Forge of worlds - League of legends fanfic

Chapter 4 - Daughter of the void

Not much was discussed after the destruction of the temple, aside from Ezreal inviting Kai'Sa to tag along with him back to the merchant camp. At first sight of his companions she declined in an instant, explaining that even though her intentions was to save others, her appearance only frightened people. Though Ezreal wanted to act like nothing about her freaky suit and weird jets had frightened him, but he almost had to change his briefs at the sight of her mask and jets. He understood that anyone that would meet her at first sight would be frightened, despite her actions. It was obvious to him that he could not ask what she was, all he could notice that she was as human as he is, but that did not mean she had her differences: Unlike the normal eye  colours he knew,  gleamed hers in lavender. The suit she wore looked a lot like the exoskeleton of a voidling, except for the armour parts. Especially her wings had peaked curiosity within him, wondering what they were made of, but he certainly understood why people were so scared of her, more so when she wore her helmet all the time.
'Can I ask you something?' The adventurer scratched the back of his head, apparently more nervous than he thought. With his forehead troubled by a deep frown he looked into her direction, but Kai'Sa's stare was lost glancing at the fallen temple. After a gentle tap on her cold, scaled shoulder she recovered back from her mindset and let him know he had her undivided attention, nodding her head out of approval. 'Why did you reveal yourself to me? Isn't it dangerous if your identity would be in the wrong hands?'
Kai'Sa tilted her head out of confusion, her hair slowly moving from her shoulder. 'Why would it be dangerous?' She asked puzzled.
'You know, what if they recognise you when you're not wearing your outfit and drag you to the palace to have you executed, or worse, the people here don't take the void worshippers kindly.' Kai'Sa raised both eyebrows and let his words sink in for her to digest, her frown took place for a saddened smile and she reached out her gloved hand to Ezreal. Now with him being confused he looked at the hand hovering before him. She gestured her head to the direction, daring him to take the glove off. As if he expected it to come off with a simple pull he closed his fingers around the tip of her index finger and gentle tried to tug it off, but to his surprise the glove felt like an extension of her, as if it was glued onto her. Ezreal tried to shake the thought off, thinking to himself that it were impossible, nothing could be that small or tight for her to wear, she couldn't possibly wear this all the time. With more strength put onto his hand he pulled even harder, eager to get it off, which had lead her to be shaken all around until she bumped into him. Their foreheads hit one another and left a faint red spot, but by the time they could have noticed it was already gone.
'What the hell, it's not coming off,' He said irritable, rubbing his chin after the painful headbutt. 'I'm sorry for that by the way,' He quickly recovered from his apology and pulled one more time, but Kai'Sa got in between it and stopped him. 'How is it not coming of, did you glue it to your body or something? Are you one of those girls that likes to wear the same clothes all the time?'
She shook her head, with the same bitter smile on her face she dusted her glove off and toggled her helmet back on, as if she suddenly got embarrassed of her own armour. 'Let's just say I was born with it.'
Ezreal's frown had returned, he once again studied her whole body, gazing into the lit peepholes that offered vision. It was as if her whole body was set in silicone, it looked like a-
'A second skin.' He mumbled.
Kai'Sa withdrew her helmet and shook her shoulders, as if she had recovered herself from the sudden emotional outburst she looked him in the eye with the same stoical facial like she did in the temple. Ezreal had so many questions, he wanted to know what it was, how she were born with it, where it came from. He wanted to know what drove her, if the suit was controlling her or the person he was talking to right now, but he already made her uncomfortable by noticing and held his questions to him, perhaps after today he would not see her any more.
'You need to go,' She said to kill the silence between them. For that moment she looked at him like he were about to fall prey like any other whenever she were mentioned in a story. 'Even though the void spawn died in the temple, I'm sure that there are more lingering underground. Wherever new spawn lives, rests unborn one.'
Ezreal grabbed her arm before she could run off. Kai'Sa gasped at the touch of his hand around her skin, as if she had never experienced the touch of a human before. The explorer's breathing became a lot faster when her lavender eyes met his, they clearly signed to him that she wanted to be released, so she could finish her current mission.
He sighed and let go. 'Just be careful, I won't be there another time to save you.' After his last words her helmet crept back on her face and fully closed onto her head. She ran off into the ruins, perhaps diving into the ground again, he thought to himself.
He watched her leave before he would do so himself, never had he witnessed a person change between emotions as fast as she did. An instinct she could easily toggle on and off. There was nothing more that he could ask, she had already left and made him wonder more of her. Turning away from the ruins he walked back towards the direction of the river. He stopped a few times in his tracks, lost in wonder what material her suit was made of, where she came from and if she were still human, because to him that's what conclusion he could draw from her.

