Chapter Text
i
in the pursuit of great
He conquers the Twin Cities in a day. Noxus in the first week, Demacia in the second. Within the span of a month, all of Runeterra, from the frozen reaches of Freljord to the graveyard of old gods in the Shuriman, has been liberated.
Ascended. Evolved.
Elementary math. The key to His victory is a counting exercise, a pattern wrought from simple numbers, a numerical certainty taught to Academy freshmen on their first day of classes. One lilypad splits to two, splits to four, splits to eight, to sixteen, doubles day after day, and before long the frog is forced to leave its home. Exponential mitosis of a cancerous growth, of a bacterial culture, of sepsis in a festering wound.
Yet He cannot compare Himself to those scourges of a bygone world that are the bane of all He stands for. For He is not veiling the pond, not infecting the wound. The opposite, in fact. He has been granted a glorious mission: to unveil, heal, purify His world of suffering.
Yes, that is the right word. Purify. A mission He was granted, carried it through as well as He has, and He walks across the world reborn with not a single regret.
For His realm, His kingdom, is so beautiful now that it is shaped and guided by His steady hand. His people are not limited by the bindings of the living biological form, of food and water and oxygen, of the need to consume and destroy in the name of survival, for He has long freed them from those mortal shackles. No rich nor poor, no misfortune, no injustice. No more senseless wars, no more endless bloodshed. No more suffering, no more fear of the nameless void that is death. Only serenity, harmony, a maelstrom of once-conflicting minds united into a cohesive and everlasting whole.
He wades through the corroded skeletons of ships in Bilgewater Harbour, the crumbling husks of blimps in the docks of Ionia, all obsolete now that He has bestowed upon His people the power of flight. He razes the walls of Demacia, the kingdom built from the bones of ancient trees and bygone wars, held captive by fears of shadows past, now captive no more. He shatters the war-factories of Noxus, grinds them to ash and fine dust like the nations their weapons destroyed. In another era the people of Valoran would have cheered. But His people are silent spectators, and the Herald does not mind, for He never was one for the spotlight. Leave the crowds to the Piltovan Council, once handsome and boisterous and all-powerful, now all but more constructs of petrified stone and unrusting gold, figments in the great melting pot of souls. Equal to the lowest of citizens in the Herald’s new world.
The only judge He needs is Himself. And to the Herald, His great work was always the only path forward.
Limps, aches, coughs marred by blood. Lungs clogged with inflamed tissue, a crooked leg that grew steeped in poison, on paltry scraps of food, away from the sun and the stars, shrouded in the darkness far from the embrace of the light. Oily water heated to a boil, ragged towels pressed to his forehead.
His parents whisper beyond the haze of a hot fever. Sickly, they say about him. Even by trencher standards. Weak, imperfect.
In phases, the illness proceeds. Eddies and tides, push and pull, bouts of health before he dances on the cusp of death, on the fingers of the Lamb’s tender embrace, then he is pulled back for another song. A never-ending cycle. Gears spinning, the hands of a clock looping, a Valdiani playing its predestined melody.
Machines, he knows how to mend. Grease and springs and screws. If only the human body were so simple.
At six years old, he is handed a cane.
Gods do not take kindly to usurpers.
In the wastelands of Shurima, two brothers, once mortal, then mortal foes, and now kindred once more, unite in the face of incoming doom.
Once upon a time, another Herald might have pitied them. Lamented that only the end of the old world could have healed the brothers’ feud. But the Herald does not feel. Emotions are imperfections, and He is perfect. Perfection is fated, and He is transcendent, above the laws of nature. Imperfect beings do not stand a chance against Him.
Scattered, the younger is, into a million particles of the sand he so loves. Absorbed, the elder is, by the nascent Herald, the arcane energy that replaced his body serving to fuel the newborn God’s age of peace.
The remaining pantheons of Shurima soon follow.
In the land once called Demacia, the first demon is chopped and scattered. Were there any in the kingdom who still possessed the gift of hearing, they might have heard the foul beast’s screeching as it is cast into the bottomless, churning, boiling depths below the earth.
The deities of the Northern Seas fare no differently. Mountains are cleaved into twine, icebergs crumpled like fresh snow, as the Phoenix is sundered from her heavenly nest, the Dwarf extinguished beneath the struggling ocean, the Bear struck down and banished into the void between worlds.
In the endless plains of Noxus, a warlord of the First Age emerges from a world beyond death to challenge the new God. The Lord of Death and his mechanical souls, an abomination, an unholy corruption of the perfect form the Herald sought for His people. For ten days and ten nights they battle, stars shorn off the tapestry of the sky and raining down like teardrops of celestial flame, the earth shattering, weeping molten rock from the violence of their clash. But the Herald learns, while the ancient man of iron and magic does not. It is destiny for Him to free the Dread Lord’s prisoners from their bondage, as He has done all over Runeterra with the souls trapped within cages of flesh and bone.
Soon, only the Bard is left to oppose Him. For all their supposed mastery over the strings of the instrument of time, the strange creature does not even raise a finger against Him. Simply sits still, allowing their existence to be subsumed by the Herald, a warbling laugh the only sound they emit from beneath that golden mask.
Now, He is alone.
He sits down, flanked by His radiant people, on the throne of His kingdom at the end of time. Where peace is eternal. Where death never arrives. It is a beautiful world He has created. It is His, it is perfect, and it is silent, and He is so, very, all alone.
Almost.
Summer. Swimming, the children go, in the waters of the cove next to the aluminum refinery. Coolant refuse. Cleaner than the polluted bay, but still coated with a glistening chemical sheen. He cannot follow, with the condition of his leg, so he builds a toy boat to swim in his place.
