Summary: A young Lux decides to explore the abandoned house atop the hill.
The little blonde-haired girl sniffled quietly as it walked by the dreadful, ruined gardens. A pair of short hurried feet clumsily navigate between the withered flowers and potted plants that were left to decay in the absence of the mansion's patient gardeners. The tall ugly weeds that grew uncontrollably around the tombstone of the deserted home forming an imposing fence around the Vaynes' property. Chocking the scarce rays of faint sunlight in an almost peculiar and alarming way.
Still sniffling and shaking with sadness the young and heartbroken daughter of the Crownguard family hastily makes her way to the Red Manor's gaping front door. Like every other time that the young child had stood before the exposed jaws of her secret hideout, Luxanna's eyes can't help but wander across the blatant signs of decay scarring the Red Manor's exterior in the form of flimsy, rotted wood and countless hanging cobwebs. The window panes of the haunted house are all broken, with tiny pieces of filthy glass still littering the windows ledges or being stuck in-between their snapped frames. The torn fabrics of old curtains the colors of which have long since faded with the passage of time can sometimes be spotted wavering unnervingly before the dark empty eye sockets of the deserted manor's second floor.
Most sensible children in Demacia, be it due to pure instinct, or naïve fear, or even the increasing sense of unease that overtook one whenever they approached the ol' haunted house tended to avoid the grisly sight of the lifeless Red Manor. The haughty servants and maids gossiping mixing with their parents' numerous stern warnings to construct the frightful terrors that resided within the empty mansion's dusty walls.
Many a time had Lux eavesdropped Garen and his friends conversing about the ghosts and witches that were hiding inside the basement of the abandoned house at the top of the hill. Sometimes the boys' secretive whispers told of a Noxian murderer that had somehow managed to slip within the city's walls and was now preying on the unfortunate children that wandered too close to the rickety old house. Some other times a strange hunchbacked blind woman would be found chopping human limbs in the kitchen, or a cloaked bloodstained Grim Reaper would be seated on one of the living rooms dirty armchairs near the fireplace, humming quietly and terribly.
Perhaps it had to be expected, but after spending so many months and even some years of listening to the concerned maids' ceaseless warnings about the old house at the other end of the town, Lux had decided to discover which terrible rumor was actually true. So, armed with her naïve courage, her hurt childish pride (Garen and Jarvan had called her a scaredy-cat for refusing to touch that dead frog they had found.) a toy baton with a prism attached to it and her strange gift of making her fingertips glow, Lux had decided to challenge the beast that scared both the adults and her fellow peers alike. Late one night, the little blonde toddler had abandoned the safety of her warm bed to search the Red Manor and defeat the evil being that resided within it…
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*Crunch, crunch, crunch, the blonde child's reluctant footsteps echoed alongside the sad remains of the Red Manor's decrepit driveway. The once perfectly flat and polished stones of the steep path that formerly allowed carriages and messengers to reach the Vaynes were nothing more than faded trails flooded with wild vegetation nowadays. The pathway itself was indiscernible from the rest of the ruined gardens as far as anyone could remember. The once pristine cobblestones were now loose and cracked, while some of the jagged slabs were missing, forming shallow holes that collected filth and occasionally, rainwater.
*Huff, huff, huff, little Lux pants as she moves in the inky black darkness, shedding a thin ray of pale light from her toy baton in order to light her way. The faint, twine-like beam of glimmering mana of the noble child's magical light bounces off exposed tree roots, rubbish and grey rocks with each new courageous step of the defiant toddler mage. Shadows seem to shift and twist near the corner of the adventurous youth's vibrant blue eyes, only to freeze and harmlessly dispel whenever Lux points her makeshift flashlight near their scheming dark forms.
The angry barking of a guard dog somewhere far away makes Lux shiver, as her hesitant feet reluctantly stop in front of the deserted manor's missing door. Carefully and ever so skeptically with a deep sense of unease finally unfolding below the ribs of the blue-eyed child, the flickering beam of yellow hope dances across twisted door hinges and wooden rectangles that may have once served as a pair of sturdy double doors. Lux's eyes minutely pause to examine the black flakes of old paint left on the ground near the damaged great doors.
