Chapter Text
“It’s not a good look, Jayce.”
Jayce fiddled with the bracer at his wrist, scowling.
No spotlight on him, this time. No wall of muttering civilian witnesses drowned in darkness. No ring of looming Councilors peeking from the shadow around him, their voices echoing in judgment.
No, that room was rubble now. That ostentatious ring table that had saved Cassandra Kiramman’s life was gone; it was a lavish, long dining table they sat around, now, at a Cadwalder mansion just outside of the city, and he sat amongst them, still, as a first among equals.
But he still fidgeted with the bracer at his wrist.
“I’m completely opposed,” he said aloud, looking down the length of the table, “Caitlyn Kiramman is-”
“Your longtime friend, I know, Councillor,” said Ovelia Hoskel, with a deep sigh over her wine, “You cannot be expected to break your loyalties any more than her mother…”
Cassandra Kiramman, tense with quiet, storm-like wrath, cleared her throat but did not dignify the present discussion further. Jayce did, however, note her white-gloved hand clenching its mechanical knuckles on the table.
“…we’re simply asking you to listen to reason on this matter.”
“This isn’t reason,” Jayce snapped, “This is dumb, blind panic and you all know it.”
He scoured their silent, gloom-filled faces.
“Do what you want with your valuables,” he shook his head, “I don’t care. But if you want to stop Jinx without it turning into a goddamn massacre like it did before –”
“Nobody has come closer to catching Jinx than my daughter,” said Cassandra, her eyes knives of control, “Nobody else can.”
Jayce nodded his affirmation.
“Listen to us. Have faith in Caitlyn,” he said, voice hard, “Trust her.”
An exchange of dark glances met his words.
“I’m sorry, Jayce,” said Shoola, “But we don’t. Not anymore.”
“She’s in there?” Vi asked.
“Seraphine,” said Caitlyn, “I believe she is.”
Vi fell silent, and Cait knew that Sera wasn’t the ‘she’ on her mind.
The condemned apartment tower loomed dark before them, scarred by fire, still marked with graffiti and hateful slogans of those bitter nights plastered over, in the year since, by printed memorial posters to those who had died here when it burned.
More casualties of the Turmoils.
More deaths on Jinx’s hands. Caitlyn blinked it away. No. That isn’t fair. She fired the rocket, but other hands fought the revolution. In her name, or otherwise, but …
Other hands had laid the path to it, long before Powder and Vi were born.
“Why Seraphine?” Caitlyn muttered, “If only Jinx knew how much that girl cares about people like her…why attack someone who’s been nothing but a voice of compassion?”
Vi shrugged, “She’s still a Piltie, Cait. Born in Zaun or not; someone preaching peace and healing, who gets to live up here in comfort and safety?”
She didn’t scoff or snort; she knew what Seraphine’s music and message meant to Cait. But she still shook her head, her expression sober.
“…hard sell downstairs, Cupcake. That’s all I’m saying.”
Caitlyn drew in a slow breath.
“Well,” she said, “She has no ‘comfort and safety’ now, Vi. I – we can’t let Jinx hurt her. We need a plan of attack.”
“Mm,” Vi narrowed her eyes, toying with her tongue as if she was sitting on something she wasn’t quite ready to say, “Should have brought Ez.”
“You were the one who told him to stay behind.”
“Yeah, and I’m regretting it,” Vi craned her neck, “That’s what, eight floors? All gutted by fire? With no idea what kind of gauntlet she’s rigged for us inside? We should probably have brought the guy who can teleport.”
“Ask him how well it fared for him at Foxtrap,” Caitlyn muttered, “No, Vi, she set her challenge for us, alone. We will answer it and bring Seraphine home.”
She checked the safety of her rifle.
“Ingress?” she said.
Vi looked at her sidelong, shrewdly, for a moment before she rolled her shoulders.
“Gonna have to be ground floor,” Vi muttered.
“Indeed,” Caitlyn lifted the scope to her eye and scanned the flanks of the building, “The outer shell seems sound enough but we can’t guarantee structural integrity. There’s an industrial crane parked on the other side, perhaps we could use it to access higher windows, but we’d be announcing ourselves to Jinx…Oh.”
Caitlyn’s lips thinned.
“What’s that?”
“Ground floor west. Past the old lamp post.”
Vi lifted a battered spyglass to her own eye and tracked where Caitlyn had indicated.
To the bright neon purple monkey painted around the doorway to the broken side garden, the doorway framed in its mouth, painted with the words ‘COME & PLAY’ in dribbling green.
“Welcome mat,” said Vi.
Caitlyn lifted from her crouch.
Obvious trap. But it’s Jinx, so…it’s walk into the trap you see, or walk into the trap you don’t.
“Let’s go,” she said.
Jayce scowled harder, leaning forward, resting his hands on the table.
An emergency gathering. Informal and impromptu. The new Council, of course; aside from himself and Cass Kiramman were Jae Medarda, Yurel Salo, Ovelia Hoskel, M’toko Shoola, all Clan relatives of various distance from their predecessors; Delio Giopara had taken Bolbok’s seat.
The seat of the Zaunite representative, an advisory-only position added as part of the Talis Proclamation and subsequent Accords, stood empty.
But the extra chairs at Cadwalder’s enormous banquet table did not.
Ambessa Medarda lounged to one side on a divan, cracking the limbs of an enormous royal spurcrab with her bare hands. As much as Jayce knew the Noxian’s positioning was an act of contempt, calculated to make the Piltovans shift uncomfortably with her scorning eyes on their backs, he was glad she was not seated at the table.
Her towering, leonine presence would dwarf them all, for one thing; for another, it meant she was playing the visiting dignitary, and Jae Medarda was fielding the Clan’s interests. If she deigned to join the table, it meant she was interested.
And she wasn’t alone, either. A smattering of the Council’s affiliated hangers-on from Clan and administrative quarters lingered in the periphery, mostly wringing their hands and muttering behind them, doing very little to conceal how rattled the events of the concert had made them.
Of the latter crowd, Albus Ferros, grandiosely-clad as ever, had been a generous patron of Hextech since the beginning, but Counts Mei and Sandvik were grating egotists with grudges against the Wardens, and Nicodemus, who stood to benefit most, was busy preening and puffing at anyone who tolerated him.
Too many ears. Jayce would have to tread carefully.
“Councilors, with respect, my friendship with Sheriff Kiramman is irrelevant to what she’s done for this city,” he said, “Do we forget that in one year of office, she’s done more to ensure the public good than any other Sheriff in the history of Piltover?”
He stared around at their dour faces.
“What? Are we going to overlook that she rebuilt the Wardens – from nothing – that she closed Stillwater and pioneered restorative justice programs-”
Sandvik muttered something about letting criminals out on the streets and Jayce gritted his teeth.
“-I acknowledge there are some who disagree with her methods, but the results speak for themselves. Petty and violent crime down to pre-conflict levels – below them – re-offenders and incarcerations at a record low, and she was personally responsible for dismantling multiple high profile organized criminal networks.”
Jayce held his tongue behind his teeth a moment, knowing full well that there were people in the room who’d benefitted, if not participated, from some of those selfsame networks…
But on any list of Caitlyn Kiramman’s achievements, they could not be overlooked.
“She pulled off detective work in months that would have taken anyone else years. She and Vi took down the Devaki smuggling ring, the Petrok syndicate, the Carvacin crime family,” he lifted a hand in sharp gesture, “They tracked and caught the Zendozi brothers and the Cogwheel Street killer singlehandedly-”
“Impressive resume,” chuckled a new voice, “Pity she hasn’t caught Jinx.”
Jayce glanced up at that faintly distorted tone, to the clicking of brass-capped boots.
The seat for the Nation of Zaun was a symbolic gesture, an olive branch offered to a powerful figure with wealth and clout in both cities. Someone who could bridge the gap.
But the man he’d gritted teeth and written it for, the man into whose hands he’d passed the draft agreement atop the Sungate wall with the gulls crying a year ago, was dead, his seat yawning empty after his daughter had launched a rocket through the Council’s window.
Mostly empty. But not always.
Renata Glasc pushed Silco’s seat out with a nudge of her immaculate boot and fell into it in a regal slouch.
“You’re late,” Jayce muttered.
Renata shrugged, “Can’t spell ‘business’ without ‘busy’. You want me here quicker, Man of Progress, build me an airship that can steer in the Grey.”
Her pink eyes glittered with amusem*nt. Even in Piltover, she hadn’t unclipped her designer breather.
“Did I miss anything important?”
As her eyes adjusted from dark to garish light, Vi craned her neck and took a deep breath.
“Okay,” she muttered, “Okay okay…okay so it’s this then…cool.”
The interior of the apartment building soared above them, almost entirely hollowed out by the fire. The ceiling and the central staircase structure had collapsed, layer after layer, leaving only the chewed-off ends of each floor jutting like broken bones into the grimy air.
