Again, and again.

'He'll adjust. How was your visit to old man Grommik?' the dark man said, his visage droughted by electronic boxes and hexagonally formed wall-blocks.


'Barely worthwhile.' he replied. The response was cut from a dryness duplicant of rubbish-bins toiled for not fortnight but perhaps several. 'Grommik's senile- talked a whole lot of garbage...'


'Schematics, survey maps... we should be able to determine the facility's exact coordinates.'


'Let's take out Leksande, first.' and his wrists were outlandishly decorated with stabilizers inset with lcd panels, readings showing statistics requisite for galactic travel.


'But... a lot of this territory is unexplored. Locals talk about the Dusted ones, communities of them, dragons the size of starships.'


'Well that's plainly ridiculous, and not worth even a single percent of mention.' came the stalwart reply. The conversation was diluted by the systematic rainfall dumping buckets of bleakness across the barren city streets. The two men parted ways just then, destined to assimilate this new-found knowledge, and impart with it a gesture of fortitude harkoning back to the ways of black-and-white investigators, whose intriguing cases were once painted graciously upon vacuum-tube televisions encased by imitation wood panelling. 

'Never again...' he said, 'Never again.'


And the streets themselves seemed to be alive. The buildings took on human characteristics. Every window and sculpted concrete wall, the obliqueness of it all, within which activity on a daily basis occurred; individuals mining computer screens for the purpose of data-processing. The rain never stopped then, either, but the people continued on their way down paths of destiny inscribed on the pavement; careless, indicative of mindlessness. 

And many years later they would be defined as being partially robotic, arcane subsystems whirring about with an intoxicating grace. The system of gears grinding solemnly one day after another in an endless sea of progress, never to be seen of or thought of again.

citydrowns

'There was a disreputable encounter no less than twelve nicks of a roundabout, but neither he nor I could make sense of the thing,' she said, words dangling soggily like poignant Victorian overcast. She balanced the silverware cautiously, almost to the extent of over-protection, but was unable to take into consideration the effect to which the glaring candlelight danced away like a fire-furnace. 'And nor does my patience permit any extra dollymopping, so perhaps we should mend the issue.'


And within several possessions of a Trinitron screen they did have a go of it, and his reclamation deemed necessary her apparent surprise. 'Well this is new,' she said in-between breaths. The windowsill held station over the presiding morning flood banked notoriously and sharply angled to the paired amalgam of Swedish homage and New York complexity, wherein personalities of sports, music, politics and popular culture flourished unabated, by willpower alone.


He started. 'No, it's not.' He paused. 'But I'm glad you noticed.' In that momentary glint of consideration he took time to examine the curiously ribbed window-boxes, their faded black branches sorted in a matchbox criss-cross pattern intersecting six times on the horizontal and three times on the vertical, evenly spaced.


'Well that was wonderful,' she said. 'I'm going to put on the tea, don't forget to remind me.'


'I never do, not even once.' he replied.


'Hogwash. Don't spoil my temperament with your nonsense.'


Were there to be a satchel rimmed with honey-dew, not even Ms. Brollixworth could pry it free, and the comfortable analogy suited quite well once the aftermath was recapitulated. Again, and again.

Duality Grid

But there was nothing to hide from. In actual fact, the sunset draped from one side of the room to the other. Her sublime expression was reflective of this, and no sooner had he crossed the line than she was administering skill-shots in the direction most conducive to wholesale massacre. ‘Never mind that,’ she said lazily. ‘Where are you coming from, seeing as the route’s off the grid?’ her words sounded unsure.

‘The Infiltrator’s Guild, the one apart for the Acadamy,’ he said. ‘All verses scrawled in barely-legible dactylic hexameter.’ And at that point in time, nothing seemed to matter.

‘That does seem pliable, and with regard to what was mentioned earlier about the blasted paperwork, you can ignore it completely.’ She fumbled blithely with the carriage-shaped transparencies before allowing them to spill to the ground completely, but the teal logistics forms were of little concern to her. ‘Now look what I’ve done,’ she said. ‘It’s your fault.’

