The room was oppressive.
The dim lighting, the stale air, and the vastness of it all made it feel like she was being judged by the ancients. She could only hope the ancients would treat her fairly, when they heard her voice.
Across from her sat Shen, the oldest, most experienced. On her right was the newbie. He was a small Yordle by the name of Kennen. And then there was herself, the first female of the Kinkou Order in decades, and a three year rookie of Pruning the Tree.
Despite the general inexperience at the table, neither she nor the Yordle felt any need to look up to Shen. He would teach them what there was to teach, and he would leave them to figure out the rest themselves. He trusted them, and they trusted him. They were equals.
But still, they were under a great amount of pressure, gathered in the room and preparing themselves. Kennen wasn't coping too well. He was stationed at the head of the table, with a piece of parchment in front of him. As the youngest of the triumvirate, he was responsible for recording the votes. His hands were trembling and she doubted he would be able to write a single legible word if he didn't calm down soon.
"Yes," Akali said into the silence, because there was no more reason to delay.
Kennen's hand lurched, blotting the page before he regained control and wrote her response down. And then it was his turn, and for a minute, his voice failed him. Shen did not look impressed, but they waited.
"Yes," he finally squeaked.
And there it was. Two votes for, zero against. No matter Shen's position, they would go to war.
He knew this, but still did not hesitate. "No."
Akali stood up as soon as Kennen finished writing.
"I'll inform our people," she said. "Shen, battle plans?"
"We'll depart in two hours," he said, showing no signs of unwillingness.
Ionia was a beautiful nation. Its wildlife was varied and it had innumerable flowering countrysides, and its architecture was pleasant on the eyes, never looking out of place in nature. Buildings were small, often with redwood supports, gently curved roofs, and there was always one sort of statue or another displayed out front, intricately carved as though it held the soul of the mythical creature it portrayed.
The Placidium, and all its surrounding structures, were nothing of the sort. They were colossal, gilded, and usually crowded with visitors – both domestic and tourist alike. And it was normally clean, with waterfalls around the edges of the plaza, transforming into gentle creeks flowing beneath bridges and well-manicured grass where people picnicked and napped. The plaza itself was constantly swept by magic, so dust and dirty shoes would never find home on the ground.
But today, things were different.
Today, the magic was busy elsewhere.
Today, blood, tears, and sweat stained the ground.
People were left, forgotten like flies that had succumbed to the heat. They were coughing and wheezing and gasping and dead and crying. That was the reality of war. Bodies on the ground were rarely dead. Nobody had time to bend down and finish the job – not when they were surrounded by more enemies to fight. So she weaved in between these people, kicking aside hands that reached out for her, because despite the travesty that had befallen the area, the sounds of cries and shouts and metal clashing were distant, and that was where she could be the most help.
The battle had somehow been drawn over towards the amphitheatre. There was seating for thousands of people, and it made for an uneven fight. Moving around was difficult with the eighty levels of seating and the general incline, and it looked chaotic from where Akali stood. She took a second to understand the flow of battle. It was not pretty, but then again, it never was.
The Noxian soldiers worried her. They weren't just there as fodder and meat shields for the magicians. They were fearless, strong, and did not show pain. They had been drugged, Akali realized, and that made every single one of them a powerful soldier in their own right. Opium, used as a base by Singed for something more potent, most likely. The Ionians were losing, and for a terrible moment, Akali thought it was all over. This was their last stand, and the Kinkou Order had arrived too late.
Or rather, would arrive too late. Akali was several hours ahead of their main forces.
Nevertheless, it was time to join the battle and make what difference she could.
Her reinforcement alone could not stop the tide. She wasn't enough, and she saw the moment everything ended and started anew again. The defining moment; the shiver-inducing, world-questioning, life-ending moment.
It was Irelia, one of Ionia's most powerful fighters. Training under Master Lito, her future was promising. But she was too young. Too immature. Too unskilled. Too ignorant. This fight, the fight for her nation and the fight for her life, had come too soon. Surrounded at the center of the amphitheatre stage, she swung her sword and shouted. Her breath was raw and full of emotion, and it was so painfully obvious she wasn't ready to die.
