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Summoner - Chapter 3 - SomeoneYouWontRemember - Parahumans Series

Chapter 3

Notes:

Yo guys! Protip, because there's a chance you might feel a tad overwhelmed or find yourself wondering about stuff!

If you're not a league player/aren't familiar with the champions and the like, while I will try my best to provide some vague descriptions and the like, I won't be going into extreme detail because anyone who knows of league will just be annoyed by the 900 words of descriptions of a champion that is already online with great artworks of them.

What im trying to say is, if you see a champion mentioned, just drop a quick google search on images and you'll see an amazing artwork of them in like 5 seconds, just keep that in mind, it'll help you visualize stuff without me wasting half the chap on descriptions n shit.

Additionally, if you want some kind of way of roughly cataloguing the runes and summoner spells, if you google "League of legends summoner spells wiki" and "league of legends runes wiki" you'll have two very proffessional ass boards that show the entire trees.

Neither of these are necessary, of course. This fic is made for the Worm fandom primarily, so I will try to keep everything understandable to some extent even to a complete newbie, just be aware these might help your enjoyment.

Ok see u soon prob cuz im addicted to this fic and im zooming words out like nobody's business

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

One month rolled into two.

She began to talk, began to pay attention.

There was still a lingering hint of unease, of everything feeling fake and dull as she slowly began to adjust back to reality.

But she could hold a conversation. A rather halting one, slow and uneasy.

Taylor Hebert's memories were a pebble on a small mountain when compared to the legends', but by the third month, things began to feel… less like looking at the very essence of the uncanny valley, less like staring at cardboard cutouts of the world.

She learned her doctors' names.

She liked Miss Yamada better. They noticed quickly, and within another month, they were holding steady conversation. Or, as steady as it could be with how invasive the questions were.

They changed her armband back to gray.

She also learned that it was genuinely cathartic to speak about… basically anything on her mind besides the thing.

That posed a simple problem.

If she did speak with any degree of honesty, she would not ever be getting out of here. So she refused to talk about it, and that unfortunately made them keep her there for a bit longer than she'd have liked.

She'd lived through everything that was stuck in her head, and just the thought of voicing what had happened to her made her feel crazy. If she spoke to the doctors about it, about why exactly she'd spent about two months mute and deep in thought, they'd think she'd completely lost her mind.

To be fair, to some extent, she had lost a good chunk of it. But she'd also gotten most of it back.

Sure, she doubted she'd ever be the same person again. She didn't think she wanted to be that same person again. But she was sane and functional, if a bit strange, no matter how much she'd changed.

So her conversations with Dr. Yamada were all exceedingly… stilted. There wasn't much she could talk about without bringing up some otherworldly memory and locking up, and her own interest in literature only lasted about two conversations before the topic had been wrung dry.

And finally, during the tail end of the third month, she was cleared to go.

With a small smile, she bid Dr. Yamada goodbye, and closed the door to her dad's car.

It was a long drive to get back to Brockton Bay from all the way down in Philadelphia. A day and a half, more or less, mostly due to their car being a piece of crap that had to stop and cool down every half hour at the risk of the engine overheating or something.

Which was why they were going to spend a decent couple on the road and in shitty motels, unfortunately.

On the other hand, that gave her a couple days to readjust to the wider world, so it wasn't all bad.

If small mercies were a thing, the fact her body seemed to have been slightly… "fixed", might be the right word, was the most welcome one. No need for glasses, a little stronger all around... Whoo…

It allowed her to rest her head on the window and drink in the sight of distance, at least.

The first few hours on the road made her feel like her brain had completely forgotten that it was possible to see distances and surfaces more than twelve feet away during her stay at Asylum East, a consequence of being in a cramped room semi-permanently. It was not unlike going cross eyed and seeing your sight blur, but the complete opposite. Like… too much clarity and scale.

An odd little detail to fixate on, but she didn't want to think about anything heavy right now.

Describing such a sensation were her dad to ask why she was staring so intently into the horizon would have been impossible.

