Pain and suffering. Give me the strength

to bear it, to enter those places where the

great animals are caged. And we can live

at peace by their side. A bride to the burden

that no god imposes but knows we have the means

to sustain its force unto the end of our days.

For that is what we are made for; for that

we are created. Until the dark hours are done.

The Acts of Youth (John Weiners)

THREE DAYS BEFORE...

There are some philosophers who theorize that time is a dimension intrinsic to the universe, where events occur in sequence independent of other dimensions: there was the past, here is the present and that is the future. Others perceive time not as a dimension, but as a process of thought through which humans sequence events: there was a past because there is a present; there will be a future because there is a present. Time, therefore, is not measurable in a concrete sense. It is constantly moving, constantly changing. What now is will be then, in the same way that what now is will be.

If one's head is hurting, it would be easier to think of time as it is, and not as what white-haired men have defined it as, because those men have higher thought processes than an average human being. What is time to the average man then? The layman perceives time as something that is lost, as something that should be saved. Men rush through life because they fear to waste time, thoroughly unaware of the singular truth that, that no matter how much they try, time will always be wasted.

What is a month? On average, it is 4 weeks, 30 days, 730 hours, 43,829 minutes or 2,592,000 seconds. Out of those numbers, 210 minutes per week would be spent in the bathroom, resulting in 840 minutes lost on an unavoidable biological process. Therefore, there is no real way to save time, unless one is a sorcerer named Zilean, in which case one exists outside of time and therefore there is no real point in debating on what time is or why it is called time- simply because one can see what will be, what should be and what can be.

But- the entire point of the aforementioned paragraphs is not to ramble about time or about the practicality of men being strapped to giant clocks. The point is to explain that no matter how much men try to save time, to treasure it and to make the most of it, it will always be lost. Darius and Draven's parents only had one month left to live. No matter how many hours the two boys spent with them, in the end, the day of the execution drew near… and then there was no more time.

Executions in Noxus were not grand public events yet, because the person who would become the Glorious Executioner was still a little boy who didn't want his mother to die, but it was prominent in society enough to be considered as something to watch if one was interested, and if one knew who was going to be axed for the day. The House of de Croix was well-known within Noxus, as one of their ancestors had been a famed General who had come very close to bringing Demacia to its knees. In contrast, Darius and Draven's family was about as important as a fly within one's porridge. Many years later, the brothers' names would be on everyone's mind, but in this day and age, they were nothing. They did not even have a House name to call their own, although the brothers would be granted one in the future.

What were House names? It was a system that Imperiosus, the first Grand General of Noxus, created and encouraged; he had been of the opinion that Noxus should remember those who contributed to her prestige and forget those that did nothing but bring her down with their indolence. If one bore a House name, then, it meant that one's ancestor had done something worthy of remembrance in the annals of Noxian history.

To clarify: when a person is born in Demacia, one is given a name and then one is identified with the family one was born into. Garen was born into the Crownguard family, and so his name straightaway was Garen Crownguard. In Noxus, where fatality rates were significantly much higher and where accomplishments, influence and intelligence reached father than the circumstances behind one's birth, to be given the Demacian equivalent of a surname and to be identified with a family, or a House, was a reward, and not a right. When they were children, Darius and Draven belonged to no House, and thus were not important to anyone except their own parents.

The headsman's platform had been set up in the middle of Emerald Ward. It was a massive, wooden thing made of newly cut pine; the old one had been covered with so many bloodstains that it would've been imprudent to execute people on it in a place like Emerald Ward. It could have been mistaken for a theatre stage, if it was not for the fact that there was a bloodstained wooden block and a wicker basket set up in the center.

As stated before, public executions were a cultural mainstay in Noxus. For a nation so fixated on death and prestige, there were certain customs and traditions involving a death that would be seen by all. For one, it was considered as dishonorable to be decapitated by guillotine, and therefore only prisoners were killed by it. A worse punishment, reserved for traitors and conspirators, was to be drawn and quartered while one was alive or burnt at the stake. Therefore, the gift of having a swift death was only granted to those with privilege, such as noblemen or individuals of some repute. When the time for their death came, they were given leeway to be executed by a sword, or by their own weapon.