But that hadn’t been the end of the changes to the space.
Creaking. Shifting. Groaning in the wind …
The walls drowned in neon scribbles. Strings of brightly colored decorative lights crisscrossing the space at random gave the innards of the wrecked building the look of a disturbingly festive spider’s nest. That glow from inside had been their first clue that Ezreal’s decoding of the coordinate cipher was on the mark.
Someone had meticulously cleared the rubble from the tiled ground floor, piled it up in the center of the room, and haphazardly stacked atop it…
…a pile of gigantic, battered industrial crates, like dishes waiting to be washed; a comparison not weakened by the way they were all spattered top to bottom with a chaotic kaleidoscope of Jinx graffiti.
How she’d moved them was anyone’s guess, but if Vi had to theorize, it probably had something to do with the industrial crane still parked outside from yet another Turmoils-aborted demolition.
Cold night breeze, heading toward morning, flowed in from the cracks in the walls and made the entire ghoulish display creak, sway and totter.
But that wasn’t the only movement.
“…hello?” came a faint cry from above, “I…I can hear you down there…are you…Wardens?”
Vi squinted up – way up – to a flash of bright pink hair under the moonlight spilling through the broken ceiling.
Caitlyn, beside her, widened her eyes at the sound of that voice directly addressing her.
“Seraphine?” she called out, “Yes, I’m, um, I’m Cai-I’m Sheriff Kiramman, and m-my partner and I are, uh, with the Wardens - If it’s safe for you to reply – are you injured?”
The pause that followed was short, but every second hung heavy on the two Wardens below.
“No-” the reply came back, “I’m not hurt.”
Another pause. Caitlyn’s professionalism seemed to snap back in, wrestled into place by sheer force of will.
“Good. Seraphine, can you describe for me what you see?”
They could both see her now, perched precariously atop the rocking tower. A slim, seated figure peeking down at them, bathed in that natural spotlight. Vi doubted it was an accidental arrangement.
“I’m – I’m tied to a chair,” Seraphine called down, “There’s – sort of a mechanism – keeping this thing together. I don’t know how it works. Um, p-please do hurry and save me! and – please, please be careful!”
Caitlyn narrowed her eyes and surveyed the boxes.
“Vi,” Caitlyn muttered, “The lights. They’re all hiding cables.”
Vi frowned. She was right; the strings of lurid bulbs concealed a tangled web of cables and cords crisscrossing the space in the dusty light, some of them connecting directly to the creaking tower of crates.
“So, it’s trapped to hell,” she said, “Are we surprised?”
Her attention roamed over the crates; a hole had been cut into each of their flanks and something had been socketed into each of the holes, an ugly iron gizmo resembling a leering, demonic mask.
“Okay,” said Vi, “She called us out. This challenge is for you. Lux said that to me.”
“She did…?”
Caitlyn had her brows furrowed and her eyes slightly distant, as if she were trying to focus on something unsettlingly familiar.
“She did,” Vi said, “So that means you’re meant to figure out what this all-”
“Vi!”
But she’d taken the step, unthinking, looking up at the network of cables. She heard the faint clunk and felt the floor tile beneath her foot sink too late.
“You raised the topic of Jinx,” Salo cleared his throat.
“So, I did,” Renata laughed, “Quiet part out loud. Habit of mine, you’ll have to get used to it.”
Her eyes flicked across the room, to the slow, predatory smirk creeping across Ambessa Medarda’s face. Renata gave the Noxian woman a small, acknowledging nod, and received a chuckle in return.
Great, thought Jayce, Now she’s interested.
“Let’s cut to it,” Renata leaned over, “The little menace struck again, I gather, while I was downstairs?”
“The Grand Arvino,” Hoskel murmured, “She’s kidnapped Seraphine.”
“Oh?” said Renata, “Well, that will put a damper on the girl’s career.”
She drummed her claws.
“And I’m assuming that’s why you’re having this little emergency tittle-tat behind the Sheriff’s back? Presumably whilst she’s off mounting her rescue op?” Renata clicked her unseen teeth, “That’s cold. I’m almost impressed.”
“Yes, well, Jinx also declared that she’s coming for ‘that which we hold most dear’,” said Salo, “In three days’ time. So, with respect, Ms Glasc, there wasn’t exactly time to schedule a gala.”
“Sounds like a terrible problem,” she replied, “For you.”
“Not only us,” said Albus Ferros, thumbing a bright, foreign coin, “Just how many investments has Glasc Industries got this side of the river?”
He looked up at Renata, and Jayce had the sudden thought that the Zaunite woman’s eyes could crack stone.
“Wouldn’t you like to know?” she said, casually.
“I frankly don’t care,” Ferros shrugged, “Will Jinx?”
Renata’s eyes narrowed, but if she gave a reply, it was lost in the flood of debate.
“It’s the last straw,” said Giopara, shaking his head, “If the Sheriff isn’t up to the task, we have to find someone who is.”
“It’s cowardice,” Cassandra growled, “You’re all acting like frightened lambs, and you’re going to scapegoat my daughter to save your own reputations, right when you need her the most.”
She pushed to her feet; a rare show of emotion in the scrape of her chair.
“You know my vote, but you will hear my reasoning. Jinx is coming for you. I know what that means better than anyone in this room. You need Caitlyn. Now more than ever. She can and will protect this city. She has proven it time and time again.”
“I’m with Councilor Kiramman,” Jayce gave her a firm nod, “Look, yes, there has been a Jinx crime spree spanning weeks – with no fatalities. That’s Caitlyn’s doing.”
“She siphoned Council funding to build the mad bitch a playpen,” growled Shoola.
“She built a trap that Jinx narrowly escaped, that kept her distracted away from the civilian populace, and saved lives,” Jayce protested, “If that’s not protecting the city, I don’t know what is.”
“I’m sorry,” said Shoola, “But Baroness Glasc is right; she hasn’t caught Jinx. Our last Council’s murderer has been running rings around Piltover’s finest, destroying property, terrorizing the populace, costing the city millions, and no-one has stopped her.”
“She’s making a joke of us,” said Hoskel, “Jinx humiliated Clan Arvino and threatened all of us in front of thousands. People are scared. Even more after tonight. It’s not a good look. Something must be done to restore confidence.”
She raised her hand beside Shoola’s. Giopara joined them.
Jayce drew his lips thin.
Mel wasn’t here. Viktor wasn’t here. Heimerdinger wasn’t here.
His gut wasn’t wrong. That feeling – that same feeling – of being under the cold white spotlight, in that ring of shadowed faces – it was back, after all these years.
The faces had changed. The feeling hadn’t.
“Salo?” Giopara turned to the blonde dilettante.
Councilor Salo drummed his fingertips on the table. “Seraphine was kidnapped scant hours ago,” he said, briefly brushing eyes across Jayce, “We haven’t given the Sheriff time to powder her nose let alone rescue the girl. Her partner made a sacrifice play literally on stage in front of your ‘thousands’; I heard them roaring her name.”
Salo shook his head.
“You’re all too eager to martyr Piltover’s newly minted heroes in their hour of glory. The only people quivering in their boots are in this room. Let the woman work, for pity’s sake.”
He lowered his hand.
“Vi!”
Caitlyn saw the shift of Vi’s body as she took a step backward onto the wide, square concrete tiles on the floor – too late.
Vi stood frozen, every muscle taut, as the tile sank beneath her and clicked.
Something had activated. Caitlyn tensed, waiting for the explosion…
Instead, the lights fritzed, and blazed brighter; the whole contraption buzzed and spat and animated into carnival-sideshow life. Each of the demon masks began rotating in their sockets at different speeds, buzzing with a horrible, recorded nursery rhyme being hummed in Jinx’s voice.
“…Cait,” she whispered, “What do I do…?”
The humming came louder. Caitlyn’s eyes drew to the rotating object embedded in the flank of the crate nearest them, on ground level.
Something sparked in her memory. Buried deep.
…Azakana-zun, Azakana-zun, don’t turn around…
“Vi,” she said softly, eyes fixed on the slowly turning object, “…were there any Ionian children in the Lanes with you, growing up?”
“What?”
“Were there?”
Vi’s eyes searched around, confused, “Y-yeah there were a couple – refugees from the last war – lot of people like that ended up in Zaun if they were poor – um –”
Caitlyn breathed out.
“Vi? Don’t. Move.”
Vi swallowed. “Okay.”
The tune. The damned tune Jinx was humming through speakers, embedded in the walls, embedded in the teeth of the grinning, crude, Jinx-ish approximation of an Azakana mask, rotating slowly into view with its eyes glowing red.
Shining Hex-lasers across the floor space, scanning their bodies.
Heartbeats passed. The leering mask stared at Vi’s back, at Caitlyn. Then it gave a lecherous giggle and slowly turned back away from them, into the depths of the crate.
