Arcane: The Gods Want Me to Pick a Route

"Don't be so absolute, Aatrox."

"First, let me introduce my, "

"I don't care who you are at all, worm!" Aatrox snapped back, wild with irritation.

Logan paused, said nothing, and reached for the cloth sack sitting beside the bed.

"Wait! What are you doing?"

Logan still didn't answer. He simply lifted Aatrox with one hand and opened the mouth of the bag with the other.

"Let's talk, let's talk! Worm, I'm willing to talk now. Come on then, what's your name?"

Aatrox shouted in a panic.

Only then did Logan stop. He looked down at Aatrox in annoyance.

The eye on the blade was fixed on him, and it was full of fear.

It was a little surprising, honestly.

Aatrox's lines were dramatic as hell, but the conviction behind that drama was never fake. A former god-warrior who had gone mad after losing his faith was basically a walking catastrophe.

To most people, Aatrox felt like the kind of warrior who feared nothing. He hated the Aspects, rejected demigods, and wanted, with all the madness in him, to return the suffering he had endured back to the world. His will should have been ironclad. There shouldn't have been anything he feared.

But in reality, there was.

After thinking about it, Logan figured Aatrox feared two things.

The first was Shurima. He feared the day Setaka might return and ask him why Shurima was gone, and he would have no answer.

The second was being sealed once more inside that lightless sword.

What kind of feeling was that?

Logan remembered reading a post once that said even the strongest person would break if you locked them in a pitch-black room long enough. Some would come out on the edge of madness.

Take away someone's senses. Take away their sense of time. Starve their mind of information and feedback. Trap them in emptiness, and eventually they collapse.

But what Aatrox had gone through was even worse.

First, there was time. A thousand years of imprisonment, maybe more, enough on its own to shatter a person's will and drive them insane.

Then there was sensation.

A human trapped in solitary confinement could at least still move. They could cry, scream, curse, vent some part of what they were feeling.

But Aatrox?

He was a sword.

When he was sealed away, his awareness stayed painfully clear, yet he was trapped inside a black-red void. He couldn't see the outside world. He couldn't even fall asleep. The voices of the Void gnawed at him and shrieked endlessly in his mind.

And in that state, he couldn't even cry.

In Aatrox's own story, there was a line that went like this:

"My limbs and muscles no longer obey me. I cannot breathe. I am suffocating. The pressure keeps rising. My chest and my limbs slowly go numb. I want to scream, tear off my own face, howl and sob, but I am trapped. I cannot move. I cannot move."

That alone was enough to prove that being sealed was absolutely something Aatrox feared, and it also helped Logan understand why Aatrox had backed down so fast.

The Ascended might be powerful, might have transcended ordinary mortals, but they had still begun as humans. Strip away the power granted by the Sun Disc, and at their core, they were still human.

Nasus had chosen to flee from the collapse of the Shuriman Empire.

Renekton had been trapped in darkness, mocked and tormented by Xerath until he descended into madness.

Azir, when given his one chance to return, chose Sivir.

The Ascended were simply humans with incredible will, unshakable beliefs, and tremendous strength.

And there was one thing Logan knew.

The stronger someone was, the more catastrophic their collapse became, because when they finally broke, their entire inner world came crashing down all at once.

Thinking that way, Logan suddenly felt a little sorry for Aatrox.

"So," he said, softening his tone after a sigh, "are you willing to talk to me properly now?"

"What do you want to talk about?" Aatrox muttered. There was still arrogance in his voice, but less madness than before.

"Anything, really. Aatrox, you only got out not that long ago, right? You were sealed in a sword for all those years without talking to anyone. Don't you want someone to talk to?"

"Give me your body, and I'll talk with you all you want," Aatrox said with a buzzing tremor through the blade.

Before Logan could answer, Aatrox started muttering to himself again.

"But in the end, you worm, you just want my power, don't you?"

"You're not answering, so I guessed right. Don't put on that good-guy face for me, it makes me sick. Humans are the filthiest things in this world. Yes, the filthiest, the most disgusting, the most damned, the most deserving of, "

As he kept talking, Aatrox started spiraling again. The greatsword bounced on Logan's thigh, and he began howling all over again.

Logan looked at him with a strange expression, then found himself wanting to laugh.

Aatrox, deep down, was actually a colossal chatterbox.

The Rift's number one trash-talker. He'd even cursed out Ornn before. Out of all the top-lane champions, maybe Jax counted as one of the few he hadn't really insulted?

"Aatrox, don't forget, you used to be human too."

That one sentence cut him off cold.

The greatsword jerked violently, then tried to leap up in fury, only for Logan to press it down hard and hold it there.