Darius' crime had been to kill a man's youngest son. The approximate punishment, if the wergild had not been paid, was to torture him on a rack and then, after a long ceremonial monologue by Maynard on why Darius was a homicidal cur, to run him under the guillotine. However, there was no guillotine for today's execution, as much as Maynard had tried to have one set up. Hystaspes and Athenais still had some influence left, and they managed to secure for themselves a good death: the executioner of the day was none other than Urgot, the Headsman's Pride himself, and the weapon of choice was Hystaspes' own battle-axe, which had been taken off the wall and sharpened to a gleam especially for the occasion.

Hystaspes and his wife would die for his firstborn, but the war veteran had been of the opinion that there was no way in any existing hell he would be publically shamed by being executed with a guillotine. Only his treasured battle-axe would do, and only his oldest friend would be the one to perform the deed. The entire affair, which should have been somber and shameful if Maynard had gotten his way, gave off an oddly personal feel. Many in Runeterra would be mortified by the domesticity of it, but Noxus was a nation of warriors who considered it an honor to be beheaded by their friends.

Of course, it was easy to romanticize the entire affair by adding some element of dignity to it, but the fact of the matter remained that Darius and Draven were to be orphaned today. They had prepared as much as they could. Darius had taken to it more readily than his brother had, although it had taken some time, and coaxing from his father.

It had happened one afternoon, when there had only been two weeks left to their month of life. The old warrior had been sitting near the dining table, polishing his ancient battered armor. Having previously thought that his father had sold it off, Darius had been surprised to see the full set.

It was a fearsome ensemble and appeared to have been custom-made. The enormous spiked pauldrons, battered from years of service and subsequent neglect, were padded with cracked black leather inside. The breastplate had been a work of art in its day, with its sharp but elegant lines making the impression of coarse wolf fur. The vambraces, couters and rerebraces, large and thick enough to fully protect his father's brawny arms, bore the embossed lines in the same style, ending in what had been razor sharp spikes. Strangely enough, his father did not have any mailed gauntlets- perhaps he had preferred to use leather gloves instead to have a better grip on his axe. The spiked wolf motif continued throughout the rest of the pieces: from the tasset, which would have protected his father's hips, to the cuisse, poleyns, greaves and sabatons that would have encased his father's legs and feet in steel. It was rather awe-inspiring for Darius, but the closed helmet was what had burnt itself into his memory: it was the warped, demonic face of a snarling wolf.

"Dar, Could you get my axe from the wall?" Hystaspes had asked.

"Would you need it?" Still awed by the ancient armor, the question had run out of Darius' mouth before he even realized it. Of course his father wouldn't need his prized battle-axe where he was going. The executioner would probably just wrench it out of his father's twitching hands to sell for scrap once the grizzled man's head had rolled some distance away. When he imagined the entire scene, complete with the sound of the axe hitting flesh and the wet thump of a head rolling away, the imagery had made him want to vomit. Already green and sick to his stomach with what was to come; his pallid skin glistened with cold sweat.

Shamefaced, he had lowered his head as the guilt collapsed on top of his shoulders and made his lungs constrict. He wouldn't be weak. He wouldn't cry. It didn't help matters if he did. He had to think more, had to act less. The world was going to be colder and more difficult without his father to guide him through, without his mother to remind him to wait. It was just him and Draven now, and he had to be an example through the coming storm for someone who had never suffered in their entire life.

"Listen closely, boy." His father's voice then interrupted his musings. Darius had raised his head hesitantly.

What Hystaspes would say in the following hours would stay with Darius for the rest of his life.

"I didn't have long on this earth to teach you everything there was to living," The older man left his armor on the table and pulled his own axe from the wall mounting, drumming his fingers on the haft as he went on. "I would've liked to stay longer to see you go into the military like me, maybe marry a nice girl, have children of your own…"

His father made a strange noise- something between a sigh and a choke. Dark thoughts went through Darius' head again- maybe his father thought his own life was being wasted as well- but he forced himself to listen to the older man, to tune out the demented whispers that lurked at the edges of his mind.

"Hell, there are a lot of things that I still wanted to share with you. I've got a lot of anecdotes about making bad decisions- never go out drinking with Sion and Urgot for example- but I'm rambling again. Essentially, what's done has been done. There's just no way around it."

Somehow, Darius managed to mumble out an affirmative. He agreed, but his heart wasn't into anything at the moment. All he wanted was for things to go back to the way they had been before, but as his father had said, what had been done had been done. He could mope all he wanted, but there wouldn't be any point to it. He couldn't afford to feel sorry for himself or for his brother anymore.

"Don't disrespect me, Dar." His father's voice rumbled off to his side. "Look at me."

