Closure for The Cryptic King: Zara [No More]
Hand outsretched, reaching toward his castle that pierces the heavens. The castle that is torn down. Walls like a falling cliffside on a frozen landmass. The tallest of pillars dropping in place, cracking, and falling like a house of cards--feeble with its faltering foundation. A galactic sword that plowed into his perfect palace. His hand fell as the fortress did, his bastion was officially broken.
"Now you've done it." The iron revenant emanated death from every fiber of his being, turning slowly to confront the fool who dared defy his reign. "Did you really think you'd get away with-"
"No." Zara interjects bluntly as his visage calmly crumbles. "Frankly, I never thought I would. The only thing I do well... is fuck shit up. Foiling plans and ruining lives... It's not something to be proud of, but this is why I am dubbed The Ruined King."
"FUCK!" 
Mordekaiser slams the ground as another pillar falls from his cryptic castle. Though furious at the collapse of his grand cathedral, he cools his rage when deliberating on the turn of events. "Your transgression means nothing! I can have my empire rebuilt in mere months. Useless, that's all this was. You merely delay the inevitable."
A finger falls as the broken man gazes upon the chaos he wrought. A swarm of undead, numbering in the millions, dwindled to an army in the thousands. The land they stand upon was no longer flat, the ground jutting in multiple angles and floating in the air autonomously. The ocean spilled into the craters formed by their collision into the earth when they plunged from the ionosphere. The enormous bastion that served as their castle in shambles, no longer towering into the clouds, its debris scattered about the domain. Some towers stood upon floating ground, like a castle in the sky.
"Perhaps... This empire can be rebuilt despite my efforts. Even so, it was not useless." In the midst of his foul act, Zara glimpsed upon his sword. When Zara saw it's glow near the tree it stood, he was satisfied. "I've done what I needed to do. So, are you going to end me now?"
Mordekaiser grimaced at the pitiful state of the king. Disgust inundated his animosity to the notion of Zara's early funeral granting no satisfaction. "Disgraceful. A king should never throw his life away for such useless endeavors. So why? Why do you besmirch the honor of a king to support a petty rebellion?"
"CAGH!" Coughing up a laugh, Zara fell flat on his ass, being too weak to stand. "What I've done this day... It was never about lords and kings. No, status is irrelevant. It's villainy. Petty malice. You get it, don't you?"
Mordekaiser mulled in malice at the realization that this was nothing more than a childish squabble.
"Goals and ideals, those are for the fortunate ones, blessed with friends they can trust. Not for the ones with enemies who hide behind sunshine and rainbows. Right or wrong, honor and glory, none of that matters for us villains you know. Try as you might, you always fail. I've tried. Oh yes, I damn well tried." Despite meager accomplishment, the guilt of a billion sins made it hard to see, hard to believe, impossible to forgive. Zara lived his life knowing glory, but only understanding hardship as merit was snuffed out by catastrophe.
"You too wear the same pointless mask I do. Even in death, to sabotage betrayal and overcome opposition. This chore comes with the trade. Don't really care for it, but it must be done. It's the only thing the ignorant know, covering the one thing they don't know. It's the only thing villains are good for..."
"Making a statement." He declared while pointing at the rubble that used to be a dark lord's domain. "Your empire is flaky, and I've damn well made my point."
Mordekaiser slammed Zara's chest and grabbed him by the collar, raising him off the ground. "Give me one good reason I shouldn't extinguish your existence, lest Nightfalls on your soul this instant."
"If you didn't know," Zara enlightened Mordekaiser. "My kingdom was based off of yours."
Zara dropped, feet on the ground, as Mordekaiser loosened his grasp. The inkling of kinship was made crystal clear to the lord of the undead.
"I respected you, you know. Honestly, I respect your strength even now. That's why I could build such a powerful kingdom. Even though I focused on helping my people sustain a fulfilling life, rather than building an army of brutes alone, both our lands flourished over the rest through what we were capable of." Zara elaborated, dusting off his crumbs of death from his mantle.
