Nathan expected stepping into Bilgewater to feel natural, to finally arrive in the virtual home he had been searching for since he first installed League of Legends.

But it wasn’t. It didn’t.

As the convention centre dissipated from his eyes and he and ninety-nine others settled into their VR pods, Nathan lunged forward, expecting immediate battle. Hoping to capture the best broadcast of the event and make a name for himself. Instead, he tilted out of a bench.

“Woah, there,” said a man to right, holding Nathan chest to keep him off the ground, “Anchor yourself a while longer, lad. This won’t take long, will it, cap’n?”

Pushing himself back onto the bench, Nathan muttered thanks and looked around in the dusty light. A long empty corridor ending in a round, shuttered window.

A hard, powdered laugh came from the other side of the bench. Nathan turned and instantly regretted it as the stench of sea-worn cloth and fish bits sailed towards his nose. As he covered it, this ‘cap’n’ wagged a green bottle and let loose a smile of barnacled molars -and little else.

“Not to worry, lad. Here, take it,” he said, handing over the bottle, “This is just a routine scrubdown for those new to port.”

The captain’s voice was smooth, and lacked the first sailor’s grit. It caught Nathan off-guard, causing him to doubt which of them, on either side, he could trust. But the ‘captain’s well-spokenness, as well as his genuine offer of water made him reconsider. These aren’t role-players, right? Gotta be NPCs.

“Nephew,” said the captain as Nathan accepted the water, “I know this journey has been long. But we are one skirmish short of victory!” The captain paused as he noticed Nathan had not drunk anything, even in the humidity.

Nephew? Where the hell did they spawn me? Nathan quickly forced down a gulp of the possibly potable, room temperature water and looked away to distract himself from the gaze of his ‘uncle’. They sat at the end of the talc white corridor, separated by doors made of jungle wood. The door next to them was made of uneven boards, reaching a few feet higher than Nathan was used to, its corners topped by busts of snakeheads. Their beady, golden eyes refracted the dim light to show the inscription;

Customs.

Office of Sarpa Anda

“This doesn’t seem very…Bilgewater-y,” Nathan wondered aloud, “It’s too dry. Too clean.”

“Aye,” agreed the sailor sitting by his right, clasping his hands in prayer. “The cult of the Bearded Lady soogeed the port all too well.” He made to rise from the bench, slowly deferring to his captain. “I say we cut and run to another of the islands, square away with a gang on a nice shady cove.”

The sailor gave the door a sidelong gaze. “Pirates, we know how to deal with; gold. But who knows what the cult will make of us outsiders?”

The captain silenced the sailor with a laugh. “Bearded Lady; Pirate kings; Demacian nobles; it’s all the same,” he said, “Power begets authority begets wealth.” He turned to the customs office with scorn, and in this moment of captured silence heard a spat – an argument between a man and a woman- emanating from inside.

“Hear that?” The captain spread his grin again, showing greying gums like banks of silt. “The same power, with all the trappings of it.” He waved out a peculiar fruit from seemingly nowhere, taking a sniff. “And I know how to make our islander friends fall right into them. So sit!”

The sailor flicked his eyes, hunched over, bound to the seat only by the tip of his fingers. Nathan caught his gaze. Well, there’s no good footage here except for a dusty corridor. Can’t believe this, but I’m going with the sweaty guy, maybe have some actual fun. Keeling forward, he began to rise defiantly with the sailor when the captain swiped back the bottle he had given Nathan and held them both down with a glare.

“You want to go? Go.” He directed it at the sailor, but Nathan swallowed. Any pity his familial connection afforded him was gone.

The sailor stepped away.

“But who’ll have you?” asked the captain.

The sailor stood transfixed on the red planks. Even in the dim light, he burned with sweat.

“Once word slips about what we did, who’ll be the likely suspect?” the captain asked.

The captain laughed again, shoving Nathan until he chuckled alongside him. Am I in a Battle Royale, or some masochistic visual novel? I’d love some HUD elements before I go insane.

“And,” continued the captain, his sailor still trapped by both shock and indecision, “If you rat it won’t just be Demacia, or the countless hunters out for a quick kraken looking for you, it’ll be me, too.”

Shrinking in his seat, Nathan was joined then by the sailor, in the same position. This is a game. A game, he kept telling himself, there’s got to be a play. He glanced around again, being drawn to the window shuttered with a coiled rope -much like a snake- glowing golden from the light it could not keep out. It sang for him to rip it open and find the experience he had come here for. Nathan’s head flooded with all the things he was missing out on filming by staying with this awkward group. But his uncle kept eyeing him, with more suspicion each time, and Nathan had no idea what would happen if the captain figured out that his nephew was not here. That he, and all of his world didn’t exist outside the digital framework of the Bilgewater Battle Royale.

