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“Y’know… when I said dragons weren’t from this world, I was right, wasn’t I? That is definitely not a dragon.” It sure looks like one. Cole would know; they feature in his nightmares often.
Zane readies himself aside him; pulling a pair of shuriken from whichever magical pocket he kept them in and settling into a throwing stance. “I would not think so, Cole – it does appear to be a dragon. I sense we have angered it by taking the Scythe from its resting place; it is likely to be the Guardian Master Wu spoke about.”
“Then how about we use it!” Kai shouts from his left, uncovering the Golden Weapon and swinging it above his head before anyone else can so much as stop him.
The sound the Scythe makes when it is brought to bear is something no one should ever have the misfortune of hearing. Not because it’s anything bad, per se, but that it is a deep, unsettling, thrumming hum that only intensifies as the dragon – a Dragon! – rears back and opens its maw.
“No, no, no, Kai! Bad idea! Master Wu told us not to!” Jay yelps, wide-eyed and worriedly flitting his attention between their hot-headed newest member and the dragon. The very huge, very angry, Guardian of the Golden Scythe of Quakes earth dragon that is smart enough to hide in the darkness of the cave and wait until it was sure that they were, actually, attempting to take the Scythe.
And Jay is trying to decide if his teammate is the bigger threat.
Kai whips his head around from staring down said dragon to glare at Jay, who snaps his mouth over the next panicked comment at the very real animosity that Kai is projecting at them. “Then you better keep your mouth shut!”
The dragon takes the opportunity to howl a tornado of sand at Jay, who had since decided – quite rightly, in Cole’s humble opinion – that the dragon was more of something to be worried about and had started attempting to sneak up behind it to do… a thing.
Cole himself is not entirely sure what he’s going for – and if it were just Jay approaching the dragon, Cole would say that his erstwhile teammate was going to attack it – but Zane is their voice of reason and he had sidled up next to Jay to help with whatever plan he’d come up with this time, and Zane would never do something so stupid.
Kai, however…
Kai takes a bracing step forward and heaves the Scythe down in a graceful arc that belies the weight of a weapon made of gold, embedding the blade into the stone. The earth starts to shake violently, throwing them off their feet, and the dragon collapses with a low, wounded noise, landing heavily.
The impact would have shaken the mountain, except the mountain was already shaking and now Cole was queasy.
Kai levers the Scythe from the earth as soon as he can get his feet back under him, bringing the earthquake down to a dull echo of a roar that ricochets through the mountain's cavern and beyond into the quarry. Cole looks over at the cave’s entrance, helpless to do anything but watch as boulders at least half the size of the dragon start to fall from their less-than secure places above it.
He shakily pushes himself into a run, the pads of his fingers scrabbling against the newly-fallen rubble that litters the ground as he fights for traction. “Come on!” He yells, waving frantically at the quickly collapsing entrance, “we gotta go!”
Unfortunately, whatever had made the dragon collapse hadn’t done enough to keep it down for long and it gets to its feet all too fast, releasing a haunting bellow at their retreating backs and hurtling after them.
Kai’s at the head of the pack, having never stepped even stepped within ten feet of the beast in the fist place, and Zane is only slightly behind him with how far he was thrown when the mountain started to shake, so when Jay yelps suddenly from behind them they risk a glance back at him.
Jay, as the de facto closest to the dragon when it had given chase, is still just within reach of the dragon’s claws, and the burst of speed he’d thrown himself into is the only saving grace for his unprotected back.
He doesn’t see if Jay had managed to dodge; Cole looks back to what’s going on in front of him just Kai skids on a patch of loose rubble. His momentum sends him flying and he lands roughly on his back, the Scythe sliding away.
Cole hauls him back onto his feet as he passes, certainly not stopping but slowing enough to grab the back of his Gi and the Scythe, and chances another glance back at the approaching beast.
The dragons entire jaw is rapidly closing around Jay’s head and his oblivious teammate only notices when the sharp teeth descend into his field of vision. “OH HOLY F- IRST SPINJITSU MASTER!” Jay dives at the ground and rolls away from the powerful mouth.
