Ambessa had made her choice long ago. She had been a girl then, one younger than her daughter Mel or her brother, Kino. She had been yet a promising warrior in her family’s warband. Talented, certainly. Ambitious, absolutely. Yet, honor and duty had been the extent of her ambitions. She wanted a warrior's life and a warrior's death. She didn’t care for what cause or even whose banner she fought under, so long as she died fighting.
And as a young woman heavy with child, yet with sword in hand, she had died.
She hadn't even intended to go to war. She had been nearing the birth of her second child, and wanted her to be born in Clan Medarda’s ancestral home of Rokrund as she had been. She'd had no notion that she'd arrive to find it besieged by Raxii raiders, but heavy with child or not, she joined the defense and pushed the savages back.
But not before an arrow found its way to her gravid belly. The Wolf, harbinger of Kindred, took her then. To Volrachnun. The Realm of the Wolf. The Land of Heroes.
The afterlife all great warriors ascend to.
There she had visions of her past and of futures that could have been. Could still be. Finally, she faced the Wolf’s champion, a great warrior with a golden shield in glorious combat. She lost. And lost. She died endlessly at the hand of the warrior she knew only as the Shield.
All her skill at arms had been worthless before him. It wasn't her skills that were tested, but her resolve. Her ambition. Her desire to live. They clashed a hundred times, and Ambessa died a hundred deaths, but she always rose to her feet. She fought on despite the odds, not for the promise of life, but because she needed to live to see her ambitions through.
Each bout solidified that desire. Her ambitions were sharpened against a whetstone. And, when the hundred and first bout came?
The Shield stood aside. Standing before him, bloody and defiant, willing to fight a hundred more battles and die a hundred more deaths, she had earned his respect, if not victory.
Then she faced the Wolf’s final trial. A trial of sacrifice.
Before a crowd of weeping mourners, she lifted a gilded lamb to the sky - and regretted it the moment it left her grasp.
She'd joined the mourners in their wailing as the golden lamb was torn apart by the great many-headed wolf.
Finally, having faced and passed the Wolf’s trials, she was faced with a choice between two futures stretched out before her.
One, where she lived and sat upon a stone throne of Clan Medarda. The throne of all Noxus, if she merely had the strength to take it.
And the other, where she accepted her death, and rose to stand beside the Shield, dressed in the armor of a legend, her leonine mask in gold and hair flowing white. It was what she'd always wanted, to die a Wolf’s death and be worthy of Volrachnun.
She was not entirely certain that it was by her will alone that she opened her eyes on that sandy beach, the arrow that had killed her still protruding from her chest, and Mel kicking in defiance of her death in Ambessa's womb. Her will to survive had certainly seen her through afterwards however, and she returned to the city where her wounds were treated. She became a thing of awe then, because by all rights, she should have been dead.
The years had been long and hard since then. Ambessa fought in hundreds of battles, killed thousands of foes, and relentlessly pursued that which had driven her to fight against death itself. She secured her place in her clan, and fought her own kin to claim what was hers by right, the position as the head of the Medarda Clan. Her children grew, and while she loved them dearly both of them turned out to be disappointments in different ways. Both were entirely too clever for their own good, and while they had ambition in spades, they lacked the killer instinct to trample over the dreams and lives of others to make them manifest.
They were Foxes, not Wolves.
Yet, while neither of her children had proven themselves suitable to become her heir, Ambessa advanced forward all the same. She built her faction. Her influence grew. Step by step, she drew closer to the object of her heart's desire -- the throne of Clan Medarda, and later, all Noxus.
Only to find the throne guarded by an impenetrable wall of thorns.
The Black Rose.
Ambessa had known of and feared them for years before truly clashing against them. Hearing of them in whispered warnings in her bedchambers from one of their own number, who vanished with the promise to stay far away to keep their gaze and that ofof the Black Rose and the pale woman at theirierits head from lingering on her. On their daughter.
She'd lost count of the nightmares she'd had, of shadowy figures spiriting Mel away to some dark corner where she would never be seen again, but it was only a decade later, when she had finally dismissed Mel as a potential successor and her grandfather was on his deathbed that they finally struck.
Not at her daughter, but at her birthright.
The Medardan Succession War was a short but bloody affair. Bloodier than it would have been, if not for the Black Rose supplying that wretch Ta’fik with rune-enhanced soldiers. Through it, Ambessa had honed her chosen successor, Rell, only to be faced with her nightmares come to life as the girl was taken from the seat of Ambessa’s power the very day she’d adopted her as her daughter.
