Work Text:
There is much work to do in the Shadow Isles! Yorick wakes up in what theoretically is the morning (as his body remembers it), but there is very little with which to distinguish the passage of time. He just assumes that it is the morning. He walks over to the ocean which is polluted with Black Mist and really not suitable for consumption, then splashes his face with some of that soul-soup to cleanse the remnants of various wraiths off himself. He scrounges himself up something to eat by catching some of the few living fish that stay near the coasts while reciting some poems.
“Green are the garden’s sunflowers, wet with dew, awaiting the sun due to arise anew,” this line makes Yorick wonder if he could try to gauge the passage of time based on Maokai. That would mean interacting with the guardian though. Maokai’s temper was too bitterly harsh for Yorick to deal with. He’d have to settle for his biological clock as he started up the second line, “A bright spring lavishes virtue, she adds fresh luster to all living things.”
What Yorick wouldn’t give to have a few cod infused with this luster. The Maiden responded to the line snarkily, but he ignored her. This was not going to be a day where they’d banter and a strange little wisp of light shaped like a fist would record their arguments. Riot or whatever the wisp called itself wasn’t here.
“In their lush growth there's still the fear that they will wither when autumn comes near.”
Well, Ruination saw to it that the seasons played a far less significant role in the livelihood of spring flowers. It brought death to all regardless of season. Even after a fresh downpouring of May showers, the leaves would turn yellow, and wither with the fading flowers.
“A hundred streams flow eastward to the sea, when have the waters ever returned though? One who in his youth does not take great pain, when old, will but regret and grieve in vain.” The fish remained eerily still within their salty habitat, perhaps startled off by the presence of ghouls. Yorick would have to wait a little longer. He tried to think of other poems, but couldn’t remember any off the top of his head. What a waste of a perfectly good “morning”! Eventually he gave up. This would be another “day” without food. It’s not that he needed to eat anymore. But it helped him feel more human, helped that dull prickling all over his body subside, and it made his mood a little better. He didn’t remember a time when fish were plump and meaty, and when there were different spices imported from other kingdoms to give soups flavor. The way things were now, his catches were barely worth eating. He’d have better luck trying to braise a wraith. After accepting defeat Yorick decided that he’d return to his job.
Many bosses would appreciate having a worker getting up at the pitch of dawn (or so Yorick thought) to work. Of course there was no cohesive and reliable measure of time, nor was there anybody for Yorick to work for, except maybe Maokai. He’d rather give up his struggle for life than work for that odiously bad tempered tree. Or treant. It made no difference in the utter lack of politeness. A sentient tree should know better actually. It should remember the Shadow Isles and should remember that it was not those of the Blessed Isles who ruined it. Thresh could hardly be called a member of the Isles when his heart already had one foot in the grave. As Yorick called upon his undead allies to help him whack bad undead people to death, he cursed Maokai out.
“It’s as if I personally colonized the Isles, isn’t it? Because you must blame me for the fact that my nature loving village which worked hard to keep local fish populations balanced are responsible for whatever the fuck was wrong with Viego! As if we didn’t lose everything.”
A wraith struck out at Yorick from behind him. He twirled around and kneed it in it’s translucent face before decapitating it with his shovel. He continued his rant, “Please! A tree loses nothing but a few flowers from being forced to live a really long time. He’s a nature spirit, he was meant to be immortal. Look at me. Old. Ugly. Can’t even get whatever unlimited youth the Ruined King had even though we were exposed to the Black Mist around the same time period.”
The wraiths eventually gave up on taking his vial away. This would only be a temporary respite, but Yorick always made good use of it. As was customary, he searched for unmarked graves. These graves were once marked with the emblem of his brotherhood in celebration of a truly glorious passing. There were never enough Mist Walkers for his cause. So he’d emptied cemetery after cemetery chasing after lost souls and bone fragments. He poured over a record book whose pages were so rotten that he didn’t dare let the Maiden handle it as her touch was too callous. He would worry about losing the last of the Isle’s good legacy. Nothing in particular caught his attention, he wasn’t sure which corpse he wanted that day. So many names listed, so many stories. All forgotten, reduced to a single grave, and a single death record. Each name is a potential new ally. Their stories did not matter much. What they were used for after death was far more important than their human dignity.
