Arcane: The Gods Want Me to Pick a Route

"Logan, should I go over there with you, or should I go ahead first?"

Perched on Logan's shoulder, the beautiful little blue bird spread her wings and tilted her head as she chirped the question.

Logan took a deep breath and looked toward the distant sky. With Janna's help, he had already arrived behind the Winter's Claw stronghold. Another few dozen kilometers ahead lay the Ice Sea, and even from here, Logan could already see Ursine Mountain.

Calling it a mountain was almost misleading. It was really an enormous island, one far larger than Bilgewater by who knew how many times over. Beneath the dense mass of thunderclouds, Logan could feel that overwhelming power, and his body trembled involuntarily.

"Janna, can you handle it alone? Volibear is way stronger than you," Logan said hesitantly. Sending Janna over there now would only get her hurt. She really had grown much stronger over the years, but compared to an ancient, old-guard god like Volibear, she was still too weak.

So weak that Logan didn't dare let her go alone.

"No." Janna's answer was exactly what Logan had expected.

The little blue bird opened her beak and continued, "But another god is already there. Look, over there." Janna lifted one wing and pointed toward the eastern sky.

"You have her scent on you, so she must be someone you only met recently too, right?"

"But she's very strange. She clearly doesn't have godhood, yet she's no weaker than a demigod," Janna said.

Ever since arriving here with Logan, Janna had felt that someone was watching her. But the aura watching her carried Logan's scent, so she hadn't paid it much mind.

After all, Logan was just that kind of person.

Who knew how he kept attracting the attention of so many gods?

After hearing Janna's words, Logan knew Lissandra had already arrived.

In that case...

"Then go."

Logan looked at Janna and said it.

"Mm."

Her wings trembled, and Janna flew up into the sky.

Ten minutes earlier—

"The Ursine will never be slaves!"

Thunder rolled as an Ursine shaman waved the staff in his hand. Several gates formed from black storm clouds appeared above the ritual platform, and in the next instant, countless Ursine roared as they charged into the portals.

At the summit, a pair of massive claws swept through the air, drawing thunder with them. Volibear was about to become a bolt of lightning and flash toward the Ice Needle Forest to kill and fight.

But just as he was about to depart, a wave of unbearable cold surged forth and instantly froze Ursine Mountain.

Purple-blue ice wrapped around the mountain. Crystal spikes burst outward and spread in every direction. In the blink of an eye, countless giant icicles had erupted all over Ursine Mountain, dense and endless, each one tinged with a dark violet hue, thrusting outward like a forest of inverted spears.

"Witch! It's you!"

Volibear snapped fully alert. In the air, lightning became his eyes, storm clouds formed his head, and thunder rumbled as he looked toward the woman in the distant sky.

Separated by the Ice Sea, she stood suspended in midair.

She wore a long white gown glowing with faint blue light, one slender hand extended toward Ursine Mountain. Moonlight poured over her body. Beneath it, her narrow fingers shone with a jade-like sheen. Her slightly flushed knuckles curled inward in a grasping motion, and then she raised her bare, unpainted face, her blind white eyes fixed on Volibear.

"You still dare show yourself before me!"

"Why would I not dare?" Lissandra replied.

Her expression was solemn. White hair spilled down behind her back. The wound over her eyes stood out sharply on her face, and now, hearing Volibear's roar, she could feel pain spreading through it once more.

That scar had almost defined her entire life.

For nine thousand years, from then until now, Lissandra had never found a way to heal her eyes. She no longer needed sight, of course. She could sense everything through magic. But never seeing sunlight, never seeing color, had always robbed life of a certain amount of joy.

"Good! Then I'll kill you first, and after that I'll sweep clean the Freljord!" Volibear threw back his head and laughed wildly.

Then, in the next moment, an unimaginably enormous bear appeared atop the mountain. Muscles bulged across his body. His round ears bore a strange earring. Two thick braids hung from his shoulders, each tied with a massive runestone.

The giant bear raised his left hand and slammed it downward.

Boom!

At the place where Lissandra stood, thunderclouds burst into existence across a two-kilometer stretch of sky. Then came the crackling thunder, and endless bolts of lightning crashed down upon her.

