I closed my lids, and kept them close,
And the balls like pulses beat;
For the sky and the sea, and the sea and the sky
Lay dead like a load on my weary eye,
And the dead were at my feet.
The cold sweat melted from their limbs,
Nor rot nor reek did they:
The look with which they looked on me
Had never passed away.
An orphan's curse would drag to hell
A spirit from on high;
But oh! more horrible than that
Is the curse in a dead man's eye!
Seven days, seven nights, I saw that curse,
And yet I could not die.
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Part IV (Samuel Taylor Coleridge)
THREE DAYS LATER…
When Nocturne was first introduced into the Fields of Justice, summoners and champions did not know how to react to him. The summoners had heard the stories, had known that Nocturne had killed many of their kind- the most infamous tale made him a nightmare personified, a thing of terror that had no purpose other than to slaughter the unwary and to torment the psyches of those who bent the very pillars of nature to their will. The champions had found the Eternal Nightmare to be both perplexing and terrifying- a caged animal that howled at them with white froth flying from its metaphorical lips. They, like their summoners, succumbed to their fears when they felt Nocturne tether into their subconscious, tainting their realities with an Unspeakable Horror.
Far off into the future, summoners would talk of Nocturne, and of the emotions that they felt from their linked champions as Nocturne tethered into their psyche. There were plenty of tales where both summoner and champion had felt the insane urge to flee in whatever direction possible- in the most humorous version, Ezreal had shifted into the Baron Pit and was 'killed' while his summoner plowed into a wall and broke his nose- but the most infamous stories were that of certain Noxian champions and their reactions to the tether.
As Nocturne burrowed into their shared consciousness, the summoners had expected pulses of terror and pain from their Noxian champions. Sion's summoners shared that they had felt nothing but giddy excitement. Urgot's summoners would shake their collective head and state that their champion had only sent feelings of amused derision. Cassiopeia's summoners reported a blazing indignation, whilst Katarina would only send feelings of cold scorn. Darius' summoners would say that the Hand of Noxus broadcasted nothing but white noise, but their shared link had made the man run anyway- some would waste their Flash while others would have him plowing straight into a tree.
Was Darius fearless then? He was not.
No one is truly fearless, after all, because fear is nothing but a basic response to stimuli. It is simply the ability to perceive incoming danger, and decision-making boils down to the rather basic choice of fight or flight. People who are seen as fearless are people who are able to make decisions under immense psychological pressure, who have the rather enviable ability to keep their minds and command their bodies. Like mastering a technique by repeating it over and over until ones' muscles remember it better than one's mind, to master one's fear towards something is to face it, over and over, to temper oneself against the irrationalities of the body and to maintain one's thoughts.
What was the reason behind the Noxians' bizarre responses then? Why did it seem as if they felt any emotion other than fear?
In their pursuit of true strength, Noxians inevitably discovered the frustrating barrier that was fear, but they did not study it, as the Piltoverians did. They did not philosophize or meditate about it, as the Ionians did. They did not cling to the written word, as the Demacians did. With typical Noxian stubbornness, they simply threw themselves at whatever scared them until they repelled, dominated or outright destroyed it with their bare fists, physically and metaphorically- and only the Rakkor and the tribe of the Winter's Claw would truly understand why it was necessary to use one's fists.
There is, after all, nothing more satisfying than overcoming a challenging task without outside aid.
The Magic Phase of the Crucible was and still is the Academy's answer to fear, and that phase is the primary reason why the tuition fee of Boram's Point reached astronomical levels- not every school could call upon the services of a summoner, and it certainly is not a simple matter to conjure controllable horrors to torment only a select few.
Given the massive number, one could probably buy a home within Ivory Ward and fully furnish it also, but in the minds of Noxian parents', enrollment and acceptance into the infamous Academy would be the best investment that they could possibly make to improve the lives of their children. To a true Noxian, the ability to control one's fear is worth more than a new house, more than fifty new dresses or a diamond-encrusted coat.
Of course, immigrants like Conrad would snidely state that a cheaper solution exists: rather than torment candidates with monsters created from their psyches, a psychiatrist and some three weeks spent in analysis would suffice. Of course, the opinion of immigrants in Noxus is given as much weight and respect as a fly buzzing about one's face. That is to say, if the fly ever became too noisy or too insistent, the fly would be crushed under a massive book, de-winged by a curious and sadistic child or de-winged and then crushed under a massive book.
