered a mammoth amount of eldritch energy into his bow, "I...can get you more and more. All the souls to keep you...as you say, satisfied."
The River King's unblinking yellow eyes narrowed, "An interesting bargain, I say, and not one without merit. More to say, have you? I would know. All creation is born famished and starving," ropes of saliva now flowing out of his bestial smile.
"Yes," Varus stopped pacing through the muck, his back turned toward the demon, "just a little more, actually."
In that moment the Darkin knew it was now or never.
A blink of an eye. A single breath.
An arrow with the power to shatter cities.
An explosion that rattled the entire swamp.
And then there was only silence, and the Darkin was once again alone under the sickly moon.
"The cost of your life. One arrow," he smirked arrogantly, hoping that some small remnant of the thing known as Tahm Kench could hear him from whatever oblivion he had just condemned it to.
The swamp remained silent, but its King was nowhere to be seen. How curious it was. Had he stunned those things which called that cesspool home in sheer awe?
But Varus did not care for an answer. There was much more to be done.
So much vengeance to be dispensed.
He began to stride out and away from that place, a smile on his face and a burning world in his mind.
"You disappoint me, boy" he heard the very swamp growl and fear returned to him like sudden frostbite.
Escape became his only priority.
"There is no evil or good in this life, boy. Even that revenge of yours is a parlor trick."
The pale skinned being tried to run and found his legs unable to be lifted free of the muck.
He screamed and raged, trying with his unnatural strength to free his legs only to realize that not only was he caught, but that he was sinking into the sludge.
"There are only debts and those who come for what is owed."
Varus roared and struck the water with his fully energized bow.
"Don't bother runnin', child..."
The muck exploded and his legs were finally freed.
"All the world's a river, and I'm its king.," that deep voice taunted, "Ain't no place I ain't been, ain't no place I can't go to again..."
Running like the wind towards the shore, he was a hairbreadth away when countless tendrils of black slime erupted from the water and latched onto every inch of him.
"...and everbody ends downriver...eventually."
Cold spears of torment penetrated his invulnerable skin and froze his immaterial soul. Pain beyond pain rent his very being. Pain beyond even his imprisonment at the hands of the accursed Sun Queen so many, many eons before.
He screamed, trying with all his might to break free, while deep throated laughter mocked him and rang about the dead marsh.
"Oh, how delectable. Despair is the seasoning. Misery has an exquisite taste."
"NO! RELEASE ME, DEMON!" he railed against that voice, still straining to break free of the black hands that trapped his body and seized his spirit.
"Call me king. Call me demon. Water forgets the names of the drowned."
"NOOOO!"
Those same inky tongues pulled, and he was dragged effortlessly like a fish on a line down through the swampy heart of darkness.
Varus continued to hurtle into the depths by some inexorable force of will.
Desparate rage built inside the Darkin, and it exploded outward to rip apart the tendrils which had encased him.
He instantly sent volley after volley of eldritch arrows into the gloomy depths, sensing those tendrils coming at him again and again and again.
He had no need to breathe yet suffocated all the same, his shouts of rage and defiance reduced to pathetic bubbles from his mouth.
The swamp could not have been this deep, the sane part of his mind observed, but the rest of him, the parts that fought desperately for his life, continued to shout and scream and fight against the black water, and so could not be heard.
All the while he could not hear amused chuckling coming from all around him in the gloom.
It was a puppet show; a black comedy for an audience that was nowhere yet everywhere around him.
"I am your greed. Your lust. I am your darkness. You cannot hope to destroy me," the River King's voice spoke as if lecturing a petulant child.
Varus continued to shout in impotent rage, shooting arrows pell-mell in the deep.
"Ah, nothing whets my appetite like the flames of ambition gone awry..."
And then Varus felt the very water squeeze the arm holding his weapon.
"...after all this time, you'd probably have realized I love playin' with my food."
An ugly popping sound vaguely told Varus that his bow-arm had been crushed.
He should have felt excruciating pain, yet only horror seized him upon seeing his mangled arm and weapon being drawn away by the water and down he went sinking further, a cruel irony of his rebirth—how soon it had been, only to be forced back from whence he came!
"It is my mouth into which all travels end," that River King's voice sneered, "Y'all gonna make for a memorable meal. I haven't had Darkin in ages."
A hook of shadow erupted suddenly from his chest, impaling his beating heart and stopped him from being dragged down any further into the bottomless pit.
"I've been here longer than any…I have witnessed worlds rise and fall; empires have gazed upon me and despaired."
With his remaining arm, the drowning Darkin attempted in vain to force it out and away.
"Too many have tried to escape me, to renege on their debt," that diabolic voice growled, "dreadin' me, runnin' from me. But I have always come to collect what is mine."
It was so cold, so cold.
"Tell me then boy, for what price is your vengeance worth?"
He could could only struggle and shout in cruel irony; the proverbial worm on a hook, a full-grown being on a festered umbilicus being dragged back into the chilling embrace of an endless dead womb.
In the grotesque reversal of his rebirth, only his pain remained and the freezing cold.
Lo and behold, his terrified eyes saw it emerge from the fathomless deep, a hundred times larger than he had ever witnessed it in life.
The very water quaked as the immense thing came at him slowly, its manner avaricious and malevolent.
It opened its monumental jaws and what Varus saw within went far beyond words and common fear.
An infinite regress of fear and torment, of teeth and venom and blood. Every horror that had ever been witnessed in the multiverse—all in one, and one in all.
A futile attempt to put in words that which was truly unspeakable.
Pathetic and broken, the reborn Darkin screamed and begged for deliverance. But only bubbles, useless and impotent, came to appeal to the hungry darkness.
"Immortality is something you and your kind take pride in", the River King's voice exclaimed, "which only means I'll be full for a very, very long time. If you meet any relatives of yours' inside, tell 'em..."
A thousand black maws with lashing red tongues laughed.
A chorus from hell.
Mocking the damned, hungrily reaching out for the struggling, frightened morsel to be devoured.
"...I said hello."