Logan felt the distant spiritual presence too.
At first, it reached him through Ahri.
The thin thread of spiritual power that connected him to one of her tails was almost invisible now. It had been worn down by the Void, by distance from the spirit realm, by everything Ahri had spent to keep him alive. Even so, something trembled through that connection, faint enough that he almost missed it.
Then he felt it himself.
Normally, that would have opened a flood of questions.
Logan shoved all of that aside.
He could wonder later.
The Watcher guarded the damaged vein beneath its core.
Its limbs moved tighter around its body now. The main eye remained partially covered by curling fuchsia plates, and the smaller orange eyes opened in shorter bursts, never long enough to become easy targets. It had learned from the last exchange.
Unfortunately for it, Logan and Aatrox were learning too.
Their movement was smoother now.
There were still moments when Logan's instinct pulled one way while Aatrox chose another. But the delay had shortened.
Logan watched the Watcher's limbs. He read the tension before beams formed. He caught the flicker in the smaller eyes before they fired.
Aatrox rushed in again.
The Watcher fired three beams in staggered timing, one toward Logan's head, one toward the left wing, and one lower, aimed at the body's center. Aatrox cut the first aside, folded the damaged wing through the second, and let the third miss by shifting only a few inches.
The blade came up from below.
The Watcher's lower limbs snapped inward to stop it.
Logan saw the gap.
"A little higher," he thought.
Aatrox adjusted.
The edge of the blade slid between two guarding limbs and struck the same glowing vein under the Watcher's body.
This time the cut was shallow.
The Watcher had moved in time. Even so, the sword bit. Gold-pink light tore across fuchsia flesh, and the vein flashed unstable beneath the wound.
The Watcher jerked away.
A low vibration spread through the Void.
Anger.
Aatrox pulled them back before the counter could close. Two fuchsia limbs crossed the space where Logan's torso had been, then opened into orange eyes and fired at point-blank range. The beams cut through the afterimage of their movement and vanished into the dark.
The Watcher lunged.
Its next attacks came faster and harder, but the precision slipped. A limb swept wide enough to crush a building. Another struck downward with so much force that the shock rippled against the gravitational field protecting the platform. Beams fired in short bursts, angry flashes meant to force Logan and Aatrox away.
Aatrox did not retreat far.
He angled the wings, let one blow pass over them, and cut across the Watcher's extended arm. The severed piece dissolved. Before it could fully regrow, he drove them forward again.
Logan understood the change.
The Watcher was stronger like this.
More dangerous.
Logan felt the shape of the plan without seeing all of it. Aatrox was not trying to win by cutting the vein a dozen times. Not exactly. He wanted the Watcher to hit harder. To commit more power.
They pressed the damaged point again.
The Watcher defended better this time. It curled its lower body, folded two limbs across the vein, and opened eyes along its flank to force Logan away. Aatrox slipped between two beams, took a glancing hit across one wing, and used the recoil to spin around the guard.
The sword flashed.
The edge scraped the vein again.
A thin line. Almost nothing compared to the first wound.
But the Watcher felt it.
This time, it roared.
The Void answered with movement.
Shapes stirred in the distance.
Voidborn.
Dozens at first, then hundreds, drawn by the Watcher's call.
"Finally they move again."
Only a handful of Voidborn came for Logan.
Most rushed toward the fuchsia Watcher.
At first, Logan thought they were defending it.
Then the Watcher opened its body.
The nearest Voidborn vanished into it.
Not eaten in the normal sense. Absorbed. Their bodies broke apart into streams of violet, black, and pale energy, feeding into the fuchsia veins under the Watcher's surface. More followed, crawling and flying into its reach without hesitation. The Watcher consumed them by the dozens, then by the hundreds.
Its wounds began to close faster.
The severed arm reformed thicker than before.
The antler-like growths on its head extended upward, twisting and curling. The deer-horn shape became larger, heavier, more complex. The ends curved forward and down, forming two massive horns that looked almost like new limbs.
Orange eyes opened along the tips.
Logan stared.
"Of course it can shoot from those too."
The Watcher fired.
Four beams at once.
Two from the arms.
Two from the curled horns.
Aatrox moved immediately.
The first beam was cut aside. The second was deflected upward. The third clipped a wing and tore away a section of gold-pink light. The fourth forced Aatrox to twist Logan's body so hard that Logan felt something in his back crack.
The missing wing-light reformed, smaller and less stable.
More Voidborn came at them.
