A bit of calm before the final storm.
Ruination: Return Chapter XXII
Red Revelations
Senna stands alone in one of the smaller vaults. Its shelves had formerly been bare, but now they hold the most precious items in the entire base.
She turns the new fetter over in her hands, the beautiful mask aching with loneliness, a mixture of desired distance and unwanted isolation. A brand cool to the touch one second, searingly hot the next.
She sets it down on the shelf and runs her fingers along it, gently touching the other fetter they managed to keep a hold of—far too few. Viego has taken so much of her. Not all, but only four pieces rested in true safety. Well, two now, as she can't really consider herself and Gwen as being safe.
The flagon, laced with merriment, stolen back by Ledros in those manic days following Viego's defeat at Targon. She remembers parties and celebrations and quiet nights amongst few.
The music box, his wedding gift, his promise of love, and even now, love aches somewhere deep within her.
No, not her, Isolde, yet in the presence of them, it became easy to slip into her memories after all that had transpired. Senna is unsure why the bleed is worsening, but it was.
Maybe because they are getting close to the end, and she is not sure what there is for them to do.
She heads back into the main room and sees the Sentinels arrayed around the Worldstone.
Olaf is silently sharpening his axes while Vayne paces, eyes tracking across the map.
Ledros hovers near the door in soft conversation with Ryze, who looks at her and nods, the pair beginning to shift in her direction.
Diana looks at her the moment she enters the room, standing and handing off the item she had procured in her absence to help buffer the defenses of the Island to her second, Cygnus, who departs without a word, going to track down the Mist Keepers.
Riven and Yasuo sit shoulder to shoulder, their hands ever so slightly intertwined, just thankful to be in each other's presence.
Graves shuffles a deck of cards in his hand messily, glancing up at her for a moment, cigar ashing across the Worldstone, which Vayne brushes away with a grimace.
Pyke detaches from the wall beside where she entered, eying her intently as she does so.
They all look tired and wane, even after a night of what she hopes was restful sleep. Milio had been sent back to the hideout under the care of Nidalee's followers, yet she had stayed.
Another to take the Oath.
That should comfort her, yet all she can think about is what Lucian did in her defense and what he risked in the endeavor.
She nearly lost him.
And he nearly caused others to be lost as well.
That resonates within her in a way she does not care for.
But they had won, a desperate victory, yes, but should they not feel comfort or pride in the accomplishment?
She glances to the side and sees Ezreal hunched over, a freshly healed but ragged scar marring the left side of his face.
"How are you?" she asks, approaching him.
He looks up at her and smiles, then wincing as the scar pulls at the rest of his skin. "I'm… I'll be alright. Not the worst I've been through."
She smiles sadly and looks down at the object he turns over in his hands: the Wayfind. More cracks thread across its surface, and he looks up at her nervously.
"I'm worried that it's on its last legs," he states.
"Meaning we can't use it anymore?" she asks.
"Not when it comes to how it's supposed to be used, just getting us back here to the Worldstone," he explains, "But… I think it only has one major trick up its sleeve until it's done for."
"Well, we'll keep that in mind," Senna states, placing a hand on Ezreal's shoulder, "Though…. I doubt things are going to get easier from here."
"Yeah…" he murmurs.
Footsteps echo behind her, and she turns to see Gwen.
"Presenting our newest Sentinel!" she states theatrically, swirling to the side and revealing Nidalee, dressed in the garb of the Sentinels, a gleaming spear made entirely of relic stone grasped in her hand, taken from the hoard Lucian had taken back from Skarner.
The rest had been given to the Ixtali, with a few of the recruits amongst the Ionians and Lunari agreeing to train them in the proper use.
"These are like nothing I have ever worn, nor thought I would, yet it feels… natural," Nidalee remarks as all eyes turn to her.
"It will shield you against the Mist, not fully, but enough not to worry about it constantly trying to worm into you," Vayne remarks.
"Thank you," Nidalee states, nodding to Gwen.
"Of course!" Gwen states happily.
"Planning to poke the eye out of another God with your new spear?" Olaf asks, grinning wide.
