The first month after our little coup d'état against House Vorth was, frankly, gloriously bureaucratic. I trained the three mages Lady Vorth sent me, a taciturn alchemist with more ego than talent, an arrogant runemage who questioned every syllable I spoke, and a theorist who would probably faint if he saw a real potion bubble. Trying to teach them the subtle fundamentals of my alchemy was like trying to teach a golem ballet.
There was a great deal of brute force, a complete lack of grace, and a constant risk of them breaking their feet… or blowing up the laboratory. But in the end, they learned the basics, enough to follow the Project Chimera recipe without annihilating themselves. I handed over my notes, an instruction manual so simplified that even a troll could understand it, and declared the 'passing of the torch' complete. We were, in theory, free.
Freedom, I discovered, has a strangely empty taste. Our new life in the Immortal Bastion settled into a routine. We had a walled property that was more fortress than home. We had a state-of-the-art laboratory. We still had plenty of resources, courtesy of our new and fearful 'partner'. For the first time in a long while in this life, we did not have to fight to survive. And the silence that followed that realisation was deafening.
My time was spent buried in the texts Vorth provided us (in exchange for a few medicinal favours), hunting for the loose thread of Lissandra's mission, the whisper of the king beneath the city. It was a purpose that kept the ghosts of other lives at bay. Morgana, however… I watched her wilt.
Noxus was draining her of her colours. Morgana, who saw magic in weeds and poetry in the frozen Freljordian rain, here seemed to see only the cold logic of the blade and the grey soot of the forge. For her, the empire was not a place; it was a relentless, suffocating philosophy. And she was trapped within it.
Every night, she would return from her clandestine visits to The Slum, the capital's miserable slums, and bring back a little more of the city's sadness with her. The light in her violet eyes, which I had seen shine with the quiet strength of resilience, was becoming… dull. She was drowning in the pain of this city, and the worst part was, she didn't even realise she was underwater. And I hated it. I hated it with a cold fury that surprised me.
[Analysis: gradual decline in serotonin levels and an increase in cortisol patterns detected in subject 'Morgana'. Symptoms consistent with situational depression and empathy fatigue. Long-term efficiency: compromised.]
The decision was made the next morning. I found her in the small kitchen, preparing a bag of remedies for another of her excursions. Her face was pale, her expression resigned. She moved like someone carrying out a sentence.
"Morgana."
She turned, surprised by my tone, which carried none of its usual irony.
"Don't go today."
"Why?" she asked, confused. "The people in the Ashleaf tenement are waiting for the burn balm…"
"They can wait," I said, taking the bag of remedies from her hand and placing it firmly on the table. "The world won't fall apart if you don't carry its weight on your back for a single day." I looked her in the eye. "Today… we are going out. Both of us."
Her confusion deepened. She searched for the logic, the hidden strategy in my words. "What's the plan, Azra'il? Are we investigating something at the market? Meeting a contact?"
I hesitated. Sincerity had always been a foreign language to me, awkward on my tongue. "No," I said, looking away at one of her plants, a pale fern struggling to survive in the Noxian air. "There is no plan. No mission. The plan… is you." I felt an irritating flush creep up my cheeks. "I don't like the colour of your eyes when you come back from there. They're too… grey. I want to see a different colour."
She was silent, completely disarmed by my blunt honesty. I could literally see the walls of her melancholy shake. When I finally looked at her again, I saw something I hadn't seen in months: a small, genuine, and slightly sad smile that warmed the entire room.
"Alright, little star," she said, her voice soft. "Where do you want to take me?"
The question, so open and trusting, caught me by surprise. Now I actually had to have a plan. I quickly retreated to my comfort zone.
"To the market, of course. In fact, everywhere," I announced, regaining my composure. "First, we are going to eat something that doesn't taste of duty or military rations. I've heard they have some Shuriman sweets in the 'Foreigners' Alley' that are probably poisonous but look delicious. Afterwards, I want to see if Noxian architecture is as inefficient and ostentatious as it seems up close. We're going 'sightseeing'." The word sounded absurd even to me.
To my surprise, she laughed. A low, rusty sound, but real. "Sightseeing in Noxus. Right. This I have to see."
And so began our 'day off', a concept I catalogued alongside competitive knitting and stamp collecting, completely inefficient but, as I was about to discover, strangely necessary.
