Chapter 8: Light Binding
Nasus runs through the halls of the Institute like his tail is on fire.
He certainly doesn't have one. It is actually faintly amusing when he gets the inevitable question from most-to-all of the female champions he encounters, since the only members of his kind that had tails were the females.
As a side benefit of this evolutionary fact, he understands what the human idiom "get some tail" means.
As he passes under countless identical dark blue archways, he imagines Lux, her bright smiling face and sky-colored eyes, wearing perhaps the sand-colored dress of a priestess of Registrana, her hair held back by a circlet of gold and sapphires. She tends to the holy edicts on the walls of the Fane of Learning, the way leading to his library, brushing off gathered sand with a cloth, her tail switching rhythmically behind her, fur the color of sunlight and tufted on the end.
He starts and blinks away the daydream. What a thing to think of!
Nasus shakes his head briskly, leaping over the yordle with the spiked gloves standing at the entrance to the library. He smells the space-warping magic before he sees it pulse around the tiny creature's fingers, and a blast of his spirit fire singes the fur on the creature's face.
"I'm busy," he growls, and Veigar meekly sticks his gloves behind his back.
He shoulders open the heavy doors and nods a companionable greeting to Madred, who is surrounded by a bevy of strangely garbed humans and human-like creatures. There are four in total: a being of sizzling energy that is a painfully bright, unnatural blue; a woman in a mixture of black armored plates and scraps of cloth that protect very few of her vital organs, with three floating spheres orbiting around her long, white hair; Ryze, who he recognizes as a friendly enough sort, using his tattooed elbows to push the others out of the way; and the dark-winged female, Morgana, who he so clearly remembers from his last match.
The bookcase the Measured Tread goes on is right in front of them.
Oh, by Registrana's scales…!
He tucks the book firmly under his arm and starts to try and push through the crowd. The energy creature makes his fur stand on end when he bumps into it accidentally, and it turns its helmet on him with eyeless condescension.
"Curator Nasus," it says with a crackle of power.
"…Tekepi," Nasus says after a moment of thought. He frowns critically and adds, "poorly bound tekepi."
Madred gulps as the creature turns on him fully and raises a clawed, amorphous hand. Ryze takes the opportunity to grab the scroll from Madred's satchel and mutters, "Barrier, ah, finally, the summoners are so very slow these days…"
Morgana joins the orb-woman in laughing at his predicament, and Nasus sighs. Does no one appreciate how busy he is?
"Nek'asha'mei!" he snarls, and the three shriek in pain as dazzling light bursts in front of them. Nasus, who prudently put a paw over his eyes before he cast the spell, shoulders through them and shoves the book onto the shelf.
"Simple fools," the energy creature growls, and Nasus barely has time to shout the nine protective runes of the shell before a torrent of hissing, violet-azure light washes over him.
"Stop it!" Morgana hisses, tugging on his arm, "You want to get thrown out again?"
Madred cowers behind Nasus's spell as he glares at the energy creature.
"How dare you fight in a place of knowledge!" he roars.
"Idiot men," the orb-woman comments. "Get out, Xerath."
"I am no slave bound in fragments of stone," Xerath crackles, staring at Nasus. Spools of energy drift off the floor and touch his body. "We of Old Shurima knew of your kind, Curator, and you are no gods!"
"I apologize," he says calmly. "I thought Madred had listened to my advice—this place needs a tekepi desperately—and simply done it wrong."
"Are you crazy?" Madred hissed. "I wouldn't touch that spell with King Javan's lance."
"There's been a new spell approved for use on the Fields," Morgana said, her ravaged face curling into a sneer. "Why don't you just give it to us to study, Madred, and we'll see no need to intrude in this dusty hole any longer."
"Ryze took it," Nasus said immediately, and pointed out the door.
"Ryze—!? That bastard—"the orb-woman said, and instantly the three were pushing each other to get out the door fastest. Nasus murmurs "ah'ke" and his shield vanishes, the spell returned to the Great Library.
"Thank you, Nasus," Madred says fervently, shaking his hand. Nasus looks down at him, slightly bemused.
"You are welcome," he growls, and Madred shifts nervously.
"Well, there's one more thing," the librarian says hesitantly, "someone's in your spot, if you're here for—well, breakfast and lunch both, I suppose."
"Who is it?" he asks.
"The Prophet of the Void," Madred says, lowering his voice to a whisper, "Malzahar."
They sit in opposite armchairs and studiously avoid one another's gaze.
"Nice weather we're having," Malzahar says gloomily.
"Yes, lovely," he says, shifting uncomfortably. He'd brought along a filling mystery, with a slender romance novel for dessert and a refreshing scientific text to quench his thirst. The Prophet of the Void readings a book whose cover he had hidden completely with his long, flowing sleeves.
This is no help at all to protect him from Nasus, who knows the contents of every book around him.
"Women: What Makes Them Tick?" he inquires after several uncomfortable moments. Malzahar jumps so high that a voidling pops out of his heavily embroidered trouser legs.
The purple blob climbs its way up to the armrest and fans the cowled face of its master.
"Ulp," the Prophet of the Void stammers.
"Something on your mind?" he asks kindly, concealing the raging curiosity that's gnawing at his mind. Why, this was a perfect opportunity to find out more about the morphological changes of being exposed to void energy, how it effects emotions and desire, and most importantly—Malzahar might let him borrow the book.
Malzahar puts his head in his hands and mutters something that sounds rather like bucket. Nasus raises an eyebrow. A bucket? He likes buckets? Maybe he means helmets—his face is covered, too, and so is Kassadin's, now that he thinks about it. Maybe the Void carries with it a compulsion to hide one's face, a subtle signal of deception!
"She's not even really alive," Malzahar groans. "There's something so lifeless, so disturbing about her, and yet a peculiar joy at death and destruction—"
Wait, what?
"—just like me—"
Was he talking about—
"—the totally alien Lady of Clockwork, Orianna."
Nasus sat there, totally stunned. The mechanical wasn't even made of flesh, not remotely the same species, skinned with metal, totally different, and yet he was still attracted.
The last few words ring in his head as he stares at his hands.
"There's even a ball a few days from now," Malzahar continues, "I have no idea what to do."
The voidling sighs mournfully and dissolves into a puff of smoke.
"All will be well," Nasus says automatically. "Simply attend this gathering and approach the Lady there."
"Will go you as well?" Malzahar asks, drying his eyes with a particularly limp voidling that has crawled out of his collar. "I understand you want to learn more about human interactions, Curator."
"Yes, that's true," Nasus says. "Perhaps I will."
He stands, suddenly restless. He wants to see how Lux's match is getting on.
As he leaves, bidding Malzahar farewell, he sees the title of the book's latest chapter.
It is called "Compliments."