Inspired Inventor 4: The Chalicar

2004, April 1: Phoenix, AZ, USA

A lot had happened since I got myself a new assistant. Crowning the Simurgh had some unintended side effects, usually good. I knew from Aurelion Sol's continued rebellion that The Crown would not crush her personality, though the Simurgh didn't quite have "willpower" in the traditional sense. It was why the first thing I did after leaving Shanghai was to get out a long list of commands I'd made to bind her.

It proved wholly unnecessary.

She accepted The Crown willingly, seeking a new directive. Her Prime Directive, the closest thing to a lifelong goal that a creature like her could have, did not change: It was, as always, to solve universal entropy. She however accepted The Crown, calculating that I represented the best chance at it. Therefore, her new directives amounted to: help me, don't start a cult, and don't blow up cities.

A lot more nuanced than that, but that was the gist.

One of the side effects I'd noticed was the connection between us. The Crown linked us as master and slave, a chain she could never remove. Aurelion was able to whittle away at it, but he was a cosmically powerful space dragon who was around since the dawn of existence, breathed galaxies, tangoed with eldritch horrors, and likely witnessed more wondrous works of celestial magic than I'd ever know.

As mighty as the Simurgh was, she was no Aurelion. I'd found that I could widen the connection, revealing myself to her and allowing her to "see" me again. I could also close it, removing me from her sight.

Normally, I deigned to leave the connection open, wide enough that she could see the things I'd soon make. And as expected of a precog-yes, she was the best assistant I could ever ask for. She handed me tools as I needed them and even made many of the mundane pieces with the same inhuman precision I wielded, leaving me to do the bulk of the enchanting.

In the past two years, my workshop was greatly expanded… kind of. I'd cleaned out my lab beneath PRT HQ and instead insisted on a single tree at the front of the building. It was a peach tree, mom's favorite. It was engraved with runes and designs known only to the yordles and myself: A Bandlewood.

Yes, I built a lab inside the Low Roads itself, a place where the laws of time and space tended to be more like suggestions. It took me nearly a full year, but it was worth it. Infinite space and privacy were mine; it wasn't as though Tristana and the others traveled to this side of the multiverse after all.

I didn't need the Bandletree to enter my own lab, I had the Book of Thresholds, but my friends did. The runes engraved on it were abnormal, allowing those whose souls it recognized to pass through a portal I could open and close at will. It also kept the tree from being harmed in any way, not that anyone was brave enough to try. With the Simurgh playing guard dog, the singular gate to my inner sanctum was about as safe as could be.

X

I felt the Bandletree's magic stir, telling me that I had a visitor. Raquel was back from a patrol. She'd grown into a real Latina beauty, figuratively speaking. She was still short and sported a lithe gymnast's build. I'd outgrown her a few months ago, a point of great teasing between us. Still, she was cute, incredibly athletic, and knew perfectly how to best leverage her appearance to score some charisma points. Those PR lessons Ms. Youngston drove into her head were put to good use.

At seventeen years old, Masked Bandit was the undisputed leader of the Phoenix Wards. There were one or two others who were a few months older, but she was also the only one permitted into my lab and apparently that counted for something. If the others had a problem with it, watching the Simurgh drop off her lunchbox quieted any protests.

She'd also managed to convince Ms. Youngston and the PR department that she could graduate from her adorable raccoon onesie. The change in costume had been the impetus I needed to design a new outfit for her. Her new costume was far more intimidating, though it still kept the raccoon theme in the form of a black visor over her eyes, metallic "ears" over her head, and a striped "tail." Most of the material was a gray metal that I'd bribed some other tinker in Cincinnati for. It was bulletproof, breathable, and stupidly expensive to manufacture according to him.

Considering money wasn't really an issue for me anymore, he'd been willing to manufacture a suit for me in exchange for several potions I hadn't released into the open market.

The visor fed her a great deal of information, enhancing her range of perception to cover a few city blocks in all directions. It also acted as a HUD which helped her coordinate the two grapple hooks at her hips. I'd shamelessly copied the design favored by Camille, the Steel Shadow.

With her boost in mobility, expanded range, and second trigger, the Masked Bandit had graduated from being the darling of the fire brigade to one of the scariest capes in the country.

The tail? It looked stupid and I thought it was funny. Not everything needed to be some fancy tinkertech.

"Yo, how's the public life going for ya?" Raquel asked as she marched in without so much as a "by your leave."

"Not too bad, though I had to build myself a Wrenchbot just to sort my mail."

And that was another big change. The Simurgh was not inconspicuous. It wasn't long before my identity got out. I'd asked her about any ways to suppress the information, but such paths involved either murdering too many people, moving to a different Earth, or limiting my activities and hiding her away as a resource.

I could do it. With Contessa and Simmie working together, it wouldn't even require too much input on my part.

