ONE FELL SWOOP - CHAPTER 13
Genres: Drama, Fantasy, Romance, Action
Author's Note: First off, I apologize for the delay in the update, but I am working on two writing projects at once, as some of you might now, I've started a new League of Legends story called "The Sound of My Voice". Right now, my muse is really driving me to write for TSoMV, so if you're interested in a Sona fanfic, check it out!
Anyways, hope you enjoy the chapter!
Chapter 13: Path of Chronos
The four of them sat quietly around the rectangular dinner table, awkward and unsure of how to proceed. While Vayne fidgeted with the straps on her wrist-mounted crossbow and Varus polished his massive Arclight bow, Kaleb had managed to find himself a pair of pants and was tapping an abstract rhythm with his foot.
"So . . . how exactly are you planning to 'help' us?" Zachariah sipped at his tea little by little.
"Uhh—" Vayne scratched her cheek with one finger, then looked at Varus for support. Varus looked just as stumped.
"We're . . . not quite sure about that part yet. The Green Father is often vague about his instructions."
"Then what did he tell you this time?" Kaleb asked.
Varus and Vayne looked at one another again and then spoke in unison.
"He told us to go greet the dead."
Kaleb's jaw dropped open. "Well that's not a nice way to put it—I mean Zach and I are kind-of dead—but we're still here."
"He means well." Vayne assured Kaleb. "It's probably because he's essentially the Watcher of Life which gives him quite a different perspective of natural life and natural death from us. To us . . . just being able to breathe and exist in this world is enough to classify as alive."
"So what—he just told you to drop by and introduce yourself?" Zachariah said with disbelief.
"Pretty much." Varus shrugged.
"Okay . . ." Zachariah pinched the bridge of his nose.
"For now, we're to standby until an opportunity presents itself to us." Vayne said.
"An opportunity to do what?" Zachariah put his cup down.
"An opportunity as in an opening. An opening to kill Amina."
Everyone went silent.
After a minute, Kaleb raised his hand.
"If the Green Father, is the Watcher of Life, then why would he order you to kill?"
"Mmm—it's not exactly killing her. I guess hunting her would be a more accurate description." Varus said and Vayne nodded in agreement.
"Isn't that the same thing?" Kaleb questioned.
"No, actually, it isn't. Because she's a Watcher, every time she reaches the end of her current life, she reincarnates into a different vessel, one that her Eye deems worthy. The vessel she's using right now is around 500 years old already." Vayne answered.
"How do you know such details?" Zachariah felt suspicion crawl up his back again.
Vayne looked at him as if he were an idiot. "Because the Green Father told us. But don't take my word for it. If you do a bit of research, the myths of a feminine 'Golden Spirit' and legends of 'She who Gives and Takes away' date back to only about 500 years ago. What Varus and I, and most primarily, The Green Father seeks to do is to seal away her Eye when she loses her current vessel so that it cannot find another vessel."
Zachariah scratched the back of his head sheepishly. No reason to be suspicious after all.
Kaleb leaned back on his chair. "I guess Zach and I are just supposed to continue climbing the ranks until we grow stronger—strong enough to match Amina's power?"
"It would seem like it, yeah. There's nothing much Varus and I can do to help you in that regard." Vayne frowned slightly.
"It's strange though. Why would Amina want us to train in the Arena instead of having us train in isolation or by any other means? She knows full well that if we manage to climb to Challenger and even become one of the Five Kings, we would be in a position of exceptional power and influence." Kaleb posed the question more to himself than the others sitting around the table.
"She wants something." Vayne crossed her arms and scrunched her eyebrows. She had hit a realization. "Something that only the Challengers, or even only the Five Kings can get."
She rested her elbows on her chair's armrests, locked her hands together as if she were praying, and put her chin on top of her knuckles.
"Perhaps even . . . something that only Rank one can obtain." The Arclight hunter said gravely.
"What might it be that Amina wants so desperately that she would even risk giving us an opportunity—maybe the only opportunity—to fight back?" Zachariah hunched his back, taking the same thinking position as Vayne.
"We're not sure," Vayne gazed at Varus and Varus nodded back to confirm their lack of knowledge. "But what we do know is that unfortunately, you can't not climb the ranks just to prevent Amina from getting what she wants. Like you said, this is our only opportunity. If Amina plays a game of risk, then in order to beat her, we have to play the same game with her."
"Actually on that note," Varus stood up, "I've figured out a way Vayne and I can help you."
"Didn't you say—" Kaleb started to say, but Varus shook his head.