Walking the same amount of hours Ezreal did not bother much to look up into the distance, because he could already tell that he was just a few minutes away. He had hoped that his companions had not left after the sound of the explosion. With one more glance over his shoulder towards the mountain he had travelled all the way from he saw the whole event playing in front of his eyes again. Ezreal shook the past off and ran the last bit back to the river, this time with enough energy to run miles on end without a single drop of sweat to break. It all came back to him the way he had entered the ruined landscapes. He had entered the temple with expectations that he may have been hindered by hidden traps an retrieved the item or dead by a stupid accident, apparently it had been the voidlings all along that had dragged everyone underground and consumed them to the last drop. Never had he thought that someone would have gone down to save him, nor could he believe that he actually lost the tear of the goddess. His pace weakened and slowed down, his palm hitting his forehead. He dropped the tear of the goddess and it was almost handed back to him. He went for a mission and came back empty handed, all he could hope was to correct the stories about her, but he knew the risk was too big to take. It would have only endangered him more. With a loud groan rolling off of his lips he fastened his pace again and ran frustrated towards the river. As promised and told did the men stay at until the evening would hit, despite the temple's explosion that they most definitely would have heard, they did live by their code. The men were both truly baffled to see the young explorer walk back with all his limbs attached, with minor injuries and wounds. Yotah looked relieved at Ezreal and reached out his hand for a firm shake. 'You've actually made it back, Lightfeather.' The middle aged man exclaimed happily, he took the male in a firm, but swift embrace and helped him back into the boat. 'What did you see? Was the item there?' He didn't take a moment to let the whole adventure sink to Ezreal and quite frankly, it was unusual for him to be in such a dip. Whenever the boy ran back from his adventure and Yotah were involved he jumped with excitement as if he were a small boy again, but this time he had such a troubled look on his face that the merchant could only think that he had not made it to the temple. After minutes of silence as they pushed the boat back into the river, the two men stared at Ezreal who still looked disappointed. Both of them leaped into the boat, but not even the slightest shiver of motion would have made him bat an eye to them, his eyes were lost in the waters.
'I was in the temple,' Ezreal mumbled as Yotah grabbed one of the pedals, looking at his companion. 'It was so fragile, the smallest vibration of sound, a single tick of my boot on the ground almost meant the end of me. I got cocky and stormed down the stairs,  walked into a trap and the whole entrance almost collapsed onto me,' Ezreal ignored the gasp of air that sounded from his travel companions and set his focus on the memory. 'I found a hidden entrance that led to a chamber. There were statues, bridges and gaping holes that probably hit the core of the world. If I even dared to make a misstep beyond the stairs I could have simply fallen into a nest.'
'A nest of what?' Yotah asked quickly, eager to find answers to their questions.
Ezreal broke his stare from the river and glanced at the merchant. 'When I pulled the tear of goddess out of the light, the divinity in the chamber just disappeared and broke out in an earthquake. All the voidlings just crept up from everywhere and I seriously thought I'd die.' Before To- Yah could have asked how Ezreal had managed to survive it he sighed and sat up from the edge of the boat, he felt a painful sting pushing into his hip, but he ignored it and mistook it for a sore muscle. 'I ran towards the exit but it was closing in on me and then-' He realised what he had told himself before, that he could have been accused of being a believer of the void worshippers and quickly bent the story. 'So I warped past it and ran out.'
Yotah 's expression gave his excitement away and he acted like no one were watching him, dancing as if there were no one there to judge him. Everyone, woman or man, would lose their control when there was a treasure involved. 'What about the explosion though? What happened and how did you get out of it?' The more he asked, the more he started to frown, he too realised that it was too easy for Ezreal to have gotten away, he thought to himself that there was no way that he could have escaped and destroyed the temple single handedly.
'There was a side entrance, mostly meant to escape the building in case one of the stair levers were pulled so I ran upstairs in walked into a, eh-' Ezreal's irritated mood had replaced itself for nervousness, he had not thought this trough. Rubbing the back of his head he tried to call upon everything that could be both flammable, he thought about the matchbox in his back pocket, he tried to recall Kai'Sa who threw the match at the remnants of the voidlings, but nothing that could make the entire temple combust into a shattering explosion that had both dragged them a few feet from the temple. 'I found some barrels filled with gunpowder and threw a match at it, I guess there were many more than I could have counted in that moment.'  Yotah 's face read not amused and his frown took place for doubt. Ezreal knew that the trust between Shurimans was well kept once achieved, hence why Noxians weren't taken lightly when entering the region. Ezreal knew that he had dug himself in a grave, and he kept digging and digging the more he added to the story. Yotah groaned and rubbed his scuffed chin.
'You never entered the temple did you? You just broke down the entrance and destroyed the temple.' Ezreal sat straight in an instant when the man had just accused him of being too frightened to enter the temple.
'I was inside the temple, why would I destroy the temple? No idiot would just break something down because they're afraid of it.'
Yotah  got up and the boat shook heavily, which caused him almost to fall. The water drenched the ground of the boat and passed on the rotting stench of the wood. 'To have an excuse to come back without crawling back to us, you could have just been honest.'
Ezreal's blood boiled to his head and he felt his gauntlet burning against his palm, he knew he had to calm down or risk losing someone who knew his connections in Shurima, he did not feel like bribing more people to finally get them to be on his side. 'I didn't chicken out, I'm telling you.' He groaned.
Yotah  crossed his arm over his chest and examined him closely, as if he were looking for an object. 'If you went and held the tear of the goddess, where is it.'
Ezreal wanted to defend himself, but there was nothing to defend. He was right, with him not having the tear of the goddess, even though he had said he held onto it, all that he was telling could have been a great excuse to run back home. He tried to come up with another argument, but there was nothing left to fight over, he clearly lost this one. With great anger he dropped himself to the ground and sat visibly annoyed against the head of the boat, looking at the man that was busy paddling and having a great view over the fight. What Ezreal had not noticed was that something had rolled out of his pocket and slid right to the feet of the merchant. All of their eyes widened at the glistering of the royal blue artefact. The tear of the goddess was right at their feet and all three of the men were beholding it's beauty and strength. Yotah quickly recovered himself from his shock and looked back at Ezreal, there were no words left for him to say than a simple action. He kneeled down to pick up the gem and beheld it's beauty once more, reaching his hand out to the explorer to give back what was rightfully taken by him.
Ezreal closed his fingers around the gem, every edge that stroke over the tips of his fingers and he held his breath once again, felt his pulse beating against the cold glass. That was impossible, she must have slipped it into his pocket when he was not paying attention. When did she do it? When he caught her? When he stopped her from walking off on him, when he were examining her?
'Kai'Sa...' He whispered softly, so quiet that the men at the foot of the boat did not even notice or hear the shock and question in his trembling voice.

