The Battle Begins, Victor Takes Vekaura, but what of the Absolver?
Ruination: Return Chapter XXIX
Life, Death, & Other Part II
Lucian glares at Akshan as he turns, seeming keen to ignore the horn.
"What was that?" he demands.
"There is an attack coming." Akshan returns.
"And you're not going to help?" Lucian accuses.
"I have my vendetta, and you have yours." Aksan remarks.
"Innocent people are at risk, and you're going to ignore them?!" Lucian shouts, "Is that what she would do?"
He points at the sketch of Akshan's mentor.
The other man turns, grimaces, and looks down at the weapon, "No."
"Then help me." Lucian pleads, "Help us. For her."
'What I'm doing is for her." Akshan snaps, "Stay out of my way."
He goes to leave, and Lucian darts before him, drawing his weapons.
"I was asking you to consider more than yourself," Lucian warns. "Now, I'm ordering you to fall in."
Akshan tenses, "You'd fight me, stop me from bringing the one person that ever gave me a chance back?"
"I have been fighting a blind fool and his 'good cause' for longer than I care to recall." Lucian returns, light collecting around the barrels of his pistols, "This city needs protecting. Runeterra needs protecting."
"You're not on me about the world." Akhan fires back, "The Absolver can't do all that. One person. One trade, a life for a life. This is for someone you care about."
Lucian's eyebrow furrows.
"No denial?" Akshan taunts, "Good."
He suddenly whirls, tossing a bladed boomerang at Lucian's face. He ducks and rolls, coming up to find Akshan vanished.
"You've wasted enough of my time." his voice echoes, and Lucian finds himself alone.
Diana lands, sand kicking up around her, swirling about her as her magic rises.
A shape appears within the roaring tornado of Mist.
"Have we not done this dance enough?" she demands, drawing her blade, moonlight lancing clean through a dozen wraiths as they attempt to surge towards her.
"No, I don't think so," Pantheon returns, his voice echoing all around her, "Though you'll find this dance to be at a different cadence."
The form that steps from the Mist is not Pantheon.
But a figure that causes her heart to hollow out within her.
Terribly beautiful in her warped armor, a binding crown atop her brow.
Leona.
"No…" Diana breathes, and Leona charges.
She brings her blade around and manages to catch and halt Leona's surging shield but feels the chill touch of doubt and grief welling within her. The Mist, without attempting to grasp, holds off those emotions so it can worm its way inside.
"You ran again. Left her alone with a mountain of responsibility." Pantheon taunts, "And how long it has been since she's seen her beloved light."
Diana's expression hardens, and she shifts to the side, the spear of the cowardly war god clanging against Leona's vast shield in place of her spine.
"You seek to disarm me, distract me," Diana growls, silver light coursing across her skin, "Ruin her to break me!"
Pantheon chuckles and spins his spear as Leona stands beside him, a silent sentinel to her grief.
"It didn't take much," he states, shrugging his shoulders, "She's always been an eager follower. A loyal attack dog, but you know that better than I."
"You seek my grief, but all you've gotten is my rage!" she roars, light billowing around her, burning and consuming any wraith it touches.
Pantheon grins madly, "Good."
And in unison, the hated parasite and her corrupted beloved surge towards her.
Olaf bellows with joy as the first of the raiders comes tearing out of the sandstorm.
They are lightly armored, a covering bone and reptilian hide formed to be intimidating, twin blades grasped in their hands.
Frightening for a southerner, perhaps, but the stopped figure before him barely reaches his chest, looking like a feeble imitation of his clan and little more.
Not even worth the full effort of his axe, spinning it around and coldcocking the screaming warrior right between the eyes with the haft of his weapon.
The fool crumpled like thin ice, and Olaf huffs in disdain.
"This is what passes for a reaver of Shurima?" he demands, of the air, the storm, and whatever lies within, "Pitiful."
Graves snorts as a great reptilian beast looms out of the sand, "Right, cause that's just a little kitten."
"Compared to the beasts of both our homelands, surely," Olaf returns, "You're people leap into the maws of sea behemoths!"
"Not my people," Graves corrects, "You're thinking of Pyke, and that mad butcher got himself killed doing that. I prefer less toothy fair."
He fires his cannon, sand detonating and turning to glass, scattering another grouping of racing raiders.
"Little luck here with that desire," Olaf notes as he throws another of the reavers through the air, their cracked mask revealing a mouth of sharpened teeth.
"Great," Graves mutters sardonically.
"Where is the challenge?!" Olaf demands, and out of the sand, standing a head taller than his prodigious form, pull free of the sand.
Creatures with the bodies of crooked men, one with the head of a hyena, the other something akin to a red-furred yeti.
With a grin, he eagerly races to meet them, ignoring Graves' smattering of swears and lamentations at his back.
Kai'sa alights at the top of the wall, Ezreal appearing right next to her. Both look down as the sand rumbles and shifts, purple light seeking through the chaotic dunes.
A deep shriek echoes from below, felt as much as heard, loose stones rattling about the wall.
