Ezreal walked down the halls of the Institute deep in thought. He swore he was just inches away from solving the case and finding out where Talon was.
"If only I could have been there on the night before Talon and Garen disappeared..." Suddenly, Ezreal jumped into the air as if the idea that had just crossed his mind had quite literally blown him off of his feet. He sprinted down the halls of the Institute at speeds he did not even know he was capable of. "There is… ONE way…'' he said to himself quietly as he ran.
He came across the room of a champion of the League. The man suffered from a disease unlike one anyone else could even imagine of. He resided in the league do to the magic of its summoners being capable of warding off the illness; in return for their cure, he fought on the Fields of Justice with his unmatched magical capability. He specialized in a magic unlike that within the grasp of any other champion or summoner throughout the lands of Runeterra. He was a chronokeeper, capable of manipulating time to his will. Ezreal could not believe he had not thought of it sooner.
He raised his hand to knock on the door when it opened on its own. Ezreal was looking at an ancient man, floating in the space in front of him, too old and weak to walk on his own. His strength of magic was so powerful that he was capable of levitation; a skill that only a few champions had mastered. He wore his hair and beard long; their grey whiskers poked out all over the place and could hardly be considered well kept. His clothing was fairly normal; wearing a long-sleeved black robe that draped down past his feet. He turned around and motioned for Ezreal to enter the room with him. Ezreal was a little confused but he followed the old man in.
"I know why you're here. You do know that, don't you?" the old man told him.
"Yes yes, of course you do. You kind of know everything in time, don't you Zilean?" Ezreal had not recalled talking to Zilean on the Fields of Justice – despite being in a match with him very recently – in quite some time; but he was familiar enough with him to know his name and who he was.
"Not particularly because of my own lust for knowledge though. I hardly have control of where my consciousness drifts when I'm not under the influence of the summoner's magic," the chronokeeper replied. Ezreal was not exactly sure as to what he meant, but he assumed it had to do with his illness. Perhaps it had been set upon by himself and his ridiculous influx of magic. But Ezreal did not have the time to ponder the complications of the disease any farther.
"I need your help Zilean," Ezreal said.
"I know," the old man replied. "Close your eyes. I will show you what you need to see." Ezreal followed his directions and shut his eyes. "Now open them," he said. Again, Ezreal followed his directions. Zilean led the way out of the door, while Ezreal looked around the room and saw everything just as it was prior to closing his eyes. It had shifted to night time, but he was still inside of the Institute of War, and he was still in Zilean's room. Ezreal followed into the hallway, just behind Zilean. Immediately a strange smell filed his nose, overwhelming his senses. While the smell was strange, it was familiar: the strangeness came about due to the fact that it was misplaced. It was the searing stench of blood. He looked to his left and to his right down the hallway. There was no one in sight; in fact, it seemed as if nothing was even alive.
"Time is frozen right now," Zilean said. "I have done this to ensure that you do not attempt to mess with anything. Any sort of alteration would cause… problems. We are in the past, on the night of the events leading to the disappearances you have researched so much about. You can spend as long as you'd like. I will follow you. When you wish to return to the present, let me know. I will take us back to a point in time just after the one in which we left from. This will insure that we were only gone from the present for a slight moment." Ezreal nodded as to say that he understood the chronokeeper and continued to look around.
Finally, he looked downward to find the blood he smelled. It was in a line; almost a streak due to its consistency. He followed the trail down the hallways; it seemed to go on forever, twisting and turning through the corridors. The blood trail remained a relatively unchanged thickness, until the end. He arrived in a small square room made up of a bluish marble material, having four hallways connecting in this center point. There was a massive pool of blood lying in the middle of the floor, presumably half a gallon. Ezreal stared at the pool in shock for what seemed to be hours.
