A Search Through Runeterra (Arcane)

"Agony, ecstasy, peace. Every passing has a beauty all its own." ~ Karthus, The Death Singer

The reveal this chapter has the second big deviation from cannon. Just because a certain someone has just been revealed to be another headache for the jungle role with zero lore. So I am taking my liberty with the fella. If he is what I wrote him to be.... then Yippee! Same with the other character I am referencing.

Also the graphs on the statistics page are really fun. (Data Analysis being what I do)

600 Collections!

Quick tip: If you find a fic where the author says the story is completed and you can read it if you pay.... it is most likely stolen. Just search the start of the synopsis on ff or Ao3 and you can read it completely for free. Do not pay for stories that are available for free.

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WHOOOOOSHHH

He felt the magic in the air change.

Electrified with blood.

A confused emotion passed through him for a second. Someone with that much power over blood magic that it had made nearly half of Noxus Prime carry the scent of blood in its magic.

He knew that every mage in the vicinity would be affected by this pulse.

Whoever this new player was..... he brought dark tidings with him. An omen for turbulent times. But he reveled in those times. The chaos was oh so delectable.

The recently formed Trifarix was still establishing itself. They needed more time to sink their ideals into the general populace.

RUSTLE

The body next to him twitched in her sleep. Her magic was being affected by the change. Blood magic affected one's mental state. Making them bloodthirsty. Blood was their main source of nutrient after all.

Food didn't cut it after becoming a blood mage.

The old bastards in the Crimson Circle loved to take baths in pools of fresh blood. He imagined, most of the random deaths in the land could be attributed to them. They also carried with them a different kind of nobility.

One their oldest spread. His position as a prince in a time long forgotten had inscribed those ideals into him. And he passed them on to new blood mages, not personally but they tried to replicate the True Nobility, that he represented.

He didn't like the man himself. Or the group of idiots called his followers.

But above all, he hated the woman who put him in this position. Hundreds of years and she believed that everyone had forgotten her existence. No. He had never forgotten. He had his own score to settle with that witch.

HISSS

And then he felt it. Rushing through him in waves.

That ecstasy.

That power.

THAT GUILT.

OH HOW HE MISSED THAT TASTE!

GREGORI!

He had arrived! And even announced his presence in such a strong way! Truly... Amoline couldn't have chosen a better partner in life. Such a treat Gregori was!

Telsi couldn't quite match up to the pure guilt the man emitted.

And he backed that guilt up with sheer power. What a lad!

Tybaluk's plush formed could not begin to show the happiness he was feeling at that time. His mind now fully active, Tybaluk moved up his plans.

He had even come up with a name for it.

Operation Guilt Trip.

If he had full control of his plush body, he would be clapping giddily while running around in circles. 

It was a slow process, since no one came close to Annie for long periods of time. No one older. Except for Flynn. That man was fascinated with Annie. Or rather fascinated with what her presence would mean for him. By bringing her to the school, he had put himself in the spotlight and Annie's performance could push him further into the light. But that made him an easy target. One Tybaluk was happy to use and abuse. Tybaluk did not care who he chose but Flynn had come to Annie with less than pure intentions. Even if Annie did not mind or realize, he did and he would make sure the man would suffer.

A demon could directly influence one's mental state. That is what he was doing to the man. Slowly, over the course of many months, he had taken his influence on the man's mind and transformed into something greater.

Now that Gregori was here, he could move on with his plan. It was less mass killing and more mass chaos and confusion. And a major annoyance. To all those who had pissed him off, it would be a great annoyance.

He even had something planned for Telsi herself, for all her crimes against the children here.

Children couldn't really do what he wanted to be done. And he would never admit it.... but he found human children acceptable companions.

There was not much separating human children from demons. Physiology aside. Mentally they were very similar.

Creatures of instinct. Of chaos.

The simply did things because they could. Just as a demon. He could not find fault in that.

The children also kept his energy up. The guilt they felt for doing something not expected from them were quite the tasty little treat. It wasn't quite the guilt of doing something wrong, but rather the guilt of disappointing a higher figure of authority.

