Second chapter that I had already written. The first chapter essentially written from Rell's POV.
POVs will switch occasionally but this will be the only instance of it being the same set of scenes. For the sake of the beginning of the story.
Hope it's okay, from now on updates will be sporadic as this won't be my main focus (I say).
Fuck. It hurts. It hurts like hell.
I tightly clutched the bullet wound in my abdomen, fresh and still seeping into my grey leather tunic red with my own blood. My free arm wrapped around the neck armour of my metallic mount as it galloped across the southern hinterlands of the Noxian Empire. Each thundering step sent spikes of stabbing pain throughout my body.
Guh… it really fucking hurts.
I had been racing - retreating - southwards for the past few hours at a minimum, and by now the pain paired with the blood loss was making it exponentially difficult to focus on where I was headed. There was one place to the south that I had heard had avoided Noxian occupation, even though the lands of the desert beyond it were under the empire's rule. It was the first place that came to mind when I had turned tail. A safe haven, maybe? At least while I tried to treat this injury. Fuck, I never get hurt. The worst I've ever had to treat was a scratch. This..?
The throbbing in my free hand was ignored after I had pounded the metal armour of my mount in frustration. The simple fact I was running away fuelled me with enough anger to push through and keep going. For now, at least. How the hell did a bullet hit me? They're made out of metal, damn it! I should have been able to stop it, just like every other kind of weapon Noxus loved to throw, shoot and swing my way when I'm rampaging their camps. So why? No way was I being over-confident. I'm not a dumb, blind kid anymore. I didn't make a mistake.
Out of building paranoia, I twisted with a grimace to look over my shoulder. It was for my sanity's sake over anything else. I knew that woman with the eyepatch hadn't bother to chase me from the get-go. Her taunts fading into the distance behind me had told me that much. Something had been off about her. She knew everything about me and had come prepared. None of her clothing had any form of metal: clasps, fixtures or otherwise. The only metal on her was that wild looking sword and her guns. Not that it mattered. She danced around the range of my magic perfectly. They must have told her everythi-
I'd looked away too long. My steed careened into a small boulder and stumbled, jostling me in my makeshift metal saddle. I lurched forward with a strained groan, eyes snapping shut as I held myself steady as best I could with one arm. If swearing apparently helped cope with pain, it was doing a whole lot of shit all right now. All I could do for a good while was curse the air while I pushed back the bile that rose in my throat in tandem with the wash of cold, pure agony that radiated from my wound, briefly oblivious to anything else.
A siren began to sound ahead of me, quiet at first but growing louder by the second. I glanced up from my slumped posture with wavering eyes to see a wall of glaring white that stretched across for kilometres in either direction. Shining brass intersected the mortar uniformly, and tipped it's imposing heights. It was then I noticed the ground beneath me, no longer a dirt path, but patterned brick.
How did I not notice all of this before now? Had I zoned out that much?
A voice blared out from the direction of the wall, but I couldn't understand it. It was plenty loud, amplified somehow, but I didn't recognise a single word it spoke. So I kept going. Whatever they were saying was more than likely better than what I had left behind. Ahead of me, directly at the end of the brick road, was a wide, brass gate; ornate in it's near pompous design. And I needed to get through it!
My ride stumbled again, this time without an external cause. My concentration was failing, my hold on the equine construct slipping. A few panels clattered to the ground in my wake and I swore again, willing the mount to pick up speed despite it's deterioration.
The siren continued to blare and the voice became sharper. I knew an authoritative tone when I heard one, but I still didn't pay it any heed. Not when I was closing in on my target. Ahead of me were figures dressed in blue uniforms, creating a line between myself and the gate that blocked passage past the wall. As if that could stop me at this point.
My hand was quaking when I lifted it, fist open like a claw. My torso throbbed in protest now that I was riding hands-free and relying on my punctured core to keep myself steady.
I knew my range, and the moment the gate entered it I could feel the stolen magic within the runes scarring my body resonating with it's composition. The voice was agitated and panicked now, it's volume loud enough to resonate through me, but my instincts to survive and get to safety blocked it out. I focused only on the gates, and watched as the dull, decorated brass slowly began to glow with a red, then orange, then white glow of superheated metal that I was all to familiar with. Whether it was the heat that it exuded or my fast approaching charge, the men and women stationed in my path broke away, leaving just the final obstacle.
With a strained cry, I pulled my arm back and punched forward. On command, the white hot centre of the gate burst open, taking most of the left side with it and, most importantly, gifting me entry.
Only then , my vision flickered and my mount faltered again. It lost control, steering to the side and slamming into a part of the gate that hadn't been blown back. The collision took the flank of my ride with it and, without one of it's front legs, it collapsed to the ground, sending me with it. I hit the ground hard, surrounded by a shower of unbound metal. Both myself and my shattered mount scattered across the cold, laid brick within the walls. The world around me spun as I bounced and rolled again and again and again, grunts and cries of sheer pain leaving me unabatedly until I eventually, mercifully, came to a stop.