The snap the teeth make as they meet echoes unsettlingly over the cavern, slicing through nothing but air. Following closely behind is the thud the dragon makes when it lands, hardly affected by the attempt and doesn’t even have the decency to stumble a little.
Jay uses his momentum to spring onto his feet, dipping low and veering off to the side to dodge another lunge for his neck and twists into his Spinjitsu, trying for a hit to the dragon’s rocky eye and being deflected by the scales. And while the attempt does nothing to the dragon, the speed boost they get from using Spinjitsu propels him forward enough that he manages to get out of the dragon’s reach.
The exit is still too far away.
And while Jay is fast enough to stay outside the dragons attack range, he, Zane and Kai are not, and the beast is slowly, determinately, catching up.
Jay – only fast enough to match the dragons speed and not outpace it – had managed to escape it by using Spinjitsu; it had given him a noticeable speed boost that they could all do with to reach the exit in time and leave the beast behind in the quickly collapsing cave.
“Spinjitsu! Use Spinjitsu!” The other three shoot him a confused look, but he doesn’t pay them any mind, Spinjitsu whirls up around him, time almost slowing as his body continues going through rote motions.
Cole shoots ahead of the pack, clearing the exit and leaving the dragon in his dust. The others wise up quickly, ducking out of the much smaller opening just as the dragon skids to a stop inside, halted by a final avalanche of stone that blocks it from view. “That was awesome!”
“Yes!” Kai crows, pumping his fists as the last of the fiery sparks burn out on the stone. “We are unbelievable!” He holds a hand up for a high-five, and Zane takes it with a wild grin.
“Woohoo!” Jay adds, laughing brightly. “In your face!”
Zane had woken to a sense that ‘something was amiss’ in the early hours of the morning.
He was right; Master Wu and Kai are missing.
What could their wayward teammate possibly be doing now?
Zane finds tracks in the underbrush that match Kai’s, heavy and hurried South, towards the Temple of Fire.
Rushing headlong into danger is what he’s doing.
And Cole doesn’t even know him that well yet; he’d met him only a week ago, and every single time there was an opportunity for Kai to dive recklessly into stupid, self-sacrificing situations he’d be there; already in it.
And while Kai had left plenty of footprints and broken flora, Master Wu hadn’t left any traces at the campsite – almost like he’d never been there at all. Even his bedroll is gone and the dirt that was underneath it that was flattened has been kicked up and disturbed.
It’s possible that Master Wu had followed Kai, but without any signs as to if he had, or where he could have gone or to which direction if he hadn’t, it’s as good a lead as any.
The Temple of Fire isn’t too far away from where they are now – another day’s travel under the weight of Master Wu’s stupidly heavy solid wood shoulder-carriage and a couple of hours by foot – they could probably make it before dawn.
Even with the light from the fire, the Forest of Tranquillity is dark, unsettling and creepy. Without that warmth, the shadows quickly encroach on the camp, bringing with it the near silence of the few nocturnal critters that dared to be awake during the witching hours.
They take what they can, leaving the bulky packs and unwieldly equipment they’d been saddled with ‘just in case’, and soon the forest echoes only with the sound of their feet pounding against the ground.
He and Zane don’t talk, not for any particular reason – though Cole was on the lookout for anything that would come charging out of the trees at them, and that required silence – but Zane was probably just tired, and didn’t feel like speaking at this forsaken hour of the night.
About halfway into their uneventful, almost boring journey, Jay puts his foot down on a damp, mossy root and slips. He has incredible reflexes – mostly credited to past inventions of his blowing up in his face and not his recent training – and manages to put his hands out to stop himself from going straight into a tree.
He sails past the tree, flails somewhat cartoonishly as his fingertips brush the bark, and ends up face down in the dirt.
And just before the dirt is another root, and while his face is having an in-depth meeting with the spongey peat beneath it, his throat slams against the smooth bark, once worn down by migrating yaks moving South for the winter.
The impact gifts a quickly blooming bruise right over the base of his throat, which leaves Jay gently probing it, immediately wincing and complaining in a hoarse rasp – “Ow…” – which is unfortunate for him.
It is less unfortunate for Cole and Zane; Jay had been nattering on for the better part of an hour about how pretty Kai’s sister was and how he was going to rescue her from the big, bad dragon like she was a princess in a tower and he the knight.
