Sunlight streamed through the ajar window, burning into the closed eyelids of the bedridden elderly man. Groggily, they fluttered open, squinting in pain and the man they belonged to turning away from the light, clutching his head. His hands slipped through loose sheets as they rose up to grip his scalp, blunt fingertips rubbing against the hairless dome.
He grunted as he rose up to a sitting position, propping himself up against the headrest and back wall of the room. Muscles in his lower back ached, but they always ached, and so he ignored it, focusing instead on forcing his eyes open to adjust to the morning light. There was a momentary sting, then it faded and he was fine.
Relatively speaking.
He flexed the muscles in his thighs, willing into motion what little power remained in them, pointlessly lifting and dropping them. His free hand massaged beneath the sheets, rubbing up and down the length of the upper leg, but always stopping just before he reached the knee. He pursed his lips and sighed, looking through the window to the outside world, to the birds, the green, and the freedom that encapsulated it all.
Dry-mouthed and sticky, he reached for the bell sitting on his bedside table. A few flicks of his wrist was enough to send the ringing echoing through his whole house, and a sparse half-minute later the door to his bedchambers opened, a modestly dressed younger woman entering with an equally modest smile.
She greeted him and bowed, asking whether there were any special requests he wanted for his morning meal. He shook his head and she returned downstairs, and the old man went back to staring out the window. He heard the chirping of a sparrow and saw it dart by before flying out of sight. A few seconds later, a group of children entered his field of vision, running and playing over the hill just outside the bounds of his estate. He did not know their names, but he had names of his own for them, recognizing them from the village his home was just outside of. For the time being, he was just content to observe.
However, they're usual playful nothings shifted into a more organized arrangement. The boys had drawn up some kind of formation consisting of two groups, three aside. The girls were behind them in a line, all of them holding sticks and holding them like weapons. Swords for the boys, and bows for the girls. He watched them play at war, shouting at one another to not hit so hard, calling out when someone had been felled and arguing with the play-vanquished. One of the boys swung low, striking the other in the knee, and causing him to fall and to wince in real pain.
A pang of sorrow struck the old man, and his fingertips brushed against the stump of his knees without meaning to, intensifying the heartache. Just for a second, for a split-flash in his minds eye, he was no longer sitting up in his bed, missing the lower half of both legs and swaddled in comfortable Demacian cotton.
He was on the battlefield, the sky was black with the smoke from the flames of Noxian war machines. The armour around his chest was well-fitted but partially dented, his nose filled with the raw stench of death and blood. A fallen horse was lain over his legs, one of his ankles crushed but the other still whole, just trapped. He was still sitting, a pile of corpses supporting his back, drenching his silver in blood.
To his right, a collection of silver-clad soldiers were ablaze, screaming and writhing in violet flames. Their faces were still a blur in his memories, but there were details that would never leave him. One of the men was trying to pry the helmet from his head, but the heat had melted the steel and flesh together, rivulets of blood running down his neck as he tried to separate metal from man. Another was frantically rolling on the ground, doing nothing to abate the fires that covered him.
To his left, a score of similarly garbed knights were having more success with their endeavours. They crashed into a party of Noxian shield-bearers, breaking their ranks and carving through the line with practiced discipline. The black-iron imperial soldiers may have outnumbered the Demacian forces three to one, but there was no substitute for proper training. Over to the far left, way off in the distance, the fabled petricite colossus dominated the field. Every step sent screams and the sounds of crushed armour echoing over the battle, accompanied by a raucous, jovial laughter that inspired pure terror from Noxus's fighters.
What kind of monster could destroy so wantonly and consider it funny?
As the thought had crossed his mind, a roaring bulwark broke out of the Noxian backlines, charging recklessly through the black ranks without a care for life, screaming madly as it tackled shoulder-first into the stone giant's ankle, attacking without pause. The details of the beast were hard to make out from this distance, but there was a glow of something crimson in its belly, and the brutal swings of a great axe.
His attention was taken as a shadow loomed over him, looking up to see a tall, bearded general standing over the corpse-horse pinning his legs. He held a wide-bladed sword over his shoulder, gripping it with both hands. Sweat, grime, and blood that was not his own covered his skin and armour.
The old man remembered trying to scramble away, despite the weight over him. He remembered reaching for a discarded spear, just being out of reach. He remembered seeing the single arc that had cleaved him free, slicing through both knees and depriving him of his legs forever, rather than feeling the pain. He remembered a flash of clean silver as reinforcements climbed over the top of him, engaging the Noxian officer and dragging him to safety. He remembered seeing the general carve through those who had come to his rescue, before blacking out from the blood loss.
And now here he was, decades later. He'd left his bed about four times in the last thirty years. Two were within the first month, clambering, falling, and crawling desperately to prove he was still whole. He'd given up after that, only leaving his room twice more, both for funeral rites.
He was alive at least, and in comfort. He never wanted for anything, was never hungry, was never cold.
Yet, as he looked out and saw the children and their freedom, feelings that had been dormant rose up. Decades of repressed bitterness and rage bubbled from a cauldron in his stomach, filling his head with a steam of fury. For the first few months, he hadn't been able to sleep without the face of the Noxian who had taken his legs haunting his dreams. It then faded, only appearing sporadically and infrequently, until eventually he was no longer troubled.
It was all back to the surface now.
He was living, but not alive, not experiencing life as it was meant to have been. His tongue tasted like salt, and his skin felt dry as he closed his fists, shaking quietly. He wasn't going to get the years of life he'd lost back, he never could, and the years ahead of him would be the same.
