“Mount Everest? Small time. Though, uh, pneumonia was interesting...”
(faceclaim: Tony Regbo)
Ezreal is twenty-five, profusely British, has visited every continent including Antarctica and is close to having put his two feet on the ground of each nation spanning the Earth. After his parents, two celebrated archeologists, disappeared during a routine excavation in the mountains of Chile, Ezreal has been left their estate and uses it to fund a life of globetrotting. In his eyes, every ruin and local village has history spanning tens if not hundreds of generations-- and he’ll be damned until he experiences all of it.
Or until he keels over from an incurable, exotic disease-- whichever comes first.
Though raised in a hamlet on the outskirts of London, England, Ezreal hated trips into the city and much preferred the mossy hills and cobblestone junctures of the manor’s backyard. His parents, loving yet absent, left him in the care of a string of nannies and housemaids (most quit, for reasons Ezreal claims to know nothing about) until old enough to be sent to the four brick walls of England’s worst prison.
An all-boys boarding school.
He eluded it; ran from it; ducked underneath covers and slipped out of windows at the cover of night from it-- but Ezreal could not escape firm education. No matter what he did he would find himself a fresh and peppy face in front of a teacher or the disciplinary council. Eventually, Hell concluded: and made him valedictorian. He did not attend college.
That is not to say Ezreal hates learning-- he hates learning so long as it’s dry erase on whiteboards and pencil-led testing. In fact, he is filled with passion for learning if it’s getting dirty in excavations and running his hands over ancient murals. His here now, then gone outlook on life has made him unattractive to even the most lenient of archeology institutions, but with favors pulled through his parents’ mutual success in the small industry has at least shown him opportunities for employment doing what he loves...
... should he have had ever shown up to the interview.
in a dark alleyway, he is hunched over a mans body. flesh between his teeth and blood dripping from his chin, soaking his hands, splattered across his chest. he eats undisturbed, until the explorer accidentally stumbles upon the mess. head snapping in the boy's direction, eyes bright, ears pointed up to pick up any sudden sound or movement made. a low growl sounding from the back of his throat; watery, and wet from a mouthful of 'dinner'.
Out of anything, perhaps “disturbing a violent were-creature” was at the top of things to avoid while scouring the chem-soaked streets of Zaun.
At first Ezreal is frozen, then his head contorts to the side and elicits haggard gagging. The sight isn’t what does it-- it’s the stench-- but he nevertheless feels his stomach roll and his extremities numb. Gods above, this place is horrid. How does anyone...?
He shakes his head. Nevermind. What matters now is not being next on the menu.
Ezreal glances at Warwick, careful to avoid direct eye contact. He puts his hands up and begins to walk away steadily and slowly, keeping a pace he ordinarily reserved for the times he’s met face to face with wild tigers in Kumungu.
Now that he thinks about it, now isn’t so different. Except that the wild animal in question could eviscerate him to a degree more cruel than any tiger.
An uneasy grin slips him. Let’s not dwell on that.
She says nothing; his words & the crackle of her campfire are all that fill the cracks of an otherwise silent night. It will be another moment ( or two, but who’s counting? ) before she knits a brow, relaxes her glare, and relinquishes his collar.
“ Stay. “
It’s a quick turn on the heel and a few steps from him to the blade, but Riven still makes haste. She is there and back, and now offers up her weapon so that he could better glimpse the crescent-like curve that defined the runesword. Only one symbol was visible; the second was only half-way on, the rest, never to be seen lest she brought back its phantom body with her ki.
“ What do you think? “ Now, running her hand along the flat side. “ The dark stone we’ve mined from the mountains up north has proven to make the finest weapons. It is…difficult to encounter since Noxus has seized its territory and made it private. “
“There was a time when it was public?”
In an instant Ezreal acquiesces his words, fumbling for his satchel and reaching inside. The entire length of his arm squeezes between the mouth of the leather, a great deal longer than the bag’s apparent shape. He winces when a finger crosses sharp glass before finally hitting rock.
“Here,” he says, pulling it out. Against the backdrop of her campfire, the pieces are a blend between black tar and blood red. “Don’t ask where I found them.”
Wouldn’t be the first time Ezreal told someone that. Sure wouldn’t be the last time either.
“Uhmm.” He looks at her, searching for something he doesn’t find. “This means you won’t try to kill me, right? Can I sit down?”
