"So you came here from the twin cities, all the way to that place called the World's Gateway?" Taliyah asked, looking amazed.
"More accurately, I'm from the poorer half of the twin cities," Caleb replied calmly.
At the moment, they were all sitting on an enormous stone slab, racing down the slope of a dune at high speed.
Once they crossed another two or three dunes, they would enter the city of Zuretta.
"That's incredible." Taliyah's eyes were full of admiration.
"It's not that big a deal."
Kai'Sa did not really have any frame of reference for that kind of thing, since she usually acted alone.
Sivir, meanwhile, carried the blood of Shuriman royalty, so she had to maintain Shurima's dignity.
Yuumi and Renekton had both seen far greater things in life. This little bit of status was not even a tenth as impressive as the Yaanogel inside Caleb.
Only a sweetheart like Taliyah was willing to hype Caleb up like that.
"Of course, you're welcome to visit there anytime," Caleb said with a polite smile. "Just give them my name, and someone will definitely come receive you."
"If I'm not there by then, knock on wood, pth—"
Caleb suddenly caught a mouthful of sand and spat it out at once.
"Taliyah, have you ever seen the world outside Shurima?"
Sivir moved over and took Caleb's place at the edge of the slab, asking the question gently.
The moment she saw this girl, she had felt an immediate sense of closeness. Taliyah's face bore all the marks of someone who had truly grown up in the desert.
Not like Caleb and Kai'Sa, who were obviously not native to Shurima.
"I went once." Taliyah's eyes dimmed. "But it didn't end well."
"The Noxians told me to use my gift as much as I could," Taliyah said, lowering her head, looking far more dejected than before.
"But when I got on a ship and made it to Ionia, the only thing they wanted from me was to be used like a living weapon."
"They wanted me to bury an entire village."
"Of course I refused. So they threw me into the sea."
"And by the time I finished learning from the Ionians and came back, I couldn't find the tribe my parents had been with anymore."
"I'm going to find them. I have to."
Taliyah's eyes hardened with determination, and the rocks in their path obediently shifted aside.
"When that happens, you can bring them beneath the Sun Disc. They'll have a good life there," Renekton said, joining the conversation.
He was not riding the slab with them. He was gliding across the sand on his own.
As a warrior, this sort of forced march technique was nothing to him.
"Ah..." Caleb hurriedly pulled out a bottle of water and chugged the whole thing down.
Only then did he breathe out like a man reborn.
That last mouthful of sand had been brutal. It had nearly gone straight into his throat.
He had coughed so hard he felt like his tonsils were about to come out.
Kai'Sa sat off to one side, hugging her knees with a perfectly innocent expression.
Yuumi, meanwhile, was standing on her Book of Thresholds, thoroughly enjoying the ride.
"To be honest, this is my first time doing anything like this."
Caleb had seen that under certain circumstances, Shurimans used wind-powered gliders and sandboards to travel across the desert.
It was an extremely risky way to move. One bad mistake, and you could go tumbling head over heels through the sand.
Getting a mouthful of sand and losing time was the small problem. If there happened to be a rock nearby, you could easily break an arm or a leg.
But with Taliyah there, none of them had to worry about any of that.
"We're here!"
As Taliyah hopped lightly off the slab, everyone could see the dried lakebed in the distance and the rubble strewn across it.
"Uh... back then, when I sealed them in, I kind of wrecked Xolaani's statue."
Taliyah scratched her head awkwardly, then looked at Renekton with a little guilt. "That's... okay, right?"
"It's fine." Renekton shook his head.
"Xolaani carried great compassion in her heart. Even before she became Ascended, she often treated the wounded soldiers on the front lines."
Renekton himself had once been one of those soldiers Xolaani healed, and just talking about it stirred up a little nostalgia in him.
"She wouldn't hold it against you."
Hearing that, Taliyah relaxed a little.
"Then let's go with the plan."
The so-called plan was simple to the point of brutality.
First, kill the Xer'Sai and draw out Rek'Sai. Then let Renekton deal with the queen.
If that still was not enough, Caleb would call out Yaanogel again, with the cat supporting him.
"I can already feel the dreadful aura here."
A mouth suddenly split open on Caleb's left cheek, startling Taliyah badly.
"Uh... how about I explain that after we deal with this?"
"Okay." Taliyah nodded.
This time, unlike the last, she was on full alert.
Just by placing her feet on the ground, she could already feel the tremors moving through the rock layers below.
"They're coming."
The Stoneweaver's heart sank.
As expected of a species that had dug so many tunnels underground, they had already begun approaching again not long after being sealed away.
"They really are," Caleb said, narrowing his eyes at the dust rising ahead.
There was no wind today. And even if there had been, the ground under Caleb's feet was closer to stone than sand.
There was no mistaking this kind of dust cloud.
Enemy attack.
Caleb took his bow in hand. Unlike before, the energy arrows he fired this time would explode.
Of course, that also meant burning through his Hextech Gemstone faster.
Kai'Sa's expression turned cold again, and organic weapons formed beside her hands, ready to fire bursts of energy.
Sivir's crossblade began to spin in her grip.
Yuumi fumbled in a hurry and flipped her Book of Thresholds to the last page.
Renekton hefted the massive blade in his hands. This was his first battle since regaining his senses.
Naturally, he was a little excited.
The creatures, each two or three meters long, burst through stone and charged at them.
Caleb did not hesitate. He fired an arrow straight into one of their huge mouths and blew it apart into an unrecognizable mess.
At the same time, the others moved as well.
Sivir hurled her crossblade with all her strength.
To her, it had simply always been the weapon that felt best in her hands. But Caleb had recognized it at a glance as the very same kind of weapon once wielded by Queen Setaka.
She could not allow it to be disgraced.
Renekton simply slammed one claw down on the Xer'Sai foolish enough to attack him.
After all, underground, these things could only sense footsteps. They had no way of judging how powerful their prey was.
The one that surfaced in front of him had been horribly unlucky. Renekton carved it into eight pieces with four savage blows.
Kai'Sa and Taliyah had both been through this before. This time, they handled it with ease, covering for each other as they efficiently cleaned up the Xer'Sai surging out of the earth.
The Xer'Sai were not individually all that strong. They simply acted on the Void's endless hunger, attacking travelers so they could devour them.
But no one let their guard down.
These small fry were only the appetizer.
The real threat was still rising toward the surface.
The queen of the Xer'Sai, Rek'Sai.
"Spread out!"
The moment Caleb shouted it, he used Arcane Shift and sprinted wildly forward.
He did not need to say it. The others could all feel the ground trembling beneath their feet.
And just to pin them in place, Rek'Sai was even willing to sacrifice more of her offspring to hold them down.
Sivir shouted, wind swirling around her and Taliyah beside her. She lunged forward in great strides, while Taliyah rolled clear, both of them escaping the center of danger.
Renekton, who had been surrounded, handled it even more simply. He barreled straight through, covering a huge distance in the process while also lopping off the heads of two Xer'Sai.
Then the massive shape launched into the air.
Its body, as huge as Xolaani's statue once had been, hung there for a brief instant above them.
And everyone around it was already ready for battle.
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