Legends of a Fallen King: Zara [Chapter 7: Lost Homelands]
"Five seconds have passed."
Ryze looks directly at me and asks, "Well, did you figure out anything?"
"That was not five seconds."
Ryze shrugs, "You're right, I took a brief pause cause of what was going on. However, it was no longer than seven seconds--I assure you." Ryze's gaze wanders as if he is looking right through me rather than at me. "So you have any idea where we are?"
Where we are? Hold on, at that very moment an eerie blue wisp passed between us. No, rather this blue has completely consumed us. I don't know how I didn't notice. There is a swirling blue fluid surrounding, just like when we traveled into through...
"The realm of-" Ryze interrupts me by placing a hand on my shoulder and shakes his head.
"Look at the ground."
I stare at the ground and notice that we are standing on the same hilltop as where we started. "Oh, so this is just Runeterra right?"
"Yes." Ryze mulls, "That is what is strange."
Strange? I shrug and ask "What's so strange about it?"
"Wait..." Ryze turns and finally looks at me directly. "You are meaning to say you really don't know?"
I shake my non-existent head.
...
"No," I state after I realize how stupid that was.
"You-" Ryze suddenly stops and scratches his head. "I guess it would be easier to show you instead of explaining it," he states as he points to skyward. "Do you see that?"
Looking directly upward, I saw a raging torrent, similar to the one that got us to the mountainside. "You mean that crazy thing?"
"Yes, that crazy thing." Ryze shifts his finger towards me and continues, "This is what is special about this phenomenon."
"Isn't this the same as before?" I ask while I gaze upon the fading streams of mana.
Ryze sighs as he shakes his head. "Hardly. If you notice, there is actually a force keeping us grounded here. Even so, you could easily rise and jump into that vortex yourself. I would suggest this, but..." as Ryze looks up, the vortex fades completely into wisps that dissipate into the air. "As I guessed, this particular phenomenon was over just as quickly as it started."
"Even so, what was special about this particular vortex?"
"These vortexes are teleportation channels. They can only exist if a portal is created. As you've noticed, I use these portals quite frequently to travel." Ryze winces a bit and continues saying, "However, the longer you stay in the realm the more violent the departure is."
No kidding there, but even so, "What does this have anything to do with that vortex then?"
"You still didn't catch the hint?" Ryze takes a deep sigh and explains, "You never entered the realm in the first place."
I'm not in the realm, but swirling mana. You mean...
"What?"
Ryze closes his eyes and shrugs. "I don't know what this means as well, but I sure wanted to see what would have happened if you actually went through that portal."
"Are portals supposed to close this quickly?" I asked out of a whim.
Ryze thought about it for a while.
Hmm...
A long while.
"No," he finally responded, "They are definitely not. If you had the intention of traveling through this portal, it would not have disappeared as quickly as you became aware of its formation. Rather it's as if..." Ryze suddenly pauses and his eyes grow wide. "No way."
Eh? "What do you mean 'no way'?"
"Right here." Ryze points at two vortex styles. "It was impossible to begin with."
I look at the vortex styles which looks exactly the same. "I don't see what you are getting at-"
"It's the direction, not how it looks, that matters," Ryze interjects. "The entrance of a vortex has the medium swirling clockwise, as it converges into the realm while the exit swirls counterclockwise to diverge out of the realm. The vortex we saw swirled counterlockwise which meant the flux was positive."
Spinning vortexes. Wait, left is counterclockwise, right? No left, right?
"What?"
"To put it simply, that was an exit portal not an entrance one."
"Wait, why the heck did I make an exit portal? Wait, how the heck is meditating even related to portals at all?" Am I in over my head? Wait, I don't have one. Ryze is still pondering about this and I could only think of one thing that was possible.
"Did this ever happen while you were alive?"
Now that I think about it, "The mana did swirl around a lot whenever I meditated like this."
"I mean, did it ever swirl into a vortex."
"It never made a vortex like this."
"In that case," Ryze looks through his scrolls, "There must be a part of you somewhere else in this world."
Just as I thought. "So there is a part of me left out there."
Ryze stopped flipping through his tomes and glanced at me. "What, you mean you expected this all along?"
