CHAPTER ONE - ANTHEM OF THE INFERNAL BLOOM
Sprawled on the lower quarter streets were the usual fare of citizenry, the same faces for years, and where should have populated the higher noble quarters instead visited Shauna Vayne, she who came to be as unruly as any peasant rouser. The House of Vayne, as with any other of Demacia's nobility, drowned in their ideals. Albeit the least intense of them, they still chased their penchants of hunting witches with tireless fervor. Aligned with the governmental contingency, House Vayne dealt with the unholiest faces of magics.
Domahl's Tavern the signage read in carvings onto wood. The settlement on first glance looked ragged for its years, likely to be damaged by inebriation - boarded and plastered in edges where bodies were imagined to be thrown against. It nestled in otherwise a homely appeal with its stone and hut craft, roofed with an open chimney from an ever-burning fireplace. The palette of orange lights it burrowed in drawn against the azalean sundown couched much of it into a mystical borne of surreality, of an ethereal atmosphere drawing patrons like moths to a flame. The domain it was draped against, however, was left a lot to be desired - the otherwise quiet visage of the tavern was destroyed by the everyday rummaging of chaos and obnoxiously loud banter. In every of the lower quarter, far and outstretched everywhere, the people knew and loved this place for its congregation of indiscriminating highborn and peasantry.
"Alright, alright, who's next against the twist of fate?" Bellowed the proprietor in his contrivance to fruitlessly mask his drunken stupor. He slammed his porky hands against the table repeatedly, shaking glittering coins off the top. "Come one, come all! Come one, come all! Come lose your money to the twist of fate!"
Shauna circled the room as she normally would, tabbing an eye out for dangerous people and dishonest purveyors who would run unscrupulous in the sanctum of private businesses allowed by the good keeper. She slid into a chair by the bar, doggedly watchful of the rowdiest table, crowded by a tumultuous group of fifteen burly men towering over a lanky lone. Even if his face was unclear, hidden by a hat and cloaked by linen pauldrons, she was downed by a familiar knowing he was a crook. She veered farther than the table, and was greeted by an equally vigilant Quinn, whom had on surface no real purpose in being where she was. But neither did Shauna, of whose frequenting of Domahl's Inn stemmed from her alienation from her noble peers, of which evolved into an impetuous extrication from them. She had since found solace in the accompaniment of the lower quarters, where she lived a second life in the dignitary as a vigilante, as the police the lower quarters never had.
Quinn was to Shauna an oddity at best, for she was born and raised a commoner, but her stupendous archery abilities and impeccable manners quickly earned her standing in the military, and had since extricated herself from her birthright. Shauna had little tolerance for hypocrites, and she thought Quinn to be one, but Quinn was as honest as they came, and nowhere remotely a hypocrite she was framed to be; perhaps vexatiously naive, but none more scheming than a child's audacity. Shauna pitched towards her a silver dart across the room, leaving a few men in the wake barely unscathed. Pinned on its sting read a note: "Not having much fun, are you?"
To which she responded with a quicker, and sharper shot from her crossbow, of which arrow harshly lodged into the wooden bar, and it came with a note as well: "I enjoy not having fun together."
"Usual for you, missus?" A lordly voice broke Shauna's train of thoughts.
"Not toda-" Caught abruptly with her attention heeded elsewhere, she only realized the familiarity in the voice embarrassingly late. Turning to her inquirer, she paused agape, blushing. "Father?!"
"And as to why you are here, should I enquire?" His eyelids raised in some semblance to mockery.
"Caught wind in the rattle a gambler that never loses," Shauna gestured to the overcrowding table. "Foul magic runs amok, my father, no chance that manner of luck is any human."
"Perhaps." A feigned grin crept on his face as he heaved the entirety of his robust self over to the table. "We can only find out."
Shauna turned to look at the note again, only to realize she'd missed the portion beneath that read: "Lord Vayne behind you".
