Chapter Text
The tears taste no different than her sweat.
She’s found herself like this, her eyes welling as she leads four others down the path she might have once ridden her horse upon. This once magnificent road from the city, now devolved into little more than cart tracks; her group having to scramble over rocks and through the ruts. And her, leading the way, a smile on her face. Her throat forced clear by the exertion. Her voice not trembling, almost. Yet her eyes well, and tears roll down, and there is little she can do to stop them except catch them with her bottom lip.
There are stories of battling mage lords in the far reaches of Valoran; now she and this group are among them. They are now the scary stories to tell Demacian children around a campfire. They are now the vicious raiders that her brother supposedly drives away from the towns of the good Demacian people.
She is the mage-blood that was supposed to spill across his sword. She is the cause of the horrified expression on his face. She is the little girl that trembled when he led her to safety away from the battlefield. She is the reason his commander saw him cohorting with the mages. She is not the chains that now likely bind him, deep in Demacian petricite
And she is not a Crownguard anymore.
Hence the tears. That she is trying very hard not to shed.
She doesn’t know where she’s going. The gaggle of four mages behind her follow her anyway.
She’s still trying to get their names straight in her mind- Attia, Rahul, Esbeth. . . and Quincy? That sounds about right. She hasn’t had long to learn. Introductions only came a few hours after, when they were already on the road; certainly not when they were hanging in cages, with her fingers fumbling around the locks, or running across the patrol of Demacian soldiers, or. . .
Another tear. Come on, Lux . She smiles even harder; she hopes her face can fool her mind into behaving.
“Ms. Crownguard?”
Lux turns around, flashing her bright beaming smile. “Just Lux, please.”
“We need to slow down. My brother can’t breathe right,” says Esbeth.
“Of course we can. You should have said so earlier.” Lux replies.
It takes a few moments longer for her to persuade her feet from walking. She finds herself pacing in place instead. Esbeth helps Quincy to a fallen log just off the trail, then he hunches over, placing his head in his hands. The forest is so quiet Lux can hear the whistle-wheeze in every breath he takes.
“How’s everyone else doing?” Lux asks.
“Not as cheery as you.” Attia replies.
“Ah, well, you know.” She shrugs. “It’s a beautiful day for a hike.”
“How could you be thinking that at a time like this?” Rahul snaps. “Are you really so spoiled, Crownguard?”
“It’s Lux. Please .” She folds her hands together and inhales sharply through her teeth. “I’m just trying to keep the mood up.”
Attia too hops on the log beside Esbeth. She starts running her fingers through her hair. Esbeth leans into her touch. Rahul, meanwhile, places a gentle hand on Quincy’s shoulder.
. . . Lux doesn’t know who anyone is to each other. They’re probably from the same area, at least the same section of outer villages ringed around the capital. Neighbors. Friends. Family, if adoption can be considered.
And Lux. The one who stumbled across them as prisoners while she was looking for her brother.
Don’t cry, don’t cry. . . you don’t deserve to cry . With that stubborn reminder she wipes the excess moisture from her eye, disguising it as brushing the hair out of her face.
“How much longer to go?” Esbeth asks.
“Well, we’ve got to get to the Demacian border, at least.” Lux replies.
“A few days? Weeks?”
“A three days’ ride, if I remember right. Though I suppose I’ve never been out this particular direction. And not on foot. And the border’s pretty inconsistent this far out from the capital.” She puts her hand on her chin. “I suppose we’ll just have to ask the next town we come across if they consider themselves to still be part of Demacia.”
“And give away that we’re trying to leave it?” Attia scoffs.
“I can be subtle about it.” Lux says.
“You are anything but subtle.” Rahul points at her.
“I already said I’m sorry.”
Silence follows. It followed the last time she said sorry, too.
Quincy coughs once, then speaks. “Get off her back, we owe her.”
Esbeth nods. Rahul sighs.
“You should sit down,” Attia pats a section of log beside herself. “No points in wearing out the soles of your shoes just yet.”
