Chapter 24: Progress indeed.
The convoy had just entered Piltover territory.
Within a few moments, mechanized armor and infantry immediately surrounded the convoy at the registered checkpoint.
"Have your papers and trade warrants ready." A heavy robotized voice bellowed.
So this was what happened when two countries were in paralysis from the thought of insurgency.
Guards and their hounds scoured the cargo for undeclared cargo, their weapons armed and ready for any being even thinking of making a run for it.
Xerath and Ahri both had Institute authority, so they were completely safe.
Others were less so.
"WHAT THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU ARE DOING!" One merchant cried out.
"This is an undeclared chemical. All undeclared chemicals will be confiscated and tested under the Piltover Peace Act Section 098. If you seek to have this chemical returned, acquire an appropriate form from the Piltover Customs Office and return it within the next week." The Piltover guard recited the lines his superiors had told him.
"IT'S A DAMN SIX PACK OF DEMACIAN ALE!"
"Then get an undeclared food form instead, sonny. Or do you have a problem with that?"
"I DO! YOU ARE ENCROACHING ON MY RIGHTS AS A MERCHANT TO HAVE WHATEVER FOOD I BOUGHT WITH MY OWN. DAMN. MONEY!"
"Well now," the guard chuckled, a glint of satisfaction in his eye. "I think my bosses would like to have a word with you."
A quick crack of electricity made the man keel over.
Coughing up saliva, the man tried to recover.
"Meet one of my bosses, Mr Taser. He really does not like it when his employees get talked down like that. Do you really want to do that again?"
"N-No."
"Good," the guard said. "TAKE ALL OF HIS CARGO! Never know what else might be in there."
"WHAT! YOU CAN'T DO THAT! IT WAS ALL A-" The merchant roared before he was met once again with the Taser.
"Listen here, you ungrateful sh*t! I'm stuck here on guard duty while my cousin is out in the town getting wh*res and high on methyl. You think I give a f**k about you and your 'merchant rights'? Bunch'o bullsh*t. You're in Piltover now, boy, the greatest nation on Runeterra that gives no sh*ts about your personal privacy. Even your hotel bathroom is wired to pre-emptively stop you from even talking bad about us. It really is a fun existence, isn't it?"
With that, the guard walked off, leaving his comrades to remove every last crate from the merchant's wagon. Unexpectedly, the guard stopped and walked back to the wagon.
Moving his hand around the six-pack, the guard's next words to the spluttering man unleashed something.
"I'm going to be taking these too, as part of a personal fine if you will."
Drawing his short sword, the merchant attempted to swing at the guard in blind anger.
The steel cut through the man's armored vest, displaying viscous blood as it wracked flesh.
A quick and complex whir of gears sounded out across the station as one of the Piltoverian battle suits aimed its imposing rifle at the man, swiftly followed by the deafening boom of the gun.
The merchant upper torso was bathed in a flash of light, reducing him to ash where he stood.
The guard was blasted backwards, his mostly intact armor cushioning most of the blast.
He came to, coughing up blood but mostly unharmed. The short sword had managed to slice through a significant portion of his flesh, but nothing a good doctor could eventually patch up.
Xerath had watched Ahri quickly avert her eyes and cover her ears as the battle suit's gun had unleashed fire.
She often got scared at the chorus of explosions.
Many Ionians, including even Jun, had such fears.
Another aftermath of the Ionian Invasion, which introduced so many otherwise peaceful lives with the intense cacophonous din of Noxian artillery, leaving so much death and destruction in their wake that a new condition known as Noxian Shell Paranoia was christened in response to it.
There were cases of even a glimpse of battlefields miles away 'gifting' a quarter of a village with this new psychological condition.
It was suggested that due to the Ionia's strong Wisp concentration, the destruction that these spirits had witnessed manifested in the dreams and thoughts of magically responsive Ionians, turning some into nervous wrecks.
"D-Don't worry, I'll be fine. Just give me a minute." Ahri stammered before quickly returning to her previous composure.
