The Violence in Vekaura comes to a weighty end, now!
Ruination: Return Chapter XXXI
Life, Death, & Other Part IV
Graves wishes he could run, but where would he even be able to escape the monolith slowly marching towards him?
"Come on, Northman, on your feet!" he shouts, looking down at the bleeding, unconscious Olaf.
The raiders are closing in all around him, chanting the name of what he guessed to be their god.
"Renekton. Renekton. Renekton."
The great creature chuckles as it stares down at him
"Renekton enjoys the taste of fear," he growls, a bit of a smile crossing his fanged maw.
"Uh huh," Graves mutters, reaching for the cylinder on his hip. He has one big shot that could maybe rattle this thing, but he needs a better opening than this.
As if sensing this, Olaf groans and begins to rise, sand pouring off him as he flicks his great mane of a beard, spattering blood everywhere.
"I yet breathe," he grunts, pushing himself to his knee, looking over at Graves, and then up at the looming titan.
"Yeah, and that big fucker is getting too damn close; now I got thi-" Graves tries to explain, but Olaf ignores him, scooping up his axes.
"Pity." he mumbles to himself, "That would have made quite a ballad."
"What?" Graves demands.
Renekton laughs and brings his blade down on them. Graves bellows in fear, closing his eyes.
A metallic clang echoes for miles.
He cracks his eyes open and sees Olaf standing there, axes crossed above his head, staining against Renekton's strike; the blade stopped cold.
He turns to Graves once more, his remaining eye crackling with lightning.
"What do you need?" Olaf growls, froth appearing at the edges of his mouth, his muscles straining against his skin as he begins to change.
"An opening," Graves remarks, unclipping the cylinder and slotting it into Des Tres. "I think I might be able to ring his bell with this.
"You'll have it," Olaf states, his body snarling with electricity as he slaps the blade aside with another thunderous clang, Raiders scattering as the impact sends streamers of lightning and waves of sound bouncing in all directions.
"Come, reptile! Let me show you the power of a Northern God!" Olaf bellows.
He leaps, and the force turns the sand beneath his feet to glass.
Grave suppresses a whistle as Olaf slams into Renekton and sets him on the back foot.
He turns around and looks up at the near-crumbled wall, which is a better vantage point than the quaking and shifting dunes all around him.
Oh, and the returning raiders.
He weaves, rolls, and batters his wave through them, clubbing and striking all comers with Des Tres, caving faces and splintering bones as he races for the wall.
Beyond him, Olaf and Renekton bellow and roar at each other. Olaf's strikes infuriate the creature, while Renekton's send the barbarian flying or crush him into the ground, but he just keeps getting up and charging back in for more.
"Crazed bastard." Graves mutters as he rushes to ascend the wall, dodging crumbling stone and leaping gaps, climbing higher and higher until finally, he is eye to eye with the titan's chest.
"Alright, Dessy, let's bag this gator," he whispers, shouldering his cannon and preparing the shot.
Renekton sees him out of the corner of his eye and whirls to face him, his bellow of defiance loud enough to quake the sky above them.
He goes to charge him, and Olaf pulls him up short by sinking both axes into his one ankle and tearing back, carving clean through the back tendon.
The creature spasms, shrieks, and falls to his knee, golden blood threaded with black spilling like a fountain about the sand.
His head is now eye to eye with Graves.
"Smile." Grave states, and he pulls the trigger.
Des Tres's bark is quiet compared to the shrieking behemoth before him.
But the flair of light and resounding boom that follows drowns out any and everything else.
Diana dances between her opponents, still seeking her opening, ignoring the innumerable cuts and bruises that now cover her.
Her opponents fight unfaltering, Leona stiffly, the Pantheon gleefully.
She allows them to think she is tiring, ignorant, or uncaring, perhaps that she stands in the light of the moon, its gentle caress lighting the wear and strengthening her limbs.
Roars, shrieks, and keening cries fill the night, attempting to draw her attention, but she stays focused on her ruse.
"What a lovely melody?" the Pantheon rasps, "Would you not agree?"
Diana ignores her. Her attention, her intention, is utterly focused on Leona, the wane grief buried in the storming sea that is her eyes.
The Pantheon takes offense at her non-acknowledgment and casts his spear not at her but at Leona.
Diana shifts, catching the haft of the spear, which burns at her touch, black fire licking across her fingers. But she halts the weapon before it can sink into Leona's unguarded chest.
Diana snarls in anger and pivots towards him, but he uses her momentary imbalance against her, ramming her in the face with the edge of his shield.
She feels her nose crack, and blood begins to seep across her lips, but she stays on her feet and keeps hold of the spear, even as the War God attempts to wrench it from her.