The first day was also spent without a single word being spoken beyond some vacant pleasantries and benign, nervous chatter from her dad.

Did you put on your seatbelt, wow that is a beautiful orchard we're passing, look at that square and that statue, et cetera.

It was more annoying than endearing, but she couldn't exactly blame him for not being sure of how to start a conversation when she barely responded, simply allowing him to fill the void with meaningless noise.

It wasn't even that she disliked him, not at all. Despite the distance, despite how she'd changed, gotten a little more… cold, to be honest, she still loved him, even if the feeling was very muted.

It just… still felt like such a waste of time and energy to engage with him.

What could he possibly say that would offer any genuine comfort, that would offer her some kind of insight or wisdom she hadn't learned through lifetimes a thousand times longer than his own?

Nothing.

Another tiny thing she was grateful to the vision for, even if it didn't erase the rest of the crap. Saving her from the unerring uncertainty of having to hear adults lecture and 'educate' her in the future, and doubting herself, not sure if they were right or not, due to the sheer gap of experience between them. Because older people knew best, because they've lived longer and knew more.

Now, that was not the case.

And it just made it harder to pay attention to him because of it.

Not him specifically, actually, just in general. She felt like their equal and more, so the way people tended to talk to her, whether that was the guy in the gas station, her dad, or her doctors, it all felt vaguely condescending.

It didn't anger her or anything, her skin was far too thick for that now, but it did make her zone out and ignore them.

Eventually, they drove to a motel, a dingy, squat yellow thing in the ass end of nowhere, just a few hours away from New York.

She followed her dad in. Waited as he talked to the receptionist, and was relieved he decided to buy a separate room for each of them. He likely thought she wanted her own space right now. He was correct, but it still felt like he was tiptoeing around her. If it gave her room to work however, she wouldn't mind much. 

He gave her the small backpack he'd packed for her, with clothes, a book, water bottles and some other hygiene basics like tampons and the like, and with a forced, awkward smile that spoke of words unsaid and chronic hesitation, walked her to their rooms. He glanced at her as they stepped on the upper floor, opened his mouth.

Closed it, cleared his throat, slowed his steps.

"Goodnight." He eventually said with another small, forced smile.

"Goodnight." She said, and after another moment of awkwardness, he turned away to find his room.

She glanced down at her key and the number on it.

She did the same, and for the first time since "triggering", the moment the door closed, she reached for her power.

Well, not exactly power, but the principle was the same and she didn't have a word for it yet.

It was a strange thing to sift through, understandably. It was like… a mental catalog. It was split between the legends themselves, allowing her to pick one to combine or turn into, the World Runes that had created the robed man's planet, each with almost a dozen different effects that could all be very minor powers of their own, and the spells of the star dragon named Aurelion Sol.

Of course, the old man had dubbed them 'summoner spells', because humility did not seem to be a part of The Institute of War's priorities. They loved flaunting how they discovered this magic, when in fact, these were all hand-crafted by a literal space-faring dragon billions of years old.

Ah, good ole human ego.

The summoner spells were varied, and powerful. She could use any one of them right now if she wished.

Unfortunately, they had long cooldowns, some being about one and a half minutes, some being five minutes, and one that had a cooldown of five days.

That summoner spell was called 'Smite'.

For good reason.

She wouldn't be using that anytime soon.

Right now, however, she just wanted to wait a few minutes until her dad went to sleep, then sneak away to set a waypoint for the 'Teleport' spell. She never knew when she might need to be a couple miles away from New York after all, and it didn't cost her anything but a few seconds.

The best part about summoner spells was simple.

They didn't take any resources to cast, no flashy transformations that would turn her into a twelve foot monster. She didn't know where or what powered them, but all it took to use them was time. She could use them to pretend she was a normal cape, if and when she decided to get to action.

And combined with the World Runes, whichever one she ended up using, she could be a decently formidable cape pretender, even without using any of the legends.

There were five World Runes, each one a large crystal of unfathomable power.

