Legends of Runeterra

The "road" Cui Zi found was essentially a crack in the rocks. He was skinny and bony, so he squeezed through like a flounder. I'm much more muscular—those ribs make me look more manly. As a result, several buttons broke off as he squeezed through.

I couldn't breathe, and could only mutter curses under my breath, all because of that double bowl of seafood chowder tonight. Then Cui Zi made a hushed gesture to me and put his fingertips in front of his lips.

I made a final grunt and nearly fell to the ground. Then the smell hit me like a punch in the face. The stench was a bit like the fishy smell of fish intestines and offal at a slaughterhouse. It stung my eyes and brought back bad memories.

Moonlight filtered through the cracks in the cave's ceiling, but it was still dim. It took me a moment to make out the piles of wrecked shipwrecks and abandoned cargo scattered about. It was a hoarder's paradise, with all sorts of junk and refuse filling every nook and cranny.

This cave was much larger than the previous one, and almost every area—except for the area covered by garbage—was covered with Baju's stone carvings. More sea snakes. It seemed the carvings only contained one kind of...

There was a large pool of black water on one side of the cave, presumably leading to the passage that nearly drowned me earlier. But there was no way all this debris and trash had been washed in by the waves. Absolutely not. Someone must have scavenged it. Honestly, there seemed to be a strange pattern to the placement of the garbage, but I'm afraid it was a pattern only someone with a brain twisted into a sailor's knot could have come up with.

There were barrels, boxes, chests, nets. There were fishing tackle and rusty harpoons, long, rotting ropes. There were piles of shells and stones, stacked in strange layers, and jars of rancid liquids and who knows what else, arranged on shelves made of driftwood.

An anchor leaned against the wall, and a barnacle-covered figurehead was wedged among some boulders—a carving of a plump woman with a fish's tail, her paint peeling so that she looked as if her skin had been flayed.

Broken masts crisscrossed the cave ceiling like crooked beams, and from them hung long strands of seaweed, while tangle of fish bones and twigs spun slowly, tangled with threads and hair, and shreds of rotten sails.

There, in the shadow of the distant rock face, half hidden, half exposed, among the jumble of objects, there was something that looked very much like...

"Do you think it's that?" I asked quietly.

It was some kind of altar, carved directly into the rock face. It resembled a swarm of sea snakes—red fins, blue-white spots, black necks, a swarm. Surrounding the altar were hundreds of unlit candles, their wax melted everywhere, and dozens of skulls of various animals. There were also several human skulls.

"The Altar of the Abyss." Cui Zi's voice was filled with awe. He had always been superstitious; he was a River Nomad, after all. "Yes, that's it, no doubt about it."

Cui Zi began to find his way to the altar. I slowed down and followed behind, staring at the shadows. It felt like this was the time when something would go wrong. It was always like this when we encountered it. Of course, I was also watching Cui Zi.

"You'd better not hide the crown away," I shouted. He glared at me fiercely but didn't say anything back.

Suddenly I saw something and my heart skipped a beat.

There was an old woman lying on a stone platform knee-high nearby. I almost missed her, but when I glanced over, I realized there was someone there.

“Shit,” I gasped. My heartbeat was back to full force now, pounding like a Noxian snare drum.

She lay faceup, her arms folded before her, like a dead statue. In fact, she looked dead, or very close to it. Her clothes were half rotten, and her complexion was the color of a week-old, rotten fish. Perhaps it was the moonlight, or perhaps the lack of it, but her skin was so thin it was translucent, and the veins beneath it were pitch black.

"There's, uh, an old woman here," I whispered.

Cui Zi was beside the altar, watching intently. "Huh?" he said absentmindedly.

"I said there's an old woman here," I repeated a little louder, glancing over to see if she'd woken up. She didn't stir.

Cui Zi looked back. "What is she doing?"

"Sleeping," I whispered, "or dying. I don't know." I sniffed it and nearly vomited. "She stinks, though. So she's probably dead."

Cui Zi wore his worried expression, his eyebrows knitted together. He usually only wore that expression when he was dealt a bad hand or got a stain on his jacket. His jacket had been custom-made in Piltover and was ridiculously expensive.

"I guess... just leave her alone?" he said.

Good idea. I changed the subject. "Did you see the crown?"

"No." He turned back to the altar. "It should be here..."

I walked over to him, wanting to help him search, when the old woman behind me gasped. I turned around, shotgun raised, but she didn't move. She was still alive.

I looked at myself, then raised my gun to the sky. What was I going to do? Shoot a sleeping old woman? No matter how smelly she was, shooting her would probably only bring us a boatload of bad luck.

I turned and kept walking, keeping my eye on the old woman, just in case something happened. Then I stepped on something. Something that moved. The thing let out a muffled scream.

Here was another man, completely buried under a heap of rotting canvas.

He crawled away from me like a cornered stray dog, his eyes wide with fear. Judging by his clothes and a gold earring, he looked like a sailor, but he certainly hadn't eaten a full meal in a long time. Then I saw a rusty iron chain tied around his leg, the other end of the chain nailed to the nearby rock face.

Seeing he posed no threat, I lowered the barrel of Destiny. I nodded to Cui Zi, who had already turned around, his glowing card ready to go.

"Relax," I said, extending my hand to the prisoner. "I'm not trying to hurt you."

"Take me out of here," he whispered, his eyes flickering between me and the sleeping old woman. "I don't want to be a sacrifice. I've only been sent to find the crown! Take me out of here, take me out of here, take me out of here—"

He was getting increasingly flustered, his voice getting louder. Who knew how long this poor fellow had been tied up here? And why?

"It's okay, young man, keep your voice down," I said, trying to sound calm.

"—Take me out, take me—"