Whir, click. Chug. The boat paddles forward. Laughter, mirthful and teasing. Fingers pointed, mouths covered, hands clapped on his back. Barriers do not only exist in the physical dimension, Viktor learns, but the mental one as well. He is close to them, yet so far away. A curiosity, a peculiarity, a subject of their study the same way he is learning about them.
Are machines curious? Is that what sets humanity apart from their metal creations? Another question to answer.
Children are impatient. Flit away like butterflies at the slightest gust of wind. Splashing, more laughter. A girl lingers at the top of the rocky face. More curious than the others. But the other children call, and even she leaves him behind.
He resets the boat. Dips it into the water. He has rewound the boat too far, and now he is limping, limping as fast as he can as his creation vanishes beyond his grasp, into the bowels of a fissure.
At the bottom is a pool of limpid motionless water, alight with the alien purple of otherworldly flowers. Glowing pink, purring contentedly, a salamander is curled on a rock lit by a solitary beam of sunlight. Seated next to the creature is a hunched man. Thin and grey and cold, spinning the gears of Viktor’s toy.
The man’s name is Singed, though he asks Viktor to call him Doctor. The salamander’s name is Rio. Her size is due to a rare mutation triggered by the purple flowers in the cave: one that boosts her physical growth but shortens her lifespan.
She is dying. He is trying to save her life.
Viktor tells the strange man he wants to become a healer, to cure people like the Doctor is curing Rio. The Doctor rebuffs him.
“You would be better off as a scientist, my boy. One cannot heal what one does not understand.”
Rio would be perfect, the Doctor explains, were it not for the curse of death. Flaws are to be fixed, yet to be fixed they must first be understood.
And what greater weakness, what greater mystery is there other than death?
It is mere curiosity, the Herald tells Himself, when He does not immediately transform the last sentient being.
A Zaunite boy, like He once was before His ascension. Three years after His work was completed, His people unearthed the human from his hiding spot in Icathia. The energy signature of the corruption, a relic of the Rune Wars, must have interfered with the Herald’s senses, masking the boy’s presence. Smart of the child to lay low in the ruined peninsula.
No matter. Foolishness won out over wits in the end. The boy could have stayed hidden for the rest of his life, but he attempted to power up a Hex device, a glass-metal cylinder which now floats in the Herald’s hand. A recreation of the Hexcore, a second anomaly. The power surge from its awakening alerted the closest sentinels, who apprehended the boy while he was charging the device.
Imperfect plans lead to failed outcomes.
Nonetheless, the Herald is curious about the contraption. His Hexcore—now His mechanical heart, the source of His magic—utilized runes of drive, of purpose, of evolution, words of power that are now etched into His very soul. The anomaly before Him, if anything, is the very antithesis of His being: fuelled by the desire to reverse, to undo, to start over. Destruction before creation, chaos before order. A paradoxical cycle, a self-contained loop maintained in sublime balance.
“A rather marvellous creation. I must compliment you.”
Once upon a time, when He was still but a fledgling hatched from His cocoon, the core might have been powerful enough to destroy Him. Now, though, it is but a nuisance, albeit a well-engineered one.
“Did you really hope to kill me with this device?”
Impressed, the Herald will readily admit Himself to be, at the resilience of this particular human. Even bloodied and broken, chest wheezing with the wet clatter of bruised organs, slammed roughly against the abrasive Icathian gravel by the hands of the Herald’s parishioners, the boy manages to nail Him with a gaze that would have sent other mortal beings scampering away. But the Herald no longer feels fear, having excised that weakness with the last flaws of His physical form as a surgeon snips the tumour from a patient. Defiance is naught but symbolic, if it cannot be backed by power and harnessed into concrete action.
“No, that cannot be. Its purpose was not to defeat me. You designed it with a more subtle goal in mind.” The Herald turns the machine around, examining the handle and the cord, the ouroboros of light that flickers in and out of oblivion within the reinforced glass tube. “In which case, there is only one possibility, and a rather foolish one at that—you wished to return in time.”
From the flash of panic in the boy’s demeanour—the near-imperceptible widening of eyelids, the slight acceleration of the heart and the lungs—it appears that the Herald has hit His mark.
“Countless generations have dreamed of travelling through time, of undoing the events of the past. Gods and mortals alike. What made you think you would succeed where so many bright minds have failed?”
The boy buries his emotions underneath a small smirk that shifts the loose and fraying skin on his skull.
“Because I didn’t have the luxury to lose.”
“Yet, lost you have. For you were hasty in activating an incomplete device, one you knew you could not adequately finish, bound as you are by the constraints of your physical and mental form.” He hands His staff to one of His assistants—a diminutive floating figure, the former Yordle who was once named Heimerdinger, the head of the Piltovan council and His past self’s mentor. “You believed your invention would work, yet your judgement, your calculations were flawed. Another testament to the failings of the human condition.”
“What’s that got to do with anything? You’re human, too.”
“Once, I was human,” the Herald agrees. “I rid myself of the burdens of my flesh and the deficiencies of my mind. Now, I am perfect. Whole.” With His free hand, He touches a finger to the boy’s forehead, gold flaring against fading white paint. “This will only hurt a little. I will mold you into the ideal form, and you will taste divinity as I have. As all our kind have.”
“And what then?”
“You will live at my side for the rest of eternity. Honoured, if you so desire. Do not worry for your fate—I hold no rancor against those who were once misguided. In fact, I have only the utmost admiration for visionaries like you.”
The boy—Ekko, the Herald catches the name floating in the miasma of the human’s mind—simply smirks in return.
“If I’ve learned a single thing my entire life, it’d be that it's not enough to give people what they need to survive. You have to give them what they need to live. To desire to move forward.”
“Is that not what I have granted through my evolution? Eternal life and eternal purpose?”
A pulse of power, and Ekko’s eyes begin to glow an incandescent white, lines of otherworldly gold crawling over his skin, but his mouth still moves, still forms the words that will be the last humanity will utter on this planet.
