Riven could see the beginnings of the village ahead of them. It had only been a few hours, but the forest edge retreated on their West and made way for plains ahead of them. In the plains were fields of fruit trees. The fields made up the village's outer limits, and the road they were on passed through them to the lonely wooden archway that marked the village entrance. Riven had ridden a cart underneath that arch many times with her adoptive father. Her thoughts lingered on him while her eyes rested on it.

She stopped walking. Teneff stopped beside her with lockstep precision. Talz did not. The massive juvenile continued his inexorable trudging, and when Teneff stopped his massive bulk carried her forward. Riven's first instinct was to stifle the chuckle that bubbled up in her throat, but she let it free instead.

Teneff added the hand that held Riven's chain to the effort and leaned back against the basilisk's tether while her heels dug shallow trenches into the dirt road. The massive animal's head slowly turned and he came to a stop. Albeit, he did so with an impatient snort that emphasised his massive teeth.

'The people here know me. If we're going to go through the village you should unchain me. It will be easier', Riven said. Teneff turned from Talz and shook her head seriously. She spoke, sounding tired.

'First, you ask for a knife, now to be unchained. I promised you respect, not freedom.' Riven shrugged. Teneff's words didn't bother her. The idea of being paraded through town in chains did, but she would endure. The people there knew her, but not all of them trusted or liked her.

Maybe it will bring them some peace, she thought.

'If we go through, will I have to fight?' Teneff asked. Riven shook her head. No, they would not have to fight, but it would be a spectacle. 'Then we go through', Teneff said finally. Riven nodded and began to walk. As she did, Teneff smiled and added, 'lead the way'.

Riven nodded and took her first steps forward. As she did so, she whistled loudly at Talz the way she recalled had been done with siege basilisks on the Demacian front. Teneff yelped as she was suddenly pulled off balance, Talz began trotting forward at speed, and Riven took long strides to keep pace with him. She could feel Teneff's scowl burning a hole into her back, she smiled.

The three moved quickly on the road. Taking the route through the village rather than around would save them hours, and neither Riven nor Teneff had any desire to take their time. Riven hated to wait, she wanted everything over and done with, and she knew Teneff had her mandate and duty to consider. There was a chance, Riven knew, that if things went poorly Teneff could end up on the chopping block beside her. Despite the dark thoughts that plagued her, Riven held her head high as she led the way. She barely paid attention to the road or the people on it. She'd taken the road many times before.

Her attention was called away from her thoughts when the slack of her chain slowly grew tight. They had passed under the archway and were inside the village. People were staring. Two Noxians and a basilisk had approached their village, of course they were staring. Riven looked around slowly. The onlookers spoke to one another in Navori Ionian. She didn't recognize any of them.

'What is that thing?', a woman asked as she openly gawked at Talz.

'Noxians', she heard; a child's voice.

'Xiir', a man, armed and walking beside a cart of goods. A guard, probably a veteran. He spat.

'They bring a war beast', said one of his comrades.

'She's bleeding', another voice across the road. Female, concerned.

Riven had forgotten she was bleeding. She looked down at herself and saw that blood had dripped down over the front of her shirt. With a sigh, she wiped her mouth and cheek on one of her short sleeves. There was no longer any point in trying to keep the garment clean. Then, she gave a firm forward tug on the chains at her wrists and started to walk again, slowly. Teneff followed. She exhaled slowly through her nose and kept her back straight. The chatter continued, and she knew it would be a long walk through the small village.

Asa Konte sat in the seat of his cart and looked back into the fields of his farm. Half of the harvest had been completed, leaving half a plot of open field, and half a plot of golden wheat that waved in the breeze. At the centre of the field stood his simple woven house, and near the house stood a shrine to his late wife, Shava. The shrine, composed of loose stones from the fields that were arranged into a tower, stood over three meters tall. Riven had built it herself.

Dyeda, he thought, and a fresh wave of loneliness sank through his chest and into his stomach. It had been two days since the hunters had come to take his daughter.

