The rain began to pick up, the drip-drop sound starting to echo around the hollowed out town, hissing filling the air as they fell upon the embers and flames that still glowed in the early evening. The smoke blotted out the last remnants of sun that seemed to ride in the sky. Jarvan glanced up into the sky, the red horizon showing over the massive clouds that were now almost upon them, rising high up into the sky, higher than anything he had ever seen. Shyvana pulled the brim of her hood down down towards her nose, hiding her thin eyebrows as they creased down over her magenta eyes that glowed beneath her hood in the dark light of the evening. A heavy drop struck Jarvan's hood. He frowned, pulling the hood of his cloak back.

Shyvana looked up to him and nodded, her eyes glowing eerily in the darkness. Jarvan extended his free hand towards her, the other wrapped tightly around his lance. Shyvana slid one gauntlet-clad hand into Jarvan's and then held the other out before her body. and then concentrating hard, closing her magenta eyed for a brief moment. Her clothes started to rustle and Jarvan could feel a wave of heat rush over his body, dissipating as Shyvana held up her gauntleted hand, a flame crackling in her palm. She held it up before them, the flickering light helping to cut through some of the darkened smoke and fog mixture, but it was hard to see anything that was more than a hand full of yards away. Jarvan took a step into the town, immediately feeling as though he had just stepped into a graveyard.

The milky mist seemed to settle thickest in the shallows of the village, pooling around some houses that had basements of cellars, sometimes giving one house a ghostly appearance next to its neighboring dwelling.

As they slowly entered into the Village, they passed an oddly pristine outer fence. Jarvan was reminded of a sensation he had long not experienced: The horror of walking a battlefield after the battle had ended. Everything about the village reminded Jarvan more of a war zone than a small hamlet not far outside his enemies' main camp, but the sense of familiarity it held was gut wrenching. All of the senses he had experienced upon the first time he had walked a day old battlefield to observe the destruction, it was all coming back to him.

The oppressive stench of rotting meat and mud atop the stale air, scorched by the great magics that were wielded like weapons of mass destruction, was replaced with the smell of wood smoke and the scent of over cooked meat. It was a greasy smell that stuck to the inside of your nose and made your eyes water. The air was hot and dry, all of the moisture burned away by the flames of the dragon. Water was only just returning to the air now as the weather front started to move in, and steam rose from the ashes of houses and bodies of the village folk. The heat seemed to scorch your lungs, and Jarvan could only cough at the dust and heat. It made it even harder to breathe, especially with the smoke everywhere, now growing heavy with the growing dampness in the air. It pooled close to the ground like a foul, insidious liquid.

"Wait..." Jarvan said, pausing. Shyvana did so, holding the fire out from her body, snaking her hand out of Jarvan's to hold the edge of her hood from her face. The sound of ripping fabric caused her to look over her should at Jarvan. He had ripped two long length of fabric out of the soft lining of his cloak, each roughly as wide as two widths of her palm, and handed one to Shyvana. She looked at him with confusion on her face as Jarvan pulled his hood back. Jarvan shivered as a raindrop struck his neck. Jarvan pulled a scarf from a pouch upon his pack and wrapped it around his face, tying it in back and then lifting his hood back up over his head. The rain was starting to come down harder now. He glanced over to where Shyvana had done the same, pulling her scarf up over her face and pulling it tight, the fabric outlining her lips and the tip of her slender, pointed nose. Shyvana looked out over what little she could see of the town, a mix of sadness and confusion in her eyes. Jarvan could just barely make out a frown behind her scarf, but he wasn't even sure that it was a frown. Jarvan reached out and took her hand, giving her a reassuring squeeze of the hand.

The sounds of the village was haunting as any battlefield Jarvan had ever walked, the depressing silence of death mixed with the crackle of flames and the snake-like sound of the raindrops falling upon the dying fires. It made his skin crawl to think that these empty shells had once been quaint houses, filed with the laughter of children playing and enjoying themselves, free of their afternoon lessons, their hunger just starting to peak as the wafting scent of cooking food started to settle over the village as suppertime approached. Men and women had laughed and joked, jovial over the end of the day's work, the ale just getting broken out. Only silence filled that void now.

