Been a hot sec.

The Eyes Lack Focus

As The Heart Pumps With Bad Blood.

Carve Them To The Quick

Spirit Quest VII

Call of Hirana Part III

Irelia freezes as she passes through the doorway.

The moment she crosses the threshold, the world shifts and changes.

The Spirit and the Material are interposed here, grey mist and dying lights filling her vision as the walls and floor become transparent as glass.

And below, she sees it. A cocoon of Black Mist touched vines, pulsing with weakening green light. And coiled around it is…something.

Something vast. And eldritch.

A Spirit, warped and twisted into something…others.

She looks around for the others and blinks in confusion.

For she is alone.

She barely has time to register that before reality seems to adjust again, dumping her unceremoniously into a small house, comforting fire crackling in the hearth, the smell of fresh bread filling her nostrils and humming…soft, gently humming, catching her ears.

She turns slowly, head aching, vision fluctuating and spinning as if to keep her off focus.

She blinks once more.

And sees…her family.

They sit at the dinner table, talking and joking, and as she stares, she feels her heart grow warm, and her mind becomes even more clouded. Ignorant of the clouds of Black Mist swirling around her ankles.

"All this could be yours." a voice whispers, sounding like a chorus speaking in unison, the voices of her family intermingling with Hui Ning and others she can't identify.

"Hello, dear." her Oma states as she turns around, holding a plate of her favorite foods from when she was little, before the war, before…

"Give up your quest." the voice mutters, "Find peace."

"I…" Irelia begins, and she hears footsteps behind her.

She looks, and her heart flutters and sinks simultaneously, unable to know what to do with the visage before her.

Liana, smiling at her lovingly, dressed in a soft gown of pinks and whites, her hair cascading down her back in a long curtain. A steaming cup of tea was in her hands, and she held it up to Irelia with a whisper.

"Drink, and come sit with us," Liana states.

Irelia reaches for the cup.


Rakan's senses burn from the warped magic inside the monastery. It crawls across his skin, burns his nose, and fills his mouth with tastes of rusting metal, sulfur, and rotten citrus. He gags and falls to his knees, trying to free himself of its corrosive touch.

"Get up, you drama queen." a voice he had long to hear for months says, causing him to snap to attention, ears arching upwards.

Looking up, he sees Xayah smiling down at him and offering her hand.

"Xayah? How…" he mutters, hesitating to take her hand.

The room shifts around them, and she moves away with a chuckle, and he can't help but follow.

They are in a forest, other Vastaya flitting through the trees and laughing. He feels the magic surge in his body, the tastes and scents becoming alluring and empowering.

Xayah walks before him, looking back occasionally with a smile, and then she vanishes behind a tree.

He darts for it, and as he turns around the corner, he freezes, staring.

His brain is fogged, his limbs sluggish, but he feels a soar of emotion in his heart as sitting beside a campfire is Xayah and…a little girl, feathering a mix of his and her mothers, dancing next to the fire and singing a nonsense song.

"Come sit with us, mieli." Xayah breathes, holding out a cup of tea to him.

"I…how…is this…" he blinks and shakes his head, but his brain remains fogged.

Xayah stands, putting a hand to her stomach and holding out the tea.

"Join your family." a voice whispers in his ears.


Erath falls to the ground and looks around, confused, for he can smell hay and freshly tilled dirt. He can hear the calls of sheep and elnuk on the wind.

But Henrietta was gone.

He rolls over, staring around in confusion, and reaches for his weapon, pulling what appears to be a pitchfork up from the dirt instead.

"What…?" he mutters.

"Son! Quit lollygagging. Food's getting cold, and we got company!" his father's voice calls out.

Erath jumps to his feet, barely acknowledging the barn he stands within, and rushes through the doors, skidding to a halt as he sees his father smiling at him widely and holding up a cup of heated cider. Behind him, a Noxian recruiter stands amongst his family, their eyes looking at him with pride and recognition.

