Chapter Three: Quick to the Draw, Quick to a Life
"Do you see it, brother? The grand undertaking of our kind, and we are its chosen guardians."
"No entry for the wicked."
"Stand back, brother! You know not what has taken you!"
"Everything will burn! Every last living being on this planet will be gutted! I will see this Library razed to the ground! And you, brother! I will keep your head as a trophy!"
Renekton's claw lurched over the ledge of the enormous pit, pulling his massive form over and onto the muddy ground of the forest floor. He stabbed his weapon into the ground and dragged himself forward, coming to a stop as he fell forward in exhaustion, flipping over to gaze into the night sky.
Through the small opening in the trees, the twinkling stars of this world looked like shining diamonds in the sky, perfect and beautiful in all their serenity. He had never taken the time to look upon the stars in Runeterra, and he feared he never would, but just looking into the void left him with memories long past. Of him and his brother on the greatest balcony in all his world, simply talking and discussing those ever-present stars. Once, he could have named them all. Now, the only memories he had were ones he did not wish to keep.
The thoughts in his mind tossed and turned like the thrashing of a trapped animal. The years of his life passed in an instant, leaving him short of breath and lacking with concentration as the forest around him moved on for what seemed like hours. The image of Nasus was one to remain constant, though. Almost like it was mocking him for his failures. Mocking him for a singular, stark truth. He had ruined it all. He had lost control and laid waste to his world. Damn it all, he was a monster.
He knew where he was. Not the specifics, but he knew enough. He was on a different world. He had experienced that feeling before. But the circumstances in which he came to be transported were... fuzzy, to say the least. The last several decades for him had been fuzzy. And it was only now did he see the world with true color.
While most would describe the forest as dreary and unwelcoming, Renekton found it fascinating and wonderful. The pure vibrancy and liveliness of his surroundings astonished him, now that he simply had the sense of mind to look. Everything was new, and he absorbed it all in a second.
Then, a peculiar scent wafted to his nostrils. A familiar scent. Dust and sweat and old, powerful magic. A few hours old. Jax and Galio, if his flagging memory served. That feeling of rage bubbled up in his stomach, but the soul-eater forced it down with a vengeance. He felt only remorse for his actions and what he had become, and he sought only to rectify his mistakes. He made his decision in an instant. He would follow the pair. And he would... apologize, perhaps? No, not quite. A century of suppressed rage and torment and carnage was not something to be undervalued with a simple apology. His heart ached with indecision. He would have plenty of time to think about it on the way there. He was already hours behind.
He turned in the direction the two had wandered off to before stopping and turning to look back at the pit for a moment. Overgrown. Probably the formation of wayward space debris. But how did he come to be there? He remembered the fight very vaguely. He remembered Jax and himself falling in, but then he was alone. Something had grabbed Jax. He looked around with all manner of confusion, but nothing was there. He found nothing hanging above the pit as Jax had.
It was as silent as the grave.
Hours had passed, yet Renekton still traveled restlessly. The pair had made an absurd amount of distance -- in no small part due to their combined pool of stamina. Renekton was no slouch, however, and he managed an even greater pace, with no signs of slowing. Their path had taken them alongside the river he had the pleasure of swimming in, and so it was a simple matter to both follow their scent and the tracks they made in the moist ground. Or, rather, Jax's tracks. The mercernary was certainly not one given to subtlety, but that didn't mean the soul-eater hasn't noticed the marks made by the gargoyle on the trees, clutching a branch like a common house parrot.
Renekton remembered a peer of his quite similar to that. As the keeper of the capital bell-tower, the avian soul-eater was responsible for keeping it fresh and well-kept, driving away miscreants and other, more troublesome birds from atop his perch on the tower. "They're like small children," he had told him. "You must drive them off once or twice, then eat a few to make sure they get the message." Rest assured, no miscreants or birds deemed to cause harm to the bell-tower after that.
