We return to Tiger Kin-No, wait…the Kashdaji Queen's Big Cat Adventure!
Ruination: Return Chapter XVIII
Fool's Errand Part II
Senna stares at the woman and her feline allies as they spread out, growling and snarling as they step closer and closer. Olaf snarls back, reaching for his axes, pausing only as the woman rounds on him.
"I repeat, who are you?" the woman demands, the hint of fangs poking out of her mouth as she grimaces, hand tightening on the haft of her spear.
"We are Sentinels," Senna offers, still keeping a hand on her cannon, though the woman before them does not seem to recognize it as a weapon.
"Sentinels?" the woman parrots, the largest of the cats approaching and sniffing Senna, "Sentinels of what?"
"Sentinels of Light," Gwen offers, reaching a hand out towards the woman with a smile, 'I'm Gwen."
"That title means nothing to me, 'Gwen,'" the woman states, sniffing the air, her eyes narrowing, not acknowledging Gwen's extended hand.
"But scent means much, for I and the Pakaa," she continues, as the largest cat shifts to Gwen and takes a breath in.
The cat turns to her and snarls softly. The woman tilts her head curiously, ears flicking.
"What is the purpose of a 'Sentinel'?" the woman asks, looking across all of them, smirking slightly at the harsh glare Vayne was giving her as the Pakaa sniffs her.
"To fight the forces of the Shadow Isles," Senna offers, "To bring an end to the Ruination."
"Ruination, that is the mists and undying beasts that have invaded our home?" the woman demands.
"Yes," Senna states.
"Then it does not seem that you have been doing a very good job," the woman states. She looks up as the cat reaches Riven and then lets out another yowl.
The woman nods, and the Pakaa walks back to her side.
"Strange magic colors, your scents, something almost familiar to us," she states, spinning her spear in her hand as she stares intently at Senna.
"Our weapons, perhaps," Senna offers, "They can kill the Mistwalkers, the undying creatures that have invaded your home."
"Perhaps," the woman murmurs, eyes narrowing, "Your companions' scents interest me. The blood and rust of Noxus, hidden beneath the sky right before it rains."
The big cats all look to Riven, "She, we are not worried about."
"Cold water, chill air, a beast I do not know." she remarks, looking up at Olaf as he glowers down at her, "He, we find… interesting."
Olaf grins and goes to speak, but she brushes past him to stare at Vayne.
"Oil, stone, and decay," she continues, "I do not know from where you come. You, we do not trust."
Vayne just stares at her.
The woman turns to Gwen, "You… smell like a memory."
"What kind?" Gwen asks.
"A happy one, though fuzzy at the edges." she returns, "We believe we can trust you."
She looks back to Senna, and her hand tightens on her spear.
"You smell of the Mist, with hints of something more beneath," she growls, her voice seeming to get deeper and huskier.
"But I have seen what the Mist has done, how it warps and twists. Let me grant you the mercy of dying as you are." She finishes, spinning the spear up and plunging towards Senna's neck.
Lucian wakes up suddenly, body flaring with pain.
"What-" he murmurs, then coughing, a ball of phlegm, blood, and mud splattering the ground as he fights to draw in air.
"Easy there," Yasuo states, appearing at his side.
"What happened?" Lucian demands.
"The earth tried to kill us," Yasuo offers.
"Wasn't the earth," Pyke growls, and Lucian looks up, seeing him perched a bit away, staring up behind them, "Was some manner of beast. Didn't know that got that big out of the water."
Lucian rolls over and sees a waterfall roiling against a tranquil pond. Following it dozens upon dozens of feet up, he catches sight of the jagged hole they came from.
He glances around, spotting Ezreal knocking water out of boots a ways away and Graves eying the trees suspiciously, cannon in his hands.
"Where-where's Senna?" he demands, shooting to his feet.
"We got separated," Yasuo remarks, "Riven went after her. Let's hope the others are with her as well."