‘I can’t help that my mind is geared for war,’ he said, disregarding the accusation altogether. ‘Despite the names, and apart from the blistering heat, waging warfare is not dissimilar to our current predicament.’ He felt the humid warmth pass between them, carried away by wisps of black-night residue provided by a buttressed gothic window, kept open most nights at her request.

‘That’s exactly the response I would have expected,’ she said hastily, moving from atop an obsidian sphere polished to a soft sheen. ‘And my commander would be wise to refuse the request altogether.’ She paused. ‘But you would have the benefit of the doubt in either case.’ The allusion to limited justice dampened the night air to the point that she could feel a noticeable change in the room’s temperature, causing her to shift expectantly.

‘I have hope,’ he said. ‘Just like before.’

Tofu Liver

‘Like so many times before,’ he mused, glaring incessantly at the frayed matrix, ‘there is never a dull moment.’ The clock on the counter, with its arms of burnished gold and yellow backplate, ticked in coordination with the beat of her index finger against the decaying windowsill, next to the wireframe ferns nestled in the far corner of the hotel room.


‘That makes complete sense, but..’ she said, her words muffled by the tinted glass less than two feet in front of her face,  ‘i’m still not buying it.’ The pits on the map, brimming with blistering agents tinged iridescent green and platforms suited for large-scale incineration, hummed and beeped with their usual modes of operation. One would often see skeleton gears plated with sheets of perforated steel in the terminal, but her form was far too distracting.


His thoughts lingered.


‘Whatever it is that keeps destabilizing the wave-resonance... It is likely to drain the life out of this place,’ he said.


‘Probably,’ she replied.


And when she brought her hand up to her face, her fingers acted as directions of thought balanced tediously close to the edge. ‘I wonder how much it could take?’


Her question was met with open air, but the cacophony of commerce floors below vibrated anonymously through the small room.


‘It would take a long time to tell,’ he said, ‘but that’s why I brought these.’ Before he could reach his hand into the front pocket of his jacket, the influx of wind through the window caught his attention. ‘They’re here, you know,’ she said.


‘So why even bother?’ he asked.


‘For fun, I guess,’ she replied. Her words seemed to inspire the proper motive. The view of the sector below was far more visible at night than any other time of day. It was the fusion lamps, they said, retrofitted from repurposed ride-on lawn-mowers and possessed cathode-ray televisions, technologies long outdated, drifting on the fringes of obsolescence.

Magnetrons

‘The sleep will be there’ she stated curtly. Such was to be expected.

‘But the rooms, the open concept, and the sacred awning?’ he asked, not bothering to examine the tubes. And there, within the tubes themselves, there were waveguides. Everyone wanted and liked waveguides, except that one tenant down the hall.

‘Microwaves,’ he had once said, his expression relaying adamant concern, ‘are all over the place.’

‘And what of it?’ she asked. Her tone sunk and sprang into echoing waves, like so many times before. ‘It’s the unlock. Clearly you’re foreign.’ The lights struck at angles reflected by box-glass blending into lava-lamps, drawing upon her countenance a rip current of smoky red neon. ‘It’s open concept, obviously, and no matter how it’s connected, the waves never touch.’

‘Useless…’ he mused, eyes fixated on hers. The hallway dissolved, exposing bar codes and rescinded fragments of unsent waveguides. ‘Unless…?’ his query lingered, grew at once with spikes before atoning any mere sense of emotion. ‘The signal.’

‘Signals or channels? Make up your mind. Don’t have time for this,’ came her response, dull in comparison to what was seen in the faceless buildings, whose grim exteriors shed reticence in the presence of sunlight, anonymous rooms; piles of secondary paperwork and networking devices, all the implements of productivity at the disposal of the exigent. ‘It doesn’t matter, just take this,’ she said. She handed him a device, a tracker of some kind, or a weapon. It pulsed once, displayed chronographic readings, and seemed fit enough to be in the possession of a cartographer.