“…it’s Azakana-zun,” Caitlyn mumbled, “An Ionian children’s game. The ‘demon’ faces away from the other children and chants the rhyme. They need to move closer, but if it turns around and sees them moving-”
“-they’re caught,” Vi growled, “Just like ‘Freeze, Enforcer!’ for us…”
“Jinx was in my home,” Caitlyn said, “She knows my father’s Ionian.”
“And Benzo had masks like that, hanging in his shop…” said Vi, blowing out a breath, “Okay. Okay, okay, so if I move while it’s looking at me…”
“You trigger the trap,” said Cait, her eyes fixed on the rotating head, calculating time before it turned back toward them, “We need to wait until it’s looking away, and then move closer to…”
“Get Sera down,” Vi scowled, “How?”
Caitlyn chewed her lip, falling silent and stiffening up as the giggling monster face rolled back into their view.
She stared up at the tower of stacked crates, the girl on top.
They all had rotating demon faces, except for the very top crate. That one was painted on every flank with Jinx’s leering monkey sign.
…Azakana-zun, Azakana-zun, don’t turn around…
There were two games called ‘Azakana-zun’ in Ionia. One a ‘statues’ variant played standing up, and the other played sitting down…
…with a stack of little wooden blocks, carved with demon faces…
And a mallet.
“I think that’s your part,” Caitlyn said.
“She’s had opportunity, and failed time and time again,” said Giopara, “The Enforcers would have handled-”
Jayce snorted.
“With no disrespect to the dead,” he said, “I was there when the Enforcers met Jinx. The day the last Sheriff lost his life. Don’t lecture me about the ‘glory days’, Delio. I was on that bridge the next morning; I still can’t look at red meat.”
The room fell silent, save for Ambessa Medarda quietly slurping crab juices from her fingers.
Jayce’s stomach twisted.
“Jae,” he said, tearing his eyes from the elder Medarda to the younger, “It’s your vote.”
Jae Medarda, young, co*cky, only half-paying attention to anything that wasn’t maps and charts and explorer’s logs, lifted a shrug.
“Hey, auntie,” he called over to Ambessa, “What was that story you always tell? About the wolf and the fox?”
“If this metaphor is going to suggest we’re sheep-” Ovelia Hoskel began.
Ambessa’s booming laugh cut her off.
“No,” she said, lifting her eyes from her meal at last and wiping her fingers on fine Piltovan cloth, “You’re chickens. Clucking around your coop in a panic, waiting to be…”
She cracked the last leg off the crab for emphasis.
“…slaughtered.”
Jayce watched the various Piltovans make various faces. Only Renata Glasc was unreadable, beyond her customary amusem*nt.
“Charming farmyard analogies aside,” muttered Salo, “Your presence, General Medarda, presents an opportunity to bring your keen strategic mind to our dilemma. What would you suggest we do?”
Ambessa’s gigantic shoulder rippled with her dismissive huff. Amusem*nt, but it masked a bitter, burning fury.
“This Jinx kills like a wolf,” she replied, “But she thinks like a fox. You won’t catch her without baiting your trap with something she wants.” She swept a contemptuous gaze across the gathering. “But I don’t think you have what she wants.”
“No?” said Shoola, “What of her threat?”
“A capricious child’s game. She’s playing all of you for fools.”
Ambessa pushed to her feet. Her shadow fell across the table. Everyone at it turned to look at her.
“But when you face an enemy that wants you dead,” she said, “Do not play. Do not compromise. Do not let yourself forget that they hate you, as my daughter did.”
She toyed with the straps on her wrist bracer, pulling them taut, and blasted her withering stare down the table.
“All of you know the price paid for mercy.”
The Councilors shrank back, Nicodemus made a soft huffing sound, and Jayce felt his stomach turn again. Old anger. Old guilt.
Glasc was the only one unmoved.
“With deference to your indomitable Noxian philosophy,” the Zaunite tilted her cheek into her mechanized palm, “We all know the price paid for war as well. Are you asking the twin cities to, what, go another round? To avenge your little girl’s honor?”
Ambessa sized the woman up, unashamedly, as if the two of them were stepping into a gladiatorial ring.
Whatever she saw, it didn’t impress her; Jayce struggled to think of what would.
“War?” Ambessa laughed, “You Piltovans have one uprising and think yourselves battle-scarred? You know nothing of war.”
With a dismissive wave of her hand, she turned for the door, the Ferros guardsman hastily stepping out of her way.
“Hunt her like the beast she is,” she called over her shoulder, “Or be the prey. Your call.”
Jae Medarda watched her go with a blown-out sigh, shrugged, and lifted his hand in support of the motion.
Renata Glasc’s masked face gave little away; but Jayce swore her crow’s feet were smirking.
One step.
Two steps.
Three.
::: Azakana-zun Azakana-zun, don’t turn around… :::her sister’s voice scratched nastily from a speaker in the mouth of the leering demon mask.
Vi breathed. Focused. Old habit, by now; Vi wasn’t the hothead she used to be, not the rebellious teen from the Lanes, not the embittered inmate of Stillwater, not the anguished rock-bottom she’d hit after Jinx disappeared…
The crawl back up hadn’t been easy. But Cait had been the light at the end of that tunnel. Something to fight for…
Someone to fight for.
The Hextech gauntlets whirred at her side as she subconsciously adjusted the power again.
Need to get Sera down.
Vi breathed out.
Get Sera down. Apparently, by punching out the crates stacked underneath her, one by one –
Micro-shift the dial, adjust the punching strength.
Without knocking the whole damn thing down.
Too little and she’d only jostle the structure, too much and-
Sure. Cool. Piece of cake. Easy.
The face rotated out of her sight, and Vi took another step, hopped another tile. One step away now from the leering face. She could hear the crates creaking and tottering in the cold breeze through the cracks in the walls…
This is insane.
“Seraphine, brace yourself,” Caitlyn called, nestling her gun to her shoulder, eye down the sight, “We’re going to get you down, but it might get a little…” Vi heard the wince in Caitlyn’s voice; “…exciting.”
“Um…oh dear. Sure,” Seraphine gave a nervous laugh, “Go for it, officers. What else am I doing with my night, anyway?”
“Good girl. Vi…when you’re ready.”
This is f*cking insane.
Vi blew out a breath, swung her hand back, and punched the leering demon face in the back of the head. The entire contraption shuddered and rippled, bottom to top; Vi flinched back, ready to spring up and try to catch Sera if she fell–
The crate exploded in a cloud of pink smoke, billowing out of all the cracks in its flank.
Vi, blinded, flailed back a few steps, Hex-shields charging from the force of the punch; she heard Caitlyn shouting, Seraphine’s sharp yelp, and a whirr and crunch of machinery.
The smoke cleared, and Vi stared past her fists to see the tower, swaying from the impact, dropping down into place.
One crate shorter.
Another demon face, this one more doglike, snapped its clunky metal jaws as it rotated into her view, and Vi froze up.
“One down,” she breathed, stared the ugly thing in its glowing eyes, and waited.
One by one, the remaining hands raised. Only Jayce, Cassandra and Salo were against.
“The vote is cast,” said Hoskel, “The proposed emergency countermeasures will be taken, effective immediately.”
“I’m sure Piltover will sleep safer,” Jae Medarda muttered, “But if we’re to take this beast down, we’ll need the right hunter.”
All eyes turned to Albus Ferros, who simply raised his eyebrows, set his lips, and leaned back in his seat with a smile.
“Clan Ferros provides,” he said.
Two pale blue eyes appeared behind him. Softer than the tinkling of their silverware, her bladed footfalls presaged Camille Ferros as she lay her hand on her cousin’s shoulder.
The Councilors and their guards jumped as one. None of them had seen her enter. And if she could slip past all of their security, could Jinx…?
But it was Renata Glasc’s reaction – or lack thereof – that Jayce found most telling. That tiny pause in her bored drumming on the tabletop. The eye contact between the two women. A flicker of bottomless feeling behind the Zaunite’s smug façade.
Much subtler, this time. Much better guarded.
“For my Clan, I stand ready to serve,” said Camille, impassive to it all.
“Y-you are most welcome, Lady Ferros,” Delio Giopara, rattled to his bones, replied.
“Then it’s settled,” said Hoskel, “The Ecliptic Vault shall be made available,” she nodded to Mei and Sandvik, “For the deposit of valuables belonging to any Clan and business interests who wish them protected in Piltover’s most secure location.”
“And we shall call in the Sheriff at the earliest opportunity,” said Giopara, “to discuss her future, and the new direction of the Wardens.”
“I shall be honored-hm, hem-” Nicodemus chortled, “To do my bit for the City, I say, Councilors.”
In the pause that followed, Nicodemus’ pleased chuffing was the only sound. Jayce ground his teeth and glared at them all, feeling the weight of it, all of it, tottering on the edge.
“You’re making the worst mistake of your lives,” he growled, “But I won’t be there when you find that out.”
