Enter Ionia. I had to get around to it sometime, so here's to Soraka, breaking our string of male features. Karma is coming up next- this is really just a lead in.
She shouldn't have been surprised to find the healer there.
Lux had been sent to Ionia- finally- as a messenger. After years of hoping, years of climbing the ranks with the lingering need to do something, to really, physically help-
It was a joke. A nasty, cruel, practically Noxian joke that she was here under these circumstances.
After years of an almost peaceful standstill, Boram's forces had started to move on the north again. It seemed the perfect excuse, to Lux, for Demacia to intervene in earnest. They could stop hiding now, stop the business of theft and infiltration and just send in the troops, for god's sake. Noxus's supply lines had to be stretched, mutiny was brewing in the capital, and now this? The Institute hadn't agreed to this! It couldn't stand behind genocide like it had during 'just' war.
But Demacia didn't send an army, and the Institute was silent still. Lux was neither general nor politician and so she had no say in the matter. When she was called to Ionia, she had been hopeful.
Years in Noxus had given her command over spells so terrible and powerful that their mechanisms had been locked away since the Rune Wars. She'd read the tomes herself, she could recite them by heart, and here she was.
Being asked to send messages. Being sent to warn people- innocent people- away from their homes before the storms came.
So here she was. Luck had brought her to an outpost at the edge of the war zone (oh, to call it a war zone, what a sick joke). This was the next target, so she'd been told. Leave it to Noxians to bomb the sick and injured.
She was supposed to have a two hour window. It wasn't much, but she'd worked with less before. Everyone she spoke to on the way had directed her to a surprisingly small, patchwork building near the center of the place. There hadn't ever been a town here, so the outpost was merely a temporary setup of tents and wood buildings in the middle of the much larger forest, housing those too wounded or too weak to retreat any further from the front. Lux merely had to push aside the strip of cloth that served as a door to walk inside, and was immediately hit with a stench not unlike rot. Empty beds around the single large room indicated either that some in recovery had left to the tents… or that the dead had been moved outside.
Considering the smell, Lux would bet on the latter. There was only so much one healer could do, even of Soraka's rising fame.
The celestial had taken a knee beside one of the sickbeds. Her hands were laid over a man's chest, applying no pressure and emitting a faint green glow, and she had closed her eyes to concentrate far before Lux entered.
She opened them as the Mage arrived, startlingly yellow in contrast with her skin. Lux allowed herself to stare, treading carefully into the room. She clutched the letter at her side, her palm sweating into the scroll.
"Please don't let me interrupt." Lux stopped a fair distance from the bed and bowed her head to take down her hood.
Soraka didn't speak, only nodded and directed her eyes back to the unconscious man. Lux would stand still and silent for the next several minutes, clasping her hands together at her belt in an effort to keep herself from fidgeting. When Soraka pulled back her hands, they came away with blood, but the man on the table coughed several times and opened his eyes, attempting immediately to sit up. The healer placed a hand firmly on his shoulder to keep him there.
"I will not save you again if you dislodge that rib. You will have to be still for the next few hours for it to set." She had a stern, almost biting way of speaking that immediately set Lux on edge. She hadn't known what to expect from this woman, and did not look forward to being scolded.
"O-Okay." The man coughed again, and a spurt of blood dribbled down his chin.
"And do not speak!" She finally looked back at Lux, wiping her hands on a cloth beside the bed. "Whatever news you have, can you relay it outside?"
Lux looked, wide-eyed, at the healer, and nodded.
"Good. This is a place for rest- come along."
She merely passed Lux on her way out, forcing the Mage to follow.
"I'm afraid our resources are limited to hold any more refugees here, if you've been sent for that." Lux hadn't noticed the hooves until they were outside, and found herself struggling not to stare. She kept in stride with the celestial to make the task easier.
"No, that isn't... That isn't it, ma'am. Here-" She produced the letter, again, and Soraka took it carefully from her hands. It was easier this way, just to have the news read. Lux still hated trying to explain her coming, no matter how many times she had before.
"...how much time?" The Starchild crumpled the paper in her hands and it lit up abruptly, disintegrated in a burst of light.
"Two hours, maybe less. With respect, we need to start moving now, ma'am." Lux took a breath. "I've done this before, that's why they sent me. I can guide you through it- we have enough time."
"Whatever you need, I will lend my aid." The healer nodded, casting her gaze to the tents around.
"How many do you think can walk?"
"...under the circumstances, most will."
"How quickly can you call a meeting?"
"As we speak, the Noxians are less than three miles out. Intelligence suggests that they won't breach the front for this- which can only mean one thing." Horrible as it was, Lux was glad to have an audience of refugees. There would be no explaining what to expect, no wailing children, no families together that made her ache of home. The men and women here had already been touched by Noxus. This was not new.
"If I see anyone retreat to their tent, they will be left behind." She saw a few people frown, "We don't have time to save family photos right now. If you're able enough to help carry someone else, stay with us. Everyone else, go north until you reach the next road, and keep going. We can't be sure how far the Noxians plan to extend."