Xerath enjoyed her more when she was full of sharp wit and humor. It suited her well for her animal form. She could well have been the daughter of a fox professor at Foxshire University who had done a major on the great cunning of foxes. Her illustrious beauty was also undeniable, but there were other beauties such as Sarah Fortune who did nothing but yap at common ordeals and wage mindless conflict, so Xerath ignored ideas of beauty for the most part.
The convoy moved on, ignoring their loss of the merchant.
To the west, lay the great city of Piltover.
Immense glistening skyscrapers of glass and shining steel sat like blades against the fast approaching dusk. Even still, a thousand lights glittered in their darkness, a city always progressing, not once stopping for anything.
No time to focus on the past, only to produce new and exciting inventions and innovations to completely work around life's menial tasks. If you had an idea and it managed to work, then you would actually have a place among the Piltoverian elite.
For most of the population though, that was improbable.
The Piltoverian elite were well-trained in producing and protecting their inventions, often going so far as to deny younger generations the fundamental ideas of even coining a new term to use for their inventions, starving the young of innovation.
At least that was what Heimerdinger had told him over some tea, immediately going off on a tangent on preserving the purity of tea after being questioned by one of his students why he had not put milk in with it.
Most Piltoverians loved a 'cupa' or a 'mug', especially Heimerdinger. At the time, it was almost comical how the students had not heard of tea without milk, as if it was some alien delicacy from the Shadow Isles. The idea came naturally to Heimerdinger since he disliked the taste of milk, but he had to reply with a more intellectual answer than that.
"You see, students," Heimerdinger had begun in his shrill voice, "You need two-, no wait, THREE ingredients to make tea. First is water, as without water what will you use as the solvent? The second is tea leaves, quite obviously. And the third is…" Heimerdinger let the students think for a second on what he was about to say.
Whispers of "Milk, it just has to be milk" and "It's obviously milk" had resounded off Heimerdinger's marble dining room.
"Short-chain alkanes!" Heimerdinger declared triumphantly.
Absolute silence.
All of the students' faces remained puzzled at their teacher's failure of a joke.
"Heimerdinger," Xerath interrupted, wanting to add to the conversation, "You forgot about the container."
"Oh… fie. Forgive me, seems I forgot about that part as well."
Suddenly one of the students raised their hand.
"Professor Heimerdinger?"
"What is it, Matthew?"
"Would the corpses of our enemies be a suitable replacement for a fuel source?"
Every student in the room suddenly got the joke, followed by a morbid disgust at this new turn of events.
"Well, you can indeed, if you want to make Morally Ambiguous Tea or, as I might call it, MAT! HEHEHEHE!"
Even Xerath had laughed at that poor joke.
The convoy stopped at Glassgown, the midnight black making the cobbled streets and Gothic houses appear to be hiding strange horrors from the depths in every back alley.
Ahri and Xerath departed from the trade convoy quickly, the thought of a slightly safer haven being fairly appetizing at this point after eight days of riding on a rickety wagon.
The two entered a local tavern, a brief flash of official Institute badges quickly granted the two their respective rooms with no further questions.
Ahri quickly asked for some good alcohol, but after a futile attempt of some 'home-made' ale, she quickly ceased her attempts and fell back to tea.
The face the bartender made when asked for a kettle of tea, without milk, was absolutely priceless.
Ahri proceeded up the stairs into her small room, quite content with her beverage.
Xerath proceeded to his room as well, climbing the stairs using his heavy boots to seem as human as possible to these sheltered folk.
Hours passed him as he tried to sleep.
He had long lost any sense of rejuvenation from the activity, but any shred of sleep he acquired had the nostalgic bliss of his human years.
He had been trying to find some way to replicate the feelings he knew from his human life, which had been rewarded with artificial touch and taste, relying on momentum changes and chemical analysis to describe the sensations around him.
The bed, for example, felt like the internal filler was wool covered by cloth.
He could sense that without looking, a good thing to know when one loses all senses to the world.
