The Icathian War

Was this really me? Was I really the same person who stayed cooped up at home and went a long time without talking to anyone in the real world? Why was I angry? Why was I bursting with questions I wanted to throw at her?

Ato thought it might be because of the Iceborn—the Iceborn who had paid for Lissandra's mistake. Over the past ten thousand years, who knew how many Iceborn had died at the hands of the Watchers? And they had willingly done so. He was angry on their behalf.

Lissandra parted her lips, but couldn't say a word. She dispelled her True Ice magic, sat back down, and lowered her head to look at her hands.

After a long silence, she finally spoke. "Yes. Does it matter? Compared with breaking the Void's seal, the truth is a trivial thing."

"Ten thousand years is a long time. I often forget the sheer terror that washed over me when the Watchers first reached a tendril through from the other side."

"Regret overwhelmed everything. Deep down, my heart kept screaming, 'I didn't do it. I didn't do it...'"

"I was just trying to shirk responsibility. I was only trying to help. I just wanted to lead humanity to greatness..."

She and Little Jinx probably had a lot in common.

Though one was limited to a small city-state, with limited destructive power, while the other had brought a great big something into this world... Ato grumbled inwardly, now that he'd calmed down.

"I want to know the details of the war. Those warriors—if they'd had their help ten thousand years ago, perhaps we wouldn't have needed to use such costly magic." Lissandra looked at Ato again.

"I apologize for losing my composure earlier. Please tell me the details. The images of that war were already enough to move me, but I want to know more."

Was this really going to work? Ato really wanted to raise an eyebrow, but forced himself to hold back, considering the impression he was making.

He'd been worried that a young man not yet thirty would be led around by the nose by an Old Hag three or four hundred times his age. But after a few pointed questions, she'd started falling apart herself...

It seemed she'd suffered through the past ten thousand years, and hadn't been without regret.

The questions had also helped Ato see more clearly what kind of person he was, but now wasn't the time to dwell on it.

"You tell her." Aatrox, who hadn't said much, handed the initiative to Ato.

"I'm a warrior. Most of the time, I solve problems with force. But if Archmage Nasus were here, I'd let him tell the story. Of course, I'd fill in anything he left out."

At last, both sides had calmed down and steered the discussion back to the war between the Ascended and the Void.

"That happened ten thousand years ago. There's no point dwelling on who was at fault now. What matters is stopping the Void." Ato recalled what he knew about the matter.

"Exactly. What matters is stopping the Void. Please go on. I'll consider what you have to say." Lissandra had regained her usual elegance and settled into a listening pose.

Ato pointed to the Demonic Sword of the Dark. "They came from an ancient empire. If its people achieved outstanding deeds, they could undergo a special ritual."

"After the ritual, those who had distinguished themselves would be transformed into another form—the Celestial Warriors you saw. In return, they gained long lives and immense power."

"You could say they were no longer human. They were more like gods walking the Mortal Realm."

"A ritual?" Lissandra, an experienced mage, raised a question. "I've studied magic for so long, and I've never heard of a ritual that could produce powerful warriors in large numbers."

"From what I saw in the dream, at his peak, this warrior's soul could rival the Demigods of Freljord."

"This ritual was essentially producing Demigods on a mass scale! In Freljord's distant past, the purest, most primordial energy gave rise to the four Demigods we know of."

"The magma serpent Rhaast died fighting Volibear. There's no way a ritual capable of producing Demigods in large numbers could exist in this world."

"That's right. No such ritual magic exists in this world." Ato agreed with Lissandra. "But what if the ritual's power came from outside this world?"

"Outside this world..." Lissandra seemed to realize something. She lifted her head and "looked" at the sky.

Ato explained, "The ancestors of that empire used certain means to draw energy from an entity beyond this world, then infused ordinary people with it through the ritual."

"When we met Ornn, he described that entity as the sun, and himself as no more than a faint firefly."

"Such a thing really happened?" Lissandra was deeply shaken.

At that moment, she felt some admiration for the empire's ancestors. She had bargained with the Void for power and nearly brought disaster upon the entire world, while that ancestor seemed to have caused no serious consequences...

"I only learned about it after meeting the little one," Aatrox added.

"Our Empress only told us that the Ascension Ritual was a gift from the gods. The ritual granted us power, and that power made us natural masters over others. She never mentioned where the ritual's power came from."

"You can imagine how unstoppable the empire's expansion must have been with an army of Celestial Warriors." Ato continued his account.

"All resistance was futile. The neighboring countries were soon absorbed into the empire."

"If Freljord hadn't been so far away, it would probably have been caught up in the empire's expansion too. Their advance stopped south of Freljord."

"...We were fortunate." Lissandra didn't know what to say.

"They were conquerors, but poor rulers. The small countries they absorbed became targets for the empire to exploit. Over time, resistance movements began to grow in secret."

"Foolish. How could they resist without Demigods? They overestimated themselves."

"They didn't have Demigods, but they discovered the Void." At last, Ato revealed the crux of the war.

"...What? They had a Void Rift there, too?" Lissandra could hardly believe it.

"Just like you, they were promised the power to defeat the Celestial Warriors in exchange for helping the Void widen the rift and let more of it reach the material world. The resistance accepted eagerly."

"The result was that the small country was wiped out in an instant. The Void spawned countless monsters by devouring everything around it. It was far worse than what happened ten thousand years ago."

"That small country was called Icathia. It lay in the southeastern corner of the empire, and the war that engulfed the entire empire was called the Icathian War."

"The empire sent out most of its Celestial Warriors and paid a terrible price to win.

The Empress was killed in battle, countless ordinary soldiers were killed or wounded, and more than half of the Celestial Warriors were lost. Worse, the Void had secretly begun to corrupt them."

Lissandra's breath caught. She stared blankly at the greatsword floating beside her.