#draven's dead? crab rave!

[bloodforvlad]

/ Ending Beginning /

For once, he doesn't feel a pulse, or a heartbeat. He feels, instead, a wave of sheer absence. It's cold, and it pushes through his senses like a wind. He looks up from his books, peering through the window of the library, and is horrified to see smoke. Billowing, broiling, spilling out across the sky. Vladimir leaves the tomes and moves towards the glass for a better look, feeling his stomach drop as he realises just what he is seeing.

The Harrowing Mist is early this year. It is reaping the birds from the sky, the beasts in the fields, and the people in the streets.

He feels sick. People are dying and he can feel it happening. Even from up here, in the Bastion, he can feel people's hearts stopping and their bodies going cold; he can see them getting to their feet again, but he knows there is nothing left in them that one could call 'alive'. The smoke is clambering, climbing the walls, reaching and lashing like malicious hands. Vladimir has never seen the Mist like this before, and the soul-lights of the Hungry Lost are far too numerous. It's like an army has descended on Noxus--

A hand clamps down on his shoulder, and he almost screams. But he exhales the nervous sound into a wheeze of a laugh, instead, as he recognises the perfume, and the heartbeat, of the woman. "Matron."

She says nothing. Her grip stays tight. Vladimir's smile - risen during the embarrassed moment - fades, then drops entirely. She isn't saying anything. She is watching the chaos unfolding outside with a stony expression. Her eyes are grim, and unflinching.

There are few things Vladimir knows for certain about the matron, his mentor and patroness and much more besides. But in this moment, as she grips his shoulder and watches Noxus being lashed by death, he learns two new things: she had known this was coming, and she was afraid.

"... Matron?"

He keeps her eyes on the window, watching the armies below as they fight the smoke, and then their own comrades. Her grip tightens, her nails digging into the fabric of his coat. Her face turns to him, and the last part to move is her gaze, which snaps from the view to his face. "We're leaving, dearest one." Her voice has none of the soft, smoky teasing to it that it normally has. Now, her words are low, and crisp, and there is such quiet force behind them.

She sounds as imperious as a queen.

The last time she had made this insistence, he had been forced to resurrect Sion, to power the behemoth's heart and flood the dead man's veins with loyal servants that had been rendered to fluid. He had resisted, then, and he had been punished for it, and forced to obey. Now? Now he doesn't dare think about second-guessing her.

It will not be long before the Mist climbs the Bastion. He will not be safe without her.

"... Yes, Matron." He doesn't ask where they're going. He doesn't ask about the rest of the Trifarix. He doesn't even ask about his servants, who are wide-eyed behind him and looking to him in panic, in plea. There is death everywhere, and she is here to save him, that is all that matters.

She is afraid. He can read it in the beat of her heart. She had known this was going to happen, and so she knew she was going to be afraid, but even so there is fear in her. She has never been afraid, but now she is. That frightens him more than the Mist.

He says nothing, letting himself be steered towards the nearest mirror. The silvery glass ripples like water, and the Matron's tight grip turns to a push, forcing him through to the shadows on the other side, before she joins him.

He hears Marie and Jacques scream, and he tries to turn back, tries to save his servants, but the Matron links her arm through his and pulls him, striding into the dark, leaving him no choice but to follow.