In the end, Ambessa had won. The title of head of Clan Medarda was hers, as was the ephemeral esteem of Grand General Boram Darkwill after delivering to him a guide for his long-awaited invasion of Ionia.
But she had lost a great deal. Both fathers of her trueborn children were dead, and her successor, her daughter, had been taken from her. And afterwards, she'd been all but forced to banish her remaining daughter to shield her from a similar fate.
The Black Rose had lost more, but aside from Rell there was one thing they had gained for their part in the Medarda civil war.
An enemy.
Ambessa had spent the years since her ascension searching for them and any weapon that could be used against them, but found herself striking at shadows, struggling to find even a hint of their existence… until Jericho Swain exposed their existence to the Grand General and all of Noxian high society, resulting in the seeming execution of all their members, including Swain’s mother and father and the ‘pale woman’ herself.
His mistake was in thinking them no more than a noble conspiracy to guide Darkwill's hand. Ambessa knew better, but with no evidence kept her suspicions to herself.
For his achievement, Swain was awarded a high position and sent afar to fight Noxus’ many enemies to the west. And now he sat at the head of the army that sought to claim Piltover and its Hexgate.
But Ambessa knew the Black Rose was still out there, and continued searching for them. She'd found nothing, but any thoughts that they may have truly been dismantled died when Kino, her son, found more success in his investigation into his father’s murderers…
And paid for it with his life.
The Black Rose had simply retreated into the shadows, and Ambessa had finally been deemed too unwieldy to manipulate, so they sought her removal from the board entirely. It was for that reason she came to Piltover, seeking an advantage over the Black Rose and to find one of their agents to glean more information about the cabal of mages. And it was in Piltover she found her path to vengeance -- Hextech was of interest to her, but Trafalgar Water Law had been the key.
So convinced was she that he was the key to all of her ambitions, she had betrayed her homeland, committing herself to Piltover's cause. She had almost wept tears of blood when ‘Law’ managed to get himself assassinated. And she nearly wept with relief when she learned that he was still alive.
Now, in the aftermath of a reveal that she couldn't have imagined, Ambessa could only laugh.
“Is this funny to you?” Mel snapped at her, Law long gone, off to clean up another mess his assassination had caused. Mel was a nervous little thing, her hands clasped together in an attempt to keep her composure.
“Of course, it is,” Ambessa replied, dismissive of her daughter's scorn. “We have found ourselves to be pawns in a much larger game, girl. That discovery puts us at an advantage over those who remain ignorant.”
“And that is all you care about, is it?” Mel questioned sharply. Lashing out because of her own anxiety and doubts. It was unbecoming of her, but Ambessa decided to excuse it. After all, there was nothing simple or mundane about what they had just learned.
“It should be all you care about as well, girl,” she rebuked. “The truth cares not if you can accept it. It simply is. And the truth is that we are pawns on a board. On one side is Heartless, the man who just walked out of the room. The other is someone we are yet unaware of. We can struggle against both, but you heard him as well as I did. We are not in a position to make such lofty enemies.”
Ambessa stood up slowly, towering over her daughter, who seemed so much smaller than normal. “We enjoy his favor and we are in an advantageous position. Both may slip by us if we do not act prudently.”
Mel clenched her jaw, and Ambessa saw the rebelliousness die out in her eyes underneath the calm logic that she was so proud of. Her daughter was no Wolf, but she had a spine in her.
“And how exactly do you intend to do that?” Mel had her own plans, Ambessa knew. While they had been reunited, and they even fought towards the same goal, it wasn't enough for her daughter to consider her an ally. It was a good thing, even if Ambessa could admit that it squeezed her heart to see.
Ambessa offered a smirk, setting aside her blade, “I cannot say that I know Law well, but I do know his type. People can grow a tolerance to anything -- pain and pleasure, boredom and excitement. He has turned Piltover's survival into a game. He favors us because we entertain him.” After all, no one kept a hobby they found boring.
She approached Rictus, and her oldest companion knew her thoughts well. He presented his spear to her -- or rather, he presented the rookern stones whose anti-magic properties had served as their greatest defense since they learned of the Black Rose's true nature. Ambessa took them, wrapping them around her fist, and when she looked back at Mel, she saw her daughter watching with veiled concern.
“Give him a show, Mel.” Ambessa instructed with a roll of her shoulders. “Let him see you make progress in your ambitions. Let him see you take risks. If he is as powerful as I think he is… then there is always the chance that he will catch you if you fall.” Unless, of course, he decided to take pleasure in the sight of her failure.
