This chapter is also available for separate reading as a multichapter oneshot titled 'Have Some Madeira, M'Dear.'

tw: drug use, violence, sex, mentions of war.

Story is told from a second-person POV - i.e. the 'you' perspective. Reader is presented as gender-neutral. It's my first time writing from this perspective, so feedback is much appreciated3

Title is from the Flanders and Swann number 'Have Some Madeira, M'dear.'

Reminder to everyone following this tale on FFNet - you can also read this on AO3 with better formatting and the added bonus of links and graphics!

Pray it away, I swear I'll never be a saint

~"Enemy" – Imagine Dragons

Excerpt from "A Heart for an Eye: My Time in Zaun."

A new nation, a haze of pollution, a blaze of hope –an intimate talk with Zaun's First Chancellor.

By B. Goode

[This excerpt contains explicit content involving drug use, violence and mature themes. Reader discretion is advised.]

IT STARTED with a sip of sherry.

Thus prefaces many an ingenue's recollections of Zaun. The classic cautionary tale. A pair of eyes meeting across a smoky café to presage a night of shadowy debauchery—and in the stale sunrays concluding with a cut purse and tearstains on the pillowcase.

In your case, the truth ran in reverse. For nearly a decade, as senior correspondent for theSun & Tower, you had delved into the chaotic workings of the former Undercity. You had puzzled over its nuances, and argued with your Piltovan cohorts who painted their sister city in monochrome brushstrokes of black-and-white.

The Undercity, you'd maintained, was a many-faceted palette.

Yet, once upon a time, you'd also found it a Pandora's Box.

Mystery ran in the former-Undercity's lifeblood. Equally mysterious were the machinations of the puppet-master at its zenith. Known as theEye of Zaun, he controlled an elaborate network of gangs, saboteurs and spies. They disseminated Shimmer, a substance whose addictive properties were known beyond the Hex-Gates. They seeped into law enforcement, greasing it to keep a machine of infernal corruption turning. They terrorized the territories, transforming the Undercity into a front for their leader's agenda of ruthless self-interest.

But who was the Eye? What was his end-game?

For years, your investigations were fractured by disaster. Too often, your contacts disappeared under unspeakable circumstances. Promising leads crashed into dead-ends. Lies unraveled into lies. In your gloomiest moments, the Undercity seemed more space than structure, controlled by centrifugal forces beyond your comprehension.

How could you divine their crux? Or rather—their Eye?

The endeavor took six years.

In those six years, you descended with frequency belowground—a frequency that left colleagues doubting your sanity. Yet in those six years, the Undercity ceased to resemble a Pandora's Box. Rather, a culture coalesced, at once arcane and alluring. At first blush, it was easy to be wary of Fissurefolk: all scowls and scars and seething attitude. And yet, in private, they loved to let their hair down. They were aficionados of strong drinks, fast dancing and high spirits.

They were lovers of life.

Beneath the Undercity's tough exterior, you discovered a beating heart. Your notebooks were filled with vibrant characters: an amputee who performed feats of acrobatic derring-do across rooftops; a black-market dealer who quoted Demacian poetry; a starlet who gambled with Piltovan aristocracy by day and was the mistress of three different chem-barons by night.

Six years, you circled the Undercity's bright edges. Yet you never penetrated its shadowy nadir. Nor did you meet the Eye of Zaun. In time, you began thinking of him as a myth. The cutthroats' version of the bogeyman, fabricated to keep the troublemakers in line.

Perhaps that was his aim too. To sidetrack outsiders with smoke and mirrors, a seduction of the senses.

A dance with one inevitable dead-end.

THEN, in an October bloodbath, Zaun was born.

The Eye cut like a blade to its center.

As it turns out, you needn't have chased for leads. The Eye—to excuse the pun—was always in plain sight. After six years and a hundred-and-fifty correspondences back and forth, you were granted permission for a tête-à-tête.

You met during Zaun's expo, over a glass of sherry.

YOU RODE the Hexadraulic elevator to a newborn nation.

Newborn on paper. In soul, the city's multifaceted energy felt unchanged. During your tenure, you had traveled to lands far and wide. Each left a colorful trace of its zeitgeist on the page of memory. For most nations, the tableau vivant of brushstrokes was easily captured. Bilgewater was blue harbors and cutthroat bargains with a zest of sea-spray. Ionia was emerald forests and secretive mists, with silhouettes gliding dryad-like through the foliage. Noxus cut a grander figure, holding court in gilded halls of red and gold, sipping vintage wine over solemn declamations of war.

Zaun was different.

It had too many colors, too many moods. The hardscrabble miner from the Sumps returning to his saltbox shack in dirt-caked overalls after a day's labor. The chem-punk decked in swirling tattoos as he arrogantly spliced between traffic on a chromed hoverboard. The minx-faced shopgirl clutching a paper parcel of sugared eel as she traipsed through late-evening streets.

To you, Zaun was no single shade. It was an impasto of varying hues.

As was its odor.

Exiting the elevator, your sinuses were clubbed. The atmosphere was an infernal haze: factory smoke, diesel fumes, cooking grease and a lick of spiced sweetness from brightleaf tobacco. The air quality in the Fissures had always been poor. The main source of the smog—the Gray, as Zaunites called it—was the industrial zone, a shameful holdover of Piltover's mercantile era.

The atmospheric pollutants gave rise to multiple diseases among Zaunites, from treatable allergies to terminal Gray-lung.

Last year, a comprehensive Emissions Control Program was implemented to clear the smog. The emergence of multi-level Hex-turbines had further dissipated the spread of toxins. Zaun's evening sky was no longer dirty green, but pastel lime with undertones of silver. A cover of fog hung at the riverside. Vaguely, like an imprint of leftover phosphorous, you glimpsed the scarlet definitions of a sunset.

Admittedly, it was cleaner. But far from salubrious.

Coughing, you scrabbled for your chem-filter mask.

Your escort laughed a superior Zaunite laugh—lungs of iron and a heart to match. His name was Lock. He was charged with security for the expo and, more importantly, with keeping you out of trouble. In a prior life, he'd been a smuggling runner, a convict, and a prizefighter. As of late, he was the Eye's top muscle.

A laconic goliath in a tank-top and dark trousers, he had tattoos inked in a geometrical maze across his torso all the way up his shaved skull. His physique was impressive: a mountain of brawn that could break a body in half and pick his teeth with the broken spine.

You wondered, briefly, if the Eye had, in fact, ordered him to do so on a past occasion. The Eye was reputedly fond of such spectacle.

His metal-capped grin said, "Welcome to Zaun."

His sharp blue eyes said, "Look out for yourself."

His hitched thumb said, "This way."

He led you from the platform into a wide thoroughfare. The plaza was formerly the main drag of the Boundary Markets. It had been paved smooth as glass, with cobblestone outlines demarking the old-time pathways. The plaza's perimeter was lined with chem-tech lamps, their brilliant radius chasing the old aqueous ambiance from the riverfront.

Their glow was tinted an otherworldly green, as if you'd been transported into a realm of alchemical science fiction.

Within, the Boundary Markets were a throbbing phantasmagoria. Everything was glossier; the spoils more plentiful. Stalls teemed with bric-a-brac from all corners of Runeterra: spices, stones, silks. People went in and out of the neon-lit shops, toting shopping bags, sipping drinks, carrying take-out.

The crowd was diverse: tourists from Bilgewater, Ionia and Shurima prowled for cheap merchandise and cheaper thrills. Office workers with rolled-up shirtsleeves slumped at outdoor food-stands. Clusters of youngsters paraded across the sidewalks in the brazen height of local fashion: all streaked hair and artfully-ripped clothes.

Unlike Piltover, Zaun had no laws on public disarmament. Anyone who was anyone carried a weapon—a gun casually holstered under a jacket or a dagger carelessly hung from a belt. A blind mendicant with a loudspeaker stood at the street-corner, belting out the blues while brandishing brass knuckles. A pair of teenagers played cat's cradle with a barbed garotte. A wiry man sat at a table, tossing chem-charged poker chips for a group of punters. As the chips landed, they exploded like bombs into puffs of red glitter. The spectators ducked, then laughed, before betting more chips.

They jeered as you hurried past—your pacifist Piltovan roots showing plain as day.

Lock scowled, and they dispersed.

Under his breath, he muttered, "Quit gawking at the scenery."

"How can I help it? The Undercity has... changed."

"Don't call it that. It's Zaun now. Z-A-U-N."

"Sorry. Of course. I meant Zaun."

He shrugged. "Don't sweat it. Just trying to make it stick in that Uppside noggin of yours. Some quarters, the wrong moniker can earn you a knife to the gut."

You struggled not to blanch. "Good—good to know."

The main drag raged with traffic. The roads were in good repair; signals flashed and signposts gleamed. Here and there, luxury motorcars zoomed by with armed bodyguards on bikes—a visiting dignitary or a local cham-baron with their entourage.

You'd heard that the social etiquette in Zaun was that you didn't look a bigwig straight in the eye—and that if you did, you dropped your gaze first if you valued your life.

You related the urban legend to Lock. He scoffed.

"Look the biggest bastard in the eye," he said. "I'll knock 'em dead after."

You weren't certain he was joking.

You followed Lock through the streets. Already he felt your towering Vergil in a tantalizing Inferno. He opened the door to a lustrous black motorcar with the First Chancellor's crest: a psychedelic green eye.

Inside waited a young person with sleek dark hair and a fine sharp face. Proffering a steel-fingered hand, they introduced themselves as Ran.

"You're staying at Hotel Muse," they told you. "Lucky."

You weren't certain Lucky was the right word.

You knew of Hotel Muse by reputation. So did most journalists and diplomats. It was a bohemian honeypot for Zaunite artists and intellectuals. It was also a frequent crime scene. The duo of a famous rock-and-roll band had committed suicide in its penthouse suite. That same year, a famed chanteuse of Oshra Va'Zaun lineage was found stabbed to death in the hot-tub.

More disturbing were claims that it was a Glass House—a Zaunite euphemism for a bugged residence. Its walls were rumored to be hollow. Its paintings held hidden peepholes. Even its bathrooms were not spared the sordid specter of surveillance.

Privacy for a journalist on foreign soil is tenuous. In your case, it felt a chill forewarning beneath a charmed façade.

"Look out for yourself."

To be sure, Zaun and Piltover's relations were cordial but far from solid. Just a year prior, both had endured a bloody conflict—known belowground as the Siege—that culminated in Zaun's shocking independence. Seemingly overnight, one nation broke into two sovereign powers. The shadow of mutual annihilation hung where the Bridge once stood.

Piltovans compared the split to a tempestuous divorce. Zaunites begged to differ. For them, relations with Piltover had never held the parity of marriage. Rather, it was the worst sort of concubinage.

In retrospect, it is striking that Piltover's indifference to the former-Undercity's decline has not received harsher scrutiny. Your own articles on the subject were buried in the bylines. They attracted notice only from certain Fissure-bred schisms of intelligentsia.

Zaun's possession of the Hexcore—a marvel developed by Piltover at the expense of Zaunite lives—complicated matters. To Piltover, its theft represented terrorism. For Zaun, it was a matter of survival.

A squared debt.

Following the split, relations bobbed along at a low ebb. The Peace Treaty was a hopeful prospect, the first brick in a cooperative bridge. With it came a chance to move forward. Glossy photographs of Councilor Medarda and Zaun's First Chancellor in a spirited Sumpside Waltz made a splash in magazines across Piltover. Visa-free travel was greenlighted. Trade deals were struck. Zaun's economy was a goldmine; its mineral resources were plentiful, and its chemical and engineering sectors were second-to-none. In return, Piltover had much to offer as the epicenter of technological and intellectual advancement. The world's greatest minds gathered in Piltover to invent and innovate. The future, many predicted, would see Zaun rise to its sister-city's level, if not beyond.

And yet, the newfound comity was a fragile one.

The spate of positive publicity would remain, always, eclipsed by the now-iconic image of Jinx—in a gown of midnight blue, the Hex-gem at her throat and her slim arm extended like a gun. Her crooked smile was a reminder that nothing was forgotten. The hurts of history cut deep, even as your nations waltzed arm-in-arm.

The expo—like your visit—was simply another brick in a long road to progress.

The motorcar whispered along the freeway, Lock resting a couple of fingers on the wheel to keep it steady. Curious, you stared out the window. Your destination wasn't far. Yet the roads were densely jammed—motorbikes that shrieked like chainsaws, others that made barely a sound, luxury limos with a single passenger and hoverboards with two, three, even four riders.

Zaunites remained adept at doing much with very little.

Rounding a blind curve, Lock glimpsed a darting shape. He slammed his foot on the brakes. The motorcar's rear-end fishtailed; a riot of honks erupted. Your pulse stumbled; Ran coiled to pounce on a potential threat, switchblade in hand.

A jaywalker flashed deuces at you before disappearing into the crowd.

"Dumb [expletive]," Lock said lackadaisically.

Ran snickered and sheathed the switchblade. The motorcar rolled on.

You dabbed the sweat beading your forehead. A nation's highways allow a visitor to glean much about its mindset. Zaunites drove like they did everything else: with a reckless abandon. Vehicles swerved between lanes with nary a warning. The speed limits were offhand suggestions more than enforced laws. Pedestrians barged heedlessly across crosswalks amid honking horns and obscene gestures.

For Ran and Lock, the daredevilry seemed ordinary. Each time you flinched, they exchanged sideways smirks.

The highway wound its way along the Pilt's southern bend. The hazy cupola of the evening sky narrowed into the palest ashes of light. Below, blighted waterways were dotted with fishing trawlers and coalships. Idly, Ran pointed out landmarks new and old.

Zaun was in the grip of manic reconstruction. Cranes spanned the cityscape, looming tall as obelisks. The architecture had shed its symmetrical splendor of Art Deco—a legacy from Piltover. In its place was an eccentric firmament of iron and glass: Art Nouveau with a smoky kiss of steampunk.

And yet there was an organic feel to the urban landscape. A spectacle meant to be traversed, not gazed upon.

To be sure, the Undercity's architecture, as many a traveler had observed, was a crazy jumble of styles. Gaudy, gilded facades sat side-by-side with austere marble edifices. Towering steel-and-glass skyscrapers were nestled next to squat, brick-and-mortar factories. The streets themselves were a jumbled mash of cobblestones, pavement, and concrete. Some, lit by ancient gaslight, lent a theatrical air to the proceedings. Others were a pervasive gloom of shadow and grime.

Maps were an impossibility: the fabric of the old city from the mercantile era had never unraveled. Instead, its dimensions had been altered with such a profusion of zigzagging pathways and cross-stitched thoroughfares that it defied logic. Hole-in-the-wall grocers shared premises with residential complexes; warehouses were converted into nightclubs; clinics were wedged between brothels and billiard rooms.

Worse, as the city's sprawl expanded, the city did not follow the conventional dictates of spatiality. Rather, it spanned up, down and sideways. The streets were multidirectional. Some, in miasmatic alleyways and shadow-streaked lanes, plunged straight down to the Sump. Others soared vertiginously, so it was not uncommon to find a butcher shop on a sixth-floor balcony and an art gallery in a basement alcove. Walkways split and reconvened like the roots of a tree. Seemingly overnight, razored sheets of steel could be welded to existing structures, forming new additions to a labyrinthine whole. Others were razed in the span of days, replaced by an eerie stretch of lunar nothingness. Then, as soon as the dust settled, the rubble was carted off and new edifices began to take shape, their pathways connecting to the existing spiderweb.

Naturally, this fostered the distorted historic view that the Fissures were beyond the scope of zoning laws—or, indeed, the bounds of civilization. The Undercity, and its inhabitants, were falsely perceived as a chaotic mass whose only commonalities were anarchic mayhem, criminal tendencies, and a disregard for all things logical.

Your research had disgorged a more nuanced reality.

It is true that Zaun's secretive nature stirred in Piltovans—self-professed lovers of airy well-lit spaces, clean streets, and orderly conduct—an unease of the dark unknown. This paranoia was deepened by real-life accounts of certain buildings—or entire districts—revealed to be hollowed out and customized to suit the purposes of smugglers, saboteurs, and worse. Weekly, to the thrilling horror of Piltovan readership, tabloids printed tales ranging from the gruesome to the fantastical: bodies of infants discovered floating in the riverside; a madman with a saw-toothed grin who kidnapped entire families and sold them into slavery; virgins sacrificed to hell-gods in bloodsoaked orgies of violence.

The Undercity, it was argued, was living proof of an unhinged psyche. Its citizens were predisposed to vice; vices that were, in turn, byproducts of a cult of savagery and superstition. Worse, there was bound to be a grain of truth to the most macabre rumors. What labyrinth, after all, was complete without its minotaur?

As a journalist, your duty was not to regurgitate rumors. Rather, it was to lay bare the truths that lay beneath.

And the truth was that the city's ethos was not so much sinister anarchism as it was the spillover of self-invention. The Fissures, for years, were a haven for the disenfranchised, the downtrodden, the outliers. These groups, over the decades, had nourished entire subcultures out of their outsidership, carving out a niche where the rest of the world saw a void.

This zest replicated itself on a societal scale. Nothing in the Undercity stayed stagnant. Life was always in flux; always evolving—at once in a state of perpetual decay, and perpetual renewal. If the past was a canvas, then the future was a work-in-progress of freeform brushstrokes, a masterpiece not yet realized.

And, like any work-in-progress, its execution was messy.

As you rode, the cityscape changed from the industrial zones along the riverbanks to the commercial district. Here, the buildings were a mosaic of neon and chrome. The Chancellor's skyscraper headquarters cut through the sky in stark contours. The exterior was a lattice of metal and glass. In daylight it was a fearsome edifice, the green cupola at its crest a watchful sentinel. At night, it was a dazzling beacon, lit from the within, at once impenetrable and inviting. A second spire—a shimmering chrome as if in ode to the city's signature narcotic—soared skyward, a half-kilometer in length. A pair of drones swept its perimeter.

In your research, you had found a single photograph of the same structure: a grainy shot of a shadowed silhouette.

It was called the Aerie.

The workshop of Jinx.

As you stared, a palpable zing leapt like static against your skin. A sense of thrilling hope and gut-clenching peril. It was as if the city itself were sentient. A presence with its own heartbeat.

It pulsed, and so did you, with a single question.

What would become of the city in the Eye's care? And in that of his prodigy?

What did the future resemble in their shared hands?

"We're here," said Ran.

YOU ENTERED the revolving gold and glass doors of Hotel Muse.

The lobby resembled a rococo creampuff: a cozy gilt-paneled space with frosted-glass valances and lush vanilla carpeting. Lock hefted your suitcase. Ran checked you in with the receptionist. Their manner wasn't solicitous so much as efficient.

You sensed that they'd been debriefed to anticipate in advance every move you'd make in Zaun. They advised you to refrain from hiring a taxi by the trip, as you would find yourself stranded after dark in places you ought not to be.

Instead, they would drive you wherever you wished to go.

You protested. "This is watch-dogging!"

They exchanged looks. Lock woofed a chuckle.

"Let me break it down for you, Mx. Goode," he said. "We respect your journalistic integrity."

"And all that jazz," Ran deadpanned.

"But," Lock went on, "you're an outsider. And a Piltie to boot. There's people out here with a long memory—and a nasty attitude."

"Should that matter? I wish for Zaunites to speak with candor!"

"Oh, you'll get candor." Ran said blandly. "It's an incurable condition."

"Like Grey Lung," Lock snorted, then sobered, "Zaun's full of people happy to talk. All with different motivations. We won't tell you who to meet or what to ask 'em. But we will be closeby. In all places."

"All places?"

The edges of his lips curled. "The usual suspects. Brothels, Shimmer-dens, bath-houses…"

"All the places real life is!"

Lock shrugged off your objection. "Unless Himself greenlights a solo trip, your safety comes first."

"Himself? Do you mean the First Chancellor?"

"The one and only."

Certainly one way of putting it.

It was the First Chancellor—as much as Zaun—whose pursuit had lured you belowground. Today, his sharp-hewn profile is unmistakable in Piltover's historical archives, as is the sibilating slither of his baritone in recorded broadcasts.

Yet, in those days, the man remained an enigma.

To Zaunites, he was a Faustian father at his most polemical. On the one hand, he was a revolutionary who had dedicated himself to Zaun's liberty. Arguably, few men could achieve what he had—dragged a nation from a stupor of subjugation and into the shocking zenith of survival. After the war, he'd spent a king's ransom from his own fortune to rebuild the city's infrastructure. He'd seduced foreign investors into splurging on fast-tracked fields of science, tech and art. He'd brought a dizzy optimism back to a populace weary of suffering.

Most importantly, alongside Councilor Mel Medarda, he had engineered the Peace Treaty with Piltover—a treaty whose existence was still contested in some quarters.

On the other hand, there were those who believed that this Faustian bargain was too costly. To them, the Chancellor was a dangerous subversive who'd sold his soul to save Zaun and yet left it imperiled by his own vices. His history as a Shimmer-baron—a fact neither publicly refuted nor confirmed—was complicated by rumors that the profits were used to back Zaun's independence. Some said he was a dealmaker driven by demonic forces: where Piltover's Hex-tech was sold for millions, he weaponized a dark amalgam of chem-tech and Hex-tech that fetched billions. He reputedly had murky contacts in newspapers, publishing, radio, printing and research databases all the way from Demacia to Bilgewater.

There were sordid stories of assassinations ordered by his hand—trade secrets stolen and politicians suborned. He'd been romantically linked to a number of sirens and savants: Bilgewater's Miss Fortune, who'd reputedly described him as"a shark who devours bite by bite";Jhin, a murderous prodigy turned street performer who claimed to have sampled firsthand the"man behind the mask"; and even the infamous Sett from Ionia's fighting pits, who boasted of having shared drinks with the Chancellor, calling him a "witty, manipulative asshole"—amongst other things.

Some of these tales were tabloid trash. Others held a seed of truth.

What was most evident was that the First Chancellor was a master of misdirection. If you asked five people about him, you'd get six answers. The only commonality was the ambiguous aura of danger that surrounded him. More than once, you'd wondered why a man so secretive had invited a journalist—of all professions—for a tête-à-tête.

Was it simply for the sake of good publicity? Or, perhaps, an elaborate ruse?

Would a single-page obituary be printed after the visit, with the byline: "Curiosity killed the journalist"?

The Eye of Zaun was rumored to have killed for less.

Haltingly, you asked: "Does he often have journalists shadowed?"

Lock's metal-capped teeth glinted in the lobby lights. "Only if he's interested in what they've got to ask."

"I should hope so!"

"So we can't have you getting hurt, eh? Shame if you ended up like the last guy."

You were nonplused. "The last?"

"Fell in a charnel pit." Lock chuckled. "Himself didn't bat an eyelid."

Again, you weren't certain he was joking.

Once you had settled into your room, Lock and Ran treated you to supper before the Expo. Their choice of venue was Jericho's. Together, you sat by the stall with a dining area open to the neon-stained street. Green squid curry was ordered for you, and black tentacle stew for Lock. Ran stuck to fresh cavernberry juice. Around your feet, torn-eared cats fought over gristles flung behind the stall.

The Undercity's menu was invariably pickled—and of dubious quality at best. But with Zaun's birth came changes. Trade bargains with Ionia led to prime cuts of meat in even Sumpside shops. New Shimmer-based hothouses allowed genetically modified fruit and vegetables to proliferate local markets. It showed in the tweaks to Jericho's menu: curls of lime leaves, sticky mounds of rice, plump morsels of cherry tomato.

They weren't as flavorful as their Piltovan counterparts. But Zaunites seemed grateful for extra folates in their diet.

Between mouthfuls, you attempted small-talk with your companions. How had they fallen into service with the Eye of Zaun? What was he like, as a boss, as a man? Was his persona as foreboding as the rumors made it out to be? Did they enjoy working for him? Could they speak honestly without fearing reprisal?

"I wouldn't," Lock grunted, slurping up a morsel of tentacle. "No offense, Mx. Goode."

"I would." Ran smiled sweetly. "Then I'd kill you where you sit."

You laughed, thinking they were joking. But the look they exchanged was inscrutable.

Beneath their amused reticence, you sensed a natural reserve. They'd not been coached by their superior not to overshare. Rather, they'd been chosen specifically because they kept their own counsel. Their discretion was as valuable as their more dubious skillsets.

Still, they weren't without the inborn Zaunite playfulness. Ran's tongue was quicksilver; Lock's humor was wry. Their familiarity with one another was evident. They ribbed each other endlessly over past antics. Yet their rapport was professional, too. Lock deferred to Ran when it came to matters of intel. Ran deferred to Lock when it came to matters of security.

It was a comfortable dynamic, and they knew the city well. You learned more from them over the course of a single supper than you had in months of research.

For instance, you learnt that Zaun had opted to retain the currency system of Piltover: washers, cogs, hexes. Not out of a nostalgic desire to cling to the past, but to maintain the pretense of economic equality. As long as both nations' coinage was interchangeable, Zaun's economic disparities would remain hidden until the nation had found its feet. A similar reasoning explained why the two nations shared the same national language. While Zaunites spoke the hodgepodge of local and foreign dialects, a standardized version (literally: Standard) was taught in schools and promoted in media. The aim was to make the language as accessible as possible, a tool of empowerment rather than exclusion.

This inclusivity was also extended to Zaun's legal system. For decades, the Fissures' patchwork legal framework was symptomatic of a wider disconnect between Piltover and the Undercity. While Topside had its own—admittedly sclerotic—constitution, the Fissures were treated as a lawless colony, famed for gang codes, tribal courts, and vigilante justice.

The Council had exerted its authority through the Wardens, with Enforcers serving as the brutal enactors of its writ. The Wardens were known for their callous disregard of the Fissures' welfare: disproportionately high rates of violent crime, rampant poverty, and widespread corruption were tolerated, even fanned hotter when the mood suited. Fissurefolk, for their part, were unsympathetic to the Wardens, whom they saw as little more than Piltover's stooges.