Mara Steorr
Age - 7
Cause of Death: Starvation post-treatment on Helia (Anton - The waters of life healed her broken throat, but her tongue did not grow back. The child was unable to swallow correctly and her body rejected food after the procedure according to her parents. We received this corpse after she fell violently ill and could not recover due to malnutrition. Passed away two ticks until midnight in our care. Potentially infected with cholera, grave is in Tilde Island with other infectious corpses.)
Burial Style: Closed casket (see above for reasoning) & partial mummification
Dues: 50 logs donated
Ah, yes. This was one of the few cases that Yorick remembered from when he was still young. Her embalming was one of the first official cases he got to work on. He never felt the time was quite right to disturb her peace, but he’d put it off for far too long. With a rickety old canoe hollowed out from a rotting log, he used his spade to paddle himself to Tilde Island. There were names for each of the islands and cities before. Some regions were called archipelagos by the hoity-toity types, though most normal people liked using specific names instead of grand generalities. Tilde Island did not look much different now than it did when everything was lush and vibrant in this area. The Maiden snickered from behind Yorick, which he elected to ignore. He was not in the mood for deep philosophy or moral arguments. Tilde Island had always been the black sheep tucked away by swaths of fog with barely any vegetation - just chalky earth and dark rocks. He’d hardly remembered it existed, though nobody ever wanted to remember Tilde Island. It’s where the sick dead went to rot for the safety of others. Hell, Yorick hadn’t touched anything from there for centuries. Who knows which primordial illnesses still lay waiting in those caskets?
So he continued in the ignoble deed of digging up and disturbing a grave. The Maiden let out a creaky gasp as she saw the lid, “You’re really going to do this? I can tell - “
“You can tell yourself to be silent. Don’t question the Walkers I choose. That is not your place.”
“It will not be effective. It will fall first.”
Yorick rolled his eyes as he worked at prying nails out of splintered wood, “A pawn is more useful than no pawn at all. It doesn’t matter.”
“I give voice to the shadows in your heart.”
He did not respond to the Maiden’s words. And the Maiden too fell silent as he lifted the lid open. Pearly white bones so small and soft that they looked like chalk marks on a brown wood background. Hollow as they were with the marrow long gone, leaked out and vanished, the curve of these rib bones reminded him of the moon. A thin strip of wire was looped to form a T-shape and connected to a walnut. It lay next to the crescent of Mara’s tiny ribs. The only tissue remaining from the original embalming was one stubbed muscle, shriveled and withered, too small to be a tongue but too large to be an eye. Yorick could see where the rest of the child’s tongue would have extended had she been born with a proper one. It would make the Mist Walker that she formed hungrier and desperate to stand against the Fallen. He could make use of her shortcomings in death.
“Ah, it is sweet that this child was never lost,” claimed the Maiden as if she actually cared about the wellbeing of others, “It would be a shame if you communed with it. Truly.”
Yorick tried to remember what about this child made her worthy of eternal rest more than the countless other corpses he’d uninterred. There were dozens of other innocents. Of course he remembered how Anton’s face turned pale and his beard quivered as a distraught mother carried in a little girl’s broken body that’d begun folding in on itself. Strength had all but left Mara’s body, save for from her hand, which clutched furiously to a homemade doll with a skirt of corn husk. Anton gestured for Yorick to help him and he grabbed the girl from her mother’s weary arms then laid her down on the treatment bed. Anton stayed up three nights without sleeping, Yorick remembered. He slaved with countless salves and tiny droplets of the Water of Life in a frenzied vigil that ended with a little girl’s corpse. Then it was Yorick’s job to do what his mentor could not bear (or probably just did not want) to do. Even in death the girl refused to drop the doll, so he buried her with it.