Our first stop was culinary. I took her to a small restaurant tucked away on a side street, run by a boisterous, heavyset Shuriman family. The air inside was thick with the smell of cumin, saffron, and stone-baked bread. It was a pocket of life and warmth in the midst of the oppressive city. I ordered us something the owner called a 'sun's blessing', skewers of marinated goat meat, couscous with dried fruit, and a yoghurt and mint sauce.
Morgana ate in silence at first, with the caution of someone expecting the food to be bitter. But then, I saw her relax. I saw the genuine pleasure on her face as she tasted something made not for sustenance, but for joy. For the first time in a long time, I saw her eat like someone who was enjoying life, not just enduring it. And, of course, I made her try the dates stuffed with honey and nuts.
"It's… sweet," she said, surprised, as if she'd forgotten what the word meant.
After we were suitably fed, our tour of 'architectural inefficiency' began. I took her to the heart of the city, where the great noble houses competed with one another in a display of dark stone, sharp iron, and arrogant banners.
"See," I said, pointing to a massive gate adorned with gargoyles that looked like they had stomach aches. "It's functionally defensible, yes. But aesthetically, it's a nightmare. A complete waste of material to intimidate neighbours they've already conquered. It's insecurity forged in metal."
Morgana, instead of focusing on the brutality, pointed out the details I had missed. The climbing vines of dark ivy that softened the hard lines. The small flowers that grew stubbornly in the cracks of the stone. "Even in iron, life finds a way," she murmured.
Perhaps she was right. My vision, so focused on analysing structure and function, often missed the anomalies, the small rebellions of life. A variable Eos could never properly quantify.
To test this theory, I changed our route. "Come on," I said. "I've heard there's something around here that defies Noxian architectural logic."
I guided her through a maze of narrow streets, away from the grand military avenues, until we reached an unadorned stone arch. As soon as we passed through it, the harsh, metallic sound of the city was muffled, replaced by something one wouldn't expect to hear here: the gentle sound of running water and laughter.
We were in a hidden square, a small secret garden sandwiched between the massive walls of old buildings. It wasn't a military park for training, nor an ornamental garden of a noble house. It was… public. Simple. There were stone benches worn smooth by use, small fountains gurgling softly, and beds full of hardy, vibrant flowers that insisted on blooming under the grey Noxian sky.
And on the benches, sitting in the pale sun, were the old folk.
War veterans, some with metal limbs, arguing over their grandchildren's achievements in the army. Widows with hands calloused from a lifetime of labour, spending their time drinking tea with others in the same situation. Couples who had somehow survived this empire, and now spent their afternoons playing a board game with painted stones and talking in low voices.
Morgana stopped, completely frozen by the scene. It was such an unlikely pocket of peace, so contrary to everything we had seen, that it felt like an illusion. I guided her to an empty bench, and we sat, observing. I saw an old soldier, his face a web of scars, sharing his bread with the grey-pigeons. I saw two ladies knitting, not uniforms or bandages, but colourful scarves.
"Who are they?" Morgana whispered, her voice full of an awe I rarely heard.
"Veterans. Pensioners. The ones who gave their strength to the empire and were 'retired'," I explained, repeating what I'd overheard. "Most noble houses ignore their existence. But one of them, House Kresta, an old family of farmers that rose through the ranks, maintains this garden for them. A way of honouring the roots the empire tries to forget."
She was silent for a long time, just watching the simple, resilient humanity on display. The laugh of an old man as he won his board game. The way one woman helped her husband to his feet. Small acts of kindness, blooming in the cracks of Noxus's armour.
"You were right," she said finally, and her eyes were a little brighter. "Even in iron, life finds a way. And sometimes… it flourishes."
It was the first oasis we had found. And it worked better than any pill I could have created.
The next stage of my personal mission to 're-colour' Morgana led us to the Artisans' Quarter. And it was there that the surprise came for both of us. While she was lost in fascination, watching a blue-skinned Vastayan paint a vibrant mural on the side of a building, I dragged her to a jeweller's stall.
"What are we doing here?" she asked.
"Marketing," I replied. "The Shadow Healer needs an air of mystery, not of poverty. A single adornment makes you memorable." I ignored her protests and, after a lengthy negotiation, traded a small pain-relief pill for a brooch. Simple, oxidised silver in the shape of a willow leaf with a single drop of obsidian at its centre. It was dark, elegant. It was… her.
"I don't wear these things," she said.