This, in turn, had led to a culture of distrust, where Fissurefolk massed into a monolith of defiance at the first whiff of authority.

Zaun's independence had changed that. The Cabinet was now committed to reforming the legal system, an arduous process that involved rewriting archaic laws and amending incomplete decrees, from the criminal justice to the bureaucracy. Progress was slow, but steady. The penal code had been overhauled in the first few months. Fines rather than jail sentences were becoming the norm for petty crimes. A sentence in Dredge prison was reserved for the most heinous offenses: treason, terrorism, murder, rape, assault. Rehabilitation programs were being introduced to combat recidivism. Vocational training for felons was in the pipeline. Even a draft-work program had been introduced to provide free legal counsel.

It was an ambitious undertaking. Zaun's judiciary was a young institution, and the city was home to a wide range of ideologies, from anarchists to syndicalists. But the Eye was the guiding hand, and his silent influence was felt across every tier.

As an example, you were informed that the proposed Chief Justice, a masked woman of humble origins, had been personally recommended by the Eye. The lady was widely reviled by Zaun's chem-baron fraternity—largely for her uncompromising sense of fairness and reputation for unflinching integrity. In the months since her campaign, she had put forward a series of proto-legislations, all with the aim of establishing a fair and impartial judiciary.

In sum, it was a city determined to slough off a regressive past. One that, in many ways, had not been a matter of choice, but necessity.

"The old empire of Oshra Va' Zaun," Lock said, scraping his bowl clean, "was one where anyone could make a fresh start. Anyone could change their name, their story, their fortune. So Zaun is like its namesake—it's the land of the famed second chance. Or do-over. Anyone can become anything, from the Sumps to the Spires. This is a city that accepts all."

"Janna Omnia Amat," Ran drawled.

"Exactly. Janna loves everybody."

You were surprised to hear the spiritual mantra from a pair of hard-eyed cutthroats. Then again, even the most morally compromised in Zaun held a dogged core of faith—and its flipside of superstition.

"Is that the Eye's philosophy?" you asked.

"More like his personal credo. He's a man who believes in redemption."

"Redemption?"

"Not in a saintly sense," Lock said, with a tiny smirk. "More like making good on a debt. He's not a man who forgets a kindness. Or an insult. In the end, all accounts will be settled."

"With interest," Ran said.

"I see. That's... remarkably fair."

"He is, actually." Lock's manner downshifted. "He's fairer than a lot of folks realize. I wouldn't be working for him otherwise. Hell, I'd be dead."

"And me," Ran said, polishing off the cavernfruit juice.

"How so?"

Lock glanced away, the corners of his mouth folding. "Let's just say, we were leftovers as far as Uppside was concerned. No place to go. Nothing to lose. I was getting my skull bashed in weekly at cage fights. Ran, they were running 'em ragged, day and night, in cartel deals. I didn't know which was worse. The work or the life."

Ran said nothing. But you saw the shadow of old suffering flit across the porcelain face.

"But he found us," Lock went on. "And we got a new start. So yeah, I'm not a man who forgets a kindness either. Or the kind who wastes a second chance. A lot of folks see Himself as the Devil incarnate. But if he is, then he's the best damn devil a man could work for."

"Even his vices?"

Lock grinned, all teeth. "Especially those."

Stunned, you were not entirely certain how to respond. You'd been warned to expect a certain degree of blind fanaticism from the Eye's inner circle. But their loyalty seemed less like cultish fervor than a debt owed. They didn't feign affection for their employer as a friend. Rather, they respected him as a man who had done right by them, and was therefore worthy of their loyalty.

It was the same devotion shown to a mentor.

Or a father.

The conversation was interrupted by a platter of Zaun's specialty: sump-vole fritters. Doused in an ascendant sauce of chili, citrus and turmeric, the fried meat was as piquant as it was juicy. It was also, in a word, flaming. Lock and Ran spit in their palms and exchanged a betting handshake over how many you could swallow.

(Six: a poor personal best.)

Afterward, you fanned yourself and downed glass after glass of sweet yoghurt drink. Idly, Ran leafed through your notebook. "Nice. But maybe you want to swap 'ethno fusion' for 'Zaunite cuisine' in this line?"

You stifled a cough."Wh—Why?"

"Sounds too pretentious. Ethno-Fusion is Uppside. Zaun has no need for fusion. Our city's already a blend. The food shows that. There's a little of everything: Bilgewater, Shurima, Ionia, Noxus. We don't pick apart which is this or that. We've got no time. We take what we get and make the best of it."

"I'll keep that in mind."

"And here?" The black-tipped nail tapped a page. "Cross out 'desire lines.'"

"Oh? Why?"

"Too snooty. Desire lines is an Uppside term too. Zaun doesn't do maps the same way your city does. For one thing, we're underground. So everything flows vertically. Like a mineshaft, only the drilling's in progress. There's no traditional routes, no set paths. Nothing in Zaun stays static. We find our way like we do everything else: by improvising."

"So the city is terra incognita?"

"Kinda. It's more a question of how you carve your way through it. Living here means having your own tailor-made mental map. We all do. The streets Lock takes aren't the ones I'd use. And the ones I use won't be the same as the Bossman's. He likes to say that each of us is a cartographer. We map a different Zaun, inside ourselves. And together, we build something new."

"That's beautiful. I like that."

"Yeah. Bossman has a flair for poetry."

"A man of hidden depths."

"A man of many things." Ran winked. "Most of 'em terrible."

The rest of the meal passed amicably. In between bites, you took in the nightscape. A fog hung suspended between the vaulted sky and the cobblestone streets. Silhouettes moved through it, some at a fast clip, others limping. From the open window of a nearby cabaret came the jazzy riff of saxophones. A pair of shoeless urchins chased a rat around with nail-spiked sticks while their caretaker shouted after them.

Behind them was a massive wall scrawled with graffiti: revolutionary slogans from the independence conflict, and a caricature of a gleeful girl with blue hair perched on a zooming missile.

VISIT ZAUN BEFORE ZAUN VISITS U.

The girl was Jinx.

For Piltovans, she remained a focal point of controversy: an unhinged terrorist whose bombs had taken countless lives. Opinions were split. Some saw her as the embodiment of Zaun's untamed wrath. Others perceived her as a victim, a puppet on the Eye of Zaun's strings. Jayce Talis is reported to have described her as an "unstable thief;" Cassandra Kiramman derided her as a "shameless little doxy;" Warden Camille Ferros condemned her as, "woefully unrepentant."

Meanwhile, for Zaunites, Jinx was a mythic figure. Half-whiz, half-witch, an exuberant fairy godmother spreading not boons but booms. Chem-punks emulated her fashion sense. Clubs played Get Jinxed in her honor. Zaun's everyday lingo featured a lexicon of Jinxese:"Anything jumpin' off?" – "Let's see what Pow-Pow thinks" – "Eff for Effort!"

She'd become a shorthand for anything crazy—from a party to a hot date to a disaster.

Jinx was everything that made Zaun unique: a reckless effusion of magic and modernity. Her gumption with gadgetry was legendary. In the wake of Zaun's independence, she'd collaborated with another Zaunite prodigy, Viktor—the former partner of Jayce Talis—to develop a series of ingenious inventions. Most notable among them was the Hex-turbine. It was credited with purifying the atmosphere of acidic freak-storms—Gnashers—that had long plagued the Sumps. The turbines' hum was now ubiquitous throughout the city.

In her spare time, Jinx shed her contentious wartime record in favor of a freewheeling fashionista's duds. With her mastiff, Sparky, by her side, she made the rounds of the most premium clubs and the most high-rolling casinos, leaving gunsmoke and bevy of broken hearts in her wake. Rumors abounded: everything from high-society swains to the dregs of the underworld were linked to her. But Jinx's private life remained a matter of breathless mystery.

Nothing could be proven. Her reputation was beyond reproach.

In many ways, she was the apple of the city's eye. Zaun's firstborn daughter: its most beloved and best.

As for yourself?

You'd met Jinx once. Or rather, seen her. During the Peace Treaty's gala, you'd witnessed her dancing to wild riffs of jazz. Then, during the photo-op, falling asleep—only to waken with a jolt and fling a glitter bomb into the crowd. She'd been a mere slip of a girl, then. Nothing like the unhinged terrorist from reports. Yet her magnetism was undeniable. The camera loved her: she seemed a starlet in a stage of her own making.

The perfect emblem for Zaun's new era.

You asked Lock and Ran about her. They exchanged loaded glances.

Lock said, "We don't talk about the Bit of Ghostberry."

"Who?"

"Jinx. Himself's got a short fuse for the media's obsession with his little girl."

"A short fuse? In what sense?"

"Every."

Ran shrugged. "No interviews. No photographs. No hearsay. We're always careful."

"I take it the Chancellor is protective."

"Protective? Hell." Lock dug a fishbone out of his mouth, and spat on the sidewalk. "She's like a bomb waiting to go off. A real shiny bomb. Best not to get too close."

Despite yourself, you were intrigued. "I hear similar rumors about the Chancellor."

"Like father, like daughter."

"Is Jinx his by blood?"

"This ain't Piltover, Mx. Goode. Blood don't count for much."

Interest piqued, you pressed further: "Has the Chancellor other children?"

"One's enough of a gamble."

"My sources shared that Jinx has a sister. Violet. Currently one of Zaun's blackguards."

Lock raised an eyebrow."Not many folks know that."

"Iaman investigative journalist."

Ran and Lock exchanged another look. You waited, pen poised, hoping against hope for a nugget of intelligence. It was a matter of professional pride. To understand a nation's leader is to understand its future. To understand his children is to understand the man.

Lock said: "Can't say."

"What? Why not?"

"Because." The blue eyes went flinty. "You'd be eating all of your teeth."

"Then she is not the First Chancellor's daughter?"

"Daughter? You call her that and it'll be the last thing you do. I don't mean Ran or me will off you. She'll do the honor her own damnself."

"The First Chancellor wouldn't stop her?"

"He'd help." The flintiness gave way to amusement. "They're a lot alike. The Bit of Ghostberry has Himself's charm. Both of 'em could talk you into a corner and slit your throat for the trouble. Violet, though. She's got his temper. If anything, she's worse."

Ran danced a fingertip along the rim of the juice-glass. "Aren't you glad you asked?"

"It's a great story," Lock went on. "Real soap opera. Plenty of redemption, revenge, all that jazz. If you published the novel, you'd win a Bullitzer, guaranteed. But it's not a tale we'll tell."

"Not even off the record?"

"Off the record, and our heads will be on the chopping block. I speak for both of us. Right, Ran?"

Ran winked. "Rather be doing the chopping myself."

You tried changing tacks. "Is Violet related, at all, to the First Chancellor?"

"Not a chance. That one's out in the public records." Lock slouched back on his stool, and his grin returned."Let's put it this way. She's not his daughter. Not by blood—any more than Jinx is. But Jinx is his family. Apple of his eye. Violet? She's something different. More like his... pupil."

"A protégée?"

"Yeah. Let's go with that." Lock's grin was cagier now."Himself's got a soft spot for lost lambs."

"And black sheep," Ran deadpanned.

"Or whatever you call a stone-cold [expletive]."

You frowned, trying to parse their meaning. "I take it she is not as affable?"

Lock ran a palm over his inked skull down to the shovel-shaped jaw. "You could say that. You could also say: she's got no cause to be. She's Himself's bodyguard. Her job description's pretty straightforward—keep him alive. It's the sort of work that breeds hard heads. You keep out of her way and you'll be fine. But don't expect her to give you an interview."

"How did she become the Chancellor's bodyguard? It seems a position of considerable trust."

"Trust. Yeah."

Again, the loaded glances swapped. It was clear the matter was not for public consumption. But one thing was certain: the Eye's family dynamic was more tangled than you'd anticipated. There were no neat lines, no clear delineations. Just a web of relationships, some familial, some not. It was a far cry from the nuclear model you'd been taught to revere in Piltover.

In Zaun, you thought, the real desire lines were not mapped on streets, but in hearts.

And the Eye of Zaun, at the epicenter, was where all the lines intersected.

The cartographer of a hidden world.

AFTER SUPPER, Lock and Ran were joined by a jack-in-the-box named Dustin.

A spiky-haired fellow with a vacantly amiable air, but jittery reflexes that set you on edge. His fingers were a constant blur of motion. You sensed, rather than saw, a glint of steel strapped somewhere beneath his sleeve. His rapidfire remarks were punctuated by snickers. As if his own words tickled him pink.

He didn't introduce himself so much as amble up to your table at Jericho's and slap you on the back.

Hard.

"So this is the hackette!"he said by way of greeting.

With dignity, you rubbed the bruise forming on your shoulder. "Good evening, sir."

"Sir? Call me Dusty. Short for Dustin. Not to be confused with Dustbin. I'm the better-looking brother."His earsplitting cackle had a hyena's pitch."Say, what do they call you? I've heard all sorts of names: Goodie, BG, Gumshoe. You've got quite the reputation. In a city full of hacks, you've got a genuine knack. It's a pleasure, a real pleasure. You coming Down-Low is a big deal."

"It is?"

"Hell yeah! This is the first time Mister S agreed to an interview. With an Uppsider, no less. What's your secret?"

"I haven't the foggiest. Perhaps he is genuinely interested in improving relations between Zaun and Piltover."

"That he is!"Another cackle. "He's a man with a plan, Mister S. Always looking forward. That's what the expo is about. Coming together. Making connections. It's a brand-new day for Zaun. We're going places, and Mister S is leading the way. He's the best, you know. The realest."

"Realest?" you echoed. "Do you mean, 'real,' as in 'realist'?"

"Yeah. Yeah. Realist. No idealist. Definitely not one for rose-colored glasses. Or glasses, in general. He's got his eye on bigger things. Zaun's got a lot to offer, but it's not going to be easy. Fortunately, with good folk like yourself, we'll have a leg-up."

"I'm a journalist, not a diplomat. My goal is to inform, not influence."

"Sure, sure. No offense meant. I'm just saying. The world needs to see the truth."

"Which is?"

"That Zaun's going places. So are we. So are you! Hey—did you try our brightleaf tobacco yet? You should. Really starts you off on the right foot."

Dustin perched beside you and lit what looked—and smelled—like an enormous spliff. The fumes made your head reel. Or perhaps it was the secondhand effluvium wafting off Dustin. The man was clearly a chem-fiend.

Zaun was no stranger to chemical vices: Fizzle, Puffcap, Sweet Nip—under the city's remarkably lax regulatory regime—were legal. Lenient drug policies made distinctions between 'hard' and 'soft' substances. Their production and sale were tolerated for recreational use. It was not uncommon for street dealers to operate openly, as long as their wares were sanctioned through official channels. It was also an open secret that elite Zaunites regularly indulged in the finest narcotics.

Some, you'd read, were still so high the morning-after, they had to be strapped into their chairs during Cabinet meetings.

Naturally, this ethos of hedonistic laissez-aller was a powerful lure for outsiders. The city's reputation for vice was legendary. Few could resist dabbling in Zaun's chemical cornucopia. Indeed, there was a certain daring prestige attached to indulgence: a night on the town culminating in a whopping hangover at best, a 'dry-out' in the city's most posh rehab at worst, was a rite of passage. A mark of the truly cosmopolitan.

Then, there was Shimmer.

The drug was a scourge of the Fissures. A synthetic narcotic produced in clandestine laboratories, it was a siren's call to the destitute and disenfranchised. Once ingested, it offered an immediate euphoria, enhanced stamina, and heightened physical prowess. Pure strains were ingested intravenously; diluted forms were peddled as a smokeable narcotic. Its street-names included:Eye-Candy, Shine, Glow-up.

Its medicinal uses—all the way in Piltover—were controversial. Progressive factions hailed it as a breakthrough in medical science. Special strains, in controlled environments, were said to offer miraculous cures for otherwise incurable diseases. Conservatives, however, saw the drug as a menace to public health, and a vector for violence.

To bolster their case, they pointed to side-effects that manifested at later stages: delirium, paranoia, and, if overused, psychosis. The most insidious effects, however, were the physiological ones. Long-term exposure caused irreversible brain damage and muscle degradation. Over time, the addict suffered the same symptoms of decay as the Undercity. Muscles atrophying; skin sloughing off; joints degrading.

The body, in its final throes, resembled a half-decayed corpse. The afflicted became known as Rotters.

The Sun & Tower had, prior to the Siege, published an editorial entitled,"Shimmer and Shame." A series of articles, written by intrepid journalists undercover in the Fissures, ripped the lid off the rampant Shimmer addiction. It was a damning exposé, calling for stricter oversight of Undercity imports and the reinstatement of full-body searches for travelers passing through Bridge.

The series went on to win the coveted Golden Quill. It was lauded as a seminal work in raising public awareness of the crisis.

Subsequently, the editorial was buried in the bylines. Publications were limited to redacted snippets. Certain articles in the archives mysteriously vanished before their due date. Others were outright censored. A rumor circulated: a mysterious benefactor had offered a generous stipend for the paper to cease-and-desist its critical coverage. The publisher, a staunch advocate of free-press, refused to fold.

A month later, the publisher was found hanging from a noose in his office. Suicide, according to the Wardens. The publisher's widow insisted otherwise, but her efforts to seek justice were futile. The case remained unsolved. In the interim, the editor-in-chief was replaced. His predecessor preferred a more diplomatic approach. In place of investigative journalism, the paper focused on 'churnalism'—rehashed articles on society gossip, celebrity interviews, and a travel section.

Meanwhile, belowground, the Undercity stewed. A cauldron of corruption, crime, and chaos.

Shimmer, of course, was not the catalyst of its social ills. Rather, it was a side-effect of a mass-scale industry in human exploitation.

The symptom of a disease whose roots lay deeper still.

Lack of economic empowerment had, for decades, crippled the Fissurefolk: physically, psychologically. Shimmer, in controlled doses, was a balm. It eased afflictions of the body, and spirit. It made life bearable. For the downtrodden, it was a cheap, available fix.

It was also, as your research had revealed, a profit-driven enterprise.

Rumored to shipped as far and wide as Shurima, Bilgewater, and Ionia, Shimmer served as weaponized currency. It boosted the stamina of soldiers, the performance of mercenaries, the morale of the masses. Its revenue, funneled back into the Undercity, provided the resources needed to wrest the Fissures from the Warden's aegis. To fund an independence movement. To bankroll a new nation.

To birth Zaun.

As of today, Shimmer had become the cornerstone of a complex and contentious dialogue between Zaun's Cabinet and the Council. The latter had recently placed an embargo on Shimmer-related exports, and were seeking to curb its distribution among the populace. The former, meanwhile, had pledged to crack down on the black-market trade. In demonstration of their commitment, the First Chancellor had recently passed an edict: all distribution of the drug as recreational narcotic was illegal. Any chem-labs found manufacturing it were to be razed.

What followed was an unprecedented crackdown on the black-market. Cartel bosses were arrested; warehouses confiscated. Shimmer's rampancy on the rave circuit was curbed, and its supply chain disrupted.

Many were quick to condemn the Chancellor's decision as a capitulation to Piltover's political whims. It was a sign of weakness, they decried. The symptom of an underdeveloped state, and an unpatriotic sell-out, to boot. Another vocal minority argued that the edict was a ruse. The real agenda, they insisted, was not to curb Shimmer's availability, but increase its profitability. They argued that the drug was still being produced—this time in legitimate factories, overseen by the government itself.

Instead of an adulterated poison, the scientists were now producing a purer strain—twice as refined, and ten times more potent.

Zaun's Cabinet dismissed the claims as spurious conjecture. Investigations were launched. No hard evidence was unearthed. Shimmer truly seemed, among Zaun's beleaguered citizenry, on the way out. There were fewer glimpses of Rotters in the slums; pharmacies had begun selling Shimmer-specific antidotes; rehabilitation clinics were in vogue. And while the chem-cartels still existed, their activities were curtailed, and their leaders were either dead, or in Dredge Prison.

Or so the official statements claimed.

As a journalist, you were ambivalent. You'd seen Shimmer's corrosive effects, up close and personal, during your sojourns belowground. Part of you—like the middle-class masses who were the backbone of your readership—hoped against hope that Shimmer could be eradicated, once and for all.

The rest of you, the reporter with the nose for a good story, knew it would not be that simple.

Dustin, blithely self-medicated on Janna-knew-what, was proof positive.

"Want some?" He proffered his joint."They're passing 'em out at the Expo."

"They—what?"

Through pursed lips, Dustin blew out a misshapen smoke ring."Brightleaf. Free samples. It's a new strain. Supposed to keep the chest clear, make the lungs less congested. The benefits are pullomo—plomo—"

"Pulmonary?" you supplied.

"That's it! So what's your poison? Brightleaf? Z-Zap? Puffcap?"

"Thank you. But I'll pass."

"Puff-puff-pass?"

"Just pass."

It wasn't that you did not appreciate a good toke. You were a child of Piltover's golden age: the days of opium dens and cannabis clubs. But Zaun was not a place to be off one's head. Their tobacco was infamous for its potency. Also, you weren't sure you wanted to swap saliva with your unsavory-looking guide. You'd not had your shots, and you'd prefer not to catch an exotic strain of flu.

Not when the interview was less than twelve bells away.

"Your loss." Dustin threw a rubberband arm around your shoulders, and gave a squeeze."Say, have you tried the sweets yet?"

"Sweets?"

"The sweet-shops at the Promenade. We've got a couple: Cray-Cray, Lollypop's, Mango-Splash. Best in town. The Li'l Miss goes to Lollypop's sometimes, after her gigs."

"The Li'l Miss?"

"You know. Jinx."

"O-oh."You were relieved. For a moment, you'd feared being strongarmed into reviewing a strip-club."I am told Zaun's patisseries are second-to-none."

"You can say that again!" A high-pitched cackle."Hey, why don't we swing by a few? There's still time before the Expo. And Mister S, he won't mind. He wants you to take in the sights."

"Is the First Chancellor a fan of sweets, as well?"

"He's a fan of a lot of things. Sweet nothings. Sweet deals. Sweet cheeks." A wink."Hey, have you tried our Sachertorte yet?"

"I—I cannot say I have."

"Wha-a-a-a-at? Lock, Ran, are you hearin' this?"

Lock was busy scraping the dregs from his bowl. Ran's reply was a laconic shrug. Their natural aptitude for indolence was beginning to strike you as the side-effect of a daily exposure to Dustin's ceaseless chatter. You wondered at the circumstances that had thrust these individuals—each a walking stereotype of Zaunite vice—into the Chancellor's inner circle.

Then again, you suspected their skillsets were far more specialized than the vices they seemed to represent.

"That's a shame," Dustin was saying, shaking his head."That's a damn shame. Hey, why don't we drop by some shops? The Rack's got the best Sachertorte in town."

"Pssssh." Lock wiped his mouth."The Rack's for the kids. All sugar. No kick."

"Well, what about the Honeypot? Punchiest opera cakes in the business."

"Too punchy," Ran hummed."Takes a week to come down."

"Then how about the Laughing Coffin? I'm tellin' ya. They've got the meanest rum-baba."

"Bossman gave it a thumbs-down. He said, and I quote, 'Ich würde meinen größten Feind nicht an dieses Dessert verfüttern.'"

"Damn. Guess there's a reason they're going out of business."

"I say we hit the Piglet's Squeal," Lock said."They do a decent macaroon."

Dustin grimaced."No way, man. Too frilly. You'll catch a dose of cooties before rush bell."

"How about the Sugarplum Fairy? Eclairs to die for. Even the Bit of Ghostberry goes nuts for 'em."

"Eh. Maybe. Hey, what do you think, Goodie?"

You'd been listening dizzily to their debate, hoping for an interlude to extricate yourself. Zaun's gastronomic scene was an entirely untapped market. Half the names dropped sounded, to your ears, like the opening lines of a particularly bawdy tavern song. The other half, however, were clearly establishments of repute.

Perhaps you could, in good faith, venture off-script to sample a few. After all, a journalist, if they wished to report the truth, must also live the truth.

In this case, you would eat it—and your own naivety—soon enough.

THE Sugarplum Fairy was a glossy establishment, complete with a wrought-iron trellis of chem-nourished wisteria and an awning of glittering pink neon. As soon as you walked in, you were treated to a sensory assault: the aromatic waft of spun sugar, gingerbread baking, and a rich, fruity tang of liqueurs.

The staff were a troupe of rainbow-aproned cuties. They wore striped stockings and frou-frou skirts. Their heads were topped by tiny chef's hats; their faces painted like dolls. They were all dimpling smiles, and spoke a Zaunite dialect so rapid it might have been the language of the pixies themselves.

Their shop was, you were told, a favorite haunt of Jinx. You could imagine the blue-haired firecracker skipping in, then sauntering out, leaving a trail of candy hearts and sugar-spun dreams in her wake.

You were also told that the First Chancellor patronized the shop once a year.

"It's true," a server gushed, her cheeks fetchingly a-glow."Jinx enlisted our services to bake his fortieth birthday cake! He had a slice—oh, it was such an honor—and so the tradition began!"

"Tradition?"

"Every year, on the Day of Ash, he orders a special cake!"

"What kind of cake?"

"Plain bundt. No decoration. No icing. No candles."

"Whatever for?"

"Who can say?" She giggled."Some say he's paying his respects to the fallen. Some say he's commemorating the days of rationing, when flour was as precious as gold. Some say he's simply a plain-Jane fellow at heart. Whatever the case, we're honored to be his purveyors. He tips very well."

Curiousor and curiouser,you thought.

The larger-than-life persona you'd collated from reports clashed with glimpses of this quieter, more private man. Perhaps his proclivity for austerity was the legacy of a childhood spent in the Sumps? Perhaps his taste for the simpler things reflected a deeper sense of humility? Perhaps it was a reminder of his roots, and a pledge to never forget them?

Or, perhaps, he simply enjoyed a good bundt cake.