“One day, you’ll be sitting on your throne, all alone, and only then will you realize that your so-called kingdom is nothing more than an empty wasteland.”
A slight flare of—not quite irritation or frustration, for the Herald has purged those feelings—but possibly mild discontent, shivers through His chest. With a practiced motion the Herald pushes it down.
“It is rather presumptuous of you, wouldn’t you say? To assume I would ever be dissatisfied with the fruition of my life’s work.”
The smirk remains. “When the time comes, you’ll understand.”
Ekko clutches the pendant around his neck. A copper gear, stained lime-green by time, still flecked with dots of crumbling paint. He is still holding on, still smiling that mercurial smile, as his body erupts like the sun then cools, solidifies into a sheath of tempered white metal.
The boy that once was Ekko, who dared attempt to tame time and turn it against the Herald, sidles into position at His side. The staff is returned to His hand by His old mentor, discreetly, with an automatic bow of reverence.
With a flick of His fingers, the boy’s device—Z-drive, its name the Herald picked from Ekko’s mind—crumbles to ash.
Now, the Herald is truly alone.
When he discovers Rio pumped full of needles and tubes, irises glazed over, whimpering feebly in pain, Viktor flees from the Doctor. Flees from the orphanage where he was sent after an epidemic took away his parents, flees to the city of marble and stained glass and that beautiful promise of progress—where, ironically enough, the Doctor wished for him to one day study. His decision to abandon the Doctor, he comes to rue when he grows into a failing body, an already-rotting bud, a young and promising inventor condemned to an early death by a childhood of empty stomachs and toxic fumes he was powerless to avoid.
He understands, now, the Doctor’s true nature.
There exist other solutions: of that he is certain. The Academy once hosted a slew of medical projects on the Grey, treatments that might have saved his life and countless others in the Undercity were they pursued to the fullest possible extent. But the Council treated them as mere curiosities, flashy newspaper headlines to garner public support, a circus with Undercity suffering as the centrepiece. Discarded and long forgotten once the desired popularity boost was achieved.
The notes must still exist, though, somewhere in the Archives, courtesy of Heimerdinger’s obsession with orderliness. If he finds said notes, then with enough time, he might be able to complete said research and heal his lungs through conventional means. He did, after all, complete his second thesis on human respiratory biology. So brilliant was his treatise that he was almost dragged off and shoved into a doctor’s garb by the Guild of Medicine, were it not for Heimerdinger pulling him in the opposite direction, into the umbrella of House Ferros’ sponsorship and—then unbeknownst to the yordle—their secret project in Hextech, harnessing magic through science, with the now-accomplished endgame of a Council seat.
But even a man as determined as Viktor has his limits. Between teaching Academy classes, daily maintenance of the Hexgate, getting dragged into aristocratic gatherings by Lady Camille Ferros, his patron and supervisor, and his work on the Enforcers’ newest mechanical toy, Blitzcrank, his body would not be able to stand the additional load of another project. Failing as it is under the current strain, cutting away years every day he toils under the weight of it all.
He requires a fast solution, and he holds it, a delicate vial of flickering violet liquid given for free by the Doctor.
“In return, I only ask for a glimpse of the results.”
The suffering of some, Viktor learns, is often necessary for the relief of many. Sacrifices may have to be made. The salamander was one such sacrifice, and Viktor thanks her for her role.
Freedom, true freedom, lies in the unwillingness to compromise, the ability to let go of all except for your goal.
Viktor has held onto one of Blitzcrank’s prototype cores. A failed attempt at generating life through the Arcane, but it may yet find use as an energy source to catalyze the transformation procedure.
If his calculations are correct, the process might do more than heal his lungs. He could possibly even recover the use of his right leg.
He refuses to believe the sensation, at first.
A perfect being cannot want, does not lack, has no need of anything, for He already possesses it all. Centuries slip through His fingers like fine grains of sand, and He spends them all on ventures of meaning.
His people carve temples from mountains, statues from icebergs, pyramids out of islands. They raise towers soaring to the heavens, excavate tunnels plummeting to the molten heart of the Earth. The finest of paintings, the most intricate of equations, the most beautiful of written tales. Libraries and museums, concert halls for the songs of creation and gardens of immortality, temples and churches and cathedrals erected in worship of His new world.
They are the audience and the performers rolled into one. He wishes for them to applaud, and they applaud. He wishes for them to watch, and they watch, settling with perfect synchronicity into their seats, standing when they are asked, walking on and off stage to play their parts with impeccable timing. He is their director, their conductor, and they are the instruments to His orchestra, and they play according to His symphony, gears clicking in perfect tune, bells sounding on every beat, and yet—
Yet—
No. He feels naught but a muted satisfaction. Completely normal, given His form. Nothing more. He does not feel more.
Viktor loves another once, in all his existence as a mortal, and even now he is unsure as to whether that brief encounter should be called love. Is his passion for his work not a form of true love? Viktor’s knowledge may be deficient on the subject of emotions, but even he is marginally aware that love is typically reserved for one, should not be split lest the whole splinter and be shattered.
Fascination, he will call it then. That is the most appropriate term. A fascination born out of curiosity, the way a mathematician plays with a pretty theorem, a pawnbroker is hypnotized by a particularly rare trinket.
Jayce Talis the Second makes for a rather peculiar Piltovan aristocrat. For an, albeit relatively minor, Head of House, he does not comport himself in a manner befitting of one of Topside’s richest and most influential men. Drab and sullen and unshaved, he speaks sparsely, his words dragged by a weight that would rival the jaded shell of the most feral of Trencher orphans.
