"Damn it, Nilah, why did you dump me here?"
A hard rain drummed on metal and muck. Farn clawed his way out of a sewage outlet, peeling himself free of alchemical sludge. He stood, broad-shouldered and six foot five, blood hot, sleeveless shirt plastered to a body cut with clean, powerful lines. His right palm bore an abstract sigil of seven grasping hands, an imprint that seemed to thrum with unruly life.
Farn was a traveler from Blue Star. He had realized early on that he had awakened in Runeterra, the world behind League of Legends. Luck had put him in Ionia. Even so, he had never dared relax. Noxus, star-born horrors, the Darkin, World Runes, the string of catastrophes waiting down the line, there were too many ways to die.
What could he do about a future like that?
If you are weak, train more. If you cannot afford to lose, then do not die.
He had thrown himself into the war-dance, a style akin to how Irelia and Rakan fight. They call it a dance in Ionia, but beauty and lethality walk hand in hand.
Later he took to the sea to study abroad. He had barely set off when a hoard-ship sea serpent slammed into his little boat.
Beasts like that ran dozens, even hundreds of meters long. Their arrival meant shipwreck, every time.
Farn had some skill, but on open water against a leviathan there was nothing to say. It was like learning to throw a punch and then seeing Mike Tyson saunter in with a friendly grin. He pats your shoulder, says, "Relax, I'm only the referee. Your opponent is Ultraman Taro from the M78 Nebula."
He was swallowed whole. Fortunately, the belly of the serpent was spacious. He lived for days off whatever he found inside.
On the seventh day, a woman cut him free. She wore a perpetual, curious smile. Dancing over the glittering swell, she fought with streams of water that braided into whip-swords. In a handful of breaths, she sliced the hundred-meter serpent into a rain of meat and scale.
Farn knew her. Nilah, the scholar who bartered with Ashlesh, the Demon of Joy, forsaking her past to carve her name into legend.
Demons were creatures born of the spiritual realm, living in the emotions of all things and feeding on those same feelings. Pain, confusion, hatred, agony, nightmares, every feeling had its demon. The oldest of them hatched from the ten primal emotions at the dawn of life.
Ashlesh, the Demon of Joy, rose from the first laughter, the oldest delight.
After Nilah felled the serpent, her mind, already skewed by her bargain, turned and found Farn. She meant to set him safely ashore, but along the way Ashlesh took a keen interest in him. The two quarreled. The backlash of clashing powers kicked up a wall of water that knocked Farn cold. He drifted unconscious, was funneled into a waste outflow, saw black, and woke up here.
Now, eyes on the sigil in his palm, Farn frowned, puzzlement giving way to grim understanding and a helpless sigh.
Ashlesh had sensed the difference in Farn's soul. That difference delighted the demon. Newly returned to the waking world, Ashlesh could not draw much joy from Nilah, who spent her days hunting monsters. She craved richer and more varied pleasures. So Ashlesh left strength with Nilah, but gifted Farn with the capacity to feed on joy.
A curse and a blessing. Power from a primal demon had just raised Farn's floor and ceiling both.
By his conservative guess, his strength, endurance, agility, pain tolerance, even bone density had jumped more than fivefold. He could shape water and kindle joy in others. He could command the flow like it was part of him.
The price was steep. He would feel intense joy himself, and he would need to make, feel, and cultivate more joy to bleed off the discomfort that joy brought.
And that discomfort.
Think of games. You prepare, you play, you make micro-decisions, you sweat, you win. Then comes the surge of joy and satisfaction. The curse hands you the surge without the struggle. Joy without a cause becomes a hollow ache.
Right now, shirt torn and barely dressed, Farn could feel it, a senseless bliss prowling through his body, urging him to act. He tried to grit his teeth and bear it. Then he realized that clenching his fist until his nails bit his palm brought relief, a tiny sting that somehow satisfied.
Oh, come on. Self-inflicted pain counts too?
Are you the Demon of Joy or the Demon of Lust?
He shoved the thought aside. He needed to do something, anything, to steady himself.
The problem was the place.
He crawled out of the outflow and took stock. Acid rain, poisonous haze, alchemical runoff in every gutter. This had to be Zaun on the continent of Valoran. No other region wore its poisons on its skin like this.
He looked up. Night hung low between jagged ravines and crooked rock faces. Layer on layer of mountainside crowded the sky. Rusted smokestacks clung to the cliffs like barnacles. In the distance, factories howled. Through cracked pipes, toxins leaked in sickly colors.
The people were worse off than the land. Ragged clothes, sidelong stares. Workers shackled to crude prosthetics bought on loan from Chem-Barons, laboring themselves into the ground to feed their families, only to pay most of their wages back to the lenders. Their cheap respirators rattled like broken engines, leaving you to wonder whether they filtered anything at all.