The smaller ones tried to swarm the wings, biting at the light, dragging their bodies against the edges to slow movement. Aatrox sliced through them with short, brutal cuts, never giving them more attention than necessary.
The fuchsia Watcher kept firing.
The battlefield became crowded and violent. Voidborn bodies burst apart. Orange beams crossed through fuchsia darkness. Gold-pink wings flickered under constant pressure. The blue Watcher's reinforced field remained behind them, keeping Ahri distant from the worst of it, but Logan could not look back.
A huge Voidborn moved between them and the Watcher.
It was larger than any of the others, a mass of armored plates, hooked limbs, and a single vertical mouth running down its front. It did not attack at first. It simply placed its body in the line between Logan and the Watcher, blocking sight.
The Watcher fired anyway.
The four beams punched through the Voidborn.
Orange light drilled through its body, carving tunnels of burning nothing through flesh and shell. The creature did not die immediately. It convulsed, held in place by the force passing through it, becoming a living screen for the Watcher's attacks.
Aatrox deflected the beams as they emerged.
Without a clear view of the Watcher, the timing became worse. Logan had to read the beams by the way the Voidborn's body lit from within before they broke through. Twice, Aatrox barely moved the blade in time. One beam grazed Logan's thigh and erased a strip of flesh before the transformation sealed it with light.
Then the firing stopped.
For a moment, the giant Voidborn hung there, smoking and split open.
Logan felt the threat too late.
The Watcher came through it.
Its body tore straight through the Voidborn from behind, scattering armor and organs into the Void. One long arm struck out of the ruin like a spear.
Aatrox raised the blade.
The impact hit.
They blocked the arm, but block was the wrong word. The sword held the edge from piercing through Logan's chest. It did not stop the force behind it.
Logan and Aatrox were thrown backward.
The wings flared, trying to slow them, but the Watcher had chosen the angle too well. They crashed into the reinforced gravitational field around the platform.
The collision shook the barrier.
For an instant, Logan felt the field behind his back like a wall made of pressure.
The fuchsia Watcher had done this on purpose.
It had pinned them against the field.
All four eyes charged.
The arms and horns fired together.
The beams merged halfway across the distance, becoming one thick orange-white line with fuchsia distortion bending around it. The combined attack came straight for Logan and Aatrox.
They did not dodge.
Not because Ahri was behind them.
This was the best chance they had.
The chance Aatrox had been waiting for.
The transformation was running out. Logan could feel it now. The wings were unstable, the glow along his body flickering in patches, Aatrox's control growing heavier as if holding the form together required more effort every second.
So they stood their ground.
Aatrox planted Logan's feet against the gravitational field and raised the blade.
The beam struck.
The world became force.
Logan felt his arms nearly tear from their sockets. The field behind him shook under his feet. The sword screamed, gold-pink light burning along its edge as it caught the combined beam and began to turn it.
Slowly deflecting.
The orange-white torrent bent a fraction to the side.
Logan's whole body trembled. His wounded shoulder threatened to open again. The sealed gap in his flesh sparked, shedding little fragments of light into the beam's glare.
Aatrox did not yield.
"Hold," he said.
Logan pushed with him.
The beam moved another inch.
The Watcher saw it.
Its main eye opened.
Logan's stomach clenched.
"Oh, come on."
The fifth beam fired from the Watcher's head.
It joined the others.
The force became almost impossible to understand. It was not just stronger. It was layered, five lines of destruction braided into one continuous attack. The gravitational field groaned behind Logan. The platform trembled inside it. The light of Aatrox's wings bent backward like flames in a storm.
For one second, Logan thought they would fail.
Then Aatrox shifted the angle.
Not much.
A perfect adjustment.
The beam slid further to the side.
Aatrox wanted to move now.
Logan felt it.
Then he felt Aatrox stop himself.
Wait.
The word did not need to be spoken.
Logan understood. Something had changed. Aatrox had sensed it before he did.
A flicker of purple appeared behind the fuchsia Watcher.
Kassadin.
He came out of a teleport with his blade already raised.
The Watcher reacted instantly, proving it had never forgotten him. The main eye stopped firing, and one arm broke from the combined attack to intercept the strike. The remaining beams still pressed against Logan and Aatrox, but the pressure dropped just enough for the blade to move another fraction.
Kassadin drove toward the main eye.
A feint.
At the last instant, he twisted away from the guarded point and plunged his blade into the damaged vein.
This time he went deep.