Viktor hears rumours of an absent father in Ixtal, of a mother lost in a snowstorm when he was naught but a young boy. Jayce wears gloves, always, even when the rest of his clothes are off, but from the prodding corners cushioned inside thick worn leather, Viktor guesses he must have mechanical fingers. Lost, then, either to the cold of that tragic storm or to blacksmithing, though Viktor is more inclined toward the former explanation.
Their encounters are rare and fleeting, ephemeral, a mayfly doomed to appear and vanish. Viktor’s Hextech is the brick and mortar of Piltover’s industry, and he cannot displace himself from his position as a critical cog in the machine. Besides, Jayce also has responsibilities. He is a primary shareholder in the metallurgy sector and the last living member of the Talis line. From what Viktor has garnered of Piltovan aristocracy, it is tradition for the youngest member of a House’s main line to marry and conceive when they are fresh into adulthood, raise a single child, as to preserve the continuity of the bloodline and prepare the heir for their role for as long as possible.
Jayce is thirty-two. In heir-raising terms, he is an old man. He shows no interest in siring a child. In fact, the only energy he ever displays is toward Viktor.
On his part, Viktor is wholly unaware of why the two of them, in particular, would share this … connection. Perhaps, with a larger sample size, he would be able to gather more data on the matter. But more entanglements would only be a waste of his time, not to mention the possibility of his work ethic being compromised. In any case, it is not as if there are many candidates lining up to his bedroom door.
Perhaps Miss Young, the Undercity girl who had lingered behind in his childhood, who managed to enroll in the Academy, who so enthusiastically researches purifying Lane air with Hextech. Even he noticed that she shows at least some degree of interest in him, and perhaps it may develop into something more, were it not for the fact that he is not … carnally interested in women.
Besides, Viktor never allows the past to catch up to him.
He and Jayce first met in an Undercity pub. The Last Drop, owned by a roughshod woman named Violet who wraps bloodied bandages around her hands, who has now set aside a room for their irregular visits. Neither recognized the other, at first, two important men reduced to nameless faces after a few drinks—though Viktor supposes they were both nameless to begin with, the unknown scientist and the obscure noble—and sometimes Viktor still doesn’t recognize Jayce when they return after Jayce has spent the day auditing pages upon pages of budgets and so to distract him, Viktor begins to drone about his work, because Jayce’s eyes light up like those of a curious Undercity child who has just seen sunlight for the first time in his life, as he absorbs Viktor’s descriptions of frequency decomposition and polarity checks and runic logic gates like a dry sponge lapping up water.
For a handful of soothing hours, Viktor almost banishes the razor-sharp stress of work from his shoulders.
Almost.
The initial signs of trouble emerge roughly two and a half millennia—or is it decades? eons?—after Evolution. An asteroid the size of a mountain almost crashes into Runeterra.
At first, the Herald is unconcerned by this particular harbinger. Mass extinctions are but natural phenomena, unfortunate as they may be, they are etched into the very bones of the planet itself, and He has learned from these collective memories of Runeterra how to counter every threat to its survival. He has long ascended past the point where mere rocks could pose a threat to Him or His people.
He shatters the asteroid with a thought.
Then the next asteroid, and the one following that.
A veritable rain of comets follows, and He is forced to open both eyes—He usually shuts them, now, to let His people rest for most of the time—to keep up. A mild strain on His abilities, but nothing to be concerned about.
The hail of starfire, however, does worry Him.
As oceans evaporate with a deafening roar, as continents melt like slime, He rockets into the oblivion of outer space, scythes through the beam of cosmic power to find a dragon awaiting on the other side. Primordial it is, a forger of stars as old as the Universe itself, enraged at how the Herald has granted immortality to mankind.
A year, or maybe a century, or is it another eon? The Herald does not know anymore, nor does He care. The fight scatters stars and splinters dimensions, rends the very fabric of space itself, until He blasts the dragon into the furthest reaches of the cosmos.
Runeterra, of course, is now but a cloud of incinerated, scattered dust. Not a problem. Another thought brings that dust back together, coalesces it into the familiar blue-green sphere He calls home.
But there is something wrong with the recreated Runeterra. An itch at the back of His head, an incessant nagging that He knows He snipped out when He was reborn. Which makes the emotion all the more confusing, because He is all-powerful and all-knowing, is He not? God, Creator?
What could be hidden from Him?
His people are all there, all awaiting His orders to rebuild His world. So why is He not giving any? He has given out countless commands over the near-eternity He has spent with them, so many that all the human scribes in all of history could not record them if they spent the rest of their lives writing. Every microsecond, in the depths of His maximally efficient mind, He is formulating yet a thousand more.
It strikes Him, then, that perhaps He is missing a key part of the puzzle.
“Viktor?”
“Hmm?”
“Do you think we could have been partners in another world?”
Mind you, the Herald never errs in His judgement. It is simply out of scientific habit that He is considering this course of action. Proper science requires peer review, requires colleagues of equal intellect, and the Herald would be … amenable to another appraising His work, if only to reaffirm to Him what He already knows as truth.
He is alone. Has been alone for—how long? He barely remembers anymore, but that is not important at the moment. His endeavour is the focus. A change of pace—separating an individual from the many, if only temporarily—would not be unwelcome.
Now, who to summon?
His first thoughts drift to the whimsical old yordle who was His first mentor in His mortal life. The construct drifts over to Him with ease. He reaches into His inner world, toward the spiral of light that is the amalgam of Runeterra’s souls, and pulls.
Then, for the first time in an eternity of eternities, the Herald is surprised when the light pulls back.
Resists His will.
Huh.
Perhaps He is still somewhat drained from His battle against the Great Dragon. Heimerdinger’s soul must be rather deeply entrenched within the light, and He simply applied an insufficient amount of force.
Perhaps a more recent addition would do? One with greater strength of will? He reaches for the human boy—Ekko.
Nothing.
Camille Ferros. Searching for her yields the same results.
