A meep swallowed Logan.
That was not a sentence Logan had ever expected to apply to his life twice by proxy and once directly.
The creature drifted in front of him, made a soft chiming sound, then suddenly grew.
It had become a round, glowing, cosmic sack of nonsense with little limbs, a tiny face, and a wide mouth.
"Wait."
The meep opened its mouth.
"No, I understand the plan. I'm just saying maybe we can discuss the, "
It lunged.
Logan saw soft light, a tongue that did not look like it should exist, and then he landed inside something warm and strangely dry.
For a second, he lay still.
Then he heard Aatrox.
"I hate you."
Logan looked around.
He was inside the meep's belly.
Beyond the curved walls, he could see the outside world, distorted but clear enough.
Bard's hand.
The stars.
Another meep growing near Ahri.
Ahri looked at Logan's meep with wide eyes, then at her own.
The second meep opened its mouth.
Ahri tried to step away.
Too late, it swallowed her in one gulp.
Logan winced. "Sorry."
Aatrox growled. "Do not apologize to her. Apologize to me."
Outside, both meeps shrank.
The world expanded violently.
Or maybe Logan became impossibly small.
Bard, who had already been huge, became something beyond measurement. His hand was now a landscape. The lines in his palm could have been valleys. A distant meep floating beside his shoulder looked like a moon. Logan looked down at himself, then out through the meep wall.
Ahri was visible inside the other meep awkwardly with her knees drawn up and her tails curled around her like she was trying to preserve dignity.
Logan raised a hand.
Ahri raised one back.
"So this is how we're infiltrating Targon Prime," Logan said. "By being eaten, shrunk, and carried inside meeps."
Aatrox answered flatly, "A glorious strategy."
"It makes sense. If you're not a Celestial, you're probably not allowed inside."
Logan pressed one hand against the inner wall. It gave slightly, like warm glass. "I can see out. I wonder if anyone can see in."
He looked toward the distant shining realm Bard had pointed to. If the meeps were already tiny, then Logan and Ahri inside them were smaller than ants. Smaller than dust, maybe. Maybe no one would notice. Or maybe Targon Prime had cosmic security that could see souls, intentions, and stupid plans.
He had no way to know.
Another meep floated closer, this one remaining outside. It pointed at Logan's meep, then at Ahri's. Then it waved both arms, kicked both legs, spun once, and struck a pose.
Logan stared.
Inside her meep, Ahri copied the motion carefully.
Her meep copied her.
It waved both arms, kicked both legs, spun once, and struck the same pose.
Logan looked at the meep around him.
"Oh."
He lifted his right arm.
The meep lifted its right little arm.
Logan lifted his left arm.
The meep did the same.
He took one careful step.
The meep waddled forward.
Logan stopped. "So we're piloting them."
Aatrox was silent.
Logan smiled despite himself. "They're our mechas."
"Do not enjoy this."
"I'm not enjoying it. I'm adapting."
Logan moved both arms experimentally. The meep mirrored him, floating awkwardly in front of Bard's palm. Ahri tried the same inside hers. Her meep waved twice, then nearly bumped into Logan's.
Ahri gave a small sound that might have been embarrassment.
Logan almost laughed, but then remembered where they were and what they were supposed to be doing.
He looked up at Bard, though from inside the meep, "up" had become a complicated concept.
"Before we go, where exactly should we look for Zoe?"
He had no idea if Bard could hear him at this size.
A group of meeps arrived before Bard answered.
They appeared from nowhere, or from between two stars, or from some folded space Logan could not perceive. They rushed toward Bard in a cluster, chiming with frantic energy. Golden sparks flashed between them.
Bard turned.
The meeps around him reacted at once.
They began chiming back, suddenly excited. One spun. Another clapped its little hands. The meep that had been giving Logan instructions forgot him completely and zipped toward the others.
Logan watched as Bard listened.
...
Then Bard moved.
Not toward Targon Prime.
Away.
The Wandering Caretaker turned and drifted into the stars with the whole excited cluster of meeps following him.
Logan stared through the meep wall.
