AN: Despite the suspiciously specific denial of Vlad being a vampire, for all practical purposes he is. Without his hemomancy he can't draw blood magically to turn into the pure energy he survives on. He's got to bite and drink blood, so sorry, Riot! I fart in the general direction of your lore, he's a vampire until he gets his powers back! As always, please feel free to review with corrections. I must have made some mistakes in there somewhere...
It wasn't every day that Ezreal felt like punching someone. Sure, there were times when he had to do worse- that was part of being in the League of Legends- but right now he wanted nothing more than to throw down his gloves and sock the crook who pawned the useless map of the southeastern mountain range off on him. All that talk of an ancient temple, a lost sect of sorcerers, and a horrid bloodsucking monster had reeled the prodigal explorer right in. He'd heard the stories of the monster in the mountain before, they came and went every few years. No matter how many times Ezreal swore that he'd investigate the happening, there was never enough information to go on.
The map was a windfall for him. Normally he would choose to forego a map- who needed them, anyway?- but in extreme climates they were a necessary evil. Getting lost in the mountains, even with abundant supplies and survival skills, usually meant death of the horrible frozen variety. The air was thin, the climate unforgiving, and vegetation and wildlife were often sparse. Ezreal was a survivalist, but not exactly a hunter. The map was everything he could have asked for, with trails and landmarks drawn in.
Why, he'd practically thrown his money at the lowlife back-alley salesman who'd been waving it in his face, knowing that the famous prodigal explorer could never resist. Well, fat lot of good it'd done him! The map was either older than it looked, or completely fraudulent. More than half the trails marked down were either long gone, or had never existed at all. The landmarks were found to be much the same, and the few crooked signposts he'd come across were long erased by the wind and snow.
Ezreal's skills as a cartographer and navigator only extended so far. The best he could do was correct his map and press on to the next possible landmark. Grimacing, the young man glanced up at the sky. The clouds were thick and heavy, rendering the sky much darker than it should have been at four in the evening. The last of the late spring snow was blowing over Piltover. Apparently this was where the front had gone. The cold temperatures and thin air at the high altitude were bad enough, but for a storm to hit now of all times? Ezreal was sure his luck had never run out faster. It almost felt like punishment for having been such a complete gullible idiot.
Even with warm clothes and the supplies he'd brought, if a storm hit he'd have a devil of a time finding an appropriate place to make shelter. Setting up a camp wasn't worth much if he was exposed. Ezreal knew that he should have waited. If he were smart- and at the moment, he was sure he wasn't- he would have sat down and researched the area until summer rolled in, then he could have simply traipsed right up the mountain amid lovely forgiving weather and everything would have been perfect.
But Ezreal sometimes made bad decisions. When he was lucky, they led him to great things. The magic-infused glove he wore was one such thing, it had changed his life, and he never regretted the unplanned, under-researched adventure that had led him to it. When Ezreal was unlucky, however, he wound up in life-or-death situations. The circumstances he was facing weren't yet so bad, but they looked certain to be getting there soon.
It was when he stopped to fill in the paths on his map that the first clumps of snow started falling. Clumps, not flakes. There would be no easing into it. Ezreal picked up his pace, hoping to find a spot to shelter from the storm in, but the vegetation was lacking and the mountainside was sheer, beaten by the weather into long, flat planes that didn't favor him with the current direction of the wind. If the map was correct, which was doubtful, he was moving along north of the Tempest Flats.
Ezreal had never explored this portion of the mountain range before. Like any other sane person, he took the Mogron Pass into the Shurima Desert and went from there. To think, simply moving east from the pass would take him into such alien territory... "I'm an idiot." The explorer mumbled to himself, the words dissolving in a cloud of steam. At least he hadn't run into any hostile mountain men or monsters, but considering the storm dumping dangerous amounts of snow on him, most other benefits were dubious at best. Ezreal would never let it be said that he didn't try to make the best of a bad situation, though.
The trek seemed to last for hours, though Ezreal knew that time seemed to extend beyond reasonable understandings of measurement when he was in a tight spot. What he was sure of was that he was going to be knee-deep in snow pretty soon, and that it was too dark to see much even with the star rod he was holding out in front of him. "Bless Heimerdinger and those yordles at the Piltover academy for inventing these rods," Thought Ezreal, "A torch might work in Shurima, but definitely not here." To say that visibility was limited would have been a gross understatement. The downfall was a thick frozen curtain obscuring all but the largest objects. Ezreal couldn't mark his map anymore with any certainty, even his uncanny sense of direction couldn't overcome the conditions.
