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Jayce had come to terms with the way the Herald's cold fingers closed around his waist, his throat, and wrung him over its banded non-human cock with fluid precision. Methodical and consistent, every intention to keep the human under its care satisfied. But the creature had been remarkably synthesized from ash and iron, was overly enthusiastic with its superior strength, and Jayce's organic form proved far too vulnerable to properly handle it.
It wasn't uncommon. The Herald would pin and spread Jayce like a butterfly in taxidermy, smother him into sheets until he kicked for air, easily close a single hand around Jayce's neck as if he was no more than a doll and would squeeze. Sometimes Jayce would sense his vision blackening at the edges and his mind would scream for mercy. On most occasions it was an accident, a sudden flex of unearthly strength that would clip something vital, rendering Jayce lifeless like his spine was no stronger than the stem of a leaf.
In those moments, Jayce only processed the coming-back. One minute he was full and gasping, savoring the sensation of being thoroughly used by the thing that wore his face— the next, vision fading in from darkness, a strangely numb ache radiating from wherever the monster had most recently broken him.
But the Arcane deity always brought him back in a flash of gold or rays of violet. The surface of Jayce’s skin and surely the muscle underneath was threaded with gold, every stitch a testimonial of unintended consequences. A toy put back together so many times the paint had started to chip; fine wires beginning to fray.
Jayce didn't consider it death anymore. It was merely routine, and in the absence of any greater sense of purpose, he accepted his role as a plaything for the creature wearing his beloved's face.
The Herald wasn't Viktor.
By the sixth time Jayce had died at the hands of the thing that claimed it was, he welcomed the attention his resuscitation entailed.
He'd stopped keeping track by the tenth.
He felt the familiar ache reed through his system, and Jayce knew he had been brought back once again. The drowning darkness allowed him, for a moment, to pretend he was finally home. The soft cushioning of a bed was nearly believable as he laid idle with his body splayed and breathed deeply, his lungs filling with air like he hadn’t used them in some time. The ringing in his ears he could possibly attribute to the straining of a kettle— maybe his mother was making him tea, a bright and early treat before he left for work.
Jayce was mentally settled in the happiest time of his life, patchworked together from bits and pieces of various memories. His mother’s cooking kept him fed, her presence a consistent comfort. Caitlyn’s innocent, facetious banter left him laughing. Mel’s affirmations would confirm that, yes, Hextech would change the world for the better.
Viktor was waiting for him at the lab, kind and impassioned, the image of illumined youth and logical optimism. The scientist would lightly tease his partner for being late. Jayce would make coffee; Viktor would add too much sweetmilk to his own cup. They’d keep living this way, forever, easy mornings and work-filled afternoons that dredged past midnight. As long as they were together, the promise of greatness within reach but not quite at their fingertips, things were good.
“Jayce…”
He kept his eyes closed. Just a little longer. He preferred the ringing to the low rumble of artificial vocals that called his name.
“Are you alright?”
When the Arcane Herald whispered that way, it almost sounded human. Like the ever-present modulation couldn’t quite twist up the soft cadence of the words. As if Viktor was truly still present inside it somewhere, stretched and coddled within the hard-shelled carapace.
Jayce opened his eyes. The sleek mask set over the face of his dead companion stared at him with glowing orange lights, deep-set into empty black voids. Twin stars locked in on his crumpled form.
The haunting echo would forever be etched there, just under the mask, eternal vacancy carved into stone. He wouldn't smile, or laugh, or scowl into a scathing remark. Jayce missed all facets of Viktor's presence, every expression of passion, for better or worse.
He knew the Herald wouldn’t let up until he responded.
“I’m okay,” Jayce said, but his voice sounded rough to his own ears.
He coughed and sat up— tried to, but he hadn’t remembered the position he’d last been in: laid bare across the creature’s lap so his back supported all his weight, legs tingling from a lack of blood flow as they were parted up over the Herald’s inorganic thighs. He blinked up into the light that filtered through the cracked fissure of the dome that once served as Viktor’s residence within the commune, awareness settling in like a slow tide.
