Ill Omen's Light (Lux/Jinx)

Chapter 16: Monsters in the Gray

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Your cradle be the junkyard,
Your bower be of scrap.
Your toys they be of salvage,
Your pillow of burlap.
But be thou wary in the Gray,
Though Mother she may be.
Our home is always hungry, child.
And teeth she whets for thee.

- Zaunite lullaby, author unknown

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"He's here. RUN!"

She almost said it in time.

Almost.

The words had barely left her mouth. The expressions of confusion and surprise on Ekko's face and those of his friends had just started to register.

The patch of darkness swelled in the smog.

It was so quiet.

Bat Guy turned to Jinx with a glance of surprise. A wedge of steel blades erupted from his chest in a welter of blood.

"Scar!" Ekko cried out in horror as his friend's shuddering body vanished over the edge into the void of the Gray.

The fire-eyed shadow looming behind him bounded onto the platform, too fast for any eyes but hers to follow, a wolven fever dream of chemtech, hunger, and teeth.

Crow Girl was half on her hoverboard, screaming and shooting after the shape with Zapper – and then she was half on the hoverboard – the other half painted all over the place.

It came straight at Ekko. He twisted out of the way just in time.

Warwick, the Wrath of Zaun, burst through the spectral after-image Ekko left behind, leaned into his momentum and shifted trajectory.

Every reflex in Jinx's body screamed to dodge move run.

Imprisoned, she could do nothing.

Jinx caught a hint of tobacco amid the reek of carnage as the freight train of fur and steel and jaws crashed into her.

"Va-"

Claws like swords shore through her chest and belly and she felt everything she was spill out, strangely light, and then-

The void was waiting. It said, w͕e̟̖̲̘͎͟l̢͔̣c̶̗̲͙̠̮͚̫ọ̹̻̗̹͇͘m̬̥̺͙̲e̼͞ͅ ̝͇̟h̺̰͘o-̠̮̻̯͚

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...l͏i҉k̵e s͡wo̷ŗd͟s ͢shore through her chest and belly and she felt everything she was spill out, strangely light, and then-

"Va-"

Jinx caught a hint of tobacco amid the reek of carnage as the freight train of fur and steel and jaws crashed into her.

Imprisoned, she could do...

⧗

"Sorry, New Girlfriend, I'm not buying it. You're not slipping out of this one, Jinx. You're going to answer for all the lives you've taken, and all the hurt you've caused-"

Lux closed her eyes, listening to Ekko's bickering banter with Jinx only in periphery. Behind her eyelids, the darkness swelled and faded, her mind's eye burrowing deeper into her consciousness.

There lay a Light, rising in sinuous threads to fill her world, like the crawl of the dawn's fingers through a dying night sky.

She felt it seeping through the facets of the crystals that bound her hand, exploring them through her senses, finding crevices, imperfections...