Chapter Text
I'm going to die.
That was the simple truth that Luxanna Crownguard had finally accepted. She was sure of that fact in a way that she’d never been about anything else that happened in the several months. It was no less than she deserved.
Her naivety trusting Sylas, the massacre at the execution, her disastrous flight from High Silvermere, the journey to Terbisia. Mistake after mistake after mistake. It was a miracle from The Protector that they managed to get there at all. Well, not all of them did. And yet, even after she let them down time and time again, the little group of mage refugees she led in exile still wanted her to lead.
Because of her name. Crownguard.
A name that had haunted her for her entire life. Trapped her in a life she hated, even as it protected her from the dangers of being a mage. Protected her from the same fate of the very people who looked to her as their saviour.
She was no saviour. What did she know about building a village? No, staying would have been a disaster. So, as shameful as it felt, she fled. She took what rations she should need and stole away in the early twilight.
Her plan was to head south towards the Conqueror Sea and find a ship that would take her to Piltover. She figured she could find her family's old friends, the Kirramans. She had met their daughter several times at various diplomatic events and they had gotten along. Maybe she could start a new life in the city. She wouldn't be the first. Everyone in Demacian court had heard of the Medarda heir who had left Noxus and was now on the Piltover Council.
Unfortunately for Lux, there was one major flaw to her problem. It was now nearly winter and the only way to reach the coast before she exhausted her supplies from Terbisia was to cross over mountains. And of course, she was cursed with the Darkins’ own luck. So naturally, she was caught in a blizzard.
She had been prepared for the cold, but she wasn’t prepared for snowdrifts up to her knees and visibility no further than a hands-length from her face. Not that there was much to see. Snow and rocks, rocks and snow. Though there was always the chance that she walked straight off a cliff. After hours of struggling through the biting wind, she wasn’t sure if she feared or welcomed the prospect. In the meantime, all she could do was put one foot in front of the other until she found shelter or collapsed from exhaustion.
So it must have been by the guidance of the Veiled Lady herself that rather than an untimely end bashing her brains out on a rock, she instead stumbled upon a man-made structure. It appeared suddenly out of the snowfall, so close she could have tripped over it. Made largely of wood around a metal skeleton, some of which was visible through damaged portions of the shell. About the size of a small hunting cottage, she figured it must have been abandoned for some time to be in such a state of disrepair.
As she got closer she realized her error. It wasn't a building at all. It appeared to be a ship. Lux was baffled. She was not only at least 50 kilometres from the nearest body of water large enough for a vessel of this size, she was at least 100 meters up a mountain pass. She couldn't imagine what fantastical series of events could have brought it up here.
A mystery for another day. Right now she had no intention of looking a gift boat in the mouth, or something. Climbing over the mostly shattered sidewalls brought her to the remains of a forecabin. The windows were all either shattered or spiderwebbed through with cracks, snow piled high against them.
She found the door to the cabin, the latching mechanism frozen in place. Unwilling to climb in through shards of broken glass, Lux removed one of her gloves, placing her hand on the handle and summoned the arcane, willing the power inside her to pool in her hand. She poured it out, raising light and heat until ice and frost simply melted away.
It felt good to let her power loose, something she had been growing more used to since the events that led her out here. It felt less good when near-freezing water sluiced down her wrist and into her sleeve, sending shivers up and down her spine. She shook out her wet hand, trying to get as much water out as she could before donning her gloves once more.
Even with the latch free, ice and frost along every other surface made pulling the hatch open take all her strength. It was equally as hard pulling it closed once she slipped inside. Once it finally slammed home she dropped to the floor, panting for breath, coughing wetly. She pulled out her waterskin and gulped from it. One advantage about being stuck in a blizzard, at least she wouldn't run out of fresh water.
Lux allowed herself a minute to recuperate before she finally stood to investigate the surroundings. The wind howled through every opening in the cabin walls, and snow drifted in, blanketing nearly every surface. The cabin itself was devoid of life and closer inspection revealed the solution to the mystery of how the ship ended up in the mountains. Mechanical controls, unlike anything found in Demacia lined panels near the fore.
Piltovan then. Which meant that this was likely one of their vaunted airships and it must have crash landed here. Of course, that raised an important question. Where was the crew? There was no clear evidence of them here. The only thing abundantly clear was that the ship wasn't going anywhere anytime in the near future.
Making her way through the next hatch, which opened a good deal more easily, Lux found herself in a short corridor with several more closed hatches lining it and another open at the end leading further into the ship. She closed the one behind her, cutting off the wind and snow but also plunging her into darkness. Fortunately that was no issue for her and she focused her power into a ball of light that she held above one upturned palm.
Still no signs of life.