Purple energy erupted inside the wound.
The Watcher's body arched.
Its roar tore through the battlefield, and the remaining beams faltered.
"Now!" Aatrox shouted.
For that moment, Logan and Aatrox synchronized completely.
One thought.
One motion.
The plan became clear as they acted.
It had always been the same. Force the Watcher to increase the power of its attacks. Make it rage. Make it commit. If Logan and Aatrox did not have enough strength to destroy it with their own blows, they would use the Watcher's power against it.
The blade turned.
The massive beam, still pouring against Aatrox's edge, stopped being pushed aside.
It began to return.
At first, the movement was small, almost invisible inside the glare. Aatrox changed the angle of the sword with terrifying precision, guiding the beam. Logan matched him fully, holding the body steady against the gravitational field, wings spread wide, feet locked into the pressure behind them.
The beam curved.
The Watcher tried to pull away.
Kassadin did not let it.
He tore his blade sideways through the vein. One of its arms moved to defend. Kassadin cut it off near the base. The other tried to angle the remaining beam away, but Kassadin slammed his gauntlet against it and held on, purple force flaring around his armor.
The Watcher's main eye widened.
The beam it had created, fed, and strengthened was no longer its weapon.
The orange-white torrent slammed into the main eye with a soundless impact that made the Void around it buckle.
For an instant, the front of the Watcher disappeared inside its own power.
Then the eye cracked.
The Watcher roared.
Logan and Aatrox did not stay still.
They launched forward along the path of the beam.
The sword followed the line of destruction, cutting through the glare like a second edge inside the attack. Aatrox's wings burned smaller with every second, but the movement did not slow.
The main eye was ahead.
Aatrox's blade pierced the eye at the same time Kassadin's blade struck from below.
Gold erupted from Aatrox.
Purple erupted from Kassadin.
The two energies met inside the Watcher's head.
For a moment, the creature's entire body became transparent with power. Fuchsia veins, orange eyes, half-formed limbs, the damaged core, everything showed through its outer shell like a map of wounds.
"Keep it there!" Kassadin shouted. "Until it breaks completely!"
Aatrox drove the blade deeper.
The Watcher thrashed.
Voidborn rushed in from every direction.
Some attacked Kassadin, clawing at his armor, biting at the purple aura that spread around him. His suit flared, and a shield-like field formed close to his body. It was not enough to stop everything, but it kept him from being torn away. He held the blade with both hands, braced against the Watcher itself, armor sparking under the assault.
Aatrox defended what mattered.
The wings folded around Logan's head and upper torso, shielding him from the worst attacks. Spines struck the golden-pink feathers and broke. Claws scraped across the light and were cut apart by small bursts of crimson energy.
But the rest of Logan's body was exposed.
Voidborn stabbed into his thighs, his side, his lower back. Something hooked into his calf and pulled. Another creature drove a needle-like limb through his hip. The transformation sealed some wounds, ignored others, and failed to stop the pain entirely.
Logan clenched his teeth.
They had to hold.
The energy inside the Watcher began to collapse inward.
Not explode.
Implode.
The main eye cracked around both blades. The damaged vein beneath the core split open, releasing fuchsia light that twisted into the gold and purple energies. The Watcher's roar rose higher, then broke into layered vibrations that shook the Voidborn swarming around them.
Aatrox pushed.
Kassadin pushed.
Logan gave everything his body still had.
The implosion grew.
The Watcher's limbs folded toward its center, crushed by its own collapsing power. Its horns cracked. The orange eyes along them burst one by one. The severed arm failed to regenerate. The remaining one clawed at empty space, then bent backward as the core pulled it in.
The fuchsia Watcher's main eye completely shattered.
The implosion reached its center.
The transformation began to come apart.
Blood drifted from Logan's legs, his side, his shoulder, and the punctures across his lower back, dark red mixing with unstable threads of spiritual light. The Voidborn still clinging to him tore and stabbed, but he no longer had enough strength to shake them off.
Logan and Aatrox pushed with what little remained, refusing to let the blade slip even as the last shape of the transformation cracked around him.
Then the Watcher finally exploded.
...
The gravitational field behind Logan warped.
The blue Watcher's presence shifted somewhere beyond the glare.
Logan felt a pull.
A magnetic force catching him from behind, precise and sudden.
Light, pressure, and Void matter tore outward in all directions.
One last thought crossed Logan's mind as the blast swallowed everything.
"Damn, Aatrox, Rudolph was hard."
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