Irelia knew this. She knew there was more to life, and that she was facing an insurmountable obstacle, and that there was nothing to do but shout. Shout, hear her own voice, and cherish the sound because it might be the last she would ever make.
There was no help to be had. Nobody was coming to her side because there was nobody left. All around her, Noxians moving in. All around her, Ionians on the ground. All around her, the inevitability of death. She was alone.
And then there was the unavoidable reality, the human body's limit, the ugly, visceral realization that her arms were too heavy, too slow, and suddenly, the sword in her hand which had always been reliable, was failing her.
A Noxian parried her attack and he saw the opening – and maybe he was surprised that he would be the one, because he hesitated – and then he thrust his sword into Irelia's chest. Several things happened at once.
Akali stopped to watch, the man she had been fighting a moment prior dead. Irelia's sword clattered to the ground. It was a sound that shouldn't have been audible, with all the metal clashing between them and the blood pounding in her ears, but the clanking of Irelia's sword pierced Akali like it was the end of times.
From somewhere, a shout.
"No!"
Akali tried to pinpoint it, but couldn't, and then didn't need to. Magic erupted – an explosion – a bomb – desperation – an alien power that coursed through the battlefield, even as Irelia dropped to her knees, blood dripping from her wound and from her mouth. She was dead, and whatever magic it was, it was too late. Still, the magic, an arrow single-minded in heart and intent, knocked friend and foe aside as it raced through the amphitheatre and down towards the stage.
Irelia's corpse fell over to its side at the same moment that the light arrived, and it ran through her, continuing even as it turned red and curved upwards, disappearing into the sky above.
The fights in the distance hadn't noticed this immense power, but everyone in the amphitheatre felt it and stopped what they were doing, no longer afraid of their opponents standing in front of them.
The passage of time was indeterminable. Maybe they might have stayed like this forever, watching the dead woman, but that was not necessary.
This was an ancient and respected amphitheatre, and it demanded a play. A drama. A tragedy with all the beats, a beautiful choreography, and three complete acts. This was the opening of the third act. The turn of the tide, the moment of surprise and disbelief. Irelia, the beloved protagonist, had met her end, and now the scene prepared itself for the greatest deus ex machina of modern times.
Set reality aside, the amphitheatre seemed to say, because I have a gift for you.
The magic was gone, faded into the sky above, and there was a faint flicker of light – visible for only a fraction of a second – in the dead woman's chest. A few seconds passed of nothingness – a struggle against the presence of so many people.
And then that protagonist rose again.
She rolled to her side, and there was blood still pouring out of her wound like a leak in a ship, but to her it didn't matter. To her, the most important thing was to wipe the blood away from her mouth. Everybody watched because everybody wanted to know what exactly they would do, when they had died and came back to life – which would never happen to any of them.
Irelia climbed to her own two feet, and she was steady. She looked around, and maybe her eyes passed over her saviour, or maybe they didn't, or maybe her eyes weren't seeing at all but yes, yes they were, because they came to rest on her killer.
The man was not lucky. It was not him.
His earlier hesitation might have been for divine reasons.
In the silence, they could hear Irelia's head turn as she looked down at the ground. Her sword, in a pool of her own blood. Her fingers flexed, and nobody would have stopped her if she had bent down, picked it up, and stabbed the man in front of her.
But as it turned out, she didn't need to. Like she had decided it was too much effort, the action was circumvented. The sword rose off the ground on its own accord. It swiveled around, the hilt stopping next to Irelia's fingers, and the next step was so obvious. Take hold of it, and stab her killer.
Take revenge.
But it didn't play out like that.
The director, the unknown and omniscient god who rose his protagonist from death, had other plans.
The sword cut the man at the waist. It went through him effortlessly, like his spine was a blade of grass, and he might not have had time to accept his fate before he was dead, but the ease of the action wasn't the problem in anyone's mind. It was that Irelia had never once touched the sword, nor moved even a single finger.
The sword moved and cut on its own accord, then. That was the conclusion.
Until Irelia shouted. It wasn't a human sound, but more like a lion's roar, unquestionably distraught. Simultaneously, every abandoned sword rose up around her. A thrumming filled the air. The moment was palpable.
There you go, the amphitheatre said. Here it is. Now fight.
