Twisted Advances, Pt. 1

[quote=The Overmyynd]I know this post is wall-of-text-y, but please don't flame the bottom with "LOL DIDNT READ TOO LONG LOL" kinds of responses, I put alot of effort into writing both this one and part 2 for the enjoyment of the community, which collectively describe the extended lore of Maokai. If i get enough good responses and suggestions, I will write another, and kind of make it my thing. Enjoy! [color=#008000]Twisted Advances, the Birth of a Legend[/color] Silence. Solitude. An uneasy peace permeates the air in the Twisted Treeline, the smallest of the League of Legends Arenas. Trees creak silently as a gust of wind blows through the two lanes of advance, and temporal rifts begin to appear on the platforms at the ends of the arena. Light particles break off from the rifts in sporadic patterns as they grow larger, and begin to take shape. After a few moments, the twisting patterns of light dissolve, and 6 Champions appear in two groups, 3 on each platform. They take a moment to look around and acknowledge one another, identifying who their partners are going to be for this match. Ryze, Annie, and Alistar look one another over behind the Blue Guardians, and LeBlanc, Veigar, and Nunu note each other with little interest behind the Purple Guardians. There is little love lost between most champions, since they can be fighting alongside another member of the League one day and trying to kill them the next, with seemingly no rhyme or reason why. The political affairs of nations are dictated by the Summoners, and summoners alone decide which champion they wish to use to "negotiate". The combatants all walk over to their designated stores, and purchase their starting items with what little money they are given at the beginning of each match. They ready themselves, and head out to the center of the lower lane to attempt to gain the honorable First Blood kill. *** Running down the lane, Ryze feels... disquieted. Not from the upcoming battle; he has seen combat countless times, has experienced "death" more than he cared to think about. No, something feels... unbalanced. His connection to the ebb and flow of magic allows him to gain insight into his surroundings, its past, present, and future. Each place has its own distinct "taste", and he knew the taste of the Twisted Treeline like a child knows the flavor of his mother's favorite soup recipe. Today, it seemed... very strange. A tang, a bite, a shift in concentration that he could not place. He was forced to put his concerns out of his mind prematurely, however, when he saw the first enemy champion. Leblanc stood in the center of the lane, looking at him and his teammates with unnerving calm. The witch from the bowels of Noxus seemed to never be disheveled by anything. Ryze had killed her numerous times, and been killed BY her at least as much, and her face never changed. Not once. It wasn't natural, to find yourself fried, eviscerated, even eaten, and not show any emotion at all. So her passiveness was by no means a dead giveaway of a trap. She could have easily simply arrived there first, and was calmly awaiting her team mates in the face of onrushing enemies. Still, Ryze chose to take the careful approach, and not engage. Alistar thundered past him, and ran into the bushes. Ryze's connection to the Summoners within the League Headquarters let him "see" what Alistar saw. He quickly found that his caution was well placed. Veigar, hiding in the tall brush, immediately created a distortion in space that caught Alistar and held him fast, and Nunu and his Yeti began to beat upon the large bovine. Acting quickly, Ryze locked Nunu into a magical cage, and the fight for their lives began. *** Allerwith, one of the Institute of War Council members, watched the summoners with some small amount of interest. This battle was deciding the fate of a border village in the Ironspike Mountains between Noxus and Zuan. The winner of this match would earn the right to claim ownership of the village. Allerwith, personally, felt that there would be two losers today. The team that actually lost the match, and the town itself, no matter who the winner was. Observing the summoners and ensuring no foul play was taking place here in the Institute was one of his core responsibilities, and he looked upon his job with a degree of boredom. The summoners were forcibly locked in place by the magic entwining them with their Orbs of Connection, the magical device letting them control their chosen Champion on the fields, so one summoner physically interfering with another was an impossibility. The most they could do while connected was twitch or cringe slightly as they felt backlash from their chosen champion's pain. The only thing to truly worry about was an outside source coming in and assassinating a hapless competitor, and that was very nearly impossible, as well. There were no windows, no ventilation shafts, and no lavatories in the Summoning Rooms, and the one door into an out of the room was warded with potent magics, on top of being nearly a foot thick of solid battle steel. The Councilman placed his hand over his own Orb of Connection, and a birds-eye view of the battle filled his third eye. The lock down on the nervous system traditionally in place in Summoner Orbs