Tales of Runeterra: Children of the Dunes

 Tales of Runterra

Chapter 3:

Children of the Dune

               “Why did you name yourself after the Void?”

                Kai’sa turned her violet eyes from the sky. They glowed in the dusty air of the Shuriman night. Sand blew on the wind even now, casting all vision beyond a few meters in a gritty filter. As close as she was to the little girl, what with her sitting in the champion’s lap, Kai’sa had no problem seeing the pure curiosity on the child’s face.

                Kai’sa chuckled before pulling the girl in closer. She wrapped the blanket around them tighter, if only to protect them two just a little better from the biting chill of the dunes after sundown. Left unchecked, the frost could bite into you like a Murderfish off the coasts of Bilgewater. It would freeze you solid, then strip the frozen flesh from your bones— blue as a blueberry and as flakey as paper.

Right here, right now, however? It was nothing more than a passing sting. The thick cloak was made of Raptor hide and would protect them during the long night.

                “Now why ever would you ask that, young one?” Kai’sa asked. She quirked her lips in an attempt to seem simply curious and not interrogative, but the effort was lost on the child. She was a child of the Sands. Threats and aggression were nothing new to her, and she was too young to care for the nuances of body language. She had something that she was curious about, and thus her mind was focused wholly on it.

                “Because my mommy told me that the Void are monsters. And you carry a Void name. Why would you do that?” The girl then tilted her head. She fiddled with the loose sand that danced around her sandaled feet. It shifted between her toes and sifted between every lock of her hair. “Why not Kaisa? Why Kai’sa?”

                Her pronunciation was perfect, from the slight dips in her voice to the barely noticeable pause at the latter part of her name. Kai’sa would have been fond of the little bits of culture being passed to the next generation had a not more pressing matter come to mind. Once more she pulled the little girl close. When next she spoke, her words came out in a whisper that barely carried on the sandy breeze.

                “My name isn’t of the Void, little one. Have you ever seen a creature of the Void?”

                The little girl shook her head. “No, but I have been told the stories. They are big, mean monsters.” To emphasize this, the girl threw her hands in the air. She formed them into claws and roared. It didn’t make it all the way back to where the girl’s nomadic tribe camped just a few meters off behind them, but it was enough to make Kai’sa chuckle nonetheless. “They have claws and fangs and pincers to pop your head off if you’re bad and don’t eat all of your vegetables.”

                “Why, yes,” Kai’sa said, and it was hard to keep the mirth out of your voice. “Little girls who don’t eat their vegetable are the prime focus of their hunt…”

                The girl eeped and drew herself fully into the older woman. She enshrouded herself in the cloak and shivered there, but it didn’t take too much coaxing to get her back out. She was a girl of the Sands, after all. Nothing would keep her cowed for long.

                “…But you aren’t the only thing that they hunt for, you know,” Kai’sa continued.

                “You’ve seen the Void?” the little girl asked. Her voice quivered, just slightly, but she asked anyway. “Do you not like vegetables either?”

                “Oh, no, I like my vegetables. I’m not bad.” The girl pouted, and Kai’sa had to chuckle. “But I have met them. I have met a lot of them.”

                “What are they like?”

                And it was here that Kai’sa changed, just a little. Whether it was from the tensing of her jaw, or the hardening of her eyes as she glared at something that neither of them could see just beyond the horizon. Her grip tightened around the girl, and the little one, in all her naivete, couldn’t miss that social nuance.

                Before she could speak her mind, however, Kai’sa spoke.

                “Shifting, moving, scuttling, scales.” Kai’sa’s voice was spoken in a single tone, as if a machine had replaced her voice for that one minute. “Chitlin and claws and fangs and thudding roaring blasted moans.”

                The girl in her arms shifted, but Kai’sa’s grip was absolute. Still, she sat enraptured at the older girl’s story.

                “They are not mindless, but they move as such. They seek only to devour, and they all are fixated on a single thing, even if each thing differs from one to another. Some seek to eat strength and grow stronger from each creature they devour as they take another’s powers for their own. Some care not for such plebian pursuits and seek only to subsume knowledge on all things.”