Unsure of what to do, and wondering half-heartedly if his father was going to start beating him for indulging in his self-pity, Darius mustered what mental and emotional strength he had left. He lifted his head from where he had been staring morosely at the floor and looked straight into his father's eyes.

His father's eyes were bright and full of life underneath his marred flesh and bushy beard. It was almost as if the older man was just going to work for the day, but that was an idle fantasy. The reality was that his parents were going to their deaths in order to repay the blood debt he had accidentally created. The only other alternative was to present himself as wergild, but that was not an option for Hystaspes and Athenais.

"You think it's tough now," His father put the axe on the table, his gaze still locked onto his son's. "But maybe it'll get easier. Maybe it'll get even harder. We just don't know. Life is strange that way. Just remember, Dar, as you get older everything starts to pile up. You've got all those things you did when you were younger, all the mistakes you never should've done if you only did so and so- we all have things like that, but I don't want you to dwell on them. You could lose a lot of time, just thinking about what could have been, and not focus on what is. Do you understand?"

"No sir." Darius replied wretchedly. Even though he did understand somewhat, he didn't want their conversation to end. It was true that he had spent the last month of his parents' lives running his mind over his long-term plans as they readied for their execution, and it was true that his thoughts had turned more than once to how in the world he was going to fend for himself and his baby brother. Where was he going to get more money? How was he going to keep Draven in school? Was there a way to avoid destroying his baby brother's dreams? Should Draven work nights too? Was the military really the best option? If only he hadn't been stupid enough to-

"When a man makes a decision, he must learn to live with what he has done." Hystaspes tapped his finger on his firstborn's forehead once for each and every word he had said, as if sensing that his son was about to start thinking about alternate possibilities again. "That's the only thing that matters. Keep it in your heart and never forget it. You have to understand that what you did to the de Croix boy demanded an appropriate response from the law- and it's written in stone, son. It doesn't consider how old you are or how much you know of it. Breaking the law is breaking the law, and we must learn to live with our failures in the same way that we parade our successes."

Darius didn't reply. He didn't know what he could've said. Unable to return the man's fearless gaze, the twelve year old's eyes went back to the stone floor. His father crossed his arms over his chest, standing with his feet apart and towering over him.

"You're afraid." Hystaspes stated flatly.

Darius nodded. There was no point in lying, His father read him perfectly.

His father reached down and pulled his head up. "Of what?"

Darius's eyes swept over to the bedroom, where he knew Draven was sleeping. His dear baby brother, his mother's favorite- who did his hardest to make everyone laugh, who made himself the jester, who didn't know how the world worked, who trusted everyone-

"The future?" Hystaspes guessed. "Being alone with your brother?"

The twelve year old nodded. He was expecting his father to tell him that he was right, because it was a big deal, but he blinked in surprise when Hystaspes gave a disgruntled snort.

"There is nothing to be afraid about," He said candidly. "It's the future. It will happen, even if you don't want it to happen, even if you're afraid of something that's going to happen."

Darius swallowed nervously.

There was only one way for his lesson to stick. Fed up with his son's attitude, Hystaspes slapped him on the cheek. It was strong enough to sting and to wake him up, but never enough to leave a massive handprint on his firstborn's face. "You can't feel sorry for yourself all the time, and you can't run from things that frighten you. That is cowardice. Never forget that cowardice cripples." The veteran growled out. "Time, and the rest of the world, won't wait for you to get over your fear. If you show that you're afraid, if you're unsure or if you're torn in indecision, the world will punish you for it. After all, life is not kind. It does not care. It will do everything it can to kill you, and Noxus is at the center of all of that. Take my words to heart, Dar: what you do not kill will slaughter you; what you do not bare your teeth at will rise against you; what you do not take it by the throat will trample you under its heel."

Rubbing his cheek ruefully, Darius realized what his father was trying to do. Hystaspes had never been particularly eloquent, even at home. For him to be talking so much, it meant that his father was in the mood to do so, and the older man would probably never speak to him in this manner again. Now then was the time to find answers.

"How you can just sit there and… polish your armor and act as if it's nothing?" Darius ventured slowly, bravely trying to ask what had always been on his mind for the past few weeks. "And the day before that, you were talking with Mother on how you were going to get your friend to act as executioner. How do you… deal with something like that?"

His father gave a full-bellied laugh, hinting at the gaming mood he had and at the gravity of the situation for him to be so candid and talkative. "Dar, everyone is going to die at some point. You've seen it happen in the streets. You've been watching the bodies float in the moat since you were about as high as my knee. You can't expect your parents to be invincible."

