"I was born at sea. I grew up at sea… I was surrounded by a bunch of sweaty fools, but my mother was there too. Life was joyful from the day I was born. The money from exports was always enough for my family to prosper. However, what I thought would be a normal childhood turned into a nightmare."
Smiling shadows formed, malicious and twisted.
"I was six years old when it happened. Pirates attacked our ship. And my mother, who until then had been a normal woman, turned into some strange kind of magical goddess before my eyes. She raised her glowing hands, and hundreds of branches emerged from our ship. The branches attacked the enemy vessel, crushing the pirates and killing them in the process. You can already imagine how horrible that must have been for a little girl. Even so, we won that day. We crushed those bastards. Right after, despite how awful it was, the excitement of seeing magic for the first time was stronger and allowed me to overcome the trauma."
The cloth showed a little girl beside her mother. Both of them were making the same scraps of fabric float that were now portraying the story.
"My mother didn't mind teaching me magic, but I was terrible at it. Even though my father enjoyed watching me fail, he always had that dumb smile on his face, and the whole crew was the same. Me too…"
Tiana had been happy…
"But that came to an end. By sinking that ship, my mother accidentally doomed all of us aboard, because none of us knew that vessel belonged to a pirate faction. Before we knew it, three larger ships belonging to that faction attacked us. My mother, just as she had before, tried to protect us all, but there was someone strange among the pirates. I never knew where he came from or whether he was part of the fleet attacking us, but he looked like a crimson jester covered in dark shadows that made it hard to even see him… That thing stabbed my mother in the back and murdered her. I will never forget its grotesque laughter in that moment before it vanished forever."
Now the cloth showed the horrific grin of a being covered in shadows.
"That's how we lost. We lost everything… They killed many of our crew members and kidnapped me. My father couldn't do anything to save me because that strange clown wounded him too. And guess who was watching us from the deck of one of the pirate ships… Can't guess? It was Kalika… She was with those pirates. That was the last thing I saw before someone knocked me out with a punch. After that, I don't really remember what happened. I only know I woke up in a strange place and was being transported in a carriage on the way to a brothel. Back then I didn't understand what was happening, but now I realize they were going to sell me as a prostitute, while I was still a child… Thanks to that, I learned just how horrible the world can be… But you know what? Being so young, I thought nothing could possibly get worse. I just waited for the inevitable, but suddenly my father appeared, holding that same giant hammer covered in blood. I never knew what gave that muscle-brained idiot enough strength to go against so many people alone, but he was strong enough to break through countless obstacles to reach me."
The cloth showed the captain and his daughter. Together they walked hand in hand while the captain dragged the hammer behind him.
"When we got out of there, Kalika was waiting for us with the survivors of our crew. Turns out this amazing woman betrayed her companions to help us, and together with my father and the others, they destroyed those bastards. How? I have absolutely no idea. My father knows that part of the story and never dared tell me because he's embarrassed. As for the clown, we never found out where he went. It's as if he vanished into thin air. And that's where the tragic part of my life ends. The rest is just a boring journey searching for grimoires and mages who can teach me magic. Then you showed up, with all these problems I don't understand and that energetic gray-haired girl."
After hearing the story, Midas looked into Tiana's eyes. By then, the cloth had gathered into a ball to imitate a lantern.
"I already told you something about me. Now it's your turn."
Once again, Midas didn't answer. He remained silent, staring at Tiana.
"Come on, dummy. Tell me something. At least have the decency to share something about yourself like I did. Or what, are you not a man? I'm gonna get mad, you know?"
Midas sighed, exhausted.
"What should I tell you? Nothing in my life is worth talking about," he said in a soft, bored tone… "What exactly am I supposed to tell you?"
"Let's start with the place you escaped from."
He fell silent again for several long seconds, making Tiana impatient. It seemed the cloth lantern reacted to the girl's emotions, because the fabric spun restlessly while glowing with green light.
"The Immortal Bastion… The capital of Noxus…" Midas finally said.
Tiana frowned.
"You escaped from that place? Ugh… Now a lot of things make sense. I've heard Noxus is currently at war with Ionia and Freljord, so the forces in the capital aren't nearly as large or powerful as the ones on the frontlines. You got lucky escaping during this time."
"Otherwise they would've captured us again…" Midas whispered, resigned to continuing the conversation. He hid his face between his knees. "Maybe that would've been for the best."
"Even so, you're here, traveling from one end of the continent to the other. If the best thing would've been to stay a prisoner in who-knows-where, then what about everything you've done since escaping? Why are you even traveling, crossing somewhere as dangerous as the ocean?"
Tiana's tone of voice, her questions, her words—everything left a sea of confusion inside his mind. In the first place, why had he wanted to go to Zaun?
"I want to see my older sister…" Midas answered in a broken whisper.
Of course, that was the answer. The reason he had endured so much loneliness and suffering from the very beginning was to return home, to return to Maissa. However, Midas sank deeper into darkness when he thought about the present situation, because many things had changed over the years.
"And you plan on going to her while hiding here like some weak, cowardly man?"
