"Hello."
Sivir stood with her hands on her hips, looking at the two of them with obvious disdain.
As a mercenary, she could spot people's defining traits at a glance. It was instinct, sharpened over years of dealing with all kinds of people.
With Cassiopeia, Sivir had sensed the woman's scheming nature immediately.
But along the way, Sivir had never let her crossblade leave her hand, so Cassiopeia never had a chance to make a move. Sivir's mercenary company had suffered terrible losses, but Cassiopeia's personal guards had never had any obligation to step in.
Then Sivir saw that gorgeous relief carving and froze for just an instant.
That single instant was all it took for a blade to punch through her body.
What happened after that had felt like a dream.
Azir, the emperor foretold to return, had appeared before her in the flesh, and on top of that, he had told her she carried the blood of Shurima's royal line.
That also meant she might become the very first person to undergo Ascension once the Sun Disc rose again.
As for the two people in front of her now...
The purple-skinned woman had clearly lived through more than enough life-and-death battles. Once the fighting started, the strength and judgment she showed probably wouldn't be any worse than Sivir's own.
The other one... that was harder to pin down.
Was he unfathomable, or just a complete weakling?
When Sivir looked at Caleb, she could not read him at all.
But then again, after everything she had experienced, after even meeting Ascended, the fact that she still could not see a thing beneath the surface of this man called Caleb was saying something.
Watching Kai'Sa pop a sugar cube into her mouth, Sivir became even more convinced that Caleb was probably just the brains of the operation.
The girl had everything going for her, except in everyday life she could be a little slow.
She looked like the kind of person who'd get sold off and still help count the money.
Then there was the yordle.
Yordles were generally peace-loving, and they possessed no small amount of rune power.
That, Sivir figured, was the real backbone of the group.
"I'll handle navigation."
Without waiting for any objections, Sivir spread out her map.
Compared with Caleb's beautifully made one, this map clearly put practicality first.
The dense markings all over it made Caleb's head hurt just looking at it.
How far would someone have to travel to label Shurima this clearly?
The map in his hands, while elegant, had still been drawn by Heimerdinger long ago from memory. The ruins of the Sun Disc, a landmark like that, were not the kind of thing that would shift around.
But scattered villages, roaming tribes, even parts of the landscape itself had all changed shape over the long march of time.
Compared to Sivir's sheepskin map, updated and brutally practical, Caleb's looked badly outclassed.
"Someone once spotted an arcane entity out on the Endless Plain."
Sivir patiently explained it to the two foreigners.
Nasus had specifically warned her that the pair knew practically nothing about Shurima.
"That person belongs to a nomadic people who travel on the backs of great dormun."
"We'll need to find her first, then ask exactly where she saw that arcane entity."
"And once we do find it, all you have to do is pour your energy into one of these."
As she spoke, Sivir laid out a row of ornaments.
Every last one of them was made of gold.
"Well then, don't mind if I do."
After leaving two for Kai'Sa and Yuumi, Caleb swept the rest straight into his clothes.
Now this was what a real haul looked like.
"You..." Sivir glared at Caleb, then let out a sigh.
She knew Azir did not care about wealth on this level.
It just rubbed her the wrong way to watch an outsider so casually claim those riches for himself.
Over the years, how many treasures had been dug out of the tombs of ancient Shurima and sold off for dirt cheap? Once merchants left Shurima, those same relics fetched excellent prices almost anywhere.
Who wouldn't want in on a business with margins like that?
Of course Sivir knew all this. The goods her mercenary company sold were hardly cheap either.
But compared to how rare the things they found really were, what they earned was still only a tiny fraction of their true value.
Sivir often sighed over it. The antiques on this land were plentiful, but what the people lacked was the very thing they needed most to survive.
Now that was about to change.
With Azir awakened, prosperity was bound to return to Shurima.
Sivir's eyes were burning with excitement when she got rapped on the forehead.
"You stupid sand maggot!" she snapped, launching into a string of fluent Shuriman curses, and nearly walked right into her own insult in the process.
"If you've got something to say, then say it. What are you grinning about?"
Caleb was annoyed too.
Most of the women he'd seen in Piltover and Zaun had been soft-skinned beauties.
The only one who really did not count was Camille, after switching to her Hextech body.
After all those years of living rough under the sun and wind, Sivir's skin had turned a healthy wheat-gold. It was a little rough, sure, but still a whole lot better than Kai'Sa's full-body Void look.
And the toned lines of muscle showing at her waist were undeniably cool.
The problem was the way she always looked at him, like she was just a little above him.
Honestly, if Caleb had been equipped with one of those ridiculous macho protagonist instincts, he would have planted four punches on her and settled the matter right there.
Sivir forced down her anger, cleared her throat, and continued.
"We head to a nearby village first and rest up. Then we look for the dormun. Once we locate the arcane entity, we use the ornaments to notify Azir."
Sivir still did not know the full story between Xerath and Azir.
Simply put, Xerath had not trusted Azir's promise to free the slaves, and instead stole the power of Ascension for himself.
If the two of them had truly spoken openly back then, maybe these thousand years of desolation never would have happened.
But now there was already a thick, miserable wall between them.
That wall was Azir's homeland, Azir's people, and the Ascension that should have been his.
"So how are we supposed to cross the Endless Plain?"
Caleb frowned immediately, spotting the problem at once.
According to the notes Sivir had marked on the map, the dormun moved across the land by secretly sensing hidden water sources.
If they tried to chase them on foot, there was no way they would ever catch up.
Sivir, however, was ready for that question.
"Skaarash. We can ride them to catch up."
"They can find hidden water in the desert too, and across the Endless Plain, there are only a few places where water can be found at all."
Caleb nodded, even though he had not actually understood what she was talking about.
Seeing that the destination lay east, near Mount Targon, he felt a faint unease rising in his chest.
With the Void still lying dormant in the west, would there still be time to stop that rift?
...
"How could this be?"
Today, Swain once again came to the top of the Immortal Bastion and watched the crow descend from the sky.
A moment ago, Raum had shown him a new future.
As a demon capable of prying into hidden things, Raum could tell Swain a great deal.
But Swain only ever chose the most urgent problems to deal with first.
"The women of House Du Couteau have vanished. One seems to be following in the footsteps of Zaun's Governor. The other is nowhere to be found."
Blood slowly rose upward and gathered into the form of a man in crimson formalwear.
Long claws tipped all ten of his fingers, enough to send a chill through anyone even in the middle of broad daylight.
"The younger daughter is in the cellar right now," a pale woman said as she glided over to Swain's side.
"She seems to have obtained part of Shurima's power."
The two of them both belonged to the Black Rose, an organization far older than Noxus itself.
But after the Black Mist not long ago, they had no choice but to join forces and prepare for war.
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