The two of them and the cat looked unbelievably small against the towering dunes as they slowly shifted in the wind.
"So you used to have an owner?"
Yuumi told them about her past while Caleb and Kai'Sa listened quietly.
Yuumi had been born from a yordle seed of life, yet had taken the shape of a cat.
She had once traveled everywhere with her owner, a witch named Norra.
The Book of Thresholds could carry living creatures anywhere, and the two of them had spent countless happy days together.
Then one day, Norra vanished, and several pages had been torn from the Book she left behind.
Yuumi had tried talking to Book, but all she learned in the end was that Norra had gone somewhere incredibly dangerous.
Dangerous enough that the moment Norra went there, she tore up the portal leading to that place.
So Yuumi and Book could only travel one page at a time, crossing more than half the world.
In city after city, Yuumi had rescued stranded yordles.
In one desert of Shurima, Yuumi had once found a shard from one of Norra's old teacups.
But before she could dig up anything else, a massive claw had burst out of the sand.
Scared out of her wits, Yuumi ran back to Bandle City and gradually shoved the whole thing to the back of her mind.
It wasn't until Caleb and Kai'Sa arrived that Yuumi finally recovered a little hope.
To be fair, Yuumi's Prowling Projectile and healing were both extremely effective.
Both Caleb and Kai'Sa had experienced that firsthand.
Caleb fought with a bow, Kai'Sa fought with that living Void skin, and both of them happened to be ranged damage dealers.
Compared to Kai'Sa's kit, which balanced burst, sustained fire, rapid movement, and target acquisition all at once, Caleb's Arcane Shift, wall-crossing, lightning strike, and giant pillar felt like a weird grab bag of abilities.
But they worked.
Every bandit they ran into on the road ended up getting tossed into the dunes by Caleb.
Whether they lived or died after that depended on their own luck.
Caleb had actually wanted to kill them outright. Snapping a neck was simple enough.
But Kai'Sa had gone soft on them and let them try surviving in the desert instead.
Those petty thieves clearly never stopped to think about what they were looking at, a cat riding a magic book, a woman wrapped in purple Void skin, and Caleb, who somehow looked the most normal out of the three.
None of that was normal, all right?
Who exactly had lent them the courage to attack?
Still, Caleb couldn't be bothered with them anymore, because in the distance he could already make out that faint golden glow.
It wasn't the color of the sand. It stayed radiant even at night.
The Sun Disc.
That thing was practically a divine artifact.
It could not only turn desert into oasis and give people a livable environment, it could do something even more unbelievable.
It could perform Ascension.
It could transform powerful mortals into god-warriors.
Caleb had known the emperor of the desert would awaken, but he hadn't expected it to happen now.
He stared at that distant city in the sands, already restored and transformed.
It was as if some unseen hand had turned time back by several thousand years.
He could barely contain his excitement.
Making the leap from a nobody among mortals to the peak of mortal strength was one thing. Crossing into demigod-tier power was something else entirely.
And aside from having an Aspect from Mount Targon descend upon him, the other way to do that was to undergo Shurima's Ascension and become one of its god-warriors.
He could become someone like Nasus, studying knowledge and overseeing great libraries.
Or like Renekton, marching to war and carving out glory on the battlefield.
Or like the Faceless God Xolaani, endlessly healing soldiers on the front lines.
The Ascension ritual was open to all those who could accomplish great deeds, while those who failed became creatures known as Baccai.
That outcome was actually rare, though. Anyone allowed to undergo Ascension was usually exceptional to begin with.
Of course, now that Azir had awakened, Caleb had no choice but to consider another factor.
Xerath.
Thousands of years ago, Xerath had stolen the power of Ascension and transformed into a being of tremendous energy.
Even Nasus and Renekton together couldn't take him down.
Now he too wandered this desert, and if he saw the Sun Disc rise again, war would be unavoidable.
Naturally, Kai'Sa and Yuumi had no idea what Caleb was thinking.
Yuumi simply trusted Kai'Sa completely, because she had survived an attack from Rek'Sai.
According to Kai'Sa, that battle had lasted a full three days and two nights.
And Kai'Sa, in turn, trusted Caleb completely.
Partly because he was generous, and even more because his decisions were often farsighted.
That Sun Disc didn't carry any foul or corrupted aura either.
That much Yuumi could tell even from far away.
"Watch out!"
The Book trembled, and Yuumi fired a Prowling Projectile.
The missile twisted and curved through the air before slamming into a gigantic blade.
And then the massive crocodile-like figure gripping that enormous weapon came lunging straight at them.
"Who's the next cut of meat for my block?"
Caleb's face darkened at once.
Of course it was this guy.
Renekton, that perennial top-lane terror.
Without the slightest hesitation, both Caleb and Kai'Sa chose the same first response.
Retreat.
Caleb used Arcane Shift, and Kai'Sa kicked into Supercharge.
In the next instant, Caleb's longbow and the living weapon on Kai'Sa's back opened at the same time.
A Hextech energy arrow and Icathian Rain came crashing down together.
The arrow struck with brutal force, while the energy bolts exploded across Renekton's hide.
When the smoke from the blast cleared, those blood-red eyes were still shining.
"This is bad."
Caleb's face looked grim. In the shifting dunes, it was almost impossible to judge the right timing for Shadow Step.
And he had already used Arcane Shift. No matter how hard he forced his magic, it wasn't going to activate again anytime soon.
Fortunately, Yuumi bounced to his side and hit him with Zoomies, dragging Caleb back an entire dune in an instant.
In the very next second, Renekton burst up out of the sand, spun his body, and brought that massive blade crashing down.
Caleb's bow instantly folded into a short staff, blocking the attack head-on.
Kai'Sa's Void Seeker followed right after, detonating against Renekton's eyes.
Caleb's body was flung backward, smashing hard into another dune.
A metallic taste flooded his throat, but Caleb forced the blood back down instead of coughing it out.
Of course, that also had something to do with the second burst of Zoomies Yuumi gave him.
"Now we're really screwed."
Caleb finally understood why those desert raiders had been so fearless.
They thought they were following Renekton, so naturally they feared nothing.
He gasped for breath, staring at Renekton as the blood-red glow in the Ascended warrior's eyes grew even brighter.
Kai'Sa's Void Seeker had bought them a moment. She immediately fell back to Caleb's side.
"What do we do?"
In an instant, her usual blank, almost cute air had vanished, replaced by the cold focus of battle.
"We run."
Caleb looked at Renekton, who was wreathed in swirling sand, and swallowed hard against the blood rising in his throat again.
That hit had been vicious. He had probably broken five or six ribs in one shot.
And the way Zoomies stitched him back together felt like every bone in his body was being forced into place at once. Caleb had no desire to experience that again.
Rather than charge headfirst into a maddened Renekton whose limits they didn't understand, it would be smarter to go find Nasus.
A massive pillar of ice erupted from the sand, throwing off Renekton's balance for a moment.
The two humans and the cat didn't dare relax. They turned and sprinted for the Sun Disc with everything they had.
"His power feels normal to me. Maybe his mind suffered some kind of trauma."
Yuumi circled around Caleb and gave him another burst of Zoomies.
The ribs that had still felt cracked a moment ago were instantly whole again.
"Maybe the Sun Disc can help," Caleb said through the pain.
//Check out my P@tre0n for 30 extra chapters on all my fanfics //[email protected]/Razeil0810