Near the shrine was a tree. It was a giant of a thing, and ancient. It had stood in the field before Asa's ancestor first planted crops in the fields surrounding his house. Deep red leaves crowned its branches, and a long, dark stain surrounded a massive wound in its otherwise smooth grey trunk. Beneath the stain, a corpse lay amongst the roots. The massive hole in her chest matched the equally impressive wound in the giant tree, and her skin had gone grey and pallid. All around her the ground had been stained an ugly rusted brown. Birds picked at the open wound but avoided her badly scarred face. Asa shivered.

He had never seen that side of his daughter before. He had seen her fight, yes, but never like that. Ionian bandits and Noxian deserters were toothless. They threatened no harm that moved her. She subdued them with bloodless ease, dispassionate. It was not the same. He had been made to watch as something awoke inside her, and she had become everything she had told him she was when he first found her. When bloodshed came to his farm, it had not been the stranger with a sword to his throat that terrified him. He shook his head. He did not want to remember Riven like that.

With a sigh, he snapped the reins of his cart to get his oxen moving. He could not stay alone on his farm and do nothing. His dyeda yet lived, and old though he was, he was determined to see her safe.

'Riven?' came the voice of a young man, his tone was surprised and concerned. Riven turned her head and saw one of the local men, a boy really, he hadn't come of age until the war had ended. She recognized him, but not by name. She'd worked for his family as part of her sentence, she repaired their roof, built fences for their goats, and dug out an entire cellar under one side of their house. The family had hated her, of course. Initially, so too had the boy.

He was running toward her, his expression was wide-eyed and mouth open. He looked very much like he should have been running the other way. With how many eyes were already on her, Talz, and Teneff, she worried he might cause a scene.

'Slow down', she said in Ionian and moved to raise her hand and gesture for him to stop, but of course, Teneff had refused to unchain her. She resisted the urge to roll her eyes. Luckily, the gesture wasn't needed, he slowed to a cautious walk. She was glad he'd understood her. Her understanding of the language was passable, but her Noxian accent was still strong. Or, maybe, she thought, he'd gotten a good look at Talz and decided to be more careful.

'Riven, it is you! What's happening? Why are you-'

'I'm going back to Noxus', she said, switching abruptly to the common tongue so that Teneff could understand her. She saw him lean to one side to look over her shoulder and then quickly retreat. She knew Teneff must be scowling back at him.

'In chains? I thought Ionia was your home?', he had not switched to the common tongue. He placed his hands on his hips and looked like he might start pacing. 'Did she hurt you?', he stabbed a finger at the space over Riven's shoulder, then withdrew it as if it might get bitten off. Riven smiled despite herself and shook her head. It was a lie, her lips burned and her cheek ached fiercely.

'This is Teneff', Riven told him.

'And the giant scary lizard?', he asked. Riven entertained the thought that he was as afraid of Talz as he was of Teneff for a moment. Only a moment, Teneff was probably much more intimidating than the enormous infant.

'That's a basilisk', she said.

'What happened to your face?' he asked, Riven was tiring of questions.

'Noxian handshake', she said. Her chain was slackening; behind her, Teneff was moving forward.

'You're slowing us down', Teneff said sternly and gestured away with her arm. Riven glowered. The boy took a step back.

'Why are you taking her?', the boy demanded, finally in the common tongue. More accurately, he did his best to sound demanding. He was shaking.

'None of your business.' Teneff stretched her shoulders, that was a bad sign.

'Stand down, Teneff', Riven commanded. It had been reflex, but the voice that had come out of her was the voice of an officer. Teneff's mouth opened, but she composed herself. After a long moment, she took a single step back. Her arms were folded, and her expression was sour, but Riven would deal with that later. The boy looked just as surprised as Teneff. 'Teneff is my sister', Riven explained. 'I am in chains, but it is my choice to go.'