The Sugarplum Fairy were as generous as their reputed patron. Each sampling was on the house. Their confectionary creations were a symphony of sugar and spice. Piltover has always prided itself on its sophisticated palate. Our desserts are inspired by the classics: soufflés, angelcakes, jam tarts. Zaun, conversely, was an untamed frontier: every flavor from the far-flung corners of Runeterra was distilled into a pot of bubbling sugar and set to simmer. The result was an extravaganza of culinary hybrids: Nazumah honey drizzled over Zhyunian strawberries; Bilgewater rum soaked into Bahrl's black-bean cakes; Demacian almond paste blended with spongy, melt-in-the-mouth Noxian pears.

Each mouthful was a journey across Zaun's variegated landscape. Some melted like liquid bliss on the tongue. Others exploded across the palate in a joyous expletive. By the end, your senses were reeling.

Then came the coup-de-grace.

The servers brought in four slices of decadently-rich double chocolate cake. The first layer was a dark fudgy delight; the second a velvety-smooth ganache; the third, a creamy milk chocolate mousse. The base was a hazelnut praline with a sprinkling of chopped pecans. Topped off with a swirl of vanilla cream and a dusting of icing sugar, the cake was as gorgeous as it was sinful.

"On the house,"the servers cooed.

Ran's eyes lit up like an excited child. Lock rubbed his massive hands together. Dustin danced from foot to foot. Their effusive glee was contagious. In retrospect, you ought to have realized: there were a few too many winks and nudges. A pitch too high, a skip too fast, in their voices. A sense of something secret, something scandalous, afoot.

But you, babe in the woods, were too entranced by the sugar-coated charm. Too dazzled by the culinary wizardry.

Too stupid to spot the trap.

Four golden forks were presented. You each drove one into a glistening chocolate wedge and stuffed it in your mouths. Ran's eyes were closed. Dustin's head swayed back and forth on a gyre of glee. Lock grinned from ear-to-ear as he chewed. Like them, you could only marvel at the skill that had gone into making the perfect bite: the smoothness of the chocolate, the light crunch of the nuts, the airiness of the whipped cream.

This cake slid down your gullet with a sensation that made your shiver. It felt nearly lubricious. It felt—wicked.

"Merciful Janna," you sighed. "What is this?"

"The Sachertorte," they chorused.

"I've never tasted anything like it."

"You wouldn't." The server tittered."It's a secret recipe. Passed down for generations. All I can say is: it's got a little bit of this and a little bit of that."

"This, and that, what?"

"Oh, you know."She batted her eyelashes. "A pinch of sugar, a dollop of honey, a dash of spice..."

"And?"

She put a finger to her lips."And everything that makes Zaun oh-so-nice."

The edges of the shop began to ripple. Your head grew light. Butterflies—silky soft butterflies—danced in the pit of your belly. The sensation spread, in slow-motion, through every extremity, down to the tips of your fingers, up to the roots of your hair. You couldn't help but giggle. This was the feeling. The one you'd been chasing. The one you'd been after, since the days of youth, when you'd snuck your first taste of illicit fruit.

The euphoria. The bliss. The freedom.

In another minute, the body-stone was in full effect.

A word of advice, fair reader. Zaun's desserts are as deadly as its dead-ends.

To requote their favorite aphorism:

"Look out for yourself."

THE EXPO was a spectacular fiesta.

Eschewing the grandomania of Piltover's civic spaces, Zaun's architects had opted for a more egalitarian, pedestrian-friendly model. There were no towering monuments of limestone taking up prime real estate. No triumphal arches rendering passersby into insignificant dots. No magisterial courtyards, with their statues of stodgy, stout-chinned elders.

Rather, the city's civic space was a network of walkable streets and intimate, human-scaled venues. Spanning all three levels of Zaun—the Skylight Commercia at the Promenade, the Bridgewaltz at Entresol, the Commercia Fantastica at the Sumps—each was a world of themes unto itself.

The Sump-level was dedicated to historicity: entire excavated neighborhoods, archeological marvels, were on display in the spotlit amphitheater: from the atrium-style temples of Oshra Va'Zaun, to the sumptuous villas of the post-boom merchants, to the cramped and claustrophobic quarters of the Sump-folk themselves. A series of exhibits—showcasing spiritual traditions, folk art, and runic scripture—provided an intimate glimpse into a vanished era.

Oshra Va'Zaun, the scholars claimed, was buried beneath centuries of sediment triggered by the floods of the Cataclysm. But its legacy survived: in the enduring myths and legends of the Fissurefolk; in the fantastical architecture and arcane artifacts uncovered in digs; and, perhaps, even in the mystical, unknowable depths of the river's blackest waters.

The old empire's essence, they claimed, was embedded in the city's foundations.

And, upon its bones, Zaun stood strong.

Indeed, the narrative threading the Sump-level's exhibits was, overwhelmingly, one of rebirth. A chronicle of how, from the dregs of despair, Zaun had risen like a phoenix rising from the ashes.

There were photographs chronicling the Fissurefolk's struggles. Exhibits highlighting the resilience of a community battered, broken, yet still unbowed. Miner's dented helmets and rusted pickaxes; a flame-scorched textile loom; an old fisherman's boot, caked in dried mud; a child's clay figurine, gnawed by acid-rain; a pair of spectacles with old blood speckling the cracked glass.

The exhibits, while sparse, were evocative. Each was accompanied by a firsthand account, narrated through audio recordings: a fisherman's musings on the worsening state of the river, a milliner's recollection of her stolen childhood, a laborer's recollection of the days of rationing. In a sense, the city's ruins had become its greatest treasure: a memorial to its exploitative past, and a testament to its defiant present.

The contrast was striking. Piltover's memorials, invariably, were dedicated to the greats. The city's heroes and luminaries. The inventors staring imperiously into the distance; the philosophers lost in thought; the scientists poring over dusty tomes. The mythos, implicit, was that glory accrued, with time, through a process of natural selection: the most brilliant would ascend, and their achievements would be immortalized, in the city's golden skyline.

Zaun's mythos was, paradoxically, the antithesis of glorification. While its heroes were certainly honored, the city's emphasis, overwhelmingly, was on its common folk. Those who, without fanfare, had struggled, suffered, and survived. Those whose names had gone unsung; their stories gone untold; but whose sacrifices would never be forgotten.

It was also a reminder.

Piltover's sins were not an academic abstraction. They were, as the exhibits bore witness, an enduring blight.

One that could only be righted with progress, not platitudes.

At the Entresol-level, the Bridgewaltz was a living showcase of the arts. Neon lights refracted off the scalloped glass of shopfronts, splintering in glittering butterflies and fanwise rainbows. Open-air galleries showcased a cornucopia of mediums for public admiration. There were hundreds of paintings, from oil to acrylic, charcoal to pastel, watercolor to graphite; sculptures, from marble to stone, wood to iron, steel to brass; tapestries, from cotton to silk, linen to wool, satin to velvet.

An entire lane had been commandeered by the city's most avant-garde street performers. A stage, running the length of the bridge, was dedicated to the historic dance styles of Zaun: from the stomp-and-shuffle of the Sumps' street-dances, to the syncopated steps of the rave circuit, to the undulant sensuality of the Promenade's cabarets. The titles were as evocative as the performances: the Drainpipe Fandango, the Bait-and-Switch, the Sumpside Waltz.

At the square, a troupe of performers spun in graceful figure-eights, waving red scarves to signify bullet-wounds, while a musician with an electric-blue cello rained a patter of sawed sixteenth notes down on them. They were re-enacting the carnage on the Day of Ash: Enforcer's bullets and the Fissurefolk's blood, merging into a river of red. The ever-changing glow of stage lights touched the beaded perspiration on the dancers' foreheads and struck multicolored crystals in the spectators' eye-whites. The polyphonic fusion of jazz, funk and swing held an undercurrent of the sorrowful.

It was a reminder of the sacrifices endured, and the struggles to come.

The theme replicated itself, in bold strokes, across the mosaics topping the three pillars at the center of Bridgewaltz. Each one traced, in compelling triptych, the evolution of the Fissurefolk. Their tortures and trials; their triumph and transcendence. The first panel showcased panoramic scenes of suffering set against the blood-red spume of the Siege. In the next, it depicted the aftermath in a stark vignette: a cityscape of smoldering embers, the deep red seams of its wounds still trickling blood. The third was a static montage: masses of silhouettes—masons and miners, fishermen and factory workers, clerks and craftsmen—working shoulder-to-shoulder, to affirm their rightful claim to a city now, finally, their own.

As with the Sump-level, the Bridgewaltz's exhibits were profoundly political. They were also, in their persevering hope, conversely ruthless. The machine of progress, they proclaimed, paused for no man or woman; there was no use pleading broken hearts and broken bones, when a city was at stake. Roads must be built, homes erected, factories refurbished. There was no time to mourn: for the future was at hand, and it demanded all hands-on-deck.

It was a sobering lesson; one the artwork confronted unflinchingly.

It was also a direct rebuke to Piltover's mythmaking. Here, the greatness was not the prerogative of a self-congratulatory elite. It was the collective achievement of the masses. The triumphs of a city, not a select few; the pride of a nation, not an aristocratic minority. Piltover, the artist proclaimed, would not be the City of Progress had not Zaun, the engine of its underbelly, kept its gears oiled and its furnaces fed.

The symbolism struck a sobering chill. For centuries, Piltover's elites had justified their hegemony by portraying the Undercity as the inferior, a necessary evil, a cesspool of vice and corruption. What's more, the Undercity was never given leeway to challenge its subordinate status: its acts of sedition were deemed a social ill, and the treatment was a scouring of gunfire.

The exhibits, however, suggested that Piltover's supremacy was always an illusion. It was the result of exploitation, and an abnegation of moral responsibility. The truth was that Zaun's ferocity, in the port city's formative years, had been the driving force behind Piltover's lasting economic success: the Hex-Gates, the trade-routes, the political and cultural supremacy.

And now, Zaun stated, it was time to repay the debt.

With interest.

The upper-level, the Skylight Commercia, was an ode to commerce: a never-ending parade of goods, services and the triumphant trumpetings of profit. All of Zaun's choicest wares were on display in a brilliant profusion. Multi-tiered stands of Hex-automata: wrist-chronos that doubled as tachymeters, collapsible parasols that transformed into pistols with the flick of a wrist; hoverboards that doubled as carts, with wheels retracting into sleek panels at a press of the pedal; miniature hex-robots, compact as bees or as flamboyant as butterflies, that buzzed about performing tasks at the behest of their masters.

The chem-tech industry was booming. Multi-function prosthetics, ranging from eye-replacements that doubled as cameras to mechanical limbs with built-in lasers, were all the rage. Others pushed beyond fads and into the realm of cutting-edge medical science: implants that detected cancers before the spread; artificial organs such as hearts, livers and kidneys, all functioning with an efficiency surpassing their natural counterparts; synthetic glands that stimulated endorphins, enhancing the user's stamina and focus.

There were breakthroughs in Sextech: a branch of biomechanical engineering focused on the enhancement of sexual pleasure. Special microchips outfitted into prosthetic appendages increased sensation through stimulation of the body's nervous system. Another, which allowed partners to control the pitch of sensations in the other's body via remote, promised a whole new level of intimacy. A third, the most radical yet, heralded an entirely new form of human reproduction: a gestational chamber, complete with a birthing device, capable of growing fetuses in the artificial wombs of chem-robots.

The most thrilling innovation, however, was by the Machinist, Viktor, in collaboration with Jinx. The duo, whose project had, before today, been cloaked in ironclad silence, had developed an entirely new branch of bioengineering: Hex-grafting. The method, using chem-infusions, enabled the transplantation of entire mechanical parts onto a living body. The recipient was able to retain full mobility and sensory feedback, without suffering any deleterious effects.

"This,"Viktor had stated, in a brief public announcement, "is the future. One where we, as a people, transcend our flesh-and-bone limitations."

The audience, in response, had cheered with the zeal of the converted. To be sure, it was an unprecedented breakthrough. The applications were limitless. From cybernetic limbs for the infirm, to enhanced combat prowess for the military. From enhanced physical capabilities for the sports circuit, to unparalleled sexual gratification for the bedroom.

And, of course, the whisper of immortality fulfilled: a consciousness, transferred from one body to another.

It was also, among Piltover's conservative circles, hotly debated. There were the ethical concerns: Was it humane to create an entirely new lifeform, an amalgamation of flesh and metal? Was this a form of slavery? Did the creation deserve the same protections and privileges as one born of flesh and blood?

By and large, however, the reception was enthusiastic. For Zaunites—who dwelt in a reality where disease and disability were rife, and mortality was a constant shadow—this was a miracle realized: a chance to shed their bodies, like worn-out clothes, and don the design best aligned with their dreams.

Time would tell if Hex-grafting was a hazard or a harbinger. For now, crowds swelled around the marquee, eager to glimpse the prototypes. Waitlists were forming for the initial phase: volunteers willing to be test subjects. Rumors swirled: the Machinist himself would be on site later, recruiting the first round of pioneers.

The rest of the Commercia was dedicated to all that made Zaun such a diverting paradise of hedonism. The night bazaars, with their sheer profusion of goods, were a kaleidoscopic dazzle. Everything seemed at one's fingertips: from honeyed cakes to chemically-infused tobaccos tomoire-silk lingerie to jet-studded stilettos. Nor was any modesty spared in the flaunting of more illicit pleasures. Wire-frame manikins posed boldly with chrome-embossed strap-ons. Heavily swagged shopfronts disrobed in a glistening sprawl of toys, from phallic to ribbed to studded. Boutiques were dedicated to oils, lubricants, patches and philters: bookshelves were stocked with everything from tantric manuals to illustrated memoirs.

Many a passing Piltovan had remarked on Zaun's brazen disregard for propriety. Sex-work was openly advertised on billboards; pornography was sold as matter-of-factly as a pack of cigarettes; brothel-workers had their own guilds. It was not uncommon, for the first-time Piltovan, weaned on a life of decorum, to forfeit all semblance upon witnessing Zaunites coupling in dark alleyways or the backseats of motorcars or the sloping tiles of rooftops.

Zaunites, for their part, did not spare the displays a second glance. Sex, to them, was just another drive: one not to be denied.

The Fissures' age-of-consent laws further emboldened this attitude. While the official statutes followed the odd-number system—Little Thirtieth, the Big Nineteenth, the Middle Forties—practice was often a gray area. There seemed, by and large, no taboo regarding sexual initiation. Girls as young as twelve were known to have a string of beaus, while boys were often expected to lose their virginity by the age of thirteen.

Naturally this phenomenon engendered a dark underside: deviants who visited the Fissures to indulge their sicknesses, and the resulting abuse of minors. However, for all its libertine ethos, Zaun did not tolerate rape. The courts were strict: a single conviction meant a mandatory ten-year sentence. No bail; limited parole. Pedophilia was treated with even harsher sanctions: a life sentence, with no chance of parole.

For a city with no shortage of vices, Zaun had, ironically, an even more robust penal code than its counterpart.

A paradox within a paradox, some might say. The truth, as with much of the city, was more complex. After decades of being treated as Piltover's dirty little secret—the"backroom brothel of the highest bidder,"Councilor Hoskel once scathingly put it—Zaun had begun its own metamorphosis. The city had once been forced to peddle its body to survive. Now, it was beginning to reclaim its agency, from a commoditized fetish to a self-determined desire.

And, in the process, was rewriting the rules.

Fittingly, the final stretch of the Skylight Commercia was dedicated to Zaun's thriving esoteric subculture. Dubbed The Psychedelia, it was a homage to the mystical gossamer that spun through Zaun's inexorably modernizing core. Here, the city's interfaith tolerance was at its most vibrant: luminous marquees displayed the crests of the city's myriad sects, cults and orders. Braziers of incense-smoke perfumed the air; cloying sweetness of rose, the earthy tang of sandalwood, the musky richness of ambergris. Mendicants and monks and mystics wandered in ecstatic throngs, chanting hymns and prayers. Tables were heaped with crystals, talismans and amulets: vast tents showcased eye-popping relics, from the bones of fabled beasts, to the mummified genitalia of a forgotten god, to the fossilized footprints of the progenitors.

It was, in many ways, the Expo's heart: the thread that wove through its rave circuit, its drug-fueled revelry, its steam-powered innovations. For all its modernizing zeal, Zaun was an ancient city. Its roots reached deep into the primordial depths. Flowing through its veins was the effusion of millennia-old magic.

The supernatural was an irrevocable facet of the Zaunite psyche. The city's mysticism was as varied as its cuisine, as pluralistic as its political leanings, and spanned the full breadth of Runeterra. Some believed the gods were a reflection of the natural order, and sought to emulate them. Others believed the gods were manifestations of the divine within, and strove to commune with them. Yet others believed the gods were the byproducts of human delusion, and sought to transcend them.

In any case, spirituality, like sexuality, was an integral facet of the Zaunite character. The sacred and the profane each held a mirror to the other: between the twain, the city's soul was defined.

Nowhere was this belief more evident than in the Temple of Janna. Once the Freljordian goddess of wind, wisdom and transformation, a syncretic blend of folkloric beliefs had coalesced around her. She was, at once, the gentle breeze of a summer day; the wizened elder dispensing hard-won wisdom; and the mother, ever-patient, ready to embrace an unruly child.

Zaun's version of the goddess elevated her to a patron deity. For many, she was the embodiment of the spark that animated the city itself. A pilgrimage to her temple was a rite of passage. Her adherents were devoted to the principles of nonviolence, universal love, and communal sharing. All were welcome: the disabled, the destitute, the damned. The Temple courtyard was renowned for its open kitchens, where hot meals were ladled out to the needy from massive cauldrons. The acolytes were the city's peacekeepers; the Priestess, the heart of the community. She was an unassuming figure, dressed in humble white robes, her only ornamentation the blue-feather circlet crowning her head. Weekly, she led prayers in the Temple in a perfumed waft of incense, the gentle melody of her voice rising above the murmurs of her congregants. Afterward she would receive the faithful in her chambers: lost souls seeking everything from poultices for blisters to divination for a lost loved one.

Another sect, the Order of the Solari, was devoted to the worship of a deity from ancient Targon. His name had long since faded from history. But the Solari's tenets, as written down in the holy book, were clear. The sun, the light of creation, was the ultimate symbol of purity. It was, thus, the only source of truth. The shrines were distinctive: small turrets of gold leaf, crowned with a sun motif. At the cusp of the Equinox, when the sun's brightness penetrated even the Fissures, the golden rays would converge, as a prismatic burst, across the cityscape, in a phenomenon the Solari's devotees called the Radiance.

The devotees were a militant order, and yet the Solari's creed was a paradox. No was exempt from the light's grace. Even those damned to darkness. For there was, within each soul, a kernel of light. The sect was forbidden from taking human life, except in the direst acts of self-defense. Nor were they allowed to discriminate against anyone. All were welcome, the Solari believed, to seek the light.

Other sects were more selective. The cult of the Kindred, for example, shrouded itself in mystery. Its twin deities, the Wolf and the Lamb, embodied the dance of life and death, and the balance that kept both in equilibrium. Rites were secret; initiations private. Their temples, hidden in the city's darker recesses, were alternately sanctuaries to the suffering, or sinister dens of the damned. The cult's most controversial ritual was rumored to be a monthly mass, where its followers took a vow of celibacy, fasted for three days, then broke the seal, in a frenzy of bloodlust: feasting on the flesh of the freshly-slain, and copulating until the sun rose.

Similarly, the cult of the Veiled Lady was the object of both fear and fascination. A minor sect, with a few thousand devotees, the Lady's worship was rooted in the oldest stories from Demacia. In them, the Lady was the goddess of retribution, her veil concealing the true face of justice. Those who sought her aid were said to pay a steep price. Those who invoked her wrath were said to know no mercy. The Lady's followers were as shadowy as their goddess. They congregated, monthly, to a cathedral of purple stained-glass, hidden from prying eyes.

In sum, the Expo showcased a city in full blossom: a burgeoning capitalist economy, an unparalleled cultural milieu, and an unprecedented spiritual landscape. Each exhibit was a celebration of progress. And yet there was no pomp, no pageantry, no pretense of nobility. Zaun wore its pride like its heart: unashamedly, defiantly, on a bloodstained sleeve.

This was the city's story: from a brutal underbelly to a brash metropolis. From the cesspit of a thousand vices to the cradle of a thousand wonders.

From the bottom of nothingness, to the heights of its own creation.

And nowhere to go—but forward.

"OOOH," was all you could say.

"What'd I tell ya?" Dustin crowed."Nice, huh?"

"Oooh."

Ran nudged your shoulder."I think you broke 'em, Dustin."

"Naaaaw. You're a toughie, right, Goodie? Hey, the night's still young! How about we head to the Lazy Eye? Loraine's doing her set. And she's got a new trick up her sleeve. Or rather, her—"

"Oooh."

"Damn." Lock chuckled."That's the sound of a happy camper."

You could neither confirm nor deny. The body-stone still buzzed though you. It turned the Expo into a jewelbox welded in glittering flux. The night air felt luminous on the skin. Greenish halos of lanterns lit up the boardwalk. Clutches of Zaunites eddied around the square. Like you, most were cheerfully intoxicated. The music was an effervescent throb; the neon lights, a pulsating rainbow.

In the distance, a distorted bell chimed. You blinked. What was the bell? The day? The week? Time was a slippery notion, and your thoughts were slipperier. You could feel them sliding against each other. The sensation made you giggle. The world was your backdrop: an abstract swirl of sensation.

Your notepad was chockful of words. It was as if the bells were a veritable feast, and your pen had gorged itself silly.

"Oooooh."

"Poor lightweight," Ran sighed."You'll be a sad camper when this wears off."

"They'll be alright," Dustin dismissed breezily."A little fun never killed anybody."

"Unless it's cannaboid hyperemesis. Or toxic shock syndrome. Or aneurysms. Or—"

"What's an-e-rhyzums?"

"A bleeding brain. The blood vessel explodes and you're dead."

"Blech!"

"Blech yourself. That's enough fun. Siddown, Mx. Goode. You need a coffee."

"I'll get it," Lock said."Grab the kid some water, too."

"Oooh."

Your body was guided to a bench. The seat was bracingly cool; your rear felt the chill straight through your trousers. You shivered. It felt good. Your toes, your fingers, your ears were burning. Was this what it meant to be alive? To feel every cell in your body singing arias in praise of their own existence.

The festivity was winding down for the night. Soon, the crowds would disperse. A rarity for Zaun, where haunts were open at all bells. But the Expo, demurely, would not allow itself to be turned into a carnival sideshow. Tomorrow would be another day, another chance to dazzle the masses. For now, the revelers would return to their lodgings, and the cleanup would begin.

Dreamily, you watched the crowds thin out. In the distance, a trio of street-singers, harmonizing to an accordion, serenaded passersby with an old Fissurefolk ballad. Bystanders gathered in small clusters, swaying to the melody. Others, in jolly chorus, belted out the refrain:

She was young. She was fair. She was new. She was nice.

She was pure. She was sweet, seventeen.

He was old. He was vile, no stranger to vice.

He was bad. He was base. He was mean...

The singers' voices, liltingly sweet, compelled tapping feet and clapping hands. As they reached the verse's apex, the music darkened.

Unaware of the wiles of the snake in the grass

And the fate of a maiden who topes.

She lowered her standards by raising her glass,

Her mind, her courage, and his hopes.

It's a song that would never see a Piltover-sanctioned anthology. A cautionary tale about reckless youth and the consequences of indulgence. But tonight, with the streets awash in neon and the skies alight with stars, it was no more than a jaunty ditty. The lyrics were not the point: the singer's voices, rich with the promise of tomorrow, were the only ones that mattered.

"Have some Madeira, m'dear!

I've got a small cask of it here

And once it's been opened, you know it won't keep

Do finish it up, it will help you to sleep.

Have some Madeira, m'dear!"

Ran dug a coin out of their wallet, skipping it like a stone into the tip-jar. Dustin sat cross-legged on a wrought-iron bench, fists under his chin, head bobbing to the beat. Lock, seemingly out of nowhere, materialized with a steaming paper cup and a bottle of water.

"Here ya go, Mx. Good. Black and bitter, the way Himself likes it."

You sipped. The brew was strong enough to cut the haze. The warmth spread down your gullet and pooled, comforting, in your belly. It smelled like the bitterness Sumps, the smokiness of Entresol, the richness of the Promenade, all distilled into a single sip. You had to admit—for all its pretensions as a culinary epicenter, Piltover's coffee tasted like burnt bean-water in comparison.

"Good, right?" Lock said."We call it the Wake-Up Call."

"Mmmm."

"Hey, that's better! Feeling alright?"

"Mmhmmm."

"There's our chatterbox." A heavy hand thumped your back, nearly sloshing the coffee down your shirt."Drink up. The night's not done. We've still got plenty of Zaun's finest to sample."

"Ooh—" You cut yourself off. No need to alarm them."Okay."

"Great. I'm thinking we hit the streets. You can get the candid scoop on Zaunite life from the locals. After, we'll head to the Blue Note. The barkeep makes a wicked bloody mary. And their oyster menu's the best this side of the bay. What d'ya say, Mx. Goode? You in?"

"Oooh!

Ran slitted a wary eye."Maybe we should take 'em home."

"N-No!"You hastened to reassure,"I'm fine. Really. I'm here to have an adventure, aren't I? And I'd rather have a drink, with my new friends. Than a cup of tea, with nobody."

Dustin guffawed."Aww, that's adorable! Hey, Ran. Tell 'em about the time you got so blotto, you stabbed a guy in the nuts for spilling your tea."

"Shut the hell up, Dustin."

"What? They want a candid scoop! That's what we're doing, right, Goodie? Showin' you the real Zaun! Nut-stabbing goes with the territory."

"I will end you."

"All right, all right! No nut-stabbing. Damn. Hey, Goodie, how's that coffee treatin' ya? Ready to see the real nightlife?"

You drained the rest of the cup, then crushed it."Let's do this."

"That's the spirit! C'mon! We're gonna have us a night that'll get the whole damn city talking!"

