[Fanfiction] Fracture - Chapter 20
PROLOGUE: http://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/fancreations/fZAXxjHA-fanfiction-fracture PREVIOUS CHAPTER: http://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/fancreations/EEU7WLLn-fanfiction-fracture-chapter-19
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.)
Sorry for the late update; belated happy holidays to you folks on the boards!
DAYBREAK
He was in his element.
It was a loud and visceral element, beautiful and bleak. It filled his ears, his nose, his mouth with its sounds and sensations and flooded him as he struggled to move to the beat of its drum. It was battle, exhilarating and gut-wrenching and soul-sucking all at once. He gritted his teeth against the tang of blood, swung his sword against the weight of exhaustion.
Amidst death, Garen was alive.
The monstrosity reared back on its eight legs, roaring as he tore his blade from its side. Its blood, thick and black and sticky splattered to the sand and he dug his heels into the ground, bracing himself for its retaliation. It thrashed – he only just caught its head with the flat of his blade as it tried to ram him full-force.
The Might of Demacia twisted around it, bringing his sword with him in a fatal roll. Its head fell as heavily to the ground as his blade.
Around him he could hear the screaming, the yelling. Feral screeches and deafening roars, the death-gurgles of monsters and men alike mingling on the beach like some kind of gruesome symphony. He squinted his eyes in the darkness – tried to make out something more than dim silhouettes by moonlight – but nothing. A bright flash of light, a colorful beam blazing out into the night. Lux.
The smell of burning flesh.
A growl behind him – the dribbling of noxious spit into the sand. He turned around, blade held ready.
Was there an end?
.
.
.
"Look," he laughed, gesturing with arms wide at the carnage. "Look at what I have wrought."
"Death," gasped the Voidwalker, "death and destruction and despair."
At last, at last – here it was.
The day of reckoning. The marriage.
They had been so wrong, so blind to presume that their universe could be separated into planes of existence, neat little layers that occasionally overlapped. No – no, that was not the order of the universe, not the rite of nature. Nature was in chaos, it was in death and destruction. Valoran would be consumed, and out of nothing, they would be reborn.
He could hear it again on the sea-breeze – the siren song of the Void calling out to him. She had come to Valoran to be wed – her entourage had arrived in advance to celebrate – and the lives she took were to be her bride price in this total union of worlds. No more planes, no more tears, only synthesis, fusion. Everything, everyone of all worlds and the next.
No life, no death, no summoners and no summoned. Only the reality of existence.
Narrowly, Malzahar sidestepped another slash at the end of a nether blade. The Voidwalker grunted as he stumbled heavily to the ground, legs going out beneath him.
A corpse in the making, a living man already dead. The absolute manifestation of all that was, and would be. Envious, so envious. How he wished to embody the Void much the same.
Kassadin would never know, never understand his own perfection – the gift that had been bestowed upon him on that moonless, Icathian night.
"You're a fool, Prophet!" he yelled, struggling to rise again. "You've tampered with forces you cannot comprehend... disrupted a balance you've no idea the significance of!"
Who was the fool?
"I know everything," he rasped in reply, rising from the sand. "I have seen eternity. The Void has shown it to me – and it is wondrous."
There it was again – the melodious call rising from the depths of the sinking sea. Close, so close. She was near the surface, fast approaching. He stopped, turned to look out over the ebon waves.
Look at me, it sang to him. Embrace me, for I have come.
His arms held out, hands splayed wide in welcome; he felt the beat of anticipation, the strength his heart's palpitations both empty in yearning, full in joy. Here, here – the Void, it had come.
A large figure, emerging from the water.
Pain.
A connection reformed, a bridge burnt rebuilt. Chains linking together once more.
No. Not again.
Malzahar sucked in a sharp breath – clutched his chest as he felt it, the resurgence. The bond that should not have been.
In his hand, there was blood.
"It did not show you this."
A dark blade, rising from his chest. The Voidwalker, pressed close to his back – a cold hand, grasping, crushing his neck. Malzahar gasped – gurgled – and reached out to the sea, to his salvation –
To his siren song.
"It ends... with you, Prophet," wheezed the Voidwalker, shoving him bodily to the ground.
The copper of blood, the salt of the ocean on his tongue. He struggled upwards, lifting his head out of receding tides in staggering motions such that he could hear the creaking, the straining of his own neck. He could see it coming, the figure, through darkening vision.
The years were leaving, past and present and future, as the color filtered from his eyes. Nothing but black and white, emptiness without depth. Eternity had left his sight.
And still it sung to him, that haunting voice carried over the waves.
