Authors Note: My first try on a FanFic. Any suggestions will be welcomed. Also, english is not my native language, so if I have grammar and orthographic fails, please let me now. Enjoy.
P.S: I don't know how often I will update, but I guess that will depend greatly on how the story is received. I will develop the character in the upcoming chapters.
Prologue
"I'm finally here...", he said to himself when the ruins appeared before him. Standing over an elevation, he had a clear view of what was laying ahead.
Once a big city of wealth and splendour, Icathia was nothing but lost ruins in the middle of nowhere in the far east, home of secrets, riches...and very dark stories, stories he never believed to be true. It was the afternoon already, and the heat was unbereable. But for him, it was normal.
"One of the perks of being shuriman, I guess", he thought. Even if he went away from his homeland for eight years, it felt like he never left, or that he just returned from a week long journey.
Maybe it was in his blood, being born in Shurima and resist this high temperatures. The real hell was the Freljord. If he had to choose between the unforgivable sun of Shurima or the cold weather of Freljord, we would choose Shurima a million times.
He shook his head, coming back to reality, and he looked to the sky. "It's not long before the night comes. Even though I don't believe in ghost stories, its better to be safe than sorry. I'll rest near the ruins and then get going in the morning".
He started to descend the elevation until he almost reached the entrance of the lost city. He stayed there for a while, just staring at the ruins.
There was something there that made him feel uncomfortable, and his survival instinct told him to turn around and go, but his curiosity was bigger. He looked at the sky again and noticed that it was starting to get dark, and soon the heat would disappear to let the low temperatures come.
He wasn't worried. He was using a travelling cape, very simple and cheap, but good enough to get the work done, with a hood covering his head. A shemagh covered his lower face, so the only thing visible were his eyes: big and with a light brown color.
After searching for a while, he found a nice spot under some rocks near the ruins that would protect him from the wind and the cold night...and also from some unexpected guests.
He reached his leather belt and took it off, and with it, two scimitars that were secured to it. Since he left, they were his most trusty companions, with no possibility of treason...and they were also something that reminded him to his family. Tired, he put aside his weapons and laid his head on the sand. He soon felt asleep, but he didn't rest well...strange dreams haunted him that night.
He woke up with the light of the morning sun falling to his eyes.
He standed up and stretched, letting out a yawn, then he grabbed his belt and put it on. It was time. As he approached the ruins more and more, he felt that survival instinct again, hitting as hard as a rock, a scream in his head telling him to run, to turn around and never return.
But he wouldn't surrender, not now, not being so close.
When he was a step away, he stopped, staring at the ruins with an insecure feeling.
He tried to think about something else. What strange artifacts would he find? What stories prevailed after so many years? Holding his breath, he took the last step.
After a few seconds of just an uncomfortable silence, he exhaled, and laughed a little. "After all, stories are only that. But hey, its better to be safe than sorry". With this, he entered fully to the ruins, walking straight to the city center.
The city was a lot bigger than he thought it would be.
About ten minutes had passed since he started to explore, and the ruins looked still the same, he even started to think that maybe it was an hallucination, until he reached what he was looking for. A big structure, crumbling and partially destroyed, with some pillars keeping the building from collapsing. Two imposing domes above the building could be seen, and a big arch was showing the main entrance.
"This was probably the palace, or the library. Both cases, what is inside is extremely valuable. I must take a look".
Without hesitating, he almost ran towards it, until he reached the entrance. He looked at the arch again, and saw a series of glyphs and runes. He almost spent half an hour trying to understand them, and even if he was almost an expert in epigraphy, he didn't have a clue of what it said.
Kind of frustrated, he took a little notebook out, a pencil, and started to write and draw what it was there, decided to decipher it later.
He entered the building, and what he was left him astonished: it was a palace, or at least sort of, with very rich decorations on the walls and ceiling. The windows had no crystals, and there were no signs left of candlelights, so all the light in there was natural, and still, it was so well made that it seemed that it was an open space.
With further examination, he saw that the domes had some kind of painting that disappeared with time. Tragic, indeed. Knowing the art and culture of a lost civilization was something he was excited for, but not everything was lost. He still had fine examples of architecture.
He kept examining the place, taking notes and doing drawings of everything interesting he saw, exploring the palace and its numerous rooms.
After a few hours, he found what he kept looking for since the beginning: the library. Ancient knowledge from a lost civilization that no one but dead people and phantoms from the past knew about was now at his grasp. Maps, documents, books, scripts, laws...everything was there. A real treasure chest.
He didn't noticed when it started to get dark until he could barely see the documents in front of him. In a bad mood, he knew he needed to leave.
While he exited the palace, he felt something weird...a horrible feeling of being watched by someone or something. He took one scimitar by its handle, without taking it out, ready to attack everything that came near him.