He felt the eyes on him, wary and measuring, but none of them stirred any real danger in his gut. He let them go.
A sudden roar rolled out of a side alley. Gunfire cracked to life. Passersby vanished indoors and barred their doors. From the source of the sound, neon-green sparks sprayed through the rain, turning the downpour into a mist of flickering color.
Lightning underfoot. Two green braids flared yellow-green in the storm of electricity. Zeri vaulted through the maze of alleys, an arc-light jacket crackling around her. Blood stained her midriff where a blow had landed. Dirt and cuts marred the smooth face Farn remembered from pictures. Her expression was tight, shadowed by fear.
"Give it up, idiot. The Chem-Barons posted a fat bounty for your head."
The bounty hunter behind her was a giant in everything but name. Alchemy had grafted a four-meter frame of metal where his body had been. Only his head remained his own. He moved like a siege beast. One swing would pulp an iron shack.
"You can't run," he howled. "Your head belongs to me. I am Zaroku the Crusher."
Before his laugh died, a surprised voice spoke from the street beyond.
"Zeri?"
"Huh?"
Zeri's head snapped up. A tall man stood at the mouth of the alley, eyes bright as if he had bumped into an old friend in a foreign city. She did not remember him.
Wolf in front, tiger behind. What luck. Out on a rainy night to make a move, and she ran into two bounty hunters. One ahead, one behind, no way out.
"Another hunter." Zaroku clocked Farn and bared his teeth. Bubbles rose in the tank on his back as high-purity shimmer compounds surged through tubes into his alchemical engines. The alley thrummed.
"Steal a prize from Zaroku and I will kill you both."
He surged forward. Metal screamed. The giant body blurred into a battering ram barreling down on them.
Zeri felt the gust of death at her back and a slice of despair crossed her eyes. If not for the stranger blocking the exit, she could have dumped all the charge in her jacket, jumped, and blasted past the crush. Now, wolf and tiger.
At the mouth of the alley, Farn sank his weight. Rain pattered on muscle like stone. Years on Zaun's streets had taught Zeri how to read force. The power in him churned hot and steady. With no time left, she gambled everything, venting her reserves in one furious rush, screaming as she charged him.
Farn fixed his focus on the monster behind her. Beneath the composure, a bright, unruly joy insisted on being heard.
"Ride one sin. Slay the rest."
The seven-handed sigil on his palm lit with a muted arc. He felt every droplet of rain, every rivulet on the walls. This was not sorcery so much as a birthright. As natural as breath. He only had to think it, and the downpour obeyed. He turned his hand. The rain around him froze in the air.
He lowered it. The rain reversed.
Drops that had hung became a torrent, but thick as gel. In that instant, Zeri felt like she had fallen into a culvert. Sprinting turned to slogging in the congealed curtain. Even running hurt.
Is this the end?
The silhouette hurtling through the murk grew larger. Zeri bit down and squeezed the trigger.
Soaked to the receiver, her homemade spark-gun sputtered a few sad arcs and died. Braced for death, she blinked when the figure rushed past her instead.
What?
She had no time to process it. The wake of Farn's charge slammed into her like a hammer. Lights out. The girl folded into the water and slept.
Zaroku had no time either. Farn, accelerating through the rain on Ashlesh's gift, was already at the giant's chest.
His left foot stamped. The ground crazed with spiderweb cracks. His right arm drew back. As he swung, the water behind him rose like living muscle and wrapped his limb.
Boom.
The punch landed. The water coating his arm detonated outward, eating the recoil. The four-meter crusher came apart in midair. Meat and viscera and shattered prosthetics burst across the alley. Filthy rain pelted down, thinning the blood and shimmer into pinkish slurry.
Farn stood still and looked at what remained. He straightened and glanced down at his right arm. It was his first kill. He felt the prickle of unease that comes when reality catches up to you. Then Ashlesh's blessing bent the feeling sideways and it bloomed into joy.
Was that good or bad? If he sank into it, Runeterra might yet birth a killer who killed for fun. As for Farn.
It felt good. The wild joy finally had a target. The edge came off.
He rolled his shoulders, savoring the power there. Runeterra really did wear its runes on its face. Mages rule, warriors drool. He had studied the war-dance for a dozen years at the Presidian Academy, and for what? One blessing from Ashlesh and a casual punch hits like seventy years of cultivation, with water effects built in. You cannot argue with results.
No wonder Nilah, after taking Ashlesh's power, cut down the Kama-Viper Broodmother, the Shifting Fiend Imarg, and the mad demigod Nabavricus in short order. Primal demons came with real weight.
Farn had received Joy rather than Ashlesh's full might, but even so, every spike of joy made his strength swell in answer.
He smacked his forehead.
He had almost forgotten.