He did not have much need for taste since it was often hard to remove the food that simply went down in between his joints of his crystal body without combusting them at several hundred degrees Kelvin, sending wafts of smoke up into the atmosphere.
That was not a good way to do it in public.
Suddenly combusting in the middle of a street was not very appealing to most people.
Ahri was turning often in her bed.
The wooden walls that separated them were not soundproof in the slightest.
His other neighbors had proven that with their own 'expedition' in their own bed.
"This is the room, roight?" A brief whisper came through from the hallway.
"No, it's this one on the right. The beaut' should be in this 'ere one."
"A'roight. Let's get this 'un ready for ya."
A click of the locks of Ahri's room.
Sh*t, what sort of backwards town was this?
Xerath sat up from his bed, readying himself for what he might need to do.
A muffled cry and resistance.
I need to stop this.
Now.
The intruders were desperately trying to inject something into her.
I can't conjure anything like this.
I need at least a few seconds of concentration.
Something these *ssholes are not giving me.
"You were roight when ya said she was a fox, mate. She has 'de f**kn' ears and 'dem tails."
A hand was clasped around her mouth and her two hands were bound together.
Sh*t sh*t sh*t sh*t.
Get off me, you pathetic wastes of existence.
The door burst open in a crackle of lightning.
Xerath comes to save the day.
Woot.
Xerath blasted the door down, hands outstretched with crackling crystalline palms ready to strike against any opponent.
"THE F**K IS THIS GUY?" One of the two cried out, readying his revolver at this arcane newcomer.
"YOU JUS' MADE A HUGE F**KIN' MISTAKE MATE!" The other declared, his concentration on pinning down Ahri waning for a second.
Ahri managed to move her mouth slightly, biting his hand like a rapid dog.
"YOU F**KE- AAAHHAAARAAAARGH!" The man reeled back from his grasp.
Ahri wriggled her way off the bed, motioning a spell.
Several crackles of fire ignited themselves into cerulean balls of fox-fire.
Motioning once again with her fingers, a fusillade of arcane fire wracked the man who had pinned her down.
The man fell back down onto the bed, howling in sheer agony as the spirit fire set the bed alight.
"YOU VIXEN B*TCH!" The one with the revolver cried, leveling the gun around to Ahri.
The man howled in pain as coruscating lightning flooded his body in azure sparks.
The man fell, dead, onto the hard wooden floor.
"AHRI! Are you alright?" Xerath shifted his focus onto the girl.
"Does it look like I'm alright? I had two men just try to kidnap me for god's sake!"
Ahri had small tears in her eyes.
"Thank the gods you heard that." She said quickly, panting from the adrenaline rush of the event.
"WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON HERE!" The voice of the bartender cried out.
"Two men just tried to capture my companion for some unknown act. I have contacts with the Sheriff of Piltover, get me a landline and I will have her send some people to investigate this. You are also clear to mail the Institute of War for property damage, which I will approve."
"That better damn well happen." The bartender angrily replied. "My gods! She's one of those magical creatures I thought only existed in fairy tales!" He gawked at the sight of Ahri's outstretched ears and her nine tails.
"Get 'er out of here now! I don't want anymore of that in my building!"
"YOU ONLY REALIZE THAT NOW WHEN I HAVE BEEN SHOWING MY FACE TO YOU THIS WHOLE TIME?" Xerath cried, annoyed at the man's ignorance.
"Isn't that just a mask or something?"
"No." Xerath removed his hood, revealing his crystalline body to the man.
"I am perhaps the most prominent mage this land has ever seen, I doubt someone like you could even comprehend what I went through!"
The bartender was absolutely mortified in horror. Never before had he seen such a sight as Xerath's crystal body that emanated magic like the very Sun itself.
"Get out. Get out. Get out! Get out! GET OUT NOW!"
"We leave on the morrow, with ten times the rent paid in addition to the Institute's compensation for the damage."
That had shut the bartender up for a moment.
TEN TIMES the rent pay.