Making her way further she noticed the hatch nearest was… different than the rest. It was absolutely covered in drawings. They were simple figures, faces, and symbols painted in bright colours–pinks, blues, yellows, and greens. The scrawl looked like something a child would draw it not for how clean and steady it was. There was something off-putting about the dichotomy and she very much did not want to go through that particular hatch. At the same time, it was basically a big sign saying “survivor in here.”
It also screamed trap.
Lux stepped carefully past the hatch, pressing herself against the wall. She willed her ball of light to float near the ceiling and rested a hand on her sword's grip. There was no sense in being caught unawares if the occupants turned out to be hostile.
She knocked on the hatch. The sound echoed loudly in the otherwise silent hallway. No response, which only served to ramp up her anxiety.
“Hello?” She called. “Is there anybody there?”
Silence was the only answer. Lux huffed out a breath. She felt like a fool jumping at shadows. Still, every instinct in her body was telling her not to open that hatch, so she turned to continue down the corridor to check out other areas. When she did, she suddenly found herself staring down the barrel of a gun.
“Good instincts, Lightbulb. I was rea~lly hoping you'd open the door. It would've been a blast!” The woman behind the gun was being far too nonchalant considering she was hanging upside down from a hole in the ceiling with a gun shoved into a stranger's face.
She wore a wide smile as her gaze bored into Lux through bright pink eyes. Her blue hair was cut close except for one long bang, a pink streak running through it. She looked like she'd seen better days, or maybe not considering the sheer amount of scars that covered her bare arms, obscuring cloud tattoos that ran down the length of one of them. She was pale and gaunt but her gun didn't waver a millimeter.
This woman was dangerous. But she was smiling, even if it more closely resembled that of a shark than a human. Lux figured it would be in her best interest to keep her that way.
“Cute trick with the light. Show me how you did it, but first I’ll take your cool looking sword.”
Lux’s stomach dropped. She absolutely did not want to give up her weapon but it didn't seem she was being left with much of a choice. Slowly, so as not to provoke the other woman, she raised her free hand in surrender as she unclasped her sword belt with the other. It fell heavily to thunk on the floor, and then she raised that hand too. All the while she wore a placid smile.
“I’m not here to cause any trouble,” she says carefully. “I’m just trying to shelter against the snowstorm.”
“Is that what you call that white shit outside?”
Lux blinked rapidly as she processed that question. Had this woman never seen snow before? Lux looked at her. Really looked at her this time. She certainly didn’t look Demacian. In fact she looked like she hadn’t seen the sun in years. Prominent veins and dark bags surrounded striking pink eyes. Strong nose. Dark, cupid’s bow lips. Sharp cheek bones but cherubic cheeks. She cut a handsome figure.
Focus, Lux.
Her clothes, what little there was, were also not of Demacian make. Her top, that was more or less just wrappings, and her dark leather pants and cap sleeves were covered in bright paint. It seemed to be a personal style of hers. An excess of belts wrapped around her hips, which were visible through large holes on either side of her pants. Bizarre. Lux suddenly felt an irrational desire to slide her hands into them.
Get a grip.
“You done creeping on me, blondie?”
Lux blushed as she realized she’d been silent for too long. Her eyes darted to the side as she struggled to come up with something to say. What had the other woman asked? She suddenly couldn't remember. Well, might as well just start from the beginning.
“I’m sorry. My name is Luxanna Crownguard. Please just call me Lux. As I said, I'm only here looking for shelter. Please, there's no need for us to fight.”
The other woman simply watched her with hard eyes for a long, tense moment before eventually coming to some decision. Her gun arm went limp, prompting Lux to let out a relieved breath. With acrobatic grace, the woman dropped from the hole her legs disappeared into, flipping to land on her feet with a flourish.
“Ta-da! Name's Jinx. Stands for Jinx!”
The sudden shift in demeanor threw Lux for a loop. Her athletic display also took her by surprise. She only belatedly remembered she still had her hands up. As she slowly brought them down, however, the gun flicked back up to her face.
“I didn't say you could drop ‘em,” Jinx warmed dangerously.
Lux's hand flew up even higher than before. It only lasted a moment though before the blue haired woman started cackling. The gun dropped away again as her whole body shook with the force of her mirth. Lux merely frowned, not finding the humor in it at all.
“S-sorry! I couldn't… help myself” she managed to get out between bouts of laughter. It took nearly a minute for her laughter to subside.
Lux just watched, nonplussed. She couldn't make heads or tails of this woman. “Are you done?”
“Yeah, I'm done. Promise.” She holstered her pistol before pushing past Lux and making her way to the colorful hatch she had just skipped over. “So what's your story?” As she pushed the door open a metallic ping sounded and two round objects popped up into the air.
She deftly caught both of them and, in a flurry of motion that Lux could barely keep track of, disassembled them. Within moments her feet were surrounded by a pile of scrap metal and all that was left in her adroit hands was a pair of small, silver cylinders, which she twirled between her fingers before stuffing down her top.
