10 Jinx’s New Necklace of Ruin
by moissanitej@gmail.com“It’s okay, it ends soon, just look. Just find it. Stop screaming,” some rando said, like he was helping. “Jinx, please, this is hard on everyone, but we need your help,” and more stupid shit like that was said while she was screaming.
Screaming and screaming and it never made any difference. No one knew what those damn machines did! The woman wanting answers kept pleading, kept sniffling, kept saying how much she needed these stupid answers- “My name is Powder and I don’t give a fuck about your problems!” she went off on her as she ducked her head in another direction to fall, to hurt her herself on the ground, to injure herself on the outside to stop the pain on her head.
Illegal, illegal, illegal, the universe wouldn’t let people remember because they weren’t supposed to, time changed! Things changed, and that’s just the way it had been! People messed with it and changed it, and finding out about the change did nothing to change it! Yeah, some idiots would go crawling back and try to fix it, but it didn’t matter!
It didn’t change everything back, and it just caused more change. More and more change.
-What am I doing here? I need to get back home!
What was that?! Jinx knew the pain was going to linger until she found the answer no matter what, she needed to take a detour. Her senses when overwhelmed, took her closer to her home base, which was there.
And there, she saw the parallel Ekko. His same hair. His same favorite outfit in green. He wasn’t visiting as her owner, he was there as-
–AaaUaaauUggggHhh!
He was there like her. They took him?
-Let me go, I’ll do anything!-
-Just stop it! Just let me go home!-
-I have to reach Jinx!-
-Why did you do all of this to me?!-
He was here. Her singular focus on trying to find her answer. She heard them. Their whispers. Their confession.
Her new terror. They took him, and then manipulated him to forget, sending him home. Three days. They held him three days, why? She listened harder for the whispers and heard it.
The rejected gods were playing the gods.
“Look, Jinx. I got you a fruit from your Zaun area. You can have it when you finish? It could be over soon, just hang on.”
“She doesn’t care about that, stop distracting her.”
“Oh screw you, she’s a human being still.”
“You’re distracting her, she’ll get to it faster with less distraction, and less pain! What is it, your first time? Give her silence, let her scream it out, and she will give you the answer. Add the gesture of anything humane left at the end.”
“You’re so unbelievably cruel.”
“Please, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, but I need to know.”
Jinx screamed some more, they wouldn’t let her injure herself any more, she was beind held tight in chains, and with a ball gag in her mouth, still trying to find the truth.
“It’s not necessary!”
“She is piercing our skull, it’s necessary.”
“She has a right to scream!”
“Then you stand here and hear her scream! It’s her right for helping the woman!”
Shutup, just shutup! Just shutup! Just shutup! Screaming did no good, but the body did it anyway. I can’t anymore! She wanted more details. She heard the path. She knew her own future coming, but she couldn’t hold on, the pain was just too much! She had to find the answer to the woman’s family problem, she couldn’t endure much more.
She would already have days of ache and pains for spending so much on that machine she used. I can’t change anything. Concentrate, and find the bitch’s problem to end this! If only she was fully null to all magic, to every magic, and nothing affected her at all, but the magic of the wayback machines, it was parallel and cruel. Wherever they came from, they were not from there.
She woke up to severe pain and started to scream again.
“Why did you wake her back up just to scream again?”
“She can’t sleep, we need the answer, and we’ve already paid for three extra hours! She always gets the answer, why is this time so much harder?”
“Her body lost consciousness because it couldn’t stand the pain you bastard, pay the extra and let her have an hour of freedom or something!”
“Let her get through it and let it be over!”
Found it! “You were never a mother, no one ever loved your ass, you were a stupid aunt that was probably hated soooo bad your family desperately paid someone to make you forget them!”
Over.
Over.
She breathed so hard. No regrets. At least she knew.
Now the screaming outside was from the stupid client.
While she just screamed on the inside.
Meddler. It was funny how he basically employed or enslaved shape shifters to run his business. As powerful as he had been, Baccai couldn’t shapeshift. It was something only God warriors did. Either way, all of them were shitty. None of them understand Aurelion Sol, the creator of basically everything, gave them that ability to ruin them. Greatest joke ever.
The real Meddler never summoned her. This could be extremely bad, and as she listened to his command? “You want me to what?” It wasn’t a phrase Jinx was supposed to use for an order, but it seemed crazy. “You are crazy. You really do think I’m crazy, don’t you?”
