Listening to Karya Tell of the Past

After becoming Darkin, Karya had awakened several times over the years.

Unfortunately, those awakenings had always ended one of two ways: either his wielder was too weak to support the energy it took to keep him conscious, or they were corrupt and wanted to exploit him, a poor, lonely old man.

For the former, Karya simply accumulated energy bit by bit, pretending to be a staff that could suppress magic. As for the latter, he never showed them any mercy. He would take over their bodies, then travel around while they were still human and hadn't yet become Darkin.

These fits and starts had made Karya a "ghost drifting outside of history." Even though he had always done his utmost to seek out books, the Void's corruption was simply too severe. Once he took over a wielder's body, he could stay conscious for ten days or half a month at most. As a result, he knew very little about history.

That was why he hoped to talk with Lux and learn about Runeterra in this era.

Meanwhile, Lux was actually a little curious about Karya, too.

Curiosity was only natural, especially for a lively girl like Lux.

To Lux, Karya was a complete mystery. She knew nothing about his past and didn't understand what his introduction meant. Since he was willing to chat with her, she figured it would be a good opportunity to hear more of his stories.

So, once she had sat down, Lux spoke first, saying she wanted to hear Karya's story. "Tell me about your adventures! Do you have any stories about defeating evil wizards and rescuing princesses?"

As an elder who had lived for countless ages in Shurima, Karya had no shortage of anything except stories. He had plenty of those.

Since Lux wanted to hear them, Karya was more than happy to tell her—apart from a few truly secret things.

Now, where should he begin?

"When I was your age, Demacia didn't exist yet." Karya thought it over, then decided to tell a story that history had never recorded. "So back then, there were no evil witches, and no princesses, either."

"Demacia didn't exist? You're making that up!" When Karya started talking about his story, Lux couldn't help but jump in. "I've heard the legend of the Winged Sisters from Mother. Demacia was founded nearly a thousand years ago!"

"Demacia was founded a thousand years ago? Then I really have been asleep for a long time." Karya's tone was calm, as if a thousand years meant nothing to him. "The poor people who fled the Rune Wars have now built a powerful nation with their own hands. That's wonderful."

"What do you mean, poor people? They were the great Thirteen Houses—"

"Hold on. We're not talking about Demacia today." Karya stopped Lux from launching into a description of Demacia's thirteen noble families. He had read that part during his last awakening, and it was full of self-congratulatory back-patting, with little of substance. "Let's talk about us instead—your story and mine."

"...All right." Lux puffed out her cheeks, then sat quietly. "Go on, Grandpa!"

The emphasis Lux put on "Grandpa" didn't offend Karya. If anything, it made him feel a little nostalgic. Many people had called him that in Shurima, and later, quite a few had even called him their ancestor.

Lux thought the name was an unmistakable way of calling him old, a small retaliation for Karya's nonsense. But Karya didn't think there was anything wrong with it.

"Back then, Shurima wasn't an empire. It was just a wilderness," Karya continued. "There were no sacred springs, no oases, and desert stretched in every direction. The barren land couldn't be farmed, and it was hard for anyone to get enough to eat."

"People went hungry?"

"That's right, they went hungry." Karya's tone remained unruffled, as though he were recalling nothing frightening, just something ordinary. "Lux, have you ever been to the beach?"

"The beach? I have!" Lux nodded. "At Dunehold, not far from Demacia City. It has the most famous golden beach in the whole country... Um, Uncle said he'd take me and my brother there when he came back..."

"All right. But don't be sad. You'll have another chance to go someday." Karya offered a quiet word of comfort, then continued his story. "Unlike beach sand, desert sand is bone-dry. There isn't a drop of water in it. Even after a heavy rain, the ground will be dry again in just half a day."

"That's hard to imagine." Lux's eyes widened in amazement at this strange idea. "It dries out just half a day after it rains..."

"In our time, the desert was called 'Se.' The word originally meant boundless, stretching as far as the eye could see." Karya hesitated, then tried to make it as easy to understand as possible. "The desert is a lot like the sea, except one is dry and golden, while the other is a churning blue."

"Se?" Lux imitated Karya, trying to roll the sound. "What a strange way of pronouncing it... I've never heard a language like that."

"That's Old Shuriman, a primitive language, simple and poetic." Karya didn't elaborate on that, and continued his story instead. "You can't grow crops in the dry desert. The only way to survive is to find an oasis."

"What's an oasis?"

"An oasis is one of the few places in the desert with water and fertile land, where plants grow." Karya explained. "Unfortunately, I can't share those memories with you yet. But I saw a book about Shurima on the shelf. It should have something about them."

Surprised by what Karya said, Lux stood up and found the book where he'd told her to look. After flipping through a few pages, she couldn't believe her eyes: the book really did have deserts and oases in it.

More importantly, the travelogue had illustrations!

"Is this the desert and oasis you were talking about?" Lux asked, pointing at an illustration. "It looks like... a huge garden with a pond and no walls!"

"Ha ha ha! That's an interesting comparison." If Karya had hands, he surely wouldn't have been able to stop himself from applauding Lux. "But you're right. An oasis really is like a walled garden with a pond, except without the walls. And every family fought every day to take that garden for themselves."

"Fought? Why would they fight?" Lux clearly couldn't quite follow. "To take the garden? But... fighting is bad. People get hurt, and they can even die!"

Lux clearly wasn't lacking in common sense, sympathy, or empathy. But growing up in comfortable surroundings, she instinctively tended to romanticize the parts of a story that weren't there.

