Chapter Text
The sun had begun to dip behind the distant Ionian mountains, calling for the end of another day. Soon, the burnt orange sky would be replaced with a deep, dark canvas painted over with thousands upon thousands of glimmering stars. A long breeze blew through the forest, causing Ahri to shiver slightly as the cool air brushed across her mix of thick fur and bare skin.
Ahri was not like any other creature in the forests of southern Ionia, maybe not even like any other living thing in all of Runeterra. Unknown to her, the Ionian legends of long ago called something like her a gumiho. She had a lithe, hourglass figure with fair skin and long, silky black hair that flowed down past her hips, tied back halfway down into a braid of sorts. Poking out the top of her hair were long, pointed ears the same shade of black as her hair. Her face was rounded, with whisker-like markings on her cheeks, thin lips, and shining eyes like a fox's, amber yellow with slit pupils. But, her most prominent feature, or features, were the nine large, white, bushy tails that waved around in the air behind her.
The nine-tailed fox darted through the growing shadows of the great oak and maple trees, observing her surroundings for any possible threats as she went. Ahri's semi-human form offered about as much protection from predators as her original fox form, unfortunately for her. But, while she was always alert to the threat of a great lion or a pack of wolves lurking just out of sight, said ravenous creatures were not the greatest thing troubling her mind.
It wasn't any different than the many other times Ahri had, in a very literal sense, stolen the breath of a human. It was as simple as every other time, she caught the attention of a young man with her natural charm and figure, lured him off to a private area, and then proceeded to steal his soul away before assimilating it with her own. It was exactly the same as every other time she had done it, every step she took was unchanged for the most part. But this time, something about this time felt... bad. It didn't feel like a successful hunt, but rather as if she had done something very wrong, like a mistake that would have serious consequences.
Why this time? And why does it make my entire being feel so heavy? Ahri thought to herself.
The more she pondered about this particular kill, and the ones before it, the more it filled Ahri with a sense of regret and clouded her thoughts. Lost in her thoughts and worries, Ahri stumbled over a root jutting out of the dirt and fell several feet down the side of a riverbank. She tumbled down the small, muddy cliff before landing in the cold, shallow water with a splash, the sound scaring away a family of sika deer on the opposite bank.
With a frustrated sigh and a mental scolding, Ahri stood up in the ankle-deep water and looked down at herself. Of course, she was covered in dirt and filth. Her red and white dress and sleeves had mud stains all over them, there were small scratches and splotches of dirt and all across her arms and legs, and all nine of her sleek, snow-white tails had clumps of mud and other kinds of muck in them. Putting that matter aside for now, she took some time to scan her surroundings.
At this point night had almost completely fallen, Ahri's eyes glowing a deep, amber yellow in the darkness. The embankments of the creek were made up of dark-colored soil with clumps of green moss scattered around. Stands of grass and many colorful maples, their roots poking out of the soil, grew along the top bank. The water she stood in was clear like glass, it's bottom almost completely covered in small, smooth stones of varying colors. The group of deer that she had startled were now grazing along the top bank, keeping a cautious eye on Ahri.
Then, Ahri smelled it. It was the smell of rain clouds gathering overhead, ready to open up and unleash a shower upon the mountains and forests. Before Ahri could even think about finding shelter, she found herself caught in a downpour of rain. Shaking the water droplets off her tails, Ahri quickly climbed back up the riverbank, shaking herself off once again before heading back into the now dripping wet forest.
Wandering through the rain and great trees, Ahri couldn't help but start thinking about that man from last night, remembering every detail vividly. How his eyes had looked upon her in wonder in the tavern, how she lured him outside and into the woods behind the small village, how his body had melted into hers as their mouths pressed together, how his eyes shot wide open and he screamed into her mouth as he realized what was really happening, and how his lifeless husk slowly fell to the ground as she walked off into the night.
But why does it trouble me so? Why has taking a life never had this effect on me before, she thought, and why did I not feel right after I did it? Why only now?