At higher ranks, the summoners who had been given the privilege of connecting with Darius himself instead of his conjured mimic would keep their mouths shut instead of joining the rest of their fellows in swapping stories- not only because they were under oath to never speak of his past, but because they would find themselves back in a decadent barren forest inundated with freezing rain, taking the point of view of a youth who crouched inside a cave for hours on end, ignoring the dull aches of his muscles and joints and struggling against the heavy veil of exhaustion as he watched his surroundings intensely. It would be with a mortified shiver that they would remember his horrifying task, and the sickening, twisted monstrosity that his deep-seated anxieties had conjured.
As far as anxieties went, Darius did not regret the loss of more than thirty other candidates in his company- clearly, they did not have the raw physical strength required. He did not feel bad about throttling Hawklight to death with his bare hands- there could only have been one victor, after all. What ate at him was his constant worry for his younger brother, the mentally exhausting and still somewhat perplexing decision he had made the night before to willingly haze another candidate so soon after his own traumatic experience, and the fact that he was being hunted by a magical nightmare come to life.
He had made the decision two days ago to simply sit and wait for his hunter to find him. It was not an act of sloth, nor was it an act of cowardice. The sad truth of the matter was that he did not know much about hunting anything outside of laying traps for absurdly large rats, and he felt that he would have a fighting chance if he faced his hunter at a place of his choosing.
His hunting skills would remain rather appalling even as an adult- in all actuality, it would only get worse because of his armor and his full growth. Eventually Rengar the Pridestalker would laugh at the Hand of Noxus for 'stomping through the Rift like a fool, announcing your presence to all, even the deaf and the blind' and Leesin, for all his resentment towards Noxus, never could hold in his own laughter whenever he was within earshot.
The cave he was sitting in was not much, especially considering his own bulk. He was forced to bend over at some points and spent most of his time crouched or on his knees. He had chosen this particular cavern because it was not very long- twenty paces and he would hit the very end of it- and because the rains had not stopped falling since it had started three days ago.
At least food and water were not in short supply- he did nothing but wait so the dried rations in his pack served his purposes well enough, and because of a fissure in the ceiling he was able to cup rainwater in his hands and take his fill without much trouble. The cold was ever present, but it helped that he could maintain a fire at the back of the cave. There was no problem with relieving himself either, because it either joined the rest of the murk or floated off somewhat defiantly. No, his real problem was that he had time to think, and even though his father had warned him against fixating on what could have beens, he could not help but run his mind over possibilities in between catching minute naps.
When left alone to his own devices, Draven would be doing what he pleased. When Darius was left alone, he brooded. Eventually, someone would tell him that he agonized over his memories worse than a prepubescent girl, and he would not react angrily because he knew that the jab was well-founded. Running through his mental map, grimacing at every single mistake he saw, wondering if something could have been averted, speculating over choices he could have made, if he should have made them- brooding was an annoying habit he hated to do.
Sitting at the cave mouth with his axe cradled in his lap, Darius had been thinking if he should have just decided to hunt the creature instead of penning himself up in a hole in the ground. It was the morning of the third day, and he knew that if he did not get the core he needed, he would be killed. As Darius tried not to think about how it was going to be his fault again, he noticed that the fire had gone out- there was no welcome glow on the walls anymore, and the air had suddenly become very cold. Gripping the axe in one hand, he turned and made the slow crawl to the back of the cave.
It was very dark- the sun was obscured by rain, and when the fire was out, only way he could tell that he had reached the end of the cave was when he reached the count of twenty and banged his nose into the back wall. He had made it to fifteen before his sleeve had caught on something underwater, and he pulled at it until he practically smacked himself in the face- the cloth had given way with a subtle tearing noise and momentum had carried his fist towards his head.
"Piece of shit," The youth who would become the Hand of Noxus rubbed at his cheek ruefully. He pushed his head down and crawled on, but he didn't even make it to twenty before his face collided with something cold. He blinked and looked up- the face of Alexander de Croix smiled back at him. The man seemed… wrong, somehow. His face was sagging, nigh greenish in places, as if his decaying skin did not fit over his skull. His eyes were pitch black and were not at all unlike marbles set into hollow sockets.