Darius bit his lip. He didn't, but then again children had their dreams.

"We're all going to die in the end; it's how you die that ultimately matters." Hystaspes drummed his fingers on the tabletop in thought. Darius was about to ask what he was considering, when the older man decided to continue talking. "But what is a good death? How will you know if your death was worthwhile? Is it better to die from illness or to die from old age?" The old warrior made a disgusted noise as he waved his cleaning cloth back and forth. "Neither will do. To die from illness is to admit weakness, and to die from old age is to settle into sloth… but dying from the sword, wielded by your oldest friend?"

His father's eyes gleamed in the firelight, the beginnings of a cocky smile tugging at his lip. "Aye. That is a good death."

It is normally difficult for well-adjusted children to imagine a world that hates them with every fiber of its being, but that is what Hystaspes had said. As if sensing that he was becoming too dark for his son, he changed his tone.

"But the world is not entirely empty." Hystaspes mused out loud. "There are those like my comrades-in-arms, who took blows for me in the heat of battle more than once. The men who served in my unit still acknowledge me as their commander. There are others still who never doubted me. So there is brotherhood, loyalty and trust left in the world, but those examples are too common, too necessary in the military to go without…" He tapped his fingers on the table again before he found what he was looking for.

"Ah, love is a strong word, and it might be confusing for you because you're so young, but I would say that there is still some love in the world. Your mother and I did our best to teach you of it. What love we did not give to each other, we did our best to give you- but make no mistake, Dar. We gave you what was left. Time, and what we did with it, took the rest away."

It had not been as easy to temper the youngest child. Draven had never known hardship. Everything the family had done had been to ensure that his life would remain relatively untouched by grief. But now, there was no real way to tell the youngest child that it was time for him to grow up. The little lie Darius had given his brother had been debunked in front of him, but they hadn't seen fit to tell him the entire truth. Draven only knew this: that their family had attracted the ire of House de Croix, and that his parents now had to pay the blood price. One can say that 'one should not lie'. After all, lying to a loved one is not easy. It takes a certain thickness of face to do so, and a level of believability in one's words.

At the same time, however, telling Draven the truth would have shattered him. His entire family had done their utmost best to ensure that his lot in life was almost always better than theirs, and for him to lose his parents to the simple fact that Darius could not control his own temper would have destroyed his relationship with his older brother completely. Eventually of course, the truth would out, but that is for later.

Willingly destroying his relationship with his younger brother was far from Darius' mind at the moment. Dressed in his best clothes, the eldest son was standing on the platform and watching the gathering crowd with a stony face. His father, clad in his old battle armor, stood to his right. Cradling his fearsome demon-faced helm under his arm, Hystaspes spoke with Urgot and Sion, his old military commander, in easy tones. The spike-laden metal had been through a rough time while it had been in storage, and still had the bangs and dents from the last time it had seen service. The cape he wore was full of holes and was no longer as red as it had been. Despite it all, the armor shone bright as if it was brand new.

Darius had felt his stomach turn when he first saw the two men who were his father's friends. Urgot was hobbling sedately on wooden legs and sporting scythe-blades for hands. He seemed to be made out of other people's body parts, as he had more stitches and staples on his discolored and sickly skin than anything Darius had ever seen. Sion was similarly disfigured, but he had not suffered any loss of limbs yet.

His mother, who had chosen to wear a simple white dress for the occasion, was standing off to the side. Draven was desperately clutching at her skirts, tears welling up in his eyes and threatening to fall down his cheeks. Darius would have been there as well, if Hystaspes had not talked to him all those weeks ago, but he wouldn't have been crying. He didn't have any more tears to give.

Still, he was not entirely emotionless, and it was with a heart that was steadily breaking underneath a forced mask that Darius listened in to their conversation.

"I don't want you to go," Draven mumbled through his tears. "Why do you have to go?"

"Not all decisions are ours to make, dear one," Athenais said soothingly as she lifted her son's face to meet hers. Ignoring the trail of runny mucus and tears, she rubbed noses with him fondly and pressed her lips to his forehead. "But what one can do towards an irrevocable fate is to face it with a smile."

Hystaspes, perhaps noticing that Draven was showing weakness in front of a gathering crowd, gestured to Darius to keep the crying boy away from prying eyes. Darius nodded his head and wordlessly picked his brother up.

