Tales of Runeterra: A Songstress' Promise

 

 Tales of Runeterra

 Chapter 10:

A Songstress’ Promise

 

                My people know sight.

                Sight is nothing new to us. We are born into this world seeing, but not seeing. We hear the call of the ground, of the crystals, and of our people from before us. We hear the worldsong, and we hear our people sing it, and through that we see the history of the entirety of creation.

                My people are born to sight. We hear it from before we are connected to our soulstones. We feel sight in every thing that we do. We hear each other’s joy and feel each other’s tastes. We are all connected, we are all one. Even when we went into our eversleep, we knew sensation. We knew sight, and we felt it all around us.

                I saw our people’s pain. I felt as they all cried out—echoing screams reaching deep into me and dragging something important out. I felt pain, but it was and was not my own. I felt loss, but I could not name what it was that I lost now that it was gone. Above me, my people were torn from the fold. Their screeching, tearing, scratching, wailing, cries rang around in me like noise off of a cavern’s walls. I saw as they saw. Unending pain as they were forced away and an incomparable sensation as they were ripped from themselves.

                Their final moments were as if my very own claws were ripped from me. I felt myself yowl, but it was nothing compared to the screams of my people. Those above me were picked apart, as if rocks from the bottom of a river, and taken away. I felt as each one of them faded from our song. I felt as the deafening silence—the scary, unknowing blindness—crept closer to me. I expected to be afraid when I felt the softskins unearth me. I expected a fear of the darkness, of the end of my part in the Great Song.

                And yet, I wasn’t. I had already felt death countless times before. I felt it in the brutal blinding of every one of my brethren. This would be no different.

                Tools of some kind, forged from the minerals of the earth, were jabbed into me, and I could feel my soulstone crack as if was forced from its place on me. Countless millennia of connection had all but bonded it to me, and to remove it would be to remove a part of myself. The softskins struggled at first, apparently not strong enough to separate a creature in one swing, but I don’t think that bothered it any. Another swing, and a fresh new pain sang out in my soul.

                I wanted to scream. I wanted to tell them to stop. But I couldn’t. I was already too tired, my body unable to will the Great Song to move my being. Crack, crack, crack! And the carapace of my physical body was all but broken, leaving half of myself crumbling to pieces and the other half desperately holding on.

                “This one was harder than the rest,” the softskin murmured. Their tongue was one that I wasn’t familiar with, but it didn’t matter. I could feel the euphoria in their song, as if they were nearly done with some great accomplishment. Were they elated at the pain they were inflicting? Did they enjoy the anguish they were causing?

                The joy in their songs suggested just that, and I could see the unending mirth in their song. They truly felt no guilt for what they had wrought. Were they truly blind to their own cruelty? I tried to ask, tried to will my heartsong to meet their own but, alas, I had already become far too tired to do so. I could only watch, vision fading, as the softskin raised their tool once more.

                I was far too tired to resist any more. The next swing would remove me from the Great Song as it had so many before me, and I could only hope that my final moments with my brethren would provide more comfort than the ones before me.

                “RAAAAGH!”

                That scream. That song! It wasn’t one I had ever seen before. It all but roared, completely unlike the song that our people usually used, and came barreling out from far beneath. The softskins, as unused to the sound as I, were stopped from their crusade.

                “What was that?” one sang.

                “I don’t know,” another responded. For the first time since they arrived in our lands, their heartsong sang of something other than mirth or fatigue. It rose and fell rapidly, beating as if unsure. The song was rickety, as if afraid. “I thought you said that there were no monsters this way! You promised me there would be no danger!”

                Their songs all convened as one, beating as to ask a single question. They all turned to one softskin—they wore great red metal plates— and asked as one.

                “I don’t know what that is,” the leader responded. “But I don’t want to be around to see. Finish up with this crystal and let’s leave before we find out.”

                The lesser heartsongs beat as one, seemingly grounded by the decision of their leader. I felt them turn back to me, and I felt as the one nearest me raised their tool again.

                Then, I felt darkness. And for the first time since I was born, I could not see.

XxX

                Sight didn’t return to me, but feeling did. I couldn’t hear the song of my people, though I was sure that they were still there. My people had just endured a lot, but they had endured more. They would persist.

                I raised my claw, or tried to, only to feel pain. A dizzying feeling rang through my body. My song was faint, and trying to use it was like trying to hold sand in my pincers. I couldn’t feel, not really. It was feeling but not really. I could hear, but I couldn’t see. It was weird to have the two be separate.

                I have to go. I have to move. Where… where are my brethren?