He may or may not be slightly winded and a little weak in the knees.
watches the artifact hit the floor, the metal making a sharp 'clang!' as it warbles & rolls. her eyes will move from it to him, smirk beginning to grow. " looks like this will sell nicely. "
“Hey, uh, I understand this is a shakedown under duress, but can I make a last request to not sell any relics you find on my dissected body?”
Ezreal resisted the urge to murmur something profane under his breath. This always happened when Ne’Zuk’s gauntlet wasn’t channeling the right amount of energy…
“Consider it my… verbal final rites. Is that a thing? It has to be. Your sword’s exceptionally pointy, did you know that? Noxtoraa stone is rather the material.”
Just how long was he having to stall for? Was the gauntlet finally deciding now was the time for Death to take him? A bead of sweat fell down Ezreal’s cheek. He hated being about to die.
There is no purpose in disclosing the abilities blessed upon those he casts down with Mist and raise them up in their body’s shadow - should they survive their ascension, the knowledge and ability of undeath come upon them in silence, awed and humbled by the Choir that then flows what blood once stained. And should they not be hallowed in their Harrowing, and perish into dust for the earth of the Isles - that is none of his concern.
Death blesses those it chooses. Death cradles those it desires. It is the unstoppable force, it is the immovable object.
“So you believe that I am foolish,” he responds, passing his staff to the mist beside him, elevated in thinning air so he may cross his withered arms. Perhaps it is a demonstration of power - that no mortal who can bear the ash and grit of the Mist can stand before him and be considered worthy by that alone. He has seen mortals. He has seen how the light withers from their eyes. “that I would disclose such important knowledge to a child.”
He does not care for his age. He is a child, as he is alive - a babe from soft cloth compared to the history of these islands. Even compared to him, long dead yet not left to his tomb.
“I may enlighten you to the abilities I possess if you continue to dwell upon these islands,” he says, hand curling near his chest in a half-threat, though regarding him with a shred of curious thought, though he may be loathe to admit. He’ll word it better. “If the Mist does not devour you whole. How are you so… animated.”
Karthus says it like it’s a disease. Humans. How terrible.
Well, it isn’t as if the dead are any easier on the eyes.
Child to you, man to me, Ezreal would had quipped should he hadn’t known these immortal types as well as he does. Immortals, no matter what flavor of ascendancy, always find themselves in the belief of their superiority, even if they sacrificed their humanity, other’s humanity, or any moral right in the book to be able to watch the world wither while they did nothing about it. Cruise control for the powerful. Ezreal isn’t bitter.
“Think it would’ve killed me on the way in if it wanted me,” he says. “Cathedral of souls isn’t high on anyone living’s vacationing lists.” Except mine.
Ne’Zuk’s gauntlet hums almost imperceptibly in the cool, wet air that becomes the Shadow Isles, a film of invisible energy separating its owner and the ghastly tendrils of undeath. Without it Ezreal wouldn’t have made it further than the beach-- his case for that had been the ship’s captain that brought him here.
“I don’t think you’re a fool, not anymore.” He glances up to Karthus’s face again, having done a secondary scan of the area. If Karthus goes for the roar-and-chasing, Ezreal can blink to a toppled pillar and, with some luck, hook himself through a dilapidated hole in the cathedral ceiling.
He smiles. “But if you’re not intent on killing me right now, would it hurt to answer a question?”
“You’re Karthus, aren’t you? This cathedral... what’s the Choir? The Mist? Or something else?”
The journals of dying men are, if nothing else, hard to source.
The way he watches him irritates Karthus. It is not fear he longs for, but a moment of respect - acknowledgement of who he is, beyond the moniker lich. Perhaps he should not expect such from mortals, believing their voices could never crawl above a whisper in the wake of one from the Mist - but it still reaches a nerve he thought he didn’t have.
How terrible it is to have an ego.
He silences the growing agitation like pinching a candle’s light. Karthus still does not enjoy the presence of the tomb raider.
“That which strengthens my existence is not yours to take,” he says, more plainly than he thought he might, feeling irritation peak at the back of his throat and curling around his words, like a snarl. He narrows his eyes down upon the boy. “Neither is it yours to guess. What joy do you derive from asking such things?”
Ezreal wonders for a moment whether to offer Karthus the truth or not-- he’s learned that he’s better with truthiness than lying, but these sepulcher halls are more cramped and ruined than on his first scan through, and they usually dropped talking and went straight for the roaring and chasing after he told them the truth.