Gold-tipped fingers that dwarfed Jayce’s own began to slide along his skin, insistently thorough. The third arm that clicked and whirred like it had independent thought gently settled at the top of his skull, delicately pushing his tousled hair back. Jayce shivered as long fingers traced lightly over each of his limbs checking for extraneous injury.
Besides the momentary lapse of awareness, this was the part Jayce could admit to himself he enjoyed. If he closed his eyes and effaced the morbid context from his mind, he could focus on the touch as the blessing it was. Considerate, if only for a time.
“Would you want to continue?” The discordant rumble of the Arcane Herald’s voice returned, egoless confidence present in every word. Its heavy tapered cock—nearly the size of Jayce’s forearm when fully erected from its orifice—shadowed his exposed torso.
Jayce tried to remember what had sparked their latest round of intercourse. They were down in the skeleton of the commune, empty of life other than overgrown, magic-corrupted foliage. With nothing left to strike down or call under oath, the Arcane Herald had conceded to trace a path through the twin cities as an aimless ghost. The reason for the creature’s nomadic behavior remained a mystery to Jayce. What ambitions did the Herald have, now that its kingdom was devoid of anything that would defy it?
Even now, Jayce remained unaware of the specifics. A blast from the Herald’s ray had knocked him solidly against the foundation of the Hexgate as he’d begun to levitate. Then… nothing. Darkness. When he came to on the floor of the station, it had been eerily quiet. The Arcane Herald descended the excavated tunnel alone. It destroyed what remained of Jayce’s hammer and attested he no longer had reason to wield it. The glorious evolution had been completed.
With no one to fight, the mannequins had begun to lose autonomous energy. The condition of neighboring nations remained a dreadful unknown. Wildlife had already begun to engulf both Piltover and Zaun, although flora and fauna alike had been tinged with Arcane influence.
Functioning as the only two independent souls left in Piltover, relegated to the ruins of a city that only billeted white and gold figures, was something of a bore. Jayce had no knowledge of how far the Arcane Herald’s reach extended, as he hadn’t been allowed the opportunity of unfacilitated exploration. The chances he’d had to run were fleeting and unsuccessful as his captor possessed no sense of fatigue, no need for sleep, and little penchant for inattention. Jayce had given up long ago; wings so deftly clipped they might as well be snipped off altogether.
His timeline was one of the doomed ones, it seemed. Jayce had failed, and just as the aged mage version of his partner had resolved to live in his own consequence, Jayce consented to the same. The Defender of Tomorrow had no purpose other than to exist in the laurels of his failure.
Which was why the creature’s focus had settled on Jayce: the only thing left to warrant its attention.
When the Arcane Herald first sensed Jayce still harbored intimate needs, it sought to appease him. It was odd, a monster taking care of him in various ways, the knowledge of what being human entailed still lodged in its angular skull.
“I do not wish to push you beyond your limit, Jayce,” the creature said. “I apologize for my misjudgment over the fortitude of your spine.”
Ah, that’s why it hurt. His nerves had been re-threaded together from the break halfway down. Whenever the Herald revived him, its healing influence was limited to the area of fatality… for a peculiar reason that Jayce was baffled by, the Arcane Herald refused to fully evolve him into the mannequin-like state the rest of the city had ascended to.
Was it lonely? Did it have the capacity for regret?
“I’m fine, Herald.”
“You are permitted to address me as Viktor.”
Jayce refused to call it that, no matter how consistently the Herald offered him the consolation. Every time the disembodied voice prompted him, Jayce felt a surge of heated possession over the memory of his dead partner. The cadence, the tone, the lifeless detachment from morality, it was all wrong.
Whatever the Arcane-infused machine thought it was, Jayce would never refer to it with that name.
“Confirmation is necessary.”
