Blood and Ashes

A special surprise piece- to celebrate Arcane Season 2 delivering the best boy, we cooked up something special, with Warwick using his might to tear a bloody path through Zaun. Enjoy!

************

He remembered things, fleeting memories. He remembered a fire— an explosion. He remembered his own children, picked off one by one. He remembered a brother returned from the dead. But for all those flickering images, names and words wouldn't come to him. He had tried to recall them, but he was no longer that man, whoever he was. There was so much he didn't know anymore, so much that pained him to even try and think about or try to remember. Instead, he turned his mind towards what he did know.

He knew hunger and rage; those two he knew intimately. He had run through the streets so many times to sate his bloodlust, but in doing so, he came to know other things— the thrill of the hunt, for one, and a sense of righteousness. He could smell the corruption running through the streets of Zaun, and he could tell what quarry was all worth his time— they would be the most vile and brutal people in the city. He could not remember the man's name, but he knew what he was now— he was Warwick. But there was one other thing he had come to know— the expanding bounds of his own strength. 

Shimmer, in all its horrible glory, flowed through his veins, but there were a dozen other chemicals penetrating his mind and fueling his body. He had grown into a monster without compare; a behemoth of a beast. His gray-blue fur was stretched to cover his tank-like body brimming with bestial strength. His arms had expanded into monumental battering rams, gigantic cannons of boulder-like biceps and triceps solid as anvils. His legs would shame steel pylons with their width and density, holding up a sculpted torso that looked as impressive as any piece of geography across Runeterra, his chest jutting out like a shield wall and stone-like abs tightly packed, buttressed by his heaving lats.

It was a monument to the unnatural alchemy of his creator, but Warwick was rarely standing still long enough for anyone to drink in the sight of his awesome physique. He was almost always on the move, his battering-ram arms able to punch through brick walls, powerful, bristling legs that could propel him across chasms, and dagger-like claws puncturing throw Enforcer armor and the augmentations of any chem baron's goons. 

Zaun had fallen even further into chaos, and while some small part of him mourned for that, the rest of him had grown to love Zaun like this— it was a smog-choked, savage jungle, just as wild and lawless as any piece of far-off wilderness, and he could thrive in an environment like this. Warwick would hardly be running out of scum and villains to hunt down and punish, and with things the way they are, he was only going to grow stronger. He may never be able to find out who he used to be, but the rest of his story could still be written in the blood of his enemies.