"Heeello, littleeee savageeee." Alexander de Croix's voice was long-drawn, seemingly made of a thousand other tiny voices speaking at the same time. As the corpse-face opened its mouth in front of him, Darius did not see the soft pinkish tissues of a healthy mouth and gums. He could see nothing but a thousand gleaming eyes and gnashing pincers as a putrid heavy scent forced its way into his nose and made him gag. The man was made of bugs.
"Shit!" Darius found himself shouting in the thing's face as he hastily backed out of the cave, his axe held in a white-knuckled grip. He knew that the thing in front of him was his hunter, knew that he had to stand and fight, but the impulse to run was too overwhelming. "SHIT, SHIT, SHIT, SHIT, SHIT!"
"Running away will do you no good, littleeee savageeee." Alexander seemed to melt down from the ceiling of the cave, landing on the moist earth with a wet plop. His body was not humanoid- it was a gigantic, constantly shifting mass of insects that vaguely resembled a centipede. It was not even a single kind of insect- he could see black beetles, pigment bugs, brown worms, sickly white grubs and brown termites among others wiggling inside, and as he backed out into the freezing rain, he thought he could see the faint outline of a blood-darkened skeleton before the creatures rallied against it and buried it deep.
As his last meal tumbled out of his mouth and fell into the flood about his knees, he stared flabbergasted as flies flew out of the corpse face's mouth and nose. Tiny limbs wiggled underneath the flesh mask to give Alexander de Croix's face a stomach-turning smile.
"You areeee so afraid. I can tasteeee it in the air. I will eeeenjoy savoring your corpseeee." The corpse-face said to him. Maybe it was the rain, maybe it was the overcast clouds, maybe it was because he felt sick, maybe it was because he had not slept much or because the thing in front of him were his deepest nightmare come to life- his breath seemed to come out in clouds as the very colors of the world around him seemed to dim to nothing but shades of grey.
Shit, shit, shit. Move, move, move! Darius screamed mentally, wanting to do something but his legs would just not obey him and his shaking hands were still gripping his axe. He stood rooted in his place as the centipede crept closer, its massive bulk seemed to hide the very sky as it loomed over him and tittered madly in glee. He choked back the urge to vomit again as the dead smell grew stronger, permeating through his clothing and clawing into his eyes.
"Wee shall rid you of your troubleesomeee lifeee. Your guilt- so palpable. Your feeeear, so delicious." Alexander de Croix's maddened smile was grossly exaggerated thanks to the constantly pulsating bodies of the insects underneath. It was over him now, covering him from the rain but- and he realized this when he thought he saw raindrops fall past- that it was salivating over him with the gaping hungry mouths billion crawling things. "What a prizeee, a candidateee with such eexpeeerieeeencees, such meeemorieeees. Your failureeee will beee my reeeeeward."
Oh fuck, oh fuck, OH FUCK- The world seemed to shrink around his ears as the warmth ebbed from his blood. Darius slowly looked down at the axe in his hand. Dimly, he realized he was shaking so hard that his knees practically had locked. The knuckles and veins on his hand stood out sharply against his clammy skin.
I'm going to die, He thought to himself with sudden clarity. I'm going to die and I haven't even used my axe yet.
The corpse-face moved closer, almost touching his forehead. Insects screamed in his ears as they ran a predetermined path, moving on top of each other to form a new shape. It was not a centipede now- it resembled the carving of Death he had seen in the Cathedral all those days ago- hooded, with great skeletal hands reaching out to pluck his head from his shoulders.
I can't die, he objected piteously. I can't die, I can't die, I can't die.
He looked up into Alexander de Croix's decomposing face, could see each and every skittering thing creeping underneath and the greenish and sickly veins drawn like melted wax against pallid and dead flesh. It was so close now that the dead smell made his throat contract again.
MOVE, PIECE OF SHIT- Self-pity made way for bitter anger as he railed at himself. MOVE, MOVE, MOVE-!
"Weeeeak, so weeeeak." Darius could still see the multitude of eyes staring at him, glowing pale white and illuminating the sickening pallor of the corpse face. There were things on his clothes. He could feel their legs crawling over his skin, could hear their chittering in his ears. "Goodbyeee, littleee savageee."
I can't die- The mental mantra grew to a final desperate and angry scream. He threw everything he had into moving, into doing something, summoning up elusive courage and determination in the face of something that frightened him to his very core. I can't die. I can't die. I WON'T DIE. I WON'T DIE-
He could feel the tiny jaws on his skin before he found himself in control again. Desperately, he managed to push his arms up, hacking away at the thing in front of him madly. His initial strokes were largely ineffectual, but it had its desired effect. The corpse-face screamed- spitting bugs into his face- as it recoiled away from the axe blade.
