Once they were back in a safe spot and Zihark had confirmed there were no monsters anywhere in the tunnel, he pulled Kai'Sa in front of him.
"What's wrong?"
"My hand hurts."
"Just your hand?"
"Waaah... I feel awful inside..."
Sadness washed over her face in an instant.
She knew she was not supposed to indulge feelings like this in a place like this. She knew she had to hold it in. But she was still just a child. How strong could a child really be?
She trusted Zihark. That was why she let herself show this weak side only in front of him.
"Don't cry. If you cry, I'll want to cry too." Zihark put on a fake sobbing voice of his own, just to make her feel a little better.
Then he waited quietly for her to say the rest.
Kai'Sa was not the sort to hide things from him. She had been waiting all along. The moment he asked what was bothering her, she was ready to spill everything.
"My hand looks so scary now, and it hurts like it's being scraped over by a cat's tongue full of tiny needles." Kai'Sa clenched her fist. The pain was not unbearable, but it was always there, sharp and unmistakable, never fading.
"I can ease the pain, but you have to get used to it. Strength always comes at a price. Pain is proof you're alive. It means you can still feel good things too." Zihark's gaze brushed over her arm, and the living armor quieted down.
"When I touch things, it doesn't feel the same anymore. My hand... it feels like it's become nothing but a weapon for killing." Furious, Kai'Sa threw a punch. Stone chips flew from the wall, and a clear dent was left behind.
She was only ten years old.
Zihark let out a soft sigh and pried open her clenched fist. Then he laced his fingers through hers, reminding her what hands had once been for.
Holding the dejected girl in his arms, he whispered into her ear, "I can hear the shell whispering in my mind. It talks to me while it grows, trying to spread over my whole body."
"That's insane! You'll go mad!"
Kai'Sa's attention snapped at once to his eyes.
She stared into the abyss, and the abyss gave her a playful wink.
"I won't go mad, because I'm not alone."
Her monstrous claw tightened in his grasp, and Kai'Sa suddenly realized this skin could feel more than pain.
All the good things were still there. An ugly outer shell could not keep them out.
What shut beauty out in the end was not skin, but a heart frozen by despair.
Nothing more needed to be said. She clung tightly to Zihark, greedily stealing whatever warmth she could from his body.
The Void had become a shadow they could never shake, but looked at another way, that only meant they would never truly be alone.
The cramped darkness pressed them close together, and the bitter cold forced them to huddle against each other, but as long as they had one another, it felt like there was nothing they could not endure.
Was that really true?
The Void was far more terrible than anything they had faced so far.
Whether that fragile faith could survive harsher trials remained to be seen.
"Are you hungry?"
After talking Kai'Sa through her feelings, Zihark took the cloth bag off his shoulder.
He pulled out the rest of their dried meat and the water pouch, one thing after another. Kai'Sa only shook her head.
"I'm not hungry."
"Really? Don't lie to me."
"I'm not lying. You can spank me if I am."
Hearing her say that, Zihark gave a dry laugh, wondering whether she had started to think he had some special fixation with spanking.
"Then just treat it like a snack."
"I don't want it. It's not even good. It's dry and hard. And if I eat it, I'll want to poop..."
Kai'Sa's face suddenly turned bright red.
She was no spoiled little princess who acted disgusted by bodily functions. Back home, she had been punished for misbehaving often enough, usually by being made to clean the sheep pen, so she was not especially squeamish about that sort of thing.
But still.
Still...
There was absolutely no way she could accept doing something like that in front of Zihark.
Just the thought of it made her want to bang her head against a wall.
And there was not even any grass paper down here, so how was she supposed to clean up afterward?
After thinking it over from every angle, Kai'Sa decided she simply would not eat. No food, no problem.
"Ohh, so that's what you're worried about."
A teasing smile spread across Zihark's face, earning him a glare in return.
In his mind, though, he could only think that little girls really did spend all day worrying about the strangest details.
After forming a symbiotic bond with the Void living armor, the host and the armor did not actually share a digestive system. Their digestion remained completely separate.
Take a piece of meat, for example. If the host ate it, the digestive system would break it down into nutrients and waste. The body would absorb the nutrients, and the waste would be excreted. The conversion rate, however, was not especially efficient.
But if the same piece of meat was fed to the living armor, it would be broken down completely and rebuilt into the nutrients and energy needed for growth.
No waste was produced anywhere in that process. Total conversion. Nothing wasted at all.
That was why Void creatures did not need to breathe or excrete. Even if you threw those things into space, those monstrosities that defied all common sense would go on living just fine.
Zihark had never heard of a Void creature dying of old age. Their ability to absorb and convert matter perfectly was the foundation of their rapid growth and evolution. It was also the basis of their immortality.
The forms that normal life needed hundreds of millions of years of natural selection to develop could be achieved by them in a few years, or even a few minutes.
Give them enough outside pressure and enough nourishment, and they would evolve all kinds of grotesque shapes and functions for the sole purpose of devouring more, crushing everything in their path.
At the heart of all of it was that bottomless hunger.
Hunger was the primal force that drove the Void.
They were a catastrophe of hunger made flesh, and their existence would devastate Runeterra's natural ecology. That was why the native life of this world hated the Void so deeply.
That said, once the living armor entered a symbiotic state, it could no longer live only to satisfy its own appetite.
If the host died, it would lose its vitality as well.
To keep the host alive and healthy, it would return part of the nutrients it gained from what it consumed whenever the host needed them, enough to support growth and daily activity.
It was a symbiotic bond where both rose and fell together. If the host refused to feed it, it would in turn start feeding on the host's own body.
That was how Kai'Sa had survived underground for ten long years without food or water.
As long as she kept killing and feeding hearts to the Void living armor, that layer of skin could sustain her for a very long time down here.
And the reason Zihark had chosen to turn himself into a monster was precisely because he wanted the living armor to take over the role of his digestive system and keep him alive.
Of course, that did not mean the body's own organs would become useless just because the living armor was more efficient.
They were still maintained properly and would not waste away from disuse. If the time came when they were needed, they could still do exactly what they were meant to do.
After all, some parts simply could not be replaced by the armor.
Since Kai'Sa refused to eat, Zihark took a swig of water and started chewing on the jerky himself.
"Chew chew chew..."
In just a few days, he had almost forgotten what meat tasted like. The moment he thought about the next several years without seeing so much as a scrap of it, the tough, dry jerky in his hand suddenly tasted unbelievably good.
He had not understood it before. Back then, after a stomach illness had cost him the chance to enjoy a lot of good food, he had once prayed to God for an iron stomach that would never fail him.
That was when he first understood what it meant to say that being able to eat was a blessing.
And in a place where even wanting to eat did not mean food would exist, that understanding only ran deeper.
Watching him chew with such enjoyment, Kai'Sa could not help asking for a piece to try.
But after only a few bites, she scrunched up her face.
"Ugh, it's still so salty!"
"Hah. You're young. Give it a few more days. Once you start craving the taste of salt, the only place you'll find it is by licking the sweat off your own skin."
[End of chapter]