“You, boy!” the captain began, fumbling beneath the folds of his cloak, “I need you to hold on to something.” The tattered, oil-black garment waved in response to the captain’s movements as if it concealed nothing.

This is it! A sword -dagger -a knife! Whatever, let’s go!

Wordlessly, the captain placed a small grey plate on the bench and slid it towards Nathan. Noticing the weird curvature and the strap on the underside, Nathan whispered, “It’s a shield.” A tiny fucking buckler! Is this game serious?

“Hide it well,” his uncle told him, pointing, “Pretend to be a hunchback, the shape is less notable that way, and it’ll give you reason to hold it steady if need be.”

Staring at the buckler’s plain design and lack of any magical, tech, or hextech ability, Nathan’s disappointment was clearly demonstrated on his face. He was about to hand it back and leave the scene entirely when the sailor nudged him, bringing echoes of the captain’s harsh words. It was obvious the same consequence would apply to Nathan if he left.

“It’s just so…boring,” Nathan muttered. He shimmied the impractically small shield down under his shirt. I bet someone’s swinging around a wuju blade or a big-ass blunderbuss. I didn’t come here to listen to quest dialogue!

The captain reached over and seized his arm like a mast line. “It is valuable. And it won’t get us caught.” He watched as Nathan nervously placed the buckler so it jutted over the drawstrings of breeches, just as the customs door slammed open.

A bustling man emerged, pushing his sleeves further up arms thick as coconut trunks. He seemed not to notice the benched crew until the door swayed back and tapped the back of his head. Then the islander grimaced, taking hold of the thick slab of door and finally acknowledged Nathan and the others. “We’ll see you now.”

The captain and sailor stood, exchanging looks. Nathan remained seated. This customs officer was an islander for sure, but despite his brutish physique, he wore tight breeches stuffed with a brilliantly white shirt, that even had pockets. Even the way he gestured to them, hand out in a short bow, was formal. What happened to the pirate aristocracy?

“Go meekly,” ordered the captain, out of earshot, “As if we have just now been dragged out from the sea.” He made a show of helping Nathan up, making sure the officer saw. The trio limped and gasped, slapping the floor with wet and greasy feet.

The officer bowed, and his crumpled sleeves were forced down again by his immense bicep. “Sorry to keep you waiting, good sirs. Miss won’t take long. A few questions. A few questions and you can be on your way.”

Nathan brought up the rear while the other two turned into the office. As they walked past, it further accentuated their differences; The officer’s clean uniform, gleaming bronzed skin in comparison to the grimy yellows of the Demacian refugees. But as Nathan approached the office he felt drawn to that window again, annoyed that its shutters blocked his view of the larger world. And as he looked, it seemed to uncoil.

Why should I stick to these losers? He thought as he tried to stared through the glowing curtain made of rope. Suddenly, Nathan grew self-conscious, realizing the Nagakaborous officer’s had eyed him, pursing his lips in a curious pose. Nathan looked back up the corridor. Would he chase me? Would he let me go? In that case, what would happen to the others?

As soon as he wondered it, Nathan felt the buckler’s slip a little down his trousers, and suddenly felt compelled to stay, to protect his brethren.

The captain poked his head back, and hissed. “Nephew!” He stalked towards Nathan with murderous eyes, pushing him through the door. “We must not keep the lady waiting.” Then, to ensure Nathan hadn’t forgotten his role, he thrust a blow, fingernails deep in his nephew’s side making him crouch over and clutch his ‘humpback’.

By the time Nathan was able to stand and look straight, the heavy doors had been shut closed behind him and he, the captain and the sailor were face to face with a bald woman behind a desk. It must have been the one whose name was inscribed in the plaque above; Sarpa Anda. Snake Egg.

Arms crossed, leaning back in her chair, the crews’ eyes were not on her but on the item laid out on the desk before them, shifting aside inkwells and many sheafs of parchment to fit it; an elaborate spear, with the seal of the Demacian royal house emblazoned in fine gold script down the side.

The captain burst into full spiel before anyone had a chance to call upon or greet him. “Oh, mistress of the docks, please excuse us,” he said, “We little crew, a miserable salvage far from our homeland, did not seek to offend your laws. Our coming is our own fault for our shortcomings as servants against the lofty standards of the crown. But here we believe is a land of growth, of new opportunity. I beg of you this chance.” He ended with a kneeling bow, visibly craning his sight away from even glimpsing the royal spear.

“And my poor dim-witted nephew.” He gestured to Nathan. “I couldn’t have left him in their hands for fear that they would inflict upon him pain beyond any I had the burden to know.” The captain’s pleas and desperate, shaky voice might have made a great impact in another situation. If only the stolen spear were not so begging of the question, with neither Snake Egg nor the captain asking it.