"I'm curious," Logan said. "I remember the Darkin are supposed to be able to use blood magic to tempt and corrupt people. But ever since I let you out, all you've done is rage and leak blood energy. You don't seem to have done much of anything else."

That question instantly put Aatrox in a dark mood.

The Darkin being masters of blood magic, Logan had no idea which bastard came up with that assumption. Since when did every Darkin have to be great at blood magic? Did not using blood magic stop Aatrox from chopping people apart?

"I disdain those cheap, lowly tricks," Aatrox said. "I was once a warrior. I have my own pride."

"Pride, even while wearing a body stitched from rotting flesh and severed limbs?"

"The hell would you know? You worm who hasn't even lived a few decades, what could you possibly understand? I'll admit you are strong. For a human to possess this kind of power, in our era every Ascended would have called you a genius. But you know nothing. You know absolutely nothing about this world!"

Aatrox sneered, and while he was at it, he started mocking Logan again.

"What makes you think I know nothing about this world?" Logan interrupted him calmly. "There's something I'm curious about. If Setaka knew that she had entrusted Shurima to you, and in your hands it fell apart and vanished, until even now, thousands of years later, what once was has disappeared beneath the sands, how do you think she'd feel?"

"The Empress never entrusted Shurima to me. She entrusted it to Nasus! But that dog, him, he abandoned Shurima! I had no interest in the Darkin War. If he'd just stepped out and taken charge, everyone would have listened to him, but instead he handed the Empress's weapon over to a girl. Wait, how the hell do you know all this?"

Aatrox's eye widened in shock.

"I know the rest of that mess too," Logan said. "Nasus was deceived and gave the weapon to a girl, and that girl, "

"Don't say her name!"

"I'll kill her! I'll kill her! I'll break her bones, cut off her head, drink her blood, eat her heart, I'll kill her, Aspect of Twilight, you deserve to die!"

The moment Logan brought up that unnamed girl, Aatrox lost control completely.

This time, even threatening to seal him again couldn't calm him down.

Logan sighed. Left with no other choice, he spent a bit of the emotion value he had only just managed to save up.

In an instant, his hair turned white, flowing all the way to his waist. A beautiful lotus mark bloomed at the center of his brow, pale pink and white, and a gentle spiritual force spread out from him.

His hand tightened around the hilt. The spiritual power of the Spirit Blossom flowed into the center of the blade. Pink-white motes settled onto the blood-veins running through the sword, and as the two forces neutralized each other, the crimson color actually began to fade.

The eye on the greatsword, which had been wholly consumed by madness and chaos, gradually cleared. Aatrox's curses and snarling grew quieter until, at last, he calmed down completely.

"How did you do that?" Aatrox asked. He sounded genuinely shocked now.

The voices of the Void had disappeared. Even the negative emotions in his heart seemed to have eased.

Guilt. Anger. Unwillingness.

It all seemed to have been washed away by this human's power.

What remained in Aatrox's heart was only a hollow, bewildered emptiness.

"I understand this world far better than you think," Logan said, ignoring the question. "From where I'm standing, if you keep going like this, you're going to regret it."

"You were a hero, Aatrox. It was because you and the others drove back the Void in Icathia that Runeterra has remained stable until now. Once, humanity admired you. They respected you. But now they curse you. Bring up your kind in Shurima today and all you'll hear back is hatred."

"Doesn't that bother you?"

"Bother me? How is that my fault?!" Aatrox shot back. His voice was still thunderous, but the madness was gone. To be fair, the guy was just naturally loud.

"Human lives are short. Generation after generation, they forgot who saved them. Forgot who protected them. That is their fault! If I make them feel my pain in return, what is wrong with that?"

Clear-headed now, Aatrox had also regained the ability to think. He let out a cold laugh and raised the sword upright to stare Logan in the eye.

"I know what you're trying to say, but I will not let past glory bind me. Back when Shurima still stood, I could endure the corruption of the Void because my sun still existed, my faith still existed. But now Shurima is gone. Azir destroyed it with his own hands. He trusted that wretch, and everything that happened is his fault!

"All those useless old memories, what's gone is gone. Now all I can think about is revenge, only revenge! That is far more real than any glory from the past. There is nothing wrong with sinking into madness and self-destruction. Logan, was it? You are not me. You have never lived what I lived, never suffered what I suffered, so what gives you the right to lecture me here?"

Logan said helplessly, "I'm not trying to lecture you. I just don't want you to regret it later."

"Regret it? Heh. I will never regret it."

Aatrox's voice turned proud again.

"The only thing I regret is that I didn't have the resolve to destroy myself completely back then. I couldn't truly kill myself. I couldn't destroy the sword I became. And that turned me into this pathetic thing, driven mad by slaughter on one side, yet still clinging to memories of old glory on the other. But from this day forward, I won't be like that anymore. I will embrace oblivion, until the very end, until the world itself is gone. So if you're trying to, "

"What if Shurima still exists?" Logan suddenly asked, looking straight at him.