He waited for Bard to come back.
Bard did not come back.
A long silence passed.
Logan said, "So that's how important my existence is to the Celestial."
He kept watching the place where Bard had vanished. "Maybe he found an artifact. Or another cosmic imbalance. Or a chime. Or a flower. Or a spoon that belongs in a different galaxy."
"You accepted employment from a being who became distracted mid-instruction", Aatrox said.
"I noticed."
Ahri's meep floated closer. Through the translucent wall, Ahri looked at Logan and tilted her head.
Logan waved once to show he was fine.
Then he looked at the meeps holding them.
They were identical to every other normal meep. Impossible to tell apart.
"We should name them," Logan said.
"No," Aatrox said.
"Bard named one Zoelle. Or Zoe did. Someone did. So we need names."
Aatrox's silence became hostile.
Logan pointed toward Ahri's meep. "That one is Ahrielle."
Ahri blinked.
Her meep chimed happily.
Logan looked around his own glowing stomach prison. "And this one…"
Aatrox's voice sharpened. "Do not."
Logan smiled. "Aatroxelle."
The meep made a pleased sound.
Aatrox spoke coldly and simply. "One day, I will kill you."
...
The meeps began moving.
Aatroxelle and Ahrielle drifted toward Targon Prime, with the remaining meeps that had not abandoned them for whatever cosmic emergency Bard considered more urgent. The shining realm grew larger with each passing moment.
Then they crossed a boundary Logan could not see.
The stars changed.
The empty space around them filled with structures. Bridges arched across nothing. Towers rose from floating landmasses made of silver stone and luminous glass. Rivers of light flowed in channels that had no source and no end. Stairways spiraled between platforms without touching them. Great rings turned slowly around domes of gold and blue crystal.
Targon Prime was not a city in the way Piltover was a city.
It was more like an idea of a city created by beings who thought gravity was a suggestion and architecture should make mortals feel underqualified to exist.
Aatroxelle landed on a vast pale street, or something close to a street. Ahrielle touched down beside him.
Logan moved one leg.
Aatroxelle walked.
The motion was strange at first, too bouncy, too light, but Logan adjusted. Ahri did the same beside him, and soon both meeps were waddling through the celestial avenue like nothing was wrong.
No one stopped them.
Celestials moved around them.
Some looked almost human from a distance, until they turned and revealed too many eyes or skin that held moving constellations. Others were tall and thin, with faces hidden behind veils of light. Some had wings made of geometry. Some carried tools that looked like weapons until they used them to repair cracks in the air. Others spoke in pulses of color, trading orbs, fragments of starlight, and folded pieces of time like market goods.
Then there were the larger ones.
Aspects, Logan guessed.
Not the ones he knew. But beings of that class, or close to it. They towered above the other Celestials, enormous and terrible without needing to show force.
One walked across a bridge overhead, body shaped like polished bronze armor filled with flame. Its steps did not touch the bridge, but the bridge bowed anyway. Logan wondered if it was some kind of Aspect of Conquest.
Another stood beside a fountain of liquid light, veiled in dark blue, holding a scale with stars in both cups. Law, maybe. Balance. Debt. Something that would probably ruin lives with perfect fairness.
A third drifted near a tower, its body long and white, with antler-like branches of crystal rising from its head. Flowers bloomed in its wake, then turned to dust. Growth? Memory? Passing seasons?
As they moved deeper into the city, Logan saw some meeps. Some floated between buildings. Some appeared from portals and vanished into cracks of light. Most ignored Aatroxelle and Ahrielle completely.
Aatroxelle approached a pair of meeps near a pillar covered in moving symbols.
Logan raised his hands.
Aatroxelle copied him.
The meeps turned.
Logan spoke slowly, as if that would help. "We're looking for the Aspect of Twilight."
Aatroxelle chimed.
The sound did not match Logan's words at all.
The other meeps responded with gestures, flashing lights and pointing down the avenue.
Logan looked at Ahri's meep. "Did you get that?"
Ahri shook her head.
Ahrielle shook its whole body.