"How… this… there is just so much blood. It's impossible. No one could have survived this. Even if they managed to live… they never could have recovered. They would have just died from sheer blood loss alone," Ezreal thought aloud. Zilean did not respond to him, nor did Ezreal plan on receiving a response. Ezreal was so lost in thought he had basically forgotten that the chronokeeper was with him. The explorer decided that he was not going to discover anything staring at the pool of blood, so he followed along the trail in the opposite direction.
The track took about fifteen minutes to follow and eventually led him to the wing of the Institute where only champions who reside in the Shadow Isles stayed. Ezreal looked around with unease; unsure as to whether or not it was safe to continue. Zilean noticed the expression on his face and nodded at him; the simple gesture put Ezreal's mind at peace as he remembered that time itself was frozen, incapable of progressing, and so long as that was true he was safe from harm. The world was quite strange when in stasis seeing as not a single breeze or sound was allowed to partake. Ezreal walked towards the blood trail and saw a small pool on the ground. He had not seen any pools since the place of origin where the wound had initially been received. It was obviously a point of importance where they stopped moving for whatever reason. Ezreal assumed someone had carried the bleeder this far, seeing as the massive amount of blood lost combined with the great distance traveled was much too intense for anyone to cover on their own.
Right where the blood pool ended, a new track started to appear: tracks left by hooves. They glowed a spectral blue and led towards the wall. Ezreal was thankful that he did not have to go into any other rooms in the Shadow Isles' wing to continue his pursuit, but he was quite displeased by the occurrence. He walked towards the wall and pressed on it, as if it would allow his hands to just phase through. Unfortunately, it did not happen. Ezreal frowned, lost in thought and confusion. He gripped his enchanted glove tightly and used it to shift his essence from his position on one side of the wall, to the opposite side. Once he was on the other side of the wall he looked to the ground and saw identical tracks running in the same direction; however, they were few and far between. The being that created the tracks was quite clearly traveling at incredible velocities that required it to rarely place a hoof to the ground. Ezreal turned to look at Zilean in hopes of an answer being provided.
"It'll take us forever to travel along this path," he told the old man. Zilean chuckled lightly, shaking his head.
"Think for a moment, Ezreal. You just shifted through that wall with the magic of your glove. How do you presume I managed to catch up to you?" Ezreal did take the moment to think, and realized that Zilean's magic may be stronger than he had thought.
"Can you speed up our time while time itself is still frozen all around us?" Ezreal asked. The old man laughed with glee.
"Why yes, yes I can." Zilean bowed his head and chanted an incantation. Ezreal felt as if the burden of living had been lifted off of his shoulders as he stood there. He began walking along the path of spectral hoof markings laid out in front of him, feeling as if he was flying. His legs were moving at a pace that his mind could not even comprehend. He began to fear that he was going to smash into the side of a wall traveling at the incredible rate and become a very large smear of flesh and blonde hair plastered across it.
Zilean talked to Ezreal as if he was responding to his thoughts; "Do not worry, you are only walking at a normal pace. The worst that could happen is you bump into a wall and do not move around it for a few hours before you realize it." The concept did reassure Ezreal and he proceeded along his path. He used the power of his glove to shift around objects when needed in order to continue pursuit of the tracks. The being carrying the wounded individual was obviously not too accustomed to the idea of walking around objects, or perhaps it was moving with such urgency that it did not bother to. It seemed to posses some sort of powers of intangibility because it never once tore down the structures in its way.
Ezreal and Zilean were traveling northwest across the continent of Valoran, passing through the many marshes near Demacia and crossing a few rivers. Eventually they ran out of land space and came across the Conqueror's Sea. Ezreal sighed and hopped into the calm waters. There were waves that literally just hung in midair; frozen with time itself. Ezreal began to swim through the waters, retaining his incredible pace with Zilean's assistance. The old man simply hovered behind him. Ezreal was beginning to wonder how a mage of his strength would ever lose a match in the League. Perhaps there was a reason for it, but Ezreal did not bother to follow that thought at the moment; he had to continue along the trail.