But that guilt was large. If he was a lesser demon, he would have been suffocated by the sheer amount. Being one of the ten, he was enjoying his current buffet. His power had shot up by quite a lot. Not to the levels of the periods where he reigned but he was satisfied.

Satisfied only because if he went further, it would alert dangerous beings.

Not the old witch or the group of idiot blood leeches. No. The Iron Revenant would want him back. And Tybaluk did not fancy going back to that man. Not when he was actively planning to weaken him further.

The dead should stay dead.

That motherfucker was refusing to.

His brother in bond being forced to hold the idiot back.

No.

By the time Tybaluk left Noxus. He would make sure his brother was free.

Atakhan will be free. Free to cause all the pain he wanted to. 

Well.... that was what Tybaluk assumed he would do.... being the Demon of Pain and all. But maybe he would find a new calling. Like him. On a second glance at the recent past, Tybaluk found that he like the life he had been living for all this while. Simple. Slow. Lethargic.

It was sort of a.... GUILTY PLEASURE!

His power was not just from the guilt produced by living creatures but rather from the concept itself.

That was made the ten original demons. Their connection to conceptual magic.

But that was also what could cause their downfall.

The first had proved that. It lost all of its individuality. It had ascended to a state beyond its original demonic nature.

It had become primal.

The primal instinct of fear.

And it had only achieved this state by exhibiting the very emotion it consumed. When the Demon of Fear, felt fear. That was the moment it had ascended.

But Tybaluk didn't believe the raise in status to be worth losing his sentience. His mind.

It made him.... him.

The very thought of becoming that caused fear. Fear IT would be willing to consume. And that was why he had come to accept children.

Innocence was quite the natural enemy to fear.

The fear that children displayed was more out of not knowing rather than genuinely being afraid of something. If they feared pain, they did not fear the concept of pain but rather the experience.

This made them a great cover.

Demon's were hierarchical. The stronger ones ruled over the weaker ones. And the weaker ones banded together to overthrow the stronger ones. They could then claim the domains the demon represented.

Atakhan's disappearance had created an opportunity for a certain Demon of Pleasure and Lust to encroach his domain.

He wouldn't be pleased with her.

But that wasn't his problem. Tybaluk had a family with Annie and Gregori.

And living with them was fun. As fun as causing chaos.

Tybaluk turned his attention to Annie once he heard her whimper. The change in magic was quite a disturbance to the girl. Considering her already high sensitivity to magic, it made sense for her to be affected by the changing in magical characteristics.

But it would be temporary.

Tybaluk gradually fed the child his magic, alleviating her pain and letting her rest. He had done the same for Amoline during her pregnancy with Annie. His magic reinforced the child. Which was probably why her magic had a demonic touch to it. Her close proximity to him had further influenced her magic. Similar things could be achieved with a contract but he would never put himself in a state where his freedom could be threatened. Never again.

And contracts weren't his cup of tea. 

He stopped thinking.... Well.... Nothing was his cup of tea. Since he had never had a cup of tea. The next few minutes he spent thinking of ways he could try and consume tea. Human food didn't fill them up but it was still enjoyable.

Food was food.

As soon as Annie's whimpering stopped, he stopped feeding her with his magic either. The child didn't need her magic to be more demonic than it already was.

And with something like fire magic.... it was hard to estimate. Her potential in magic was quite high but her child-like mind held her back. That was a good thing in their case. 

If she had single-mindedly focused on developing her magic, these idiots would have used her for research. And knowing them, they would probably do so soon enough. He estimated them to make that decision within a year.

Even if Gregori hadn't come, Tybaluk would have made sure of their escape before anything happened to his girl.

But now that he was here, the girl would be happy.

She missed her father. She missed her sister. And above all she missed her mothers. The child had lost two of them. One of them, she lost within hours of accepting the woman as her mother. Annie had asked Tibbers the question many a time.

"Did she die because I called her mother?"

Tybaluk had never answered that question. It was not in his place to answer. But he couldn't let the girl wallow in her sorrows and guilt.

So he ate it all.

Whenever she felt guilty about her mother's passing, either one, he ate them all. Annie would be kept safe. 

Safe from even guilt.