Tales of Runeterra: Of Frostbite And Stardust

 Tales of Runeterra

Chapter 4:

Of Frostbite And Stardust

This was not what Zoe was expecting when she decided to visit the Horned War Penguins.

“You’re so not cool!” she screamed, before ducking back into a portal. For some reason the finicky things were being surprisingly compliant today. She felt the shards of black ice just barely miss her hair as the sensation of warping through space and time overcame her.

Magic and sparkles and reality bending and twisting and curling and molding all at once danced across Zoe’s eyes. She cooed at the pretty colors. She laughed in the weightlessness.

She frowned as the portal spit her out mere yards from where she just left. The mean Ice Witch turned to her, her eyeless stare as cold as her attacks. Zoe glared back at her, before turning to the portal that had already started to dissipate.

“Stupid gate!” she yelled. She made to kick at it, but instead of letting her it just bounced her foot off. The Aspects were making it clear that they wanted her here. While they were cooperating enough to prevent her from being gored by the tall, cold lady, they weren’t letting her leave either.

Zoe turned to the witch. If throwing balls of stardust and leaving wouldn’t work, she would have to try something that usually never worked with adults.

“Uh, hey. Hi.”

She would try talking.

The Ice Witch, thankfully, lowered her hand. There was already frost and wisps of icy smoke drifting from it, which told Zoe all she needed to know. Her attack aborted, the Ice Witch seemed to be contemplative.

Mind you, the weird lady looked exactly the same. The room felt less charged, however, so it was a win.

“Creature,” the lady said. Her voice was deep and just as chilly as her domain. “You can speak.”

Zoe felt her mouth drop open. What? “Uh, yeah. Duh, of course I can speak. Everyone can speak! I’ve been speaking!”

The Ice Witch, now affirmed of her ability to talk, lowered her hand back to her side. She walked—well, could that be called walking? She was gliding along a river of ice, which, Zoe had to admit, was pretty cool— forward and stopped mere feet away from the Aspect of Twilight. Zoe felt the need to run but steadied her nerves.

She could stare down the rabid space puppies, she could stare down a mortal.

“Not all beings are capable of speech, creature,” was all that she said. Zoe folded her arms.

“Well, yeah. Rocks and stuff can’t talk.” Zoe then thought about the rocks that she did see talking and frowned. “Well, most of them can’t. But most things can! You just don’t speak their language.”

The Ice Lady seemed to contemplate her words, before turning from her. She glided her way back through the sea of frozen people— and wasn’t that a weird thing to keep a collection of— and made her way to the frozen throne at the far end of her weird, icy hall.

She made it about halfway there before something shifted in the room. Zoe stumbled at the raw amount of malicious energy that rose from the ground. She looked down, only to see that what she thought was frozen ground was actually a slab of ice with really condensed magic.

The Ice Lady had lessened its saturation, just a teeny bit. The blackness of the ice cleared, ever so slightly, allowing Zoe to see what was entombed within.

Zoe, the representation of the endless cosmos, found herself staring into another that was more endless than her. Purple energy crackled from the irises, and the young girl felt something she hadn’t felt in ages.

Namely, fear.

The blackness returned as the magic saturation increased. The frozen humans all screamed, their cries a muffled hum that dissipated in time. The enormous beings hidden underneath the ice shelf seemed to dim, falling into a magical slumber.

Zoe took deep breaths.

“Can you understand them, creature?” the Ice Lady asked. Her smile was small, but Zoe sensed something there. It was a mean trick, but this lady didn’t seem the type to make many jokes.

“They don’t speak a language,” Zoe said. Her voice was unusually calm. Whispers from the Aspects drifted gently into her ear. It was a cacophony of things that could only be likened to words, but she understood them, nonetheless. “They don’t have a language. Chaos is chaos is chaos. They’ll come to an understanding amongst each other eventually.”

The Ice Lady, now at the far end of her room, settled gently into her massive throne of ice. As far as thrones went, Zoe had seen better, but the spikes protruding out of the top of the headrest were cool.

“So, you do know of them?” the Ice Lady asked. Zoe had the feeling that, had she had any, she would be raising her eyebrows in surprise. “You know of the Watchers and their Void?”

Zoe walked, though it was more akin to skipping, over to the tall Ice Lady. Now that she wasn’t shooting shards at her, Zoe had to admit that she was pretty… chill.

“Is that what you call them?” Zoe asked. “I call them Yuck Mungers.”

If the Ice Lady found her joke funny, she didn’t laugh. She raised a blue hand to her chin and rubbed it but didn’t say anything else. Zoe shrugged and took it as a cue to continue.

“The Yuckers,” she started. “That’s the abbreviated version, by the way. So, anyway, the Yuckers are, like, totally bad. They’re…”

Realization dawned on her face. She turned back to the ground, now blackened through and through, with wide eyes.

“They’re why I’m here,” she whispered. She turned back to the Ice Lady. “You! Who are you?”

For once, a bit of emotion bled into the Ice Lady’s face. It wasn’t the grim satisfaction that she wore before, however. This amusement was, for once, not at Zoe’s expense.

“You came all the way down here without knowing who I was?”