"I won't die." Darius snarled at it as he hefted the axe in his hands and wished it wasn't raining. The thing was slipping from his cold wet hands. "I won't die here."
"Beegging!" The corpse-face barked at him in its thousand-insect voice as it reformed into a large roiling scorpion with absurdly large claws. "Beegging! How fun!"
"Shut up!" He howled at it as he pushed through the water, slamming the flat of his axe into its Alexander de Croix's face like a boy would use a bat. Mortified, he watched as the man's face literally flew off and landed into the murky waters.
"You didn't likeee that faceeee?" The roiling mass screeched at him with a million little voices. "Littleee savageee, would this faceee suit your neeeeeeds?"
Like a worm peeking out of the ground, the thing in front of him regurgitated a half-eaten corpse, lifting it above the black insect mass. Most of the limbs had been picked into ribbons. Shreds of muscle clung to yellowed joints. Soft dark-brown organs spilled from gaps in the chest cavity.
What made him give a choking dry heave and a noise of anguish was that the face was still so intact, and it was the face of his mother- her mouth was moving but he could see the bubbles coming from her throat, knew that was where Urgot had cleaved her head from her shoulders. He gave a strangled sob as she opened her eyes and looked at him, blaming him-
"You killed me." She said in that voice he had always held dear, and he could feel himself coming apart.
NO, NO, NO! He mentally screamed against his guilt. No, that's not real, that's not real at all.
"Stop it." Darius snarled, and he lifted his axe and threw his weight into his next blow. His skin suddenly grew hot and feverish, invigorating him against the cold and the grey world that the thing had managed to call down.
His mother's head tumbled from her half-eaten shoulders, falling against his face and covering him with a trail of warmth. 'My darling boy, my light'- her last words echoed as her head fell down into the waters about his knees and he bit back an instinctive sob.
"You killeeed your own motheeer!" The insect-mass screeched at him.
"She died for me, and I buried her!" Howling in anguish like a wounded wolf, he hacked away at her decaying corpse until the rest of her was consumed in the darkness of churning insect bodies.
He stared up now at the half-chewed corpse that was his father, and Hystaspes' great hulking mass seemed to have been thrown into a meat grinder and then spat out abruptly. He could see bloody bones jutting out of places- some whole, some snapped- could see the oozing blood mixing with the rain. As before, his father's face was still hauntingly, painfully perfect- as if the man was in front of him right now, staring down at him, his great bushy beard hanging off his chin like a shroud of moss.
"You disappoint me." His father's voice was still as he had remembered it.
Darius didn't know that he was screaming again, didn't feel anything as he threw himself at the beast, regardless of the danger that the millions of jaws would have posed to him. As he cut into the mutilated body of his father, he didn't see the man's arms curl about him in the mockery of an embrace, pulling him closer inside and pressing him against the hungry jaws of the carrion bugs.
A thousand tiny cuts opened along his face and his arms, and Darius closed his eyes involuntary as he seemed to burn alive in his own skin. Still, he resisted the urge to draw back in fear, to stop. He was still hacking desperately away at the gruesome mimic when the two of them fell into the churning black waters.
Suddenly, the colors of the world returned in dirt black, moss green and mud brown as sharp branches and rocks pummeled at his body. All around him, billions of little insect teeth and legs scraped against his skin, nipping into his flesh when they could before they too were swept by the torrent.
Darius tried to find his bearings, tried to push his head above the flood, but the insect thing was there, holding him under in emaciated claws that formed and reformed constantly. He tried his best to stay calm and to hold in his breath, remembering the sea phase and tried not to think about the fact that he Could. Not. Swim.
Panic made his heart beat fast but Darius urged himself to remain calm. He extended his axe in desperation and it caught on something, sending shocks up his right arm and possibly even wrenching it out of its socket. At the price of shredding his skin, he pulled himself up along his own axe, praying that it would not dislodge from whatever thing it had latched on to.
Gradually, Darius found that he was above the flood, creeping on top of a slippery but crevice-ridden rock. Coughing out water, his gasps for air came in too fast, and he tried to regulate his breathing as the rain washed over his fevered skin and cooled him down.