"It's called the Midseason Raw Internationals. I overheard Khada Jhin mention it—might I comment that he was quite ecstatic about it—a few months ago during one of those AD-Carry's Conferences discussing some insignificant petition to lower the consistency of ADCs getting one-shotted. Apparently, it's a new type of competition that invites all League champions and their mages, regardless of rank, to participate in elimination-style matches. There are no minions and no gold, only Champions being pitted against one another. It's a gamble: participants earn three times as many League Points with each win and basically anyone can join, but they'll be competing against the best of the best. The Five Kings are definitely going to participate."
Zachariah bit his lower lip and frowned. "Really? That's all there is to it? It can't be that simple."
"It's not." Varus's expression was grim. "There's a reason why it's called 'Raw'."
Oh boy—here comes the catch. Kaleb looked away. It sucks, how there's always a catch.
"There are no restrictions to the powers, weapons, or techniques that you use. No balance-changes to make the playing field fairer. The pain index is set parallel to that of reality and regeneration of health is virtually non-existent. That Nautilus anchor that typically does little to no damage? It's going to hurt a shit-ton more than the Blitzcrank pull that's usually much more punishing because Nautilus, in reality, is seven times the size of Blitzcrank. Your body in the Raw Arena will only be as strong and durable as your real body. The only attacks that aren't permitted are those that are on the level of 'Planetary Destruction', which will be monitored and enforced by the League's Star Guardians themselves. All other offensive techniques, the Arena will be able to contain within its magical boundaries."
Zachariah exhaled "That's a lot to take in."
Varus winced. "There's one more thing, and I'm not sure if you can swallow this as easily."
He set his bow down on the table and walked to the glass sliding-door that led to the back of the house.
"The pain—it's shared. Every ounce of pain that the Champion feels, the Mage will feel in full force too. If Kaleb gets hit . . . he's not going to be the only one hurting."
The table fell silent again.
Kaleb let out a nervous laugh to break the tension.
"Anyone else want more tea?"
. . .
Two small, hooded figures wandered in an endless plain covered with pure white snow. The freezing wind assaulted them from every direction, forcing them to take almost as many steps backwards as they did forwards. Their tracks in the deep snow lasted no longer than a few moments before they were filled and blown away by the relentless hail and blizzard, making it virtually impossible to return from whence one began one's journey.
The only way to navigate the hellish ice storm was to use, in combination, two very rare magical items known as . . .
"So this is the infamous Gelid Vortex. No wonder even the native Freljordians try to stay away from this place." Ekko shouted over the howling wind.
"This is where the magical signature that Karma provided us leads to. But for some reason—" Rosalyn massaged her temples. "—for some inexplicable reason, we always lose the trace here."
"Maybe we should just head back to where we started and look at this from a different perspective and—"
"Wait. Stop talking and give me the damn globe. I need to see where we are."
"It's not called the damn globe. They call it the 'Guardian's Orb' here in Freljord. We're lucky Karma and the Order managed to procure this item for us or we'd be lost in this nightmare of a storm long ago."
"Ekko, just give it to me." Rosalyn stuck her hand out.
Ekko reluctantly placed a small, sapphire orb the size of a large orange, which seemed to contain an ultra-condensed swirling snowstorm in itself, in her palm.
"Fine, here you are," Then, after a moment, he added, "I thought you said I was to hold the Guardian's Orb and you were to hold the 'Eye of the Watchers'?"
Rosalyn stopped, turned around, and shoved her face close to Ekko's. Her bluish-indigo eyes gazed coldly into his eyes, giving off an intimidating stare.
"Are you an idiot?" she scolded him without raising her voice. "The Eye of the Watchers is not complete without the Guardian's Orb, which you place—"
Rosalyn pointed at the empty spherical slot at the centre of the greyish-blue lantern-like device she held in her right hand.
"—right here. This device I'm holding right now is only a Hextech shell created as a vessel for the Orb and its useless when used alone, but when you place—"
She took the Orb and placed it in the empty slot, which seemed to surround and suction onto the Orb.
"—the Orb inside the vessel, it truly becomes the 'Eye of the Watcher', which will shine a blue light towards the direction of wherever we wish to go."
"Oh." Ekko nodded dumbly and Rosalyn rolled her eyes in exasperation.
"Karma explained all this to us before we left for Freljord. Were you not listening or paying attention?" Rosalyn raised her eyebrows, expecting an immediate answer.
"Umm . . ." Ekko struggled to find an excuse. "N-not really . . .?"
Rosalyn shook her head in disappointment.
"I was thinking about my new prototype design for my Chrono Blade, the QWQRE83." Ekko protested.
"Why am I not surprised." She said sarcastically and switched her attention back to the Eye of the Watcher. "Now . . . I had a slight epiphany as to how we should approach this clown fiesta of a tracking mission."
"And?" Ekko prompted.