"You're certain it's just xer'sai?" Ezreal demands.
"I-" she begins, as several begin to surge free of the sand, "I don't know. But we need to stop them."
"Following your lead," Ezreal affirms, and she tips over the wall, blade singing hungrily as they sink into the first Voidborn.
Ezreal opens fire, carving through several others as they attempt to leap for her. She whirls, bisecting another, bolts of purple energy flying free of her cannons, blasting the writhing mass of sand into a fractured glassy dome.
The mass of voidborn shifts, and she pivots, preparing for their strike, but the tide swiftly calms.
"Where are they?" Ezreal demands.
"I don't—" she begins to say, and the ground collapses out from below her. A wide chasm crackles with pink light and opens up, and emerging from it, great jaws wide to swallow her whole is the creature she dreaded.
Rek'sai.
"Damn…" she murmurs, her helm swiftly clamping tight about her face as her armor chitters a warning.
And then she is skidding across the sand, Ezreal's arms wrapped around her, sparks of his magic flickering out around them.
The beast bellows, snorting and snarling, but the ground still quakes and shifts, and Kai'sa watches, surprised, as several of the serai retreat closer to their massive matriarch, who gnashing her wide jaws at the air and stomps her feet.
'What is she doing?" Ezreal demands.
"It's… a threat display," Kai'sa notes, realizing her carapace is chittering in a similar fashion.
"Against you?" he asks.
"No." she returns.
And with that, the true threat lunges free of the ground, rippling and writhing, a vast serpent, three heads shrieking at the sky, one long and sleek like the great serpents of the coast, adorned with arching horns dwarfing the others. Behind its long, sinuous form comes a dozen grasping, twitching, twisted, almost-human arms.
"Nashor," she breathes, fear gripping her fully and truly, and she hears Ezreal say something likely heretical back in his distant home.
Lucian runs as fast as he can, weaving and dodging through the streets as folks panic and flee all around him.
"To your homes! Board the windows, hunker down!" he shouts, the few tongues he knows. The message spreads swiftly, but he believes the Mistwalkers lancing down at him from the sky get the message across far better.
He whirls and rolls, guns blazing, screams filtering into relief as he scatters several wraiths to the wind.
He checks the wicker basket, now attached to his hip with a sturdy cord, and stops in his flight to help a pair of fallen civilians to their feet.
"Find cover," he warns and prepares to shoot down another two wraiths as the civilians give whispered thanks and swiftly turn to run, but the wraiths rocket past him.
And one is ensnared in the jaws of a vast feline; Nidalee rips it to shreds with magic-coated fangs before looking up at him with a quizzical expression.
He looks past her and notices that they and several cords of the Black Mist are being dragged away from the others, chasing something he doesn't have eyes on.
Akshan, he realizes, thinking of all the negative emotions that had to be roiling within the vengeance-driven fallen Sentinel, or perhaps Viego knows of the Absolver.
Either way, he has a lead.
"Follow me," he orders, and she does so, loping along beside him, but she growls, clearly confused by his actions.
He bolts after them, dodging and slaying his own assailants, street after street, flying past him.
And then he freezes, as here near the city's pinnacle, he can look down and finally truly see what danger comes for Vekaura.
Ahead, he can barely make out Diana is fighting two combatants, only clearly Pantheon, the other nearly as tall, a blade of black-edged flame striking again at Diana, who is on her back foot.
To the east, a sandstorm sits, roiling, worryingly paused. On the ground, lightning crackles and lights flash as Graves and Olaf contend with numerous combatants, including two animalistic giants. A crackle of red lightning illuminates the sandstorm from within, and a towering reptilian shadow is briefly highlighted.
And to the east, a true horror shrieks and writhes some unspeakable thing snapping at the sky with three hungry maws, and at its base, Kai'sa and Ezreal look so very, very small.
Three separate horrors, three crises that demand his attention.
It's a shame, then, that he is being pulled in a fourth direction.
"They need us," Nidalee states, transforming back to her humanoid form, eyes narrowing.
"I know, but... there is something here we need," Lucian says, pointing towards the wraiths. "Another Sentinel. The weapon they carry can protect Senna and us; it-"
"You risked much for your own interests before; is this the same?" she challenges.
"I- we need to hurry before Viego gets his hands on him or something worse happens," Lucian remarks, setting off after where he believes Akshan to be.
Nidalee follows, but her eyes narrow, "These people need us, your people need us. Diana sent me to fetch you."
"Then pick up the pace." Lucian fires back, and he races off without another word, forcing her to shift into her feline form to keep pace.
Doom Sings for Quaint Vekaura.
Sun, Sand, and Hate Batter at the Gate.
Five Torches Fly With Defiant Light.
Yet Two More Skirt the Fight.
Oh, Do Weep for Quaint Vekaura.
Next time, the battle commences in earnest as Akshan, Sentinel Avenger, seeks his own absolution.
The end draws closer. I hope you are prepared. Thank you for tuning in.
As always, comments, questions, and critiques are appreciated. This has been VerBeeker, signing off!