"Because if you didn't fight and take an oasis, you'd starve or die of thirst." Karya gave her a reason that was cruel by any measure. "When I was your age, I lost my tribe and my family. To survive, I joined a family. Everyone in it was alone, just like me. Together, we fought to claim an oasis where we could stay alive."

"I think I understand."

Lux thought for a moment, then looked out the window. She had chosen a seat by it that day, and through the open window she could see the garden outside, with its pond, rockery, and shrubs.

Lux still couldn't imagine people fighting for a garden instead of honor or justice. But the reason of "surviving" still weighed on her in a way she couldn't quite put into words.

"Then what?" Lux blinked, casting off that heavy feeling. "Did you fight other people? With your fists? Spears? Or shields and swords?"

"With anything we could find, from rocks to sticks." Karya paused, then continued. "We used them against people armed with swords, polearms, or magic."

"Magic—so you fought evil wizards with rocks and sticks!" Lux's mouth fell open in amazement. "That's amazing!"

"Watch your words, Lux," Karya said helplessly. "You're a wizard yourself now."

"I—" Lux opened her mouth, then faltered awkwardly. "That's different. I don't use magic to fight!"

"But what if, in the Shadow Realm, a monster tried to devour your uncle's soul?" Karya asked. "Ordinary swords wouldn't do you any good there."

"...That's different." Lux still instinctively rejected the situation Karya described. "There might not even be any monsters in the Shadow Realm. You're just trying to scare me!"

"Let's say I'm trying to scare you, then." Karya didn't press the subject. Instead, he continued his story. "There were no princesses in my family, but there was an older sister. Her name was Setaqa, though we all called her Big Sister."

"Big Sister! That's so cool!" Lux was excited all over again. "A woman everyone respected!"

"Exactly, both enemies and family alike." This time, Karya went along with Lux's words. "She didn't need any fine weapon. With nimble steps, she could close in on her enemies and win a fight with ease. Even against cunning Spellcasters, she could find a way to prevail."

"But... Uncle told me that without a good weapon, there's almost no way to deal with a Spellcaster who's prepared." Lux was puzzled. "How did that Big Sister you mentioned fight wizards with sticks and rocks?"

"With brains and strength." Karya's voice carried a rare hint of nostalgia. "And, of course, fearless courage, along with a little help from the goddess of luck. For instance, once, when we were fighting over a small oasis, she cleverly used the power of the mountain..."

Karya went on to tell Lux the story of how Setaqa first made a name for herself.

The battle had taken place in what was now Nareumajel. To deal with the wizard in the oasis, Setaqa first disguised herself as a passing merchant and led her group inside. She had shaved the skin beneath her camel saddle blanket and drawn a map on it.

Then she led her family into the desert in the dead of night, braving the bitter cold to set up a rockfall trap.

Working together, the whole family—including Karya—used a simple pulley system to set large boulders on the hillside west of the Nareumajel oasis.

The next day, they feigned defeat and lured the wizard there, then sprung the trap.

Faced with boulders tumbling toward him, the wizard calmly summoned the Sand Barrier to stop them.

But just as he thought he had victory in hand, several warriors who had been lying in wait for a long time emerged from the Sand Barrier he had summoned. They were battered and bruised from being squeezed by the sand, but they took advantage of the wizard's smugness to land a deadly strike.

The wizard, who had been born with the ability to control sand, clearly hadn't expected anyone to withstand the terrible pressure of being shaped by it. Caught off guard, he was defeated.

Lux had clearly never heard a story with so many twists and turns. It was nothing like the stories popular in Demacia, where a "righteous knight denounced evil with righteous words, then cut it down in one fell swoop with a sharp sword."

Compared with Demacian knightly romances, Karya's stories were more tense, more thrilling, and more exciting to Lux. Clearly, even though this Crown Guard girl had always wanted to be a good girl, deep down she also yearned for adventure and battle.

What's more, to help Lux picture things more clearly, Karya directed her to find illustrations in one travelogue after another on the bookshelf, many of them similar to the events he described.

The combination of "text and pictures" delighted Lux. She completely forgot to wonder about Karya's identity and even started recommending some of her favorite books.

It wasn't until the sun sank in the west and Lady Ogsa returned to the house with Garen that Lux reluctantly ended her conversation with Karya, after a servant knocked to remind them that dinner was about to be served.

Here, she had heard not only the story of how "a double trap outwitted a wizard," but also a whole series of Setaqa's adventures, such as "escaping a fake quicksand trap to lure away the enemy," "borrowing a dragon's fury," and "toward the Stars."

Even in Shurima's history, few people knew these stories. To preserve the empire's greatness, Setaqa had to be recorded as a perfect Deity, born with a great destiny.

Only Karya, who had fought alongside her, knew that she, like countless other Ascended, had once been just an ordinary mortal.

What sort of heroes and heroines simply fell from the sky?

They were just a group of mortals who persevered and finally made it to the end.

Of course, Karya didn't tell Lux any of that. She was still too young, and didn't know much about the true nature of the world. Though Karya could be a devil of a teacher, he was still happy to spare the girl a childhood that was too cruel.

So he didn't tell Lux that only a fifth of those who had hidden in the sand beforehand survived to take part in the final assault. The other four-fifths had either died of hypothermia during the night or been crushed to death as the Sand Barrier took shape.

He also left out that many people had died when they feigned defeat. Some had even volunteered to die, both to make the act more convincing and to hide the smell of blood that might rise from the sand.

Karya had turned a brutal lament for survival into a child-friendly heroic epic.

But... Setaqa's story made a pretty good heroic epic, didn't it?

At the thought, Karya finally couldn't help clicking his tongue. What a pity—he'd had far too little to do in that part of his life.