MUSE

MUSE

The Visceral

From the very moment of her mother’s untimely suicide, Muse had been haunted by a shadow that lurked in her peripheral, always breathing down the back of her neck. Born to the Temple of Koyehn’s former mistress and an art critic from Demacia who spent the majority of her youth travelling Runeterra in favour of searching for the finest art pieces the world had to offer, Muse had only ever known the tranquil life of sea shores and boundless creativity. Her upbringing was one of luxury, despite her father’s absence, and relied heavily on her mother’s guidance. Her mother, a master artisan and beautiful geisha, encouraged her daughter to carve her own path, and when following in her footsteps was the one she chose, there was no time at all wasted in teaching her the fine arts of performing.With her mother’s high standing within the Temple, she was treated with the same manner of respect, although there were tensions surrounding the matter of succession and whom the Temple should pass to. Muse grew up alongside Hwei, the prodigal son that was hailed within the Temple for his magical proficiency. They would spend their youth close together, a bond that bordered on siblingship, and soon the templefolk became fond of their charming dynamic: the young painter and his sister-like muse.The day her mother died was when plans that had been long since plotted were sprung into motion. With the matter of inheritance up in the air, leaving the only daughter mourning and mad, the old Masters took the circumstances sprung onto the Temple into their own hands and named Hwei successor, as he had been in secret since the day he was born, a private resolution intentionally kept from the former Temple mistress.Heartbroken by not being able to carry out her mother’s legacy in her memory, Muse grew bitter, envious of Hwei and suddenly every creeping inkling of jealousy culminated like a festering wound, staining her view of him. It became clear in one single moment that she had never been valued in the same ways that Hwei had, and where the Temple raised him up in honour of his capabilities, she was only ever seen as an apparatus made to inspire, never create. Unaware of Hwei’s own turmoil, she ultimately decided that it was he who was the cause of her suffering, and a rift split down the middle of them like a tear in the page.Over the years, things began to change, heralded by the prompt return of Muse’s father post his wife’s demise. There was an unfamiliarity between the two of them as a result of his leave that served to blur the concept of family; to Muse, this was simply the man who helped create her, and to her father, she was the spitting image of the woman he took to wife.There was a role to be filled where her mother once stood, for both the pleasure of her father and the enjoyment of the Masters. She was forced to put down the brush, abandon her ideas, and neglect all personal expression in favour of donning a performative front— ethereal, inspiring, desirable. Perfect.All that was needed of her was her face, and the rest could go ignored, shoved into the corner when her usefulness to a piece was depleted. She was given no reprieve from the relentless ordeal of appearing flawless, and her autonomy rapidly slipped through her fingers, considered only as a concept and a fantasy— especially that of her twisted father. The muse was made to be seen and not heard, docile and giving, but exotic so as to excite, all the while the anger that churned deep within her ensured that the shadow she had first seen lurking over her mother’s corpse was never far behind.It was when Hwei grew close with a visitor to the Temple that things took a turn for the worse; she was wracked by night terrors that began to wake the entire Temple, with it usually being Hwei, despite her contempt toward him, who would selflessly cradle her as she pointed to nothing but thin air in the corner, mumbling, ‘demon, demon, demon’.The visitor— Khada Jhin— seemed to be unsettled by her claims, believing her distress to be some kind of foresight to his grand plans for Koyehn, and so made to acquaint himself with the girl, sleuthing around for what she knew.What little time Jhin spent with Muse over Hwei was utterly precious to her. For once, she was treated not as something to be desired or sought after, but engaged in intellectual conversation. Jhin saw Muse as a person, not an object. Her loathing toward Hwei surged significantly when it became clear that Jhin was far more interested in his craft than her, and because of this, her temper began to fluctuate.During a heated argument with her father one night, Muse’s resolve broke, and in a desperate frenzy murdered her father in cold blood. Guilty and dazed, she was found by Jhin, who aided her in the disposal of her father’s corpse, and yet again whispered words of praise and encouragement that had her already confused head spinning into depravity— but it also kept the shadow at bay.The shadow— the one she had named ‘demon’— would appear at a distance now, watching from a treeline or peering through the window, and for a time, she felt better, even taking it upon herself to reconcile and confess her transgressions to Hwei.Believing her childhood companion to be faithful, trusting him, weeks after her father’s disappearance, she confessed to the killing. Her heart bared to him and all inhibitions erased, she spilled every single truth she had kept hidden for she believed it might relieve her cursed anger and get the demon off her back.She was wrong.Three