Tags: Irelia, Riven, Karma, Drama, Adventure?
I would like to put a warning tag about dark themes and violence here, even though you are happily playing a video game where huge bloodthirsty brutes are cutting children in half with war axes to protect world peace and nobody thinks of calling Social Service… Then again, the children of the League are Lady Loki, a serial arsonist and a kid that enslaves endangered species so I am not really sure what to feel about it... Long live Godmo.
It is a cold unforgiving night. The temperature is quite low and the wind has been steadily picking up recently as the season of winter inevitably approached. The dead leaves that have been gathering underneath the Zaunite Institute's crooked trees are getting bigger and bigger as the days grow shorter and colder in comparison. Inside the Institute's reinforced walls, huddled like cattle in their pitiful cell's corners for much-needed warmth, the test subjects fidget about uneasily.
The experimented children, starving orphans that had been gathered from the streets, don't try to converse as the wind screams his eternal defiance outside of their familiar souless prison. Those emaciated youthful guinea pigs don't sob or voice any complains while clutching at their ratty paper-thin blankets, helplessly shivering against the equally quaking cold bodies of their abused peers. Sometimes they groan or croak and gesture or nod, but never talk like normal people do. The experimented children lack the means for such functions after all, the child soldiers' vocal cords having been surgically removed so potential runaway experiments would be unable to seek help from outsiders.
The experimented orphans will never be able to voice their opinions ever again. Complain about their hellish living conditions or beg for mercy from a superior enemy before being savagely struck down where they stood. They will never have short conversations about the most mundane of things, be able to ask for directions or sing absentmindedly and talk about their feelings. Such things aren't required of expendable cannon fodder after all. Soldiers should only be able to following the orders of their superiors and swing their swords in the general direction of the advancing enemy forces.
The sound of approaching footsteps makes a dozen or so pairs of beady eyes wander towards the basement's locked door. The faces of the child soldiers' remaining impassive when the giant heavy door suddenly opens and another child soldier is roughly pushed into the dirty dimly-lit cell. The cruel Zaunite guards of the Institute sending the shivering children a suspicious glare before leaving the room and sealing the entrance behind them. A tense silence follows.
The experimented children merely glance at the emaciated silhouette of the bruised newcomer. The guinea pigs' dull lifeless eyes briefly pausing at the burnt left hand of the collapsed albino kid that's still crackling with flickering emerald lightning, before casually returning back to their indifferent shivering states.
Riven doesn't utter a single croak as the white-haired toddler slowly gets up and limps at the opposite corner of the cramped prison cell, the albino child's left hand ceaselessly smoking and twitching involuntary every few seconds whilst spiting lightning. Jade-colored sparks minutely appearing across the little albino's bandaged hand, burning Riven's flesh with the primal power of her uncontrollable magic before fading just as quickly.
The white-haired child soldier closes her eyes and tries to catch some sleep as she too starts shaking from the cold that sips in the cell from the cracks that's littering the walls of the moldy dark basement. Soon enough the green sparks racing over the young child's burnt skin finally vanish engulfing the stinky dark cell in complete and utter darkness.
0000
"This is… sickening!"
Irelia has always tried to maintain her composure when faced with scenes of carnage. Adopting a cool mask of indifference when walking in public, and meditating for countless hours every day when in the privacy of her home in order to master the art of concealing her emotions. Yet, this time there was no way that the proud and usually collected undead Captain of the Ionian Guard would just stare at the sight before her and shrug it off without a second thought.
Not when Karma had brought her to this hellish battlefield that had withstood the nightmarish Zaunite chemical barrage that had ended the Noxian-Ionian war.
Not when an alarmingly solemn and tense Enlightened One had wordlessly pointed at a pile of partly disintegrated dead enemy bodies, and Irelia had noticed the dead soldiers' strange proportions.
Not when Irelia had found the bones of countless dead children littering the desolate battlefield, dressed in Noxian military uniforms with chipped and shattered swords still held in their tiny skeletal hands.
"I wholeheartedly agree." Tensely whispers the always composed Enlightened One, and this is the first time that Irelia can detect such underlined anger and disgust audibly coloring her childhood friend's somber tone.
The two Ionian heroes continue roaming about the desolate battlefield, their footwears leaving faint yet discernible footprints on the ashen sea of burnt soil and dried blood left in the wake of the terrible Zaunite bombardment. Silent witnesses to the horrors of war scribbled across the landscape of the once beautiful destroyed valley, nameless gravestones erected by the already decomposing bodies of the decimated Noxian child soldiers.
So much death and destruction. So much loss of innocence and human lives. The battle-hardened Captain of the Ionian Guard feels humbled by the stomach-churning sight she comes across. Irelia as a proud warrior of her nation is no stranger to death of course, and yet seeing the miniature bones splayed beneath her feet and imagining the horrid expressions worn on the faces of those deceased children sickens the disciplined Will of The Blades to her very core. Captain Lito and Karma silently inspect the humongous piles of decomposing flesh and rusted breastplates. The broken swords and torn banners left to rot in this cursed valley of stolen lives.
"Does anyone else know of this?" Irelia asks the dark-skinned woman after a while. Karma responds by shaking her head in immense remorse.
