Chapter 13

When Thresh led her down the corridors, Akali felt a sense of foreboding within her heart. Her heart beat wildly in her chest in jackrabbit leaps, and she could sense some tension from Thresh as well. He seemed a ittle on edge, as though one of the Summoners could appear at any moment.

“Thresh…have you been lying to me this entire time?” Akali said in a murmur.

“The truth will be revealed if you open this door,” Thresh said while gesturing to the key in her hand. “Everything that you worked hard for…it would be a waste to throw away your hard work because you didn’t trust me.”

Akali still remained slightly skeptical. “I mean, I don’t completely trust you, but I went along with this because my curiosity was even greater. Just what am I going to see beyond this door, Thresh?”

“I don’t know,” Thresh said honestly. “But I can tell you—it’s not going to be pretty.”

“We’ve come this far,” Akali murmured, before she slipped the key into the hidden vault. The two sturdy doors swung open. Upon first glance, there was nothing suspicious in the room. Akali’s heart sank. Did they do all this hard work for nothing? However, Akali didn’t want to stop there. She would not be defeated here. She wandered throughout the room, before she paused before a door. Her heart leapt again. Could it be?

When Akali opened the door, her breath caught in her throat. Her first instinct was a scream, though she quickly suppressed it and swallowed it down. Inside that door was a laboratory that had various rejuvenation tanks that held the sleeping froms of clones. Akali saw herself reflected back to ehr in one of the rejuvenation tanks, and then quickly turned away. IT was so surreal seeing another her.

Thresh wandered further into the laboratory, which opened up into yet another room.

“AKali, I think you better come look,” Thresh said.

Akali hurried over to Thresh, and what she saw made her want to vomit. A morgue room with dozens of piled dead bodies lying underneath white sheets stood before her. Akali was brave enough to lift one sheet to uncover the face of Varus, who had ‘died’ on the Rift in the previous match. There were tones of other bodies like these, upon further investigation, of various different champions in different arrangements of death. Some were burned, some were muled; it made the knees week and the spine shiver.

“This is fucked up,” Akali said bluntly. She then thought about Shen’s words, and wondered if this was what he was talking about when he said that she sought dangerous knowledge. What was she going to do with it now?” “we have to tell the others.”

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“The Summoners will do something about it before we can do anything, I assume,” Thresh said. “We need to think of an exit plan.”

“Obviously,” Akali said, suddenly feeling a well of anger spring within her. “But how could the Summoners do this to us? What does this all mean? What kind of fucked up sick, twisted, notion did these Summoners have? Do they seriously see us as nothing more than…play things?”

Thresh remained silent for a moment ,before he pointed a single gauntleted finger towards a back room. “Let’s investigate all that we can. We may not get this rare opportunity once again.”

“Or it may cost us our lives,” Akali whispered, before a new determination steeled her over. “We’ve got to warn someone. Anyone.”

“We have to get out of here, first,” Thresh said, before he frowned a little, as though in deep thought.

Akali wondered what the skeletal being was thinking.

“Thresh? I’m getting the shivers just standing in the morgue. Looking at all these dead bodies is just disturbing. I mean, I’m not one to coil at a dead body, but…this is beyond strange and the Summoners are crazy.”

Thresh paused in his thinking, before saying carefully, “The Summoners could find us. It’s best that we leave immediately.”

Akali wondered if Thresh was also afraid but he didn’t care to admit it. Even though he was the embodiment of death itself, it seemed that even the Reaper of Death had fears too. Though Akali also knew that there were some things that were worse than death, and she was facing all the truths and lies that she had to confront about the League and everything it stood for. So it seemed that they died after all…but somehow their conscoiusness was transferred to another body, in one of the clones, before their memories of their death were wiped clean from their state of shock. That’s what Akali guessed. Thresh was smart enough to figure it out as well.

But what was mots important was that they needed to move. They had to get out of here, lest the Summoners spot them and then do unspeakable things to them that went far beyond torture or death. They knew what the Summoners were capable of.

Akali dashed down the hallways, though she could hear the sound of voices down the corridors. No alarms have been tripped yet, but she thought she heard the voice of Kai somewhere in the distance.

“The Champions mustn’t know about this room,” an Elder Summoner said to the young Kai. “We’ve been working so long and hard on this project for it to be disrupted by a few rebellious champions that may defy their fate.”

“It seems kind of cruel though, doesn’t it?” Kai said, swallowing in unease. “I feel bad for them.”

“Oh, Kai, they’re a mere hollow of their former selves,” the Summoner said. “They’re merely tools for the entertainment of the privilidged. We perfrorm grand spectacles as entertainment, of course, but there is a deeper reason behind all this. The tournaments and fights are merely a cover up for things much deeper going on. It is all according to Master Thanatos’s plan.

Akali and Thresh stood at the edge of the corridor with bated breath, listening. Waiting. Frozen.

“Master Thanatos wanted me to check something real quick,” Kai said, before he snuck off towards the very place that Thresh and Akali were hiding.

“You two!” Kai said, before looking around frantically. “You shouldn’t be here.”