Lux patters over, brushes the dirt off her portion of the log, then sits down. Instinct makes her cross her ankles, clasp her hands together, and straighten her posture.
“Targon above. . .” Rahul mutters.
She tries to uncross her ankles, but she can’t. Otherwise her legs will start tapping and bouncing again. She can’t have that. She can’t let anyone see her like that.
They spend a bit of time resting on that log, before taking off down the path for several hours until nightfall. Lux knows what sorts of horrors stalk the border towns of Demacia after dark, so she guides them all off the path, to a small cliffside they can put their backs to.
“Now,” she comes back to the camp with a handful of whatever she could find on the forest floor, “does anyone know how to make a fire?”
Everyone looks at Attia. Lux sets down the sticks in a cross-shaped pattern, like how she’s seen in storybooks. Attia waits til she is finished, then rearranges the bundle, putting the finer, fluffier things on top. She then holds her hand out. She closes her eyes.
The smallest puff of flame lights the outer material. Lux supposes the word kindling, that she’s previously heard only in the context of revolutions before, makes sense now.
“Beautiful work!” Lux says.
“Is it?”
“Sure it is.”
They all look at her as if she’s grown another head.
“What is everyone else’s power, anyway?” Lux asks.
“Plants.” Esbeth says.
“Also plants.” Quincy says.
“Healing.” Ruhal says. “And you?”
“I? Well, I make. . . sparkles.” Lux gestures with her palm. Actual sparks make their escape from her palm at the moment, and she quickly shoves her hand into her sleeve. “Sorry.”
“Don’t need to apologize now.” Ruhal sits down by the fire, which has since spread from the kindling to the main sticks.
Lux sits down across the fire from him. The rest join one by one.
“Say,” Lux asks, “have any of you met my friend Galio?”
“Who’s that?” Espeth asks.
“No.” Quincy says.”
“What does he look like?” Attia asks.
“You’d know him if you saw him.” Lux leans her chin against her hand.
“Maybe he doesn’t associate with the likes of us.” Rahul gestured to the others surrounding him.
“I don’t think he’d care about that kind of thing. He’s just happy to have the company.” Lux replies.
Though she doesn’t really know. She’s just guessing. Galio isn’t here now either. She wonders if she could call him, create some big bursting beam from herself to engulf the world in blinding light. But she doesn’t want to get him in trouble. Doesn’t want anyone else to get in trouble because of her.
She wonders if her brother will also be mistaken for a mage. He’s always had an affinity for the divine; she’s seen angels bend to his call for aid, and worst yet they all have now seen his affinity for her, his sympathy for magekind.
(
She wonders how heavy the petricite chains are
)
“Lux?”
Quincy is holding out his hand, as if to go for her shoulder. She pulls away.
“Sorry! Just got some smoke in my eye.” Lux scratches the hem of her sleeve against her eyelids.
“Are you sure?”
“The fire looks like it’s getting low. I’ll get more firewood. Since I can light my own path! It only makes sense.” Lux springs to her feet.
Before anyone can object, she runs off into the inky black of the forest. Sparks spill from her palms and evaporate past the treetops. She sprints over a ridge. She trips on something, a root, a rock, and it breaks her open. A shriek spills from her mouth, and out pours shimmery vomit. Her tears harden into diamonds and fall at her feet.
All she can do is tremble on the ground until all of this horrible mana built up inside of her is gone.
She reaches up and feels her cheeks to find them still moist.
. . . how does her stupid body have any tears left at this point?
Whatever, it’s okay. She wipes her face with her sleeve again. She stands, brushing the dirt off her chestpiece. There’s still little diamonds of her light, solid and glowing in the soil, and she doesn’t know how to make them go away. Instead she gathers them into her left hand and holds them out to see by. She plucks a few good-sized sticks from the underbrush then slowly picks her way back to the camp.
“We saw your light from here.” Ruhal stands as she re-enters the firelight. “What happened?”
“Oh, nothing. Just needed some daylight to see by.” Lux lies.
“You’re going to get us all killed if you’re going to be that obvious.”
“I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.”