She didn't say the words out loud, but based on the grimace that flickered over her face, her daughter had the same thought. “I already have a plan in place,” Mel replied tepidly. “I asked for your intentions.”
Ambessa chuckled before walking towards the balcony, “To make progress in my ambitions. To start with, I think I'll have a conversation with that assassin.” Mel started to say something, but with a quick burst of speed and a jump, Ambessa had already thrown herself over the balcony and into the sea below. She struck the water a second later, plunging herself into its murky depths.
The runes carved into the rookern stones hummed in the presence of magic. A warning as much as it was a tool to counter it. And, if used correctly, it could even be used to track a mage based on how the runes hummed against her skin. Without coming up for air, she swam beneath the waves, following the hum against her skin.
Her quarry took refuge in an alcove. The redheaded woman with a scar over her eye was shaken from her encounter with Law, but her instincts were still sharp. The assassin- Katarina shot to her feet with her daggers in hand, the moment that Ambessa emerged from the water.
Ambessa knew who she was, had even met her before, but something about her was… familiar, in a way Ambessa couldn't place. No matter.
“Settle yourself, girl. If I wanted you dead, then you would be,” Ambessa chided, water flowing over her body, and her attire was soaked, but her clothing clinging to her like a second skin worked in her favor. Ambessa had honed herself for decades, and she had more than her fair share of scars. She saw it in the girl's eyes -- she knew that in a direct confrontation, she would lose.
Katarina looked to the talismans wrapped around Ambessa’s fist before her eyes narrowed ever so slightly. “You knew that I was there the entire time.”
“Of course, I did,” Ambessa replied with a small laugh. “My plan was to save Law in a dramatic fashion when you decided to make your move… but it would seem that we both underestimated him.” That had been the plan, at least. However, Katarina was faster than Ambessa expected. More than that, Ambessa had suspected that the Law before her had been an imposter planted by the Black Rose.
Katarina clenched her jaw while her grip tightened on her blades, but said nothing.
“I know of you, girl,” Ambessa remarked with a tilt of her head. “We met once when you were just a girl. Katarina Du Couteau, daughter of General Ivan Du Couteau.” The girl tensed at her name being revealed in full, or perhaps it was the name of her father. The Du Couteau family was an old one. And where all the old families grew fat on wine and gold, becoming little more than merchants that played at war…
The Du Couteau remembered their roots. They had but one product to sell, and that was death -- be it on the battlefield or in the shadows, slitting throats as their target slumbered away.
“You were a dedicated little thing even when you barely came up to my knee,” Ambessa smiled. “Enough so that you snuck away into the city in the dead of night to steal poisons from apothecaries to inflict upon yourself because you thought your father was taking it too easy on you. He is a hard man to please, but I know him well enough to know that he was proud.”
Katrina didn't flinch, but that in itself was a reaction.
Ambessa knew all the major players on the grand stage quite well. The Du Couteau family were a family of assassins, first and foremost. They often served at the Emperor's left hand. So when disaster struck them, even a small one, the courtiers tittered and whispered to chip away at what influence they had. As such, Ambessa was well aware that Katarina had fallen out of favor with her father to the point that he had a standing bounty on her head even as she continued to serve Noxus.
“Would it be that my own children had that same fire,” Ambessa mused, her eyes narrowing just a touch as a memory struck her. A memory of a girl who was kind, sweet, and loyal. So desperate for a mentor and to stand on her own two feet. A girl who had slit the throat of a begging girl her own age for no greater reason than Ambessa had commanded her to.
Rell. The Wolf to Mel's Fox nature. The girl who could have been her heir, adopted into her family even before Ambessa had learned that she was a mage.
A girl who vanished into thin air from the halls of Rokrund Citadel. Taken by the Black Rose.
“You speak of my family so easily. You speak of Noxus as if you hadn't betrayed it!” Katarina snapped, her weight shifting to show that she was about to pounce.
“Noxus belongs to the strong, child,” Ambessa rebuked sharply. “The one most suited to rule is the one who can take the throne. That has always been our way. Or at least it had been.”
“If you seek the throne, then you should have challenged Emperor Darkwill directly instead of throwing in with our enemies!” Katrina snapped, and it would seem that her rift with her family hadn’t changed her loyalty to Noxus. That was a relief to see, even if it was currently inconvenient. She would need people like Katarina when she inevitably took the throne, be it by guile or force.
“I would if Darkwill was worthy of the challenge. If he was anything but a puppet for his unseen masters,” Ambessa replied and Katarina stilled. Interesting. “Ah, then General Swain suspects, does he? That he only plucked a few overt pedals while the rest of the weed retreated to the dirt.”