"I brought my people up from the brink of collapse and your people fought hell itself; as the gods came crashing upon your doorstep. The only reason I know this is because even after generations past, they can't seem to forget the epic feats of the Mortal Godslayer. I was constantly compared to you, but I unfortunately had no gods to slay so my name was dragged in the dirt."
"A godless era is quite fortunate." Mordekaiser corrected. "Gods only mislead and betray. There are no gods in the underworld."
"You could be the first."
"I am not their god. I am their lord."
"Lord Morde," Zara emulates shaking his nonexistent head. "This is precisely why I'm disappointed. Why are you satisfied with being the lord of an island in the middle of nowhere? I didn't take you for a pussy."
"There is no glory." Zara quickly adds as Mordekaiser readies Nightfall for an earth shattering swing. "Biding time here is about as useless as the stunt I pulled on your toy castle."
"I don't sit here idly. I send scouts-"
"That do what? Take a dozen lives at most?" Zara waves his hand with a missing finger dismissively. "That's not making a statement my lord, that's making an urban legend. Your legacy is much older than mine and only few people remember me. You might have been an incredulously powerful warmonger, but these scare tactics are ass."
"Tell me Death Lord, do you really want a repeat of your second campaign? If you sit around here, every nation is going to figure out and will bombard this land harder than I smashed this place up. If I alone could do this much, you're in for a real treat."
Zara schemed up a heinous plot and suggested, "Villain to villain, if you really wanted to make a statement, you'd sweep the rug right from under them and take back what's yours. That's what I'd expect from the Iron Emperor."
"You know dying king, I'm real tired of your shit," Mordekaiser berated, but then conceded on one thing, "but that's the kind of chaos I can get behind."
"Ha..." Zara chortled feebly. "As expected of Lord Morde."
Zara grew too weak to muster up the boisterous enthusiasm he wanted to offer Mordekaiser, and the dark lord noticed this fact. However, he refused to make a statement, to honor his perseverance.
"Say, I always wondered..." Zara mustered in a weary voice. "What kind of statement do you want to make?"
Mordekaiser had no words. He hesitated on giving the obvious answer that everyone expected of him. Everyone simply assumes it is to reign over the world in an empire of death. Restoring former glory by reclaiming his rightful place. Yet he pondered what Zara told him, that honor had no place for villains.
"When I think of your second campaign, I can't help but feel a sense of emptiness. I doubt anyone else would know, but since I tried to become you, I do. Conquerors cannot rule over the hearts of rebels, and rebels don't stay dead. It's surprisingly disappointing, yet that was your only goal." Inevitably, even if Mordekaiser claimed the seat of highest power over the entire planet, he would not get the honor he wanted. He was aware of this long ago, so he didn't think much of it.
"An emperor should have the most grandiose of dreams, to overcome this disappointment. So what was yours?" Mordekaiser had lingering ideas, yet they were not cohesive enough to consider himself motivated to accomplish any of them.
"I'm assuming you have none since you won't respond." Zara bluntly accused, but he remembered something quite trivial. "I don't know much about your first life, but I recall someone who did. I'm not sure if this helps or not, but he said that you were much stronger in life than you were in death. You may have had quite a spectacular dream in life."
"After all," Zara sighed as his life was sapped a bit too much. "You weren't always a villain."
Mordekaiser's eyes grew wide on the last thing he said before Zara nodded off from exhaustion. Not many knew him as a hero due to his horrible reputation and even less lived long enough to tell the tale. There were a few women who knew of him at such a time that would probably still exist, namely a certain sneaky 
witch. Yet there was only one man that came to mind that could live for that long. He had his doubts before, but all of them were cleared now.
While Zara did think of Mordekaiser as a villain, not once did Zara ever think of him as evil. It reminded him of his allies from his youth. The ones he couldn't convince. The ones he couldn't save. It reminded him of the regret he had when abandoning the ones most important to him. The regret of not being able to stand by their side when they needed him most. This same regret welled up from his ancient past as Zara laid before him, dying from the curse he placed upon him and the lifeline that he cast away.
"No more." Mordekaiser released the curse that siphoned Zara's vitality. "You will suffer no longer."