"Don't get me wrong, I thought of this just as you were mentioning it." I think back to her. "However, it does explain a lot of things. Things like why only some parts of my memories are absolutely clear while others aren't. I was guessing that perhaps I was reaching out to my other self to try and find what I was forgetting. Like a vortex for the passage memories rather than people."
"A passage of memories." I caught a glimpse of Ryze gulping silently as he looked back at his tome.
"What do you make of this?"
Ryze stares at me frozen solid, as if hesitating to state something. Eventually he manages to state, "There is a great secret in the study of magic. It is called Reminiscence."
"Wait, so reminiscence as in remembering?"
"Yes, as in remembering." Ryze scratched his head and continues saying, "I must admit, I believed it to be preposterous. However, it was passed down through generations within the scrolls. I would be preposterous to doubt them."
"Eh? What's so strange about magic with memories?"
"Magic with memories?" Ryze waves the idea off. "That's perfectly normal. What isn't normal is memories traveling across the cosmos. What isn't normal is a spell that utilizes all the four forces of the universe simultaneously."
Memories across the cosmos? Forces of the universe? "Can I take a look at this?"
"Oh, by all means scour through all the dangerous secrets of magic known to carve galaxies."
I can feel the snark emanating from his words, but even so...
"So, yes?"
Ryze hands me the tome he was looking at. The title apparently says, "The Universal Will of Mankind."
Wait, what? I've seen this before. These characters...
EHH?!
"Oye be careful with that! Did you figure something out?"
No. This is impossible. Is it impossible? Wait. Hold on.
"You can read that title?"
"No, it's something he told me."
"Wait, who?"
"You know, the prophet."
Ryze drops all the scrolls he had.
EHH?!
I flipped through all of the documents and found all the things he shared with me. Memories were coming back. Hymns of the Ballad of Streams came back to me. I remembered the mechanics behind the creator of the universe literally being the largest physical element, which the prophet dubbed: Life. I felt all the stories of his adventures showering my mind.
"Uh, Zara? Why are you crying?"
Waves of guilt passed through me as I realized. "You are way in over your head."
"That said, there is no reason you should be ashamed of what you don't know. Nor should you be of what you can't do. You only need to have faith in what you do know, so you may save yourself in the future. Then you can look back and Reminiscence on the things you have done."
"You mean 'reminisce'?"
"No," The prophet said. "I mean Reminiscence."
Wait. "That's it."
"What is it?"
"How do you cast this spell?"
"Reminiscence, wait how did you even-"
"Yes, that spell, how do you cast it?"
Ryze opens the tome and stops at a page with many glyphs. "You must channel mana into a pattern like so," Ryze answers as he creates a large circle with from string of arcane bolts. If I had to guess, the certain something I did must have something to do with this super sword I got.
"Where is my sword?"
"What? You mean the one on your belt?"
"No, not this crusty old thing, my big sword."
"Oh, well in that case," Ryze weaves this arcane circle a bit to remake one of the patterns in the tome. "Just think about it."
"It? Like the sword?"
"Yes, the sword."
I reach out my left hand to the sky and imagine a titanic sword crashing down from the- Oh.
"Well I guess you have your sword, so now what?"
I have done so much already. I cut through all those... fish. I don't want to go anywhere near those... fish. I got this sword, well I still have it. Nothing is happening though. Dang, I bet Ryze would know what to do right now... Wait.
"Zara?"
I guess this makes sense. It's the only way. "Catch my sword."
"Wait, hold on. Why me- oh shit."
A shroud of mana fills the air.
"I can see him do you see him Ryze?"
Ryze falls silent. Well, it only makes sense, he is him after all.
I don't get it. "Master, can you help me with this?"
"Sure, what do you need help with Ryze?"
I point at the glaring issue. Like two runes? Two runes, seriously? Two runes parallel to each other with one spell. "How is this even possible?"
"Oh, this again?"
"Please, just tell me how it works."
Master Tyrus just laughed and asked sarcastically, "Seriously?"
"I've been working on this thing for a whole week, I haven't made any progress with the arcane ever since this!"
"For good reason too," Master glances over me and points at the center of the moment-flux diagram. "If I recall, you are still a bit rusty on accurately centering your target."
