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“Really, I don’t think they’ll care-”
“Nonsense, Sera. it’ll only take a moment to cover your roots.”
The singer huffs as the five-minute alarm clock on the vanity jangles. She clamps it shut before letting Rayne do the finishing touches on her makeup. Overzealous as he could be trying to get the “best” look, he was damn good at his job. His song sounds almost like a waltz as he works, and Seraphine hums as he does. She could never resist joining in.
Seraphine can hear the roar of the crowd in the distance. The Entresol certainly wasn’t the biggest place she’d ever performed, but definitely the loudest. Here, the swathes of dark green that made up the Zaunites’ clothes were stood together with the almost blinding bright blues of Piltovans. On good days, they merged. On bad days, they didn’t intersect at all. She never quite knew which would be which, but there was no point in assuming the worst.
Yes, today they’ll be together. I’m sure of it, she thinks to herself.
“Ta-da! You look gorgeous!” Rayne says. Seraphine fluffs her hair and grabs her mic.
“Thanks, Rayne. See you in a minute!”
“Of course! Good luck!”
With a snap, her platform zips over to her. As she steps on, she takes a deep breath and counts the tempo on her fingers, placing each finger in to her opposite palm. Dad had taught her that trick to self-soothe, back when she was having a hard time. For a moment, she reflects on those days.
The sun’s rays would be filtered through her blinds, and though she could block out the blinding light, the Noise never could be. It was constant, loud, wailing, inescapable Noise that was always there. At least, that was how she thought of it at the time.
The essential ways to understand something were time, patience, and love, Mom said back then.
The Noise of the crowd roars behind the curtain, and Seraphine takes one last deep breath. In through the nose, out through the mouth.
You can do this. You can do this You are not afraid. She thinks.
The curtain lifts, and the Noise roars louder. Seraphine winces a little, even now, but she quickly gets used to it.
“Hellooooooooo, Entresol! I’m Seraphine, and You. Are. Beautiful!” With a blown kiss, the Noise of the crowd gets louder. Though everyone seems to be having a good time, the songstress listens closely, as best she can.
The Noise sounds almost like two halves of a choir. One half is practiced, perfected, but everyone sounds… disjointed. The other is unruly and disorganized, yet almost paradoxically harmonious in it’s chaos.
Yet, every once in a while, a few notes come together. One song, one choir, one people.
“Your songs tonight are beautiful, everyone!” Seraphine yells. The notes come together again with the hoots and hollers of the crowd, but just as quickly split apart, like droplets of rainwater on a window.
“Okay everyone! One last song for tonight, but I’m gonna need an encore, from all of you. Can you help me?” She winks.
They’ll definitely join in. Right?
The crowd erupts. A smile spreads upon the girl’s face. Tonight was going to be a good one for Piltover and Zaun.
As she sings her duet with the crowd, she listens closely to a select few in the audience. She loved hearing the different interpretations of the song she sang. One Zaunite girl sounds like an oboe. A Piltovan older man sounds brassy, like a trumpet. Another Piltovan sounds like a harp, harps were rare. A handsome Zaunite man sounds like a hextech guitar.
It was wonderful, listening to each and every one of their songs.
That is, until Seraphine spots a hooded figure, far in the back.
As she floats over the crowd, the songs of everyone fade in volume as she sings the song slower and slower. Before they begin to turn and walk away, Seraphine strains her eyes and ears. When she finally gets close enough to make everything out, she freezes.
She sees a metallic face, boring holes into her eyes. Whoever this… man was, he clearly didn’t think highly of her. She had always had haters, even obsessive ones who showed up to heckle, but this was something else. This was… she doesn’t know what it is. She doesn’t know what he is feeling. Her heart drops to her feet.
He has no song.
Everyone Seraphine had ever met had a song, even the cruelest, most soulless people alive. Everyone sounded like something, at least to her. She knew other people couldn’t really feel on the level she could. No, this was something only understood by her. For years, she had it figured out. It didn’t come to her right away, of course, but over time… it made sense.
It’s only then when she realizes she’s fumbled the lines live on stage, to confused stares from the crowd. They’ve noticed something’s wrong.
“Oh! I uh- um-, Sorry, everyone. Even singers forget the words sometimes!” She laughs nervously.
The crowd laughs back, but not out of pity or at her. No, they find it endearing; cute, even. Most importantly, no one noticed the man even after he slipped around a street corner, into the shadows. No one, except Seraphine.