Then came her spirit. It didn’t realize who she was at first, just that she was dead, and the little girl’s now blurry face was lined with shock. She cried as soon as she saw Yorick. There was little he could do to comfort her. Still, he spoke, “Little Mara, it is time to go now. You have already said goodbye, haven’t you?”
She shook her head, “I don’t want to go.”
“Why?”
“My mother! My father! My friends! The big restaurant on the border of Helia that my aunt promised she’d take me to when I got better.”
“It will only take a blink for your loved ones to return to you. And your ancestors are surely there waiting for you. How sad they are to see their future dead so soon, yet how glad they will be to see you by their side in the stars.” The girl blanched at Yorick’s statement. She looked behind her to see if any ghost was lurking in the distance, eagerly awaiting her acceptance of death. There was nothing there. His words had been figurative.
She wailed. She screamed and blamed Yorick for his coldness. But no matter where she ran to, which of her dearest relatives she spoke to, none heard her voice. She came back to her freshly dug grave where a far younger Yorick was sweeping leaves off the marble path. Her face was lined with grief as she spoke, “I don’t want to go. I am hungry, so hungry. I’m lisping, that’s how hungry I am! I want to eat. They are having fried fish at my funeral feast. I want to eat fried fish and I want to taste the thick berry sauce. I want to try the muskmelon pudding. I am so hungry that it hurts.”
Yorick paused. “You aren’t hungry anymore. Don’t you feel it? All the pain is gone, all the weight. You don’t have a lisp anymore. Everything has been fixed,” his voice was quiet. He wasn’t sure if she would believe him even though it was true.
“Nothing has been fixed,” she cried, “I can’t eat! My tongue is still broken and so is my throat. I feel where it was slit still. It’s like I have an unending pit in my stomach. I am so, so, so hungry.”
Yorick set his broom aside then. It was annoying being one of the newer monks since he was always tasked with mundane work then. Ironic that he’d been forced to do similar work now that all the other monks were dead. There was no student or newbie for him to bully into cleaning and cooking these days. Just countless fallen souls and endless seas of wraiths. He was very awkward with calming spirits back in the day, “The moon will give you fish and the sun will feed you cake. How happy you will be!”
“I am not happy now! I want to play with dolls and visit the village chief’s daughter so we can admire porcelain dolls. I want to splash water on my friend Kier’s face and then run away before I can get in trouble. I want to bake bread with my mother while feeling the fire’s warmth and feast on our efforts for dinner.”
“Your grandmother will bake with you in a furnace made of starlight while you watch over your friends. You can splash water on Kier’s face and he’ll never know! How fun that will be.” The girl’s face contorted in an unnatural fit of rage.
“Stop telling me how good things will be! I am sad. I am hungry. I am lonely with nobody to talk to but a stinky boy!” She cried again but nothing came out of her eyes. It seemed that she’d already dried out her tear ducts.
“You don’t feel hungry any more. Your body doesn’t need it. All you need is patience and everyone will meet you in the future. Why are you sad?.” asked Yorick, quite insensitively.
“I’m sad for all the dinners I could’ve had, for all the meals I would’ve wanted! I’m lonely because I will never have a wedding with a man who loves me with a banquet that the whole village looks forward to. I’ll never have children that I can teach our family’s embroidering patterns to. I’m sad because I’ll never have a reason to feel happy anymore. I hunger for a me that can feel all these things!”
“You’re feeling them now, aren’t you? Your life has been a nightmare building up to the beautiful dreams you’ll have in death, Little Mara. It’s okay to be scared.”
The spirit did not respond then. She stayed there for a very long time, and then vanished. It was a different passing than several of the other ghosts he’d dealt with. It was understandable since her life ended before she got to experience anything. She would get to live again now, as a force to fight against the darkness of Ruination. He coughed awkwardly as he began to commune with the Mist, “Are you still hungry, Little Mara? It has only been a blink for you I imagine.”
No response.
“Are you still scared, Little Mara? How happy you should be now that you’ve reunited with your family. Are you ready to live?”