"Do you fight Gods often?" Nidalee asks, ears flicking.
'More than you'd think," Yasuo remarks, and Diana nods, pursing her lips angrily.
Lucian appears a moment later, Beryn a step behind.
"Not sure if it'll hold up compared to the original work, but it'll pack a mean punch regardless," Beryn remarks.
Lucian nods, turning over his new pistol with a critical eye, "Excellent work as always."
Beryn chuckles, "Thanks, but I still say we should credit the stone."
Nidalee looks around the room, "It appears we are all gathered, so tell me, how do we kill Viego?"
Her question hangs in the air like a guillotine, and no one seems ready to face it.
"See, I'd like to hear y'alls plan for that a well." Graves states.
"I," Senna begins, steeling herself, "I don't think we can."
"What?" Nidalee demands, her eyes going to slits.
"He's been put down twice in recent memory," Yasuo notes, "Each time, he just came back as strong as he'd been before… if not stronger."
"He's intimately connected to the Shadow Isles and the Black Mist, and finding a solution for that has been on the mind of many for centuries." Ryze interjects, "None have succeeded, and… I have theories about why, but they're not fully pertinent to the conversation."
"He must have a weakness, though, something we can exploit?" Nidalee demands.
"Isolde," Vayne states.
Senna feels something stir within her, but she can't place the emotion.
Nidalee grimaces.
"If prey can not be killed, it must be trapped, and you have yet to make a way to get this done?" Nidalee challenges, staring around the assembled Sentinels, "You've been at this for over a year, I take it?"
"Yes… but we have been focused on collecting the fetters, making sure Viego can't get his hands on them." Senna returns.
Nidalee stares at her flatly, "How well has that worked for you?"
"Mixed at best." Ezreal remarks, drawing looks from the others as he kicks a loose pebble and refuses to meet their eyes.
"Then it is long past time you change tactics." Nidalee states, "There must be something we can exploit outside of his devotion to his lost bride, as you have informed me."
"He and the Mist have bonded so intimately that any trap we devise he could likely slip out of in little time at all." Ryze remarks.
"And if we could sever his connection to the Mists?" Yasuo asks.
"Then your mission becomes considerably easier," Ryze attests, "But I am uncertain of how exactly we could accomplish that goal. The Sentinel's troves have been wiped clean across the continents. The Isle is firmly his domain."
He rubs his chin and looks to Gwen, "Standing with you is one of the last remaining fonts of Hallowed Mist in Runeterra, one of the few things that can utterly rebuke the Black Mist…but I can not think of how to utilize her full potential without likely endangering her life."
"I would do anything to stop Viego," Gwen states, stepping forward, "I live because of Isolde. I would gladly give my l-"
"No!" Senna cries, the light in the center of her chest flaring briefly. Gwen blinks in surprise, "No, Gwen, that is not what she wants for you."
"Then, what do we do?" Vayne demands.
The others look amongst themselves, hunting for answers, when a soft chuckle emerges from the darkness.
"Quite a pickle you are all in," the voice says as a gaunt man, dressed all in red, irises glowing with scarlet light, steps from the shadows.
"Luckily for you," Vladimir, the Crimson Wanderer, the Red Merchant, the Man in Scarlet, and so many other titles, says, smiling at the group. "I have the answer you're looking for."
"You," Senna gasps, hand twitching towards her cannon, several of the other Sentinels going for theirs as well.
"Me," Vladimir responds with a smirk.
"How are you here?" Ledros demands, "The wards-"
"Are good," Vladimir interjects. "Just not quite good enough, but don't be ashamed. I am older than most nations in this corner of the world."
"You're the one behind the markings at the Sentinel outposts." Ezreal murmurs.
"Who else did you expect?" Vladimir asks, sounding just the little bit insulted. "When young Ryze and your order's founder went looking for help, who else could they have turned to?"
"Where have you been?!" Ryze demands, eyes flaring with magic.
"Around. Our work was a delicate thing; unraveling it took effort, especially with you playing hero with a dozen other trials," Vladimir states with a false smile.
"This is your partner?" Vayne growls in disgust.
