The strange phenomena over Mount Targon finally stilled. The white phantom silk stretched across the stars vanished without a trace, and after Xineos departed, the star gate sealed shut.
"What are we waiting for? Kill them first!"
Logan snapped back to himself and charged the nearest Aspect. Of the twelve Aspects, Lissandra had killed one, Jax had killed one, and Logan had killed one. Five had already fled, which meant there were still four left at the scene.
The situation had looked dangerous a moment ago, but Logan had not actually been worried. That Xineos had never entered Runeterra at all. He had attacked from beyond the stars. It looked as though he wanted to wipe out Shurima with a single strike, but in truth, Xineos had only locked onto Logan himself.
Which meant all Logan had needed to do was use Spirit Blossom and slip inside it. Once he vanished, Xineos's lock would lose its target, and that power would disperse on its own.
Still, he really had drawn Soraka out in the end?
Now that was interesting.
Logan's expression turned a little strange. After everything that had happened, his disgust for the Aspects had already climbed to ninety-nine, just one step away from full-blown kill-on-sight hatred. But Soraka's appearance dragged that number back down by quite a bit.
Not every Aspect was an enemy of Runeterra. Some of them could still be reasoned with, could still cooperate.
And Soraka, well, with her it was more than that. To put it bluntly, Zaunites ought to put her on a pedestal, because Zaun had received her care before.
Soraka was also a true deity in the deepest sense of the word, not just some ordinary divine being.
She was loving, compassionate, fair, kind, as if every beautiful virtue in the world had gathered in one person.
That had been true in Soraka's old lore, and it was still true in the updated version.
Her characterization could be called saintly in either case, but especially in the newer lore, where Soraka endured the agony of her body burning and still descended without hesitation, all so she could save the creatures she believed had lost their way, humanity.
In Soraka's eyes, humans were full of boundless vitality. They grew wild and untamed, drifting from the grand design the celestial host had laid out for them, ignoring the fate woven by the stars. Worse still, human hearts and minds were easily swayed by chaos, uncertainty, and suffering.
The other Aspects of the celestial host treated all of that as a joke. They watched humanity the way someone might watch ants in a jar, live or die, and never cared where human development might lead. Human wars, human mistakes, the desperation and despair born from choosing the wrong path, to those Aspects it was all just a game, a farce.
But Soraka was different. She could not keep standing by and watching.
She had always been a wanderer of the Celestial Realm. Though she was one of the celestial host, she had never joined any faction. In her travels, she saw possibility in humanity. So she left the celestial host, departed the heavens, and came to Runeterra.
And where had she gone over these thousands of years?
Read the histories. Listen to the songs of the bards. You would find the answer there.
Among certain tribes in the Freljord, stories were told of a wandering traveler from afar, a woman with beautiful horns who soothed frostbite in the cruelest winters.
Down in the sump beneath Zaun, there were records of a lavender-skinned doctor who treated those poisoned by the Gray, healing their lungs for free, never taking payment, and sometimes even sharing her own food.
In Ionia, the oldest myths of the vastayashai'rei spoke of a miracle, a prophet from another world who could speak with the stars, call down starlight to heal the wounded, and show the lost of the First Lands the way forward.
In Noxus...
In short, wherever there was suffering, Soraka would appear. She always showed up beside those who had been bullied, broken, and driven to despair, bringing them hope to live on with words and magic.
Because of that, anyone who knew her story could not help but respect her.
Logan was no exception.
This woman was not some flimsy support everybody flamed on the Rift, she was a truly powerful deity with impeccable character.
Come to think of it, did Riot make every support champion's backstory more absurdly powerful than the last?
While thinking that, Logan and Rammus worked together and smashed one Aspect straight into the ground.
On the other side, Lissandra had frozen Cecilia in place. The powerful female Aspect's sword and shield had been knocked from her hands, and an ice coffin pinned her hard to the earth. She glared at Lissandra with a twisted, furious face.
Lissandra was just about to finish her off when she suddenly frowned and looked into Cecilia's eyes.
The two pupils were different colors. One was Cecilia's own golden eye, but in the other eye was a clear, luminous green iris.
It was clean and innocent, staring at Lissandra with the terror of a frightened fawn.
From that pair of eyes, Lissandra saw another soul.
At once, she bent down and reached for Cecilia's head.
"Get lost! I don't need your help. I'll leave her body myself!" Cecilia shouted the moment she saw that hand coming.
"Don't insult me, witch. I was never going to use her as a hostage. I'm a lofty Aspect. If a god can't protect her own follower and in the end needs that follower to die for her and take the blame, then what kind of god is she supposed to be?"
As she spoke, a phantom soul appeared from that golden pupil. It belonged to a tall, curvaceous beauty with a head of curly hair.
Then that soul slipped out through the eye, and Lissandra promptly shifted the ice coffin away from the girl's body and instead used it to suppress the soul itself.