“Do what you want,” Jayce spat.
“If you insist,” the Herald purred.
Jayce regretted his choice of words.
Wide, strong, corded hands lifted him by his armpits to delicately position him over the strange, tentacle-natured dick Jayce had become accustomed to taking. His palms settled against the Herald’s chest, solidly constructed with gold handholds that mirrored the brace once worn by his partner. Decoration as opposed to the interlocking support piece his partner once needed in the throes of creeping, unavoidable deterioration.
Jayce cringed. Yet another reminder that reaffirmed the creature had evolved from the fragments of a corpse.
“I never tire of your games,” the Arcane Herald said slowly, any intended warmth ground out by the grating rumble that permeated its voice. “The complex variety of emotion you cannot help but display… provides satisfactory entertainment.”
Jayce knew he was giving the machine exactly what it wanted when he whimpered in response to the cold touch that threatened to breach his hole again. His knees brushed the Herald’s thighs, but there wasn’t enough purchase for him to rest his weight. Jayce knew if the hands holding him let go, he’d be prone to the stretch that awaited him.
“Don’t— don’t drop me,” he managed to say.
“Now you levy requests? ” The Herald’s voice resonated low under Jayce’s fingers, the vibration carrying up his arms in a way that elicited goosebumps. “Intriguing. What emotion do you feel now, Jayce?”
“Concern,” Jayce mumbled. When the hands around his waist began to lower, and the cock pulsed and squelched new lubrication against his used hole, he yelped. “Fear, Herald, please go slow this time—”
Jayce was aware the rolling rumble was meant to be a laugh.
“An unnecessary response from your inferior system, little thing. I have you.”
Jayce flushed pink from the odd term of endearment. Compared to the machine, he was little, and there was nothing else left to compare to.
Despite his reservations to reconvene their activity, Jayce didn’t voice his desire to stop. What else was there to do? Clean up and return to… what? An empty Piltover? Try to discern which walking corpse was his mother? Caitlyn? Had Mel managed to escape the wrathful evolution, or had her Arcanic abilities meant nothing in the face of such power?
Jayce decided he would rather let the creature that vied for his attention have its way with him.
The stretch that reclaimed his hole was a self-subscribed punishment. Jayce moaned at the intrusion that filled him fully, the burn from lack of sufficient lubrication an added bonus. The cock licked at his insides faintly, the movement barely perceptible, but it was there. He sighed at the cool relief of artificial lubrication pooling at the ridge where his hole was stretched, begrudgingly appreciated.
“And now?” the Herald asked as he lowered Jayce fully, hungry for the only amusement their new world offered.
Jayce took a moment to find the word. He could feel the pressure overstuffing his stomach, already fucked through from before he’d been unceremoniously dispatched. He could practically feel the fullness up to his throat, an overwhelming satiation that left him reeling.
He pressed his head to the Herald’s chest, fingers curling into the mock-brace. Torn and chewed nails disappeared within the curves of gold. His shaking grip caused the ridges of metal to bite into his palms.
“Hate,” he gasped out.
“You hold this emotion for me, in this moment?”
Jayce cried out as he was lifted by his hips and dropped back down again.
“No,” he choked. Jayce keened and whined out his discomfort, legs starting to shake. “For myself.”
The Herald exuded a drumming hum.
“Unfortunate,” it said, resoundingly loud in comparison to Jayce’s harsh, raspy breathing. But that was all the creature resolved to say on the matter.
The Arcane Herald pulled Jayce up and down the length of its winding cock in an intentional, precise rhythm, a steady pace the man had become well-versed in. He eased his body to accept the intrusion, his own dick half hard. The consistent pressure on his prostate had dulled to a numbed-out feeling since their proclivities became a regular occurrence. As always, the pleasure built overtime, and Jayce was soon trembling from the coiling weight of arousal pooling in his gut.