"Liar," he hissed, blood bubbling at his lips. "Liar!"
It had promised him everything.
Death by the Voidwalker, Void incarnate – a betrayal in an end, or a fulfillment in a beginning? Was this his rebirth or his final passing?
Malzahar took a shuddering breath, head collapsing into the sand. The tide would carry his blood away, and nothing else.
It had promised – but still, he had nothing.
.
.
.
The Prophet was dead – dead by his hands.
Kassadin crumbled to his knees, blade going out. His fingers would not move, his legs would not respond. He could feel the chill creeping up his body, the gradual shut-down of his organs. Flesh, black and rotting – already, he had begun to decay.
Ah... To die now... It had not been a good life, but -
He had fulfilled his duty, if nothing else.
.
.
.
Her staff – gone, her energy – gone, her will – not broken.
But was that enough?
It clutched her close to itself – a strange, four-armed embrace of macabre intimacy as it opened its mouth wide. She could see the teeth, the residual blood – smell the death on its breath and feel its warmth. Lux tried in vain, to thrash, to struggle, to move. She had nothing left.
The mage shut her eyes tight.
It bit down.
A crack, as if meeting metal. The monster screeched and tossed her aside, and she landed like a ragdoll in the sand, breathing dirt. There was a sound like a blade meeting chitin and flesh.
Lux coughed, rising shakily as she tried to see what had happened. A tall figure stood before her, stance protective.
"Are you all right?" came the deep, collected voice.
"Shen!"
Flashes of lightning in the distance. The sharp cry of the twirling of blades.
The Kinkou had arrived.
.
.
.
His wailing was high and loud.
An awful sound.
If Shen had had the moment, he might have stopped to watch – to observe the mourning. He might have seen Kog'Maw, floundering piteously at the shoreline, scouring for remnants of the Prophet. He might have seen the way he flailed and pawed at the bloody sand, seen the way he seemed, so desperately, not to understand that the corpse had dissipated, consumed by the dark energies that had sustained it for so long.
But he did not, and so the Eye of Twilight could hear only his terrible howl.
He took stock of the battlefield quickly, helping the youngest Crownguard to her feet as he handed her her staff. Kennen to the east, dashing through the chaos, Akali to the west, in the midst of her bloody dance – where was he needed?
There.
He whirled around, impaling one Voidborn behind Lux as another took up their side. She gasped and stumbled forwards, staff flying up protectively. Feinting left drew a lunge – he seized her by the arm and pulled her around past him, vorpal blade following their arc until it was buried in the beast's head. The girl must be exhausted, to be this vulnerable.
"There's no end to them!" she panted, adjusting her footing until she was standing on her own again. "I don't know how long we can hold."
"Then you must retreat," he replied, yanking the bloody blade from its skull. There was a glint in the distance, at the foot of the mountain, bright even by the thin light of the moon. "Reinforcements are yet to come."
"I can't," she said, drawing in deep breaths. Her head snapped to the side and she flung out lucent singularity, detonating in a bright flash. Pained screeches rose from surrounding shadows. "Case... in point, we need... all the manpower we can get... to hold this."
"Then at least move to a safer position than in the fray."
Arguing her determination was a waste of time, he knew by experience. Shen beckoned for her to follow, stepping nimbly through the carnage. Another Voidborn, leaping – and then dead by the slice of his blade – one springing from the left, caught in a light binding and slain.
These creatures were not comparable to those that had entered the League, no, not by a long shot. But they were many, and *they *were few, and that might be enough to overwhelm them if something didn't happen, quickly. The youngest Crownguard was fast running out of energy, he could tell, and it was too dark for him to see much else of the others.
A sound like thunder.
The earth shook – there was a great cracking, as if the very ground had split – and the ninja glanced quickly over his shoulder. A familiar impact, the grand skyfall of the Artisan of War, leaping from above to join in battle. Another rumble – a mimicry of the Terror of the Void, and yet, not hostile. The Battlecast Prime. He couldn't quite make out their forms, not with only the brief flashes of light spared by weapon and magic alike, but he knew it. They had arrived.
"Here!"
That glint again, piercing the darkness – it was the momentary glow of her shield.
The Radiant Dawn.
.
.
.
She could feel it. Their suffering.
It was as if the entire ocean were crying out to her – the sound of rushing, falling water in the distance like a shuddering groan of pain. The Void was consuming their world, their seas, her people, she could feel it in her very scales.
"Do you have it?" asked the Eye of Twilight, as they converged. Lux bent over, hands on her knees, panting.
"Yes," Nami answered quickly, grip tightening on her staff.
