What's up, my hombres?
I'm kidding, of course. I don't speak Not-Englishese. I think pomme de tair means something somewhere… it sounds French. I don't want to bother googling it, but I'm relatively sure it's an apple. Or a potato. One of the two.
Anyway, I guess I'll just get on with this and write as much as I can before I pass out from self-inflicted sleep-deprivation. Video games, man. Shit's like cocaine.
Chapter 67: A Beginning
Ahri's POV:
"Has anyone seen Zoh?"
Everyone shrugged at me, forcing me to go into deep thought for a few moments. We'd only just met up with the Yordle military, and he'd ran off before he could even say 'hi'. It wasn't exactly the first time that he'd shown a considerably lacking ability to be in the right place at the right time, but there wasn't a single thing in Bandle City that could have distracted him. It was just like a regular town; brick buildings surrounding grass roads, some monuments dotted around, a few more modern zones that Heimer had threw up. The only reason it was even a city was the sheer size of it, easily being as big as Piltover, though only horizontally.
I looked around the room for any possible sign, clearly having no hope of working it out with my head alone. It was pretty much what you'd expect from a military command centre. Except smaller. There were people sat at desks, answering radios and pressing buttons that did who-knows-what. Mirrors stood where walls would normally be, giving a three-sixty view of the city. There was some important dude with far too many medals sat on a chair on one side, shouting out commands every few seconds.
I tapped Akali and whispered: "I'll be back in a minute."
"Okay. Why are we whispering?"
"I don't want to disturb the Yordles."
"But you shouted earlier."
I wondered if I'd taken a few too many smacks to the head for a moment before speaking at my normal volume: "… Just wait here."
Heading back the way we came in, I found myself strolling through the halls when I noticed the sign above one of the doors. I stared at it for a few moments, sadness growing in my gut as I took in the reality of the situation. They had a coffee room.
I shoved the door open and stared at Zoh, who looked back, exclaiming: "Hey, Ahri, how's it going?!"
"How much coffee have you had?"
"Do you want the answer in cups, gallons or litres?"
"Just. Tell me."
"Well, I'm not great at maths, so I'm just gonna say that I've probably had enough to last the entire war. And then some. There's probably going to be a global shortage."
"You really just… you frustrate me. So goddamn consistently."
"Well, it is my job. Horrible pay. No benefits at all. I don't think I even get dental from it. That's like, the one thing every job gives."
I glared at him, regretting ever taking my eyes off him. Every time I did that, he managed to do something incredibly dumb. He was like an overly-energetic puppy.
"If I keep working this hard, I'm surely gonna get a raise."
After dragging him back to the command centre by his ear, we were finally ready to meet with the many-medal-guy.
The second we came in, he turned his attention to Zoh: "Finally, you're all here! Care to give me an idea what the hell we're about to be dealing with?"
Zoh put his hand up and declared: "I believe I am the closest thing we have to an expert, here. Basically, they're going to win and we need to evacuate the city last week."
"You're just meant to tell me what I'm fighting, not how to run away from it!"
"Okay, how about this. They have more soldiers than you. Their soldiers can lose limbs and not even notice it. Their armour covers pretty much everything and requires a dedicated power attack to break. They also have tanks. Lots of them. We have one."
"It would've been great to know this soon enough to do something about it."
"I didn't know any of this until today. However, it wouldn't be an issue if you listened to me when I said we all had to work together for this. I distinctly remember you telling me 'I'll fight beside a Noxian the day pigs fly'."
The Yordle put his hands on his desk and let his head hang, sighing: "What do we do, then?"
"Delay them as long as we can and evacuate the civilians. The city isn't built for a siege, and it wouldn't last long if it was. They're not trying to capture anything, they simply want to destroy every last one of us. They'll steamroll the city, and we have to make sure that all we leave for them to destroy is bricks."
A chilling silence flooded the room, all eyes turning to the commander. Everyone knew what leaving the city behind would mean, but we also knew what would happen if we tried to save it. It was a decision that we all knew the right answer to, but I doubted that many of the people there would have had the will to enact it.
