True Balance
"Shh... You'll wake her up!"
"Relax, Lux, I'm just changing the dressings on her head... "
"But -"
"Lux, I learned basic field training in Noxus, alright? Please..."
"Ughh, can you at least let me help?"
"Alright, alright, just... try not to move her around, alright? I need to go get a fresh roll of bandages... I don't know how she nearly cracked her skull open and dislocated her shoulder... It's like she got hit by a-"
"Eep!"
-thump-
Abruptly, Riven's voice cut out and she snapped her head around to find Lux pinned down to the bed with a semi-conscious Irelia towering above the shocked mage.
"Whoa! WHOA! Easy Irelia... Easy..." Riven immediately called out, rushing back to the bedside and restraining the warrior from making any rash moves.
Blankly, the warrior resisted Riven's initial attempts to restrain her until her eyes finally settled on the mage peering straight back up at her. Finally, Irelia paused and blinked. Opening her eyes, she stared numbly at the mage who remained pinned down on the bed beneath the weight of her body.
"L... Lux?" Irelia questioned somewhat hesitantly.
Before the light mage got a chance to reply, Irelia brought a hand up to the side of her head and let out a painful groan as a splitting pain cut through her skull.
"Relax, Irelia... Take it easy... Please..." Riven spoke up almost beseechingly, her restraining hands turning into supportive ones to prevent the warrior from collapsing.
Gently lifting Irelia's body, Riven allowed Lux to scramble free of the warrior's pinning weight. The moment the mage was free, however, she immediately caught both Irelia and Riven in a huge hug.
"You're okay!" Lux declared happily.
"O...Okay..." Irelia repeated dazedly.
"She needs her rest, Lux, please let go..." Riven chided mildly.
"Aww, but Riven..." Lux protested, but the exile silenced her with a stern glance. Finally, the mage frowned slightly and released both of her friends. Riven promptly set the Ionian warrior back down onto the bed in a comfortable resting position.
"Irelia... What-mmphh!"
"Rest, Irelia... Please rest..." Riven interrupted while clamping a hand over Lux's mouth.
"Riven, what was that-"
"Where am I..." Irelia interrupted the mage with a whisper.
"This is the old headquarters of the Kinkou Order!" Lux immediately answered before anyone could stop her, "It's creepy isn't it? It's so dark... It needs more lights!"
"Old Kinkou..." Irelia repeated as her eyes fluttered to a close. It took the warrior a few seconds to put all the pieces together.
"OLD KINKOU!" Irelia finally exploded, rocketing into a sitting position on the bed. Instantly, pain shot through her skull once again as her abrupt movements agitated her wounds. The warrior collapsed back into the cushioning of the bed as she brought both of her arms up to smother her head in attempt to stop the throbbing pain.
Riven and Lux watched the warrior in silence as Irelia slowly dragged her hands down across her face. When her hands finally fell to the bed, the warrior returned her stare to her two friends.
"What... How did you guys find me..." Irelia whispered, using as few muscles in her body as possible.
"Well actually we-" Lux started, but Riven cut her off with a hand.
"That's enough for today. We need to let her rest." Riven said firmly.
"But she's asking us a question! We can't just ignore her!" Lux protested with a pouting frown on her face.
"Rest first. Questions late- Urmph!"
The rest of Riven's words were cut off as a dark figure roughly shoved past her and advanced straight towards the resting warrior.
"Hey! You can't just... She needs her rest! What do you think you're-"
"SILENCE!" Zed snapped in a dangerously low, seething voice.
"Do not forget who it was that brought you here, Noxian." He finished with a warning glare.
Anger flared in the depths of Riven's haunted eyes, but a single hand from Lux brought the exile back to her senses. At last, the former Noxian turned away, forcing her sense of duty to protect her friend back down her throat.
For a few moments, Zed stood in silence; towering above Irelia as an indomitable shadow. When he finally spoke, his voice dripped with contempt.
"Do you know why you are here, pig?" Zed demanded.
Irelia mutely gazed into the ninja's hellish red eyes for a few moments before turning away and muttering a reply.
"Never took you as one to ask senseless questions." the warrior murmured more to herself than to Zed.
In an instant, whatever vestiges of hospitality Zed had vanished. In a blur of movement, blades shot out of the wrist of Zed's armored gauntlet. As the blades shot forth, he swung his fist downward; sending the protruding razors deep into the cushioning of the bed. Even through the cushioning, the force of the impact was audible.