The third arm wrapped around to toy with him again, weaving through his hair and scratching delicate lines up his back. The extra stimulus made Jayce shy away, but he had nowhere to go, forced to press himself further into the uncomfortable support of the Herald's chest. A sharp cut under one shoulder blade sparked a much appreciated break from the monotonous consistency of pressure on his insides, and he sensed his cock drip a bead of fluid, spelling his end.
Just a little more. Whatever he could get in that moment, Jayce would accept. Anything to take his mind off of what had happened, why it happened, and the terrible part he'd played.
“Almost— almost there,” Jayce strained to say, anticipating that the pace would speed up in light of his stuttered confession.
Instead, the hands wrapped firmly around his torso stilled their movements. Jayce panted against the metal-bound chest and rasped out a groan.
“H-Herald why’d you— stop?” he asked, feeling the heat in his abdomen begin to taper.
The machine didn’t offer a disembodied answer. It adjusted its grip to close a single hand around Jayce’s entire waist so he was held halfway down the banded shaft and brushed a finger lightly over Jayce’s dripping dick. It twitched in response and Jayce sobbed as the orgasm from his hole was snuffed out, the pleasure replaced by new stimulation.
The Herald’s index finger was larger than Jayce’s entire cock. It gently toyed with the comparably tiny length and gingerly nudged against the balls clenched tight beneath. The touch was apathetic, lazy even, and as Jayce was speared, he couldn’t cant his hips forward to further stimulate himself. He was stuck in place, strung up with no governance to pursue his climax. He whined and waited for the carefully administered pleasure to satisfy his needs.
Jayce tilted his hips back and forth in a minute attempt to garner more friction against the finger caressing his cock as the ascending feeling started to build again. But then the hand encircling his waist lifted him almost all the way off the Arcane Herald’s length, making Jayce gasp with the sudden change of pressure on his insides.
“What the f-fuck are you d-oing,” he panted out against the metal-plated clavicle. He pressed his bearded cheek to cool gold and weakly pounded his fist above his head, a dull thud of skin hitting inorganic matter. “Stop it. Let m-me—”
Jayce was plunged part way back down before he could finish, and sobbed from the intentional overstimulation. The hand holding his waist wound tight enough that he could feel the pinch of his skin between the cock inside him, his organs, and the grip holding him prone. The Herald’s thumb and index finger closed gently around Jayce’s dick, stroking it with more consideration than before.
The turbulent ascent towards and retraction away from orgasm had Jayce writhing where he could, unsure whether he wanted to crawl away or sink down further to fully claim the stretch he now attributed to climax. The cock inside him didn't pulse with life, only squirmed and prodded, so Jayce knew the full-body throb he felt was entirely his own.
“Please, I-I’m so close,” he begged. “J-ust let me—”
“And this?”
Jayce was too far gone to interpret the vague question, groans and choked gasps supplanting the majority of his vocabulary.
“This emotion, Jayce, what do you label it as?” the Arcane Herald asked again. At least it was generous enough to continue pleasuring the toy it held.
The only word Jayce could come up with wasn't quite what his situation constituted, but the heart-wrenching feeling was intrinsically wound into every waking moment he was cursed to endure. Amidst pleasure or pain, he felt it eat away at his psyche.
What he’d lost. Who he’d failed to save.
“Guilt,” he sobbed, the simple admission heavy on his tongue.
Jayce moaned and cried as he was finally allowed to come, spilling his pent-up seed over the Herald’s imposing form, white dripping down gold-embedded grey skin. His orgasm shot in discordant rivulets, the mess painting the Herald’s hands as the creature slowed its motions and let Jayce shudder through his climax without further interruption.
“You won’t let me die, will you.”
It was confirmation, not inquiry.
Jayce sat clothed in stolen robes on the far side of the dome. The place where he’d witnessed the last part of partner wither away, shot through the chest by Jayce’s own means of execution. He curled his knees up to his chest and felt the dull throb of overwrought intercourse sap at his strength.