Slowly, heavy with fury, he rose from his seat.
“If you do this,” he said, “You do it without me. I’m standing down. Right here and now.”
“What?” said Hoskel, and a hubbub of voices rose around the table in shock and protest, “For Kiramman?”
Jayce slid his Council ring off and put it on the table. His eyes found Cassandra Kiramman, and she gave him a firm nod.
“For Piltover,” he said, and turned away, “I’ll be at the forge.”
“Wait!” Salo shot at his back.
Jayce paused at the door.
“Councilors,” said Salo, smiling behind clasped hands, “We are all experiencing a moment of strong feelings, to put it politely. And I will put it politely, lest I say something more truthful like ‘pants-sh*tting insanity’, considering Piltover’s current predicament.”
“Your point, Yurel?” M’toko Shoola said through gritted teeth.
“Might I propose that rather than the Council lose its Man of Progress over a spot of friendly political difference…”
Salo steepled his fingers in front of his lips, considering.
“A compromise might be reached.”
Jayce closed his eyes and caught his breath.
His hand was on the doorknob.
The heat of the forge on his face. The ache in his arms, the rough weight of the hammer in his grip.
Opening his eyes, he turned and sat back at the table.
“I’m listening,” he said.
Recorded snorting squeals and Jinx’s laughter echoed from the mouth of the next mask.
“And – strike!” Caitlyn’s voice snapped out across the cold space.
Vi clenched her teeth, micro-adjusted the punch, and crashed the Atlas’ knuckles through another smugly grinning demon.
A pig, this time. Jinx was getting a little more direct in her messaging.
Vi leapt back from the whirl of green smoke and flash of debris as the crate dropped into place, a whine of machinery and clunk as the four walls of the crate fell apart and the next one slammed at least a ton of weight on the cracked concrete floor.
Vi coughed amid the smoke, “You good, Sera?”
A pause…
“I… haven’t thrown up … yet?”
Vi rolled her neck.
“Three down,” she muttered, “Two to go. We got this…”
The next face rotated into her view; Vi’s stomach twisted at the sight of an Enforcer mask. A real one, right down to the stained crack in the brow where blunt force had ended its owner.
It had a V I cut into its cheek and painted white.
Her heart rate picked up, but she unclenched Hextech fingers and held her ground.
Wait. Just wait for it. She’s trying to rattle you. Make you misread the timing. Stay cool.
The face made no sound other than the familiar, haunting rasp of the Enforcer breathers as it turned and rotated away.
“Kay,” Vi breathed out, “Cait, I’m moving in.”
She took another step forward and lifted her fists, ready to punch on Caitlyn’s signal. They all turned at different speeds, and this one was revolving painfully slow…
“Vi…” Caitlyn called.
“Ten, nine-” Vi counted under her breath.
“Something’s off. Wait!”
The mask suddenly spun – fast – back into place – Vi had her leg lifted to step. She stumbled forward with the weight of her gauntlets.
The eyes flashed.
::: I SAW YOU! ::: Jinx’s voice crowed, distorted into a demonic growl, and everything happened all at once.
The mouth panel of the Enforcer mask dropped away to reveal a pair of saw-toothed Chomper jaws; but between them cupped the dark hole of a barrel, and Vi was a split-second too late to dodge the silver Enforcer shock dart that hit her in the chest.
Electricity sizzled; Vi’s limbs locked up and she dropped to her back.
The mask kept turning, spitting more of them across the room; behind her, Cait gave a pained scream, but Vi couldn’t turn to look.
“Watch out!” Seraphine cried out above it all, voice choked in sudden shock.
She had just enough field of vision to see the floor panels popping like corn on a hot plate, Chompers springing up beneath them…
Stupid way to die… Vi thought, sinking in and out of awareness, muscles twitching, unless it’s just another damn joke…
The Chompers blew, billowing pink and green smoke everywhere that stank of the Grey, of Zaun, of home. Blooming, beautiful in a noxious kind of way, like neon flowers…
She’d always been an artist.
…Powder, you always were…
Vi snapped back to consciousness to the CRACK of a Hextech rifle.
The Enforcer mask burst in sizzling blue. Through the cloying, drowsy smoke, Vi saw Caitlyn’s stumble out of the smoke become a determined stride, springing across each ruined pressure-plate like lily pads on a pond.
Her rifle raised, twisted in smooth, precise motion.
CRACK… CRACK… CRACK.
A blue flash popped each of the bouncing, smoke-spewing Chompers, trapped them in nets unfurling from corkscrew bullets and hurled them out through the ruined windows.
The smoke began to clear.
The silhouette loomed in Vi’s numb, gas-muddled vision; the shadow of a rifle, the crisp cut of a uniform, the helmed silhouette and rasp of an insect-like mask…
She shuddered, until the figure bent wrapped arms around her shoulders and amid it all, she caught a hint of Caitlyn’s perfume and sweat.
“We missed it,” muttered the voice behind the breather, as Cait pressed one over her own mouth, “The Enforcer mask was a warning; ‘breathers on, sis’.”
Vi groaned, coughed, and sucked in filtered air, “…’course it was. F-freaking beautiful…”
She let Caitlyn haul her up to her feet; her partner grunted and shook her head.
“That last one changed its rotation speed at random,” she grumbled, “She cheated.”
“Dur,” said Vi, with a bitter laugh, “Ugh. Sera…?”
The last crate sat above the wreckage of the second-last, just above the heavy clouds of smoke. They could hear the girl coughing amidst them as they rose to choke her lungs.
“Help…” she squeaked, “…help!”
“sh*t!” Caitlyn hissed, “Hang in there, Seraphine! Vi…?”
“On it.” Vi sucked in a deep breath through the respirator and dialed up her gauntlets.
“Careful, there might be active pressure plates-”
“Don’t care!” Vi roared and slung herself through the smoke, legs pumping, pushing off with a burst of the Atlas gauntlets –
She’s close enough now – I can make the jump – I can get her –
Caitlyn cursed inwardly and outwardly as Vi peeled away from her and made that mad leap, hurling herself face-first, fists-first into danger.
For the second time tonight.
Behind her breather,Caitlyn clenched her teeth and lined up her shot between the billowing clouds of smoke. Poor visibility, throwing everything into hazy half-seen silhouettes.
Vi soared like a warrior goddess above them, tearing trails of smoke after her.
Seraphine screamed – fear or surprise, it was hard to tell – as Vi crashed down into the top of the crate beside her and swept her up in those giant hands, ripping the chair she was tied to from its moorings, girl and all.
For all its force there was something delicate about the way Vi cradled Seraphine between the solid wall of her body and the brass shields of her gauntlets that hit Caitlyn somewhere in the belly –
No time!
…because when the chair’s bolts snapped, wires snapped with them, and then there were more Chompers, concealed amid the tangled lights, falling on cables and laughing all the way.
And, with the sudden shift in weight, the crate tottered, slid, and tilted toward the floor.
“Vi!”
Vi tumbled, her eyes flying wide in shock, with Seraphine gulping air and mirroring her terrified expression as the crate slid with slow but inevitable force right through the forest of Chompers.
Caitlyn fired; each net-shot snatching a Chomper out of their path and into the darkness of the ruined building beyond. They exploded in pops of dizzying, blinding fireworks, without much concussive force or fire, thank Janna…
But there was nothing Cait could do to stop the crate.
“Hold on!” Vi cried out, leaping down to floor level with Seraphine clutched tight, her Hex-shields blazing blue – but the shift of weight made the damn crate tip up.
It tipped toward them, its shadow falling over their bodies.
Caitlyn wasn’t quite sure what happened next; Seraphine shouted something over Vi’s shoulder, and there was a deafening PWOOM and ripple of force that kicked dust up from the floor and shoved the tottering crate sidewards, just missing Vi and Seraphine as it came down like a toppling tree…
Then something like a glitzy manta ray swooped out of the dusty darkness, flew beneath the two of them and swept them off their feet. Vi’s yell grew in volume as the thing flashed toward Caitlyn and collected her as well –
All breath knocked from her body, Caitlyn couldn’t even scream – it was all she could do to keep hold of her gun – air rushed around her…
The final crate crashed against one of the walls as it fell, and between that, the Chompers, and the mystery shockwave, the gutted building had enough.
Caitlyn rolled to her side, bruised and winded, her body slapping against a familiar wall of Vi and a less familiar tangle of pink hair on the dirty ground. She threw up her arms to shield her face as a wall of concrete dust and ash rolled over their position.
The apartment building’s ruined walls tipped inward, cracked in half, and fell together into a pile of blackened rubble.
It took Caitlyn a moment to realize she wasn’t dead because they were, inexplicably, outside.
Glad for her breather but coughing through bruised ribs, Caitlyn pushed herself up to all fours.
“Vi…Vi…?” she pawed around in the dust until she found a familiar leg.
“…m’here…what the…flaming…sh*t was…”
“Seraphine,” Caitlyn gulped, “Seraphine!”