Ahri's thoughts were interrupted when she caught a glimpse of a potential shelter. It was a large, ancient-looking oak with branches as big around as cattle and what seemed to be a hollow in the trunk. Moving her ears around to listen for any potential threats before making her move, she hurried over to the large tree as to take a closer look. Indeed, there was a hollow in the tree, and luckily no other animals had claimed it for themselves. It wasn't very large, but it would have to do for now.
Managing to squeeze herself through the small hole into the slightly wider hollow, Ahri curled her tails around herself in hopes of gathering up some much-needed warmth. The air outside was cold, clearly not cold enough to turn the heavy raindrops into powdery snowflakes, but cold enough to bite at Ahri's wet body. So here she was. Cold, wet, and squeezed up inside of a small tree hollow. And there was that feeling again, the one seemingly caused by her hunt the night before. But now, it wasn't only that one man, but now all of the people she had stolen the life-forces of. All of the sudden, there was just something terribly wrong about it all, like what she had done was one of the worst things someone could do.
And then, Ahri had the worst of these new feelings yet. It was like every emotion she had, understood or not, came crashing down like an avalanche. Seemingly losing all control of herself, Ahri first felt the liquid streaming down her cheeks like the raindrops outside. And then, she began choking on her own breath and whimpering loudly. Foxes only whimpered when they were in serious pain. This wasn't pain, or at least not the same kind of pain. Once she had slipped into this strange and cruel feeling, she didn't keep track of how long she had been sitting in there, whimpering and gasping as the drops of salty liquid streamed down her face. But eventually the world around her started to turn fuzzy and distant, and soon everything went dark as the whole world went silent.
* * * * *
Ahri woke up to the smell of smoke and the echo of water dripping onto stone. Eyes still closed, she felt something itchy, yet somewhat comforting below her. That's when Ahri realized that she was no longer bunched up inside of a tree, but rather she was laid out on her side. Eyes finally opening up, she raised her head to look at her surrounding.
Indeed, she was no longer jammed up inside of a small tree hollow, but rather she was laying on a small bed of straw and dead leaves inside what seemed to be a cave of some sorts. The sunlight glowed brightly outside, but none of it crept through the mouth of the cave. At the entrance of the cave was a small campfire with a makeshift spit that seemed to have burnt out a little while ago. Besides the campfire and a small pile of sticks, the cave was pretty much empty.
As she rose up, the sudden chill of cool air made Ahri pick up on yet another important detail. She was completely naked from head to toe, and the way her hair waved loosely against her back showed that even her hair tie was gone. Now she was even more confused. How did she even get here in the first place?
"Oh, you're awake," a gruff male voice came up from behind Ahri. Retracting her ears and tails in the blink of an eye and quickly covering her privates, she spun around to see the voice's owner.
Standing there in the entrance of the cave was a man. He was tall, rugged, lightly tanned and had an almost absurd amount of long, black hair all tied up into a ponytail, reminding Ahri of her own tails. He was dressed in baggy blue trousers, a rope belt, metal shinguards and arm-guards, ornately designed armor covering his left shoulder, and what seemed to be either a scarf or part of a cloak, blue with white designs around the part that covered all of his face below the nose, which had a distinct scar running along it. Oh his back was a fairly large katana in a blue and silver sheath, and slung over his right shoulder were two grey hares.
"Your clothes are outside, by the way."
"You brought me here... and you undressed me?? In my sleep??" Ahri replied angrily, her yellow eyes burning like embers.
"Yes, yes, and yes. They were wet and cold, so I took them off and put them out to dry. Believe me, hypothermia is not fun." the man said as he entered the cave, setting the hares down on the floor.
"Who are you?" Ahri said with an irritated tone in her voice.
"Just another wanderer, that's all. And you?"
"Hmph, why should I tell you? You won't give me your name."
The man just chuckled at that as he lit up the small fire, sitting down cross-legged and folding down his scarf as the orange light softly glowed against his rugged features.