Still, the future of Earth-Bet improved if the faceless masses could put a face to the name of Rubedo. It helped if I could be more than just a mask as it gave the illusion that I could be controlled. The same reason I still remained in Phoenix as a Ward, really.

In just two years, mom's and my life had changed a great deal. Funnily enough, our previous landlord begged us on hands and knees to leave, saying he couldn't house such "distinguished tenants." It might have had something to do with making Simmie knock on his door with rent money.

Heart attacks for everyone!

Regardless of how it happened, we had a cozy house to ourselves that acted as our physical address, not that we really slept in it much. Mom got her own Bandletree apartment and lived the life of the idle rich, occasionally visiting me and making me awesome Korean food. When she wasn't doing that, she volunteered at a local youth center, teaching music classes to anyone who cared to attend. It made me proud; I felt like a real hyoja.

"You're zoning out again," Raquel interrupted my musings with a poke on the cheek. "How many 'love confessions' did you receive last week?"

"Don't know. Don't care. I'm twelve. I ignore everything that isn't from a tinker asking to cooperate. Those, I go over… when I feel like it… or give to Simmie…"

"God, becoming the world's biggest celebrity somehow made you more of a shut-in."

"And what about you, miss 'I flew to the Ivory Coast for a day to rip the Ash Beast's heart out of his chest.' You're not exactly a nobody anymore either."

"It was a mercy kill," she said defensively.

"I'm not saying it wasn't; that wasn't an accusation. I'm just saying, you've got your share of admirers. How many guys asked you to prom over PHO again?"

"Not as many as you. You know PHO's shipping us?"

I made a disgusted face, mirrored by Raquel. "Yeah… Pretty sure Simmie's the one fanning the flames there."

"God, I can't believe the last endbringer is such a troll."

"At least she's not trying to set me up with a harem anymore."

"Oh yeah," she chortled. "What was her justification for that?"

"Officially? 'Great men have demonstrated their greatness throughout history by having many wives. Master is the greatest. Therefore, Master too should have many wives and spread his genes throughout the world,'" I recited, dry as the Sahara. "Unofficially? She likes to fuck with me."

"You're twelve…"

"The Simurgh likes to prepare for the future. Shocker."

"Can't you just… order her to stop?"

"I could, but I'm not that cruel. The thing you need to understand about Simmie is that she's effectively a child. She was a dutiful daughter given a mission from her mother, a mission that placed the weight of the universe on her shoulders. Now, she's done. She's free. She can finally develop an identity of her own and… I guess I'm not so heartless as to take that from her."

"The Simurgh… a dutiful daughter?" She thought about it and grew horrified at the implications. "Andy… Who is her mother?"

"Don't worry, she's dead now," I waved her off. "Seriously, trust me that it's dealt with."

"… fine… I trust you." She danced around my workshop, looking at every creation of mine. Each was placed like a museum exhibit with a small plaque describing its function. Finally, her eyes alighted on the cross sitting at the center of the workshop.

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

The bladed cross seemed to be made of a lustrous gold, with four turquoise gems at the base of each radial point. It looked elegant and deadly in equal measure, an art piece that could be the center of any exhibit. Another masterwork in progress. It was almost finished.

"Don't you have enough weapons?" she asked. "And this looks super impractical. How much does this thing weigh?"

"Forty-eight pounds," I responded. "And yes, I have plenty of weapons. That one's special though. It's called the Chalicar and it's meant to be thrown like a boomerang."

She pointed to a handgun hanging from a wall. It sat next to some kind of portable contraption that folded out into three cylinders. "You made that thing a week ago and told me it's a mass driver, a portable coilgun. Why would you ever want a boomerang?"

I shrugged. "One of the strongest weapons I've ever made is kitchen cutlery. I think we can agree that appearances can very much be deceiving when it comes to my creations."

"Okay, fine, so what does this thing do?"

"Secret."

"You're impossible," she pouted.

"You know that puppy-eyes look doesn't work with me."

"Ugh, you suck."

We bantered back and forth and shot the breeze for a few minutes longer until she had to go off to handle Wards Leader duties. It was no secret that she was being groomed for a leadership role in the Protectorate, as were all the original members of Wards Team One. Which, in this case, meant assigning further patrol schedules and public appearances.

The city was largely peaceful; I'd yet to send Simmie as backup but no one was dumb enough to test the possibility. Still, even in a peaceful city, there was plenty to do and the job of a Wards Leader was never truly over.

X

2004, April 8: Boston, MA, USA

Truth be told, even I didn't expect to need the Chalicar. Then again, I wasn't fool enough to ignore the greatest precog in the world when she said it'd come in handy.

It was very much unlike any other weapon in my conventional arsenal. Sivir used it like a boomerang, but it was so, so much more than that. It was the closest thing Runeterra had to an Excalibur, a truly divine blade made not by human hands, but originating from the celestials high above Targon.