The boy sighed, 'will you come back?'. Riven shook her head. He turned away from her and put his hands on his hips to take a long breath. When he faced her again he looked up at her with a deep frown. 'Do you have enough food?', he asked, seemingly out of lack of anything else to say. They did, and she opened her mouth to say 'yes', but faltered at the memory of Teneff's cooking. She only paused for a moment, but it was enough.

'Wait here', he said in the common tongue and jogged off. Riven looked back to Teneff.

'I suppose we wait', she said. Teneff huffed.

They stepped off to the side of the road and Riven placed her back against a woven fence. She made the effort to look relaxed, but she was watching the crowd that had formed carefully. She recognized a few of them. People she'd worked for, or traded with. People who knew her father. There was a cart, as well, with an armed escort. She was sure they'd passed that very same cart going the other way at the village entrance.

We're being followed, then, she thought. She sighed and hoped they just wanted to gawk at the spectacle.

Her thoughts dissipated when she saw the boy jogging toward her with a sack. He stopped at arm's length and thrust it toward her.

'Here, for the road', he said. Riven raised her manacled wrists into view with a wry smile and tilted her head toward Teneff. His eyes darted sideward to where Teneff stood, scowling and looking for all the world like she would rather have disembowelled the boy than take anything from him. Still, when the boy, visibly nervous, held out the sack to her, Teneff took it.

'Thank you', Riven said as Teneff opened the bag and dug around inside. When she pulled out her hand she held a round pink fruit that was native to Ionia. She nodded to the boy. A bag of fruit was a luxury.

'Thanks', Teneff echoed. Riven tugged on her chain.

'We have to go. It's a long way', she said, and Teneff began to move behind her. As she passed the boy, Riven turned her head and spoke in Ionian, 'Check on my father, if you can. He is alone now'.

'Have you lost your mind?', Riven wheezed, eyes wide. Teneff was, once again, insisting on chaining her to a tree.

'I can't fight them and keep an eye on you at the same time', Teneff replied as she snapped the lock shut on the loop of chain. Her brow wrinkled even as she said it. She knew what Riven was going to say, Riven said it anyway.

'You don't need to keep an eye on me! I can-' Teneff jammed her pointer finger at Riven's nose with violent suddenness.

'No', she said. 'It's only been a couple days, Riven. If you hadn't deserted in the first place we wouldn't even be here.' It took more than a small portion of Riven's willpower not to strike Teneff for what she said. If a part of her hadn't acknowledged it as a guilty truth, she still might have. Riven could feel her face burning, but she stayed quiet. Teneff would only have a couple of minutes at most to make ready for the coming fight.

The armed men from the village had followed them on the road that followed the river. On the plains near the town, they'd kept their distance, staying just close enough to keep Riven and Teneff in view. Not that keeping track of two Noxians and a basilisk was hard.

Once they'd hit the tree line things had changed. The men had begun to close in. They couldn't hide; Talz was simply too large. And they couldn't shake the men trailing them due to Talz's massive footprints. That had left the option to either run or fight, and Noxians did not run.

The pair had rushed into a ravine where the River widened and was shallower, and crossed to a clearing that would give Teneff room to work as well as let her see her enemy clearly. And That was where Riven found herself. Chained to a tree in a clearing, across from Talz who was chained out of her reach to keep her from grabbing her sword or something else. It didn't take long for their pursuers to arrive.

They emerged from the treeline in a loose group. There were seven in total. Each of them held a spear or axe in both hands and wore a basic lamellar cuirass and a simple helmet. Riven recognized the man leading them as the one who had hissed 'xiir' at them as they entered the village. He was shorter than the others but judging by the scar on his forearm and his focused demeanour he was a veteran. His direction was probably what had kept the group together, Riven thought.

The leader barked orders to the others that Riven couldn't make out, but the way he gestured with his off-hand suggested he was ordering a surround. They split into three groups. Three men downstream, two men upstream, and three more, including the leader, in the centre. Teneff positioned herself at the edge of the river, spinning her hooked chain in one hand and brandishing the hammer she used for tent stakes in the other. Most of them faltered at the sight of her. Riven's heart was beating in her ears like the beat of a war drum.