This is something he said once before, a long time ago.
"Is that your answer?"
Perhaps it was, though in the time he said this, it was a much more menacing moment: ending one's misery. His answer rather came from a bygone dream. Though he was still unsure of how feasible it would be, so he kept it to himself. While he usually enjoyed the torment of weak souls dissipating into nothing, Zara was a weakened soul who may have been even stronger than him, had Zara not been severely crippled. It was a justice for a man to be laid to rest, and he would do so by sending Nightfall upon him. Mordekaiser readied his swing, green leaves brushing past him, but then he realized something.
Green leaves? All the trees are dead, and the few that aren't are dying. There should be no green leaves to be found, yet a healthy green leaf is seen right on top of his foot. It trailed on a bedraggled path, dragging his gaze upward until he saw the sword. Immediately surrounding the sword were healthy trees and bushes. Mordekaiser froze in place, bewildered at the foreign phenomenon. He was so bewildered, that he almost failed to recognize a hand placed on his shoulderpad.
Mordekaiser swiftly turned to find that accursed 
gravedigger by his side. Malice, betrayal, and wrath filled him as he assumed that a cheeky sneak attack was planned as Zara laid, fainted on the ground, while many of his allies gathered around. While nobody raised a weapon, he was still alert, but then the gravedigger proclaimed:
"He cannot die here." Pointing his shovel toward the greenery to which the path of leaves lead. "Someone awaits his arrival at the garden. Someone very important to him."
Looking around, he realized that Zara's allies were watching the two the whole time. Since nobody even flinched at his reaction, he figured that everyone decided he wasn't an enemy. So, he let Nightfall fall to the side and he lifted Zara to his feet.
"Wake up you king."
"Eh?" Zara stated weakly. "What is it? Just let me lay here for a bit longer."
"Stand up straight." Mordekaiser berated Zara as he finally held his balance. "Someone is waiting for you."
Zara looked forward at the path of leaves on flat earth to the sword lodged into the dirt. He feels the sword, but he also feels something else. Something strangely familiar.
"I see. This is the one last thing I must do." Zara states melancholically. "I can't keep her waiting. She's waited long enough."
Mordekaiser didn't really understand what Zara meant, but when he looked to the gravedigger once more, he finally understood. Zara started walking along the path of leaves, but then stopped suddenly.
"Lord."
"What now?"
...
"Thanks."
With that, Zara walked the road to ruin and his allies followed far behind. Many undead were curious of the large group heading toward the sword.
"Muses." Mordekaiser snapped and a group of frail ghosts came to him hurriedly.
"Y-yes lord?" A banshee asked as politely as possible, but failing to hide her fear as every one of them believed they were about to die from his unbridled wrath.
"Sing for me... Ode to Ruin. Rather, any ode to the king. One to help him on his journey, as he walks the path to ruin."
The muses looked at each other in bewilderment, astonished by his request.
"Why are you surprised? I hired you weaklings for a reason." Mordekaiser affirms. "It would be sad if I died without a song to my name."
"But this is a song for another king."
"For this unsung king to walk to his death." He looked at Zara limping along weakly, crawling to pick himself back up. "That too, would be sad."
Thank you for reading No More. It has been a long journey, but the end is near. That is the purpose of this chapter's name. The final chapter awaits and only two epilogues afterward. The fight was long and hard, but now it has come to an end. There is only one more thing left to do and then Zara's second life can finally reach its conclusion.
This is a winding-down chapter as a bit of context. I'm sure you can figure that out by reading it. That said, I don't really expect anyone to get what's happening without the previous chapter posted, so I am going to briefly summarize what happened before this:
Put bluntly, Zara fought Mordekaiser's entire army. As aforementioned in this chapter, its magnitude was in the millions. Since Mordekaiser cast a Siphon of Destruction on him, (his old E which is just part of my my philosophy that champions don't really lose their abilities lore wise) Zara's fight was on a time limit so he used
Kalista's
Black Spear to bind the souls of the Shadow Isles into him to increase his size to that of a titan.