I knew what having to leave a home behind felt like. More than losing all your belongings, you lost a feeling of security. Suddenly, you didn't know if you'd have a bed that night. You didn't know if you would be able to find clean water. You didn't know that you would be protected from the things that lurk in the darkness.
Finally, the commander shook his head and ordered: "Evacuate the city. Have a regiment escort them out; everything else goes towards holding the city until every last civilian is gone."
One of the other Yordles asked: "Where do we send them, sir?"
Zoh answered for the commander: "Get everyone to Shurima. The trek through the desert will be hard, but it will hopefully slow down the enemy. Azir will shelter you all if you can get there."
"Are you sure?"
"He was the one leader I met who was willing to work with everyone else. He'll take you in."
The commander nodded and exclaimed: "Okay, get moving everyone! If that defensive line isn't set up by the time the enemy get here, I'll piss on all your graves!"
I and Zoh glanced at each other, both smirking lightly. He muttered: "Motivating."
"Kinda useless if the aliens don't bother to give us proper burials."
He gasped in an excessively sarcastic way before replying: "They wouldn't dare."
A few minutes later (20:10):
The bombardment never seemed to end. One wave of shells barely had the time to land before the next one was fired. Each blast sent tremors through the city, rattling the more poorly-built houses and knocking over the chubbier Yordles.
Of course, the shells didn't only rattle the houses. That was only if they missed. The majority of the buildings that actually got hit were decimated in their entirety, reduced to less than rubble. Sometimes, you could have questioned if there was ever a building there to begin with. Once the dust settled, all that was left was a crater and some dirt.
I had to admit, it was going pretty badly. From what I could tell, they weren't actually going to bother to send their troops in. They seemed perfectly content to just flatten the city from a distance.
Since getting bombed until we were all dead was no-one's idea of a good time, we had sent off Poppy, Tristana, and some of the city's best troops to take out the guns.
That was quite a while ago, and we were starting to worry that something had gone terribly wrong. Not that there was much we could do if it had. Akali was the only one with a hope of getting to them, but she wouldn't be any help against the kind of fortified positions we expected them to have. Assassinating entire armies at once wasn't really her thing; was always more Katarina's sort of thing.
I really couldn't do anything except sit behind my barricade, waiting for something to happen.
Meanwhile, Zoh was doing… I wasn't actually sure what Zoh was doing. He was frantically smashing together a machine of some sort. Obviously, I hadn't got a clue what it was meant to do or be. It looked like a house had gone through a trash-compactor.
Whatever it was going to do, I could only assume it was going to be spectacular. If I had to guess, caffeine made up at least eighty percent of his body at that point. On the negative side of things, that meant it was going to backfire in some way. That was why I and the more intelligent Yordles had gotten well clear of him.
As I wiped off the dirt that a nearby explosion had covered me in, Rex walked up and knelt down next to me.
"Greetings, Mistress of Devious Evil. How's it going?"
"I'm cowering in a crater as the city is brought down around me by constant shelling by aliens. So, pretty average, I guess."
He stared at me for a few seconds before saying: "Are you not going to ask about the title? That's not the sort of thing I say to everyone I meet."
"I assumed you were just being… you."
"And whatever do you mean by that?!"
"To put it into perspective, you're the only thing I know that can consistently make Zoh look confused with a single sentence."
"I'd like to see you retain your sanity after spending fuck-only-knows how long underground with a bunch of idiots who won't stop making skeleton jokes! That meme was old while I was still alive!"
I instinctively attempted to make sense of that before realising that it was hopeless.
"Okay, whatever, are you here on a social visit or do you have something useful for us?"
"I sensed that the Overlord was building a demonic summoning monolith and, well, how could I miss out on that?"
"Wait, what? You mean that thing?" I queried while pointing at the still in-progress device.
"He's not building anything else, so yes."
"Does he know?"
He shrugged at me.
"Well go tell him, then!"
"You go."
I glared at him until he realised: "Oh yeah, I'm just a minion."
He got up and went over to Zoh. I listened in as he explained the situation and Zoh immediately dismissed the idea. Apparently, Zoh was almost completely confident that he hadn't sacrificed a goat while building it. However, Rex was utterly certain that it was a demonic summoning device.