“I got her, Cait,” Vi groaned, “But…what got us?”
Something shone in the haze; a familiar, gleaming, but utterly nonhumanoid shape floated out of the smoke; their unlikely rescuer.
“Her stage,” said Caitlyn, in baffled awe.
Its crystalline lights oscillated and pulsed. If Caitlyn wasn’t going mad, she’d almost have sworn it was happy.
No time to think of that. Vi rolled onto her back, uncurling her arms; bruised and battered, but clearly breathing, Seraphine slid out of them in a heap of broken chair and slackened loops of rope.
“Seraphine!” Caitlyn fell to her knees and quickly checked the girl for signs of immediate injury, “Are you hurt? Can you speak?”
“…ugh,” the girl’s eyes fluttered and she coughed a few times, then cracked an eye open and peered up at Caitlyn and Vi, “…bit bruised but nothing broken…I don’t think…th-thanks for the save, you guys…”
“You’re safe now,” Caitlyn assured her, “We’ve got you, and you’re out of the building.”
“Y-yeah I … I figured…” Seraphine squinted at the wreckage of the building, “…oh boy…pretty sure…that wasn’t supposed to happen…”
She almost seemed…chagrined? Caitlyn had to wonder at it, but it could simply be shock.
“Vi, if you please-”
“I’ll radio the medics,” said Vi, chuckling, as she hauled herself up, “Give you, uh, a chance to interview the rescuee, Sheriff.”
She had the bloody audacity to wink.
Caitlyn blew out an aching sigh and turned to Seraphine. The Seraphine, the Starry-Eyed Songstress of Piltover.
Caitlyn couldn’t forget the first time she’d heard her; just seventeen, then, pink hair blazing above her modest costume, busking on the corner of a busy Piltovan square, singing, in broad daylight, bittersweet songs of sorrow and hope.
Caitlyn, on her weary way home from Academy drudgery, had been among many who stood transfixed by the haunting sweetness of that voice.
But others jostled as they pushed by. Muttered about Undercity beggars crawling up from the Trench as they flowed around this tiny, humble pinpoint of warmth in their clockwork city.
Caitlyn had known, right then, right there, who this girl was, and what she’d become.
“Seraphine,” she swallowed, facing her idol.
Silly, really, the girl was half a decade younger than her, and currently dirty, battered, and disoriented. Her glittery stage outfit was ruined; her hair a tangle, her makeup streaked with dried tears.
But her beautiful eyes, turning to Caitlyn, were full of that same warmth.
Another victim of Jinx, Caitlyn reminded herself, and pushed her thoughts to duty, very far away from screaming fan, back to the role she must play now as a Warden.
“Can you walk? We need to get you out of the dust, and away from here. Jinx could still be nearby,” she said, offering a hand, and her spare rebreather, “I’d like you to put this on, for safety’s sake.”
“Oh, worried about my voice, Sheriff?” Seraphine smiled as she took it and clipped it on, but there was a grateful gulp as her shaking breathing levelled out, “Th-thank you, Caitlyn.”
Caitlyn’s heart was suddenly thumping. She called me… Caitlyn…
Seraphine studied her features with a dusty, but radiant smile beyond the translucent breather that only flickered and faded after a moment, as if she’d remembered the gravity of the situation.
“Don’t worry,” she said, “Jinx isn’t here.”
Caitlyn furrowed her brows, “My partner has called for a medical team to examine you. But in the meantime, if you are capable, time is pressing. We need to discuss what happened. Anything you can tell us about Jinx, anything she might have said or done…”
Seraphine looked back at the building, then back at the floating stage, with a long-held glance and a nod that Caitlyn didn’t understand.
“Let’s walk,” she said, “I’ll tell you what you need to know.”
Caitlyn fell silent, unable to shake the crawl in her neck as they walked together away from the ruins of the apartment block and out beyond, to a small park on the edge of the cliffs, looking back toward the glittering heart of Piltover.
Seraphine shed the rebreather as soon as they were in fresher air. She hugged her arms and shivered. Caitlyn unclipped her Warden coat without a second thought and passed it around the girl’s shoulders.
Seraphine caught her hand and squeezed it tight.
Caitlyn caught her breath, lost for words, as the younger girl intently searched her eyes. But she couldn’t shake the feeling that Seraphine wasn’t so much looking at her as listening.
Seraphine smiled gently.
“I, um, want to thank you, Caitlyn,” she said, with a shy tilt of her head, “You and Vi saved my life tonight. I…um, I wasn’t expecting you’d actually have to save my life, but you did. You really are heroes, just like…”
Seraphine trailed off.
“Seraphine,” Caitlyn swallowed, “Please explain what’s going on? Because it is, forgive me, seeming a little as if you didn’t expect to be in actual peril from being kidnapped by Jinx. And that is not, let’s be frank, a sane combination of words.”
Seraphine clicked her tongue behind her teeth and stared back at the rising cloud of dust from the destroyed building. Warden sirens were already shrilling in the distance.
“It wasn’t supposed to go this way,” she said, “She didn’t…plan for it to end like this, so I guess I should just tell it to you straight. Even if she’s mad…it’s more important that you know what to do next.”
“Seraphine, please.”
The little singer turned away to Piltover and fidgeted with her fingers at the edges of Caitlyn’s uniform coat.
“…will you arrest me if I tell you that Jinx is my friend?” Seraphine laughed, a little shrilly, “I don’t think you want to. And it’ll probably help that I really was kidnapped. And I didn’t do any crimes; I don’t think so, anyway, though there’s some Arvino agents who tried to kill me who probably have a bit of a headache.”
Caitlyn’s brain nearly broke, right there and then. She blinked, paralyzed, as the cold night breeze tugged at Seraphine’s pink hair in the silence.
Caitlyn filed all of it under later discussion except the most immediately relevant.
“…I…Jinx is your…friend…?”
Seraphine nodded, without shame or guilt, “I think we both know she’s not really a monster. I think we both know why she’s really doing this.”
She bit her lip.
“But I’m…I’m really scared for her, Caitlyn. I’m scared she’s going to get hurt; and when she gets hurt, other people will get hurt, too, whether she wants them to or not…”
Seraphine trailed off again, eyes growing distant.
“When I’m up on stage…I can take all my sorrow, my anger, my joy and hope, and put it into my music…let it flow out of me, give it back to the world that gave it to me. It’s the same for her.”
She shook her head.
“Chaos is her music. When she can’t contain her pain anymore, it bursts out of her like a sea that sweeps up everyone around her. But it crashes back down on her in the end. If I want to help her, I have to help you. Can you trust that?”
“I can try,” Caitlyn said, around the thick lump in her throat, “If you’re honest with me.”
Seraphine nodded and took a deep breath.
“She left clues for you and Vi in the graffiti, um…” she glanced behind her with a wince, “…in the building. So, uh, just tell Vi that she needs to ‘check the monsters under her bed’ whatever that means, and…”
She paused, her brows furrowing, and turned back out to the city.
“Seraphine,” Caitlyn went on, when the girl didn’t respond, “Where is Jinx?”
Seraphine closed her eyes.
“I can’t tell you where, I’m sorry, Caitlyn,” she said, “It doesn’t work like that, not in a crowded place like Piltover. But I can maybe tell you, um, how she is, if I try to listen. Hers does…” she smiled, “…stand out.”
“I’m not sure I follow,” said Caitlyn, “But do what you must.”
The pink-haired songstress turned away. Caitlyn heard the soft rasp of her breath. On small, doe-like steps, Seraphine walked to the edge of the railing and gripped it with both hands. She took another deep breath.
Her eyes closed and searched behind their lids. She swayed, as if she was opening herself up to something overwhelming.
She was still, brows furrowed, for what felt like hours. Then, all of a sudden, she flinched, and her eyes shot open.
“…it’s her…” she swallowed, “…there’s…there’s just too many…but it’s so loud…I….”
A shudder went through her, then a small gasp.
“Seraphine?”
The girl cupped both hands over her mouth.
“…Oh no,” she whispered, “No…Jinx…”
She was crying.
“…don’t…”
Lux woke to the cold bite of rope.
Dark dreams faded; dark dreams of damp earth and cold rain and the taste of Demacian soil on her tongue trickling away to awareness. From nightmare, to waking.
And waking was worse.
“…Jinx?” she whispered, “What…?”
She’d been in bed. She’d been at the Clocktower. She’d gotten clean, gotten into bed, where Jinx would have expected to find her, resting, only the weight behind her eyes, the pressure on her chest had been too much, like something was holding her down, like something was…
Rope.
She was seated on a chair. Still in her night garments. The rope pressed on her bare skin from all sides, pinning her arms and legs, restricting movement and leverage from four limbs.
Whoever had tied her knew what they were doing.
I’m captured.
