Right, got a bit more free time this week; expect a chapter for Spirit Quest later in the week!
Let's get back to it!
A Haven in the Isles Part II
Grasping for Hope Part II
"Where is she?" the woman demands, the veil rippling as she speaks, her voice echoing oddly.
And before Braum can answer, she charges.
Braum bolts to meet her, shield rising and clashing against the Ruined King's Blade, which sparks with green fire.
"Are you?" Braum begins, seeking through his memories and all he and the others had learned on their first excursion to the Isles.
"Are you Isolde?" Braum asks, "What has hap-"
He swallows his words as the being shrieks and nearly slices his nose and mustache from his face.
"That is a no, yes?" he queries, catching another blow on his shield.
"Stop trying to make friends." Caid snaps, firing several shots, the bullets careening through her form, leaving glowing holes.
She turns, a bolt of fire descending down the blade and nearly taking his head off. The older man ducks to the ground and fires again, catching her in the side of the head.
She snarls.
"Aw, that hurt?" Caid taunts, "Then you shouldn't have blown up my damn house and killed my Pups! You wraiths used to have manners. Things have gotten all twisted ever since that little punk ass woke up."
The feral specter fully turns her attention from Braum and bolts towards Caid, Braum battering her back with his shield, a wall of ice forming between her and them. Caid's last hound lets out a low growl as Braum places him down.
"It seems we have upset her." Braum remarks.
"Yeah? Well, fair's fair." Caid spits, eyes scanning around for a sign of her.
"We should be alright for the moment," Braum states, stepping back from the ice wall.
"It's ice." Caid states flatly, "She's a specter. They go through walls, ya big lug."
"True Ice chills even the dead friend. I learned that on my first journey here." Braum returns.
A soft sizzling catches his ears, he looks down and sees black flame crackling around the base and top of the wall, and the tip of the Ruined Blade pierces clean through the wall, and he feels the temperature heighten immensely.
"But the persistent find a way!" he shouts, scooping up his shield, putting it over his back, and then taking Caid and his dog under each arm.
"What are you doing?!" Caid demands.
"Trust me!" Braum shouts as he feels the air ignite behind him in a brutal conflagration.
Ahead of him was a slightly cracked wall.
Grinning despite himself, he lowers his shoulder and leaps.
As another explosion rocks the spire, Yorick turns away from the fight.
"Ha, ha!" Braum cries, emerging from the smoke, bouncing down the spire's side like one of the goats his homeland was famous for. Caid swears profusely but manages to get a shot off, catching a veiled feminine specter center mass to his credit.
"Still so jovial." Thresh remarks, his scythe nearly catching Yorick's chin, "It's almost impressive."
"He was your prisoner, yes?" Yorick comments, ensnaring the distracted specter with a mass of grasping limbs, "Worried you are losing your touch?"
Thresh snarls, carving the limbs away, and tosses his lantern towards him, teleporting after it and coming down with his scythe atop Yorick's head.
Yorick deflects with his shovel, striking at Thresh's torso and waving his hand, more of the drowned dead lunging from the water, wrapping their grasping limbs and slobbering teeth around him.
Thresh grimaces, fighting to free himself, and Yorick spares a glance towards the other specter, freezing when he sees Viego's hand grasped in her hand.
"What-" and Thresh strikes out, carving a line across his face.
"Oh, that?" Thresh asks, nodding to her as she continues to bare down on the leaping and lunging Braum, "Things are changing across the Isles Yorick, interesting, interesting things."
As he says that, Grael's face briefly pokes out from amongst the flames, set in a deeply ingrained sneer.
"Viego had no idea what he unlocked when he woke up, the gifts he had unknowing handed all his subjects." Thresh remarks, parrying Yorick's next strike and lashing out again, wrapping his long spine-like cord around the gravedigger's neck, "Ruination and with it Freedom. The ability to traverse all of Runeterra, and with him sleeping, there is no one directing where we can go."
"Then why are you still here?" Yorick snarls, stabbing with his shovel only for Thresh to knock it aside.
"Really, Mori?" Thresh whispers, "You don't think I know what you and Ledros want? Oblivion for all the Isles?"
"Freedom." Yorick counters.
"That isn't freedom." Thresh snaps, "That's death. I would much rather we stay here in the Inbetween."
He raises his Lantern to Yorick's face, "And no one is going to get in the way of that. There's a whole world out there. It is high time I see it on my own terms."
Yorick could feel the lantern trying to rip his soul from him, and then Thresh was gone. A rage-filled scream rocks the harbor as the Maiden slams into him like a charging bull, knocking him into the surf.