She doesn’t even register anything else, no other sensation until after she’s had her nightly tea and cozied up with her cat in bed. The rest of the night was just… Noise. Even as she tries to listen to the whirring sound of Piltover traffic at night, she can’t get the burned image of the robotic man’s face out of her mind.
Where was his song. Where was his song. Where was his song. Where was his song-
Seraphine bolts upright, before quickly putting on an outfit and her hextech helmet. With her parents asleep, that meant the hexbike was free to use. Surely Dad would just write it off as another one of her “secret” Zaun performances. This mystery had to get solved, now or never, and all on her own.
It was a problem only she could solve.
The cool Piltover night air masks most of the Zaun Gray below as Seraphine steps out into a lonely street. Only the hextech lamps light her way as she fumbles onto her bike before quietly slipping away from her block. The wind whips pink strands of hair into her face before she brushes them aside. Her mind does the mental math, over and over and over again.
By the time she reaches the street she saw the man at, she can think of nothing else.
The street was on the other side of town from her home, far away from anything, really. As she turns the corner, she realizes she has no idea where to go next. This part of Piltover was almost dead, nothing and no one lived here. Even the streetlamps were fizzling out above her. She huffs, and turns before she spots some graffiti.
Covered in spraypaint, “GET JINXED!” was splattered out across the back of a rusted elevator. A Zaunite elevator.
Morally dubious as Jinx was, Seraphine whispers a silent “thank you” to the infamous madwoman of Zaun before pressing the down button. Just like the Entresol. Except with a lot more banging and squealing of metal. She hopes it moved quickly as she stared as the starry sky turns a sickly neon green from the chemtech lights below. Some consider it hideous. Seraphine considers it unique.
The elevator clatters to a halt. End of the line.
The Zaunite streets are quiet in this part of the undercity. Eerily quiet, for the Zaun Seraphine knows are bustling and lively. But not a soul is out tonight, as Seraphine’s boots click across the damp pavement. The Gray is thick as always, and she feels her breath getting shorter as she searches. Where would she possibly find him?
She coughs as she rounds the corner, onto Emberflit Alley. It certainly wasn’t a place she had been before, nor one she would go to for concerts. It was quiet, reserved, and and somewhat forlorn. Her parents only spoke of it briefly, and with a somewhat hushed tone while they still lived in Zaun.
It’s then that she realizes she can’t remember her way back. She groans, this was all a stupid idea. Should’ve let sleeping dogs lie, as her dad would say. She leans against a stone wall as she grows weary from the Sump, not caring that the soot would stain her clothes.
She coughs again, this time harder. The Sump was getting unbearable. She has to get inside somewhere, fast. Ahead of her, a fairly dilapidated house was hiding behind a rusted wrought-iron gate. The door ahead was ajar. Though no lights are on, a dim glow emanates from somewhere inside. She huffed.
Time to take some chances.
She pushes open the gate, wincing and coughing as it squeals loudly. She hurries inside and sucks in a deep breath of sweet, fresh air at last. The room inside is dark, dreary. Whoever had lived here made sure to get a quality chemtech air conditioner. A few minutes’ rest and Seraphine could be on her way home.
Suddenly, there’s a whirring coming from another room. She freezes for a moment, the last few breaths now being nullified by the ticking bomb that had become her heart. Moreover, she is no more than three paces from the room the whirring filtered out from. The house’s thin walls reverberate loudly each time it stops and starts. The door is left slightly open, just like the one outside. If nothing else, Seraphine has to check that she’s alone.
She creaks open the door, just a little bit more to get a better view.
A man is there, using some kind of mechanical drill to mess with some kind of augment on his arm. No, another prosthetic claw attached to his back. In the dim light of what seemed to be a workshop, Seraphine’s heart drops to her feet.
The man. The same one she had been searching for.
“I can see you, you know.”
Her blood runs cold. His voice is mechanized too, but even when he spoke, there was still no song. It is jarring to think about to her. Just what was he thinking? She had to know.
She steps forward, into the lab. On the inside, it’s a lot bigger than it looks. A huge dome makes for an impressive ceiling, and organs line the shelves. The hairs on her neck stand on end, but she supposes it’s to be expected in a laboratory.
“Just-Who… are you?”
“You walk into my house and ask who I am? Some might say that is rude, Seraphine.” He does not look up from his arm, instead squinting downward through his mask to inspect tiny screws embedded in them. His mechanical voice pierces through her ears and stings her soul. She winces. She knows better at this point to be shocked that people actually know her name, but she still doesn’t feel good about it.
“I-I’m sorry, it was just getting really bad out there. I couldn’t breathe, and I thought no one lived here.” She twists the gloves she wears back and forth.