Zoe huffed. She folded her arms as her cheeks puffed out. “I go a lot of places without knowing things. But we’re not talking about me, we’re talking about you! So spill!”

The Ice Lady chuckled, and Zoe, against her best wishes, found the action surprisingly elegant. The lady laughed as if she were a queen. If she could get herself to laugh like her, then maybe Ezreal would like her.

Though, considering the laugh of the girl that Ezreal did like, she was probably better going in the other direction.

“Very well. I was, at one point, called as Lissandra. You may address me as such, child.”

“And I’m Zoe!” the young Aspect called. She had none of the regality of her counterpart, but Zoe found such ceremony useless if the custom would die out in a couple hundred years anyway. “And I’m much older than you are, so don’t call me a child!”

Lissandra smiled, her blue lips stretching slightly, but said no more. She curled her long, blue ponytail that was the color of the mid-afternoon sky around her finger before gesturing at her.

“Anyway…” Zoe continued. “I am in some circles something called an Aspect. Do you know what those are?”

“I remember some fools on a mountain far from my kingdom worshipping something like that a very long time ago. Are you one of the mountain people’s gods?”

“Mountain people? Gods?” Zoe asked. She floated over to the steps before the icy throne and sat on the one at the very top. She wanted to sit on the armrests, but something told her that it was a bad idea.

Maybe it was the frost that was still seeping from Lissandra’s hands.

“Oh!” Zoe screamed. Her voice echoed around the room and bounced off the frozen people. She wondered if they heard her. “You mean Pantheon and the rest of them! Yeah, I guess they’re kind of like gods to, uh, Twargon? Yeah. They’re kind of like gods to Twargon, but they’re more of just, like, kind of normal people to me. I don’t think they even remember that I exist. I don’t think I’m a god to them.”

Lissandra hummed. Her fingers drummed on her armrest, sending a solid thump through the chamber. The place where her fingers hit the ice were worn in a bit, with her fingers falling into shallow little divots.

“So why are you here, exactly?” she asked. Zoe turned, folding her legs, and resting her hands against the ice at her sides.

“Because,” she said. “The Aspects want me here.”

“I thought you were an Aspect?” Lissandra asked. Zoe shrugged.

“I am and I’m not. Twilight works through me and is me but I’m not it and it isn’t me.”

The confusion was evident, even if half of Lissandra’s face was hidden. Zoe was used to it.

“Don’t think about it,” she said once the silence became too much. “It’s not important. What’s important is why I’m here.”

“Yes, that was my original question,” Lissandra said. She still seemed amused, and there was no ice flying at her, so Zoe assumed that things were going well. “Care to explain?”

Zoe nodded, and voices that weren’t hers but also were drifted into her head. She spoke them as easily as if they were entirely her own.

“I come to herald calamity,” she said. Her voice dipped down in energy once more as she talked business. “That is the purpose of my Aspect. This world, Runeterra, is about to face disaster unlike it has ever seen.”

Her words were usually met with many things. Incredulity, disbelief, and ridicule were the most common. Most people refused to believe that their lives could ever end. It was what made mortals both so infuriating and fun. It also made it very sad when they were inevitably destroyed.

Some people, however, took her words to heart. They despaired at what they took to be the words of a prophet. They sunk down into lifeless husks, all but dead already as they awaited their inevitable doom.

Never, however, did anyone react to Zoe’s words the way Lissandra did. In Zoe’s opinion she almost seemed… bored. There was a silent acceptance there, and then… nothing.

“Is it because of them?” the woman asked. Her sightless gaze was directed towards the ground. Zoe shrugged.

“I’m… not sure…” Whispers from herself. “I mean… yes?” Her eyes trailed back down to the cloudy ice. “Is that why you are keeping them frozen? You’re stopping them from bringing a calamity?”

And, with that question, Lissandra seemed to sag. The pull of years seemed to affect her all at once as she slumped in her seat.

“Yes,” the woman said. She sounded tired, as if she had spent all day chasing Starflies. But instead of a day, it had been centuries. “And I am failing. They grow stronger every day, while I grow weaker. Sometime soon, they will be freed. If I had Avarosa and Serylda with me, I could…”

Lissandra went silent, but Zoe could feel the woman’s sadness. The melancholy was colder than the room.

“Their kind isn’t something that could be stemmed, Lissandra.” Zoe rose from her position on the ground. Such a thing was easy when you could fly. She bounced over to the woman. She was pleased when she wasn’t frozen for it. “They are hunger. They are the Nothingness that Eats Away At Reality. Even with more help, you wouldn’t have kept them back forever.”

Cracks appeared in the armrests where Lissandra was gripping. Spiderwebs spread from the point of contact, arcing outward before being consumed by a fresh coat of ice that grew in erratic bursts away from the sleek original frame of the throne.

“But I cannot let them return,” she snarled, and Zoe recoiled at the sheer amount of hatred. It was like bathing in the light of a supernova at point-blank range. “They… those monsters. They must never awaken!”

Cracks appeared in her throne again, the Witch’s uncontrolled power causing chaos to her once finely controlled spell. Zoe looked at it, then watched as the cracks raced towards the black ice.