                Everything was silent. It was like losing my brethren, but everyone. All at once. The world was the same, I could still feel the sand that blew over me. But it was different. I couldn’t feel it as my brothers and sisters did. I could only feel it as I did.

                I didn’t like it. It was incomplete. Life was incomplete.

                There was something there. A lost piece. It was off, very far, but the closest thing I could feel. It was like me and… and yet not. It was the angry voice that rang out from the base of the planet, far beneath me.

                Brethren. Brackern. My claw lifted and snatched at the sand. I found no purchase and I wasn’t even sure if I did that much. The angry voice got farther away.

                Wait. I am here. Come back.

                Even I could tell that my song did not reach it. It echoed uselessly around my carapace before bleeding out through my shattered crystal. I tried again, clawing at the sands, but that wasn’t enough. The only song I could hear, that of my angry brethren, was gone before I could stop it.

                And then I was alone. There was only silence. In all my years, I had never been so blind. But… not blind. I could hear. The land above me that was now the land of now was calm. The wind blew dispassionately, whistling across the dunes without a care in the world. Was it always this way, the wind? I remembered when the song of the air was much warmer. Much sweeter and calm. Now, it was dry and uncaring. It didn’t lift my steps as it once did.

                I couldn’t lift my steps as I once did. I supposed that things changed.

                Settling down, I let my half-shattered carapace rest in the shifting sands. For a second, the world died away and I was left truly blind, but it came back rather quickly. When it did, I could feel myself buried almost up to my soulstone on my back.

                The sands were cool. I remember them being so much warmer. Sight, or what was left of it, faded, but I could still feel as the grains snuck between the cracks in my shell. I could feel the way it snuck into the cracks inn my soulstone and further muddied what little of the world I could still perceive. Eventually, even my feeling became sandy, and it was like feeling the world through a mass of grit and bumps.

                But I could still feel. Sensation was all that was left to me now. Not feeling, but something more. Or something less. I couldn’t explain it, but it was all I had left. I held onto it, that dizzying, muddied feeling, and watched as even it slowly slipped away.

                I thought of my people, of my people’s heartsong that was now lost to me. I longed for it, for the warmth and comfort that it once brought. I longed for my slumber, that was so effortless and yet so right. I longed for the angry heartsong, that even now I knew beat relentlessly across the dunes that was once our home, looking for something that even it did not fully know.

                I longed for my sight. My vision of happiness and sorrow and anger. I longed for my sight that was also my feeling and my sight that was also my hearing.

                I longed for the sensation of muddied understanding, little more sensation than sensation was sensation. I longed for it because it allowed me something to think on. I longed for thinking. I longed for understanding.

                Something moved, and I could feel something beyond the veil of sensation that was claiming me. As I faded further, almost unknowingly into the terrifying vagueness of what was going on, I felt it caress my soulstone and frown.

                You are not going to be here long, it said, though the tongue was unfamiliar. I… I am sorry that this has happened to you.

                I… was it a softskin? I couldn’t be sure. It was talking to me, but there was no way I could understand it. How I longed I could understand it. For a bit of the companionship I once had before I was taken from my people’s heartsong. I didn’t care how.

                You… you’re lonely. You don’t want to slip away alone, do you?

                Were those words? I couldn’t be sure, but I could feel a bit of sorrow in the creature’s heartsong. It washed over me like a blanket, and despite myself I felt the warmth.

                Then, as if it could hear me, I felt the creature sing. It was unlike the song of my people, but it was something so close to it that, for a second, the fuzzying sensation of the dunes bled away. I could feel, I could see for just a bit.

                I saw a softskin, clad in a cloak of red and brown. They looked at me, their head covered in pink, and sang. Magic danced on their words, bouncing through the air and into me with an energy that bordered on whimsical.

                And yet, I knew that it wasn’t a happy song. Their heartsong was sad, almost melancholy, and it didn’t take me long to realize that their grief was for me.

                I understood why before I could realize. What was happening to me was something that even my farthest memories had trouble realizing. I… we… hadn’t experienced something like it in eons.

                Her song ended before long, and with it the fuzzying sensation had returned. Silence reigned, though it wasn’t nearly as choking as before. Sight and sound and feeling bled away, all consumed by the encompassing feeling of vague emptiness.

                Until there was nothing left. Just the faint heartsong of the softskin.

                I… I am sorry that this happened to you, they said. I… I will end this terror to your people. Even if I am the only one that can hear your cries, I will make sure that everyone hears mine! Everyone, from Zaun to Piltover to Bilgewater and beyond will hear my sorrow, and through me they will know of your pain.

                Their words were a dizzying mess of almost-sounds. But her meaning rang true. This softskin would help my people. They wanted to.

                I promise you.