An ant crawled across the vast expanse of dirt and grime while very confused about where it was. The ground beneath the ant had shifted from a fruitful soil to a disgusting and plagued ground, ridden with poison and pollutants. It had not traveled far to experience the full transition, which is most of why it was confused. The ant collided with a large brown boot; one so big, so worn, and so filthy that it could only belong to a great Demacian man who had traveled a grand distance. The size of the man was due to his rank in the Demacian military as the leader of the Dauntless Vanguards. But those days are past. He stood inside the borders of Zaun with two people - one less so of a person than the other - and stared up at the sky, hardly caring for the ant at his feet. One quick shift of his footing crushed the poor bug with the tattered cloth around his heel that was exposed through the worn out sole of his large brown boot. His shifting of his feet may have been an unfortunate end for the ant, but it was a new chance awakening on his end, for in shifting his feet, he was able to catch a falling piece of paper. There was a small torn string wound around the page where its courier, a large blue Demacian eagle, had cut it with his talons in order to allow the paper to fall to the ground.

Garen looked at the paper in his hand and studied it carefully. It was a map. He looked at his companions and then back at the map; he not quite sure how the directions to access a secret underground route, leading into Freljord, had been dropped from the same bird that had been sighted shortly prior to being ambushed twice, but he was not planning to argue.

The map held a rough sketch of the entirety of Zaun. They could easily distinguish they eastern portion of the city that resided just shy of the ocean and its beach. They found the entrance to the tunnel to be on the outskirts of the west side of the city and they walked that way in attempt to find it. It seemed to be marked as a manhole, so the party kept their eyes on the ground as they walked.

The city of Zaun was not much to look at. It was fairly quiet in terms of people, but very loud in terms of machines and noises. People were occasionally seen, but the most they accomplished was moving from the inside of one build to another in the shortest and most direct route possible. The buildings that lined the streets were far from pretty, and rarely did they even look to be well constructed or maintained. Some appeared to be vacant, but the sounds of machines could still be heard from the inside.

"Zac," Riven started, "you are easily the most colorful thing in this city. Its color pallet is brown and grey." The blob grinned and looked at his company.

"You two aren't helping that cause very much. You're dressed in brown. And grey. A bit depressing, really," he replied. Garen looked down at his clothing and realized that his statement was not far from the truth. He then noticed that his boots were not in any better condition than they had been a week ago when he was still on Ionia. Presumably, Riven's shoes were the same.

"Um... Riven?" Garen said.

"What's up?" she replied.

"How is your footwear?"

"Brown, like everything else," she told him while grinning. She was aware that this was not what Garen had intended to ask for with his question, and she reflected the look of sarcasm in her face. He smiled back at her.

"I meant the condition of them, not the color. If we do journey into the Freljord, we will want a little more protection on our feet than cloth," he said while lifting his foot to expose the torn wrappings of his feet that dangled to the ground. Garen turned to Zac. "Is there anywhere around here that we can get a hold of some boots for the snow and ice?"

"Not that I would trust. Maybe in Freljord," Zac responded.

"Hmmm... Perhaps. But our feet will freeze off in the snow until we find someone who can provide us with the clothing," he told Zac.

"Don't worry champ. I gotchya covered." Garen looked a little confused by this reply before realizing that he meant his words literally. He separated a small portion of his gelatinous body and let it fall to the ground. Four small bloblets lay sprinkled about, approximately the size of footprints. "Go ahead," Zac said. Garen slowly removed the remnants of his boots and the cloth bandages on his feet, then placed his foot onto one of the blobs. The globule felt cold and squished under his weight; it was like stepping into a pool of jelly. His toes curled up on contact and took a few seconds to relax. Next, he stepped into the other portion of Zac and underwent the same reaction. The bloblets formed up around his feet to create two, green, gelatinous boots. Garen could not help but to laugh aloud as he looked at them.

Walking was a bit awkward at first, but the soft material and rubber-like nature allowed him to move swiftly with a slight spring to his step. Riven cracked up as she watched him move about before she turned to put on her own blob boots. She took off her old shoes and bandages, just as Garen did, and left them in a pile with his discarded footwear before stepping into her portion of Zac. Garen and Riven looked at each other, then down at their boots, and smiled widely.