Logan sighed. "Of course."
They followed anyway.
At each group of meeps, they asked again. Or tried to. Aatroxelle chimed. Ahrielle copied Ahri's polite little wave. The city's meeps seemed to understand enough to send them onward, deeper through Targon Prime.
Past a plaza where Celestials traded colors that made Logan's eyes ache.
Past a garden of floating stones, each stone holding a tiny storm.
Past a hall with doors opening onto different skies.
...
As they walked, Logan's thoughts wandered toward the lore.
Myisha.
It had been Myisha, the previous host of the Aspect of Twilight, who taught mortals how to trap the Darkin inside their own weapons. Not Zoe. Zoe was the current host. She had not been the one who sealed Aatrox.
So why did Aatrox react to her voice like someone had dragged a blade across his soul?
Logan glanced back at the sword strapped inside the meep with him.
"How do you know the current host?"
...
Eventually, the Darkin said, "When I consumed those who bore me and walked Runeterra in flesh, I sometimes encountered her."
"Zoe."
"The Aspect wearing Zoe. The name does not matter."
"It probably matters to her."
"I do not care."
Logan waited.
Aatrox continued, each word low. "Different hosts. Same stench of Twilight. Same laughter from above while we were reduced to prisons. I wanted to kill them all. Slowly. Horribly. No matter what face they wore."
"And Zoe?"
Aatrox's voice went colder. "The new one laughs worse."
Logan watched a group of Celestials pass overhead like living lanterns.
"What do you think now?"
The sword was silent.
Logan had expected hatred. Even with Aatrox changing, it would have been easy to say he still wanted Zoe dead.
But Aatrox did not answer.
Logan let the silence stand.
Then he saw the meep.
It was alone, walking quickly across a side path with a little scroll clutched in both hands.
One of Bard's normal meeps. Round body, small limbs, soft glow.
But wearing a dress.
A pretty navy-blue dress with tiny star patterns on the hem.
And the hair.
Or rather, the wig.
A bright, wild wig styled suspiciously like Zoe's hair.
Logan stared.
Inside Ahrielle, Ahri clasped both hands to her chest.
A soft sound left her.
Pure tenderness.
"Zoelle," Logan murmured.
Aatrox said, "That creature is wearing stolen dignity."
Zoelle did not seem imprisoned.
She moved with purpose, clutching the scroll close, glancing left and right with what looked like secrecy. Then she hurried down a smaller street between two high walls of silver stone.
Logan moved Aatroxelle after her.
Ahri followed in Ahrielle.
Aatroxelle waddled faster.
Not fast enough.
Zoelle was quick.
She crossed beneath an archway, slipped between two floating pillars, and entered a narrow passage that felt almost absurd in a city this grand. The walls leaned close together. Light dimmed. The shining order of Targon Prime thinned into a quiet corner where maybe even Celestials forgot to look.
Zoelle stopped.
Logan stopped too, keeping Aatroxelle partly behind a glowing column.
Ahrielle leaned beside him.
Zoelle unfolded the scroll and looked down at the ground.
There was a purple stain on the stone.
Small.
Almost like paint.
Logan leaned forward.
The stain shimmered.
Then two huge bright eyes appeared inside it.
A voice exploded out of the little purple patch.
"Zoelle! They followed you!"
Logan froze.
Zoe.
Definitely Zoe.
The purple patch was not a stain.
It was a tiny portal.
Zoelle startled and clutched the scroll to her chest.
Zoe's eyes narrowed inside the portal, bright and furious in the way only someone having fun could be furious.
"Bad sneaky meeps! Bad! Very rude! This was a secret fashion-diplomacy mission!"
Aatrox's voice became a whisper of pure dread. "Leave."
Logan did not move.
Zoe's eyes shifted toward Aatroxelle.
Then something bright rose behind Zoe.
At first Logan thought it was another light.
Then it moved.
A star.
Small by cosmic standards, maybe, but a freaking star.
It came through the portal like a thrown toy, blazing gold and purple, straight toward Aatroxelle.
Logan had one thought.
Of course she throws stars.