“...Ah. I suppose that’s understandable.” He sighs. He sighs? “If that is the case, why are you here? In Zaun?”
“I was looking… for you.” She laughs nervously. “I saw you in my audience tonight. But you… You’re not like everyone else. Who are you?”
He laughs. It’s not really a mocking or amused laugh, though. More like a golem imitating human laughter. Breathless, and cold.
“I am Viktor, Seraphine. And that makes two of us.”
Viktor. Viktor, the man with no song and a seeming disdain for her. Was it disdain? Anger? She couldn’t be sure anymore.
“Tell me, Seraphine. What makes me different?”
“...Your song.”
“I don’t follow.”
“I hear everyone’s emotions as songs. I thought I did, anyway. But you… You have no song. Nothing.”
He finally puts down the drill, and pauses. He picks up a staff leaning against his desk. He’s quite tall compared to her, at least a couple of heads. The rest of his augmented body makes noise as he walks, comparable to a knight, almost.
“I can understand why that might frighten you. I am certainly… discomforting, at times.” He says flatly. His mask made it difficult, but Seraphine wonders if he smiles behind it when he says that.
“I just… I want to know.”
“Because I freed myself.”
Now it made even less sense. She raises an eyebrow at him.
“Freed yourself?”
“Free, from emotions. From pain in my body, and mind. Fear, anger, sadness.” He paces back and forth in the lab, placing fingers on the organs in the jars. “I began to help others free themselves. Now, we can transcend our humanity, and live as superior beings.”
“You… you removed your emotions. That’s horrible!” Seraphine gasps.
“Horrible… to some. A gift to others. Surely you’d understand.”
“No, I don’t!” She balls her hands into fists. “Our emotions make us strong, good or bad! They’re what tie us together!”
“And yet,” Viktor taps his staff on the ground. “They tear us apart.”
The dome echoes the staff and Viktor’s voice as he speaks. “We have all been destroyed, by agony and despair and suffering, and it will happen all over again. Emotions, for example, keep Zaunites trapped in that sickly air that a Piltovan cannot breathe in for more than a few minutes, while Piltovans go home to clean air and hextech that instantly heats warm meals.”
He bends down, and drops his voice just a tiny bit. “Not that a Piltovan would understand.”
Piltovan. Seraphine was a Piltovan, and always would be. Always on her pedestal, and she would never possibly know how it feels. She feels her face get hot.
“I am the last person to say that to, and you know it, don’t you Viktor?”
“I do. That’s what I don’t understand.”
“What?”
“Why you force them all to suffer.”
She clutches her shirt. She has to stay calm. “There’s no suffering in coming together for my songs. I’ve seen it. Zaunites and Pilties like being together there. It’s the only place they do.”
“They would not hate each other if what made them different was eliminated. You could have your dream realized if not for that variable. They are variables. Unstable ones.” He takes a step forward.
“But you, you seek to disrupt all of it.”
She tilts her head upwards. She would not show fear.
“You think you don’t feel anything. That you figured it all out. Just because you can’t feel right now, doesn’t mean you can’t. I know it.”
He squints through his mask again. “Naive girl. Even now, you’ll deny the truth.”
“Pot meet kettle.” She grunts. Viktor turns around.
“No matter. If you cannot understand, I will make you.” He taps his staff again, this time with force.
A metal cage sprouted from the ground, an electrical hum dangerously close to singing her hair. Seraphine jumps from the shock, but knows she has to get out, fast. She takes a deep breath, and hums.
The cage hums, then vibrates, then pops. A shield of sound enveloped her, and Viktor whirls around suddenly, but only two paces. His hexclaw hums to life, and his staff crackles with hextech magic.
“I’m not naive, despite what you might think.” She pulls a mic from her bag, and begins to tap her feet.
One, two, three, four, two, two, three, four.
“Such insolence.” He throws a claw trap at her, but Seraphine sends out a soundwave with a boom, and it clatters to the ground, it’s speed halted mid-air.
The two mages trade blows. Seraphine throws a note, but Viktor dodges as it explodes on his desk. Viktor’s hexclaw grazes her leg with a laser as Seraphine yelps, but still misses her and travels to the books behind him.
“Look at us, Viktor. Your life’s work is getting damaged because you can’t accept the truth!” She hurls another booming wave that seems to reverberate through his metal armor.
“Silence. You know nothing. You are nothing before me.” His laser tries again to fire at her, but her shield reflects off of her and bounces to the wall. The walls shake, and dust falls around them. “Everything you are, and everything you do, will all be for nothing.”
