There is a special kind of madness reserved for inventors, alchemists, and the minor gods who believe they can rewrite the rules of the universe. It is a quiet madness, fuelled by caffeine, insomnia, and the smell of ozone. It turns cellars into laboratories, sleep into an optional theory, and common sense into an inconvenient variable. At present, I was neck-deep in this particular brand of insanity, and my cellar had become its unholy sanctuary.
The place stank of unsuccessful progress. A pungent mixture of burnt metal, rune-varnish, and the occasional scent of tea I'd spilt in moments of frustration. The lighting came from a single yellowish lamp hanging from the ceiling, a prototype of mine which possessed a peculiar feature: it would only light up at maximum brightness when it detected words of high emotional vibration in the room. In other words, swearing. As a result, my lab was almost always the most well-lit place in Piltover.
My workbench was an altar to creative chaos. Clockmaker's tools were scattered next to runic chisels, bronze cogs nested against silver fragments, and at the centre of it all, my contraband collection: half a dozen brackern crystals. They were beautiful in a sickening way, each one pulsing with a faint, irregular light, like the tired heart of an ancient creature dreaming of freedom. They were the soul of my addiction.
Around the table lay the proof of my numerous glorious failures. My experimental hextech kettle, the "Volatile Caldera", which now served as the primary source of entertainment in the cellar.
[Warning. Kettle prototype model CV-3 has reached an 87% probability of explosive decompression. Recommend immediate evacuation of the perimeter. Unless it's a Tuesday. In which case, please continue and record the explosion for data analysis.]
There was also the "Chronometer of Uncertainty", a hextech clock that, thanks to a particularly stubborn crystal, never showed the same time twice in a row. It was philosophically interesting, but commercially useless. Beside it, a crude prototype of a power-gauntlet, which I had used to prove a point to myself by punching a small anvil.
I was engrossed, trying to carve a containment rune into a copper ring, when the soft sound of footsteps on the wooden stairs pulled me from my concentration. The light from the swear-lamp dimmed slightly, a sign that a more serene presence was approaching. Morgana.
She came down with the care of one crossing a minefield, balancing a small plate which held a generous slice of Eddie's latest berry tart. Her aura of calm was an almost violent contrast to the controlled chaos of my lab. She looked like a mother bringing a snack to her troublesome daughter who refused to leave her room. It was a… disturbingly domestic feeling.
"You missed supper. Again," she said, her voice without a hint of accusation, which was somehow worse.
I didn't bother to look up, my eyes fixed on the sickly blue glow of the crystal I was trying to tame. "I didn't miss it. I have transcended the need for mortal sustenance in pursuit of scientific enlightenment," I replied.
"Or you're on your way to fainting over a kettle that has a nasty habit of exploding," she countered, placing the plate on the only relatively clean surface on the table. "Eat."
With the sigh of a martyr, I picked up the fork, but my eyes remained on the crystal. I chewed the tart, the sweet and sour flavour exploding in my mouth, a welcome distraction but a distraction nonetheless. The truth was, I was obsessed. Morgana watched my work in silence for a long moment before she asked.
"You spend so much time down here, surrounded by these… glowing stones. What is it exactly you're studying in them, Azra'il? What are you looking for?"
The question was simple, but the answer was anything but. I leaned back in my chair, finally putting down my tools. The glint in my eyes, I knew, was a mixture of deep fatigue and the feverish excitement of one who possesses forbidden knowledge.
"These shiny little things," I began, gesturing with my fork at my collection, "are the lie upon which Piltover has built its church of progress. They call them Hex-crystals, rare magical jewels. What they really are, Morgana, are tombstones."
I paused to let the weight of the word settle.
"I found in old archives that a long, long time ago, there was a race. Ancient, wise creatures made of earth, magic, and memory. They called themselves the Brackern. When a devastating war nearly wiped them out, they did the unthinkable to survive: they transformed, entering a deep hibernation, converting their living consciousness into pure crystals to wait in safety until the world healed."
My gaze moved from one pulsing crystal to the next. "Each one of these… is not a stone. It is a Brackern's heart. It is the soul of someone, dreaming in a sleep of millennia. The 'music' I feel in them? It is the last echo of their consciousness, a dream that Piltover interrupted with pickaxes and explosives, stealing these fragments from the Shuriman underground without understanding, or caring, what they were desecrating."
I pulled the swear-lamp closer to illustrate. "Look. I placed a vocal-resonance rune here. It's tuned not to the sound, but to the emotion behind the sound. The crystal doesn't react to the word; it reacts to the sincerity, the passion. Swear words are just an efficient shortcut. It is the fragment of one soul reacting to another."
I picked up the explosive kettle. "Here, the crystal feeds a copper coil that heats the water. But the energy it releases isn't constant. It's temperamental, because the consciousness within is fighting against its imprisonment. When the water hits 120 degrees, the energy flow spikes, the pressure builds, and… *kaboom*. It's not a manufacturing defect. It's a scream of protest."