The pretty lady knight's soul had only just emerged before she let out a muffled groan and was trapped inside the coffin.
The girl Cecilia had been possessing crawled up from the ground, stumbled over to Cecilia, and dropped to her knees. Facing Lissandra, she said in a trembling voice, "My lady, please, please don't..."
"Get out of here!" Cecilia snapped from behind her. Wearing the expression of someone ready to die, she declared loudly, "The winner takes all. I chose to descend into the mortal world, so I was prepared to bear the consequences from the start."
Lissandra looked at Cecilia calmly and spread her fingers toward her.
She was not the sort of person who changed her mind because of a few words. If not for the benefits that tied her to Logan, and the fact that she truly had seen hope in him, Lissandra never would have allowed him to keep growing, much less willingly let herself be used by him.
She was a witch, the Frost Witch. Across the long history of the Freljord, a third of its people had died by her hand. How could someone like that ever be softhearted?
Meanwhile, that little turtle Rammus was pressing both tiny claws down on an Aspect's arms, lowering his head and ramming the Aspect over and over, keeping him pinned so he could not move.
Logan stood with his legs apart atop that Aspect's body, gripping Aatrox in both hands and preparing to drive him down.
But just as Logan and Lissandra were about to strike at the same time, a brilliant starlight flashed out and wound itself around their wrists.
Lissandra's pale eyes widened. She looked down at her wrist and saw the starlight frozen into ice. It was not true starlight, but magical energy.
Then she shook her wrist, broke it off, and turned to look in one direction.
Logan was different. He was not as strong as Lissandra. The moment that starlight bound his wrists, both his hands went weak, and he could not put any force into them at all.
Seeing that, he simply stepped back. The instant he did, that strange force clinging to his wrists vanished.
He looked in the same direction Lissandra had, and saw a beautiful woman approaching. She had horns on her head, slightly purple skin, and a lovely face. She wore a close-fitting gown that showed off her graceful figure, but beneath the hem of that dress were a pair of hooves.
Goat hooves?
They were long and delicate, and on her left hoof was a golden ring.
Above them, her calves were no different from a human's. As she walked closer, the dress parted now and then, revealing flashes of full, smooth purple thighs.
What could he even say? With Kindred as a precedent, Logan was not particularly shocked by the hooves. But unlike Kindred, whose legs were straight and slender, Soraka's were different, lush and balanced, full thighs, shapely calves, and those hooves below with a gold ring on one of them.
What the hell was that supposed to be, some kind of unfair fantasy creature bonus?
"Sorry for stopping you," Soraka said apologetically as she stepped forward, looking at Logan with complete sincerity. "But could you hear out my suggestion first?"
"You want to save them?" Logan asked calmly.
Soraka nodded and looked at the four suppressed Aspects. Lissandra alone had pinned down two. Logan and Rammus had beaten one flat. Nasus had restrained the last.
Four Aspects.
That meant four demigods.
"The Aspects forced their way down here, and they have already paid the price they deserved. Besides, compared to killing them, I have a better solution," Soraka said to Logan.
Logan turned to Lissandra, wanting to know what she thought.
But when Lissandra saw him look over, she only tilted her head away, folded her arms under her chest, and said softly, "That's enough. I'm going back."
"Handle it however you want."
Soraka... was truly powerful.
Lissandra estimated that even she was a step beneath Soraka, and that was here on Runeterra, where Soraka suffered constant burning pain from the rules of the world. If they were outside among the stars, the gap would be even wider.
After all, the moment Xineos saw Soraka step in, he chose to give up immediately.
If Logan knew what Lissandra was thinking right now, he would say that was only natural. That was the Starchild.
Soraka's lore painted her as a wanderer, yes, but could someone who roamed all over a place like the Celestial Realm really be weak? And with a title like Starchild, the weight behind that name was enormous.
Lissandra had no idea what kind of existence Soraka truly was in the heavens, but she could not be bothered to care anymore. Logan would handle it. By now she was already used to tossing troublesome matters at Logan.
When Logan needed her, she could come out again. That was enough.
So Lissandra left as soon as she said she would, disappearing from the spot at once.
After she was gone, the snowfall over Shurima stopped, and steam began to rise from the frozen earth. Before long, the heat would melt it all away.
Seeing Lissandra leave, Soraka seemed to let out a small sigh of relief. She reached up and patted her full chest, then looked at Logan with a gentle smile.
"Please hear me out, Logan."
"Killing them will not benefit you very much. The celestial host is no longer what it once was. There is no unity left among them. These Aspects are nothing more than someone else's blades and spears, blindly following the strong. But if they can follow one strong figure, why can't they follow another?"
Logan pondered for a moment, then said, "I'm not an Aspect."
"They wouldn't follow you, of course," Soraka said, a little speechless. She lifted a finger and pointed at her own face with a smile. "I meant me."
