Chapter 14: In Memorial
He could hear them.
"It's over."
The sounds repeated.
"Greyhamon is waking but it is too late."
The world turned.
"We've lost contact with the outpost."
Colours merged with sound, places mixed with time, faces became words and all was an indecipherable code. He could feel the Chrono Keeper crashing what could be and what would be in cosmic cataclysm. There in some dark corner the Death Singer composed his mortal throws into beautiful melancholic music. And The Prophet of The Void laughed.
But it was not over. Two eyes stared at him. Glittering brilliant in the glow of starlit dimensions, a tapping, tapping, beating upon his heart, they stared. Someone else was there with him at the edge of Lethian destruction. So many tiny steps over so many stretched out seconds - aeons found in moments - had he walked towards that precipice of oblivion. He could feel his very soul bleeding in scattered shade, feeding that maw of where dreams go to die. But those two eyes, brimmed in blinding light would not let it be so.
It was not done. There yet were words to weave, stories to craft, legends to form.
"There is more to this than ever was seen."
The voice came from outside all things. It was godly, not divine, but absolute, as if all the universe stood still to listen.
He tried to respond but couldn't.
"You think the void comes only for you. You think even Malzahar knows what attempts to claim your world. The totality of this event eclipses any understanding you previously had."
His bones began grow. He could feel his muscles shake back into being, his veins growing as rivers, the blood following through them in torrents - his flesh, his skin, his being, floating out there somewhere in the dream.
"This is about more than just a tale. Ryze, this is about all tales."
The eyes came to him, so close he could feel the quaking power of their stare upon his reality. He knew his lips, newly formed, would strain to speak if they could speak at all, but still they muttered the words "who?"
"One who must let you know the truth of all things."
And that voice and those eyes shared with him a truth that shattered all preconceptions. A million, millions worlds came crashing through his consciousness. Faces and bodies, magics and sciences, histories and geographies - a clattering cacophony of crashing universes unfolded before him. The cosmos opened up, and in a moment that lasted a lifetime he finally felt the mud between his fingers, the wind upon his face, the feeling of his own body heavy against the world's finite surface.
To look upon the face of God, to see the truth – the real truth – and return from the mountain top. To die, be forgotten, left to unfinished archives and the dusty priests of the never ending dusk: Ryze had seen this, he had seen this deep within the pool of death's ignorance and been drawn back from the waters of life's wisdom. Reaching breath he still shined with incandescent droplets about his form, stretched steadfastly with glittering eyes upon his soul, stood hopeful with that voice ringing universal truth within his ears.
"Go" it shouted.
"Fight" it yearned.
"Win" it pleaded.
I I I
Garen stood there against that purple beast, her blood still on his teeth.
Heimerdinger stood there against that grinning demon, his blood still on his blades.
Altaarn stood there against that crowd, their blood still in his hands.
There was a war to fight, and it was not just a war for their world, but for every world; it was for every dream and every nightmare, for every thought and every action. This fight was for life itself, and they knew that life was - if it was everything, anything - the impossibility of nothingness. And all four of them, in that moment, swore, this would not be the end of days.
It is not over.