Draven, it seemed, was catching on. His sobs gradually stopped as Darius carried him down the stairs and behind the headsman's platform, but the hiccups that followed still wracked his smaller frame and made it seem like he was still crying.

"Are you going to put me away again?" Draven asked his brother sadly.

"I'm just waiting for you to stop crying." Darius replied as he set his brother down on the wooden steps.

"I'm not crying." Draven reached forward and pulled on Darius' best shirt, using that to wipe his face and blow his nose. "You're mean."

Resigned to the fact that he probably was not going to be able to salvage his shirt, Darius patted his brother's back and retorted. "The world is mean."

Draven shook his head adamantly. "Mama said the world tries to be fair."

Darius thought about what his brother had said long and hard. He loved his mother, with all of his heart, and he knew that she did as well. She would not be dying for him if she didn't. Still, Draven was her favorite, and love might have clouded her words. But, Darius realized, mother is right. For now.

"If this is fairness, then we must have done something very wrong." He said softly.

Because he did do something wrong.

And the world was simply being fair.

By the time the execution was scheduled to commence, there was a mob gathering at the platform. Darius had done his best to clean his brother's face and sent him off to Hystaspes. It was his turn to be with his mother now, but it seemed that he didn't have her full attention.

She was staring off at a distant house. It looked like all the other houses next to it- high walls, scowling gargoyle faces, purple slate roof and candlelit windows. There was a balcony on that particular house, and there was a red-haired man clad in a simple white shirt and black trousers standing in it, a child with the same fiery locks not older than the age of two cradled in his hands.

When he looked at his mother, Darius was shocked to find that there was a strange happiness in her eyes. He stared at her in askance, wondering if her sanity finally gave way in the face of her imminent demise. She saw her child gaping at her out of the corner of her eye and laughed, cocking her head slightly towards the red-haired man at his balcony.

"It is Commander du Couteau." His mother said to him.

Darius blinked. He glanced back at the man, even as his mother was speaking under her breath.

"You do me a great honor, my lord. It is more than a lowly agent could ever ask for." Though Darius was quite certain his mother's voice was too soft to even be heard beyond the headsman's platform, he could have sworn he saw the red-haired man smile- if it could have been called a smile. An almost imperceptible light ran through his eyes when she had spoken, though his facial expression never changed.

It took maybe three minutes for him to fully realize what had happened, and by then Darius had stiffened in shock at the acknowledgement. She had never said anything of her military service, but her words had made him realize what exactly it was. Commander du Couteau, she had said. But he had not come down to the platform to see her personally. He had stayed his distance, and they had communicated in their own secret way. He hadn't expected his mother to be a spy, but then again- this was Noxus, and the more he thought of it, the more it had made sense. She was not beautiful enough to be of note, nor was she ugly enough to be remembered. A person like her, whose plainness made her easy to forget, had made her into the very best infiltrator a man in the Intelligence Corps could ever ask for.

And the man, du Couteau, had been her superior.

In the future, Darius would find himself face to face with the man's daughter, and he would remember just who it was he saw in the balcony that day. He would keep the laughter bubbling silently in his chest, his eyes alight with a private joke.

The teenager's thoughts of his mother's secretive past were interrupted when Urgot shambled over to them. He had swapped out the blade implements on his hands for clamps- how else was he going to hold on to his father's battle-axe? "Maynard de Croix is here. It is time," Urgot growled out. With an awkward little twist of his waist that made it seem as if his stitches were going to burst due to his movements, he gestured towards the blood-stained block waiting for her.

His mother bent her head and enveloped him in a final embrace. Darius buried himself in her arms and tried to burn every inch of her into his memory.

"My darling boy, my light," She kissed him on the forehead as well. "I will tell what gods there are to smile down on you and your brother."

If he had been Draven, he would've clutched at her until the very end, but he was not.

The storm was still coming, and he needed to weather it for himself and for his brother.

So he let her go.

There was a very long speech by Maynard de Croix on how Darius had assaulted his son, but it mattered very little to Draven. Standing off to the side with his older brother, he looked quite small. His eyes were red and puffy from crying compared to Darius' calm gaze, and his sides shook with unwanted hiccups every now and then. As for his brother, Darius looked as if he had aged ninety years since the day he had come back with a paper bag full of goat cheese. The scar on his brow had only recently healed, so it was still visible and oddly awe-inspiring. There was also a small white hair on the top of his brother's head, and Draven made a mental note to tease him about it later.

