"Slow down..."
Caleb was trying to get her to slow down, but Kai'Sa's pace didn't decrease at all.
With that layer of living skin on her body, on top of such serious injuries, even though the restoration potion was healing her quickly, she was starving.
Creatures of the Void basically all inherited the Void's instinct to consume.
Kai'Sa, wearing Void skin, was no exception.
"What are you looking at? Move it!"
After brusquely shooing everyone away, Caleb quietly got himself another bowl of noodles.
Maybe other people got this too, when you watched someone eat like the food was unbelievably good, you started getting hungry yourself...
Like if you didn't take a bite too, you were somehow doing yourself dirty...
That was exactly why Caleb had gone back for another bowl.
His six-pack hadn't even been around that long, and if he kept eating like this, it was probably going to disappear.
"You full?"
Seeing that Kai'Sa still wasn't saying anything, Caleb decided to speak first.
It wasn't because he was some kind of social butterfly, it was just that this girl barely talked at all.
"Yeah." Kai'Sa nodded silently.
After waking up, she hadn't dared make any sudden moves, and the main reason was this man.
Not only was his body powerful, arcane power was surging through him.
Kai'Sa could tell that much.
So after waking, she had neither chosen to attack nor tried to flee.
Instead, she had quietly watched him manhandle a yordle from top to bottom.
What Caleb didn't know yet was that, in Kai'Sa's eyes... he was kind of strange.
"Where were you attacked? Give me a general area."
Caleb handed her a map almost without hesitation.
Kai'Sa getting attacked was a serious problem.
If even Kai'Sa could end up that badly wounded, then those areas were absolutely off-limits.
"Here."
Kai'Sa didn't waste words either. She directly marked out an area for him.
"Simon!"
Caleb called toward the front of the caravan almost immediately.
"Yeah!"
A bearded man hurried over to him.
He was a born-and-raised Zaunite, and it was only because the two cities were now equal that he had been able to rely on the skills he'd honed in back alleys and side streets to join this caravan.
There was a Piltovan advisor in the group, sure, but with Caleb backing him, Simon still had the final say on how the caravan moved as long as the disagreement wasn't too major.
And honestly, when it came to haggling or judging the value of goods, topsiders were good at that.
But when it came to predicting which road robbers were likely to use, that was still Zaunite work.
"Go around this area."
Of course Caleb wasn't about to explain what the Void was to Simon. When a caravan was out on the road, it couldn't afford to lose the drive that kept it moving forward.
And of course Simon would listen to the Governor. Without Caleb, could the people of Zaun have put together a caravan like this in the first place?
The topsiders looked down on them as nothing but gutter trash.
By then, being able to do backbreaking work in a Chem-Baron's factory for a few scraps of pay, enough to barely survive, would already count as a blessing.
Caleb turned back toward Kai'Sa. After Simon had gone far enough away, he asked softly, "Does anything feel wrong with your body?"
Kai'Sa looked at Caleb's face in the firelight and gently shook her head.
"Good."
Caleb nodded. It looked like he might've given her too much of the restoration potion.
Thinking about it that way, he felt like he'd taken a loss all over again.
"Here's your sleeping bag for tonight."
He had already prepared for that. Earlier, he had borrowed one from the caravan.
"You'll take watch with me, from two to four. Sleep whenever you want during the day."
Then, seeing how quiet Kai'Sa always was, he added, "That work for you?"
"It does." Kai'Sa still spoke very little and never wasted words.
"Good."
Caleb found a spot and hung Ziggs up in midair again so he wouldn't start stuffing things into his clothes.
Though even if Ziggs managed to run off, Caleb's speed and the bow in his hands weren't for show.
If it came to that, Ziggs might actually get hurt.
That night, before Caleb even woke up on his own, Kai'Sa patted him awake.
"It's almost two," Kai'Sa said softly.
Time had always been a blurry concept for Kai'Sa, but after joining the caravan, especially after seeing their timepiece, she had become ridiculously punctual.
"All right..." Caleb didn't complain. He just forced himself up out of the warm sleeping bag.
The temperature difference in the desert between day and night was brutal, so over his loose clothes, Caleb pulled on an extra outer layer.
Kai'Sa, on the other hand, wore her Void skin year-round.
So her expression didn't change at all.
Along the way, Kai'Sa had already gotten used to the way people looked at her.
And she understood it.
When she had first fallen into the Void, hadn't she also been just a little girl who knew nothing but how to cry?
By the campfire, after dismissing the people from the earlier watch, Caleb and Kai'Sa sat across from each other in silence.
Caleb felt a little awkward too, because he had always handled this shift alone before.
As the strongest fighter in the caravan, Caleb taking the most dangerous watch had always earned praise from everyone.
But now Kai'Sa was sitting in front of him, and the two of them just faced each other without a word. Caleb couldn't help wanting to find something to say.
In the end, it was Kai'Sa's quiet voice that broke the silence.
"They call you Governor?"
There was curiosity in those bright, clear eyes.
"Yeah." Caleb relaxed and just talked. "We came here from Zaun. We're doing business."
"Is the city... big?"
"It's big, yeah, though probably not bigger than the Void." Caleb thought for a moment before answering.
"The city's lively. You can walk along the stone streets of Piltover, or head into Zaun and try the street food."
He thought about it, then realized his vocabulary was kind of pitiful.
"If you get the chance, come visit Zaun sometime. Dinner's on me."
Kai'Sa gave him a rare smile and nodded.
She had been quietly sensing Caleb the whole time. When they first met, she had felt that he wasn't like Taliyah, that he carried a lot inside him.
But even in that short time, Kai'Sa could feel how much this caravan trusted him.
Almost the same way Taliyah's people trusted Taliyah.
"It sounds like a place full of life."
There was a little longing on Kai'Sa's face now too.
She came from a small village in Icathia. Back then, the little girl she used to be had thought that the mountain on the east side of the village and the river on the west side were the very edges of the world.
"Have you been to the Void?"
Seeing the sadness in Kai'Sa's face, Caleb tried to change the subject.
The moment the words left his mouth, he wanted to smack himself.
"Imagine a place where it is always night."
"And you refuse to give up hope for a dawn that will never come."
"I don't have to imagine it. I've been there."
Kai'Sa's words spilled out easily enough, and she didn't seem to care at all about the expression on Caleb's face that clearly said he knew he'd said the wrong thing.
She had spent too long in the Void, so long that even talking to people had become unfamiliar.
"So in the area you marked, there's Void activity?"
"Yes. The Xer'Sai and their queen, Rek'Sai, have dug a lot of tunnels there."
"Damn... so it's a whole underground nest, huh..."
Caleb sucked in a breath too.
"Then something's off." Caleb looked at the map. That area had originally been on their route, but only near the very edge of it.
"But where we are now is still pretty far from the Xer'Sai nest."
Caleb frowned out of habit and thought it over.
"How exactly did you travel that far and end up right on the caravan's path?"
Kai'Sa also stared blankly for a moment.
"Yeah... why did I suddenly end up somewhere so far away?"
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