Personally, I was really hoping that Rex was right. I'd never met a proper demon; the closest I ever got was running into Vi when she was using her demon skin. Technically, I had dressed up as a demon once but pretending to be one was much different than meeting a real one.
After thinking it through, I started to wonder what they'd look like. Sure, there were plenty of ancient depictions of them, but they were all pretty vague and stylised. And, from what I could tell, ancient painters had a thousand-year-long argument about what colour of skin the demons had: pink or red. Personally, I was pretty damn sure they would be red. That was the classic evil colour. Pink was what you expected from a teenage girl who didn't have the heart to tell her dad that she didn't love all things pink anymore. Or just a young girl who actually DID like all things pink. That worked too.
With Rex's encouragement, Zoh managed to quickly finish the machine. Just as he did that, repeated explosions landed right on the machine. If I had to guess, the aliens had used their irritating ability to sense magic and decided that the huge concentration of demonic magic was, probably, something they should have been destroying.
Surprising no-one, Zoh was fine. Rex was… in a lot of pieces.
Importantly, the machine was unharmed. Considering that it was made of bits of rubble, that was quite the feat.
Zoh wiped the dust off his lenses and looked over to me, giving a thumb's-up. I gave one back, and he returned to the machine.
It dawned on me while he went through the start-up process that Rex had never actually mentioned what it was going to do. He gave a lot of encouragement, but never once said anything along the lines of 'this thing is going to bring demons into our world if you use it'. That meant Zoh was likely about to become the world's first accidental warlock.
Couldn't really work out if that was a positive thing or not…
My pondering was interrupted by the machine whirring to life for all of a half-second, before exploding into a brilliant green fireball. Matching lightning shot out from the explosion in all directions, blasting at the air around it. The shockwave that hit me brought with it an uncomfortable heat that I felt as strongly on my skin as I felt on my heart. It warmed every part of me in a way that felt far too unfamiliar for my tastes.
With a new plume of smoke in the sky, the ground finally started to clear of fire and dust. Left in the explosion's wake was Zoh, who had been knocked onto his ass, and a demon. The first thing I noticed about him was the colour, and I had to say I was disappointed. He was grey. Instead of proving one side right and displeasing the other, he'd managed to disappoint every part of the argument.
Apart from the INCREDIBLY frustrating colour, he had a lot of what you'd expect from a demon. Tall horns poked out of his head, breaking apart his coal-black hair, which was tied into a pony-tail that reached to his neck. His eyes were yellow and looked like they were on fire. They probably were. He was a demon, after all.
His face had odd ridges on it anywhere that would normally be flat. On his forehead, his nose, his cheeks. Apart from them, he had an unnervingly human face. He was even an odd sort of handsome.
He was also goddamn huge. Not just in the way that he was nearly eight foot, but also in that he had muscles on his muscle's muscles. He basically had Braum's physique, with a notable difference being that he was covered in ridges like the ones on his face. He also had hooves instead of feet, which was definitely different to Braum.
All he had to cover himself was a pair of cloth boxers with stone on all the seams. There was no way in hell that was comfortable.
After giving myself a pat on the back, I hopped up from my crater. I was on my way towards Zoh when the demon summoned a sword of flame and swung at Zoh. Not knowing if it would harm Zoh or not, I put my hand out and shouted: "No!"
Thankfully, something stopped his arms mid-swing. When he tried again, from another angle, his arms were stopped again. While trying to attack Zoh many more times, the demon boomed: "This cannot be! I! Cannot! Be! Bound!"
Zoh got to his feet and declared: "Clearly, that's not true!"
"The Lord of the Burning Scars will not be bound! I shall not allow it!"
"Too late now, buddy! Consider yourself the newest loyal minion of me. Before you ask, you don't get paid."
The demon dispelled his sword and chuckled: "Ha, you really think that YOU could bind anything?! You have no magical potential to speak of!"
Zoh stayed quiet for a moment before mumbling: "So…" while turning to me.
"Does this mean I'm a warlock now?"
Zoh shrugged: "Technically. I think. I can't be bothered to look it up in my helmet's dictionary."