Things were looking bleak, but that was nothing new for the prodigal explorer. Ezreal reminded himself that he'd endured just as bad, if not worse, situations before. He knew he'd pull through, even though his legs were getting tired, and the cold was starting to creep into his clothes. Yet, as though to answer those thoughts, a great shape loomed up from the haze ahead. Just studying it's high, jagged angles and lopsided set got the explorer's heart pounding in his chest. Discovering something new always did. Not only was it shelter, it could very well have been what he'd set out looking for.
Ezreal nearly ran towards the structure, moving as fast as his legs would take him through the snow. On the snow-laden stairs he slipped, but the accident did nothing to hamper his enthusiasm, and he scrambled up the stairs on all fours to reach the landing. Not once before in his life had the explorer been so glad to get indoors. Ezreal had a special dislike for cold weather. During Snowdown season all he wanted to do was stay inside or travel south. When he was summoned to the Howling Abyss he was usually as surly as could be about it. At least this time, it'd been worthwhile.
The clear blue light of the star rod illuminated the dark passageway ahead. The first thing Ezreal did was look to the walls. The quickest way to learn about the purpose of an ancient structure was to check it's walls for pictoral carvings. By it's silhouette, Ezreal was sure this place was fairly old. Sure enough, there were carvings, but only faint ghosts of the images remained. The stone here was windswept and eroded, defaced too thoroughly by the elements to tell any story. With his gloved hand at the ready to cast a mystic shot at any real sign of threat, Ezreal continued down the hallways, noting the strange recesses chiseled into the floor every so often.
The further from the door he got, the more clear the carving on the walls became. While Ezreal was itching to take a closer look, something in particular put him on his guard: the scent of burnt wood. It was faint, but that didn't mean there was no reason for concern. That smell suggested that someone had been there recently, and there was nothing to say that whomever it was had left. With no way to know whether or not the potential other occupant of the building was friendly, archaeology would have to wait until the place was secure.
Yet what Ezreal discovered at the end of the weaving hallways of the temple came as a complete surprise to him. The smell was not, as he suspected, from a put-out campfire. It was the long-trapped scent of burnt furniture in the charred great hall. The explorer groaned aloud. Even the furniture could have had historical importance, and some fool had torched it completely. The fire couldn't have been too long ago, or the place would have been much more thoroughly aired out, but the ashes were strangely undisturbed.
Travelers were said to disappear in the temple in the mountains all the time. What else could this place have been? Yet the place looked like it had been virtually untouched ever since the fire. The only sign that anyone had even been through happened to be the footprints in the ash, though even those were old, covered up in some places by snow that blew in from the gaps in the ceiling. Maybe someone had burned the creature out. Ezreal knew he should follow the prints to make sure there was nothing nasty waiting to surprise him wherever they ended, but he sincerely didn't want to go back outside into the storm, and if the howling from the other end of the hall was actual wind and not some baleful monster, he was sure it led back out.
Sleeping would probably be impossible with that ominous howling going on, but all the better if he was awake. More time to set up camp, make sketches and charcoal rubbings, and take inventory of the recognizable furniture. It was going to be a long night.
/\\/\\/\\/\\/\\/\\/\\/\\/\\/
Miraculously, sleep did come. Not a sane, decent amount of it, but any sleep was good sleep. Ezreal had slipped into his sleeping bag for just one minute, and before he could stop himself he was dozing off. He'd only slept for two hours according to his watch, but it was better than nothing. The storm continued to rage outside, if the thick snow still pouring through the holes in the ceiling was any indication. Reluctantly crawling out of the warm shelter of his sleeping bag to pull on his boots, Ezreal sat down on top of it and started to leaf through the rubbings, sketches, and notes he'd spent most of the night making.
What he'd gathered from the carvings in the wall was that the temple had belonged to a sect of hydrosophists, practitioners of water magic. They were depicted manipulating great arcs and orbs of water before awed and reverent masses who bowed down to them, and from what Ezreal could tell the magic was passed down from mentor to student directly, physically, by way of the water itself. Interestingly, the carvings were not in Ionian style. The gestures apparently needed to cast the magic looked similar to gestures he had seen before on the Fields of Justice. Syndra flung her dark sorcery in marginally the same way, but he had never witnessed her manipulating the elements.
Valoran had it's own mages, of course, but the general Valoran focus on hextech development and military operations had de-emphasized the heavy use of direct magic, especially dangerous elemental magic. Historically, mages had been destructive enough before the days of the League that most people were happy to see them either regulated by the League or relegated to Ionia to learn control. The mages residing in the temple were obviously not Ionian, meaning that they had either been wiped out in the early wars, or had left for Ionia like the rest.