Revelry exploded in violent cheers as the skinny man revealed his last card. 'Heh' he smirked. "Dealer always wins." Just as the one with angry cheeks opposite of him cringed in embarrassment, Lord Vayne thought it fitting to take his place instead. He rowdily lugged the chair, rearing all that is undaunted of himself and cast it over to the man, beckoning him: "As does a hunter crossed with a witch, am I correct?"
"Heh." The man scoffed. "Pick a card. Tell me what you've got. Or don't. It doesn't matter. Heh."
Lord Vayne motioned to his daughter in their own code of morse, to which Vayne acknowledged explicitly. They knew who that man was, and he wasn't to be trifled with. He reeked of corpses that was more than foul to the trained nose of a witch hunter even amidst the drowning stench of beer and roast - the hallmark of scholars in the field of dark sorcery. The fireplace crinkled in the newfound silence as the crowd pivoted their attention onto the man's hand.
"A sneaking suspicion you're cheating, that's what I've got." He smiled, only to be met by the unanimous jeering from the spectating crowd. Sore loser, they called out. The only other man playing with him grinned even wider. Disinterred from memories of whisperings and street-tales, the Lord vividly recalled the man being the one they called 'Twisted Fate', a name aptly fitted to one whose forelife was wrongly wrought by the bad side of serendipity, and how he, a mere mortal, went against stacked odds to verse himself with wielding forbidden sorcery - unholy magics to bring fate to its knees. He was known among card sharks and the worldly underbelly as the Fortune Monger, he who borrows from an endless fount of luck.
"Cheater's just a fancy word for winners." He unfolded a winning hand. "Luck's out, mister."
"Fair of temperance against the twist of fate, Fate."
"You needn't stutter, my good sir. I heard you cle-"
"I wasn't, Fate." All of his life was washed from the Lord, leaving only enough emotions to carve a face of stern. "Twisted Fate."
"Careful the unknown waters you tread, Lord Vayne. A card shark's still a shark."
Twisted Fate tipped his hat, inking his face with deep shadows. From his seat, the Lord could only see a wicked grin ruin his otherwise pretty mien. The cards on the table each glowed varyingly a crimson red, a blinding gold, and a shimmering blue; all menacing in their sinister undertones. Twisted Fate slammed an open palm on the table, sending the men around him backwards, and the cards drifting in midair, each and every one of them sharply pointed towards the Lord, whose sword was now unsheathed in defence. Apart from the clicking of their crossbows, Quinn and Shauna stood unmoving without a plan. Not even averting his gaze away from the Lord, Twisted Fate raised a clenched fist and released it towards Shauna, to which the cards obeyed, viciously flying towards her. The scattering of cards darted blindingly quick, piercing the sound veil with every concerted movement, leaving not even a pocket for Shauna to respond. The blue ones exploded into a magical storm, cutting into her soul; the gold ones delivered her into a blur of daze, blinding her; and the red ones struck deep into her armor, slicing open skin. Then came loose a scream that reached the heavens, of which would come to haunt her father should he have the fortune to escape unscathed. One of the red cards had struck both her eyes, staining her cheeks a crimson shade darker than the weapon.
"Quinn, remove her from here!" The Lord beckoned; she already was lugging Shauna out of the tavern in the bloodied mess, of whom the latter impregnated the place with intermediate screams.
"No, father, we leave together!" Shauna shrieked between wretched tears as she writhed her hands helplessly to numb the pain on her face.
"Do not persist in folly, Shauna! Leave this to Father." He directed a fiery gaze of solemn towards his daughter's perpetrator, the sword drawn against his neck. "Your turn to run out of luck now."
"Empty of cards, yes." He spoke gently, his lips accentuating every syllable. "Empty of friends, no."