Nobody had ever said Noxians lacked bravery. They answered the roar with yells of their own, and they charged. And they were all cut down by Irelia's swords, which danced through the battle, finding fights and winning fights. They were in harmony with each other but at discord with everything else. The elegance of the swords were the very antithesis of their actions, as they continued to kill their opposition.
With every dead Noxian, a new sword rose from the ground for Ionia, and like that, a battle line was formed. The surviving Ionians rallied around the woman they all had earlier abandoned and all would eventually fear but didn't now because it was war, and the rate of bloodshed only seemed to increase as the battle wore on.
Later, as the remaining Noxians forces were being routed, Akali passed near Irelia's saviour, wondering if she should say anything. Her mind was set, though, after seeing Soraka's wild expression.
"What have I done?" the woman said to no one. She knelt down, placing her palms flat on the ground. "Stars forgive me."
Akali slinked back into the shadows.
With this, the battle for the capital would be over by the end of the day. The Ionians would be granted a decisive victory, and the Noxians would be scrambling to recuperate.
Would Soraka join in the celebrations tonight? Probably not. The Starchild would be left alone to ask herself, as though stuck in an endless loop, but at what cost?
Seven years had passed, but Noxians still lived and breathed in Ionia. A disgrace, in the eyes of many. An inevitability, to some.
The three southern provinces had been lost, and it was the still before another great battle. A seven year still, first spurned on by Noxus' need to recuperate from the lost Battle of the Placidium, and then extended by small skirmishes everywhere across the island.
Militias in the west, raising their arms in the face of foes that vastly outnumbered themselves. Monks leaving their temples on a pilgrimage, and then showing up in the middle of a Noxus encampment, releasing explosive dark arts. Children disappearing from orphanages, carrying swords as long as they were tall, intent on avenging their parents. Even the Dark Sovereign was participating in the chaos. Since the Great Flattening, no Noxian General dared let his soldiers anywhere near the floating castle in the sky.
Some had said Noxus could move on the capital again at any time but there was no value to it because the three southern provinces were the wealthiest, and that was all that mattered to Noxians. But since the disappearance of General Marcus Du Couteau, a year ago, it seemed a large scale confrontation was inevitable. New government, new ideals.
The League of Legends had been created in recent years to resolve such conflicts, yet Ionia was so ridden with strife that they had not joined. If they had all been of one mind, Karma could have submitted a formal request – which almost certainly wouldn't be denied – and they could resolve matters through a combat of champions, but many Ionians were against giving power to a third party, and they wanted revenge for their slain kin.
And now, the Noxians were moving again.
The Navori region of Ionia was beautiful and serene, and this made it all the sadder.
Last week, Akali had watched the riverside temple of Minami, just a short walk from Ionia's southern trade hub, burn to the ground. As the sun reached its zenith, she watched a plume of black smoke blot the sky, born from the ashes of scripts and historical texts. For the first time in her life, Akali regretted who she was. She wasn't weak, but that was how she felt, as she obeyed the Order and refrained from interfering.
People were dying as she stood idle, and it hurt to feel so useless. But the Order didn't think on a small scope. The lives of these people weren't important enough, if, ultimately, balance could be maintained. So she would need to harden her resolve as she watched the Noxians march through her homeland, testing the shape of the front lines and the strength of the haphazard militias.
The information network was priority number one. Keep it organized and keep the information flowing, and the Noxians and Ionians would eventually get the battle they all wanted, where bloodshed would be plenty and the battlefield would reek of the last breaths of fearless men.
For now, the Noxians were meeting little resistance. They wouldn't be lulled into a false sense of security, though, because they were trained men, strong and wary and not so easily fooled. It was a fault of the strong, however, to want to exert their power. They would eventually lose interest in the defenseless temples and villages along the way, and their commanders, growing impatience for battle, would forgo killing the monks and raping the woman as they made steadfast progress towards the heart of the kingdom, where the real resistance lied in wait.
Do nothing, Akali thought, turning her back on the burning corpses of the village guards and the hanging bodies of the Men of God.
Akali watched as the Order's scout disappeared into the trees, carrying her message to Shen. That was to be her social interactions for the day. She would now catch up to the Noxians at the next farming village, Kai. It had been several weeks since they stopped their scorched earth strategy – they believed their war was won, and any more damage they caused would only be hurting their own economy once they had settled their own people into the region.