Then again, his experience with the undead were the gibbering, mindless remnants of sorcerers concerned with protecting their artifacts long after their catacombs were lost to local knowledge and themselves none more than brittle bone and ash. The Shadow Isles are more than different-- it’s extremely dangerous.
And there isn’t a bigger hoard waiting for him than in somewhere extremely dangerous.
So Ezreal looks Karthus in the eye, one hand over his gauntlet and the other pointed across and says flatly, “Was worth a try.”
“Sometimes on the first threat they drop everything and tell me where it is because their next trick is trying to claw my eyes out or fry me open with dark magic.” His eyes flicker to the cobble walls beyond Karthus, disused and miserable as the cathedral’s foundation. Then they’re back at him and Ezreal shrugs.
Rustle, rustle… the movement is sporadic. Twitchy, even. One could mistake it for a small brush animal searching the bushes for the last bit of summer fruit. Had this been the case, she’d have written it off time ago, keeping to her roast with her hum still in her throat.
Rustle, rustle…
She throws her dagger towards the spot she last heard it. Her blade would have been drawn & at the intruder’s throat had his strangled yelp and subsequent appearance not been quite silly.
Still. The glare remains fixed on her face as she assesses him. Changes only when he mentions noxtoraa, the likes of which raise both brows and loosen her frown into more of a thin line.
‘ could he have…did he find the pieces i broke off so long ago? ‘
“ Noxtoraa is not easy to come across unless you’re going around and dismantling the gates above Noxian territory. “ Stated flatly, she makes her way closer to the stranger until her fingers curl around the underside of his collar. He didn’t seem dangerous, but looks could deceive.
“ State your business. “
Ezreal knows that, pound for pound, this could’ve gone much worse and a lot better.
Good thing? He’s alive, even after the dagger ripped through the air and almost landed square between his arm and his sleeve should he not have instinctively ducked past it. Bad thing? He’s not two sentences in and he has the sinking sensation he’s bargaining for his life.
Usually he managed at least five or six before it came to that.
“Yes, well you see-- that’s why I’m interested in your...” He looks at her blade for effect, then back to her. “Weapon. Rare that it is to see noxtoraa in person that aren’t the walls of Noxus Prime.”
Or a Noxian guillotine, but Ezreal wouldn’t claim to know anything about that. He instead smiles coolly, almost as if he is reminiscing, not at all smug or knowing-- something he had practiced over the years in how to be less of an insufferable git when faced with any amount of danger or threat. Now he’s just a git with a lick of charm.
“I’m Ezreal,” he says. “An explorer. It looks as if you do a lot of moving around, too.”
He stares at the length of her arm and how it isn’t budging. Right. Bargaining for his life. He knows that song and dance.
“The noxtoraa is in my bag. I keep it with me as it’s not very obstructive compared to other relics. If you, uh, want to see it, could you let go of my collar and I’ll do the honors?”
It has been seven years since Ezreal purloined the second gauntlet of Na’Zuk from the maw of his Shuriman tomb and seven years that have sped past without news of either the first gauntlet or the possibility of his parents having escaped the ruins alive. The first gauntlet’s whereabouts have become something of an obsession for the so-called Prodigal Explorer (and how loathe he is to that title now, having been exposed one too many times to his city’s borderline fetish for titles), unceasing, unsolved, when there is nothing he despises more than a mystery that stays that way.
Seven years he’s struggled with what has amounted to a challenge he hasn’t won.
True to his nature, Ezreal hasn’t given up, but the wound has festered in the last year or so when it appears that he’s all but fully understood the limitations of the gauntlet he does have. Ne’Zuk was a master craftsman that adored his tools, but was no fool-- he knew that his artifacts would be treasured and even sought after by hellions and thieves long after he was buried, and did what he could to make both tomb and artifact impregnable.
Although Ezreal won’t admit it, it mostly amounts to dumb luck that he managed to discover the spoken Shuriman tongue to unlock his gauntlet before putting it on-- he doesn’t want to think what the ruins grounds might’ve looked like if it were marked by electrified Ezreal paste.
Arcane mastery, short-field teleportation, he can only imagine the possibilities if both gauntlets were reunited.
So where did the other one go?
Therein lies the rub, doesn’t it? The ruins were traversed by somebody before Ezreal-- before even his parents. But both gauntlets belonged to the same sanctum, or so it looked-- so why leave the other one behind when they could’ve snatched both?
Maybe Ezreal isn’t looking for someone. Maybe someone’s looking for him.
