Finding the Darkness: Part One
Jinx laughed maniacally at the confusion before her, as champions huddled amongst themselves chatted nervously. None had yet left the room, instead choosing to stand by friend and foe to contemplate the newest matter at hand. She saw the Demacians, they were the loudest, the rudest, the most skull-cracklingly annoying with their ridiculous sermons of peace and hypocritical justice. Even the Noxians were far better company—at least honesty prevailed in such a violent and vulgar community, both of which she loved with open hearts. It was hard not to. Why torment another faction when all she had to do was walk into a Noxian's basement to see a show?
She saw the intellectual book-headed morons in their corner, silently gazing through sparkly glasses and shiny, shiny little baubles as if they told them who she would kill the next day. The thought of them claiming to be all knowing ones, better than anyone else when their brains were no match for the single bullet of a gun made her want to pull out Pow-pow right now, and sink a sharp one right between the eyes.
Aim. Shoot. And fire.
No, no. Forget the aim. Just fire.
Closest the the pedestal, where the strange man had made both his appearance and disappearance, was the Piltover crew.
Fuck the Piltover crew.
They were always breathing down her neck. Couldn't a terrorist get a break? Just one weekend in peace with Fishbones? Just one, where she could blow up a city in peace? Was that really, really so much to ask for? Jinx knew the sheriff and her boy-toy had better things to do than babysit Fathands and her muscleheadedness. Even she knew that their favorite game was fuck as long as you can, see who passes out first, and it was a relationship she guessed Katarina and her broken off-switch would envy.
"But Fathands…oh Fathands…you got another thing coming to ya' if you think there's any way out…." Jinx emerged from where she stood in the shadows. "And in more ways than one!"
Had anyone been looking up, they would have seen a blue haired girl balanced perfectly on the hall's support beams, had anyone been thinking straight, they would have noticed the glimmer of blue across the ceiling and the beams and the walls as the girl hefted a shark-like weapon upon her shoulder. She was grinning a grin wider than her rocket-launcher's, eyes bright and full of life brought on by the most sickening of revitalizations, hands shaking with excitement.
In her right hand, a bright blue orb was clutched tight, the plasma-like substance flaring white where her fingers touched. Her smile widened, and slowly, as if digesting the moment, Fishbone's jaws lined up with the Enforcer's soft pink hair.
"Bye-bye."
First she was staring into her eyes. They were filled with the bleeding dark blues of pain, the flecked sparks of anger, the blank depths of sorrow and beneath it all, a pulling wrecking tearing hymn of splinters and nails, smashing all the turmoil into something she could not bear to see, but could not fathom looking away from.
It was madness. The inner workings, the thing which oft found its way buried, for sure, into the blonde's heart. This time though, the shell had peeled to reveal a boiling interior. What hurt more, more than seeing the abyss she had long known was locked within her love's white light, was knowing that it was all directed at her. The sharp, rage-filled glares of the other Demacian men were mere skin pricks in comparison, as hers was a knife clawing its way through her flesh, twisting and rending and shredding a new kind of agony.
Lux and Riven were not the best of friends. They were not of a sisterly relationship nor a brotherly kind, but neither had many they could dare to call comrades in something but arms. Since day one the Exile had been entranced by the light mage and so since day one they shared passing words, sparing glances, wavering smiles and that alone was something to connect them. Each week they spent more and more time with eachother, in spite of the dwindling awkwardness Riven could not seem to shake off.
The image of those tormented eyes were erased from her view as the ground shook. No…it did not shake. It seemed to erupt. Her vision was flooded with a painfully bright light and then dimmed down to wisps of color pressing at the back of her eyes, as smoke filled her nostrils and blood spluttered from her lips. She couldn't feel anything but pressure on her head, couldn't hear anything but a tight ringing, until a darkness cloaked over her mind.