"If you're trying to control this, wait. What did you say?"

Aatrox stopped mid-rant and stared at Logan with wide eyes.

"I said Shurima still exists. Azir is alive. Nasus is alive too."

"That's impossible! Every Ascended, every Darkin, they all saw Azir die with their own eyes. They saw Xerath stab him and steal his power!"

With Setaka's bloodline seemingly gone, and with no line of followers left to rally behind, the Darkin had gradually abandoned themselves and chosen destruction.

In truth, after the Ascended were tainted by the Void and became Darkin, they had not immediately gone mad. They had kept resisting the voices in their heads the whole time. They had been mighty god-warriors. They had beaten back the very source of the Void and reduced it to ruin. How could they have turned into lunatics just because they were touched by Void power and burdened by a few whispering voices?

There was history behind it.

Between the Void War and Azir's reign over Shurima, countless years had passed. Setaka was Azir's ancestor's ancestor. During all those years, Aatrox, Rhaast, and the others had continued to protect Shurima.

They had not been mad.

They believed that as long as the Empress's bloodline endured, the sun would never go dark. They had been willing to follow Azir, but his sudden death made the sun inside them fall as well.

And once there was no more light, no more direction, that was when they became what the world later called the Darkin.

So now this human was saying that Shurima still stood, and Azir still lived?

"Azir is alive," Logan said with a nod. "And even if he weren't, Setaka's bloodline still continues."

"That's impossible. How could that be...?" Aatrox couldn't believe it.

Logan went on. "Her name is Sivir. She's the only remaining bloodline of the Shuriman royal house. Her bloodline is even purer than Azir's, because she hasn't received the power of an Ascended yet. And there's something else, seeing her might actually make you happy. She carries Setaka's weapon, and she can wield it perfectly."

The current Aatrox had not yet become the butcher of tens of thousands. Later, after slaughtering barbarians and climbing Targon, after truly reaching the point of no return, Aatrox probably wouldn't have shown Sivir any kindness at all.

Logan remembered that Aatrox had a special line for Sivir, something along the lines of, when you wield that crossblade, do you hear Shurima's cries?

He had recognized who Sivir was. He had recognized Setaka's weapon.

But by that point, there had been no turning back for him.

Now, though, things were different.

Because Aatrox's blade was trembling.

He stared at Logan, terrified that the next words out of his mouth would be, I'm kidding.

If that happened, he really would go mad.

"Chalicar... she can use the Chalicar?"

"Yes. She's in Shurima right now. Age-wise, she should be about the same age as me."

"Take me to her! I need to see her with my own eyes. Even if she is of the royal bloodline, if her character is lacking, if her will is weak, then she has no right to wield the Chalicar!"

Aatrox shouted, "Even Azir had no right to wield that weapon!"

"But Aatrox," Logan said suddenly, "what identity do you plan to use when you meet her?"

Aatrox froze.

Then he fell silent.

The eye on the greatsword went blank.

That was right.

What identity was he supposed to use when he faced Setaka's bloodline?

As Setaka's retainer? Her friend? Her guardian?

Or as the leader of the Darkin?

Smiling faintly, Logan said, "I can give you a direction."

"Speak."

"Become my sword, Aatrox," Logan said seriously.

Aatrox said nothing, but contempt appeared in his eye again.

After all that, wasn't this still just another human trying to claim him?

Logan didn't care about the mockery in Aatrox's gaze. He continued calmly, "You made terrible mistakes. No matter how many excuses you come up with, Shurima's fall does have something to do with you. But in the end, the true cause wasn't really you.

"The ones who truly pushed Shurima toward destruction were the Void, the Aspects, and Xerath. You want to see Sivir. You want to see Azir. As you are now, you don't have that right. But we can go together."

"To be honest, yes, I do need your power, Aatrox. In the future I'm going to fight the Void, the Aspects, and Xerath. And those people happen to be your enemies too, aren't they?"

Thoughtfulness appeared in Aatrox's eye.

For once, he didn't immediately reject Logan's words.

Which meant he really had heard him, and was actually considering whether it could work.

Then Logan said quietly,

"Shurima has not truly perished. The cities buried beneath the sands will one day rise again. Its lands and rivers will return one day. Aatrox, you do not have to walk into oblivion. Those voices that torment you, I can silence them for you. And the glory you lost, we can reclaim it together."

The eye on the greatsword locked with Logan's gaze.

The blade hummed and trembled.

Blood energy swirled through the air...

//Check out my P@tre0n for 10 extra free chapters //[email protected]/Razeil0810