The man was still speaking, Lux noticed dully. The manacles clapped around her wrists burned as the petricite within them suppressed her light. She hung her head dejectedly as the man gave his speech of vengeance and hate. This wasn’t supposed to have happened. The mage seekers were supposed to have been dismantled, but it didn’t seem so. They hadn’t been a large force, but their deal with some rogue Noxians had turned them into a force to be feared, at least by a town as small and ill-defended as Terbisia.
The Noxian siege engines had made short work of the few defences Terbisia had, and the petricite bombs had reduced the mages to little more than a useless rabble of ill-trained civilians. So now, Lux was chained by the wrists to the ground awaiting her execution.
The man seemed to have finished his speech as he turned and slammed a hard fist into Lux’s stomach. Lux coughed harshly as the petricite dust aggravated her lungs as she gasped from the blow to her stomach. She fell to her knees, her eyes watering. She could still hear the mageseekers' siege engines as they chewed through the few walls Terbisia had managed to erect when they heard that the force of rogue mageseekers was heading for them.
She gagged as she tried to force words through her wrecked throat. Looking around she saw the captive mages of Terbisia, held in waiting as their leader, Lux, was executed. The head mageseeker laughed harshly. “This is your leader!” he crowed, turning out to face the heartbroken faces of Terbisia’s remaining forces. Lux only had two hopes, the first was that after her death the people under her command would be shown mercy. The second was what she was trying to ask.
She gathered her breath in her lungs, ignoring the aching pain in her stomach and chest. “My wife… Is my wife alive?” She gasped, the pain in her body nothing compared to the pain in her heart at the idea that these monsters who attacked her town had killed her wife while she had been away. “Hah!” The mageseeker laughed, the sounds from the siege engines seeming to grow closer and louder as he gloated. “Why would we have bothered to deal with that scum. There is nothing she could do that would be relevant.” The noise from the siege engines stopped all at once as a sound like thunder clapping echoed through the ears of everyone present.
Lux began to laugh, her guts aching even as it happened. She tilted her head back and laughed, and slowly, the previously disheartened people of Terbisia joined. As the sound of thunder got closer and closer. “What!? Why are you laughing, you monster! Lavios, where are the reinforcements!?” The mageseeker bellowed as another sound echoed past the thundering booms. The sound of raucous, high pitched laughter. And a machine like whirring and flickering. As, in a plume of dust and violence, the mad bomber of Zaun exploded into what was supposed to be an execution square.
All of a sudden the people of Terbisia were fighting again. Their jailors went down in hails of gunfire from the huge minigun the cackling bomber wielded as though it weighed nothing. The head mageseeker who had been beating Lux was not spared the damage as a series of bullets chewed through the armour of his legs bringing him crashing to the ground. All the while Lux laughed, her relief and joy mixing into some heady rush that thundered her blood in her ears.
Jinx jumped again, propelled by another chomper that decimated an arriving squad of Mageseekers, landing next to Lux and moving quickly to break her chains. “Heya Blondie, sorry I’m late. I had to see a thing about a guy.” Jinx turned slightly, throwing Lux’s staff from its position by her waist into Lux’s waiting hands. Lux felt herself breathe a sigh of relief as light flooded her again. A brief thought and her would be executioner’s curse was cut off as a beam of searing light decapitated him.
“I’m just glad to see you, my love.” Lux said, leaning forward to press a kiss to her wife’s bloodstained cheek. “Now, shall we clear these animals from our town.” Jinx grinned revealing sharp teeth. “Awww a date with my wifey? Of course.” The laughter started again, as the wives leapt into the fray, twin mad grins on their faces as they defended their home. Lux glanced over her shoulder, sending a wall of light to block a crossbow bolt that was shooting for Jinx’s exposed midriff, the bluenette sent her a wink of thanks that made Lux blush. As Jinx swept another fusillade of fire over a mageseeker who had been trying to sneak up behind Lux.
There would be a time for grief soon, when the dust settled and the two governesses of Terbisia had to reckon with the dead of their town. Time when tears would be shed and the wives would hold each other through the difficult times. Through the grief and the guilt and the healing. But for now, they had been attacked, and they would avenge themselves upon those foolish enough to dare to do so. They would teach any who watched that Terbisia was a shelter for mages that was no longer defended by anonymity, but by wrath and light and mad mad laughter.