‘But what does it do?’ he asked. ‘I’ve never seen one like it.’

‘The maps are encrypted, second phase lithographic,’ she said. ‘You can solve it if you’d like, been trying for weeks. Some parts look like tails of propellant exhaust, others like heartbeats.’

4h6464564w5ywetghrdfgbdfb

Today at work, I visited a place called the Headend. I work for one of Canadia's most well known telecommunications companies, and the Headend is where all the magical shit happens. There are lots of cables and servers. Cables, everywhere, green ones, black ones, and twisted, infinite fiber optic ones that plugged into everything at once, and didn't make 1 per sense (%). There was a server-box with like 6.02x10^23 fiber-optics bristling out of it like a multiplexed Christmas tree, and I read about multiplexing today on Wikipedia, because we were in our last day of training and I wanted to remain as productive as possible by surfing random wikipedia articles on a closely monitored network. But digital signal processing multiplex is like multiple channel frequencies within carrier waves (sine waves?) transmitting physical information via electromagnetic spectrum, of which only a small segment comes through as visible light, and the rest is radio, tv, wifi, microwaves (not recommended for bacon), gamma rays, and I was reading something about plasma torches.
If we were able to develop a power supply capable of housing ridiculous amounts of energy, and we had retractable, perforated rods capable of supporting a super-heated concoction of ionized gas plasma, you've got yourself a fucking lightsaber. Because if lightsabers were made of light, the guy could come at you with a shield of mirrors, and you'd be fucked.
and .... QAM - quadrature amplitude management... there was a server box with this written on it, and it's about modulations for multiplexing frequencies. Because these frequencies frequent those frequencies with a high level of frequence, and the multi-frequence face fucks bandwidth across multiple bands.

STORY TIME 3

Snapshots of a League match. AND SEGMENTS.

And stuff.

You all suck.

‘Try dodging one more time, and see if you're so lucky again!’ cried Lux, her voice rapt with frustration. She was preparing in her silk-gloved hands another concentrated blast of light. Her mind became focused like a crystalline prism, dividing perfect streams of photons into a glowing latticework of florescent death.  'Let's see if you're ready for this...' she said, her eyes wincing as the infusion of magic bundled into fragments hotter than plasma.

Katarina ducked for cover as high-speed projectiles screamed overhead. It was difficult for her to get a grasp of the situation, but she knew that her assailant was hiding for cover within a patch of long grass no further than twelve feet in front of her. From within this place, Luxanna continued to unleash prismatic beams of focused energy that seared the tops of plants, leaving behind a blackened trail of charcoal bits. 

The brightness flew forward over the water in silence. Katarina was at first blinded by the encroaching wave of brilliant heat. From her position, she listened as the system of concentrated energy dissolved into crackling beams of haywire magnetics, decimating patches of nearby earth as it destabilized. 

With split-second timing, she dove into a forward front flip before executing a swift side-step maneuver that brought her within inches of Lux’s face. The mage was shocked, and did not react in time. With a smile, Katarina brought her daggers to bear on the exposed flesh of Lux's throat, thrusting downward with a striking force indicative of her title of The Sinister Blade. 

With little time to react, Lux flinched, and tried to side-step to avoid the vicious attack, but was too late. The blade were plunged deep, and she had no magic to summon to her defense. Katarina sighed as she ripped free the blood soaked weapons, leaving Lux to topple forward into a pool of her own blood. Lux tried to speak, but only incoherent gasps escaped her mouth.

'Such easy pray,' she said, 'your blood has slaked my blades far too often. Let's finish this.’ With a wicked grin, no, a bloodthirsty smile, Katarina pulled back her right arm as far as it would go, her blade glinting brilliantly in the water-reflected sunlight, before dealing the final killing blow.

---

Summoner Vandrik did not try and hide the fact that he was quite perplexed. His summoning abilities were unquestionable, and no one doubted the fact that he was capable of unleashing havoc against the enemy team. To his credit, the mage's prolific records of success on the Fields of Justice were no less an accomplishment than the many years he had dedicated to the exultation of the Institute of War. And today's match was just as important.