Cold thrilled in her spine. Years of Illuminator training sprang fresh into her thoughts. Protocols. Interrogation resistance techniques. When to comply and when to demur. Masks she could wear. Smiles, if she had to, or faces as cold as an empty doll…
But, despite all her training, and as the fear shaking her spine kept reminding her, Lux had never needed them before.
Who? Noxians? Chembarons?
Her gut crawled.
Mageseekers…?
No blindfold. No gag. So they weren’t afraid of her making noise and didn’t care if she could see. But the darkened room, her swimming, blurring vision, offered her few other clues. How had they taken her, tied her up, without waking her? The grave-taste of her nightmares had a chemical tang, now, clinging in her nostrils – drugged?
Lux breathed in cold air and lifted her head.
Her adjusting eyes caught movement; faces, staring in at her, all directions – tangled blonde hair, blue eyes glinting in the dimmest of lights –
No. Not faces. Her own face, multiplied a dozen times, watching Lux from every angle…
Mirrors.
…between words, smudged in neon red, glowing in the dark, the only source of visible light…
Not words. One word.
Over and over and over, scribbled in agonized slashes on her staring faces, staring back at her.
LIAR
liar LIAR liar LiAr
LIAR liar liar LIAR
liar liar liar
Her heart dropped.
A tiny room. Barely more than a closet; but every wall, the floors, even the ceiling, covered in mirrors. Broken, dusty, cracked and fragmented, most of them, but all of them tightly wedged together to take up every inch of space.
Nowhere she could look that her LIAR face wasn’t staring back at her –
And nowhere she could shine even a single beam of Light without reflecting it back until it hit the only non-reflective surface it could find.
No windows. No door. Nowhere but herself to look at, at all, save one patch of darkness, right in front of her, facing her.
No. Not darkness.
A figure. Slumped, arms draped on knees, head tucked between them.
Jinx looked tiny, hunkered like that in the dark. No shining eyes to greet her; they were buried in her knees and hidden in her hair.
The mirror she had her back wedged against was smeared with a multiples of a different word.
FOOL
fool FOOL fool
In the dark, Lux heard her breathing. Wet and shivering.
“Jinx,” she murmured.
Her lover flinched as if Lux had hit her and curled smaller into herself.
“Please,” Lux found the words, forced them from the welling ache in her chest, the wet growing in her eyes, through trembling lips, “Please let me-”
“…why,” Jinx rasped into her knees.
It sounded like sandpaper on concrete. Like she’d been crying for hours already.
Lux swallowed.
“…why’d it have to be you?” Jinx whispered, crushed glass trailing blood from every word, “Why did you have to make him right?”
Lux’s words died on her lips.
She’d felt the moment coming. Far-off, like a storm on the horizon. Like an approaching tsunami, just a cold, silent grey line out to sea.
And I did nothing to stop it. Nothing that didn’t make it worse.
I’m the fool, Jinx. Not you.
Lux hadn’t known what to expect.
Screaming. Threats. Rage. Violence. Torture.
Not this. Not this…
“…everyone else betrays us…”
Jinx drew a shuddering breath and turned her cheek to her knee like a small child.
“Jinx-”
“Everyone,” her lover growled, but the fury fell out of her words, “No else, no us. Just everyone.”
Another little spasm went through Jinx, and she raised her forearm to wipe her eyes. Something clinked. Lux saw Zapper in her hand.
Lux breathed out.
Jinx pushed to her feet. She didn’t lift her head. She didn’t look at Lux.
She didn’t need to look to aim.
Jinx held Zapper out, body turned to one side, eyes hidden in her bang.
The gun’s dark eye stared at Lux.
Somewhere, deep inside Lux, somewhere beyond layers of darkness and pain and guilt, the Light pulsed and flared, struggling against the weight of her breaking heart. Wanting her to live, to let it out, to shine…
It didn’t matter. If she cut herself free…
Shine…
Anywhere she aimed her Light in the room would strike a mirror and reflect from the glass until it hit one of them.
Blaze.
Anywhere she aimed…
Live.
Except at Jinx.
I won’t. Not ever.
So, this is where it ends.
Lux closed her eyes.
This is how I die.
Jinx’s hand shook on the gun. Her aim wandered, fighting itself to point anywhere but where she had to shoot.
Lux heard her murmuring under her breath. A ferocious, inaudible argument, and she knew, for once, what the voices were saying.
“…if this is what you have to do,” Lux whispered.
“…Lux…” Jinx sobbed softly and shook her head in a whisper of braids.
“I-if this is…” Lux fought the tremors in her voice, “…how it ends, th-then…I’m glad, Jinx.”
“What?”
“I’m glad,” she said, more firmly, letting her masks go. Letting them fall, cracked and discolored and dirty, to the mirrored floor.
She couldn’t hide her face. Not now. But then, with Jinx, she never could.
“I’m glad I met you.”
Jinx finally lifted her eyes. It nearly broke Lux.
Pain. Raw. Unfiltered. Streaks of Shimmer tears slicing dirty trails down her cheeks, layer over layer of them, dried and fresh, like snaking tributaries of a flooded river.
“What was the plan?” she rasped, her voice suddenly steady, “Sell me to them, and you get to go home…? Or did they promise to keep you safe, give you a new home here?”
She took a deep breath.
“Was Ekko in on it too…?”
Lux shook her head, pursed her lips tight. Gave Jinx her eyes, her heart, open and truthful.
“Y-you won’t even say it?” Jinx gritted her teeth, “You won’t even lie to me again?”
“No,” said Lux, “I owe you better.”
“Then why…” Jinx’s words choked in her throat. The gun trembled in her hand, “Why did you go to her? Behind my back? After everything? Why did you go to Vi?”
Heat streamed down Lux’s cheeks. She couldn’t hold it back; she didn’t want to.
But her words, her heart, held their course.
“I had to.”
Jinx’s brows furrowed; Zapper’s waving eye paused as her muscles locked.
“What?”
“She’s your sister,” Lux breathed out, “She’s always with you, even when I can’t see her…since the day we met I knew that – I’m – this is what I do, what I was trained to do, I just…I just wanted to use it for you…for us…I…had to…”
The words, freed, tumbled out of her. Lux hadn’t known she could cry more; her eyes were blurring rivers.
“Had to what?” Jinx snapped, breathing hard and fast, gulping air like a dying animal, “Lie to me – sell me out – betray me to – to them? Take it all from me, again?!”
“I’m so sorry,” said Lux, shaking her head, her eyes fixed on Jinx, “I had to know.”
Never looking away. She owed Jinx that much.
She owed Jinx everything. But most of all, one word.
“She’s part of you, Jinx. She’s an – an open wound in you, my Jinx, bleeding you out. I had to know for myself,” she repeated, “If she’s our friend or enemy…the sister you loved, or the monster you feared.”
Jinx scowled, “Lux-”
One tiny word, itching at her, clawing at her lips.
To be spoken. To be free.
“I had to know if she loves you,” said Lux, “Like I do.”
Jinx fell still as death.
“…no…”
“I love you, Jinx.”
“…no no no…don’t…”
Lux shook her head.
“I love you.”
It was on her tongue. It was in her heart. It was fire, burning her up inside, it was water, drowning her…it was Light, ignited, all-consuming, all-revealing…
“I’ve loved you since you first took my hand,” she said, her lips aching with the smile, her heart bleeding to watch Jinx’s shattering behind her eyes, “I just didn’t know it…but now…don’t…don’t tell me to hide it…I’ve been hiding all my life…I can’t. I love you.”
“You don’t,” Jinx whispered, “Nobody – nobody does – nobody can – I ruin everything…I’m a Jinx, I-”
“You’re my Jinx,” said Lux, “And I love you.”
“Stop saying it!” Jinx screamed, her clenching nails clacking on Zapper’s grip, her teeth white beyond cracked grey lips, her face twisted in rage.
Her eyes shrieking nothing but hurt and sadness and terrible, terrible fear.
“I can’t,” Lux’s voice cracked, “You know I can’t…Jinx, this…this is me…this is all of me. You broke me open. You found me. I can’t go back to that girl m-made of masks – lying to herself, to the world, just to survive – I don’t want to be her anymore. With you I’m free. I want to be yours. I am yours. And you’re mine.”
Jinx nearly bent double, gasping for breath; her eyes tore away from Lux’s own, fled to look anywhere else for refuge – but found none – face after face, Lux after Lux, tear-streaked and smiling, in every direction, those words upon her lips. Inescapable.
Jinx’s eyes flicked to the gun in her hand, pointed at Lux.
“If you have to,” Lux said softly, “It’s okay. I can’t hide another light.”
Lux looked like a mad girl herself, smiling like that.
“You found me. It’s enough,” she exhaled, “Thank you, Jinx.”
“No no - no no –” Jinx moaned, “NO- I can’t, I can’t- I w-I won’t – she isn’t – you’re wrong –she’s not the liar – YOU ARE!”