It took half a day for her to arrive at the village, and only seconds for her understanding of war to be scorned by the reaper and shattered into a thousand pieces.
There was not a single Noxian soldier or tent present.
She walked the length of the village, slowly counting. The houses hadn't been damaged, except for the odd broken door. At the last house, she stopped and turned back. Cows, sheep, and chickens were all alive. But that was it.
The entirety of the village was outside, lain perpendicular to the road, ordered from the tallest man to the youngest baby. Like a reaper had torn through the village. All executed, their mouths stretched wide open in rigor mortis. She stood on the brink of an unforgettable horror, unable to understand. Stunned, shaken, confused, she knelt down next to the body of a little girl, whose hand was outstretched. Next to it, a doll, dirty and trodden on. She picked it up and wiped some of the dirt off of it, before placing it back in the girl's hand.
People died all the time in war. Adults fought for their kingdom and died, but children?
What had transpired here? What had evoked such rage in the Noxians? She closed her eyes and took a large breath of air. For once, she was thankful for her anosmia. For all the lost scents, the flowers and food unknown, she was at least saved from the full impact of a scene like this.
Reopening her eyes, the scene was the same, but she felt more control.
The only blood she had seen were from self inflicted wounds. They had teared at their own skin, bit their own fingers, and scratched their eyeballs prior to death. Something had induced insanity in the village, before they had died. Drag marks indicated the bodies had been moved after death, to create the grotesque display.
Akali moved along the line until she was at the younger adults. Kneeling down next to a purple haired man, she turned the corpse over. Three days had passed, she estimated. It was an unpalatable job, but she undressed the man and inspected him thoroughly. She made no discoveries to discredit her initial theory.
Singed.
Things had to keep moving, and it was for this reason Akali fed and watered the chickens. The activity was soothing. In their wire mesh cages and wooden coops, these animals were indifferent to the loss of their gods. They had clucked, were clucking, and would continue to cluck. Akali had to take a lesson from them.
The sheep were fenced in a field with a creek running through, so she did not bother with them.
Standing in the middle of the village, she tried to think of what needed to be done. Burying the dead would take weeks, and she did not have the time. Was there a sort of checklist for the aftermath of such a disaster? She hoped not. She also wished Shen were here, to offer her some advice. He could have made sense of the situation.
It could have been a message of some sort. Actually, even if it wasn't meant to be, it would serve as a message to the Duchess and her political opponents. If this massacre didn't spurn the Ionians into unity and action, nothing would.
A crash of metal drew her attention. Akali stared at a nearby house, where it sounded like a pot had fallen onto the kitchen floor.
There was no reason for the sound – there was no wind, no fire, and no people. Following marks in the dirt, where a body had been dragged, she approached the house. It was no different from the others. The possibility of a trap didn't even enter her mind. She pulled the rickety door open.
It was a small house. Immediately, she saw the source of the sound. A metal pot lay on the floor next to an open cupboard.
A shadow above her, the shifting of cloth. Akali moved in, and a small weight dropped from the roof.
It landed in the doorway, where she had been not a second ago.
A cooking knife was embedded into the wooden floor, held by small, faltering hands.
The girl struggled for a good two seconds before prying the knife out of the floor and nearly falling backwards. Once she had regained her balance, she charged.
Akali brought her foot up and out, and the girl ran into it. She dropped the knife, forcing Akali to kick it away before she fell on it.
"Die, nefarious Noxian!" the girl shouted, scampering on her hands and knees for the knife.
Akali stepped forward, grabbing the girl's arm. "Look at me."
The girl struggled a moment, greatly outclassed in size, before obeying. Eyes widened. "Not Noxian," she said.
Akali nodded. "What's your name?"
With a confident humph, the girl put her arms on her sides and puffed her chest out. "None."
'None' was not a cultural Ionian name, nor any name she had ever heard of.
The girl knew the word 'nefarious', but Akali had a feeling it was several years beyond her comprehension. Unfortunately, Akali was a terrible judge of age, and so she could only estimate that the girl was between five and twelve years of age. Her uncanny climbing abilities and vicious attack indicated she was older, but her vocabulary didn't seem well developed. Her hair, a dark brown, had been cut short – a common feature of children who grew up on the farm. She was skinny, but not malnourished, and her skin was well tanned from what was probably long hours playing and working in the fields around the village.
