Queen of Borrowed Light

The creature lay sleeping outside of the court when the sky split asunder and a blade of radiant light struck the grounds of the court and split them to the vascular flame beneath the stone. The angel rode the wake of light behind, crying triumphant as she broke the veil of shadows and for a moment the cracked one-way mirror which separated the court from the glade around it sputtered and fogged. Cleansing white fire filled the halls and scorched hot enough to melt the ethereal stones themselves as the angel hefted her blade at arm’s length and brandished it like a magician’s wand, all show and drama with no malice. When she charged the Black Throne, there was the malice. There was the anger and the righteous indignation at the very notion of the thing which sat upon it. The blade struck through woman and throne alike, but moments later hung in empty air as the throne shimmered from sight and reappeared at another end of the court, the flickering and faltering dimension still under full control of its master as the angel railed against her.

“You know that this all fixes itself, right? You aren’t even inconveniencing me, really.”

The angel hoisted her sword as if she would charge again, but ultimately sheathed it. Nothing in her posture relaxed, nothing about the sneer on her lips lost any of the contempt behind it.

“I thought you appreciated drama, sister.” She said, Morgana sighed.

“There is a world of difference between drama and loudness. That is something even the Noxians seem to have come to understand before you did.”

“This was all more fun before you learned to make the world around match your understanding of it,” Kayle sneered and shrugged her helmet off to hold it under her arm. “Back then, I could at least break your furniture.”

"I'm not remotely surprised that treating the symptoms in place of the disease fits within your understanding of the world.” Morgana tried to make the way she sneered the word understanding match the contempt Kayle had delivered it with. She almost succeeded, but there was a level of hatred for those around you that could only come from being truly convinced of one’s absolute moral and intellectual supremacy. Her own world was not that small.

“As opposed to holding it in a box until it changes of its own accord,” Kayle spat, “Perhaps you should ask the souls consumed by the Harrowing if they’ve earned their redemption yet.”

“Yes, because that makes so much less sense than murdering every murderer until no murderers remain,” Morgana rolled her eyes, “Except… for one very noisy one, I suppose.”

Kayle spat and flickered, fundamentally incompatible with the pocket of reality around her but not weak enough to be consumed by it. That was what Morgana found annoying about her. Or at least, it was part of it.

“I’m surprised you haven’t started keeping a collection of misbehaving souls in a **** lantern since I last saw you.”

“And I’m surprised you came back. Did killing all of the murderers off-world not work there either?”

Kayle paused for a moment, then spat again. Like the damage, it was something which would solve itself as soon as she left. Like the damage, it was more about getting on Morgana’s nerves than any meaningful change. Part of growing up with somebody meant that you knew what annoyed them. If Morgana had any food, she’d be loudly chewing it and smacking her lips in response. That was all this was on at least some level. Their parents would have been so disappointed.

“I was gone long enough that I forgot how impenetrable your skull was.” Kayle finally grumbled.

“And you were gone long enough for me to forget how unfun you are all of the time. But that does leave the hanging question of why you would return and interrupt our happily forgetting each other.”

Kayle seemed to remember why she had come and straightened up. A look came to her eyes that Morgana hadn’t seen in a very long time. It probably wasn’t a good sign.

“That is a fair question, sister. As much as I wouldn’t have come back if I thought it was possible for me not to, I’m afraid there is a rather pressing matter at hand.”

“And yet here you were, happy to trade words with me while-”

“Sister, please. This is serious.” Kayle’s tone was pleading, Morgana sat up straight.

“What possibly vexes you this badly?”

“In my travels I found many worlds outside of our own. Most of them are cold and dead places, some seemingly that way since time began, some made that way by their own hand or by the hand of another.”

“I suspect this about the “hand of another”, then?”

Kayle nodded, “The field of stars is a place of lonely size beyond what the mind can wrap itself around. Because it is so vast, it was all but a certainty that other worlds than our own would find themselves host to life which was thinking and feeling, that could be communed with. But the same vastness made it all but a certainty that the chances of finding one were slim.”

“Yes, I understand the notion. If what you have to say is so dire, do not mince words or linger in the places where your mind stagnates.”

“I found dead worlds before I found living ones, and among the dead I saw patterns of destruction as the calling card of murderers. A singular race, one which could form itself as needed for integration with hosts, one which could feed on and amalgamate both form and capability. The seeming goal, as I saw it, was to descend on a world and take all that which could prove useful to the base entity, then leave no trace of the races which had once called the place home. Whole systems of cold, empty rocks. Surfaces eaten down to bare, miniscule components.”

Morgana fidgeted in her throne, her mind starting to connect dots that had before seemed like isolated points of data.

“These things, they would prove no threat to us, I imagine?”

Kayle shook her head, “In isolation, the threat would entirely be to everything which was not ascended or of great enough power for a human being to be but a struggling fly in its web. But we have always seen eye to eye in that we need not recognize the autonomy of that which preys on intelligent life.”

“Then I suppose these things are on their way here?”

“I found their home, if you could call it such. It was… beyond what I previously thought possible outside of the capabilities of idiot gods. A nest for rats built around a comet. Living rock, mana shaped into crystalized latticeworks, structures made of thinking, living flesh given no features but full comprehension. I touched a mind within each atom of it I brushed against. Walls and floors which pulsed with intelligence, and all the while these things like spiders tunneling in the flesh, burrowing through blisters and lesions which wept in a thousand tongues. I destroyed all that I found on that rock, reduced it to memories. But knowing the manner of energy which composed it, I reached out for it as far as my mind would allow. I hoped to find nothing, but found hundreds of these… seed stones. I did what I could as long as I was capable, but in my travels came close enough to home to feel them nearing.”

“And even if you destroy what is either coming or already landed, what do you hope to achieve?”

“This transcends morality, sister. This transcends any argument between us about what is and is not just. This is not life. It is a disease which cannot be treated once it has begun. I do not hope to achieve defeat against this foe. I am here to immunize the planet from it. Nothing more, nothing less.”

“And so you feel them here already? Why come to me and not root them out yourself?”

Kayle grew visibly uneasy, “Where your senses have always been as a surgeon’s blade, mine have always been as a craftsman’s hammer. I know that they are here, I know that the longer they are here the more danger we are in, but I will not see cities leveled in the hopes that one has made home there. Though there are few things that I want to do less, I must ask for your help.”

Morgana sat and stared at her sister for a moment, conflicting contempt and desperation wavering on Kayle’s face. Slowly, Morgana smiled.

“Sister dearest,” Morgana made her voice sweet as honey and condescending as a resentful instructor, “Perhaps it is time I give you a lesson in the nature of drama.”

The creature appeared curled in her lap.