Her hand shook on Zapper; the gun wobbled away. Mismatched nails clawed at her own cheek, clamped like a spider over her staring eyes.
Lux cried out as Jinx dragged black, bleeding lines in her white skin –
“…Jinx don’t-”
Twisting away, Jinx screamed, pulled up Zapper and fired.
Lux’s face shattered.
The pieces froze and fell.
Glittering.
Tinkling.
To the floor.
…
Jinx’s shoulders heaved. Her sparrow chest rose and fell with erratic shudders. She gulped the cold air between wet, trembling lips.
I A
L
Lux stared down at the broken shards of mirror at her feet. A trickle of blood ran down her cheek.
One whole wall panel lay shattered; behind it, a smoking bullet hole gaped in dark, grimy wood. A door.
Jinx squeezed her eyes shut and her breathing slowed.
Lux lifted her head to watch her lover’s still face.
Is it over…? she wondered, sucking in desperate relief, and parted her lips to speak.
Her words died away as Jinx smiled. Her eyes had opened, blank, cold, and full of hate.
“…sun’s gone down, Blondie,” she whispered, “Moon says it’s time.”
The door swung and slammed, rattling and cracking glass, then hung open, a yawning hole, dark within dark.
Gone.
Her words, broken shards, lodged dread in Lux’s heart.
“…Jinx…” she whispered, “…Jinx…”
Alone in her bonds, she stared at the space beyond the broken mirror; her escape, if she called her Light, if she cut the ropes, she could…
Lux hung her head and wept.
Dust from the wrecked yard trailed their boots as Caitlyn and Vi strode through crowded streets, headed for the Warden headquarters.
Caitlyn’s head pounded. Exhaustion and exertion gnawed at both of them; Caitlyn would have killed for a good warm meal and a soft bed with Vi’s arms around her.
The nearby roaring of chanting protesters wasn’t helping her think.
“Huh,” Vi prodded her, “They work quick.”
Caitlyn glanced sidelong to see the huddled crowd; not many, maybe twenty or thirty, enough to warrant observation; Caitlyn had given express orders that the protesters not be harassed, but with tensions high, escalation was possible…
“Nobody’s keeping an eye on them,” Caitlyn frowned, “Strange.”
Signs waved above heads, reading NO MORE LIES and CLAN CORRUPTION and PILTOVER IN CHAOS over a skyline painted with red flames.
But END EXPLOITATION - TWO CITIES, ONE HEART! was in there too.
“Heh. Good to know someone Topside still gives a sh*t about us,” Vi’s grim chuckle pulled her away from staring, “…think the Sandvik girl is there, somewhere?”
“I genuinely wouldn’t be surprised,” Caitlyn replied.
It unsettled her more than she’d expected to see a couple of protesters with their hair dyed blue; one of the signs approximated Jinx’s monkey.
She put it out of her head and ascended the stairs of the Hall of Law.
“…monsters under the bed,” Vi muttered at her back, “…the art, the drawings she left at the crime scenes. Gotta be. They’re the puzzle pieces – they fit together somehow…”
Caitlyn let her have her moment. Her own thoughts whirled too wildly; the clockwork in her brain clicking too loudly to absorb anyone else’s process.
The pneuma tube from Jayce hung heavy in her grip.
Check in at the Hall. Earliest opportunity. Need to talk.
Jayce meant Council business and that might mean a reprimand for the expenditure of Foxtrap, or her frankness on the stage…
…or it might mean a report of their success in rescuing Seraphine had already reached the Council’s ears and they might, finally, be ready to offer more support…
“We need to get Ez back on it,” said Vi, as they pushed open the doors, “Maybe we can bring them both in officially, now we got our team…”
Her words faltered as they stepped across the threshold.
“…together…”
Faces turned as they entered. Wardens, from the central office and each of the precincts, all gathered on the main floor of the Hall.
All eyes on Caitlyn and Vi as they entered, all bodies rising without a word, all stepping back to part an aisle, leading to Caitlyn’s desk.
Faces all grey, some of them grave, some of them haunted, some of them smug. Caitlyn’s steps slowed to a dreamlike crawl as she walked, her stomach sinking with every step.
“…the f*ck is this,” Vi breathed, but her eyes said she knew.
Nicodemus stood at Caitlyn’s desk, leaning his bulk on it until the hardwood creaked, wrinkled hands clasped together, rubbing the palms and beaming.
“Well, well, good timing then, Little Caity,” he smiled, ear to ear, like a harmless walrus; but his eyes fixed her with a reptilian squint, “I was just about to give my big speech to everyone, you see, now that it’s been decided. I’ll get you to say a few words at the end, if you don’t mind, dearie, a bit of continuity always does good with these sorts of affairs…”
Jayce stood beside him, arms crossed, head bowed. The austere lighting of the Hall cast his strong, handsome face all in funerary shadows.
Caitlyn’s steps slowed.
“Jayce,” she turned to her friend, ignoring Nicodemus with a spiteful pinch of her lips, “What the f*ck is this?”
“I’m sorry, Cait,” he at least had the decency to look her in the eye, “It was all I could do.”
A beat of dead silence, dead air.
“And it, is what, Jayce?” she said, clarion-strong, loud enough for them all to bloody well hear, “Someone’s idea of a coup?”
“Like hell,” growled Vi, flexing her fists. Hextech whirred; she still wore the Atlas gauntlets.
The awkward shuffling of Warden uniforms, Warden boots on the tiles.
Jayce’s face twitched in a wince. He gave Nicodemus’ beaming smirk his cold shoulder as he stepped close to Caitlyn, leaning in, aware that there was nothing he could do to save his words from sharper ears.
“…I told them I’d quit if they replaced you,” he said, “Their counteroffer was…” he cleared his throat, “… a change of hierarchy. ‘Expanding’ the role of Warden-Prefect.”
“No longer so ceremonial, I’m afraid, Little Caity!” said Nicodemus, looming over their shoulders with the look of a pleased toad in a suit, “The Council wanted a more – hmm – direct hand in matters of policing, given this Jinx matter getting rather out of control…”
He smiled under his bushy moustaches.
“From here, all investigative and administrative decisions shall pass my approval,” he said, “And I’ll be managing your official orders and requests, as the Council’s voice to you, and your voice to the Council. Oh, and…there’ll be a few other changes necessary to whip this sorry situation into ship-shape; minor adjustments, just a few little things, here and there…”
His eyes told her they’d be anything but.
“For starters, this Jinx nonsense,” he shook his head, “Shall be set aside immediately. Put it out of your head, Caity. You’ll be getting back to the business of restoring public order.”
Caitlyn’s stomach dropped, “What?”
“It’s handled,” her new superior chortled in the back of his throat, a small wave of his hand accompanying it, “The Council have called in specialists.”
“Specialists…” Caitlyn’s eyes searched the air, whirling through possibilities, “What bloody ‘specialists’…?”
“You can’t – it has to be us – you have no idea what she’ll do if…” Vi trailed off, clearly fighting not to give this preening moron his own head as a suppository in front of a Councilor and two hundred Wardens.
The Atlas gloves weighing on her arms were, for once, the only reason she didn’t throw a punch.
Vi took a step forward, instead. She looked like she was ready to murder everyone in the room; even Nicodemus had enough self-preservation to step back, giving Caitlyn and Jayce space.
“Cait, be smart,” Jayce pleaded, “You still have a job. You’ll just have to work within a few limitations, just the same as me.”
“Jayce,” Caitlyn clenched her teeth, “This is my department – I built this team – I hand-picked every officer here, you cannot march him in here –” she thrust a shaking finger at Nicodemus, “-and tell him to do my job-”
“It was a compromise, Cait,” Jayce warned, “It was all we could do, and I had to put my head on the block to get it. Please.”
“You were quitting anyway,” Caitlyn muttered, and he winced.
“You made the choices you made,” Jayce clasped his hands, “Right or wrong, you knew there’d be consequences. Here they are.”
“This is a mistake,” Caitlyn shook her head, “This is a mistake…”
“I told them so,” said Jayce, “They didn’t want to hear it.’
“No need for the long faces!” Nicodemus chuckled, giving a sly glance back over the gathered Wardens, all of them silent, all of their eyes evincing tangled feelings, “The burden of leadership is heavy on a young lady’s shoulders, I know. Let me take the weight a while, until all this business is sorted. Don’t worry your heads, you two…”
The smile stayed on his face as he looked at Caitlyn and Vi.
“…everything will be perfectly proper.”
The color had gone out of Vi’s face.
“Cait…” she whispered, “This is bullsh*t.”
Numb, Caitlyn turned to her Wardens, her comrades in arms, their pale faces all in a row, greyer than their uniforms.
“I’m sorry,” she said, “But Council or no Council, I will not stand for this. Not now,” her voice trembled only a little, “Not when we are so close to laying Jinx’s threat to rest, once and for all, not when Piltover needs us most…”
Her voice rang out cold in the stones of the Hall. Silence answered.