Many of the fires that still burned now started to dance amid the rain drops, struggling to stay alive in the rain and the air, struggling for oxygen with which they could continue to burn, the hissing and bark of fire now starting to get covered by the gentle din of rain falling. However, the steam and smoke seemed to suffocate many of the fires, and they were beginning to splutter out in the deep hollows where it pooled. Jarvan looked out over a sea of blackened stumps, thick timbers had survived long enough for the flames to die out and leave a blackened stump, cracked and brittle. The scene looked like every war zone he had ever visited, bodies crushed and torn apart in places, strewn in ways that the body was never supposed to conform to. It was a horrifying sight that you could only close your eyes to, and even then, the scent, the sound and the memory was so hard, so vivid, it was no better to clamp your eyes shut than it was to try and continue through it.

Jarvan heard a squelched under foot and he had to stop, dreading what was under foot.

"Don't look." He warned Shyvana softly, his voice muffled by the scarf, but it was already too late. Her face paled to that of fine bone china, her eyes flung wide as she stared down at the ground. Jarvan did his best to swallow, but his mouth was dry, only the taste of ash and the heat of his own breath were left in his mouth. His tongue was leathery as he tried to wet his lips, but even that didn't help. He finally looked down and immediately regretted it. They were standing in the intestines of a man, spread out across the street path, his blood now nearly the color of pitch. Shyvana wretched, pulling her hand from Jarvan's as she took three brisk steps, pulled the scarf down and then dropped to her knees. Jarvan could hear the retching and the wet splatter as she emptied her stomach. He stepped clear, dragging his boots in the mud just beyond the remains of the man's bowels, doing his best to clean them of the gore and the stink of the intestines.

Jarvan could hear Shyvana struggling to move, watching her pack and rear wiggle as she struggled to get to her feet. Jarvan leaned over and grabbed the top of her pack, hauling her to her feet. She wiped her feet and looked up at Jarvan with weak eyes, a queasy smile upon her face as she quickly glanced away. She used the tail of her cloak to wipe her face as Jarvan fished around his belt for his canteen.

"Here." He held the canteen out to her. She looked at him, down at the canteen and then back up at Jarvan. She accepted it with both hands, trying to screw the top off with one shaky hand. Jarvan put his hand over hers, holding the bottle still while he twisted the top off. The leather strap help the cap as her dropped it to the side. Her held her shoulder as she lifted the bottle to her lips and took a sip, swishing it about in her mouth and then spitting it out onto the ground. She took several deep breaths and then took a long gulp of water. She held the bottle sheepishly out to Jarvan, who took a shallow sip to wet his lips then hung it back on his belt.

"How do you do it?" She said quietly, watching his slow mechanical movements as he struggled to keep his own hands under control.

"Do what?" Jarvan said, his hand falling to his side, the other clasping back around his lance. If it weren't for the black leather gloves that encased his hands, she would have been able to see the fact that his knuckles were nearly the same color as her face.

"How can you not feel sick..." She said, looking almost green as she pulled up the scarf over her face. "In all of this... this... desolation?"

"I've seen this many times before." Jarvan said his voice wavering slightly. "You never get used to it... I hope I never get used to it... but you become... numb to it." He shook his head as he grimaced. He opened his mouth to speak again, but Shyvana set her hand upon his arm, smiling weakly up at him.

"It's fine... I understand." She said, trying to hide behind a smile. Jarvan could see through to how upset she actually was though. It wasn't anger or hatred, but it was almost fear. He could see the same fear he had once felt about her reflect back at him now.

He suddenly felt sick himself, the thought that in his own way he was barely human.

Humanity.

What an odd word. Jarvan snorted, the irony sickening. We use the word to describe how human someone is... the height of arrogance. And here I stand with someone who is only half human... and she has more humanity than I at this moment.