However, there was an incongruity: the burnt furniture. On closer inspection of the salvagable things, he'd found the workmanship not only to be standard, but contemporary. Someone had been living here relatively recently, maybe within the last ten or fifteen years. New theories joined his original speculation that the place had been burned to drive out a monster. The mages might have resided in the temple up until the creature came. They might have burned their own sanctuary to smoke the beast out. Ezreal thought that someone might have come to wipe them out, but there were no human remains among the ash. "The Piltover Archaeological Society is gonna love this." Ezreal proclaimed proudly to himself as he carefully folded the papers into a portfolio. Coming across the half-marked map again, his optimism fizzled. "...If I ever make it out of here."
Ezreal bound the portfolio shut and slid it into his pack before beginning to pack up to follow the footprints in the ash as he meant to do earlier that night. He hadn't been attacked in the couple hours he'd spent sleeping, but the absence of evidence wasn't the evidence of absence when it came to danger. The prodigal explorer tied his rolled up sleeping bag to the pack, hitched it up on his back, and began to track the footsteps down the other end of the great hall. There were several sets, and the ash that clung to the boots of the adventurers before him gave him some insights into which way they'd headed. The back halls led into the partially collapsed living quarters of the mages or clergypeople who had resided in the temple. The wall carvings remained relatively consistent with the ones in the front hall. A search for human remains turned nothing up.
Most of the ashen footprints led through to the other side of the temple and back outside, where they disappeared under the snow. It was an honest act of willpower for Ezreal to step out of the stone shelter of the temple and into the storm again, but another figure in the haze lured him forward. An untrained eye might have mistaken it for an unusual rock formation, but to Ezreal it looked like some kind of shrine. Retrieving another star rod from the side pockets of his pack to light the way, Ezreal pulled up his scarf, pulled down his goggles, and wandered toward the structure.
Up close, it was much larger. What Ezreal had taken for a shrine he soon discovered to be a charnel house. A few rotted coffins, half-buried by snow, still laying at the porch of the building, held human skeletons, all stripped of any possessions. Ezreal found that strange. Graverobbers normally didn't take the clothing. More unusual still, the skeletons were entirely whole. The coffins were overwhelmingly simple, rough hewn wood sealed only with nails. Once the wood rotted away, scavengers were liable to come and carry off pieces of the body while it decomposed, bones and all. Something here was out of place.
Ezreal tried the door, but the knob- and probably the hinges- were rusted to uselessness. Trying to break it down only ended with a sore shoulder, the wood was either very solid or very frozen. Determined to find a way in, Ezreal slogged through the snow to circle around the building in search of a window, but toward the back of the building a certain detail distracted him. There was a thicket of bushes behind the charnel house, but some of them had been obviously cut away with a sword to create a gap that hadn't grown closed. Frowning, Ezreal approached them. Nobody hacked away the local flora without a good reason. The ground beneath his feet began to incline downward as he moved along the path cut into the brambles. With the snow concealing the ground ahead, Ezreal wondered if he should go any further.
"What kind of thinking is that, Ez?" The explorer asked himself, voice muffled against his scarf. Talking to himself was a habit he'd picked up in years of traveling alone. He made pretty good company for himself. "You're an adventurer. Be daring. Be intrepid. Be a moron. Live dangerously!" Grinning at his own nonsense, he began to make his way forward. Caution still marked his descent along the incline. One hand remained on the rock face at all time, knee-deep snow kept his pace slow and steady. The wind along the sheer cliff face whipped his face and he found himself rubbing his goggles more often than usual, but it was all worthwhile when the path turned into the mountain itself and yielded a new discovery.
A small cavern was worn into the mountainside, still supported by three of four columns that still stood against all odds- though a swift kick probably would have toppled them. Ahead of him was a worn metal door. Ezreal tried it, expecting it to be rusted shut like the charnel house door, but found it surprisingly operable, barely touched by decay. The door's weight surprised him, the metal was thicker than he'd expected. From his experience, the heaviest doors protected tombs, treasure, or both. Ezreal's heart got to pounding all over again as he pulled the door wide enough to admit him.
With his first step inside, his star rod flickered. Ezreal lowered it to examine it, shook it like that might help. "That's weird..." Star rods normally never flickered. They ran on magic rather than electricity. The light returned in full when he held it up again, then promptly died altogether, plunging him into almost complete blackness. Ezreal swore and headed back outside, where the star rod returned to life instantly. The explorer looked from the door to the star rod quizzically. "Okay... so star rods don't work in there. Gotcha." While the discovery might have made anyone else nervous, Ezreal was more curious than ever. Why wouldn't a hextech light source work in that place specifically?