"Maybe we've been going at this the wrong way. Maybe . . . instead of blindly following the blue light, we should consider what kind of situation we're in in the first place. I mean—every time we've been here, for the past two months, we've been stuck at the same point. We're not progressing at all. And it's probably because we keep relying solely on this device."
"I'm not following." Ekko said, scratching his armpit from within his warm cloak.
"The Gelid Vortex is classified as a non-sentient magical entity. It's not just any regular storm, and it's not some giant evil spirit either, but it is driven by a residual magical source, which I bet is at the centre of all this ice hell. It probably has a self-growth mechanism that allows it to adapt to trespassers and in this regard, the storm or rather these storms are very much alive. When I saw alive though, I mean that they can change the concentrations of magical energy across the body of their storm and effectively scramble any navigational device we're using regardless of the device's competence."
"Ahh—! I think I'm getting the picture now." Ekko brightened. "So because of the Gelid Vortex's non-sentience, we can safely assume that it is not capable of complex spontaneous creativity, and in mathematical reasoning, that it does not follow anything sophisticated—for instance, a randomizing algorithm—to scramble our navigational device but rather, a simple 'switch' mechanism. That's brilliant Rose! It makes our job so much easier."
"Essentially, all we have to do, is to head in the exact opposite direction the Eye of the Watcher points us to." Rosalyn smiled proudly.
"Wow, look at you, showing so much more emotion than you usually do." Ekko chuckled. "Then again, I guess the solving of such a predicament requires a mini celebration—"
Ekko's grin faltered.
"Rose."
"Yeah?"
"Look at me."
"W-why?" Rosalyn pulled down on her hood to cover her face.
"Just look at me." Ekko grabbed her arms, forced them aside, and lifted her hood. He looked alarmed.
"Rose, when was the last time you took your medication?"
"Yesterday." The response was immediate.
"And before that?" Ekko pressed.
"What do you mean?" Rosalyn tried to put her hood on again but Ekko stopped her, holding her arms back.
"When did you last take your medication before yesterday?"
"That would be the day before yesterday." Rosalyn said calmly.
"Damnit Rosalyn don't lie to me!" Ekko yelled over the winter's howl.
Rosalyn hesitated. "It was a week . . . a week-and-a-half ago? But—how did you know?"
"I'm not an idiot like you describe me to be. Your smiles. They're natural today, not coldly fabricated. And your eyes. The medication is designed so that when you consume the prescribed dosage of pills, your irises will change from their original bright-blue color to a more opaque indigo shade. Right now, your irises are indigo with a shade of blue mixed in—in fact, they're more blue than indigo. That means you only took your dosage recently and the side-effect of the medication is only starting to settle in. It also tells me that before that dosage, you haven't taken one in at least two weeks."
"I-I didn't know that . . ." Rosalyn sounded dismayed.
"Rose, you know you have to take your medication every day for the treatment to fully work. Do you remember what happened the last time you neglected to take your medication for an extended period of time?"
"I'm not sure—"
"You entered a severe hallucinatory state and fell off the roof of a fucking building. You couldn't control your emotions. I don't want anything dangerous like that to happen again, especially not out here in this desolate place."
"Trust me, it's not going to happen again."
"Just promise me to take your pills regularly."
"Okay, I will." Rosalyn assured him.
"Don't just tell me what I want to here to get me to shut up. You know—ever since . . ." Ekko paused and took a deep breath. "Ever since Kaleb died, you've been suffering from intense psychological mood swings, and even though I was against it, I let you choose prescribed medical treatment over natural rehabilitation because I knew it was for the best. Even though I was against the medication because it would deprive you of emotion, I knew it was the only way we would be able to achieve our dream."
Rosalyn looked the other way. "Kaleb was weak and I was disappointed that we wasted so much time with him—"
Ekko stepped in front of her, forcing her to face him.
"Do you really believe that? Rose, it's been excuse after excuse, blame after blame, and you still haven't given me a consistent answer as to why you pretend that Kaleb was some useless little shit we hired off the roadside."
Rosalyn pulled her cloak close to her and avoided Ekko's heated gaze. The boy sighed heavily.
"Just give me the fucking lantern and let's go."
. . .
"I see light—I think the opening is right up ahead."
"Well, I'm glad your idea worked, Rose. But what are we expecting at the end of the tunnel? What are we expecting on the other side of the exit?" Ekko was at Rosalyn's heels.
"Take a non-combative stance in case there are subjects outside that are susceptible to provocation, but be ready for any potential hostiles."
"Got'chu." Ekko adjusted the settings on his Z-Drive to Neutralize and pressed Confirm.
"Ready?" Rosalyn slowed down as she approached the narrow crevice.
"Whenever you are." Ekko replied as he tightened the grip on his Chronoblade.
Both put their hoods on and climbed out into the light.