“We just rescued Seraphine!” she cried out, “She’s at her home, safe and sound, because of us!”
“Because of you, Sheriff,” said Hardwicke, “Not us.”
A soft murmur rippled through the ranks of the others. Eyes cast his way or avoided looking at him. Avoided looking at Caitlyn and Vi, too.
“Hardwicke,” she said, “Do you…agree with this?”
He shrugged and nodded.
Caitlyn took a shuddering breath and turned to Simeon beside him, “Simeon…?”
The blonde sniper wore no expression at all.
“You took your shot, Sheriff,” he said, “Something’s got to give.”
“Mir…Tisca…?”
Mir clenched her teeth and looked at the floor, “I don’t bloody like it, but it’s…it’s the Council…” she shook her head, “I’m just a flatfoot, Sheriff, it’s the Council…”
One by one. The excuses and the dodges. Tisca, looking sick to the stomach, all her bouncing energy locked frozen in place. Zevi swearing under her breath, tinkering with a gadget on her desk, refusing to look up. Sheila, hugging her cat, fury knotting her brows, her tiny frame buried in the crowd.
“I can’t believe it,” said Vi, staring at them all, “You f*cking cowards-”
Caitlyn closed her eyes and stepped away from Vi; from all of them.
Without a word, she crossed the floor and seized a ceremonial saber from a display piece above the Warden book of oaths. Confused glances stabbed at her as she drew the blade, turned, and scraped a white line into the tiled floor.
She stood on one side of the line and lifted her eyes.
“I am the Sheriff of Piltover,” Caitlyn tried to keep the tremor out of her voice, “Your commander and your comrade. I swore to uphold an oath to protect this city, its laws, and its people, if it cost me my life. And by that oath, I will complete this mission, alone, if I must. Wardens of Piltover - will you stand with me?”
“Sheriff-” someone began.
“Will you?”
Silence swelled. Those on the other side of the line shuffled their feet; Hardwicke, Simeon, then others took their places, opposite her. Those behind her froze, uncertain.
The awkward space was only broken by the whirr of Hextech knuckles, and the fall of Vi’s boots. Alone, she shouldered her comrades roughly aside, crossed the floor, and stood beside Caitlyn.
Caitlyn gave her a grateful twitch of a smile, that flickered only a little when Jayce crossed the floor as well to stand at her left.
“I’m no Warden,” he addressed the office, “But I believe in Caitlyn Kiramman. Who she is, what she stands for, and what she’s done for this city. And Vi…”
He glanced sidelong at her and smiled at her stunned expression.
“Yeah…I’ve seen what she can do, like all of you have. I know where I stand.”
Nicodemus growled under his moustaches, “Councilor Talis, this is an unseemly display of support for insubordination. The Council’s decision was unanimous, was it not, after your amendments were made?”
“Sure. But I still think it’s stupid. So here I am,” Jayce played that easy smile that had won the city’s heart so many times, “Who’s with us?”
The smile stayed up, and for a moment, Caitlyn’s heart ignited – with gratitude – with desperate, exhausted hope.
But even Jayce’s smile twitched away when more boots crossed the floor in the other direction, until only Sheila, Amelia, and Zayne Asako were left.
“Sheila…” Caitlyn’s voice quavered.
She stepped to Caitlyn’s side of the line.
“To the end, Sheriff,” the little scholar said, defiant, over the fluffy ears of the cat at her chest, “Who else would get your tea just right?”
Heat stung Caitlyn’s cheeks.
“Thank you.”
But the heat only grew to stinging pain when Amelia Darlington, face white, looked at her feet and crossed the floor.
“I’m sorry, Cait,” she murmured as she passed, “I’m…this is my whole future…”
Caitlyn closed her eyes, squeezed the salty heat to their corners.
“Go, Amelia.”
“Cait, don’t – we can still work with this – come back. If we defy a Council decree, we – we break the law…”
“It’s all right,” Caitlyn managed, “We all do as we must.”
Amelia flinched in bitter shame as she stepped to Mir’s side, where Harknor took her hand and muttered consolations about ‘the right thing’ and ‘the rules’ like the proper little pedant he was.
Zayne was the only one left.
“You’re with us, right man?” said Vi, “Undercity solida-”
Zayne looked back at her, his expression unreadable, and held a long, calculating look.
He shook his head, and slowly crossed the floor.
“It’s been good, Vi. Sheriff,” he said quietly, “But I know where I have to be.”
It took the wind utterly out of Vi’s sails. There wasn’t even room for anger on her face. Her eyes simply went blank.
Nicodemus, at the back of the wall of Wardens, elevated above them slightly by the steps leading up to Caitlyn’s desk and wall map, had the audacity to grin ear to ear.
Caitlyn’s eyes blurred, their faces – friends, comrades – melting away to indistinct shadows.
She heard the whine of depowering Hextech and the slither and clank of metal, and then Vi’s strong grip caught and entangled her fingers.
It was only her touch that gave Cait the courage to speak another word.
“Fine,” she said, “Then…Piltover is yours, to guard, to protect, and to serve, if you still care about your bloody oath…”
She took a deep breath and did not wipe her eyes.
“But Jinx is ours,” she slid the saber into its sheath and clicked the peace-guard on the scabbard with her thumb, “Council or no Council, badge or no badge, we will finish what we began.”
“We’re bringing her in, alive,” said Vi, “If you were ever on our side, don’t get in our way.”
Caitlyn gave a fierce smile through her tears as she squeezed Vi’s hand, and turned away with her, with Sheila and Jayce, the last of her allies, for the doors.
“Now, now, no tantrums –” Nicodemus called across the chamber, “After all the Council did for you, dear me – utterly insubordinate – you’d throw it all away for Jinx?”
Caitlyn stopped in the doorway, her fingers squeaking on the marble frame.
Her glare back at him was murderous.
“If you want to stop me,” she smiled, “Then bloody well arrest me.”
Nicodemus bristled and glanced to the Wardens, but not one of them moved.
Caitlyn smiled grimly.
“I thought not.”
She shut their faces from her mind as she walked away.
Seraphine wrung out her hair and spread it on her shoulders to dry, a deep sigh pinching at her aching ribs.
The scrapes and bruises that still made her wince whenever she brushed or bumped them didn’t sting half as much as the fight she’d had with her parents; her mom’s transformation into panicked outrage, reliving the worst of the night they crossed the bridge, scared her more than anything Jinx had done to her.
Her dad’s fear and dread hit her harder, a quiet darkness behind his eyes, a weight in his Song, beneath its warm, familiar motifs of joy and kindness.
“I’m not hurt…” Sera murmured to herself, repeated for the hundredth time tonight, rubbing her hands, “She didn’t hurt me.”
Jinx.
The fight wasn’t all that haunted her.
Her song…
She’d heard it, oozing up out of Piltover’s shadows like blood from a hidden wound. Seraphine didn’t have words to describe it; she heard suffering in Songs, especially those whose echoes she caught drifting across the river…
But this…
“Jinx…” she breathed the word, a desperate prayer, “Don’t hurt her. Please…Janna’s grace…if you have any love for them…let her see…let her listen…just…don’t let her-”
An unfamiliar Song drifted into her thoughts.
A knock at the front door, slow and hesitant, below her window.
Silence.
The knock came again.
Seraphine slung off her blankets, forgot even her slippers as she fled downstairs – Mom’s at work – Dad…
Dad should have been at work, too, but he’d called in to divert his wife from insisting on hiring bodyguards for their daughter when she was home alone – she’d bit her tongue on telling them what had happened with Adalbert –
Sera cast a quick glance at her father’s sleeping face. He’d slumped on the couch in a tangle of blankets, the shadows of exhaustion and stress under his eyes pricking her in the heart.
Who…
At least she knew it wasn’t the Arvino men coming to silence her; the Song behind the door was utterly unlike any of them.
But it gnawed at her, hollow despair sucking the life from every note.
Who…?
Seraphine fumbled with all the bolts, muttering under her breath, and pulled the door open.
The figure on the other side of the door shivered, hugging her arms.
“I…I’m sorry,” Lux mumbled, “I’m so sorry I…”
Seraphine froze and stared at her.
Her song, her beautiful rainbow song…
Lux looked up at her, eyes red-rimmed, cheeks streaked with dirty tears.
“…I didn’t know where else to…”
Seraphine swept forward and wrapped Lux in her arms without a word.
The Demacian, just like Jinx, stiffened only a moment before she sank against Sera and unspooled, her body crumpled into shuddering, hoarse sobs.
“I’ve got you…” Seraphine murmured. She buried kisses into her bedraggled golden hair to hide her own tears; stinging, shared pain, words she couldn’t find, only, “…I’m here, Lux. I hear you.”
Lux’s cracking gasp of heartbreak went through her, an opened vein, a world crumbling.
Her song of Light played on, all its colors drained to Grey.