The final call for the summoners to take their places was made. Vandrik rose from his chair within the ornately furnished waiting room. Prior to the final call, he had been sharing stories with a barely-visible group of mages representing a well-known school of elemental air magic that Janna had founded many years ago.

'And with these few simple principles,' one of the mages had said, 'we can appear invisible, as though we never existed!' Then, before Vandrik's eyes, the mages had vanished completely. The Institute was renowned for catering to peculiarities of spellcraft that were virtually known to the rest of Valoran, so the novice trick provided little amusement to him. But still, he was quite perplexed nonetheless.

The summoning circle upon which Vandrik and the other summoners stood was inscribed with words of protection and power glowing green and purple. The runes served a dual purpose; to both stabilize and strengthen the bond between Summoner and Champion. The Summoners stood evenly around the stone circle as the ritual took place. Elder Summoner Belsted initiated the ritual by calling forth an arcane torrent of magical energy accessible only to the most advanced Summoners. From this torrent he withdrew the raw magical energy needed to locate and open the necessary dimensional pathways. His fingertips sparked blue from the subtle manipulations that only an artificer or master summoner could make, and when he uttered the invocations of channelling, the other summoners became attuned to the flow that would soon link them to their respective champions. The natural world slipped away.

Within moments, Vandrik became absorbed by the invisible forces of binding flaring blue within the space of his mind, a willing procedure allowing the outer extensions of his consciousnesses to be projected into the essence of another. At the moment of binding, the surrounding environment blurred away with blinding motion, replaced by a vibrating warp tunnel of deviously curved ovals and rippling purple sheets of inter-spatial fabric. Novice summoners were delegated the task of enhancing these tunnels by empowering them with protective barriers, rune-shields, glowing fluorescent orange across an endless sea of magical energy. This was a place where time could move in either direction, depending on the tidal currents of the maelstrom that existed in the center of this extra-dimensional plane of magic, a curious place devoid of organic forms. At the final moment of connection, Vandrik happened upon the willing consciousness of Katarina, his thoughts melding with hers, in concert with her will, all actions inextricably linked to an instantaneous data-stream of malleable sentience. While in this state, the Summoner was unable to cast direct spells on his own accord, and could not speak. His being was all but entwined with Katarina’s, their thoughts a complex exchange of energy impossible to break. For Summoners and Champions alike, this all-too-familiar transaction initiated a dynamic process. Temporary linkages between thought and action were formed. Jaded as those familiar with the ritual may have been, every experience with it varied slightly, and part of it depended on the Champions’ prior affiliation with the Summoner he or she was connecting to. Summoners less acquainted with their target Champions experienced a slightly more turbulent interface affected by minor disturbances in the mental link, but once locked-on, the link could only be severed by a void rupture (willingly applied by the elder summoners at the end of a match), or death.