Hindsight, fair reader, was always 20/20.

By next morning—a hungover, groggy, aching mess—you would eat your overzealousness the way a drunken man ate the pavement.

Nothing but a crash, and a cry.

MAGIC may live in the corpuscles of Zaun's heart.

However, the city's pulse belonged to a secret cabal: a roaming underclass of movers-and-shakers at its nexus. Their names would never be recorded in the newspapers; their deeds would never earn a place in the history books. But they were the silent engines of the Fissures. The ones who, beneath the shellacked glitz, kept the wheels of industry greased and the cogs of commerce whirring.

Their hierarchy could best be summed up as pyramidical. At the apex, there was the ruling oligarchy: the Eye, and his Cabinet. Closely tied to them were the chem-barons: a collection of magnates and tycoons, who had carved out their turf in the city's lawless fringes. Next, came the Guilds: the organizations which held a monopoly over key industries, thus wielding substantial political power. Below them were the Underbosses: small coteries of respected figureheads, from merchants to mercenaries, whose clout was localized by jurisdiction, but undeniably potent. The bottom rungs—the small-time gangs, the backstreet crews, the freelancers—barely warranted mention. They were the grist of the city's meat-grinder: hired by sundown, dead by dawn.

Yet all were connected, through a shadowy web of intermediaries, into a single, cohesive power structure. In a city as competitive as Zaun, survival necessitated cooperation. Thus, there was an uncodified pact between the city's factions: while their interests may clash, their mutual survival was paramount.

This, the cabal ensured. They were the ones who made sure that the gears did not jam. That the machinery of the Fissures stayed functional.

They were called Fixers.

Fixer was, for the uninitiated, a catch-all term. It described any of the numberless players who operated anonymously in Zaun's shadow economy. Fixers could be brothel-keepers, black marketeers, bar-maids, bootblacks. They had no gangs; no formal affiliation with governments. What they shared, however, was the commonality of their enterprise: the art of solving problems without raising undue questions.

Their credo was: No job too big, no job too small.

In Zaun, it was a maxim that paid well. For the right price, Fixers could procure anything from a black-market kidney to an untraceable hitman to an illegal brand of liquor. In their profession, discretion was paramount. They recorded no names in their ledgers, and never reneged on a deal. Their word was their bond, and they expected their terms honored in kind.

And if not?

In Zaun, there were many places to dispose of a body.

In the early days, when the Fissures were an open warzone of gang violence, Fixers had flourished: a motley collection of enterprising souls who could procure everything from a shiv to a coffin. In times of rationing, they could supply a meal or a medkit. In times of strife, they could secure safe passage, or a firearm. As the Undercity began its metamorphosis from a polluted mining rig to into an industrial metropolis, the spectrum of their services expanded from black-market to white-collar.

Now, with Zaun's blossoming glamor in the global spotlight, the Fixer's role had taken on a more cosmopolitan veneer. For the right price, they could connect a wealthy, anonymous client with a high-end prostitute. Or provide the necessary tools for a heist. Or, even, arrange a hit on a rival businessman.

There were rumors that the Fixer collective, in fact, belonged to the Eye of Zaun. That he used them to keep tabs on the crime lords and their respective dealings. That, through them, his reach was beginning to extend to the higher echelons of rival cities: Piltovan politicians, Noxian warlords, Demacian bureaucrats, Shuriman bankers.

Soon, it was whispered, he'd be privy to the innermost weaknesses of the most powerful, and use them to destabilize nations.

Whether this was paranoid conjecture, or hard truth, remained a mystery.

What was undeniable was that, without the Fixers, you would never cross into Zaun's inner-sanctum.

Or meet, rather than the Eye, your maker.

The Fixer's symbol—three concentric circles ringed into a single eye, a slash slanting through it—was inked upon your notepad. Anyone who bore it was granted safe passage through Zaun's backroads.

It was the mark of a neutral party, one that the cartels and cutthroats would not dare touch.

"Are the Fixers," you asked, "the Eye's disciples?"

Ran shrugged. "Kinda. Not really."

"How so?"

"It's a mutually beneficial deal. They give Bossman a leg-up. He gives 'em protection."

"How does he recruit them?"

"He has his ways."

"Does he pay them a wage? How is their loyalty ensured?"

"Dunno. And, again, dunno."

"So he simply appeared in their lives, and they fell in line?"

"Pretty much."

You frowned. "Is it possible... the Eye was once a Fixer himself? Someone who worked in the black markets, and had a network of contacts in the underground?"

Ran blinked, slow. "Dunno."

"Could I ask him during the interview?"

"You can ask him about the color of his skivvies. Up to him if he replies."

This was proving to be a dead end. You tried another angle. "Do the Fixers, then, have any particular traits in common? Do they share the same social background, or upbringing, or education? Do they all hail from the Sumps?"

"No idea."

You were beginning to feel the prickles of irritation. "Ran. I know you don't wish to jeopardize your employment. But I would like a hint as to how he operates."

Ran paused. Then: "Bossman's a people person."

"A people person."

"Yep."

Lock slung a massive arm around your shoulders. "Don't sweat it, kid. You'll see for yourself. Then, maybe, you'll understand." He flashed a metal-studded grin. "Or maybe not? Maybe your brain'll melt out your ears, and we'll have to mop it off the floor."

You weren't certain how to interpret that statement. But you suspected a threat was not the intent. So you decided to let the matter slide. Whatever the arrangement between the Eye and the Fixers, they had cleared the way for you to enter Zaun's deepest recesses.

Now, all that was left was to make good on the journey.

Over the next few bells, you would be privy to secrets by the dozen: places and people heretofore unknown. Never before had you ascended the jumble of rooftops above Drop Street to observe the Solari's secret midnight ritual known as the Midsommar Farewell: colorful kites looping through the smoggy night sky as groups of giddy sumpsnipes raced across the firmament, tugging on strings in symbolic mimicry of the sun's eternal rise and fall. Or mingled, in the glassed-in gem of a cultivair's hot-house, with a languidly supercilious chem-baroness whose botany was the pinnacle of Zaun's genetic engineering: a profusion of ferns, vines, blossoms in a palette of chromatic vibrance that exquisitely perfumed the humid air. Or perched, cross-legged, in the suffocating walk-up of a tailor's shop, where an angel-faced girl labored over the stitches of a tycoon's suit: her fortieth for the night, but with no shred of self-pity in her smile, because her talent had made her a princess in the only kingdom that mattered. Or chorusing, blotchy-cheeked, with a crowd of laborers in a dimly-lit ale-house, their foam-topped tankards overspilling cheap beer as freely as their dirty tavern ditties, while others lounged in the quieter pockets, smoking cigarillos between hushed debates on everything from politics to poetry.

Zaunites, you observed, were as prone to waxing lyrically as they were to swearing. Their passions were strong; their fuses short. Their love of the absurd was matched only by their defiant optimism.

Self-determinism was, to them, an article of faith.

It was a quality rarely glimpsed in their complacent counterparts across the river. The Undercity was once plagued by shootings, drug epidemics, floods, fires and bombings. Yet in barely two years, it had begun snapping into shape. There were offices and emporiums. New schools. Maternity clinics and rehabilitation centers. The ports had been rebuilt, and each day, a rich tide of tourists, merchants and migrants poured across its docks.

Zaun's cosmopolitan ethos welcomed newcomers. In Piltover, many districts remained honeycombed by bloodline. In Zaun, different creeds, classes and clans thrived side by side—albeit tempestuously. A cheap standard of living paired with easy access to food and medicine in an unregulated market meant that up-and-coming professionals, aspiring artists and rebels could flourish here. You spoke to a pretty Reiki masseuse who had rented an apartment at Entresol without, as happens in Demacia, being evicted on grounds of witchcraft. At a crowded tavern, you chatted up a cloaked Shuriman refugee exiled for worshiping the Great Weaver, a figure shunned abroad but tolerated in Zaun. Refilling your chem-filter mask at a breather station, you listened as the heavyset owner boasted of starting his own business from scratch after fleeing penniless from the war-torn trenches in Ionia.

Here, aristocratic antecedents counted for little. Wealth was the true determinant of success.

Or as Lock put it, "Money doesn't just talk in Zaun. It never shuts up."

Indeed, there seemed no end to Zaun's potential as a towering Technopolis. No matter how far you ventured through different zones, you never came away empty-handed. There was virtue and vice in every corner. Zaunites seemed the externalization of escape velocity: everyone was constantly pushing themselves toward the stars, even as their origins were grounded in the gutter.

It was a city of extremes: in ambition, in style, in attitude. What united them was not their origins. Rather, it was a sense of belonging to the city, as if each had claimed a square inch for their own.

"Oh, I've had plenty of chances to leave the Undercity forever," said a bright-eyed woman named Iris, thumbing a smudge of paint off her cheek. "But I could never. It's still my home, you know."

She was sitting at an age-worn wooden table spread out with jars and brushes, having interrupted her work to chat. The walls of her modest studio apartment were plastered with canvases of all sizes, their vibrant colors leaping against the drab surroundings. A clutch of young children played nearby, stacking up blocks only to knock them over, squealing each time.

"Besides, dumpster diving builds character." Iris snorted ironically at her own joke, then backtracked. "I'm kidding. Janna, please don't publish that. Whenever my Piltie clients say that crap, it pisses me off so much. Let's see how much character they can build while almost starving to death… hey, is this going to be anonymous? Well, either way, that part is off the record. Please." A nervous laugh, followed by a more businesslike tone. "And even if I moved to Piltover, the Topsiders would never let me forget where I come from. Not that I'd want to. Growing up here was hard, probably the hardest thing I've ever done. But I'm here now, so I can take anything else that life throws at me. You know, when Enforcers call us 'sumpsnipes' they mean it as an insult, but it isn't. What it really means is that we're survivors. And I wouldn't be here if it weren't for my friends. A lot of them aren't… around, now. But that's how you get through life here. The people you know and the friends you make."

Taking a breath, she smiled determinedly. "And I love Zaun because I love them; I wouldn't give them up for anything."

"I can't imagine living anywhere else," said a young mage of Demacian origins, who identified as Kayla. She perched, crosslegged, in the window seat of a pub at Entresol, a steaming cup of tea cradled between her palms. The secondhand neon lights played across a pale, shadow-eyed face that would've looked at home on a gothic doll. Between idle sips, she elaborated, "I've been through a lot of different places. But Zaun? It's honest with itself. Demacians love to be all honor and morality but enslave folks like me. Did, in fact, enslave me. Noxians love power and strength but beat on hapless farmers and people who can't fight back. And Piltover loves its progress, but who makes that possible? We do. We're the reason they have that wealth and can live such easy lives. But what we get out of it is their literal shit falling on us."

The idleness was a façade. You sensed a blistering anger behind the words. She took a deep gulp of tea, and went on, "But Zaun? It's honest with itself. It's wild and messy and insane, but shows it freely. And that's what I love. There's no hypocrisy. That, and someone like me can really make it. Everywhere else talks about rising if you prove yourself. But it's only Zaun that lives up to that idea." Her features softened; a half-smile tugged her lips. "I guess... I love this place, warts and all, because it's truly free. Sure, there's grime. But beneath it all, it shines like gold. Everywhere else is just gilding covering rust and rot."

"Where to start?" drawled a refined young man in a dark leather greatcoat. Identifying simply as Hugo, he sat at the terrace of a posh little townhouse where he resided with his wife and infant son. The evening mist rolled around his silhouette, lending the ambience a spectral glamor of a piece with his rarefied appearance. "Everyone wants you to believe that their homeland is the best. The most civilized. The most daring. The most innovative. But I'll tell you a secret, my friend: we are all that, and more."

He interlaced his pale fingers together, chin resting on them. His eyes, like ice chips, fixed on a point beyond the horizon. "I'll admit I was quite the fish out of water when I first arrived. Surviving off of what little coin I had enough sense to take with me, and my own cunning. But as it turns out, my niche talents where enough to tip the scales in my favor." A coy tilt of the head. "And in Zaun, there's a niche for everyone. So long as you're willing to put in the work."

You had to ask: "And what, precisely, is your niche?"

The pale lips curled into a smile. "Wouldn't you like to know?" His finger traced, almost absently, down his lapel, which was lined with a series of small, cleverly-stitched pockets. You thought, against your will, of old Shuriman tales where poisoners concealed their wares in the seams of their robes. "There's a great many things I know how to do. But what I'm best at is finding the right solution to a problem. For the right price." An elegant shrug. "Currently, I'm partnered with Glasc industries. But I had much more fun—" the word stretched out, almost teasing, "—working for the Vyx. That's the charm of Zaun, isn't it? Plenty of money to be made, no matter who you decide to work for." A beat. "If, that is, you don't mind getting your hands dirty."

"I was born here," said a young pilot known simply as Avi, her fingers toying deftly with a wrench. The sleek superstructure of an aircraft loomed in the hangar behind her, the air was thickly perfumed with jet fuel. "I grew up fighting to survive, same as most. But I was lucky. My father…was an Enforcer. Dunno if my conception was consensual or not; my mama said it was love but a lot of people tell lies to spare painful truth." The wrench slapped a slow rhythm against her open palm. "Anyway, for the first twelve years of my life I was allowed occasional field trips up Top. Dad was an Air Patrol officer, so when I visited I saw them."

"Them?"

"The airships. Planes, zeppelins, blimps, copters. Anything that flies. I loved 'em all." She quirked a little grin. "Daddy figured I'd just look at the pretty machines, then forget about 'em like most Topsider girls. But he forgot where I come from." The grin sharpened. "I learned it. All of it. Spent my free time scavenging in the scrapyards, stealing blueprints, teaching myself how to build. Dad stopped letting me visit when I turned thirteen—never saw him again—but it didn't matter by then. I had what I needed. Then one day I built something new. Something mine. And I flew. First time in my life I didn't feel caged, didn't feel trapped. I felt...free."

"And in Zaun? Do you still feel trapped?"

The question hung between you, and the answering smile was chiding: an adult humoring a child.

"Look, I'm not saying I got everything figured out or some shit like that," she said. "I'm not saying there aren't days I get mad at my dad for fucking us over, or Topside for making us live in filth. I'm not saying there aren't days that the past still makes me feel so trapped it hurts. I'm just saying...that's what flying is for."

The smile softened.

"It's the place where the sky and the ground meet. Where all the pain and the noise and the fear is just a memory. Up there, it's just you and the horizon. Nothing can touch you. And... for me... that is Zaun."

The interview ended with a bang—quite literally—as a bucketful of rivets nearly dropped on your head. There was a mad scramble to collect notes, pens and dignity before the next round of rivet gunfire began. Avi laughed and sauntered off, whistling a tune strangely reminiscent of Ride of the Valkyries.

It sounded, to your ears, like a call-to-arms.

ANOTHER unifier, of course, was the Eye of Zaun.

As the city's patriarch, he was ubiquitous. His name was invoked everywhere: the common refrain, "The Eye is watching," as a warning to keep one's misdeeds in check; or the coded blessing, "May the Eye be upon you," as a guarantor of success; or, simply, the boast, "The Eye and I go way back," as an assurance of the speaker's credentials.

It was a mantra bound the disparate factions into a commonality, much in the way the Freljordian tribes bound their spirits by worshiping the same gods.

To be Zaunite was to recognize the Eye as a looming presence. He was the enigmatic totem, the wrathful deity, the silent arbiter. His memory, as the adage went, was longer than the Sump's deepest mine: he kept score of every tribute, every transgression.

And, if crossed, his reckoning was absolute.

But there was no denying the disconnect. In Zaun's streets, the Eye was an entity larger than life. But in the flesh, he was nowhere. Few, if any, had laid eyes on the man himself. He was notoriously private; photographs were a rarity, and even portraits were sketchy—to pardon the pun. The most widely-circulated image, a grainy black-and-white, showed a dark-haired figure slouched behind a desk, his hands folded, his features obscured in shadow. No discernable tattoos, no distinguishing marks. It could've been anyone. A blurry figure in the background of an aerial shot. A ghostly outline on a surveillance film. A half-hidden specter at a steamy window.

It was like spotting a silhouette in murky waters: the moment you plunged a hand in, it dissolved into nothing.

His presence, rather, seemed effaced from the collective memory and into the city's very guts: a corpus of iron and glass. Those closest to him were kept at arm's length, and rarely divulged details beyond the bare minimum. His personality, his peccadillos, his ponderings—all were the subject of speculation. Rumors ranged from the mundane ("He likes his cigars with a whiskey chaser,") to the bizarre ("He collects severed heads."). Some even whispered that he was dead, and a proxy was filling his seat. Others swore that he was an ageless demigod, and the city itself his vessel.

What was unmistakable, however, was his voice.

Every month, by radio broadcast, he addressed the city. The voice was pure sorcery: slow, succinct, slithering. The accent was as cultured as any high-born pearl in Piltover's sanctum. But the timbre was like deepwater; roughened with grit. The voice of a man who belonged in the nooks and crannies of the city, as surely as the smoke that stained its skyline.

His addresses were terse, and, by design, cryptic. Sometimes they were exhortations to a new civic policy. Other times, warnings against internal threats to the city's stability. On rare occasions, he offered congratulations to a particular guild, or eulogized a fallen champion. Most of the time, they were oracular pronouncements: the rumblings of a distant storm, or a glimpse into the mists of time. Each was, invariably, prescient. In a matter of days, the event he prophesied would materialize: the fall of a cartel, the outbreak of a deadly disease, a fire in the chemical refineries.

These forecasts were always followed by changes in the city's political landscape. Some said the Eye was a Seer: an oracle who had foreseen the future and could, therefore, manipulate it. Others speculated that his knowledge was merely a symptom of a broader conspiracy: one of which he was the chief architect.

Whatever the case, the city held its collective breath whenever the enigmatic voice filled the airwaves. His pronouncements were akin to divine revelation. They were also undeniable in their effect at rallying the hoi-polloi. Whenever he spoke, the city seemed to swell with an indomitable will: a collective fist that rose like the tide. And whenever he stopped, it receded—leaving in its wake a silence, pregnant with the promise of things to come.

This, arguably, was the real magic: not in his addresses, but in his ability to stir a city to action. In Piltover, a council's edicts were carried out with the alacrity of a marching band. In Zaun, they were carried out with the speed of an avalanche. There was a sense, belowground, that the future was not an inert block of clay, waiting to be molded: it was an energy in flux, capable of burning bright or going dark.

To your mind, there was something unnerving about a city with a faceless avatar. But, for the Eye to sway a populace that was notoriously distrustful of authority, was a testament of their faith in his final word. His power was not a given, as was the case in the Council. Rather, it was earned: by a combination of populist reforms, ruthless violence, and an irresistible charisma.

Even the most hardened skeptics acknowledged that, without his machinations, the Fissures would still be a warzone.

"For a man with no face, he's certainly smashed the old status quo," gruffed a broad-shouldered miner. He sat in a crowded dive called the Hound's Bite. Its walls were decorated with dog-themed paraphernalia: mugs, plates, posters, toys. A neon sign, above the counter, flashed a lurid green: BEWARE OF DOG OR DRUNKEN MAN. "It's as if the Undercity has come out of a depression. We've lost much. Now there seems so much more to gain. It's whipped the masses into a frenzy. Everyone's on fast-forward. And I'm not talking about the chem-tech. The old guard doesn't like it, but there's nothing they can do. We're the ones running the show now." He shrugged, flashing a gold-toothed grin. "That's the power of a vision. The Eye may be the voice of the city. But the will? That's the people's."

"He's a shrewd businessman," remarked an androgynously svelte beauty with a black-on-gold business card and a matching custom-tailored suit. They referred to themselves as Myste, and had a habit of biting the ends of their nails, in a manner that wasn't jittery so much as coquettish. "The Eye is a brand. Zaun is a product. His marketing strategy is a simple one: build a reputation, and it does the selling for you. He's built himself a mystique, and it's pulling customers in droves. You've seen the crowds at the Expo. And this is only the beginning. Once Zaun gets down to business, there'll be no stopping the stampede." A smirk, as a talon-like nail touched their plush lower-lip. "Mark my words. Soon, there won't be a corner in the world where you can't buy a bottle of Zaunite brew. Or a pair of Zaunite boots. Or a Zaunite gun. And Piltover? They can either get on board or get out of the way."

"I say it's what gives the city a little spice," husked a dancer at the high-end cabaret known as the Midnight Room. She was clad in a black body-suit that glistened like an oil-slick. Hooking an elegant leg around the pole, she executed a flawless pirouette. Over her shoulder, she flashed a grin: the light fractured off her glossy white teeth. "It's like having a masked lover. Or a voyeur in the shadows. That feeling when you're being watched. That someone, somewhere, might tip you the big one." She winked. "Sometimes, I like to imagine he's watching me. Then I give the best damn performance of my life. Because the show's not just for the crowd, baby. It's for us, too."

"Don't let him fool ya," shrugged the madam of a popular brothel, a pipe-smoking Yordle with a heavily painted face. She was lounged, queen-like, on a cushioned armchair. Two young women, clad in wispy lingerie, flanked her: their hands, like delicate birds, preened her hair, adjusted her jewelry, refilled her wine. The air was lush with opiate-infused incense, and the soft music of a dulcimer. "In my line of work, you get to know what makes a man tick. His wants, his vices. Most of 'em like simple things. A good cut of meat. A pretty thing on the arm. A bit of fun between the sheets." A wistful puff of smoke. "The Eye's more complicated. His tastes are hard to satisfy. And men like that, they're always chasing the thrill. You have to be on guard. Because sometimes, the one who pays the price for his fun... is you."

"I'm not convinced," said a gadgeteer named Giz, a grizzled veteran with an acid-blue prosthetic eye and golden grills on his teeth. He was the owner of the Meltdown, a repair shop at the fringes of the Sumps. You had ducked in for a breather mask recharge and spent the last half hour in a rambling discussion about the Eye. The conversation was interrupted by the occasional crashing and curses as his apprentas attempted to fix a malfunctioning hoverboard. "The Eye talks a big game. But what's he done besides throw a couple of parties and build some roads? When the old guard ran things, at least you knew they'd shoot you in the face. With the Eye, you never know when the axe is gonna fall." His mouth twisted; he spat a glob of tobacco into a spittoon. "A lotta folks have gone missing since the Eye started calling the shots. And no one's seen 'em again. Maybe I'm just a paranoid old sod. But if he's the father of a nation, then I'm not feelin' a whole lotta love."

"You don't believe his vision has longevity?" you asked.

"A father's worth is measured by his backbone, not his words." He jerked a thumb towards the slipstream of traffic. "Take a look outside. What do you see? A bunch of hellions and harlots, making a racket. Sure, his rule has brought a galvanizing effect. But what about after? A father's duty isn't just to shelter his children. He's gotta feed and clothe them. He's gotta make sure they are safe. Otherwise, all his talk is worth jack-shit." He spat another glob of tobacco. It landed dead-center. "Zaun's got no shortage of workaholic fathers. They're never short of ambition. But never around to wipe a kid's ass, neither. That's a father's job, too. And if the Eye can't manage that? Then I call him no different."

A WORKAHOLIC father?

Perhaps.

In some ways, the Eye's role in Zaun's transformation was analogous to a patriarch. A father was, after all, the foundation upon which a child could found their own path. It was his duty to impart values; to impart a legacy.

Without his guiding hand, a child could easily wander off-course, or lose their way entirely.

Likewise, a city needed a moral compass. An anchor of civic virtue to ground its growth. Otherwise, its trajectory could stray too far from the principles that underpinned its inception. And, soon enough, it could lose sight of its spirit. Or become its antithesis. That, to a degree, had been the fate of its counterpart, Piltover: a city so consumed by progress, it had forgotten the very reason for its existence.

You were no expert in childrearing or urban planning. But, eyeing the sprawl of rooftops and neon lights, you wondered if Zaun's patriarch was, if not a merciful father, at least a loving one. Certainly, he'd taken an interest in his people, unlike the apathy across the Bridge. But was the interest born of empathy? Or a calculated investment, to crown himself king of a bustling metropolis?

The answers, as with much in this city, were complex.

"If Mister S is our Daddy," Dustin said, "then Uppside was our landlord." He jabbed a forefinger upward. "Bastard was always breathing down our necks. Always telling us to pay up." The forefinger was replaced by the middle. "Now Daddy's blown a hole through his roof. And we're in the yard, helping him bury the bodies. The place is a mess. It's all dirt and blood. And we're thinking: What next?" His middle finger was joined by its brother. "But that's what Zaun's about. Figuring it out. Taking back our lives. Making ourselves a home. Because, finally, this is home!"

The analogy, though crude, was apt.

Fatherhood was contingent on more than values and legacy. It was the society's moral glue that kept a family together. And the glue in the Undercity had always been threadbare. A neglectful landlord—Piltover—had long allowed his tenants to be exploited. He'd done nothing to repair the city's crumbling infrastructure. Nothing to ease the strain of the working class. Nothing, indeed, but sit in his ivory tower and sneer at the squalor below.

In this light, it was no shock the Eye—distant as he was—seemed preferable. He gave Zaun a vision; Zaun gave him her heart.

Better a workaholic father, after all, than a deadbeat.

But Zaunites, whatever else, held a bone-deep irreverence for authority. As the Eye's children, they were a rebellious lot: unruly, insolent, and prone to tantrums. Most were, in Lock's words, a bunch of "screwups, scoundrels and scammers." The rest were byproducts of a failed system. They had little patience with planning for the far-flung future.

What mattered was the moment: a chance to fill their bellies, or their pockets.

Or, for the less fortunate, to keep living.

Traversing through the Sumps, you were confronted with the ugliest byproducts of Zaun's post-liberation—and Piltover's callous neglect. The streets were a jumbled jigsaw of dilapidated tenemens. The streets were clogged with garbage. A noxious soup of waste, smog and steam choked the air. Disease and hunger stalked every crevice.