"You do now," I insisted, pinning it to her cloak. She gave me a look of gentle disapproval but didn't remove it. A small gleam of silver against her dark robes. A detail, but it made a difference.
And then, finally, the market. The great, chaotic market of the capital. The true, beating heart of the city, not the war chambers or the arenas. It was a frontal assault on the senses, an information overload that would make a Demacian mind implode. A labyrinth of colourful canvas stalls selling everything from coarse Freljordian wool and eye-watering Ixtali spices, to contraband Piltover-tech that hummed with an unstable energy. The air was thick with the smell of roasted drüvask, cheap Vastayan perfume, grimy metal, and the palpable energy of a thousand ambitions crossing in one place.
"Right," I announced, rubbing my hands together with theatrical glee. "Mission: Acquire as many gloriously useless items as possible before sunset. Survival is irrelevant. Logic is forbidden. The only rule is: 'Do I want this?'"
Morgana sighed, a sound that said, 'I am going to regret this'. "Azra'il…"
I ignored her. My first stop was a stall run by a suspicious-looking yordle with goggles on his forehead and a smile full of too many teeth. He sold 'curiosities' and 'souvenirs'. They were trinkets, mostly smuggled junk from other nations, but among them, I found one that caught my eye. A small, crudely carved wooden doll, in the shape of a Demacian knight in full armour. It was a piece of propaganda, likely looted from some border village. It was ridiculous. It was perfect.
"We'll take this one," I said, paying with a single copper piece.
"What do you want that for?" she asked, the confusion in her voice genuine.
"It's not for me. It's for you," I said, handing it to her. "To practise your curses on if you get bored. Or to have someone to scold who is even more rigid and unimaginative than I am."
She took the little knight, looking at its plumed helm and heroic pose. And then, something shifted on her face. The smile that spread, genuine, surprised, and full of a light amusement, was a far more interesting chemical reaction than any I had ever created. It was the first time I had given her a gift that wasn't edible or medicinal. A perfectly, gloriously, useless item. She held the little warrior with an unexpected gentleness. And I wondered, with a strange pang in what passed for my heart, if it reminded her of a different, simpler time. Before wings became chains and sisters became enemies.
"He looks… very serious," she said at last, a twinkle of amusement in her eyes.
"Exactly. Let's find him a stuffed dragon to fight."
The next stop was a Vastayan weaver whose silks and wools seemed woven from the sunset itself. They were impossibly beautiful and utterly impractical for our life. Morgana ran a hand over a deep purple scarf, the colour of her own eyes.
"It's too conspicuous," she said, drawing back.
"Exactly," I said, already haggling with the vendor. "Perfect for your 'Shadow Healer' persona. Adds a touch of drama. The clients will love it." I handed her the scarf. "Consider it part of the uniform."
She rolled her eyes but didn't argue. She looped it around her neck, and the vivid colour against her dark robes made her look less like a shadow and more like an exiled queen.
We continued our journey into uselessness. I bought a set of Ionian wind chimes that, according to the seller, 'captured dreams', and tied them to Morgana's bag, turning her previously silent movements into a soft, tinkling melody. She shot me a murderous look, but I just grinned. I bought Shuriman fruits that burst in the mouth with a sweet-and-sour flavour, making her jump in surprise. I bought a small pot of glowing paint from a Zaunite alchemist, "just in case we need to leave a message that glows in the dark," I explained.
With every stop, every absurd purchase, I saw her loosen up a little more. The armour of eternal responsibility was beginning to crack. The high point was when we found a stall selling strange musical instruments. I picked up a small, clay ocarina.
"Do you know how to play that?" she asked.
"Do I know how to play an ocarina? Of course not," I replied. "But the sound I'm about to make will, at the very least, scare off pickpockets." I blew into it, producing a horrific screech that made a nearby cat jump and knock over a pile of pots. Morgana, instead of scolding me, put her hand to her mouth and laughed. A real laugh, open and free.
It was the first time I had ever heard her laugh like that.
The memory of that sound instantly became the most valuable item I have acquired in millennia.
As the afternoon wore on and the shadows began to lengthen, the market crowd thickened. We were passing through a more open area near the smaller fighting pits, where novice gladiators fought for a handful of coins and the chance to be noticed. The distant roar from the main arena was a constant thunder on the horizon. It was here, amidst the noise of gamblers and ale-sellers, that the atmosphere changed.