It does happen again. It returns every night after they settle down and light the fire. Something in Lux’s chest ignites also, mana spiking hot against her insides. Light oozes from her palms; she shoves it into the ground as best she can. It’s as if it’s taunting her for all the times she held it back in Crownguard manor growing up.
It’s of some relief that none of these episodes summon Galio; maybe it’s because they’ve finally left Demacia proper or maybe it’s because there’s something even stronger within her waiting to be released.
The most she ever sees from her companions are flowers growing in Esbeth’s footsteps as they walk down the trail. The freshest hint of smoke as a breeze blows past Attia. Ruhal keeps his power to himself, even as Quincy coughs and wheezes down the trail. He must have already tried healing him, Lux assumes, otherwise there would be no reason not to try now.
Her tears finally stop, if only with every other expenditure of water in her body. Her and the group, all four of them, are struggling for water. When Quincy gets a moment of rest he grows what lettuce he can from the ground, and that’s some moisture, but definitely not enough.
On the fifth day, a sign to a village appears. They cast a vote. Ruhal and Esbeth are overruled by Attia, Quincy, and Lux herself to travel through it.
Before they get within sight of the logging village, though, they all stop her. Ruhal insists that her chestplate, skirted armor, and greaves need to go. Most commoners never see such pieces of plate in their lives, explains Quincy. Nothing screams ‘Crownguard’ more, agrees Ruhal.
So Lux digs a hole for each piece, runs her fingers down the segments of each, and whispers a goodbye as she buries them. She marks the location with a circular sigil made of stones; one she saw a ‘villainous mage’ use in a theater production once.
They continue on, and the road becomes stone again. The village has a townhouse and a tavern, and little else. All of the patrons look at them, five hooded strangers, as they enter and sit at the bar.
“Do you take Demacian currency?” Lux asks the bartender quietly.
“Still good here, lass,” the bartender replies. “Who’s this seedy bunch you’re traveling with?”
“They’re hardly seedy.” Lux replies. “They’re my friends.”
“Where are you all off to?”
“Oh, you know. Some of the towns ahead.”
The bartender gave a knowing look. “Then you and your friends best be careful. A dark magelord runs the land beyond. Avoid crossing the old king’s border.”
Marking the border, she finds the next day as they set off again, is a massive slab of petricite. It gives off the same energy as Galio does, and Lux quickly figures why the aforementioned magelord must not have expanded to swallow the previous village. This is the edge of Galeo’s response range, as he was crafted to protect the Demacian homeland as it was when Jarvan’s forefathers ruled with much greater influence.
“A warning to mages that they are not welcome here,” she remembers her history tutor saying.
It was only natural, then, that they cross beyond the old border and into the wilds of Valoran. It is here that they see the first signs of civilization again; the roads become cobbled the further they walk, and one night they come upon a structure- some sort of lamp? It burns with a nearly invisible purple flame. Attia can’t reach out to it with her own flames, though, so the group is left pondering. Lux feels a twinge in her stomach whenever she looks at it, but she can’t place why. Another ‘Crownguard’ thing the others wouldn’t want to hear about, probably.
By now, her clothes are stained from the dirt and her sweat. Her hair, once voluminous, is now greasy and thin, the blond dulled into what other girls might call ‘dishwater’. The only thing still shining about her is her bracers, which the others allowed her to keep; the petricite alloy shines beneath the wraps she’s put over them.
And her eyes, she hopes. Her eyes should still have light in them. They need to. She can’t lose that. What else would she be left with?
On the side of the shining cobble road they’ve been walking on, a great stained-purple wooden sign looms. There’s three languages carved onto it, all in equally pointy font.
The Demacian script reads “TURN BACK ALL DEMACIAN FILTH WHO ENTER HERE OR BE DISINTEGRATED WITH THE POWER OF THE STARS THEMSELVES!”
“Aaaaand we’ve gone too far.” Ruhal remarks. “Let’s turn around. There’s got to be a spot between here and the border for us to settle.”
“Hold on,” Esbeth says. “Can anybody read the rest of this?”
“I’ve got a little old Valorantian bouncing around from my school days,” Lux says. “Let me see what I can make out.”