He snarls in turn, and she smiles at his annoyance.
"Oh, I'm sorry. I thought you were enjoying yourself?" she taunts, lashing at him with her blade. He slides back, releasing his spear, and she launches it away.
He laughs, "You fool."
He raises a hand to call it back to him, but it doesn't come. He blinks in confusion, and Diana grins. A brief shroud of moonlight she wraps around the spear keeps it from responding to its master's call, granting it a brief rest by her dominion of the night.
"Go fetch, dog." she hisses, and she lunges for him.
He raises his shield, and she collides with it like a gong, and he gives up before she does, sending him grinding down and away into the sand.
Leona surges after her, but now she is alone, fighting in a manner anathema to her normal forms. She is weakened, distracted, a puppet.
Diana pivots around her slash, and Leona doesn't even manage to parry.
The blade strikes her down, and Diana blinks in surprise, recognizing for the first time that Leona has been fighting this entire time despite the Pantheon's assertions.
The sloppiness is not the working of a half-stringed puppet; it is the defiance of a warrior with a will to match her own.
Leona stares up at her from the ground, her gaze steady, her body straining against itself, fighting to rise and stay down all at once.
"Do… it…" Leona gasps, shifting her head every so slightly so Diana has a clear shot at her neck.
"I love you." Diana intones, tears welling in her eyes as she stares down at the battered and bleeding form Leona, Black Mist roiling about her.
She gathers all her power and releases her blade, allowing it to fall free so her chill palm can rest upon Leona's forehead. Her other hand catches her blade, forming the strongest shield she can manage around herself and Leona as she hears the Pantheon begin to pull himself from the rubble behind them.
"What-" but then she can't hear him. Just Leona's breathing, rasping and angry, her blade stutteringly rising to cut across Diana's neck in turn.
"Come back to me," Diana begs, "Please, love. My light reflects yours, and it is stronger than any shadows."
Leona blinks, and she can see the Mist begin to fade.
"Diana, I…" she begins, her expression softening. An orange gleam emerges in the center of her black eyes.
"Hello, Sunrise," Diana murmurs, thinking back to those moments of dawn when the sun sat briefly amidst a starry sky, the moon on the opposing horizon, true celestial unity.
Then, the moment, the hope, the calm, is ripped away as Pantheon shatters through her barrier, black fire blazing all around him, and he comes down on top of them like a comet.
Towering above them, body swollen with unholy rage and the Black Mist, he grabs Leona, a brief moment of fear and defiance returning to her healing eyes, and tosses her aside, a curtain of the Mist rising to swallow her away.
"It seems she needed to stew a bit longer," he snarls, rounding on Diana and kicking her heavily in the chest, sending her to bounce across the ground.
"Did you really think I would allow that?!" he roars, bearing down on her.
"No," Diana returns, smiling despite her rage and grief, for this was the opening she had truly desired, "But I care very little for what you desire. The man trapped within, however…"
And before even a god can blink, her hand is on his chest, and the magic roiling within her is pouring into it.
"I think he should voice his." she finishes.
The Pantheon screams, a haunting unnatural sound like a dozen wind chimes chocked by barbed wire as Atreus briefly comes to the surface.
"Thank you," he rasps. "This… planned. Find, Lucian."
And then, with a grunt, he wraps his hand around his throat. With a force of will greater than even War itself, he forces his possessed body, already beginning to win back control, into the Mist, casting them somewhere along the grand breadth of Runeterra the Ruination currently touches.
Diana wipes the blood from her face and tears from her eyes and turns, hunting for Lucian amidst the chaos that had been at her back.
And she sees him, guns blazing like a star as a tide of dreadful violet awful comes crashing down atop him.
And then both corners of the city are consumed in a flair of brilliant white light.
Lucian blinks the stars from his eyes as the light dies down. The Voidborn thrash, shift, and shriek, darting away from the source of the cascading light.
Nashor lists back and forth, shaking its vast head, and Lucian watches as the strange jellyfish detaches, falls to the ground, and cracks into a dozen ashy pieces.
Ezreal looks back in confusion, tears tracking through the grim and blood on his face.
"Another fool sees the light." Nidalee remarks, looking past them both up at someone.
"What-" he begins, and then Kai'sa is wrapped in a curtain of white light that wraps around her like a burial shroud.
She rises out of Ezreal's arms and rights herself in the air, and then the shroud scatters apart, a musical tune, sourceless on the wind as she gasps for air, and her eyes flick open.
She lands next to Ezreal, coughing and gasping at the wound in her chest, where little more than a discolored scar marks her carapace.
'You're okay." Ezreal gasps.
