Chapter 102 - For What We Fight - My Life (After Countless Reincarnations) in Runeterra

POV - Azra'il

It was not a metaphor. When Aatrox stopped toying with them, the colour of the very air changed. Darkin energy saturated the space around him in a thirty-metre radius; the ground grew slick with a moisture that was not water, the stones gained crimson veins, and the air itself became denser, hotter, and harder to draw into the lungs.

It was as if reality were haemorrhaging.

The strike came, carving a trench dozens of metres long. Both twins dodged, Kayle upwards, Morgana to the side, and what used to be a battlefield was instantly transformed into a crater. The second blow arrived before the dust had the decency to settle. Then the third. And the fourth.

Aatrox was no longer attacking. He was redecorating the landscape.

[Technically, he was merely amusing himself.]

Kayle dived from the heavens, wings tucked tight, sword pointed downwards, aiming for the space between his horns. Brave. Splendid. The kind of attack that works on creatures who respect the laws of physics.

Aatrox raised a hand and plucked Kayle from the air. As one plucks a piece of fruit. Without effort. Without so much as a glance.

"Valiant. A fool, but valiant."

He threw her.

Kayle struck the village tower. The structure collapsed. Stone and timber and dust and the sound of things shattering that were never meant to break. I have seen many bodies strike many structures over many lifetimes, and the sound never improves. It never becomes less wrong.

Aatrox turned to Morgana with the smirk of one who has just cleared the greatest obstacle from the table and is now ready to attend to the details.

Morgana did not look towards the tower. I saw the toll of that decision in her jaw, every fibre of her being wanting to turn and run to her sister, yet every gram of discipline saying 'trust that she rises.' But she did not look. I knew that effort. The locked muscles of the jaw, eyes fixed on the enemy when every instinct begs to turn and check. It is the hardest gesture a warrior can make: trusting an ally who is out of one's line of sight.

She surged forward.

Her wings unfurled into a shadow-span and she accelerated level with the ground, low, swift, Mihira's blade in hand. Aatrox brought down a blow where she should have been. Should. Morgana had already slid inside his reach, beneath the arc, and the blade rose in a cut that sliced his abdomen open from left to right.

She did not stop. She pivoted on her wings, and her second pass severed the tendon behind his knee.

Aatrox buckled.

A four-metre Darkin. On his knees. Before the healer who crafts remedies for sick neighbours.

There is something I have learnt over my various lives regarding people who heal: they know exactly where to sever. Anatomy is not a double-edged sword; it is the selfsame blade. To know where a tendon connects to rebuild it is to know where to cut to dismantle it. The only difference is intent.

And Morgana's intent, in that moment, was unequivocal.

She didn't stop at the knee. She leaped with her wings, cleared his horns, and the blade descended into his shoulder as she crossed him. Three strikes. In five seconds. Three different points. His regeneration was spluttering.

"Swift." Aatrox looked at his own torn body with something that wasn't pain, but interest. "The other shines brighter, but you cut better. How long have you been pretending you weren't born for this?"

Morgana's answer was a thrust to his flank that wrenched a roar from his throat.

Kayle exploded from the tower's rubble. Armour dented, golden blood trickling down her arm, but functional and furious. I saw relief flash across her face when she found Morgana standing, not that she would ever admit it. Then that relief turned into fuel.

Together. And I finally saw the thing that made me understand why Mihira split the sword. It wasn't an error. It was design.

Kayle was the catastrophe. Descending blows fuelled by the speed of her wings and the fury she used like petrol. Every impact reverberated through the field like physical thunder. Morgana was the surgery. She cut into the spaces Kayle opened, into the junctions, into the points that she, who knew every tendon and artery, knew would hurt the most.

They didn't just coordinate. They breathed as one. Kayle knew where Morgana would be before Morgana was there. Morgana felt when Kayle was about to commit before Kayle moved.

I have seen many beautiful things in many lives. Sunsets on planets that no longer exist. Symphonies played by orchestras of extinct civilisations. I have witnessed the birth of stars and the final gasp of universes.

The two of them fighting together was more beautiful than any of it.

And equally doomed.

For an entire minute, a minute I shall keep like a stolen jewel, they held the upper hand. Gashes opened faster than they could close. Aatrox was retreating.

And then, he stopped retreating.

Flesh-wings spread wide, larger now, fed by the blood of the villages. His body pulsed. A wave of crimson energy exploded from him and hurled the twins back. When the dust settled, every gash had closed.

All of them. At once.

"Good," he said. No smile. "You nearly made me remember what it was like to feel fear."

