Moonlight bathed the gardens of the Institute of War, illuminating exotic flowers and inanimate objects. There were enchanted sculptures that twitched and swayed in the wind like marble trees, benches were nested around patches of fragrant mana-roses. The still waters of a shallow pond at the very center of the gardens reflected the bright orb in the sky on the cool liquid's serene surface.
Few residents of the Institute were still about to behold the tranquil pond and the clear sky, even fewer of them would put aside their trivial matters to appreciate the beauty that surrounded them. They were caught up in things like duty and expectations, going through life with their eyes closed and their hearts under lock and key.
Diana, ironically enough, given that she hailed from Mount Targon -a realm of martial discipline and inflexible beliefs, was an exception to this unwritten rule.
The silver-haired moon maiden was truly a troubled and burdened individual. The Lunari, Diana's fellow worshipers of the argent Goddess in the night sky were nearly extinct. Betrayed by their arrogant sun-kissing Solari brothers and sisters that deemed their own beliefs superior, the Lunari were nearly completely erased from the annals of history. Their temples had been destroyed, their people had been murdered. Mount Targon had buried the memory of the Lunari to satisfy the egos of the overbearing sun-zealots.
Yet, despite having lost her home and being treated like an unhinged heretic and an outcast by the Solari and their equally self-rightious allies, Diana still reserved moments of her free time to marvel at the moon and the world painted in the colours of its platinum patina. Her argent goddess was the only thing that Diana had left, after all. Her only solace in this bleak world and cherished ray of hope in the darkness of her existence.
The sight of the dreaming sky and its twinkling gems soothed Diana's heart and eased her troubled mind. Under the watchful gaze of her milky-white deity, the shunned Targonian gazed at the stars for guidance while the moonlight caressed her skin, filling her with contentment.
Everything was beautiful under the cleansing radiance of the moon in Diana's opinion. Mundane sights cast in glistering moonlight became bedazzling spectacles in her eyes, while breathtaking sceneries were all the more magnificent whenever Diana's goddess graced them with her silver shroud. Of all the memorable views that the night so generously offered to her, with the exception of the night sky and the celestial bodies that were sprinkled in its black canvas, Diana enjoyed the sight of flowers being caressed by her Goddess' featherlight touch the most.
That's right, flowers. Those fragile and insignificant things that nobody else seemed to notice. The timid blossoms that would never be able to survive at the windswept peaks and jagged rocky formations of Mount Targon. Pretty things such as tulips and roses rarely bloomed in Diana's harsh homeland and when they did, they never lasted for long.
Nocturnal by nature, Diana spent her nights strolling through the gardens of the Institute, admiring all those velvety petals and soft buds that thrived in this foreign land's fertile soil. Sometimes the reclusive Lunari wondered if there was someone that tended to all those plants, or if the gardens were sustained by magic.
Diana had yet to reach a decisive conclusion since she hadn't encountered any gardeners in her nightly walks and she had neither spotted one of them on the Institute's grounds during the day while she was on the way to her scheduled matches. She had heard of Ionian craftsmen singing to plants and beseeching them to grow in a certain way that suited their needs, but Diana hadn't heard people singing here either.
It was a mystery. The perplexed Lunari was leaning towards the assumption that magic played its part in the maintenance of the flora. It would make sense, considering that the Institute of War housed a lot of magically gifted individuals and powerful spell casters. If the Summoners were able to construct arenas that defied life and death, then there was no reason to assume that they wouldn't also be capable of preserving the plants in their gardens through magic.
There was a failing in that explanation, however, a blaring inconsistency that caused Diana to doubt her own thought-process and second-guess her logical conclusion.
There were no mages that resided in Mount Targon. Everyone born under the harsh sun, the chilly air and the steep, treacherous slopes was a veteran warrior, more concerned with acquiring 'real' strength than chanting and gesturing in the face of a swinging battle-axe.
