Chapter Text
The letter arrives with the morning post, sealed with the Talis hammer. It piques Mel’s curiosity right away, but she forebears from indulging that intrigue, the banishment of Jayce Talis being so very recently reversed. She cannot be seen to show favoritism to such an individual, especially given Heimerdinger’s very public and unrepentant indulgence for the boy.
From all accounts he has quietly gone to work at his family’s factory and stayed there, but the death of a Zaunite child still lies at his doorstep. Talis also adamantly denied any knowledge of Heimerdinger’s whereabouts, but Mel detected a lie in his questioning before the council. Nothing that she could pin down, just the vague feeling that he knew more about the professor’s disappearance than he was letting on.
In any case, she allows the envelope to rest in the stack for Elora to open while Mel peruses merchant contracts.
She is halfway through a truly cloying message from Amara – the woman is twice Mel’s age but still leans heavily into ‘girl talk’ as an attempted shortcut to build rapport – when Elora makes a little sound of startlement. “Oh!”
Mel snaps to attention at once. Elora has sat forward, staring at the Talis letter with alarm. Her eyes visibly speed up, dancing down the lines of the page. “What is it?”
“Oh dear. I...I think this is a suicide note.”
“What? From Talis?”
“Yes. He doesn’t outright – wait, no, he does, he outright says it! Oh dear!”
Casting the two pages of the letter into Mel’s outstretched hand, Elora leaps to her feet and races from the room, calling for the guards. Mel stands at her desk, her heart racing and her eyes darting over the handwritten words on the pages.
Then she stops, blinks several time, and restarts the letter.
To: Councilor Mel Medarda
From: Jayce Talis, House Talis
I hope this message finds you well, or at least finds you. I wouldn’t blame you if it winds up discarded, I know I’m still something of a pariah in Piltover, but I hope you’ll read it until the end.
This will be the last you hear from me. As much as I appreciate the Council’s decision to allow me – and my mother – to return to Piltover, I’ve come to the two-fold conclusion that exile is both safer for someone as dangerous as me and also not as permanent a solution as what’s required. I fully absolve the Council, and you, of any responsibility for my fate.
I didn’t feel, however, that I could take my leave without addressing you one last time. You see, I know something about you that you do not, and it didn’t feel right to take that knowledge with me when I go. I understand that you’re unlikely to believe what I have to tell you, but I need to at least try.
There are people in the world who are naturally born with the ability to wield magic; others learn it through careful study; others – let’s call them idiots – try to invent it wholesale and usually get the people around them hurt or killed. You were born with magic, Mel. Not just any magic, either, but the most rare kind: you’re an empath, with the ability to turn the magic of other mages against them. This knowledge was kept from you by your mother. I don’t know all the particulars, but this was the real reason for your banishment from Noxus. There are other magic-users in Noxus called The Black Rose who are looking for you, and your mother sent you away to keep you safe. The Black Rose has either already killed your brother or are about to, believing him to be the child of your mother born with magic. But it’s not your brother. It’s you.
I know all of this must sound insane, and given the source and the circumstances I wouldn’t blame you for disbelieving all of it. All that I’ll ask is, keep your eyes open. If your mother comes to Piltover with a story about needing a weapon to defeat a threat against your family, know this: you are the weapon.
I’m sorry for all the trouble I’ve caused you over the years. Seems to be a bad habit of mine. In another world, you found the trouble charming, but I’m afraid I’ve run out of charm. It feels like I’ve run out of everything. I know I should probably be trying to go home but I can’t figure out how to do that without repeating all of my worst mistakes, so I’m just going to die now. I’m tired.
I wish you the very best. If you can do anything kind to help my mother in this time, I’d appreciate it. You were always so much kinder than anyone knew.
All my love,
Jayce
Elora has come back to stand at Mel’s side, vibrating with anxiety. Mel looks at her blankly, for once in her life at a complete loss as to what to do next.
-o-
The faculty housing of the University of Piltover is some of the finest in the world, boasting views of the campus green and the river beyond.
It is also, annoyingly, up an excruciatingly long staircase.
When he’d been appointed Dean of the College, Viktor had been offered alternate accommodations in student housing on the ground floor out of consideration for his disability. He’d politely turned them down. Too many people already don’t think he belongs in the Dean’s Tower, he isn’t about to agree with them, even if that means making the long trek up these fucking stairs every day.
