Chapter Text
When he emerged from the ‘water’ there was a distinct lack of heavy machinery creaks and hums—something that he had reluctantly come accustomed to in the past few months.
Kai’s lungs seized as he coughed out another mouthful of water, steam rolling off his shoulders as his body burnt off the wetness clinging to him.
He blinked the remaining drops of water from his eyes, uncurling to scrub a hand down his face and leave it over his mouth, taking slow deliberate breaths as his nervous system forced itself back into something stable. After a moment he opened his tired eyes and scanned the Dead Sea bank, brittle drift wood and the husks of trees dotted randomly around.
Dying embers for eyes drooped back to the water. His breath against his palms is warm, a building heat in his mouth as he moved his other hand in front of his face and clasped them together.
His tongue clicks against his teeth and the heat continues to build, drying up the salvia in his mouth and letting him blow a controlled flame from his throat, warming his hands and washing out the realm’s natural monotone greys and blacks with a fiery orange.
The water was still and flat, a fine layer of mist hovering over grey liquid; no more Master Wu or lake monster in sight, the ladder’s charred corpse likely laying on the bottom of the lake—if there even was a bottom.
Though absent of the monster, something in the water still called to Kai and although he couldn’t see the illusion of his family in it anymore, he knew that if he walked back in he wouldn’t walk back out.
A loud screeching came from over.
Daidan’s washed out leathery wings were stretched out to impossible lengths, her body tilting as she circled in the sky. She screeched again, triumphant and still angry, tilting as her wings cut through the air with another powerful flap. Confident when nothing rose from the water, Daidan changed direction and began to descend down to the water.
Her body made a distant whistling sound as she stretched out her front legs and snatched something out of the water — cloth by the look of it, an intact scrap that was sopping wet. It hung from her claws as she drifted toward the shore.
Kai shuffled from his kneel to a standing position, absently noting that his gi was in worser condition and stiff from the quick dry it was given—whatever composed the ‘lake’ wasn’t real water, it was too thick to be called water and shimmered unnervingly like oil.
When he dragged his tongue across his teeth it lacked the usual sludgy, briny taste that came with swallowing lake water. He coughed again, running a hand across his mouth and spitting to the side.
Wind wiped his face as the dragon’s landed, Daidan’s loud arrival sending a spray of fine earth at Kai.
She stared down at him, white haunting eyes watching him like he was a bug. She tucked her wings close, tail curling around her side. The glowing symbol between her horns was bright against the grey landscape, drawing Kai’s immediate attention before the red ninja tore away from it to look at her eyes—holding eye contact despite the way it made his stomach curl.
White and gold stared at each other, softer than when they first met. Kai licked his dry lips, “that’s twice now,” he rasped, his throat still aching from nearly drowning, “that you’ve saved me.”
If this had happened even a year ago, Kai wouldn’t have accepted it, would have devolved to snarling and spitting. But he didn’t have that opportunity in the Land of Monsters.
Daidan loomed over him silently for a moment, looking down at the ninja quietly. “Yes,” she finally said, adjusting to lay down comfortably but still keeping her head regally pinned back, “it would seem that you are incapable of keeping yourself safe.”
Kai looked away, dull gold eyes looking down at the water—his hat was half submerged in the water and half laid on the bank, he picked it up, still concreted on the water.
“Your metal robot is gone,” She said it factually and with a lack of gentleness most would have thought to use. She took the scrap of cloth from her fore claws with her mouth and dropped it in front of Kai, “what will we do now?” She asked.
It landed with a defeated wet noise, sand already clinging to it. The ninja’s lips thinned as he picked it up with one hand, inspecting the cloth; it had been a piece of the fire mech’s poncho like covering, the golden embroidery confirmed that. Kai traced along the pale stitching—it used to stand for something, symbolise something grander than this hell it had been dropped in.
Kai had come to realise that the Land of Monsters went beyond a single layer. This place was evil incarnate, leeching away any hope or goodness that existed in people and twisting it into hate and despair.
Kai wondered what the score was: how many monsters had been borne here, and how many had it created?