Luckily, Ezreal always had a contingency plan. The rags he tore up to use as kindling for his campfires he carried specifically for making torches in a pinch. A little magic, a little loose wood, and he had a light source. In this case he didn't have any wood, but there was the metal star rod. Ezreal didn't know if it would melt, but it was worth a try. He wrapped the end of the rod in fabric from his pack and cast a simple fire spell on it to ignite it.
Once more, Ezreal stepped through the door. The star rod died, leaving the passageway bathed in the amber light of the fire. The path ahead led down a flight of steps, ever deeper into the mountain. Out of habit, Ezreal looked to the walls. Sure enough, more carvings along the stairwell. He headed down to investigate them only to find that they told a very different story from the ones above in the temple. The stone was unweathered, almost pristine, preserving a gruesome tale in sharp relief.
The mages he had originally thought to be hydrosophists were depicted slitting the throats of the awed people who worshipped them in the carvings of the temple. The rivers shown on the temple walls were not water but blood, all of it flowing from the bodies of hundreds of sacrifices. The mages drew from it, forming their globes and arcs, the shapes of which didn't seem as playful as they did when Ezreal thought they were made of water. Ezreal continued downward, unable and unwilling to tear himself away from the images. The blood mages appeared to have turned on each other, tearing each other apart until one great, indistinct figure rose up above all others, who fell to their knees in its shadow.
As much as Ezreal would have liked to read on, tripping and falling down the stairs was not conductive to story time. The tumble went on for much longer than Ezreal would have liked, no matter how he tried to stop himself the momentum carried him all the way to the bottom of the steps. His torch clattered down next to him and skidded across the cobblestone floor a few feet. Another sound followed it, hollow and rhythmic- the object he'd tripped on. Ezreal was still gathering himself off the floor when the thing hit the landing and shattered into pieces.
Clutching the side of his aching head where he'd struck it on a step, Ezreal reached out with his other hand to pick up one of the shards dashed across the floor next to him. In the low light he couldn't tell what it was. He raised it into the torchlight and then immediately dropped it. It was a molar. The thing he'd tripped over was a human skull. Looking ahead, he noticed the long recesses in the walls and immediately understood that he'd descended into a crypt of some kind. No wonder the door had been so heavy.
His hand came away red when he pulled it away from his head to check for blood. "Damn it." Ezreal groaned. His backpack had broken the fall a little, but the damage was done. Here would be a good place to stop and tend the wound. Using his bloodied hand to support himself, Ezreal stood up to grab the torch. Suddenly he found the amber light of the fire ahead joined by a soft crimson glow next to him. One of the odd crystals mounted in the wall had begun to glow where his hand had touched it. Curiously, he put out his other hand towards the crystal in the opposite wall, but it didn't respond to his touch. The connection in his mind was instant, but unwilling. Ezreal smeared the crystal in the blood on his other hand and watched it flicker to life.
"Ugh, that's disgusting!" Exclaimed the adventurer, apalled. On the other hand, though, if the crystals remained illuminated for long they'd be a good way to find his way out... even if the means of lighting them up were vile. On a normal day he wouldn't let himself bleed, but this was already far from a normal day. Ezreal retrieved the torch and continued on his way, stopping occasionally to illuminate another crystal with his blood.
The crypt proved to be a full catacomb, complete with winding, confusing hallways and underground mausoleums marked with a language Ezreal couldn't recognize. He found it odd that for all the holes worn into the walls for bodies, there were barely any remains, let alone coffins. More unusual still, there were no animals. No bats had made their way in, and although Ezreal noticed rat droppings, there were no actual rats to be found. The only living residents of the place seemed to be spiders, though he could only guess at what they ate so far beneath the earth.
Eeriest of all was the growing feeling of being watched. The further Ezreal went in, the stronger it became. He found himself looking over his shoulder nervously. The prodigal explorer was not one to spook easily. Ezreal had gone through dozens of tombs without so much as a prickle on the back of his neck, but this was something else entirely. He checked his glove to see if it had sustained any damage. No worse for wear, except when he tried to summon energy into it, nothing happened. First the star rod, then his glove? Suddenly he wondered if it was better to turn back.
No, his nerves were getting to him. That was what he told himself, that he couldn't cast because he couldn't focus. Ezreal immediately felt stupid for being so cowardly, it wasn't like him at all. Taking a moment to steel himself, the explorer pushed onward. The blood trickling from his temple was beginning to dry into a sticky film on the left side of his face, his hand was already dry. Knowing that he clotted quickly was some kind of comfort, at least he wouldn't be walking around with a bloody head wound the whole way.