                The girl had lost track. Kai’sa had started using big words. Still, she sat, transfixed as Kai’sa’s voice started to dip.

                “Others are filled with an insatiable hunger— young and starving and borne simply of a greed that knows no end. And even still… some just eat. No reason. Nothing to really gain from their satiation. They simply wish to consume all that there is. Those are the worst kinds.”

                Then, as if a trance was broken, Kai’sa snapped back to attention. She looked to the girl in her arms and saw the little Duneling looking back at her. No tears, no fear. Just simple curiosity. Kai’sa smiled. A true Daughter of the Dunes.

                “Anyway, they aren’t mindless. They aren’t simple beasts. Still, they don’t care enough to grace us with names, and the few who can wouldn’t use a language native to our world. No, the names that every Void creature has comes from a language from our dimension. Do you know which language that is, little one?”

                The girl shook her head.

                Kai’sa’s smile grew just a little. “It is Shuriman, little one.”

                “No way!”

                “Yes!” Kai’sa said amid chuckles. “Ancient Shuriman, to be precise. From the age of the Sun Disks. Only the oldest members of the oldest nomad tribes remember the tongue. It is from them that these names come, and my name is no different. I named myself by the old tongue, just like the rest of my tribe.”

                “And which tribe do you come from, Kai?”

                “Kai’sa little one.” She bopped the girl on her head. She got a giggle for her efforts. “And that’s not important. They are not around anymore.”

                The girl’s face fell, eyes sparkling in the starlight now dimmed by the all too familiar concept of loss. “I’m sorry, Kai’sa.”

                “It is no worries, little one. I had come to terms with it long ago. Now I just work to make sure that the same never happens to anyone else.” She then hesitated. When she spoke again, gone was the confident, rapturous voice that told the little girl a story. Now her voice was just another nocturnal Shuriman breeze.

                “And I work to find the other who survived.”

                The girl looked up, but whatever it was that she hoped to see was gone. The woman was staring off into the horizon again, once more looking for something that couldn’t possibly be there.

                “It is getting late, little one. Your parents will be looking for you soon. They would not like to see you out here with me.”

                The little girl nodded. She scuttled from under the cloak and turned to her story teller.

                “You are the girl who came back, no?” the girl said in Shuriman. “I have heard stories of you, too. From my tribe-mates and my tribe-mates’ tribe-mates. Are you not lonely?”

                Kai’sa took a moment to think on this. Before she could answer, however, calls came from the encampment. Both turned to see the fire burning amongst the caravans slowly dying down.

                It was time for sleep, and the girl needed to be there.

                “Tell me tomorrow?” the girl asked. Kai’sa shook her head.

                “No, little one. By tomorrow I will be long gone.” Lying was not a particularly common trait amongst the Shuriman. Death was too common, always following just a few steps behind. Deceit, while useful to survival, simply took too long. Easier to stick a knife in their guts and be done with it. “But treasure my stories while you can. And use it to prepare. The Void calls, and it either consumes or it dies.”

                Kai’sa turned from the girl back to the horizon. Stars dotted the night sky, decorating it like a masterful tapestry as it dipped below the farthest dunes.

                “Just survive, and that is all I could ask of you.”

                The girl nodded, not that Kai’sa could see, and turned. Surviving was what Shurimans did best. Her sandals scuffed the sand lightly as she toddled away, back to her family.

                Before she could get too far, however, Kai’sa’s voice rang out. She knew that she probably shouldn’t ask—nothing would come of it— but she felt the need.

                “Ik fi a kas sai dyn,” she spoke. “Do you know of whom the desert knows?”

                The girl turned. She said nothing as she stared at the woman— her frame a single, lonely outpost against the endless starry sky.

                Then she pointed to the horizon. To nowhere in particular, and yet somewhere that all Shurimans knew never to tread.

                “Sai a dyn kai tre Icathia.”

Kai’sa nodded, even as the girl ran off to be with her tribe. She spent several minutes more just sitting there, before rising from the sand that even now erased all knowledge of her presence.

“Sai a dyn kai tre Icathia.” She repeated. “The desert knows who treads upon Icathia.”

And then she was off. A lonely vigil in the crusade against the tide.