“You speak of them,” Katarina ventured, making Ambessa smile thinly. “You lay your treachery at the feet of an unconfirmed enemy?”
“I have never betrayed Noxus. It is Noxus who betrays me. Betrays itself,” Ambessa growled, taking a step forward. “You felt it, didn’t you? You couldn’t even stand in his presence.” Katarina’s guard rose, but she offered a placating smile. “I don’t begrudge you for it. It’s only natural to bend one’s knee before a king. Could you claim the same of Darkwill?”
Whatever Law did, it wasn’t magic. It set her blood alight, however. She hadn’t felt that way since she was a little girl with a spear thrust into her hands instructed to find and kill something worthy of her heritage. She had wandered for days in the mountains, searching for worthy prey… only to discover that a predator had marked her as such.
When she felt in that room was the moment of realization that one wrong move meant death. A second of hesitation, a mistimed thrust, unstable footing… any one of ten thousand things would end with her devoured and forgotten. She hadn’t been the target of whatever Law had done, but she had felt it all the same.
Katarina stilled in a way that told Ambessa that the remark had struck home. As did her telling silence. She couldn’t argue because of the Grand General… if Darkwill had ever been a true warrior, then the crown had hollowed him out. Now Ambessa suspected that Darkwill only became Emperor because of his… agreeable nature.
“Carry my words to your master, girl,” Ambessa began, deliberately turning her back to the assassin to wade back into the sea. “Tell him that the Black Rose has its thorns around the beating heart of Noxus… and that he should have his surrender ready. Piltover intends to fight and with what I have seen of them… they cannot lose.”
As the water came up to her waist, Ambessa spared a thought to General Swain. She hoped the man didn't die in the battle to come.
She could always use such capable subjects.
…
My grand return was rippling throughout the city. There were meetings I could go to -- Cassandra Kiramman wanted a sit down with me to make sure that the marriage between me and Caitlin went through. Viktor could use a helping hand designing his new body with the limited amount of time he had left in his failing meat suit. I was due for a visit in Zaun to reassert my control over the Undercity and to prevent them from setting the whole place on fire. There was also Clan Ferros, an old player in the city, but one that had been absent at the board until now.
And from what I knew, they were a family with some serious potential.
I held off for the moment. I wanted to see how the ripples of my return shook up the city before I had another important meeting with the major players. I wanted to see what Ambessa and Mel would do. I wanted to see what Cassandra would do, especially now that Cinder and Caitlin were officially an item. I wanted to see how Jinx and Vi's reunion would shape up and what path Jinx would take to twist her big sister around her pinky.
That wasn't to say that I was done with my meetings entirely though. There were still a few boxes I needed to check off, but they were more insular in nature.
“I am relieved to see rumors of your death have been exaggerated, sir,” Tanya greeted me on the factory floor. Her attire had changed in the few days that I was away. Her blonde hair was in a new style while her white work attire had been changed out for the classy look of a manager -- complete with slacks, a button down, and suspenders. “Productivity did suffer an unfortunate downturn, but I was able to curb the worst of it with workplace incentives. Additionally, I have fended off attempts by Councilors Medarda and Kiramman to nationalize the company.”
She said the word nationalize like it was a slur, much to my amusement.
“Excellent work as always, Tanya,” I praised her before my gaze slid to the woman that stood behind her. She was tall, with ruby red eyes and a customer service smile plastered on her face. “And this would be?”
“In your absence, I took the liberty of hiring a new security expert. It seemed prudent given your apparent assassination,” Tanya was swift to introduce her.
“It wasn't me!” The red eyed woman blurted nervously. “I didn't assassinate you!”
Vaguely concerning that she felt the need to clarify that, but I just smiled with amusement, turning my gaze back down to Tanya, who coughed lightly into her fist. “This is Yor Briar,” she introduced her as if nothing was amiss. “Her skill set is highly specialized, but she is an excellent head of security.”
“Ah,” Yor caught herself before she bowed. “It is a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Water Law.”
There was absolutely a story here, and I was torn between unraveling it and just watching it play out. “Nice to meet you too. And please, just call me Law. My name doesn't exactly roll off the tongue,” I said, offering a hand that Yor shook. Vigorously.
Hard enough that if I had been an unenhanced human, I'd have ended up with some bone fractures. And the real interesting bit was that she seemed entirely unaware of it.
Very interesting.
“I have no problem keeping you on board. Tanya is a great judge of character, so if she trusts you, then that's enough for me,” I decided. Yor audibly sighed with relief while Tanya smiled.