The silence is welcome.
Once they move on, it only ends up being another hour or so until they start to see light breaking though the treeline and they slow to a stop just as the sun starts to lift over the horizon. The lava that meanders down the volcano illuminates the clearing, even from as far away as they are, and it – combined with the light of the rising sun – gives them enough visibility to see the doors of the Temple beyond.
They’re sealed closed.
Either Kai and Master Wu aren’t, and never have been, here, or something – or someone – had shut the doors while they were inside.
The three of them share a glance, determined, cautious, and concerned in equal measures – and not only for their missing members – before they head for the doors. The banks and bridge sizzle with heat as they tread over the rough, untravelled stone, superheated by the river of meandering lava it crosses.
The wind shifts slightly.
A nearby tree bursts into flames.
“The Sword of Fire was here, as well as our friends, but I only sense loss. We are too late; the Golden Weapons have left this realm and are now in the Underworld. The end is drawing near.” Zane comments, almost too blasé for the gravity of the situation.
Cole looks skyward, mostly in askance for gifted patience but also because he cannot believe that this is his life now. The Underworld? Really? “The one place no mortal can cross over. Of course.”
“It is unfortunate; there is no way to stop Garmadon before he achieves his goals – whatever they may be. But we will just have to prepare ourselves for the worst, and hope that we will be able to foil his plans.” Jay sends Zane a sideways look, doubtful and if Jay’d had his voice, he’d scream.
Jay doesn’t have his voice completely back yet, and so he can’t scream right now, fortunately. But a hoarse whisper-shout is apparently perfectly manageable. “Oh! Yeah, sure! Garmadon has all four of the GOLDEN WEAPONS, Kai is probably dead, and Master Wu has vanished! SOMEHOW, I DON’T LIKE OUR ODDS!”
Zane spares Jay a brief glance while he scans around them, methodologically cataloguing their surroundings for, as he’d say, ‘abnormalities’, and Jay cows, going back to rubbing at his throat and flicking his gaze between the sealed doors and the lava beside him, watching it like a dragon is about to leap out and drag them beyond the surface.
He might be right, though.
Cole backs away from his edge of the bridge slightly, warily staring at a suspiciously loud, bubbly part of the lava, where a creature that had to breathe – did dragons even have to breathe? – might hide.
He shakes his head; he’s being paranoid.
Is it paranoia though, if they really are out to get you?
“Your odds are better than you think,” A soft, young woman’s voice drifts over the walls to the Temple of Fire, distorted slightly by the stone and ever the more creepy for it. There comes a giggle, “your teammate is not lost.”
“Who’s there? Where is Kai? Come out, now.” Zane readies himself beside him, inspecting the top of the walls with a quiet, cold focus. Jay tries to mumble something under his breath, though it seems that his earlier tantrum had caused the remainder of his voice to kick the bucket and now he can’t speak at all.
Small mercies usually, but right now Cole is actually missing the loud, panicked scepticism.
“Actually, I’m right here!” Kai’s voice echoes from beyond the doors, grunting like he’d picked up something heavy.
A loud thud followed by muffled cursing drifts over.
“And we might not be able to cross over…” The doors are shoved open, nosed aside by the very fire dragon that is supposed to be eating Kai, which rumbles a little when he pats its flank. “But a dragon can.”
Is he insane.
“Are you insane?!” Cole backs all the way up, hiding his bulk behind one of the poles of the entrance gate some twenty feet away.
Kai chuckles a little. “Once he realized we were trying to protect the Sword of Fire, he actually became quite the softie.”
A girl emerges from behind Kai and the dragon, trailing her hand along its side, “Our father used to tell us stories about the dragons; that they were kind, mystical creatures that belong to both worlds and ferried between them freely.” She smiles, scratching up the side of the dragon’s neck to behind one of its horns. It closes its eyes and pushes further into the scratching, an almost aggressive rumble starting up as low background noise that no one else seems to notice.
“He’s agreed to go to the Underworld; to help you get the weapons back.” Only someone related to Kai would be crazy enough to have the nerve to get so close to a dragon, especially an elemental one in its natural habitat; that has to be Nya.
