Letting Go...Going Home: Chapter 9
Non-Canon Compliant Arcane Fanfic: Warnings for Blood/Gore and such
*For the very few who probably care I am SO SORRY that this took so dang long. Life hit me like a damn truck but I am getting back on track! As always I welcome any constructive criticism*
It was something other people couldn’t really understand, she knew. Something you could only see if you could move with the perversion of Shimmer in your veins like she could.
It was that speed that saved her and Vi’s life.
And it was that speed that showed her the flame turning those who had followed her into charred and blackened husks.
Jinx was almost glad for the roar of the missiles that continued to turn the island into a ruin, because it drowned out the screams of the burning.
She cradled Vi’s fragile form to her chest with every ounce of strength in her body as she hurtled back through the entryway of the prison, stumbling with the shockwave of the first round of explosions and losing her footing as she crossed the threshold.
She turned and landed hard on her side, shielding Vi from the impact, her ears ringing and an all-too-familiar sticky warmth blooming on the side of her head.
Survivors poured into the dark of Stillwater around her, coursing over the bodies of the fallen. The breach Jinx and Ekko had created above showed the sky now choked with smoke and flame, like the eye of a vengeful god staring down at them.
The whole building shook and rubble fell in shifting tides as the deafening terror continued. Jinx tried to rise, still holding Vi, and found her traitorous legs shaky and weak.
“I got her, kid,” a rough but comfortingly familiar voice said.
Sevika leaned down, scooping Vi up easily and letting Jinx hook one weary arm around her shoulder, rising and supporting both sisters at once.
“We gotta move deeper in! Everybody in!” Sevika roared over the din as people continued to rush back.
Jinx leaned on Sevika, groaning from the pain in her head. She looked at the older woman tentatively. “Ekko?”
Sevika frowned. “Last I saw he was flying out into it trying to help his people who had been scouting the perimeter… I don’t know after that. It got too thick to see and I had to get as many in as I could.”
A deep and hungry fear raised its head in Jinx’s mind, hopefully urging her to picture Ekko’s mangled body out there among the carnage. But she threaded her fingers through Vi’s and squeezed her sister’s hand, growling.
The huddled masses moved further and further until they were in the rotunda of the low-security wing. Massive dark steel with encircling rows of cells rose up, but the roof itself, still high above, seemed to be holding steady.
“They don’t seem to be shelling this far back,” Jinx panted, leaning against a wall gratefully and sliding down.
Sevika nodded. “They can’t bring the whole building down. That bitch is brutal, but she’s not stupid. She still needs to come out looking legitimate when all of this is done. Can’t cross the line from taking back control for public safety to extermination.”
Sevika slid next to Jinx and laid Vi’s head in her lap. “They’re softening us up. Then they’ll come.”
Jinx nodded quietly, looking out over the crowded survivors huddling together. Torchlight cast their faces in flickering glimpses of nightmare and pain.
Some seemed only mildly injured—bruises and lacerations of various kinds, ash-blackened clothing and faces, and eyes that would never forget. Others were worse. Much worse.
A Zaunite no older than Jinx and likely even younger lay on his back fifty yards away or so, screaming into bloodied cloth placed in his mouth to bite on while a grizzled older woman wrapped the ruin that was once his left leg to stop him from bleeding out.
Worse were those who would never scream again… lying under anything they could find to cover them in the oppressive dark.
Jinx covered her face with her hands. “I did this. I led them here.” Her shoulders shook. “Look at them. We can’t hold the Noxians back. Not like this.”
Sevika laid a heavy hand on her shoulder. “We don’t have a choice, kid… and before you go painting yourself as the villain, remember. Every fighter here wanted to be here. Some for you, some for Vi, and many for Zaun. You asked your people to fight alongside you and they said yes. So you don’t get to blame yourself, Jinx. We aren’t dead yet.”
Jinx wiped a quiet tear away and smiled.
“Vi is never gonna believe how nice you are when she’s not awake to hear it.”
Sevika scowled, but Jinx could see the small smile in the low light. “Don’t you worry. She’ll be awake soon enough, and we can get back to punching each other.”
Jinx stood. “Not if we don’t figure something out.” She paced back and forth, still trying to ignore the throbbing pain in her head.
Hopefully, more had lived and were scattered in other chambers and floors of the prison. But before her, only twenty or so fighters remained—and almost none of them in good condition.
She heard voices, banging and yelling. And realized with a start that the inmates in this block hadn’t been cleared before the bombardment began. Dirty and bedraggled faces watched from behind bars at the newcomers. Some yelled and demanded release.
Most were just terrified.