What was the point if it was all just so empty?
His servant re-entered the room with his standard breakfast fare. As she placed the stilted tray over his lip, he looked up to her and spoke, asking her to go to into the village and procure a certain set of items.
She set off, and the elderly man sat back in his bed, looking out the window one last time. The children were still there, laughing and sitting in a circle crowning the hill. It was sweet, he thought, and he was at least glad he'd seen it.
The rest of the day was spent inside his own head, concerned with portraying himself through ink, and remembering the image of the Noxian who had stolen his legs.
The next morning, the old man lay unmoving in his bed. His servant had discovered his death after trying and failing to rouse him. Two things had been in his hands, clutched close to his chest. One was a note, addressed to her, explaining his final will in that he would leave the house and a portion of his fortune to her, should she desire to keep it. The other had been a crudely made effigy of straw, and three nails pushed crudely into it – the same set of items she'd picked up for him the day before.
No one could determine his cause of death. There was no disease or signs of pre-mortem distress. The corpse was whole, the vessels within the body intact. It was, to the villagers, as if he'd simply given up his life.
Across the world, another man was waking up dead. His body was lying on its front in the centre of his house for his children to later find, missing the head and his legs below the knees. Those parts had been arranged instead, directly in front of the corpse. His head sat on its side atop the dismembered parts, a thin pike nailing the three pieces in place.
There was no trail of blood to indicate a struggle, only the pool that the body lay in. No damage had been done to the man himself or his home, as if the murderer had simply killed him and committed the sick ritual without any resistance. The only indicator of any killing was a trio of piercing wounds through the mans heart, striking clean through the chest and out his back.
Kalista found herself staring across the water once more, black spirits aimlessly dancing through the waters placid surface and the air around the coast of the Isles.
She looked down at her hand and flinched. For a split-second, she hadn't seen the clawed, lean hand of the wraith she'd become. It had been heavier and wrinkled, the hand of a man wizened, but only for a heartbeat, just long enough for Kalista to question if she'd actually seen it.
Kalista. She reaffirmed.
A cool wind swept from behind her, causing the loose cloth parts of her garb to rise and trail with it. She felt the cold, but not the chill. She scowled across the ocean, watching the water ripple as the wind traced over it, then turned away and walked back inland.
As she was, as Kalista, she could not leave the Shadow Isles, at best travelling with the yearly onslaught of Black Mist whenever it made landfall somewhere, like Bilgewater. The best she could hope for was experiencing the world through the eyes of her Oathsworn, but even then, it was through fragmented whispers, and only ever in revenge.
How can I find myself?
As if prompted, her portion of the Black Mist materialized around her, snaking around her exposed midriff and clutching her, almost forming fingers and hands. Faces formed in the swirling embrace, calling to her, calling her name.
"…Vengeance. Vengeance, our Lady."
She snarled and tore it away, leaving the entity floating off her back like a cloak of faces and grasping hands, but finding nothing to grab for. Kalista took one last look over her shoulder at the water, then strode forward into the forest, letting the darkness cover her.
Partaking in a hunt always made Kalista feel better. She may not remember who she had been before the ruination, but it felt natural to chase, to indulge in the pursuit and bask in the thrill of a kill. The Isles may be desolate, but it was teeming with that same living desolation. All manner of creatures still roamed the land, either as undead or lost spirits seeking finality, and they were all things to torment for the greater Islanders.
Kalista had learned long ago there was no point to trying to help them pass on. They were stuck here forever.
She brought her hand behind her and scooped out a handful of swirling Black Mist, shaping it into a construct that resembled her own face.
"Seek."
It swum away through the murky forest air, zig-zagging through the trees until the luminous spectre was entirely out of sight. Kalista closed her eyes and for a second saw only the darkness behind her lids. Something came into focus, the wispy frame of a lost spirit, trudging alone through the woods, and Kalista opened her eyes.
Willing a spear into her hand from the Mist behind her, she allowed herself a small grin, and leapt into the hunt.
Trees blurred past Kalista's field of vision as she moved, bounding on great strides and kicks from the ground. Her Black Mist trailed behind her, following every twist and turn Kalista made to reach her target. The wispy spirit had caught on when it had seen the spectral face eyeing it, and set off into a run.
No one escapes.
The moment the spirit came into Kalista's true vision, she hurled her spear mid-leap, grazing the spirit on the side of the torso. This didn't seem to impede the fleeing spirit's attempt, but nor did it disparage Kalista. She landed squarely and kicked off, forming, grabbing, and tossing a new spear all in the same arc of her arm.
A direct hit through the shoulder. The spear stuck, and the figure staggered, but picked itself up and continued to shakily run. Another spear, now directly through the sternum, still they ran.
Rend!
The spears tore themselves from the host, ripping through and apart the already fragile state of the spirit. There was a scream as the remaining half-torso and legs fell to the earth, fading fully before Kalista could even reach its corpse.
It hadn't been her greatest hunt, but it had been exhilarating nonetheless. She wasn't certain as to whether it was the slaughter or the chase she preferred, but both aspects were beloved by the wraith. It felt familiar, like home, even if there was something missing…the risk of death?
Perhaps Kalista was a fighter…a soldier? She asked herself.
She blinked a few times as she realized exactly what she had thought to herself.
Perhaps I was a soldier. She corrected mentally. But how could I find the truth?
