A/N: This story will be inconsistent with the new lore which removes the Institute of War and the summoners. From a narrative perspective, however, I think the new lore will be much easier to develop stories around (some of you will think that's blasphemy; sorry! Purely my opinion). I am writing a chapter per day, hoping to finish this story very soon.

Thanks for the views and follows! I'm trying to decide what my next project should be, so if you enjoy my writing and can think of a story you'd like to hear, feel free to let me know. For the record: I can write very effective smut, but not comedy; my sense of humor is terrible.

P.S.: I am also attempting to reconcile Soraka with her rework; in my mind, the Soraka before, arguably the more powerful version, represents her original magic. The reworked Soraka, who is more support-y, represents the diluted version of the stars' magic. I hate to explicate my own story, but League of Legends is a complicated beast, and I was afraid this wouldn't be clear. Carry on!


It grew steadily colder under the anonymous weight of the darkness, the suffocating smallness of the chamber.

If the creature hadn't spoken, if he had left the room only a void of silence, she would have believed herself alone and would have simply taken the glowing viridian of his eyes for a fascinating magic.

But as she knew she wasn't alone and could see nothing of him in the dim light, she felt terror like a necklace around her throat. Her voice trembled when she spoke. "I have arrived here by mistake," she said. "Can you tell me how to leave this place?"

The creature stirred, and it was like the whisper of a breeze through an overgrown meadow.

"You wish to leave?" he asked. "Why did you come here, just to wander away again? Has the Institute of War left you unimpressed?"

There was a hint of amusement in the way he spoke, the way he tilted his words to the side. As though, she thought, he knew the answers already and only wanted to hear what alchemy of words she would choose.

And then, she wondered...

"Are you part of my test? Part of this...trickery?" She stuffed the questions with bravado, made them as sharp as possible to redeem herself from the silence in the burning grove. "Please know that I'm not interested in being measured. Show me no more of these lies."

"Death is everyone's test," he told her from across the chasm of darkness, more sincere than amused. "It is yours too now, is it not?"

She stared at the black that concealed him.

"Are you afraid?" he asked.

Her pulse was an allegro of thunder. "No."

And then he laughed. It was a terrible sound from which even the soot of darkness seemed to momentarily retreat. "Do not try to trick me, heavensent."

She heard that sound again, the rustle of reeds and hummingbird wings, and he was there before her, a shadow painted with the softest fire of jade. "I feel your fear..." he said, and his breath on her face was the smell of weather turning.

And in their new proximity, she saw it: the curve of silver like a crescent moon, the smile of jagged metal.

Behind her, she closed her hand around the door's handle, and the creature shook his head, twisted the brocade of razors that was his mouth into a frown. "No," he said, and the hand that was not clutching the staff of the silver blade moved like a sunbeam along the white ivy vine of her hair. "Not of me. Never of me."

"Please," she said, stranded between terror and exasperation, guarding desperately the last threads that held her together. "Just tell me how to go away from here..."

"And I'll tell you, heavensent," he said. "As soon as you tell me why."

What did they want from her? Had she not demonstrated her weakness already? Was her failure incomplete without this forced admittance?

So be it, she thought. She was exhausted by this game and ready to be done.

"Because I have nothing to offer," she said, meeting his gaze. "I can no longer wield skyfire, and without it I am nothing. Because I once thought that justice was a responsibility of the divine, and for acting on that belief, I was broken. Because I cannot fight. And perhaps I learned, not soon enough, that war is not always unjust, but my power was vested in the belief that peace is only possible without it. I have nothing to offer the League of Legends."

She took a deep breath and prepared to say more, their further judgment be damned, but the creature silenced her with a shake of his head.

"Had they not told you, heavensent? Those broken lights of yours?"

She waited.

"In a just world," he began, "it is never the burden of angels to punish the wicked. In a just world," he said, anointing her with light the color of tea leaves, "the wicked punish each other."

His words orphaned her past, draped solace across her. Stunned, she could only listen and breathe.

"You are a guardian, not a creature of war. Have you not written yourself as what you expect they want and not what you are? Your magic has not abandoned you, heavensent; it is there like an aegis, waiting on you, and meanwhile, Ionia and Noxus are on the brink of war. Their fate is to be soon decided. And the heavensent can either make herself for helpless, or she can be a guardian for those who would preserve the sanctity of her home. Tell them you will fight," he said. "Tell your judges that you will fight as a guardian fights: as a savior for the fallen."

"I cannot even heal myself." Her voice was a whisper, wingless and rootless there in the dark.

"Because your wounds will not be healed by magic," he said. "Only time."

It occurred to her, a stray possibility, that he could be right. That perhaps in the place of her magic, the stars had left her something else. That perhaps to some degree, she had authored her own punishment. And in spite of the promises she'd made, the words she vowed never to say again, she felt hope blooming like a white rose in her breast. Quiet as sunlight, she prayed.

And in the midst of her prayer, the ground opened into a fractal the color of amaranth petals, which spread beneath their feet. A shimmer of diamond dust culled the darkness and dropped into the center of the sigil, and she heard the catch in his breath, felt him jolt as the light struck him.

"Oh yes..." he muttered, tightening his fingers around the staff of his scythe.

"I'm sorry," she quickly offered.

But he only laughed.

And she was suddenly unafraid.


On her way to the main room, she was surprised to find it there, nested in the ivory plait of her hair like a shard of obsidian: a night-black feather.