Unfortunately, in the process of squishing them into the summon core that had replaced her heart, the robed man had had to severely limit and cut their abilities in order to not make the entire thing implode. Size and mana restrictions and all that.

Not that mana existed in Earth Bet, outside what her own soul produced, but the same rule still applied.

Still, the runes were powerful.

She leaned back on the bed, eyes on the ceiling, and mentally prodded the surface of the runes, a brief skim.

It was odd, the way the process worked. It wasn't like she was seeing a menu or something, it was more akin to remembering something she already knew once, knowledge smoothly implanted into her mind so long as she asked.

There were five World Runes, each with about a dozen effects that would all be simultaneously active, and one main effect that she could choose she wanted, usually out of a selection of three to four.

First was the Rune of Precision, a crystal of golden energies that were oddly reminiscent of Scion's glow, now that she thought about it.

Very convenient and heroic-looking.

Even though she'd locked the rune in during her 'trigger event', she couldn't much imagine she looked all too heroic during it, despite the golden glowy bits. All she remembered was screaming and plastic-smelling foam.

She locked the Rune in.

It was a heady feeling, much like the first time she'd done so.

Instantly, just by locking the rune in, she knew she could shoot the top half of a fly's wings off with a bullet. Or a pebble.

Or that she'd be able to make a photorealistic copy sketch of literally anything, no matter how complex, so long as it was a clear image in her head. She could probably draw the Mona Lisa using her feet.

The Rune definitely lived up to its name. 

But she wasn't finished with it, not yet, because just like the first time, she was presented with another choice. The main effect of the Rune.

The robed man certainly did not lack imagination or a sense of gravitas when he named the effects.

She chose the least aggressive one.

With a deep breath, she curled her abdomen and rose to a sitting position on the motel bed.

The first thing she noticed was that 'horizon' was a mere suggestion. She could pick out the individual people driving on the highway on a distant hill through their car windows, see their expressions.

Compared to her old self that needed glasses, this felt like… like watching a video online, and jumping the resolution from 144p to 4k.

She could see the individual strands of wood on the window frame.

She could probably sever an individual strand of wood with a throwing dart, actually, barring the interruption of unexpected vectors, forces, or multidimensional orbits.

This felt good.

She rose to her feet, and after another glance at the digital clock on the nightstand, she confirmed that about six or so minutes had passed. Maybe she should have waited something like thirty minutes, but she was a little… excited. It was nice.

So she did not wait thirty minutes, instead pulling her hood over her head, and quickly darting out of her door, locking the door behind her before vaulting over the flimsy railing, eleven feet down to the ground, a rather spontaneous decision she somewhat regretted when she actually hit the ground and almost sprawled herself over it, stumbling forward after her knees damn near folded under her.

Not having the mental block associated with overwhelming action and height drops in place was useful, but she had to remember that her body was still squishy and fragile, until she could do some of that physical conditioning that Lee Sin spent his life committing to.

God, that was going to fucking suck.

Especially when this world had a complete and utter lack of what the monk had called 'Qi' and 'lifeforce' in the ambient atmosphere. Any refinement to her body she could do would be completely and utterly glacial.

At least until she worked out a few of the nigh-endless possibilities and combos afforded to her through the legends and the runes. She was sure there was something to speed things up.

Because right now, she was the weak link in the chain. She was the most killable and squishy, in a way few to none of the legends were.

Thankfully, The Rune of Resolve had a couple of ways for her to permanently increase her 'lifeforce', even without the Rune being in active use, somewhat similar to how Precision's effects worked.

That increased lifeforce was something she could then convert to Qi cores and actually start becoming a human boulder and doing stuff like moving her center of gravity around her body and crushing guns to pebbles with her fingers.

But as she straightened and glanced around, she briefly lamented that like with everything involving the damn Runes, any genuine bonuses achieved through them had to be achieved either through fighting, or killing.

Not that she was particularly opposed to either, but like… give her a bit of time to process stuff first, goddamnit world.

