It has been one year since Viego was smote on the Mountain of Targon. Yet, the Ruination remains, and the Sentinels' work is far from over. They have been hunting for Isolde across the face of Runeterra and have come up dry as another force moves against them. Yet, as whispers reach them that the Ruination once more roils above the Shadow Isles, they must seek answers with renewed vigor. Let the final chapter of the Ruination Saga begin.
Ruination: Return Chapter I
A Wanderer's Lament
He stepped cautiously, thankful for once for the screaming storm that roared above his head. Viego's pawns were scattered, some dealing with the troubles he'd dropped on their doorstep, the others too embroiled in their own machinations to care.
Yet, she was still sitting there.
The Yordle.
He sighed, feeling his age for the first time in so long. He had expended so much, keeping the Mists from reaching the secret places, so few knew of. The monsters trapped within would end the world a dozen times over if the Ruination claimed and empowered them.
From the lands of the Ursine to the mountains near Nazumah, all the way to the shores of the Successor States and brilliantly colored Kathkan, he had traveled.
Learning all the while, but now he thought, now he could stop the Ruination.
Permanently.
The yordle barely had time to react before his spell struck her, locking her in time.
And then he was across the throne room. His eyes fell momentarily to a small shelf covered in gleaming momentos.
He reaches down, hands hovering over Sanctity, knowing better than to grasp the hateful blade.
Even in the tales he'd pulled from the ruins of Camavor had been painted in an ugly light. Though he doubted the Camavorn penning the stories about it thought of it in any sense but deepest reverence.
Greed-obsessed colonizers.
He focused, praying that his enchantment would work, that Viego would be bound within, and this would all be over.
He…had miscalculated.
Something had been missing.
And as the spell flickered and failed, from the back of a chair emerged sharp, pained, and cold, a look of jarring familiarity written on its stark white features.
"You." Viego rasped.
Sanctity rose and carved towards his face as Viego's body emerged from the Mist, the blade clasped in a reforming hand.
He dodged low, but the blade managed to carve through the scroll on his back, sending pages scattering and sputtering into ash.
"Damn it," Ryze muttered, backing away his tattoos igniting with purple energy.
"I…I remember you." Viego stated, pointing Sanctity towards the center of his chest, "The apprentice that followed my niece like a lost dog."
"She was someone worth following." Ryze countered, unbothered by the attempted taunt, "Unlike the man standing before me."
Viego struck toward him, and Ryze leaped aside, blue fire snarling from his hands. Viego vanishes into the Mist, and the fire roared harmlessly through the air, but Ryze's eyes are drawn to the shelf once more.
He darted towards it, hand reaching for a bronze sundial, only for Viego's hand to wrap around his neck and send him careening through the air.
"You will not touch her!" Viego roared, swinging Sanctity down.
Ryze rolled to the side and sent a blast of arcana into the furious specter's face.
"You were a fool to come here." Viego spat, stretching to his full height, standing just a few inches taller than Ryze, but with the Black Mist freshly pouring from the hole in his chest seeming to loom all the larger.
"Are you just parroting things that people said to you all those years ago?" Ryze returned, casting out a rune cage.
Viego cut clean through it with Sanctity and was on him instantly, plunging the blade deep into his torso.
Ryze gasped as the chill blade began drinking in his life's blood, Black Mist pouring from the wound.
He reached up and, with a snarl, detonated a blast of arcana right in Viego's face, who let out a scream as he stumbled back.
Grasping the blade, Ryze wrenched it free, slicing his hands and letting out a snarl of pain as he began to charge the arcane power roiling within him.
He had expended so much energy over the past year, so much of it still locked in the places he had sought to protect.
But he hoped he had enough to knock this petulant little shit on his ass at least once.
Viego turned, revealing a blackened skull, blue fire in its eye as the skin regrew across his face.
Sanctity reappeared in the king's hand, and he stalked around Ryze.
"Why did you come here?" Viego demanded.
Ryze is silent, concentrating on consolidating his power.
"To stop me?" Viego spat, laughing, "Alone?!"
Ryze said nothing.
"Foolish," Viego muttered, looking at the collection of Isolde's items, "Nothing. Nothing will stop me until I see her whole again!"
"You could have." Ryze mutters, drawing the ghost's attention back to him, "But you wasted your chance centuries ago."
A snarl touched the dead king's face, and Ryze released the building arcana.
The blast encompassed the entire makeshift throne room, and Viego screamed with fury as the blue fire ripped into him.
Ryze's body slumped as he felt a deep weariness attempt to claim him, the flames dissipating all around him.
Viego knelt before him, body charred and burning, the Black Mist hovering about him like a mourner's veil.
"Instead, you will go to your ancestors, a shadow of the man you could have been," Ryze remarked, casting a hand towards Sanctity and working his spell once more, putting all that he had left into making the enchantment work.
"All alone," Ryze stated, his eyes burning with a blue flame.
Viego made a soft sound, which Ryze quickly realized was a broken chuckle.
