Let the Trial of the Bearded Lady Begin!
Ruination: Return Chapter X
Depths Beneath Part II
Ledros awakens with a start.
He sits up and freezes as the hands that lift him from the ground are not the gaunt, skeletal claws he has known for millennia.
They are flesh and blood.
Scarred and tanned.
He looks down at himself, and he finds himself whole and hail.
He stands, looks around, and finds the city of Helia pristine, untouched, and in the distance, a grand Camavoran ship rises like a welt from the city's glasslike harbor.
It… had it all been but a nightmare.
A horrid vision of what would happen if the King succeeded.
He sees the gifted sword, the sign of trust that the man he had considered liege and occasional friend, resting on the ground before him.
He scoops it up and races for the ship.
This can not come to pass.
He would stop it.
No matter the cost.
He stumbles onto the deck, breathing hard, and stops as he sees the King standing with Hecarim and…. Kalista.
She seems nervous, but her expression brightens at his arrival.
She knows him.
He feels a surge of relief and joy.
It had been a dream.
It must have been a dream.
"There you are, my Champion!" Viego exclaims, his expression a giddy one.
"My King, I-" he begins, but Hecarim speaks over him.
"Now that he is here, can we proceed?" the knight demands, not even deigning to look at Ledros.
"Yes, of course," Viego remarks, and with a declarative certainty, he vanishes into his quarters.
Ledros's heart drops as he returns but a moment later, carrying Isolde's shrouded body.
"Soon, my love, soon." Viego breathes.
"What is, did the Masters not say that they would not allow this?" Ledros demands.
Viego looks at him thunderously, "No one can allow me to do anything. I do as I please in all things."
There was the impetuousness, the desperation, the madness, the monster he would become already haunting the panes of his young face.
Ledros's grip on his sword tightens.
Kalista looks at him with a saddened expression.
She will see reason.
"We will march to my love's salvation, and you, my champion, will lead the Host against any who stand in our path while Hecarim shows these pompous fools what it means to refuse to understand my plight." Viego orders.
Hecarim grins, and for a moment, the fanged visage burnt into Ledros's mind appears.
Ledros steps back and looks to Kalista.
"This is madness," he states, seeking her response.
She looks away, a mixture of grief and rage on her face, but as she glances at her nephew, a resolve fills her.
There it is.
He readies himself, for he knows she will join him.
She glances back at him, "It must be done. Do as he asks, please."
No.
She would never.
She…she went to her death knowing.
She damned herself for Helia.
This…
He quiets his thoughts and looks up, eyes burying into Viego's.
"No," he states, and he moves, blade flashing up.
Hecarim's head leaves his shoulders before the knight can even draw his blade, and it continues its arch, lancing towards the rage-filled face of Viego.
Only for Kalista's spear to halt the blade.
The force of the strike sends her to her knees.
"Traitor," she snarls, and for a moment, her warm brown eyes, which had only ever looked at him with kindness, flare into that dreadful alien blue that holds no recognition of who he is.
Viego shouts and bellows and screams, but as he cradles his dead bride, he never draws his sword.
"I will not allow this to happen again!" Ledros bellows, and though it fills him with momentary revulsion, he headbutts Kalista.
She falls, and he rushes past her, charging for Viego.
The King stumbles back, and Viego goes to sink his sword through his stomach when Kalista's spear punches through his ankle and sends him rolling to the ground.
The pain means nothing. He needed to keep going.
She is on him in moments, another spear poised to lance into his throat.
He raises his blade to defend himself, and despite his mind screaming for him to stop, he lets the adrenaline carry him forward.
He surges upwards, knocking the spear aside, and his hand finds her throat.
He wrenches her into the air, and she looks down at him, eyes burning with shock, anger, and betrayal.
"Why," she demands.
He looks to Viego, who is snarling at him like a rabid animal.
"This has to stop." he returns.
The image around him begins to shimmer and fade as he feels his body lock up.
Kalista changes, becoming as he has known her for millennia, spears rising from her back, her eyes burning with hatred.
He changes as well; flesh and bone become green flame and blackened metal once more.
"You have drive." a voice states, sounding like the priestess's but undercut by something older and deeper. Something fathomless.
And that something turns his head, drawing his attention over and up, revealing a mass of gleaming emerald eyes staring down at him from the darkness.
"It needs to end." he states again, "The Ruination, the Shadow Isles, Viego's obsession, all of it."
"Yet, you are a part of it." the voice booms, "Another mark of that dark legacy."