"Let us hope it is worth something," he said, voice grim. Shen drew one sword – impaling it into something behind him in one swift stroke. "Go."
Leona rushed past, bashing aside a Voidborn with her shield as she joined Pantheon in the melee. The Tidecaller could only trail behind.
The cries of the dying grew louder with every step.
.
.
.
Her sword sunk deep into one, and she could barely pull it back out fast enough to catch the lunge of another. She grunted beneath the strain, pushing it back with her shield. It staggered – a spear nailed it into the sand.
She nodded at Pantheon over her shoulder, blowing the hair out of her eyes as her Zenith Blade caught another. A flash step – behind it now. The Radiant Dawn cuffed it over the head with the pommel of her sword.
Somewhere in the distance, past the sounds of rushing blood and her beating heart, she could hear the deafening roar and the earth-trembling explosions of the Machine Herald's creation. It was in the air – blood and battle, death and destruction. They needed to reach the sea.
"Careful!"
Pantheon sprang in front of her, smashing away the beast that had run up in the meanwhile. A quick strike at its heart. Bright eyes in the darkness.
"You too!" she replied, whirling around in a sweeping kick until the next one was on the ground. Its head made a loud crack beneath her heel, and she grimaced, pulling her shield up in front of her.
They were surrounded.
.
.
.
Too many, too late.
Their plan had been to plunge the moon stone into the deep – hope desperately that whatever properties had made it so vital to her people were not just preventatives – but there was no way they could cut a swath through to the ocean. Not with this many.
Nami urged the tides to carry her faster and faster, to where Leona and Pantheon had been mobbed. So close to the sea, she could feel the surge of energy rush to her, as much as it was suffering, and she tried to internalize it – that pain – and make it something more.
"Oceans spill forth!"
It pushed her forward, the great wave she had drawn from the water she carried with her, and it spilled out over the bay, throwing up the Voidborn and sending the rest stumbling. The ebb and flow of the water called to her – springing from friend to foe as she guided it across the battlefield.
And still, they came.
"Tidecaller!" called Leona, as she neared.
"There's no end," muttered the Artisan of War, readying his shield and spear. He shook the water from his helmet. "At this rate, we'll never make it."
"All cannot be lost," insisted the Radiant Dawn, taking a defensive stance at his side.
What had it all been for?
Diana's death, abandoning Kassadin, obtaining the moonstone – what had it all been for? To end things like this, swarmed by the monstrous Voidborn after everything they had done?
The moonstone. The moonstone.
With clumsy hands she screwed the bottom off her staff, catching the sphere as it rolled out. Its pearlescent glow lit up the darkness, and it was then that she realized -
Why had the moonstone been a deterrent?
.
.
.
The chosen of the sun grunted beneath the full force of a heavy blow, heels digging into the sand to maintain her stance. The Voidborn hissed, diving over the top of her shield as it tried to get in a snap at her bare face. Its teeth clicked loudly drawing back – its breath the briefest of puffs of hot air over her skin.
"Leona!" cried the Tidecaller.
She had only a second to look before it lunged again, and she pulled her shield up quickly, catching it on the chin. It screeched loudly as she shook it off.
"We need a solar flare!"
"What?" she huffed, sidestepping it as it hurtled towards her. "But dawn is yet to arrive!"
"Just try!"
Did the child know what she was asking for? To call upon a sun beam in the midst of night?
"There can be no solar flares without the sun!" called back the Radiant Dawn, teeth clenched as she floored the beast with her shield of daybreak.
"Please!" cried Nami - something cracking in her voice.
"I can't!" she gritted out, squaring her shoulders for another charge.
"Trust me!"
There was something bright in the sky.
She glanced up quickly. The moonstone – Nami had thrown it into the air – high, high above the battlefield. In her periphery, the Voidborn was rearing up for another lunge, torn chitin, bloody black, and gnashing teeth. It would go for the throat.
Leona tightened her grip on her Zenith Blade, and then –
She pointed it skywards, and prayed.
.
.
.
There was a loud, horrendous cry.
Brilliant light.
.
.
.
She was blinded.
This much, Nami knew as she collapsed into the sand. Her energy was leaving her, evaporating like dissipating water. Her heart hurt terribly, her chest burned with a frothing kind of feverish relief. This was the end.
The light was dazzling, radiant and golden and warm – so, so warm – and she had seen something wonderful, so very wonderful, in the briefest of seconds before the flash. On the inside, it made her want to cry.
The flare had come from the moon.
.
.
.
In the midst of night, day broke over the battlefield.
Next Chapter: http://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/fancreations/MXQWqEEB-fanfiction-fracture-chapter-21
