Layla

"Layla?"

I jumped as I looked up at Mika, she held out a white dandelion for me. I took it and patted the seat next to me, letting her know I wanted company. She sat down next to me and leaned her head on my shoulder, we watched as Heimerdinger giggled with some of the other kids while playing with bubbles. He looked over at me and smiled warmly, I know he sent her over to make me smile. Well it worked, especially since Mika is someone who loves sitting in silence so it's never awkward when we sit together and people watch.

It's been days since I turned Vi away and I feel absolutely awful. I didn't mean to freak her out, I acted like an idiot because I was completely starstruck by everything I suddenly learned. I still am but I just want her with me.

I've been struggling to do things without her for years, and yet even after getting used to her being gone, I've never had a problem thinking through things when I'm in her arms. I thought that she'd do the same thing, push me away and need to think by herself. I didn't even have time to register what I had said to her.

God I'm an idiot.

What the fuck am i doing? I need to get to Vi and apologize for being a numbskull. I looked down at Mika and kissed her forehead, "Thanks for cheering me up munchkin. Go play with the others, I have to go find someone real quick."

She nodded, happy that she could help me and skipped over to the rest of the kids. I watched her go as I stood up and waved at the rest of the children in the corner who were trying tricks on their hoverboards.

I was ready to grab my things to head up to Piltover but Ekko stopped me.

"Layla, somethings wrong."

He raced towards me with Scar on his tail, he held up a leaf that had streaks of light colors on it. My eyes widened as I took the leaf from his hand to inspect it, what the hell?

"What the hell is this? Nothing like this has ever happened to the tree, she's stayed healthy for years." I said absolutely dumbfounded, as if I haven't had enough things to deal with now I have to add mysterious colors infecting our home.

But we have a brilliant scientist with us after all, I grabbed E's arm as I walked us towards Heimerdinger.

"Hello kids! Layla I hope I didn't oppose much by sending over the adorable little girl, you looked so sad I thought she could cheer you up." Heimerdinger quickly started explaining his mindset to me but I shook my head before stopping his rambling.

"Heimerdinger I appreciate the gesture but we need your help." I said with a serious look on his face that made him quickly understand. He excused himself before leading us to his little area we gave him when he first arrived, he sat on his stool before clapping his hands together.

"Now how can I be of service?" He said cheerfully, but his good mood deteriorated as I handed him the leaf. "Oh this is quite troubling." Heimerdinger said curiously as he stared at the oddly colorful leaf from the tree underneath a microscope.

"That tree is everything to us," I spoke with sadness in my tone as I crossed my arms. "It's our food, our fresh air..."

"We built our whole identity around it. But every time it seems like we might catch a break-" Ekko started saying before Heimerdinger interrupted him. I was glad for his interruption, Ekkos words were only increasing the anxious feeling that knotted in my stomach.

