Chapter Text
Dead.
Lloyd’s feet pounded on the cold stone tile underneath. His heart pounded and his breath kept hitching. His vision was blurry and it caused him to almost trip several times.
He was alive, but the others were gone.
He knew it was foolish to follow the crystal spider on his own. He didn’t expect it to result in—in all of this. The vengestone cage that slowly sapped away his health while he was forced to watch the screen show—the Ninja, their blinking lights—
Gone.
The Monastery, his home, the rest of his family—
They were all dead.
Lloyd stumbled into a wall and forced the fresh wave of tears away.
He’d tried to be brave in front of both of his worst enemies—Harumi and the Overlord—but it was a well-practiced mask. He was grieving and he was desperate. His brief bout of confidence had dried up as soon as he started running.
He was never going to see them again.
He had to keep moving. He had to get out and survive for them. He can’t let their loss be in vain, he can’t let Harumi win again. He can’t let Ninjago fall.
He’ll fight them. He’ll fight them all. He’ll fight tooth and nail until he drops dead from exhaustion because Ninja never quit and he will not let his big brothers and big sisters down from where he knew they will watch him.
But first, he has to get out of this stupid stone temple.
He had to focus. He had to stay alive.
There had to be an exit somewhere.
Lloyd kept running.
He couldn’t catch his breath or slow his frantically beating heart. He was weakened from the vengestone; not only did it block his element, but it made him sick; deathly so if he was in contact with it for too long. Harumi had kept him in that cage and in chains for days. He’d grown so weak he could barely walk.
Even though he’d just escaped from the damn stone minutes earlier, he couldn’t stop and let exhaustion catch up. He had to overcome the fatigue and fever that threatened to pull him down.
He just had to escape and find somewhere to hide. Then he could get the rest that his body so desperately needed.
The walls echoed with shouts and Lloyd panicked. They were coming. All of them. Harumi had gathered their greatest enemies together—Pythor, Vangelis, Aspheera, Mr. E (now known as Mr. F), the Mechanic—and they had Lloyd’s family’s golden weapons. They all wanted him dead.
They were coming.
It was like salt in the wound. He had to watch Harumi kill his siblings. Then the villains came back with their weapons like a trophy. They stole the weapons that were still connected to his siblings’ elements, the last thing he had of them, and now they wanted to kill him with them.
He couldn’t let himself be brought down by the very elements that made up his own. He couldn’t let down his siblings like that.
Lloyd managed to bring his attention back to the present just in time to stumble to a halt and avoid Kai’s—Aspheera’s—sword by a hair.
His vision swam and tilted and made him dizzy. But he couldn’t stop. He had to keep going.
“Time to sssay goodbye,” Aspheera hissed.
Lloyd stiffened when he felt the presence of lightning behind him. He’d been too slow, too sick; Pythor had caught up to him.
His blurry vision made out a dark but partially-glowing figure coming from a hall to his right.
The sight made his head twinge in pain. Mr. F’s blaster had knocked him out twice already—once by throwing his spinjitzu off balance until his head slammed into rock, then by striking him directly in the back. He didn’t plan on experiencing it a third time.
“N-no thanks,” Lloyd rasped. He stumbled to the side, somehow managed to avoid another attack from the sword, and staggered in a half-run down the hall.
His slowly-recovering element connected with another; one that was ahead of him. It was the only way Lloyd was able to drop into a slide and avoid having a corrupted Shuriken of Ice embed itself in his chest. He remained laying on the group a moment longer than he should’ve, thrown off-balance and utterly disoriented.
Lloyd forced himself to his feet. The Mechanic sent him a lopsided grin—Lloyd thought so, anyway, his vision is too fuzzy to tell for sure—and laughed wickedly. “Not so tough, are you, Ninja?”
Despite the dizziness, Lloyd steeled his expression. “Tough enough to still be free,” he spat.
Which was true, he told himself for a tiny boost of morale. He was still standing, alive, and unchained. If he wasn’t as skilled as he was, he would’ve collapsed from the effects of the vengestone as soon as he tried to walk.
But here he was, running for his life. Delaying the inevitable.
Just find an escape.
The Mechanic didn’t like his sentiment. The older man charged at him.
Lloyd dodged to the right. The momentum sent him crashing into the wall. He caught himself, pressed against the stone, as his chest heaved for breath.
He felt like he was going to throw up.
But he couldn’t.
Laugher came from behind him. The sound made Lloyd’s fear spike, and the shot of adrenaline had him fumbling to put his feet under him and run.
He knew his path wasn’t a straight line—literally. He swayed from one side of the hall to the other because he couldn’t see properly. He tried to ignore the villains behind him that mocked his weakness.
He didn’t notice that their numbers dwindled to one. One person chasing him. He didn’t know to be concerned.
Not until he stumbled into a four-way intersection with every path blocked by a villain and a corrupted weapon on spinjitzu.
Oh, he thought deliriously. Whoops.
Screw him for not realizing that they were going to cut him off.
Well. Too late to dwell on it.
The last Ninja stood surrounded by his family’s greatest opponents. He could feel the familiar elements, tortured and corrupted and wrong, surrounding him and growing in power.
“Finish him!” Someone snapped. It sounded like Vangelis.
Time seemed to slow down.
Lloyd gasped as the elements in the weapons around him suddenly flared in warning, their powers still trying to protect him despite the way they’d been twisted and captured. His blurry vision would never have shown him that the weapons were being thrown towards him, all at once. His element, and his connection to his siblings’ powers, was the only thing that kept him alive.
That, and sheer willpower.
Lloyd managed to summon enough of his powers to send a blast at the ground directly underneath him and send him flying into the air. He was able to avoid the attack of all four weapons of spinjitzu hitting him at the same time.
But then the four weapons all united. And exploded.
The union combined with Lloyd’s powers resulted in a blast that threw him into the wall hard enough that he couldn’t move. Stars danced in his eyes and his chest shuddered as he tried to breathe, the wind having been knocked out of his poor weakened body. He wasn’t aware of much except a thick haze and pain.
There was shouting. Lloyd felt cold as his hearing locked onto the voice he’d never forget—the voice of the former Princess of Ninjago.
Someone lifted him off the ground by his neck.
Lloyd struggled weakly. His hand weakly clawed at the one around his throat. He couldn’t breathe. He needed to take a breath, he was already short on air as it was, he couldn’t die like this—!
He felt the newcomer before he saw them. A strong element, one very similar to his own, powerful and so alive. It was like a lighthouse; a beacon of hope. It shone brightly and Lloyd subconsciously latched onto the feeling. He felt his own element flare in happiness.
A dark shape slammed into the person holding him.