Along the Pilt's shores, you saw tin-roofed barges packed with Grey Lung sufferers—floating slums literally cut adrift. Ran said they were volunteers. The boats were testing grounds for a risky vaccine: one that could eradicate the disease. Medicks, according to Lock, would sail out to the barges thrice a day to drop off food and medicine. Soon, the sufferers might be well enough to return home.

In the meantime, they floated in convalescent limbo.

And suffered.

It was a sound that would haunt you for the rest of your life. The gut-stabbed echoes of coughs drifting across the dark waters. Each one a plea for salvation: from the gods, from the city, from anyone. Your escorts had the grace to keep silent, as you stood by the quay, a shamefaced voyeur.

Finally, you spoke. "There's no cure?"

"Not yet," Lock said, grimly. "Himself's got a team of medicks working on it. Brightest minds in the city. They're closing in. But...it'll take time."

"How long?" You heard the hoarseness of your voice. "How many will die?"

"Enough." Quieter: "You know what causes Grey Lung, right?"

You bit back a retort. It would be churlish to say something as ignorant as "chem-smoke." You knew the cause: the runoff from Piltover's refineries that had polluted the waters, and leeched into the air, and infected the lungs of the slum-dwellers. A disease, born from the Council's arrogance, and its refusal to acknowledge its culpability.

The truth sat like a lead weight in your gut.

But the Eye of Zaun had his own truths to account for.

Hand-in-hand with Zaun's festering sickness were strains of subterranean disorder. Driving past the watercourse, you noticed blankets and food being distributed to residents in a darkened city block. Lock explained that the Firelights, a separatist rebel group demanding independence from Zaun, had sabotaged the gas pipeline belonging to a chem-baron, and had plunged the neighborhood into clammy cold.

Within Zaun, the Firelights cause attracted little publicity from the national press. Yet deeper fault lines ran beneath—both sectarian and humanitarian.

Deriving their name from a small species of Lampyridae that thrived in the city's darkest depths, the Firelights were a loose coalition of paramilitary vigilantes. They advocated—through sabotage and subterfuge—for an independent Undercity. However, their cause was radically divergent from the Eye of Zaun's.

To them, he was a catalyst of corruption: a disease vector who'd allowed the worst cancers of the Undercity to metastasize—cartels, chem-barons, cutthroats. Their movement was a call to arms against his autocratic reign. Indeed, the Firelights believed, in the strongest terms, that Zaun was better off without the Eye.

In their vision, Zaun was a haven for all. A place where no child would go hungry, and no parent would labor without a fair wage. A place where no citizen would be exploited by gangsters, and no community would suffer under the heels of an unjust elite. A place where the city's wealth would be redistributed, fairly and equitably, and where the Fissurefolk would be free, in mind and body, to live the lives they deserved.

"They're rabble rousers," Lock grunted, with the contempt of a jaded adult for the dopey pretensions of idealistic youth. "Bunch of kids playing war-games. They want their utopia, fine. But there's no utopia without a price."

"So their cause is what, exactly?" you asked. "A political one? A humanitarian one?"

"Both. Neither. Depends on who they're beating up."

"Are they violent, then?"

"They're Fissure kids, Mx. Goode. Most of 'em are angry and desperate. So yeah: sometimes they get a little rowdy."

"And the Eye... tolerates them?"

"He's got bigger morsels on his plate."

The morsels, in fact, were the other faction of Zaun's fractious social milieu: the chem-barons. A cadre of ruthless money-men who'd risen out of the Fissures during its implosion into a crime-torn wasteland, they had staked their claim in Zaun's nascent economic landscape. Their fortunes were forged from the city's industrial growth: the factories, the mines, the refineries. However, their methods to maintain dominance were uniform: by force of fist or firepower.

Under the Eye's leadership, they'd formed a loose network of trade alliances. However, the symbiotic relationship between the Eye and the chem-barons remained volatile. His tendency to curb their excesses by cracking down had earned him their hidden enmity. In turn, his iron-fisted grip on the city kept the chem-barons dependent on his protection. Each was, to the other's chagrin, a necessary evil: each one the other's bane.

Their only commonality, in truth, was a desire to keep Zaun's coffers flush and their businesses in the black.

"For now, Himself's success is their success. They know not to bite the hand that feeds." Lock shrugged. "But they won't play nice forever. Greed's a nasty bitch. They'll keep biting until there's nothing left to feed on."

"Do you believe they'll attempt a coup?" you asked. "Overthrow him, and take power?"

A metal-studded grin. "They tried this week. Didn't go so well."

"You're saying... it's a regular occurrence?"

"I'm saying, in Zaun, you gotta look out for yourself." His grin turned sly. "Himself doesn't mind the occasional assassination attempt. Hell, he enjoys them. Keeps him on his toes, he says. But if they start testing his patience..." He clicked his teeth, a metallic snap. "Well. He's a busy man. Gotta draw the line somewhere, right?"

You considered that. "With a warning, or... a demonstration?"

Lock's chuckle was darkly amused. "Oh, Mx. Goode. If we start listing all of Himself's motivational tactics, you'd never get a wink of sleep."

This was Zaun's reality. A pendulum of vertiginous détente: an ever-shifting power balance between the Eye and his adversaries. For now, the oligarchy was holding fast. But as the city's fortunes rose, and more factions joined the fray, the pendulum's swing could become erratic. Or fatal. If the Eye lost his footing, his foes would pounce. If he fell, Zaun would collapse.

There was no room for error; no margin for forgiveness.

Only a man, and his iron will, holding the fragile equilibrium of a city's fate.

A workaholic father, indeed.

TO BE SURE, Zaun's fabric was as rich as Demacian poetry and as blunt as Noxian prose. Art lurked at every corner, and the best material was embodied in the everyman. But Zaunites did not write solely with ink. They were scribes of violence, as of beauty. Beneath the nation's veneer of noirish decadence, there were unmistakable streaks of blood.

Most were leftovers from Piltover's mismanagement. As much as the city's rebirth had inspired the masses, the wounds still festered. Many pockets of Zaun resented the Peace Treaty; some openly loathed it. They saw the current attempts at shared progress as patronization; they saw the Cabinet's reforms as an attempt to whitewash their history; to pretend the sins of Piltover had not been paid in full.

On occasion, the hostility flared into violence.

During your voyage, a few passersby recognized the Piltovan cut of your suit. Some shouted insults as they passed. Others, bolder, attempted to rough you up. Most, at the presence of your escorts, gave you respectful berth. Connections counted for much in Zaun. The Fixer's seal was a formidable deterrent.

However, not even a seal could stop a bullet.

For you, the reminder came not in an alleyside—but in one of Zaun's most upscale clubs.

YOU WERE SITTING AT THE BANQUETTE in Blue Note, a jazz club near Entresol.

It was rumored to belong to the Eye. Access was members-only. Even among Zaun's crème de la crème, the guest list was vetted. No press was ever allowed.

Yet when Lock pulled up the motorcar at the elegant horseshoe-shaped drive, the Captain greeted you cordially. The mahogany double-doors slid open with a sultry rush of purified air. The concierges, two lovely girls in purple striped uniforms, led your group to the prime table like royalty. The décor was neo-classical, very sleek, with polished black marble and colored neon lights—green, purple, and hot pink.

Dustin winked at a passing waitress. She took your orders and fluttered off, giggling.

Soon you and your escorts were drinking the finest champagne from the orchards of Trevale, and tearing into rare cuts of a premium-grade Sump-vole while barely five feet away on the parquet stage an androgynous beauty in an iridescent black gown crooned a haunting rendition of Summertime that touched every fiber of your body.

Undeniably, the scene was a bubble of privilege. A world inhabited by well-heeled chem-royalty, self-made yet insolently elitist. But the other Zaun—to your mind, the real Zaun, with its strutting gangs and subversive wiles—was never far. It was there in the guests: the un-Piltovan cut of their suits, the gleam of gold in their teeth, the scars on their skins. It was there in the conversation, punctuated by arms trades and bloodbaths. It was there in the conventions flouted with a rough-edged relish: tobacco spat into cuspadors, F-bombs indifferently dropped and dancers gyrating to lascivious styles that were once banned on Piltover's dancefloors, but had now begin trickling their way even into the banquets of aristos.

In some ways, defiance to Piltover was an indelible pathology for Zaun. Your nations were two sovereign powers, and yet you were also remnants of one broken map. Although Zaun was created in a convulsion of violence, the violence was one half of the collective psyche. The remainder was negation of its estranged sister. Everything Piltover was, Zaun did not care to be.

If Piltover said white, in Zaun it had therefore to be black.

After dinner, Lock, Ran and Dustin played Sumpside Snapdragon. A deadly twist to Piltover's parlor game: a bowl filled with brandy and sprinkled with salt, then set alight. But instead of cogs and candied fruit tossed into the blue blaze, there were tiny daggers. The goal was to snap as many as possible without getting cut or singed. In the same blink, the daggers were flung at a target across the room.

Victory was conferred on whomever hit the bullseye. According to urban legend, they'd meet their true love by midnight.

To call your escorts enthusiastic was an understatement. They flicked the blades at the corner wall with a skillful panache. Keeping up proved a challenge. Between the sumptuous dinner and the fading body-stone, you were dizzied with sensory stimuli.

Pride refused to let you admit defeat.

Your group played shot-for-shot. The champagne made your antics rowdier. At one point you mistimed the fling. The blade streaked past a crossing waitstaff. He batted it out of the air casually, his manner suggesting it happened all the time. The blade pinged off the wall and whistled at a neighboring table.

It belonged to a chem-baron. His lavishly-tailored suit suggested a man of means—even as the ensemble failed to conceal a physique the approximate dimensions of a pumpkin. An entourage of guards surrounded him. The baron himself sat cozily ensconced between two dazzling beauties, their hands playing over his shoulders as if he were the adonic Malcolm Graves himself.

The dagger sliced past his cheek. Blood spilled. His scream rang louder than the music.

"Great," Ran muttered. "Eramis the Crybaby."

In a trice, the baron was on his feet, cursing and shouting. Most of it was Targonian—a small mercy, as his bulging eyes suggested nothing complimentary. His entourage encircled your table. Nearby diners whispered and stared.

Lock rose, dwarfing the baron. "Mind your manners, Eramis."

"That [expletive] Piltie!" The baron brandished a finger. "I'll teach them respect!"

"Mx. Goode is Himself's guest."

"Silco allows this? A Piltie in our club?!"

"A clause of the Peace Treaty. So sit your ass down."

"Soon as I take their [expletive] eye!"

"Do that, I'll take yours."

Lock was serious. His suit coat was open, his gun on display but holstered.

In Piltover, exclusive sanctums are governed by a formal etiquette. Gentlemen never raise their voices. Arguments are always taken outside. You had always chafed at the regulations, and found in Zaun a sense of joyful liberation. Now you were confronted with the flipside: gunfire looming at the horizon, and no laws on your side.

Cringing, you shrank back.

The argument grew heated. The chem-baron threw the first fist. Lock caught it easily in his larger hand, spun the baron around, and sent him flying. Eramis collapsed straight on his rump in a puddle of tailcoats. Then he erupted into a shriek so loud it made the hairs on your neck stand.

"Shooooot!"

His bodyguards swiveled, weapons riding their hips.

Your escorts had already leapt into action.

Survival in Zaun is contingent on the Shuriman credo: Semper Paratus.

Or, as already mentioned: "Look out for yourself."

Lock, Ran and Dustin moved like clockwork. Dustin springboarded the table, dagger drawn. In a flashing arc, he'd cut two throats. Ran unsnapped a chem-taser secured under an armpit. In a feline swoop, they'd slammed it into the closest bodyguard's forehead. Electricity crackled. Soundlessly, the man folded. Lock bulldozed through the remaining bodyguards, knocking them flat with fists the size of shovel-blades. They scattered like toy soldiers, weapons forgotten.

Around them, clubbers cheered like spectators in a coliseum.

In the melee, you ducked below the table. You came face-to-face with an injured bodyguard on the carpet. Snarling, he raised his pantleg and grabbed a snub-nosed pistol from an ankle holster. The hammer was cocked and a bead drawn before you could scream:

"Help!"

CRACK went the pistol.

A bullet winged inches past your ear. Ran had already pounced. Down came the chem-taser. The device kicked solidly as it discharged volts of electricity into the bodyguard's convulsing body. Smoke surged from his skull in a steam-whistling shriek. His eyeballs rolled back. He fell in a puddle of his own urine.

The close call proved much for this humble scribe. Your head swam and a blackness poured in.

You passed out.

A PALM striking your cheek rocked you back to life.

"Mx. Goode?"

Disoriented, you opened your eyes. You lay folded in a king-sized bed. Silence reigned. No music; no gunshots. You were in a regally-appointed suite. Not Hotel Muse—this was somewhere more deluxe. The drapes and carpeting were a subdued salmon, the paneling a glossy rosewood.

"You awake, Mx. Goode?"

The voice was smooth like a dark liquor. The rims of your ears warmed. You blinked at the speaker. The rest of your body warmed too. Once, you'd been warned by well-meaning colleagues that a Piltie in the Undercity could expect either his wallet stolen at gunpoint or his heart skewed at knifepoint. You'd brushed it off as twaddle.

Now you reconsidered.

The woman looming over you was an Amazonian glory. Her body was all burnished muscle. Her face appeared to have been carved from unyielding bronze. A smoldering aura went with her dragon's eyes.

You croaked; she cocked an ear, "Say what?"

"W-water?"

Nodding, she withdrew. You heard a clanking of crockery. Then a hand, strong and none too tender, hauled you up and put a glass to your lips. Water spilled clumsily from the corners of your mouth. It was green-tinged, but tasted refreshing. You swallowed.

When the cup was empty, you meekly regarded your hostess. "May I—know your name?"

"Sevika."

"S-Sevika…"

"Deputy Chancellor. Presently your Glorified Babysitter."

"Oh my…"

The First Chancellor's XO.

Her steel-gray stare was of a piece with her steely reputation. In Zaun's inner circles, she was known for her talent to stop trouble in its tracks with a well-timed word. Or a righteous roundhouse. Among the populace, she was known as The Dragon. Many claimed her skin was thick as armor, her heart—if she had one—buried too deep for any bullet to pierce. It was the reason she was the Chancellor's go-to, why she was sent to curb disasters and clean up messes caused by others' incompetence.

Speaking of—

Sevika stared down, grim-mouthed. "You had a little too much fun at Blue Note."

You winced. "A dreadful misunderstanding. The chem-baron—"

"Eramis?" Her generous mouth hitched. "He's been handled."

"Handled?"

"I had a talk with him." She lit a cigarillo with a practiced flourish. "And Sir's got him so scared he wouldn't say shit if he ate a mouthful."*

(*Vulgarism is preserved for the distinctly Zaunite turn of phrase.)

"Sir?" you repeated. "The First Chancellor?"

"Bingo."

"I should—very much like to meet him."

"That's why you're here."

"Here?"

"At the Chancellor's headquarters. I took the liberty of checking you into the diplomat's wing. Your luggage has already been brought up."

Your head spun. "This is most irregular…"

"So is starting a gunfight on your first night in Zaun." She expelled a mouthful of smoke. "Lucky for you, Silco has a taste for troublemakers. He'll see you in an hour. I'll send up an escort. Be ready."

"But—"

She had already spun on her heel. You watched her exit with the ultimate Zaunite walk. A strut, you've always thought of it: all squared shoulders and swivel-hips that call to mind the devilry of a big-game hunter. The room's frosted-lamps glinted off her chem-modified arm. Purple streaks of Shimmer-veins glowed along her jawbone.

To call her beautiful would be banal. She was a bear-trap for the eyes. You were ensnared.

The door slammed shut.

Dazed and headsore, you were alone.

A BATH did much to restore your spirits. Dressing, you eyed your reflection critically. The First Chancellor was renowned for his dashingly austere fashion sense. Your Piltovan pride demanded that you pass muster.

A knock sounded at your door. Your hurried over, hopeful for another glimpse of Madam Sevika.

You were greeted by a blackguard.

Pronounced Black Guard by the Piltovan crowd, and Blaggard by nearly everyone belowground, theirs was an arm of the law as long as the bones of contention flung their way. Piltovan activists had repeatedly accused them of extrajudicial killings. There had been criticisms levied over the prevalence of a wartime militia operating in a peaceful metropolis. And yet their pervasiveness was, to the casual observer, inescapable. In Zaun's daily life, they acted as a disciplining fist against disorder. In community pockets, they assisted the Eye's initiatives for social reform. At political functions, they provided extra security.

The city's safety, according to some, rested squarely on their shoulders.

Among Zaun's populace, their reception was mixed. Wealthy Zaunites shrugged them off as a useful tool for keeping the rabble in line. Middle-class Zaunites tolerated them as functionaries in a system that was, whatever else, a step up from the jackbooted Wardens of yore. Working-class Zaunites were not consulted. But many feared their presence as a relapse into old ways. Their methods, after all, were akin to a hammer on a nail: a blunt force designed for one thing.

To break skulls.

In a city where justice is a commodity, choices were slim.

As the guard's silhouette filled your doorway, you felt the hair on your nape bristle. His helmet, unlike the sleek insectile faceplate, was a retro-style biker's crash-helmet: painted with neon pink crossbones. It was fitted with the customary gas mask, with its eerily sawing chem-respirator. The visor was black, reflecting your nervous face. On his shoulder was a badge. It was stamped with the Eye's emblem: two elongated semi-circles in the style of a half-closed eye.

The stylized sigil of an all-seeing overlord.

The guard removed his helmet.

It was a woman.

Your jaw dropped. Not just a woman—a young, attractive one. A head of pinkish red hair, cropped into spikes, framed her heart-shaped face. Her features, despite the trivializing embellishments common to Zaunites—a nose piercing and a roman numeral on the cheekbone—were surprisingly sweet. A dusting of freckles across her cheeks added a touch of wholesomeness.

She was armed to the teeth.

A baton rode her hip. A dagger was strapped to her left boot. Another gleamed in a shoulder-sheath. The handle of a third poked out from the back of her belt. Her dark chem-suit clung like a shadowy second skin. It delineated a physique of incredible fitness. Muscles rippled beneath the skintight weave. Every lineament exuded an understated menace.

The impression was that of a guard dog: poised on the threshold between predatory alertness and relaxed repose.

And, if provoked, ready to bite.

"Mx. Goode?" she said.

Her voice was a husky contralto. A hard-hewn Fissure accent. Yet it held a touch of Piltovan polish. As if she had spent time in both cities, and absorbed the best from each.

"Y-Yes," you stammered.

"I'm your escort. Are you ready to meet him?"

"Him?" you asked, feeling stupid.

"The First Chancellor. The Eye. Whatever you want to call him." Impassive, she gestured toward the door. "After you."

"May I know your name? Miss...?"

"Violet. Just Violet." The tone was dry, not sultry. "Unless we're better acquainted."

This, then, was your escort. The First Chancellor's personal guard: a walking arsenal, with an eye for danger.

And, if the crew's tales were true, a temper to match.

Your knees went weak. This, indeed, was the city of a thousand wonders. But the price of admission was high. For a moment, you were tempted to retreat back to the safety of your room.

Blackguard Violet was having none of it.

A gloved hand cupped your elbow. With authority, she steered you into the hallway. As you were escorted down the corridor, you caught the faint scent of sweetness drifting from her. Candied cherry, perhaps? A whiff of femininity utterly at odds with her tough exterior.

You thought back to Lock's words: stone-cold [expletive]. Yet your curiosity was piqued. Surely, you thought, this was a case of appearances deceiving. Perhaps a gentle heart lay beneath. Perhaps, she was a woman with a story. As all women are, to some degree.

Especially those who carry daggers in their boots.

"If I may," you said. "Have you served long under the First Chancellor?"

"Long enough."

"What kind of man is he?"

"He's the Eye of Zaun. That's what kind."

"Yes, but I'm seeking more..." You paused. "Personal insights. Does he have a sense of humor?"

"He's not a clown."

"What does he do in his spare time? Paint? Read?" You were desperate for an entry point. "I understand he has a penchant for Shuriman opera epics. I find it a tad too melodramatic, myself. Their last play, Titus Andronicus, for example—"

"If I wanted to hear about opera," she said, cutting you off. "I'd ask. Otherwise, zip it."

You stepped together into the elevator. The polished brass doors swished shut. Through the glass cube, the cityscape was a neon starfish in an armature of steel. Traffic poured in a glittering stream: the arterial river of headlights flowing in all four directions of the compass. Beyond, the sun was beginning to rise. The first rays, sanguine and rose, chased the shadows from the streets.

In Zaun, morning was a rare and lovely sight. You felt the stirrings of poetry within. This, perhaps, was why the Fissurefolk loved their city so fiercely.

A realm where beauty, like hope, bloomed best in darkness.

Violet punched a button and the carriage ascended with smooth rapidity. A blessing, as close quarters with a blackguard felt an earmarking of doom. Especially this one: so forbiddingly silent. Already, you missed the ribald company of Lock, Ran and Dustin. Had they fled the gunfight? You hoped so.

Likewise, you hoped to survive with a treasured memory of last night—rather than regret over the sum of your life choices.

Violet, straight-backed, stared ahead. It was difficult to fathom her. In profile, she bore scant resemblance to her notoriously zippy sibling. Everything was dissimilar: from demeanor to coloring. Even their eyes: one pair, neon pink and unnervingly bright, the other, the half-lidded blue of winter, pale and piercing.

But when you glanced at her, the winter seemed to her stare, you saw something that had been absent in the crew's: a human directness, its vitality so startling that it struck you, belatedly, as the missing piece you'd been searching for throughout Zaun's labyrinthine corridors.

Lock did not possess it; his bonhomie was an impenetrable exoskeleton. Nor did Ran, who, behind that feline air, was a consummate enigma. As for Dustin, the less said the better. Behind his cackles and wisecracks, the man was a phantom. Even Deputy Chancellor Sevika, for all her directness, seemed a study in shades.

But Violet?

There was something uncomplicated about her. A starkness of purpose that cut through the city's ambiguity, reducing it to the binaries of light and dark.

Then she blinked, and the mirage dissolved.

"What?" she snapped.

"Nothing. Only..." You hazarded on, "Is it true that you're the First Chancellor's daughter?"

There was the tiniest spasm in her cheekbone. "Of course not."

"My apologies. It was only a rumor—"

"He's not my father. Never has been. I just work for him."

"How did you join his staff? It seems quite an achievement."

"It's a job."

"Still, to be privy to the machinations of the most powerful mind in Zaun—"

"Save your flattery for him." Her jaw flexed. "Or don't. He's not big on fawning."

"What is he like? As an employer, I mean?"

"I don't think that's any of your business."

"But surely, like his crew, you have opinions. His people seem devoted, from what I can tell."

"His crew are not 'his people'. They're criminals. Their only devotion is to the paychecks he signs."

The bluntness took you aback. "But he's done great things for Zaun, has he not? The reforms, the development—"

"Yep. He's a real miracle-worker." The blue eyes were frosty. "A saint."

It was a dare, not a dressing-down. Discretion was advised, but your journalist's instincts refused to relent. There was too much potential, too much mystery. The Eye's family dynamics were so convolutedly interwoven with his legend. They were a secret the entire nation ached to unlock. The question stumbled out before you could stop it.

"Is it true you and Jinx are sisters?"

There was no reaction. Blackguard Violet's face remained stony. Her gaze shifted toward the brass-trimmed panel. In the wall mirror, you glimpsed a flicker in the blue eyes: quickly doused.

"Yes," she said tersely. "We're sisters."

"Astonishing! Is she as... colorful, in person, as her reputation?"

"Colorful?" She looked at you with flat reproach. "Say what you mean. You think she's crazy."

"Well, I—"

"She's not crazy. She's… Jinx." The stare turned withering. "And she's not Zaun's sideshow attraction. Stick to talking about the Eye. He's the ringleader of this circus."

"Yes, I, well, er." You cleared your throat. "Is he a decent man?"

"He's not indecent. At least, not on the record." Violet gave you a once-over. "Why? You after dirt?"

"Not dirt. Just the truth."

"Good luck with that. Truth's a rare commodity down here."

This was astonishingly direct, coming from a member of the Eye's retinue. You seized the opportunity to probe. "Are you suggesting there is a problem with his governance? Some irregularity with his conduct, perhaps?"

"Everything about him is irregular. Or have you not noticed?"

"Do you have faith in him? His leadership, I mean?"

"It's not my job to have faith. I do what's required."

"And what," you pressed, emboldened, "does he require?"

"Whatever Zaun needs." The blue eye cut sidelong. "You done?"

"I—"

A gloved finger stabbed a button on the elevator's control panel. The carriage lurched. Not up or down—but sideways. Your shoes skidded. You grabbed the brass rail, steadying yourself. Beside you, Blackguard Violet stood stock-still. She was an unmovable center, as the cityscape behind the glass walls blurred, then plunged into pitch-black.

"Where," you cried, "are we going?"

Volet's voice was a husk in the gloom. "Where he is."

With stunning momentum, the carriage veered left. The city re-entered the frame: a smear of color and light that resolved, slowly, into a panoramic spread of the riverside district. The sun had risen further; its light was a wash of blood-red. The river itself, a silvery ribbon, ran from east to west. Beyond, Piltover glittered. Its skyline, all burnished geometry, was the color of old ivory in the dawn.

It seemed impossibly close. And yet, darkly eclipsing, Zaun was all the eye could see.

"You're not going to throw me off the roof, are you?" You tried to keep the panic from your voice. "Or are we going for a scenic ride?"

"Neither. We're going to his office."

"I thought his office was on the twentieth floor."

"His main office, yes. But he ends his day elsewhere."

"Ends?"

"This is Zaun, remember? Work all night; sleep all day."

The carriage juddered to a stop. Your nearly toppled, but a gloved hand caught your elbow. The bell chimed and the doors slid open. Looming ahead was a passageway, dark-paneled and dimly-lit. The air smelled faintly of disinfectant. You were reminded of the sterile corridors of a hospital.

Or a morgue.

A chill settled on your spine. "Where are we?"