Yorick grabs up his shovel and focuses, and as the specter fights his way back to the surface, dozens of the angry dead swarm Thresh, drawing him further and further from the waves above. He'd never drown, but this would keep him busy.
The other specter turns at the Maiden's arrival and shrieks, racing for her. Braum hits the dock, releasing Caid and his hound.
"The boat now." Yorick orders. Braum nods, ripping free the mooring and leaping aboard. Caid joins him, but not before taking several more pot shots at the attacking specter. His hound leaps into Braum's waiting arms.
The Maiden rushes to meet the other specter, but Yorick holds her back. He pivots around her, swinging his shovel like a bat, and a roiling mass of Black Mist forms, launching at the attacker and ensnaring her in thick, snarling Black Mist that begins to drag her to the ground towards more awaiting Mist Walkers scrambling to answer Yorick's call.
"Let go of me!" the Maiden hisses.
"They are here for you." Yorick returns, gesturing to the stolen blade in the specter's grasp.
"I will have that affront banished from this world." the Maiden snarls.
"For once, Isolde, will you listen to me!" Yorick shouts, raising his voice for the first time in what feels like centuries. The Maiden looks at him, her eyeless gaze still managing to burrow into his very soul.
"Viego sleeps, we have time, they capture you, bring you to him; what happens?" Yorick asks, "There is a slim hope yet, for peace on the Isles."
"Let go of me," she states her voice ice cold.
He glares at her for a moment but concedes, and without another word, she darts away, racing across the waves.
Yorick hops into the ship, and with a wave of his hand, several of the drowned dead make for the back of the boat frantically pushing. The boat picks up speed, and as the Maiden rips back around towards him, a current of air catches the sails and sends the ship almost skipping away from the spire.
"Times like these make you wish for a Piltovan," Caid mutters as, behind them, the Sword-Thief takes to the air, racing after them.
"What?" Braum asks.
"Their boats can move at a clip, we run out of wind, we're deader than him," he states, pointing a thumb over his shoulder at Yorick.
"Have a little faith," Yorick mutters, closing his eyes and reaching out for something, anything, he can grab on to spiritually.
A loud crash forces him to open his eyes, and he fights a deep sigh as he spots Thresh emerging from the waves on the back of a chariot pulled by two sharks.
Thresh cackles, "It's amazing the things you find just lying around."
Braum's eyebrows knit together in confusion, "Why is there…."
"What was wrong with your people?" Caid asks, sighting his rifle and firing, ripping chunks out of the undead beast's hide.
"I have no idea what that is or where it came from." Yorick returns.
"Do you have a plan?" the Maiden snaps, pulling closer to their boat as their enemies encroach.
Yorick closes his eyes, grasping onto the thread he had briefly felt.
Braum turns and looks at the pair and slides his shield off his back.
"I have one." Braum states…"Never did it on the water before."
"Braum…" Yorick begins, not opening his eyes.
"Just make sure to pull me back onboard." Braum returns.
"Wha-" Caid begins, and Yorick feels the boat shift under them, skimming even further across the waves.
"He jumped!" Caid shouts, and with a grimace, Yorick opens his eyes but mentally forces himself to keep ahold of that tether.
Braum was twenty feet in the air, drawing his shield back and forcing himself into an even deeper plunge with a grunt.
A boom like thunder and a cascade of water bursts out in front of him, ice snarling up and through it.
Braum is thrown back, his shield skipping across the waves like a stone, ice forming beneath its touch.
A wall of ice and water slams into Thresh's demented chariot, crushing the beasts under its weight and seeming to ensnare Thresh and the Sword-Thief, who screams in frustration.
"My shield…" Braum mutters, looking after it as Yorick and Caid move to haul him back onto the deck.
"There is no way we have the time to haul that slap of stone up." Caid states, wincing, "Think I wrenched my back just pulling you up."
Braum grimaces and nods, "We should have time, no-."
His voice is cut off by a gasp and spatter of blood across the deck as he reaches for his throat.
Blood seeps from his fingers as the Ruined Blade rockets back into the air, racing towards the Thief as she draws free of the ice.
"Shit!" Caid barks as Braum keels forward to his knees. The old Sentinel rips his cloak and begins wrapping it around Braum's neck.
"Is…is fine, Iceborn…bleed slow, I'm fine." Braum gurgles.
"Yorick!" Caid cries, "That plan? Any time now!"
The Sword-Thief cracks herself free and points at the boat; the Black Mist beginning to coalesce. The Maiden snarls, her claws lengthening. Braum fights to stand, and Caid swears in four different languages as he tries to sight his rifle and steam the former's bleeding. The hound howls.
Yorick's eyes snap open, gleaming with silvery-blue light, "There you are."