Wake up. Exile, you are no use to me dead. Wake up….wake up…
It was a soft voice, but woven with a thousand different tones. It seemed to fade before coming back stronger and more hateful, as if the sound was carved into the cave of her mind.
Rise to your feet, come to your senses…I cannot reach you if you reject my presence….
Her bones felt cold, the brightness fading from her eyes. She glimpsed rubble, turned her head and found more rubble, moved her arms and found they were coated in it.
We are calling you, but no call can be understood without being first fully heard…let the nightmare engulf you….
She was on her back, but no longer winded. Her first instinct was to find Lux. She had to be okay. But, over the cracking floor and collapsing ceiling and fiery air there was little to be found. Champions were all over the place, but the Demacians….
No. There they were. Lux was helping to support Garen and another unconscious man, with the aid of the Prince. For a moment Lux looked back, face scratched and hair dark with soot, but her gaze went right through her. As if…she wasn't there.
Because you're not, foolish Exile.
Nocturne! She exclaimed internally. Now she recognized the voice. Get out of my head!
No.
You rotten—
Do you want to die?
Her throat closed up. Riven peered down at her prone form, finding it engulfed in shadows. Nocturne was a fiend of the dark, yes, but he also had great prowess of light…by swallowing it. He was a master of illusions, and most likely saved her from the Demacian warriors with his powers. But the question remained.
Why?
How typical of you to ask, stupid girl….. But I won't humor you.
She remained silent. Her body felt like it was run over, eaten by Cho`gath and then regurgitated to repeat the process. Still, she peered at Lux's fading figure as she turned back around and disappeared into the smoke, a little ball of light signaling her being, but that too eventually blinked out. Her hand reached out as if to pull back the mage, as if chasing her with her mind, before it fell limply back to the ground.
Pitiful…some warrior you are… Nocturne sighed. And thus your will has become quite pitiful as well…. it is so weak it is irritating…fortunately it is also too weak to resist me…
Riven stared forward, unblinking. She had no energy. Explosions burst around her once more, chunks of marble and stone and granite landing in tremulous heaps.
I cannot fathom your importance to us, pitiful girl. The monster seemed to shrug, she could see it in her mind. Alas, the Warden knows best…
Slowly her eyes began to close, and a warmth spread on the center of her chest.
Sleep now, girl…your nightmares shall sweep you away….
The warmth shot through her veins, and the lullaby of his laughter took her to the dark.
She awoke, ironically, from a dreamless slumber. Her hands gripped soft cloth, white as snow, surreal in the ebony walls and coal-dusted rugs. The bed was large, too large, to the point that she felt as if it was used for something other than just sleeping. In like, the room itself was enormous and it did not help that the only other piece of furniture was a mirror, which in fact seemed to stretch the expanse of the area.
There was a single door, large and with two metal handles. From the handles, strips of the same elegant white cloth flowed to the base, where an eye was carved in. It seemed to glow, that eye, as if it truly was some entity gazing at her through the symbol.
Perhaps there was.
Riven forced herself into a sitting position—instantly she was rewarded for her efforts with the sensation of a knife in her brain, as if her skull would shatter and the pieces would stab even deeper. Her wounds were gone, but it seems they had collected instead to her mind. Looking down at her body, it became apparent that someone had taken care of her quite well, for her armor and layers of padding had been removed and there was instead a simple combat uniform—soft cloth and thin pads over more critical areas.
She recalled Lux's vanishing form, the look of despair in her beautiful blue eyes. They reopened the wound her caretakers failed to heal, the one crisscrossing her heart, with the same deadly daggers.
She believed it. She believed she attacked Garen.
Every word.
After all, no one deny solid evidence. Heimerdinger was that evidence. Nothing escaped him, he was a genius of the highest caliber; mistakes were not of his tongue, not of his world. If he says she assaulted the Might of Demacia, then no matter how foolhardy the act, she did it.
Only she didn't.