Either she was an emotionless girl, or she hadn't yet looked outside and was completely unaware that her entire family and all her friends had been slaughtered.
"You don't have a name?" Akali asked, stalling.
"Name."
In either case, there was a survivor. The Noxians had made a mistake, and though Akali doubted it was from carelessness, she couldn't quite say what had caused them to overlook the child.
What was she to do, now? It seemed like a bad idea to let None see the village outside. Akali had a mission and couldn't let a child delay her. The obvious choice was to bring None to a nearby village, and let them sort it out. She wasn't the first war orphan, and certainly wouldn't be the last.
It was with this thought that Akali scavenged the house. What did children need? A blanket, food, water. In the child's room, a stuffed poro – more grey than white from the passage of time – caught her attention. She grabbed it, and added it to the pile of supplies.
The father had likely been a miner. Old pickaxes and chisels were hung on the wall, and large ores were on the mantle above the fireplace, treated as though they were trophies or family heirlooms. It was essentially looting the house, but Akali couldn't bring herself to feel guilty as she grabbed a large, untreated, green gemstone placed on the centerpiece. If not her, someone else would come along and loot the place.
Under the bed of the master bedroom, she found another gemstone. It was more polished. Large, brown, shiny, and round. Akali doubted it was from an Ionian mine. Noxus had some larger gems in their mountains. As she picked it up, she heard a humming sound, as though a powerful force was contained within. More than meets the eye, Akali wondered? Not many families had magical heirlooms like this one.
While she was looting, None followed her throughout the house, watching her. Oddly enough, she voiced no complaints as Akali took what she wanted. Maybe she had some sort of understanding of the situation.
"We're leaving," Akali announced.
"No."
"Here." Akali handed over a wicker basket containing the loot. "Hold this."
The girl instinctively took it, struggling with the size and weight. Her hands now occupied, Akali wasted no time. Blindfolding a child before they could realize what was happening wasn't what Akali had trained her life in martial arts for, but it helped the process up greatly.
"I'm kidnapping you," Akali said as None dropped the basket and started struggling against the blindfold.
The kicking and screaming only stopped a few kilometers outside of the village.
Because Akali couldn't accept 'None' as a name, None became Nona, and Nona was a child who didn't speak much.
Travelling with a child was slower than Akali had prepared herself for, and her patience was wearing thin. They were travelling the road northward, and though she had a general idea of where the nearest village was, she kept a close eye on signs. Nona struggled to keep up, jumping over puddles on the road and climbing over fallen trees, but she didn't complain.
Akali quickly learned that her silence was meant to build complacency, and that Nona was a clever devil. It took her thirty seconds to realize she couldn't hear Nona's panting behind her, and Nona was already a hundred meters down the road, running back to her village. Akali caught up in seconds, scooping the kicking and screaming girl up in her arms.
Not once did Nona ask where her parents were or demand to be returned home, though that might have been attributed to her vocabulary, which she had yet to prove was greater than twenty words.
Nona, who refused to either condemn or approve of her new name, only tried to kill Akali once, during their first night. Death by head-to-rock collision was not in Akali's interest, so she chased Nona until the girl climbed a tree and refused to come down. She came down the next morning with a little coxing from her stuffed poro and canned soup cooked over a fire. Afterwards, once Nona realized who the fire-starter and food-cooker was, the attempts were half hearted – only wanting Akali to chase her up a tree, because that was Nona's notion of play.
Akali's memory served her correctly, and they arrived in the nearest village within three days. Heiwa village wasn't connected to the main road, so the Noxians hadn't passed through. It was untouched. A plain tucked away in the corner of a wide stretching forest, it was a pristine hideaway.
With Nona wrapped around her neck and basket in hand, Akali was greeted by the village elder.
She delivered the news of the nearby village, and was surprised by how willingly they accepted the child. The accompanying gemstone might have helped the process, however.
"And her name?"
"Nona," Akali said, feeling a little discomfort at offering the name she'd chosen.
There was also the discomfort of suddenly losing the child, who had almost grown on her in the past few days.