days later, Hwei told the Masters what she had done.Upon confrontation before the people of the Temple she begged and pleaded with them to have mercy, to no avail. Horrified by Hwei’s betrayal, every ounce of anger that had been building up til now came rising like flames in an explosive episode of rage and an urge to evoke sorrow.Lashing out and screaming, she permeated the temple with a dark, perturbing energy that would have spirits shrivelling. She drew the hairpin from her bun, curtained by tresses of silken black, and attempted to kill the one she had for so many years known as her only friend. Manipulated by Hwei’s magic, her anger involuntarily mellowed into misery, and in response she pointed the hairpin at herself instead. Having no other choice, the Masters restrained her and made haste to banish her there and then, and so with her exorcised this evil cloud she wrought. A difficult decision, the lesser of two evils, they saw what others did not: the summoning of a great terror that by removing her, the Temple would remain safe.Alone, bleeding and utterly overcome by rage, she crawled her way to her mother’s shrine, where she lay against and cried. As if responding to her call, from the deep of the night came the unearthly figure of a hulking canine, unruly and wild. It moved like any other feral animal, except it was wrong.In that moment she knew, as if she had always known it, that this was no ordinary beast. It had begun as a shadow and grew stronger til it had appeared in her room, ate at her emotions and turned as monstrous as she herself felt. The shadowy visage of her own making, her not-quite demon, and like her, it could not yet surpass its more powerful siblings. Such is the manner of an Azakana.The creature lurched toward her and under the candlelight of the shrine she could see its gaping maw dripping with starved hatred, flesh in between its jagged teeth. Eyes like fire burned into her through the black mass of matted hair. It was like looking into the mirror of her soul.A low gurgle emitted from its throat, followed by a voice— her mother’s voice. The final piece to break her back and let the rage flow freely to feast upon.The conflict that ensued was brutal. The Azakana lunged at her jaws first with the intent to swallow her whole, and with every bit of might and sheer spite she had left in her, she bit back.She choked on oily strands of the Azakana’s hair and in return it grew sick with its cheeks full of her flesh. The two of them ate one another, merging as one, with the Azakana not quite managing to corrupt her iron will to overcome, and her being permanently changed by the ordeal. An internal battle for dominance began, one which resulted in her beauty having been tainted and transformed into the evil that had been instilled within her over the course of her life.The merge had left her famished, hungry for something she couldn’t describe, and so she made her way back to the Temple’s gates only to find it burning. The smell of corpses filled her nostrils and the sight of the flames felt like home. It was home.Beneath it all there was anguish. Anguish over everybody she ever knew having been lost, turned to ashes in the inferno’s wake, it was the lone shred of her humanity that enabled her control over the sickening fury. She gripped her head and struggled with the pain of two opposing forces continuously swallowing the other in an eternal ouroboros. Refusing to give in, she curled up and chose instead to starve the beast, even if it meant her own demise.If it wasn’t for the masked man who found her at the foot of that gate, thin and dying, she would have perished.Deciding that she did indeed have a part to play in this scheme, he returned with her back to Ionia, all the way through the region to the Kashuri armouries, where he presented her sickly form clinging to life as an opportunity for his investor.She was restrained, held in stasis to prolong the purgatory her physical body was stuck in, and brought back to life only for the curious intricacies of her situation. The woman arrayed in gold with her many hands studied her closely, and having heard tales from overseas about contending arms imbued with chemical substances, she experimented with fashioning the almost-demon’s blood into strings that she used to bind together all sorts of mechanisms; a new exploratory array of demonic weaponry.It was by Khada Jhin’s request that Muse remain at his side. The Maker, pleased with the outcome of her newest venture and with all her magical knowledge and talents, concocted a tonic that would suppress the Azakana threatening to eat her weakened husk from the inside out. The tonic would stabilize her but it would not leave her unchanged. She was able to feel human even if she did not look like one, and this only deepened her agony.Though intended to be the hostage pawn whose debut was meant to shatter the last remnants of Hwei’s resolve, over time, Muse grew fond of her captor— or as she saw him, her saviour. To endure his torment was worth the affection he dangled in front of her, to which she would so readily bite and rip at with monstrous adoration. As time passes and she forgets her true name, the man pulling the strings fills her head with lies and trickery, encouraging her to reclaim the title that she has forever been bound to, unaware that this is not freedom: it is deceit, and what she believes to be her cathartic crusade to take her life back into her own hands and make her own way is merely the masterfully crafted tragedy she is doomed to repeat.