II approached the two of them with a sudden confidence, declaring: "Minion, punch yourself in the face!"
"I shall not-" He managed to spit out before being interrupted by his own fist.
The ridges on his body ignited into flame as he glared at me.
Zoh pulled his helmet off and stepped over to me.
"I don't imagine you're going to be responsible with this."
"Of course not. You can't say you would."
"Oh, of course I wouldn't. That's why I'm so proud of you right now." He smiled while patting me on the head.
"You know, I'm a warlock now! You can't just pat me on the head like a child anymore."
"Don't kid yourself, I totally can."
I shoved his hand away and grumbled for a few seconds before noticing something. It had been at least a minute since I had heard an explosion.
"Is it just me, or are we not getting bombed anymore?"
"Well, I feel distinctly un-bombed right now, so I'd say it's not just you." He looked around for a second before squinting his eyes and mumbling: "This isn't a good thing, is it?"
The city wall crumbled to rubble, squishing quite a few of the Yordle defenders who were taking cover behind it. On the other side of the new entrance was a sea of angry aliens. And a tank. Multiple of them, actually. Somehow, the tanks looked as angry as the aliens.
I glanced back to Zoh and admitted: "You were right."
"As always." He lied just before his grin was covered by his helmet.
He immediately ran directly towards the endless horde of enemies, laughing in a joyous, and slightly insane, way. The hovertank dropped from the sky just as Zoh collided with the alien's frontline, its impact taking out a few dozen enemies instantly.
I looked over at the demon and raised an eyebrow, before ordering: "Well go on then. Get in there!"
"I will kill you one day."
"Sorry, but for now you'll have to settle for killing those guys."
He summoned his sword and followed in Zoh's footsteps. However, instead of calling in a tank to assist, he raised his hand and a bunch of aliens simply burst into flames.
After simply watching them for a minute I realised I wasn't actually being helpful, unless standing in the distance and occasionally shouting encouragement counted as 'helpful'. In my mind, it definitely didn't, so I decided to go find some way of helping. The number of explosions that the demon and Zoh were taking was not the sort of thing I could just shrug off, so something a bit less front-liney would have been much better.
A quick check of my surroundings showed that things had gone from bad to worse. The aliens weren't dumb enough to all be piling through the choke point with Zoh and the demon. Instead, they had come through at hundreds of different points. With only the Yordle military to hold them back, it wasn't surprising that I could see squads of them moving deeper into the city already.
Unfortunately, the under-city was still being evacuated. Not much of the overall population still lived in the underground areas, but there were still thousands of Yordles down there.
I had to buy them time somehow, but distracting an entire army wasn't something I had any experience in.
"Come on, think. Think!" I mumbled to myself while holding my face in my hands.
A spark of brilliance hit just when I needed it. Zoh had told me that the aliens were attempting to eradicate magic from wherever they went. From what I could tell, they could also sense magic to some degree. So, if I could get to an empty district, I could focus all of my energy into making my Orb as bloated and overflowing with mana as possible. Considering how much essence it had been feeding on over the years, it would be impossible to miss for anyone who could detect magic.
Getting out once I had their entire invasion force surrounding me was a bridge I'd cross when I got to it.
Since the main residential district had been first priority, I had to assume that it would be clear. Anyone left there either had a death-wish or was looking for a fight, and I was definitely going to bring them one.
I didn't want to waste any of my energy dashing there, and it was relatively close by, so I started running. It was getting very dark and very cloudy, so I figured I had a good chance of sneaky by any of the aliens that had made it that far into the city.
What I wasn't expecting was for them to have, apparently, very good low-light vision. I found that out the hard way when I heard something slicing through the air and on a course towards me. The spear stabbed into the pavement where I had been standing as I looked up to see four of the aliens falling towards me from the sky. They had white, glowing wings, little armour, and only a sword each. I thought it was fair enough to assume that they were some sort of scouts.
Considering that there were only four of them, I didn't expect it to take very long. I was mostly right.
