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There is a loud echoing boom that sweeps through the city.
Ambessa follows it, almost on instinct. And amusement nearly forces a smile to her lips – Hextech weaponry in Piltover. How perfect. And an attack? This city would become a hornet's nest, ripe for the shaking. And their Undercity, the perfect target, sitting preen and pretty and weak, for an attack. Even if this is some random affair, these people have never seen war. They do not know how to gather their nerves - it'll run roughshod, even if it just grazes a civilian district.
What building was attacked? She surveys it, cut into the sky, taller than most of the civilian districts but not taller than the Hextech high rises.
It’s the council building.
Mel.
Elation runs cold in a second, and fear turns any amusement sour. Her daughter. Her daughter! Her daughter – she would be –
No. No. She wouldn’t. She takes the pain, wraps it into herself and lets it become determination.
“To me!” She tells her guard, and they follow. Citizens are rushing here and there, and she barks orders – get inside. Lock the doors. Let no one in, unless someone knows them. Unless you do.
It happens almost on autopilot. It’ll be good for later.
After she knows if Mel lives.
She takes the stairs up two at a time. She’s not the only one – enforcers begin crowding the passageways, trying to make their own way up. Well, tough. Ambessa got here first, and these men are weak. She barrels through their lily stomached shivering, and steps into the council room.
The windows are shattered. Was her daughter hurt in the explosion? In the shrapnel? Under the glass?
If she was killed, Ambessa is going to force these cities to burn themselves to the ground.
There is too much blasted dirt– she can’t see. There are figures in the dust, dark spots, and she follows – the first is a hatted and vested, and enforcer, the second is far too frazzled to be her girl, and the third –
She’s bent down, but on her own feet. She pulls her up – she wants to force her up, but she might be hurt. Might be injured. She doesn’t know, but she knows enough that her heart quickens, up from the deliberate slowness Ambessa had forced on herself. Mel still comes up easily, glides like she always does, like she was one part Noxian and one part swan. Her eyes are wide but with shock. Not pain.
“Are you alright?”
She nods. Once, twice. No neck injury then – she’d know better to move like that if she were. “I’m fine.”
Still dazed. But wearing off. She can see her come together, her lip hardening and her gaze settling. That means, very soon, it will be time for politics again, and for one crushing moment Ambessa cannot bear to let her go.
She pulls her face in closer, tucks her fingers under her chin, and for one moment Mel is her whole world. She studies the patterns in the freckles on her cheeks – the makeup, untouched. Good. She’d been protected. “You sure?” She whispers.
Her daughter nods, more firmly this time. Good. Good. She exhales, controlled – let no one else see. Least of all her daughter. There’s been enough belly-showing for tonight.
She turns back to her guards, lays out commands. Commands for medics, evacuations, rescue. Commands to secure the area. Her daughter slips in nearly imperceptibly, Piltover’s guards joining her men in taking care of this open wound. This attack.
It will be a good look, for Noxians to be so closely intertwined with Piltoverians in their time of crisis. This is generally the kind of thing that would occur to her daughter. But her attention seems to have narrowed to protection, to restoration, and Ambessa cannot fault those priorities, really, for all they will bite Mel back in the future.
She leaves her be. One eye on her, always. This was far too close – she will have to move faster. More carefully.
This cannot be allowed to happen again.