The Hunt Begins: Facing the Manifestation of Death (Katarina's Legacy - Part 2)
If you haven't read Part 1 yet, here's the link: http://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/skin-champion-concepts/49xvwvt9-beyond-the-lines-a-story-of-love-and-league-katarinas-legacy-part-1
Alright, on to Part 2!
Lamb knelt to the ground and examined the tracks. They were fresh – a set of footprints leading away from the Demacian walls and into the forest. Whoever had left these tracks was either brave – or very stupid – to leave such an easy trail.
Wolf scratched at a tree eagerly. “Are we going to chase it, Lamb?”
“Patience, dear Wolf,” Lamb replied. “It may not be this creature’s time yet. It has yet to come face to face with us.”
“Then why do I feel we have met it before?”
“Maybe we have. If this creature is a League champion, then we cannot kill it …”
“But we just killed some champions the other day!” Wolf whined. Sometimes he sounded like a child, but Lamb had always allowed it. After all, he was the emotional member of the pair, while she felt little.
“… Yet,” Lamb finished. Wolf slowly accepted her authority and trotted over. His black coat was still bloody from the battle in Noxus that had only been a short time ago. Lamb and Wolf noticed the passing of time at a different rate than the humans, so what felt like weeks or months to the mortals was a mere blink to the duo.
Lamb nocked an arrow and raised her bow to aim between the trees, looking for a target. After a moment, she said, “It is time. We will hunt.”
Wolf howled happily and bounded into the forest. Lamb quietly followed.
Lux was getting the feeling that something was off about this forest. It had been weeks since they had raced home to save Katarina’s life, but even then something in this forest hadn’t agreed with her. So she had come today to try and figure that out. Now in a small clearing lined with all different types of trees, she had paused to see if she could find the source of the uncomfortable feeling.
On the topic of Katarina, she had recovered quite quickly and was now training to join the Dauntless Vanguard, which Garen was in charge of. She had been a little surprised to find out her brother and his supposed nemesis were in love, but she had suspected it ever since the day Garen returned from his first battle with her. As she had told Garen while Katarina was still in the hospital, it wasn’t her he needed to convince – it was her parents. And boy, had that been a challenge. The argument they’d had over her boyfriend Ezreal seemed like a miniature quarrel compared to the full-blown fight they’d had about Katarina. Lux was sure Katarina was going to pull out some shocking ace hidden up her sleeve – no pun intended – but her parents had finally relented, after hearing Katarina explain her current position.
Even though Noxus and Demacia were ancient rivals, Lux and Garen’s parents had basically had no choice but to accept the girl who had single-handedly brought about the downfall of her original faction. Having switched allegiance to Demacia, she was now Demacian nobility, due to the fact she had been in line for the position of general of the Noxian army, the faction’s highest position available, before tearing her home apart. And Lux had a feeling they were a bit impressed by the fact that she’d been able to use Garen’s sword. That weapon had been magically tailored to only work for him, but the thing with enchantments was that if you found the person meant to be your other half, the enchantment worked for that person too. So it had been a combination of things that had finally got her parents to quit pushing the topic and let it be.
Her thoughts drifted to Ezreal, who had told her he’d be arriving in Demacia in a few days the last time she’d seen him in the League. She missed him desperately, despite the fact that she had her parents, her brother, and his future wife all there for her at –
An arrow whizzed inches by her head. She had ducked at the last possible second, sensing the change in the air as it was launched. Once she heard the arrow hit a tree, she looked to see whose it was. Different Demacians used different feathers for their arrow fletching, and there were a few fellow nobles who didn’t really like her and would go out of their way to try and catch her off guard.
But instead of seeing a wood arrow with colored feathers, Lux’s eyes found a snow-white arrow with pure white feathers. Fear raced down her spine. There was only one bow that could fire that exact arrow. And only one being could use that bow.
Lux looked behind her and saw Lamb standing at the edge of the clearing, a second arrow nocked on her bowstring, and Wolf crouching at her side, waiting for the command to chase.
Why couldn’t the Demacians just accept I was one of theirs? This was getting old. The being-chased-by-angry-Demacians-through-a-possibly-haunted-forest part, that is. What was their problem? I was on their side now, and I physically couldn’t return to Noxus, it being in ruins and no one living in the fallen faction’s territory anymore.
I dodged a very poorly thrown sword, watched it cleave a sapling in half, and then focused my sight in front of me again. If I tripped, I’d be done for. I was trying to avoid a confrontation, but if they got close enough, I’d have to kill them in self-defense. After all, the only weapons I had on me were the few small daggers tucked into my clothes at various points, and they were too small for any use except throwing.