The Arcane Herald was close by, looking up at the gaping crack that had shaken the commune to its core. Any emotion that beholding the sight should have instilled was chillingly absent.
“That would result in an unfortunate waste of life,” it finally answered.
“You call this living?” Jayce scoffed. He leaned back against the smooth curvature of the wall and glared at the creature he was forced to cohabitate with. “Retracing memories that aren’t yours in a barren wasteland you created,” he laughed, humorless. “Is the glorious evolution everything you dreamed it would be, Herald?”
“I do not dream.”
“Of course you don’t.”
The chill of impending evening ran a shiver across Jayce’s skin. The light was fading, but there was no curfew to adhere to. No rules or regulations to abide by. Nothing to break up the monotonous drudgery of the life he lived, other than strange, habitual courtship. He crossed his arms in an effort to retain his own heat.
When Jayce looked up again, the Herald’s glowing stare was fixed on him, lit lanterns without the flicker of flame. His dead partner’s face sat expressionless underneath.
“You must be cold.”
Jayce was angry. And tired. And horribly bored. The despairing anguish that had gripped his heart for weeks had phased out, replaced with a constant simmering cynicism. He fluctuated between bitter resentment and morose acceptance over the reality he’d played a part in consummating. The Arcane Herald’s insouciant attempts at conversation would dictate the direction Jayce’s mood would fall.
And that memory wasn't one the machine should have been allowed access to.
“I’m fine.”
The Herald was unconvinced, especially when the subject of its attention shivered again. Without another word of tempered cordiality, it unclasped the ratted cloak from its shoulders and draped it over the comparably small form in front of it. The machine knelt as it did so to properly cover the human’s body before backing away.
“I don't need anything from you,” Jayce protested halfheartedly. It wasn't his blanket anymore. He barely recognized the thing that had remained in his possession for so many years. In a matter of months, the fabric had been ripped and frayed into whatever best suited its owner’s current form. “I certainly don't want this.”
Jayce fisted a hand into the seedy fabric, ready to throw it aside as a juvenile form of resistance. But the movement brought the tattered cloak close to his face, and he paused, caught off guard by sense memory.
Bitter iron. It should have only been that. The scent of the fabric was pointedly metallic, but something else remained present within the weave. Placebic or not, he reveled in the barest hint of the smell he'd grown fond of over years of close proximity: too-sweet coffee, herbal salve, and the distinct purity of eucalyptus.
Jayce closed his eyes and pressed the fabric against his mouth, smothering his nose, trying to douse his psyche in all the things that smelled like home, hidden away deep within the threads.
While the blanket had spent years in the lab absorbing a combination of their scents, it wasn’t something Jayce expected to have lingered. Months had passed. By all logic, this smell should have been long gone. But here it was, just a hint, enough for Jayce’s heart to swell with a morose longing for what would never belong to him again.
Jayce could feel the fabric against his face dampen, as his tears had started to flow without his notice. Once he realized, the cynical dam that kept him sane broke. Jayce began to sob into the ratted weave pressed against his mouth, loud and wet and unshackled by shame. The echoes of his cries bounced off the interior curvature of the dome, scattering unsuspecting wildlife that had been grazing outside it. His shoulders shook. He let his throat take the brunt of his screams as it promised he'd feel the burn in the following hours, a reminder that he was the only one left able to feel this kind of pain.
Jayce pulled the shredded husk of a blanket tighter around his shuddering form and grieved.
The Arcane Herald, ever intrigued by its companion’s performances, watched him with reserved fascination. It didn’t attempt to offer a hand of compassion or a kind word of consolation. Instead, it turned away, granting the human it refused to ascend some privacy in his sorrow.
“Humanity's affliction remains cruel,” it said quietly. “The evolution was of dire necessity, Jayce. You must understand.”
Almost a whisper.
Almost the ghost of his partner.
But the Herald was not Viktor. Jayce would never again hear his name lulled in the comforting, dulcet tones of his partner’s true voice.