Lux stepped down from the small box that had served as a platform and watched as most of the crowd disbursed, men and women retreating into the wood without question. They had already been close enough to the front to understand urgency and did not stop, did not hesitate, did not glance at the tents behind them. Good. Lux felt a weight off her shoulders- she wouldn't have to explain war to anyone here. She barely understood it, herself.
Soraka kept a watchful eye on those remaining in the crowd. It was a small group- two dozen, at most- more able men and women than those unable to rise to their feet. She sighed softly, grateful for their fortune.
Lux was counting heads, all the while. "Do you think we can ask them to pair off? We'll move more slowly that way, but..." She looked uncertainly at the celestial, as if she would have any better ideas. They were crippling themselves by refusing to abandon their wounded, but...
The Mage and the healer looked at each other, saying nothing but understanding the same thing. They wouldn't leave anyone behind. The idea was too horrible to consider.
"How much time do we have?"
Lux looked southward. She couldn't see anything yet but, then, they wouldn't. Not until it was too late.
"...We can take ten minutes, I think, without cutting too close." She looked uncertainly at Soraka. "What do you want to do?"
"I may be able to bring some of them to their feet. Find me when our time is up."
She wove easily into the crowd- people stepped aside to yield to her, in the same uncertain manner Lux had felt the need to. No one took the celestial for granted here.
Lux heaved a sigh and sat down on the box, fiddling with the book at her side. It was a small thing, strapped to her belt, but having her hands on the leather binding calmed her. She didn't really need to read it- she knew the words by heart.
Victory for our allies, defeat for our enemies, and Justice for all.
Why couldn't it be so simple?
She thumbed through the pages for a few spare minutes, head bowed as if in prayer. All of her doubts about her early enlistment, her placement as a spy, her lost childhood- they had all dissolved when she was called to Ionia. Lux was certain, somehow, that she was needed here.
And then she heard the thunder.
It wasn't a storm, but it always sounded that way, from whatever mechanism they used to drop the bombs. Lux's chest tightened- they were supposed to have time. An hour still, at least. Slowly, afraid to confirm what she already knew, she looked up towards the sky.
There was chaos in the camp. Everyone had heard the noise, and the dark green cloud creeping in boded no better. They were out of time. Singed would not make a poison that could be outrun.
Lux was still. She honestly, really, didn't know what to do. No one had prepared her for this, she had never really been to war, and... She wasn't meant to be here. Even if she were stupid enough to stand and fight, what would it end in besides her death and Demacia being dragged fully into the conflict?
"I have never seen such a quick two hours." Soraka was standing over her. How was she supposed to explain this?
"W-we were wrong. We must have gotten it wrong, I'm so sorry, I don't..." For the first time in years, Lux actually felt her age.
"I don't know what to do." There, it was out. She hadn't been trained for this, the only idea coming to mind was to teleport and she could not take twenty Ionians with her.
But she couldn't leave them here!
The smoke was rolling in too quickly. Even without being inside the cloud, Lux felt a cough rise in her throat and bent forward to give in to it, blocking her mouth with both hands.
When she pulled them away, there was blood.
They were out of time.
Lux wiped her palms on her pants and drew in a shaky breath. She extended her hands blindly in front of her and was still able to throw out a shield. It shimmered on its way to the crowd and caught each Ionian in turn, creating a sparkling, golden barrier over all of their heads. It did nothing for the pain already in Lux's chest and she coughed again, spitting up more blood. The shield flickered.
Soraka put both hands onto her shoulders and Lux actually felt the force of magic through her, curling somewhere in her lungs to close whatever wounds the noxious poisons had created.
"Come closer!" The celestial's voice rang clearly above the din, amplified by fear as well as magic. "We stand as one!"
It would be easier to maintain the shield in a smaller area. Soraka was too well-versed in magic not to know that.
Lux kept her arms extended and fed mana to the spell, feeling herself weaken every second that it hung above their heads. The awful poison was upon them now, held at bay only by her glowing barrier. Dropping it was death.
"W-we need to start moving." Lux found her voice with a whimper, tearing her concentration for the moment it took to glance at Soraka standing over her. "...I can't hold it forever." The healer nodded, looking at the crowd. They were all so close as to make out faces now- some panicked, some angry, some calm.
"Can you hear her?" She asked calmly, one hand still clamped on Lux's shoulder. "We'll move as one. As quickly as you can, do not step outside the shield."
They moved. Lux kept herself at the back of the group, refreshing the barrier in front of her whenever it began to weaken. The forest outside was fully obscured by green smoke, so thick as to be opaque. Just as Lux felt her knees begin to weaken, the celestial swept her up into her arms, walking for the two of them as so many of the veterans ahead supported their wounded. The shield was failing by the minute, intensity fading until it was barely translucent above them.
"Here, Lux." The Starchild whispered and Lux felt her mana restored, so suddenly potent that it threatened to burst, unbidden, from her fingertips. She channelled it into the shield around them and it surged to life again, bright as Demacian gold.
They would remain like that, for what felt like years- the Starchild feeding her mana and Lux maintaining her barrier, until the green mist faded and finally, with the moon high above their heads, the Mage felt herself fade.