"I've been watching you for a long time, Logan, or rather, I have been watching everyone on Runeterra. And you know many, many things, which means, I think, that you understand me to some degree."
Soraka looked straight into Logan's eyes with her golden gaze and said seriously, "So I think you'll trust me."
"..."
"Fine. Call it thanks for helping me just now," Logan said at last. He slung Aatrox onto his back and ignored Aatrox's impotent fury.
Now that he could not kill any Aspects, Aatrox was naturally unhappy. But Logan's Spirit Blossom power was affecting him now, and the bloodlust and Void influence had already been scrubbed away. As for why he was still yelling, that was just Aatrox being Aatrox.
"Thank you." Soraka smiled.
Then she clapped her hands lightly and turned to Cecilia.
"Cecilia, are you willing to follow me?" Soraka asked.
"Follow a traitor like you?" Cecilia rolled her eyes in disdain. Sitting cross-legged on the ground in soul form, the lady knight folded her arms over her chest and said, "Then kill me. If you're not going to kill me, let me go."
What a joke. After being deceived alongside Black Moon back then, Cecilia had already started living alone. She had no intention of joining any camp ever again.
Not even the Starchild, the uncrowned sovereign of the Central Domain.
Soraka saw her reaction and shook her head with a small laugh. "All right. But what if I told you that if you follow me, I can bring your Black Moon back to life?"
A moment ago Cecilia had looked like a martyr prepared to die. Instantly, her entire attitude changed. Her eyes widened and she stared at Soraka in shock and delight.
"You mean that?"
"I know who inherited Black Moon's legacy. Her vessel is living around Mount Targon. And if she has a vessel, then she must still be alive."
"I'm in! I'll go with you!"
Cecilia made her decision on the spot.
As for the other three Aspects, there was even less to say.
Who wanted to die?
Besides, following Soraka did not make them traitors. No one knew who was stronger, Soraka or Xineos, but with a title like uncrowned sovereign, Soraka was already at Star-Lord level.
Following her... was a good thing.
Off to the side, Logan watched in silence. He knew that after Soraka dealt with this, she would still have plenty she wanted to say to him.
At the same time, the moment Jinx heard the matter was over, she hopped onto Janna Airlines and flew from the Shuriman port back toward Logan's location.
Along the way, Jinx lazily gazed at the ground below. But when they passed over a patch of damp, sunken sand, her eyes suddenly narrowed.
"Hold it!" Jinx slapped the big fluffy bird beneath her hard.
"Hm?" the goddess mumbled sleepily.
"Back up a little. There's still one left. Something was moving in the sand just now," Jinx said. Her eyesight was razor sharp. Sure, she was a scientist, but she was also the runner-up in the Twin Cities firearms tournament.
First place... had gone to Caitlyn.
But in a quick-draw contest, even Caitlyn could not beat her. So as far as sheer eyesight went, among the Twin Cities, excluding supernatural beings, Jinx could be called number one. Her dynamic vision was ridiculous.
A sharp, ragged breathing sound echoed beneath the sands of Shurima.
There was something strangely sultry about it, the voice of a mature woman with a faint dryness to it, a rasp that came from thirst.
After several more breaths, one hand suddenly burst up through the sand and clawed frantically at the ground beside it. Then the other hand emerged as well.
There was an eerie beauty to those hands. The fingers were long and slender, but tipped with sharp claw-spikes, and both arms were wrapped in hard shell-like armor.
Then both hands pushed at once, and a furry head rose into the sunlight.
Beautiful black hair, full of sand. The woman spat grit from her mouth, squinting hard. It had been too long since she had seen sunlight, so of course she could not adjust immediately. But there was a protective membrane over her eyes, the kind only an insect should have.
The ground came slowly into view. It was still blurry, but even that was enough to fill her with joy.
"I... I finally made it out..."
She shouted it aloud. After the joy passed, determination settled over her face, as if she had made up her mind about something.
Then she tried to pull the rest of herself out of the earth. But the moment both hands strained, she suddenly whipped her head around and looked behind her.
Her vision was still limited, but she could make out what was facing her.
A very beautiful hand.
So white it almost seemed to glow in the sun, with smooth, rosy nails. The index finger and ring finger were painted blue, and that hand was holding a little... stick?
The thing felt odd, a mixture of metal and plastic. In the middle was a dark hole. And the instant the strange woman saw that hole pointed at her, a bad feeling rose in her chest.
It was the pounding instinctive dread that came when danger was staring you in the face.
Then she heard a playful voice.
"Hey, what exactly are you supposed to be?"
"I thought I'd run into Rek'Sai!"
That sweet, teasing voice carried a trace of disappointment before it spoke again.
"Seriously, why do you look like some sexy oversized cockroach?"
"What, did a cockroach turn human?"
Kai'Sa slowly adapted to the sunlight, and what she saw was a beautiful blue-haired girl in a straw hat.
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