Bringing it to a street fight was like bringing a nuke to… well, a street fight.

And yet, bring it I did.

It was nighttime when I appeared at the main quad of Harvard University, stepping through the portal with Simmie at my side. The moon shone bright above me. There were still some people wandering about, heading to night classes, the library, or whatever else rich, posh bookworms did.

As was custom by now, all conversation ceased. People talked about the "university bubble," but none were so isolated that I wasn't recognizable on sight. I didn't bother with a mask, hadn't since I went public. The unmasked cape with an endbringer dressed in traditional Korean garb was a very recognizable image.

"Don't mind me, just going to go murder the Butcher," I told one professor as I passed him by.

I saw Simmie wink, making him drop his coffee on his impressively polished loafers.

It took several seconds until reality caught up with them and my words fully processed in their minds. The courtyard descended into terrified anarchy as Simmie carried me away in a bubble of her telekinesis. We giggled at the chaos wrought by our hands, master and slave of like mind.

"Am I a bad influence on you, Simmie?"

"Of course not, Master."

"Yeah, you're probably right."

Soon enough, we left Cambridge and entered Boston proper, only to be accosted by a Case-53 cape with dragonfly wings. He had bulbous, compound eyes and chitinous "armor" over much of his body. It made him look like some sort of "insect knight" out of a fantasy.

"Ho," he greeted. Simmie responded in kind at the same time.

I didn't know a dragonfly could be so expressive, but the confusion on his face was hilarious.

He tried again, only to be echoed word for word by Simmie. "Hello there, Rube-"

No, hearing it again, Simmie was just a bit faster.

"I wanted to sa-"

"Can you sto-"

Finally, the poor man quieted down and glared mulishly at my smug assistant.

"Simmie, stop being a troll and let the poor man speak."

"But he's so predictable," she gave me an exaggerated pout. Murder-pigeons shouldn't look that adorable. "I could just tell you what he wants. Or better yet, I could tell him that there's a letter inside his boss' sandwich in the third floor fridge of the Boston PRT HQ written in glue and cayenne pepper that says exactly what you'd tell him if he told you what he wanted to say."

"Everyone's predictable. Let him speak anyway… And please don't tell me Director Armstrong took a bite of that."

"Okay, I won't tell you. I'll just tell you he may or may not be looking for a lot of water right now."

I sighed and gave the messenger an exasperated look. "See what I have to put up with?"

We stared at each other as he tried to figure out a way to proceed. Eventually, he decided to just be blunt. "Umm… Please don't kill the Butcher?"

"Why? She's currently Hotflash, a former member of the Phoenix Protectorate. Now that it's come to this, I consider it my job to end this."

"You of all people cannot become the Butcher," he tried. "Think about what kind of damage you could cause."

"The end of the multiverse as you know it," I said simply. "Or really, just this dimensional cluster, but same difference to you seeing how you'd be dead."

"I… What?"

"You asked me to think about the damage I could cause if I went insane. There you go."

"And you still want to avenge Hotflash?"

I thought about the Boston Games in three years. There was no guarantee it'd happen of course, but… "Not really. I've said maybe two sentences to her… if that. This is more about duty and making sure the Butcher doesn't become a giant pain later on. Well anyway, thanks, but no thanks. See ya."

We flew off, far faster than he could catch up.

With Simmie's help, it didn't take long to corner the Butcher. She took out a Petricite collar and chucked it in a random direction. A few seconds later, the Butcher was hauled from her hideout by the throat, Hotflash's blazing teleportation completely negated by the collar she hung from.

We then landed in front of the Boston PRT headquarters. Simmie formed a giant barrier, preventing all interference.

"Rubedo, you can't kill her," Director Armstrong cried. He'd rushed out to try and talk some sense into me as soon as he heard I'd arrived.

All around, I could see people look dismayed at the thought of someone like me becoming Butcher VII. The area had been overrun with news crews and idiotic spectators too stupid to know when to run.

I loomed over the woman who had been Hotflash. "This is the end. Any last words?"

"You'll make a wonderful host," she said with a deranged grin.

I smiled, waved for the cameras, and plunged the Chalicar into her chest. "Sorry, that's not happening. The moon is the light in the darkness. It is truth among falsehoods. Its gleam reveals the essence of all, uncovering every secret and unmaking every lie. The Butcher dies tonight. Moonfall!"

Silver light answered, descending in a pillar that struck the Chalicar. Its rays burned everything around me, scorching a giant crater contained only by the full might of an endbringer. The protections intricately woven into my costume and engraved onto the blades of the Chalicar did their job, safeguarding me from the cleansing light.

And that was what struck me about the moment.

Despite the elaborate light show, there was not a single sound to be heard. The moon was silent after all.

When the light faded, it was to reveal a nude woman covered in the Simurgh's hanbok. I threw a sack over her head, just to be safe.

