Once every ten years, the rival nations of Noxus and Demacia met not on the open field, but within walls built for sport and spectacle.
The Conquest Games were older than most anyone alive, a tradition born in the aftermath of a war neither side could afford to finish. Seven days of sanctioned battle, played out within a fortress that belonged to neither flag, its stone halls echoing with the clash of dulled steel and the roar of crowds of civilians gathered to cheer on either side.
The rules were simple enough for a squire to recite: no killing, no maiming, first to surrender. Only blunted training arms were permitted. Every defeated foe was a prize to be kept until the Games ended, a "captive," to be treated as well as honor allowed. Prisoners were fed and clothed, given quarter under the care—or whims—of their captor. "Hospitality" was the word used in polite company. "Spoils" was the one muttered over tankards. On the seventh day, the Games ended with a final grand melee. Territory and captives were tallied, a victor declared, and all returned to their own camps. At least in theory.
The unspoken aim of the event was simpler still:
Learn the enemy's measure to get under their skin…and stay there.
---
The courtyard rang with clashes of steel on steel. Sunlight flashed off polished armor and the gilded edges of raising shields.
As a yordle, Poppy had seen many a Conquest Game come and go. This year would mark her first time volunteering to join the fray, and so far, she'd been putting in a good performance. For the current event, her squad had been holding a choke point for five minutes—a lifetime in a match like this—but the Noxians were pressing harder now, forcing them back a step at a time.
And then he appeared.
He broke through the line like a siege ram, his great axe sweeping aside her comrade's shields as though they were nothing.
The man was a wall in motion, every swing of his weapon herding the Demacian soldiers like cattle.
Poppy braced, hammer at the ready.
His eyes flicked down to her, the grin that touched his mouth infuriatingly calm.
They clashed. Trading blows in a narrow passage, her hammer and buckler met his axe with bone-rattling force. He was stronger, whereas she was more nimble: darting in low, forcing him to constantly adjust his approach. Poppy had fought no shortage of foes that dwarfed her in size, knowing to stay up-close denying their advantage in reach.
In one instant she thought she could turn the tide, until a sudden feint sent her off-balance, and he landed a solid strike into her chest.
She gasped from what felt like the air rushing out of her lungs all at once.
She fell to one knee. But before she could rise again, the flat of his axe head intervened and pressed lightly—almost mockingly —against her collar.
"Yield," he said, voice low enough that only she could hear it.
Pride burned hot in her chest. But the match was officially over. Around them, her squad was already throwing down their arms, the tide of Noxian red closing in.
She met his eyes. "Fine. You win this round."
His grin only widened a fraction.
"No, hammerbearer. What I have won is *you*."
That night, as any other during the span of the Games, was one of celebration and mourning.
Food was plenty. The long tables in the dining hall were set with all manner of delicacies: Whole game birds lacquered in spiced honey, their crisp skin gleaming in the torchlight; trencher boards heavy with thick-sliced roast beef, still blushing in the center; great bowls of buttered root vegetables glistening under dustings of coarse salt; dark loaves of bread split open to steam, the slightly mushy insides spread with soft, tangy cheese; figs and pomegranate halves bleeding juice over polished silver platters.
It was abundance without restraint. A kind of silent battle in itself, waged between benefactors from either nation, vying to eclipse the other's generosity.
The smell alone made Poppy's stomach clench—only partly in hunger, part unease.
She hadn't taken a single bite. She wouldn't, out of pure resentment.
The Noxians on their side, meanwhile, feasted with abandon. Grease slicking their fingers and beards as they tore through the meat with their teeth and tossed the bones indiscriminately onto the floor, to be fetched by the unabating swarms of scurrying servant children. Their platters, in honor of their day's victory, were specially laden in servings of roasted trout glazed with citrus, neat little pies of venison and mushroom, sugarcoated almonds piled in pretty porcelain bowls for dessert.
While they rollicked still, the Demacians sat straight-backed and humorless. They muttered sourly about their degrading defeat. Even the occasional spit of laughter, when it arose, came out hushed and polite, as if they feared the sound might chip the marble tiles beneath their feet.
Poppy sat halfway down the line, alone.
This was nothing new. It had always been easier to keep her own company, than to try forcing her way into their midst.
To be respected was not the same as belonging.
Her spoon traced the same circle in her stew again and again.
Maybe it was because she was a yordle: small, magical, a reminder of the wilds that Demacia liked to pretend it had tamed.