Her hands balled into fists. Strange things were happening, one after the other. There was no letting her guard down, or anyone's for that matter. As for the explosions…
The door slammed open. Bright white flooded into the room like liquid sun, so bright in comparison to the dreary room that she was forced to shield her eyes. She heard the door crash against the walls, and a hardly audible 'oops'. A blur of a silhouette seemed to appraise the wall the door had crashed into, before shrugging haphazardly and walking up to Riven. She squinted her eyes at the intruder, making out a pale face, large eyes, a thin frame…was that blue hair?
The figure grinned wildly, and put two fingers against the exile's throbbing head.
"Bang."
That was when the dots connected. Neither moved—not the injured girl from her position on the bed, nor the self-proclaimed, and widely proclaimed maniac, with the tips of her fingers not even twitching. The silence was like a long breath, pieces coming together from the scattered fragments of comprehension in her head. As for the terrorist, the knot of thoughts nested within hers were as much mysteries as the arcane magic which wreathed the world, as not even she herself could decipher them.
It was Jinx behind the explosions.
Jinx had to be working with Nocturne.
It was obvious.
"But why?" She wondered aloud, leaning forward slightly. Jinx's face twisted into an expression of disappointment, anger and happiness, all at the same time.
"Why? Why? That's all you have to say when a mass murderer points a gun to your head? And I know. Yes I do. I know that you're not even talking about that. Hehe!"
Slowly, the Exile brought her hand over the other's girl's, leading it away from her forehead.
"That is not a gun, Jinx. And you are not a mass murderer." She continued moving closer, until their lips were almost touching. "Just a terrorist."
She pouted like a child—really, that was what she was. A little girl stuffed into a young woman's body, in such a cruel manner that the pain on the flesh was moved to the pain in much more fatal places. It was frightening, truly knowing her, because every word, every action was something which completely altering that knowledge.
Was she a killer? A joker? A wrath, a fighter, a child or even a puppet?
None of the above? All of the above?
Yeah. Riven always had to go with that.
Yet in their more intimate moments, she was also reminded that Jinx was also just a girl. Her sanity had been driven to the tormented corners of her bones, etched where the darkness clouded. When her most human impulse took over, it would emerge, yet fleeting, so soon snuffed.
She nipped the Exile's nose and giggled, jumping backwards with her hands hidden behind her. She had a playful kind of smirk, where beautifully soft lips peeled back to reveal feral white canines. They matched her cotton-candy eyes in a certain animalistic, dare she say rabid way, as they danced with blood red depths.
"While I would love to participate in your favorite game, now is not the time. Where is Nocturne?"
Disappointed, she rolled her eyes. "Come on come on! You sound like rusty ol' Fishbones now! All what matters and no fun, all 'this is right, don't do that, now is not the time!'"
"Haven't you ever tried listening to him?"
At this she fell backwards with a whine, covering her ears with her hands. "I don't wanna listen to him! He just has to listen to me! You know, don't you get the feeling he does waaaaayy too much talking and not enough shooting? Shooting is the fun stuff, but he always always always tries to be boooring. Maybe he needs a de-barker! I know, I'll install one after I finish upgrading Pow-pow's boom powder! That way there's more blood, you know, and—"
Riven slid out of the covers, grabbed Jinx roughly by the throat and pinned her to the bed. Her bright blue braids splayed out across the sheets like silken tassels, slim arms pushed down by two tan hands. The warrior pressed they bodies together, one warm the other cold, and first nipped, then kissed the younger girl's collarbone. Their breaths caught, sucking the air of its noise, before she brought her lips to her ear.
"Let's figure out what's going on first. Tell me where Nocturne is, and don't pull any tricks. Then we'll play both of our favorite games."
For a moment she didn't reply, but then touched their noses with a lust-filled grin and honest eyes.
"Deal."
They lingered there for a second, before they pushed off the bed. Jinx seemed to skip to the door, the lust already shedding to simple excitement, so much she glowed. Her laugh filled the room, and then the hall where they emerged one after the other.