A worthy deal indeed, along with the Institute's financial compensation.
"Fine. So where will the miss be staying now? Should I get another room?"
"She may sleep in mine if she so wishes."
This was probably a bad idea.
A very bad idea.
If this got out to the rest of the League, then who knows what would happen.
Apart from every damn Summoner wanting Xerath's magical energies strewed across Valoran in jealousy.
"I'm fine with that."
This was stupid.
This is so stupid of me.
May the fates have mercy on me for what I have done.
"It's better than increasing the rent pay by fifty percent."
"So you do know a bit of mathematics."
"I can do three divided by two, okay?"
"That would actually be one-point-five X plus compensation charge C."
"Fine, fine. I'll just shut up then."
Ahri had moved her salvageable baggage across to Xerath's room.
Ahri was struggling to sleep, tossing and turning by Xerath's side.
"You alright?"
"HOLY SH*T You're awake!" Ahri said slightly louder than she expected.
"I have very limited interests in sleep since my Ascension. I often just lay still and think, unlike you."
"Well it was just unexpected was all. Not a sound came from you."
"Would it be better if I snored?"
"Hell no."
…
"You are scared about something?"
"Wha-What do you mean?"
"I had a friend who would do a similar thing a long time ago. She was a good person. She… She did not deserve what I did to her." Xerath looked away, ashamed of what he had done to her and everyone he once knew.
"Was this person named Tabia?" Ahri questioned.
She had struck a vein.
"Where did you hear that name?"
"It was a while back. You know how I used to steal a man's essence before I joined the League? Well I still kind of do, somewhat. D-Don't worry, it's not bad or anything it's, it's just that it happens with my essence theft sometimes. I get small, and I mean incredibly small, bits of information or memories that tag along with the rejuvenating energy. That happened, and I got that name. Just that one name. With how many times you had said that and how comforted the words felt, I found it obvious that Tabia meant a lot to you."
"Yeah, she did, and still does, mean quite a lot to me. She was my friend and possibly my fiancée if I had ever gotten around to asking her. This was when I was still human as well, so I had not Ascended yet. She was one of a special kind of magician known as Insulators, a very rare breed of mage from which my other thousand fellow students at my old academy, only five were Insulators. I was an Inductor, another rare breed of magicians, so our classes were often similar because of how few Inductors and Insulators there were. We often saw each other and we got on well with each other. Then I came down with an terminal illness."
"So you tried to do this Ascension thing?"
"Yes, basically. I did this on my own so as to control my concentration. However, while I was Ascending, Tabia showed up. In a single brief lapse of my concentration, a blast of arcane energy from the sphere killed her outright. It was my fault that she lost her life. It-It was hard for me. But I could not mourn when my Ascension was at hand, lest I suffer the same fate. So I kept on going, until my body turned into this monster." Xerath motioned with his crystal hand.
"I'm-I'm sorry to hear. I-I didn't know it was that tragic. I'm sorry I asked."
"Do not be. She was dead before even your greatest of ancestors emerged from their mother's womb. She would have died of old age by now anyway, and so would I had I not Ascended. With how many good friends I have now, I might even consider my Ascension as being a success."
Ahri chuckled.
"So what were you scared about?" Xerath questioned.
"Fine. I guess I have to say something about it now." Ahri sighed. "It's a couple of things, small things, nothing that would affect most people. Y- You know I was saying about me getting small memories from people whenever I steal essence? Well, when I was going around Ionia shortly after my transformation into this human form, I stole a lot of essence from as many people as I could. At the time, I didn't care about the consequences. They were all just food for me, stupid people looking for a good time. But then I started to have dreams. All sorts of dreams, from happy and fun recollections of childhood friends to horrid nightmares of horrific battles. None of them were my own experiences, but that of the people I had killed by sucking every last drop of their very spirit. I started to realize that the people I had killed actually had lives, which I took away everything they knew and cast them into the next life. And then the dreams started to intensify, each one of them a horrible reminder of what I had done. I constantly tried to suppress them, but they only came back again and again. They just kept on coming and coming and I just couldn't handle it and- and- and I- I-"
Ahri was on the verge of tears at this point, her very voice trembling in fright of her reality.