And Snake Egg, for her part made a terrible performance of pretending to listen to him. While the three waited in a line in front of her, she immediately gave the desk and the evidence on it a wide berth. Instead, she focused on rubbing a shine into the central skull of a hundred-headed serpent statue, much like her own immaculate baldness. She did not turn as the captain pleaded. Her ears did not twitch at his obvious lies.

It was done for. This meeting was bait, Nathan realized, and he had just missed his last chance to get out of this situation. Unless, perhaps, he could bolt now and pry open the heavy doors before the larger officer had caught on.

But he wouldn’t. Again, his buckler slipped around the rim of his breeches. And whispered to him.

‘NO! Stay. Protect.’

What am I thinking? Hell no, I recognize that spear! I may not know much lore, but I’ve been flagpole knocked-up enough to know that’s Jarvan IV’s!

Stay. Protect!

The captain snapped. Perhaps it was Nathan’s itching incessantly under his shirt as he fought the voice in his head, or maybe his fellow sailor refusing to pipe in to add some sympathetic element to his tale. Or, more likely, the captain had had enough of being taunted by a scrawny, hairless woman.

“We didn’t have a choice, damn you! Answer me, you slimy coward—”

That got her attention. Before the captain could move an inch closer, Snake Egg’s officer was at her side. The captain backed away, like a caught street dog, and the officer sat back down in the far corner of the office.

“Relax, uncle,” Nathan, said, gently reaching out to him. If you get me booted from this game before I can capture some halfway decent clips, I swear to God I’ll find you in the full game and corpse-gank you every day for a month.

Thinking quickly, Nathan noticed something about the large Nagakaborous officer. Specifically with his ring. He kept adjusting it over his finger so that its jewel faced the captain, the sailor, then Nathan in turn. He repeated this process a number of times as the stalemate continued, yet each time the emerald landed on Nathan his expression changed. Whether that was good or bad, it was hard to tell. Still, he did it once more as Snake Egg strode back towards her desk. Again, it landed on Nathan. The officer frowned. Taking off the ring, he got up, going back to Snake Egg, at which point Nathan decided that this was definitely bad.

The trio continued to wait in silence while the officer handed over the ring to Snake Egg. “Every word is a lie, except for the fact that they were servants of Demacian nobles.”

Snake Egg snorted. “I hardly need the Eye of Nagakaborous to see that.”

“Still, there is –”

Snake egg cut him off with a blunt hand, and sat forward, elbows on the desk, so she could properly witness the captain’s reaction.

The captain wrung his arms and grit his teeth. But he was committed to his act. “Please…”

As Nathan was impressed by how easily Snake Egg held the room to her will, the shield called out to him again, luring him into placing a hand under his shirt.

Snake Egg idly rolled the spear with a finger. “Seems like you understand your position now,” she began, “Good. It just so happens I require the use of some discreet Demacian connections.”

The captain perked up. Just enough, wisely, to show he was listening, but not enough to seem aggressive. Snake Egg smiled at that.

“What do you need?” he asked her.

“I am to believe that Demacia has a magic absorbing material. Petricite, isn’t that right?” Snake Egg paused, waiting for a nod. “Do you remember the floating bodies when you came to port?”

The sailor piped up for the first time, startling Nathan out of his stupor, causing him to nearly drop the shield. “Yes! They were fresh.”

Snake Egg scanned the sailor briefly before explaining. “Something is…happening to the citizens of my city. Something I believe to be magical in nature; I need this petricite, thief. Get it for me.”

“I cannot -I will not!” interrupted the captain. “Please is there no other way? Don’t send us back to Demacia, have you any idea what they do to traitors?”

Snake Egg did not seem surprised or even angry. She simply turned to her officer, eyebrow raised, as if to imply this was exactly what she had expected. He in turn shrugged. But despite this, the shield forced Nathan to pull it out from his shirt. Protect! Without realizing why, he strapped it to his arm and dug his heels in for a leap forward.

Snake Egg plucked the emerald ring from her officer. “You’re sure you won’t reconsider?” she asked. The captain gave his reply in the form of a raised fist, at which Snake Egg thrust her ring hand forward.

“Then you’re useless to me, aren’t you?”

Ghostly tendrils of lagoon blue lashed out towards the captain. But Nathan dived, intercepting them shield first. His block was not precise, yet the shield drank up the tentacles, suddenly illuminating to marble white and setting Nathan aflame with energy. It burned in the back of his eye sockets, filled the sides of his throat and he roared, in a voice far from his own.

“I wake!”

Snake Egg stumbled back, showing emotion for the first time. Pale faced, she finally looked like her namesake. Taking advantage of the moment, Nathan lunged forward with the infused buckler and grabbed at the royal spear with free arm.