The Mist circled around Tilde Island like a cocoon. The Maiden shrugged uneasily behind him as they waited for a response. It will come soon. Yorick could tell that she’d heard his voice in her deep slumber. “I have lived a thousand lives in death,” whispered a voice.
“And a thousand lives have been robbed from the living.”
“I don’t really care. How happy I am to be dead,” replied the voice. But this reply had slowly brought her over that invisible boundary between death and life, and her spirit rose from the earth the same way it’d entered it. As her spirit passed through her bones, her body began to warp, and Mara watched in horror as she was changed into a Mist Walker. Small, with only half a tongue, it waddled towards Yorick’s waiting hand. Her expression changed as Yorick filled her in on what had happened in the years following her death, and eventually, her spirit vanished. He did not know if it merged with the Walker or if it simply left the transfigured corpse to return to eternal slumber. It didn’t matter. The Walker obeyed him. It would fight.
Before Yorick wanted to rest, he sailed back to his current abode, and tried to fish again. For several more “hours'' nothing arrived. He sighed. He played poker with the maiden using half-faded playing cards, then rat slap, and then black jack. Some of the more benign Fallen spectated this game and accused both parties of cheating whenever they won a round. To make sure that neither could cheat, they decided to play old maid. Yorick, with his very good luck, immediately drew the ugly little joker in his hand. He tried not to smirk, he’d surely find a way to give the card away.
The Maiden had no real expression, as corpses often don’t. Her poker face was honestly amazing but Yorick’s face wasn’t too far away from death itself. It could hold a serious expression if he really wanted to. The Maiden drew first but grabbed his ace of spades. “Damn it,” swore Yorick.
The Maiden only shrugged as she waited for Yorick to choose, “Lucky me. Unfortunate for you.” She then discarded a pair of aces - the ace of diamonds and the card she drew. Yorick hovered over the cards in her deck, trying to see if he got any nervous energy from her when he hovered over particular cards. No reaction. The Maiden laughed, “You can’t use those tricks on me. Just accept this defeat that I’ve gifted you.”
Yorick picked a random card. Nine miniature shovels with faded paint stared back up at him. He checked his deck for other nines, but saw nothing to match the nine of spades. The Maiden went next, taking his seven of diamonds. She didn’t discard any pairs so he assumed that the other sevens were still in the “extra cards” deck. Lucky! He drew the five of clubs and discarded it alongside the five of hearts. This continued on for some time. The Maiden took the seven of hearts, eight of clubs, jack of diamonds, and finally the joker. By this time Yorick managed to get rid of all his cards, leaving the Maiden with the poor little clown. He smiled benevolently at his old companion, who was probably just a little bit displeased, though her face did not show it.
“So it appears that you didn’t give me a defeat,” he exclaimed. They got to sorting and stacking the cards as some of the Fallen drifted away.
The Maiden huffed, “What a beatific smile on such a cold face. It’s as if the sun shone on our dear Isles. All you did was win a game.”
“I see that you’re a sore loser.”
“Victory comes in the long run. I’ve no doubt that I’ll outlive you and your rotten heart.”
Yorick closed the card case and carefully closed the record book. He looked back at the Maiden floating in midair with a cape of tattered black mist swirling around her. In that moment he felt the thousands of hearts within her beat, as if they’d connected somehow. As if they were friends. But that doesn’t matter much.
The Maiden tilted her head curiously, “What will we do now? You’re just standing there. Can we go kill some more wraiths?” At this he looked outside the window into the streets of Helia where countless ghosts and depraved spirits wandered around in a constant trance. Then he looked at this old base filled with simple things and trinkets, all artifacts of a time long past that a certain blonde explorer would kill to “rescue and preserve.” He looked back at the Maiden with a certain kind of expression.
“Not today” My friend.
Then his aching old body grew sleepy and he tucked himself into a rotten straw mattress covered by moth-eaten wool blankets. His Maiden and Walkers took their post by the door staring out at nothing. He did not know if he spent a week’s worth of Runeterra time doing this. For all he knew he spent three days playing old maid with a supernatural entity. It didn’t matter. In the Shadow Isles, this was his “day.”