The doors to the Institute of War tightly locked all of its secrets inside, letting no one know the chaos taking place within. Lucian twirled his pistols about his fingers before quickly holstering them on either side of his hips. He looked at the front doors with an excitement welling up inside. His best hope of saving his wife, Senna, lay within its doors. He gathered himself and marched up to the entrance, unknowing what all was waiting for him behind it.
Once inside, the grandeur of champions roaming about was a sight to behold. Lucian was a bit overwhelmed at it all and had no idea where to begin. He caught the attention of a summoner walking through his view, who then approached him, confused at the new face.
"Anything I can help you with?" he asked Lucian.
"Yeah, I wanted to join the League. Who should I talk to?" The summoner looked at him fairly blankly before muttering a response.
"Join the League?"
"Uh, yeah. That would be what I said. Can you help me?" Lucian repeated, starting to get annoyed at the situation.
"Well it's just... Did you get a judgment?" the summoner questioned.
"The hell is a judgment?" The purifier was more confused than he had been before talking to the man.
"How did... Why did they let you in without a judgment... What could they be too busy with to assist a new champion..." The perplexed bantering of the man was more than enough to inform Lucian that something was clearly amiss. The summoner scampered off, searching for the answers to his questions, and Lucian was left to scout the Institute without any guidance.
He wandered about and followed the general flow of people as they all seemed to be crowding into one place. It took him out to the courtyard in the middle of the Institute, where he saw a large mass of summoners and champions standing about. They all seemed very confused as they looked upon a woman standing in the center, dressed in a purple gown that closely resembled the garb of a summoner, who was waiting for the rest of the people to arrive. Through listening to the crowd, Lucian gathered that the woman was one of the high summoners of the League of Legends; Vessaria Kolminye.
Beside Lucian stood a woman in sleek black leather and a long ponytail, and a man with a purple cloak, not too different from Vessaria's, but a mask completely covered his face while his exposed skin was violet. The woman in black seemed astoundingly familiar to Lucian, and he soon remembered that she was the woman who had given him and Senna the ship – who called herself the Night Hunter in their last encounter – which they used to get to the Shadow Isles. She remained amazingly ignorant, giving no response to any of Lucian's non verbal gestures for attention as he stood beside her. He frowned, and decided to listen to Vessaria as she began to make a declaration to the crowd.
"My champions and summoners of the League!" she announced. "As you may know, there have been some defiant champions among our ranks." A slight pause ensued as a wave of murmurs shot through the crowd. A smile flashed over her face, missed by most of the champions and summoners gathered, before she continued. "King Jarvan III has fallen in a duel with Jericho Swain. While Jarvan IV has moved to take his place as the King of Demacia, a large number of Demacians, citizens, summoners, and champions alike, have erupted in outrage at the transition of power." She allowed for another pause as the people thought about the information she had just given out. A silent mutter of the word "bullshit" was heard coming from the woman beside Lucian: whatever Vessaria was saying, was far from the truth.
"This is where I need your help! I need support to help defend the Noxian soldiers and people, being invaded by Demacia and their rampant champions! This is what the League stands for: protection of the peace in the Valoran. We plan to enforce this upon those unwilling to oblige to our standard of unity. For the better of Valoran, for the better of Runeterra, let us bind together and defeat a common enemy!" The crowd responded with a mixture of roars, cheers, and utter confusion. The two standing on opposite sides of Lucian dipped backwards nearly instantly after the speech, and he turned to follow them.
"Wait up!" he called as he pursued them through the halls of the Institute. "What was that all about?" The woman turned to see who was calling to her, and determined that he was not hostile. She nodded to the cloaked man who beckoned for Lucian to follow, and began explaining the situation.
"The Demacian 'traitors' were sent off by the League itself just hours ago. They probably have not even hit the city-state yet. Vayne," he said while pointing to the woman beside him, "chose not to go, finding the situation suspicious. She informed me of what was going on, so we have laid low for a little while."
"Wait..." Lucian mumbled as he pieced together information in his head. "So you think that the League is setting up this battle? Attempting to knock out Demacia and its troops?"
"Precisely," Vayne replied.
"Why would they do that?" the purifier asked, clearly very uninformed of the entire situation.
"It's not the League's doing. It's Vessaria's," the cloaked man said.
"And why are you trusting me with this information?"
"You aren't a champion. The information can't really hurt you or us. And besides, Vayne seems to trust you."
"And what if I were here to stop you?" Lucian questioned. Vayne turned to him with a small, but noticeable, smirk.
"Jax here has fought the world's strongest opponents, and has been doing so on a daily basis for years. He has never once lost." The statement seemed more like a threat than anything to Lucian, but he nodded in acknowledgement and the group left the Institute of War. They came to a small cave just outside of the building, and Jax lead the way inside. They walked for an extremely long time before he motioned for them to follow him down a ladder. At the bottom, a clearly carved tunnel extended forward, lit entirely by small blue crystals lining the floor, that seemed to only give off light as they approached, and the old ones faded away.
"Where are we? Where are we headed?" the purifier asked, completely lost in the dramatic shifting of scenery.
"Tunnels. En route to Demacia. We have to beat Vessaria's reinforcements, and this is the only path fast enough. She may teleport some of the champions using the summoner's magic, but she won't have nearly enough summoners for them all, and it takes a huge influx of mana to perform such a spell. And I assume that she wants to bring the summoners too, which means that she is probably letting them march as an army."
"And why won't she be using these tunnels as well? Too many people?" Lucian asked.
"No, nothing of the sort. She simply does not know they exist."
"And how do you?"
"Well I built them," Jax said smugly. Lucian grinned at the remark and pressed on down the tunnels with Vayne and Jax. He was not sure where what his role was going to be in arriving at Demacia with them, but it was glaringly obvious that sticking around the Institute was not going to make any sort of progress in saving Senna, whatsoever.