Kai'Sa had searched through the ruins to see if no voidling had survived the fall, if she had not missed a single bug crawling around. All was promising and even the eggs they had nested deep within the ground were squashed by the remnants of the ceiling and pillars. One of their nests had fallen, there was no way for them to recover it again. Climbing back up on the mainland she looked over to the gates where her new friend and walked through. She wondered if he were safe, but not for long as she had thought after she had seen him in combat. He had quickly picked up her pace and knew where he had to aim at to finish the devil's spawn.  There was nothing more for her to teach him, their encounter was over and she would likely never see him again, like all the others that looked beyond the mask and acknowledged her for the being she really was: human. After a decade wandering around, testing her limits and finding the weak spots of her own suit, she knew how she could finally take it off, but it was impossible for her to do so alone, nor the best option if she wanted to achieve a region without a hint of their presence left. As long as the void resumed to live, she had to keep steering one to get to that world. Though, she never thought there would be someone that would have actually risked their life to save her. She hated to admit it, but she would not have gotten away without serious scratches if he had not taken action, he had sped up the pace of their annihilation, not only that, but he even got out of his way to catch her when she fell, even though none of that was really necessary. A sigh passed her lips as her eyes gazed to the sky, she had not taken a minute to sit down and enjoy the view sadly, nor to catch her breath, she was constantly on a mission to fight them. If she rested too long her second skin would fuel its hunger and consume on her skin, it had to be fed, wherever, whenever, if only she could just take it off for a few minutes. Feeling exhaustion hitting her straight in the gut she toggled her mask off and walked towards the mountains, seeking for shelter, something to cover her so she could just sleep for a mere five minutes. Wrapping one of her arms around her stomach she walked in a slow pace towards the towering mountains ahead of her, the closer she got, the more she fell in its shadow to cover from the brooding sun. Five minutes she told herself as she gathered her last big of energy to climb on a ledge and roll herself on the cold stone. If the void would come for her, her skin would wake her up, she knew for sure. Falling on her side she exhaled deeply, more out of pain than really a sigh. Feeling the heavy blankets fall over her eyelids she allowed them to shut down. Taking one last memorable breath she gave in to her fatigue and rested.

One day she would have a moment to spare from the awful skin,
one day, she promised to herself.