Of Silence and Scars, Chapter 24

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XXIV Sona rubbed the weariness from her eyes. She thought back to last night, smiling sadly knowing now she would have to do without Draven for a week or so. She couldn’t stay in Noxus forever, but perhaps he would visit Ionia again soon. A tap on her shoulder broke her train of thought. Irelia stood in full battle gear, “You alright to fight?” Sona nodded and rose, swinging her etwahl around to her front to check the strings and make any last minute adjustments. The locker room at the institute for the blue team was bustling with activity as they prepared for the big match. All were wary however, the kidnappings wouldn’t be forgotten. Not every game it occurred, but it had been awhile… Sona felt her skin crawl as she got an unshakable feeling something terrible was going to happen. The locker rooms had no cameras for obvious reasons, they had to get out of here and back into the world. Soraka saw her friends face and walked over. “Hey, hey. What’s wrong?” Sona signed her concerns. Soraka put her arms on the slim shoulders of the Maven of the Strings. “It’s going to be fine, they have tripled security around the locker room and once you get out onto the rift you are safe! I will be watching from the stands as you kick Shurima’s sandy butt, ok?” Sona nodded and thanked her for the comforting words. But the feeling was not shaken. Every moment dragged on until at last the light shown above the door to the portal room. The Ionian team marched into the dark room as Sona waved one last goodbye to her friend. Inside, the Shuriman team piled in from the other side, illuminations from the 10 summoning pads illuminating their faces in an ominous glow. Captains of the teams strode to the center of the black room to shake hands before loading on to start the match. Azir and Irelia reached out to clasp hands when they both stopped. The room had gone cold… A puff of frost vented from the Will of the Blades nostrils as she huffed and looked around the room. Cameras on the walls panned violently as operators took manual control from security rooms to try and discern the situation. The walls of the room slowly became coated in ice, spreading to cover each door and freeze it shut. From out of the darkness behind the summoning pads a faint purple aura glowed in the darkness, like the sun behind a dense fog. An ominous female voice filled the chilled air, “Behold Valoran, your champions mean nothing before the might of the Watchers!” The ice coating the room shattered and exploded towards the center of the room, quickly enveloping both teams and shoving them violently into one frozen cocoon. Sona couldn’t move an inch as she saw Lissandra and several of the crystal creatures that had attacked her with the Noxian party on the road emerge from the darkness. She addressed the cameras directly at this point. “All of you pathetic mortals will kneel and freeze before the true lords of this realm! Your time is over, the sun will set for the last time and ice will coat the corpses of any who resist destiny!” With a violent wave of her hand all the cameras shattered and she tore open a void portal behind her. She approached the glass and tapped on it playfully. “Hello? Anyone in there? Hahaha! Azir you old bird, why do you never visit? Emperor of the Sands too good to see the Ice Queen? No matter. We will have tons of time to talk.” Lifting the ice cocoon with an elegant gesture, she took them into the portal with her as her henchmen held the doors shut from the battering of the Institute guard. The end game had begun…

Swain set down the scroll he had been idly playing with as his company arrived. Draven, Darius, Katarina, Urgot, Leblanc, Talon, and Morgana gathered in the conference room. Vladimir crept around the back, admiring random objects. He hardly ever was called to a meeting. Sion’s titanic form leaned heavily on one of the stone supports jutting up into the ceiling at exact intervals around the room. He cleared his throat with a violent hacking noise and all eyes drifted to him. He began the briefing, “I have been attempting to locate the source of the recent kidnappings at the Institute. Recently through the efforts of our lead interrogator,” he gestured to Urgot, “we have persuaded an agent of the void to enlighten us to what he knows. That and personal research have led to what we now know. Lissandra has returned and is just as hell-bent as ever to return those damned Watchers. She is amassing mages of the highest caliber by kidnapping them from the League by using an object called a void stone.”
He slid an open tome with a picture of a smooth purple gemstone across the table for all to see. “A voidstone is a minor rune in the void. There are hundreds of them deep within the infinite space of that dark realm. They are things of minor use to creatures of the void, much like our runes we use in the Institute of War.” He paused for a moment. “But void stones are different when interacting with fibers from our realm. The new material reacts violently with the void material, awakening power no one of the void can harness. The stone is a parasite of sorts, feeding off of the life energy it is unaccustomed to. But, as most links do, this goes both ways. This allows the user to now discover powers of the void. The prime example we have known for years but didn’t know it I suspect. It is a rumor that a fragment of such a stone interacted with Kassadin in that cyclopean city the day he got his powers. That was only a fragment, allowing him to travel the void briefly. The full stone has the power to open portals from a distance for an extended duration.”
“I had a hard time pinning down the object in question because no one object could open void rifts and command voidlings to do the user’s bidding. But Lissandra is the key to that. She is creating her own army of creatures made of equal parts ice and void magic. We have designated them “the Forged” since they are born of her imagination and come in various shapes and sizes. It is not entirely clear why normal voidlings were present in the attack, but I believe she has assistance seeing as how one would have to be of void origin to even locate the original stone for her to use. I do not yet know why they are working together to bring the Watchers back, the void has shown no interest in the religions of man before.”
“Finally, I have checked my various sources and no one has heard from Ashe in nearly a week. She usually sends out requests for help against barbarian incursions,”
Darius grunted and chimed in, “Which usually just means its Tuesday in the Freljord.”
Swain continued, “Agreed. But she has not sent out any communication. This leads me to think Lissandra has already besieged her, striking down any attempts to communicate. The base of operations must be in the Freljord. She knows we are close on her heels, since she sent Kog’maw to destroy our progress so far. I need all of you to be ready for action, once I can figure out their numbers and how long we have until the ceremony, I will call on you for a mission into the Freljord. I will probe the Demacian network to see how they are coming along on their investigation. I won’t lie, this looks bleak. Dismissed.”
They all dispersed, thinking about what had just been revealed. Draven walked with Darius in the direction of his home. “We know where they are, why don’t we just hit them?”
Darius grunted, “We don’t know how many of them there are. Swain is cautious, but it has worked out for him so far. I think he fears if we march in force then someone may take the advantage to attack our abandoned territory. We aren’t a culture to take one for the greater good Draven.”
Draven waved a hand of dismissal, “Screw the greater good, these assholes tried to kill us! They need a good long chat with my blades to ask why such an offense was necessary” he smirked.
They arrived at Draven’s house, where they saw Soraka banging on Draven’s door. He rushed over and shouted at her, “Hey! I don’t know what he said to you, but I’ll apologize. My door can be quite a chore when he’s drunk but he’s a good wingman at the bars I assure you. You don’t have to rough him up,” Draven joked.
Soraka looked flustered and scowled at Draven, “I regret this already, so can you not be a complete tool for a moment and just listen? I didn’t know where else to turn!” Soraka’s eyes glimmered with concern.
Draven quickly turned serious. “What happened?”
“Sona… Lissandra took her!” 
Draven’s knuckled went white and a trickle of blood ran down his hand as his fingernails dug into the flesh of his palm. He told her he would get her back and rounded quickly back to the Spire. Darius followed on his heels. Draven hoped the Watcher’s didn’t mind if all of the cult followers drowned in their own blood.