The Shadow Prisoner

Ling Ying always seemed to have the luck to stumble into major trouble and still make it out unscathed. But this time, she had a sinking feeling she was done for. Noxus, the Black Rose, or that monstrous spider that had lived on the Shadow Isles for who knew how long—none of them were someone she could afford to provoke. Yet by some twist of fate, she had run into all of them at once. An insect trying to stop a chariot, a mayfly trying to shake a tree: the outcome was bound to be a foregone conclusion. She would be crushed to pulp. Still, Ling Ying thought that if this was the afterlife, it had remarkably little character.

The room was not particularly spacious. A dim oil lamp illuminated the simply gray-painted walls and the sparse furnishings: just a bed and a chair. However she looked at it, this place had nothing whatsoever to do with either heaven or hell.

"Creak."

As Ling Ying looked around, the door opened. A person cloaked from head to toe in a black robe walked in, carrying a small tray. Without a word, they sat on the stool beside Ling Ying's bed and took a long, thin syringe from the tray.

"Hey..."

Confused, Ling Ying instinctively pulled her hand back, only to discover that her limbs were restrained by shackles made of some unknown metal. Ominous black light shimmered across their surface, and the shackles seemed to hold some kind of energy. Bound by them, Ling Ying felt weak all over.

Seeing the Black Robe about to stick the needle into her arm, Ling Ying hurriedly thrashed about. With those damned shackles on, she couldn't get away, but she wasn't about to lie there and take it, either. At least she managed to make things difficult for the Black Robe, who held the needle in one hand and couldn't find a place to inject it while Ling Ying wriggled around on the bed like a loach. After several seconds of this stalemate, the Black Robe suddenly struck, jabbing the needle into the part of Ling Ying's backside that was moving the least.

"Damn it!"

Ling Ying couldn't help cursing. The Black Robe ignored her, and while she was no longer struggling as much, pushed the plunger all the way down, injecting the colorless-looking solution into Ling Ying before yanking the needle out. The whole process was brutally simple.

"Oh, how pathetic. And over something as trivial as a shot."

A cool female voice spoke beside her. It wasn't the Black Robe's. It belonged to the black-haired, black-eyed woman who had appeared beside Ling Ying's bed at some point.

The Black Robe gave the woman a slight nod, then quickly gathered up the things and left the room. That left Ling Ying and the black-haired woman staring at each other.

Ling Ying stared at her for a couple of seconds, then suddenly sniffed the air. Her voice was low as she said,

"LeBlanc."

"Oh? Not bad," the visitor said, sounding genuinely surprised.

"I didn't know my disguise could be sniffed out."

"Hmph. You can drop the act. If I can see you here, I guess I didn't die after all?"

"No, but you came close."

As LeBlanc spoke, she suddenly swept out a hand, and a Magic Mirror appeared between them.

"Why not take a look at yourself?"

"..."

Ling Ying looked—and then she saw it: a monster, neither human nor ghost, with half its face covered in black chitin and black cracks spreading across all the skin visible to the naked eye. She tremblingly raised a hand, and the monster in the mirror raised its hand too. She grabbed her collar and tugged it down a little, but quickly stopped. The cracks clearly covered an even larger area beneath her clothes, and little black, tendril-like lumps of flesh writhed among them.

LeBlanc waved the Magic Mirror away, but Ling Ying continued staring blankly ahead. After a long while, she let out a heavy sigh.

"Congratulations. Whatever you were trying to do, you've succeeded in making me feel like I'd be better off dead."

She wasn't angry. She didn't know why. She felt as though she ought to be furious, but when the words reached her lips, all that remained was despair.

"Oh? You've got the wrong idea."

LeBlanc plopped down on the chair and crossed her legs.

"You didn't end up looking like this because of me. Well... I suppose I was involved to some extent. But I was the one who rescued you from Mother Spider's jaws."

"You... saved me..."

Ling Ying didn't care that LeBlanc had called Mother Spider a little spider.

"Why? You wanted to kill me before."

"Hmm... No reason. I just changed my mind at the last minute. If you insist on an explanation, you can say I did it for myself."

LeBlanc's words made Ling Ying pause for a moment. Then she quickly thought of a possibility and looked at LeBlanc warily.

"Don't expect me to do your dirty work for you."

"Oh? Is that so? Too bad. It's not up to you."

LeBlanc spread her hands and gave her a strange smile.

"When I said you were close to death, I wasn't exaggerating. Do you know what state you're in? Shadow Assimilation. The little spider's trick was pretty effective. You should have turned into one of those mindless Shadow Monsters long ago, but... it seems you already had Shadow Power inside you. That saved your life and let you hold on to your current form. But it's obvious this state won't last long. You can feel that for yourself, even without me telling you. Can you still use the power of the Void?"

