League of Legends: Short Stories

Nasus & Azir: Twilight of the Gods

They came to a dead city in the mountain's shadow under cover of night. Battle-hosts of a thousand warriors, each bearing bloody totems that told of the ancient lineages of the Sunborn Ascended who led them.

The city and the bones of its people had long ago become one with the desert, and it was impossible to tell ash and bone from sand. Only its tallest towers remained above the dunes: broken spires that sang mournfully when the winds blew from the realms beyond the mountain. Upon a broken plinth stood two trunkless legs of stone, the cruel visage of a half-buried avian head lying in the sand beside them.

In a long-distant age, an event of great moment had taken place in the valley where the city would later be built.

It had marked the beginning of Shurima.

And set in motion its ending.

None remembered that day, save the god-warriors who now led their hosts towards the city's jutting ruins. Those same god-warriors had put the citizens to the sword in the wake of their emperor's betrayal. And with its people murdered, they had seen the city burned and its name hacked from every stele and obelisk that remained standing.

Yet these acts of extermination were for naught but futile spite.

Futile because the child who had been taken as a slave from this city was long dead, and in life had no use for memory of his birth.

His act had destroyed the empire and sundered their brotherhood.

And so the god-warriors burned Nerimazeth, and its people, to ash.

The passage of deep time had stolen the golden scroll's luster.

Much like us all, thought Ta'anari. He drew a clawed finger down the etched list of names and numbers, a meticulous record of tithes from the newly-established trading port of Kha'zhun in the north.

Newly-established...?

Kha'zhun had been a city of men for centuries, their savage tongue already debasing its name into something new and ugly. The Scholar might have found the scroll's contents interesting, but the only worth it held for Ta'anari was the tangible link it provided to a time when the world made sense.

The room had once been a hall of records, its marble walls lined with shelves and stacked with scrolls recording tributes due to the emperor, accountings of his wars and long lists of his deeds. It had been a cavernous space, but the roof had caved in centuries ago, and sand filled most of the subterranean space.

He felt a change in the air, and looked up from his studies.

Myisha stood in the doorway, dwarfed by its dimensions, though Ta'anari's black-furred skull would brush its lintel—were he still able to stand upright. Her frame was slight, fragile even, yet Ta'anari sensed she possessed depths not even he had fully grasped. Gold-blonde hair, like the men found in the cold north, spilled around her shoulders. Her features were youthful, but her eyes, one rich blue, the other twilight's purple, held wisdom beyond her years. She wore thin silks, colorful and entirely unsuited to the desert, tied at the waist with a thin rope, from which hung a single golden key. A vivid pink scarf coiled around her neck, and she twisted its tasseled ends through her fingertips.

"They're here," she said.

"How many?"

"Nine hosts. Nearly ten thousand warriors."

Ta'anari nodded, drawing his tongue over his yellowed fangs. "More than I expected."

She shrugged and said, "They all need to be here."