Renekton kept well to the side of the path, his green skin blending flawlessly with the fauna of his surroundings as he kept low to the ground on all fours. He took special care to maintain his pace yet still remain undetectable, for the sole purpose of him finding his quarries. It was a tenuous situation. What if Jax was to attack first? He would certainly have to defend himself, but he wasn't sure if his conscience could take another ill-conceived fight. How would he explain himself? How could he explain himself? Nasus would've known. His brother was always the more cool and collected of the two of them, and his way around social conventions was only matched by the way Renekton knew his way around a battle. No doubt, though, Nasus had learned how to deal with him since since he had turned... feral. He had doubts that he could best his brother if they were to come to blows. Or anyone, for that matter. He had become predictable in his anger. Predictability in war was often punished by loss. It was time to adapt.
Hence why he played the cloak-and-dagger. No sense in bombastically parading through the jungle when one could prowl and plan instead. He found no issue with it so far, as a small plant futilely tried to bite him through his tough, reptilian hide. A strange ecosystem, to be certain, but nothing he couldn't handle with ease. He crushed it with a single foot. He heard it squeal satisfyingly, with the sizzling of plant blood following. Until it squealed again.
And again.
And again.
That was annoying. He crushed it again, only to hear the squeal again. As he drew his eye closer, it became evident that the plant was not making the noise -- how silly of him -- but the terrified shrieks came from further inside the forest. In the opposite direction from his path. It sounded like a person.
On one hand, he could lose his trail completely and lose his chances of finding where his redemption had wandered off to. On another, that same redemption was screaming in his ear, obviously in distress. One, he could lose for a long time. The other, he could lose for forever. He could wait a long time. He could also wait forever. But it couldn't. He made his way towards the screams.
Barreling through the forest with speeds that rivaled that of the armor-dillo of Runeterra, he trampled through what must have been a mile of untraveled forestry in no time at all, finding a grotesque amalgamation of several different animals chasing after a small, purple dragon. Youthful. However, not so youthful as to not have the basic motor functions of a living being, as he was running as fast as his little legs could take him. Not as fast as the creature though. It was gaining ground fast. But so was Renekton.
The soul-eater burst from the brush like a whirling tornado of metal, taking his blade from his back sheathe and swinging it at the creature in a wide arc, giving it no time to react. Now was the time to adapt his strategies.
He had aimed for the wing, and it was the wing he got, rendering the lion-dragon-scorpion creature unable to retreat for the time being. He had dealt with wild animals before, sicced on the Library in ill-received refusal. So in came the frenzied swipe of the paws, and snap went the bones of its foreleg. He had caught the limb mid-air and snapped it with the blunt side of his weapon cleanly, leaving yet another limb crippled. With another limb donated to keeping the other from suffering more harm, the venomous tail of the creature came jutting down like a lightning bolt, too quick to catch.
Renekton dodged and whirled around his wounded enemy, drawing great wounds around it as he moved, while suffering none of his own. All the while, the great predator roared in pain, having finally met its greater. In desperation, the creature tried to cut its losses and scurry off into the forest somewhere, but this just have Renekton the opening he needed to grab its tail and sever it from its body, spraying green venom everywhere on the ground. The predator was dying. It knew that. Renekton knew that. And in mercy, ruthlessness, or something more, Renekton dealt the killing blow and drove the tail through the creatures skull, silencing its whines of torment forever.
Efficient, short, and brutally accurate. Just how Renekton liked it. Before, he might have sprayed the limbs and organs around a bit. Make a bit of a show. But this? In his right state of mind, this was more than enough. This was simply natural selection. And it served its purpose magnificently. Don't attack the Darwinist of the forest. He did not relish it. Not anymore. But its effect was satisfying.
Carefully, he turned to the reason he took the time to go off his main path and through kilometers of unrecognizable forest terrain to get to. The dragon was cowering high up in a thin tree, his eyes closed and his arms covering his face. All-in-all, rather pathetic if one knew what he would grow up to be in a few centuries.
"Down from there, young one," Renekton tried, finding himself surprised by the deep, gravelly tone of his calm voice. "It is dead."
"W-who are you?" the dragon asked in surprise, uncovering himself and gazing at the wreckage of a creature that was once a manticore.
"I am Renekton. And you?"
"Spike. Spike the dragon!" Spike puffed up his chest as if to make himself seem bigger.
"Nice to meet you, Spike. A strange name for a dragon, to be sure. More suited to a dog, perhaps."