“Why do you think I’m always taking you closer to Demacia conventions?” Meddler said. “Here is the rule. You have one week to find him. When you do, return and give his location. Do not get caught. He will destroy you.”
Really? Really?! “I don’t even know where to start.”
“That way.” Meddler gestured toward the right.
“And if I don’t find him?” she asked.
“He is that way,” Meddler repeated.
Oh. Great, so Meddler already knew where the guy he wanted her follow ended up, he was just making her learn the damn path. “So I don’t kill the target?”
“No, just follow him.”
“Target’s name?” Jinx asked.
“Ryze.”
Hmm. “I don’t need to ask about the blue skin.”
“Enough information.”
“More than enough. What about the other clients bloodlust while I’m gone? Or penchant for a cool friend on the shoulder? Or a funny singer? Or a pettable human? Or a human chair?” Jinx was all of it and more.
“While you are gone, you are off those duties. You will return within the week. Learn the route to where he goes. That’s an order.”
You know? At least she was getting a break in the killing process a lot of these people wanted all the time. Still, she did it once again. “Excuse me, you said what?” She had to talk back again to Meddler! “You want me to go through petricite? Petricite is a solid mass.” Petricite was a special mineral, a rock that Demacia was made out of. It suppressed magic and it was the natives of the great Rune wars who used it to build a kingdom devoid of magic, to ensure they were safe. And Meddler wanted her to walk through it.
“Petricite is normally a solid mass, but you are not a regular person, Jinx,” Meddler reminded her. “You cannot cast magic against petricite, it would do nothing. I am sure it’s an illusion of petricite. Illusion is magic. Magic doesn’t stop you. You can walk straight through it.”
“I can walk through something that looks like solid rock.” Weird.
“Yes. Explore the area and find where it opens like a curtain. Find the opening and walk through.”
Ryze’s Secret Area Near Demacia
Sometimes, duties were easy and sometimes they sucked. Jinx waited a short ways away as she saw the blue skinned man leave the area. She headed toward it.
It was covered completely in petricite and had some magic way of opening up casted on it. Which was fine for Jinx. Magic didn’t affect her. Anything magic was treated like invisibility to her body, she found that out the last time she visited.
So since those walls of petricite had some kind of opening to let Ryze through? She found it. A weakness, just an illusion of protection, and walked straight through.
Not a comfy place to live inside. No furniture and just some weird architecture to look at. Jinx went to a sculpture of petricite and looked in. “Red, yellow, green, and purple. Pretty glowey. Kind of pretty. Why do super powerful things always look so pretty?” She gave a very light chuckle.
Okay, done. She left, and with still a whole five days off! Jinx left the area, but just kind of lounged around the trees for a little while. She yawned.
She looked ahead and saw Ryze coming her way. Holy crap, it’s this guy! She was far enough away, it didn’t look suspicious. In fact he didn’t even seem to notice her. Yeah, I’m no threat. I’m less than a single threat to him. That’s the way it should be. When he did look toward her, she just smiled.
He didn’t seem suspicious of it, just noted it, and went onward.
I mean, on the one hand. Another nice one week vacation without dealing with anyone. On the other? “You want me to go in there, and shake off a little powder from each of the four colored rocks?”
“Not rock. Runes,” Meddler corrected her. “World runes. He is protecting the world runes.”
A slight cough. Maybe more than a slight cough. “You want me to shake powder. Literal dust off the world runes. The things that-that caused wars and destructions in the past?!” Damn. Not just colorful rocks. The world runes. Four of them. Four.
Four. Even one was hard to wrap the head around, but four. “The celestials used those to create Runeterra. To drain oceans. To carve canyons. To build mountains. And, I’m gathering powder from that?”
“Well. I believe it’s befitting you. You were named Powder after all. The result of blisters and bedrock?” He smiled.
Jinx just sneered. He looked into the origin of her name. What else was new? That guy literally had nothing else to do but haunt her life every second. “Yes. Funny. Sir.”
“Not much powder, we are not getting much of the rune. You are going to place the fine powder into a little drawstring bag.”
“Super sweet, ultimate power to craft mountains and drain oceans in a nifty little drawstring bag.” She took the little bag he offered. “Ultimate power powder, that’s bound to stain your bag, hope you aren’t fond of it.” He gave her more little bags. “Is it my name day or something?”
“Different colors. Different bags,” Meddler commanded. “One week.”