"Come on now, what good is that in this scenario?"
My master raises an eyebrow at the question. "Really now, did you just ask me why keeping the center of mass aligned with the snare zone is important for a telekinetic spell?"
I felt a bop on my head, which was the tome he was reading if I had to guess. However, it rolled off my head and started to fall. I scrambled to try and grab it, but before it even hit the ground, the tome was surrounded by an arcane veil supported by two runes of tribulation. The tome was then rubber-banded back into the center of the two runes.
"Telekinesis is largely based on gravity. We are the ones who give this gravity form through electromagnetism. In the end, the result is gravitic friction. If you know diddly squat about the nature of friction, you should know that static friction is higher than dynamic. Well, in this case it is ridiculously higher, more than tenfold. If anything overcomes the static friction, the dynamic friction is going to make the snare feel extremely weak."
"As you just learned Ryze," He taps the center of the diagram. "The strength of the friction in general is based on the the mass of whatever is contained within the snare zone. And since you are using a regular shape to contain an irregular object, you need to rely on aligning the center of mass of the object with the center of the snare zone."
"That's easy for you to say," I attempt to snare the tome as well. As always, it ends up a bit lopsided, swiveling like it's on a hook. "But how do you even control where it snares, doesn't it just happen automatically?"
"Automatically? You dunce. It obviously can happen automatically, but the state of lowest entropy is not at the center of mass. That's why you need to apply a strong electromagnetic field in the first place. It means you are not putting out sufficient magnetic force."
Jeez, so I need to polarize even more. I can't argue with Tyrus anymore. I feel like my head is spinning with every moment I think of this.
"In other news, we're here."
Here? Ah, home sweet home at last. The soft glow of the wisps of fire. The humble bellows of women alongside their children. The cleaved flesh of warriors rotting away in the burning prairie. "What the hell?"
"Hold on Ryze," Master Tyrus implores as he looks off in the carnage with an arm holding me back. With a grave and stern glare, master turns to me and declares, "It's here."
No way. Impossible. They wouldn't do that. They know.
"Let's go." We change course to the council of mages. "It has already begun."
At the council of mages, there is nothing but chaos. Summoners are barking at each other slapping scrolls depicting convoluted occultic magic. Shamans scour through tomes in search of some answer. Druids call upon the ancient wisdom of the forest to see if fate can be averted.
Master Tyrus steps forward and examines the entire temple. He abruptly grabs the shoulder of a passing shaman and asks, "What happened?"
"I'm sorry sir really got to get to-"
"I'm asking a fairly simple question." Some mages start to notice master and stop in their tracks. Tyrus then turns and directs the question to everyone, "What happened?"
"Rune Sage Tyrus, is that you?" One of the druids ask.
"Yes, it is I. Now can you stop wasting my time?"
The mages are quite taken aback. Why the hell are they the ones surprised? They are the ones responsible for this mess. If anything, it is moreso that nobody wants to say anything.
"We made a huge error," one summoner steps up and admits. "You might have noticed that none of the warlocks are here today."
"I noticed alright. What does it matter?"
The summoner goes silent for a moment, and before anyone else steps up to answer, she continues, "Unfortunately, world runes fell in their hands."
Oh god. My head- ears. I didn't hear that correctly, right? My head is pounding now, I don't think I did.
"You let the warlocks, the battlemages, the generals of mystic warfare, get their hands on world runes?"
The army has a foundation of this world-
"World 'runes' as in more than one?"
"Two world runes."
Foundations of this world...
"What is happening."
"Targo Warlocks have engaged with the Shuriman Warlocks."
"With world runes?"
They are playing around with it?
"Yes."
"NO!" I scream insane fury. "You let those monsters duke it out with World Runes?"
"We didn't inten-"
"WORLD RUNES?" I bellow horrific rage. "We trusted YOU to keep this from ever happening. Look what you monsters have done."
"We aren't the-"
"LOOK AT IT!"