Amidst the exchange, Riven's hand instinctively moved to the hilt of her enormous blade. Yet, when her hand arrived there, she was yet again stopped in place by Lux's hand. Glancing back, Riven shot the mage a look of anger. When the mage met her gaze, however, Riven instantly froze. Even without saying anything, the lady of luminosity expressed her demand for Riven to stay put. It was rare seeing the joyful facade of happiness absent on the mage's face, but when it did happen, it always meant that the mage was no longer joking around. At last, Riven battered down her sense of protection once more; leaving the two Ionians locked in their verbal duel.
"Do you realize what you have done?" Zed snarled with subdued fury.
A small line appeared on Irelia's neck where Zed's blades had grazed her skin. Tiny beads of blood gathered along the thin line as Irelia shifted her body a safer distance away from the deadly razors. Slightly shaken by the ninja's outburst, Irelia's voice quavered slightly when she finally spoke.
"I haven't done anything... Not yet..." Irelia managed to say in an unconvincing tone.
Zed's hellish red eyes narrowed into mere slits beneath his mask.
"You have destroyed the harmony that we have created." Zed spat viciously.
"You're one to talk about balance." Irelia countered darkly.
If Zed's expression could have gotten any darker, it undoubtedly would have. As that wasn't an option, the master of shadows instead forcibly grabbed Irelia by the scruff of her shirt. Lifting the warrior's relatively limp body into the air, Zed snarled into her face.
"What do you know about symmetry!?" Zed demanded, "The balance you preach and follow so blindly is but a lie! A fallacy! It is but one side among thousands in the equation!"
"Thousands of sides?!" Irelia repeated incredulously, "There are not thousands of sides! There is only good and evil defined at a personal level!"
Zed practically threw the warrior across the room in his anger.
"Two sides?!" The ninja demanded lividly, "You think there are two sides?! Ignorant fool! Your sight is narrow! Shallow to a degree that is narrower than the width of your skin!"
"It is YOU that is blind!" Irelia almost screamed back with defiant adherence to her beliefs, "You are the one that follows a path that is shrouded in darkness with no light in sight! You are the one that is unbalanced!"
Zed exploded in a cloud of darkness before reappearing directly in front of Irelia. The ninja's hands had curled into fists that were held with such force that the tips of his fingers dug deep into the leather of his palms. Towering above the warrior, Zed glowered as he spoke.
"Child." Zed spat, "You have followed your country's beliefs for so long that you have blinded yourself to the truth. You have seen harmony only on a microscopic level. Have you not thought once to take a step back and see the world as a whole!?"
The master of the shadows paused for a few seconds to catch his breath before continuing.
"If you are so balanced. If your country is so shrouded in light. What is it that weighs the other side?! You, of all people, are famous for saying 'balance in all things', yet you remain ignorant to the true meaning of your own words." Zed finally finished in a cold, icy tone.
Irelia's mouth opened and closed wordlessly as Zed's true intent bore down upon her. Before she could even regain her voice, Zed struck her with yet another verbal hammer.
"So long as your country exists... So long as your beliefs carry you to your 'justice'... There must be and there always will be a shadow that exists behind it. I am that shadow! The Dark Sovereign is that shadow!"
Another pause. This time, Irelia couldn't even find the will to fight back. All the warrior could do was stare at her feet in shock as the foundations of her beliefs were rocked to their very core. If her beliefs were a concrete pillar, Zeds words were the sledge hammers that shattered it. While her thoughts were stunned, her subconscious was not. And all her subconscious did was repeat a phrase that she had heard from Syndra's mouth long before they entered their relationship.
"You. Know. Nothing... Nothing about the burdens I bear. Nothing about the very lies you have convinced yourself to be true. Nothing about the hypocrisy of your very existence!"
It was then that the warrior realized exactly how far from the path she had strayed. All along, she had been fighting for the wrong thing; protecting an ideal that she only understood half of. At last, the unbreakable will that Irelia was famous for, snapped. And it didn't just snap, it shattered into a thousand irreparable fragments. It was as if everything the warrior had held close to her heart had come crumbling down in a spectacular avalanche of destruction.
"NO..." Irelia finally choked out in a anguished wail that quickly turned into a sob, "No... no no... no..."
For a few moments, Irelia remained on the floor; her entire form quaking beneath the weight of her emotions.
"Syndra..." Irelia finally whispered through labored breaths of air, "Syndra... What have I done... Where are you..."
At last, Zed had seen enough. Stooping down, the master of shadows roughly grabbed the scruff of Irelia's shirt and began dragging the warrior across the floor. Irelia was so distraught that she didn't even try to resist the ninja's efforts. It wasn't until the ninja tossed her in a sealed room with no lights and locked her in that she even realized that she was alone.