The darkness shifts to the streets of Bilgewater, a Harrowing, and he sees himself, carving through the fleeing and the desperate, walking momentarily shoulder to shoulder with architects of his torment.
"I know." he states, glancing up once more, "Too long was I lost in rage and mourning."
"And you believe you have changed, stagnant being that you are?" the voice asks, and he hears something shift in the darkness, a vast sourceless slithering.
"Trapped as I am in my lot, but that does not mean I can not learn a better path forward." Ledros states, "I wish to atone, I wish to be free."
"As is the right of all who live." the voice agrees, and the eyes seem to grow closer, "Do you believe you have that right as well, stagnant thing?"
Ledros looks to the image of Kalista held in his hands, "I hope. I love. I fight. I would weep if I had the tears to give. I am an echo of all I used to be, but I think, I think I do have that right."
"And with life, there is motion." the entity breathes, "Will you truly do anything to stop this plight?"
He is silent, contemplating, and the being presses further.
"Would you slay her?" it asks, "With finality, with a gift given?"
He stares at the visage of the woman he has loved for millennia, and the answer comes slowly, "I would rather save her, free her from all that haunts her, so she could move on to the peace she deserves."
"But if she could not be saved?" the entity questions.
"Then… then I…" he falters and looks away and down, then up to the entity, "Then I would grant her freedom with the only way I had left to me."
"Seek your goal, follow your path. You walk in Motion, Ledros of Camavor. May the Mists never impede your path again."
One after another, the multitude of eyes close, and the air becomes charged with energy.
"A warning, though," the voice intones one last time, "This gift will not be a pleasant one."
And with a sudden snap, his body explodes in white-green flames, and all he can do is scream.
Yasuo opens his eyes to find an empty bar surrounding him. He looks around in confusion and finds it to be Ionian in guise and utterly empty except for him.
He glances down at his arms and finds the one still marked by the Black Mist.
"Another vision," he murmurs, "What facet of my past will be used against me this time."
"How sardonic of you." a voice intones, and he whirls, freezing as sitting beside him, two seats down, nursing a cup of tea is his brother, though not as he had last seen him, but as he had been in life.
"Yet no less true." Yasuo returns, narrowing his eyes, "Is this the only form my guilt knows how to take?"
"Hardly. This is just the oldest," his brother states, turning to him fully and revealing glowing emerald eyes, "We both know you carry so much more with you."
"Of a master failed." the entity states, and Elder Shouma replaces his brother. His breath hitches.
"That of a woman who trusts you when you once sought to kill to appease your conscience."
Suddenly, Riven is seated beside him, and he feels a stirring in his chest, an ache he reckoned with most days.
"That of friends abandoned." this entity continues, and Riven becomes Braum and the gently smiling visage of Ahri, another ache, another burden he acknowledged.
"Or perhaps that of a homeland you couldn't save." the being states, and the tavern shifts, becoming a grey, burnt ruin, the idyllic view outside no dull and choked by Mist.
"I carry it with all me, yes, but I know the teachings of the woman who summoned you if it is you, Oma." Yasuo states, bowing his head respectfully, "I accept your rebuke."
"You believe I view you as a failure, Yasuo of Navori?" the entity demands, and then, to his surprise, she laughs.
He glances up and blinks as staring back at him is the one person he can't think of how he failed. His first and only student, smiling up at him with the quirked eyebrow he remembered so well.
Taliyah.
"For someone so intimately tied to the wind, you were stagnant for so long." the entity continues, "Drowning in your own loathing and guilt. But you have found your Motion, been named a Guardian of Life alongside mine own priestess."
"You have Motion." she states, "You have chosen to live, to fight, to be a hero, though that matters little to me in truth."
"You were a wanderer for so long, but there was no direction to your path." the entity continues.
"And now I do," he murmurs, "Back to the Isles to finish what I helped start."
"Indeed. Now rise. Your fellows need your blade unhindered by guilt, though we both know you will never truly let it all go. Let us make sure that the Ruination at least can not grasp it as well." she states, standing and holding out her hand for him to shake.
She takes it with his Black Mist-marked one, and before his eyes, the entity shifts back through all the faces of his worry, guilt, and hope.
It freezes for a moment on Ahri.
"She, too, is in Motion." the entity speaks.
"Wha-" he exclaims, but the sound of surging waves drowns him out, and the cycle continues, shifting through an equally smiling Riven before resting on his brother.
"I do wonder where your Motion will carry you once this is all over." the being states, and as she releases his hand, the world goes dark.
Lucian sits up with a start. Around him is the sea cave, but empty of everyone but himself.