Lissandra extended both hands forward, fingers spread evenly apart. In the next moment, she drew them back to her chest, closed her eyes, and pressed her fingertips together, terrifying cold gathering in the center of her palms.

A slab of blue ice dozens of meters long and several meters thick appeared above her head.

It hung in the air like a shield, protecting her from above.

Lightning struck the ice layer again and again. The ice began to splinter, shards flying in every direction, but the cold gathering between Lissandra's hands never stopped. The shield above her head continued regrowing even as it broke.

"You've actually become stronger than you were before! But this still isn't enough! Witch, this time I'll rip off your head and take it as my trophy—as the horn that announces the return of the old ways!" Seeing that his lightning couldn't blast through the witch's ice, Volibear only laughed harder instead of getting angry.

"Heh. Volibear, after all these years, you've grown quite a bit weaker, haven't you?" Lissandra shot back. Her right hand swept out, aimed at the charging Volibear.

Whoosh!

Countless ice crystals materialized behind her and then rained down in a dense barrage toward Volibear.

The bear spirit ignored every single one of them, letting the crystals smash against his body. Soon, patches of fur on him turned red, but he paid them no heed at all and continued charging the witch head-on.

Once he got close enough, he leapt high, launching from the ground toward the sky, and slashed his claws at the witch's face.

Clang!

Crack—

The scene he had imagined—his claws striking the witch directly—never happened, because Volibear's strike crashed into a shield-like wall of wind.

And in the next instant, an ice crystal dozens of meters wide slammed into Volibear and smashed him back down to the ground.

"Who is that?!"

Volibear shook his head. His braids whipped around as his body expanded, growing even larger. Then he raised his head and roared furiously at the sky.

A holy and beautiful white-haired woman stood shoulder to shoulder with Lissandra, staff in hand, her expression solemn.

It was Janna.

She had used her wind magic to trap Volibear, but Volibear shattered it with a single swipe of his claws. Before this, in Noxus, even LeBlanc had been unable to do anything to Janna's wind barrier.

That alone showed just how powerful Volibear really was.

And from what they had just said, it sounded like...

this bear had actually grown weaker over the years?

Was it because of the wounds covering his body?

Janna didn't know.

"One of Logan's people?" Lissandra glanced at Janna and spoke softly after a moment.

"I'm Logan's goddess," Janna replied seriously. Then she lifted her hand and shook the staff she held. Terrifying wind pressure, carrying snow, storm, and lightning, crashed down toward the earth. The ground around Volibear caved in and shattered, yet Volibear still stood unmoving where he was.

"You came alone?" Lissandra attacked at the same time Janna did. Frost and storm gathered together and became a blizzard, howling toward Volibear with bone-cutting force.

"I also notified Swain, but I don't know if he'll make it," Janna answered. Then she asked, "What, the two of us still can't beat him?"

"Beat him..." Lissandra gave a bitter smile and shook her head.

"With just the two of us, even holding him back will be difficult. We need one more god," she told Janna.

Janna was shocked by that answer.

She couldn't sense Volibear's full strength, but she could sense Lissandra's.

The power contained inside Lissandra was about twice Janna's own.

And even so, she still couldn't stand against that bear?

If Lissandra knew what Janna was thinking, she would only nod and say yes.

That was right.

She really had grown much stronger over the years. She now had the power to fight Volibear. She was no longer the woman whose eye had been clawed out in a single strike by him.

And Volibear really had grown somewhat weaker because of the Void's corruption and his own wounds.

But the problem was that this bear would only grow stronger once battle stirred his blood.

This bear truly became more ferocious the longer he fought. The more he fought, the stronger he grew.

In the entire Freljord, the only one who could confidently suppress Volibear was Ornn.

"Then what do we do?"

"We do everything we can. Once things are resolved on Udyr's side and he gets here, then there will be three of us," Lissandra said calmly.

Janna nodded, but when she lowered her head to look at Volibear, her body trembled slightly.

How to put it...

She felt like she and Volibear overlapped too much.

This bear was covered in lightning, but his control over wind was no weaker than hers. Janna called herself the goddess of wind, and now she had come face to face with a true storm.

This...

was a challenge.

Watching the battle on Ursine Mountain in the distance, Logan unconsciously swallowed, the corner of his mouth twitching.