"BAH! Who is this blundering fool? We are here trying to fix the shit that we didn't even cause. You're yelling at us that we didn't do our job? It's not our fault that the World Rune was snatched away from us. It was the traitorous warlocks who schemed a plot to use the explosive powers of the world runes for some loony reason of displaying the 'Maker's Might' to the world. Where were you when these fools crashed through our heavily fortified defenses with the god forsaken Watchers at their side? Hell, who are you to even judge our-"
"Pipe down," my master states in disappointment. "Know that you are talking to Ryze, the Rune Mage. My only disciple. Know that I have indeed trusted you to keep the World Runes secure. Know that the World Runes are now not secure."
A lingering rage sparks from the mage. "We couldn't do anything, no matter how hard we tried. We can't stop them, no matter how hard we try."
"I understand, and we must move on." The pressure rises as every mage in the room lets out a deep melancholic sigh. "How bad is the warzone?"
"So far it has been only physical carnage, in attempts to interrupt the opposing warlocks. It's at a standstill right now."
"How long has it been like this?"
"13 hours."
Master Tyrus looks out of the temple into the warping skies on either side of the battle field. "This world burns."
What?
"The battle field will detonate in about an hour."
No no hold on, "My family is down there. What do we do?"
Master looks at me and all the other mages look away, "Run."
"Run? As in flee? No, my village. My- no. You want me to just abandon my village?"
"I don't want you to abandon anything." Tyrus then addresses the entire council of mages present asking, "Who is brave enough to charge into war ridden grounds to rescue your families?"
Many mages fall silent, some break down in tears.
Tyrus turns to me and reiterates, "Run."
In complete disbelief I can only shake my head. An hour should be enough time to save some people right? It doesn't take long at all to make a teleportation gate. Suddenly one of the crying druids holds back his tears and calmly states, "We must live, so no one else dies."
I direct my gaze to Master Tyrus. He answers my gaze by saying, "You are not the only one."
Waves of dread fills my soul as the mages part their own ways to avert the blast zone. Before I knew it, I was atop a mountain following Tyrus. It felt like the world collapsed beneath me. No. It actually did collapse beneath me. I didn't want to turn around, but Tyrus caught me before I fell in the pit of our greatest failure. I bore witness to the manifestation of anxiety. The nightmare that is a Nova-Class Ion Bomb.
It looked like a cloud, but I knew better. The plasma had lightning coursing through it. The mountain, the village, the war-zone ascended into a cosmic state. The state in which galaxies are created. The cataclysm that is akin to a star nova on a minute scale. Such power coursed through this plasma which replaced what I known and loved.
Tyrus shook his head. "I am sorry Ryze. I have failed my duty as The Rune Sage. Entrusting the safety of the world runes to some fools who don't even comprehend. We who know the runic arts are not on some bullshit quest passed down from the gods. The truth is we are the only ones who can protect this world from the destruction this world gave us."
My master grabs my hand and picks me up. "When this world burns, we burn with it. We remember these scars so as to never be set ablaze again." A burning determination of justice and rage, Master Tyrus looked past the atrocity and moved forward. So I followed.
In this burning rage, I remembered the part of me that became a monster.
The mana coursing around us swiftly converged upon the arcane circle until it became volatile and exploded into a wisp.
"Huh, so my sword can do some pretty weird things."
I tried to warm the mood a bit, but Ryze had no words for me. I felt a chill as the flame that represents my presence started dying down.
"I'm sorry Ryze." I paused as I looked at Ryze's blank expression then continued saying, "I didn't know this is what happened here."
For a moment I thought Ryze wouldn't say anything with his vacant demeanor, but he surprisingly replied with, "I guess it makes sense that you are, but you don't need to be."
"What?"
Ryze looks at Piltover and says, "Everytime I go here, I remember this anyways. Call me insensitive, but I've grown numb to this shit now."
"That's not insensitive, that's desensitized."
"I guess you are right there," Ryze chuckles lightly. "But now I can't even invite myself to an atrocity like this." Eh? Ryze glances over at me and continues saying, "The fools here on Piltover are stuck in the mindset of using magic like fuel. They think they can control the powers that be to use it for commercial use. If I ever collaborated with these fools, they would legitimately believe they could use the world runes to power their toasters."
"Hah, that's pretty ridiculous."
"It's all very ridiculous." Ryze glances over at me for a second then looks back at Piltover. "I would ask why you did what you did, but I don't even want to think about it. All I want to know is if you figured something out from it all."