Jarvan tried not to smile as he looked down into Shyvana's eyes. The young dragoness had none of his training or experience, the years of combat on the battlefield and in the meeting room. They were two very different fronts to be battled upon that were both fought with the ferocity and desperation of entire countries... Diplomacy and open warfare. Soft warfare and war. Call it what you like, both could make or break an entire country in the period of a few hours. Shyvana had experience with neither of these, and she didn't know how to keep her body from divulging her emotions. The masters of soft warfare, those who fought with words and the lines of the territorial borders, they were the true masters in that art. Jarvan had learned how to hide his emotions when he best needed to, but here, upon a battlefield, amid the devastation and terror that gripped at his heart, even he could not contain the emotion he felt. The base fear that wrapped around his heart like an icy fist, the lust of power that rushed through his veins when prey looked upon you as the predator you are.

Jarvan took several deep breaths to calm his racing mind and to ease his unsteady nerves. Shyvana seemed to pick up on the uneasiness he felt, the tension starting to build in her shoulders, the tightness in her muscles as if she were a tiger about to strike at her prey. He covered his face with the scarf, making Shyvana did as well, before taking one final deep breath.

"We should keep going." Jarvan said, extending his free hand again towards Shyvana. "And this time, mind your step." Shyvana nodded quickly, taking his hand. He gave her hand a reassuring squeeze, which helped to calm her nerves further. She looked a deep breath and put on a brave expression that Jarvan could read in her eyes. It was a spark of fire that danced in the dull light, but to Jarvan it was becoming his life blood. That spark of energy... of happiness... it drove him onwards.

"I'll try." Shyvana said weakly, her face still as pale as bone china. She reignited her torch, holding the flames out in front of her as they continued to wind through the town. They were headed towards the center of town in a roundabout motion, checking loosely for any survivors or anything they could use as a clue for what the hell happened here. It wasn't long before they came across a knot of Noxian soldiers. Some of them had been burnt down, others that be smashed by a heavy wooden beam and then burned to the blackened remnants of a human corpse.

"Something happened here..." Jarvan said, wondering if he had found some answers to the questions he was starting to have.

Jarvan frowned, using his boot to roll a Noxian Soldier over onto her back. He was surprised when he recognized the officer from the several days before, the Lieutenant who had been serving as the Captain's aide to the company they had passed when heading to the inn. A look of surprise was frozen on her face. The other half was burned away, only blackened flames left to cling to the skull. Jarvan felt bile rise in his throat, and he leaned down, closing her eye and then turning her face so that her beauty was seen from the heavens.

"This is horrible..." Shyvana said as Jarvan struggled to lever the heavy wooden beam off the ground of Noxians. He grunted, heaving the timber that was nearly twice as thick as his thigh aside, the sound of splintering bone as he dropped it onto their legs. "Oh gods..." She gasped, her hand hovering over her mouth.

His stomach turned over and he could feel the bile rising in the back of his throat as he found out what these Noxians had been doing.

The blackened corpses of three children had been crushed beneath the soldiers and the timber. One of them was so tiny he couldn't have been more than a year or two old. The bones were cradled in the arms of one of the soldiers, with only lumps of grotesque, burnt meat to hold the bones together. The other two looked to be somewhere between five and ten, their exact ages no one would ever know. Jarvan had to rip his own scarf aside before he bent over a short stone wall and emptied the contents of his stomach onto the ground. He wretched until there was nothing but bile left in his throat, and even then he dry heaved until his stomach muscled ached. His mouth tasted vile and his throat burned, tears forming in the corner of his eyes as he wheeled about and sat down heavily on the stone wall, facing away from the bodies. . Shyvana collapsed next to him, her shoulders shaking with silent sobs.

"There are things that life can't prepare you for." Jarvan said after several minutes of deep breathing and trying to calm his nerves. "This... this though..." He was bewildered and at a loss for words, the shock setting in.