For what felt like minutes, but likely only seconds, I lay there, paralytic such was the agony wracking my body. My gut felt warm, but cold. How was that even…
There were people around me. Yelling, crying, murmuring, I could hear all of them, but again not understand. An audible flinch passed through them when I twitched, forcing a scraped arm under myself to heave my body off the ground. I saw the pale brick beneath me. It was horribly red. I shook the sight out of my mind and put all my effort into righting myself, but I could only slump onto my knees.
I took in my surroundings. A market, a busy one. Dozens of people all watching me warily, some afraid. I looked back towards the gates and saw destruction. They were almost totally blown open, with injured men wearing the same outfit as those on the outside littering the area. Others knelt over them, tending to them. Any other occasion, I would feel guilty for hurting these people, who had nothing to do with me. But right now, all I cared about was that I was within the walls.
Another voice, deep and baritone, called out to me, and I saw three similarly dressed men break through the gawking crowd and approach me with conviction. For the first time in a long while, I was reminded that I was still just a sixteen year old girl. Everything hurt, excruciatingly, and everything felt heavy.
I hurriedly looking for anything around me that I could utilise. Panels of metal were dotted around me, but when I swung my arm from their direction towards the approaching guards, nothing happened. I was too tired, too weakened by this point to command a coin, never mind kilos of steel. So I scrambled back to the nearest piece, yelping as I stretched my torso to reach it and tossed it in their direction with what was left of my strength. It halted one of the men for a split second while he protected his face from the blunt projectile, but it wasn't enough.
Panic spilled through my veins, my flight mechanism fully activated for the second time that day. I turned on the spot, the fresh rush of adrenaline planting a foot beneath me and pushing off, only for my next step to never follow. As rapidly as it came, my burst of energy drained away. My body went limp and crumpled, my eyes rolling up into their sockets before I'd even hit the ground, out cold.
I awoke with a start in another unfamiliar place. There was a man leant over me, not looking at my face, but further down. He didn't get a chance to react as I shot up and backhanded him away, falling down off whatever I had been laid upon. A bed? I reached down to where I thought he had been looking and felt my bare skin where my seemingly torn tunic should have met the waistline of my leather pants.
Anger and hatred filled my being and my eyes bore holes into the man, yet again in that blue uniform. What had he been doing? And for how long?
He was dazed by the sucker punch, confused by my sudden ability to stand up, and I took the opportunity. I sensed them. Bars of metal all around me, a box, a cell. I didn't even need to look away from the grounded man as I willed two bars free of their fittings and had them clubbed into his body. He was sent reeling from the first, but managed to duck the second, scrambling out of the cell and slamming the door behind him in panic.
The metal. Door.
With a rasped yell of fury I lifted a foot and kicked forward, freeing the door from it's hinges with ease and sending it colliding into the man with enough force to knock him back, through another door across the room and outside onto the street.
Outside!
I was only able to take one step past the threshold, though, before I was doubled over in agony, the hole in my side finally being reacknowledged by my rattled consciousness. Again, bile rose in by throat as the waves of pain and resulting nausea returned full swing. I barely registered the shuffling around me until I looked up, one eye tight shut with the strain of my wound, spotting dozens of other people in the room, half beholding me with shock and seven more uniformed men and women arced around me.
When they realised I'd clocked them, they all hastily approached at once. With the hand that wasn't gripping my wound, I managed to wrench more bars from behind me and send them towards my assailants. Two were knocked back, but the other were on me seconds later. My head met the wooden floor with a hard thunk, sending my brain reeling as each of my limbs were pinned down under their bodies.
I was hysteric, too confused by my new surroundings and to make proper judgements on the scenario, muddled by pain and my - now extensive - blood loss. Desperately, I felt out for every ounce of metal I could sense and willed it to free me with every inch of my being. Over my own roar of effort I could hear the screams and cries of people in the room. Grunts sounded above me and I felt some of the limbs holding me down disappear. I began to struggle and writhe beneath the final two pairs of hands who stubbornly held onto me, my reckless want to get away making me once again ignore the burning in my torso.
Not far away, I heard a man yelling with urgency and, as I continued to wriggle, I caught a flash of pink in the corner of my eye. It stood out starkly from the white walls and blue uniforms that my eyes latched onto it. Bright pink hair, cascading down and framing the face of a girl who was cringing in discomfort, but her eyes, the most pure azure I'd ever seen, met mine with an intense look of determination. She spoke, and I was instantly assaulted by a warm sensation that took over my frantic mind. As it passed through me, it seemed to wash away some of my angst. My body stilled.
Like everyone else, I didn't understand her. What was she saying? A spell; charm?
I should have felt dread at that possibility but I didn't, and couldn't look away as she took laboured steps towards me, stumbling to the side and having to catch herself on a wooden desk. But she didn't look away from me, and spoke again. I audibly gasped as my body relaxed as if on command, my mind being filled with a sense of comfort. Intrusive and unwelcome, but pleasant.
I watched with wavering vision as she tumbled to the ground. For some reason, she seemed almost as spent as I was yet still she didn't look away. When she opened her mouth a third time, her words seemed to fail her, but by that point any adrenaline coursing through my system had been ushered away and I was once again succumbing to unconsciousness.
Pink hair? Was that natural..?