"Surprised?" Vladimir taunts, "Why? You should know how trying times make bedfellows of the strangest sort. Look around you."
"A monster hunter and a revenant.' he states, gesturing to Ledros and Vayne, "Saying nothing of the murderers, monsters, thieves, and traitors amongst you."
His crimson eyes flick from Yasuo to Pyke to Graves to Riven.
"Is it really so strange that a magical prodigy, a brilliant scientist, and a practitioner of the occult would not join forces to hold back the sway of something so… naively devastating." Vladimir offers.
"I suppose not," Ezreal remarks, glancing at Senna, though he and many of the others look incredibly wary.
"Why should we trust anything you say?" Riven demands, glaring at him, her hand squeezing tighter and tighter around the hilt of his blade, "I know what you are."
"Inspired?" he mocks.
"Black Rose," she growls.
He blinks, seeming for the first time to be disarmed by something in the moment, but he recovers quickly enough, "Ha, well… the loyalties of that little club have always been…mutable."
Riven bares her teeth.
"You do not need to trust me," he states matter-of-factly, "But I do have every intent to help you. Perhaps this will work as proof."
He reaches within his cloak, which ripples distressingly, and removes from it a bronze circlet.
"Her crown," Yasuo remarks, eyes widening, and Senna feels immediately drawn to it. Gwen steps forward as well, hovering at Senna's shoulder.
"A peace offering." Vladimir states, setting the crown gently into Senna's hands, "One more piece, perhaps forgotten, even by your…hmm… what is she to you really? Benefactor? Ward? Parasite? Where does she end, and the two of you begin? Regardless, that makes you even with my nephew. Only one more remains."
"Your nephew?" Lucian demands.
'Where is the last fetter?" Yasuo asks.
He ignores them both, speaking mainly to Senna and Gwen.
"My people, the Camavorans, kept everything they stole," Vladimir states, crinkling his nose with derision, "Or made. A rarer thing, that. Regardless, it's not just the items themselves that they hoard. It was the knowledge as well, history, rumor, right down to the scraps of half-remembered notes and aged builders tools. Their covetous nature was a thing of legend."
Vladimir gestures to himself, "We were a gluttonous people, for life, for history, for dominion, and that meant we need not just claim a thing, but everything attached to that thing. Those of Highborn blood, of course, I mean."
He bows respectfully to Senna, Gwen, and Ledros, "The common folk were more stayed in their passions."
"Regardless, what I mean to say is that while the knowledge of Helia has been warped and lost beyond recovery, meaning how to sever Viego's connections to the Mist through those avenues is likely to be so fruitless as to not even consider it, there is another path before us." he continues.
"Is it truly so hopeless?" Gwen asks, "I can access the Hallow, as can Ledros."
"Do you know how you do so?" Vladimir asks pointedly.
Gwen falters, "I-"
Vladimir nods and looks to Ledros, "And the latter was born from Divine Intervention, and even that was but one. Do you not think that the deific figures of Runeterrra would have cured the blight of the Shadow Isles if they could truly manage it in full?"
Silence meets his question, though many eyes narrow.
"Perhaps I am being a tad too harsh, but I must admit, I am older than some of them," Vladimir remarks with a shrug.
"Then what do you suggest?" Senna demands.
"I did not wax poetic about my homeland's hoarding nature just because I enjoy the sound of my own voice," Viego returns, Lucian cutting him off before he can continue.
"Are you sure?" he asks.
"Cute." Vladimir returns, turning back to Senna, "My point, my lady is this: Camavor holds the answers you seek, but you must follow a different avenue. Forget the Mist; look to the sword."
"His blade?" Olaf asks, "What of it?"
Vladimir pinches his nose, "Surely you people have a library, histories, by the hells if Jenda'kaya could see what her life's work has become."
He looks Olaf up and down once more, "Though… perhaps you simply cannot read."
Olaf growls and motions like he plans to choke the ancient being standing before them.
"His sword is magic, a dark and hungry thing." Ledros offers.
"Yes, yes it was," Vladimir acknowledges, "Right, allow me to spin you a tale of old."