Draven liked the fact there were so many people who were staring at him, drinking in his every move even if all he did was shift his weight from one foot to the other- even a black crow perched on top of a tree that seemed to take an unusual interest in the proceedings! But then again, this was his parents' execution, and he knew he had to feel sad.

But he wasn't- not as much as he should have. Not as much as he did before, when he first learned of the terrible price they had to pay. Maybe it was because he had spent a long month listening to his parents telling him what was going to happen. Maybe it was because his brother was replaced by some otherworldly being from the Void because the older boy wasn't even flinching or anything when Urgot sharpened their father's battle-axe on a stone wheel.

Draven had flinched. It had been a nasty noise and it hurt his ears.

His mother was on the chopping block, and her head was angled towards him. She was smiling and then mouthed the word 'now'. Draven knew what to do. He had practiced so many times. He closed his eyes, as mother had instructed all those weeks ago, and counted to three. That was what his mother had said- she had said beheadings didn't last long.

There was a sound- like a butcher's knife severing pork limbs- and then a thumping noise like watermelons rolling into a wicker basket, and then an eerie silence.

Draven opened his eyes again as his brother stepped forward. He felt a stab of envy as the crowd shifted their eyes, and he didn't quite understand why.

"For the life of Adrian de Croix, Athenais paid," Darius said ceremonially to the crowd. He still managed to sound rather confident, given that his voice was still cracking. Slowly, almost reverently, Darius took the basket containing their mother's head.

Draven couldn't resist peeking. Briefly he stared down at the thing in his brother's hands, drinking in his mother's face. She was still wearing a serene smile, but there were faint tears at the edges of her eyes.

Something broke in him then, he wasn't sure what. Finally noticing what his brother was doing, Darius cocked his head and quickly covered her with a purple cloth as he transferred her to a nearby casket- to be burned on a funeral pyre.

"For the other half, I offer Hystaspes." Darius bellowed as he turned back to the crowd, putting the bloody wicker basket back where it had been. Their mother's body was nowhere to be seen.

His father was on the block now, his full battle regalia clanking on the wooden platform. Urgot raised his axe, and Draven closed his eyes again.

He didn't see the blade when it got stuck halfway through his father's neck, but he did feel hot fluid splatter onto his face. Flinching away as the smell of blood filled his nose, Draven felt his brother lay a hand on his shoulder- the older boy's grip was tight enough that it hurt.

There was a gurgling noise somewhere in front of him, and then a groan. Thinking that the executioner was done and wanting to see his father no matter what state he was in, Draven mustered what strength there was left in him to open his eyes, but Darius' hand quickly clapped over his face and enveloped him in darkness again- but there was blood on his brother's hand and it was hotter than his skin.

"Not yet," He heard his older brother say.

"What's happening, Bro?" Draven complained despite himself. "Why is it taking so long?"

"Dad was a warrior," Darius replied. "And warriors don't go down easily, even if they let their enemy walk all over them. You're just going to have to wait."

Draven made a frustrated noise under his breath- when did Dar start to be so stuffy anyway- and shifted uneasily from one foot to the other. Deprived of seeing the execution once again, he chose instead to listen hungrily to the sounds of the execution around him.

The noises that followed were familiar now. The hand over his eyes was pulled away, bringing the heat of his mother's lifeblood with it.

He snapped his eyes open, blinking furiously against the stickiness of his mother's drying blood. His eyes adjusted rapidly, but the blurry shapes didn't coalesce into anything solid until after Darius had already begun the ceremonial motions of receiving his father's head.

His father had been a hairy man with a great big beard- so all Draven could see was a tangle of black and bright red before Darius placed the head inside the casket as well.

"The price for my son's life has been paid," Maynard de Croix took the platform now. He gazed imperiously into the crowd. "Let it be a lesson to all- that blood will be answered with blood."

The onlookers watched as the solemn thirteen year old give a ceremonial bow towards the noble, regardless of the slippery blood that coated his palms. Unlike his younger brother, who had cried earlier and had flinched at the grinding axe, the older boy had held his parents' heads in his hands, and he had never wavered.

He had blood like ice, an observer would later write in his journal, and a face of steel. Whoever that teenager was, he would become truly great.

Author's Note: That was a rollercoaster to write, I must say. Demacia takes pride on the values of honor and benevolence, so it would make sense for Noxus to have parallel values. In keeping with the concept that Noxus was where the strong succeeded and the weak perished, I figured that personal pride, the concept of a good death and the warrior ethos (never give up, never surrender) fit very well in this context.