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A quick thing that was missed with the Void powers, Void Energy has a range of kilometers.
Simply being in the remote vicinity of a Void Rift for a period of time causes severe headaches and long-term memory loss, with those affected describing trying to remember things about themselves as trying to hold onto water.
My name is Axamuk Var-Choi Kohari Icath'or. I think… I think Axamuk was my grandsire's name. It has meaning, but I can no longer remember what...Axamuk was a king, I think. I do not remember where. Was it here? In this ruined, sunken city? I do not know what Var or Choi mean. Icath'or should have meaning to me, but whatever it was is gone. There is a terrible void where my mind and memories once dwelled. My name is Axamuk Var-Choi Kohari. Kohari? What is that? There is a mark on my arm, a sword wrapped in a scroll. Is it a slave mark? Was I the property of a conqueror? I remember a girl with green eyes and an opal necklace. Who was she? Was she my wife, my sister? A daughter? I do not know, but I remember the smell of her flowers. My name is Axamuk Var-Choi. I repeat it over and over, holding onto it as if it can stave off this slow dissolution. I do not want to forget it. It is all I have left. My name is Axamuk. I am being erased. I know this, but I do not know why or how. Something awful writhes within me. All that I am is unravelling. I am being undone. My name is. My name. My.
There was an uncomfortable, maddening pressure on Sigvar's mind here, a pressure that seemed to be coming from below. He pressed his knuckles into his temples, trying to relieve it. From nowhere, a memory long forgotten came back him in a rush, like a swarm of bats bursting from a cave...A hand on his shoulder brought him, shuddering, back to the present. He was sitting with his back against the splintered stone statue of an ancient guardian. He had no memory of sitting down.
Simply being in the remote vicinity of a Void Rift for a period of time causes severe headaches and long-term memory loss, with those affected describing trying to remember things about themselves as trying to hold onto water.
My name is Axamuk Var-Choi Kohari Icath'or. I think… I think Axamuk was my grandsire's name. It has meaning, but I can no longer remember what...Axamuk was a king, I think. I do not remember where. Was it here? In this ruined, sunken city? I do not know what Var or Choi mean. Icath'or should have meaning to me, but whatever it was is gone. There is a terrible void where my mind and memories once dwelled. My name is Axamuk Var-Choi Kohari. Kohari? What is that? There is a mark on my arm, a sword wrapped in a scroll. Is it a slave mark? Was I the property of a conqueror? I remember a girl with green eyes and an opal necklace. Who was she? Was she my wife, my sister? A daughter? I do not know, but I remember the smell of her flowers. My name is Axamuk Var-Choi. I repeat it over and over, holding onto it as if it can stave off this slow dissolution. I do not want to forget it. It is all I have left. My name is Axamuk. I am being erased. I know this, but I do not know why or how. Something awful writhes within me. All that I am is unravelling. I am being undone. My name is. My name. My.
There was an uncomfortable, maddening pressure on Sigvar's mind here, a pressure that seemed to be coming from below. He pressed his knuckles into his temples, trying to relieve it. From nowhere, a memory long forgotten came back him in a rush, like a swarm of bats bursting from a cave...A hand on his shoulder brought him, shuddering, back to the present. He was sitting with his back against the splintered stone statue of an ancient guardian. He had no memory of sitting down.
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| After months of inhuman labor, Ne'Zuk revealed the Monolith—a floating fortress of living stone, maintained by the greatest elemental mages, and its ramparts manned by his fellow Ixtali god-warriors. The size of a city itself, the Monolith glided titanically toward the wastelands of Icathia, the lightning crackling from its magical inhibitors fusing the sands to glass beneath it. Ne'Zuk and his superweapon arrived at their destination, to face once more the howling infinite darkness of the abyssal realm, and the hordes of Voidborn monstrosities it had created. The battle dragged into weeks. It was violence of a scale and intensity never before witnessed in Runeterra. Sorcery enough to raze entire civilizations, or render whole continents into naught but a memory, was unleashed upon the Void. The darkness retaliated in kind. Its hideous energies gouged deep wounds into the living stone of the Monolith, whose surfaces became pocked and seared with unnatural malphite—from the Ixtali for "bad stone"—and leaving mineral-like scars. The fortress was pushed to the very limits of its design, struggling to self-repair and reknit its weakened superstructure… but even the incredible magics that held it aloft had a breaking point. |
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| What happened next defies my understanding. No mortal eye had ever seen such a thing. The pavilion exploded with forking traceries of light. Arcing loops of purple energy ripped into the sky and lashed down like crashing waves. The force of the blast threw everyone to the ground. I covered my ears as a deafening screaming tore the air. I pressed myself to the battle-churned earth as the wail burrowed deep into my skull, as though the world itself were shrieking in horror. I rolled onto my side, retching as stabbing nausea ripped through my belly. The sky, once bright and blue, was now the color of a week-old bruise. Unnatural twilight held sway, and I saw flickering afterimages burn themselves onto the back of my mind. Slashing claws... Gaping maws... All-seeing eyes... I sobbed in terror at the sight of such horrors. Alone of all the things being stripped from me, this I gladly surrender. A nightmarish light, sickly blue and ugly purple, smothered the world, pressing down from above and blooming up from somewhere far below. I pushed myself upright, turning in a slow circle as the world ended around me. The Shurimans were streaming back from the city, terrified by whatever force our priests had unleashed. My enemies were being destroyed, and I knew I should be