Still not wanting to use any more of my mana than I had to, I snapped my fingers, making a tiny flash of fire appear in front of the closest alien. He was disoriented for a moment, which was just about long enough for me to get close and shove his sword into his head. Moving quickly without using magic was more difficult than I thought, but I was still quite a bit quicker than the aliens.
Stepping back to avoid a sword, I had to immediately dive out of the way, as one of them crashed into the ground where I had been. Another tried to swing at me, but I caught his arm with a couple tails. Unfortunately, he had a lot of other arms, which he used to throw me into a wall. My tails cushioned it a little bit, but that just meant that my tails hurt.
After glancing back to realise I had hit the only remaining bit of wall of that building, I focused back on the fight. They were all charging me, so I dodged to the side at the last moment. I grabbed the closest guy's sword mid-swing and pulled it back, taking him off-balance and sending him to the ground. Just like the first one, his own weapon proved to be his downfall.
With only two of them left, I decided to indulge myself a little bit and play a game. I charmed one of them and watched as he immediately attacked the other, using the element of surprise to easily kill his ally.
He stepped over to me, expecting some form of reward.
"Sorry, but I'm seeing someone." I shrugged before knocking him out. I picked up his sword and glanced between it and him for a few moments, my grip tightening until I shook my head and dropped it.
"Damnit… I'm gonna regret this."
I gave him another kick to make sure he wouldn't wake up any time soon, then hurried off. I'd wasted far too much time with that fight, making me doubt my decision to hold back on the magic. Using my regular abilities wouldn't have been too draining, surely? I'd never actually been in a fight long enough to run out of mana.
The aliens weren't all-that close when I reached what I assumed was the centre of the district. I could only assume I was in the right place, as it was pretty excessively bombed. The buildings were in a state where I doubted that they had ever been buildings in the first place, and what had once been a beautiful tree was on its side, mostly shattered into twigs and chunks of wood.
I felt an odd urge to touch it, so I knelt down and put my hand on a piece. For the brief moment that I held my hand on it, I saw the spirits of dead Yordles, still going about life as usual as if the city had never taken a single shell.
After pulling my hand away, I shook my head and mumbled: "Spirit tree. Never gonna not be creepy."
I sighed and summoned my Orb. After fixing it in place, I plucked a little chunk out of it. The Orb pulsed gently as I started to funnel as much mana into the chunk as possible. It took a lot of my effort to contain it all within such a small space, but my Orb knew to keep on sending more mana into it.
Looking out across the ruins of the city, I saw that the aliens had started to attack the soldiers defending the fleeing civilians. It was very obvious that the Yordles were no match for them in that sort of fight, so I doubted that the soldiers would last long. That meant I had very little time left.
A quick glance at one of the bodies lying under a pile of rubble reminded me of the consequences of failure, leading to me putting more effort into the tiny chunk of mana than I knew I had. The air around me was started to come alive, and wind started to swirl as sparks began flying off the chunk of mana. It still wasn't ready.
The Yordle defenders were dwindling fast and I could see, even from hundreds of meters away, the fear in the eyes of the fleeing civilians. There were still so many left to evacuate, and not nearly enough people left to defend them. But it still wasn't ready.
I was barely staying conscious at that point. My legs were barely able to still hold me, and my arms were only being held up by the streams of mana flowing through them. I still needed more time, but when I looked over one last time, I saw one of the aliens slashing away at the fleeing civilians.
Immediately letting go of the chunk of mana, I fainted.
Zoh's POV:
"What the shit was that?!" I yelled while clambering out of the burning husk of a tank. Looking over at the direction of the light, I was stuck motionless at the sheer size of it. The entire city and the forest for miles around was lit up as if it was a bright summer day. And it wasn't just a flash. Light was pouring out of a central point in the city.
Once my eyes had adjusted to the light, I realised that the city was suddenly inhabited by thousands upon thousands of ghosts. There was no other way to put it, they were ghosts. All of them were just strolling about, doing their jobs, playing games with invisible balls. They didn't even know what had become of the city.
Trying to piece things together, I mumbled: "Spirits everywhere, a huge magical light…"
All at once, the aliens started b-lining straight for the source of the light, completely ignoring me and the demon. Finally putting the pieces together, I yelled: "Ahri!"
