Chapter 2, here goes...
Zed turned came through the door leading onto Corridor 1 from the Champion Quarters B, right next to Ryze's library, and almost collided with Diana, who was standing behind the door, gazing at the banners hanging from the wall opposite the library. The midday sunlight lanced down through the large windows up in the hallway's rafters, bathing the corridor in a golden glow.
"There are so many of them... Bandle city, Freljord, all the clans, the Kinkou, the Solari... and only I... I have none." She kept muttering to herself, but she became quieter, so Zed only heard an incoherent stream of words.
Suddenly, she turned to Zed, her eyes and the symbol on her forhead shining with a silvery light, something he saw often enough on the fields, but never in the Institute itself.
'Whats happening now? She seems so distant'
"There is something coming, Master of Shadows, a change, a change that will resound throughout Valoran, throughout Runeterra itself even." The voice cam from her mouth, but it wasn't hers. The voice was slightly higher, and was soft as moonlight.
"What? Diana, wake up!"
She blinked, and the glow of her eyes and the symbol vanished, both going back to their normal shimmering state. She looked at Zed and spoke, now in her normal voice: "I do not know what was spoken to you, it was for you, so do not ask."
'Why would she not care if someone spoke through her? She hates being controled.'
Zed looked at the wall they were standing in front of. "What were you saying about the banners just a moment ago?"
"I said nothing."
Zed looked at her, but her face was an impassive mask, so Zed changed tack: "Why are you here? The champions are gathering in the courtyard, aren't they?"
"I am here to meet with Ryze. He wanted to talk to me."
'What? Now? Is he planning on telling everyone?!'
"How convinient, so am I."
They stood in silence, gazing at the banners and the other decorations along the corridor. When Zed's gaze fell on the banners of Noxus and Demacia, displayed side by side, proudly, almost like two brothers, who weren't as different as they thought. His thoughts then went to old friends lost, but not to death. His actions had cost him friends, friends who are now his enemies. They had tried to send him to his death, but he alone had learned to trick death, to melt away when he couldn't win.
"It's the 13. hour. Time to meet with the professor."
Zed glanced at Diana. "Lets see what he wants us for" he agreed with her.
"Aaaah, you two are here, good, good." Ryze was sitting in his library, his desk covered with books and scrolls, one large one unrolled in the middle of them all. Around the desk, and down an aisle through the entire room, shelves full of scroll holders, most filled with scrolls, reached up to the ceiling, each equipted with a ladder that could be rolled along the shelf to reach any scroll you wanted. Strangely enough, the only scroll Zed had expected to see, as always, was nowhere to be found. The scroll on Ryze's back was missing.
Zed decided to cut straight to the point. "So you have the scroll I wanted?"
"Hm? Yes yes." He didn't elaborate, but kept gazing at the scroll on the desk intently, so Zed tried again.
"Would you give them to me?"
"Ah, yes, there's a little problem with that... I can't give it to you, really, however I can tell you what you want to know."
"Professor," Diana spoke, who had, until then, just been standing by. "What did you want me here for?"
"I think Zed can answer that question. Zed, on what did you want scrolls again?"
"On Light and Shadow, but... oh."
'On LIGHT, he had the same idea I had.'
"Why," Diana looked sidelong at him. "Would the Master of Shadows want to learn something on light?"
"Because, of this." Ryze said, pointing at the large scroll, which was covered over and over with runes, with a free square in the center, on which were imprinted a few lines of writing lines of runes. As Ryze mumbled a few words, the writing glowed with blue magical energy, the same energy that sometimes lighted Ryze's rune tattoos in the fields.
"This, this is your scroll..." Diana was in awe. Noone had ever, ever seen Ryze's scroll open.
"Aye, but this is important, so focus!"
The runes had changed into modern writing, and it said:
The balance will come, brought by two brothers from beyond the Sea,
The one for justice, the other for light, the only whose eyes truely see
'Two brothers from beyond the sea... balance... light... shadows... Impossible...'
"No, it definately is not. This scroll does not lie." Zed hadn't noticed that he'd said the last word out loud, but Ryze's comment brought him back. "And although you cannot read the runes around this, I most definately can."
"Then you must be mistaken."
"Wait," again, Diana spoke up. "What two brothers? And what about balance to justice and light?"
Suddenly, out of the shadows a voice, completely level, spoke: "You should tell her Zed. We will need her."
Zed and Diana whirled around, to see Shen standing right behind them. Ryze just kept looking at the writing around the edges of the scroll. "Didn't I ask you to wait?"
"You did, but he needs to tell her." His gaze was unwavering behind his mask.
"It is no longer the truth Shen, and you know it!" Zed spat out.
"I know it already."
"WHAT?!" Both Zed and Shen were suprised, though nothing showed on their masks.
"You two were brothers who trained together. Sometimes under the moon. What the moon sees, it can tell me. Some weeks ago, when I was sitting outside, it told me of you two. It wanted me to be warned of something coming that would change Valoran forever."
"It speaks of you 2. You must find a way to bring balance, to light and shadow, to justice."
"Ha!" Zed started. "I have nothing to do with light!"
"And why did you want the scrolls?"
'Sometimes, Ryze is to smart for his own good.'
"I don't have a brother." Zed staed flatly, not looking at Shen in the process.
"Yes you do, whether you want to or not. I am trained to restore balance, and keep it, and I will do what I must to achieve that goal."
"Shen, you always were thickheaded." Shen let the comment pass. "Anyway," Zed turned to Ryze, "light and shadow are in balance already."
"No, actually they aren't. The Kinkou are having trouble in the north of Ionia. They are attemting to keep beings very much like Nocturne at bay. They have trouble finding their source, and have asked me to help find some way to imprison them that doesn't take a nexus fragment, or as much energy that we use to keep Nocturne in the summoning prisons, seeing as that would cost far too much energy to be effective. Why do you think I'm gone for so long looking at the prisons?"
"So thats why the Kinkou need the help of the Solari, sunlight to fight the dark."
"Yes, but only one can keep darkness at bay, and he must be a master, not only of Shadows, but also of Light. You must go to Ionia. Fast."
"The Ionians will attack me on sight. I will have to go to my temple, and there, shadow prevails."
"No, they won't. I'm coming with you." Zed stared at Shen, and started to disagree.
"Oh no, you thi..."
"And I'm coming too." Now Zed glared back and forth between Shen and Diana, hoping to stare them down, but Shen's mask showed nothing, and Diana stared right back. "You'll need someone who nows about light."
Finally Zed relented. "Alright, we start tomorrow at daybreak. Be ready."
Author's note: okay, chapter 2. again, read, write reviews, and enjoy
thanks to rogizo, he's writing stories himself and i asked him to take a look at mine here, and his are pretty cool, check them out.