What could possibly go wrong?
She was going to kill Draven if she ever saw his smarmy ass again, brother of Might himself or not. A new government, a pardon from two thirds of the triumvirate and the chance to go after the wicked witch who'd started it all? She should've known better. Riven just did not have the kind of luck for all that to go off without a hitch.
Such ruminations aside, she had more important things to focus on right now. Might was still hammering away at the gates. His brother had swerved off to keep the one-eyed mercenary busy. Vision and Katarina were the blood gods knew where. She'd lost track of the two early on in the initial melee. She assumed they'd be fine. One, she knew by reputation, the other had survived the same jungle hell she had years ago.
Speaking of Ionia, Riven cast a glance at the man running along by her side. Between herself and the ronin next to her, they'd set a hellish tempo through the ancient hallways of the Black Rose's stronghold. Wind at their heels and gales mingled with metal shards from her blade cleared the hallways in what her companion would call a most dishonourable fashion. But what use did two 'traitors' really have for honour? Especially when time was of an essence.
"Left!"
She could feel the pull on her blade as it grew closer and closer to the cretin who forged it. If it weren't broken in half, it'd likely have rebelled already, used that dark magic to gut its wielder with her own hand before she was even aware. But she'd spent years breaking it down, first in rage, then in determination. She'd made herself its master, taken every sliver and imprinted her will on it. Well enough that when she came back to Noxus and survived the Fleshing, she'd felt a tug as it realised her heartfelt desire.
The first one she'd told had been Draven, ironically. Then Darius, then with Swain's vision the samurai and his fox who'd travelled all this way to rescue her. The fox had stayed behind however. Fear, she assumed, or perhaps some sort of ancient knowledge. No matter, Riven would see this done even without her help.
"High!", Yasuo called, which prompted her to use her broken blade like a pole and vault herself sideways into the wall, where her momentum carried her several meters into the middle of the last shield-wall between herself and her goal. She hit their middle like a juggernaut, the fell magic from her blade strengthening her impact enough to crack the very stone she landed upon. Troopers were sent scattered before her like leaves in the wind, only for the wind blade in her wake to mow them down like grass.
And then it was done. The pair of them stood before the sinisterly ornate, leaden doors to the central chamber. They could feel the dark power emanating from within, making the air waver with magic like heat above a desert. Here, Riven turned to her companion, her blood-splattered, black and crimson armor hanging in tatters from her frame. Still, she wore a weary smile as she laid her hand on the much larger man's shoulder.
"You're done here, old friend.", she told him.
"Bu.", he disagreed, with a stern furrow of his brow. "I will not abandon you so shortly before the end."
"You're done.", she repeated. "Go back to Ahri. The gods know I've already taken enough from you. Go, Yasuo."
"Riven…"
"This wasn't the plan. Might and Vision should be here with us, with Guile on overwatch. Darius and Swain aren't here.", she reasoned, only for him to interrupt her:
"That is exactly why I should-"
"No! Whether one or two of us kamikaze in there, the result will be the same. You have someone to go back to. So go back to her. Let me make everything right."
The Ionian warrior took a deep breath. He hated this, that much was obvious to her, but he knew that what she spoke was truth. His time with the fox had shown him what mages could really do. The sorceress his friend was after would likely tag them both. But it only needed them to live long enough to run her through and that, well, that Riven was correct in. That she could do alone.
"I'm getting her to heal you.", he promised, before stepping back and running down the hall. She didn't need to see the look on his face as he left her to her fate.
She knew it all too well, after all. She'd seen it many times in the mirror.
Time to end this.
Moments later, those heavy doors were smashed open by the now cracked pommel of what used to be a runeblade. Riven stepped inside, muscles coiled and ready to set herself into motion the moment she located her target. Still, there were a few fractions of a second to take stock of her surroundings. The lavish, purple and gold carpet, the stylised, comfortable throne at the head of a long table with gargoyles for legs. Then the paintings on the walls. One stuck out to her, because she knew that face. She'd never forget Darkwill, the man who'd preceded the Trifarix, the dictator who'd been but a puppet of the white-skinned, red-eyed woman who was even now rising to her feet.
She had only seconds, at best, and she wasn't going to waste them! Her target identified, she hurtled towards it. Time to pull out all the stops! Her form shimmered green, a barrier appearing around her made of grave light that soaked the first of those dark, purple orbs the old witch hurtled at her. Then, she saw her enemy split into three identical copies! Fortunately, Riven could handle that. A one-handed flip saw her through the next barrage, her body twisting to dodge the increasing amount of missiles, while her blade swings through the air in an arc, her power flowing through it, forcing her will on her environment to pull the broken bits from her belt pouch and telekinetically hurtle the shrapnel from her broken blade into her opponent's triplet form.
"Impressive control for a walking slab of muscle."
How did the witch manage to sound so incredibly bored after being perforated by dozens of pieces of shrapnel? It was almost like-!
Riven spun around as swiftly as her catlike reflexes allowed, but it proved to be too late regardless. She took the full blast of fire from the actual witch right to the side. It hurtled her through what turned out to be three illusions and right against the throne, where she landed hard enough to take its back clean off and tumbled behind it. Lucky, perhaps, with how the next two orbs of sorcery pulverised the furniture. Still, now, she knew where her opponent actually was. She pushed herself off the ground, ignoring the pain in her side, the searing burn from where her scalded flesh fused with the metal from her armour. She could deal with that later, if she lived. If not, it didn't matter.
With fresh grit and determination, Riven ran up the wall to her right, jumped off it two meters up and bounced off the corner nearby to land on the table in a smooth roll that carried her past it and behind an ornate, but soon cratered couch. Every jump, lunge and dive carried her closer and she could see that knowledge in her enemy's face, just as the old crone with the body of a nymph could see the hatred and rage in her own. Perhaps it was that that tipped the scales in the end. The raw fury of Riven's increasingly unbound, unhinged telekinesis in the wake of her jumps, where shattered pieces of furniture launched themselves towards the sorceress just like the blade shards, ending in a maelstrom of shrapnel in the room that threatened to kill them both.
It was a raw cacophony, a furious mess of magic and mayhem that Leblanc soon saw as a fundamentally losing proposition. Riven was too hardy and frankly, too suicidally determined to not take her with her. Better to retreat. Better to open a portal and slip on through. And so she did, stepping into a purple oval opening into the void, only for her enemy to follow just as she cut the magic off.
Riven howled in frustration and slammed her blade into the closing vortex. This wouldn't do! She didn't know magic, beyond her increasing affinity with moving objects with her mind and the powers of her broken blade. But what little skill she had, she poured into it, tried to open that portal again to take her to the dark place where the immortal white witch dwelled. There was nowhere on Valoran Leblanc could hide from her.
This desire met with the crass opposite. A wish born of skill and ancient cunning to elope from danger and wait a few dozen years til it died of old age. Riven wanted Leblanc. Leblanc didn't want to be found. So magic needed an ancient, immortal sorceress with porcelain skin and crimson eyes, an immortal who'd steered nations as a sinister, grey eminence for millennia just as she had.
Against all odds, it found one. Magic always found a way. Thus, when Riven foolishly stepped into the astral portal to her new destination, she went in steaming for a fight with her nemesis, only to emerge someplace else entirely.
With Riven gone, the hunt for Leblanc went on in Valoran. While Yasuo and Ahri returned to Ionia, the brothers Darius and Draven continued side by side, with the du Cuteauo siblings to provide them with vital, and in Draven's case much-needed, intelligence. Swain, meanwhile, retreated to the Immortal Bastion to prepare for the long haul. But that was a tale for another time and age.