He tries Sky, despite the fact He is certainly aware that Miss Young’s consciousness was subsumed into the Arcane after His second transformation, just before His liberation of the Twin Cities. He is not grasping at straws. He is merely eliminating alternate possibilities with thoroughness.
There is another soul, of course—Jayce Talis. He remembers that person having some significance to Him in His former life, but when He sifts about He encounters the same roadblock, except that for this particular individual something stronger lingers in the back of His mind, itching underneath the heap of several millennia of memories—
“My, my, my dear boy.”
The raspy, serpentine voice echoes inside His head, still sends non-existent goosebumps flaring all over His skin.
“You seem to be trapped in quite the conundrum,” the Doctor remarks.
In His human life, the Herald would have huffed.
“I suppose it is appropriate that you would be the first to answer, Doctor.”
“I’m offended you didn’t think of calling upon me sooner.”
“Apologies.” The word is perfunctory, for a God has nothing to be sorry for. “You know what I want to ask you.”
“For what it’s worth, I believe you have done an admirable job. All my life, I searched to cure death, and not only have you found that cure, you have distributed it to every living being on this planet. I am proud of you, Viktor. Your progress has been splendid.” A minute pause. “But that answer will not satisfy you, will it?”
The realization hits the Herald microseconds before the Doctor’s projected thoughts.
“No.”
“You are not here for someone to kowtow to you. You wish for an intellectual equal to prove you right.”
It is only within the nature of a scientist, the Herald argues to Himself, and was He not, does He not remain a scientist? Only when critics corroborate the validity of a theory can one demonstrate oneself to be correct beyond reprehension.
—children laughing on a riverbank—
“I wouldn’t recommend reaching for them right now,” Singed continues. “Their souls are fused together with yours, bound to your life force, and as powerful as you are, I would not recommend tampering with the spiritual integrity of your metaphysical self.”
The Herald arrives at that very conclusion, and the immediate corollary with respect to His objective, within the same instant.
“So you are suggesting that I—ah.”
His memory is infallible. He still remembers the human boy, Ekko’s device, and it is a trivial matter to fix the runic configuration, siphon off and isolate a sliver of his power to mimic the energy of the boy’s anomaly.
“If you cannot reach those you wish to speak to in the present, seek them out in the past.”
Flashes and dull screams. A blazing inferno, ash mixing with puddles of scarlet—is that his blood?
Little does Viktor remember of the attack. Camille fills in the gaps for him. A missile fired by an Undercity rebel named Jinx, purportedly in revenge for the deaths of her family at Enforcer hands. She, Heimerdinger, and Councillor Medarda are the only survivors. Not that any three of them are of any use. The Head of House Ferros is paralyzed from the waist down, the yordle is submerged in a coma, and Medarda reported missing. A Noxian general, reportedly Medarda’s mother, has taken over Piltover in the meanwhile.
“And what about me?”
His physical form is … different, now. Akin to the results of his own attempted treatment, the organic tissue of his right leg replaced by a synthetic Shimmer-flesh weave, except that now his whole body save his head has been replaced by the material and enhanced with a metallic structure that is vaguely similar to Blitzcrank’s exoskeleton.
“You died, Viktor,” Camille proceeds in her clipped, calculated tone. “My men rushed you to your laboratory to find any means of safeguarding the information in your cerebrum. The Hexcore you were experimenting on reacted to your condition and—fused with you.” She gestures at the cocoon at the back of the room, then back at him. “Now here you are.”
Once upon a time, Viktor might have agreed with Camille. Once upon a time, but Miss Young was disintegrated by the modified Hexcore only a month back, prompting Viktor to scrap all his research in the area and stash the Hexcore away until he could discover a way to safely dispose of it.
“You had no right to bring me back.”
“Mistakes are for lesser men, as I have taught you over and over.” Even confined to a wheelchair, Lady Ferros manages to appear intimidating. “Are you implying that I erred in my judgement?”
“Yes, Lady Ferros.”
For a brief moment, a flicker of surprise flies over the face of the Steel Lady of House Ferros. It gives way to a small, sly smile.
“You are learning, Viktor.”
“No matter. What is done, is done, and all we can do is adapt and move on.” Viktor reaches for his cane, warped into an iridescent sceptre of alien design no human craftsman could replicate. He might study it if he has the time, but now is definitely not the moment. “What is the seriousness of the current situation?”
“Dire. Piltover and the Undercity are on the verge of war, with Noxus pouring fuel on the fire.” Camille blinks, the only sign of weakness Viktor knows she will allow herself. “The Academy has begun investigating the possibility of weaponizing Hextech.”
Joints popping, metal creaking, as Viktor’s fist tenses around his walking stick. His creation in the name of progress, of humanity, corrupted for the purpose of destruction.
“I’m afraid,” Camille continues, “that … this time, the situation might be unsalvageable.”
A creeping shiver crawls down Viktor’s back. He is old enough to remember the gang-lords and their brutal reign of terror over the Lanes. The coal miner uprising that ended with a Bridge drenched in blood, all while he was taking finals at the Academy. The civil war between the two former leaders of said revolution, Silco and Vander, while he was determining the degeneracy of runic energy eigenvalues. If he recalls correctly, that final conflict ended with the death of Vander along with most of his adoptive family, the defection of one of his children to Silco’s side, and a veritable massacre in the Lanes—a quarter of the population culled, with half of the remainder now addicted in some degree to Shimmer.
Thorough, the Doctor has always been.
He doubts the Undercity would ever accept him back. A Trencher who crossed the Bridge to live in the high and mighty palaces of the cruel Topside overlords, who sold out his people for copper cogs and a fancy laboratory. Even though he does not hold any special attachment for Piltover—not more, at the very least, than he does for the Undercity.
