Young Writers Society

Prologue - Ashe

“League of Legends has become more than we had hoped when we started it in hopes of calming the wartimes. Over the past decades, our system of battle has proved to be most successful in preventing a war that could have fractured Demacia and Noxus both,” Ashe looked at the crowd with an encouraging look that she hoped wouldn’t betray the fear she was feeling inside, “however, this system has proved to be more damaging than we had earlier expected. The Clash of Fates has proved to reveal something much more sinister.”

The room was quiet, the congregation of leaders from all around Runeterra had forgotten all of their bickering and grudges. League of Legends had become sort of a lifestyle to them, something that was a part of their lives, as much as eating and bathing. Ashe’s mouth had suddenly dried out, making her next words feel like lead in her mouth. She suddenly wished she had her bow with her, but all weapons had magically disappeared inside the dome, keeping the peace, if only that aspect of it.

She suddenly felt queasy, like she was the messenger of grave news. But in a way, this was as grave as one could get in a peaceful time like this. She cleared her throat and trudged on, “The Elders have felt it wise to stop League of Legends in light of these new secrets.” She closed her eyes as the room erupted in discontent and anger. Sweat started beading down her face. She calmed her breathing and focused her magic. Ice wyvern, hear my plea. She clenched her hands and immediately the temperature in the room had dropped. Frost started forming on the elaborate curtains to the side of the room. The shouting settled down as everything just tried to stop the cold from getting to them.

“We know this is quite a shock to everyone. But it is needed. The Elders have found something hidden in Fr-”

CRACK! The air felt like it had been sucked out in a vacuum as the floor started convulsing around them. The diplomats started screaming and covering their ears as the ground under their feet molded and crumbled beneath them. The ground right in front of ashe rose like a cone to block her view from the crowd. Avorosa’s heir? You seem fit to be her seamstress. The voice seemed to be coming from all around, its voice echoing in the large dome. The air itself vibrated from the magnitude of it. You are weak, All of you. I will rise again, and the world will fall under my cold grasp. Then I will shape it anew. You shall feel the wrath of true power. The power of Ice.

The ground stopped moving, all at once. The air felt constricted, as if something was still lingering in the air, but whatever inhabited it before was gone. The cone was the only thing still moving, but not like it was before. It pulsed with a blue energy, its shape not quite certain, as if it moved each time you moved your eye.

Ashe let out a breath she didn’t realize she was holding until now. “Tryndamere?” she muttered in a small voice.

He was by her side quickly, his large sword by his side, even with the ancient and powerful magic trying to force it out of the dome. The sword was a part of him now, much more than a weapon one wields. It was something that was as close as being a part of his arm as he allowed it. She could feel the magic pushing at him, and him keeping it at bay. “Yes, my Lady?”

“I need these people out of here quickly. We need to find out what that was, and with haste. I have a feeling we have wasted too much time with formalities.”

“So, this is more than just an artifact in the ice?” Tryndamere asked slowly, as if not sure whether or not the question was out of his bounds to say before a queen.

She closed her eyes for a moment, clearing her thoughts. The voice she heard was strangely familiar, as if it was a light just out of her reach, and the more she thought about it, the farther away it became. Giving up with a sigh, she looked at him in the eye, “I have a feeling that this is much more than an artifact in the ice.”

~~~

The dome had received more damage than it seemed like whenever, well she really didn’t know what to call it, happened. Several of the major supports beams had shattered completely from the ground movements and almost none of the more minor ones remained. The outside looked fine, but the dome itself was on the verge of collapse. As for the mound of blue in the middle of the dome, Ashe still hadn’t really found much about it.

She sighed as she studied the ground in the dome. It almost looked like something, as if the ground had moved to form an image that it had been trying to for years, and something had finally let it do so, right in the middle of a crowd of some of the most important people in the land. It looked almost like something, but like the voice, it was just out of her reach.

“What is the Frost Archer doing in the middle of Demacia?” Someone behind her said. She turned to see Jarvan the Fourth in some of the most royal looking clothes she had seen him in in a long time. He smiled warmly and opened his arms to her, inviting her to a hug. She rushed in and wrapped her arms around him warmly. “Oh Jarvan, you don’t know how much your absence in Freljord has pained me. You look almost human with that attire.” Just a little more alien than the last time she had seen him. She decided to keep that thought in her head.

“I’ve had to take up my rightful place as King-In-Waiting, since my father’s illness. We are not in a time of war, but it feels like it sometimes, with the amount of politics I listen to.” His smile vanished from his face. “It’s like almost everyone royal in Demacia had never fought in a war before, the way they complain about petty things, like land boundaries or where a watchtower was placed, or why the royal horse was gone when.” He looked at her fondly, “I’m sure you have had your share of that lately, though. With this convention and everything.” She returned his gaze evenly, covering her exhaustion, as if her problems were simple-minded compared to his.

He looked down, his final royal barrier dropping. “It’s been hard, Ashe. It seems that even though war is gone, it is always in the shadows, its threats always in the back of your mind. I wonder which is worse, war or the always-looming threat of it.” She just noticed how much he had changed in the few months he had been back in his homeland, ruling his own kingdom in the wake of his disease-stricken father. The wrinkles in his forehead had come back with a vengeance and there were now wrinkles around his eyes, not of happiness, but of masking his thoughts with a veil of happiness. She knew that all so well. Faint bags under his eyes marked recent restless nights and stressful days.

He had changed. So had she.

“It’s hard. But even if we could rid of these roles, even if we wished to, we couldn’t. We were both born into royalty, and that is the role we must play in the world.” She looked away, and suddenly, the task at hand came back into her mind. Seeing Jarvan, the man she had been most acquainted with for a long time up until a couple of months ago had been enough to numb her mind to reality. Jarvan, the man who had helped her reunited Freljord, if only for half a year. The man who had offered her the joining of the two kingdoms once. . .

“This place is in bad shape.” Jarvan’s somewhat obvious musings aroused her from her thoughts. She took the moment to shove them into the depths of her mind.

She traced his eyes to the mound that had sprouted up right in front of her just a few hours before. “I don’t know what happened, to be quite honest. It felt like the very ground was going to split and we were all going to be devoured within it, before that mound had raised from the ground.” She went silent as her eyes tried to make out an image in the mound before it melted away into the blue haze. A sudden chill befell her, and despite her usual immunity to the cold, she shivered.

“It is imbued with deep magic,” Jarvan admired , but his voice sounded like it was coming from a tunnel. He seemed to be in the same trance as she was. “I can feel it. . . I can feel it from here.”

She managed a nod, her mouth suddenly dry. The blue haze that was covering the mound suddenly churned and a face formed in the middle of it. The ground shook with fury as Ashe’s knees buckled and she fell to meet with the spasming ground. Her vision funneled, all she could see was the constantly shifting face in the blue magic. It had a feminine face, but the eyes were covered by something that was just out of her vision. Avarosa’s heir. Your life would serve me just as well as the pesky chicken. Prepare to meet your end, Frost Archer. Freljord will know of your pain.