Done with the distraction, Akali restocked on supplies and left the village. It was time to refocus on the army marching towards the capital. A repeat of the Battle of the Placidium wasn't an impossibility. It was as though everyone had forgotten how it had played out the first time. Nobody won in battles like that.
The noise was obvious, like a bumbling boar rushing through the woods. There was enough time to climb a nearby tree and wait a full minute before the scene began to develop beneath her. Akali watched as a woman stumbled out of the bushes and leaned against a tree. She looked thoroughly exhausted, as though it had been days since she'd slept and eaten. Her eyes were wild as they looked around, and Akali realized her life was in danger.
Somehow, in a remote part of the forest, Akali had came upon someone's last stand.
A moment later, new sounds were added to the forest's ambiance. These were more subtle, but unmistakably there. More people, these ones quieter. They were moving in synchrony, surrounding the woman who could barely stay on two feet. She pulled out a weapon – a crossbow – and it was then that it struck Akali as odd.
The woman was Demacian, not Ionian, yet she was alone and being hunted by Noxians in Ionia. But that wasn't the only thing wrong about the scene. Akali couldn't help but think maybe the impending fight wouldn't be so one-sided. Even as she had this thought, the fight was signalled by a branch snapping and all the men charging forward. They emerged from the trees in number.
The first few were struck down by deadly accuracy from the crossbow. Just like at the Battle of the Placidium, the rest didn't flinch. They were doped. The woman dropped her ranged weapon and pulled out a sword. For a few minutes, the forest was filled with reckless screams and swords clashing, and though the woman's attacks weren't as skilled as Akali had expected, they were enough to take on the Noxians.
The last man dropped to the floor, and almost without pause, the woman began to loot the corpses. What kind of super-soldier looted Noxians corpses for Ionian currency? Akali wondered as she watched the woman pocket a few coins.
Ah.
The battle wasn't over. There was one soldier remaining. He hadn't charged with the rest.
From Akali's viewpoint, she could see as he notched his arrow and drew the string back, taking aim. Even though the Demacian began to react to the sound, it wasn't quick enough – it struck her in the leg. No matter how much it must have hurt, it didn't delay the counterattack. Without even turning to look, the woman threw a dagger and it struck the man's throat. He collapsed silently, pulling the dagger out, but it was much too late. All he could do was try to staunch the bleeding with his hands, and in silence he slowly died.
The woman was too busy to notice that. She had her own troubles – the arrow had been poisoned.
Without an antidote, however, there was nothing she could do. In minutes, she was unconscious.
Akali dropped from the tree and cautiously approached the woman.
Purple hair was uncommon. And there was the uncanny ability with ranged weapons and a sense of inexperience with the sword. She was alone, but hadn't used any magic to help herself. It reeked of Unbalance – perhaps the only thing Akali could smell, now – and she knew she was letting herself get delayed again. Still, she watched the unconscious woman for a moment, trying to come up with an answer to a question she didn't know.
Her orders, in Shen's own words, were to avoid conflict with the Noxians, and report on their movement. The Demacian had already killed all the Noxians, so there was no reason Akali couldn't interfere now. Was this what Balance wanted? A solution, to this oddity? If she let herself believe it had led her here, and witnessing the event hadn't been a coincidence...
Astonishingly, the woman woke again, and began to move. She didn't make an effort to stand, but she began dragging herself across the ground, unaware of Akali standing next to her. It was infuriatingly slow progress, and for the next half hour, Akali followed. They moved not fifty meters, but by then the sound of a creek was audible. A far cry from her destination, the woman fell unconscious again.
Again, it all felt so strange. A knot grew in her stomach, and she watched silently, knowing with every passing moment the woman was coming closer to death. Though she didn't understand it, she began to understand that in the interest of Balance, the Demacian couldn't die here.
It would be quick. Bring her south, to Heiwa village, and leave her there. They would heal her, or perhaps not, and then fate would handle the rest. A quick, gentle tip of the scales was all that was needed.
Carrying the Demacian was a difficult task – she was taller than Akali and heavier too. Fortunately, the trip didn't take as long as she had expected. She found Heiwa village's herbalist picking plants along the riverside, humming to herself. Akali unceremoniously dropped the dying girl, snapped a nearby branch, and disappeared into the shadows to watch the proceedings.