Hey guys! This is the second installment of the four-part series of chapters with other POVs than Nasus. I hate to bother, but reviews would be appreciated to see if you like these little glimpses into my other character's heads. If you hate it...well, after Chapter 5 they should go back to Nasus with a few little T'sa snippets so I can keep her story up to date with the action in Runeterra.
Also, this story is planned to have 3 parts, each with 11 chapters, and, unless I change my mind, a sequel-entitled either A Shadow in the Desert or The Black Sands Doctrine. I know Miao Long mentioned that my title is something that turns readers off, so I am vacillating between using the same pattern for continuity or changing it up to make it more attractive. Thoughts?
Enjoy the chapter!
Chapter 3: Shadow Walk
In Evelynn's life—a long life, a strange life, with many bits and pieces that she does not fully remember or understand—there are two things that she knows to depend on.
The first is that a man will see what he wants to see more clearly than the truth. Sometimes it's not necessary for her to retreat to invisibility, to pull down the veil of night around her. People are willing to only see her smile and her bared skin and not notice that her teeth are fangs and her face is blue. They will look past her unusual hair and dress if she wills them too, and as it takes less energy, she usually does. She likes to walk through streets and markets like a normal human woman, watch the twittering mortals go about their business, enjoy the petty discomforts squirming underneath the surface of their blank, sheep faces. She can look for victims in comfort, and sometimes she can even seize an opportunity to both sate her hunger and quell pangs of conscience by killing other, mortal predators.
The second is that her instincts are never wrong. Sometimes she thinks that they are, tries to ignore them, and ends up crashing into calamity after calamity. Sometimes she follows them, and suffers for it, hunts a prey too strong for her or sneaks into a warded area or plies her charm against an iron will. But in the end, they are right, and she is wrong, and all turns out in her favor in the end. If she follows them. It is a crucial if.
The moment Nasus mentioned the last artifact weapon they had screamed at her. A shrill chorus from her damned soul. Her senses were so finely tuned to seek out suffering that they could locate the potential for it miles away. The word "dagger" had thrummed all the way to Noxus. But when she had left Ahri's chambers and made her way to the Institute's outskirts, the feeling had changed, lying low and heavy in her, urging her not east, but north…to Zaun.
So here she is, skulking the streets, following the sickly scent of possible pain. The air in the city reeks of it. Mutants line the edges of the streets, reaching out deformed limbs in silent pleas to passerby. Most die in days—and they are lucky. Some find their way in crime, or as part of the Noxian war machine. Some join Mordekaiser's legions, and find no mercy in their deathless service (Evelynn hates that man.)
The way he looks at her makes her feel…unclean.
The agony in Zaun's air makes Evelynn feel slightly drunk when she visits, and she takes extra care in how she places her stilettos as she edges around the corner of the alley. It's not necessary for her to be invisible or even disguise herself in this city of all cities, but her instincts hiss "hide!" So she hides.
And she is right to hide. Looking directly at her is a scowling Darius. Cute, though, she thinks.
He could stand to wash his hair.
She leans against the wall and taps her fingers against her lips as she watches the Glorious Executioner drop a bundle of sacking on the ground with a grunt. It so obviously contains a person that Evelynn places a graceful hand over her eyes in despair for the art of subtlety. He mutters a curse and rolls his huge shoulders.
"Damn butcher better get here soon," he rumbles.
She steps away from the wall and strolls languidly over to the bundle. While Darius patrols in a wide circle, his hand on the handle of his axe, she pokes a hole in the sacking with a fingernail and leans to fit one wide eye in the gap. The darkness is no obstacle to her examining the vivid blue stomach she finds herself looking at.
She whistles quietly and leans back on her haunches.
"Kassadin, Kassadin, Kassadin, what's a self-righteous gorgeous hunk like you doing in a sack?" she asks the motionless figure before her.
Kassadin, being unconscious, gives no answer.
"Come on," she coaxes, "I bet if you really try, you can tell me!"
Evelynn chuckles and leaps backwards just as Darius turns around, his dark eyes flaring with suspicion. She lands lithely on a protruding gargoyle, barely recognizable under a thick layer of grime, and climbs up to perch on the head.
"There you are," Darius grunts, and she tenses slightly, before she sees the Mad Chemist slip out of a connecting street.
"I hear you," Singed says, the dirty bandages around his face shifting around his grin. "What does your lovely lady have for me this fine day?"
"Don't get too excited," Darius warns, leaning on the butt of his axe. "You can't kill him, or even hurt him."
"What's the point of purchasing my services, then?" Singed scoffs.
"We want him to forget the last two weeks," Darius says, prodding the bundle with his mailed foot. "Give him some residual memories so it's not too alarming, but he's not to remember a thing about where he's been or what he's been doing."
"Curious," Singed says softly, leaning down to examine Kassadin. "I don't suppose you'd like to tell me why you need his mind wiped?"
"Not if you want to keep that bald head on your shoulders, chemist," Darius growls.
"Fair enough," Singed murmurs. "Leave me to my work—this shouldn't take but an hour."
"You'll get your money when we see him back at the Institute, safe and sound," Darius says, and hefts his axe over his shoulder as he strides away. Singed, chuckling softly under his breath, sings, "mix, mix, swirl, mix…"
Evelynn takes a deep breath, swelling her lungs until they are fit to burst, then seals her mouth and nose shut with magic. Then she jumps, straight off the gargoyle and onto Singed's back.
"Wha—" the chemist says, startled, poison already starting to leak from the bottle he carries, then groans and collapses as thousands of black spikes shoot up from the ground and tear through his body. His agony flares, fresh and delicious, and the shadows drink it in and surround Evelynn.