"What?" she said.

"I said 'The Butcher dies tonight.' You're not the Butcher, Hotflash. You're just the idiot who thought killing the Butcher and teleporting really far away would keep you from inheriting."

"How? I was…"

"You were. You're not. Don't question it."

"But you'll-"

"No," I cut her off. Then I raised my voice for the cameras. "I have the strongest precog in the world as my slave. Do you really think I'd let myself inherit? Hotflash is a member of the Phoenix Protectorate. I saw what she would become and decided I should end the Butcher once and for all. So, the Butcher died. Don't ever call me a liar."

With that, I opened a portal and vanished, the newly sane heroine slung over Simmie's shoulder like a sack of potatoes.

If this bit of PR gave the PRT a collective migraine, well, that'd be a happy coincidence.

X

2004, April 9: Boston, MA, USA

I was lying in bed when a door opened into my room, the lady of hats herself stepping through.

"You know, normal middle-aged women find a hooker," I said dryly.

She ignored my snark with the ease of longsuffering practice. "You didn't kill the Butcher."

That Simmie hadn't twisted her head off meant she wasn't here to do something stupid, not that I didn't have any backup plans of my own. Fortuna and I had long since come to an understanding: She doesn't fuck with my plans and I help kill Scion. It's been years since I and my creations became a blindspot and I'd gifted Doormaker and Clairvoyant a set of tattoos that allowed them to peer into select sections of my sanctuary as a sign of trust.

Trust was also why Alexandria kept my two masterworks. After all, I had to buy Contessa's neutrality somehow.

I realized I was caught up in my own thoughts, a bad habit of mine I just couldn't shake. "No, no I didn't."

"Why? How?"

"How'd you find out?"

"The Butcher still appears on the Path, but as different people, some sane and some not. I don't know how it was done."

"Huh, so it's still connected to the Shard network," I mused. "The Chalicar is a damn-powerful weapon, maybe the greatest I've ever made. And no, you can't have it. It has the power to seal away gods; a misbehaving Shard isn't worth mentioning."

"Can it-"

"Maybe? It's an option for sure. It can definitely seal away a cluster. Scion himself? Maybe. If I had to guess, I'd say it's safely able to seal away a large chunk of Scion's power, but I'm not confident enough to say it can seal him altogether. The problem isn't the Chalicar; the problem is that Scion is a gestalt entity made up of trillions of Shards. Even if most of them are minor, it'd be like trying to perform an autopsy on a human body one cell at a time."

"But if you could get at the 'brain' of the whole network?' she tried. I noticed she casually dismissed the mention of gods. She was used to my turns of phrase and Fortuna, before she became Contessa, had her own beliefs.

"Possible. I'd need a vessel to seal him in that isn't a plastic butcher knife."

"Is that where you sealed the Butcher?" Her lips quirked upwards.

"Yup. Stole one from some toy kitchen set."

"But the Butcher can escape."

"Only if someone takes the knife and tries to use it repeatedly. It's theoretically possible for the Butcher to possess them, just like the Darkin could. It'd be a slow process though."

"I see. I want it."

"No."

"Why?"

"I want to study a gestalt Shard network for a while longer."

"After?"

"Sure. But you're not getting my Chalicar. It's not like The Fork."

"It can't be used by anyone else."

"Correct."

"Greedy."

"Damn straight."

"Fine."

"Path to keeping the briefings tomorrow from wasting my time?"

"No."

"Come on," I whined.

She chuckled and made way to the Door. "No. Your misery nourishes my soul."

"Bitch."

"Good night, Andy."

"Good night, Fortuna."

Author's Note

The Chalicar is basically Runeterra's Excalibur. It's one of if not the most powerful weapons in the setting, with the only potential exceptions being Ornn's Hammer, Pantheon's spear, Kindred's bow, etc. You know a weapon's bullshit when the only peers you can think of come from gods and Death Incarnate.

Long story short, the Chalicar is what ended the Ascended Host. It can, for lack of a better word, absorb the DNA of a god and was what killed six Ascended in one attack (would have been nine but three escaped). After the events of Twilight of the Gods, it was taken by Ta'Anari's former queens to forge weapons that could seal away the rest of the corrupted Ascended, who would come to be called the Darkin.

Nasus also prophesized that the Sivunas Alahair, "Bringer of the Rains," would either unite or destroy all of Shurima again and that she would wield the Chalicar. This is almost certainly Sivir. So yeah, "Whomsoever draws this blade shall be the rightful king of England (Shurima)."

Contessa's a lot more fun to write when she's forced to be Fortuna again.

Thank you for reading. To reach a wider audience, and because I enjoy a more forum-like setup to facilitate discussion, I like to crosspost to a wide variety of websites. You can find me on FFnet, Royal Road, Space Battles, Sufficient Velocity, and Questionable Questing.