Something once again shifts near the edge of Luxanna's vision. The toy light baton is instantly pointed towards a shadowy bush that rustles softly in the cold midnight gale. Lux gulps, and unwittingly takes a step back crossing the Red Manor's unwelcoming threshold.
"It's ok, Lux." The young toddler's voice rings uncertain as the miniature noblewoman takes a few deep breaths in order to recompose herself. "There is no Noxian fugitive or mad hag hiding around the old Vaynes' house. Garen and his friends are silly to think otherwise!"
Sky blue orbs travel across the dark hallways of the rundown mansion, taking in the sights of peeling white paint and dusty defaced portraits. There is more rubbish littering the floor of the decrepit old building as Lux takes a few tentative steps forward with her small heart beating thunderously like a war drum in her ears. Splintered furniture, filthy rags, shards upon shards of broken glass and stomped porcelain. The list goes on as the young mage-child steels itself and starts checking the Red Manor's rooms for signs of the notorious mad hag. Luxanna's light footsteps echoing ominously in the unnatural silence that is permeating the old empty house.
The floorboards squeak underneath the brave blonde sprite's shaking feet. The damp doors, moldy and warped as they are due to the rainwater that slips in throughout the season due to the countless holes in the roof, creak loudly as Lux strenuously pushes them open.
Time losses its meaning for Lux as the courageous little munchkin breathlessly examines trashed servants' rooms and bedrooms engulfed in repulsive grey spider webs. Most of the chambers and collapsed corridors that Lux dares to peek into seem to be entirely devoid of life. Plain empty wrecks full of damaged antiques and dirty surfaces.
There is no sign of human skulls, bloody cleavers and heinous bandits. No Grim Reaper with eyes that promise a painful death, cloaked shades with spectral chains hellishly rattling behind their ankles.
Around twenty minutes after setting off in the middle of the night to prove Garen and Jarvan that there is nothing sinister hiding in the ol' Vaynes' house, Lux's sense of fear is quickly replaced by a feeling of accomplishment and smug pride.
Sky blue orbs lose their frightened hesitant luster as Luxanna's until then booming heartbeat gradually calms down. Small childish fingers stop holding the toy baton in a white-knuckled death grip as a small pleased smile settles on the face of the young light witch. With her innate curiosity and her adventurous spirit taking the wheel at last, Lux becomes more daring and less cautious in her exploring, inspecting each new room more closely. Searching for shiny things, interesting trinkets and hidden treasures underneath the beds' torn mattresses and among the smelly piles of rusted iron and burnt books.
Lux will have to find something neat to prove to the boys that she really visited the crumbling house atop the hill. Then Garen and Jarvan will have no other choice that to admit that she is brave enough to be included in their games and they will all play knights together!
So Lux needs something that undoubtedly belongs to the Vaynes' before she returns back to her room. A broken letter opener with the dead clan's initials etched on its hilt, a torn flag with the forgotten house's coat of arms, a misplaced diary, a cracked signet seal. Something of that nature.
"I need to find some keepsake of the Vaynes or Garen and Jarvan will never believe that I came here and accept to play with me!" The blonde toddler murmurs absentmindedly as her tiny hands desperately comb the heaps of discarded odds and ends. Rusty, crumbling and utterly useless broken items being hurled carelessly behind Lux's heaving back as the young rascal continues searching for treasures among the disorganized pile of filthy objects.
One such small and utterly useless thing promptly lands near the child's dirty fingers. The scratched golden ring with the intricate capital V letter produces a clear and yet startling sound as it gently lands near the kneeling form of the preoccupied blonde-haired toddler. Lux grasps the ring curiously.
"Will this do?" A raspy feminine voice asks gruffly from the ebony shadows of the old bedroom's dark entrance, and the courageous blonde girl feels her blood turn to ice.