In his titan form, his height is 8 miles high and every casual footstep is a mile long. Zara fought an epic fight against Mordekaiser, and I mean epic since at one point they were flung into the ionosphere, where Mordekaiser was victorious. Finally, as a last ditch effort, Zara launched his monumental sword into the bastion Mordekaiser built on the Shadow Isles. Then comes this chapter.
I skipped a lot of details, but if I talked about them this wouldn't really be a summary anymore. This is more just to help readers get some context as to what the hell is going on here. One particularly important detail is that Mordekaiser was TRIGGERED by Zara becoming a titan, because it reminded him of the conflict he had with the Darkin--one of which being about the size of Zara here. As you probably guessed, Sahn-Uzal slain this Darkin when he was still a mortal. As such, Sahn-Uzal, Mordekaiser as a living human, was known as the strongest mortal in the history of Runeterra.
To be honest, I'm a bit scared of the chapter I made and what I have done to Mordekaiser's personality. This chapter makes him weak. Mordekaiser takes insult left and right with little contest. Even though he knows after all the turmoil the events are of no consequence, he still finds himself desperate. He doesn't have his plans in order. In fact, he has no grand scheme. Mordekaiser is everything he shouldn't be and Zara knows this. He knows this because he too does not meet expectations.
Zara is strong. Strong beyond all realistic comprehension. Yet he's a dumbass. Boneheaded and uncompromising, this king can't even think half a step ahead. His people thought of him more of a device than a duke, a mere tool of unparalleled combat prowess. A tool that never gives up due to an insane degree of dedication. His kingdom was ruled by the queen, not the king, but she was the one who died. The one left behind could not fill the void in responsibility. Incompetence made all too clear. He truly was everything he shouldn't have been, just like Mordekaiser.
At the time of the kingdoms' wake, they were the promised heroes who would bring glory to their kingdom, their empire. The monsters who would challenge crisis in full force and do the impossible. They were clearly powerful, they were clearly flawed. These flaws built up and doubts bubbled up from the bowels of their citizens and spread like wildfire. Their problems were made clear and there merits were long lost. Their kingdom may have went through impossible adversity. When those times passed, the people wanted efficiency, not sufficiency. More need not be done, rather things done should be done better. In their stagnation, their hope was lost.
When the people lost faith in their lord, their lords' reputation grew ever worse. Everyone wanted them to step up, yet none were at a level to replace them. A coup was impossible, because standards were too high. Their problems rolled on and on until their people could not take tolerate the tyranny any more. The people went through great lengths to pressure their lord, but they pushed too far and only cataclysm awaited them. They went back to a time when they needed a powerful king or emperor to save them from adversity. However, they cut down the very things that made their lords powerful. The impossible was truly impossible. Despite their best efforts, their notorious reputation exceeded them. They would be forever etched in history as villains who destroyed their own people. Mordekaiser would not accept this, but with much deliberation, Zara did.
He came to realize that there was no point in aimlessly trying to chase glory that he'd never be given. He came to realize that he would never get a medal for the good that he's done. He realized that no matter what he did, he would never be absolved of his crimes. Thus he became the face of a villain, because he realized being a hero was never an option. Yet after all the accusation he's endured, he never gives up on being a good person, because the only thing he can do is make a statement.
It didn't matter whether if it was a good one or a bad one. The only thing he could do was impact the world in his own way. To become the phenomenon of true greatness, embedded into legend. This is the glory that he knew and the one thing he wanted Mordekaiser to remember. To put everything on the line to become a living epic if only for a moment. That is how they would make a statement. It did not matter if a hero would come along to snuff them out, they have been dead for a long time so anytime is a good time to go. The only thing that matters is what they wanted do. That is why he asked him.
What kind of statement do you want to make?
The king's grave is to be made At The Garden. You've done enough Zara, you can rest now. [zombie-nunu-tears]
Arc 1: Our King Returns
Arc 2: Method to the Madness 9. Dawn upon Zaun
Arc 3: A Reason to Remember 30. No More 31. At the Garden Ep1. Reminiscence