Certainly, the naysayers had some salient points. Viktor is the youngest Dean ever appointed, almost immediately after graduating from the University himself. He’d been assistant to the former Dean for the majority of his schooling, however, and given the chaos surrounding the turnover after Heimderdinger’s disappearance, simply no one else had known where everything was. Viktor had made sure of it, carefully positioning himself to be the only one besides Heimderdinger who had access to all the basic information necessary to run the University. He simply hadn’t expected to be thrust into the role of Acting Dean so abruptly, nor to ride a social movement aimed at reparations for Zaun into a more permanent position.
A Zaunite as Dean of the College would have been unthinkable only a few years ago, but after a student conducting illicit experiments had caused the death of another Zaunite, suddenly Viktor’s greatest hindrance – besides his body – had become his greatest asset.
Now if he can just convince someone to install a fucking lift.
Reaching the top of the accursed stairs, Viktor pauses for a moment to catch his breath before limping to his front door. Undoubtedly a mountain of letters awaits him: the life of an administrator suits him far less than that of an academic and Viktor spends far less time answering mail than lecturing. He needs an assistant. He’s needed an assistant since the beginning, but he possesses enough political acumen to know that he should absolutely not select one of the promising young Zaunites who have recently been admitted to the University, lest he be accused of favoritism.
Unfortunately he also possesses enough self-awareness to know that he will never, in a million years, tolerate working with some sniveling, self-entitled progeny from one of those same households.
Sure enough, a small mountain of correspondence sits in the little bucket inside his front door. Sighing, Viktor presses one of several buttons on the wall next to the door. The pulley system strung across the ceiling activates, hefting the bucket upwards as he crosses to the icebox in search of fortification. He finds it in the form of a delicate box with multiple compartments containing a meal prepared for him by his housekeeper, a Vastayas woman recommended to him by Councilor Medarda, and also a slim, well-worn journal hidden under old newspapers on top of the icebox.
Limping over to the countertop, Viktor lays out both meals, one for his body and one for his brain. The bento reveals dumplings perfectly calibrated for his delicate stomach, along with ginger slices and perfectly-cooked green beans; the largest benefit to his new position has been the steady diet of nutritious meals. He eats with one hand while the other finds his bookmark and flips open pages of schematic designs.
Technically, he should not have this journal. It, like everything belonging to Jayce Talis, should have been destroyed along with everything else in his apartment. That task had fallen to Viktor, however, and he could not resist the temptation to peruse what had turned so catastrophic. After all, what scientist should not seek to learn from the mistakes of his colleagues?
What he’d found, however, has sustained him through so many long meetings and tedious administrative tasks: a tantalizing glimpse into what Viktor has come to recognize as pure genius. Jayce Talis’ experiments had killed a young girl, rendering him a pariah in their community – a symbol of Piltover’s destructive excess – and despite his instant fascination, Viktor couldn’t possibly have risked his own position in the University by opposing Talis’ banishment.
But by Janna, he has spent so many long hours plumbing the depths of that mind, turning it inside and out and rotating it to view every refraction of light, like Talis himself was one of the mysterious crystals he describes at length in his journal. Like a miser clutching his last coin, Viktor has kept this journal to himself. There is one of his own, of course, where he notates errors – there are few – and extends the thought experiments further, until he feels as though he and Talis might be hunching over the same material.
And yet they are not, and eventually Viktor must put aside the journal with another sigh. It is only a glimpse, after all. Popping his back, he turns to his bucket of letters.
-o-
Only a few miles away but on the other side of a physical river and a spiritual divide that – despite recent social movements – still yawns between the sister cities of Piltover and Zaun, a young girl sits at a makeshift shrine.
The shrine itself is old, constructed out of half-rotted wooden planks bent and shaped into a half-circle to protect from the elements. Under this makeshift bower is a collection of incense, a doll with red hair, and a reverently-centered portrait that might resemble the doll if one was drunk and nearsighted. Powder, with the tip of her tongue caught between her teeth, gingerly situates a new doll on the shelf. It is conspicuously smaller than the first, with hair made from the tail tufts of a golden doodle puppy and an extravagant mustache constructed from broom bristles.
“Sorry, Professor,” Powder mumbles as she props the two dolls against each other’s shoulders. “Don’t dare make ya your own place, in case the Enforcers come back snoopin’. Yer just gonna have to share with Vi. You’d’ve liked each other, I think. Vi was dumb as bricks but she would’ve – ”
A sudden flicker of light and burst of static cuts Powder off. Gasping, she whips around to stare across the room. Far back in the darkened basement, half-deconstructed to disguise it as scrap, a machine stirs to life.
Her eyes wide and fixed on the machine, Powder shouts, “Ekko! The ghost is back!”