Katarina stood upon the summoning platform, her fingers flexed through her crimson hair. The wind on Summoner’s Rift picked up and carried with it the forgotten remnants of leaves from dead trees that hid within nearby encasements of artificial containment. She took two steps from the location from which she had entered the field, a place of countless battles and unlimited bloodshed, designed for the purposes of resolving all matters political, and, more recently, for the sake of pure entertainment. To register with priority a sense of progression upon the Fields of Justice, it was expected of a Summoner to be both deft of mind and spirit. The flexibility of one’s will was reliant on excessive mental agility, so nights spent in taverns prior to League matches were highly discouraged. Katarina eyed her Noxian teammates with a committed gaze. Her status within the High Command did not have the same technical jurisdiction here, but she was viewed as a leader all the same. Warwick was the first to meet her gaze, as the other three were still in a state of interfacing with their summoners.
‘Wonderful, miss. Where do you want me?’ said the Bloodhunter.
‘Alright Warwick, here’s what we’re going to do,' she said, breaking her descriptions down into simple explanations for him to more easily comprehend. Katarina withdrew her map. She made bright red markings with a quill upon the page. The plan she set in motion was absorbed by Warwick as he considered the plan of attack. Without time to waste, the Bloodhunter bounded off up the top lane, rushing forward with a ridiculous speed. Underneath his clawed limbs he pounded the earth relentlessly, seeking only to go to the location that Katarina had specified. Her words resonated with him, sat with him in earnest of their underlying importance, as if no other words could even match the same level of potency. She conveyed with her words a sense of unlimited aspiration, a motivational wall of importance that could not be interfered with. It was at times like these that beams of transcendence penetrated the visual sphere of the crystal screen projectors broadcasting in all the homes of Valorian spectators anxiously observing the actions taking place. In every home from the far eastern reaches of Ionia to the heart of Noxus and the hazardous waste dumps of Zaun. From school teachers to shop merchants, members of governance and of military, enthusiasm for Champion versus Champion combat taking place upon the Fields of Justice was tantamount to fanaticism. Most people chose a local Champion to support, but it was not support for foreign champions was not altogether unknown. However, it was known that the support of non-local champions was to be handled with a certain level of discreetness.

Warwick trampled over the piles of makeshift cover before him. Branches snapped underfoot. Rigid plants and bamboo sticks mixed with rocks were pushed away like weightless debris when subjected to the forceful strength of the Noxian werewolf. He neared the top tower and eyed solid concrete structure with contentment.

‘I don’t think this will be a wise spot to commit to an engagement,’ said Lux. In a moment of consideration, her countenance belied concern, as it was more often the case that she conveyed an indefatigable sense of joy regarded as being quite infectious. She eyed the mysterious reflections of bright sunlight coming from the forward tower, inching forward, quiet yet precise, the white fabric of her demur Demacian outfit comfortably ruffling from jungle gusts. Luminosity accompanied her articulate hand gesture, directed ahead swallowed by darkness. Trees parted, and bundles of mist wheezed from the foliage. Within the densest parts of dark, there could be seen the shimmering outline of a bipedal figure. Lux was taken aback by the sight. It might have been a stealthed Champion, and she was unsure of this. The form moved, light bending properties coiling the plants and root systems deflected modestly, but it was noticeable nonetheless. She knew someone was there. 