I'm not quite sure what to make of this. "If anything, I would say the other part of me is a monster."
"Why do you say that?"
"I felt a familiar presence with Tyrus near the end. It was along the same lines as that black mist."
He fell silent once more. I don't wish to stir up bad thoughts, but this is the truth. I cannot lie, I cannot hide from what is to come. Ryze heaved a melancholic sigh...
"Do you think you will make the same mistake as Tyrus, Zara?"
Mistake? "Yes." Ryze looks a bit unnerved with that response. "I will certainly make the same mistake. I have made the mistake in the past."
"Why would you make the same mistake if you have done so already?"
"It is because I didn't die." Ryze didn't quite understand what I meant, so I clarified by saying. "I didn't die, I didn't drown, I didn't lose. So I must live." I stared directly at Ryze and declared, "My greatest mistake was to live when I clearly should have died. I will repeat the mistake Tyrus made for the same reason you fled instead of saving your village: We must live, so no one else dies."
"Well, aren't you dead?"
"Ha, HA! HAHA! Isn't that the point? If a dead fool like me can't rest, there is no peace in this world." Taking in the somber reality of the brief duration of my potential life, I finish by saying, "So I must live until there is peace in this world. Then maybe, I can rest peacefully."
Ryze stares at me with what seems like a vacant, disappointed expression, but a tear rolls down his cheek. "You are a foolish king. However, your foolishness comes in the form of selflessness that knows no bounds. I will trust in this selflessness and have faith in the world rune that is your titanic sword. You may have given up your crown, but you now inherit the weight of the world. When we met, you carried the 
Blade of the Ruined King. Now you carry the Blade of the Reborn King."
"Hey bro, why are you crying? This isn't really a goodbye."
"I'm afraid it is Zara. There is no way in hell I'm going into Piltover." Ryze picks up his tomes and scrolls then starts drawing runes on the ground, "This is where we must part ways."
"How unfortunate. Do you really think I know enough about arcane magic?"
Ryze laughs and assures me, "I'm sure you know enough, after all you are a Disciple of Skrolle's."
"Hmm, disciple of scrolls. I like that."
Ryze then opens a portal to the mana realm and asks, "Are you intent on going into Piltover? In all honesty, we could go somewhere else."
"Well," I gaze outward at the horseshoe shaped landmass with the city of Piltover somehow plopped in the center of the aquatic bay. "Let's just say I am chasing a memory. A memory I will remember."
Ryze waves farewell as he disappears into the portal. I take a deep breath of the forest air and the magnificent stench of the rotting bear corpse nearby. I descend the foothills of the mountains towards Piltover with fond memories of long lost homelands.
So ends chapter 8 of Zara, the Cryptic King's lore. So ends the first arc of the Legend of a Fallen King. I am expecting to create three arcs of this lore. So, you can assume around 21 chapters for Zara.
With the end of the first arc is also the end of this continuous stream of posts. I don't have the next chapter ready yet, but I have significantly worked on it. If you want to make an overall review of the story, now is the time to do so. Also, here is the place to do it since it is the end of this arc. We don't want to be spoiling anything for our fellow readers. (Even though I particularly don't care either way.)
It might seem strange that
Ryze is being emotional here, but he has been bottling up quite a lot of stress over his quest. I mean, his whole village was obliterated by the very thing he's studying. He killed his own mentor, Tyrus. He also killed many people he trusted, but started to abuse World Runes. On top of all this, he abandoned those who relied on World Runes for survival. Ryze has been dealing with a lot of frustration and despair lately. However, now that Zara came into his life. He's finally gotten that relief for all the sadness he has been dealing with thus far.
Thank you for sticking around to the end of this arc. I hope to see you again when we advance toward the technological metropolis in: Dawn upon Zaun. [zombie-brand-mindblown]
Arc 1: Our King Returns
- A Distant Memory
- Conquering the Abyss
- Runic Affinity
- Yearn to Learn
- Forged from Sand and Runes
- The Blue Sea
- Pain and Pride
- Lost Homelands
Arc 2: Method to the Madness 9. Dawn upon Zaun 10. Good Morning Ghost 11. Knight of the Full Noon 12. Madness of Man