LeBlanc's words struck Ling Ying like a bolt from the blue. She sat there in a daze for a while before finally realizing why her body had felt strange ever since she woke up. It was because... she could no longer sense the power of the Void. When she sank her thoughts inward, all she could see was a huge black vortex that had swallowed her inner world, churning and spinning without end.

Ling Ying closed her eyes and drew a deep breath. There was only one thought in her mind: It's over. Yes, it was all over. Without the power of the Void, how was she supposed to survive in this world?

LeBlanc watched with interest as Ling Ying brooded by herself, then suddenly spoke.

"Well? Think it over. If you feel there's nothing left to live for, I don't mind helping you die as you wish. But of course, you have another option..."

As she spoke, LeBlanc rose from her chair and leaned close to Ling Ying, her voice full of temptation.

"Do as I say, and you can survive. If you're lucky enough, you might even become stronger than you are now."

"Survive..."

Ling Ying kept murmuring the word. Her reason told her that someone like LeBlanc wasn't to be trusted, but the reality in front of her was that if she didn't want to die, she had no choice but to turn to LeBlanc.

"Tell me what I have to do in exchange for a chance to survive."

After a long inner struggle, Ling Ying finally gave in. She hated the way she looked now, like something neither human nor ghost, but she hated the thought of dying even more. Deep down, she still hoped that, having crossed over into another world, she might achieve something like the protagonists in those novels. So she had no choice but to accept LeBlanc's terms, even knowing that the price might be steep.

"A wise choice."

LeBlanc smiled and snapped her fingers.

"I like dealing with clever people. Then, we have the beginnings of an agreement. But you'll still have to prove your worth. For now, just lie there; you're no use to me in your current state. If you haven't turned into a mass of Shadow Monsters in a month, we'll talk again."

LeBlanc said this and made to leave, but just before she went, she suddenly remembered something. Without turning around, she said,

"Oh, right. Someone will give you a shot like that every day. Don't worry; it's medicine that suppresses the activity of the Shadow Power inside you. So if you don't want to die any sooner, you'd better not refuse."

With that, LeBlanc...

Was a month a long time? Perhaps not for someone with a full life, but for Ling Ying, it was an excruciating ordeal. Even lying down, she never had a moment's peace. Apart from the one or two hours of relief she got after each daily injection, she had to spend every bit of her strength fighting the Shadow Power inside her as it tried to turn her into a monster. Compared to the Void Consciousness's old tactics of constantly trying to take over her body, the Shadow Power was savage and direct. Fortunately, Ling Ying was never overwhelmed by it. Perhaps it was because she wasn't unfamiliar with Shadow Power, or perhaps it was just luck. Over dozens of days and nights of struggle, Ling Ying gradually gained the upper hand. She regained control of the part of the Shadow Vortex's energy that had belonged to her all along, then used it as a foothold to influence the energy she couldn't control. The results weren't bad: she could use more than half the energy in the Shadow Vortex, and she even sensed the buried power of the Void again. Though that part of the Void's power was weak, like a candle in the wind that might go out at any moment, at least, just as LeBlanc had said, there was still hope.

Ling Ying raised her right hand. A ball of Shadow Flame ignited in her palm. She stared at it for a few seconds, then turned her hand over and snuffed it out. With another sweep of her hand, a Magic Mirror appeared before her, reflecting a face half-consumed by Shadow Power. After a long while, Ling Ying sighed and waved the Magic Mirror away. A smiling black-haired woman appeared beside the bed, where the mirror had been blocking her view. Ling Ying looked up at her and said expressionlessly,

"Do all you Noxians like appearing out of nowhere without making a sound?"

The black-haired woman paused, then suddenly burst out laughing, as if she'd heard something hilarious. She kept laughing until Ling Ying's expression changed a little, then cleared her throat and said,

"First of all, I don't much care for you calling us 'Noxians.' And secondly, Noxus doesn't have that many Shadow Masters who can come and go right in front of you without a trace."

"Oh?"

Ling Ying put on an appropriately surprised expression.

"I always thought this land was full of patriots. So that's not the case?"

"Heh. If you mean people like Darius, then there are certainly plenty of them here. But unfortunately, I'm not interested in Noxus's values."

LeBlanc seemed completely sincere as she spoke, not a hint of deceit in her crystal-black eyes. But the next moment, a sly smile replaced that earnest look.

"But I really am here on Noxus's business this time. They need a little help from the Black Rose, and after giving it some thought, I decided it would be a good way to test how well you've recovered. It'll also let us see whether there's a chance for a deeper partnership."

LeBlanc's words made Ling Ying's breath catch. She knew LeBlanc had come to collect on her investment, just as she'd said before, with interest—and it would most likely... no, certainly be something unpleasant. She took a deep breath and looked at LeBlanc.

"Who do you need me to kill?"

"Some stubborn relics from the old age who refuse to join the new order."

LeBlanc smiled faintly.

"And their kingdom."