---

Talon’s stealth could have been more effective. Lux stood frozen before his concealed position, the gold outline of her modern Demacian attire glimmering with the same sheen as her fawn tresses. She seemed to take notice of his movements, but he was not quite sure. The Lady of Luminosity was known to be deceiving in her ways, and Talon knew that if he made a false move, she would be onto him. He stepped cautiously through a tangled mess of ferns and held his blade poised to strike. Lux was walking forward now, her head tilted. In her left hand a crystalline baton crackled with pent up magical energy. It rattled in her hand from the tension within, and it took no small amount of energy to keep it under containment. Lux eyed her potential victim with glee. ‘Not so fast, Noxian!’ she cried aloud. Talon felt familiar rush of fight-or-flight, sensory perceptions dominated by the apogee of an adrenaline rush.
 Lux darted ahead and took aim at the assassin with her baton, and conjured a prismatic shield for herself. From deep in the woodlands he saw her, and he didn’t even care that she had taken notice of him. The ripples on the water became bridges with the light emanating from her baton, and it was difficult to ignore. Talon looked up with a smirk, seeing that he could get an upper hand in the situation, he leapt forward with a dash that passed by so swiftly as to kick particles of dirt up around it. The mage crossed his path and, with a smile, unleashed a blast that caused the water in the surrounding lake to evaporate with a sizzle.
‘You’re mine!’ Talon said. He slashed forward with his right arm, attempting to slash with precision, but Lux was deft to avoid the attack, causing to Talon to fall forward and cut nothing but air. When he sprang forward once more, she was unable to dodge, and took a deep gash on her side. Talon retracted the weapon, looking, satisfied. The Demacian champion was wounded, but far from giving up. She fired back at him a prismatic burst that rocked the foundations of his footing. He slumped back to the ground, falling face first into a pool of running water filling his mouth as he delved into the muck. She grinned, and summoned from her fingertips a crackling vortex of concentrated photonic energy. With a blinding flash, a column of pure white drew forward like a train. The air surrounding the beam broke apart into blurry waves that screamed under the intense heat. Talon was stricken in his side, and the force of the attack knocked him the ground. He looked up at Lux, face winced in pain, and with but a moment before the darkness overtook him, noticed her smile. There were times when, without warning, a Champion would remain dead on the field for a duration of time before being re-summoned, or returned to their Summoner in a physical form for the process to begin all over again. It was not possible for the summoning to take place in a short amount of time, which is why Champion deaths were so taxing.
Lux took a bow as the Demacian supports erupted with praise. From all across Demacia, those in support of the events felt the sweep of jubilation. Children, parents, and citizens alike reacted to the events in either a form of dismay or excitements.
The scenery washed away in a haze of light. Talon fell to the ground, defeated, and his body returned to the Summoner’s platform in a cloud of electrified mist. As he lay there, the ritual to re-summon him was already taking place, as the magisters fought to re-establish a stable portal though which Talon would resume fighting. Summoner Rek met eyes with Talon in such a way as to convey a sense of disturbance, as though one had let down the other, and it was not a glance that any Champion liked to receive. In an instant Rek stepped forward and prepared once more the arcane ritual. Talon got to his feet, the residual pain from Lux’s overpowering attack still spiking through his system. He took deep breaths to shake of the weariness that accompanied League death, a residual pain that experienced Champions were all too familiar with. Between Summoner and champion there were few words exchanged. Each one knew what the other was capable of, and it was a bond strengthened only by familiarity. Novice as she was, Summoner Rek knew Talon’s mind well enough to execute fairly diverse actions without a conflict of interest. This was in spite of the fact that Talon was not known to be among the most receptive of Champions. It took a special mind to acclimate to a Champion, to device the inner workings of the thought process transmitted through invisible fields of inter-dimensional magic.

------

After a bite to eat and minimal conversation Talon and Katarina were crossing through the prestigious doorway to the Noxian High Command. It was a decedent and ancient building that in some ways resembled an obelisk. The black sheen of its exterior made it appear foreboding at any time of the day, and for the average citizen this was rightly so, as the building itself was shrouded in secrecy and was the source of many rumors. Only highly trained officials and diplomats were allowed to enter, and the secrets within were to be protected at all times by stealthed guards and sentry wards placed all around the perimeter, undetectable by conventional means. Talon had seldom entered here, as he was not yet an official member of the Crimson Elite. His presence was welcome only because of Katarina’s authorization, so he had to remain by her side at all times. Never before had he crossed through the obsidian doors of the High Command without out her, for to do so would be an act of treason.

The pair of assassins walked formally across the polished granite floor. Pillars of ivory decked the lobby. Paintings of Noxian heroism and intrigue lined the walls surrounding the lobby, adding a classic touch to the place. Braziers of plated gold were held aloft by chains near the ceiling, ventilation provided by air-ducts carved into horizontally barred skylights sequestered within double decker roofing. Katarina’s combat boots tapped loudly against the solid floor, and she was heading right to the front desk, staffed by a sullen, balding man who looked to be in his 40s. ‘I have the meeting room booked for the two of us,’ she said expectantly. The man nodded his shiny head and rose from his pleated leather chair with a creak. Talon examined the elaborate Kumungan jungle carvings hanging on the black slate wall behind the desk, shapes and forms stylized for abstraction. Talon glanced ahead at the reflective surfaces on the walls that lead to the main floor. After a quick written exchange, the guard gave Katarina a special bracelet, a simple security measure, and nodded his head. The briefing room was elegant and simplistic; gray carpet, black walls, and a large viewing window overlooking Noxus, where one could observe the day to day activities of the merchant district. Small vases filled with simple green vines were placed in clusters on the boardroom tables. Katarina was holding a large orange dossier filled with paperwork. She pointed to a seat and looked at Talon. ‘I’ll do the talking,’ she said. Her voice echoed off the high ceiling. The space was dark, drafty, and lacked the colourful Noxian art and vibrancy of the lobby. There were seats for at least 40 people here, so there was plenty of room to sink into, observe, and contemplate the silence. It was a comforting place to be for an assassin, thought Talon.