triumphal, but this... This was not a victory any sane person could revel in. This was extinction. An abyss that bled purple light tore open amid the Shurimans, and I saw their ivory-skinned general overcome by whipping cords of matter. She fought to free herself with wild sweeps of her blade, but the power we had unleashed was too much for her. The pulsing, glowing light spread over her body like a hideous cocoon. Everywhere I looked, I saw the same slick coils rising from the earth, or from the very air itself, to seize the flesh of mortals. Men and women were swept up and enveloped. I saw one Shuriman clawing his way over the earth, his body seeming to dissolve as the tendrils of foul energy overwhelmed him. I began to hope, to pray, that this doom was what had been planned all along. I saw shapes in the flickering light, too fast and indistinct to make out clearly. Stretching, swelling limbs of strange, tar-like matter. Men were clawed from their feet and pulled apart. I heard the gurgling, hooting bellows of things never meant to walk the surface of this world. As awful as this day had become, I wondered if this was the price of the great weapon our priests had unleashed. I hardened my heart to the suffering of the Shurimans and remembered the centuries of misery they had heaped upon us. Once again, I had lost sight of Saijax and Colgrim. But I no longer needed their presence to steady me. I had proved myself worthy of my grandsire's name, worthy of the brand on my arm. I was Kohari! The sky groaned and buckled, sounding like a vast sailcloth tearing in a storm. I turned and ran back to the city, joining up with other soldiers. I saw the same desperate, horrified looks on their faces I knew must be upon mine. Had we won? None of us knew. The Shurimans were gone, swallowed whole by the terror we had unleashed upon the world. I felt no regret. No remorse. My horror had given way to justification. I had lost my nimcha blade somewhere in the frenzy of the battle, so I took my bow from my shoulder and pumped it to the sky. "Icathia!" I yelled. "Icathia!" The chant was taken up again by the soldiers around me, and we stopped to watch the enemy finally overcome. The seething mass of matter that had consumed them lay like a shroud over the flesh it had consumed. Its surface was undulant, and swelling blisters of glistening matter burst open with frothing birth-sacs that twisted and unfolded like newborn animals. I turned as I heard a deafening grinding of rock. Booming cracks echoed as more and more chasms tore the landscape open. I dropped to my knees as the earth shook, and the walls of Icathia, fallen once and now rising again, were shattered by a groaning bass note that split the earth. Geysers of dust and smoke erupted from within the city. I saw men screaming, but could not hear them over the crash of falling rock and splitting earth. Towers and palaces that had stood since the first Mage King planted his star-metal staff were swallowed whole by the ever-widening chasms. Only rubble and shattered fragments remained, my beloved city reduced to a charred skeleton. Fires spat skyward, and the wails of my people were somehow magnified by the canyons of the city as they fell into the hideous doom below. "Icathia!" I cried one last time. I saw a flash of movement, and flinched as something flew through the air above me. I recognized the vulture-headed god-warrior from earlier in the battle. Its flight was erratic, its limbs already partially ruined and unmade by the strange matter spilling from the rents in the earth. It flew towards the pavilion with desperate beats of its ravaged wings, and I knew I had to stop it. I ran towards the towering creature, nocking an obsidian-tipped arrow to my bow. The thing stumbled as it landed. Its legs were twisted and its back was alive with devouring tendrils. Feathers and skin sloughed from its head as it limped past the bodies of dead priests, whose own flesh bubbled and roiled with internal motion. Fire built around the god-warrior's hands, ready to burn the pavilion with the last of its power. Saijax had said the Sun-Emperor had more armies, and we would need our weapon intact if we were to defeat them. I drew back the bowstring, an obsidian arrow aimed at the god-warrior. I loosed, and the arrow sped true, punching through the dissolving matter of its skull. The god-warrior fell, and the fire faded from its hands. It rolled onto its side, the flesh falling from its bones—I saw threads of sinewy, pallid matter forming beneath. The god-warrior sensed my presence, and turned its vulturine head to me. One of its eyes was milky and distended by growths of a strange, fungus-like substance spreading across its skull. The other had my arrow protruding through it. "Do you even... know… what you... have done… foolish… Icathian?" the blind god-warrior managed, its voice a wet growl of dissolving vocal chords. I sought to think of some powerful words, something to mark the moment I had killed a god-warrior. All I could think of was the truth. "We freed ourselves," I said. "You… have opened a door... to… a place… that should... never be opened…" it hissed. "You have... doomed us all…" "Time for you to die," I said. The god-warrior tried to laugh, but what came out was a gurgling death-rattle. "Die…? No… What is to come… will be far worse… It will be… as if none of us… ever existed…" I left the arrow embedded in the god-warrior's skull. Men were limping back from the battle, bloodied and weary, with the same look of incredulous horror in their eyes. None of us truly understood what had happened, but the Shurimans were dead, and that was enough. Wasn't it? We milled in confusion, none of us knowing what to say or do. The landscape before the city was twisting with unnatural motion, the flesh of the Shuriman army utterly obscured by pale, coiling ropes of hideous matter. Its surface was darkening as I watched, splitting where it hardened like some form of carapace. Viscous ichor spilled out, and more and more I had the impression that this was just the beginning of something far worse. Light still spilled from the colossal rents torn in the ground, and alien sounds—a mix of shrieking, hissing and crazed howls—echoed from far below. I could feel tremors rising up from the bowels of the earth, like the slow grinding of bedrock that presages an earthquake. |