But is it not his life’s goal to heal humanity? To cure death? To fix the flaws in the mechanism, smoothen the kinks in the treads? Even if every ailment is cured, every wound healed, humanity will still yearn to destroy itself. Peace is a delicate equilibrium, a toy boat trapped in turbulent currents.
Unless he acts.
Unless, with this new body, he can create a prosperous haven where there is no need to fight. Eye of the storm, light in the void. Where he can preach peace until it becomes a given constant, a universal invariant, not just a state of being but a fundamental law of the cosmos itself.
Humans learn by example. An edict of social psychology. Viktor only has to provide this example.
Serve as the anchor for the boat in the storm.
“I may be able to mediate a—solution.”
Certainty, natural and overflowing, oozes from Viktor’s once frail but now lithe and sturdy frame. Sudden confidence that makes Camille frown.
“And when exactly did you learn diplomacy?”
“I did not,” Viktor counters, and perhaps it is the calm in his voice or the quiet steel in his eyes, because Camille blinks again. “But I do know how to heal. Though, for expedience, I will require your assistance.”
“Political rifts are not mended by doctors.”
“Only because none have tried.” He steps forward, reaching with a glowing hand. Only now does he realize how small Camille is, as she blinks again in surprise. “Once, I never believed I would be able to breathe with clear lungs, or walk without use of a stick. We all have the potential to engender limitless change. Never claim impossibility until one has made a wholehearted attempt.”
“Pretty words, Viktor.” The falseness of her words is belied by the greedy slant of her mouth as she eyes the tips of Viktor’s sparking hands. “Both of us know very well not to trust anything less than concrete power.”
“You wish for me to back my claims.”
“If I … support this particular endeavour of yours, what do I stand to gain in return?”
Viktor breathes in. “I will give you back your legs.”
So it happens that the Herald returns to the past. To when it all began. He is not concerned: after all, it wouldn’t hurt a god, a perfect being, to travel back in time, would it?
Time, it appears, is determined to prove otherwise.
The moment He lands in the past is the moment He notices the wrongness of it all. He catches a glimpse of startled amber eyes and paper-white skin through a tapestry of fading runes, before the abrupt and unexpected feeling of weight and weakness and suffocating mortality hits him like a missile.
“Incredible. So this is the true power of Hextech.”
“Power, I would avoid calling it, Jayce. It is not power I seek to obtain from Hextech, but progress. The betterment of humanity through the alleviation of our burdens.”
“Still. I know that for me at least, it'd be nice, once in a while, to give into the temptation and pretend like we’re children in the sandbox of infinite possibilities that is the Universe.”
“I’m trapped in my child self’s body,” are the Herald’s first words, three thousand years in the past.
“So it appears.”
Experimentally, before a smudged mirror, He flexes a spindly arm. Presses a finger into a sunken cheek.
“All these emotions and sensations … I had forgotten exactly how much of a burden they were.”
It would be an understatement, to say that the Herald is appalled at being trapped in this lesser form. That He now hungers and thirsts and tires, that his sight has been blindfolded and his hearing muffled and his ability to detect magic nonexistent, that spatial movement must be accomplished by the cumbersome motion of physical limbs. A butterfly trapped in the body of a caterpillar, yet to molt into its wings. The shock of the experience even knocked Him out— knocked a God unconscious —for a few hours, considering how He is roused from a soft surface—a bed, he recalls—by a wrinkled woman depositing a receptacle of steaming broth next to him, pressing the back of her hand to His forehead, then silently leaving the room.
A frail old lady, fussing over a God.
“How did this come about?” He muses.
“From what I’ve observed in your inner world, you arrived into the past in physical proximity to your past self. That proximity led to both of your bodies fusing. Fortunately, you have retained most of your powers, though heavily weakened.”
Another side effect: deductions and calculations now require effort, and even the slightest disturbance to HIs environment—may it be a gust of wind, or a shout from the street, or the creak of some rusty hinge—suffices to derail His entire thought process. He struggles to process this piece of information. His memory, once flawless as befitting a God, is now reduced to a blurry mess. Superb for a human, but inexcusable for Him.
Thousands of years of history, the birth of a new world, all under threat of disappearing even from the recesses of His mind, and He wonders if He made a—
No. Impossible. The Herald’s judgement never fails.
“It would be unwise to push your current form through the Evolution at this moment,” the Doctor anticipates Him. “Your soul fused with the soul of your past self, and while resilient, it has not yet adapted to your level of power. Better undergo the original process, albeit accelerated. Moreover, this will give you time to win over a companion to your side when you Evolve this new world.”
Slowly, the Herald turns toward the door.
“What do you mean, Doctor?”
“Your arrival here created a branch in the tree of time. An alternate reality, so to speak. So long as you remember the runic configuration to return back home, you have all the time in the world.”
"You suggest that I stay here for some time."
"What are a handful of lost years, compared to what you stand to gain for the rest of eternity?"
Orphans, beggars, prostitutes, and a bottomless number of Shimmer addicts. Viktor gathers them during his passage through the Undercity, all the wretched souls who would otherwise be condemned to lives of squalor and afterlives of oblivion, heals them with his newfound power, and they follow like newborn lambs after a shepherd. But he is still unused to using the latent energy of his newfound form, for when he arrives at his destination—a spacious cavern set snugly inside one of the deeper fissures—it is all he can do not to collapse after he sets up a series of membranous tents.
While slumbering, he is able to watch the goings of the camp. Souls, silhouettes of swirling light drifting through an infinite ocean, connected to him by an umbilical cord in the astral world.
They are—different. Camile, the prior Camille wouldn’t have hesitated to laugh at him for his softness. Now, she mills about the camp with her enhanced legs, carrying loads that would strain even the sturdiest of mechanical cranes. Heimerdinger, whom he woke from the yordle’s comatose state, would have shook his head and babbled about preservation of the natural order, furry ears raised in irritation, incapable of grasping how cruelly the natural order he worships treats humanity. Epiphany seems to have struck this new Heimerdinger, though, humble and humorous, designing everything from toys to irrigation canals to power generators, all the necessary components for a functioning community.