was absent in his, so he was free to move and look about the room, and engage and disengage from the battle at any time. He noted with indifference that the Noxians had attained first blood on Zuan, slaying Alistar, but they paid dearly for it. Both Leblanc and Veigar fell before Ryze and Annie, their combined Stunning abilities locking their foes down and leaving them vulnerable. Only Nunu and his Yeti managed to escape, and even then it was a close call. He continued to watch the match while he kept a piece of his attention on the summoners and the room, becoming increasingly bored with the whole thing, having seen hundreds of similar battles. He removed his hand from the Orb, sat down in his chair, and pulled a device covered in crystals, small fans and gears, along with a small toolkit, from the inside of his robes, and began to tinker. If this device worked, it would allow a person to magically enchant the minute dust and pollen particles in the air, creating a vast web of listening devices that worked through the vibrations caused by sound waves. This small, easily concealable listening device could prove quite lucrative for him in the ever flowing, cutthroat world of Valorian Politics. *** Ryze opened his tome, calling forth the power of a vocal incantation to blast Veigar with the most potent spell allowed to him in the arena. As he watched the Yordle disintegrate into a cloud of electrically charged bits and pieces, he thought to himself that the limitations imposed on the Champions were both a blessing and a curse. Curse in that, in all of his travels, Ryze had accumulated an incredibly vast amount of spells, and could very easily find one to handle absolutely any situation, including mass destruction of an entire opposing team. The limitations were also a blessing in that, so could all of the other champions unleash their own unbridled arsenal. He silently shuttered as he thought of what the little ball of evil that lay in parts at his feet could come up with had he not been severely hamstrung by the regulations imposed upon him when he entered the arena. He would likely desperately look for an excuse to open a black hole that would eat the entirety of the Twisted Treeline, and half of all Valorian while he was at it, and the little bastard would probably cackle madly at the center of the maelstrom all the while. Ryze peered through the fog in his mind, looking through the eyes of his team mates. They had failed a surprise attack on Nunu, who was busy roaming the forest looking for powerful monsters to kill and take their boons. He shook his head in nervous thought. Annie, so innocent a name, such an innocent looking little girl with her teddy bear, and one of the most frightening presences on the Field. He supposed that that's what happens when an archmage of Shadow magic and an archmage of Pyromancy breed. In the year or so Annie has been on the field, he had seen a dramatic increase in the potency of her magic, as well as her proficiency at using it. When she grows into her teens... The thought disturbed Ryze so much he turned his attention away from it, and used the moment of respite to ponder other matters. Absently slaying the minions that poured from both nexus, he questioned the still uneasy feeling of the taste of the treeline. It had gotten worse. Much worse. The shift in the balance of the arcane energies was so wildly fluctuating now that it was nearly visible. He wondered if anyone else noticed... likely not, with the possible exception of LeBlanc and Veigar. No one else present had quite the kind of magical attunement he did; Veigar was so insane it was unlikely he would pay enough attention to care, and LeBlanc was just an unknown factor all around, so there was no way to know for sure. He guessed it had something to do with the unusual concentration of potent mages on the field today. It definitely was not normal for the Treeline to support so many powerful magicians... Its usual inhabitants were mostly physical combat oriented. He looked around at the edges of the lane, to the trees that gave this arena its name. Strange twists and knots throughout were so common it was highly unusual for a tree to look "normal" here. Many of them had wicked looking faces carved in them for reasons Ryze was at a total loss to explain. But one caught his attention in particular. Curiosity overcame him; he took a break from killing the helpless, mindless little minions for the meager gold prizes they offered upon death, and walked over to the edge of the path. A large tree, about 9 feet tall and strangely thick for its height, seemed to be crawling under the surface, the bark over its whole body shifting and crackling almost imperceptively. It had an unusually well defined face; eyes, teeth, even a kind of crown and beard fashioned out of wooden spears all appeared to have grown out naturally, instead of being carved. He moved forward to examine it more closely, when suddenly LeBlanc flashed through the trees beside him and threw a potent ball of magical energies at him. Taken by surprise, he took the full force of the blast on his chest, even as he hurled his own attack back at her. So over charged with power was her blast, it exploded on impact, and wisps and sparks flew in all directions as Ryze was