Inside Ryze’s Secret Area again . . .
Jinx took a tiny tool and banged it a little. “Don’t shoot lava. Don’t cause an earthquake.” She banged it again, and some find powder landed in a bag. Don’t think about what you are doing right now, just get it done.
She closed the bag, opened another and did the same thing. Only fine powder. She went to the other two pieces and did the same. Slight tappings. “Red, yellow, green, and purple.”
She performed her last instruction. Chiseled just the tiniest piece of petricite off from a little area. “There.”
She held the dust of what could cause the end of the world and some petricite, and left right before the blue-skinned man came back.
She was done.
She was not done? “You want me to what?” Jinx was really confused.
“You are going to fashion a petricite necklace, that completely shields the world rune powder, but holds it inside.”
“You know, sounds like a great necklace. A real bomb, and I know my bombs,” Jinx said. “And hey, as much as a chaos girl like me thinks having the world runes strapped on me would be super badass, the sensible side is screaming ‘What the hell?!’ so . . .” Nothing. “I don’t know how to even make necklaces.”
“You fashioned your own finger again,” he pointed her to her hand.
Jinx looked at her fashioned project finger. That excuse wouldn’t work.
“You are going to Madame Durham. She will help you make a secondary necklace, to replace the first one around your neck.”
Jinx touched her necklace. Ooh, ooh, ooh, bad feeling! “You’re replacing it?”
“Yes.”
“You are going to put a necklace of awesome catastrophe around my neck instead?” Jinx coughed. “Sorry. My brand is chaos, but this one is a little bigger than I’m used to.”
“It will go through your neck.”
Through the neck? “Why?”
“You are asking too many questions, Jinx.”
“Well, I have to, this is not light shit that you are throwing at me!” she yelled back.
“I wonder how Vi will feel all alone, on the streets, with no memories. On the shimmer-filled streets of Zaun,” he warned her. “As a sixteen year old. Maybe an eight year old?”
“Point taken.” He had no problem hurting them. He never did, and it wasn’t the first time he did.
“Besides, linking you to it will make it easier to pick you up without a cage anymore. I just have to lift the necklace, and you will come each time.”
“Oh, okay, yeah. Convenience is a great reason too.” Ugh! What are you up to, Meddler? “So why give someone who can’t use magic, uh, magic? Like magic’s cool and all, but it doesn’t affect me and I can’t use it.”
“This is a special necklace that Miss Durham will claim is one of her breeding necklaces,” Meddler stated. “She is covering up. Why do you think she would do that?”
“No idea.”
“Madame Durham works with magic, Jinx. Not romance.”
“Yep.” Making it better because humans usually didn’t procreate like rabbits with magic. Couples wanting children who had hard times, had been known to leave farther away to other places to try that sort of thing. It was more like a last attempt thing though.
Not foolproof, but it’s what she had. What Meddler is saying doesn’t make sense. She already does that. Getting humans to reproduce with other species was even tougher, and to Jinx’s knowledge, there weren’t any humans involved around there. He is just messing with me. Nothing to do with pregnancy, and everything to do with the word magic. Durham is getting into a new line of business with Meddler. Something to do with these runes.
“I bagged the little cretins finally who dropped the Wayback machine.”
Ooh. “I see.” She lost her real appeal to have her now. That meant she went from rarity camp to experiment camp. “Oh, cool. Can I get in on the pool too? How much money do I get if I win?” Jinx asked, trying to keep herself together. “Or do I just get to live?”
“Now, now, Jinx. Don’t talk about yourself like that. You have an extreme honor the Baccai are giving to you. You get to save the day. Be a hero.”
“A lot more people important in history for this kind of honor instead of some backyard slug from Zaun you know,” she emphasized.
“No, no, I think you are perfect. Whether you die or not, I think you will save the day. If not, something at least fascinating will happen.”
I am a bet! “Humor me.”
“Oh. There are several bets on you, Jinx. We are all excited to see what happens when we use you as a resource.”
Resource.
“I know that you know that word,” Meddler grinned. “However, only I and Madame Durham know about the new necklace you’ll create. So, they aren’t thinking in the term of gods. Just, guessing what a second resourcing would do to you.”
“Guessing.”
“Yes. What fun.”
“Screw you.”
“Easy, Jinx. Remember your place. Bow down.”