Conserved on the surface yet … altered, in a positive manner, in their deeper composition. As if a part of Viktor’s drive, Viktor’s soul, has been imprinted upon those he heals, imbuing them with a common purpose.
Only one remains unchanged. Sky, whom he finds floating in the ocean. She smiles at him, lingers at his side, encourages him to move forward and spread his gift. Locking the Hexcore away was a mistake born from a rash excess of self-recrimination, a sentiment that could have cost so many the chance to truly be free. Drawn, they are, the sick and the poor and the nameless, to his community that purges illness, to his touch that blesses pilgrims with the end of all woes, release from the tender sufferings of the mortal form.
Thirteen months later, the Hound and his daughters arrive.
In a week, He regains control of His powers. A flicker divided by infinity, in comparison to the millennia He has spent in solitude, but the duration drags for longer than any period of time hence.
In that week, the Herald formulates a precise plan for the next two decades. It begins with shapeshifting into an adult form, then transporting Himself to a certain snowstorm in the Piltovan mountains, to a boy and his mother trapped within.
This Evolution, Jayce will become His partner. His equal. It is destiny. The Herald ordains it so.
Camille, Heimerdinger, Sky, the Doctor—over the innumerable centuries He has spent meditating on His ascent, and the week He has now lived in the past, He has played through every possible interaction, every scenario so thoroughly that He has completely grasped their personalities. The Herald would gain nothing by recruiting any of them to His side.
Jayce is the only unknown in this equation, the only variable left unsolved, the only potential the Herald has yet to exploit to its fullest. Jayce’s nature, the Herald did not have the opportunity of fully grasping in their short acquaintance.
A gap in His knowledge He fully intends to remedy.
He pretends to stumble upon the boy and his ailing mother. Wheels away, plucks a runestone from His bracers—shards of His power, solidified into a more palatable form for His temporarily mortal body to handle—and, rather performatively, casts a simple teleportation spell.
Staff-waving, the circle of runes, the brief passage through the arcane—those parts are for dramatic effect. He could easily teleport them into their beds and be done with it. But the seed needs to be planted in Jayce’s head. Spark the boy’s fascination with magic in a life-saving event he will never forget, and follow where that gratitude leads him.
He selects a shard from His bracer. ‘Union’. Rather befitting of His mission, He finds. The Herald plops it into the boy’s—Jayce’s—outstretched hands.
Before Him, the future stretches out, clear as polished crystal.
All that is left for the Herald to do is wait.
The thirteenth month also marks Jayce’s arrival at the commune. ‘Small town’ would be a more appropriate term, at this point, Viktor’s community having made the jump from a humble village to a large-scale settlement in only two months, fully occupying the expanse of the canyon, glittering houses and schools and shops sprawling along the fissure floor and crawling up the walls, cattle joining the crops and orchards that emerge from the magically-fertilized soil.
Haggard, rough, weary, Jayce makes for a startling sight amongst the impeccably clean denizens of the commune. Even Vander, a kind man turned mutated beast, is healthy and groomed clean, eyes sparkling with intelligence and love as he follows his daughters—Violet and, surprisingly enough, Jinx—around. Repressing the beast’s instincts was one of Viktor’s more draining procedures, but he is now confident that the wolf-man will no longer consciously pose a threat to the people of the commune.
All is well, until Jayce barges back into Viktor’s life.
“Noxus just officially declared its rule over Piltover,” he heaves between gulps from a glass of water. “They’ll come for the Undercity next, and here, Viktor.”
“I do not see what they would seek here. We have no weapons, no military strength to offer or threaten them with.”
“This settlement is a quarter the size of Piltover. A substantial portion of the population. And that’s not the most important part. Ambessa knows about you, Viktor. She wants your power.”
“Then my services I shall offer. I do not turn away any who seek my help—”
With a frustrated grunt, Jayce slams the hilt of his Hextech-enhanced greathammer against the floor of Viktor’s abode. The guards attempted, and ultimately failed, to confiscate that weapon from the jittery noble.
“They will use you as a weapon of war. The very opposite of what you came here to do.” His face contorts into a trembling grimace. “You have to run, Viktor.”
“And abandon my people to their fate?” Viktor stands, arching his hands on the table. “I can never accept that.”
“This isn’t just about you or me. This is about the world—”
“What I am doing here is also for the sake of the world. Providing an abode for all those who seek peace and redemption.”
“A paradise that will soon be burned to the ground! You don’t even have weapons here!”
“It is not the right way to fight with every person who disagrees with us—”
“Sometimes,” Jayce whispers, holding up a hand, “fighting is inevitable, if you want to protect the things you cherish. You have to draw a line in the sand and hold your ground. If only—if only so you never have regrets.”
Viktor examines the hard-set lines of Jayce’s face, the way the other man twiddles with his mechanical fingers inside his gloves, how he is almost certainly thinking about his mother.
“I’m sorry, Jayce. But my decision is final.” Viktor turns to the door. “I will speak with this Noxian general, this Ambessa, when she arrives.”
“I see.”
“Camille will be at my side for the parley. If you so wish, you can accompany me as well. Though in no way will I prevent you from leaving if you so choose.”
A brief silence. Then, footsteps clunk up to his side.
“Have this, then.” A sheet of soft white wool is draped over his shoulders. “It used to be my mother’s favorite cloak, before she—” Jayce chokes.
“You don’t need to force yourself into saying anything, Jayce.”
“It was her good-fortune cloak,” the other man finally croaks out. “She always wore it, in the winter, and the one time I called it ugly, she didn’t put it on, then she—”
Another grimace flits over his face. Breath in, breath out, and he composes himself.