I had a brief moment where I had absolutely no idea what to do, but I managed to remember that I had a single-use jump-pack on that armour set. Jumping out of the tank, I had a quick run-up before launching myself towards the light. As I flew through the air, I activated my shield and put it on the largest setting.
I landed a few feet from Ahri, who was on the floor. When I looked around, I couldn't find an angle that the aliens weren't coming from.
I went over to her and lifted Ahri into my arms, cradling her behind the safety of the shield.
"Shen! Turn the blocker off!"
"We cannot allow them-"
"Turn it off!"
The second I was able, I hit the teleport button. It didn't matter where, just not there. Right before we were about to disappear, I felt a pain in my gut. We appeared in a desert, and I immediately fell onto a knee. There was a spear through my gut, but it hadn't hit Ahri.
The blocker turned back on a few moments too late, as I heard a few things teleport in ahead of me.
I put Ahri down and pulled the spear through, tossing it aside as I looked towards the aliens. There were about twenty of them, and they were all the heaviest variant of the aliens. I couldn't see a single way to beat them, but that didn't mean they wouldn't get a fight.
Simply getting up to my feet sent a jolt of pain through my body that stopped me from even being able to move for a moment. Whatever that spear hit, it was important.
I set my armour to self-destruct if it took enough damage, then stepped towards them. My body was so incredibly heavy; every movement felt like it was weighed down by a few dozen extra kilos.
Despite the protests of my body, I ran forward and slammed into the closest one. We fell to the floor and I tried to lift my axe to drop onto him, but got kicked off before I could. I fell onto my back and looked up as all the ones surrounded me prepared their halberds.
Oddly, I couldn't help but smile. In some sort of backwards way, I was going to win. They got to kill me, but Ahri, their main target, would have a chance.
All at once, spears of gold plunged through the chests of the aliens. They disappeared, then appeared again. I watched all of the aliens fall and couldn't wrap my head around it until Azir stepped into my vision.
"I seem to be making a habit of saving you from terrible situations."
"It's helpful, considering… my habit of getting into terrible…" I trailed off as I blacked-out.
An unknowable amount of time later:
When I opened my eyes, I wasn't really expecting to be floating in a zone of nothingness, surrounded only by endless white. There wasn't a single distinct feature anywhere in sight, which was… concerning. Mildly.
"Oh shit, have I died again?" I thought aloud before muttering: "Gotta stop doing that one of these days…"
"You're not dead, honey."
I turned around to see Ahri smiling at me.
"Are you sure? I'm pretty sure I don't remember Runeterra having a void of endless nothing."
"Trust me. This is just the effects of a poison that spear was coated with. Your soul is somewhere between life and death, but your body is just fine."
"But… wait, how are you here? And how do you know all this?"
"Shurima has a lot of very good healing mages. They're projecting me here to guide you back to us."
"Oh, I guess that makes sense. So, how do become less almost-dead?"
"Just take my hand." She reached out, and I was about to grab her when another Ahri appeared next to her. The other Ahri yelled: "Wait! Don't trust her!"
"Oh for fuck's sake, not this shit. Do you guys have any idea how unoriginal this is? Even the jokes about this being unoriginal have become unoriginal!"
"I don't know what you're talking about, but you can't take her hand! If you do you actually WILL die!"
"I'm pretty sure even we have done this before… Anyway, fuck this shit. What's the name of my right hand when I draw eyes on it?"
"What?"
"Frederikson Shrubbery, 'The Mad Cow'." The second one answered with a sigh.
"Easy peasy." I grinned while taking the real one's hand.
Ahri's POV:
I heard the door open and took my head of Zoh's bed to see Azir striding in. His talons clinked against the stone floor as he strolled over to me. Only when he was standing right next to me, looking down at Zoh, did he ask: "Still nothing?"
"Nope… how are the Yordles?"
"Still not quite acclimatised, but they are fitting in well. Shurima has become quite welcoming of other cultures since my time. But I am not here to talk about them."
"What is it, then?"
"The aliens. The desert has slowed them down, but they will be upon us within days. As much as it hurts to say it, Shurima will likely fall."