"Y'all get split up a lot?" Graves asks, glancing back over his shoulder and then flinching as something shifts in the jungle before them. Pyke turns in that direction as well, lowering a hand towards his knife.
"Happens more than is comforting," Yasuo admits, also eying the treeline.
"We need to find them," Lucian states, gathering himself and looking around, "We need to-"
He pauses as, for the first time since it began, he hears the tune, not a faint echo within his own mind but carried to him on the wind.
He freezes and turns, the others glancing at him as that draw, that promise becomes too much for him to ignore.
"That way," he states and surges off, Yasuo sharing a look with Graves and moving to follow. Pyke waits, staring at the shifting jungle, until whatever is moving towards them seems to second-guess itself and shift away.
"Where are we going?" Yasuo demands.
Lucian, lost in the song, does not answer.
Senna shifts to dodge out of the way of the spear, only for it to stop short, Olaf's immense hand holding it firmly.
"That was a mistake." Olaf growls.
The woman snarls back, and it is distinctly feline.
The Pakaa charge, swiping and biting; Riven meets one with the flat of her blade, pushing it backward to the cat's apparent surprise as it flounders momentarily in the water.
Vayne dives beneath the legs of the one that attacks her and vanishes, which whirls and freezes in confusion, sniffing around and then whirling on Senna.
It leaps for her and sails right through her as she slips over to the other side. She coalesces and then batters it with the side of her cannon, eliciting a pained yowl.
"She changes right before your eyes, yet you fight us?!" the woman demands, eyes narrowing, her body seeming to grow even as Olaf holds the spear firm, "Then you are against us as well! The jungle will not have you!"
"You don't understand!" Gwen cries, trying to approach her, only to be rebuffed by another of the Pakaa, though it swipes at her half-heartedly compared to how its kin chase and slash at the rest of the Sentinels.
"You should listen to her," Olaf warns, looming over the woman.
"You should let go of my spear." the woman hisses, once more the feral tone coloring her speech.
"No," Olaf returns, catching a leaping Paka with one hand. Staring down at her impassively, he tosses it back towards the forest. "Not until you call off your pets."
"Not my pets," she snaps, spitting the word like vile poison. "My family."
She lets go of the spear, backing away from Olaf. He keeps it clutched in one hand, the other drawing his ax.
"We don't need to do this!" Senna states, "Please, just believe-"
"You outsiders are all the same,' the woman snaps back, "Honeyed words and false promises, attempts to soothe the pain of the knife you are readying to stab into our backs! Even the Ixtali are this way. No more!"
"Just let us explain," Senna demands, but the woman shakes her head, and Olaf grins.
"Stubborn, my people and yours would have much more in common than you think," Olaf states, "If we must knock sense into you rather than speak it, then I will gladly do so."
"Release my spear," she demands as her cats continue to harass and hunt the others. Riven batters two back, Gwen rather puzzledly dances around hers, and Senna has to split her attention between the woman and the Pakaa stalking towards her aggressively. Vayne is nowhere to be seen.
Olaf tosses his axes to the side and then plunges her spear into the ground behind him.
"Come take it," he challenges.
The woman tilts her head.
"That's a mistake," she warns, parroting his comment from earlier.
And in an instant, standing where she had been is an immense Pakaa, standing taller than Olaf. Her orange fur wild, green metallic bone covering her face and forelimbs. She opens her mouth, and fangs like butcher knives slip free.
Olaf grins, and she leaps. They clash in a spinning ball of fur and fang, lightning snapping across Olaf's form as he gives in to his berserker nature.
Sena rolls away from her opponent, weaving and blocking the feral strikes as the great cat is intent on tearing her head from her soldiers.
"No need for that!" Gwen states interposing herself, a defensive barrier of Hallowed Mist rising up to protect them.
"Thank you," Senna states, resting a hand on Gwen's shoulder as the Pakaa retreats. The Pakaa stares at the dome in confusion and cautiously swats at it with a paw.
It growls and yowls, attempting to move around Gwen to stare at Senna, but the doll stays firmly in the way.
