As Viktor stands before the Hexcore late at night once again, fiddling with a syringe full of shimmer in his hand, he hesitates to continue. Heimerdinger is old, ancient by some definitions, so heeding the yordle’s words seems obvious. Heimerdinger was wrong though, quite frequently in fact. Almost a decade ago the dean of the academy had nearly wiped Piltover’s hands completely clean of Hextech. It was only because of Viktor’s less-than-legal interference that Piltover established the Hexgates and became the global trade hub it is today. In the morning, Jayce had relayed Heimerdinger’s words during the council meeting, and, despite the professor’s rather poor track record in regards to Hextech, the claims his mentor made gave him pause


    The Hexcore was different, nigh unrecognizable after just a day without Viktor’s supervision. Its blue aura had entirely shifted to a golden, sickly hue. The rune matrix orbiting the core mechanism was no longer two dozen spinning plates, but four, metallic, jittery surfaces with silver and yellow lines covering each. At the center–where the gold symbol was when he passed out–rested a fleshy blob with three, sickle-like legs extended outward like arrows, connected to the main body by thick, black wires. A metal framework topped the central mass with small cylinders sticking out at odd angles, looking vaguely like a kind of muted, grafted hardhat.


    Viktor remembers what the Hexcore did to the plants. He also doesn’t want his molecules to end up transmuted like his lab’s air. Singed assured him the variant shimmer could allow him to survive a violent transformation, so he would literally be trusting his oldest friend with his life. Singed, as far as Viktor knew, had no reason to deceive his former pupil, and if Viktor didn’t try this, he would certainly die within months.


    Viktor looked past the syringe to his chaotic desk, flooded with notes and theories. Hextech filters, ventilation, more efficient Hexgates among countless other ideas. Oh ideas… He has so many ideas… so many plans… if he could live even half as long as Heimerdinger, he could do so much good!


    Viktor drew the short end of the straw at birth. A poor cripple from the undercity… it was luck and copious amounts of skill and grit that brought him this far. He wouldn’t fall before reaching the finish. He can’t let it all be for nothing. There are people that help now. They can’t wait, so neither can he.


    Without another thought, Viktor stabs the shimmer into his crippled leg, watching his veins bulge with a vibrant, inhuman purple. The braces he placed around his leg to guide the transformation light up with the same sickly gold as the core.


    Willed by his actions, the matrix spun to point one of the four symbols at him. This one was a hexagon inside two ovals, giving the depiction of–he assumed–an orbit, with both ovals being contained by a final outer circle. As the symbol shined on his leg, Viktor heard a meaty squelch and a snap, his leg twisting painfully in order to point straight forward. The shimmer made the pain of the Hexcore’s manipulations just barely tolerable, keeping him teetering on the edge of unbearable agony as the Hexcore and shimmer broke and remolded his fragile body.


    The matrix spun again, illuminating a second, different symbol. Again, a hexagon sat at the center, but with a perfect wheel surrounding it. The wheel was split into eight segments, the boxes separated evenly by straight lines. As the transformation continued, the segments along the wheel would light up in seemingly random configurations. Viktor’s skin began to peel away slowly, revealing the bloody, bulging shimmered muscles underneath. Viktor’s eyes widen, purple tears flowing down his cheeks as metal shards erupt from between his muscle fibers. He screams, but the pain overwhelms him, cutting his cries short as he faints into his chair.Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.


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    The next time Viktor wakes up, his head throbs painfully. An agonizing migraine is hindering his mental faculties, leaving him doubled over in his chair. Without thinking, he pushes himself to his feet, clutching the sides of his desk. His unsteady hands slip on the countless papers, sending a pile of his notes scattering into the air. As he drops, time seems to slow. Viktor’s eyes catch the reflexive motion of his right leg as it shoots out to catch his fall. So much faster than anything he’s seen–let alone from his own body. What’s become of the disabled limb is… otherwordly.


    His ‘skin’ has been… destroyed. Discolored and patchworked with steel staples haphazardly tacked on, barely covering the cold face of rusted metal and poorly painted, faded yellow lines. The metallic plates, looking unreasonably aged and dilapidated, cover the insides of his entire leg and foot like a sick mockery of knightly armor, worn below the skin rather than above. The transformed pieces end just below Viktor’s hip. There, a thick metal clamp divides his humanity from the abomination below.


    The plating only covers beneath the front of his leg, leaving a jungle of twisting wires, and, more concerningly, bones and pulsating purple flesh exposed in the back and sides, visible between the numerous rips and loose stitches. From the look of the muscles inside his new leg, the shimmer, human, and Hexcore all fused to form a revolting amalgamation of magic, flesh, and metal. Despite it all, though, it feels better than the rest of his body; Like he just took off a cast he’s had since birth. Viktor reasons if he saw the inside of his normal body he’d be disgusted all the same, so best not to think too much about the interior of his leg. He can’t reconcile the exterior, though. No amount of logic could overwhelm the instinctual aversion his humanity gives him to .


    Viktor gingerly places his right foot back to the ground with a metallic thunk; An odd sound considering the spongey, dead skin around his sole. From that step, he can tell the leg is much heavier than its human counterpart. Despite that, it feels much more powerful and nearly weightless, like he could break through the tile to the vents underneath if he stomped hard enough.


    Viktor could feel his heart beating faster as he considered the transformation and its worrisome, though exciting ramifications. It looks so much cleaner than he was anticipating–after all, he half expected to lose his leg altogether–though still atrociously off-putting and obviously inhuman to any onlooker. He’d need to hide it when going out… but should he show Jayce? Most likely his lab partner would be squeamish, being from Piltover and unused to such sights, Viktor doubted he would take it very well. Perhaps doing some tests, obtaining some experimental data, and then presenting it to Jayce as proof of his success would allow logic to quickly overtake whatever reflexive, emotional response the counselor might react with.


    Viktor activates the wall lights, ready to analyze his new leg more thoroughly. The lab brightens immediately as though the sun has suddenly risen. The darkness of the lab typically helped him “get in the zone,” so to speak, and the glow of the Hexcore would often be sufficient to–


    The scientist pauses and stares at the desk he’d worked in for hundreds of hours. Above the carpet of scrawled notes and speculations: four, rusty metal plates levitate motionlessly in the air. From inside his most promising creation, peeking between the narrow gaps of the plates, a lurid, golden eye bore into his soul.