Katarina stood by the window as she prepared to deliver the mission. She turned back around and tossed the documents on the table, crossed her arms, and began to pace. Her perplexed look indicated intense concentration, but Talon knew that she would have been well prepared for this in advance, so there was something else on her mind, something tugging at her that she was not at liberty to discuss.

‘Alright,’ she said, ‘here’s the situation.’ She asserted her words with confidence, and Talon listened intently. ‘As you may know, there’s been suspicious activity in the graveyards. Stolen bodies. Graverobbers. That kind of thing,’ she said. ‘We’ve been made aware of these incidents from General Swain, and he’s not happy with it. We’ve got to find out what’s going on out there, because people are starting to talk. When people talk, they gossip, and that hurts us, Talon, as you may know.’ Talon nodded, sat back in his chair, and thought of what he’d heard in the past week to connect to this. Nothing about graveyards or suspicious activity. ‘We’re dealing with a necromancer, a dangerous one. Used to be a summoner in the League, now he’s gone mad. We need to put a stop to it.’ Talon stared blankly at her, as if she’d just slapped him. Necromancy? It was a myth as far as he was concerned. Nobody practiced that ancient art. Too risky. Too many failsafes preventing the success of the spells. It was one thing to suggest the use of black magic or other sinister arcane arts, but necromancy was a whole different kind of animal. It had been outlawed decades ago by the Institute of War, at least outside the Fields of Justice. Practiced necromancers were to unlearn their powers, revoke their oaths, and break all necromantic incantations under their spellbinding. ‘These are the affected locations,’ Katarina said. She unravelled a freshly pressed map of Noxus, and on it where several red markers. The first thing Talon noticed was that nearly all the markers centered over Noxian graveyards, crypts and other places where the dead resided. ‘We have reports of undead walking, the real deal, and people are dying,’ she said. Her words were mute, free of worry or concern. Talon had come to respect her ability to supress her weaker emotions.

‘So, one man is responsible for this?’ said Talon.

‘So-far that’s what we’ve been told,’ Katarina said. She scanned through the mission briefing papers for additional information, whatever was most relevant. There were several eye-witness accounts, vague reports of incidents of livestock being attacked, stolen, children going missing, yellow eyes glowing in the darkness, slow moving forms that groaned and howled. These incidents took place at the outer fringes of the city, near the forests, dividing lines between rural and urban. There were no day-time accounts. The connection was drawn by the nature of the assailants. The matching descriptions made it quite obvious that these were undead minions of some sort, arising from places unseen, seeming to shamble forward from the mists and then leave without a trace. The relative information suggested that a rogue Summoner, recent escapee from prison, was responsible for conjuring these beings into existence, though there was not a lot of detail here. The lack of information was unnerving to say the least, especially for as precise a detachment as the Crimson elite. They dealt with black and white, dead or alive situations when given a duty, a time, and an extraction point. Their business dealt with the art of killing for purpose, whether it be the protection of high profile individuals or the general safeguarding of Noxian citizenry. They were an advanced police-force given the jurisdiction to act independent of Noxian law, so long as the mission was completed. This fact made them both feared and revered, and it had also cut crime down to a level that rivalled Piltover.

‘So where do we come in?’ Talon said. Katarina balanced on the balls of her feet as she flipped through the pile of official paperwork. The candles in the room flickered steady in the draft that came from the open slits by the window. She walked over to them and cranked a latch that closed the openings in one swing.
'We provide the killing power, as usual,' she said, her pose conveying a sense of indifference that only a trained killer could exhibit.