"Where you've wanted to go. To see the Eye."

Your feet refused to move. The darkness ahead was impenetrable. It swallowed all light. Even the sun.

"Is he," you gulped, "alone?"

"He's never alone."

The statement was too layered to parse. Reflexively, you glanced over your shoulder. Behind the glass walls, Piltover beckoned.

A way out.

Except blackguard Violet's hand was against your back. A soft pressure, yet inexorable. It urged you forward, through the dark. The carpeted floor swallowed your footsteps. The only glow was from the elevator, and even that was receding.

You had crossed a threshold into the unknown.

The corridor widened into a hexagonal atrium. The sky, cut in brilliant cobalt blue, poured in luminous bands through the glass. Then it struck you. The blue did not belong to Zaun's natural firmament. It was an aquarium, suspended from the ceiling. You could hear the dull rumble of the recirculation system. The refraction of dappled blues drenched the chamber in a subaqueous glow.

It was disorienting. Like being at the bottom of the sea without the benefit of gills.

A school of shadowy fish made lively patterns across the walls. Their shapes—curved like sickles, with fearsomely jutting teeth and eyes in luminous jewel tones—were vaguely reminiscent of some predatory genus from marine textbooks. They flitted in swirling currents, silhouetted against the chamber. The density of the glass, however, afforded little glimpses beyond the ghosts of motion.

"They're sharks," said Violet. "Blacktips."

"Sharks?" Your throat had gone parched. "What are they doing here?"

"He likes to watch them. Says they're beautiful." The barest inflection crept into the monotone. "I think it's a reminder of how his mind works."

"Pardon—?"

"Life's a simple formula. Eat or be eaten."

"That sounds like a recipe for murder."

"Welcome to Zaun."

There was no humor in the blunt statement. You felt a mounting desire to flee. It was too late, of course. You had been ushered past the chamber and to a security checkpoint. Two guards in chem-suits closed in. You were searched with calm efficiency. Your smoking case was confiscated. So was your fountain pen. For the interview, you were allowed only a notepad. A writing implement would be offered at the Chancellor's desk.

The precautions seemed extreme. But this was Zaun. Its parameters seemed defined by unpredictability.

Finally, you arrived at a single door. It was a stark slab of black granite. An iron sign, bolted into the stone, was inscribed with a single word: PRIVATE.

"Through there." Violet jerked her chin. "He's waiting."

You blinked. "Not you?"

"I'm not on his calendar today."

"I—what? I thought you were his bodyguard?"

"Blackguard," she corrected, flatly. "And I am. But not today." Her features were inscrutable. "He doesn't like to see me after dawn. Says it brings bad dreams. For him, I mean." The blue eyes shuttered. "Good luck, Mx. Goode. Enjoy the sharks."

"Wha—?!"

For the first time, Violet cracked a smile. It was barely a curl of the lip, but in that moment, her resemblance to Jinx was unmistakable. It was the look of a woman who had seen the worst life had to offer. And found it, perversely, amusing.

Or, at the very least, worth a well-timed quip.

"I'm kidding." Again, her hand against your back. A little gentler. "Go. He doesn't like to be kept waiting."

The pressure was inescapable. You had no choice. With a sense of foreboding, you turned the knob. The door swung inward on soundless hinges.

You stepped through.

THE FIRST CHANCELLOR'S OFFICE was a polished stronghold.

The Eye's headquarters were one of the tallest buildings in Zaun. The office gave the sense of looming on top of the city, all-powerful. Its interior was fitted out with a sleek functionality: ebony paneling and charcoal carpeting giving way to a flight of marble stairs terminating in a gleaming semi-circular study. A bay window offered a technicolor spread of Zaun's skyline. Morning light, the color of tarnished silver, slanted through the window. It struck the room in a sharp wedge of brilliance.

The office appeared empty.

The journalist in you, the insatiable snoop, crept toward the study. The desk was pedestal-style jugendstil, vintage and gold-trimmed. It was pocked with bullet-holes. You puzzled at its significance. A Zaunite design choice? Under the beam of a stained-glass lamp, the surface was stacked with tantalizing sheets of official-looking documents. An ashtray, hand-painted with XOXOs in a crude but colorful style, vied for space with a glass bearing melting ice cubes in a finger of whiskey.

On the blotter, letters rested, written in a spiky slantwise hand. With a fingertip, you traced the Chancellor's signature: a single alphabet in a serpentine twist.

S.

A shadow fell across you. "Prying for trade secrets?"

You jumped.

The voice, like a deep-rooted echo, resonated down your spine. In the flesh, its effect was unmistakable. A low, languid timbre, with a sibilant undercurrent of menace. With a decibel, it was capable of filling an auditorium. In close quarters, it was purely electrifying.

It was also... familiar. Years ago, you'd heard this same voice in a crowded street-corner, rallying for a liberated Undercity. It was less gritty then. More youthful, more passionate. But the tenor was unchanged. In a blink, you were thrust back into the throng, the crowd's momentum surging, the young man's audacity a flame that could not be doused.

It was, you understood, the flashpoint of a city's birth. And you, the witness of his will.

As you'd said at the start: The Eye was always in plain sight.

The office's occupant stood in half-shadow, clocking you with the stillness of a predator. At first glance, he seemed a replica of his scant few official photographs. Dressed in a pristine black three-piece suit with burgundy accents, the creases sharp as a general's uniform. The physique beneath was lean and angular, the shoulderblades rising in sharp peaks. A few salt-and-pepper strands had come loose from his pomade. With an idle motion, he smoothed them back.

His left eye glowed red.

That was the difference between the First Chancellor in photographs—and in person. In print, he cut a formidable figure. In the flesh, the formidable inverted into the uncanny: a serpentine fluidity in motion, a sharklike elegance in stillness.

He was not handsome in the Piltovan sense. But his bisected face held a strange magnetism. The right side was all patrician austerity: high cheekbones and a heavy-lidded blue eye. The left side, beneath layers of concealer, was deformed by scar-tissue. The eye was the color of ichor surrounding a raw wound: black and red.

It had earned him the moniker: Eye of Zaun.

Since then, of course, the Chancellor had enjoyed his fair share of appellations. Silco was his family name. His Excellency was the seldom-used formal address. Among the Piltovan elite, he went by The Industrialist; among chem-royalty by a single initial—S. There were also the garden-variety epithets that Piltovan hardliners applied to him.

Tyrant. Megalomaniac. Monster.

He particularly relished the latter.

Hastily, you extended a palm. "A pleasure, First Chancellor."

"Likewise."

His long-fingered hand enveloped yours. Even the grip felt predatory: bones clad in a cool stretch of skin, and yet the touch held an unnerving solidity. He wore no rings or bracelets, as was the popular affectation among Zaun's bon ton. Instead, his left wrist was circled by a chrono dubbed the Always Elenvenses.

It was designed by none other than Jinx—and took the cake for novelty with its jumbled hour-markers, subdial for days of the month, a depth measurement system for gauging the Fissures' toxic zones, and a miniature screen beautifully displaying the alignment of the solar system on an aventurine dial surface that resembled a starry sky.

The model had immediately caught on among the chem-royalty. Zaun's leading watch manufacturer, in Factorywood, soon launched an official model. Its cost rivaled the Ferros Sky Moon, but it was also available in more affordable models with a fraction of the features, in several eye-popping colors.

The Chancellor's chrono was simpler: a classical tonneau shape in black-and-white. He was seldom seen in public without it, setting the tone for Zaun's proud domestic image abroad.

Without breaking eye-contact, he said, "Our nation's unruly temperament seems to agree with you."

You cringed. "My apologies for the mishap at Blue Note. The chem-baron—"

"Eramis? He's a forgiving soul. A bloodbath won't trigger your expulsion." A small smile. "Or is it incarceration?"

You cleared your throat. You could not tell if he was mocking you—or mocking all you stood for. Either way, you couldn't let the issue go uncontested. "There seems a great proliferation of weapons in Zaun."

He nodded.

"And mercenaries."

Another nod.

"And drugs."

Again, the equivocal nod.

"Surely this must be addressed? Zaun ought to elect —"

"Zaun exists on the freedom of selection. Not election."

"But surely common-sense regulation—"

"Like Piltover's?" A gleam of serrated teeth. "It didn't preclude disparity in distribution, did it?"

You realized your hand was still clasped in his. With a casual squeeze, the Chancellor released it. You felt unaccountably flustered, as if the action were a promise of future intimacies.

At his request, you sat face-to-face at his bullet-pocked desk. You could not help inquiring about its history.

"Oh? These." With a fingertip, the Chancellor traced the bullet-holes. "A souvenir from Piltover's Enforcers."

"Enforcers? In the Undercity?"

"During the Siege. They stormed the Undercity—" stressed with didactic dryness, "—when we refused renegotiation with the Council. I escaped by the skin of my teeth. Others were less fortunate."

"You did not replace the desk?"

"It was nearly my coffin." His expression sliced from reminiscence to a sharp-eyed amusement. "It may yet be again."

A dark topic to preface your interview. However, you would learn, in time, that the Chancellor relished in unsettling non-sequiturs. His replies held a tenor: wry, subversive, elusive—or downright horrific. Meanwhile, his trademark voice was mercurial, by turns sandpaper-rasping and buttery-smooth.

The interview commenced. You had prepped extensively: you were ready. But the Chancellor did not seem interested in the prepared script. He seemed, in fact, more interested in play. He listened with a detached air, the glowing red eye tracking the movements of your mouth.

You had the impression that every word was being pared and measured, like a blade at the throat. A wrong turn and your jugular would be slit.

It was an irrational fear. And yet, under his stare, it felt real. Too real. There was a raw chemical signature, beneath the immaculate suit and the cultured drawl, of something lethal. The sharks in the tank, the corridor of shadows, the streets bleeding neon—it was all there, contained in a single man.

The city's living avatar. Or its demon, depending on who you asked.

You cleared your throat. "Your Excellency—"

"Silco, please." The invitation snaked smoothly down your spine. "We're off the record, are we not?"

"Well, in a manner of speaking—"

"Then I insist." A glint of teeth. "The only excellence is in service, and that is best done in the absence of titles."

The room, inexplicably, felt a degree warmer.

"Is that," you dared, "your philosophy of governance?"

"It's not my philosophy that's governing. It's theirs." His arm swept idly to the bay windows and the shimmering cityscape. "You've had a glimpse. The Fissurefolk, and how they've suffered. How they've survived, in spite of suffering. Now Zaun is theirs, and so's the last laugh."

"Do you think life will be better than under Piltover?"

"It's already better." The blue eye narrowed: as searing as the red. "Miles to go, of course. But what's a few stray bullets compared to the entire blue hell of a sky?"

"What are your plans, then, after the Expo? What's the next chapter for your city?"

"Progress."

"Is that your mantra? Progress, prosperity, profit? A triptych for Zaun's legacy, as it were?"

"Legacy? A fine term—for a tombstone." The glint deepened into a sardonic grin. "One's progeny can't clothe themselves in an old man's legacy. What matters is what he leaves within arm's reach. The tools to strengthen their grip. The means to fill their bellies. Schools for the young and work for the grown. A roof, a bed, a dream. The rest follows."

You saw the moment to pounce. "Yet you have detractors. Many, in fact. They accuse you of a dictatorship. Of using the city's resources as you see fit. That your rule is, at best, a personal fiefdom, at worst, an abomination. Some go so far as to say you're a—"

"Kingpin." The red eye glowed brighter. "Charming epithets. I've worn worse. Beats a crown, at any rate."

"They also say—"

"I know what they say. Your Sun & Tower can't get enough of the gossip." A withering note slipped in. "The last expose on my ties to organized crime was particularly riveting. I imagine it sold well."

You were flummoxed. "You've read it?"

"Read it? I had the illustrations framed. My only complaint is the nose. A bit too snub. Mine's longer."

You struggled to maintain your footing. In the wake of such a scandalous hit piece, most heads of state would have fired back with a defamation suit. Many, in person, would have gone for blood. Yet here the Eye was, cracking wise. If not a sign of lunacy, it was certainly the mark of a man supremely indifferent to public opinion. An unheard-of stance in a political sphere where image mattered more than ideology.

Then again, the Eye of Zaun was not the average politician.

"Then," you ventured, "you don't deny the accusations?"

"Which one? That I'm a psychopath? Or a dictator?" The bisected features, beneath the film of cosmetics, were sublimely composed. "What's it matter? They amount to the same thing."

"What of the allegations that you've profited off the Undercity's chaos as surely as the Council? That you've built an empire on the backs of its downtrodden. Specifically, through the drug trade—"

"Drug trade?" The smiled bared a bright row of carnivore's teeth. "You mean Shimmer."

You felt the floor slipping out from under you. "You—you admit it?"

"That Shimmer exists?" A lazy roll of shoulders. "Of course it does. It's a booming industry. We have factories, laboratories, research facilities. There's an entire division invested in its wide-ranging applicability." With a fingertip, he tapped the riven flesh of his left cheekbone. "I can attest its efficacy."

You blinked. This was new. And highly explosive. "You admit to using Shimmer?"

"In the right doses, of course. It's a powerful anti-infective. It can regenerate damaged tissue. Even stymie some forms of cancer. It's the future, or rather, its foundation." He sobered, "It's also the chief ingredient for our prototype vaccine against Grey Lung."

You thought of the huddled figures in the floating barges at Sump-level. The coughing, the hacking, the desperate cries. Grey Lung, an epidemic that had been crippling the city's populace for decades, treated by an even deadlier chemical that once laid waste to its streets.

The irony was too rich to swallow.

"Is this why your government outlawed Shimmer's recreational use?" you pressed. "To put the future vaccine's production, distribution, and sale in your hands?"

"That's a patent, is it not?"

"And the citizens, your guinea pigs?" You could not hold back the accusation. "There are repeated reports that your factories once produced Shimmer. That your agents once peddled the drug on the streets. All to fund the uprising against Piltover."

"Revolution doesn't come cheap."

"Then you do not deny—"

"I deny nothing. Except, perhaps, my appetite for truth." He steepled his fingers, the gold cufflinks winking. "Tell me. Your last hit-piece on the Shimmer trade: the fatalities, the broken families, the societal ruin. How did it fare, in circulation?"

"It was, ah—"

"Don't be shy. It made quite the stir, didn't it? Two million copies sold in Piltover and its territories." The red eye burned with an eerie fire. "It was lauded as a 'necessary spotlight' on a 'pitiable social ill.' Wasn't that how the Golden Quill praised it?"

"Yes, but—"

"But nothing." The Chancellor's smile descended to subzero. "Topside loves a cautionary tale. The grislier, the better. That's what the article reduced us to. A society of deplorables who don't deserve self-governance, because we can't manage a dose of common sense. Weren't those your exact words?"

"My editor and I disagreed over the verbiage, but—"

"What matters is the consequence. Addicts reduced to spectacle instead of sobriety. A city saddled with stigma instead of solutions. You laid bare names without a qualm. Employments terminated. Families dissolved. Lives ruined, in a snap. Then you had the gall to call it a 'public service.' All you serviced was the bottom line. Two million copies; six golden Hexes per print." His right brow quirked. "Quite the payday."

You groped for a rebuttal. "We were addressing the truth—"

"The truth? It was pure spin. Shimmer isn't some monstrous ichor. It's the adulterants that are the issue. The street drugs cut with toxic contaminants. Their ill-effects are irrefutable. But Shimmer itself? It's a catalyst at its purest. Everything from pustules to plague, it has the potential to cure. And it's ours. All we have, in the wake of your city's abandonment."

You struggled for composure. "With respect, that doesn't make Shimmer any less lethal—"

"No, it merely shifts the blame. From the Council's negligence—which poisoned us for generations—to the victim's poor choices."

"But the deaths," you protested, "the violence, the gangs—"

"Shimmer didn't invent those issues. It only highlighted them. Gangs, gambling dens, brothels: they were already operating. Shimmer just gave them a new lease on life." A beat. "Or a choice to die on their own terms."

"You cannot equate a civic duty with creating a death cult—"

"I do not. But nor do I pretend to condemn those who partake." He rested his chin on his locked hands. "The problem, Mx. Goode, is not addiction. It's hypocrisy. Tell me, do you like spirits? Tobacco? Have you ever done a line of Pix? Sampled a dab of Hex-dust?"

You had the oddest sense of a spotlight shining into your skull. Putting every vice on flagrant display.

A hot flush crept up your neck. "What I've done is my own business."

"Naturally. Your habits belong in the domain of private consumption. You're a free agent, bestowed by Piltover with the full liberty to indulge. Whereas the Fissurefolk, condemned to the same habits, are painted as a nation of scapegoats."

"Chancellor, you are being deliberately provocative—"

"So what if I am? Would you deny me the sight of those flaming cheeks?" A chuckle, silken, threaded the air. You fought not to shiver. "I wager you've a taste for Pix. It's a hard business, journalism. The hours are long, the stakes high, and the competition's ruthless. One dab goes a long way."

Your blush intensified. You did, in fact, have a preference for Pix. You did, in fact, a line of Pix every Monday. It kept you on your toes. It also kept the words flowing, the typewriter clacking and the paychecks rolling in. It was, in many ways, your fuel as much as your fodder.

Usage was an open secret among the Sun & Tower's staff. The Editor-in-Chief kept a drawer full of the stuff, and regularly dispensed it to the cub reporters before their deadlines.

But you'd never had a dealer. Never overdosed. Never visited a clinic, or a rehabilitation center. The drug helped; it never hindered.

"Chancellor," you said, "Pix is an indulgence. Shimmer is an industry."

"And both are an inalienable right." He leaned back: the picture of cool courtesy. "We're all addicts, Mx. Goode. We simply imbibe different poisons. And the nature of all poison, whether a drop or a gallon, is its capacity to kill. The distinction is in the choice. Topsiders make theirs on a scale. Fissurefolk, on the brink."

"You would thus excuse the deaths of hundreds?"

"I would not. I simply point out our mutual culpability. To blame the addict, who has the least say in the matter, is moot." He spread his hands. "Addiction is an intensely personal struggle. I will not force my citizens into a corner. All I propose is a shift in the treatment of addiction. That is why we are cracking down on the distribution of adulterated Shimmer and launching rehab centers. Rather than shaming Zaunites into the shadows, we will provide them a means to reclaim their dignity. They can earn their keep, and keep their vices. All that is asked is their compliance."

"You mean obedience."

"Obedience is blind faith. Loyalty, a shared purpose. In Zaun, we know the difference."

His half-smile needled with the practiced flair of a lifelong confrontationist. But the force of his conviction was undeniable. This city, you understood, was his obsession. He was not cowed by your status, any more than by what you might write. For him, you were merely the latest in a long line of critics, all of whom had met their end with a skewering.

Literal or metaphoric.

You squared your shoulders. The conversation had gotten away from you. He'd played a game of wits—his favorite, you realized—and won. Now you had to wrest control back to the script—or else the real interview would be reduced to a carnival act.

And yet, you could not help but wonder... had the conversation gone off-script for a reason? Was he, perhaps, testing your mettle? Having agreed to this interview, was the Eye signaling that he wanted a journalist who was the equal to his intellect, but the antithesis to his politics?

If so, why?

"You seem," he drawled, "rather flushed, Mx. Goode. Shall we break for refreshments?"

"I—no. That's quite all right."

"A drink, then. Your voice is hoarse."

He unfolded from his seat, his movements nearly liquid. There was a small liquor cabinet concealed within the corner paneling: cut-glass decanters of a dozen rustic shades. Choosing one, the Chancellor poured three generous fingers into a crystal glass. The aroma was unmistakable: a sharp-scented bouquet cut with cask-aged oak, and a lilt of citrus.

"Sherry?" you guessed.

"It's a local brew. Similar to madeira, but smoother."

"Zaun brews sherry?"

"Our cavernfruit—distilled—makes for a fine tawny. A tad sweet for my palate, but then, I've been spoiled by a boyhood of rotgut." He proffered the glass. "Try it."

Your fingers brushed his in the handoff. A spark of static danced across your skin. He had scars on his knuckles, you noted, and calluses on his fingertips. The hands of a man accustomed to hard labor, but who kept a veneer of fastidious grooming. The dichotomy intrigued you. The contrast between his cultured persona and his brutal history—and the sense of darker core, as yet unexcavated.

You hid your consternation behind a sip. The vintage glided smooth as velvet and hit the belly with a burst of heat. The sweetness, you could not deny. You had expected something bitter—or, at the very least, astringent. The Chancellor seemed a man who preferred bite.

"This," you murmured, "is remarkable."

"Zaun has limitless potential." A note of pride filled the deepwater rasp. "All it needs is the chance."

"And you?" You cleared your throat. "Will you govern on chances, or certainties?"

"One does not govern from the high-ground, Mx. Goode. One only governs." He slid into his seat, the movement releasing a secretive waft of his cologne. Bergamot, you caught, and vetiver. Underlying both, a smoky musk, as if he'd walked through a forest fire. "The trick is knowing which path leads to which end. That shift will define our era."

"You seem sure it will be an 'era.'"

"It already is." He lifted his own glass, the diluted amber catching the light. "We are on the brink of change, and there's no going back."

"Because the future is inevitable?"

"Because the alternative is annihilation."

He downed the shot. You watched his throat work: the hypnotic pulse of arterial blue veins. The bare patch of skin was framed by the severe V of his collar, its point knotted into a white silk cravat. There was something oddly sensual about the contrast: austere formality and exposed flesh.

It held your attention until he swallowed, and his words drew you back.

"Nostalgia is the great seducer, isn't it? But the past is naught but ghosts in graveyards. No use yearning for what's buried."

"You think it's better to forget?"

"Far from it. Forget nothing, else the past will bury you too." The corner of his mouth crooked. "There's only one direction. Forward."

It was, of course, his favorite dictum. Forward, but never forget. In the future, the press would quote and re-quote its variations. But, hearing it then, it struck a different chord. His words held a strange heaviness. As if he'd not forgotten, but had been compelled to leave it behind. Graveyards have ghosts; the present holds monsters. Both can eat a man alive.

Forward, you sensed, was the only refuge left.

Drinks finished, you felt it prudent to conduct the proper interview. Rather than the conventional trajectory—the Expo, the Treaty, the trade alliances—you found yourself homing in more closely on the Chancellor. You told yourself it was to flesh out his public image.

And yet, as the hour waxed late, your curiosity became burningly personal. You found yourself leaning closer, to catch his answers; and, when he paused, lingering on the stillness of his scar-seamed features. There was a magnetism, beneath the cool façade, that drew you like a lodestone.

It was, you would later think, no different from the dangers of Zaun.

Like Shimmer, he was a catalyst.

Conversation deepened. So did your understanding of his history. He'd not grown up thriving in an atmosphere of terror and trickery. He related his history in offhand synopsis—a humble childhood at the Bonscutt Pump Station, orphanhood, dark days in the mines, darker days as a smuggler, the killing of a patrolman, rehabilitation at a juvenile center, four years at Piltover's Academy, and a grudging return to the Undercity whose betterment would become, as time passed, a lifelong mission.

A mission, you were surprised to learn, that had its beginning at an ordinary bar.

"It was a pub near the Black Lanes. A little dive called The Last Drop." His smile turned wry. "Rusty hinges and a rowdy crowd. My second home."

"The bar, or the neighborhood?"

"Both. The Lanes were where I earned my first coin, and my last. And the bar's owner was like family."

"His name?"

"Vander. Better known belowground as the Hound of the Underground. A man with a fist as big as his heart. Both: strong as a vise." A rueful headshake. "But not his books. The man couldn't add a column without an abacus. Luckily, I had the skillset."

"You were the Hound's accountant?"

"I ran his books. The bar was his dream, not mine. I just wanted a quiet place to read."

"What did you read?"

"Anything I could get my hands on. We'd no libraries Down-Low. Most of the tomes were smuggled, and sold in back alleys. I devoured them, whatever they were. History, philosophy, science—if the words made sense, I was hooked. Certain volumes of poetry, I could quote verbatim." He let off that flat chuckle that seemed characteristic: a depth of darkness beneath the dry-voiced delivery. "In those days, a man could lose his head for quoting the wrong stanza."

"Lose his head?"

"Words hold power, Mx. Goode. We both know that." His finger circled the rim of his glass. "One tag of poetry, and you've sparked a revolution."

"Was that what happened?"

"In some ways. Like the line from an ancient Shuriman verse: The world below stirs..."

"And your world?" You found yourself riveted by the subject, and him. "What tag stirred you?"

"There was no tag," His features grew remote, and yet somehow more vivid: as if a layer of secrecy had been peeled away. "There was only a moment. A flash of blue, and everything changed."

"Blue?"

"A long story, Mx. Goode. Too long for today."

And, tipping his glass in salute, he let the silence stretch. Then:

Forward, without forgetting

Till the concrete question is hurled

When starving or when eating:

Whose tomorrow is tomorrow?

And whose world is the world?

You knew the stanza. It belonged to a poem penned by a Demacian writer, and published in an anthology that had been banned for its anti-monarchist stance. In your student days, you had memorized the entire piece for a recitation contest. You had, in fact, won the gold ribbon, and the title of Class Poet.

You'd never cared a jot for the poem.

Now, the words shook through every fiber of your being. It was as if someone had rung a bell in a hollow space, and the reverberation went on and on. It was, you suspected, a sensation similar to the first time one falls in love. A sense of the world unmade, and remade.

A revolution, stirring.

And the Chancellor, toasting to you, with a grin like a slow-burning fuse.

Well, the red eye dared, what's next?

BY MIDNIGHT, the Chancellor and you retired to the Laguna Lounge, a sumptuously designed blue-and-gold parlor.

You sat face-to-face in two armchairs. The honeyed lamplight lent an atmosphere of intimacy. Your topics had shifted from the straightforward minefield of politics to the tantalizing taboo of the subterranean: sex work (legal in Zaun, and represented by a guild of licensed professionals), the demimonde of arts (a thriving subculture integral to the city's psyche, and patronized by the Chancellor himself), and the fashion scene (an eclectic mix of the avant-garde and the retro that was proliferating even Piltover's upper echelons).