The tavern erupted into a haze of purple smog, blinding the Lord and locking him in fits of coughs. "Cheap tricks." He lamented, but he hadn't expected anything less of a street-rat such as Twisted Fate, whom along with everyone else faded into the billow of deceit; and the immediate thought that followed was the safety of his daughter and Quinn. Amidst the smokescreen, he groped towards their skirted silhouettes, bellowing their names. The smoky residue began to subside quickly, and just as he made his way to push both Quinn and his daughter out of the fray, his passage was staved by a weapon in face. The silhouettes were not of familiar faces.
A staff strewn by the witchwood of the Blackthorn Forest and empowered by a construction of crystallized mana, wielded by a matriarchal figure adorned with the regalia of the Black Rose. On the shaft was drawn with a most forbidding black the guild's insignia - the unmistakable imprint of a rose. The staff beamed with dangerous levels of magic, and from its crystals unleashed an orb of destructive energy, impelling the Lord up against the wall several yards behind him.
"Surprised to see me?" She cackled in her caricature of mockery.
There stood before him the Matron, Emilia Leblanc, and beside her a man of age, lower half of his face cloaked, and limping. From beneath the Lord's soles, darkness swelled in violent proportions, and from its belly manifested a talon most immense, clawing and ripping his torso, binding both his shadow and himself to the ground. The claws, they grazed and tore, and sunk beneath the Lord's body - they worked their way through his skin with merciless fervor, then forcing their way through stiff muscles and fibres, oblivious to his shouting in excruciating pain, securing a grip before they fastened in stills. Quinn, under her breath, whispered an apology, and egressed with Shauna under the flight of her winged mount.
"Feasting begins, Beatrice." Croaked Swain as he tapped his walking stick. Parchments of a blackened glyph drew itself on the floor, conjuring a portal of the rift. From the darkness unknown shrieked an ominous being, large and demonic. Its beak dribbled with fresh blood but not of its own; all six of its eyes shifted erratically as if in search for prey. Feathers darker than black littered the floor and as the entity exited the portal, disappeared into dust. In its lacklustre blackness, the bird-beast unfolded its wings, extending into the immensity it truly was. Recognition came clear: only ancient demons were sealed with black glyphs, where they spent eternity in the darkness of other realms. Cognition came clearer: this man was not as mythical as he was whispered to be in apocryphal tellings. The bird gave away his identity: he was amongst the darkest of legends to be the first man to have achieved s- Jericho Swain of the Black Rose, the Ravenous.
Following his cackling, the demon bird took flight in the messiest of ways, heaving everything in its turbulent wake, shadowing Quinn's and Shauna's trail.
"Inconsequential, but if you must." Leblanc strutted away from her advisor, closing in to the Lord. "Nothing quite painful like the allusion to betrayal, yes?"
"You... it cannot be! You di-"
"Died in the war? In the ruse you contrived just for me? I must say I am utterly appalled you would think I, of all people, would fall for petty deception."
"..."
"What folly of mine to have thought us comrades, my Lord."
"None of the Font of Vayne would ever befriend a witch such as y-"
"Clearly age has caught up with your mind. Just how are your bloodstained hands any different from mine? Do you think your ideals lend any holiness to your murderous spree? Lord Vayne, I implore you. You are but a shallow murderer as harsh as I am."
"Do… not level... us to be the same."
"Both of us kill for pleasure, don't we? Pleasure of our twisted minds, of a form gone horribly wrong that our proud selves would not acknowledge, only to mask them under our warped sense of justice. Tendrils of the mist, claim your prisoner." The matron chanted as she waved her staff in a witchly rite, conjuring ethereal chains from a glyph bearing the insignia of the Black Rose, clasping all of the Lord's body in a suffocating grip. Every lock tightened with every second, unyielding to his cavernous roars. Blood filled the spaces between the chains, and his flesh fell in small carvings. The rattling of the chains would not cease even if his wounds demanded. With another wave of her hand, a second glyph was conjured, constricting the Lord in another rope of chains, impaling his body in punctures. "Remember. The pain is only imaginary."
The last the the tavern heard were the echoes of his bones unfettering from their flesh prison.