There is a Demon at Koyehn

By Khada Jade

There is a demon at Koyehn, and it’s not the one you think.We stand in a line from loved ones to stranger. From those who call Koyehn home to those who we call visitor. From the undeniable worst to the very best. They light the lantern in my father’s memory and I watch it drift into the sky, black and starless and all I can think is how badly I wish for it to swallow me whole.They never found my father’s body. They never disclosed how he met his end. I should be grateful, for all the fights and tears are over now, but there’s this big hole in my chest that he took before he drew his final breath. I wonder where he wanders now, beyond the veil in the spirit realm, if he’ll find that fox mother used to tell me stories of when she was still alive. How terrible of me to think it, but I’d prefer him to meet his fate stuffed in a lantern for all eternity, where he’ll never be saved. Either way, I am envious of him. He gets to float into the sky and I must remain tethered to the earth with my heavy guilt weighing me down. No, they never found my father’s body. I made sure of it. We did, I and the only other person in this line that knows what I did.I am bitter even now after it all. I should’ve known it’d never go away, even after the blood. I felt many emotions when I killed him, but I only remember the sensation of one clearly now even as I watch the lantern disappear into the night.Rage.I don’t move when the rest of the templefolk depart. I stay and I watch the dark sky. I feel as though I am bound by my obligations still to perform, even when he’s not around to control me. I dread walking back through the halls and past the room I split him open in. I fear the aching silence when I wash away my face. I am scared, but never of what I’ll see when I lay in my bed and stare at the corner— and I know this for certain, it is too familiar now; I know it will come.It’s here with me now and I refuse to look at it. It’s right behind me and I can feel it breathe down my neck, taunting me. It wants something from me, has always wanted something from me, and yet I do not know what. It never speaks, and yet I feel what it feels. If I close my eyes perhaps it will go away. A fool’s hope. It never leaves.“You’re crying.” I hear Hwei’s voice as he wipes away an escaping tear. His touch lingers for a moment, burning me with his golden affection, and then it falls from my cheek. “We’re going back now.”I give up on my subconscious attempt to dissolve into starlight and cast a glance to my left where Hwei hovers with concern. I look at the man behind him and he looks at me. There is the slightest crinkle to his carmine eye; a knowing smirk, audacious and unabashed. It’s the look you give somebody when you know what they’ve done. The look you give an accomplice.But Khada Jhin wasn’t my accomplice and I wasn’t his. I killed my father, it was my hands stained with his blood. It was pure happenstance that he had found me in the wash of moonlight, and for once it wasn’t my anger that stalked me through the hall.I couldn’t tell whether he was a saviour or a villain at that very moment. He did not condemn me, instead he applauded— my guilty weeping and dishevelled appearance was a show of truth he did so adore.He took my shaking hands and bestowed a sense of numb calm that felt foreign to me. He told me that a first kill is orgasmic. He kissed my bloody palm as I cried and told me that I was an artist.Imagine that: a life of being the muse. The porcelain doll for eyes to feast on, old hands to touch and limbs to guide for the painter to distort. I had learnt to be the perfect artisan to my craft, and yet all that was needed of me was my face. The prospect of being seen as something beyond that was exhilarating.He told me that I had committed no crime so it must be true. So why do I still feel angry?Guilt controls me now as I sit on the bedside. I am angry at its presence just as I am angry about everything else. I don’t look the part; I am small, meek. Who would look at me and think of wrath?It does. It knows. From its corner it waits, for what, I don’t know. I risk the crane of my head to look.We lock gazes, this shadow and I. I suddenly feel bare; naked of all my transgressions and hate.