A quick Author's Note: Hi, guys, it's great to see you all on ! In these first few chapters, I've been working on introducing the champions, most of which I'm giving special love and attention to, I own. Now that Ahri, Orianna, Malzahar, and Evelynn, my favorite mid AP carries, have had their mention, I'm ready to start moving onwards…welcome along for the ride.

Thank you for your sweet review, Guest, which inspired me to get Lucidity up tonight. Also, to Schadenfreude555, I hope the story has answered your question

I'm interested in hearing what you are thinking about the plot and how I might move forwards, and anything you might like to see more of. Personally, I'm leaning towards another big league fight in the 3rd chapter after this one.

And the next two chapters will be most interesting…

Enjoy!

Chapter 9: Lucidity

Compliments, he thinks. How do you compliment a human?

Nice fur, he mouths experimentally. No, that wouldn't do at all, unless he was speaking to the cat-woman or Rengar, and he doesn't think either of them would take that well.

He strides along the corridors towards the spectating rooms, his face stern with thought. Who could help him understand human flattery? He needed someone who had been on both sides of compliments, someone that was an expert at getting their way, clever, cunning, beguiling…

He stared for a moment too long at a particularly rich splash of blue on the wall, shook his head, and moved on. He wanted to see how Lux was getting along, especially after the disturbing turn she'd taken during their first match together. The Measured Tread, her illness, the match—they had to be connected somehow. She would know, and unless he decided to lift the information carefully from her mind, like a book with pages too worn to read with his eyes, he would have to figure out how to get her to confide in him. In time, she should, but he had the sense that he needed to solve this mystery, quickly. There was something…something in the air, something that made senses that had experienced thousands of years of protecting his library prickle in alarm. In all the time in the League, it had only happened once, when Xerath had touched him this morning.

Thus…compliments.

Maybe.

He smiles slightly as his ears perk up with the sounds of the spectating rooms. It was nice to have a project, something to distract his mind from the unease he felt about Xerath. And while he watched, he could do some maintenance on his claws and armor. With this in mind, he breathes a word of power, and catches a heavy disk of sandstone as it drops out of the empty air. Carved on its face is a scarab, pincers wide, with a circle of glass set in its forehead. Under the glass, dark, verdant mist roiled, cramped in the small space.

Ahead, an archway had a huge, grotesque eye carved out of the stone in the center, spidery gold runes around it announcing:

LIVE SPECTATING

ASK A NOVICE SUMMONER BY AN OPEN VIEWING CRYSTAL

TO SHOW YOU A MATCH OF YOUR CHOOSING!

CITY STATE MATCHES IN THE CENTER HALL

NO MAIMING

"Not even a little?" a slender female asks the door guard, her lips pushed up in a pout. Her skin is the color of blueberries, if they were crushed and mixed with blood, and she is wearing a… lattice of straps that stripes her long legs and arms, but only barely goes over her chest.

He shivers. With his senses, he sees the malice dripping off her like poison, thick and shiny on the tips of her clawed hands.

"Not even a little, Widowmaker," the guard said sternly, his hand dropping to the hilt of the mageblade Nasus senses hidden in a simple sheath. "Now take the limiter, and I can let you in. And no, before you ask, you can't enter without it, the League doesn't like it when matches get interfered with."

The female cackles and pats him on the cheek.

"Oh, you don't need to worry about little old me," she croons, digging in her nails a little, and Nasus frowns, his hands tightening around the scarab stone, at the scent that laces the air. The guard licks his lips as she leans forwards and runs the same hand down his chest, leaning forwards to purr, "I'll just get it for you." Her other hand goes the guard's belt, strung with many tiny violet vials, and passes over them as she reaches for the hilt—

He hesitates no longer.

The scene freezes. Calmly, he lets the sands of time spill into the hand he has thrust into the hourglass. As they collect, he walks towards the female, watching the particles in the air move away from him and leave a trail behind him as they float, motionless.

He pulls his hand out and throws the grains at her, and time snaps back to normal. The guard blinks, and recoils away from her as she grimaces and tries to whip around, only to find herself trapped as if the air has turned to quicksand around her. Slowly, she rotates her eyes wide and furious.

He reaches through the golden veil of sand around her and grabs her by her slender throat, heaving her up into the air.

"Your soul will be measured," he growls, and she flinches as he pulls at her essence, tearing it away from her and sending it to his staff, floating quietly in the Deserts Between until he needs it. Then he drops her, and wills time forwards as he does, so she slams into the floorstones.

To his surprise, she chuckles throatily, and he realizes that, impossibly fast, she had flipped herself over and caught herself.

"Nasus," she coos. "I was only playing, you know."

"You are evil and I do not trust you," he growls. "I am a protector and this man will be protected."

"She's being honest," the guard commented wryly, "she does this every time."

He turns to look at him, his jaw hanging open, and the female laughs.

"Poor Curator. You are so very quick to judge," she says, and he shifts in his discomfort, hunching his shoulders. His mind aches from the strain of the time spell, the most powerful version of the incantation called "wither" on the Fields of Justice. "Still," the Widowmaker adds playfully, "I don't blame you. You're right about me, of course, but I'm not stupid enough to feed in the Institute."

She winks at him, and vanishes into the shadows after snatching a vial from the guard's belt and swallowing it in one minute. He growls, and then snarls and shudders as cold lips press against his ear.

"My name is Evelynn, doggy," she hisses, "and I may be bad…but I feel good."

He silently reaches out a hand to the guard, takes a vial, and pours it into his mouth. It tastes terrible, and he gags as he swallows and feels his link to his mental archives of knowledge and his access to the Deserts Between snap closed. He tucks the disc under his arm and strides inside.

He knows where Evelynn is going, if not where she is. He needs her, and Ahri.

Two females, skilled in seduction. If they can't help him, no one can.