"Hey! That's my name, and I'm sticking to it! I don't need any criticism from you!" He looked down at the ground for a second. "It is a dog's name, though," he mumbled.
"I apologize," Renekton said gracefully. Maybe he wasn't so bad at this. "Now, do come down from there. I'd hate to have to crank my neck up to talk with you."
"Nuh-uh! I'm staying right here! I saw what you did to that manticore, and I don't know what you'll do with me if you get me!" Or, maybe not.
"Spike, I'm not going to hurt you."
"Yeah, right! I don't even know what you are! I'm pretty sure alligators can't talk!"
Renekton tossed around the idea of telling him the name of his kind, but that certainly wouldn't help matters. "That's not important."
"Of course it is! Names are everything! You're practically a stranger!"
"A stranger who saved your life," he pointed out.
"A stranger who could end it just as easily, too! So I'll just stay up here for a while. Maybe dig myself a little hole in the tree before I head back home." He began to scratch absentmindedly at the bark.
"Home?" Renekton puzzled. "You have a home? Where is it? Don't dragons your age travel with packs?"
"Why would I tell you where my home is? So you can kill them like you killed the manticore?"
Renekton tired of the verbal back-and-forth. "Spike..."
"What?"
"Watch your fingers." And with that, Renekton launched his blade into the base of the branch that Spike had wandered off to, leaving the latter falling straight into the former's open claw. Renekton walked over smugly to retrieve his weapon, then looked at the helpless dragon.
"That was unfair," Spike complained.
"You wouldn't listen," Renekton countered, frowning at the adolescent. He cringed back.
"Please don't hurt me," he squeaked out.
"You still aren't listening," Renekton said placidly, before setting Spike on his shoulder and walking along the path he could see Spike had taken. The small dragon heaved a sigh of relief, grasping a hold of Renekton's neck-piece and sighing in fatigue.
"How did you get out here, Spike?" Renekton asked, still walking. The dragon hadn't objected, so he could only assume he was going the right way.
"I... lost a book," he confessed, blushing.
"You lost a book?" the soul-eater questioned flatly.
"My... um... sister owns the library in town. Total bookworm. These books are her world. So when I lost one, I couldn't just face her and tell her I lost it. I had to find it myself. Well, I didn't really lose it, per se..."
"Go on."
"My friends did. I lent it to them and they lost it somewhere out here, trying for something crazy for their special talents. I couldn't bring them here. They couldn't handle it. I can. I'm a dragon. I just got a bit... lost."
"Yet if you came out all this way, and you couldn't get back, it would seem that your friends were more qualified to search than you were."
"I know..." The spines at the sides of Spike's head drooped in sadness. "I'm the worst dragon ever..."
"I haven't seen too many dragons," Renekton said neutrally, in an attempt to comfort his charge, "but I'm sure your analysis is false, given the amount of dragons that I'm sure exist here."
"At least they grew up with dragons," he muttered.
"What was that?"
"Nothing." He clearly wanted to speak no more on the subject, so Renekton let it go, despite that fact that it was probably not healthy to be having an existential crisis at his age. It was out of his league.
Around a half an hour of silence and trailblazing passed before Spike spoke again. "Hey, how did you get this deep into the Everfree?"
Everfree, hrm? The place certainly felt free. That was a good name.
"I am... unsure. I'm suffering from slight amnesia, as I'm sure you will forgive. I simply know that it had to do with a lot of magic. I can tell you that much. I was trying to find two colleagues of mine when I heard you crying in distress, so I found you. I'll have to renew my search after I get you home."
Spike snorted. "A thirteen-foot tall alligator with a huge sword thing and can talk? I thought magic was kinda implied. And I wasn't crying."
"Mmhmm."
"And your... colleagues. Are they like you? Why were you looking for them?"
Renekton almost laughed. "They are certainly unique, I'll give you that. As for being like me, I'm afraid not. And I was looking for them because I have wronged them. I have wronged many people, and it is time for me to apologize. Some of those people, I cannot apologize to, but these two, I can. I have to start somewhere," he shrugged. As an afterthought, he asked, "Does any sort of river or stream run through your town?"