"Only the scouts that came to search the battlefield for survivors, plus Shen, Akali and Kennen and their spy network. I swore all of them to secrecy the moment I received their reports." The Ionian Elder admits breathlessly.
Irelia wants to protest Karma's decision, but even a simple warrior with no experience in political maneuvers like her can understands that the knowledge of Noxus' treachery is too dangerous to be released to the public without careful consideration beforehand. The morale of the Ionian forces would plummet for one. Their kind-hearted soldiers pausing to contemplate whenever they were actually fighting armed children or genuine Noxian invaders mid-swing, those fleeting moments of distraction potentially leading to the loss of the pious defenders' lives.
Not to mention that Demacia would also rush into war with Noxus once more if they took a hold of that dreadful and discriminating information. Piltover would form a temporally alliance with Demacia then in order to lay claim on the abundant resources of the black city, forcing Zaun to defend Noxus with their chemical warfare.
It would be the start of the final Rune War, and as much as Irelia and Karma wanted to bring the Noxian High Command to justice for their inhumane actions, there were too much at stake for Ionia to open Shaco's box and let slip the dogs of war that have been grudgingly slumbering until now.
Karma kneeling before another great gathering of jumbled corpses draws Irelia out of her reverie. The red-clad Captain of the Ionian Guard curiously directs her stare towards whatever it was that her wise friend had spotted amidst the scorched piles of deformed human remains. The undead Ionian lich's sentient blades shifting about in mute agitation above the two squinting women.
"What is it?" Captain Lito whispers tensely as she too kneels before the pile of dead twisted flesh. Karma's intense gaze appears to be fixed on the scattered shards of a colossal runic blade that's still humming faintly amongst the blackened burnt bodies of the Noxian cadets.
"There is a survivor." The Enlightened One says guardedly as Karma's intelligent brown eyes slowly move from the freshly-shattered weapon to the trail of bare footsteps left behind by the owner of the enormous sword… leading directly towards the Ionian capital.
"Are they from us or…?" Irelia asks heatedly as the floating blades above the red-clad female warrior start shaking in barely contained anger.
"They are Noxian." Karma responds as her conflicted gaze leaves the dusty trail left in the ash to meet the striking angry jade-colored eyes of her childhood friend. And a livid Irelia is about to lunge forward and onto her enchanted hovering blades that she commands and hunt down the Noxian rat, when Karma's hand is suddenly wrapped around her wrist, effectively stopping the Captain's departure.
"Don't! The survivor is but a confused child that has been unwillingly exposed to the horrors of adult violence and war. They are probably injured and terrified out of their mind. The last thing we want is assaulting the poor child and proving to it that Ionians are the same as its cruel Noxian handlers."
The undead Ionian lich would have none of it however.
"I am not going to let a Noxian butcher loose in our city. Child or not, the survivor's hands are stained with the blood of our people!" Irelia grits her teeth as she attempts to pull her arm away from Karma's grip. The sight of her childhood friend's solemn brown eyes stops the resurrected Captain's struggling much more effective than the lose grip on her left wrist ever could.
"Perhaps, but this child didn't have a choice in the matter. You have one, however, right now. Please, I don't want my dear friend to become the undead monstrosity some of the Elders see in her. Don't let that hardworking and honest woman strike down a scared toddler in cold blood."
"Setting my hate for the Noxians that killed me and robbed me of my future, aside. Telling me to ignore a rogue enemy soldier that has infiltrated the capital and could go on a killing rampage any moment now… Do you have any idea what you are asking of me, my Duchess?"
Despite Karma being so seethingly addressed by her title instead of her given name, the Ionian Elder's eyes remain focused and pleading staring right back at Irelia's. Looking at this resurrected shade of her deceased childhood friend with calm, unwavering conviction.
"I do. And I'm not asking you to ignore them. Bring the child to me once you've found it and I will take care of the rest. I will make sure that it won't harm more Ionians from now on. The survivor will be my responsibility and you won't ever hear about them again. I won't let the kid become your problem."
"You're playing with fire, my Duchess." Irelia glares harshly at the dark-skinned mediator.
"I'm fully prepared to forsake my status and kneel down before you to beg if that means my dear friend won't become a coldhearted monster. I know that there is more of Irelia still residing within you than you let on, Captain Lito. Hopefully the fractured soul of my best friend will take pity on me before I start groveling at your feet and start kissing your boots to convince you."
"You would lower and humiliate yourself for the sake of a Noxian rodent?" Asks the immortal lich, yet Irelia's jade-colored orbs seem conflicted for a short moment.
"I would do it for both the sake of a mistreated child, and to preserve the light that's still burning inside your tormented heart, my dear lost friend."
The lich's face crunches up in distaste.
"Your childhood friend is dead, Enlightened One. I would have thought that someone as intelligent and perceptive as you would have realized that by now."
For what feels like long eons the dark-skinned woman silently stares at the raging storm gathering inside the jade-colored eyes of the Ionian lich. Then slowly, ever so slowly, Karma's lips begin to smile.
"If that was really the truth I would have given up a long time ago, my dear Irelia. Yet here we are today, and you have yet to pull your arm away from mine and hunt the survivor."