He had drained the reservoir of blood he'd absorbed to force a total regeneration. Hundreds of deaths held in reserve. Entire hamlets converted into a bandage.

And the sisters were exhausted, bleeding, with shattered armour.

(Universe, you are a wretched comedian.)

Aatrox advanced for real. And the difference between the before and the now was the difference between a cat toying with a mouse and a hungry cat.

The Darkin sword descended upon Kayle with a force that made the air scream. She blocked, and the impact buried her into the ground up to her ankles. Her arms trembled. Her wings arched back. Every feather of light vibrated at a frequency that said 'I can take no more' in every language that exists.

Morgana cut from the flank, precise, deep. The blade sank into the flesh between his organic armour plates. Aatrox responded by spinning his body with the sword still locked against Kayle's and, with one of his other arms, punched Morgana with the force of a galloping stallion.

She flew backwards. Used her wings to brake. Spat golden blood.

And she returned. Morgana always returns. I sometimes wonder if it is courage or an infirmity. Likely both; courage and illness often share the same quarters.

Aatrox disengaged from Kayle and attacked them both with a circular sweep, his sword spinning in a 360-degree arc, clearing everything. They both leaped. But he interrupted the spin. He changed direction. The blade returned at the opposite angle and caught Kayle before her wings could complete the evasion; the impact tore away an entire plate of her armour, which fell through the air spinning like a metal leaf.

Kayle stumbled. Morgana covered her, lunging into the space between Aatrox and her sister, blade held in a defensive arc. Aatrox blocked with his forearm; Mihira's blade bit into the flesh, sinking several centimetres, and he used his arm as a lever to pull Morgana close.

Too close.

The headbutt came from above. The horns of the bone-crown struck the crown of Morgana's head with a sound I felt in my own teeth. She reeled. The world spun in her eyes; I could tell by the way her pupils lost focus for half a second.

Aatrox gave her no time. His knee rose and slammed into Morgana's abdomen, directly into the gash that was already open. The pain doubled her over. I saw her face contort, the kind of contortion that isn't theatre; it is the body betraying the person. Real pain has no dignity. It respects neither posture nor pride nor will. It simply breaks what it finds.

And whilst she was doubled over, Aatrox's hand closed around her face. Enormous fingers enveloping her skull like someone clutching a fruit.

"Do you know the difference between the two of you?" His voice came from so close the words vibrated through the bones of Morgana's face. "She fights to prove she is worthy. You fight to protect those you love." He squeezed. Morgana groaned, his fingers compressing her skull, her helm-armour beginning to buckle. "Both motivations are pathetic. But yours, at least, is honest."

He threw her.

Morgana hit the ground and opened a ten-metre furrow, her body ricocheting off the debris, her armour drawing sparks from every stone. When she stopped, she was face-down. Motionless for four seconds that felt like hours.

Four seconds. I counted each one like heartbeats on a monitor in intensive care.

And she rose.

With difficulty. With trembling arms and golden blood dripping from her nose and the gashes on her abdomen and arm, and likely from other places the armour still concealed. She rose the way I have seen the dead rise in worlds where death was not permanent, her body refusing to obey gravity through sheer cellular stubbornness.

I wanted her to stay on the ground. I wanted one of them to have the bloody common sense to stay on the ground for one minute. But no. She rose. She spat more golden blood into the dust. Adjusted the sword in her hand with fingers that wouldn't stop shaking. And turned to the monster with the posture of one who was not yet finished.

[You love her because you hate what she does to herself.]

Kayle attacked Aatrox from behind, striking him with everything she had. The celestial blade split his shoulder open in divine flames. Aatrox spun, fast, far too fast, and his left hand grabbed Kayle's right wing.

He yanked it with brute force.

And the sound that came... That sound.

Feathers of light being uprooted, joints forced beyond the limit, something that should never be touched being violated. The sound of a wing being torn from the inside is the sound of something sacred being profaned. There is no adequate comparison. I have heard bones snapping, heard worlds collapsing, heard the silence that follows the end, and that sound was worse than all because it was personal. It was the sound of something intimate being destroyed in front of everyone.

Kayle screamed.

And I had never heard Kayle scream. Never. Not when her mother left her on Mount Targon. Not in the court. Not in any memory until now. The woman who permitted herself no weakness, who built her entire identity around control, who used her voice like a judge's gavel and never, never as a confession of pain... she screamed.

Aatrox did not let go. He used the wing as a handle and spun Kayle in the air, a complete rotation, and slammed her against the ground. The impact opened a crater. The wing was left at a wrong, jagged angle.

Morgana heard the scream.