Damn.

Scary. Really scary.

Janna and Lissandra had intercepted Volibear on Ursine Mountain, and even from this distance, Logan could sense what was happening in the sky far away.

And beyond just using his control over the elements to sense magical aura, he could also see with his own eyes the constant flashes of lightning, walls of wind, and forests of ice spikes.

Battles between demigods could remake the world itself. In only this short span of time, nearly half the mountain peak had already been sheared away, and the entire mountain had been turned into an ice sculpture.

Janna and Lissandra had held Volibear back, but with the Ursine shaman's help, the Ursine had already crossed the Ice Sea.

Even now, Logan could see dense clusters of black dots surging toward the Freljord side.

Logan watched the charging Ursine and felt his body start to heat up.

It had really been a long time since he'd fought.

Especially this kind of fight—the kind where people could actually die.

Logan didn't seek slaughter, but every now and then, he really did feel the urge to fight. Maybe it was the Wolf's trial pushing him. Or maybe it was just him. He wanted to know where his limits really were.

And the Ursine were not weak.

Every Ursine warrior could use lightning, and all of them were immensely strong and physically powerful.

You could even see it from an old cinematic: Sejuani, using her full strength and wielding a True Ice weapon, could kill several Ursine. Olaf could also fight Ursine on his own. But for ordinary Winter's Claw warriors, it took four or five of them working together to handle a single Ursine. And if that was true for them, then for normal humans it was even worse.

The Trifarian Legion? The Dauntless Vanguard?

Put them up against the Ursine...

Heh.

Against the followers of a demigod, they'd probably shatter the moment they made contact, like a knife going through tofu.

In the whole Freljord, probably only Lissandra's core Frostguard could really stand against the Ursine.

The Hearthblood couldn't do it either, because Ornn had never granted them power. After all, Ornn had never truly treated himself as their god. He saw himself as an old craftsman. His relationship with the Hearthblood was more like that of a master and apprentices, or simply friends.

Ornn was an old tsundere.

On the surface, he acted like he didn't need the Hearthblood, but when Volibear killed them, Ornn flew into a rage and fought his brother, wounding him.

After that, Ornn never came out again, shutting himself inside his cave and blaming himself for the loss of Hearth-Home.

Ornn...

No.

Now wasn't the time to think about Ornn.

Shaking his head, Logan threw those distracting thoughts aside. He didn't have time to let his mind wander anymore.

Because he could already hear the Ursine roaring.

"For the glory of the Ursine!"

"Fight, slaughter, awaken the old ways!"

"For Valhir!"

"Bring war to all!"

Logan narrowed his eyes and estimated the force. There were probably around three hundred Ursine, and among them were several enormous ones whose size completely dwarfed the others around them. Some of them even had mounts, and behind them lumbered all kinds of strange, oversized beasts.

Lifting a hand, Logan brushed the hair from beside his ear and tied it up. His somewhat long black hair was gathered into a small black bun at the back of his head. It obviously couldn't compare to Jinx's huge blue buns, but Logan had plenty of hair himself, and the little bun looked pretty good with the way it bounced.

Then Logan extended both hands to either side and gave them a sharp shake.

Elemental mastery.

Wind swordsmanship.

At once, a wind sword formed in each of his hands.

Then, after taking a deep breath, Logan stepped forward and planted one foot onto the frozen surface of the Ice Sea.

Behind him lay Sejuani's Winter's Claw. The elderly and the children of the tribe had no way to withstand the Ursine. The main force still hadn't returned, and neither Lissandra nor Janna could help him right now.

Because the war in the distance was even more terrifying. The clash of three gods sounded like the charge of a thousand armies.

So for now,

Logan could only rely on himself.

At that thought, Logan smiled.

He wasn't really worried about dying.

Lamb liked to act tough, but she was softhearted. She kept saying there was no way she'd resurrect Logan in Spirit Blossom again, but if something really happened to him—if he really died—then Lamb would definitely bring him back.

After all...

Ahri would hound her relentlessly if she didn't.

"Then I'll hold the line alone."

His arms tensed.

Both swords swept out with all his strength.

Sword wind blasted across the space in front of him.

And Logan broke into a run, charging alone toward the Ursine army.

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