She stalked the water's edge as if she could smell their fear. Where she advanced they fell back and a different group would move forward. She stalked down the bank with her chain cutting smooth circles through the air. She kept the centre and downstream groups from stepping out of the water while the pair upstream ran through the water to the bank. They were definitely moving to surround, which was smart. Noxian armour did not protect the wearer's back. But Teneff was Fury Company.

She waited, attention focused on the two groups still wading through the river, for the two men to get around to her back. As her chain reached the peak of another tight loop in her hand she loosened her grip so that links slid over her palm and the reach of the loop extended. The hook flew in a high curve over their heads, and when she yanked it back it grabbed one of them by the back of his shoulder. Riven watched Teneff spin to haul the hooked man toward her, and using the momentum of the turn, smash the head of her hammer into his ribcage. He folded with a gasping wheeze, and Riven doubted he'd be able to breathe anymore. She winced, Teneff wasn't just fighting them off, she was killing them.

'Teneff, no!', Riven yelled, stepping as far from her tree as her chain would allow. Her sister wasn't listening. She'd already freed her hook from the man within the same turning motion that had buried the head of a hammer into his lung and used the chain of her weapon to capture the spear of the second man. She snapped its haft, pulled him into her, and drove her armoured shoulder up into his chin. When he fell to the ground holding his jaw she drove the broken haft into his exposed armpit. He would bleed out.

The drumbeat in Riven's ears gained tempo. She didn't want to fight her sister, but she wasn't sure what else to do. She used her heel to strike her chain where it looped around the trunk of the tree. Of course, it didn't break. She didn't think it would, but Riven could remember a time when she would have believed she could break a chain, and it would have surrendered to her. Because she was strong. She kept trying.

Beside the river, Teneff had turned seven men into five and was reckoning with lowering that count further. The men no longer moved like they were afraid, although they clearly were. They were lost in rage and adrenaline. Her sister may as well have been fighting a pack of animals. Conflicted, Riven felt the call to fight at her side, it made her uncomfortable, distracting her from her attempts to break her chain.

Teneff spun her weapons at the ends of her reach to keep her attackers at bay and on their toes. Constant motion was her advantage, she made it difficult to tell when an attack was coming and when she was just protecting her space. Riven continued to kick at her chain, becoming frustrated. The drumbeat intensified. A man swung his axe and Teneff turned five men into four. Riven growled in her throat and dropped to a knee, beating against the chain with her bare fists. She felt herself stirring, something asleep, a feeling that scared her. War drums had replaced her heartbeat.

Riven took a deep breath and stopped striking her chain. Her hand ached and a few of the chainlinks glistened black with her blood. She breathed slowly against the drumbeat in her ears, trying to force what she was feeling back to sleep, or at least keep it under control.

A flash of colour both shattered and reforged her resolve. A streak of vibrant red followed Teneff like a brushstroke. A spear had found her unprotected back. Riven surged and her inner conflict disappeared. Her fist struck the chain where it was stained red from her earlier attempts. Her strength of will sparked on impact, shattering the chainlink, and Riven had her feet.

She ran, flying to Teneff's side with a roar that she didn't remember starting, and rammed her shoulder into the man who had wounded Teneff. He shifted over his centre of mass and tumbled, rolling into the water. The wide eyes and dropped jaws of the remaining three men and Teneff alike told Riven that her arrival was unexpected. She did not pause. She swung her manacled hands to lash out with her broken chain. Teneff fell into step with her and they danced.

The faces of her enemies melted away and Riven's senses heightened. The war drums in her head and chest steadied, and she began to see colours, not just the red of Teneff's blood and cape, but the greens of leaves and the browns of mud. Her chain was dull, but the sharpened blades and tips of her enemies shone. She felt fury, it had escaped, awoken, and it was almost in control. Almost. More than once Riven barely restrained herself from making a killing blow or snapping a captured limb.