"I... I did not think anyone capable of such slaughter." Shyvana said, her face queasy and green. Jarvan wrapped an arm around her, trying to find comfort in her presence, but after seeing something so wretched as that, Jarvan could only find anger and fear.

"The world has managed to refrain from such wholesale slaughter such as this for years..." Jarvan said, shaking his head. "Whatever did this was decidedly not human." He leaned forward, holding holding his face in his hands.

"This doesn't seem like the work of any dragon my father ever told me stories of..." Shyvana said quietly, a hint of betrayal and confusion in her voice. "Dragons were noble and reclusive... not genocidal." She shook her head; Jarvan could still feel her shoulders trembling as she leaned against him. He sat back slightly, looking up into the sky, pulling hood back and letting the rain drip down over his face and begin to wash away the troubles he felt. He took a swig of water from his canteen, rinsing his mouth and spat it out. He was afraid to take even a sip of water for it might cause him to wretch again. He offered it to Shyvana, who did the same, though she drank some before handing it back, she had attempted to empty the contents of her stomach a second time with only the pained heaving of an empty stomach to show for it.

"We should head for the town square." Jarvan said, after giving himself several minutes to calm down. Shyvana's trembling seemed to subside as well, though she didn't stop entirely. Jarvan ran his hands over his face, leaving streaks of black ash on his face like war paint. He pulled his hood and scarf back up after standing, unsure whether his knees would actually hold him or not. They were unsteady and he felt as though he might actually fall over for a brief seconds, but he managed to keep himself right.

Shyvana took his outstretched hand and struggled to her feet, but she was not nearly as steady as he was. As soon as she got all the way onto her two feet, her knees seemed to give out beneath her, and Jarvan had to struggle to keep her from slipping to the ground.

"Easy now..." He had trouble speaking those words, his throat sore from all of the retching, but also because he had such trouble trying to believe it possible to ease anything along after seeing that.

"Just give me a moment to regain my legs..." Shyvana said, putting up a hand as she leaned over, as if she were about to retch again. She started to, but in the end she merely swallowed and stood up, a determined look upon her face.

"Take your time." Jarvan said, taking a deep breath. The scent of death and charred flesh now carried an image that would haunt him for days if not weeks to come, something that he was already dreading. Shyvana slowly straightened up until she stood on her own, if slightly unsteady.

Shyvana took a staggering step forward and nearly had her legs go out from under her again, but Jarvan caught her.

"Thanks..." She said, nearly silently. Jarvan could barely hear her over the rain, her voice muffled by the scarf over her face. "We should go."

"You don't have to tell me twice." Jarvan said, helping her, an arm around her waist. They doubled back towards where they had come from, before taking a turn towards the main road, avoiding the scene they had been much too involved with. They moved through the darkened streets, the rain hissing at Shyvana's flame, but it never extinguished itself. The smoke and steam was beginning to settle, the rain helping to ease the smoke and the steam. There were only guttural fires that were sparsely dotted across the town, many of them located under over hanging rubble that served to keep the fire barely alive.

As they grew closer to the center of the town, the number of civilian bodies decreased and the number of dead soldiers increased. They were clumped in groups, many of them with fire blackened metal shields laying somewhere around them. Most of the bodies were blackened, much of the flesh burned away, but there were those that were torn apart, as if they had been snapped like twigs by the wind.

One of the most gruesome was a body missing both legs and an arm that had been impaled upon a collapsed church steeple like a hunk of meat on a spit to be roasted. Black, dried blood stained the cross and the slate tiles that made up the steeple roof. The entire thing was stained black, as if his entire body had been drained of blood. It must have been extremely painful, the man writhing for the last few seconds before he passed out from shock. Jarvan found it hard not to stare, but he didn't want to draw Shyvana's attention to it.