"Was this one of the reasons why you sought out the League?"
Ahri nodded, still trembling by his side.
"You saw what happened when the bartender found out that I was a fox? That… That happened quite a bit in Ionia. I found it really hard to continue on with my life when I had both these dreams and people always being scared of my fox nature. There were people who liked me, but only for the size of my breasts and all those stupid things that men are always fixated on. Not one of them cared about who I really was, just the fact that I was beautiful. I checked that as well, some of the memories were of their last moments with me. They didn't think about me, just that I was a girl willing to do the things men liked. Some of them even liked the fox aspect of me because they found them 'cute'. At the end of it all, I was struggling with my mind and the hatred from everyone around me. I was thankful enough to be scouted out by the Institute before something crazy happened. From there, I became what I am today."
Ahri had calmed down now thankfully. That was a good sign.
"Are you taking what happened in your stride? It hasn't really effected you too much from what I can tell."
"I'm okay. I'm kind of used to people doing all sorts of weird shit to get close to me. Summoners included. It is still frightening to go through that sort of ordeal, you know?"
"Good to know then."
"You realize that this is the first time I've been in the same bed as a man and not seduce him?"
"Discount me as a man. I have gone beyond biological functions."
"And that means?"
"I have no thing. Therefore I do not need to care about wanting to seduce you." Xerath said frankly.
Ahri's face went completely blank.
"What." She managed to say.
"I no longer have my phallus so I am effectively a eunuch."
"Well this has just turned awkward as sh*t."
More hours passed till dawn and somehow the two managed to get some amount of sleep.
Having paid the additional rent that left a significant hole in their pockets and the signing of an official Institute compensation certificate, Ahri and Xerath moved to secure their place on the trade cog to Yujong.
The trade ship was of typical Ionian design, a long slung body and a heavy dorsal sail that blocked out the eastern sunrise. An old vessel from before even the foundation of the Institute. The captain, an aging, modest, man by the name of Fei Yun, disagreed that it was a weak vessel, only outclassed by Piltoverian advancements. And Piltover outclassed nearly everything, except when some random Zaunic scientist made a superior design in his backyard shed.
The oncoming cargo was comparatively low compared with the other Piltoverian vessels, each capable of holding an entire cities worth of goods. Undoubtedly homely though, the crew having a jovial and upkeep attitude as well as the small smuggler cabin being made for kings.
Their little smuggler cabin was stocked with homely goods, going so far as to install a small rack of shelves with all manner of novels. They had even bolted down miniature garden arrangement in the far corner. At least these people knew something of hospitality.
"Ahri?"
"Yeah?"
"You deserve to be in the League. I have seen so many magicians with stronger and more cataclysmic powers than you, but you have two things they do not. The power to think for the betterment of those around you and yourself, and the courage to carry that betterment forth. I believe you to be more than deserving of the right to be a champion of the League and that of a good person. Let none think otherwise."
"Well look at you with your big speeches. You kind of deserve to be one as well. You went through a lot of sh*t to get here and you are more than skilled enough to stop anyone in your way. I've seen the sort of things you can do on the Rift. They are pretty damn impressive in my opinion as well as many others I have talked to. Seriously, that amount of power is ridiculous."
"You know what happened during the Uebel incident? I annihilated a significant proportion of the Horde force in addition to taking out a Titan class Golem. This power I wield is truly immense."
"Just keep using it when you want to use it, okay? You are definitely strong, Xerath. I know people who have misused that sort of power. It was not pretty in the end."
"I know. And that is why we must not let Syndra misuse hers."
"With the conversations we have, we could just humor her into submission."
"Your ideas are boundless, fitting of a fox."
"And you compensate something with your immense power."
"Are you really going on that?"
"Eunuch getting away from that so easily."
Puns.
Fates damn me.