"And what are you going to do about it?"
He stared out the window and admitted: "That… I do not know. I cannot ask the people of Shurima to die with their city, but to put the lives of my people in the hands of Demacia or Noxus… Would it not be better to die with dignity, defending your home, than starve outside the gates of another man's city?"
"I understand why you're conflicted… but I'm not the person who can help you. Zoh knows the leaders of those other cities. Me? I barely even remember their names."
"Something tells me that the way you believe people see you is not nearly as accurate as you think."
"What do you mean by that?"
He paused for a moment before stating: "There's a crowd outside the doors to the hospital. Hundreds of people. Every once in a while, they chant for you two. They chant for Zoh, the bulwark. And they chant for Ahri, the Saviour."
Azir turned to leave, pausing at the door to add: "You are far more beloved than you know."
I looked back to Zoh, a meagre smile appearing on my face.
A few hours later (Saturday 28th 14:57):
The light of the Sun Disc was pouring through the window, warming me right to my core in a wonderful way. The room was so cold and unwelcoming with the blinds closed, simply because of how oversized it was. Zoh's was the only bed in there, but it was larger than the main room of our apartment. Its only redeeming feature was the Shuriman architecture, which was stunning as always. The mix of metal and stone had been sculpted into various patterns, none of which had faded at all despite its time buried in sand.
I was still kneeling next to Zoh's bed, holding one of his hands in mine.
"Remember that time when you showered me with presents because you thought my birthday was in December? You never did tell me why you thought it was that day… I only say this because… it's the twenty eighth. You probably had something planned, but there's only one thing I want today."
I put his hand on my face and leaned against it for a moment.
The joy I felt when it stroked my cheek on its own was enough to light up the world. Tears gathered in my eyes as I looked up to see Zoh barely open his eyes and look at me: "I wouldn't miss this for anything."
I leapt up and wrapped my arms around him, squeezing him tightly as he stroked my back. After a couple seconds, I pulled my head back to look him in the eyes: "You're late."
"Fashionably. I do feel very well rested, though."
I smirked at him and leaned in for a kiss. The feeling of his warm lips against my own was one of the things I missed most while he was unconscious. I was more than happy to lay there, until I ran out of breath.
After leaning out of the kiss, I sat up on my knees. Zoh sat up against the bed's headboard and asked: "So, have you had a nice birthday?"
"I'd be lying if I said yes. Shen and Akali visited, but they had to leave pretty quickly to evacuate a settlement."
"Well, that changes now! There's a whole lot of shit to do in Shurima, and we're gonna find the coolest stuff it has to offer!"
"Do we get to have sex at some point?"
"It's YOUR birthday, so I think there's a pretty good chance of that."
"Great. I've been day-dreaming about it constantly for the past couple days."
"Don't you mean 'past couple years'?"
"Well, yeah, but even MORE recently."
Later (15:40):
"This is coolest thing! EhEHehhhhEHHEHEH!" Zoh laughed maniacally while flying past me. He was standing on a surfboard-thing, holding onto a wire that was connected to a flying orb. Essentially, he was water-boarding, but on the sandy dunes. Also, instead of a boat, he was being dragged by a stone sphere that had spent the last few thousand years buried under sand.
And I was about to be, too. When the engineer got my one working.
I had a lot of regrets.
After stepping away from the sphere, the engineer exclaimed: "Got it! Three-two-one go!"
"Hey, wai-"
After a few solid minutes of screaming that was a confusing mix of fear and excitement, the sphere came to a slow halt. Stepping off the board, Zoh asked: "How was that?"
"Horrifying."
"In a good way or a bad way?"
"... It was good when I was going straight."
"As they always say: 'any birthday that doesn't scare the life out of you, is not a successful birthday'."
"Who says that?"
"'They'. I literally just said it. You gotta listen to me more often, man. Communication is key to any successful relationship."
"You can't just-" I began before he interrupted: "No, no, it's fine. I'll forgive you this once, as it's your birthday. Now, where do you want to go next?"
I sighed, shaking my head.
"Fine, whatever. Wanna go get some ice-cream?"
"… We're in a desert."