"Go to her…?" he sighed, as if Tiana hadn't understood the point. He raised his gaze, and his eyes shone with a faint arcane glow. "They turned me into a monster… How can I even think about going back to her like this? Of course, you don't know. You don't understand. These hands—my hands—are stained with the blood of people who had nothing to do with me. I killed them like they were ants. And do you know what the worst part is?"
Tiana shook her head.
"I… felt relieved after killing them. I felt relieved because I wasn't the one who died. Now I hear their voices in my head, screaming and crying, blaming me over and over again." In pain, he grabbed his hair and clenched it tightly between his fingers. His nails dug into his scalp, and a few drops of blood ran down his forehead. "They made me believe I'd be a hero. They filled my head with lies I blindly believed. I spent nights excited to help Noxus. I hoped all this effort could help my sister in Zaun, but they lied to me…"
"Who lied to you, Midas?"
Midas closed his eyes, trying to pull the memory from his desperate mind. The people who hurt him while telling him his magic could help countless others, when in the end all they wanted was an obedient weapon. Those same people hiding in the shadows of Noxus, yearning for even greater power…
As he remembered those people, Midas thought of the horrible things they had done to him deep beneath the Immortal Bastion.
Drowning, terrified of what the future might bring, he answered:
'The Black Rose.'
***
There is a woman with many faces, silently manipulating events. She moves her darkness-stained fingers before a wall of strange white paintings, which move as if they possessed lives of their own.
She was elegant and dangerous, but the appearance she wore was likely not her true form.
As she moved her hand before the white wall, pale charcoal-colored stains shifted softly like blood in water. The stains formed a heptagram, with seven stones rotating within the figure.
The woman, expressionless until now, sighed in disappointment.
"Everything is going exactly the way you want, isn't it? Always with your… dangerous schemes," a man's voice suddenly said behind her.
The woman remained silent. This irritated the man, who walked through the great doorway, revealing his aristocratic gothic appearance. His hair was white, pure, without the slightest stain. His eyes were red, like the blood flowing through his veins, but his skin was so pale it made him seem like something from beyond the grave. He approached the woman with a noble's grace, dressed in clothes befitting his social standing.
"Listen, darling. Everything's going fine in Ionia, but things in Freljord are getting complicated. Try convincing Darkwill to send more troops or your adorable little plan is going to fall apart."
The woman sighed. Without taking her eyes off the wall, she replied,
"Life has many paths, Vladimir, but I have set my sights on another objective for now. I'll deal with Darkwill; I'll make sure he falls the way he should. His replacement will be Swain, though at the moment he is enjoying himself in Ionia."
"Hmph! If that's all you're going to say, then let me present my disappointment on a silver platter. The blood spilling in Ionia is glorious. Conquest is inevitable, yet you don't give it enough importance. Isn't the power you seek there?"
"That is indeed what I seek. However, something else caught my attention."
"Oh? And what has you so distracted, woman?"
"Do you remember when we ordered the hemomancers to create the ultimate weapon, but instead they gave us a foolish little girl who couldn't control herself?"
"That inferior, filthy, stupid beast has nothing to do with me, LeBlanc," he said, almost shouting. His hair became disheveled from how agitated he grew, but he calmed himself and fixed it again. "Do not mention that humiliating failure ever again."
LeBlanc ignored Vladimir's reaction and gently moved the stains on the wall.
"You ignored the existence of that failure carrying your blood so thoroughly that you failed to notice she escaped alongside one of our most valuable experiments."
"Valuable…? Nothing beneath the Bastion is valuable. They're all failures unworthy of my attention."
LeBlanc shook her head.
"No. I'm afraid you're mistaken. There was something there. That boy possessed incredible talent for magic. So extraordinary, in fact, that we decided to use some of our previous records to experiment on him. Among those records were Sion's and Briar's. You should remember him. I believe you spoke with him once."
"The filthy Zaunite brat who exploded and turned everything into gold?" He found it amusing. "The only thing that boy was good for was increasing our monetary power. He was traumatized after the first test and refused to continue on the battlefield. That brat isn't valuable…"
"I saw more in him than you ever could. Now that boy is far more valuable than before—more valuable than anything we've achieved so far. A fine weapon that could help us prevent Sahn-Uzal's return. Just look, the fruit of your blood and the hands of our scientists and mages…"
The black stains on the wall shifted and displayed the silhouette of a man standing before dozens of sea creatures. The man unleashed his magic, and every creature was erased from the face of the ocean. After that, the heptagram and its seven runes appeared.
"Impossible…" Vladimir whispered, incredulous. It seemed the day had begun on the wrong foot, because too many ridiculous things were happening. "He can't possibly be capable of that. If that were possible, then he would be…"
"That's right. I personally made sure it worked, so he could become the ultimate weapon," LeBlanc said, referring to the runes displayed, for she herself had granted them to the experiment. Her hand moved again, revealing another silhouette. "For now, I'll let everything unfold as it should. Soon enough, I'll send someone to retrieve him."
Vladimir clicked his tongue and turned to leave.
"It seems I'll never get bored with you."
LeBlanc smiled faintly.
"I'm not so sure about that."
Vladimir merely shook his head and vanished into the darkness outside.