The Eye proved unexpectedly candid. No subject, regardless of how scandalous, unnerved him. In fact, he seemed to revel in the transgressive. His tastes, you would learn, were equally provocative: the erotic lithographs of Shurima, the macabre etchings of the Shadow Isles, the risqué pin-ups of Demacia.

He answered your queries with the easy eloquence of a man well-versed in the topic, and with no qualms about discussing its vagaries. And yet, in all respects, the man himself exuded a wickedly fine breeding. Though a breed of what?

The word that came to mind was: Zaunite.

A staff-member arrived with a tray of sweetmeats. The Chancellor dismissed them, and, with a deft hand, served you himself: delicate tartlets of black figs, fluted pastries glazed with a caramelized sugar, and a decadent slice of blackberry cake. When he mentioned that they were from the Sugarplum Fairy, you fought to conceal your blush—and failed.

"I take it," the Chancellor drawled, "you've sampled the wares."

"I, er, yes." You coughed. "The sachertorte was exquisite."

"Indeed." He handed you the plate. "Now sample this. And don't fret: it's only a tart."

It sounded, to your ears, more graphic than the most lewd blandishments. You fought not to blush again. Accepting the offering, you took a bite. The sugary pastelito was an explosion of flaky dough and buttery sweetness, its crumbling filling of custard and fig a mouthwatering complement. You let out a moan. It was the sound of unadulterated bliss.

"Good?" he asked.

"Marvelous."

"Try the blackberry cake. It's sinful." His voice held a note of dark amusement. "And perfectly legal."

The statement sent a shiver of anticipation down your spine. Taking the fork, you broke off a bite of cake. Its moist, velvety texture was a matchless delight. The Chancellor's own plate, its portions more modest than yours, was neatly cleaned. Watching him eat was strangely compelling. Each bite was a slow-motion event: the leisurely descent of his fork, the deliberate parting of his lips, the predatory glint of his teeth.

You watched, mesmerized, as he licked a stray fleck of frosting off his thumb. His tongue flicked out: a flash of pink against white. The movement was swift and precise, and yet so unselfconsciously sensual that you nearly dropped your fork. Cheeks heating, you wrenched your attention away.

The cake was delicious. But the Chancellor was tenfold more dangerous.

To distract yourself, you eyed the Laguna Lounge's sitting room. From the ceiling glittered a Jugendstil lamp: a tangle of frosted-glass sconces and faceted gemstones, the light filtering through in a prismatic kaleidoscope. A few framed prints hung on the sleekly papered walls: artwork in the same colorfully abstract style as the ashtray on the Chancellor's desk.

At the escritoire, sheafs of paperwork were stacked with military precision. A crystal decanter sparkled with amber-gold liquid. In the corner peeked a pile of books, each one a first edition. You caught the titles: The Lost Tomes of Runeterra, the History of Ancient Valoran, A Compendium of Shuriman Folklore, and an anthology titled Tales from Beyond the Void. All were dog-eared and well-thumbed.

It felt a heady thrill: probing the Chancellor for business, yet edging into his private life. Perhaps in time you could strip away the fearsome legend around him, and see him bare.

In a manner of speaking.

The Chancellor poured two glasses of sherry. Between sips, he proffered his own questions. How had you chosen your career? What were your family's origins? Why had you taken an interest in Zaun's affairs? You felt, not as if you were being interrogated—but, rather, as if you were a book whose spine he had cracked, and whose pages he was oh-so-softly stirring.

The experience was a novelty. Your usual interlocutors were content to drone on about their exploits. Few cared about the journalist except as a conduit for their own glory. But the Chancellor's good blue eye held more curiosity than any politician you'd encountered thus far. His queries were direct and incisive. He listened with a focused attention, and did not seem to mind the pauses. It was even possible he was savoring them, given the way his mouth would quirk at the corners.

Under the scrutiny, your tongue loosened, "I confess… I've written about you before."

The Chancellor eyed you over the rim of his glass. "Oh?"

"Years ago. You were a graduate from the Academy. I was the fresh-faced correspondent, touring the lower-zones. Our encounter lasted only a few minutes. But I recall it vividly. It was one of the first opinion pieces I wrote on the Undercity's liberation movement."

"I know."

You shifted in your seat. "I was somewhat... critical."

"On the contrary. It was my favorite piece. So much so, I've kept the clipping."

"What—?" You were agog. "Why?"

"It made me laugh. Vander, too. I remember, we sat down at his bar, and I read the article aloud. My rendition of your prose had him in stitches." His throaty chuckle set your skin aflame. "It was the last good laugh we had for a while."

You recalled the column. A scathing critique of the rally, which ended with a callous dismissal of the Fissurefolk's grievances. The Chancellor was then in his twenties. A firecracker of a young man with a whipcrack of a voice. Off the podium, he'd seemed no less volatile. But you remember the moment you had shaken hands; his grip was surprisingly gentle.

"You wrote," the Chancellor says, "'If the Trenchers want justice, why don't they just shoot the Councilors?'"

Chagrined, you ducked your head. "I was younger then."

"So was I. We both have learned, haven't we?"

The words hung like smoke in the air. His expression, as you lifted your eyes, was inscrutable. You were reminded of the late hour. The way this interview had strayed so far off-script, and yet so far from wrong. The strange exhilaration of falling into conversation, and yet feeling yourself on the lip of something darker, an invitation that savored of mystery…

In the background: a thump. A ball rolled across the carpet. Confetti erupted from it in a smoking plume.

You nearly spilled your drink. "What—?"

A girl entered the parlor.

She was a dainty thing, sloe-eyed and sulky, dressed in grease-streaked overalls, her blue hair twisted in a loose bun. Eighteen at most, though she seemed at once older and younger. She crept on bare feet without sound.

The dog at her heels was equally silent. You say dog—but behemoth was equally fitting. A mastiff, the type bred by Bilgewater's pirates to guard cargo at the docks. Its black head swiveled idly from the Chancellor to you. A pair of red eyes flashed. The jaw bridled to show teeth long as dinner knives.

Yet the true danger emanated from the girl.

"Silly." Her voice was a husky lilt. "What's the ruckus?"

A pert question. Yet her presence transformed the parlor, as if its decadent black undertones were swept away in a blue tide of chaos. You watched the Chancellor transform too. He rose, and the bladelike edges melted. A new smile appeared, as startling as a moonbeam. There was tenderness in its shape, and in the hand that cupped her cheek. She nuzzled into it, like a cat, and the smile deepened.

Suddenly, he cut a softer figure. No longer the leader of a nation—but a doting father.

This was, after all, no other than Jinx.

"Forgive me, child," he said. "I thought you'd be in the Aerie."

"I was catchin' a nap."

"At this hour? You ought to be dead asleep." Reproachful, "In your room."

"Meh. The one in here is nicer." Her stare cut to yours. "Who's that?"

"We've a guest."

She pulled a leery face. "A speeeeecial guest?"

"A journalist from Piltover."

"Yeah?" She fixed you with glowing pink eyes. Though you wanted to look away, you couldn't. "No wonder they're all fuddy duddy."

Hastily, you rose to extend a hand. "A pleasure to meet you, madam."

She let off a cackle. "I ain't a madam!"

The Chancellor shook his head. "Manners."

She pulled a droll moue—a mobile replica of the Chancellor's own. But she shook hands peaceably. Up close, her eyes were the same hue as Zaun's neon. An unsettling, otherworldly pink. They seemed to burn right through you. Her features, in contrast, were pristinely pretty. A pixyish nose, a cupid's-bow mouth, and the long-lashed eyes of a doll. She wore no cosmetics, and no perfume. The powerful whiff of engine-oil hung off her. Beneath was a spice like gunpowder, and a peculiar sweetness.

Candied cherry, you thought.

She and her sister both smelled of it. A confectionary fragrance: lilting, innocent. And yet, one was a deadly blackguard. The other, a war-criminal.

"Mx. Goode," the Chancellor said. "May I present Jinx."

She cleared her throat. At her side, the dog's muscles rippled.

Without missing a beat, the Chancellor said. "And Magnus."

"Sparky!"

"Whichever. Child, this is—"

"Mix Goody-Goody. I've heard about you. You wrote a real doozy about my old man. Got his name in the headlines, and all that." Those pink eyes. A predator's eyes. They sized you up with an uncanny relish. "What'd you call him again? 'Scourge of the Shadows'? Or was it 'Scrooge'? I get the two confused sometimes."

"It was a—" you faltered, "an ill-advised title."

"Sure it was. A real gas, too. 'Gangsters Gunning for Power-Grab,' 'Prostitution: the Pillar of Poverty.' 'The Undercity's Ulcerated Underbelly.' That one cracked me up." A grin. "You've got some cojones, comin' back for more."

You were beginning to sweat. "I've since revised my opinions—"

"Revised 'em, or reaped the rewards?" The smile held a razored edge: another replica of her father's. "I heard that last edition made the Sun & Tower a cool twelve mil. Now Zaun's outta the bag, and you're gonna make another fortune off its guts. How's the market for organs? You sell those, too?"

You fought not to bristle. "If you are implying the publication I represent is exploitative—"

"Implying? Hell no. I'm spellin' it out." She let off a musical peal of laughter. "Your stakeholders. They're a branch of House Holloran, right? Lotsa investments in the mines and quarries. Real impressive portfolio. Then, boom! Zaun's independence. Overnight, their holdings tanked. Now, they're scramblin' to make up for lost ground. And who better for the job, than an author who can't possibly be biased. Not after a history of hatchet-jobs against the Eye. A fair-minded advocate. The voice of the people." Her tone hit a dramatic vibrato before cutting to the quick. "But hey! Your pinch, Zaun's cinch."

Your face was scalding. It felt like a live coal had been lit beneath your collar.

It was true: your editor had exhorted you to spin Zaun's redemption as a marketing opportunity. And you had leapt at the chance. After all, it was your best shot to finally meet the Eye. To see his inner sanctum, and, if lucky, catch a glimpse of his famed partner-in-crime, the Loose Cannon.

It was a scoop any journalist would salivate over.

But you'd not been privy to the stakeholders' motives. You'd not realized you were being bought—or sold—like a sack of goods. Or that the Eye would not be the biggest threat to your journalistic principles—but your own blind ambition.

It was a bitter pill to swallow. Especially with a pink-eyed imp leering at you.

"I—" you licked your lips, "I meant no disrespect."

"Oh, you'll find no shortage of disrespect here." Unexpectedly, a small hand tweaked your chin. "You're cute. A li'l pointy around the ears, though"

Stiffly, you corrected, "There is Vesani blood in my family."

"Like the immortal cats?"

"Sadly not cats. Or immortal. Merely long-lived."

"Yeah? Can I have a peek at your tail?"

"I beg your pardon—?"

With a chiding hum, the Chancellor touched Jinx's shoulder. "Child, let's not give the good writer any gray hairs." A wry note slipped in. "You've already given me plenty."

Jinx giggled, and let you go. In a blink she was entirely focused on her father. The dog, circling, settled back onto its haunches, keeping an unwavering eye on you. You listened to their rapidfire back-and-forth. The cadences were startling similar: one low-slung drawl that rumbled, another that sang, in a duet of baritone and contralto. The words, a combination of shorthand and slang, practically a foreign language.

"Come see the schematics for the Wazoo." She tugged his sleeve. "Got the prototype in the Aerie."

"In the morning, Jinx."

"Mooooorning?" Only a (spoiled) teenager could make that sound like forever. "But it'll only be a jiff! Even Vitya's awake."

"He, is, perhaps, not the best judge of time."

"Yeah, well, he's got better things to do than watch the clock. C'mon!" Another tug. "Bring Chex-Mix over there, too. It'll be great fodder. Front-page material!"

"Mx. Goode has a deadline." His focus on Jinx was tender and entire. "And you, my dear, have a bedtime."

"Huh? I was gonna go clubbing with Vi!"

The Chancellor didn't flinch. But the smile was a fraction tighter. "These late bedtimes are becoming a habit. I'd hate to have to ban them."

"We both know it's not the bedtimes you're banning." Her pout was petulant, and yet knowing. "Where is Vi, anyhow? Thought she was staying the night at HQ."

"Violet has a full roster tomorrow."

"Meanin' you sent her back to Hotel M. Again."

"Meaning she has a full roster." A sharp edge, beneath the calm. "As have we all."

Jinx gave him the full treatment: slitted eyes like laser beams, and a scowl that could level a city block. The Chancellor did not bat an eyelash. The blue eye regarded her levelly. The red seemed to glitter at a secret frequency. It felt like a tug-of-war between two implacable forces. You were fascinated. You were also, admittedly, a tiny bit frightened. Of whom, you could not tell.

Perhaps both.

Then, with a sigh, Jinx threw her hands up. "Fiiiiine! Have it your way. No clubbin' with Vi tonight. Early to bed, early to rise, and all that."

"You'll thank me later." The Chancellor's forbidding mien gentled. "It's been a long night. Best rest your eyes."

"You promise to see the schematics later?"

"I do."

"Swear on your eye." The impish gleam was only half-jest. "Or I'll hex it 'till its rotten."

The Chancellor's sigh was pure exasperation. Then he held up a pinkie. Jinx linked hers with a giggle. Going up on tiptoe, she dropped a kiss to his scarred cheekbone. He caught her chin in his free hand and touched his lips to her temple. The intimacy to the gesture spoke of a long-standing ritual. Neither one seemed bothered by the spectator.

Then Jinx met your shocked stare. "Awww. They're all starry-eyed. You sure can pick 'em, Silly."

"Child." The Chancellor's tone brooked no nonsense. "To bed."

"I'm going, I'm going!" Over her shoulder, "Later, Chex-Mix!"

Without a word, she bounced out of the parlor. The mastiff flowed after her like a shadow.

You stared after them. The most ordinary exchange—and yet extraordinary that it had occurred at all.

"So that," you managed, "was your daughter."

"Zaun's shining light."

"She does not look like you…"

The ghost of a smile. "A blessing. Imagine if she'd inherited my nose."

"…Except in her demeanor."

"Oh?"

"She seems quite independent. Headstrong. A troublemaker's streak."

The Chancellor's eyes glittered with a devious darkness. "Is this criticism or flattery, Mx. Goode?"

Flustered, you changed tacks. "Her sister. Violet. She seems equally... er, formidable."

The smile was gone. A shadow crossed the Chancellor's features, fleeting and complex. "That, she is."

"She is your personal blackguard. Correct?"

"Finest there is. Solid as a brickbat, and twice as deadly." The smile, returning, was humorless. "A woman of few words, but those are choice."

Either it was your imagination, or the Chancellor and his blackguard seemed to share a peculiar antipathy. It made no sense: why, if they were hostile, would he appoint her as his personal guard? Did he want to keep a closer eye on her? She, on him? Or was Jinx the crux of the conflict?

"I'm told Violet and Jinx were once estranged." You watched for a reaction. "Are they close, now?"

"Quite close." The tone held a peculiar ambiguity. "When they're not at odds."

"At odds?" You latched onto the opening. "Over what?"

"They're sisters, Mx. Goode. Nearly as bad as brothers. Bickering is their birthright." He leveled a piercing stare. "Hardly worth the headline."

His voice, beneath the smooth diction, held a note of steel. Your spine stiffened. It was the first time the First Chancellor had issued a command. What's more, you could not argue. In Zaun, until her Big Nineteenth birthday, Jinx was a minor. It would be a breach of ethics to publish her name.

Instead, you chose a neutral topic. "You seem well-adjusted to fatherhood."

"Hardly. I have no idea what I'm doing. Daughters, Mx. Goode, are a challenge like no other." He took a contemplative sip of sherry. "But I find a challenge is best faced head-on."

"And Jinx?" You swallowed. "What did you find, when you looked at her?"

"My flash of blue." He said it without hesitation. "One I will trade for nothing."

The revelation staggered you. The entire time, you'd hoped to glean the secrets at this intensely cryptic man's core. The endeavor had been like trying to pull teeth—sharp teeth—from the maw of a very stubborn shark. Now you glimpsed what lay beneath the legend.

No grandeur, no games. Just a little girl.

Your fingers itched to type the quote. But your heart was no longer in it. This was not an interview.

It was, in the most intimate sense, a conversation.

"Have you considered," you dared, as you both resumed your seats, now side-by-side, "finding a companion to share the burden with?"

"Companion? I trust you don't mean a spouse?"

Your cheeks flamed. "Are there so few suitable candidates in Zaun?"

"Suitable? Oh, plenty."

You found yourself leaning in. "But no one special?"

"Special..." He rolled the word on his tongue: languorously, as if savoring a peculiar delicacy. "In a manner of speaking."

He eyed the decanter, and seemed to debate whether or not to pour a second shot. He settled for a single finger. Yours, too, was devotedly filled. The atmosphere was beginning to warm: a clandestine coziness of blue-and-gold. You'd not realized how much heat the Chancellor radiated, until he was a bare distance away. The shared settee felt like a private sauna.

"Who, then?" Your voice, coming from somewhere deep, had grown husky. "What sort of person could entice you?"

"Oh, a rarity. But Zaun has no shortage of those. We're a spirited folk, Mx. Goode. Our passions, our ambitions... they are not bound by convention." A hand lifted; sherry swirled in the glass. "They are not, in fact, bound at all."

You took a shaky sip from your own. "You seek, then, an equal match."

"A balance, not a scale." His chuckle rasped up your spine like a lit matchstick. "I'll admit I'm no catch. My faults are many. A temper to shame Shurima's blistering sands, and a stubbornness to rival their stone colossi. I'm prone to jealousy, and far too accustomed to getting my way. Then there's my taste for strong liquor and late hours." He tipped his head back, and downed the shot. You watched the tendons in his throat flex sinuously. "But, whatever else, I keep my vices within legal bounds." Wry: "Even if those bounds are elastic."

Your own glass was nearly empty. Your head spun: from the sherry, or the man, you couldn't say. "I have heard... rumors."

"The world's full of them."

"Your, ah, tastes. Are said to be eclectic. And your carte du monde..."

"Broad, as they say, beyond the pale." That low laugh. "You're curious?"

Breathless, you answered, "Very."

"I'm afraid I must disappoint. Some secrets are best kept secret." A sidelong smile. His front teeth were finely serrated, and chipped at the center. Why did that strike you as attractive? It was mystifying. "I will say this. A wide platter is no promise of a full belly. Especially—" A pair of canines bared their twinkling points. "If one's palate is discriminating."

The temperature had jumped several degrees. You felt, in a trance, your glass being taken from your hand. Heard the clink of the two, set aside.

When his attention returned, he was closer than before. You noticed the creases at the corners of his eyes, and the scar notching his left temple in its trajectory down to the jaggedly seamed flesh of his cheekbone. His mouth, too, had a scar: a tiny white nick near the upper lip. It was not unattractive. In fact, the violence in the topography of his flesh seemed only to enhance his appeal.

The imperfections were signs of a life lived fully. With passion. With vigor.

A Zaunite life.

"Surely," you licked your lips, and tasted the sherry, "you've sampled everything the city has to offer."

"I've sampled." He tipped a shoulder. "And been satisfied."

"But not fulfilled?"

Again, that equivocal shrug. "I'll be blunt. The city has a surplus of beauty, and no shortage of brilliance. But it is the rare find whose value cannot be gauged. The Noxian boys, not to stereotype, are always greedy to prove themselves. Too greedy, in my estimation. Bilgewater's wenches are bold as brass, but insufferably spiteful. Ionians, I've a soft spot for. A study of elegance, in their way. But tender hearts can be fickle. And Demacians..." He gusted a sigh. "A pretty passel, but heads as empty as eggshells. If I crack one, its contents will likely ooze." A grin. "Unless it's a good fuck, in which case, I won't complain."

It was the first time he'd uttered a profanity in your presence. And his delivery—the way his lips lingered on the f and cut like a knife through the k—was undeniably filthy.

The heat spiked into a flare. You skin felt slick, your pulse wild. His stare, that lazy-lidded blue eye, took in the effects.

There was the faintest of smiles, and no tell. His poker face was perfect.

"Have you considered," you fumbled, "searching closer to home?"

"Indeed, I have." Then, to your dismay: "The local Vekauran enclave, in fact."

"I—really?"

"I've no prejudice. They're a fine-looking folk. Lithe and lovely and dark as dusk. Their cuisine, especially, is a godsend. Have you tasted payasam, Mx. Goode? I detest sweets, but their use of jaggery is pure genius."

"Their dishes," you heard the pique in your own tone, "are a bit too spicy for my taste."

"Spicy?" The smile slipped into a smirk. "Or hot?"

"Is there a difference?"

"There is in Zaun. Spice has layers of flavor. It can be bitter, or sweet, or sour. But the essence is its bite." He lounged back, and his knee brushed yours. The blue and red eyes snared you with hypnotic intensity. "Hot, on the other hand, is a lasting potency. Does it sear, or scald, or swallow you whole? Only a brave tongue can tell."

You swallowed. The parlor was an oven. His knee, kissing yours, a branding-iron.

"Is that what suits your palate," you managed. "A little spice?"

"A little. Never too much. Just enough to get the blood flowing." His arm draped the back of the settee. You felt his thumb skim your nape. Gooseflesh bloomed. "Anyway, Vekauran beauties are best enjoyed at a distance. Praise one by saying she belongs in the kitchen, and she'll chop off your tongue and feed it to you raw."

You voice was nearly a shiver. "You seem... well-versed."

"I am, indeed." Another brush against the nape. You tried not to arch. "And I prefer my tongue in working order."

"For business…?"

"That, too." And, slowly, his thumb stroked down to the hollow between your neck and shoulder. "Speaking of which, are you enjoying yours?"

The words—the touch—were a dousing of heat. Your eyes nearly fluttered shut. You were on the verge of a slip: down scandal and into the inferno. A part of you screamed to abort, and flee to the safety of your suite. To cool down, and return to Piltover with a full report, and an intact reputation.

The rest of you—the real you—melted like candlewax under a flame.

You'd played with fire before. But never one as scorching as this.

"I think," you breathed, "we've done enough talking."

The Chancellor, smiling, closed the last scant inches.

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HE WAS A PYROMANCER: a wielder of flame.

But his touch was cool. His lips, as they slanted over yours, were the same: a chill contrast to the heat in your veins. They parted yours with a practiced ease, but tasted with a thoroughness that licked a fresh circuit down your spine: a wallop of shock and sparks. You'd been kissed before. Many times.

But never like this.

There were no alluring flights of fancy. No gentle coaxing or coy persuasion. His kisses were like his words: a weapon to be wielded. Each swallowed syllable was designed to peel back the layers between his wants and their fulfilment. Each minute melting with the clock hand was a descent past the strictures of propriety and into the forbidden. And every inch of you was newly-won territory, to be stripped and slowly—oh, so, slowly—savored.

This was not, you'd also learn, a man for half-measures.

Or mercy.

A bubble of sound broke at the back of your throat: half shock, all sensation. And in that tiny, telling cry, his tongue slid past your teeth. You felt it, and then: you tasted him. Smoke and sherry and some dark, drugging brand of a decadence you couldn't place: only that it sank its claws beneath your skin. His fingers wove their own spell, twining through your hair.

He had a way of holding you in place with the barest touch. His sheer physicality was enough to pin you, as if he'd backed you up against the wall with both arms bracketing at your body.

As if there was blood on his fingers and a corpse at his feet.

The bubbling cry inside you burst: a high-pitched duet of syllables. His name.

"Sil—Silco—"

"Hmm. That's better." His hot breath gusted your wet lips. "You've a way of rolling it off that little tongue of yours. Say it again."

"Silco—oh."

Cupping the back of your skull, he seized a knot of hair gathered there. The lance of sensation shot wicked from your nape and down to the curling toes of your feet. The kiss renewed; redoubled—a deeper angle, a more sinful friction. Your fingers scrabbled at the front of his suit, then fisted in the fabric. He was all edges. His bones pressed like blades through his flesh. Overlaying them was a sinewy musculature. His body was a stiletto hidden inside a fine silk glove: lean, honed and built for killing.

And, oh, you wanted him closer.

You wanted him so badly you ached. So badly you groaned. He swallowed the sound, and answered with a low-pitched growl. You felt it vibrate all through your bones. The kiss went on and on. Your lips throbbed; his mouth left no quarter. A hand slid over your hip. The other gripped your shoulder. Your bodies, now flush, slid together.

The friction-burn was bright as Zaun's neon. Your heart went into a gallop; your body into overdrive.

The rest of you: freefalling.

"Silco—" You gasped his name again, and he moved to your throat. The circle of his teeth, the pressure of his mouth: a shock. You felt capillaries burst. Felt the bruise blossom. Then his tongue: a laving lick of flame. "Oh gods—"

"Not gods." His breath gusted over the throbbing bite. "In Zaun, we pray to nothing but ourselves."

You should have heeded the warning. But you'd thrown your dice; you'd wagered all. The stakes were too high, and the risks too sweet. There was no going back. Not when the First Chancellor's fingers, so deft, were unbuttoning your vest. Not when his thigh was wedging between yours, and the hand at your hip was sliding inward.

Downward.

His fingers found the button on your trousers. It popped open. A zipper sang. He was methodical. Meticulous. As if undressing a stranger was an everyday affair. And, likely, it was. The thought was a needle through the heart: how many had he taken to bed? How many had been seduced by the smooth tongue, the sharp wit, the sinful mouth? How many had known the thrill of a chance, and lost all they'd gambled?

Would you be another statistic in his ledger, or just a footnote, half-forgotten?

His hand, dipping past the band of your smallclothes, found you.

And you stopped caring.

Crying out, you bucked into the touch. A chuckle, and his lips caught yours again. The kiss, now, was all teeth. But a sweetness threaded it the spice. Like biting into candy and discovering it was a firecracker: a flash-pop color and a crackling blindness. Your head spun; your nerves sang. His fingers were a rhythmic torment. You writhed, seeking more.