"Bad kitties," she states firmly as the one that was half-heartedly fighting her also approaches.
Riven swats the two attacking her away with a mighty swing of her sword and rolls under their retaliatory swings, coming to her feet within Gwen's protective bubble.
"What's the plan?" she demands, as her opponents join the pair as they stalk around the outside of the bubble.
"I can get us out of here,' Senna states, closing her eyes and reaching out.
The fetter is moving to the north, deeper into the jungle.
"The fetter is to the north, on the move," Senna states, "We just need an opening."
Olaf roars and tosses the shapeshifter off him, bashing her heartily against a tree. She snarls in pain and drops to the ground, growling and hissing as he steps toward her.
"I've fought bigger as a cub!" he bellows at her, body bleeding from dozens of deep cuts, hair crackling with electricity, "Do better!"
The shapeshifter yowls and two of the Pakaa break off from the bubble, leaping for Olaf. He pivots under the first leap and catches the second on his forearm, their fangs digging deep into his flesh.
He snarls and throws them off, going for his axe, but the first harries him from the side, causing him to spin away.
He is laughing, "I missed this! Too long fighting hollow things with no passion, their rage not their own!"
Senna fights the urge to roll her eyes, firing a shot at him.
She fires, and the blast envelopes him as the second Pakaa lunges again and is pushed back by the flare of Black Mist. Several of his wounds knit shut, and the shapeshifter snarls, glaring at her intently.
She yowls again, much louder, and something big shifts within the jungle beyond.
Olaf turns to meet it as the Pakaa return to encircling Gwen and the others.
A behemoth, an elephantine beast with armored skin, feathered ears, and four grasping trunks. It slams into Olaf with enough force to knock him to his knees, and then its trunks begin wrapping around him like grasping vines.
The shapeshifter shifts into the pushes as the vast beast continues to bear down on Olaf, who glances toward Senna and the others.
"Leave," he growls, straining against the beast.
Senna nods, grabbing Gwen and Riven and drawing them into the Mist with her.
The Pakaa snarl, snap, and bite at them but flinch away as their jaws fill with painfully cold mist. Olaf strains against the elephant creature, a bolt of lightning crashing down on top of him.
He opens his eyes, expecting to see the entity wounded, yet it seems startlingly unbothered.
He grins at it, fighting his way free of one of its trunks, and it wrenches him into the air and slams him into the ground with a fury.
He groans and then howls in pain and rage as it rears back and presses all of his weight down on top of his back, pressing him into the dirt.
He struggles against it, even as his wounded arm threatens to buckle, and the faint sound of something popping or cracking in his back can be heard.
"No!" Gwen cries, her voice muffled by the mist. Turning to return to him, Senna grabs hold of her to keep her back. The Pakaa still surrounds them, and she can only keep them like this for so long.
The shapeshifter leaps from the jungle, slashing her claws across the side of his face. This elicits another cry of rage as she shifts back into her humanoid form, pulling her spear from the earth.
"Come out, specter!" she demands, pointing her spear towards Senna while shifting her spear to be pressing against Olaf's throat. He growls, straining against the beast. The Pakaa continue to stalk around them.
Senna releases the Mist, and the Pakaa close in. Yet there is a soft shunting sound, and the shapeshifter is knocked to the ground, her body wrapped within a net of tightening silver wire.
She hits the ground and begins to struggle, only for her to be wrenched back to her knees as something grabs a fistful of her hair.
"How about you stop making demands of us?" Vayne states, appearing beside her, crossbow an inch from her temple. "Senna would likely wish I did not pull the trigger. I, however, am quite averse to shapeshifters. So let her speak her peace."
"My pack-" the woman growls.
"Will tear me to pieces, yes, but my bolt will already be through your brain," Vayne growls back. "Now call them off!"
The woman glares at her, looking like she is keen to take her chances, but Olaf bellows and surges upward, causing the elephant creature to stumble back, which seems to dissuade her. She whistles, and the Pakaa look to her and lie down, the one closest to Gwen taking the chance to rub against her hand. The elephant creature also backs down, rumbling and flapping its ears as it stares down at Olaf.