Some priests and nomads possessed abilities granted to them by wining the favor of alien, celestial beings, enchanted weapons were passed down from father to son for thousands of years till this day, divine aspects walked among the mortals, blind to the plights of their , for all the fear and respect that they garnered, those warriors and clerics and pawns to the war of selfish gods dabbled in magic that was not their own. Their magic was fractured and borrowed, a trickle of power steaming from cracks in the dam that the celestials had built around Mount Targon long ago to toy with human lives.
Diana's own gifts had only been given to her recently by her argent goddess, and thus the persecuted Lunari herself couldn't quite understand the wondrous boon that had been granted to her. She knew however that magic was more often used to end a life rather than to nurture it. Spells were used not to create, but to destroy. They were used to kill.
The mystical practitioners that the pale Lunari frequently fought against on the Fields of Justice called upon the might of the elements to vanquish their foes. They hurled conjured fire at their opponents and tamed lightning to use it as a projectile, they trapped enemies in cages of ice and imprisoned them in rings of condensed soil and stone. Their magic rarely shielded and healed, inflicting harm upon others like blinding swords and crystal daggers.
Shaped by the vague intentions of their immature conjurers that remained indifferent to the consequence of their actions, the magic that Diana usually encountered was inchoate and volatile, mirroring the nature of the casters that wielded it. Their spells jolted and burned, staggered and shocked, they charred the skin of those they came into contact with them and broke their bones like iron mallets.
The magic that sustained the gardens was the complete opposite of the reckless and violent magical applications that scarred the land. So unlike her own newfound magic that she had turned against her Elders. The blessed shield that she had handled as a sword. The magic that nurtured the gardens was subtle and invigorating, structured and controlled, purely beneficial for all intents and purposes.
Once a curious spirit and a ridiculed scholar amongst her inflexible, headstrong people, prior to her defecting from the Solari order, Diana was intrigued by this practisioner's achievements. She could respect someone that found their own way in the world by discarding the misconceptions of others. A pacifist, no less.
Diana had learned while attempting to restore the Lunari to their former glory, that renewal was a task as daring and difficult as confronting a band of enemies when being outnumbered. She had solemnly concluded that mages across Valoran preferred reckless manifestations of destructive force from regulated use of their power because they were as prejudiced and egocentric as the sun-zealots.
The common spell caster, whether they were a priest, a sorcerer or a witch, were driven by their need to display their mastery of the arcane and make a show of it. They flexed their power to intimidate and bully people into submission much like how the Solari demanded monthly tributes to their God from nearby villages and bossed around the nomads that they judged as barbarians and heretics for believing in their own obscure deities.
The Solari Elders, those craven and self-serving fools that so easily spoke of blasphemy and heresy were acting as if their prayers were the sole thing that kept dusk at bay and persuaded the sun to rise each morning. Diana almost pitied Leona for having to tolerate the ramblings of those pathetic coots. Those clueless sycophants, those bigoted...
The Lunari sighed, there she went again stirring the still burning embers of her hate. Although she would never forgive her former brothers and sisters for persecuting her unjustly, Diana had realized that she should prioritize restoring the Lunari order over emulating the sun-kissers behavior and massacring innocent acolytes over their differences.
Reining in her anger was an arduous task at times. The faces of the Solari Elders, distorted in outrage as they sputtered abuse at her and fervently demanded for her to be executed were painfully vivid in her memory. Mountains of slain Lunary haunted her dreams, visions from the past resurfacing through Diana's connection to her Silver Lady. Yet to hunt down the Solari with the same fervor that they had exhibited when pursuing her people was to stoop down to the same level as them.
Diana wouldn't taint the reputation of the Silver Lady by projecting an image of a crazed warmonger leading her ranks. Targon numbered enough unreasonable, muscle-headed warriors upon its ridges as it was, her countrymen didn't need another one of those joining the fray. Countless people would lose their lives if she and Leona ever fought outside of the Fields of Justice, utilizing the full range of their celestial gifts to murder each other. That wasn't something that Diana wanted on her conscience, killing the vast majority of the Solari Elders had already shaken her considerably.