Again; Dragon!
There is something seriously wrong with their lineage.
Jay and Zane inch over, lured by the gilded promise of flight on the back of a dragon, and when it proves to not attack on sight, they offer their hands for it to sniff.
Cole does not have a death wish, thank you, nor does he want to lose a limb, so he stays right where he is. All the way back here, where he’ll get some warning if the beast decides they smell good enough that it wants to have them for lunch after all. See you later suckers, have fun being gnawed on.
“You guys go on ahead. There's not enough room for all of us on that... thing.”
One of the dragon’s eyes opens slightly, staring him down like its tossing up between leaving Nya’s side to lunge at Cole or just staying where it was.
There’s this look in its eyes like it’s seriously having trouble deciding.
Nya’s scratches are just that good, apparently.
Kai gives him a considering look over the dragons lowered head. “You’re right, Cole,” A seriously offputting grin crawls over his face from ear to ear. “But I got a way to fix that.” He shoos at Jay and Zane, shuffling them away from the dragon’s side. They grumble a little, but they dutifully take a few steps back.
He climbs onto the dragon’s foreleg, hoisting himself up and onto its back and holds out a hand for his sister to join him. Once she’s settled and secure behind him, he looks over at his supposed teammates, “Stay nearby; I won’t be long.”
What.
Jay and Zane take a few more back as they get with the program, but only when the dragon starts stretching out its forelegs – and the wings attached to them.
And then it shakes itself out from head to tail and launches itself into the air with a single beat of its wings.
Just like that.
It isn’t until late-afternoon that Kai returns – though Jay’s voice does the same sometime mid-morning – and with him is not Nya, but three more dragons.
Three of them.
All three.
The ice dragon that guarded the Shurikens, the lightning dragon in the Floating Ruins, and the earth dragon that they’d collapsed a mountain on.
And Cole is no expert on draconic facial expressions, but they all look mad. Like seriously – blast you into oblivion and turn you into splatter against the floor – angry. The ice dragon even flicks its tail in what seems like annoyance and makes an aborted movement to turn right around and fly away, even after the lightning dragon had nudged against it in solidarity.
Nya isn’t on their backs either, of which he’s quite happy about; if he had to hear even another moment of Jay’s hopelessly infatuated, badly composed poetry about her eyes, or her voice, or her hair, or whatever else he’d decided was the most attractive part of her in that moment, then he was going to hit him.
And Zane would help.
At least this way he would be distracted.
The fire dragon lands gently on the edge of the channel keeping the lava river contained, and curls up to go to sleep with the end of its tail over its eyes. Kai slips off its side in a barely controlled fall and wanders around to shove at the dragon’s tail; so that it shifts itself enough that the limb isn’t in any risk of slipping into the lava itself.
As a fire dragon, and not a lava or magma or volcanic or whatever other elemental dragon there may or may not be out there somewhere the molten rock would penetrate even its scales and it would hurt. Maybe not as much as it would another dragon that wasn’t as used to not just surviving but thriving in high temperatures, but still.
Further away, nearer to the Forest’s treeline, the ice dragon perches primly and elegantly on a fairly sizable boulder. It’s smaller than the fire and earth dragons, though that might be more due to the way it seems to compact and wrap itself around it body in order to stay on the rock it’d settled on, and it swivels its head like an owl, on the lookout for any dangers that might approach. Zane had started moving over to it even before it had landed, walking faster than his usual, and if he’d had a notebook or even some spare paper, it would be out and half filled with notes before he’d reached the boulder.
The lightning dragon had dived at the ground from almost 20 feet up in the air, pulling up just before it would slam snout-first into the dry, cracked clay and rock that surrounded the lava river. It grinds to a halt in front of Jay and the unlit campfire using its wings as a parachute, its tail as a rudder and its claws like landing gear. It lies belly-up on the ground, basking in the sun, and even stretched out like it is, its easy to see that its much smaller than the others; leaner, more agile, with whipcord strength over overt musculature. It’s longer though, and the tail that lays carelessly over the clearing is at least as long as it is, possibly even more so.