The language is the one Demacian evolved from, the old language those on the edges of the kingdom once spoke. A few old operas are written in Valoratian, and she was forced to study those by her tutor.
The Valorantian on this sign reads something like “Traveller, you enter the lands of the Beast (of something? Must be a specific place name- she can’t make it out). Read this message and despair!”
“Well, what’s it say?” Esbeth asks.
“Nothing any friendlier.” Lux replies.
“What about the final bit?”
Lux studies the last language. It’s not Noxian. It’s something. . . far different. The letters move and flicker when she tries to get a good look at it, almost like how her brother described his own difficulties with reading, though she knows the cause of this effect is something far more intentional.
“It’s some kind of magic.” She says to the group.
“Is it?” Esbeth says. “I can’t see anything.”
“Me neither.” Ruhal agrees.
“It’s moving.” Lux points to the largest word, drawn in enormous curved letters.
Something flickers in her eyes, and hums in her ears. She touches the word, and it whispers “Veigar” .
The word certainly doesn’t ring any bells.
“Umm, definitely magic.” Lux pulls her hand away. “Did anybody else hear that?”
“Hear what?” Esbeth asks.
“Right. Nothing.” Lux laughs at herself a little. “So are we turning around or. . ?”
“I think we should.” Ruhal says.
“Wait, it can’t be that bad out here.”
The argument starts. Lux tunes it out.
And now she’s lying awake around the embers of Attia’s fire, wondering how someone could have made infused magic into a language. A language, with words and grammar that maybe she could understand if she was able to learn.
And she wonders what a “Veigar” is. The word sounds ancient. Did it have something to do with magic? Maybe she could learn that, too, and she could finally control this thing beating against her insides.
The others, meanwhile, are still arguing. Something about finally leaving the border feels freeing to Esbeth and Attia, despite the ominous sign. Lux thinks she hears them decide on forward before she drifts off. When she wakes up, her palms are glowing. Rahul and the others are squinting at her, so she hides her hands behind her back.
“Why all the showing off?” Attia asks.
“I don’t mean to.”
“Doesn’t it take effort?” Quincy asks.
“What?”
“Your magic. To coax it out.”
“Mine doesn’t seem to need much coaxing at all. . . if any.” Lux sighs.
“Wish ours could be as easy.” Esbeth says. “Then we could grow more food for us right now.”
“Right. Well, I’d donate it if I could.” She smiles.
Even among mages she’s privileged and worthless.
The great cobble path they’ve been following culminates in an intricately-patterned plaza square, sticking out like a sore thumb amongst crude wooden buildings. In the center of the plaza is another massive purple-stained sign. The script at the top says “KILL COUNT.”
“We should keep going.” Lux tells the others.
“We could really stop for food and water.” Esbeth puts her hands on Quincy’s shoulders.
Lux takes another look at the sign. The names written beneath the grim threat are peculiar- “Wardsaw the Brutal”? “Felic the Fiend”?
“I’m not sure.” Lux says.
“We’re not about to make our home here.” Ruhal says. “But we’ve also finally left Demacia. If anything happens we can defend ourselves.”
He glances at Attia, who averts her gaze.
“Okay. Let’s just make it quick.”
They stop in the tavern. Quincy practically collapses against the back of the seat at the table they’ve chosen. Ruhal watches the surroundings like a hawk. The rest of them try to figure out what sort of currency they can use here.
The tavernkeep approaches their table. “Travelers?”
“Yessir, that’s us.” Lux replies.
“Just passing through?”
“Like you never saw us.”
“Where to?”
“Oh, you know.” Lux smiles and shrugs. “Do you have any water you can spare for us?”
The tavernkeep walks back behind the bar and-
Waves his hand.
Five cups come floating down from the highest shelf.
They land on a single serving tray.
Then the tavernkeep ladles water into each cup like normal and brings the tray over. Lux is staring at his hands, listening for his breathing, feeling for any warmth in the air and the hundreds of other little tells that the Mageseekers taught her to identify something like him and yet-
He places the cups on the table and looks at the five of them. “Demacians, you lot.”