Ezreal leaped back when something crunched beneath his foot. Looking down, he discovered it to be a small skeleton, probably a rat. Not far ahead he spotted another, and a few more were piled up by the wall beyond that one. Now he followed the trail of animal bones, no longer bothering to try and illuminate the crystals behind him. As he progressed, the bones became more numerous, and then, to Ezreal's disturbance, he began to find corpses rather than just bones. Bat corpses, rat corpses, mice and rabbits, some with fur and meat still left behind. They were getting fresher.
The trail of tiny bodies led up to a mausoleum that lay open to disclose a red glow from inside. Ezreal hung back at the edge of the light. The feeling of being watched was stronger than ever; even though there was nothing but darkness behind him it wasn't a comforting darkness at all. Turning back no longer felt like an option. Better forward into the light than back into that threatening shadow. He advanced into the mausoleum.
If it weren't for the enormous crystal in the middle of the room glowing the colour of blood, Ezreal would have noticed the little mountains of rodent corpses strewn in the corners, the vaulted ceiling, the beautiful etching in the stone- but the crystal was all he saw. Transfixed by the sight, he moved toward it until he stood only a couple feet away from it, never daring to put out his hand and touch it.
"Bloodstone..." He whispered in awe. Ezreal had only seen bloodstone once before, and it was in Taric's collection. When he'd shown an interest in it, the gem knight had readily explained that bloodstone was both powerful and dangerous. Large chunks of it contained magic that could be used to heal mortal wounds and cure terminal illnesses, but the price for creating it was steep. Bloodstone was formed by some of the blackest arts: blood magic and necromancy. Using it's magic would deplete it of it's power, but long exposure to undepleted bloodstone was corruptive. For all it's healing potential, it was evil.
Never in his life had Ezreal seen so much of it in one place. Taric would have been beside himself. The explorer's eyes moved from the jagged pinnacle of the stone to it's base. The fabric pinned beneath it caught his eye. For all the moth holes in the faded material, it still seemed familiar. Ezreal crouched and touched the hem of it tentatively, running his finger along the silver embroidery. Green eyes grew wide as he recognized the pattern. "Oh no..." Ezreal thought, his stomach sinking, "This is a summoner's robe."
A new voice cut abruptly into the tense silence of the room. "Do you know something about this stone, dear lady?" Startled, Ezreal dropped his torch and scrambled to his feet, turning to face the source of the sound and aiming his glove for a mystic shot. The thing now standing in front of him was hideous. Chalk white skin was stretched tightly over a deathly skinny body swimming in fine black clothes apparently too large for it. The taut flesh on the being's bald head gave it a skeletal countenance, from which two pure red eyes glowed covetously. It's smile- if it could be called a smile at all- showed off a predator's elongated eyeteeth.
The monster rumored to kill travelers in the mountains now stood in front of Ezreal, staring him down, possibly sizing him up. Worse yet, it laughed at him. "Oh, my darling, unless you mean to punch me to death, you can stop pointing that thing at me. Whatever you're planning to do with it won't work. No magic does in this place." The monster's voice was light and lilting, completely incongruous with it appearance. Masculine, but still slightly higher than Ezreal's own. The creature began to pace in front of him, stalking from one end of the room to the other. The explorer's eyes never left it. "Now, I will ask you again, young lady, do you know anything about this stone?"
Distressed and bewildered, all Ezreal managed to blurt out was "I'm not a girl." If the monster had eyebrows, they would have moved up. The change in expression was all that was there to suggest it. Ezreal didn't lower his arm.
"Indeed you aren't, but that doesn't answer my question. Do you know anything about this stone?" Somehow it was scarier when the monster stopped pacing. It looked like it was about to strike.
"Yeah, I do. Why?"
"No one else seems to. If you aren't lying to me, your knowledge makes you unique." One impossibly shiny black boot edged forward. Ezreal tensed, bracing his body for the recoil of the magical pulse he expected to come from his glove, but nothing of the sort happened. Exactly like the monster had said, it didn't work. The vicious grin on that skull-like face widened terrifyingly. "Now, now, there's no need for that. Where are my manners? Allow me to introduce myself: My name is Vladimir. I invite you to stay here as my guest in the days to come."
"I'm not-" Ezreal began to protest only to have his words choked off by sudden pain in his throat. Vladimir was on him before he could have ever prepared himself, sinking sharp fangs into his neck. Ezreal tried to scream, but no sound escaped. Blackness.
Don't worry, Vlad won't be stuck in his nosferatu skin forever.