Maybe because she was a woman among men, which carried its own brand of distance.
Or, as she had increasingly come to think…
The fault might solely rest with herself as a person, somehow. Some vital missing component in her creation, which she could not so much as even grasp, causing her to be ever the wrong shape for any chair she tried to sit in.
Worlds apart, Darius was situated at the head of his table.
He was laughing politely at something one of his lieutenants said, the thunder of it rolling over the Demacian murmur like a tribal drumbeat.
Leaning back, he gestured in a toast with a half-emptied tankard.
For a moment, Poppy could imagine herself in that orbit of heat and noise.
Perhaps her eyes lingered longer than they should have.
Suddenly, he fixed his gaze upon hers.
A knowing grin curved like a sickle across his squared mouth, residing there uncomfortably long, as he tipped his tankard at her in the barest salute.
Heat pricked under the yordle's collar. She shoved back her sitstool, muttering something about needing air, though none had questioned her. Then she walked briskly toward the side door, shouldering through it. And kept walking. She moved with her head low, no destination in mind; there was no sanctuary to be found here, so far from any semblance of home.
Her pulse was racing.
I'm just…a little wound up, she told herself. Too long confined, not enough movement.
And there was some truth to that. Poppy was no stranger to long stretches of travelling by her lonesome—just her and the road, carried by the weight of Orlon's hammer slung across her back. But here, the walls felt too close, the air too static. She kept telling herself it was the Games, the pressure of competition. The stark bitterness of defeat, certainly. But the truth hummed under that excuse like a taut bowstring: that she wasn't used to anyone watching her this closely.
Certainly not someone like Darius. The words he had said in the arena.
"No, hammerbearer. What I have won is *you*."
What could he have meant?
A steel-blooded butcher—a villain, a hunkering dog of war—like that?
She was his "prisoner" now, a slave to whatever cruel fascination he might secretly be harboring.
Maybe that was what had her pacing the hall now, boots whispering over stone.
She needed to turn her back and shut the door on his gaze, this sense of his foaming intrigue, while she still had that option.
Moving without rest, she'd made it far enough that the sounds coming from the dining hall had dulled to a muffled hum. Stone walls lined in braziers rose high on either side of her, banners for both nations swaying faintly in the nighttime draft. She had slowed in her stride, more out of habit than purpose—the long years of carrying Orlon's hammer had trained her to move in measured steps, conserving her strength.
It wasn't long before the sound of bootsteps pursued her.
She didn't have to look to know who it was…
"I did not take you for the type to flee at the first blush of discomfort," Darius said, his voice filling the narrow space as easily as he filled a doorway.
Without a break in her pace she glanced over her shoulder. "That's none of your concern."
He breached the remaining distance between them in two great strides, falling into place like a mountain shifted by an earthquake beside her. "You became my concern the moment you surrendered to me," he said, the torchlight painting his features in streaks of gold and shadow. "You will follow my instructions. You will not leave my sight unless I have willed it."
"I'm not your slave," she said flatly. "Or your pet."
"True enough. I would have whipped you into obedience by now if you were either."
She quickened her pace. "I bet you would. You Noxians–"
"That's leadership," he interrupted. "One shade of it, at any rate. If a soldier disobeys, you bend them into working shape. Or keep trying until they break." He kept his tone light, almost conversational. "You've led before, haven't you? A woman as wise and well-fought as you must have a wealth of experience to bring to any war room."
Poppy stopped. Was that...a compliment?
Through the dim moonlight she could see him raise an eyebrow.
"Me? Lead?" She shook her head, collecting herself. "I mean…well, yeah. I've had some pretty big boots to fill. Enough times to know it's not about having the loudest voice in the room."
"Depends on the room." His eyes slid to her, measuring her. "Here is something to consider. You may continue to sit with your countrymen—there is comfort in that, familiarity. But I would proudly share my table with a warrior of your fiber. The experience could prove illuminating to you and I both. Who knows."
Poppy's brow tightened.
She couldn't be sure if the suggestion was borne out of pure arrogance, or...what else?
A Noxian, with praise coming from a genuine place of sincerity? Inconceivable.
This uncertainty, it irritated her far more than any clear insult could have, as he continued:
"But I have a notion, either way, that you would still be sitting apart. I only wonder if that is by choice."
Poppy bristled. "It's only been a day, and you think you have me all figured out?"