"Says the man who hates the sound of his own voice," Riven remarks flatly. He smiles at her, but there is no warmth to it.
"Then perhaps someone other than the bumbling historian should have done their homework," Vladimir notes.
Ezreal blinks, but it is Yasuo who speaks.
"His sword drinks in life. He was trapped within it the first time we encountered it." Yasuo offers, "Thresh and Gangplank were very intent on claiming it."
"Did they manage it?" Vladimir asks.
"Oh, is this not something you had heard about, oh wise one?" Yasuo demands.
Vladimir sighs, "I am taking these barbs in stride, as my aid is sincere, so please continue."
"No." Yasuo finishes curtly.
"Good for them," Vladimir states, "for if they had succeeded, it would have been the sword's judgment that met them next, and it was always a fickle thing.
"The sword's judgment?" Senna asks.
"Oh, yes, Viego's blade was once known as Sanctity, the Blade of the King," Vladimir explains, "A lofty title for such a brutal, bloody thing. To claim the throne of Camavor, the chosen heir would need to claim the blade and hope it claimed him back."
"What happened if it didn't?" Senna asks.
"You died." Vladimir states, "As it drew your soul from your body and into itself. It worked much the same on the battlefield, supping on the souls of those who faced the king's ire. Some thought Viego would be yet another casualty to it. Clearly, he proved them wrong."
"The Ruination, the Black Mist, was born when that blade, a thing of ultimate death, met with the Waters of Life, from which the Hallowed Mist poured a font of endless life." Viego explains, looking at Ryze, "You were there. How have you not informed them of this?"
"I… I don't remember." Ryze remarks, looking fairly haunted.
Vladimir's confident persona slips for a moment, and standing before Senna is someone older and more tired than she could ever properly understand.
"Of course," he remarks.
"Viego lashed out at the pool when things went wrong with Isolde?" Lucian asks, "That's what caused those forces to meet?"
Vladimir laughs darkly, and his eyes flick to Senna and Gwen, "No, no, the waters worked. Isolde returned."
The tension in the room builds, and Senna can finally feel the emotion that radiates within the crown, the fetter that was cast the farthest away: guilt.
"She returned furious, wounded, betrayed." Vladimir continues, "And so she plunged Viego's own sword through his chest and into the waters below."
"She anointed him as the King of Unlife, trapping him within Life and Death forever, so he could never join her for the betrayal of such a sacred right, and Helia broke with him as the forces tried to overpower the other." he finishes.
"Oh…." Gwen murmurs.
"But. The blade was made as a prison of the unworthy." Vladimir notes, "The plans would remain in the archives of Camavor still, untouched, waiting. With those, and you."
He points to Gwen.
"We would have a way to muzzle him and cease the Ruination," Vladimir states.
The others look around the room, and Senna is aware of their murmured questions, but she is too rattled by the revelations before her.
Isolde had doomed Helia just as much as Viego…
"Hey," a soft voice murmurs and the guilt consuming her vanishes as Lucian cups her chin.
"What do you think?" he asks.
"If it can stop him, how can we not pursue it?" she answers.
"Then we have our plan," Nidalee states, spinning her spear.
"Indeed." Vladimir states, "Camavor awaits for some of your numbers."
"Some?" Ezreal demands, "Why not all?"
"One fetter remains in the open, under threat," Vladimir notes, "And well… that."
He points a hand to the Worldstone, ignored in the enthralling notes of his story.
A point of light, centered in Shurima, flashes franticly.
Ezreal is nearest to the table and reaches out to touch it.
The image is flickering, unable to fully connect, but Senna recognizes the figure hovering there.
Kai'sa.
"Ezreal?!" she cries, taking him in first and then the others, "Sentinels! I need your help."
And scene!
Next time, we depart the canon to venture into the unknown: Ergo, welcome to the likely smaller arc of Distant Shores, followed by the Shuriman arc: Divine Error and an interim chapter simply titled Fall Before.
Hope you enjoyed this chapter, gonna be dark for a bit after this as I work on the next arcs.
As always, comments, questions, and critiques are appreciated. This has been VerBeeker, signing off!