The hooves had left their spectral essence to hang on top of the water itself. Perhaps the creature was capable of traveling at such speeds that it could literally use the friction with the sea's surface to propel itself forward, or maybe it actually did weigh less than water. Seeing as it seemed to be capable of walking through walls, neither idea surprised him. Ezreal swam until he hit land; however, he wished he had not. He had come across the Shadow Isles themselves. He began to wonder if he should even bother tracing anymore. There was not any good that could come of the place, but he had to know. He collected himself and pushed onwards.
The hooves led deep into the shadows to the point in which they were the only thing visible among the dark shroud the isles had created. He followed them as if his life depended on it; he was quite used to this type of dedication to navigation, from his adventures in the past. His path led him to a small shack deep within the forest, scarcely visible among the aura of the Shadow Isles. It was very sloppily built out of mud, tree limbs, and stones. It looked like a hut a goblin would reside in. Ezreal looked around the outside of the shack, searching for a viewport of some kind. He found a slot along the side and peered inside, using his glove to light the area and grant him vision of its contents. The light was not enough to distinguish any aspects of the room outside of it being quite small and fairly empty. There was a door along one side of it that led to the small hallway-like entrance to the building. Inside of the room that Ezreal did have vision of, he saw a large centaur like creature with a blue spectral flame emitting from the cracks in his armored body.
He immediately recognized him as Hecarim, a champion of the League of Legends. That would explain a lot of the questions that Ezreal had built up: his horse body's hooves had left the tracks behind while his spectral composition had allowed him to phase thought objects in his path and run across the ocean, while his connection to the League would explain his presence inside of the Institute and the capability to travel to the Shadow Isles. On his back was Talon, who appeared to be in the process of being handed over to another Shadow Isles oriented champion of the League, Yorick. The man was accepting Talon in and was most likely planning to nurture him back up to health. The wound on Talon's back was severe, and the sight of it almost made Ezreal lose his lunch. The gash was horrendous; not that anything less was expected to have produced such an impressive trial of blood. Ezreal knew that he was not going to get anything else out of the scene and turned to Zilean.
"Let's go back to the Institute. I think I've gotten all of the information that I can. Thank you so much for your help."
"Oh, it was not a trouble at all. I knew it was coming anyways. It's not like I have many other things to do with my time nowadays," he replied to Ezreal. The explorer was not quite sure as to whether or not the comment was a sarcastic or literal one. There was something strange about the old man; perhaps there was still something else he was expecting Ezreal to want from him. He figured that he would discover whatever it was that Zilean wanted soon enough. "We will need to return to the Institute to insure that we can bring you to the present in the same place that you left it." Ezreal sighed at this, realizing that he now had to travel across a continent and an ocean for the second time. He set off at a pace more quickly than before to shorten travel time. He was reluctant that time was frozen; otherwise he would have passed out from exhaustion, starvation, and dehydration a long time ago. In a relatively small amount of time – compared to what it should have taken to walk such a distance – the two were back at the Institute.
They walked through the halls and returned to Zilean's room, where he returned them to the present. Ezreal thanked him and went to his own room to try to make sense of everything he had just seen. While he had discovered where Talon had gone and how he had gotten there, his original question was not answered; he had no idea how Talon managed to survive. Ezreal searched through all of the books cluttering his shelves, floor space, and desks looking for one with information about the Shadow Isles. In the midst of his thoughts, he heard a sharp rap on the door that caused him to let out a fairly high pitched yell. He heard giggling on the other side and knew who it was. Rolling his eyes, he got up and opened the door to discover that his suspicions were correct; Luxanna had decided to stop by his room, even though he had just been to see her. He was not quite sure why, but he greeted her with a friendly smile anyways.
"Hi Ez!" she gleamed. She was always so happy and excitable; perhaps it was a good thing to balance out his constant flustered nature and hectic mind.