What is this feeling? He thought as he raised the spear with the intent to run Snake Egg through. But he was halted. Yet, the hulking officer struggled with only a one-handed push against Nathan’s strange new power. His arms wobbled, tendons rippling out under his skin like the fibres of a branch ready to snap.

Snake Egg had not so much as flinched. Nathan’s attack had collided, briefly, leaving her with a bloody gash on her forehead, but her face was marred more by her unrelenting grimace.

“It is back,” she uttered.

She was glaring at Nathan. Was he it? It was such a profound statement of fact, shocking Nathan enough for her officer to gain the upper hand, and enough that Nathan did not hear the sliding reach of a desk drawer, or the metallic click of a gun’s hammer.

The shield screamed in Nathan’s head, swerving his arm towards Snake Egg fired at the captain. No more goodbyes!

Nathan pushed off the desk, forced to part with the spear, and crouched in front of the sailor before Snake Egg could take another shot. “Protect,” he grunted, hearing only the shield’s voice while the sailor tore at Nathan’s shirt, pleading with him to run, to take the shield and get far away.

Snake Egg stood to the side. Swaying the gun from the captain’s corpse, she looked past Nathan to speak to the sailor. “No wonder you weren’t interested in the job. You had the petricite already.” She looked back to Nathan. “But it seems something else has been brought alongside it -at least I can discard the magic theory. What are you? Possessing my people by the hundreds?”

Well, this is weird. Brought out of the shield’s haze, Nathan thought about what this meant for other players, too. How will the characters of this game react now he’s let the imposter game slip?

BANG.

Bright lifeblood spattered Nathan’s shirt. The sailor dropped in a heap. Snake Egg had played him for the fool he was, and the shield had begun its screaming again.

No! No more goodbyes!

Nathan tensed up, ready to use the rest of this absorbed power to crack this egg open. But the shield wouldn’t let him. It tugged him back. Protect. Save yourself! And Nathan listened.

“Where’s he going? After him!” Snake Egg commanded.

Pulling from the reserve energy, Nathan bashed through the doors, but the officer was on his heels. Literally. Brought down by a tackle just inside the hall, Nathan crawled furiously towards the window. I need to see. Just one good clip. He stretched out towards the spiralled shutters. They seemed to flower open as he got close. His fingers just managed to brush the sun-warmed weaves right before the officer got a proper hold. Pulled back, face hitting the boards, Nathan heard the soft slither of a robe crossing the floor to him.

“I’ll take that,” Snake Egg said, and there was the click again. She shot through the inside of Nathan’s arm, forcibly removing his shield. Then, she hoisted him up to the windowsill, shutters falling away as she threw him headfirst out the window.

Nathan tumbled, the light, the pain and his fall all blinding him. But when he did not immediately hit the ground, he righted himself, and saw the whole of Bilgewater laid out before him as he fell. Dozens of districts piled up over each other, more uneven than a rolling tide. Thick fumes of green and purple trailing from factories; Tall structures hoisting clumps of Noxus banners; Ionians and Vastayans, sunbathing and sparring on brightly tiled roofs. Dark jungles peered in from the inland, caves and shoals tucked in lonely boats low down by the docks. And amongst it all wound miles and miles of rope bridges, keeping the archipelago connected.

Nathan got his clip. Before the end he looked back up with a smile, seeing the temple upon the highest peak of Bilgewater that he was thrown from, and he could still make out the giant kraken carved beneath the cliff face, its million-jewelled eyes shining down on him.

*

While the boy fell, Sarpa Anda, the Snake Egg, had adjusted her sari twice, double-checked the tightness on her hextech pistol’s charges and found a devotary to clean up the mess. When finally he landed, she nodded once in satisfaction, and closed the shutters.

“Do you think I shouldn’t have killed him?”

Her officer, Arjun, looked up from his sudsy brush and wiped his brow. “Absolutely. That was too far.”

She waved his concern away. Stepping over the foul-smelling sailors, Sarpa sat back behind her desk to submit the necessary paperwork. “This coming from a truth seeker who ‘does not like to judge’,” she joked, putting her things back in order. After a moment, she looked back up to see whether she succeeded in drawing a huff from Arjun, which of course she did. She stroked her smooth scalp in satisfaction.

Finished with the clean-up, Arjun bowed deeply to the devotary as they took the corpses away to be cleansed. Refocusing on the office’s shattered door, he sighed and said, “You have convinced me of one thing, however.”

“What’s that?” Sarpa asked, not pausing her quillwork for fear of it dripping.

“That the elders were wrong. This is not another Harrowing.”

Snake Egg looked up to smile, then dove back to her notes. “Of course I’m right,” she said, “But, I fear it’s something far worse.”