She was holding herself back. It took great effort, and, at first, resisting her instincts slowed her, but it was important to her to spare her enemies. She felt responsible for them, the war had created men like them. So, she would use violence to end violence. Once she focused on that certainty and felt it with conviction, she no longer needed to fight herself. She came wholly alive.

The fight was over in moments. Her enemies were disarmed, and Teneff's killing strikes were each deflected or pulled aside. In the end, Riven had grabbed Teneff's wrist and forced her to drop the hammer. With their weapons either broken or abandoned, the survivors scrambled away. They would live, and alongside her rage, pride grew inside Riven. She had not given in to her fury. Not entirely.

To her side, a hook flashed through her vision. Teneff's chain soared over the shoulder of one of the escaping men. Riven's anger surged. They were running, not fighting. Striking them down wasn't just wrong, it was cowardly.

She leapt forward, but she didn't reach the hook until Teneff had already hauled it back. Catching the chain buried the steel tip of the weapon into Riven's cloth-wrapped forearm and she hissed through her teeth from the pain.

The man she'd saved caught her gaze as she held the chain taught with the hook buried in her arm. His eyes were wide and he shook like a leaf, his entire demeanour was fear and confusion. She jerked her head to the river. The message was clear: Go. He nodded, barely, and ran. Then Riven locked eyes with Teneff's snarling face.

'Traitor-', Teneff's curse was cut short; Riven yanked hard on the hooked chain. Her sister hadn't been expecting it, and when she stumbled forward Riven smashed her forehead into the bridge of Teneff's nose, breaking it, and sending her to the ground unconscious. Teneff was strong, and though it had been brief, fighting her felt correct, almost good. Riven thought maybe she would like to fight Teneff again.

Riven's war drums faded, and with them the colours of the world around her. The certainty she'd known in battle had left her, and her fury went back to sleep. She wondered if she'd done the right thing, or whether she'd done enough. She wondered also why she couldn't break her chain if she'd been strong enough to do so all along. She wondered if she could have saved all seven of the men, or prevented Teneff from being wounded, if she'd just been able to break it in the beginning. Her head spun in an uncomfortable grey fog, as it often had since she'd come to Ionia.

She kneeled, and carefully collected her unconscious sister off the ground to inspect her wounds. Things were different between them than they had been before, but she did not want to lose Teneff again. Of that, she was sure. She held that certainty in mind as she searched under the red of Teneff's cape for her wound.

Teneff held her eyes shut as she sat, leaned against a tree, next to the campfire. Her head hurt, it felt like there was pressure inside her skull that wanted to burst out the back, and every breath, movement, and even thought seemed to antagonize it.

'You have one hell of a handshake', she told Riven. She heard a low chuckle from across the fire and looked to her sister. Riven was sitting cross-legged, manacled hands in her lap, chained to a tree. She'd done it herself, Teneff hadn't even said anything. She wondered if it was meant to be an apology for breaking her nose, or whether it was something else. Riven wore a small smile but did not speak, and her eyes looked tired.

She seemed so different from how Teneff remembered her. This new Riven acted confused and conflicted, she had never been either of those things before. Riven had fought off their enemies but spared them. She had fought Teneff, too, and then she had stitched shut the wound in her back and bandaged it. She'd even tended the wounds of one of the men who she judged could be saved. Teneff thought she must have punctured one of his lungs, but he could still breathe. Riven tended him as best she could and sent him limping back toward the village, where he would surely tell the others of 'Noxian bandits'. They would have pursuers because of Riven.

Her actions didn't make sense to Teneff, and yet she was undeniably the same woman in many ways. Teneff sighed, her head throbbed, reminding her pointedly of one of the ways that Riven had not changed. She was strong. Teneff smiled.

