A Search Through Runeterra (Arcane)

"Echoes from the deep."~ Nautilus, My Hitbox is Normal

A quick fight to start of the battle. And a quick battle. This is a set up fight. A set up for the entirety of the upcoming arc.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The first man swung his axe with the intention of cleaving Gregori in two. Instead of ducking and killing the man instantly, Gregori slammed the man with his shield and followed through sending him in the men behind.

Losing vision in any battle would mean death and in one against a group that was an eventuality. Gregori couldn't afford to even blink. It was why he had used his shield against the man instead of ducking. Ducking meant losing vision. That would mean death.

Stepping back to create distance, he observed them start to surround him. He spotted the mages around the back and the Iceborn and the mage leader stand alongside them.

Not ideal but it was what he wanted.

In a straight face off he could be picked out easily but by putting himself in their center, it made it so that they couldn't kill him with spells for the fear of harming their own allies.

Two groups with no prior interaction combined into a single one?

Chaos was all they would get.

That was one of his plans.

Enter. Cause chaos.

Of course, causing chaos had a small prerequisite step to it. One he had set up the day before.

Watching them prepare to attack him together, Gregori moved the axe wielding hand to his belt and pulled out the three glass vials.

Glass vials filled with blood.

Not human blood but blood of a certain group of wolves he had faced nearly a year ago. Rimefang Wolves. The ones who had magic coursing through them making them display properties of the frozen lands itself.

His actions had the group surrounding him still in confusion.

What was he doing?

CRACK

SHATTER

The three vials flew into the group behind and to his side, showering them with the blood of the wolves.

Then came the first bout of chaos. Fear of the unknown. Those hit with splatter of blood hurried to get it off themselves.

Gregori used the opportunity to run forward, right into the man he had slammed backward. Instead of using his axe to cut the man he slammed his shield into him again. But this time he used the edge. The edge which sported sharp spikes. The spikes punctured the man like paper, leaving him bleeding from his chest and neck.

His axe became a blur as it cleaved into the next man and without a moment of rest he continued into the next man.

Left. Right. Front. Back. Sideways. Swing. Hack. Slam.

It was almost programmed, the way he fought. That was how a fight was. Observe and react. That was how one won a battle. The Freljordians were different in that sense, tactics never mattered when they could just overwhelm with pure numbers and strength.

That was when he got hit with his first blade. A normal one not a True Ice one luckily. But it still hurt. A wound was a wound and one in the back was unavoidable. He didn't have eyes on the back of his head. Attacks would slip through.

But he soldiered on.

His shield blocked incoming attacks as well as ending his enemies. His axe swung, reaping lives as well as locking his opponents weapons.

But he did not come out unscathed. It just wasn't possible to come out unscarred from this. Cuts littered his back and shoulders.

Though his legs were completely unscarred. Honor demanded the Freljordians to not go for his legs.

Honor that would get them killed.

He had to rely on his physical capabilities alone until all the pieces of the puzzle were on the board. Magic was the last and most important piece of the puzzle.

It wasn't long before he was drenched in the blood of his enemies, huffing as the weight of the ordeal caught up to him.

Then he heard it.

So did they.

AWOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

WOOOOOOOOO

AWOOOO

The Rimefangs.

A smile shone on his weary body. His plan was in motion.

The vials had their blood. Blood that he had taken from a few he had killed the previous day. They were territorial beasts, the kind who wouldn't move unless they had a good reason to.

Gregori gave them that reason.

Revenge.

Rimefangs were familial beyond normal wolves. They would throw themselves at certain death even if there was the smallest chance at getting revenge.

It was why they were feared.

Gregori considered himself lucky for having gone against a small pack. A larger pack hellbent on revenge? He would have had to resort to Caalyx earlier.

The wolf pack he had enticed onto the battlefield had more than a dozen members. Allies. The blood he had thrown on his enemies marked them as their enemies as well.

They attacked.

Chaos erupted through the lines.

The Freljordian's retaliated. The mages fired of spells. Rocks flew. Bursts of flame erupted from the side. But just as expected, the mages were both untrained and unskilled. Their attacks harmed their own allies. Both the wolves and the Freljordian's fell under the rain of magic that failed to distinguish friend from foe.