He took it in both hands and watched as steam rolled off of it, manually drying it with his element like he had his gi until it was similarly stiff and warm.
He held it in front of himself, silently examining it before deciding to shift his gear around.
He took the ragged fur-straw cape from his back and dropped it in the sand, exchanging it for the mech’s scrap of cloth and then re-tying his original cape on top of it. It wasn’t any warmer; he had been manually controlling his internal temperature since he realised that this realm didn’t keep or distribute any of warmth.
“We?” Kai looked up at Daidan, frowning at the large reptile. The world around them was still, absent of foes or sloshing waves and it’s here that Kai finally acknowledges just how large she is—certainly larger than the bird beast who attacked him on the bridge.
Daidan released a hot breath from her maw, adjusting to sit up. “Yes, we.” It was clipped and short, strained and vulnerable. Kai didn’t say anything in response, choosing silence over trying to decipher what Daidan was trying to project—he was tired, too tired to focus on anything except his desperate need to get away from the water.
“Alright,” he murmured, scrubbing his hand back down his face in exhaustion.
He didn’t have a heading, he had lost the tracking compass in his struggle to reach this forsaken lake.
He has practice climbing onto the backs of dragons’ before, wrestling his way onto Daidan’s was no feat. Her wings arched up high and then thrusted down, spraying sand around; Kai had to quickly pull the tight lower face covering of his gi up as a shield.
It was different seeing this realm from a bird’s eye view. He had caught a small glance of it the first time that Daidan had swooped him up and flown them to a cliffside after their first encounter—admittedly he had been more focused on holding onto her horns then surveying the land, but this gave him the opportunity to better observe.
It was still a land without colour, like an old timey film made completely in black and white, only shades of grey to add depth and distinguish certain features—Kai had learnt quickly to abandon his red and gold gi as it drew too much attention from different monsters. Instead he had stolen the clothing off of an old skeleton and weaved together the straw portion of his cape.
He and Daidan were like a colourless bullet shooting through the sky, one of Kai’s hands firmly holding onto one of Daidan’s horns.
His hair, well grown past his usual cut, whipped behind him as he squinted his eyes and bared the wind slashing at his face; his hat had no string yet, meaning that he couldn’t wear it without loosing it during the flight.
Eventually Daidan slowed down, the two of them soaring past a mountain peak. Kai’s hair settled back to whipping around his shoulders although not as ferociously as before. The sun was beginning to set slowly and Kai knew that they should find shelter soon.
The majority of him was grateful to be so far away from the lake, his stomach still rolled with anxious nausea and the scrap of Rusty’s cloth weighed heavy. “Why’d you come back!?” He yelled over the wind, muffled by his face covering and the elements.
Another flap, a longer glide.
“You accused me of lacking strength,” she said. “So show me what this so called ‘real strength’ looks like, boy.” It was a poorly disguised challenge to stay alive that the old competitiveness inside Kai latched its teeth into.
His grip on the dragon’s horns tightened and Kai subconsciously curled closer to the short thick tuffs of white fur that protruded in a straight line down her neck all the way to the longer tuff on the end of her tail—she’s not as warm as Flame was or as rough as he was. Instead Daidan’s scales are smooth and Kai wondered what colour she actually was, red like Flame or blue like Wisp; or maybe she really was just naturally grey.
Regardless, it comes to his attention that she has not once called him by his name. “My name,” he said, still having to shout over the wind, “it’s Kai Jiang!”
“Names have power,” she responded, “be careful who you give yours to… but, you may call me Daidan.”
They had been flying for an unknown amount of time now, Daidan’s mighty flaps growing shallower and more separated with each dip up and down. They had gathered an impressive amount of distance from the lake, the air growing colder and strangely thick.
“Where are we going!?” He questioned, all he could gather from the dim sun was that they were potentially going west. They flew over a large lake, smaller than the last one they had been at and one that Kai assumed was more so treated like a watering hole, he could vaguely see a few dark blobs dotted around the far sides.
“My nest, or at least what remains of it.”