I threw my weight to the side to dodge another lousy sword throw, pushed up off of a tree trunk, and swung myself up into the branches. Now I’d have a better chance of losing them by running on the tree branches, since I could take routes that would be impassable to my grounded pursuers.
“Stand and fight, you Noxian witch!” I heard one of them shout. If these guys didn’t force me to attack them, or lived through my assault, Garen would have their heads for just calling me names in the first place. I was wishing I hadn’t insisted my overprotective true love train his new Vanguard recruits instead of stay with me when I went to go buy some food at the market. These guys had seen me there and decided to stir up trouble by walking over to me and drawing their swords. The next thing I knew, I was running for my life.
Well, that’s life when you’re the most feared assassin of a faction’s greatest rival, and then you move to that faction after destroying their rival, also your own home. Sounds crazy enough already, right? Wouldn’t you think they’d thank you for destroying their greatest enemy? Well, Prince Jarvan IV and his wife Shyvana did, and so did the king (and of course my true love, the head of the royal bodyguard, his sister, and – grudgingly – their parents), but the common folk didn’t, I guess. Which explains why I’m running for my life if I didn’t have a proper explanation before.
“Come back here!” I heard one of my pursuers yell as they chased me through the undergrowth. Their footsteps were rather loud – it made it easy for me to start making my way back to Demacia without them hearing the change in my direction.
After a few moments, their footsteps faded. I must have lost them, so I dropped to the ground and started running. After all, the trees were good for losing a tail, but the ground was still the fastest place to run.
But then I heard a familiar voice yell the one word I used to fear and now used as my own battle cry, and it stopped me in my tracks.
Lux needed my help.
“DEMACIA!”
Lux’s cry echoed throughout the forest as Final Spark cleaved the clearing in two with its deadly brilliance. Of course Kindred had dodged it. Lamb had merely vaulted to the side, and Wolf had followed in her shadow. Lux knew that if she was going to get the duo to back off, she’d need to trap them so they couldn’t dodge her spell again. And in order to do that, she needed to get within Lamb’s firing range. Which was a hands-down bad idea, no matter which way you looked at it.
Lux groaned inwardly. Why did she always get the hardest opponents, inside League and outside of it? And why were Lamb and Wolf even trying to kill her? She knew that since Kindred were the manifestation of death here on Runeterra, they were allowed to kill anyone. But why her, out of all of the possible targets they could mark? She knew she hadn’t done anything that would give them reason to mark her for death.
Lux stopped debating Kindred’s reasons for hunting her and darted to the side, barely escaping Wolf’s jaws. She tossed a blind Lucent Singularity behind her, and hearing Wolf’s yelp after she detonated it, knew she’d scored a hit. Whether or not he’d back off, she didn’t know – since she wasn’t running, Lamb was allowed to shoot, but she was also fighting, which could be considered refusing to die. In that case, Wolf would be allowed to attack her as well.
_This is complicated_, she thought, dodging Lamb’s second arrow by flattening to the ground. Instantly, she rolled to her left to avoid Wolf’s pounce. His whine of frustration quickly changed to a howl.
Lux sat up and saw Wolf rejoin Lamb at the edge of the clearing.
“More are coming …” Wolf growled in delight.
“… To face their fate,” Lamb finished.
And as Lux listened, she could hear the pounding of footsteps and voices shouting.
There was currently only one person who could incite such behavior in Demacians, whether on purpose or simply because they saw her outside.
Katarina was on the way.
Dang it! They were back on my tail!
Somehow, the men I’d tricked had found me again. Whether it was because they’d decided to head home after losing me and then found me again, or I’d never truly lost them in the first place, I was once again running for my life.
Why was my life so complicated lately? For once I was trying to help someone, and these guys still weren’t giving me breathing room.
Swinging back up into a tree, I climbed higher to try and see where my future sister-in-law was. While I was looking for her, I also had to try and keep my thoughts off of her, because thinking about Lux would lead to thinking about Garen, and that would distract me from my task.
When I was finally far up enough to see the nearby clearing I guessed Lux was in – and far up enough that my pursuers’ attempts to climb the tree held no part of my attention – I froze. The situation was worse than I’d feared.
I’d thought Cassiopeia had come looking for revenge at first. She had survived the battle at Noxus, as far as we knew, and definitely would have been mad at both the Crownguards and me, so I guessed that she would take her anger out on whomever she found first.
But it wasn’t my younger sister waiting in the clearing for me. It was Kindred.
Thankfully, I could tell that Lux was still alive. The ruckus my pursuers were making had probably distracted the duo to a possibly larger – and more successful – hunt.
But I had to get there soon, with the men on my tail, in order to get Lux out alive.
Lamb stood completely still at the edge of the clearing, waiting for the foolish mortals to make their way to the clearing. She and Wolf were ignoring the young mage for now – it was foolish to focus on the small prey when a larger, easier one was on its way.