"Hey!" he replied, smiling back. "So uh… what are you doing here? Something else that you had questions about?" She smiled at him again and walked into his room. Ezreal closed the door behind her and turned to face his overly messy room. He went red in the face instantly as he realized just how much of a slob he was compared to the royal quarters Lux spent her time in. Lux however, did not seem to mind at all. She danced about his room looking at anything and everything she found, truly fascinated by it all. He remembered that he had never actually taken her into his room before; and that was probably for a very good reason. He stared at the mess all around him for a moment longer and decided to go back to looking for the book on the Shadow Isles while she explored his belongings and made up her mind as to what it is she wanted to do or talk about. After a little while she grabbed a certain object off of Ezreal's shelf and walked over to him.
"What is this?" she asked, holding a small locket in her hand. It bore the crest of Demacia on the outside and was sealed shut with a lock that Ezreal had never managed to open before. It was attached to a small chain whose loop was wide enough to fit around the neck of someone possessing a smaller frame.
"I'm not entirely sure to be honest, but I do know that it is Demacian. I'm assuming you already knew that though, probably why you took it to me, right?" he said.
"Yeah…" she replied while staring into its golden surface, lost in thought and the metallic shine of the trinket.
"I haven't ever managed to actually open it though. I picked it up from a grave yard; it was hanging on a tree branch oddly enough. I never expected to find something so seemingly valuable in a place like that. It was so… out of place. I felt like I had to pick it up. I took it home to study, and to this day I cannot remember what I had gone to the graveyard to look for initially. I forgot as soon as I found that locket, and spent a week trying to open it. It was just something I never managed to get to work, no matter how much I looked into it. Still have no idea what it is or what's inside." Lux flipped the locket around in her hands a few times before looking back at Ezreal.
"Here," she said. "Hold one side of it with both of your hands. I'll hold the other." The concept was a bit confusing to Ezreal but he did as she asked. She held on to one side of the locket with all of her fingers lining the edges and her thumbs pressed to its backside. Ezreal mirrored the action and as soon as he pressed his thumbs against the front face of the locket, a sharp click rang out and the locket popped open. They looked at each other and smiled, then looked back into the locket. The two sides were mostly empty; omit a foggy mist swirling beneath the glass lenses which resided in each half of the locket. It was obviously much more than the work of a simple mechanism. Both Ezreal and Lux gazed intently into their half of the locket, sitting beside each other on the cluttered floor.
Ezreal's image began to swirl and shift as he looked upon a scene of a massive war about to take place. Two armies stood face to face; however, the leaders were not distinguishable, nor were any of the soldiers on either side. Perhaps it was not focus in the image. He looked around the still scene, searching for something out of place. Standing upon a hill in the background, a man stood examining the battlefield. One of the sides seemed grossly outnumbered, but the man did not seem to care. He was holding some sort of weapon or tool but Ezreal could not quite make it out. He was just standing there, looking at the two armies. After some time he just turned around and left, slowly making his way out of the scene by walking back down the hill from which he was standing. The leaders of the armies looked to be shouting and commenced in a headlong charge. The battle scene did not unfold before the image faded away, but the outcome was quite obviously predetermined.
Lux's half of the locket showed her brother Garen. He was kneeling down on the ground, bruised and battered from battle. An axe was held above his head, its blade inches from his neck. The axe was already bloodied, as if it had been used to slay many others before its next victim. Garen's expression was blank, as if he knew what was to come but had nothing he could do about it. Many people were around him, mostly injured and wounded, staring with a similar look on their face. One woman with silver hair was crying and shouting, as if it was going to make a difference. Suddenly, the axe was raised into the air and dropped down onto the kneeling man's neck. Garen's dismembered head rolled to the ground, causing an uproar in the crowd around him. The man holding the axe grinned in his victory and looked up to see a mass of wounded soldiers charging at him, running on nothing more than adrenaline at that point. The vision faded before the army of injured soldiers was cut down.