“Remember your place. Who do you think you are, Azir?” Jinx called him out. If there was one thing the Baccai knew, and they had her look up all the time? It was their own time of creation. In ancient Shurima with the sundial that basically said ‘you failed’ and judged them unfit. “Yeah. That you do. Same words he used for Xerath when he got that guy to do basically everything for him and still never freed him from his own slavery? Not until the day he was going to ascend. Boy, talk about waiting way too late. Then again, who’s to say if he really meant it?”
“He didn’t!” That got into Meddler’s nerves. “He was nothing compared to Xerath! He would be nothing without Xerath.”
Jinx sneered. “You know, it’s so damn funny, that you Baccai idiots hold so much against Azir, when you all have your own slavery right here. You think Xerath would be happy with your actions, when his whole life was dedicated to freedom for slaves? The hypocrisy is so thick, you can’t miss it.”
“The Baccai were not slaves!” He corrected her.
“Yeah, you were all something special that thought they deserved to be gods. Missed the pop quiz cut off score, poor you.”
“Last night, I went out and took a woman from Zaun for no damn good reason, wiped all of her memories, claimed her as my property and I will rent her out with no qualities whatsoever. Low price. No rules attached.”
Jinx grinded her teeth. “It’s world runes.”
“Did I mention she has lovely purple hair like your mother, and a two month old? I am more than delighted to show this one.”
Jinx watched as he left his working table, and came back in with. A mother with purple hair. A two month old. The woman was dazed, under his control.
“At anytime, Jinx. Your friends. Your family. Or just people I know would bother you to lose.” His overgrown Baccai hand stroked the woman’s cheek, slightly scratching it. “She’ll remain here with her little one until you make that necklace. And you can watch the two month old, get your own form of practice, if at anytime, you share with anyone-”
Jinx bared her teeth briefly before she sank to her knees. “Just. Don’t.”
“Then, don’t. You expose the secret about the runes, to anyone, and she will pay. I’ll keep the daughter, and just like you, her future generations will have her to thank for their future being caged.”
“Captain Teemo already knows about the resource thing.” Obviously he knew that.
“The runes. Don’t tell anyone about the runes.”
“Share with who else, I’m not sharing with anyone, and I’m going to Madame Durham’s right after Two-Two Jacks,” Jinx insisted. “When I am done with this necklace, I get to see them go back myself.” Fashioning her own death necklace. A death necklace as a resource. I’m going to end up killing every form of me. Not just me. So, the bet. How much would she risk saving herself, over her family. How desperate would she get? Vi. Ekko. Zaun. Death. Her own design, but not her own will. If this is it, I want home. “Do I have nine months?”
“Certainly not that long,” Meddler remarked.
Ready to straight up end me. In some experiment. What a way to go out. No, I am getting this. “Potential pregnancy, and I want a two month vacation. Durham grants two month vacations when she thinks the chances are high.” Captain Teemo was a yordle, he could deduce in his own ways it was false later on. “I want two months vacation.”
“That’s cute.” Meddler said it with no amusement. “He would believe that how? You are null to magic now. Nothing works at all.”
“Parallel Ekko. That other Ekko also gets germs for not being from here, and it spreads like the flu to me. During that time, I’m probably susceptible to magic.” Plus he was the only human who had been here, she saw that in the Wayback machine, and Captain Teemo knew that too.
“Yes, I know about his little rendezvous rentals to see you. He meets with you everyday, renting you, like I don’t even see the relation of him to this universe’s Ekko.” He looked a little odd though. Frustration? Who cared.
“Just send an official letter,” Jinx insisted. “I want it. My two month vacation.”
“Don’t you have official business with Meat Claws soon?”
“Set it up today, let’s get it over with before I go,” she insisted.
“Home to see loved ones for two months. It will only be harder to part. We’ll see.”
“I want to see them again! I want them to know I was alive. I want to spend time with my sister, the way I should have, if things didn’t get messy between us. I want to see how my Ekko is doing. I just want to see and know before I go. I know there’s no way out. You are ready to try something really fucked up that’s probably going to kill me. Two months, and don’t wipe their memory. I want them to know I was there.”
“Two months. Granted, when I get time. If you are suspected of saying anything about the world runes, we will wipe their minds after you are dead. If investigation reveals you said nothing, then fine. They can remember. Now, up, off your knees. I’ll fix the fight for the beginning of next week probably. Go see Durham.”
Jinx pulled herself back up. Home. Sixty days of home. Two month vacation.
Her first, and last, two month vacation.