“You honor me with your faith, sir,” She said, and I just patted her head.
“What else has changed while I was dead?” I asked and Tanya was quick to launch into a full scale breakdown of our current situation. The factory floor was in full swing with rows of children assembling manufactured parts, be it microfusion cells or robotic limbs or laser guns.
The long and short of it was that production was down but morale was high with my return. There was an ongoing issue of theft, at least until recently, where employees were stealing from shipments and stockpiles. They would then sell them on the black market for a stack of cash, probably to Noxian spies or rival corporations, before they fled the city. Something that many were doing in the face of the invasion that loomed over Piltover like an executioner's blade. Especially now that it was on the move again.
General Swain wasn't dragging his feet any more. The Noxians had covered more distance in the three days that I was dead than they had in three weeks. And I doubted my return would slow them down at all.
Which meant that instead of another month or two before they arrived, we instead had at most a week.
“Hm. Can't say that it looks good,” I remarked, looking down at the spreadsheet that Tanya had prepared. “Not enough guns, not enough ammo, and we'll only have two functioning gun boats. And only if we stop production on the other three and focus on one.”
I wasn't worried, however. We had plenty of resources in my other worlds, but the fact of the matter was, if we went off what we had stockpiled in just this one, we'd lose.
Tanya stilled across from me, “The Council can't truly be considering surrendering to the barbarian warmongers, can it?” She sounded genuinely terrified of the thought.
“We had a vote today -- we're committed to war,” I assured her and I think that her concerns about the lack of war were less ideological and more out of bloodthirst based on that smile she gave me in response. “We'll need to ramp up production while we can. Unless something major changes in the next week, however…” The general public couldn't know about Heartless just yet.
Heartless had to sweep in at the final hour when all hope was lost. Otherwise, the people of Piltover would realize that they had just traded one master for another.
There was a flicker of resolve in Tanya's gaze at that, and she offered a curt nod. “We'll be ready, sir! I'll make sure of it,” She vowed before turning on her heel and marching away. Yor followed her, closing the door to my office behind them, and I…
“What an amusing girl,” I chuckled with a shake of my head. And, it was then that my next meeting came to me as there was a flurry of petals before two figures emerged inside of my office -- Robin and Jenova. Robin favored me with a slight smile while Jenova immediately began searching my office for snacks, prompting me to shamble in a plate of cookies.
Robin had been experimenting with her powers now that they had been enhanced with Compound V. Among them was her ability to teleport between her sprouted limbs, and, more interestingly, the ability to bring people along for the ride so long as she was in physical contact.
“There has been a development,” Robin informed, taking a seat across from me while Jenova nibbled on a shortcake. Based on how her eyes narrowed, there wasn’t nearly enough sugar in them to be satisfactory.
“This world’s afterlife is occupied,” Jenova informed me, pushing away the shortcakes as if they had personally offended her. “However, it is not by any god.”
“Oh?” I started, my eyebrows climbing high. I expected Runeterra to be a little different than the other worlds that we visited. It was, by far, the highest ‘fantasy’ type world thus far. The gods were real, even if they were more beings of extreme power than the ‘judge your soul after death’ type. There was even some mountain that you could supposedly climb to attain the power of a god somewhere in the world.
But I had expected something to be different about the afterlife that would prevent Jenova from simply absorbing the sea of souls like she had the other worlds.
“In structure, it is no different from the others,” Jenova began, sounding vaguely annoyed. “It is the contents that have proven resistant. One soul in particular decided that he was unhappy with the nature of the afterlife, and instead of fading away as he should have, chose to change the nature of the sea of souls to suit his whims.”
I blinked before a slow smile spread across my face. That sounded hilarious. “Seriously? What’s he like?” I asked, my interest growing. That sounded like someone I would be interested in bringing back from the dead. Actually, that sounded…
“He’s like you,” Jenova informed blandly, taking a sip of her tea and voicing my thoughts. Yeah, finding a whole lot of nothing in the afterlife and building your own with blackjack and hookers sounded exactly like something I would do. “He is quite irritating. He has grown aware of my existence, and he is attempting to invade.”
“Sounds like quite a guy. He got a name?” I asked, playing around with the implications. Noxus was attempting to invade Piltover and some dead guy was attempting to invade the Lifestream?
Jenova’s eyes glowed for just a second, telling me that she had never bothered to ask him until now. When the glowing stopped, she answered, “Mordekaiser.”
Mordekaiser, huh?
Really, Runeterra was the gift that kept on giving.