Jarvan knew that Shyvana had been hunted by dragons and humans alike, but he doubted she had ever seen more than a handful of dead bodies or corpses at a time. Her father, what little Jarvan could gather, seemed to prefer running to fighting, and Jarvan couldn't blame him. Despite the strength that Shyvana showed, she was much smaller than Kampf, barely a half or even a third his size. Her father's corpse hadn't been much larger than she, only half Kampf's size at most. Considering Shyvana was a bastard child of both human and dragon, and her father had been the dragon half of the human-dragon union, it was only natural for Jarvan to assume that her father had no taste for killing humans. Running meant he didn't have to kill any of them, so long as it put Shyvana in no danger.

Jarvan had seen much of this before though. Dead bodies were a common sight upon the battlefield; the blood and guts merely an obstacle to overcome. In Basic Training as a cadet, he had been forced to crawl under barbed wire through pig guts that had been spilled and mixed with mud as a part of a shock and awe introduction to the soldiering life. Magic spells had been flying overhead as he did so, the head of which some he could feel on the back of his neck at times. He had never been squeamish to such things, but this atrocity was something different entirely. Demacian justice was demanding to say the least, but even then it had allowances for the protection of children. Even the Noxians had made it a habit to avoid the brutal slaughter of children. The only warriors he had ever heard of who slaughtered man woman and child alike were the vicious and deranged Zaunites, whose weapons couldn't distinguish between man or child, friend or foe. Jarvan had heard horror stories passed on from Ionian emissaries during the Noxian invasion of Ionia.

He tried to put the thoughts at the back of his mind as they emerged into the town square. Burnt out stalls and the remnants of colorful fabric was enough to evoke the images of the famous Demacian Market in Jarvan's mind. It was a thriving and energetic place, the complete opposite of what sat before him. Along the north side of the square, fire still smoldered, a massive pile of rubble marking the highest point left in the town. They moved towards the pile of rubble that marked the base of the highest remaining point in the town.

"We can wait here." Jarvan shoved a body off a low wall with his boot, the body collapsing on the ground with a crunch. Shyvana watched him warily, but nodded, lowering herself down onto the stone wall. "Shyvana..."

"Hmm?" She said wearily, looking up from underneath her hood, the rain now pouring down in sheets. It ran off her hood and cloak, crashing down around her, as she sat in it, her cloak getting wet, but the armored plate she wore over her rear end serving to keep her dry.

"Is there anything that could drive a dragon to attack like this unprovoked?" Jarvan said hesitantly.

"Nothing." She said definitively, but frowned. "Well..." She furrowed her brow and brushed a few water logged locks of hair form her face.

"You mentioned that your father once did something like this..." Jarvan said, lifting a boot the low stone wall next to Shyvana and adjusting the straps that held it in place. He opened the armor, and pulled up the sock that had slid down his foot, tugged the leather trousers he had down onto his leg, tucking the sock underneath the leather. He then slid his foot back into the metal gauntlet, strapping it back into place and then shaking his foot about to ensure it was solidly held in place. Satisfied, he stamped his boot several times and then rolled his head, sighing.

"Only once though." Shyvana said. " And it was because my life was in danger." She crossed her arms over her chest, clearly uncomfortable with the subject. From what Jarvan could tell, Shyvana reveled in anonymity when it came to dealing with humans. She didn't like being the subject of their stares or curiosity. In Noxus she had seemed at home by his side as they had wandered the city, lost among a people where they were no more than any other couple on the street.

Demacia is going to prove to be a major shock for her. Jarvan thought as he stood up next to her of the fence and trying to pear through the smoke and rain that put a gray filter over everything.

"He would never have taken on an entire company of heavily armed soldiers, either." Shyvana said with a frown.

"It doesn't seem like this dragon had much in the way of trouble with them though..." Jarvan said, his voice even. Shyvana looked up at him as he tried to peer through the mist, probably looking for Isaacs and the others.

"My father did not want to hurt humans..." She said. "This one obviously did."

"But why?" Jarvan looked frustrated among other things. His face was pale, and his eyes seemed empty compared to their normal sparkle. He lacked the aggressiveness he usually had, and he just seemed out of it. Shyvana wondered if all of the bodies were troubling him.

