At the bottom of a pit made of spiralling stone, a bug scuttles across a hand. The hand twitches - then flinches violently towards its owner's chest.
She gasps - doesn't register rolling to her knees - chokes petals on the dusty ground. Her hands reach to twist and press the flesh of her neck that must be rendered to sinew by chains and thorns.
Mel is awake. She is on her feet. Walking - somewhere - backwards. She hits a wall. Red flashes in her vision, spiralling thorns open above her. She blinks - they're gone. Blinks again and Elora is a spray of blood in front of her eyes. It hurts: more than she can bear but less than it should. Her fingers don't understand the soft skin beneath them and the absence of pain has her mind frayed between two places like a bad dream.
She crosses her arms, clutches her shoulders: thinks, distantly, that holding herself might be enough of an anchor to stop the world spinning. Red creeps into her vision and she squeezes her eyes shut and waits.
A second passes, then two. It takes a minute and a half for her breathing to stabilise; for her body to catch up with her mind (or perhaps the other way around) and realise she isn't going to die, not yet.
She isn't even hurt.
Dimly, Mel touches her face: confirms there are not thorns where her eyes used to be. She checks her arms for scars, for anything really. Runs a finger from the back of her hand to her shoulder and comes away with nothing but a thin layer of grime.
She's... dusty. From the floor. Her dress is torn but not bloodied and her shoes are missing.
It shouldn't be possible. She shouldn't be alive, let alone untouched. Mel scratches her inner wrist and does everything in her power not to think about vines beneath her skin. Vines beneath her skin and roses in her throat and - she slumps to the floor, back against the wall.
Who knew thoughts could hurt? Maybe Ambessa was right, Piltover had made her soft. Not that she could recall ever being more than soft in her mother's eyes.
A voice rings across the space and she startles; still dazed, she only registers the amused tone and the soft chuckle that supersedes it.
"Who's there?" Mel scans the corners of her prison, sees a sitting figure silhouetted at its edge.
"Not sure I know anymore. Our hosts have a way of.." he pauses. It's a male voice, slow and gravelly from disuse. She catches a hint of a noxian accent and isn't sure if that makes her situation better or worse. "..scrambling your omelette."
Another prisoner, albeit one with a strange sense of humour. She doesn't… relax, but the relief is palpable. Mel is a diplomat at heart but she doesn't know what she can offer this man beyond solidarity.
"They killed my friend." Express a surface vulnerability, imply a common enemy. An ally in this situation is something she wants, desperately. "One moment she was there, and then-"
Red flickers in her vision. She stops. Elora is not a surface vulnerability; she's an open wound. Mel sees darkness and chains and chokes - rests her head in her hands. Shudders. Truly the fox in her is an awful creature: how dare she try to treat the death of her friend like a resource to utilise, to gain favour with a stranger no less.
Her cellmate gives her no time to recover. He hums, sounds faintly amused and Mel lifts her head to watch him stand.
"The stewards of the old world are always keen to give you a glimpse of their might."
In a better headspace the vagary would irritate her. As it stands she musters a nod, pulls her thoughts together enough to ask a question: "What is this place?"
"Near as I can tell? An Oculorum."
She doesn't know what that is.
Mel stands and looks up; the sun streams in like a spotlight through most of the chamber. It's a hole made of stacked stone overlapping into an upwards spiral; the space feels very much like an oubliette, one large enough to leave no need for bars at its surface.
"According to legend, the ancients built specialised chambers to seal away false prophets." The man stands pointedly outside the light. He laughs, "but if you ask me, they're just the fancy pits peacock princes like to toss their friends into."
She flinches and stares at him. Remembers stolen laughter at the edge of galas and speeches; quips no one alive but her should have heard.
"Peacock princes?"
"Sorry," his voice softens. Mel doesn't move. "Just an old family joke. You know, the kind of rulers with an artistic flair."
She doesn't allow herself to think.
"Step into the light."
He does. Oh god, he's taller than she remembers. His beard is unkempt but the crinkle in his eyes is so unmistakably her brother that she gasps. "Kino?"