Utterly exhausted and bleeding from a multitude of wounds and what else, he lay back on the rock, tried not to aggravate his right arm and stared up at the pouring rain and the overcast skies. His throat hurt, his breath still came in short bursts, his heart wanted to just jump out of his throat, his entire body was aching horribly and bleeding and his arm was at a rather strange angle.
High pitched wails filled the air as Darius felt scrabbling tiny limbs on his leg. He looked down to see the amalgamation again, clawing up at him, scrambling and trying to reform from the pouring flood to consume him. It was with a sense of detachment that Darius realized that there was a curiously shining pearl in what he took to be its throat or its chest.
The Core. I need that. Darius had to mentally remind himself, because he felt worn down to his very soul and all he wanted was to simply close his eyes and sleep. He felt numb and dead as he kicked at the screeching thing, staring at it vacantly until it fell back into the water and dissolved into nothing.
The pearl was bouncing halfway down the rock face before Darius realized that he had to grab it, and when he did dive after it he only hurt himself further with his sudden abrupt action, but at least it was safe in his good hand.
He pulled himself back up the rock and stared down at the little thing in his palm, marveling at the comforting heat that emanated from the perfect sphere. He wondered how he could possibly get back to the longhouse now, if he even still could go back. It was the third day after all. He knew he was still somewhere in the grounds, but he didn't know where exactly. If he was going to get the Core back to Summoner Gareth, he knew he had to get off the rock and brave the flood again.
The pearl glimmered in front of him, still radiating that disturbing welcome warmth, and it was with a familiar sense of dread that Darius realized it was healing him. At any other point in time, he would have dropped it, but he was worn-out, in pain and too psychologically exhausted to even complain, so he merely lowered his head as he heard his bones snap back into place and felt every single cut disappear. As soon as it finished- and it had turned into a dull black color that seemed to eat light by then- he tried to put it into his satchel.
Darius almost dropped it back into the floodwaters around him. Dimly, he looked down at himself and discovered his satchel didn't survive the flood. His clothes weren't any better- in some places they were little more than worn down rags clinging to his frame. His axe was still jammed underneath the bubbling flood. His rucksack had been left in the cave.
The relieved laughter that bubbled from his chest was tainted with misery.
When Darius finally managed to make it back to the longhouse, the rain had stopped and the ground underneath his feet had turned into viscous, sucking mud. He had backtracked to retrieve his rucksack and spare uniform, silently thanking the mountain phase for teaching him how to keep his head even through mental exhaustion.
Darius had let the Core drop into Summoner Gareth's hands, hollowly greeting Chief di Castellamonte a good evening as he did so. She had taken one look at him- drinking in the hollows underneath his eyes, his slack jaw, unruly hair, bedraggled uniform and slow movements- and had smiled as if he had just run a marathon for her.
"Tomorrow brings a new task, candidate." She had said. He had stared at her vacantly before he remembered that he should not, and then clapped his fist to his chest in salute before she had dismissed him.
Shambling into the longhouse, it occurred to him very slowly that Dominance Company's numbers had thinned yet again- there were only fifty of them now, down from some two hundred hopefuls. Lazare de Richelieu was gone, but Seamus and Keiran Darkwill were still there. The latter seemed to be like him, all stare and no movement at all, but the former was humming a rough sea shanty under his breath as he fixed his things.
"You're oddly pleased with yourself." Darius found himself saying hoarsely, watching the older man work with detached interest.
"I got a free healing spell." Seamus replied over his shoulder.
"Me too." Darius replied bemusedly.
"You too?" The veteran blinked and looked at him carefully. "You don't fucking look it."
"I don't?" The younger man echoed.
"You look like a fucking shitstain." Seamus supplied eloquently.
"Oh." Darius replied vacantly, feeling too tired to even think of a good enough insult to fire back at him.
"Can't fucking deal with the strain huh?" The veteran chuckled at him knowingly. "What a piss-poor schmuck."
Darius lowered his rucksack next to his bunk, leaning against the post as he looked at Seamus. "What strain?" He asked dumbly.
"There's nothing wrong with you." Seamus pointed out. "You fucking retarded asshole."
"Nothing?" Darius blinked in surprise.
"You just got healed, so you shouldn't even be tired." The veteran snorted as he rolled his eyes at an obvious fact only he could comprehend. "What a retard. I'm surrounded by fucking idiots."