For a few moments, Irelia remained curled up on the floor, her knees hugged to her chest and tears streaming out of her eyes. And yet, even while she cried, a piece of her heart echoed with the name of the one thing she could still cling to.
Syndra.
Raising her hands to her face, Irelia smeared her tears out of her eyes and forced herself back to her feet. Her breathing still ragged and uneven, the warrior raised a fist and pounded the locked door that held her in the pitch black room.
"Let me out..." The warrior whispered at first, punching the door lightly and only succeeding in hurting herself. However, the blow was not entirely wasteful. Instead, the pain she felt served to quicken her return to her senses. It also hastened her development of one other emotion. Anger. As if Zed knew what the warrior was feeling, he spoke through the shadows of the pitch black room.
"Snivel. Coward" Zed goaded, "Your weakness will protect nothing."
"LET ME OUT!" Irelia finally exploded, her temper skyrocketing at Zed's words. "LET ME OUT OF HERE, I HAVE TO FIND HER... I HAVE TO SAVE HER!"
"You can protect nothing." Zed replied, his voice echoing maddeningly throughout the room.
"I SAID LET ME OUT!" Irelia screamed lividly, "TELL ME WHERE SHE IS. TELL ME WHERE SHE IS OR I SWEAR I'LL KILL YOU!"
Rather than replying with words, Zed answered by manipulating the shadows within the room. Slowly, the room's darkness faded until Irelia could make out two doors mounted on the wall opposite of her. The door that she thought she was pounding on had vanished. Temporarily distracted, the warrior glanced around her. She immediately noticed two pictures on the doors. One door had two green dragons engrained in it, clearly a symbol of Ionia. The other had three purple spheres engrained in it, clearly a symbol of the sovereign. For a few moments, Irelia glanced at both doors.
Then her face contorted with fury.
"QUIT FUCKING WITH ME!" Irelia screamed and summoned four of her blades. Without even a second of hesitation, the warrior dashed straight towards the wall between the doors and sent all of her blades into and through the surface. Even before the debris had settled, Irelia catapulted herself through the gaping hole. Without slowing her momentum, the warrior caught and tackled the one man on the other side down to the floor. Around her, a fresh set of four blades phased into existence; their tips aimed with lethal intent at Zed's skull.
"If the next words out of your mouth aren't where Syndra is..." Irelia growled, "Your students are going to have to find a new master."
Beneath the warrior, Zed stared balefully up into Irelia's sapphire eyes. At last, he looked away. His eyes showing the barest hints of mirth.
"Your balance is-"
Before Zed could even finish, Irelia swung forth with her blades. Her transcendent weapons, however, only found the cold concrete to imbed themselves in. She blinked, and found only a black mirror of the ninja staring back up at her.
"Your balance is but a shroud which covers the true instincts you hold." Zed finished in a low voice. The master of shadows didn't allow his surprise to show in his voice as he watched Irelia smolder in the flames of her own conviction.
"You are not one of them." Zed continued, his voice returning to ice, "You... are one of us. You are a fighter at heart. You live to see the battlefield. You live to hear the sound of steel."
This time, Irelia didn't even waste her words refuting Zed's claims. Instead, she stood in unyielding silence. Without speaking a word, she demanded an answer to the question she had been asking the ninja all along.
Folding his arms, Zed leaned back slightly so he could look down upon the warrior. Not even for a second did her gaze waver. At last, the master of shadows smirked beneath his mask and started forward. It wasn't until he was beside the warrior that he paused. With no words to say, the ninja merely dipped a hand into a pocket and pulled forth a small slip of parchment. Refusing to meet the warrior's eyes once more, Zed merely shoved the paper into the palm of Irelia's hands before curling her fingers around the slip. With that, the ninja continued moving forward without a word until his footsteps could no longer be heard.
Irelia stood still for a few moments; the pounding pain in her skull and shoulder had returned, but it all seemed so distant compared to the emotions she felt in holding the small map in her hands. Unfolding the small paper, Irelia's eyes feasted upon the map. The images on the sheet moved about as if they were sentient; animated by the powers of the shadows. However, only one dot caught the warriors eye. Even without understanding the intricacies of the map, Irelia knew that the small red dot was none other than her marker for Syndra. Wordlessly, the warrior folded the map and tucked it back into her sleeve. Irelia didn't even turn back to give her farewell or thanks to her friends. None the less, as the warrior strode out into the courtyard of the old Kinkou Temple, three pairs of eyes watched her figure disappear.