"That's true. However, the stories of my ancestors always warned that you should never give your name to a fox."
Ahri's eyes opened in surprise, she was foolish for thinking that she would have been disguised in her sleep. Knowing there was no point in, Ahri's large ears poked up out of her hair and her white tails unfurled and wrapped themselves around her naked body.
"Where are my clothes?" she demanded.
"Already told you, they're outside on some rocks."
As the man picked up one of the hares, seemingly getting ready to prepare it, Ahri stormed outside out the cave in search of her clothes.
The cave wasn't so much a cave as it was a large slab of rock lodged between a depression in the mountainside, a great red maple growing on the mountainside above the cave. The hideout overlooked a large forest valley, all of the trees in autumn bloom, with small band of flat, grassy ground about 3 meters wide separating the cave from the descending cliff. To Ahri's surprise, the sun wasn't rising up over the eastern horizon as it would in the morning, but rather it was high above her head, burning bright in the midday sky. As the man had said, lying on some smooth rocks next to the cave entrance were all of her clothes.
I should just make a run for it, she thought as she dressed herself, I'll be gone before he even notices.
But then, her mind wandered back to those two hares. The thought of their tender, gamey flesh made Ahri's stomach rumble loudly inside her. She hadn't eaten any real food in a few days, and she had noticed that her new form got hungry at least once a day, whereas when she was a fox she could go several days without getting hungry. As much as she wanted to just run off back into the woods, the temptation of fresh meat was too much for her to overcome.
Coming back into the cave, she saw the man had already skinned both hares, and was in the process of gutting them. Looking over his shoulder, she observed how he used a small, makeshift stone knife to carefully remove the inedible bits and pieces.
"You want yours with the liver or without?" the rugged man asked, not even having to glance out of the corner of his eye to know Ahri was there.
"With." she said simply. Of course she would have the liver, it was her favorite part.
He seemed to like his with liver as well, as he left the liver alone and carefully cut out the small, green bile glands from under the livers. Once he was done gutting the animals, he grabbed two large sticks. Impaling the carcasses through with one stick each, he propped one rabbit up on the makeshift spit, and used a few more sticks to make a second one.
"Strange, do all humans cook their meat?" she said, looking curiously at the two hunks of meat slowly roasting over the open flame.
"Usually, yes. I assume you're an exception to that?"
Ahri didn't answer him, rather she sat down on the opposite side of the fire pit and watched the food cook. The aroma of the meat slowly being roasted was better than anything she had ever smelled, making her mouth water and her tails swish around eagerly as her stomach let out yet another deep growl.
"Don't get excited yet," the man said suddenly, snapping Ahri out of her hunger-driven trance, "these will take quite a while to cook."
"And how long is 'quite a while'?"
"Let's see... about an hour?"
Upon hearing this, Ahri let out a frustrated groan. She was hungry now, why should she wait for the food that's already perfectly edible?
"The hunter should be able to enjoy it's prey once it has been captured, yet you intend to wait for so long?"
"Well, cooking food makes it healthier-," he began before being interrupted by yet another growl resonating from Ahri's gut.
"And, a lot tastier," he said with a brief smirk.
"But it would be so much easier to just eat it as it is, would it not?"
The man sighed, as if distant memories came back to him in a wave of melancholic remembrance.
"Someone I once knew told me that taking the path that is the quickest or easiest will lead to ruin. That the best things in life come from patience and hard work. Are foxes not familiar with that concept?"
Ahri did not answer in words, cocking her head to the left and raising her right eyebrow in confusion. The man sighed and chuckled before speaking once again.
"Think of the rain clouds. They may want to hurry and rid themselves of the extra weight, so their rain comes down quickly. The rain pours so quickly and heavily that the soil and waterways cannot absorb it all, and they bring floods and ruin to the land. But if the rains take their time and gently shower the land, their waters will bring sustenance and life to everything on the earth."
