[Fanfiction] Fracture - Chapter 14
PROLOGUE: http://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/fancreations/fZAXxjHA-fanfiction-fracture PREVIOUS CHAPTER: http://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/fancreations/vHu623va-fanfiction-fracture-chapter-13
Fanfiction.net link: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/10770866/1/Fracture
Genres: Suspense/Drama/Mystery/a lot of others Characters: Leona, Caitlyn, Nasus, Kassadin, too many to list
Summary: The machine that sustains the lethal matches of the League fails. Events spiral outwards. (Character death.)
JUDGMENT
"Renekton!" he grunted, bearing the full weight of the blow under the shaft of his halberd. "Stop this foolishness at once!"
His brother did not answer him – could not, for he had reverted to his crazed roars, spit dribbling from bared teeth as he snarled and lunged at him. Renekton seemed to lean into their locked weapons, gradually applying more pressure, and Nasus could feel a strange trickling – a slow tearing of something in his side. He grit his teeth, struggling to push back.
"Get off him!"
Under normal circumstances, the Battle Mistress would not have been able to haul him off the way she did, but his brother had been leaning so far in that he was naturally off balance when she tackled. This quick analysis was what flitted through the librarian's mind as he staggered backwards, catching his breath. He should have been able to withstand this assault – should have been able to push his brother off.
"Nasus!" he snarled, shaking the mercenary off. He scrabbled wildly at the ground with his claws as he tried to stand. The Curator of the Sands took a shaky breath, and steadied himself.
"Ugh." Sivir kicked him in the side of his head. "Settle down!"
His brother only swatted her aside, scrambling to his feet as his hands found his weapon once more. Nasus tightened his grip on his halberd. Renekton lunged. He went for the throat this time – slicing his blade laterally in an attempt to decapitate him. The blow glanced off the handle and the librarian swung it around to try and knock his brother off his feet.
He couldn't kill him – not now.
Renekton twisted around it. It was that strange, rolling dive. He seemed to go straight for his stomach. The Curator stumbled to the side, just barely dodging the hit as his brother met with the wall behind. Nasus had barely time to whirl around as he kicked off of it for another pitch.
Something flitted by and his brother made a sudden slash at the air, knocking the boomerang blade from its course. Behind him, he could hear the Battle Mistress click her tongue. Something dripped.
When Nasus looked down, he saw blood – when he looked up, he saw Renekton.
He was going to cut him open in one lunge. All he saw in that precise second was the wicked gleam of his brother's eye, the orange glow about the frenzied, slitted pupil that told him, no – right now, this was not his brother, and he would be a fool to hope it was.
Nasus shut his eyes tight.
Someone let out a strangled growl.
"My... What is it we have here?" There came a soft, wispy voice. "The Butcher of the Sands... and his brother, in mortal combat."
It was a low, whispered tone – husky by the sounds of other voices echoing atop it like smoke shrouding the sky. Chillingly familiar.
He opened his eyes.
There was a hook in Renekton's shoulder – embedded deeply by his neck such that the blood flowed in a red river. It was holding him, jerking him backwards as he struggled against it, and the librarian could see the flesh peeling back around it as the thrashing only deepened its hold. Nasus followed the chain.
"Thresh!" It was Katarina, standing on the other side of the room, in the doorway. Her eyes were wide, and though he could tell she had been running, her face was pale.
He stood in the darkness of the next chamber, cloaked in shadow. At his feet was a dim, green glow – no doubt from his lantern – but it was the fiery light of his eyes that peered coolly into the room.
Why was the Chain Warden in Shurima?
"The Sinister Blade," he greeted, voice but a murmur. "A pleasure. We were not expecting you."
"We?" she asked warily, eyes darting about for his cohort.
"We," he assured her, tone light and gently menacing in its legionnaire whispers.
"Why are you here?"
It was Sivir, coming to stand beside him. Nasus winced as she pressed a firm hand to his reopened wound, a scolding glance shot his way as he pulled her hand away and replaced it with his own.
The shock of their new arrival had warded away the pain. Her wordless disapproval was not lost on him.
"Perhaps you'll find out," Thresh replied easily, and if his face had not been set in a ghastly, eternal leer, he certainly would have done so then. His brother groaned and struggled against the chain again, but the Chain Warden only jerked it back. "I myself am curious as to the presence of the illustrious Du Couteau... sisters?"
Cassiopeia had slithered in.
His grip on the chain seemed to slacken, and something in Nasus's stomach churned at the sight of the specter's widening sneer. Something was amiss. He turned, ever so slightly to look at her, head cocking sideways.
"Well, well... This is very interesting," he murmured.
"What?" Katarina took a step forward, obvious concern for her sister in her voice. "What is it?"
Thresh chuckled a low, cruel chuckle, winding the chain around his hand as he reeled Renekton in closer, eliciting another groan. Something about that chain, or that hook, seemed to drain him. The Curator of the Sands set his jaw firmly, hand tightening to a fist.
"That's right..." he whispered, leaning forward. "You can't see it."
"See what?" demanded the elder Du Couteau anxiously.
The Chain Warden took a single step forward, blazing gaze boring into the Sepent's Embrace as she slithered towards Renekton. Somehow, he seemed to smile – and it was dark, and thoughtful, and foreboding.
"Her soul... is becoming inhuman."
.
.
.
The world was ending – the world as they knew it was ending.
But something about it seemed terribly familiar.