"You're gonna do us proud, boy." his father states with a chuckle, "You'll be twice the soldier I ever was. I know it. Now drink up."

Erath turns about, taking in his home on the Dalemor Plains, and tries to match that with his father, returned and hale.

He reaches for the drink, his brain burning with confusion and the desire for this to stay as it is.

"You've got a bright future ahead of you." a voice mutters.


Akali stares around, standing on the grounds of…Hirana Temple, but lacking the Black Mist in the skies, sunshine turning the patches of snow into a radiant expanse of white.

"This isn't…right," she mutters, reaching up for her mentor's blade and freezing as a large shape looms around the corner to her left.

Udyr steps into the light, looking down at her with a befuddled expression. He is dressed in the vestments of a monk and looks…younger.

"Something is wrong." he mutters, scenting the air, "Where are the others?"

Akali blinks in confusion when she notices that the two of them are entirely alone.

"I…" she begins, only for a voice to cut her off.

"Udyr! You've returned. I could sense your raging spirit when you stepped through the doors."

The two turn, and walking towards them is a muscular Ionian man in monk vestments, shirtless despite the cold, with a red cloth tied around his eyes and a long corded ponytail running down his back.

"Lee," Udyr grumbles and Akali looks up, surprised by the soft longing tone in the giant's voice.

"Why have you come?" Lee asks, clasping Udyr's large hands in his own, a shock seeming to go through the Freljordian.

"We…I am sorry. I did not expect to see you safe." Udyr remarks.

"It takes much to defeat a dragon," Lee responds, a curious edge to his voice.

"We're here to find the Green Father." Akali interrupts, "To heal Ionia."

Lee nods and turns, waving them to follow him, "Then there is much we must discuss, come, have tea with me. It is funny you are not the first visitors we've had today."

Akali and Udyr share a look but continue after him.

"Who?" Akali asks, "We did come with some other people so that they might have already tol-"

She stops as her mother sits at the base of a pagoda next to a small table, sipping softly on tea.

"Akali!" her mother says with a smile, getting to her feet, "Please join us."

"No…this…how?" Akali demands.

Her mother's eyes fell, "I am sorry I had to stay hidden but to see you here on such a noble mission warms my heart."

"We never told you where we were here." Udry growls, taking a step back.

Lee raised a placating hand, "Mayym is of a keen eye and deep knowledge. There is no need for hostility. Please, sit, drink."

Akali shakes her head, feeling her vision warp and shift, and she quickly grabs hold of her master's blade, drawing it free and focusing.

A pulse of energy passes out from her, and the beings pretending to be their loved ones back away with a hiss.

Akali looks up at them, seeing a pair of Azakana shrinking away from them and Udyr, burning with a crackling storm of energy at her left, the shapes and gnashing maws of various animals bubbling off him.

"Where is the real Lee?!" Udyr demands, his teeth sharpening, lightning-shrouded bear claws emerging from his hands like a second skin.

"All around you." the false Lee rasps with a chuckle.

"And I had hoped to make this a pleasant experience." a dripping, rasping chorus of voices echoes around them.

"No matter. Kaiyan."

The illusion shatters as a behemoth of warped muscle, and Black Mist comes barrelling seemingly from nowhere and bullrushes Udyr to the ground. Two immense horns growing out of their brow, and others piercing clean of their partially reptilian flesh.

Udyr kicks them off and rolls, an animalistic snarl on his lips as his body flair orange, ram's horns wrapping around his shoulders like armor, and charges the beast.

Akali focuses on the blade and on her Kinkou training to manipulate the Spirit Realm, even this twisted falsehood that was roiling all about them, and casts her voice into it, reaching for her allies.

"Wakes up!"


Irelia goes to hug Liana, tears tracking down her face, when Akali's voice echoes within her ears, and the inherent wrongness of this situation strikes her like a hammer.

Her family is dead.