Or they teleported off a cliff somewhere unmentionable and died tragically. He’s still got to account for others not having his brand of dumb luck.
Ezreal much preferred the sanctimony-- however deadly-- of a humid jungle than the stuffy claustrophobia that were the streets of Piltover.
At least in the jungles he’d be allowed fresh air.
“No, good sir, do not take that machete with you,” a nasally frump answered him, the rims of their glasses flicking at him then to the side. “Take it up with the Customs Major.”
“The Customs Major? Who in the...” Ezreal grasped at the air. “I went to Kumungu and now we’ve a Customs Major? What else? Barkeep Major? Banker Major?”
The secretary shot him a searching look, then pointed to the hall adjacent.
“First office on the right, don’t take the luggage outside of this--”
He was already there.
Frosted glass. Mahogany (Ezreal knew the kind-- Ionian hardwood, just from the slips on the grain) divider and a gold knob on the door. Emblazoned on the glass in italic bold-- MS. SENSA KAIRI, CUSTOMS MAJOR. His brows knit as he flexed his hand over the knob and let himself in. He knew that name, too, and the memory wasn’t fixed with pleasantries.
“Hi, Ezreal.”
First thought? Kairi’s really filled out since she almost threw me over the Sun Gates. The second? I can’t believe I’m looking at someone that almost threw me over the Sun Gates and she’s smiling at me.
He tries to match the smile, but it’s lopsided and fades away quickly. Instead Ezreal puts his luggage on a table beside her desk-- “Right there, Ezreal, open it up and take everything out, uh-huh.” -- and he doesn’t notice at all that he’s gone from smiling to neutral and now barely stifling a grimace and they’ve barely looked at each other.
“How was your last trip?” She fixed a cinnamon stick (also an Ionian import, he was first to note) in her mouth. “Nearly die? Bring back artifacts to the golden boy’s hoard?”
Yep, not stifling anymore.
“Customs Major,” Ezreal rolled in his mouth. It tasted vile and like concrete, the kind of stuff that Piltovan masons loved but was awful to the touch and made of gummy refuse unimaginable. “Can I ask a question first? I’m going to ask a question first: why does this city have a Customs Major?”
As if delighted by his derision, Kairi motioned him closer and clapped her hands together.
“Oh, I’ve got the perfect thing for this,” she said, swiveling on her chair behind her and stopping at the rolled up pull-down before her. Then she took the ring and let it down, chiming about how she knew how much he loved these.
A map. Ezreal stared at it, recognizing it the official Map of Piltover and Surrounding Territories, the lovechild of that sniveling cartographer’s guild of whom never, ever avoided hearing about how they had their heads stuck up their--
“You see, Ezreal, you can be the Grandmaster Explorer all you like, but we of Piltover have a problem. A simple problem, at its surface-- a smuggling problem.”
Don’t tell him she was going to...
Her mouth flapped open again, not even waiting for a quip. Ezreal’s eyes threatened to roll back into his head. She was going to monologue.
Like a villain ripped straight of fictionalized annals detailing Ezreal’s own exploits, Kairi sneered something vain and chortled along to her own deluge of self-satisfaction, as if she had waited for this very moment, planned each syllable, practiced every note and even knew the wagging, pointing motions.
Astoundingly, Ezreal managed to hear none of it. Sure, he heard her-- with bitterness, too-- but with the state he was at he recalled nothing and she might as well been overacted background noise. By the time he realized it was over, his eyes had strayed to every corner of her office that was blessed to not contain her persons.
“Sorry, Kairi,” he replied, nodding as if he’d understood a word she just said, “But I don’t put a price on my artifacts, I’m not in cahoots with Bilgewater thugs, I want to get out of here as quickly as I can and I deserve a machete of all things to not get hung up in customs and no, for the last time, I’m not going on a date with you again you almost threw me off the Sun Gate, you know that? I didn’t even have my gauntlet on at the time and barely survived--”
He went pale as a ghost.
“Oh, Gods.” He smacked himself in the face. “I’m monologuing too, aren’t I?”
“Listen.” Not even glancing in her general direction, he packed up his luggage. She was saying something to him, and by word he didn’t have to hear it to know she was furious. “Listen,” he repeated, to no avail.
“I’m going to port out of here with my luggage and you can take up your Customs Major title with my estate, okay? I’ve got adventure to be getting to.”
Pressure built in his cheeks, then his arms-- and finally, Ezreal was gone.