"Shall we then?" she asked, while extending a hand outward.

"After you," he replied.

The three of them marched through the streets of Zaun until they came across a large run down factory. Unlike most other buildings in the city, no sounds of machines and workers could be heard from the inside.

"What's that building?" Riven asked. "It's like, in the middle of the town, yet no one is inside."

"Oh, that," Zac said. "It's where I was born. Technically."

"Oh?" she expressed.

"Yeah, not much in there. Old computers. Broken equipment. Probably some rampant blobs."

"Rampant blobs?" she asked.

"After I was made, the scientists who made me, my mom and dad, fell in love with me. To them, I was their son. So they snuck away with me. The Zaun lab was not so happy. They tried to recreate me but couldn't do it. Either my parents scrapped the chemical compound to make me, or someone else did. Either way, a lot of their failed attempts were causing problems. I was made to fight, but had the brains to know when to and when not to. Sadly, many of their creations didn't. My mom said it's because I was raised to have a heart, those experiments weren't." The two stood and listened to Zac share a bit about his background and nodded when he had finished.

"Did they not attempt to recapture you?" Garen asked.

"Oh they did. They just failed," Zac said with a grin. Garen got his jist and decided that they ought to press on with their journey. They walked past the factory and continued until they were just outside of the town. A small manhole cover sat in the ground right where the map suggested it would be. Garen looked at the two of them before lifting the cover off to reveal a ladder leading down into a cave. Garen wondered if there was anyone else who had noticed it before, but quickly realized that it was not too far from ordinary. The busy city probably had a scarce amount of travelers or explorers, and definitely did not have a lack of manholes and sewers.

The three of them slipped down into the hole and Zac used his flexibility to pull the cover back overhead. Once inside, the tunnel was a slight bit cooler than the air had been up above inside of Zaun. Garen took out the map and saw that they had to make a straight shot into Freljord. Not that there were not any branch offs inside of the tunnel, but they did not need to pay attention to them.

The path was lit by small blue crystals that seemed to light themselves up as they approached, and fade out as they left. The strange stones had only been seen once before by any of them, and that was Garen, on the Fields of Justice. When battles took place during the night, these stones kept the fields bright, but dimmed out as the champions left in order to ensure that their positions or previous locations were not revealed. Garen wondered where the gems came from, and why they would be used in both the Fields of Justice and these random underground tunnels, but his thoughts were interrupted when Riven spoke up.

"These tunnels are huge! Are you sure this isn't some sort of elaborate set up Garen? I mean, the map came from that same bird that showed up before Zed ambushed us earlier."

"I saw the bird on Ionia too, when we were eating the wolf meat. The next morning is when we had to face off against Zed," Garen replied.

"Sooo... Why are we trusting it then?" she asked again. Garen pulled out the map and pointed to a small scribble in the bottom left hand corner. The letters "E" and "Z" could be distinguished with the slight blue luminescence emitted from the nearby stones. He looked at Riven while pointing to them. She was a bit puzzled.

"EZ. Or, Pronounced, Eh-zz. It's short for Ezreal. He is the only one I know who could draw out a map this elaborate without even being here. Well, I suppose my sister, Luxanna, could have as well. But she does not explore like Ezreal does. She and Ez are very close friends, and therefore I trust him. So unless someone managed to forge his scrawled signature, and thought to do so in creating a huge plan, I can trust it." Riven looked up at Garen with wide eyes as they continued to walk along the tunnel.

"You truly do have a lot of people who trust you, don't you?" Garen looked down to the ground briefly and the raised his head, with his eyes closed, like a slow motion nod.

"Yes," he replied. "That's why I had to leave them. More problems would have arrived had I stayed. They do not deserve it." After Garen had finished, Zac spoke up, but in a slightly different tone that usual. There was a slight solemn hint to his voice.

"You aren't here willingly, are you?" he asked. Garen bore a slight frown as he looked at Zac.

"At first, no. Now," he started before looking over at Riven with a smile. "Now, it is what I want." She blushed lightly and kept walking forward. Zac smiled at her reaction and bowed his head slightly. The three of them continued down their path for the next two days, en route to Freljord.