"Speak," she states.
Senna approaches, "We are not here as enemies. We seek a mask, a jade mask, and once we find it, we will be gone, and so will much of the pressure the Mists are putting on your people in Ixtal."
The woman stares at her with a confused expression, "The Ixtali are not my people."
"Then whomever you care about, allowing us to pass will help them," Senna snaps, then collects herself. She shifts, placing a hand on Olaf's arm, pushing healing magic into it. The woman's pupil's eyes widen slightly as she watches, tilting her head to the side.
"It's true," Gwen offers. "All of us are just trying to fix this. Senna is our leader; she is not your enemy unless you choose to make her one."
"And how well is that working out?" Vayne remarks, holding the crossbow a bit closer for emphasis.
"Vayne, please," Senna admonishes, "I understand your wariness, I do, but I swear to the depth of my being I am not here to harm your people or anything they care about. We seek to push back the 'Undying,' not just here but the world over."
"This affliction is felt everywhere?" the woman asks.
"Yes, we-" Senna begins, but the woman cuts her off.
"Is that why you smell them?" the woman asks, "Steeping yourself in the essence of your prey?"
"That… is not entirely far off," Senna admits, "I was marked by it as a child, and the thing it imparted the entity that controls the Mists has been hunting ever since."
The woman narrows her eyes and goes to speak but pauses, flicking her ears, "Something is coming."
"Another friend of yours," Riven asks, reaching for her blade.
She remains silent, staring behind her. Out of the woods, a Pakaa cub emerges, panting frantically. The woman immediately surges against her bonds, attempting to reach for it, and the other Pakaa move to meet it.
The little beast mewls and whines and the woman stares at it intently.
'The Undying have found our hideaway," she murmurs, looking up at the Sentinels, "You seek a mask?"
"Yes," Senna says, feeling a rush in her chest. "Do you know where it is?"
"One of those I care for does, and if you do not release me, the Undying will learn of its location before you." She intones, "You claim to be allies, then prove it."
"Release her, Vayne," Senna states.
Vayne grimaces, but she does so, and the woman surges to her feet, whirling, and freezes as Olaf holds her spear out to her with a grin.
"I look forward to seeing what you can truly do with this," he states. She takes her spear, giving him a pensive look before turning to Senna.
"You are Senna of the Sentinels?" the woman asks.
"Yes," Senna returns, shouldering her cannon.
"Other names can wait, but if we are to fight together, my name must be known," the woman states, "I am Nidalee of the Pakaa, and these jungles are my domain no matter the claims of Outsiders or Ixtali."
And with that, she turns, changing into her massive cat form and racing into the jungle. The Pakaa look at the assembled Sentinels expectantly.
"Are… are we meant to ride them?" Gwen asks, ellation slipping into her voice.
"If so, then hop to it. We need this win," Senna said, the flutter in her chest growing stronger every second that they lingered.
Yet she couldn't help but look back one last time, thinking about Lucian and the others.
"Please be okay,' she murmurs, climbing astride the awaiting Pakaa as the others raced past her into the jungle.
Yasuo is far beyond nervous at this point and more than a little annoyed at one of his companions.
"Where is he-" Graves asks for what felt like the thirtieth time.
"I don't know." Yasuo snaps back.
They were heading south; his connection to the winds allowed him to know that much, but Lucian was moving like a man possessed, ducking and weaving and racing ahead, finding paths and switchbacks that gave them easy traversal through the jungle as if he had lived here his entire life.
"Lucian!" Ezreal calls out, attempting to draw his attention, but the man continues on.
They had been running for what felt like hours, pausing only in the moments where he seemed to come to brief lucidity.
Pyke had been silent the entire time, eyes burrowing into the back of Lucian's head, spinning his knife.
"What is this?" Yasuo demands as Lucian comes to another stop.
"I… we just need to keep going this way a little longer, and we will be where we need to be." Lucian huffs, breathing in lungfuls of the muggy air.