Ahri was both confused and fascinated by the man's usage of words. Never before had she heard speech used in such strange and mystical ways. Were words like these the key to achieving human wisdom? Was this man just using crazy words and phrases and trying to make sense out of them? Or was it both?
"Long story short, patience works out better not just for you in the long run, but for the world around you as well."
"Oh. So, is that why we are waiting so long to eat?" Ahri said, the man nodding in response.
"Well, maybe cooking your food won't necessarily affect the world around you," he said with a chuckle, focused on carefully turning the spit-roasts over, "but it sure makes it taste a lot better."
* * * * *
Finally, Ahri got to sink her teeth into the roasted rabbit meat. And by the gods was it the best thing she had ever tasted in her entire life. She was ready to just tear it to pieces and gulp it all down in quick bites. But, some deep feeling inside told her that it would be best to eat slowly, as to savor the flavor. Maybe it was the man's words that had swayed her, with all the talk about this "patience" that humans, or at least this one, seemed to think so highly of. Nevertheless, following her subconscious orders, she slowly bit off pieces of the meat, taking enjoyment in each bite.
"It seems that you're a fast learner, Young Fox," he said with an amused huff, also taking his time with his own meal.
"Young fox? Ha, that's rich. You don't know my age."
"That may be so. But, I do know that most foxes only grow to the age of five. Then again," he said, closely observing Ahri's mix of humanoid and animalian features, "you are not truly a fox. Yet, you are also not a human...," the man said, trailing off into deep thought. Ahri, not at all willing to discuss that more personal topic, let the silence between them come back again as they ate.
The man ended up finishing his meal before Ahri did, surprisingly. She watched as he got up off the dusty cave floor, walking over to the edge of the cliff and sat back down, same crossed-leg position. After seemingly getting comfortable in the spot, the man procured a thin flute, crafted from a bamboo stem, and began to play a simple, soothing tune as he looked out over the valley forests below.
Finishing her own food, Ahri watched from the entrance of the cave as the man continued playing his instrument. After a few moments, Ahri made her way over to the edge of the cliff and sat a couple feet to the man's right. Ahri closely watched how he moved his fingers over the flute's holes, every combination creating it's own individual tone. After a few minutes, he stopped playing his instrument. After staring off into the Ionian wilderness for a few moments, he spoke up.
"So, gumiho, how exactly did you achieve that human form?"
Ahri perked her ears up and looked over at the man, acting as if she was confused by the question. Despite this, he could easily see through the fox's trick.
"You know what I'm talking about. What did you do to become what you are now?"
Ahri fell silent, still unsure if she should explain anything about herself to this stranger. She sat in silence for a few minutes, pondering what her next words would be as the man went back to playing his flute. Meditating over everything, Ahri reached a few conclusions. This man, even though he had completely stripped her down in her sleep and seen her naked body, he had done it with good intentions. Ahri wasn't too sure what this "hypothermia" was, but it didn't sound like a good thing to have. Second, he had gone out of his way to get food not just for himself, but for her as well. Third, if this man truly wanted to cause her any harm, he would have already done something by now. And finally, Ahri felt that keeping what she had done to herself would just cause herself more of this stress and pain. So with that, she decided to finally speak up.
"I'm a predator. And, up until now, I thought that the souls of humans were supposed to be my prey," she finally spat out, the man stopping his music to listen.
"I lured people into the woods, and I stole the life essences from them. They gave me power, they... made me more human. And they have, it's why I look this way. But, I didn't realize that becoming more human would make me have feelings like these. Especially the feelings that just make it harder to continue what I do."
"You're developed morality, and you feel guilt for the lives you took," the man said, Ahri surprised by his relative calmness despite the revelation that she was practically a man-eater. Ahri simply nodded in response before continuing.
"But... but why? Why would these feelings come up when I was so close to my goal?? It's- it's not fair..." Ahri began trailing off, a mixture of that awful emotion from the night before and a more familiar feeling, that of anger, boiling up inside of her. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see the man suddenly looking over at her with an intrigued and mystified look on his face.