It was in that moment when he felt it...when he heard it. Hundreds of voices calling him, creeping into his mind, making his head hurt from their intensity. Desperate, he looked around everywhere, trying to find the origin of those voices.
The voices became stronger and stronger, almost driving him insane. He was on his knees, with his hands on his temples and with the eyes closed.
"Remember your training", a voice said somewhere in his mind, "remember the temple". With this, he started to calm down, and tried to focus on something, muting the hundred of voices in his head.
Breathing at a slow rate, he slowly put his hands down, while the voices slowly disappeared, and the pain stopped.
Meditation, a little "trick" some monks have taught him while he was in Ionia.
Slowly, he opened his eyes just to discover the thick darkness surrounding him and the city. He got up and started to walk out of the ruins...or at least try, it was almost impossible with all the darkness.
While walking, he felt the gaze of hundreds of eyes staring at him, from the crumbling buildings and the destroyed structures. This made his survival instinct to fully activate, making him run desperately in a straight line, hopping to leave the place as fast as possible.
Suddenly, he bumped into something, making him loose balance and fall. Still alert, he took one scimitar with his right hand, prepared to fight, until he noticed what was in front of him.
An obelisk, in the middle of somewhere in the ruins, standing tall and with no signs of damage, it even seemed it was made the same day he reached the city. It was strange. He started to feel an intense urge of getting closer to it, to inspect it. He was hypnotized by it, so he didn't noticed the darkness approaching to him.
When he was close enough, he stopped, and without thinking, he extended his left hand and touched it...a big mistake.
Without warning, everything went black, and the voices returned so strong that he thought he would faint from the pain, but that was not all. A dark purple light was coming out from inside the obelisk, and he saw how the same light started to crawl towards his left arm.
He was scared for the first time in a very long time. He tried to move, just to discover that he ha was not even able to make a sound. How was this possible?
"You are ours now, you have no scape. Vow to us, or let every part of of your self be consumed".
How was he able to hear that voice if his senses were not working? Then, he realized what was happening to him. He was in a trance, probably provoked by the same entity that had been hunting him since he left the palace.
He needed to wake up...but how? Even if he recovered, he wouldn't be able to move his left arm. He started to think, while he looked how the light reached his elbow, spreading more and more. He needed to so something, but what?
In his arm appeared strange lines with a blue bright, coming from his fingers and slowly spreading through his arm. Desperately, he looked around trying to find something that could help him, and then he saw it.
He was still holding the scimitar with his other he could be able to just move his right arm, he could...
"I don't have much time, there is nothing else I can do. I must not think about it and just act!", and with this thought, he concentrated all his energy and strength to move his right arm.
The light was still moving, climbing towards it shoulder, while the strange lines were expanding slowly reaching his elbow. After what appeared an eternity for him, he finally managed to move his arm.
Without hesitation, he raised the scimitar, with the sharp end straight to the immobilized arm. He stared at it for a moment before closing his eyes and almost immediately swinging the scimitar down with all the force he could muster.
The shock made him faint for some seconds.
When he regained consciousness, he could see the night sky filled with stars and the moon shining like never before. Everything was so calm it seemed he just had a nightmare.
He looked to the front, searching for the obelisk, but there was nothing there. He felt a little relief, nothing really happened after all.
"I don't know what that was, and I don't want to stay to now. I must leave right now". He tried to get up, and then he felt the pain, an unbearable pain coming from coming from the left side of his body, where the left arm was once.
With horror, he looked to his limb laying in front of him, still with the strange blue markings, and almost instantly, took his right hand to the gap where his left arm should be, feeling something warm coming from it. Blood.
With the little strength he could gather, he got up and started to walk. Where? He didn't knew, but everything was better than this place.
He kept walking until sunrise, when the blood lose and exhaustion made him faint. He never noticed when a wandering caravan found him and took him to the nearest town.
When he woke up, he was on a bed, with bandages in his amputated limb. They told him he slept for an entire week, and then they asked him why was he laying in the middle of nowhere without an arm?
"Bandits. I was on an expedition with more people when some bandits ambushed us. I lost my arm in the fight...I am the only survivor". They believed him, of course they did. Bandits weren't uncommon, and it was a good reason of not getting near a place. He wouldn't tell them the truth. How could he? If he did, they would consider him a mad man.
He recovered after a few days. Strangely, the wound cured unnaturally fast.
He gave some coins to the wanderers for all the trouble, and after thanking them for everything, he left. When he was far away from the town and made sure nobody was near, he burned the notebook with all the information he gathered about the ruins. Icathia. For the sake of Valoran...no, for the sake of all Runeterra the city needed to remain lost. little he knew, that all his life was about to change.
Well, thats it, the prologue of "Fighting for his Mind". Please let me know if you liked it. Thanks.