Tags: Vayne, Fiora, Drama.

Two young children are playing in a vast Demacian garden. There are flowers and marble sculptures littering the trimmed green grass, rose bushes shaped like castles and forming beautiful arcs, fountains glittering with clear cold water and trees sheared in the likeness of mythical beings and small woodland animals. The sight is breathtaking, the atmosphere is joyful and serene. Little Shauna smiles as she places a circlet made of woven flowers onto the dichromatic head of her playmate. The older girl smiles and giggles and Shauna Vayne averts her gaze intending to hide her faint blush from the other young noble child when Fiora suddenly hugs her tightly.

The scene is so bright and magnificent as if it's made out of pure white light and little Fiora doesn't accord with parting with the fragile woven circlet that Shauna has made for her until one of her family's servants finally puts the child to sleep that night. Even then Shauna's gift is carefully placed next to the noble girl's bedstead so Fiora can observe it under the pale moonlight that's entering from the open window until sleep finally claims her.

0000

Little Fiora doesn't understand why she isn't allowed to play with Shauna from now on. The adults are yelling and fighting, they are talking about some great disaster that has striken the House of Vayne and they keep peeking at her with anxious glares and tense faces carved from frigid stone. Fiora doesn't care about what the adults think! She grabs her precious circlet and dashes towards the front door. She wants to see Shauna! She needs to know that her friend is safe and that everything is alright!

One of the adults yells in alarm and someone grips her wrist and forcefully drags her towards her chambers. A particularly violent tug from the solemn servant and the precious fragile circlet slips from her small childish hands only to be instantly crushed under the heel of another approaching maid. Fiora sniffles in anguish as the first servant keeps pulling her away from the precious fallen gift of her playmate and its crushed and scattered petals.

The young girl's wet blue eyes never quite leave her abandoned woven treasure even when one of the saddened maids proceeds to sweep the circlet with a broom and then throw it away in the rubbish.

0000

It is almost a public secret that a lot of the noble Demacian Houses aren't too fond of each other. House Lawrence for example likes to compete with the members of House Crownguard and trade political blows with them for the most unnecessary and meaningless of reasons. Wherever that included trying to win the favor of the current sovereign, attempting to widen their scope of influence by attending important meetings and war councils or just making sure to appear wearing the most lavishing and expensive of clothing and accessories in public. That last one was part of an egotistical effort for the rich members of the Lawrence House to make the members of the other noble Clans look like mere beggars in comparison to the riches and wealth that the pompous duelists were so proudly exhibiting.

And yet for all of their numerous differences and their arrogance the noble Houses of Demacia needed to appear united and collected like the clenched fingers of an unwavering fist, and so all of their members are forced to attend social gatherings like celebrations, important ceremonies… and dreaded funerals.

Fiora wasn't certain why her parents had suddenly dragged her and her siblings all the way to this depressing meeting placed among ancient pillars of grey stone, or why everyone around her was so eerily silent and serious. An elderly man dressed in white robes was talking in a calm authoritative tone and a few of the adults that were attending the ceremony were looking at their boots, gripping their walking canes in their hands and some of them were even crying!

The spectacle was weird and bizarre to say the least, and the young toddler's confusion would soon take a turn for the worse with the appearance of the short cloaked figure with the hidden face and the emblem of the House of Vayne embedded on its small stiff back.

The white-robed elderly man pauses as soon as he spots the short quiet figure. The priest's harsh bushy eyebrows furrowing in thought and the ivory-clad man makes as if to opens his mouth to say something scathing before the stern clergyman seemingly changes his mind and tiredly shakes his head before continuing with his loud sermons. And maybe it is just Fiora's eyes that are playing tricks on her, but the yelling man's wrinkled visage is now undoubtedly fiercer and sprinkled with red hues as if something has insulted or angered him greatly.

"Aaand so the Founder held his golden sword and the people of Demacia gathered around him like a crown so he would spread the light of his radiance to the farthest-"

The old man keeps humming and murmuring complicated words, a few nobles perform some kind of weird hand gesture. Fiora is too focused on the unnerving lone figure of the cloaked intruder to pay any attention to any of this and the young noble child abruptly finds itself stepping towards the mysterious stranger. Fiora's parents and siblings presently proving far too lost in their own thoughts and the acts of the ongoing ceremony to register the curious girl's disappearance and attempt to stop her from approaching the unwelcome stranger.

The curious toddler stealthily moves towards the dark hooded figure with the hunched shoulders with swift steps and a desperation born from all the time that Fiora has spent away from her childhood friend. The stranger bears the symbol of Shauna's House on their back after all and so they must be able to help Fiora meet her dear playmate!

"And He wrote His name, and He swung His sword so the pious and the just-"

The hooded intruder abruptly notices Fiora approaching and attempts to take a step back. The noble child's eyes widen before narrowing in response, small hands darting for the black fabric of the fleeing stranger's cloak. This is Fiora's only chance to reunite with her dear friend after all and the young noblewoman refuses to just let the stranger escape before she gets some answers out of them. The hooded figure attempts to take another quick step back before little stubby fingers suddenly get a hold of the dark fabric of the mysterious person's clothes causing the black hood concealing the stalker's identity to abruptly fall, only for the dark soft fabric of the cloak to uselessly gather around the young person's trembling shoulders.

Fiora has mere seconds to realize that the stranger is actually Shauna before the other child suddenly lunges for the shadow of a nearby gravestone with flames licking its pale face and a pained screams escaping from its open lips.

The crowd around the two children instantly comes alive. The gathered nobles start murmuring and pointing their fingers at the burning child or exclaiming in shock as the sole survivor of the House of Vayne covers her burning visage with little shaky palms and tries to hide behind the old dusty gravestone.

Fiora is frozen, wide sky blue eyes staring fixedly at the screaming toddler that had once used to be her childhood friend. The young Lawrence's small arm frozen, still outstretched as if the shocked child is trying to reach out and grab the sniffling shade of her friend that's currently sobbing behind the old dirty gravestone. One question keeps reverberating inside the startled mind of the shocked noble girl even as the adults around Fiora start settling down and the white-clad clergyman begins repeating his fanatical sermons with suddenly newfound joy and seemingly renewed vigor. The elderly priest completely ignoring the heart-wrenching screams of the pale toddler that's yelling in pain behind the ancient grave of a long deceased Demacian soldier.

Meanwhile little Fiora has yet to find the answer to the sole dreaded question that's ailing her young mind.

Just why were Shauna's once kind brown eyes now a terrifying dark crimson?