3 3. Nathan

"I cannot -I will not!" interrupted the captain. "Please is there no other way? Don't send us back to Demacia, have you any idea what they do to traitors?"

Snake Egg did not seem surprised or even angry. She simply turned to her officer, eyebrow raised, as if to imply this was exactly what she had expected. He in turn shrugged. But despite this, the shield forced Nathan to pull it out from his shirt. Protect! Without realizing why, he strapped it to his arm and dug his heels in for a leap forward.

Snake Egg plucked the emerald ring from her officer. "You're sure you won't reconsider?" she asked. The captain gave his reply in the form of a raised fist, at which Snake Egg thrust her ring hand forward.

"Then you're useless to me, aren't you?" Ghostly tendrils of lagoon blue lashed out towards the captain. But Nathan dived, intercepting them shield first. His block was not precise, yet the shield drank up the tentacles, suddenly illuminating into a marble white and setting Nathan aflame with energy. It burned in the back of his eye sockets, filled the sides of his throat and he roared, in a voice far from his own.

"I wake!"

Snake Egg stumbled back, showing emotion for the first time. Pale faced, she finally looked like her namesake. Taking advantage of the moment, Nathan lunged forward with the infused buckler and grabbed at the royal spear with free arm.

What is this feeling? He thought as he raised the spear with the intent to run Snake Egg through, when he was halted. Yet the hulking officer struggled with only a one-handed push using this power. His arms wobbled, tendons rippling out under his skin like the fibres or a branch ready to snap.

Yet Snake Egg had not so much as flinched. Nathan's attack had collided, briefly, leaving her with a bloody gash on her forehead, but her face was marred more by an unrelenting grimace.

"It is back," she uttered.

She was glaring at Nathan. Was he it? It was such a profound statement of fact that Nathan was taken aback. It shocked him enough for her officer to gain the upper hand, and enough that Nathan did not hear the sliding reach of a desk drawer, or the metallic click of a gun's hammer.

The shield screamed in Nathan's head, swerving his arm towards the captain as Snake Egg fired. No more goodbyes!

Nathan pushed off the desk, forced to part with the spear, and crouched in front of the sailor before Snake Egg could take another shot. "Protect," he grunted, hearing only the shield's voice while the sailor tore at Nathan's shirt, pleading with him to run, to take the shield and get far away.

Snake Egg stood to the side. Swaying the gun, she looked past Nathan to speak to the sailor. "No wonder you weren't interested in the job. You had brought the petricite to me already." She looked back to Nathan. "But it seems something else has been brought alongside it -at least I can discard the magic theory. What are you? Possessing my people by the hundreds?"

Well, this is weird. Brought out of the shield's haze, Nathan thought about what this meant for other players, too. How will the characters of this game react now he's let the imposter game slip?

BANG.

Bright lifeblood spattered Nathan's shirt. The sailor dropped in a heap. Snake Egg had played him for the fool he was, and the shield had begun its screaming again.

No! No more goodbyes!

Nathan tensed up, ready to use the rest of this absorbed power to crack this egg open. But the shield wouldn't let him. It tugged him back. Protect. Save yourself! And Nathan listened.

"Where's he going? After him!" Snake Egg commanded.

Pulling from the reserve energy, Nathan bashed through the doors, but the officer was on his heels. Literally. Brought down by a tackle just inside the hall, Nathan crawled furiously towards the window. I need to see. Just one good clip. He stretched out towards the spiralled shutters. They seemed to flower open as he got close. His fingers just managed to brush the sun-warmed weaves right before the officer got a proper hold. Pulled back, face hitting the boards, Nathan heard the soft slither of a robe crossing the floor to him.

"I'll take that," Snake Egg said, and there was the click again. She shot through the inside of Nathan's arm, forcibly removing his shield. Then, she hoisted him up to the windowsill, shutters falling away as she threw him headfirst out the window.

Nathan tumbled, the light, the pain and his fall all blinding him. But when he did not immediately hit the ground, he righted himself, and saw the whole of Bilgewater laid out before him as he fell. Dozens of districts piled up over each other, more uneven than a rolling tide. Thick fumes of green and purple trailing from factories; Tall structures hoisting clumps of Noxus banners; Ionians and Vastayans, sunbathing and sparring on brightly tiled roofs. Dark jungles peered in from the inland, caves and shoals tucked in lonely boats low down by the docks and rope bridges spread amongst it all, keeping the archipelago connected.

Nathan got his clip. Before the end he looked back up with a smile, at the temple upon the highest peak of Bilgewater, and he could still make a giant kraken carved beneath the cliff face, its million-jewelled eyes shining down on him.

Now this is-

While the boy fell, Sarpa Anda, the Snake Egg, had adjusted her sari twice, double-checked the tightness on her hextech pistol's charges and found a devotary to clean up the mess. When finally he landed, she nodded once in satisfaction, and closed the shutters.

"Do you think I shouldn't have killed him?"

Her officer, Arjun, looked up from his sudsy brush and wiped his brow. "Absolutely. That was too far."

She waved his concern away. Stepping over the foul-smelling sailors, Sarpa sat back behind her desk to submit the necessary paperwork. "This coming from a truth seeker who 'does not like to judge'," she joked, putting her things back in order. After a moment, she looked back up to see whether she succeeded in drawing a huff from Arjun, which of course she did. She stroked her smooth scalp in satisfaction.

Finished with the clean-up, Arjun bowed deeply to the devotary as they took the corpses away to be cleansed. Refocusing on the office's shattered door, he sighed and said, "You have convinced me of one thing, however."

"What's that?" Sarpa asked, not pausing her quillwork for fear of it dripping.

"That the elders were wrong. This is not another Harrowing."

Snake Egg looked up to smile, then dove back to her notes. "Of course I'm right," she said, "But, I fear it's something far worse."