The Blessed Isles had been a beautiful land, home to peaceful peoples drawn from many nations and ancestries. Nature was kept verdant by the kind ministrations of a clade of spirits, but within the waves, beings of true majesty and beauty lived.
And as with everything, Viego had slaughtered them in one catastrophic moment.
But unlike so many, he had not crushed or warped these beasts' spirits. Their cries fill the waters about them, sonorous and melodic.
The first rises, massive jaws closing down around the Sword-Thief with a booming clap.
The Platinum Leviathans, long-toothed silvery anvil-headed whales, fifty meters long, beautiful beasts who had been respected and worshiped by the sailors of the Isles.
And all that remained came to their aid at his asking.
The second dips beneath their boat and, kicking up a flume of water, rushes them away from the oncoming danger, while a third rises, lunges for Thresh as he clambers atop the mass of ice Braum created.
Yorick sighs and slumps to the floor.
He looks up to Braum, pale face still set with a kind, determined smile.
"The music…it is quite nice." Braum breathes, "Who…who is playing?"
"We need to get him to a healer Mori," Caid states, "I can staunch it, but I ain't got anything for fixing this."
Yorick nods, "I know where we must go, the Glade."
"That's on the other-fucking-side of the Isles!" Cade snaps, "We ain't got that kind of time."
"Then it is a good thing I know someone who can take us there swiftly." Yorick counters, reaching down and tearing off some of his garments, "Keep pressure. We can't afford to lose him."
"You won't." Braum mutters, "I promise."
"Hush, big guy," Caid returns, "Just sit back and relax."
"Wonderful start." the Maiden whispers into Yorick's ear.
"We yet live." Yorick returns, "There is still…."
"Don't finish that." she hisses, turning to look back the way they had come.
"We were so close." the Sword-Thief mutters, standing atop the smoking hallowed corpse of the Leviathan that had swallowed her.
Thresh was on the beach, spinning his scythe in a manner that was too distressingly carefree for her liking.
"We failed," she mutters, staring down at the blade.
Thresh continues to ignore her, staring out at the horizon.
"We failed!" she states again, darting down and getting directly into his face.
"Truly?" Thresh returns, "I thought this went very well. You clearly rattled them with your little persona change, Vex."
The veil flutters to the side, revealing the Yordles face very briefly, shadows roiling from her eyes.
"They got away." Vex snarls, "And were you even trying?"
"No." Thresh returns, "And look how close we got. You nearly killed one of them."
"She got away!" Vex spits, and her shadowy form grows bearing down on Thresh, who stares are her unimpressed.
"Yes, but with one of them wounded and unarmed, we both know where they will go next." Thresh returns, "Where is the last fount of Healing in this cursed realm?"
"The Glade." Vex breathes, "We can stop them there."
"I'm sure you will make him proud, prove your ability as…a partner." Thresh remarks, "I wish you luck."
Vex turns to him in surprise, "What?"
"I feel another series of events calling my name, begging for my intervention." Thresh states, "Besides, you wouldn't want me to steal your thunder, would you?"
"He ordered you to stop them." Vex states, bristling.
"I'm not very good at that, am I?" Thresh states.
"You will stop them!" Vex states, pointing the Ruined Blade at him and smiling as she feels the faintest hint of control impose upon him.
Growling, Thresh pulls away, "No. No, I will not."
Vex's eyes narrow.
"What would you want more, my girl," Thresh asks, "Viego trusting me to be at his side when he returns for our actions in these interesting times, or you?"
He lets the question hang, and when she looks away, he chuckles, "That is what I thought."
His form flickers and his countenance becomes much more human for the briefest moment, "You're not the only one with desires, dear girl. Now is the time to act on them."
And with that, he vanishes into the Black Mist, a low chuckle on his lips as Vex stares down at the Blade she had claimed.
Thresh had told her a piece of Viego dwelled in that sword, forever tied to it, and now she had bound herself to it as well.
A bond that would last, he would see that.
His bond to Isolde was frayed and immaterial, held within trinkets and fleeting memories. Clearly, she did not wish to return with how tightly she held to Senna and Gwen.
This bond.
Her hand squeezes around the hilt, and she momentarily feels his presence once more, a comforting chill.
Was forged of Iron.
Jabbing the Blade down from the sands, dozens of Camavoran soldiers and sailors began to push themselves free, looking at her and kneeling.
And a Hope.
To be the Queen of the Shadow Isles.
Yeah…so….Yeah.
This sort of just evolved, and I'm not sure where exactly this is gonna go, but here we are.
Hope you all enjoyed it, and see folks over at Spirit Quest soon.
As always comments, questions, and critiques are welcome. This has been VerBeeker, signing off!