“I- well-” Lux sputters.
“Certainly not.” Ruhal interrupts.
“Definitely not.” Esbeth says.
“No, not us.” Quincy whispers.
Attia mouth opens and closes, before she slowly holds her palm above the table. She squeezes her eyes shut for a moment, and a tiny flame flickers in her palm.
It takes everything Lux has not to leap across the table and cover it with her own hands.
“See?” Ruhal is the only one who recovers quickly enough to speak. “Would a Demacian do that?”
The tavernkeep shakes his head and chuckles. His facial expression fades into something quieter. Almost a sympathetic bent, Lux hopes.
“That sort of thing won’t phase anyone here. Not with what we usually put up with.” He takes the serving tray off the table. “Still, I’d recommend being quiet about it ‘til you reach Noxus.”
“Noxus?” Ruhal snaps.
“The magelords tend to take or cull whatever magical talent they find.”
“Then why did you use it just now?” Lux asks before she can stop herself. “What’s different about here?”
“Don’t stay.” The tavernkeep replies. “You don’t want to catch the attention of his Lordship. I don’t think he’d be to your. . . sensibilities.”
He leaves, almost disappearing back behind the bar.
Attia picks up her cup and guzzles down the water. Quincy follows suit, then Esbeth, then Ruhal.
Lux stares at her cup and the reflection of light across the top of the water.
The group spends the evening on the edge of town arguing over the fire. Lux can’t track it all. Back and forths and personal digs from years spent knowing each other. Low blows about who revealed who to the Mageseekers. Ruhal had apparently set up an underground clinic to heal people. Attia lit a roof on fire during a spat one time. Quincy was caught singing to the plants in the fields and the weeds were beginning to take over his and Esbeth’s house.
Rahul worries about his wife and daughter.
Attia mentions her three sons.
Esbeth and Quincy wonder who will take care of their parents now that they’re gone.
All of them so desperately needed. All of them who will be achingly missed. The ‘home’ they all keep referring to can’t be returned to. Noxus is just as poisonous in their mouths as the idea of staying here is. There’s some place they’d all rather be and it’s behind them.
And here Lux is. Finding herself thinking about the “Veigar” again, and the tavernkeep lifting the cups, or even about the rumors she’s always heard about Noxian mages, and she can’t bring herself to be disgusted by any of it.
What is wrong with her? Her brother is back there. Her brother is back there , how could she possibly be so selfish?
She pulls her hood over her head and turns her back to the fire, which surges brighter with Attia’s every terse word. The heat keeps building. She forces herself to keep still. Cross her legs, cross her arms. Desperately plead with the energy building inside to stay quiet
(
Don’t imagine him in chains.
)
She tries to think of Galio instead. Except she never got to say goodbye to him either, and now she’s outside the Demacian border for good- he must think she’s left him, and now he’s trapped within the petricite of his own body, just as imprisoned because of her and-
Her hands burst into shimmery light. She rolls on top of them and fires a beam into the ground to try and soothe herself. Burning hotter and brighter and- something sharp cuts her palm. She sits up to find that she’s turned the soil beneath her into glass.
“What now, Crownguard?” Ruhal hisses at her.
Crownguard.
Lux scrambles to her feet and sprints off into the forest beyond.
—
Everything is bleached white. Artificial daylight swallows the stars above. Rainbows shimmer on the edges of her vision, refracting through her tears. Her breath is hot as it spills from her mouth.
She stops and forces herself to smile. If she just smiles she can get this back under control. She remembers a rumor about some sort of demon of joy- if only she could find one right now. She substitutes instead with the recitations her mother taught her behind closed doors to still the heat inside her. Glory to the hall of kings, glory to the bloodlines eternal, glory to the gentle people of Demacia, may the walls never come down. . .
Or maybe she should just let whatever lies beyond Targon pick her up and bash her against the rocks-
May the
How could she be thinking this? How? How? Garen gave everything to give her this chance to live and now she wants to throw it all away? How dare she, how dare she-
Walls.