“Lissandra.”

“The Watchers,” the Ice Witch continued, any heed of Zoe’s words forgotten. “They were monsters. The things they did… the things they made us do…”

“Lissandra.”

“If they return, they will consume the land. They will reduce everything to nothing.”

“Lissandra.”

“Are you saying that there is no way to stop them? That everything I’ve done until now has been for nothing?”

Her fingers curled tighter, and the cracks grew deeper as Lissandra’s rage, thus restrained, grew.

“No. No. I will not allow it. I will not allow them to awaken no matter how hard they try. I will gather more people, weave more dreams. They must not be allowed to return. They mustn’t. They mustn’t. They—”

“Lissandra,” Zoe said. It was weird being the calm one in a situation. “Your spell.”

Lissandra gasped. The cracks, which were mere inches from the black ice, receded quickly. They closed, abetted by light blue magic the color of powdered ice, and it wasn’t long before the area around Lissandra’s throne was a pristine carving once more.

There was a smattering of pink across the eternal blue that was Lissandra’s nose. Zoe almost wanted to giggle at it. There was something more important to do first, though.

“Hey,” Zoe said. She rarely got to do this part of her job, so her approach was rough. At least she was trying though. “Don’t feel down.”

“That’s…” Lissandra started. She was sagging in her seat once more. “I cannot help it. You say they will escape? Well, then it is over for us all. I cannot seal them away again once they do. There is no one else on this plane that can stop them. Once they’re freed, they will devour everything in their paths.” Lissandra sighed. “I… have failed.”

Zoe hummed. “Well, I wouldn’t say that there isn’t anyone. This planet has a surprising number of powerful figures just running around.”

Lissandra looked up. “Excuse me?”

“Yeah,” Zoe chirped. “When was the last time you left this place? There are powerful people everywhere!”

Zoe bounced backwards, and stardust fell from her fingers like dirt from an old rug. It rearranged itself in the air as Zoe willed it to her thoughts. Sparkling space and fragments of stars danced in the air until, finally, it formed into the image of a man. His helmet concealed his face, but it did nothing to hide the red gleam of his eyes, nor the power that dwelled within it.

“On Twargon, a piece of my kin rests. We talked about him before, his name is Pantheon. The creatures of the Void can be held back by just him. He’d probably burn out his current host while doing it, but he can beat them down.”

“For how long?” Lissandra asked. Her voice was still so defeated. Zoe decided she didn’t like to hear such a powerful lady sound that way. “You said it yourself. These creatures are the Nothingness. Can he hold back the endless?”

Zoe frowned. “Probably not. But he wouldn’t be alone.” The stardust shifted again, this time showing the image of a bald man. Runes covered every part of his body, even his face that was currently grimacing at some unknown force. “This man, his name is Ryze. He has control of magic that I haven’t felt in a long time.”

“A man and a half-god against a force that could devour all,” Lissandra droned. “Color me impressed.”

Zoe frowned, and then her hands were a frenzy. They danced in the air as stardust flashed through multiple images. Great warriors with the face of animals, horrid beasts in the shape of weapons, and even a gargantuan dragon with a crown. It then shifted to a town of sorts, where tiny creatures mingled with magic as if it were a part of them, before shifting to a single, lonely figure sat atop a decrepit throne.

“The Ascended,” Zoe said, her voice strangely grave. “The Darkin. The Space-Puppy, and The Bandled. The Ruined King, the Master of Iron. You have powerful forces in your realm like you wouldn’t believe. They are not all aligned, but they will come together if it means saving your world.”

“Our world is doomed,” Lissandra replied. There was bite back in her voice, but Zoe didn’t like that it was in defense of such a gloomy outlook. “You’ve said it yourself.”

“Ugh,” Zoe scoffed. “I hate that people always think that calamity means the end of the world. Just cause you drop your ice cream on the ground doesn’t mean that you’re gonna die!” She then whispered. “Although it certainly feels that way.”

Lissandra didn’t say anything, instead waiting for the girl to continue. She seemed to do that a lot.

“Listen,” Zoe said. “Calamity is coming. Can’t avoid that one. Those Yuckers down there are probably going to escape sometime soon, and when they do, they’re going to bring a bunch of nasty stuff with them. We got that? Good.”

Lissandra nodded, though Zoe could feel a bit of amusement creep back into her. That was good.

“But that doesn’t mean that the calamity will kill you all. You might be able to stop it.”

Zoe couldn’t help the smile that adorned her face as she let her eyes roam the room.

“Aaaand… I might be able to help you?”

Lissandra finally sat up at those words. Optimism, though shaky and weak, returned to her. “You… you can? How? How can we put this nightmare to rest?”

“Easy!” Zoe chirped. She floated forward, before resting on Lissandra’s armrest. It was, thankfully, not covered in frozen spikes anymore. “And I’ll be glad to tell you! But on one condition!”

Zoe’s energy was as infectious as always, and she reveled in the tiny, true smile that adorned Lissandra’s face.

“Name it,” she said.

Zoe’s smile widened as she whipped her hair around.

“Do my hair like yours!”