The ground shakes again, and the thin walls holding up the house on Emberflit Alley begin to crack and vibrate in response to Viktor’s staff.
“I know I don’t know everything. But I do know your heart, Viktor.” Seraphine narrowly dodges another cage thrown at her. Her foot taps with her own rhythm. Battle was like a dance, but it was hard when your partner can’t hear. She calls out through her mic. “I believe in you.”
“Enough! You insolent brat! You… just like-”
A sharp note rings out before Seraphine can hear the rest. A janky and off-key one, but one single note of a violin. The dome is crumbling, the books and jars and equipment lining the walls are now strewn everywhere, and Viktor hunched over from exhausting his hextech body. She stands tall before him as the tinnitus in her ears reaches a fever pitch.
“I hear it. It’s a violin.” She gives him a smile, like one she would give after singing a ballad. “Those are rare, you know. I think it’s beautiful.”
“No, No you don’t know anything.” He slams the staff on the ground one more time, piercing through the floor. A vortex of dark energy hurtles out, straight towards Seraphine. She has to act now, to finish his song in one final encore.
In through the nose, out through the mouth.
For a moment, Viktor’s yellow, glowing eyes widen in awe, then fall in sadness.
The dome above them crashes down, and the ground shaking knocks Seraphine to the floor. When she stirs again, a large pile of rubble blocks her way to Viktor.
Frantically, she jumps to her feet, and scrambles to pull the debris away. It cuts through her gloves and her palms begin to bleed, but she doesn’t feel a thing. She only cares that he lives, that he’s okay.
“Viktor?! Viktor! Vik-”
As she pulls one more pile away, a hexclaw jumps out at her through a hole. She screams in fright at it frantically trying to grab at her hair before suddenly sputtering out. It seems for all that it was worth, Viktor couldn’t fight if his augments were damaged. She peers through the debris to see the man, who was now sat up on the rubble, facing away from her. From the sound of it, he was hyperventilating, muttering to himself.
“Just like him. She’s just like him… Seraphine… Seraphine…” His mechanical voice wheezed out.
“Viktor? Are you okay?” Seraphine called out. His breathing slows, and he stops muttering about “Him”. He does not turn to look at the songstress. Likewise, Seraphine leans against what used to be the lab roof, opposite him.
“I am fine. I can clear this later.”
“Good.”
Seraphine waits for a moment, looking up at the Zaun Gray. It was always difficult to tell time down here without looking at a clock, but if she had to guess it was just beginning to dawn. She can’t hear the city from here. No, she can only hear one particular song now. A violin, playing a somber solo.
“I still hear it, even now.”
Viktor lets out one grunt. “You are out of your mind.”
Another long moment passes. The two of them say not a word as they look up to the Gray until his hoarse voice scrapes out again.
“What does it feel like? To know each day, you suffer, just to hear everyone?”
She pauses for a moment.
“For a long time, it was like… drowning.” She takes off her ruined gloves, and stows them away in her pocket as she rubs her calloused hands. “I heard everything, even things I didn’t want to hear. It was…”
“Overwhelming.” He finishes. “It was overwhelming.”
“Yeah. I had to hide from everyone, for a year. If I went outside, it felt like I couldn’t breathe. I just wanted it all to… stop. And I did stop it, for a while.” She inspects her mic, now damaged from her fall to the ground. The hextech crystal charging it had completely burnt out. She must’ve wasted a lot of energy on that note.
“But… it wasn’t me. It never was, I just didn’t know it yet.” She smiles as she places the mic in her lap. “That’s how I think Piltover and Zaun are. They’re just struggling to manage each other’s emotions. It took time for me, and I’m sure it’ll take longer for them, but it has to happen.”
His song soars upon hearing this, a long drawn out note. He chuckles.
“If you say so, child.”
“You don’t have to believe me. You definitely won’t.” She grips her hands together, and slowly pushes herself up off the ground.
“But I have to try.”
Viktor’s violin fades, slowly. She can’t even see him over the rubble, tall as he was. She assumes he was still resting.
“Viktor.”
“Seraphine.”
“Why did you come to my concert?”
The violin shifts to a halt in a diminuendo.
“Just observing.” He could be lying. He could not. She supposes she would never get all the answers from this man. She turns to climb out through the broken wall on her side, back onto Emberflit Alley.
“Goodbye, Viktor.”
The man says nothing as she left.
On the streets of Zaun on one lonely morning, A girl hums to herself a song.