thrown yards backward. Getting stubbornly to his feet, he looked up in time to see something... very strange. LeBlanc was on one knee, also knocked back by his power, which was lingering in the air. What was strange was that neither of their magics was dissipating. Instead, all of the aftermath of the spells was being drawn to the tree he was observing before he was attacked. The crackling and shifting intensified, and the eyes on the tree began to glow with an unnatural light. Curiosity at this strange, frightening phenomenon overpowered his instinct to kill his enemy, and all he could do was watch this tree change. Thankfully, LeBlanc appeared to be similarly incapacitated. The branches coming out of the trunk shifted, twisted and morphed, forming a small, clawed right hand and arm, and a huge, shield like left hand and arm. The base split halfway down with a deafening crack, and two legs were formed as they ripped violently out of the ground, roots tearing from the base of the trunk. 2 sets of eyes blazed forth, one from the tree's face, and one from his shielded left hand. A deep, earthy, heart wrenching howl began to emanate from the mouth of the tree as it started to swing wildly forth from its resting place, even as a high pitched, manic giggle trilled in the background. As the behemoth tree stumbled from the treeline onto the path, a small, bulgy plant creature crawled from the larger one's back and up his arm to rest on his clawed, right hand. Taking notice, the large tree looked at the small creature with frantic curiosity. In response, the little thing hopped up and down excitedly, and gibbered something unintelligible. This seemed to somehow justify its existence to the monster, and it turned his attention to his surroundings. Unfortunately, his surroundings included Ryze and Leblanc. Leblanc's reaction was swift. She stood up and started to run down the path towards the bushes leading to the heart of the forest. The monster tree roared, dissolved into a floating mass of leaves, branches, and pulsing magical energy, and shot off at an incredible pace towards its fleeing prey. LeBlanc looked back, and did something Ryze had never seen her do. Scream. Her normally pretty face contorted into something much less attractive out of pure, primal fear. This, more than anything, made Ryze's stomach drop, and his heart falter. What kind of monster is this to make LeBlanc react so? The heaving mass of nature and magic caught up to her and surrounded her, and thick, grasping roots exploded out of the ground and wrapped themselves tightly around her legs and torso. Blowing past and around her, the mass re formed into the gigantic tree, which then proceeded to rear back and slam its massive left hand straight down onto its helpless victim, crushing her like a hammer shatters a delicate crystal balanced on its end. Ryze watched this, transfixed in abject horror. He snapped out of it very quickly, however, when the beast turned its eyes on him. He scrambled to his feet, and wanting to avoid LeBlanc's fate, he threw a Cage at the beast. He caught him mid stride, and the creature froze, and roared his defiance from behind the magical barrier. The little creature began to hop up and down frantically, squealing its head off, and a branch coming out of its head started to spark at the top. The larger creature paused for a moment, then hurled his miniature companion at Ryze, the horrible little thing squealing with glee the entire time it was in the air. It landed a foot from his feet, and emitted a blast of strange magical energy that forced him back several feet. Sighing with relief that at least one of the behemoth's abilities wasn't overly dangerous, he turned to run, when something caught his eye. The little creature was not destroyed. In fact, it stared up at him with malicious joy, and began to run towards him! Ryze ran as fast as he could away from the vicious little thing, but the scuffle of the stubby wooden limbs and insane laughter behind him was faster. After only a few yards, a massive explosion rocked his body, and he was thrown forcefully into large, angular, spiky tree. Sliding down to the ground, coughing up blood, he knew his time had come. As he lay on his back, unable to move, his eyes sliding out of focus, he watched as the monster roared free of its cage, and began to lumber into the forest in the direction of the other Champions. He hoped that his team mates were watching as he was slain. Not that he cared for them overly much, but facing this creature was a fate he would wish on no one. He let his heavy eyes close for the final time, and was no more.[/quote]

[quote=Tiddlyfunk]Great part 1! It's interesting how you've gone against the status-quo for 3v3 teams, and made it fit in with Maokai! Will be sure to give the next part a read.[/quote]

[quote=The Overmyynd]bump[/quote]

[quote=Vitigam]OMG! Amazing! Gonna read part 2 soon.[/quote]

[quote=The Overmyynd]Thanks alot! let me know if there are any particular champions you want me to write about next. I was even thinking about making a series called "The Adventures of Shaco", detailing his avid career as Valorian's only fully functional homicidal comic-assassin.[/quote]

[quote=The Overmyynd]bump[/quote]

[quote=MedievalMonsta]Awesome! :D[/quote]