And her face became smooth. Calm. Void of everything that wasn't purpose. I know that face. I have seen it in mirrors, in other lives, in moments I should rather not remember. It is the face of someone who switches off everything that hinders, pain, fear, self-preservation, and is left only with the essential. It is the most dangerous face that exists, because the person behind it has already decided what they are going to do, and the cost has been accepted before it was even calculated.

Aatrox hoisted Kayle again and prepared to slam her down once more.

Morgana lunged. Not to attack him. To cut the hand holding her sister. Her blade came down on Aatrox's wrist with surgical precision and silent fury. It cut deep. He let go of Kayle and roared.

Before Kayle hit the ground, Morgana was there. An arm around her waist. Wings compensating for the double weight. She descended with her sister. Slowly. Controlled. The effort visible in every muscle of her neck, in the way her teeth ground together, in the tremor of her wings which carried twice the load whilst bleeding and aching.

She deposited Kayle on the ground with a care that contrasted violently with everything happening around them. Her hand adjusted the silver hair covering her sister's face, a gesture so small, so instinctive, that I doubted Morgana even realised she'd done it.

Aatrox watched the scene. His wrist was knitting shut. His ember-eyes moved from Morgana, who held her sister, to Kayle, who was rising with her wounded pride aching more than her wing.

He tilted his head.

"Fascinating," he said. His voice was pensive. Almost academic. Like a scholar examining an intriguing specimen. "Each time I wound one, the other burns brighter. Each time one bleeds, the other forgets her own safety." He raised his sword. Rested it on his shoulder. "You fight better when you are protecting something. The soldiers. The civilians. Each other. Your motivation is not victory, it is fear of loss."

He turned to the North.

"And what if that which you protect..." He looked over his shoulder. The smirk returned, but different. Calculated. Surgical. "...lies there?"

The gesture was casual. The Darkin blade pointed towards the walls of the settlement. Towards the watchtowers. The houses. The streets where hundreds of folk lived and slept and waited for their Protectors to solve the problem.

Both understood at the same time.

"No." Kayle. Her voice hard as steel.

"No." Morgana. Her voice low as venom.

"Yes." Aatrox opened his flesh-wings. "I wish to see what happens when you fight for real. When it isn't pride, or duty, or justice." The wings beat. The ground shuddered. "When it is desperation."

Then Aatrox leaped.

The monstrous body ascended, cutting through the air like a projectile of meat and hatred, each beat of his wings generating pressure waves, towards the city, the walls, the southern gate.

Towards an old mortal in a dark kitchen with a cup of tea and his eyes on the horizon, awaiting the return of his daughters.

"KAY!"

"I KNOW!"

Both pairs of wings spread, white and dark, and they took flight. Kayle was swifter despite her damaged wing, her wings of light slicing the wind, reaching Aatrox halfway. Mihira's blade cut his wing from behind. Flesh and membrane split open. Aatrox faltered in the air.

He spun. That entire mass rotating with a forbidden agility. The Darkin blade came in a wide arc that Kayle dodged, and Morgana arrived from the other side, her dark blade carving a gash into his ribs.

The aerial battle exploded.

On the ground, there were limits. In the air, there was everything. Three dimensions of chaos, every strike mixed with a manoeuvre, every dodge with a counter-attack, every second a gamble between living and falling.

And I could not stop watching. Not because it was beautiful, though it was. Not because it was important, though it was. But because I knew that desperation. The desperation of fighting not to win, but to stop. To hold something horrific away from something fragile. In many lives I have been the one fighting, and in several the one watching, and in none of them did I find a word that adequately described the agony of seeing people I—

Kayle fought as if each strike were a furious prayer. Vertical dives using gravity as an ally, ascending arcs that transformed her wings into blades of fire, spins that made her silver hair cut the air like a comet. Her right wing ached; I could see it by the way she compensated, favouring her left side, losing symmetry. Every manoeuvre requiring the damaged wing cost a micro-second of hesitation, a degree less of tilt. But the pain fuelled the fury, and the fury fuelled the blows.

Morgana fought as if each cut were a sentence. Her wounds limited her flight, she was gliding more than flying, using gravity when she lacked lift, attacking the blind spots Kayle created. Where Kayle was the storm, Morgana was the lightning strike that lands exactly where it must. Every time her body protested, I saw it in small spasms, in the breath that caught between strikes, but she simply did not listen. Or she listened and carried on.

And Aatrox fought like something that didn't need to win; he only needed to advance.

He took blows to gain metres. He let Kayle sever an arm to use the momentum of the spin to fly further north. He absorbed Morgana's thrusts to his flank to draw closer to the walls. Every exchange of blows was one step closer to the city. He was trading blood for distance. And the exchange rate was in his favour.