"What?" Ahri asked in an annoyed tone.
Before the man could actually tell her, Ahri noticed the sensation of warmth in her right hand. Looking down, she was shocked to find that a strange blue flame was burning the grass around her hand. She quickly pulled her hand away, but to her surprise the flames followed her hand in the air. It had no defined shape, just thin trails of the blue fire that danced and swirled through the air.
The strangest part about this fire was that it didn't feel like a normal flame. To Ahri, the swirling flames felt as if they were her, an extension of her being in a way. As she calmed herself with the smooth motions, the flames slowly started to fade into the air. Once they completely disappeared, the fox was left staring at her hand in pure bewilderment and wonder.
Did... did I really just do that?, Ahri thought to herself.
"Hm, seems like you have more untapped potential than I first thought, Young Fox. By the look on your face, my guess is that you've never done that before?" the man said, Ahri simply nodding as she continued to stare down at her hands. She was so transfixed that she didn't even notice when the man got up and walked up under the maple tree growing over the cave. A sudden, quite powerful gust of wind snapped Ahri out of her trance and somehow urged her to look in the direction it was blowing.
Looking over, she saw the man had taken out his katana and was moving in strange ways. And then, Ahri was yet again mystified when she saw that the same gust of wind which blew across her seemed to be following the movements of the man and his sword, a cloud of maple leaves swirling around him. Ahri came up closer to the man and sat down, completely mesmerized by how the man seemed to be able to control the wind itself. For the next few moments, the man continued his graceful movements with the wind while Ahri watched him closely. At the very end, he stood up straight with his blade pointed out in front of him and the breeze dissipated, the cloud of red leaves slowing moving to the ground around him. The man sheathed his sword, turning to face Ahri before sitting down in front of her.
"Impressed, Young Fox?" he said with a slight smirk.
"That was amazing..." she said with mouth still agape in awe and wonder, earning a slight chuckle from the rugged man.
"It wasn't that hard, figuring out how to control the power when I learned it. The difficult part, the part that took many years, was learning how to respect that power. To not just know how to use it, but to also why I used it. One day, when I was still young and full of confidence and arrogance, someone I knew gave me a maple seed. He told me that however simple and plain it may have looked, given enough patience and caring it could turn into something much more, and the same goes for me and my gift. Now, Young Fox, I believe that it goes for you."
"You're offering to teach me?"
"Well I didn't really get to that part yet, but yes. You can think about it, Young Fox," the man finished as he got up and began walking away.
"Ahri," she said suddenly. The man, not quite hearing what she had said, turned to face her with his left eyebrow raised up.
"My name is Ahri."
The man stood for a few moments, the look of deep thought apparent on his face, before he spoke up.
"Yasuo," he said simply before climbing up the rocks of the cave and sitting on one of the maple's thick roots.
Ahri went back into the cave, sitting down on the dusty ground as her thoughts took over. What on Valoran had she just done? Was that really her controlling the fire, or something else? How was the man, Yasuo, able to move the wind at his own will? Who exactly was Yasuo? What was his story? And, most important of all, who was she? All of these thoughts, and many more, floated around in her mind, but she couldn't think of an answer of any kind to her questions. Maybe this man would be able to help her find out. So Ahri sat there, pondering her circumstances and what led up to them, for several hours. Finally, after all that time, she finally made up her mind. Getting up and wiping the dust off her clothing, she went outside to confront Yasuo.
What was this power she had?
It was something unusual, something potentially dangerous, but it could also become something beautiful.
What exactly was she?
She was no longer a fox, she was not a human yet, but she also wasn't exactly half of each either. She was something else entirely. What that was, she would figure out eventually.
Who was this man, "Yasuo"?
Hopefully, he was someone that could help her answer these questions, plus many more.
What did the future hold for her?
Ahri could not say for sure what the future had in store for her. However, she knew with certainty that whatever happened next would change her entire life.