At first, it was blinding, as if the purity of the white light that shown down on them was smiting them, but as their eyes adjusted to the brightness, they saw a completely unexpected picture before them.
A calm, white snowy expanse, like a meadow during winter, decorated by a few patches of trees and bordered by an infinitely high wall of violent winds. It was like they were standing in the middle of a giant hurricane, where a secret little paradise grew. However, when they looked closer at the ground, the thin layers of snow seemed to cover up strange, black marks stretching long and wide. It was as if someone had scarred the earth itself.
"What is this place?" Ekko said with wonder.
"Welcome!" a voice behind them said enthusiastically. "This the Eye of the infamous Freljord storm system known as the Gelid Vortex."
Ekko and Rosalyn whipped around and found themselves before a short young lady with a brown complexion. She was dressed in blue winter garments from top to bottom.
"The Eye . . . of the Vortex?" Ekko's voice drifted off.
"You two are a bit late to the party." The girl commented. "A month late, to be exact."
"Party? There was a party here?" Ekko's ears perked at the notion. "Is that why there are all these marks on the floor? Because people were partying too hard and made a mess—wait did you just say a month late?"
"Yeah I did. The last time someone was here was about a month ago."
"A month late? That's not possible—the magic signature was still fresh yesterday." Rosalyn exclaimed.
"Are you looking for someone or something in particular?" the girl asked.
"No, not really. And if we were it'd really be none of your concern." Rosalyn answered curtly.
The girl smiled and sat down on a nearby ice-covered boulder. "Then why are you carrying an 'Eye of the Watcher' around?"
Rosalyn said nothing but quickly hid the lantern-like device behind her back.
"I'm going to take a wild guess and say that you and your friend probably took the Path of Chronos."
"And what, if I may ask, might that mean?" Rosalyn loosened up. She knew she was not a position to remain prideful in the face of the unknown.
"The Path of Chronos is one of the several routes you could take to get here through the labyrinth of tunnels underground. You probably expressed the desire for the 'fastest possible route' to get to the source of whatever magical signature you were looking for, and the Eye of the Watcher pointed you to, naturally, what was geographically the shortest, most straightforward route to the exit. What the Eye of the Watcher doesn't consider though, is the magical properties of the labyrinth. The faster you want to get to the other side, the more the labyrinth speeds up time in the real world."
"You're telling us that . . . one day in the Path of Chronos is equivalent to one month aboveground? Are you kidding me?" Rosalyn started to feel the frustration creep up on her. She was tired of searching. She was tired of treading through sand, through swamps, and through snow.
"Don't worry though, your bodies only age as fast as the temporal density progresses in each realm, so you've technically only grown one day older." The girl jumped down from the boulder and patted the snow off her behind.
"That's really not my biggest fucking concern right now." Rosalyn dropped to her hands and knees and appeared to have trouble breathing.
"Rose! Rose, breathe and relax. Let me get your medication for you." Ekko frantically searched for the small cylindrical container in his satchel.
"H-how much do you think we d-d-decayed?" Rosalyn was struggling to speak now. "Do y-you . . . do you realize how—h-how much more t-t-time we have to spend trying to c-climb the ranks we dropped?"
Ekko handed her two pills and a bottle of water. "Rose, that's not important at the moment, just take your medication first and we'll worry about our decay later."
"DO YOU?!" Rosalyn screamed and Ekko flew backwards, crashing into the girl and tumbling into the snow.
"Rose, don't use your powers recklessly! You could kill us!" Ekko shouted over the unrelenting waves of telekinetic energy pushing him back. "Hold back, Rose! It's me, Ekko—stop using your powers against me damnit!"
Rosalyn stopped screaming; now, only tears rolled down her cheeks. Ekko fell forward and panted heavily.
"Holy hell, Rose, you can't do that every time you get upset. You're going to hurt someone sooner or later."
He took another two pills out of the container and fed them to Rosalyn. He let her drink the water herself, standing up and stretching out his arms and legs.
"What a way to start day." Ekko was evidently trying to sound cheerful, but it sounded fake.
The girl behind them spoke up.
"Mmm, maybe this is a good time to introduce myself. I'm Taliyah, I'm from Shurima. And because I sorta feel bad for you, I'll give you a name."
"What use is a name if we don't know it?" Ekko grumbled.
"Well it's better than having nothing," Taliyah argued. "Anyways, do you want it or not?"
"Fine. Give it to us."
"The person who was last here. His name is Zachariah."
I know I've mentioned this before, but if you feel like it'd be awesome for me to create a glossary for all the AU (and canon) terminology for this particular story, comment in the Review section below! As usual if you haven't Followed the story or Favorited it and you want the updates as soon as they get posted, click that Follow/Favorite button!
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Peace!
~Nightrous