'How is your arm?', she asked. Riven shrugged, not bothering to look at the injured limb, but the normally white wrappings were stained brown and orange from the dried blood. That it was not fresh and red was a good sign. 'You're still one hell of a fighter, Noxus will welcome you back', Teneff continued. That thought put her somewhat at ease, she hadn't really thought about it, but she realized she'd been worrying about how Riven would be received when they got back to Noxus. Noxus was not kind to deserters.

'I won't fight for them', Riven said quietly. She stared into the fire with her shoulders slack. She looked to Teneff like she was somehow less than she had been that morning. 'They don't love Noxus, or strength, they love power.' Riven's words were seditious, but Teneff was too tired and sore to be angry. Anger meant fighting, and she had done enough fighting, she felt.

'Riven, they'll execute you', she leaned back and closed her eyes, willing her headache to go away.

'I know. I won't fight for them.'

'And when they send you to reckon in the fighting pits? Will you fight for them then?' Silence. She imagined that Riven shrugged, but she didn't bother opening her eyes to look. No reply. 'You'd just let them kill you?', she pressed.

'I don't know', Riven said. Teneff shook her head, and spoke harshly, perhaps more harshly than she meant to.

'Ionia hasn't made you weak, pride has.' Her eyes snapped open after she said it, but across the fire, Riven looked just as quiet and still as she had before. Unmoved. It was a relief. 'I'm sorry, let's talk about something else', she said and forced herself to her feet to get food for them. The boy's sack of fruit had turned out to be a life-saver; effort-free food was a blessing in Teneff's state. She held one of them up to catch Riven's attention before tossing it to her. Riven caught it and let it rest in her lap.

'What have you done here? You must have done more than farmed the whole time', Teneff said, returning to her seated position and cutting into the rind of the fruit with her field knife.

'I worked on a farm as a child', Riven replied. Teneff waited for details, but no more came.

'That's it?', she asked. Riven raised her tired eyes from the fire to meet gazes with Teneff.

'I tried other things- As hobbies. I always kind of wanted to be a poet.' Riven's admission surprised Teneff, Riven really didn't seem the type. 'I wasn't very good at it', Riven admitted. Teneff placed a chunk of the Ionian fruit into her mouth with her knife, excusing herself from conversation and prompting Riven to continue. Riven obliged, adopting a mocking tone, 'a warrior's blade reflects the truth in their heart. Mine is black, and broken', she said with a roll of her eyes. Teneff laughed through her mouthful of fruit.

'You really aren't very good. Stick to fighting', Teneff told her. 'Have you met anyone here?', she asked, 'you know, "conquer any sons of Ionia", in your travels?" Riven snorted, blowing some hair from her fringe out of her face with the abrupt laugh.

'No, Teneff. No "sons have been conquered"', she shook her head, clearing her bangs from her face entirely. She wore a weary smile.

'No one? Nothing?', Teneff might have been incredulous had she felt better. It had been years. Though, to her memory, Riven had never seemed interested in any of her fellow soldiers.

Maybe she just doesn't-

'Well, there was- Is a… Fixation. I met someone, just once, who made me feel a, uhm… Hm.'

So, she does, Teneff thought and leaned forward with interest as Riven fumbled with her words. She stuffed her mouth with more fruit, further excusing herself from the role of speaker.

'A want?', Riven continued with uncertainty, 'she was a dancer, and a warrior, not a soldier like us, someone who fights out of necessity, but she's very strong, and she has skill, and presence, and… I would have liked to kiss her, I think.'

She, Teneff thought. That explained a little bit, not everything, but some things. 'But you didn't?' Riven shook her head.

'She can't forgive what we did to her homeland or her people, and I would never ask her to.' Teneff nodded and took another bite of fruit. It was more sour than sweet, but not unpleasant. It was then she noticed that Riven hadn't touched hers.

'Hey', Teneff said to catch Riven's attention and tossed her field knife to her sister. Riven caught it by the handle. Her brow furrowed and she frowned. 'You are no longer my prisoner', she told Riven. 'We go to Noxus as sisters.' Riven smiled.