Three months of asylum stay weren't exactly enough when she was busy trying to unfuck her mind.

She circled around the lower rooms for a bit, glancing around for any prying eyes, despite how this place was just a dump on the side of a hill road-

Yellow light reflected off the window to her left, and her head snapped to it, only to blink in surprise at the empty room beyond, then trail to the reflection in the glass.

She glanced down at her hands, at the soft, eddying swirls of honey-gold energy lazily and softly twining around her fists.

Was that there the first time?

"Fuck." She hissed out, annoyed, and turned around to slam her forehead on the off-yellow wall, oddly angry at it.

Her body was suddenly light as a feather, and her eyes snapped open, seeing the aftermath of golden essence rush down her body and briefly make her clothes glint oddly like they were on the first step to turning into gold. A slight jerk left misty trail behind, one that would more than likely be extremely eye-catching in the middle of the night.

This very public place was not somewhere she could sit down and do some power testing, for fuck's sake.

She flicked the Rune off, and the light instantly disappeared, letting her go back to being a heavy, normal person, one that didn't mock the laws of physics by existing.

Right, Teleport waypoint.

She briefly glanced around once more, just to confirm nobody had seen her, and walked through the short hallway between the rooms, coming up to the back of the property.

It smelled like shit and piss and cold air.

Lovely.

She walked off into the small, dry, reed-covered valley behind the motel, and after a couple hundred feet, paused.

Then she closed her eyes, and grasped the spell with her mind.

It required a waypoint to teleport her to, so, knowing full well there was no such thing, she grasped the pearl-like target point, moving it up to ten feet over the flat ground.

And that was that.

Even if someone moved a car in the way or something, the spell would just clear the space by force before moving her in.

She opened her eyes, tapped her feet, put her hands in her hoodie pockets.

Her eyes strayed up to the sky.

Valor, Quinn's great-eagle came to mind, and she sighed.

If only.

She might have never flown, not in reality, but she still missed it.

Shyvana The Half-Dragon loved it more than anything too, but becoming a gigantic fire-breathing dragon was likely going to draw way too much attention.

So instead, she began to bring forth well-practiced mana exercises and practise frameworks, knowing full well that the only way to expand her resources was to use them until they strained, not unlike a muscle.

It wasn't visible, and nobody else in this world had mana, so it wasn't a sensation one could feel either. To all but herself, she was just flicking her fingers in strange patterns and mouthing barely-human sounding chants.

Maybe she should have started earlier, but again, one thing at a time. She was busy and reeling.

Now that she wasn't, she had no excuse to be slacking off.

Runeterra had two kinds of mages. Learned mages, and natural mages.

Each had their advantages and disadvantages. Natural mages had to expel no effort to start casting, and they could grow well.

She was not one of those, obviously.

Learned mages had sheer, incredible versatility and efficiency. The only thing stopping her from shooting lightning out of her fingers right now was the fact that her mana pool was fucking abysmal.

Which made sense. As far as her soul was concerned, it only began making mana three months ago. It would grow naturally as she grew up, but she didn't want to leave it up to time. She'd hurry it along.

Runes for stationary mana circuits, the standing legs of a spiral of fire, a telekinetic repulsion field, mana turned to physical force, all formed and dispelled.

She was just burning mana to force her core to adapt and grow right now.

And this was… unsurprisingly easy, actually. She had dozens of mages in her arsenal, some being masters amongst masters. Maybe in a couple weeks she could actually cast something cool.

It would be interesting to cast something first-hand rather than experiencing it through the lens of someone else's faded eyes.

She couldn't wait to get back to Brockton Bay, and wow, was that sentence not just absurd enough to be funny?

She let herself let out a short series of amused puffs, not loud enough to be a laugh but certainly full of mirth, her shoulders shaking.

Notes:

I lied, next chap should be Brockton Bay tho.

And to those who noticed some certain stuff: gj, yes, not exactly the same obviously but close enough. If you didn't notice, uh.... cope and seethe?