Wolf was overly eager now, since he knew he’d get at least one chase. The two still had to abide by their own rules, but Lamb knew that her companion would scare the prey into running so he could chase it, if he had to.
“Patience, dear Wolf,” she whispered. “They are coming. And once they are here, they will realize their mistake.”
“They are running to us, for once,” Wolf replied. “But soon these creatures will see their mistake, and turn to flee.”
“And that is when …”
“… We will strike!”
Lux watched the duo prepare for the slaughter that was coming. She quickly made sure she was uninjured before quietly picking herself up off the ground and moving to the edge of the forest. There, she cast the first spell she’d ever learned, the one that rendered her invisible when she’d cast it by accident. That way, now she _and_ Kindred were invisible. Well, Katarina would be able to see the duo, but her pursuers wouldn’t, unless they were champions too.
But that was about as likely as Bard strolling into the clearing at that exact moment. Champions knew the rules. They wouldn’t try to kill each other outside of the League – except for when she and Garen had killed Darius and Draven to save Katarina’s life. To be honest, she was happy the annoying Noxian brothers weren’t a part of the League anymore. Just a week before the invasion of Noxus, she had seen at least one of them every other game.
But now the footsteps were getting closer. Lux prepared to throw her baton to shield Katarina as soon as she set foot into the clearing, because whoever was the first into the clearing would be Lamb’s first kill.
I was just a hundred feet or so from the clearing when I tripped over a tree root. I was more surprised by the fact that I had actually tripped than by the fact that there was a tree root where I hadn’t expected there to be one.
As I went down, I saw my pursuers draw close. But I was back on my feet and sprinting for the clearing as they reached the spot I’d been lying just a moment before.
But as I broke through the edge of the clearing, I could tell that something was seriously wrong. So I dropped to the ground and rolled out of the way … barely dodging Lamb’s first volley of arrows.
Two snow-white arrows found their home in the hearts of my pursuers. The third missed, its ultimate target an old oak tree instead.
As I jumped back to my feet, I felt the now-familiar sensation of Lux’s shield forming around me. I followed the baton’s path back to her, and saw the faintest shimmer of light that indicated she was using an invisibility spell.
I then teleported to her – causing my pursuers to shout angrily before Lamb’s next arrow severed a young man’s head from his body – and whispered, “How did you get into this mess?”
“I’d ask the same of you, but we’re in the middle of a battlefield here. Oh, and I have this for some reason,” Lux replied, passing me one of my spare daggers. I smiled and grabbed it. I preferred to fight with a pair of daggers, but one still worked fine. After all, I had originally trained with single weapons before I demanded to learn how to use twin daggers.
“I can’t remember picking it up, but you’re welcome,” my future sister-in-law continued. “Now go and teach those men a lesson! I would if I wasn’t certain Kindred would attack me when my back is turned.”
“Why did Lamb and Wolf mark you in the first place?”
“No idea. But from my time spent on a team with them, my guess is that Wolf was feeling bored.”
We both laughed for a second, and then Lux whispered, “Final Spark is almost ready again. Please go distract them, but try not to kill them.”
“Ok, ok …” And with that, I spun and teleported back into the fray, immediately dodging an overeager Wolf, who was starting to chase one of my former pursuers. The guy had turned to run, so he was doomed to die in those sharp claws.
Another Demacian saw me and charged in my direction. I merely ducked under his arm and stabbed him in the side. His screams echoed through the clearing as I pulled out my dagger and started looking for my next target.
A white arrow whizzed past my head – and buried itself in the chest of the man I’d just stabbed. So Lamb was back to normal, at least for now. Wolf was – well, I guessed the term would be _partially unaccounted for_. I couldn’t see him, but I could hear the tearing of flesh and the dying screams of the man he’d been chasing.
Dropping to the ground and rolling to avoid yet another poorly thrown sword – and a charged arrow? I wasn’t sure if Lamb had just tried to use Mounting Dread on me – I sought my next target. There were three men at the edge of the field, apparently unsure whether to join the battle or run. I solved that for them, whipping out three small throwing daggers, spinning in a tight circle and sending my blades to their new home in my targets’ chests. Three snow-white arrows followed the daggers’ paths, claiming the souls of the freshly dead Demacians.
I jumped, startled. It wasn’t the sudden silence that had caused an unusual reaction. What startled me was that the arrows’ paths made it seem that they had come from _right_ behind me.
I spun around – and found myself face to face with Wolf and Lamb.
I hadn’t realized, but the field was already covered with the quiet of death. My pursuers were all dead or mortally wounded. Lux, Kindred and I were the last ones standing.
And only one of us might walk out of the clearing alive.