Morgana listened to me, her face a canvas of serene horror. She did not understand the mechanics, but the truth of my story resonated with her on a visceral level.
"This is why they are finite and expensive," I continued. "You can't just 'make' more. There has to be a desecration, a mutilation. Piltover calls this a 'rare natural resource'. I call it mineralised slavery. They have built a paradise of brass and glass using the organs of a race in a coma. Rifles for show-off nobles, glowing canes for rich old men, while down below in Zaun, people burn toxic scrap just for a little light."
[Translation for the layman. Crystals = bits of a sentient critter trapped in a rock. Result: expensive power. Risk: BOOM. Humanity, statistically, never learns.]
I looked at Morgana, expecting to see shock, but what I found was a look of deep, resonant sorrow. Slowly, she reached out, not to touch, but to hover her palm inches from one of the larger, darker crystals.
At once, the crystal's blue glow pulsed, intensifying. It was not a mechanical reaction; it was a response. As if the dreaming soul within had sensed a touch of compassion and was reaching for it. I saw Morgana's face tighten with a pain that was not physical.
"This isn't just energy…" she whispered, her voice strained. "It's… a lament. A chorus of trapped souls, singing a song of pain. And they take this song and turn it into luxury goods."
I arched an eyebrow, a chill running down my spine. "So you hear the music too," I said, quieter now. "I thought I was just getting overly dramatic with age. Brilliant. Now there are two of us, conversing with the imprisoned spirits of a scorpion-people."
Her gaze met mine, and it was as firm as bedrock. "No, Azra'il. You are not being dramatic. You are right. There is something alive in here. And the City of Progress is building its glorious ivory tower on the bones and the pain of something they do not even bother to understand."
She finally understood. Not the science, but the truth. And that validation, coming from her, was strangely… comforting.
I leaned back in my chair with a wry smile, devoid of any joy. "It's always the same story, isn't it? A rare and powerful resource, ruthlessly exploited, painted in the colour of progress, and sold as the future. I have seen… I mean, I have read about it in so many history books from so many worlds I've lost count. The only novelty is that here the resource is called Hextech, and not coal, or spice, or the blood of a fallen god."
Morgana's face grew dark. "Then the true cost of this progress will not be measured in gold. It will be measured in souls. In the pain of what they exploit, and the arrogance of those who do the exploiting."
I took the slice of tart she had brought, the sweet taste now tinged with the bitterness of our conversation.
"Precisely. And here is the final joke," I said, pointing the fork at a crude diagram of a synthetic crystal matrix I'd been drawing. "The Piltovan elite know that their monopoly depends on the rarity of the crystals. That's why I overheard some academics whispering in the shop the other day, between sips of the 'Chef's Brew'... They mentioned a boy prodigy. An inventor, sponsored by House Kiramman itself, who is obsessed with figuring out how to create these crystals artificially. To create the soul in a laboratory."
I gave a humourless smile.
"He probably thinks he is democratising magic, that he is bringing progress to all. An adorable idealist. But what he's really doing is discovering how to mass-produce the bullets for humanity's next great war. And when he succeeds, Piltover won't lock him up for playing god. They'll give him a medal and a parade."
The silence in the cellar was heavy. Morgana just stared at the pulsing crystal, as if listening to the sad song no one else in the city could, or wanted to, hear.
I took the last bite of the tart and pushed the plate away.
"At least Eddie's tart doesn't threaten to explode if you look at it the wrong way," I remarked. "Yet. And that, my dear Morgana, is more than I can say for Piltover's glorious technological future."
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💎 Autor's Notes 💎
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Alright, lore nerd moment incoming. 👀
So… if you've been following League of Legends for a while, you probably know that Skarner, yes, the big crystalline scorpion dude, recently got a complete lore rework. In the new version, the Brackern as we knew them basically don't exist anymore. Riot turned Skarner into something more… primordial? Less about tragic consciousness trapped in crystal, and more about ancient geological spirits with hive-mind vibes.
Cool? Sure.
But emotionally devastating like the old one? Not really.
In the old lore, the Brackern were an ancient race of sentient beings made of crystal and earth, who willingly put themselves into deep hibernation to survive a cataclysm. Their consciousness was stored in their crystalline bodies, literal living souls turned to stone, waiting for the world to heal. Then humans came along, dug them up, and used their hearts as batteries to power Hextech inventions.
That version always haunted me. There's something beautifully horrifying about progress being built, quite literally, on the suffering of something sacred and forgotten. It's a story about exploitation, arrogance, and how humanity has a talent for turning miracles into commodities.
It's tragic and poetic.
That's why I decided to keep the old Brackern lore in this fanfic's continuity. I didn't want to lose that sense of moral weight, the feeling that every glowing crystal in Piltover is a silent scream from beneath the sand.
In short: new Skarner lore? Cool.
Old Skarner lore? Existential masterpiece.
And since my girl Azra'il has a soft spot for tragic souls and moral catastrophes, we're sticking with the old one. 💀✨