"CALL OFF YOUR IDIOTS!" A roar erupted from the Scarmother.

Gregori snorted at the command.

"STOP YOUR MAGIC!" He heard a voice comply and command. A new voice. The Demacian mage.

He winced for a moment as a drop of blood found its way into his eyes. Raising his hand, he rubbed his eyes while rapidly blinking.

A mistake.

CLINK

A wave of pain erupted in his side as he fell to his knees. 

An axe lay embedded in his side.

With a weak swing, Gregori pushed the attacker back. Pushing himself back up, he turned to the woman and threw his axe at her.

Weaponless, she could only watch as the axe cut into the part between her neck and shoulder.

"UGH...." A painful grunt escaped his lips.

But he had realized something. The mages had stopped their assault. But they had also moved closer. 

The opportunity had come.

Gregori took a painful breath as he prepared for the single most powerful burst of magic he had ever done and then slammed his hand into the ground.

BOOOM

Every single enemy was lifted of their feet for an extremely short instant. But the magic wasn't meant for them.

It was for the blades and runes he had hidden under the snow.

Preparation was the key to victory.

Knowing one's surroundings and exercising control over said surrounding was the most important skill.

He felt the runes activate.

BOOM

BOOM

BOOM

BOOM

Explosions sounded across the battlefield as the runes blew up. 

But there were only four successful explosions.

Less than he had expected. With the number of runes he had forged and hidden, it was not possible to charge them all with magic before the fight. Hence, he had relied on the mages using magic around the runes to power them up for the moment he needed them.

The quick stoppage of the indiscriminate rain of magic from the mages had made it so the rest of the runes weren't fully charged.

The explosions hadn't affected him since, he had moved to the position from which point he had based all his rune placements. A dead zone.

But even if the runes hadn't all exploded, the attack was still far from complete.

Gregori felt his magic flow through the ground, connecting the knives he had also buried in the snow.

WHIZ

WHIZ

SHWHIZZZ

They flew up out of the ground impaling anyone who had stood over them. A bunch of enemies fell at that moment.

But it did not stop there.

The blades moved.

Over and over.

They spun around in circles, impaling and piercing anyone with the bad luck to be in their path.

It was a meat grinder.

Men and women died in an instant, cuts appearing on their body eventually becoming larger and larger until they could no longer be identified.

The winds whistled along with the whizzing of the spinning blades. Creating an eerie symphony. The notes of death.

This was when true fear struck the heart of the members of the Winters Claw. The fear of death was not something they had but the fear of something as horrifying as this? That was something that came out from the depths of their very soul.

For the first time in all their lives, they ran. They ran like cowards. Ran away from a single man.

An injured tired man who had managed to eradicate over half of their entire army alone. And he did so in the most brutal manner.

Gregori watched as the last member exited the range of the blades. He cut off the flow of magic and they all cluttered back to the ground.

Pushing himself back up, Gregori spotted the largest Iceborn move toward him. Gregori knew his name. Brokvar Ironfist. Known to be fierce even among the Iceborn. Gregori let out a ragged breath as he pulled the axe out of his side. He knew if would start to bleed out but his earlier movement had already dislodged it a little. The battle wasn't done yet. A shiver ran through his spine.

A thought flashed through his mind.

"With how much blood he had just lost, he wouldn't be able to wield Caalyx for a lot longer than the both of them had expected." The thought brought a smile to his face.

Brokvar stood in front of him, axe posed over his shoulder. His expression was unreadable but Gregori could feel the anger radiating off the man.

"You killed so many of us." He stated.

Gregori stayed silent choosing to prepare himself.

"You are a true warrior." The man continued, not deterred by Gregori's silence. "Let me grant you the death a warrior deserves."

Gregori raised his neck and looked up at the man in defiance. Blood dripped past his forehead and off his eyebrows. "Heh." He snorted.

This was it. The last push.

Raising his shield up, Gregori used the axe that was embedded in his side to perform the Rakkor ritual again.

BANG

BANG BANG

The might of man. This was him showing his respects to the world he had once abandoned for survival.

CLINK

Gregori's eyes dropped.

Weakness flooded his body as he felt his magic leave him.

Chains had wrapped one of his legs. Petricite chains.

And just like that, he had his legs pulled out underneath him.