He blinks, squints at her. She sees no look of recognition on his face. Mel steps closer; slowly, like he might run if she moves too fast. She can't imagine what their captors must have done to his mind after so many months alone.
"It's me, brother." then, when he doesn't say anything: "Mel."
The response is immediate.
"Mel!" Kino takes her waiting hands and she almost sobs with relief. He grips her shoulders, runs a thumb over her cheek and holds her like she's going to disappear if he doesn't. Mel throws herself into his embrace, hugs him so tight her muscles hurt. Kino presses his forehead to her shoulder and lets out a shaky laugh, "you've grown up."
She thinks of the child she had been when she was first cast out of Noxus and agrees. Mel can't imagine how he sees her now - it's been so long. This harrowed version of herself is hardly what she wanted him to see at their reunion but she's too full of relief to be embarrassed.
Kino pulls back enough to see her face. His eyes are searching, guilty. "I had hoped they'd never come for you."
Mel shakes her head. "I shouldn't have taken mother at her word, when there wasn't a body I should have done something - tried to find you."
"There was nothing you could have done."
She suspects that may be true but it doesn't hurt any less. That she accepted his death while he was trapped here, left to rot? If she hadn't been taken she would never have known he was alive. Mel shudders at the thought.
Kino doesn't look like he should be left standing for long. There are bags under his eyes and a persistent shake when he leans on his left leg. Mel guides him to the edge of the pit, sits and lets her brother follow suit.
"Kino I…" She falters. Genuine, intentional vulnerability went against the teachings of both sides of the Medarda family. Neither the fox nor the wolf encouraged lying on your back with your neck exposed - even to kin. She says it anyway. "...I think there's something wrong with me."
Her brother shifts his gaze to look at her; sympathy and - something else in his eyes.
"What do you mean?"
"I should be dead. When I was taken… there were chains. They had barbs on the links. I felt every minute of it but," Mel gestures to her body. "Nothing. Not even scars. I should have bled out, suffocated even - but I'm fine. Why am I fine, Kino?"
She doesn't expect him to have an answer and he doesn't. He just watches.
"I thought perhaps it had been an illusion but look," she thumbs her earlobe - pushes at it. "My piercings are gone. I had earrings - they were ripped out - but they're not just missing, it's like I never had them."
Her brother leans forward, tilts his head to the side. Like an animal. "She didn't tell you?"
"Tell me what?" She leans back.
"There were rumours in Basilich, about our mother. They say she passed through their hometown before our time… fell in love." Kino doesn't blink. "The affair led to a child."
Mel stares. "That's impossible."
She blinks and he's crouched in front of her with his face inches from her own. "And yet, it is the reason we are here."
Her eyes widen and his expression shifts imperceptibly. In a single motion Kino stands and steps backwards, continuing: "Put simply, whatever that child inherited was of terrible interest to your captors."
Mel furrows her brow and takes her time to stand. "My captors?"
"Our captors." his face shifts again, becomes soft the way she remembers from childhood. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to scare you foxkit. There's just so much our mother kept hidden from you - from us."
She nods, smiles at him carefully.
His hair, the crinkle in his eye - they're too perfect. Too much like the man she remembers. It's been years, she should have as hard a time recognizing him as he did her. Why would he reference old jokes to a stranger who could never know them? Mel suppresses a shudder.
Her fox-brother is dead.
She steps forwards, holds his face ever so gently in her hands. She feels his warmth under her fingers and thinks this is the cruellest thing anyone has ever done to her.
It's a beautiful illusion; she allows herself a second to pretend she still believes it. Tears threaten their way to Mel's eyes and she knows she has run out of time.
"You're not my brother." There's a sense of finality to that.
Grief turns to anger and she grabs the thing that is not Kino before it can react and shoves the back of its head into the wall. There is an awful crack under her hands and blood spatters stone. Lines of red arc out along sudden branching patterns and she ignores all of it to push harder on the splintering skull beneath her fingers.
Mel's brother's face flickers; shifts to be the dead princess that haunts her dreams. She keeps pushing. The thing becomes Elora; then her mother, then herself. It tilts its head with impossible strength and she watches her own face twist fatally around towards her.
It has dark eyes and an awful smile and she remembers too late what brought her here in the first place.