The two sat in silence after viewing their scenes within the locket; but for different reasons. Ezreal was simply confused and thinking about the strange man standing on top of the hill, while Lux was in silence due to the pain of the thought of losing her brother.
"Umm…" Lux began. "Are you sure that there is no other information about this thing?"
"I uh… No. I haven't ever found anything. But I do find it quite odd that it took the both of us to open it. It's like it was meant for two people." They stared into the locket for awhile longer but nothing more was shown from the murky glass. The outside had some symbols on it, but Ezreal was not sure what they meant. It was not from a language that he was familiar with. He pointed them out to Lux, but she did not know either.
"Maybe we can find a book on it. Do you want to look through my language books to try and find the symbols? In the meantime, I need to look up some information about the Shadow Isles, if I could just find the book I have on it…" His thoughts trailed off as he looked about the room while pretending that his quick scan would find the book. Lux's face shifted drastically as she grinned mockingly at his statement.
"Well maybe if you'd just keep this place CLEAN, you could find what you need! Besides, where in the world am I going to find your books on language?" she teased.
"Well they're all in that stack over there," he said while pointing to a small pile of books clustered besides a book shelve that would have room for them had the books on it been placed in an organized fashion. She rolled her eyes and walked over to the pile, beginning to shift through Ezreal's mess of junk and tidied up the cluster of objects that he referred to as his room. Ezreal looked around a bit more and found the book that he had intended to be searching for quite some time ago, before he had gotten distracted by his company. He flicked through its pages and began to read about anything that had been discovered about living on the Isles. He found, however, a lot more about death on the Isles. They stated that no soul was capable of moving on to the afterlife without the assistance of Yorick, the Grave digger. Not only did he spend his time burying the bodies of the dead, he helped to ease their souls and insure that their passage into the afterlife is uninterrupted and carried out purely. Some people even referred to him as the ferryman of the Isles. But none of that made sense to Ezreal. "How could a man who assists in the deaths of people possibly assist in the surviving of someone?" Ezreal thought. It just did not make any sense. In a moment, it all hit him simultaneously.
"OF COURSE!" he shouted. The poor blonde woman in the corner of his room, who was cleaning up his mess, jumped a foot into the air as he made his exclamation.
"Did you find out the language?" Lux asked.
"Uh, no. Not really. But I DID find out the answer to the question I have been asking about Talon."
"You mean where he is?" she questioned.
"Yes. I found out earlier, when I went to Zilean, that Talon was taken to the Shadow Isles and turned over to Yorick, the grave digger." Ezreal saw that Lux was very confused and he continued. "On the Shadow Isles, nothing dies without the assistance Yorick, who then buries their bodies and passes them off to the afterlife. So while Talon should have just been dead on arrival, he was awaiting death. But Yorick was there, and somehow, someway, he was convinced not to allow Talon to pass. So instead of passing into the afterlife, he kept him there. So for the longest time Talon was stuck; until his wounds healed to a point in which they were survivable. Talon didn't die, not because of some miracle, but because he COULDN'T! It's… well it's genius really!" Lux looked at him, puzzled.
"You went to Zilean? What do you mean?"
"Well, I was walking through the halls of the Institute thinking to myself. I thought, man, if only I could just go back in time and see what happened on that night before Garen and Talon disappeared, maybe then I could figure it all out! So I asked Zilean to help me, and he did. And sure enough, I have figured out what I wanted to. However, there is ONE last question that I did have," Ezreal stated as he returned to flicking through the book in his lap. He flicked through its pages in attempt to find more information about Hecarim. He was wondering how he had managed to keep Talon from dying while upon his back and running at speeds exceeding that of what any human could ever hope to reach. As he flicked from page to page, he came across a few symbols that caught his attention. His eyes widened as he realized what he had just stumbled upon.