"Now now, it's not lost yet, lads. If there is a means of preservation, by golly we'll find it. I have seen something of this nature before." We over at the small elderly creature who lowered the leaf before giving us his full attention as he turned towards us in the stool.

~~~~~

I watched in amusement as Heimerdinger ran through the little tunnel that was at the bottom of the building we met with the Councilors in. I lent him my mask so he wouldn't be recognized easily, but the damn thing keeps falling off his face. He told us we needed to come up to Piltover so we could go to his lab, his tools will be much more helpful in finding out what's going on.

Or so he says. I kept the same tight pants on I had before but I changed into my dark purple hooded poncho, switching out my clicky heel boots for my non-clicky ones. Ekko always made fun of me for wearing heels but I said it made me feel powerful.

He thinks I'm nuts.

"Don't you technically own this place?" Ekko asked confused as to why we needed to sneak around, he was shushed by the small man before we continued around a corner.

He ran down before making some weird arm gestures for us to understand, but we didn't know what he was trying to say. "The brumback has left the jungle!" He whisper shouted making me cover my mouth as I stifled a giggle at his antics.

"Uh Heimer, code phrases don't work when you make them up on the spot." I kept my voice quietly humorous  as I continued to crouch down to follow the man, Ekko laughed lightly from behind me.

We came to the end of the tunnel, looking up at a ladder that led to a room. Heimerdinger quickly undid the screws leading into the room, he looked around before moving the circle piece of the floor over so we could get up. He hopped up before turning back to shush me, but a bright light came from behind him making us jump and turn towards it quickly.

"Professor? Layla?" Jayce stood there confused with his giant hammer pointed at us, he shut it down before lowering it to the ground.

"Yes of course! What the devil has gotten into you?" Heimerdinger asked annoyed, I hopped up before helping E out from behind me.

"I thought...Wait why are you breaking into my lab? A-and who's he?" Jayce asked as he pointed towards my brother, I stepped in front of him facing Jayce.

"Easy pretty boy, this is my brother Ekko." I said calmly to the man who looked downright horrible, he had bags under his eyes and he looked paler than normal.

"Him and Layla are my new pupils. Ekko this is my former pupil Jayce." Heimerdinger introduced the two who seemed unimpressed by the other one's presence. The scientist and Jayce argued before we sat down to drink tea, I took one sip and like Ekko's my face morphed into disgust.

"It's so bitter." Ekko whispered to me making me nod slowly in his direction as we sat on two stools next to Jayce who was looking through a magnifier to see the leaf.

"Well you're right. This looks just like the plants we tested with the Hexcore, but where did you say you found this?" Jayce asked as he turned the knobs on his microscope.

"Deep in the underground." I whispered as I looked at the leaf sitting on the glass plate. I wish Vi were here, I'm such an idiot for turning her away.

"Layla and Ekko's home is a marvelous place! Truly a wonder. You should see what-." Ekko gave him a look that told him to shut up, even though Jayce wasn't the real enemy he hasn't really shown us we can trust him. "Oh uh, right, um when I said "home", I was of course referring to their cognitive center. Not a physical location hidden in the-."

He didn't finish his sentence because I covered his mouth with my hand, the fur from his mustache tickled my palm. I looked at him blankly as I shook my head once, he nodded in understanding and stopped talking about our home.

"Did any of the plants survive?" Ekko asked hesitantly, he was more worried for the tree than I was. He was the one who found it after all, the both of us think of the tree as sort of like a mother to us all. She gives us what we need to survive, like fresh air, and she's always there for us when we come home from a long day.

"They were not what we were trying to save. But this pattern...How could it be there and here?" Jayce asked himself as Ekko and Heimerdinger walked towards the rectangular blob of colors that sat in the middle of the room, there was a silhouette of a person in the middle. Like someone had come out of it and just walked off.

"Where's Viktor?" Heimerdinger asked Jayce who stood up frantically and was running around grabbing books and tearing them open. I grabbed a book from beside him, flipping through the pages as I tried to make sense of what any of this meant. He sat down on the other side of his table before he started talking.

"He...I honestly don't know, he just left... But that's not the problem. Viktor hypothesized that there may be something he called "wild runes". Patterns that occurred naturally where the border between our world and the Arcane is thin." Jayce said as he ran a hand down his face in distraught.

"Runes like the ones you use in Hextech. So what's the difference between those and wild runes?" I asked as I rested my arm on the table, putting my head on my hand to prop it up as I stared at the opened book in front of me.