“What was that?” Lux asked, though she wasn’t sure if she would feel more assured knowing or if she just left it alone.
Once again, Jinx flashed her that leonid smile before answering with a shrug, “Grenades.”
Lux’s eyes blew wide, which was apparently exactly the response the other woman was hoping for judging by the way she started giggling. “I know,” she said as she waved Lux into the room. “I'm pretty amazing. Anyway, this is me. My little home away from home.”
The room was unremarkable. She'd seen similar rooms on many Demacian ships, a single bed and a small desk with a few drawers, though it did appear to have a private bathroom. The state of the room was more or less exactly what Lux had come to expect from the wild woman. Scrap metal was littered on every available horizontal surface and paint was splattered on every other surface. The woman was as bombastic and carefree on the inside as she was on the outside.
A dark, bitter feeling welled up at that revelation. Her own life had always been a balancing act of carefully concealing the parts of herself that others found distasteful. Whether it was her family, her friends, the kingdom, or other mages. It felt horribly unfair.
Jinx flopped onto the bed. Through the small window next to it Lux could see the sky darkening behind endless wind-driven snow. Even from just inside the room she could feel her body heat being leeched through it. She pulled her heavy travel cloak closer around herself.
“So,” Jinx drew her attention, her pink-eyed gaze fixed on the blonde. “What's your story, Sunshine?”
Lux felt herself relax. She wasn't sure why the other woman put her at ease when only minutes ago she was pointing a gun at her, but she was too exhausted to question it. She stepped into the room, gingerly avoiding all the detritus and sat on the little stool tucked under the desk.
“Not much to tell. I’m just travelling south to Needlebrook. There’s a port there where I can hire a ship. Though I haven’t decided where I’ll go next.”
Jinx pulled a face at that. “Awfully fancy clothes and an even fancier name to be ‘just travelling ’, but what do I know?”
What did she know? Perhaps it would be a bit presumptuous, but just based on her appearance, Jinx didn’t seem to be anyone of any particular status. Yet she was on an airship seemingly alone. And unless the powers that be were particularly whimsical, it was unlikely that both of them had accidentally stumbled on this down craft. She presented herself as an everyman but behind her sharp eyes, Lux felt a keen intelligence.
She was fascinating.
“You’re not wrong,” Lux admitted. “The Crownguard line has long been the right hand of the throne. The foremost defenders of Demacia. But look at me. Do I look like the defender of anything right now?”
Jinx’s bright eyes tracked every movement, every gesture that flitted across her face. Whatever she saw seemed to satisfy her. Lux couldn’t imagine why.
“I s’pose you’re not, but then neither am I. The name ain’t for show, Blondie. I’m a curse. You really sure you want to bunk here?” In spite of the lightness of her speech, Lux could see real pain cross her features.
Lux’s heart ached for the blue-haired woman and she felt an overwhelming desire to cure her of her self-recrimination. She lifted a palm and summoned another ball of light. “Do you know what they call this light in Demacia?”
The blue-haired woman’s eyes were drawn to the light like a firebug. The way she looked at it… it was an expression that Lux had never seen in Demacia: awe. It filled her heart with a painful sort of joy.
“An affliction . If I were to show this to anyone, even family, I would be cursed at best. Imprisoned or exiled at worst. If you’re a curse, then what am I? Something much worse.” Her voice trailed off, lost in the painful memory of the words of her own brother when he discovered her secret.
“ Bullshit .”
The strength and vehemence of the words startled Lux. Her expression beheld such conviction that all of Lux's denials died on her lips. Jinx sat forward and reached out, fingertips ghosting over Lux's, close to, but not quite touching the ball of light.
“This,” she said with reverence, “could never be anything but beautiful.”
The words hit her with such force, though they were nearly whispered, that it was nearly a physical thing. It forced the air from her lungs and left her in a daze. The very concept of her magic being something that could be called beautiful… It made no sense. Every fiber of her being rejected it, even as she yearned for more.
“I-I have to go.” The words tumbled out of her as her magic bled away. The other woman might have said something, but if she did Lux was deaf to it.
The next thing she knew she was in another room. It was more or less identical to Jinx's room, minus her personal touches, but it clearly had not seen use in some time. None of that mattered to Lux in that moment as she sat curled around her knees on the floor. Her breath came in gasps as tears rolled down her cheeks.
She didn't understand why she was crying. She didn't understand anything. All she could hear was the word ‘beautiful’. All she could see were eyes full of adoration. And all she could feel was the pain of a lifetime hating and hiding her light.
How could she look her in the eye? Jinx was too good for her. She didn't deserve to be close to someone so perfect. She deserved to curl up in a pitiful ball and suffer. So that's what she did.