"If you knew all along where she was, why didn't you just save her." Riven muttered more to herself than to Zed.
The master of shadows didn't even entertain the exile with a reply.
"That's simple. It wouldn't mean anything if he was the one to help her." Lux answered readily. The mage's voice was still in its serious tone; lacking the ditzy cheer that she was famous for.
Riven rolled her eyes with annoyance before speaking once more.
"And why are we letting her leave in her condition..." Riven pressed on.
"Because nothing can stop her the way she is now." Lux answered again.
"We should go with-"
"We'll just get in her way in her current state." Lux interrupted.
"Then why did he even bother calling us here if not to help her?" Riven demanded.
"We did help her." Lux answered in the same voice, "He probably just wanted her to wake up to familiar faces so she wouldn't freak."
"I still think there were better ways to help her than how you did it." Riven shot at Zed with a derisive snort.
"That's probably true." Lux piped up again, "But his way was probably the fastest, and considering how Irelia is a little short on time..."
Riven rolled her eyes again and turned away, strolling back into the depths of the temple. When the exile disappeared around the corner, Lux finally spoke up in her cheery voice once more.
"Y'know what Zed, you're really not that bad." Lux declared happily.
Zed visibly twitched at Lux's words.
"At first, I thought you just wanted to protect your ally... But the truth is, you actually do care about her." Lux said with a huge smile, "I guess she is your only friend... Syndra..."
"I am only looking out for my personal benefits." Zed finally answered through gritted teeth.
"You're also a really bad liar." Lux continued as if Zed hadn't said anything.
Zed twitched again and shut his eyes. The master of shadows was accustomed to being unpredictable and unknown. Lux read him and his intentions as easily as reading an open book.
"Think what you will." Zed finally spat, unwilling to admit that the mage was actually right.
With that, the ninja turned and followed the exile down the hallway back to the temple. Before he was out of earshot, however, Lux called out one last time.
"Zed?" Lux asked, "What happened when you put Syndra through that test? The goal is to make the path between the two doors right? Did she pass it?"
The ninja paused for a few seconds before turning around and walking back to Lux's side.
"That depends on your definition of pass and on your definition of finding the path between the doors." Zed answered, taking a pointed nod at a huge crater in the ground off to the side of the temple.
Lux smiled at the hole in the ground before turning around and skipping down the hallway. Half way down, her voice echoed back up to Zed.
"She passed."
Author's Notes:
What is this? Another chapter so early? Yes, because spring break is a wonderful thing. This A/N is going to be a little bit longer than usual because this chapter actually touches on many things that I have been looking forward to for a very long time as well as holding many of the ideas that I have in regards to Ionia. I'll start off with the characters I used in this chapter:
Riven: I have a really hard time characterizing her. She is a bag of so many mixed emotions that portraying her accurately just doesn't come naturally to me.
Lux: Traditionally, Lux is often depicted as a ditz. In all honesty, her cheery voice makes it difficult to see her in other ways. I however, believe that that attitude is actually just a mask. I think the real Lux underneath that is a horribly scarred girl that has seen far too much in war at far too young an age. I also feel like she is a master spy with all of her experience in espionage. Hence why she is able to see Zed's intentions so easily while Riven only scratches the surface.
Zed: Here is probably where I am the most worried about having a character that is OOC. My view of Zed is a little bit twisted in that I don't actually think that he is unbalanced. I think that he is compensating for the rest of the balanced Ionian society by being unbalanced himself. I see Zed not as some power hungry ninja, but as someone who embraced a darker path that leads to the same destination as the lighter one.
Alright, now for something that I have been touching the surface of throughout the entire story, Ionia. This chapter in particular was probably my biggest attempt to portray my own views of Ionia. I see Ionia as an ideal, kind of like communism; great on paper, flawed in practice. And I see the people of Ionia as very narrow minded. Pretty much everything I think is spoken by Zed (Harmony on a microscopic level versus a macroscopic level). I think it's pretty ignorant of Ionians to only see and accept one side of the equation.
Okay, that's enough of my rambling about my thoughts on Ionia as a whole. Realistically, there are a lot more connections that I tried to make in regards to making things circular, but I'll leave that stuff for you to find should you be interested in it.
As always, thank you all for reading and thank you so much for your continued support. I hope to see you all in the chapters to come.
Chapter References:
-The words that Irelia hears in her head are spoken in chapter 5
-For the previous chapter, Akano is the arch mage mentioned in chapter 15