"Yeah… and?"
"It would melt."
"Not if you put it in a freezer."
He breathed in and froze still, a pained expression spreading across his face.
"How did I never think of that…?"
Much later (18:40):
Zoh's POV:
The desert was a very odd place. I'd been in nothing but shorts all day, and had still been utterly melting; yet the moment that the sun went down, all warmth had just fucked right off. It was there, then it was gone, and I was very upset about the sudden development.
Somehow, I was surprised how well adapted the Shurimans were for the sudden chill. Considering that they lived in it for their entire lives, I really should have expected how good they were at keeping back the cold.
Despite being on a terrace overlooking the city, with the cold and motionless sky above me, I was actually quite pleasantly warm. For that, I had to thank the pillars dotted around the restaurant, which were radiating heat for reasons that I couldn't explain. Rock had no right to be so perfectly conductive of heat.
The restaurant had quite a few people, but it was very quiet. You'd think people would be more hysterical considering the alien army a few miles away, but I was assuming they were all just the quiet kind of horrified.
I, on the other hand, was in some state between recklessly unconcerned, and quietly horrified. There was very little chance that I would actually die, despite my history of doing exactly that. Other people, however, were much more likely to become thoroughly not-alive, and they didn't usually have my uncanny ability to reverse the process.
As was my usual way, I escaped my thoughts about the problem by staring at the stars. Something I never noticed before was that we were in range to see the Tri-Star system which, surprisingly, was notable due to having three stars in close proximity. I very much enjoyed slapping the person who named it that.
I didn't stare at it too long, though, because it brought back terrible memories. Only one planet in that system. Full of spiders. Fucking terrifying.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, there was the Grxty system. I had been slapped for mispronouncing it many times, which I thought was unfair. There was no way in hell that the proper way to say it was 'Grixty'. If it was that, it would have included the 'I' in the actual name!
At least it had a couple nice planets. The people there had an excessive love of ice-cream, but other than that it was a lovely holiday destination. I could agree that ice-cream was great, but electing a cone of it as your president for two consecutive terms seemed a tad much.
"Ahem."
My gaze fell to Ahri, who was standing at the other side of the table. She had her hair white, and matching the main colour of her dress. The dress itself was pretty simple, the top being flat and just barely covering her chest. Everything down to just above her knees was covered, but it was sliced away diagonally to reveal her left leg. The interesting parts about it were the hourglasses floating above her shoulders, about level with her head that seemed to never need turning. I was kinda jealous that I'd never thought of that, to be honest.
I stood up while stammering: "Holy hell, you look… awesome? Hot? Both."
She smiled and sat down, replying: "Thanks. You're looking fantastic as always."
"I try my best, although I think I've been out-done tonight." I admitted while getting back into my seat.
"To be fair, this wasn't my idea. I bumped into Nasus while looking for something to wear and he helped me out. You wouldn't believe how much knowledge he has about fashion trends."
"So things floating above your shoulders is the 'in-thing'?"
"Apparently. Everyone has wanted this stuff since Taric did it, but only recently did people work out the right enchantments for the clothes."
"Mages have existed on this planet for how long and they only just worked this out?"
"It's harder than you think. I'm not sure how to explain this… okay, it's like asking why cave-men didn't invent guns. There were steps up to it. They had to figure out levitation, enchanting, stopping levitating things from bashing people in the head…"
"Oh… fair enough, then. I'd probably just use some invisible sticks, but whatever works, works."
She shrugged and went on: "I suppose. But enough about my dress, how are things going? And I don't mean about the war or whatever, I mean with you."
"I'm okay, all things considered. Compared to most of my life, things are pretty good right now. I'm building anything I want, I've got more friends than ever, I live on a free planet, and the most beautiful thing in the universe is sitting across from me."
"You're never going to stop telling me that, are you?"
"Never. How could I, when you surprise me every time I see you?"
"You're almost making me feel bad for not doing the same. I do think it a lot, though."
"Why not just say it, if it makes you feel bad not to?"
"The last thing the universe needs is for your ego to get any bigger."
I guess I was wrong about the 'this one should be on time' thing.
Dang.