"Retreat, Tidecaller," Kassadin gasped, water leaking from the cracks in his mask. He coughed, pushing her backwards with one hand on her shoulder. "They have arrived."
There were so many of them. Huge, bulking, grotesque – almost as gigantic as the Terror of the Void had been, after his feeding – and they rose from the sea like the surfacing of newly-untethered buoys. Somehow, some way, Nami felt as if she was watching the advent of a childhood nightmare; horrors she had never known, as if she had dreaded them all her life.
Malzahar had turned his back on them to watch their ascent. Something cold trickled down her scales. They were so close to the shore. Kassadin dragged her backwards, urgently pulling her away.
"You must go, now!"
"But what will you do?" she protested, struggling against his iron grip.
"The Prophet is my responsibility," he rasped, the breathy filter returning to his voice now that the seawater had cleared. "These consequences are mine to face."
"You can't! That – that would be suicide." The Marai managed to yank her arm from his hand. "Just look at them! How could you deal with them yourself?"
"That is not the issue," said the Voidwalker, voice low. "It is imperative that you contact the Kinkou Order. Immediately."
"Going somewhere?"
She whirled around – Malzahar had turned to look at them. The glow to his eyes was menacing beneath the shadow of his hood. The Tidecaller, despite herself, trembled.
"Go!" ordered Kassadin, giving her a shove.
Nami swam as fast as her fins would take her, surging tides beneath her tail pushing her forward. She could hear behind her the gasping exhale of the Voidwalker's force pulse – why hadn't he used it earlier? – the sound of shifting sands Malzahar's null zone made. Before her stretched the Ironspike Mountains.
"Reach the mountain range!" she could hear him yell, voice rapidly fading as she willed the tides to carry her faster, further. "Contact the Kinkou!"
Nami could not answer him – could only gulp down shuddering breaths as she strained to keep vision on her goal. The light of the morning sun was harsh to her eyes. She could barely see.
Then there was shadow.
Her heart plummeted to her stomach and she whirled around so quickly she nearly lost her balance. The silhouette was huge and looming over her – she could make out four arms, and the figure was so familiar, she was sure she was dead.
"Analysis underway. Stand by," it rattled out. The Marai was all but frozen beneath its red gaze. "Orders received: escort."
That mechanical voice... This could not have been Cho'Gath, could it?
"Tidecaller," said a different voice. It was muffled by static, but the robotic slant only familiarized the accent to her.
"Viktor...?" she asked, warily. "Is that you?"
"Keep moving," he told her – the voice seemed to project from the monstrosity's shoulders, above."I will explain on the way. Only know that this is my creation, and it will not harm you."
Even if he was lying to her, it wasn't as if she had much choice but to oblige him, and the Marai took up a quick stride. "What is that thing? Why are you helping me? What's going on?"
"It is merely a techmaturgical adaptation – improvement, if you will – of something very familiar to you. As for why I am aiding you, well..."
"The elders wouldn't give me leave to give Diana a proper burial," broke in another voice. Female. One she knew for sure. "But they let me take care of her body otherwise. I found several notes among her belongings. What do the words 'abyssal pearl' and 'moonstone' mean to you?"
"The moonstone?" she gasped, head snapping upwards to look at the mechanical Cho'Gath. "It's –it's what I came to the surface for. Every one hundred years, my people need it to ward off the terrors of the depths."
She thanked the oceans that she did not traverse land conventionally, or else scaling the mountainside would have been incredibly difficult. Watching her robotic escort use his knife-like appendages to climb was evidence enough of that. The whole mountain practically shook with every stab.
"Will this be the hundredth year since your people last acquired the moonstone?" Leona asked her.
They reached a small plateau, and Nami stopped to think for a second – of the time she had spent in the depths, hunting for the pearl, of the time she had spent waiting in the mystic cove, and then the time she had spent in the League.
"...Yes."
The surfacing monstrosities. The fish. The sea.
Her people.
"No." She dropped her staff, hands flying to her head. The realization was only just beginning to sink in. "No no no no no!"
"What happened?"
"The moonstone!" she cried. "I needed the moonstone to ward off the monsters of the deep! My people were depending on it, and now..."
"Could it be," began the Radiant Dawn, "that the monsters of the deep were in fact –"
"Creatures of the Void," finished Viktor. He continued with, "Wherever your people are settled must be near a tear."
"If the moonstone is necessary to warding them away, then it might be key to stopping the Prophet," said Leona gravely.
"But that was all just preventative!" she yelled, hands balling into fists. Her voice pitched high in desperation, and Nami swallowed a sob. "It's too late!"
"Think rationally, Tidecaller," the Machine Herald told her. "We have no concrete evidence, and few other leads. It may not be too late."
She inhaled shakily, eyes shut tight. "It's too late for my people."
The hundreds of fish that floated to the surface were only a sampling of what had occurred deep in her heart, she knew this.
Leona's voice, though shrouded by static, was soothing. "You will never know until you try."
Slowly, she looked up, into the sky, and then out over the mountain range. Standing there, with a looming monster of a robot above and a swarm of monsters below – above the whispering tides of the sea and below the splendent silence of the morning sun, Nami made a choice. There were several moments of stillness.
"I found a map, tucked into her armor," offered the Radiant Dawn.
The Tidecaller closed her eyes, and murmured, "Okay."
.
.
.
Next Chapter: http://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/fancreations/LazfvQdc-fanfiction-fracture-chapter-15
