Broken Blades, Broken Souls - An Arcane Fanfiction

The Demons I Carry

July 17th, 2:20 PM

Vi's POV

"Did you find something?" Vi turned her head at Ekko's call. Her friend was standing about ten meters away from her, on another pile of metal trash that had been brought to the Undercity by Piltovan ships. Everything the topsiders didn't need anymore, they just dumped it in the Undercity. Typical.

However, Vi, Ekko and some other firelights were searching for everything that could be possibly valuable for them. Most of the metal they found was used for weapons or to fix broken things around the hideout. They were living in hard times and they had to use everything they found.

It was incredible how time had flown since Jinx had fired her rocket at the council. Since then, everything had gone down. The council had completely burned down from the explosion, now, it was only a sorry ruin topping the sad image of what Piltover had become.

They hadn't found a single survivor in that building. All counselors including Viktor and anyone else who'd been in the building at that time, dead. On top of that, the smoke emerging from the building had led to a massive smoke intoxication of the residents nearby. Enforcers had erestimated the numbers of dead a total of two hundred, the injured a bit over fifty. It was a disaster.

Jinx had fled the scene immediately after attacking the council. Enforcers were searching her everywhere, but she was nowhere to be found. Vi and Ekko had searched her themselves, in every single part of the Undercity - without success. It seemed like her sister had just been swallowed by the earth.

A few days after the 'catastrophe', as the topsiders liked to call it, Mel Medarda's mother, Ambessa Medarda, had claimed leadership of Piltover. Not that it was any better than before.

The Undercity was still suffering, in fact, since the catastrophe, living conditions in Zaun had become even worse. Ambessa had decided to finally make the Undercity independent, to create the nation of Zaun, which theoretically was a good thing. The catch: being detached from Piltover also meant being detached from the HexGates and the global trade - and the Piltovans made sure they'd let the Zaunites know how much they hated them.

Goods like food, clothing or medicine were taxed extremely high and barely payable. On top of this, the bridges to Piltover only opened three hours a day and were being guarded all the time. Zaun was lacking of everything, the people were starving - most of them also still dealing with the aftermath of their shimmer addiction - diseases couldn't be treated die to the lack of medicine and electricity and water were running only a few hours a day.

Vi and Ekko were doing anything they could to keep the people alive. After Silco's death, Ekko and the firelights had taken over command in Zaun and Vi had become Ekko's right hand woman. To keep the Zaunites alive, they mainly snuck into Piltover to steal food and other supplies, but they also tried to negotiate with Piltover - wasted labor.

The Piltovans seemed to think that the firelights were hiding Jinx from them. They demanded from Zaun to deliver her to them, then, they'd have peace - something that Vi didn't believe at all. However, they'd tried to make clear that Jinx hat literally disappeared, but Piltover insisted on the deal with Jinx. They wanted to punish their culprit.

From what Vi had heard, Ambessa had promised a bounty of one million for whoever found and turned in Jinx. Posters with drawings of her face were hanging everywhere and by now, her name had even become an insult in Piltover. Her sister was the most wanted criminal ever.

The attack on the council had really driven a wedge between Piltover and Zaun, had made things even worse than they'd been before. Even the Zaunites cursed Jinx for what she had done, many even saying that under Silco's rule, things had been better. Search troops were taking apart the Undercity everyday, in hope to find Jinx and end the misery they were living in - something they'd failed to accomplish yet.