"I will not keep you long, Lucian" a low voice intones, and he spins, freezing as looking at him with glowing emerald eyes is his father, Urias.
"You have been challenged and tested your entire life, stayed stagnant for quite some time." the voice remarks, studying him with narrowed eyes.
"Stagnant?" Lucian asks, cautiously reaching down to his weapons and finding them discomfortingly missing.
The entity wearing his father's face watches the movement and chuckles.
"You lived your life in a circle." the being states, and briefly, the image shifts, a forest racing by as a facsimile of him chases after a familiar cackle and the clack of bone and iron.
"Chase the Fiends, kill them, ignore attempts to reach you, to forge a path beyond the lonely road," the entity states, "Rinse and repeat, ever hunting the Torturer, seeking your beloved."
"I was led to believe you reviled the undead." Lucian returns, narrowing his eyes.
It chuckles, "Oh, I do, and for your relentless pursuit of that architect of ruin, I commend and respect you. But before I grant my boon, I must ask you a single question."
"Ask it then," Lucian states.
"You found Motion when your wife was returned to you. Your obsession fading," the entity notes, and Lucian feels a brief urge to argue against it but holds his tongue.
Yet it smiles knowingly all the same, "You lived for only one thing. Tell me that does not ring of familiarity to the current plight of the world."
"I am not-" Lucian begins, understanding the hanging accusation.
"No, no, you are not." the entity interrupts before giving him a direct and scathing look, "But perhaps you will be. Love is a powerful thing, all-consuming for many, and at times a horrendous source of stagnation."
"I only ever wanted to send my love to her rightful rest. I never dreamed that I would have her back!" Lucian challenges.
"And now that you do, can you live with the thought of losing her again?" the entity demands, standing and looming taller than his father ever could.
"I challenge you, Lucian, when given the choice, which matters more, the world or your wife's life?" the entity asks, emerald eyes erupting from the shadows all around him.
"I-" he falters before looking back at her without a stony expression, "I am not Viego."
"No, you are not." the entity murmurs, "But that does not truly answer my question."
"I would choose her." Lucian states, and he feels a sense of disappointed anger flare around him, "And she would choose the world regardless because she is much more selfless than I could ever be."
"And in that, there is the truth of it." the entity states, "Mind that as you go forward, for if you falter in your Motion, the Mists will swallow you whole."
"But of course…" another voice murmurs, sweet and cordial, accompanied by a low humming tune, "There could always be another way to get all you want."
The entity's eyes flare, and her voice becomes thunderous, "Begone!"
And while he is cast out of the vision, mind racing with questions, he is certain she is not speaking to him.
Senna blinks her eyes open. She can feel sand beneath her fingers and hears the gentle lapping of waves. Sunlight filters lazily through swaying tree branches above her.
She sits up, and in the distance across the curving crescent bay before her, she can see a small village, people moving about their day and setting out to see in small boats laden with nets and fishing rods.
Home.
Her original home.
"This is where it happened," a voice murmurs to her left, and she looks up, eyebrows raising in shock. Looking back at her, she sees a younger version of herself, eyes glowing emerald.
"Where your path through life changed forever." the entity states, looking back out at the ocean.
"Yes," Senna agrees, "This is where I met her."
"And when you lost control of your own Motion." the entity states.
Senna looks up in confusion and feels a tingling in her chest. She reaches up and feels the swirling mass of Isolde's spirit emerging.
"Chased place to place, unable to set down roots, to chart your own path, even when it comes to your career, your imprisonment, your l-" the entity continues.
"I chose to be with Lucian and to be a Sentinel," Senna remarks coldly.
The entity shrugs and glances down at the sphere in the center of her chest, "I can acquiesce to the former, but if you did not carry her with you, would you be fighting this current battle so avidly?"
Senna opens her mouth to counter the entity, but she powers on, "Your fates are so completely intertwined that you can not survive without her. You are stuck between life and unlife because of her. Because of her, you were locked within that lantern for years. You have been forced into stagnation, and what do you gain out of it?!"
Her shout sends ripples across the ocean, and on the horizon, green lightning flashes from the heart of an encroaching stormfront.
Senna stands and places a hand on her chest, "She didn't have a choice. You should know that. With her, I have never been alone, and as she can not act against the monster that would damn us all regardless, I fight for her. You ask me if I would be fighting this fight without her. Yes, but I wouldn't be here today without her."
"Only her?" the entity asks, "Not your love?"