"Pass me a tome." Jayce asked and I quickly handed him one of the books that were stacked up next to me. "I used words you understood in order to elicit your action. This is what Hextech runes are. Pass me a tome."

He asked Ekko who had stood next to me, Ekko held out another book to him but when Jayce sternly repeated the command Ekko scoffed before throwing it down in front of the man.

"There you sighed. Still a kind of language. A sound, but not words. Something raw. Natural. That's wild runes! Most places, the Arcane is dormant, but here and there, it's more active. Wild runes are-."

"Sort of like its fingerprints." E asked in confusion, but when Jayce nodded my brother's tone hardened. "So you're telling me that pattern is on our tree because you pissed the Arcane off with all your demands?"

Jayce chuckled nervously, realizing that Ekkos accusation wasn't completely wrong. When he started to stutter, Heimerdinger spoke up from behind us, "Oh the lad may be onto something. Every action sparks a reaction." The little man was balancing a wrench on this hand but dropped it and cursed lightly, I laughed at him playfully. I would never tell him this becauseI think he would find it offending, but he is so freaking cute.

"Do you think this could actually be a result of overuse of Hextech?" Jayce asked the scientist as he examined the leaf some more.

"I've seen miracles spring from the hands of mages many times, but so often they can turn to horrors. I'd always presumed it was due to mankind's...turbulent relationship with power. But perhaps it is a property of the Arcane itself." Heimerdinger said as if coming to a conclusion on why this was happening.

"We've tested our Hextech under every conceivable condition for years. If there's some kind of reaction taking place, how come we've never seen any sign of it until now? And why would it appear on a tree deep...underground?" I turned back to look at Jayce who stared at us with wide eyes, he stood up suddenly before walking towards the door. "Come with me, we need to see something."

I took a deep breath before looking at Ekko and Heimerdinger, I didn't like the way he said that. But we followed him down the hall and to an elevator that took us down underground. By the time we stopped I thought the doors would open to the Lanes since we were down so far but it opened to a gold metal door. Jayce grabbed his mighty hammer and turned it on, he powered up the energy in order to unlock the door as he asked us how we knew so much about Hextech.

"You didn't think I came up here just to sing for you rich people, right? You guys love to talk about your inventions, I'd found a few books during my times up here and brought them home to Ekko." I said as I watched the electricity from the end of the hammer, decipher some kind of lock the door had.

"We read what we could decipher and deduced what we couldn't. We didn't think Topside would trust anything that important below the surface." Ekko stated as the circle started turning on the door, it lit up in blue lighting before the door started moving up to allow us to enter. I squinted my eyes from the sudden bright lighting, but I gasped as I stared into the huge open room before us. It was a round dome shaped room with blue diamonds on the walls, a colorful dome sat in the middle of the room.

"Holy moly." I said as we started walking towards the dome, I wrapped my arms around myself as I felt the temperature drop.

"I thought the gemstone mesh was installed above ground?" Ekko asked in confusion.

"The mesh is aboveground, but we weren't sure what would happen if the gate overloaded, so we installed a failsafe at the base."

"So instead of it blowing up into your world, it would blow up in ours." I stated dryly as I spun around to look at the ceiling.

"We're miles from the fissures."

"These are the same ducts that give us water and facilitate our ventilation. That would explain it effecting the tree." Ekko continued arguing with Jayce about how stupid this was to be set up down here, I continued staring at the ceiling as Heimer looked at the dome.

He muttered something but we were quickly silenced as the entire room turned white, my face fell as I looked around. Ekko stepped closer to me as his eyes rounded while he looked at something behind me, I turned around and mimicked his expression.

"Is that a wild rune?"

"I have no idea what that is." Jayce answered Ekkos question as he reached out to touch the huge colorful object that sat angrily thrashing in front of us. I slowly shook my head as I felt my soul slowly leaving my body the closer he got to it. I felt all my senses die as I was suddenly erupted into the object, colors danced around in my vision as I saw Heimer freeze in front of me. Ekko reached for me and yelled but was silenced as his entire body started buffering, I screamed as his body parts started coming apart. But my screaming stopped as I froze up too, I couldn't move or feel anything but I could still see. I saw Jayce lift up his hammer as if in slow motion towards the colorful object, as soon as his hammer made contact with it everything went black.

Before my mind shut down completely, I thought of my favorite person.

Violet.