-how could she do this to him it’s all her fault she’s the stupid worthless ruiner of the family name and she’s ruined him, everything she touches turning to shimmering crumbling light beneath her fingers and it’s over, it’s over now, there’s nothing left-
Never.
She screams, but the aperture of her mouth isn’t wide enough to let it all out. Liquid fire bursts from her chest, and jagged crystalline shards shoot into every living thing around her.
Come.
Down.
For six seconds, a new star takes form on the surface of Runeterra.
A gasp brings reality back into Lux’s body. All she can do is shudder beneath the weight of the superheated air above her.
She feels herself getting warmer again. Except now she’s exhausted. Her insides feel like slop, just her own flesh sloshing around and nothing more. Heavy, without any animated spark propelling her. She can barely breathe, let alone move. The ground sucks heat away from her.
She wills herself to shiver. Then to cough. Orange light flickers above the tops of trees as they reach toward the dark night sky.
She sits up and everything is on fire.
She groans and forces herself to her hands and knees. She crawls towards where she thinks the group made camp, where she thinks the village is. They need to be warned. If she hasn’t killed them already. She’d vomit at the thought, but there’s nothing left inside of her to give.
Voices, in the distance. She freezes. She then crawls her way to the nearest tree trunk and presses herself against it.
They’re going to find her and they’re going to kill her.
(
As they
should
.
)
Hopefully they can put the fire out and save their village. Hopefully they can find Ruhal and Attia and Esbeth and Quincy, and forgive them. She hopes they say they didn’t know about her. She hopes they can slip away in the chaos that follows.
Something short and stocky comes running by where she’s sitting. A child? They run and throw a bucket of water almost as tall as they are on one of the flaming bushes. It doesn’t do much. They turn around, but they don’t spot her, and they run back from where they came from.
“Ready your buckets!” A childish voice shouts.
“I couldn’t hardly do a thing! I don’t think this’ll work!” Another responds.
“Are you going to tell that to our Lordship?”
A bucket floats by. Lux watches it teeter in the air before it gets dumped on another branch.
“That’s how you do it!” The first voice shouts again. “Be brave, fellow acolytes!”
An army of buckets race through the air and began waging war against the flames. A group of them manage to douse a single tree. The fire still rages beyond.
“It’s spreading!”
“Contain the radius until his Vileness is done!”
The buckets shift their focus, propelling themselves to the far edge of the flaming radius. They put out a few more trees, but not before more light up against the dark sky. Then the ground shakes. Lux grabs on to the roots of the tree she’s pressed against.
A pillar of reflective darkness rises from the ground ahead of her. Five more sprout in an arching pattern beyond, eventually encircling the fire zone. Lines of glowing purple peer out from the dark expanse, trailing up and down the pillars.
Then- light.
Infinite reflections form a wall between the pillars. It’s as if time itself slows. Lux studies her own face and eyes as they refract in a kaleidoscope of variations. She reaches a hand forward. Infinite fingers reach back.
The illusion is shattered when a shrill, high-pitched voice shrieks “WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR, FOOLS? READY THE NEXT VOLLEY!”
Hundreds of buckets of water are flung over the wall as the flames beat against the inside. With all wind and fuel cut off, plus a generous dousing, the fire fades away into nothing but embers and dust.
But Lux isn’t watching that. No, instead she’s squinting at the lettering on the pillars. It’s the same script that was on the sign- definitely magic. A language. She knows sentences and paragraphs when she sees them, and this is a veritable tome.
Before she can begin picking out repeating words or phrases, the pillars sink back into the soil, and the light held between them dissipates into the night sky. She gets a gust of ashes blown in her face, and she stifles a cough.
She stifles her breathing, too, when she hears “Get the prisoners!”
Metal boots pace across the forest floor, breaking sticks and small rocks beneath them.
“Which one of you four did this?” The shrill voice asks.
“None of us. We swear!” It’s Ruhal’s voice.
“LIARS!” Something metallic hits a nearby tree stump, causing Lux to flinch.
“None of us!” Esbeth echoes.