The hall was a plain one, with white washed walls and reflective tile floors. Not a spot of dark was to be seen, though countless mirrors and pearly surfaces bounced back the flaring ceiling lights. In fact, parts of the floor itself were mirrors, and she was suddenly glad that a skirt didn't find a home in her wardrobe. The general composition of the place, with the slightly arched walls and glass gildings, made the place seem so much bigger than it actually was.
It felt like this absolutely could not be Nocturne's hall. Then she remembered how dark the room was. Perhaps he, being spectral shadow, did not use the halls? Perhaps he simply navigated by room, amidst the black that fibered his soul. She was unsure, also, which hall this could even be. The nightmare had no alignment…and then again neither did Jinx. Did that mean they both housed in the unaligned hall? She had always thought that they would choose some other affinity to their liking—she herself preferred a personal hall given to her by the summoners—perhaps Noxus or Zaun giving the terrorist's hobbies.
Explosions. Death. Parties. Sex.
Even inventing.
Had she possessed a more typical appearance, there would be nothing for her to distinguish as not one of the two.
She would know.
Since their arrivals at the league, the girls had found something instinctive within eachother. Something with no sentiment, no logic, something that simply had to be because their bodies wanted it. No. Needed it. And so one day, the found themselves succumbing to their impulses, during days of grief and anger and victory and simple desire. It would have been a disrespectful relationship to her warrior nature, but not unusual to her Noxian heritage. Maybe that's what drove her into their 'friendship'…just being Noxian.
It was that depressing thought which drove her to the memory of the one she used, betrayed and tossed aside. The one who now loathed her more than anything, and had every right to.
They stopped at an intersection, where one wing had all the lights punched out. Slowly the brightness of the hall they stood in was consumed until there was but pitch blackness, beckoning with its malevolent mist. Her partner smirked, with a mock bow and the paleness of her skin not unlike moonlight.
"Ladies first."
Riven walked into the dark. She did not hear steps behind her, and she did not look to see if she followed. Darkness was never Jinx's thing, contrary to popular belief.
Each step was a bell, an alarm ringing in her head. The air was heavy and threatening with malice, her instincts screaming for her to raise her blade and assume hostility. Her heart, however, said otherwise. Why would so much care be taken into healing her, if just to kill her? They needed her for something. What, she didn't know. She did however recall her savior mocking her will.
Such a recollection brought a pang to her chest. Lux believed she was going to kill her brother.
But it wasn't her.
Was it?
Slowly Riven released a breath, an attempt to calm her edgy nerves. That night was not a pleasant one. What if, inadvertently she had attacked Garen? The piece of her past which had yanked out the worst in her had appeared once more, but not in the form of a nightmare. In the form of a hallucination.
Are the two not one in the same?
Her eyes widened a fraction, before sighing out her nose. "Out of my head."
His laughter echoed through her mind, as the shadows swirled around her.
Girl, I am in everyone's head. I cannot not be in your head. And you are the one who let your thoughts open…
She stopped walking. A pair of intense eyes glowed in the black, penetrating her soul. Every movement seemed to be impaired by a thick fog, every nerve filled with helpless fear. Her throat constricted, her hair stood on end.
This was not the fear she was used to. This was not like running into battle, with death breathing down her neck. This was not like laying in a hospital bed, being told you probably won't live. This was not like turning your back on your home country, and wishing you could take the burden of those left behind.
This was the pure essence of it, fused with her being.
This was Nocturne.
Feel the fear, he mused, and embrace it. Your fragile little heart cannot hope to combat what you feel.
Riven had no reply. Her mouth was dry and head spinning, so much that if she tried, it would end up a whisper.
The eyes grew closer, until his shadowy face was almost touching hers. She could feel his blades hovering over her, cold and glistening. She stood stalk still, as if even twitching would send them across her throat and through her chest.
What are you afraid of?
She swallowed, the shattered remains of her will fighting desperately to keep her thoughts contained.