"For a learned man, you are not very smart." Viego remarked, looking up, "I am never alone."
Ryze felt a blade cut across the back of his ankle, and he flinched, briefly breaking his concentration.
Standing next to the throne was the Yordle, risen to her feet, an indignant smirk on her face, a long tendril of shadow lancing across the ground towards him.
"Thank you." Viego breathed, and the look that crossed her face was so filled with adoration Ryze fought the urge to roll his eyes.
He fires off a barrage of arcane missiles, shattering stone as he attempts to get more ground between him and the pair, and barely manages to duck under the blade he spots out of the corner of his eye.
Hecarim, monstrous, an oddly human glint staring out from beneath his monstrous helm towers above him.
"Unity, reunion, immortality!" Viego shouted, as more and more wraiths began to appear at his back, "That is what I will bring with the union of my love! None will ever know the horrors of death again. All I require is loyalty and devotion to my Isolde!"
"This isn't loyalty." Ryze spat, and while the forever-young king was ignorant to it, Ryze could spot the cracks in his "master" plan, Vex's ears twitching low at the mention of Isolde, the low growl of defiance from behind Hecarim's visor, the flickering faces of dozens of trapped souls pleading for release.
Viego smirked and pointed at Ryze, "You will see."
And out of the Black Mist, a spear punches into Ryze's shoulder, followed by the guttering, chained form of his old friend: Kalista.
"You will see," Viego repeated, slamming the jarred Ryze to the ground and placing his blade to his temple.
"But first, there must be no secrets between a subject and their King," Viego noted.
And the Black Mist began to worm its way into Ryze's mind.
Dozens of images were poked and prodded at, and tendrils slipped through even as he buttressed his mind against the intrusion.
A sharp agreement with a Witch of Ice to keep a Monster of his own making trapped far from the Black Mists.
Late-night dealings in the Tavern of Two-Coats, both beings at the table filled with a desperate need.
Battles with Golden Warriors and Skittering Beasts in the search of the Forbidden.
Entreating the Twilight in a Ruin Held by Time.
Working to Cage an Angel and a Devil in an Eternal Battle. For Guard and Gain.
Red Eyes in the Dark and an Agreement Long Made.
A Silver Parasol gleaming with Blue Light in the workshop of an Old Friend.
Viego latched onto that last memory and snarled.
"You…dare keep her from me!" Viego bellowed.
"Yes." Ryzed returned, and he vanished using the last of his power, slipping free of Viego's grasp and into the Ways Between. Viego's screams of rage chased him the entire way.
He emerged not in his actual bunker, knowing the Ruined King would relentlessly pursue him.
Instead, he lands in a place he had long abandoned, warded, and protected.
In the Bowls of Zaun, the workshop of the Sentinel's Founder: Jenda'Kaya.
Together, they had tried for so long to find a solution to what Viego had done.
Joined eventually by the Red-Eyed Reaper, after discovering Isolde shattered and scattered and knowing that she needed to be protected.
It had been difficult work, and not long into it, the Rune Wars had distracted him and his mentor. He'd been forced to leave Jenda in the hands of the Reaper…and had never had the time to truly look back, rushing from crisis to crisis, attempting to lessen the impact in the background.
As he had done now.
With a wave of his hand, he undid a dozen enchantments and let the door to her Vault swing open. All her prototypes and personal weapons rested here untouched, covered in millennia of dust.
Yet, pristine on the farthest table was the silver parasol.
Had he never gone to the Isles, it would likely have sat hidden for years.
But the Ruination had gone on long enough, and Viego's forces would not be too far behind him.
He scooped up the parasol, sliding it into a holster on his hip, and froze, as he heard a voice call out from above.
"Who is down there?" a female voice asked, and he heard the door open, footsteps echoing down towards him.
He should have known in all that time since this place had been built, someone would have moved in.
"I am sorry I-" he began.
Freezing as he saw the Black Mist roil down the steps and the sound of a mechanism beginning to wind up.
"It's rude not to knock." the woman states.
He breathes in and readies himself.
And miles away, two eyes crying tears of silvery blue snap open with a cry of shock.
Above, a silent gleaming sentinel turns to the East, a chime of warning clanging out from its celestial form as on the horizon, the Black Mist roils with green lightning and a booming roar like thunder.
The Isle of Light immediately begins to spring into action, Senna looking up at their Celestial guardian and back towards the swelling torrent of Black Mist.
"What is going on?" Ezreal asks, skidding to a stop beside her, hair a mess, his coat half-pulled on, bandages from their most recent outing wrapped around his forehead.
It had been a year.
But she could feel it.
Feel him.
"He's back," Senna remarks, raising a hand to her chest.
And so begins Return. Next time we split the party, with some heading to the eerily idyllic streets of Piltover and others heading for the warded docks of Bilgewater.
Anyone still around for this story, let me say now I appreciate you and hope you enjoy where this story goes. I would love to hear guesses if you can figure out what Ryze was doing.
As always, comments, questions, and critiques are appreciated. This has been VerBeeker, signing off!