"Faster, daughters of Mihira!" His voice thundered through the sky. "You are falling behind! And I am growing hungry!"

The wall appeared on the horizon. Then it was no longer the horizon. It was close. Too close. And on the walls, faces. Hundreds of faces turned to the sky. Soldiers. Civilians. Children.

"LOOK UPON THIS!" Aatrox roared to the city. His voice hit the walls like a shockwave, and I saw people stagger from the sound alone. "Behold your angels! See what the heavens send to protect you! Flesh and feathers and good intentions!"

Kayle dived with everything. Her celestial sword tore Aatrox's chest open in divine fire, a cut that should have killed anything living. Aatrox smiled through the gash. His free hand grabbed Kayle's ankle and used her as a hammer, striking her body against Morgana who was close behind.

The two collided in the air. Wings tangled, white and purple, for a second before they broke apart. Aatrox seized the moment to fly closer to the wall.

"I feel your fear!" The Darkin blade spun in his hand. "I feel it change! Before, it was fear of me. Now, it is fear of what I shall do to what lies behind you!" He pointed his sword at the wall. "What is a city worth, Kayle? How many lives before you admit that you are not enough?"

"SHUT YOUR MOUTH!" Kayle surged forward. Two strikes. Shoulder and flank. Both cuts healed an instant later.

"And you, Morgana?" Aatrox pivoted towards her. "The Redeemer who walks amongst mortals. Who pretends to be one of them. How long until I find your mortal father's little house?"

I saw the blood vanish from Morgana's face. I saw colour desert her skin like a receding tide. I saw her eyes widen one degree more, the degree between controlled fear and panic.

Morgana attacked with a violence I had never seen from her. Her blade in a wide arc, then another, then another, several consecutive strikes aiming for his neck, his face, his eyes. Each blow more furious than the last, each carrying the weight of a daughter who had just heard someone threaten her father. Aatrox blocked the first two. The third opened a gash in his jaw that tore away a chunk of dark flesh and exposed metal beneath.

"HA!" Aatrox roared with pleasure. "THAT IS IT! That is the fire I wanted! The fury of one who protects! Delicious!"

The Darkin blade came down in a strike Morgana blocked, and the impact drove her downwards. Their altitude dropped. Her wings struggled to hold their position, each beat weaker than the last. Aatrox pressed on, shoving, pushing, until Morgana struck the top of the wall.

Her feet skidded on the stone of the rampart. Soldiers scrambled out of the way. And Aatrox was over her, his blade pressing against hers, his monstrous face inches away.

"I shall go slowly," he whispered. Only for her to hear. "House by house. Street by street. And every scream I wring from your folk, every bone I shatter, I shall ensure that you hear. For that is what you deserve, you who carry the names of gods yet can protect no one."

Kayle struck Aatrox from behind like a comet of silver and fury. Her celestial sword sank between his shoulder blades. Deep. Divine fire exploded inside his body. Aatrox roared and released Morgana.

The two attacked together. Desperate. Brutal. Without technique, without elegance, only fury and fear and the animal determination to keep that thing away from the people behind them. For thirty seconds, it worked. Thirty seconds of fire, shadow, and steel pushing Aatrox back, away from the wall, every blow gaining a metre of ground.

But Aatrox wasn't being pushed because he didn't want to stay. He was being pushed because he was choosing when to stop retreating.

And he stopped.

He planted his feet in the air, flesh-wings opening to their maximum span, and when the two lunged for the next strike, he exploded.

The wave of red energy surged from him like a rising sun. It hit both sisters with the force of a wall of pure will. Kayle was hurled backwards. Morgana was flung towards the wall. Their wings buckled under the pressure.

Aatrox surged through his own explosion.

the Darkin blade caught Kayle squarely. The descending strike found the already dented chest plate and carried through, opening the metal like parchment, the blade biting into the flesh beneath; golden blood exploded in the air in a spray that shimmered against the dawn.

Kayle fell.

Her wings tried to brake. The left one functioned. The right one, the one he had wrenched earlier, did not. She went into a tailspin. Rotating. Golden blood tracing spirals in the sky like the trail of a dying star.

She hit the ground outside the wall. Crater. Dust. And when the cloud cleared...

Kayle lay on her back at the bottom. Armour in shards. Gashes in more places than I cared to count. Her wings lay over her body like a tattered fan. And Mihira's sword, her half, her heritage, had been lost in the impact. It stood embedded in the earth several metres away.

Kayle's fingers were outstretched towards it. Trembling. Falling short.