“Do you feel it too?” I whisper.I wait for an answer but it does not come that night, nor the next, or the one after that. Only after my home, my family, turns against me do I hear it reply, and it does so with tooth and claw. Standing in the centre of a room full of people who never truly loved me, overcome with the hot rush in my ears dampening their harsh words, I draw blood.My mother’s shrine by the shore is where I choose to die. To be close to her in death is all I can hope for now. I hold my neck while it is wet with blood and I swallow the very same taste of iron.I’m not sure why I did this to myself. It hurt, and I was already hurt, but more than that, it felt like punishment. The back of my father’s hand when I refused to let him hold me couldn’t be enough. The banishment from a dozen shrivelled men who would never know what it is like to be me couldn’t compare. The only valid contender was the look my brother, my only brother, gave me when he realised that he had failed to protect me, blaming himself like a gods damned saint. But unlike them, he did not find it in himself to forgive me for what I’d done. He left me to be damned. Unsaved. For my rage alone, I was unforgivable. How lucky he was to not have to feel as such, how lucky he was to be owed leniency for a title stolen from me even when he was at fault. Hwei was everything I wanted to be and I hated him for it.So I scream. I render my bloody throat raw and spit flecks of red over the tiles of the shrine floor. I scratch at the stone til my nails match the blotted array of my pierced throat, my hair falls in tangled ribbons and I shake, I shake with every ounce of rage threatening to rip me in two.I hear it then— the woeful voice cutting through the darkness. It’s mother; my sweet, soft, rotting mother. Her voice calls to me through the gloom and approaches like a hulking shade. Through the sea mists treads a creature that puts the fear of the gods in me, one that I have known all my life.Mama, I try to speak, but the wind in my throat has been whisked away, drowned by the open viscera in my gullet. Mama, mama.My mother does not come to me. She does not raise from the dead to hold me, to tell me that it is alright. Instead, I am greeted with a jagged row of teeth dripping with a jeering, gritted sneer. The beast parts its maw and mother’s voice comes out, and in that moment I am struck down with truths I cannot bear to handle.I see my mother’s eyes on this emaciated creature. All the things I had been told slip through my fingers in favour of one terrible fact: You ate her. You took her away from me. You’re the reason I’m broken. You’re the reason I’m impure.It’s wretched and hollow, the hole torn into my stomach, the one that encourages bile to rise up my throat and makes me twitch like a madman. My efforts are then rejuvenated, and I am well aware of the way that I look— shredded dignity and filthiness. I am the very face of visceral rage and I am filled with unimaginable malice.You want to eat me too, don’t you? You always have.As if hearing my thoughts it drags its pus-filled paw against the stone, straining its back with sickening clicks to lower into a pounce. I wobble to my feet, bleeding like a martyr. We ready ourselves for the throwing of flesh on flesh, the basest and most primal of dances. I have honed my craft; I wondered if it had practiced theirs.Try.Black engulfs me. I taste the salt of thick, coarse hairs down my throat. I feel my ribcage ripped apart. I am eaten as I swallow it back. The pain is excruciating, I am sick with it in my stomach and it is sick with me in theirs. We eat til there is nothing left of either of us but a body, skeletal and slick, eyes black like coals and mouth wide open. My jaw aches and my cheeks split, and the turning in my stomach only ceases when I steel myself to keep it down.Everything is still then. My tongues lap pathetically at my own spilled blood on the floor. I am hungry, so hungry, and the wafting scent of burnt flesh does nothing to stifle the vile drool I secrete. Lifting my head, I look toward the skyline above the treetops; bright orange against that very same starless night I once dreamt of fleeing to.There’s a fire.Hwei.────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────Four beats on Whisper’s surface. The timely tap of brass claw against the temple steps beneath the archway. Jhin could feel the blaze even here across the bridge, and the flames were sure to lick the beams soon, but he could spare a moment.He’s oh so curious about this discovery. Look at her; folded in on herself and wrapped in a cocoon of black hair. She must’ve hauled herself all the way over here, poor thing. He can hear her laboured breaths and wheezes and the way her chest expands has managed to enrapture him.He kneels and goes to lift a lock of hair from her face when it suddenly springs to life and coils around his wrist, constructing like a snake.He blinks behind the mask. She doesn’t know who he is yet. Despite this, she still pleads with wide eyes. A smile spreads across his lips.“Look at you.” He says with all the morbid fascination of an onlooker at a freakshow. “Marvellous thing.”With an artistic eye he drinks her in, terrible, ugly monster of her own making. Beautiful and unashamed. It’s a good look on her, he thinks.What a brilliant plot device. He thinks he’ll keep her.

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