PROJECT: Toothcomb

Whether there were any walls or a ceiling, it was difficult to say. The room was total blackness. Its only feature was the spotlight, and the thing within the spotlight.

'Minister Montrose,' said a voice. A woman. 'You sent for me?'

'Yes,' said another voice, presumably Montrose. 'You heard?'

'Yes, it happened again. It's an outrage.' The woman's voice trembled. 'Do we have any idea who?'

'None,' Montrose said. 'So far.'

'I'm curious...' said the woman, but her voice trailed off.

'Yes?' Montrose asked.

'I mean...why didn't we find out who did this after Yasuo...?'

Montrose grunted. 'I wanted to at the time, but the old Minister didn't.'

'Ahh,' said the woman. There was a sudden understanding in her tone. 'Well now you have no such Barrier.'

'Quite.'

'So now you're using this to look for it? I thought you only used it to search for candidates to the League...' the woman's voice trailed off again. 'Oh.'

'Oh,' said Montrose. 'Yes. Nobody simply takes four champions from Summoners Rift. No cruddy teleport gets through the transduction barrier.'

'Which means...'

'Which means whoever took the others and made them....whatever they are now...has skills and resources. Skills and resources that could be useful to us,' Montrose said.

'And clearly they should be brought here.' the woman said. She understood.

'Yes.' A pause. 'How are the others?'

'Resting,' said the woman. 'They have been through an ordeal.'

'Do they know anything?'

'Nothing. They couldn't even say where they were. Only that it was nowhere in Valoran. Or anywhere else that is known to us.'

There was a pause. Then: 'What do you see?' Montrose said. Not to the woman, but to the thing within the spotlight.

The hands of the thing moved across its smooth blank head as though it were a crystal ball. IT had no eyes, no nose, no mouth. Just a blank, fleshy sphere that sat atop its long neck. Tiny arcs of energy spat between its head and its fingertips as it caressed itself. 'Nothing,' it said. It's voice sounded like someone drowning. 'I see...nothing.'

'Keep looking,' Montrose said.

'Maybe it's...' said the woman.

'Yes?'

'On the other side.'

'Yes,' said Montrose. 'I had considered that.' A pause again. 'A team should be sent.'

'But that's impossible. Nobody crosses The Stain. You know that, it's the reason we've only explored one side of Runeterra. Not even this thing can see past The Scar,' the woman protested. 'Nobody who has ever been there has come back.'

'Do you know what The Stain is?' Montrose asked.

'As much as anyone. It's the tear in the fabric of reality that brought magic to Runeterra. Nobody knows how it happened, but some say that something crashed into the world billions of years ago and tore a rent in the fabric of the universe. We can't see through it, scry through it, transport through it. It's impenetrable and impassible and separates Valoran from The Great Mystery on the Other Side.'

'Was impassible. But that was before.' Montrose said.

'Before what?'

'Before I found a way through it.'

'How?'

'Vel'koz. It thinks it can open a tunnel through the void between one side of The Stain and the other.'

'You can't trust that thing.'

'Despite its intelligence, its needs are pretty simple.' There was a smile in Montrose's voice. 'As long as there is something to interest Vel'koz, it will do as we say. And what better to interest it than The Great Mystery on the Other Side? Besides, it kept our secret. It could have told the previous Minister that I had planned to overthrow him. It didn't.'

There was an awkward silence. 'So why did you call me here?' the woman asked.

'Since you are Senior Summoner now, you will go with Vel'Koz to cross the Stain. You will take Fiora and Yi with you, and you will take the Seer. Once across, you will find the culprit behind these abductions and...transformations and you will bring that culprit back to the Institute of War.'

The woman sighed. 'Not Zed or Leona?'

'No. Zed can't be trusted. And Leona is being kept for study. Yasuo is useless, as he hardly remembers what happened to him anyway.'

'Very well. I shall set out immediately.'

'Good,' Montrose said. 'I will have the seer loaded aboard a ship for you, and you will depart within the day. Good luck.'

'I'll need it.'

'You will.'