It just occurred to him then that the veteran was right, and it was with shame that he remembered feeling like this exactly when he woke up in the infirmary after Alexander de Croix had broken his bones repeatedly. Conrad had said then that he was fine, there really was nothing to treat- but he had sulked like a child and had ignored the man entirely. His mind was still dealing with the events of the day, but he felt fine- so why wasn't he fine?
"I shouldn't." Darius repeated stupidly as he realized that his mind and his body were not on the same page, and the moment the younger man said it the veteran gave a great bark of laughter as he walked off- evidently he didn't want to waste his time with him.
What most people on Runeterra do not realize is that healing is not an end-all solution to one's problems. Certainly, one can heal grievous physical injuries but unless one's mind is fully prepared, there is a tendency for the brain to be disconnected from the body. Healing spells close wounds, soothe tired muscles and bring back energy in one's step, but the human mind is a fickle thing, and it will still believe that it is still tired and utterly worn down even if the body is ready to run through another gauntlet of pain. And what plagues the mind eventually plagues the body. Even if there really is nothing wrong with the latter, the former would make it difficult to do anything- mind over matter, as the saying went.
Those who know how to deal with the mind-body discrepancy are able to heal or be healed without much trouble. Master Yi, the Wuju Blademaster and Leesin, the Blind Monk, would excel at this- thanks in part due to their meditative techniques, they would be able to have their mind recognize that their bodies were well and they would be able to fight for days on end, never wavering, never giving in to the plague of creeping mental exhaustion.
Darius sank into his bunk, massaging his temples as he tried to think. He was fine. He was not tired at all. He had gone through this before, and had given in to his weak mind. He tried now to listen to his body instead, to feed off the energy that he should have known he had.
Relief did not come quickly- it would take some years before he could fully shrug off the mental strain that would come with consecutive healing spells- but the small glimmer of strength that he had managed to wean from himself made him feel better.
Despite having faced an unspeakable horror that day, when he slept in his bunk that night, he did not dream.
Author's Note: It's always eaten away at me how magic and technology could possibly co-exist in Runeterra. I mean, okay, let's run it down off the top of my head: we've got gas-based Hextech/techmaturgy, which essentially is technology powered by ecological magic from Piltover/Zaun, and then we've got the whole crystal tech/magic line from Jayce and Skarner's lore. So you either haveeee no big surprise, the power of nature (I'm looking at you, Chevron) or the power of truly, truly outrageous gems (Final Fantasy CRYSTAL ENERGY HORY GOD).
How the hell does anything work? Is it anything like AC/DC? 'Oh no you can't use that blender, it's crystal powered. Go find your natural gas blender'?
What also makes me wring my hands in frustration is that on the Fields of Justice, you've got people with techmaturgical devices running around like Caitlyn, and then you've got the immortal/? beings like Kassadin and Aatrox with their own magical/? weapons and then you've got dudes like Darius who run around with plain weapons.
If the entirety of Runeterra was so hell-bent on stopping magic from destroying their surroundings, is Riot trying to imply that Darius/Garen/Draven/Xin Zhao/other regular joes with non-magical weapons actually are ecologically conscious? Visions of Darius in a Sea Shepard shirt aside- I have absolutely no idea why everyone won't just use the best weapons for their wars.
Look at how the United States progressed. What is the US known for now? Bombing the shit out of things from far away. Everything they have, from forward operators to satellite imagery, is geared towards that. Sure, you've still got tanks and dudes on the ground but really why would you even bother coming in close when you can just bomb the fuck out of it?
In that same vein, why in hell would anyone go near Garen when they could just bomb him from far away? That being said, GANGPLANK YOU ARE THE MOST SENSIBLE PERSON IN ALL THE FIELDS OF JUSTICE. Don't mind me, I'm hungry and I'm rambling.
Where was I? Right. So, assuming that we have magic and technology peacefully co-existing in Runeterra without tearing holes in my sanity, what about medicine? We know that healing spells are absolutely the shit, but we also know from Swain's lore that traditional medicine still exists because they reset his leg and gave him a crutch because he told them he could take a permanently broken leg like a man. SO- why not just throw away traditional medicine and just go around healing people like Jesus?
I tried to elaborate a bit more on that and hopefully it made more sense than say, Annie-not-aging-despite-having-been-there-since-th e-inception-of-the-League (AND I WILL EXPLAIN THAT, Riot hire me). If you're too lazy to scroll up/remember, tl;dr: healing helps your body, not your mind. Master Yi is stupid broken.