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Humans died. It was a fact of life. It was the only thing that bound them together. The well-fed and the soft, who lay awake at night fearing the things they could not ken. The sunbaked beggars on the streets, those who others would prefer were not human at all, so they could pretend that they had nothing in common.
The gods of death collected them all, shepherding them across the river and into the dark.
Evelynn did not take her responsibilities very seriously. She lapsed in judgement and in duty, preferring to spend her time among the humans and tricking them into games and ploys to deliver their souls into her hands. Sometimes a literal gamble. Your life for a game of chance. Or sometimes it was a measure of talent. Sing a song powerful enough, play your instrument well enough, write a poem beautiful enough, and maybe she would spare you.
She did not; she never did. Even if her partner often reminded her that the grapes harvested later in the season were all the sweeter for it, she tore them ruthlessly as babes and as children and anything else she could get her hands on. Humans died, and she came to collect them.
She did her job for Kai'sa's sake.
That partner, everything Evelynn was not. A lord among gods, a figure on a gemstone throne. Kai'sa ruled from the Underworld and she had earned that position through her own merit and through the power that ran thick in her blood. Evelynn hung onto her coattails and rode it all the way to the end, and repaid Kai'sa's patience with absolute loyalty.
So it was loyalty that brought Evelynn to the Hellhound's lair, looking for a hunter who could find what she needed.
And more importantly, someone who could keep her mouth shut.
That was easy for this particular god: she didn't even have a mouth.
"You need me to find a fox," Akali repeated the request. All the gemstone teeth on her jet-black mask glittered with the movement. "Three centuries you've held onto the favor I owe you and you want me to hunt down a fox?"
"Not just any fox." Evelynn stepped deeper into the lair. The walls were warm and wet, like a mouth that seemed to breathe harder in anticipation of her movements. Hanging from the ceiling were charms and mementos from hunts and kills, skulls and teeth and bones and feathers. Akali's little nest. "She's the bride of Hades."
Sitting cross legged in her hammock, the Hellhound listened with her head quirked to the side. Evelynn laid out the whole sordid story: there was a village in the mountains that sacrificed one of their young girls every ten years. This year they found a strange woman wandering in the woods and abducted her, thinking that any young girl would do, and better to kill a stranger than one of their girls.
Evelyn had arrived. It was part of her job to collect tributes to the lord of death, a job she enjoyed very much because she was never one to pass an opportunity to have fun at a mortal's expense. Human misery was ecstasy to her. Kai'sa was less than thrilled by a chance to explore the surface, so she often sent Evelynn in her stead. They both preferred the dark of course, but Evelynn never shied away from being the focus of everyone's attention.
That clawed, fiery figure, that whip-tailed beast. Evelynn; that monster made of nothing but teeth. That was the one who ventured onto the surface. So people called her Devil's Child, they called her vampire. They called her Lilith and Grendel and Ah Puch and Echidna.
Kai'sa stayed below, solid and morose, and they called her Hades and they called her Anubis and they called her Macha and Ereshkigal and Thanatos.
It was all true; it was all not true. It didn't matter. The point was there was always girl to be sacrificed and Evelynn would have to decide what to do with her every ten years.
"This one is different," the priest promised, and unveiled a gilded cage, and inside the cage was a tattered, shredded wedding dress... and a pure white fox.
Evelynn had laughed so hard she cried, and accepted the fox in her torn white dress and said she had never seen a more beautiful bride. Obviously the girl that the fools kidnapped had escaped, and left a present in her place. The death god was too amused to be insulted.
Thinking Kai'sa would appreciate the joke, she brought the beast down no matter how it howled and snarled and tried to escape. Deep in caverns of gemstones and darkness, where nothing living grew, she let the fox loose and watched it run until its little legs gave out.
Once she caught up to it, Evelynn grabbed it by the scruff and dragged it the rest of the way into hell.
"It wasn't a fox," Akali guessed.
"She is," Evelynn insisted. "Most of the time. I never felt anything off about her at first."
When Kai'sa saw what Evelynn dragged in— literally— she was not amused at all. She took her bride and as far as Evelynn could tell, fell in love with it at first sight. She had never seen the lord of death so moved by a living creature. Besotted with the fox, Kai'sa tamed the fierce snarling beast into something like a lapdog, well-groomed and affectionate. It slept in her bed. She stroked the fox over its triangle ears, fingers getting lost in thick fur, and Evelynn tried not to be jealous of an animal.