"I am-" she begins, and then he wraps her tightly in a hug, heedless of the monsters swarming all about them.
"Huh."
Lucian turns and spots Akshan hopping off the wall to their left, looking down at the Absolver with a mixture of disdain, wonder, and relief.
"So it really does work," he remarks, giving Lucian a shrug and then turning his attention to the Voidborn, shot after shot crashing out of the Absolver, cracking shells and spattering ichor.
Nidalee turns as well, scattering them with her spear, and ensnaring others in snapping traps, leaving them ready for the others.
Lucian blinks away his shock and turns to face the tide, and Nashor snarls and snaps at the air, looking around with what Lucian can only guess is confusion.
And then Rek'sai, uncaring of either miracle or confusion, charges her towering opponent and tackles him into the sand.
The twin behemoths writhe, snarl, snap, and rapidly descend beneath the sand.
Ezreal and Kai'sa push themselves to their feet, taking out any of the xer'sai that get too close, but most of the smaller voidborn chase after the titans, diving beneath the dunes.
A tense moment passes, and then another, and another, but the voidborn do not resurface.
"Thank you," Lucian states, turning to Akshan.
He holds up a hand and shakes his head, "No, I finally used my gift for something other than my own vendetta because of your prodding. So thank you. I was and still am a fool, and I still seek the return of my mentor, but for now and the near future, the Absolver and I are yours."
"You saved me?" Kai'sa asks, approaching them with Ezreal a step behind.
"Not me, this," Akshan notes, holding up the Absolver, "I am just… the bearer and a Sentinel, sort of."
"Sort of?" Ezreal asks, raising an eyebrow.
"Consider me a contractor," Akshan jokes.
"I consider you useful; for now, the battle still rages in other parts of the city; we have to move." Nidalee snaps.
"Right, we need to find the others and fight off whatever threat remains so we can leave," Lucian states.
"From my vantage point on the way over here, it seemed your tall silver friend had handled her opponent, meaning the great lizard-" Akshan explains, only for a shrieking roar to cut him off.
"Move." Lucian orders, and the others take off after him, weaving through the streets.
They emerge on the other side of the city within moments, urged forward by Lucian's magic, and find a terrified Graves, a snarling feral Olaf, and a bleeding Diana staring up at the writhing behemoth before them.
It is raking at its face with a great claw, torrents of golden ichor soaking the sand as it snarls and writhes. It shrinks as it does so, going from a mountain of muscle and metal to just standing taller than the city's thirty-foot walls.
"What happened?" Kai'sa demands.
"I uh… shot it in the face." Graves offers.
A small thump draws their attention as a cylinder of relic stone falls to the sand, and the creature turns, revealing a horrid wound and a punctured eye, seared in a star pattern.
"I am going to lick the marrow from your shattered carcass!" the entity shrieks, leveling his blade at Graves, who yelps and leaps to avoid the strike, which powders the wall.
The creature writhes, shrieks, and screams, and Lucian's heart drops as he begins to see the Black Mist threading its way into the wounds.
"Cut off the Mist!" he shouts, opening a barrage of fire at the tendrils. Several shots slam into the creature's head, eliciting snarls and swings of his vast blade.
The others begin their attacks, Olaf, Diana, and Nidalee darting in while the others open fire, a barrage of golden light threaded with purple slamming into the behemoth.
Yet the Black Mist continues to seep in, and above him, the corrupted clouds begin to form into a funnel.
"I have already bent one god to my will." Viego's voice intones as the vortex crashes down around the gator-headed god.
"Another fights for me through witless whim," he continues to taunt.
A spectral visage of him appears before Lucian, arms outstretched, a cold sneer on his face.
"The spirit of an entire nation answers my call!" he continues.
"The armies of another have marched with me from the beginning!" he shouts, laughing towards the sky.
"Whose cause do you serve, Renekton?" Viego shouts, and the cloud parts. There, with a gleaming crown atop its head, is a body warped and contorted by more than just the Mist, strange organic growths pushing up from beneath the skin.
"The Ruined King," he growls, falling to a knee and bowing his great head. All around, his beaten and fallen followers begin to stand once more, their eyes glowing with the rancid green light of the Black Mist. Above them, wraiths gather like a flock of vultures.
'Pathetic." Olaf snarls.
"Your god will fall to me in time as well." Viego challenges with a smirk, 'It is just a matter of time."
"You haven't won yet." Lucian challenges.
"Have I not?" Viego returns coyly, "We're in the final hour, Sentinels, and you can see now how great my might has become. You never had a hope of stopping me. Especially not now."
"What do you mean?" Ezreal demands.
"You'll see soon enough." Viego returns, his grin widening.