Quincy tries to say something, but he falls into a fit of wheezing instead.
“Tell me who started this fire, or I will have the great pleasure of torturing it out of you.” The voice says.
“It was the other person we were travelling with. Lux Crownguard. Short girl, blond hair. Can’t miss her.” Ruhal sputters. “She ran off that way.”
“Do you think I’m so gullible? A Crownguard?” The voice scoffs. “ Demacians. You’re all the same.”
“Please. You have to believe us.” Attia says.
“Ohhh, ‘I have to believe you’- OR WHAT?” The voice shrieks. “I know you’re all mages, just confess which one of you amateur dolts had a mana surge and started the blaze!”
Lux pulls herself to her feet. The world spins. Her muscles protest against every action.
“SPEAK! OR FACE MY WRATH!”
Lux throws herself out from behind the tree. “It was me!”
In the clearing ahead, Ruhal, Attia, Esbeth, and Quincy kneel before. . . a short figure with a pointy purple hat.
The figure turns, and two blazing yellow eyes stare deep into her. Inky shadows swirl where the short figure’s face should be. He whirls his staff around- a wicked two-pronged blade with a yellow crystal floating in the center -and points it at her.
“ You. ” He hisses.
“It was me. I’m sorry. Please don’t hurt them.”
“Tch.” The figure rolls his eyes and glances back at the group.
They stare at her in silence.
“Don’t hurt them. I’m the one you want. You can have me, just let them go.” Lux continues.
“Are these your friends?”
“Yes! I mean, no! I mean. . . please. They had nothing to do with this. It’s my fault.”
The figure glances back at the group. “Nothing to say about this heroic sacrifice?”
Esbeth swallows nervously.
“None of you? No ‘don’t hurt her!’ or ‘but she’s our friend!’ or trying to take the blame for yourselves?” The figure mimes a dramatic swoon with each mocking phrase. Then he stills. “Nothing at all?”
“We don’t know her. We were just travelling with her.” Ruhal spits.
The figure turns back to Lux. “Pathetic. You should get better friends.”
“Just let them go. Please.”
“No! I don’t think I will. Minions?”
A cohort of. . . yordles(?) spring out of the surrounding bushes. Some of them puppet small herds of enchanted cloth, see-through sans their own tiny glowing eyes. Together they bind the other four. The figure, presumably the magelord himself, walks towards Lux.
With a wave of his staff, he binds her hands in the same purple light that the wall was made out of. It’s. . . nice and warm against her cold wrists. The spark inside of her wakes up at the contact. The figure narrows his eyes.
“Minion fifteen.” He turns to one of the yordles. “Scout for mana crystal residue. Let me know what you find.”
“Mana crystal?” Lux asks.
“You must know what a mana crystal is- oh right, Demacian .” The figure hisses. “Big blue crystal. Can’t possibly miss it. Your little tantrum must have ignited it, given the massive release of-”
“There wasn’t anything like that.” Lux says before she realizes that might not be a good idea.
She watches in real time as his glowing eyes become wider.
He passes his staff into his larger gauntlet before snatching her arm. His claws first clink against her petricite bracers, and he hisses, before yanking her further down and grabbing at her upper arm.
A jolt of something runs through her, like an echo in a vast cavern.
A gasp, quiet but audible. Then the figure starts to cackle.
“What’s so funny? Who do you think you are?” She tugs against his hold.
“ I am Lord Veigar, Beast of Boleham, Master of All Things Evil,” the figure flourishes his staff. “And you. . . are my newest project!”
Veigar.
This was the Veigar she pinned her hopes on?
From the energy that binds her wrists, she finds enough strength to shake out of his grasp. She makes for the nearest tree.
Only to slam into a thin wall of light. Time stops, and she is caught in a sea of reflections. Dozens of her own eyes caught in a dance, staring her down.
Time winds up again only for her to fall to the ground. Coarse rope is now wrapped around her wrists and ankles.
“Pick her up! Don’t scrap her along the ground!” Veigar shouts.
Half a dozen sets of tiny cloth hands lift her into the air and march her alongside their lord.