Girl, you cannot hide yourself. The nightmare is in everything, and I am the nightmare.
She swallowed, biting into the inside of her cheek until she tasted copper.
Are you afraid of me?
One blade traced over her collarbone, sending involuntary shivers of fear down her spine.
Are you afraid of her?
Images of Lux flew past her eyes, her bright face, bruising kindness and gentle smile.
Or…are you afraid of yourself?
She saw red. The biting terror was overwhelmed by heinous memories of that man, her sword through his side, his through hers, the blood that had spilled. Instantly Riven dashed forward, the specter's blade making a clean cut past her neck. Her hand shoved his face to the ground, where it first connected then dissolved into particles of darkness. Pain blossomed where he cut and brought her palm to touch the wound, only to find there was none…just a withering soreness.
Laughter cascaded from the hall.
You are stronger than I thought, girl. I thought that tenacity was lost.
The air got less dense, the fear receding.
But you are still weak, a petty human. And now I see where your nightmares lie…where they have always festered in wrath.
"Why am I here?" She yelled out to the shadows, finding her voice. He seemed to circle her, glowing eyes reappearing once more.
You are here because the Warden finds some use for you. He said, surprisingly without mockery.
"The Warden?"
The Chain Warden, girl. He who steals lost voices.
"Thresh," she identified out loud. Thresh. But that still didn't answer her question. It just made more.
"Okay then. Why does he want me here?"
That's for him to answer.
"Ugh, okay…what is even going on?"
Do you really think I can answer that either?
She sighed. "I suppose not. But what does Jinx have to do with any of this? Did you tell her to bomb the hall?"
At this he scoffed. It was such a human reaction, she wondered how much of him was really just darkness.
Girl, she is the Loose Cannon for a reason. She cannot be controlled…Riven swore he broke a grin. Yet her fears come rather close to doing just that.
That startled her. Jinx? Fears? Jinx has fears? "It seems I don't know her as well as she claims I do."
He shook his head. You are naïve. As naïve as that Demacian you hold such high regards for. And why? So she can throw them back in your face? The moment you step into the public, champions Demacian or not will be hungering for your pretty head disconnected from your body.
"What's it to you?" She snapped, glaring into him.
I told you. We need you. And whether you like it or not, you will help us.
"What makes you think I won't just kill you now…and take my leave?"
He surprised her once more, shooting her with a pitying glance. It knot her heart with rage. Pity was worse than anger, and worse than hate.
I doubt you could in your state. This is my domain, girl. And say you could. Say you killed me now and left.
He disappeared, reappearing behind her.
Then you would be defenseless… Then you would be casting away your precious morals… Then the whole of the league would be after you… I…we…have more allies than you perceive, girl.
Riven turned on her heel, facing him once again. "So you say." Then a dry laugh escaped her lips, so full of self spite and emptiness than it was foreign to even herself. "And here I am, believing ever word that comes out of a murderous shadow's mouth!"
Hey, who says evil specters can't be honest?
"All the other champions."
Very funny. Now, come with me, girl. We have all gathered in this hall. A lot has happened since the bombing…so it is a good thing the other champions cannot find this place.
She expected to feel nervous, but found that the previous events had taken its toll. "We? There's more than just you, Tresh, and Jinx?"
Of course… We all have something we want, girl, and we all have a common way to get it. The Wishing Well… the Summoner… this is not the League anymore. This is our dreams come true.
He faded deeper into the hall.
Are you coming?
Riven looked at Nocturne, his maelstrom of black gesturing like hands, and then back to the distant light of which she came.
"Alright."
Whew. Done. After...like, a while. So...questions, comments, concerns? Leave them in reviews! If there are any characters you would like to see more of, just let me know and I'll find a way to integrate them into the story. Who knows how the pairings will turn out...certainly not me! Thank you BY TONS for reading and reviewing! The next chapter will probably have lots of Vi and/or Lux!