"I've got the touch," she whispers sweetly, resuming breathing as she shoves the cork back into the bottle. With a hard strike to his neck with her elbow, Singed collapses on the filthy ground.
She rummages through his pockets and takes out three vials-one red, one blue, and one an inky, writhing black. Evelynn spreads them in her hand and stares at them, concentrating.
Heat bursts against her forehead as she confidently smashes the red vial against Singed's forehead and selects the blue vial as she heads over to Kassadin. The black vial gets stuck into her brassiere as she shreds open the sacking with her nails and grabs Kassadin's chin beneath his mask.
"Open up, Kassy," she purrs, and pours the contents of the blue vial down his throat. The Void Walker coughs raggedly several times, before the pale lights of his eyes flicker back into existence.
"EVELYNN?" he gasps.
"Tell me who did this to you, Kassy," she says, holding down his feeble attempts to rise with a firm palm on his chest.
"THE-THE NOXIANS," he rumbles weakly. "THEY TOLD ME THEY HAD—MY DAUGHTER...BUT IT WAS THE DEICEIVER IN HER STOLEN SHAPE."
"Poor thing," Evelynn coos, leaning over Kassadin's mask. He blinks and closes his eyes quickly as her chest comes directly over him. "Why did they have LeBlanc pretend to be your daughter?"
"THEY WANTED AN ARTIFACT FROM ANOTHER WORLD—A DAGGER CALLED REGISTRANA'S FANG. THEY TOLD ME THAT I WOULD FIND THE TRACES OF THE PORTAL MAGIC THAT WOULD LEAD ME THEIR IN SHURIMA, AND I DID DISCOVER A WAY THERE. I TRACED THE WEAPON'S MAGICAL SIGNATURE AND FOUGHT OFF A NATIVE CREATURE TO RETRIEVE IT, AND THEN I BROUGHT IT BACK TO NOXUS."
"Who has it now, Kassy?" Evelynn says, reaching slowly and deliberately inside her brassiere for the black vial.
"I WOULD GUESS THE SINISTER BLADE, BUT I DID NOT SEE WHAT BECAME OF IT BEFORE I WAS INCAPACITATED. EVELYNN…WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE? WHY DID YOU RESCUE ME?"
"Oh, Kassy," she whispers, "I'm the one asking questions here. And thank you. You've been very informative. Now drink up…and rest."
With a single swift motion, she pulls out the vial and forces it down his throat. Choking, pulses of Void energy coming off him erratically, Kassadin swallows it whole.
"ABOMINATION—WHAT HAVE YOU—ARGH!"
The light dies in his eyes and Kassadin slumps to the ground, his muscles relaxing. Evelynn chuckles to herself and stands up, brushing dust off her arms.
A man will see what he wants to see rather than the truth.
She slinks over to Singed and slaps him briskly. The red liquid has sunk into his flesh and his wounds are already closing.
"Whuh—what?" he mumbles.
"You having one of your episodes, chemist?" she asks harshly.
"Evelynn? Always a pleasure to see you, my sweet," Singed says, recovering quickly.
"What were you doing on top of Kassadin?" she demands, leaning forwards. The Mad Chemist chuckles softly and rubs his hands together.
"I was administering a little medicine, my sweet," he says. "I suppose I got a little excited."
He fumbles around in his pockets, and turns up nothing. A quick look around the street shows him spots of blood and shards of broken glass. All normal.
Evelynn smiles and leans forwards, kissing Singed lightly on the side of his cheek. "I'm sure you gave poor sick Kassy a lot of help."
"But of course, my sweet," Singed says, his hand moving up to cup her cheek. Before it can touch her, she is ten feet away and already vanishing.
"Have a wonderful day, Singed," she calls.
"Any day where I get to see you is wonderful, my sweet," he replies.
Singed lurches forwards to pick up Kassadin and start the laborious process of hauling him to the Institute as Evelynn leans against the wall and laughs, long and merrily, to herself. She brushes off her lips with the back of her hand and strolls off, a mere flicker in the corner of the eye.
So, the Noxians had the key and the Demaians had the way. Good thing they don't like to work together, she muses. It's something to tell Nasus, at least.
"So then you heard me tell her I trust you," the Curator growls, a faint smile on his muzzle. Evelynn feels a rush of warm pleasure run through her quite different than the feelings she gets from pain. She can feel the strength of him, radiating silently in pulses of power than taste like desert sand. She leans her head so lightly against his side that she hopes he will not notice it.
"That may prove your undoing," she warns, a little flicker of fear running through her. His fur brushes against his cheek and she sighs. It is so hard for her to control her nature…
"Perhaps," he says, and the scorn in his blood red eyes at even the thought of her betrayal makes her tingle all the way to her blue toes.
She could take his staff and be with the Demacians before he knew it was gone. She wants to, in the dark part of her that cries out for pain, always pain, more and more, drowning the world in tides of suffering. Her instincts tell her that would be the path of most agony for the people around her. But she ignores them…at her peril.
She wants to be trusted. She likes Ahri, she thinks Malzahar and Orianna are adorable, and she pities Lux in a contemptuous sort of way. But Nasus is…different.
She likes him…more than the others.
And it is frightening.
She blushes violet beneath her invisibility as she slips through the gates of Zaun and slips into a miles-eating run through the countryside. She must keep such thoughts to herself. Such a thing is impossible. He obviously has some sort of attachment to little Miss Crownguard that supersedes all else.
She doesn't mind. She can bear it. Perhaps it is the price for going against her instincts—she must feed on her own suffering.
Evelynn blinks furiously and leaps into the trees to run until the wind scours the signs of her weakness from her face.