He didn't immediately answer.
Instead, he looked away, taking half a step ahead.
"No. You are a curiosity to me, hammerbearer," he said. "I want to twist you apart, unravel you, while I have the chance."
He let that linger in dreadful silence for a note longer than Poppy thought was comfortable.
Not that any single solitary moment of this exchange had been without teeth.
Without words, she was unable to grasp whatever sentiment he was trying to express. Her grip unconsciously tightened on the strap of leather slung over her shoulder which held Orlon's hammer, as if bracing against a wind that hadn't yet arrived. A not insubstantial part of her craved the simplicity of a rematch, sidestepping all of this tense and confounding parley.
Darius made what looked to Poppy like an attempt at a smile, then. Only it came out wolfish, more sneering than something that could be called amiable, if that was his intent.
"I think the world is a slightly more interesting place with someone like you alive in it."
All she could do was stare.
A sense of threat was gripping her, laced in something indecipherable.
Poppy did not like that smile. It was too sharp, too certain of itself, as if he knew the ending of a story she'd only just started reading.
On another night, Poppy was sat under the stars by a firepit that had been erected by the two camps a short walk from their lodgings. Her armor—what was left of it—had been stripped the moment they'd dragged her into camp, her well-worn boots traded for fur-lined slippers that were far too warm, too soft. Though not forcibly. She'd handed each piece over one by one, teeth gritted, as though they were fragments of her very essence, and was given a sack dress to wear in exchange, all still while pretending the rules of the game didn't bother her. As though it was all but some passing mild bureaucratic inconvenience.
Darius crouched across from her at the firepit, turning a skewer of meat over the flames. His armor was still on though his axe was gone from sight, his body encased in a shell of black iron catching the light like the reflective gleams of a glass of wine. She'd learned his name only once, and even that had felt like giving him ground. *Darius*, he'd said, voice thick with amusement. She hadn't asked for more.
"You eat like you fight," he said now, watching her chew. "Efficient. Joyless. Like you're simply trying to get it over with."
She swallowed. "I'll eat however I please, thank you."
"You are mine until the Games end. And I order you to eat more slowly."
The unabashed ridiculousness of his "order" aside, the word *mine* landed somewhere low in Poppy's gut with a heavy, molten thud.
"You're toying with me," she said.
His smile was a slow, deliberate cut. "And I get the sense you are enjoying it."
The fire snapped between them like a sharp punctuation.
Poppy looked away, fixing her eyes on the embers. She'd fought hard—harder than she'd needed to, maybe, as if she could batter down something inside herself before it could be allowed to take shape. But here, in the hush before sleep, her discipline felt like a dam with cracks spiderwebbing under the pressure.
Darius shifted closer, the scrape of his greaves in the dirt perilously loud in the otherwise quiet night.
"Tell me something, hammerbearer." He spoke like a man coaxing a skittish animal. "When was the last time you let someone take care of you?"
She frowned. "I don't need—"
"I didn't ask if you needed it. I asked when you last let it happen."
The answer came to her mind immediately—never. But saying it would feel like handing him a key.
So she held her tongue, chewing on silence instead.
In those close confines she could smell him now: leather, smoke, and that faint tang of steel that clung to warriors.
He nodded slowly, as if she'd answered anyway. "Thought so."
The meat sizzled as he resumed turning the skewer again, but he didn't break eye contact. "You've been carrying that hammer for what, a century? Maybe more? Fighting other people's battles. Guarding people who barely notice the wall you're standing on. All that devotion. All that legacy you carry with you." He leaned in just enough that she could feel his breath on her cheek. "And now, for once, you don't have to hold it. Not unless you want to."
Her fingers curled against her knees. He was still in-character, still the captain having a bit of fun with his "prize," but she could feel the edges of something truer bleeding in.
And the dangerous part was that she could dare to believe him.
"You don't get to tell me what to do," she said, aiming for a scoff but landing closer to whimper.
She could tell he had noticed, his smile a knife's edge. "Not yet. But I will. And when I do…"
He let the thought hang, dragging his gaze deliberately from her eyes to her mouth before sitting back again, looking satisfied.
"…you'll thank me."
Poppy should have laughed, at the overwrought villainy of it all.
She should have told him to keep dreaming.
Instead, she found herself leaning just above the fire, as if the warmth could hide the flush rising to her ears.
So this is what "the game" is really about.