“Run!” Lux whispered, hoping Katarina would hear her. Unfortunately, she’d turned away just long enough for her future sister-in-law to be cornered by Kindred after finishing off the last of her attackers.
As she watched, Katarina tensed, and reached for two more throwing daggers.
But before she was able to grab her daggers, Lamb spoke.
“Long have we shadowed your deeds …” Lamb began.
Knowing what came next, Lux braced herself for the most strenuous spell casting she’d ever do.
“… Turn and face us now!” Wolf snarled.
I teleported away a split second before Lamb fired, and then was forced to pull myself up onto a low-hanging branch to avoid Wolf’s pounce. Seriously. Did I _really_ have to deal with both at once? It was hard enough to fight Lamb or Wolf alone.
I get the worst lane assignments.
Ok, it’s not time to think about League.
I leaped to another tree branch to dodge another snow-white arrow, and then pulled out two more throwing daggers. If they were going to kill me, I wasn’t going to go down without a fight.
Wait. Where was Lux?
Wolf whined in pain as a sudden bolt of light snared him where he stood. Lamb, despite her best efforts to dodge the light, felt that her feet could not move, and was caught too. She instantly saw what was about to happen.
Their original mark, Lux, was winding up to unleash her famous Final Spark, while Katarina – the newly Demacian assassin and their new mark – had a few throwing daggers in hand, and was preparing her deadliest attack, Death Lotus.
“Has our time finally come, Lamb?” Wolf whispered. His tone was more resigned than ever before.
“No, dear Wolf,” Lamb replied. She still had one last spell up her sleeve. One last play that would save them, even if it meant they had to admit defeat.
“Not here. Not yet.”
Just as Lux’s brilliant Final Spark shot across the clearing – hitting Kindred dead center – and Katarina’s first duo of throwing daggers soared towards their targets, a blinding glow filled the clearing. Lux shut her eyes despite the fact that her brain was telling her she would be fine if she looked, and waited for the light behind her eyelids to fade. When she reopened her eyes, Lamb was standing with one hand touching the ground, and Lux instantly knew what it meant.
Kindred had activated Lamb’s Respite.
They were surrendering.
Relief flooded through Lux’s body, and she relaxed for the first time that day. She looked over to make sure that Katarina was fine before walking to where Lamb and Wolf waited, Lamb still holding her fingers to the ground.
“You have done well, young ones,” Lamb finally said once Katarina teleported over. “We have accepted your victory …”
Wolf growled unhappily, but Lamb glared at him and he quieted.
“… So take this mark as a symbol of our respect. It may not be long before our paths cross again …”
“… But we will look forward to the reunion of blade, light, and arrow,” Wolf continued.
“See you on the Rift, then,” Katarina added, and Lux couldn’t help but laugh.
Lamb nodded in Katarina’s direction, then Lux’s. After a brief pause, she lifted her fingers.
And the pair vanished into the forest as if they’d never fought in that clearing in the middle of the forest surrounding Demacia.
“Lux…”
Lux looked at me. “What?” she asked.
I pointed. “There’s a mark on your forehead.”
It was an exact replica of Kindred’s mark. I wasn’t sure what it meant, but I felt that it had to be some sort of symbol referencing our victory over Lamb and Wolf.
As the thought crossed my mind, I reached up to feel my own forehead. I couldn’t feel the mark – it wasn’t raised – but I could guess it was there.
Lux looked at me and grinned. “Guess we get a free pass from Kindred next time we’re fighting them on the Rift, right?”
“I sure hope so.”
Then we turned and made our way out of the clearing, heading home.
As we neared the forest’s fringe, Lux asked, “So what did you do that made those Demacians chase you all the way out here?”
“I showed up.”
Lux laughed, and I glared at her, but it only made her laugh louder.
“Sorry,” she said, catching her breath, “but I can’t believe those idiots were so stupid as to chase you all the way outside the city, into the forest, where you’d have a better chance of getting away. If they’d kept you in the city, they might have got you.”
“If they’d blocked off the gate, I would have run to the castle,” I admitted. Lux nodded, since that would have been the best move. My strongest supporters were in the castle, so if I could have gotten there first, I’d be safe. But fate led me into the forest and to Kindred and Lux, and we had defeated Kindred to the best extent we could. To say I was ultimately satisfied by the way today had gone so far was an understatement.
But then Lux murmured, “Uh oh.”
I took a moment to look in the direction she was staring – and saw Garen waiting for us at the gate. From even this distance, I could tell he was unhappy.
When we finally reached the gate, he asked, “What happened to you? And what is that on your forehead?”
Thanks for reading! And here's the link to Part 3: http://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/skin-champion-concepts/l9AmwIyd-last-words-the-final-threshold-katarinas-legacy-part-3