"LUX!" he yelled out. The unfortunate girl just about had another heart attack as he yelled for her, and she quickly put down the objects that she was organizing to head Ezreal's way. She crouched down beside him and looked at the page that the explorer was yelling about. She looked at it in shock and pulled the locket out from her pocket. The symbols matched. Ezreal set down the book and jumped up to run over to his desk. He pulled out a small booklet with all kinds of symbols and translations inside. It was a compilation of things that he had found in his research and things that other people had given to him; either directly or through books at a library. He flicked through its pages until he came across one with markings from old pieces and artifacts found from the few explorations that had taken place in the Shadow Isles. He brought the booklet over to Lux and they matched the symbols inside of it to the symbols on the exterior of the locket. Some words were not directly translated, but they could make out a few of them in the middle of the sentence, reading; "Together when… changed."
"I can't believe I didn't ever think to look up the symbols from the Shadow Isles. I suppose I always assumed there was no way I could have obtained an object from such a place. And why does one side have a Demacian crest while the other has symbols from the Shadow Isles? It just doesn't make any sense," Ezreal stated. Lux looked at him, just as puzzled as she had been the entire time that she had spent inside of Ezreal's room that afternoon.
"So… what does it mean Ez? The words? I mean, it is broken. We can only make out a few words in the sentence, and they are not even all in sequence. We have the words 'together when' at one point, and the word 'changed' a few characters later." She left a pause in her spoken thoughts as the two contemplated its meaning. She continued after a few moments, her voice much more quiet than before; barely above a whisper. "What did you… did you see in your piece. Or half, or whatever?"
"Not much," he replied dully. "I saw a battle scene about to unfold. Two massive armies, but one was heavily outnumbered. None of the faces were distinguishable, so I'm not quite sure if it was any particular two factions or what exactly it was. But regardless, the only other thing in the scene was a man sitting upon the hill, waiting on something. He decided that whatever he was there for was not important and he left. Then the battle started and it ended the scene. None of it made a whole lot of sense to me." Lux sat in silence for a little while before she said anything.
"I saw…" Her voice had already started to crack as she spoke. Ezreal leaned in closer to make sure that he could hear everything she had to say clearly. His blonde moppy hair was long enough that it covered the majority of his ears; which did not benefit his attempt to hear her at all. "It was… My brother. Garen. He sat on the ground… er… kneeled. He was bruised and injured. There were many people about him, looking hopeless. Than a large axe fell… it killed him. He was… gone." She looked up at Ezreal, tears flooding her face. "Is he gone Ez? Is he ok? I… I do not know him as well as I wish I could… but… I do not want to lose him…" she sulked. She fell forward and wrapped her arms around him. She let her head fall upon his shoulder and the tears ran down his back. He held her close, trying to think of what to say.
"The army that I saw. It was about to get slaughtered. We have not had a war of a size that massive in forever. I don't think that Garen is dead just yet. It may have been in insight to what the future may hold. I dunno. None of it makes sense to me right now." Although still baffled, Ezreal's words seemed to comfort her a little.
"Do you fink fat whee can change it?" she said with her words muffled from speaking through the cloth on his shoulder.
"Change…" he repeated. "Wait! Change! Together when changed! Do you know what this locket is Lux?" he announced with a glowing expression while looking down at her head that was still buried in his shoulder. She raised it and looked into his face, her eyes red from crying and frustration, but her smile widening as it always does. "It took the two of us to open the locket… perhaps…" She knew what his theory was and finished off his sentence for him.
"The two who open the logget… gan be together… when its gontents are changed…" she said with her voice still sore. The two looked at each other for what seemed to be an eternity before she leaned forward. Ezreal blushed a shade of red brighter than he ever had in his entire life as her lips touched his; a feeling he had never expected to experience in his time as an explorer. At first he wanted to pull away, but he realized that this was not just some strange impulse thing that he had just done, it was her doing: Lux wanted this. After a few seconds she split away, and looked into his eyes. "Save him Ezreal… for me…" she whispered to him.