“My condolences,” Viktor fills in.
“I know it’s silly. A grown man like me, acting superstitious like a child.”
His fingers tremble as they pull away from Viktor’s shoulders, as they have so many times before, and all of a sudden Viktor’s eyes shoot open.
Viktor doesn’t know how to heal broken hearts. Not yet. But ailments of the body he can now remedy by instinct—
“I could heal your fingers.”
—and if the ailment of the heart is connected to the condition of the physical—
Jayce’s eyes widen. Then he jerks his hands away.
“I—I can’t—”
A pang shoots through Viktor’s chest, and he lowers the hand he has stretched out.
“I apologize for presuming.”
“No, no—” and Jayce hangs his head in contrition. “I’m the one who should apologize for refusing your kindness. But I’m afraid I’ll have to pass on your offer. This is my scar to bear, not yours.”
Viktor frowns. “I’m afraid I—don’t quite follow your logic.”
“That’s alright. I know you’ll get it, one day.”
Gently, cooly, the night breeze blows, whistles like a chime in the ruins of a broken home.
“Am I interrupting?”
Jayce jumps, startled, back from the ledge.
“The hell’s your problem?” A weighted pause. “What’s that, another list with my name on it?”
“Actually, yes. But only because you signed your notes. Every page, I might add. A tad egotistical, don’t you think?”
“Is that why you came? To insult me?”
“No! No, no.” An opening to step forward, to proffer support. “Actually, I was intrigued by what you said at the trial.”
“That makes you the only one.”
“Yes—well, I wanted to talk to you about your work. This … Hextech theory of yours.”
“It’s not a theory! I saw with my own eyes what magic can do. The lives it could save. You have no idea how beautiful it is.”
A droop of the head, a slow turn back toward the ledge.
“And now it’s gone. No one believed me.”
Moment of truth.
“Nobody’s ever believed in me.”
Walk up to Jayce’s side, gaze out into the starry night sky.
“A poor cripple from the Undercity? I was an outsider the moment I stepped foot in Piltover. Didn’t have the benefits of a patron, or a name. I simply believed in myself.”
Smile, slowly. Nod subtly.
“Which is why I am here. Because I think you’re onto something. I want to help you complete your research.”
The runestone flares inside a closed fist. Clamouring, awaiting, to be returned to its other master. Ying to the yang, half of a whole.
“When you’re going to change the world, don’t ask for permission.”
“I guess this is goodbye.”
“Thank you very much for your company in my solitude, Miss Young. I will … miss our talks.”
“No. You won’t.”
“Scientists seek discoveries. Ways to make the world a better place. This Hextech dream of yours, it has the potential to do that.”
“No.” A hand claps onto a shoulder. “Our Hextech dream.”
“I understand, now.”
“I—I don’t understand.”
“After I saved you and your mother from that storm, I followed your progress through the Academy. As expected, you surpassed all my expectations, even catching Heimerdinger’s eye. So I decided to give yet another nudge in the desirable direction.”
“How—”
“How do you think a shipment of Hex crystals ended up in the Undercity pawnshop you just so happened to frequent? How do you think the Ferros family lost their wealth, when they held a secretive monopoly over their supply?”
“The message hidden within the pattern.”
“You—you ruined the Ferros family.”
“Camille was rather amenable after her—transformation in the previous timeline. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for her past self. I did not wish to repeat that experience, so I removed her from the board.”
“R-removed?”
“A necessary sacrifice for the greater good.”
“The reason for our failures in the commune.”
“Then you invented Hextech, all by yourself. I knew I chose correctly when I chose you, Jayce.”
“The doctor was right.”
“You want to improve lives through our Hextech dream, do you not? We are so close to our goal, now. We restored my true form. And together, as partners, we will bring everlasting salvation to the world through the Glorious Evolution.”
“It's inescapable—humanity, our very essence.”
—wheezing, coughing, fingers gouging through bloodied dirt, crawling, crawling forward, guts spilling in a macabre trail from the gaping wound along his waistline where he was severed in half—
“This war can end, Jayce. Every war will end. From this day forth, human suffering will no longer exist in this Universe. All you need to do is take my hand.”
“Our emotions.”
“You call this ‘evolution’? ‘Salvation’? Turning people into these—these mindless things?”
“Rage, compassion, hate."
“Jayce—”
“How—how could you? My life, my dreams—how much of it was your lies, your manipulation?”
—vision failing, throat hoarse and swollen, his people wailing in a symphony of collective agony, the beast thrashing, but he ignores them all, digging into his soul for the last dregs of his energy, reaching toward a whimpering body wrapped in blue wool, mechanical fingers twitching inside the old leather gloves—
“Everything I did, Jayce, I did for our dream—”
“Get away from me.”
“… I beg your pardon?”
“I SAID GET AWAY, YOU MONSTER!”
—floating inside a lightless chrysalis, plugged full of tubes with the blood that will heal him, rebirth him, the Doctor asks a singular question and yes, he answers, yes, He understands now, embraces it fully, the price of progress, the sacrifices required for the greater good, and He will pay it, to atone for how His human self was too weak to pay them before—
“Who are you really, Viktor?”
“I’m your partner. I’ll always be your partner—”
“Two sides of the same coin, inextricably bound.”
“No, that’s—that’s a lie. Another one of your great deceptions. The greatest of my regrets is that I didn’t see through any of them before. You’re not my partner. I never had a partner.”
“I-I wasn’t lying, Jayce.”
“That which inspires us to our greatest good, is also the cause of our greatest evil.”
“I won’t let you take anything more from me.”
“Wait—”
Before Viktor can do so much as raise a hand, Jayce points the barrel of his hammer to his own face and pulls the trigger.