The Elders might have ordered her execution, but they had been her family once upon a time. A strict, exigent kind of family she had never quite fitted in, but they were all the family that Diana had known of. The former sun-worshipper wished that she had been able to spare them despite the rage of her Goddess boiling inside her chest at the prospect of the vile Solari slaying her Chosen One at the time. Rage that had bled into Diana and guided her actions as she turned her crescent blade towards the enemies of her God.
Talks with Soraka and Karma had helped her deal with her emotions even if the nightmare of that terrible night didn't cease haunting her dreams. As a celestial, Soraka's insights were invaluable. The kind Starchild was happy to answer Diana's questions, shedding some light in her new role as an aspect of her Goddess' power and a walking avatar of her will on Runeterra. According to the older woman she would be an agent of the Silver Lady and a conduit to her emotions.
Karma was also very understanding, she spoke to Diana about inner peace and taught the young Lunari meditation techniques so that the Silver Lady's feelings wouldn't overpower her reasoning anymore. While Diana was devoted to her Goddess to a fault that didn't mean that she would surrender the last vestiges of her freedom to her. The Lunari would serve the moon the best she could, but she would be the one to decide how to without another person's emotions interfering with her mission. Surrendering full control of her life to an invasive divine being would be no different than following the tyrannical decrees of the Solari Elders.
To Diana's immense relief the lost Lunari felt no anger through her connection whenever she met with Karma or Soraka. The moon wasn't displeased with her for seeking their aid. So perhaps her funneling the rage of her Goddess had been an accident on the Silver Lady's behalf... It was also possible that the moon had felt her reluctance to strike down her would-be executioners and had given her a little push to save her life.
"Was that really the case?" Diana silently murmured into the night, lifting her conflicted gray eyes to stare at her luminescent deity. Nothing stirred within her bond, the quiet humming of celestial magic beneath her ribcage neither turning into a cacophony of buzzing sounds nor fading in reply. The moon simply surveyed her, like a gentle parent or responsible teacher watching over a child that's playing in the yard. Letting the child enjoy themselves and explore the world while simultaneously always being a heartbeat away from rushing to their aid.
Another sigh escaped the Lunari's lips, Diana's gaze settling once again at a nearby patch of green covered in a variety of flowers. Wordlessly, the ghostly pale Targonian moved closer to the slumbering cuddle of life, unbeknown to the pale woman an eerie change taking place behind her. Blossoms disappearing from the ground a fixed distance away from her only to bloom beautifully, closer to the strolling Lunari.
Crouching before the moonlit flowers the persecuted pariah carefully extended a hand to caress the delicate petals of an evening primrose. The corners of her lips twitched upwards at the sensation, a deep content breath teasing her nostrils with the aroma of dozens of sweet fragrances.
Diana exhaled, standing up to continue her solitary walk. Her mood brighter and her heart at , tap, tap, her footsteps rang against the cobblestone path in the silence as night flowers faded away from her and others bloomed closer to her vicinity. A part of the garden accompanying the introvert Lunari under the soothing light of the moon.
Writer's note: What initially started as a DianaxZyra shipping attempt ended up as a background dump with a twist. Anyways, I hope that you enjoyed the story. There are a lot of possible explanations about the blooming phenomenon. One of them being that the moon is behind the flowers, giving Diana something that she yearned for in Targon in order to reward her for her loyalty. It could also be that Diana is unwittingly causing her latent power to leak to her surroundings making night flowers bloom in her presence. The moon reflecting the Targonian life-giving light of the sun, being a symbol of renewal and so on. Or Zyra could be hiding behind a tree stalking Diana like a degenerate, or Maokai is fond of her and he is the one hiding behind the tree.