"Of course, my love, but I would have died in his arms, been unable to take part in this battle, and left him grieving and angry and alone if it had not been for Isolde." Senna returns, "Without her… I never would have found him to begin with."
"So you weep not for the life you were forced to abandon?" the entity asks. Briefly, Senna is in the center of her childhood home, her birth family around the dinner table, frozen mid-conversation, many laughing, and others looking towards where another version of her younger self with loving smiles.
"No, I have a new family now," Senna mutters, and the image shifts. The interior of the Sentinel Headquarters, a bit of levity within the storm, a meal shared, a conversation observed, each of her fellows looking to her for instruction and inspiration, "And I thought you were the goddess of forward motion, of action, not past woes."
The entity chuckles, "Correct. But what of the past that clings to you?"
Senna looks to her, and what looks back is no longer her younger face, but just a floating mass of gleaming emerald eyes.
"You will need to let her go eventually." the entity warns.
Senna starts, feeling a rush of fear and sadness bubble up within the pit of her stomach, "Why?"
The eyes flick to her face, "Do you believe I am speaking to you alone, Senna Abaru?"
The fear grew stronger.
"A question before I send you on, at the end of the day, what matters more to you?" the entity begins, the world swiftly darkening and the sound of something immense closing in on all sides, a mixture of slithering scales and crashing waves, "Saving her, or saving the world?"
"I…." Senna begins
Lucian sits up with a gasp and looks around. Diana kneels beside him, a look of curious worry on her face.
"Are you alright?" she asks.
"Fine, the others?" Lucian states, the humming still resounding in his brain.
"Awakening now, Ledros is…" she pauses and looks over her shoulder, "Changed."
Lucian goes to look but hears a grunt to his side. Looking over, he sees Senna opening her eyes, tears welling within them.
"Senna?" he murmurs, touching the side of her face.
She smiles sadly at him, gently squeezing his hand, "I'm fine."
He helps her up, and together, they stand, their arms wrapping around each other.
Yasuo gets to his feet, marveling at his cured hand, "So, we'll be protected against the Mists?"
"As long as you venture through the Isles, it will have no grasp on your body or soul." Illaoi remarks, though her eyes stay locked on something behind each of them.
"And what of me?" Ledros asks.
Lucian turns and blinks in surprise as what stands before him looks far different than before.
Blackened metal had become silver, the angles and edges slightly lessened, and ugly green fire replaced with a gentle silvery-blue, and his face was a full helm, hiding the skeletal visage of before.
Only his broken blade with a locket wrapped around the hilt remained the same.
"You have become something new. Through her blessings, the new can occasionally become the old." Illaoi remarks, "As is the true power of change, though she cares little for that aspect."
"The Hallowed Mist." Ledros breathes, looking to the others, "I feel… warm."
"So what now?" Yasuo asks, looking at Senna.
"Now we go to find 'Pyke' and wherever the Shard of Isolde is hidden," Senna states.
"Which means we must seek Sarah Fortune, which is a danger all its own, yes?" Diana queries, looking to Illaoi.
"Yes." Illaoi remarks, "You will be ferried to the surface as is your want. I wish I could accompany you, but I am needed here. Regardless, I doubt my presence would do you much good when it comes to Sarah."
"Even as I am, I doubt my presence alongside you would do you any favors in Bilgewater," Ledros notes, "If you would permit me, I would use my new gifts to search for this 'Pyke' on my own, if I learn of anything I will attempt to send word."
"Just be careful." Senna states, turning to the others, "As for the rest of you, stay alert; Bilgewater was always a haven for rats. Who knows what we will find going there now."
He tries not to listen.
He really, really does.
But how can he not, with how things have been going lately?
The whole city had gone to warf rats, and that was before the Hells themselves had seemingly decided to take a shit over the whole thing.
No way out now, though, so… he tried to make good on old debts, and now he tries not to listen.
"Please, I'm not one of his, please." a choked voice begs from behind the door he guards.
The cock of a hammer sets him to chomping his cigar all the more avidly.
"I know." Sarah Fortune murmurs, her voice syrupy and cutting all in one breath.
There's a bang, the smell of black powder, the wet rattle-gasp of a dying man, and a meaty thumb.
"But you weren't one of mine." the Queen of Bilgewater rasps, and Grave curses his shit luck for the fiftieth time as the door to her office rattles open.
And scene! Next time, our heroes delve into Bilgewater proper!
Hope folks are still enjoying this.
Might get another chapter out before the holiday, not fully certain.
As always, comments, questions, and critiques are appreciated. This has been VerBeeker, signing off!