The fox grew restless. So the lord of death bid a heavenly sibling come down to grow a forest in her glittering gemstone caverns. Dark tree trunks stayed eerily still, no breeze to rustle them and no animals to shiver in the thick brush. None save for one, a fleeting ghostly shape running in the maze constructed for her. But the fox grew restless again, and even Evelynn could see this place deep underground was no suitable home for any living being.
Whether through stubbornness or fear, Kai'sa refused to acknowledge that. She kept it even as the fox's fur began to lose its luster, and the savage fire left its eyes, and it didn't even muster up a half-hearted growl whenever Evelynn came near it.
"And you lost her." Drawing one knee up to her chest, Akali watched Evelynn carefully. "You let her out onto the world of the living again. Didn't you?"
Clear answers weren't Evelynn's preferred tactic. The fact that she was explaining herself at all should have been seen as a gift. So, irritated, Evelynn withdrew a shard of pure white gem from the sleeves of her robes.
The Hellhound sat up, feeling the energies radiating from the shard.
"That's not supposed to leave the Underworld," she said. "Does the lord know you're carting around a piece of her heartstone?"
"Have you ever seen the heartstone look like this?" Evelynn shot back.
Heavy-lidded eyes dropped down, examining the heartstone. Normally it was purple, swirling with specks of black and blue and thick with power. Instead it was cloudy white as common quartz.
With her mouth replaced by a mask of pure jet, it was often hard to tell what the goddess of hunt was thinking.
"No," Akali said at last. "I haven't."
"The lord wants her wife back." Evelynn pocketed the gem. She couldn't keep the pain out of her voice. "Please. I can't stand seeing Kai'sa this miserable."
"You'd think you'd be happy, having any rivals out of the way." Akali's yellow eyes scanned her over. "Don't you want her all to yourself?"
"I can have Kai'sa whenever I want her. What I can't seem to have is her smile, and only her wife seems to be able to draw it out of her these days."
"Her bride. The fox." Akali's eyebrows raised, but then she thought better of whatever she was going to say. "Then I'll do it. For the lord's sake, and not yours. Your favor remains unclaimed, friend."
"This isn't an easy task. She's different from any other fox. Of all the foxes in all the worlds—"
Akali cut in, impatient. "Please. Who do you take me for?"
The mouth of the cave swelled. Suddenly, Evelynn realized she was not standing on solid ground at all, and she scrambled back as the jaws of the Hellhound nearly snapped shut over her. Standing back, she looked up as the great beast unwound itself, scales glittering like bronze and steel.
Her mouth was still pure jet, but the dragon did not need her teeth to hunt. A knife, or her claws, or the thorns in the thickest part of the woods would suffice.
Centuries ago, a hero had bested the Hellhound. The hero took her mouth, ripped her teeth out one by one and used them to forge weapons for a mighty army. Her jaw was placed in the font of a river, and from her mouth flowed water blessed by a holy man. There was no way for Akali to even get close, lest the waters burn her and kill her. So the jawbones calcified into a hard mountainside, and if Akali ever wanted them back, she'd have to deal with some new hero to go and fetch them.
But rather than trust fickle humans, she went to Evelynn and traded a favor for a mouth full of gems and jet. Close to the Underworld as she was, Evelynn happily provided her new mouth, with teeth that shone in the dark. It wasn't her original mouth, but it served its purpose.
"I'll get your fox wife," the Hellhound promised, slinking around her once. Draconic claws scrabbled on the earth, gouging deep lines with every idle movement. Idly, Evelynn stroked Akali's head on the next pass. "I'll do it in three days."
"I'll hold you to that," Evelynn said, blowing her a kiss, and the Hellhound lifted off, and flew away into the night.
But of course when Akali found Ahri, the fox told her that she did not 'escape' hell.
The lord of death let her go. Willingly.
Kai'sa could not bear to keep her wife in a place that made her so miserable. So instead she roamed the halls of the dead, listless and heartbroken for doing the right thing, until Ahri dragged Evelynn and Akali back down to hell with her and deposited the scheming gods at Kai'sa's feet.
Ahri did not enjoy being in hell any more than most living creatures...
But for Kai'sa, maybe, perhaps, a compromise could be made.