"I feel... no... weakness..."

Aatrox descended. The earth groaned beneath his weight. He walked towards the crater with the patience of one who possesses eternity and knows it.

"Look at her!" he projected towards the wall. "Your Justice is a broken statue in the mud. Your mother gave you the sky, and you chose to crawl." He stopped at the crater's edge. Looked down. "Let me silence the ridiculous beating of these divine hearts."

The Darkin blade was raised high. Its incandescent core pulsed. The final blow hung over Kayle, who struggled to rise and could not, her arms giving way, her wings useless, fingers still reaching for the sword.

"Come, daughter of Mihira. Finish the song your mother hadn't the courage to sing."

Morgana saw.

Fallen near the wall, deep gashes open across her body, her wing aching, her armour in tatters, she saw her sister on the ground. Saw the sword out of reach. Saw the Darkin blade on high.

And I saw what crossed her face.

It wasn't desperation. It wasn't fear. It was the thing that comes after all that, when you have exhausted fear and desperation and all that remains is clarity. A cold, brutal, honest clarity.

Morgana looked at the sword in her own hand. The dark half of Mihira. Her mother's legacy. The blade with which she had been cutting all day, opening wounds that closed, severing flesh that mended itself, repeating the same gesture with the same result as a practical definition of insanity.

This does not work.

Not through lack of skill. The blade cut flesh. But flesh he could rebuild. For the problem was not the body; it was what was inside. The sword. The soul. The hunger. Mihira's sword was fire and steel, matter against matter. And matter would not solve a problem that was not made of matter.

But Morgana possessed something else. Something that was not Mihira's.

Something that was hers.

She leaped and took flight. A crooked, uneven flight, her wing protesting every beat, but functional and swift. She landed on the crater's edge.

Aatrox saw her. He smikred. He kept the blade raised, unhurried. Let the audience come for the final act.

Morgana looked at her sister. At Kayle's sword embedded in the dirt. At her own blade in her hand.

And she drove Mihira's blade into the ground. Beside Kayle. Near both halves.

She let go of the hilt.

She opened her hands.

"Do you wish to see what I am, Aatrox?" Her voice echoed with a different resonance, older. Deeper. The voice of something that had been kept in reserve. "Then look."

Her wings opened to their fullest. The wound shrieked, I saw pain flash across her face like lightning, but she did not yield. And beneath her wings, the chains.

They came from within. They burst from her forearms, her shoulders, her back, tearing through what remained of her armour, emerging as if they had slept there an entire lifetime awaiting this moment. They were not metal. They were dark fire. Purple-incandescent. Each link pulsing with something that was the exact opposite of everything Aatrox emanated.

Where he was hunger, the chains were weight.

Where he consumed, they bound.

Where he destroyed, they sealed.

[Binding magic. Soul-magic. The polar opposite of hemomancy. It does not attack the flesh; it attacks that which inhabits the flesh.]

[Likely she never needed to. Or never wanted to. Or she feared what it meant if she used it, that her mother's sword was never her weapon. That her power was something else. Something that did not come from Mihira. Something that was only... Morgana.]

[Yes.]

Aatrox saw the chains, and his smirk died.

"Chains of binding," he said. The blade dropped half a degree. "Sealing magic." And for the first time, I saw something cross his ember-eyes that wasn't arrogance. "So the heretic knows the old tricks."

"I have read of you lot, Aatrox." Morgana stepped forward. The chains stirred around her like serpents with an opinion. "I read of what you were. Of what they did to you. And of what binds the Darkin inside their weapons."

Another step.

"You are not a body. You are a tethered soul. All this, stolen flesh, absorbed blood, is a construction. A house you rebuild every time someone wounds you because the true you is in there. In the blade. Trapped."

Aatrox did not move.

"And chains," Morgana said, and the chains rose like a crown of dark fire, "are the only thing something like you should fear."

The chains flew.

Not as projectiles, but as predators with an address. each on a different trajectory, converging upon Aatrox. The first embedded in his shoulder. The second in his forearm. The third in his thigh. The fourth in his torso.

And where they struck, where the dark fire touched Darkin flesh, the flesh died. It did not heal. It putrefied. Grey, then black, then it disintegrated, exposing beneath not bone, not muscle, but the truth. The dark truth that existed when all the constructed layers were stripped away. The nothing that Aatrox was when he removed the mask of a god.

"WHAT IS THIS?!" The roar was not one of pain. It was one of terror. The terror of something that spent millennia constructing itself feeling those layers stripped away like a bandage from a wound that never healed. "My strength... it ebbs!"