The earth dragon in drops to the ground somewhat heavily next to Cole, snuffling at the long cooled stones they’d used to keep the fire from going out of control.
Not that anything flammable had survived so close to the heat of the lava.
Semantics.
It pulls back slightly to loom over him menacingly when it finds nothing edible, growling lightly.
So this is how he dies?
It’s like his nightmares have left the realm of his dreams and come charging out to chew on his bones.
Kai interrupts the gruesome visions of his death by wandering over after checking in on Jay and Zane, who were both happily chatting with or at their respective elemental dragons, forming lasting bonds with flying death beasts of the Underworld. He reaches up to scratch under the dragon’s chin absently, turning to face Cole and subsequently turning his back on said flying death beast. “So, Cole. Any luck housebreaking our friend here?”
So he really is insane.
Not a good look for a world-saving, destiny-bound protector of Ninjago.
The dragon huffs in displeasure, blowing a blanket of dust over Kai’s supernaturally vertical hair. “Kidding, kidding. And leave the hair alone!” He swats none-too-gently at the dragons neck with one hand, scrubbing the dust out with the other.
Cole sort of freezes, watching the dragon chase after the hand that Kai had stopped petting it with to get more of the dust out.
Dragons are predators, visual hunters, but if he stays still enough maybe it won’t be able to see him.
Too bad about Kai.
Kai combs his fingers through the roots, turned slightly away in the hopes that the dragon wouldn’t dust him again. “No, but seriously, have you even talked to him?”
“Uh, no. Not really. It seems pretty good being on its own.”
Kai looks up sharply at him from under his arms, “Hey man, not cool. He’s not an it.”
“Oh. Uh, sorry?” The dragon huffs again, bowing his head down a little to nudge at him. “You, uh, you want scratches?”
The fire dragon had seemed to like it when Nya had scratched behind his horns, so Cole slowly brings his hand up to do the same. The earth dragon notices it quickly, tracking it out of the corner of his eye before twisting to sniff at it – almost like cats do when they’re not sure of your intentions.
He shoves his snout into his palm once he’s done confirming that no, Cole wasn’t going to bring his wrath upon him and his teammates again by attacking it – once was more than enough, thank you. He twists slightly so he can get his arm out of the way of sharp, fast-moving teeth should he decide that the scratches weren’t satisfactory, and reaches around to get at the raised scales at the base of his horns.
The dragon leans into it as Cole puts some force behind it – to get through the touch, rock-like hide – and almost bowls him over with the unexpected weight.
“See? He likes you.” Kai grins at him. “Why don’t you give him a name?”
A name?
The dragon seems to like the idea, turning slightly to lathe the back of his head with his tongue.
But a dragon? As a pet?
He doesn’t know how to housetrain a dragon.
What if he gets cranky when he’s hungry. Cole can’t calm a rampaging dragon.
Cole can’t even calm a rampaging Jay.
Though a dragon might be easier...
“How about… Rocky?”
The dragon pulls back, sticking his head under Cole’s legs and shoving him up onto the flat of his nose. He flails a little, hands first flying out to balance himself and then in front of him to grab onto the short, rounded spikes on top of his head so he doesn’t fall, though the dragon holds still until he settles.
Not cool.
Really, not cool.
He’d like to get down now.
Kai’s grin seems to stretch even further, walking forward to look up smugly at him before wandering off to chat with Jay and his dragon.
He leaves them with a parting remark, thrown over his shoulder. “Rocky it is.”
Rocky warbles brightly, ruffling his wings and tail as he prances around the others proudly with Cole still balanced precariously on his head. He does a circle of the camp before slowing to a stop next to Zane and Shard, letting him slip off gently.
Face to face with him, some of his shoved-down fear rears its ugly face again, but Cole takes two very brave steps forward to wrap his arms around his head quickly and the mounting terror dies.
The dragon makes a soft, almost appreciative sound before pulling back to lie down and then roll in the dirt. He raises a wing invitingly once he’s stopped, motioning with his head towards Jay and Wisp, where he is curled up against her to fend off the cooling night.
It’s a very… vulnerable position, and he’s only half sure that Rocky wouldn’t suddenly turn on him or something.
Cole walks forward anyway.