Jinx looked at them all, looked back at Sevika still cradling Violet, and took a long, deep breath. Then exhaled slowly.
The shelling had stopped. They were coming.
She walked back to Sevika and hunkered down, kissing Vi’s forehead.
Vi murmured… hands clenching gently, and for a moment Jinx thought she might wake. But not yet.
Jinx cradled her cheek with one hand. “That’s okay, Vi. Take all the time you need, you big lug.”
She looked back at Sevika. “You need to get them out of here. I don’t know how. I don’t know where. But there has to be another way out. Hell, even if you lead them down and stage a defense from there—I don’t know, but there has to be something. You can’t just sit here waiting to die.”
“There’s probably some tunnels or something, sure. But what will you be doing?” Sevika asked.
Jinx stood as Sevika’s face contorted in confusion and then a rage so clearly born of fear for her it was almost enough to make her stop.
Sevika started to rise. “I don’t know what you’re doing, but whatever it is, don’t be fucking stupid.”
Jinx turned like lightning and kicked Sevika’s leg out from under her, dropping her back to her ass hard.
“I need you to do this! I’m not a leader. I’m not a commander. But you are. You can save these people. You… you can save her.” She looked at Vi and sighed.
“I’m Jinx. You’ve been telling me for years I’m a symbol,” Jinx said the last word mockingly but grinned, letting a tear fall. “Time for me to go be one.”
Sevika glared up at her, her breath ragged, her chest heaving. “And what the fuck am I supposed to tell Vi when she wakes up and you’re gone?” she asked quietly.
Jinx grinned. “Tell her I love her.”
And turned from the chamber at a full jog, the light of the breach like a distant beacon as she approached from the dark.
Jinx was many things depending on who you asked:
A terrorist…
Silco’s mad daughter…
The heir to the Eye of Zaun…
But in that moment, letting the Shimmer start to burn in her blood, her senses sharpening, the lethargy and pain in her muscles strangled and forced down as she hurtled toward that distant glow—those weren’t the things that mattered.
She was Isha’s guardian…
Violet’s sister…
And just maybe, if she survived this, she could even be something to Ekko as well.
Thinking of those she loved, Jinx launched herself up the pile of scorched stone and rock, up through the breach into the eye of that angry god, and emerged into the hellscape the Noxians had created.
Devastation reigned.
Massive plumes of smoke choked the air.
Craters the size of ships marred the ground in all directions, the stench of acrid smoke and burning flesh filling her nostrils.
And through the smoke and flame, like the goddess of death herself, marched Ambessa Medarda, at the head of a full contingent of Noxian soldiers, with more following from the shore.
Fear bloomed in Jinx’s heart.
Fear she would never see Vi’s eyes open, or feel Isha’s arms around her neck, or know the feel of Ekko’s lips on her skin again.
But it was for them that she put those fears away.
It was for them that her face stretched into a grin just a bit too wide for her face. And she ran with Shimmer-assisted grace, leaping down across massive bits of fallen stone until she landed in front of the now-blocked entrance to Stillwater itself, sitting on the lip of a barricade, kicking her feet and humming.
The heavy impact of armored boots came to a halt before her, a tall shadow cast over her whole body.
“My, my… I have wondered when we would meet,” a warm voice chuckled that made Jinx’s blood run cold.
Jinx smiled and looked up. Ambessa stood tall and strong, gold war mask glinting in the light, her fearsome chain blades coiled tightly in her grip.
Jinx sprang to her feet so fast the soldiers lined up behind Ambessa seemed to twitch almost as one.
Jinx laughed. “Relax, kiddoes, I’ll behave. I just wanna talk to mommy here.”
She looked at Ambessa and cocked her head to one side. “You wanted to meet me, you coulda just asked. The fireworks are a bit strong for a first date.”
Ambessa was quiet a moment, then threw her head back and laughed. She removed her golden mask, her sharp and clever gaze falling on Jinx like a falcon on a mouse.
“Simply matching your preferred method of communication, my dear. You are, after all, quite well known for your theatrics. Now then, what say you be a good girl and throw down those pistols, and order your surviving fighters outside to do the same? This is over.”
Jinx felt the snarling, hungry darkness rear in her mind and forced it into submission. “No… No, I don’t think so. I’m not big on sharing. I wanna play. Just you. And me. You Noxians are big on the strongest should rule and all that crap. Well! Prove it. You and me. Sister-napping, scheming bitch versus Jinx.”
Ambessa’s grin widened without reaching her eyes. “Now, now, let us remain polite. Your sister was taken as a tool, yes, but I assure you, I could have treated her much worse. Explain to me why I would entertain this clear ploy for time?”