"And where is that?" Graves grumbles.
"Senna?" Ezreal probs, staring intently at Lucian.
"It… this will help her," Lucian says, and he goes to take off again, but Yasuo snags his arm.
"What will?" Yasuo probes.
Lucian looks at Yasuo, his eyes a little wild, "You saw what happened in Bilgewater, how frayed she was, how she-"
He pauses, looking back at the way he had been going.
"I need to check this. If there is a chance, she doesn't need to risk everything she is for a woman who died millennia ago," Lucian remarks, a surprising amount of bitterness pooling out of his lips.
He pauses, a bit of guilt crossing his face, "I have to try. I… I would do anything not to-"
He goes quiet, staring at the ground.
Ezreal glances up at Yasuo, and Graves chews on his cigar, eyebrows raising, "Feels like y'all neglected to inform me of some stuff."
"Lucian-" Ezreal begins, looking like he is debating the words he knows have to come next. Yasuo helps him out.
"You know what you sound like, right?" Yasuo challenges.
Anger flares in Lucian's eyes and he goes to say something but stops.
And this time, Yasuo hears it, too.
A soft lilting hum, a melodic tune that sounds better than nearly anything he had heard before.
"That is what I am following," Lucian states, staring hard at Yasuo, "And I know where my lines are. I'm not him."
"I doubt he got where he was from the jump," Yasuo remarks.
"You wouldn't risk anything to protect the people you love?" Lucian snaps.
"I-" Yasuo begins, pausing to compose himself, but Lucian powers on.
"Or is it just easier to let them get hurt for you, by inaction or on purpose?" Lucian states.
Yasuo feels his sword being drawn before he can fully process the words.
"Stop!" Ezreal shouts, and he realizes that Lucian is going for his pistols as well.
"This isn't you," Ezreal states, speaking to both of them but looking solely at Lucian, "It's not!"
Lucian stares at them for several moments, starting and failing to say something several times. He then turns and heads toward the song.
Yasuo goes to shout at him but Pyke stops him, placing a hand on his chest, speaking for the first time in hours.
"Enough," Pyke states, glaring after Lucian. "Let him go. If he's putting a noose around his own neck, it's better that he doesn't drag us all along with him. We should look for the others and what we originally came here for."
Yasuo listens, nods, and follows Lucian anyway: "I'm not leaving him to face whatever that is alone."
He glances back and sees Ezreal following after him.
Graves takes a moment longer, seeming to realize that staying would leave him alone with Pyke and quickly marches after them.
Pyke leans against a tree, unmoving, keen to wait for whatever follows.
It takes a few minutes, and the quartet stumbles into a clearing where a river has flooded its banks.
And sitting in the middle, a table heavy with food, gambling tokens, and playing cards resting before them, is a wide, fish-faced being, humming the tune that had pervaded Lucian's mind for days.
Graves pales, his cigar almost falling out of his mouth.
"Two-Coats," he mutters, and the creature's eyes flick open.
An impossible wide smile seems to split the creature's head in two.
"Finally," Tahm Kench remarks, throwing his arms wide, taking in the immediate fear and district with a mirthful chuckle.
"Azakana," Yasuo breathes, going for his sword.
"Now, now, I wouldn't do that." the demon warns, a long tongue emerging from within his teeth, "This Ruination business has left me feeling mighty famished, and if you are going to come and deal at my table…"
He pauses, rising from the water, causing it to drop, revealing four chairs crafted of driftwood and aged bone.
"Then you are gonna do so, politely." the demon growls, chuckling again, the sound seeming to vibrate within their very bone.
"Lucian, my boy, take a seat," Tahm states, "Let's deal."
And scene!
Senna rides to battle, Lucian readies a bargain, and beneath them, the earth still churns with the fury of an ancient.
Lucian snapping at Yasuo was unexpected, but I do enjoy where these characters take me.
Comments, questions, and critiques are appreciated. This has been VerBeeker, signing off!