"I grow tired of this talk!" Nidalee snarls, preparing to launch her spear.
"I agree. What even is this Viego? Grandstanding?" Lucian asks.
'It's called…" Viego remarks, pausing for a moment as if considering something, "A distraction."
The horde of raiders and wraiths dart towards them. The clothes raise their weapons as Renekton rears back his weapon.
"Ezreal n-" Lucian begins, but he is interrupted.
Lucian barely has time to register the threat racing for him in the chaos until it is too late.
Xin Zhao stabs towards him with his spear, and he manages to weave aside, realizing too late that this has been a feint. Xin is able to slice through the cord holding the wicker basket to his belt.
He scoops it up and twirls away. Lucian opens fire, but the Ruined Seneschal is just too quick. Nidalee and Diana race to meet him. He pivots and leaps, and then the ground erupts in an explosion of semiliquid glass as Renekton strikes the ground.
The world goes dark as Lucian is swallowed by the torrent of sand, glass, and crumbling masonry.
He is unsure how long it takes for him to awaken, but when he does, he is gifted with an unexpected sight.
The sun.
"Easy, easy," Ezreal remarks, helping him to stand.
"What happened?" Lucian asks.
"After Renekton hit us, they all vanished into the Mists." Ezreal states, "And then… the Mists drew back."
"He's mocking us." Olaf growls, standing nearby, "One last look at a sunrise before he takes it away again. He believes he has won."
Lucian looks around and sees Diana sitting on the ground, arms wrapped around her legs and her head resting on her knees, a posture not exactly fitting of a goddess. He swears she is staring directly into the sun.
Nidalee paces around them, ears flicking at every errant noise, her knuckles white from the intensity she clenches her spear.
Kai'sa and Akshan stand a bit away, looking back at the city. People come out to thank them and ask for consolation, both of which they seem uncomfortable with.
Graves is cleaning off his gun, sweating in the growing heat, and seems to prefer to focus on the easy problem before him rather than the warning/threat/gloat that lies before them.
"But why?" Graves asks, shaking more sand out of his coat and grimacing.
"We will not know until we see what has become of the others. We need to return to the Sanctum." Diana remarks.
"If the Sanctum remains." Nidalee remarks, and the others all look at each other, shock and anger passing through them, "Why else would he gloat so. This Absolver, can it counter such a loss?"
She looks directly at Lucian, and he grimaces as the others glance between them.
"I-I don't know, but we need to get back regardless of anything, here's hoping Senna and the others were more successful." Lucian states.
He turns to Ezreal, who nods and draws the Wayfinder.
"Was just waiting on you," he says and looks towards Kai'sa and Akshan.
"Are you two coming with?" he asks.
Kai'sa stares at the ground pensively, "I am worried about that voidborn, the one that ran off with a bit of the Mist, but…yes, I'm coming. Let this 'taunt' of his be the first returned sunrise of many."
Ezreal smiles.
Akshan chews on his lip and looks down to Lucian, "Hm, I do have a personal vendetta to get back to, and that sounds much less lethal than what I can guess is a march on the dread Shadows Isles themselves, yes?"
Lucian grimaces, "Likely."
"Eh, you're going to need all the help you can get, even amongst the unsavory ilk," Akshan jokes, glancing at Graves, "Though it seems like you've already got that covered."
"Rude but fair." Graves returns, shouldering his gun, "Waiting makes me antsy. Let's just get on out of here."
"Let's." Lucian agrees, pushing himself to his feet as Ezreal pulls out the Wayfinder.
They vanish into the light of the taunting dawn, racing towards what they believe to be a safe haven and the uncertainty of the final battle beyond.
And a world away, in fact, another world entire, though it was so much more and less than that, a tiny being ferries a curious bit of magic towards the figure that spawned it.
It swims through lavender seas, camouflaged by the odd striations and whirls that mark the almost rock that surrounds it.
The thing in its jaws attacks it again and again, seeking purchase seeing something to change, to draw out, to manipulate, but all it finds is blissful, blissful silence.
Three eyes open in the lavender depths, and this thread of attacking magic is let to drift before it.
The scent is intriguing, the noise that emits enticing, but it is the emotion, the cascading flavor of emotion, that draws it, her, and them forward from the dark.
"Intriguing." It-She-They say, as another pair of eyes, larger than the first, open above a mouth of daggers, and the thread is swallowed within.
But more can be said about that another time.
Two-maybe three chapters left, and the Ruination Saga comes to a close.
I hope the folks who have stuck around have enjoyed it, and for those who find it later, this was an intense and occasionally aggravating labor of love.
As always, comments, questions, and critiques are appreciated. This has been VerBeeker, signing off!