"I don't know." She said, shrugging finally. "The rage that caused this though... I can still smell the fear in the air." She said, lifting her nose.

"Smells like death to me." Jarvan said bluntly.

"Find anyone alive?" Isaacs said, emerging from the mist with Forsythe carrying Quinn over his shoulder in tow. Forsythe carried his great sword in hand, the other around Quinn's legs to keep her from falling. Both Isaacs and Forsythe were pale white, and they looked decidedly pissed off.

"Not a soul." Jarvan said, a grimace upon his face. "Whoever... whatever did this... shall be purged." He clasped a fist and flexed it before him as he dropped to the ground from the stone wall.

"What happened to her?" Shyvana said, gesturing to the tracker that Forsythe held over his shoulder.

"She apparently doesn't care for charred and dismembered bodies." Forsythe said quietly. "She passed out when we can across a particularly gruesome scene." Shyvana simply nodded. Jarvan watched her cautiously, expecting a bitter comment, but he was glad when she said nothing. He didn't care for dissension underneath his command, and he didn't like to take side either, but the two of them fighting almost forced him into a box.

"What's our move, Captain." Forsythe said as he carefully sat Quinn down on the stone wall. He leaned her back against a pillar that rose up forming a gateway further along the wall before sitting down and sighing heavily. "We gonna do something about this?"

"I wish we could." Jarvan glowered, sighing heavily.

"Damnit." Forsythe muttered as he sat down heavily, his shoulders hunched over as he breathed raggedly. "What the fuck. What the everliving fuck." Forsythe massaged his brow with two fingers, a pain expression on his face.

"I don't even know where to start." Jarvan said, shaking his head. He dropped down, shaking his head as he knees bucked slightly, landing in a puddle. It sent a wave of water crashing over Shyvana and Isaacs' boots. Shyvana glared at him but it ended with a small smile, one eyebrow raised as she cracked a smile. Jarvan returned it, though his stomach still felt like a knotted ball of ice he put on the brave gesture for her and as a show of confidence for his men.

"We're pretty far out of the way for our original plan..." Isaacs said scratching his head. "Shall we just head in that direction?"

"What about the bodies?" Forsythe said, holding a hand over his mouth, a wild, confused look in his eyes. It was as he had seen something on the other side and returned; something Jarvan had seem amny times before... and something he never liked to see in the eyes of his men.

"What about them?" Isaacs said, glaring down at him with a frown.

"Can't we do something about them?" He said, looking up with wide eyes. "This is just... disgraceful."

"We try doing anything to them and we plant a nice big target on our face when the Noxians come calling." Jarvan said gruffly. "Specifically her." Jarvan said pointing a finger towards Shyvana.

"SO what if they think it was her?" Forsythe muttered. "She's just a dragon anyways."

"You want to repeat that?" Jarvan growled.

"She. is. Just-..." Forsythe started to say, anger forming in his words as he started to repeat himself slowly and angrily. He stood up, a fierce, wild look upon his face.

"Alrighty then..." Isaacs said stepping between them, a hand out in each direction. "Both of you back off."

"No." Jarvan growled. "I want to hear what hear-..."

The rubble beneath the town hall's clock tower shifted behind them, several large stone blocks falling to the ground, rolling down the pile and settling in the mud. Something rumbled close by, sending shudders through the pile of stone and into the ground below them. The pile of stone and wooden rubble seemed to expand then shrink again. Jarvan's mouth hung open as he blinked a few times, his mind trying to quickly figure out what could cause such a rumble and the shifting of the stone blocks in the rain. Ice shot through his veins as he clicked his jaw shut.

"What the hell was that..." Jarvan said, starting to turn. Shyvana twisted about on her seat, looking over her shoulder.

She found herself looking straight into a massive, glowing, red, reptilian eye, staring back at her from underneath the rumble.

"Oh fuck." Shyvana groaned.