"I will. I promise," he stated as he closed her hands with his; the locket tightly shutting in her grip. "I will go to Zilean now. I will make things right." He pocketed the translation book still resting in his lap before he got up and walked out of the room, leaving Lux in the middle of his floor to stare at the locket and pray that Ezreal knew what he was doing. He sprinted down the hallways of the Institute, for yet another time that day, making his way towards Zilean's room. The world stood still for Ezreal, to make sure that not even the wind would restrict his movement through the hallways. He busted into Zilean's room without even thinking to knock. The old man, however, was not startled a bit. He got up from the chair he was sitting in and floated over to Ezreal.
"Take me into the future. I will stop this from happening. I HAVE to stop this from happening," he announced to the old man, assuming he was already aware of what was going on. He was correct in his hunch. The man responded to him as if they had been in this conversation for hours already.
"You do realize what that would mean, don't you?" Zilean asked the young explorer.
"I would be changing the future, I know, but this has to happen! Don't you see! If we allow Garen to die… The repercussions could be… tremendous. I don't know. I just know that I have to stop this. I need to be brought to the point in time in which Garen is about to be executed. I can prevent this!" Ezreal did not intend to yell at the old man but he could not keep the emotional stress out of his voice; he knew in his heart that his desired course of action was the right thing to do, and Zilean was the only one who could help him.
"This is all true. However, if I take you to the future, you will not exist in the current time. You will be locked in stasis until the time comes in which you can do whatever it is that you need to do. It was different when I took you into the past because I allowed time to stand still. Plus, that time frame had already happened. All that we did to you, in the present, was drag you into the past for about a second. But if I take you to the future, I have to take you back as well to insure that you are just locked in a stasis for a second or two and then time will take its course. But if I allow you to do anything in the future, and you plan to KEEP it that way, I have to leave you there. Otherwise, when I drag you back, it will be as if it never happened at all because that point in time has not happened yet." Ezreal's heart sank as he realized what the chronokeeper was telling him.
"So… I will have to literally leave existence from now until the time in which Garen is killed…" Ezreal spoke slowly, not to guarantee that the chronokeeper could hear him, but to make sure that he could hear himself and understand exactly what he was saying.
"Correct," the old man responded. He floated in place silently, waiting on Ezreal's response.
"I… I'll go," he said at last.
"Very well," the old man replied. He looked pleased. Perhaps that was what Ezreal had taken note of earlier when he thought that Zilean was expecting him to ask for another favor. Maybe the chronokeeper was expecting Ezreal to come to him, and that there was a greater reason for saving Garen beyond what Ezreal saw. Ezreal's thoughts strayed off as he closed his eyes and waited for a moment.
As soon as Ezreal had disappeared, being sent into the future, Zilean grinned. Had he chosen anyone else to be the hero, he or she may have thought to just wait until the time came to rescue Garen and not be sent into the future and forced to sacrifice the time in between. But, it was the way that it needed to happen: Garen was saved and the knowledge the boy had gained from Zilean's actions were not endangering him, seeing as he was not even around until the point in time that he needed to be. The high council members may have incredible magic, but they cannot drag Ezreal back into the present; that was a power only Zilean himself possessed. The Institute would most likely look into the high influx of mana intake that Zilean had just finished using, but if he had done everything correctly, it was possible to slip under their radar. Either way, Ezreal was safe; and that was how it needed to be.
Zilean clapped his ancient hands together and the wind started to blow its gentle breeze through his open window, once again. He had put on quite the charade, and had it been any other person with a mind more set in the present, or with fewer things to be flustered about to distract him or her, it may have not worked out quite as well. He was glad that Luxanna had been so willing to partake in the act as well; however, it was in her best interest too. Over the next two days, Zilean spent his time resting and relaxing. He did not have any League matches to attend to and he had become exhausted by the magic he had performed. Plus, laying low would keep suspicion from arising. Not many people would suspect a tired old man to be the cause of a missing champion.