"Yeah, why?"
"Does it come from the forest?"
"That's the one."
The soul-eater smiled. "Then perhaps my trail is not lost after all. Is your town near?"
"Yeah, there's a little trail coming up that leads to a friend of mine's cottage. That's close to the town. It would still be a few hours, at how fast we're going."
"Then let's see if we can speed up a bit." Renekton dropped to all fours and plopped Spike fully on his back, instructing him to take position around his neck as he broke off full tilt towards the trail.
It was the perfect plan. He had needed a way to break the ice between him and his fellow champions, so what better way to do so than to use the friendly natives? Surely, with the knowledge of a library, they had some form of celebration to welcome the incoming travelers into their town, and, therefore, loosen the hostilities. He just had to get there first.
No problem.
The mangled corpse of the manticore lay on the forest floor, without a single fly or parasite having taken notice. The open wounds hadn't even begun to smell, and the ground was still wet with blood. Nearby, in the shadows of a tree, a ghostly, demonic figure appeared, clad in matte-black trappings and with a larger, more threatening version of what the Ionians called a kusarigama. A glowing lantern illuminated the dusk of the night, as well as the tiny green sprite floating above the corpse.
Thresh did not make a habit of collecting the souls of primitive creatures. But at least it gave the others company. Into the lantern it went, sucked up into a vortex it would never escape from. Not as his jailer lived.
Or died, in his case. Unlived? Came back to life and died again? There were frustratingly few adjectives to describe his state of being, and, as a well-learned man, Thresh was frustrated to no end by it. He would personally find that particular soul and torment him endlessly.
As for his current project, everything was proceeding as planned. A bit of a disruption here, an upset animal there, a message in another place, and his allies were on their merry way to a peaceful, and, as he had observed, strange village. They were his allies, even if they didn't know it yet. He may have been a clinical sociopath, but he wasn't stupid. Reaper or not, he didn't have a clue where he was, and he would need all the help he could get. But he needed more information, first. And he needed to fulfill his daily quota of souls.
So, turning from the harvested corpse, he began to walk into the shadows to transport again when he heard a chilling voice call out from a few yards away, "Hey, buddy. That's mine."
It was a pony. As expected. He had long since determined the dominant species of this world, but this one was different. He wore a black cloak, with an open hood, yet inside the hood was a black void that seemed impenetrable by any onlookers. Simply looking at him made Thresh feel unease, and his voice made the air feel cold. He was flabbergasted.
"I'm gonna need that soul. It's my job."
"Oh, you have got to be kidding me."
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This is really good, don't stop. Keep uploading this fast! This is awesome
This story is awesome. Keep up the good work.
love the story and the champs you picked.
fc03.deviantart.net/fs70/i/2012/248/8/e/fluttershy_wants_moar_by_alexgoestrollandlol-d5dqge6.png
Liking it so far. Keep it up!
I'm really enjoying your take on a restored Renekton. It's quite interesting to see him trying to figure out how to make up for his actions when he was crazy.
And this Thresh, too
Write on,
Legion
Update when :(?
Step 1: Search for MLP LoL stories.Check.
Step 2: Stumble across a lot of crappy stories. Check.
Step 3: Stumble across your story. Check.
Step 4: Read the chapters available. Check.
Step 5: Cry tears of joy at what may just be the best story on FIMfiction. Checkcheckcheckcheck.
Step 6: Wait for the next chapter to come out.
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Fuck.
just so u know thresh is not from runeterra
he's from the shadow isles, ya dummy 
no offence
I need mores, Please! MOAR!!!
3372483 That was pretty much my reaction to this story as well. I can't wait to read more... Wait.
3541185 he never actually originated from the shadow isles, I believe when he was human his lore stated he was a warden somewhere in runeterra, known for his brutality and loving of executions. One day a prison riot broke out and his prisoners hung him, an ironic end for an executioner. Well. He was reborn as...that.
It's a damn shame thresh found the author of this story. I had some fun with it.
MOAR I NEED MOAR
So far, very good!
Very interesting characters you picked! And I like the way you write Thresh! He's my favourite champ!
I will be tracking this story like a hawk! I hope you update soon!