“Because, like it or not, I’m the face of the rebellion, toots. You and your men sweep in and slaughter everyone with your explosions and overwhelming numbers, I’ll be a legend. Oh, especially if you execute me in front of a crowd! All formal and everything. They’ll never stop blowing up buildings in my name. But you crush me one on one? Prove your dominance? You crush their hope”
Ambessa pondered a moment. “Obvious baiting aside, in truth, I have long wondered if you are as good as they make you out to be.” She turned to her soldiers. “If I fall, you return to the ships and leave this land at once. Do I make myself clear?”
As one, the soldiers met shields with spears. A deal struck.
Ambessa dropped her mask and rotated her arms, her heavy chain blades falling into a ready position.
“Come, child. Let us end this.”
Jinx nodded, stepped forward, and placed her hands on her guns.
A breath…
Please let her be slow…
That Jinx was faster was the only reason she didn’t die in the first moments of the fight.
Ambessa’s blade whipped out like a viper, cutting deep into a broken column of stone where her neck had been only a second before.
She danced back as the blades whipped through the air, one slithering past, opening a searing line of agony across her midsection—but not deep enough to cut deeply.
Jinx swore, jumping back, firing a quick volley of shots, only for Ambessa to rotate out, the shield on her arm flaring with a green hiss as the shots dispersed across the runes carved there.
Jinx rotated and moved as a blur up a nearby fallen column and off of it, firing down at Ambessa as she arced overhead.
One shot seared into Ambessa’s calf, and the woman buckled with a hiss of pain as Jinx landed—confidence rushing back for the blink of an eye—until she realized, with horror—
The warlord had faked the pain.
Just as Jinx registered the threat, both blades came down as one, and Jinx barely managed to cross her guns over her head in time, the impact knocking her flat on her back.
Fear and pain washed over Jinx as she tried to catch her breath. The blades were wrenched back, and her guns flew from her grip in pieces.
She tried to force the fuzziness and nausea away, reaching for the knife in her belt—only to have it kicked out of her grip and feel a terrible, crushing weight bear down on her hand. She screamed as something started to break.
“This is the great champion of Zaun?” Ambessa asked those watching, her tone soft with confusion.
Jinx bared her teeth. “You fucking—” Ambessa kicked her in the mouth hard, sending her head back onto the blood-stained stone.
Ambessa leaned down over her, now planting a foot on her chest. “Manners, child. How we leave this world is just as important as how we enter it, and how we conduct ourselves while we are here.”
Jinx laughed, eyes wide with panic, trying to push on the armored boot squeezing the life from her. “Then boy am I screwed.”
Ambessa raised an eyebrow and shrugged, bearing down more.
Jinx tried to hold out, but a wheezing scream ripped from her lungs.
Her vision went dark at the edges and her hearing went fuzzy. Tears of pain ran from her eyes. Somewhere in her mind, she prayed they were going to make it out. She prayed that Violet would know how hard she tried… how badly she wanted to make things right.
Over Ambessa’s shoulder, even though everything else was fuzzy… it was crystal clear when she saw Vi standing there, tall and strong with her big goofy smile, Isha riding on her shoulders waving, and Vander next to them, his eyes warm.
“It’s okay to be afraid, my girl. It’s okay.” His voice comforted her as she started to slip beneath the waves.
In her reverie, Jinx didn’t hear the low rumble and mechanical hum that drew Ambessa’s attention.
She didn’t see the green glow as it rocketed up over the top of Stillwater, dropping toward them like a bird of prey.
But she heard the crack of steel against a jaw—just as she felt the weight suddenly vanish from her chest, letting her breathe through bruised and very likely several broken ribs.
And she heard Ekko’s voice, flat and cold, the eager thrum of his sword bat arcing figure eights through the air, glistening with Ambessa’s blood.
“Hah. The Commander of the Firelights himself! Truly, I am blessed on this day,” Ambessa said, rising to her feet, grinning through blood-stained and broken teeth.
“Come on then. Let’s see if you can end the rebellion here and now, you fucking monster,” Ekko growled.
Ambessa nodded. “It will be my pleasure.”
As she stepped forward, there was a click… a beeping… louder.
Ekko threw himself over Jinx as the entry to Stillwater exploded. And from the chaos, the surviving warriors of Zaun poured forth, bolstered by countless inmates—Topside and Zaun alike all victims of Ambessa’s abuse and treachery.
Sevika strode forward, her arm converted back to the blade. She smiled down at Jinx. “You did good, kid. The wounded are safe, and Vi is with them.” She stared back ahead as Ekko helped Jinx to her feet.