More.

A pyromancer, you thought hazily, and a smuggler: two professions at odds. One, a flashbang of spectacle, and the other, a slow-burn of stealth. And this—a man who walked both paths—was a paradox. You would never know the half of him, and he'd never show the whole. You'd glimpsed his daughter, yet knew nothing of his heart. You'd learned of his vices, without an inkling of his virtues.

All that you knew was this: beneath the blandishments was a man who'd burn the world to the ground.

Who was, with each touch, setting you alight.

You were in his bed. Somehow, you'd crossed the threshold, and were laid out upon his bed.

The carpet was strewn with your clothes. Your undergarments rent open, loose threads like pennants. The lamplight painted a golden patina over the sheets: a halo you'd forfeited with the first kiss.

And he, the Devil, trampling it underfoot.

The mattress sank as he knelt on the edge. His shirt, unbuttoned, clung to the whippish lines of his torso. His skin, a shade lighter than the muted olive of his face and hands, was taut beneath a fine tracery of old scars. The trousers, low-slung, bared the jut of hipbones. And, below, the sharp V of his inguinal crease framed the dark nest of well-trimmed curls. The fly was half-undone. You had a glimpse of his erection, a delineated outline beneath his drawers.

Like the rest of him, it cut an imposing shape.

A dizzy dip caught your chest.

You were far from virgin. You'd bedded your share of lovers. None like this. Not men with the power to level the status quo. To lay waste to a city. To raze lives to the ground. The atoms in the air were charged with the history of him. You felt its pull like a gravity-well. You felt your vulnerability like a spotlight.

Reflexively, you shrank back. A single look quelled the rebellion.

His expression was the same you'd seen in his office: a cool, appraising mask. Beneath, there was nothing but the hard glitter of hunger.

"No," he said.

"No...?"

"No hiding." His eyes, a leisurely glide, took in your nakedness. "You'll find, sweetling, that I've a short fuse for cowardice. If you want to be spared the sting of my temper, best behave yourself."

"But surely the lights—"

"Will stay on."

The mattress dipped as he prowled closer. In a trice, he was upon you, a long lazy slide of flesh and fabric that left you primed to a mass of raw nerve-endings. He was heavy: the narrow frame was a lie. Beneath lay coiled something else. A lethal, latent threat.

"No hiding," he repeated, and his teeth scored the shell of your ear. "No tricks. You've made a calling of chasing the truth. Now, you'll give me yours."

"I—"

Too late. He pinned you, a wantonly bare sprawl. His hands, big and calloused, cupped your knees. They tipped them open, and spread you wide. The exposure was a heady blend of shame and lust. You wanted to hide yourself, and yet arch higher. You wanted to cover yourself, and yet spread further. You were aflame, and flushed, and ready.

Whimpering, you buried your face in the pillows.

"Ah, ah." The rasp tickled in your ears. "What did I say?"

A palm fisted your hair—and tugged. Your face, bared to the lamplight, was a ruddy mess.

"You do blush everywhere, Mx. Goode. How delightful."

"Please." You twisted, but his grip held. "This isn't dignified—"

"Dignity." He leaned in, and his mouth trailed over your chest. A nipple, stiffened to a pebble, was trapped between his teeth. A shudder rocked you. "How very Piltover." Another bite, and a sob ripped from your throat. "Here, we don't mind a little filth." The tip of his tongue circled lower. "We're rather fond of it, in fact."

And, descending, he proved his point.

A yelp flew from your lungs. Your spine bowed; your thighs shook. His hands, pinning you flat, kept you from thrashing off the bed. His mouth was obscenely thorough; it engulfed you entirely. You were a wild-winged seraph, caged and writhing. And he, a frieze of scarred flesh, the devourer. The wet, velvety drag of his tongue was ruthless. The suction of his mouth was a furnace.

And your body, melting, was a slick pool of ecstasy.

In the breakneck pace of your life, pleasure was a rarity. There was little time for romance. Less time, even, for the self. Your world was your work; your orbit, the truth. The rest: a furtive encounter in the dead of night. A few quick trysts in the office's copy-room, or a hurried rendezvous in the stairwell. You'd had a handful of lovers, and not a single one had touched you this way.

Not a single one had known, in a glance, how to unspool you.

But he didn't simply unspool. He took you apart, piece by quivering piece. When you were close, so perilously close, he'd stop. His tongue would cease its merciless, repeated, relentless swirls, and his mouth, its maddening suction. He'd draw back, and watch you thrash. A gleam of mismatched eyes; a curl of glistening mouth.

Then, once you'd subsided, the torture would renew.

It was the most excruciating pleasure you'd ever known. The soundtrack was your sawing gasps and the wet sounds of his mouth. By the time you were begging, it was in monosyllables. By the time he relented, the monosyllables were incoherent. By the time you were on the brink, you were sobbing. By the time you broke apart, the climax was a full-throated scream that went on, and on, and on.

Soundless, he swallowed every drop.

It took a long time—a very long time—to catch your breath.

"Well." A lazy drawl between your thighs. "What do you think, Mx. Goode? A little filthy, or a lot?"

You fought to answer. Fought to form words. Fought to think.

Failed.

The bedsheets were sodden. The rest of you: wrung-out. Through the spiky screen of your wet lashes, he loomed: a silhouette in chiaroscuro. You watched his hands travel down his clothes. Watched as he stripped completely. The play of light and shadow was of a piece with the rest of him: a body built on the bloodied anvil of the streets. Whipcord arms, narrow hips and long, well-muscled thighs.

His erection was a marvel. Thick and uncut, it jutted slantwise, curving to a dusky tip. A vein, snaking its length, pulsed visibly. At the head, a pearly bead glistened. The thought of him inside you, filling you, was almost too much. You'd come once, already. Hard. A second climax was out of the question.

And yet, you ached to try.

"Cat got your tongue, Mx. Goode?"

You managed to shake your head. His grin was a scalloped blade: full of teeth. It widened when you reached a trembling hand. He didn't stop you. He watched, good eye gone narrow, as you took the tour: over the ridges of sinew, across the mapwork of scars.

Each, you know, told a story. One likely unfit for print.

Your touch dared lower. His erection pulsed beneath your fingertips. His breathing, so controlled, went ragged. The blue eye, no longer lazy, followed your every move. The red, though, stayed fixed in space and time. It gleamed like a drop of blood in the dark.

Tentatively, your palm curled around him. "Do you want me to...?"

A throaty chuckle. "Are you asking if I'd like a blowjob?"

Your face burned. "I—"

"Because I would. Very much."

He idled back across the pillows. The pose called to mind a Shuriman pasha in the lap of a luxurious seraglio. It was an invitation, and you, the eager odalisque, scrambled to climb astride. He poured off heat: a furnace against your palms. The lamplight made two pearlescent cups of his shoulders, and limned his scars with gold. Beneath, belying the indolent sprawl, his musculature was granite.

Your pulse skittered.

You'd come to Zaun looking for a scoop. And now, here, was your headline.

His fingers threaded in your hair. Firmly, he guided you down.

His measured breathing hitched as you took him between your lips. He was thick; your jaw would ache. The taste, like Zaunite sherry, held dark, heady notes. Musky, male, potent. You breathed, and felt dizzy. You licked, and his thighs twitched. You suckled, and his fist tightened.

"That's it," he rasped. "Show me what that Topside spit-polish is good for."

His words were a goad. The grip, a spur. His hips, rolling, took the reins.

The pace was a languid, unyielding slide. His widespread palms cradled your skull. From time to time, they'd take a caressing tour: a stroke along the cheek, a skim down the spine, a squeeze to the rump. When you whined, the squeeze became a stinging slap. When you choked, he soothed the welted flesh with his palm. When you sighed, the palm slid over the curve of your hip and dipped between your thighs.

The caress was light, but the effect was a lightning bolt.

You arched, and he chuckled.

"Again?" Despite the graveled voice, his fingers were gentle. "Such an insatiable streak. You truly are a diligent journalist." His other hand, tightening, dragged your head down. The angle drove the breath from your lungs. The head of his cock nudged the back of your throat. "We'll see it put to good use."

His hips snapped. Your muffled moan won a sibilant hiss.

Bit by bit, he worked himself deeper. It was a burning climb. You choked, spittle leaking. Tears blurred the lamplight. His girth stretched you to your limits, and still he filled you. You'd never had a lover so demanding, nor one so thorough. He took everything.

Every whimper. Every gag. Every gasp.

"That's it," he gritted, as the burning heft slid past your throat. "Keep the tongue soft. That's good. Sweet Kindred, look at you. Practically made to choke on cock, weren't you?" Another few inches, and your throat spasmed. "Almost there. Fuck." One last shove, and he was lodged deep. His fingers knotted in your hair; a tremor ran through him. "Sweet fucking Hexes, that's good. Stay down."

Your nails scored his hips. Your eyes overflowed; your throat cramped. Your lips, stretched taut, were numb.

"Look at me, sweetling." His hand cupped your wet chin. "Sssh. Don't cry. It's natural. All beginners choke." The cultured varnish had rubbed off; his accent belonged in the blackest gutter. "There. You can take it. Swallow. Again. That's it. Such a lovely mouth." He withdrew, eased in. Out, then in. "There. Keep swallowing. Don't fucking stop."

The rhythm began: relentless.

With each thrust, he ground your face into his groin. With each withdrawal, his cock dragged across your tongue. Your throat was a wet glove, molded to his shape. Each pass was a little easier. But you couldn't keep the sobs in. You couldn't hold back the tears. You could only take him: over and over, until the pistoning devolved to a brutal blur. Each wet squelch was a vile backdrop to his praise: darker, cruder. Each plunge was a jolt to the center of your being.

He took the ride: deep, dirty, and all the way down.

And you, exultant and shaking in every cell, let him.

Suddenly his grip shifted, and you were dragged up and off.

Woozy, you struggled for air. He was there, too: the taste of him on your lips. Your mouths were inches apart. His breathing, harsh. Yours, ragged.

In the gloom, his eyes glowed hellish and hungry. The poise, the precision, the impeccable facade—all of it had been stripped away. In its place was an unholy transfiguration that reformed the angles of his face into a surface of brute singularity.

This was not Zaun's enigmatic First Chancellor. Nor the kingpin who smiled behind a veil of cigar-smoke. Nor the smuggler who walked two worlds.

This was the pyromancer: a monster tempered in flame, with a heart of ashes.

And he was smiling.

"Enough." A thumb swiped your lower-lip: a smear of wet. "You're a quick little learner. But I don't take my pleasure in the back of a novice's throat." The hand at your nape slid down, down, down. "Hands and knees, sweetling. We'll see how you fare on a different end."

His palm, a guiding weight, set you facedown. Your legs were spread; your hips, arched high.

The indecently vulgar pose had you burning anew.

"Mmm." His hand stroked the dip of your spine. "Lovely. Stay there."

Trembling, you obeyed. The sheets, silk-edged, seemed to whisper secrets in the dark. And you, the star journalist of the Sun & Tower, could hear nothing but the thudding of your own heart.

Distantly, a drawer scraped open. A small bottle, glinting roundly, was set upon the nightstand. The cap was popped: a silvery thread spilled. He warmed the liquid between his palms.

The sweetish scent was, unmistakably, shimmer-laced oil. Not the cheap, chemically-crafted concoctions sold in the markets. This was the real deal: a top-of-the-line formula that promised no tingly thrill, but a whole-body high. You remembered reading of its effects. One drop was worth its weight in platinum: a single vial would buy a week's rent at Bluewind Court.

Now it sat at arm's length.

Poison, you thought. Doom.

And yet, you wanted more.

"Before we begin," he said, "let's set a few rules. If I ask a question, you'll answer. If I command, you'll obey. If I want a color, you'll give me one. Green for go, yellow for slow down, and red for pause. And if you wish to stop, all you need say is—" A beat. "Well. How does 'Piltover' sound?"

Mute, you nodded.

"Excellent. I trust you'll hold yourself to a similar code. Honesty. I'll not abide a liar, sweetling. Are we clear?"

"Yes." Your voice was a thread. "Yes, sir."

A chuckle, and the mattress dipped. "Save 'sir' for another day. For now... 'Silco.'"

His hands were hot and slithery. The oil made a sensuous glide down your spine. The shimmer had a kick: a slow-burn that heated by degrees. Already, it was warming your blood. Already, your nerve-endings were coming alive. More oil, sweetly scented, drizzled over your backside. Slid down your cleft. Slid into you.

Then his hands were upon you: spreading, stroking, slicking.

Your voiceless cry was muffled into the pillows.

"Patience." His fingers, circling, were wickedly precise. "You're a tight little thing. But this will ease the way." The words were slow; his touch, slower. "If you want my cock, I'll expect you to take every inch." More sliding circles. "Every. Last. Inch."

You could barely speak. You were burning already: a bonfire at the base of your spine. The touch of his callused fingers was a sinful rasp. Then his mouth was there, too: a wet, open-mouthed kiss. It was filthy and intimate: your body contracting against his tongue, over and over, as he teased your entrance.

You'd done this before. With other partners, it had been a matter of fumbling and guesswork. They'd wanted something novel. You'd given it, and taken, in return, a dull modicum of pleasure. The encounters—like them—had been a sliding scale of mediocrity and monotony.

But this—this—was something else.

A lesson in patience; a crash-course in pleasure. The oil made you slick; his mouth was slicker. His tongue, opening you with torturously slow stabs, made your toes curl and your fingers knot the bedsheets. You were beyond shame. Beyond pride. Beyond anything but a keening, needful whine.

"Please, please, please..."

"There's a good sweet." A wet kiss to the base of your spine. "Beg all you like. You'll get what's coming."

Biting the pillow, you cried out. You couldn't help it. He'd breached you: two fingers sinking inside: slow, burning. There was a sting, and then—a sweet, deep pressure. The bedsheets were sodden. Your skin, too. The sounds, as he stretched you, were positively lurid.

Far worse, were his words: a sinuous, slithering litany.

"Oh, sweetling. Look at you. A view worth a fortune."

A third finger: a tight, scissoring split. Helpless, you spasmed.

"Sssh. Easy now. There's more to come. So much more."

A fourth finger, gently fluted, and the stretch was too much. Your spine went rigid; your lungs seized. You sobbed, and his other hand came up: a steadying weight between your shoulderblades. You needed it. The anchoring was all that kept you from flying apart.

"Colors, Mx. Goode. What's your color?"

"Green," you managed, hoarse. "Please."

"You're almost ready." He twisted his wrist. "A little more patience."

And he showed you just how patient he could be. He worked you until the pain was pleasure. Until the stretch was a high-pitched thrum. Until you were sobbing into the pillows, and a fine sheen of sweat beaded your back. One hand stayed at your nape: a possessive grounding. The other rocked, frictionless. Each sound was a filthy squelch, but the sensation—oh, the sensation.

The fullness, the ache, the pleasure. It was unbearable. You couldn't move; you could only shake.

Shake, and beg.

"Please. Silco. Please."

"Please, what?"

"Please—" Gods, there was no going back. "Please, fuck me."

A low laugh. "Are you certain? My cock's thicker than my fingers."

"Yes." The sob wrenched loose. "Gods, yes."

"Hmm. Since you're so insistent."

His fingers slipped free. The hollowness of loss was terrible. You clenched on nothing, and cried out.

Then you heard it. Somewhere, the crinkle of foil, and the torn packet dropping to the carpet. The sound of the sheath being unrolled. The snap of a cap, and more oil, pouring. Then he was behind you: the heat of his flesh a molten wall. His fingers, newly slick, spread you again. One more pass of oil, and then: a pressure.

Thick. Blunt. Hot.

You gasped as he breached you. The tip, just the tip, sliding in.

"Gods..."

"None of that." A low chuckle, and his free hand fisted your hair. "You'll have only one god, tonight. And, if you're very, very good, he'll have you on your knees."

He fed you an inch: deliciously slow. Then another. Then a third.

The agony was exquisite. The pressure, the weight, the stretch. The saw of breathing—his steady, your strangled—filled the room. He was splitting you in two, and it was wonderful. His grip at your hip was a vise. The hand, buried in your hair, held you fast. The Shimmer-oil, seeping into your tissues, fritzed brighter.

Your pulse was a livewire. Your skin, a furnace. And beneath, your bones had gone molten.

"Colors," he said, and sank deeper.

"Green," you sobbed.

"Think you can take a little more?"

"Yes. Please. Yes."

"Good." A dark chuckle. "I'm going to enjoy ruining you."

And, with a growl, he slid home.

The world ignited. The afterglow was neon. The impact of his hips slapped skin to skin. The friction was indescribable. He split you. He owned you. You were so full: so impossibly full. The Shimmer, too, had taken root, and was flowering: all was sensation.

Groaning, you plucked at the sheets, working your hips in short, helpless jerks. His palms, bruising, stilled you. His silhouette was a lean, long-limbed sprawl bracketing yours. You felt his breaths gusting hot and heavy in your ear. Felt the thud of his heart against your spine. Then his teeth found your nape.

You saw rather than felt the bite: a bright red flower bursting in your mind's eye. It was the only thing you could see.

The rest was him.

He was deep. He was rooted. He was everywhere.

"Silco—oh gods."

"I told you," he grated, and the voice was rough enough to strip bone. "No gods. Today, you'll pray to something else."

And you would.

Gods, how you'd pray.

In that shadowy bower, you'd learn a brand-new liturgy. One composed of skin and sweat and a dark, divine rhythm sung to the undulation of your body. You'd forget the deadlines, the scoops, the stories. You'd forget the Sun & Tower, and the life that lay beyond the door. You'd forget, for the briefest eternity, everything.

Everything but your newfound god.

He'd take you through the spreading rays of dawn, and then, again, as the light turned deep-golden. He'd work your body past the point of pleasure and into a realm that bordered pain. He'd hold you down; he'd pull you back. He'd lick the sweat from your skin; he'd drink the moans from your mouth. He'd coax you to the brink and fling you off, and, after, he'd catch you.

And, in the aftermath, you'd kneel before him.

Swallowing his salty libation, you'd taste not a single drop of the divine. Only the bitter dregs of Zaun.

And beneath it, the lingering smoke of revolution.

BY LATE EVENING, you awoke with a pounding head.

The blue-silk walls of the Laguna Lounge's boudoir were striped by a watery luminescence. They touched your face with cool fingers, and you turned from them with a grimace. It had been a long night, and a longer day. The pillowcase was soft against your cheek, and strung with motes of bergamot.

But the faint imprint of the body beside yours was long gone. So was the heat.

Idlers, you knew, did not fare well in Zaun.

Groaning, you heaved yourself up. You had never felt so drained. So completely and utterly undone. Your body ached in places it never had before. Your hair was a wreck, your lips kiss-swollen. The meridians in your body throbbed with bitemarks. You looked like you'd been savaged by a wild animal. And, to be honest, you felt like one.

A woozy little grin played across your lips.

A knock. You nearly jerked out of the bed.

"Who—who is it?"

"Mx. Goode," came a muffled reply. "I'm here to escort you."

"Es-Escort?"

"I'm the First Chancellor's valet. You've slept in. The three p.m ferry has already departed."

"I—" You clutched the sheets to your chest, eyes darting around the room. "I—I'll be right there!"

You were alone. Of course. He was already gone.

You'd known that from the beginning.

Your clothes were neatly folded on the ottoman at the foot of the bed. Your shoes were set there too. The only things unsalvageable were your undergarments. Those were shredded beyond repair. You still remembered the sound they'd made as he'd ripped them off, and the way the fabric had clung with streaks of wetness as he'd tossed the tatters aside.

The memory sent a bolt of residual heat down your groin.

Shaking the thoughts away, you dressed with haphazard haste. You didn't want to keep the guard waiting.

Mortification crept in as you stepped, wobbly-kneed, into the lounge. It was empty, save for a boy. Barely thirteen, he was as flax-haired and pale-skinned as the illustration of a Freljordian shepherd in a nativity painting. Or a sheepdog, the way those lank locks fell into his large solemn eyes.

He introduced himself as Posky—the Chancellor's personal retainer.

"I apologize for the trouble," you said, wincing.

"Not at all," young Posky replied, with a grave formality that belied a schoolboy's lisp. "If you'll follow me, I'll show you to your rooms."

Your ears felt scorched as the boy escorted you out.

Mercifully, the descent to the sublevels was short. There were no witnesses to your walk of shame. No one but Posky, and he seemed paid to be discreet.

With the utmost courtesy, he saw you to the door. He imparted the message that the First Chancellor had left for a meeting. He also let you know that breakfast would be sent up shortly. The next ferry to Piltover would depart at seven thirty. A limousine would be waiting to see you to the docks.

"Thank you," you fumbled. "I won't be long."

Posky, politeness itself, nodded.

"A bath's been drawn," he said. "You'll find the salts a great relief. The First Chancellor hopes you rest well, and looks forward to reading your work."

"I—I see. Thank you."

He departed, and you were alone.

Stepping into your room was like entering a different dimension. Your head spun; your body swayed. You did not feel fully situated in time. Memories pinwheeled: the crowds at Expo, the barges in the Sumps, the gunshot at Blue Note. The First Chancellor's rasping baritone and Jinx's irradiant pink eyes.

Zaunite sherry.

The flashbacks of what followed had branded themselves in a series of snapshots, all of them visceral: the Chancellor's scarred hands, the rumble of his voice, the rake of his teeth. Beneath your clothes, you still throbbed with the evidence. Your senses were primed. Your body felt attuned to a strange, subliminal frequency. It was an unnerving sensation, but far from unpleasant.

In fact, you were tempted to seek out its source again.

You wondered if this was how Shimmer addicts felt: off-balance, and yet hyperaware. You wondered, too, if you'd have a similar reaction the next time you sampled it. If, indeed, there would be a next time. In the past, your fixations had been fleeting. A pretty face, a rich bankroll, a smooth turn-of-phrase. Now, it seemed, your standards were higher. A pretty face was no longer enough; a bankroll had lost its sheen; a turn-of-phrase, its power.

Only the razor's edge of intellect retained its ability to arouse. Only the dark, and the deep, and the dangerous, held the key.

You shivered.

A decade of struggling to parse out addicts' compulsions. Now here you were, in the grips of your own.

Bathed and changed, you set to work at your escritoire. The draftsman's lamp glowed, the typewriter hummed, and the clack of the keys echoed like rain. Yet your mind was elsewhere. How could you craft a reportage of the Expo when, all the while, your thoughts kept straying back to the Chancellor's lair? How could you write about Zaun's bright beginning, when its end was such a delirious climax? How could you, a scribe, be expected to give a fair account of the Eye, when, for the first time, you were seeing the truth in technicolor?

Your memory returned to your final moments with the Chancellor: the heat of his mouth on yours, the unbearably slow slide of friction, and the release that left you, hours later, still reeling.

A sense that your acquaintance with Zaun had sweetened, overnight, into something else entirely.

You had no intention of publishing the piece.

It would be a breach of professionalism, a betrayal of your editor, and an unforgivable act of sedition. You had been sent here to write a flattering report on the rising nation-state. You'd found a city of entangled politics, and your own missteps were less an error than an entry point.

Zaun was not a subject to be studied, but a state of being. And the Eye, not a depthless enigma, but your own flash of blue.

If you dared.

You could no longer separate yourself from Zaun's story.

By seven o' clock, it was time to depart. Heartsick, you packed your bag. Lock, Ran and Dustin were waiting in the lobby. They greeted you with grins. Your gloom receded by a degree; you shook hands and even shared a laugh over yesterday's misadventure. As you headed for the doors, your mood lightened further. The twilit cityscape was a hive of activity: the whiz and bang of construction, the bustle of pedestrians, and the honking of horns. Zaun, in its infinite palette, was pulsingly vital.

The only thing missing was your heart.

You'd left it behind, in the Laguna Lounge.

"Well," Lock said, after ushering you into the limousine, "How'd your interview with Himself go?"

"The Chancellor is... singular." You fiddled with your seatbelt. "He spoke candidly."

"About what?"

"The state of his government. Its policies and priorities." You coughed. "It was, um, fruitful."

Dustin clapped you on the shoulder. "Fruitful, eh? Guess that means a second scoop's in progress!"

"Er, yes. Quite possibly."

"So when'll we be seein' that next piece?"

"I'm not certain. There are... logistics."

"And a ferry to catch." Ran tapped the glass partition. The vehicle eased into motion. "One of the private yachts is waiting in the harbor."

You faltered. "The private yacht?"

"Uh-huh. Bossman's treat. He also sent this along." You were handed a slim leather-bound folio. "A little 'Bon voyage.'"

Baffled, you opened the folio.

Inside was a handwritten note. The message, in elegantly spiderlike script, was brief.

Be seeing you.

No signature. Nor was one needed. The sender was unmistakable.

Attached was a ticket, for a performance scheduled a month hence. The venue was a grand theater near the Promenade. A troupe of renowned actors would perform a classic Shuriman opera: The Dark Descent. It was the epic tale of a doomed lover who had sold her soul to a demon. The sort of production you could attend without attracting undue notice.

The Chancellor's message was plain: the affair would not be discussed outside of Zaun.

Nor was the invitation a formality.

It was a promise.

You shut the folio, and pressed a hand to your burning face.

"Well?" Dustin prompted. "What's it say?"

You swallowed. "Nothing. Only—he bid me a safe journey."

"That's Mister S for ya. Always a class act."

The motorcar glided through the fogged streets. Through the windows, Zaun seemed somnolent, like a late-night reveler, all passion spent. Yet its quintessential charms were intact. At the horizon, Piltover's skyline glowed. Yet you kept looking backward. Desire strobed in slow-motion. You felt the gravitational pull of a new story in the making.

And a sense, strong as sherry, that you'd not yet had your fill.

THERE'S a saying, in Zaun, about the things that keep us up at night. Some say it's the ghosts. Others, the rats. And some say it's the monsters.

But the real answer is this:

It's the darkest parts of ourselves.

And, perhaps, the truest.

Look out for yourself.