Her love is trapped.

The world had ended.

And this was nothing but a happy memory being warped and twisted by yet another horror.

She closes her eyes and screams, her blades spinning in a tornado around her, as she lets all the rage, grief, and hopelessness that had been building in her soul out in one magnificent crescendo.

When she opens her eyes, she is alone, in darkness, the shredded bodies of a dozen azakana lying on the ground around her.

The sound of movement catches her attention, and she parries just in time to stop a pair of thick, partially metal, partial bone claws from taking off her head.

One of the Shojin warped into a partially reptilian abomination, tendrils ending in lashing clawed hands, races for her.

"If that was your doing, you have made a very poor decision." Irelia spits, launching for the corrupted monk, even as the world around her continues to shift and warp.


Rakan stumbles away from his false love and the kid that should be there, that he wishes with his whole heart was real.

"I…you aren't her, and unless things work out better than I can even hope…this will never be real," he mutters, then runs.

As the ground crumbles beneath his feet, and the trees warp and crack around him, he launches off.

He hears them just in time, dodging low as what he guesses was once one of the Shokin launches at him, hands seeping with the Black Mist.

Rakan keeps running, sending shots and bolts of magic tearing toward the entity as they begin a dangerous dance amongst the vanishing trees.


Erath stares at his father, who still holds the cup out to him.

He looks down and sees his rifle back in his hands, but he…can't even think of doing what he knows has to be done deep down.

But he isn't alone.

So he lets out a high-pitched whistle.

And Henrietta emerges, lancing through the illusion, teeth burying into his false father's shoulder and dashing him to the ground.

Erath turns, firing at the false-Noxian as it approaches, and the illusion fractures more, a reptilian beast in similar vestments to the woman that met them at the gate and a long tail that looked more like exposed muscle than anything else ducking under the shot and launching for him.


Akali focuses more and pierces her master's blade into the stonework, pouring all she learned and what little magic she had into the earth. To fix the breach as she had learned years before under Shen's tutelage.

Her vision goes white, and when it returns, she can see the warped visages of the various Shojin monks being pushed back by her allies, who falter for a second as reality fully reasserts itself.

And her eyes and theirs all turn to the center of the monastery for a moment.

For there is a cocoon of Black Mist infused vines.

And wrapped around it, a conglomerate of azakana limbs and bodies slowly begins to uncoil; as it does so, her companions' enemies are forcibly drawn towards it.

With the blade in hand, she can see their spirits raging within against the perversion of their bodies.

Yet as the horrid mass unravels, they join with it, bodies vanishing within as it takes on a more concrete form.

A Dragon.

And in the center of its chest, Lee Sin sits, arms restrained, legs encased, only his torso and mouth visible, as the spirit that empowered him twitches and shrieks.

"You will not have it!" the horrid entity shrieks in the voices of the Shojin. Black Mist pours from its fanged maw.

"Gods, what in the fuck is that!?" Erath shouts, but Irelia and Udyr are already racing toward it, rage on their faces.

"A god," Akali states, looking at him and drawing her Kunai as she darts in; Rakan is a step behind, casting a shield about Udyr as he leaps for the warped spirit's head.

Erath gulps and leaps onto Henrietta's back, racing into the fray.

And within the cocoon, unheard by any of the forced monsters or would-be heroes beyond a voice, states cheerily to the Black Mist and those trapped within their warped God.

"I told you help was coming!"

Sorry this took so long and that it is a little short.

I think that there might only be 2-3 chapters left for this section of the story, and then all my focus when it comes to this tale will be going over to Return. Speaking of which, hopefully, I will get a chapter or two out for it, but I can't make any promises at the moment.

The entities that are fighting alongside Lee Sin are the other Shojin Monks from LoR for reference if you want to look them up and get a better idea of what they looked like and how they were corrupted.

As always any comments, questions, or critiques are appreciated. This has been VerBeeker, signing off!