Lloyd looked down at his trucks and soldiers strewn across the ravine floor below and felt the uncontrollable anger storm inside of him. Everything he had worked so hard for--all his plans, all his effort--wasted in a single second! No one would take him seriously after this, no one! This was his one chance to prove himself and someone had gone and destroyed everything! Who--
Out of the corner of his eye, Lloyd spotted movement in the river. Four figures were running away from the crash site and he recognised them almost instantly. Wu's students. He locked on them now, forcing his brain to remember every inch of their faces, and he swore revenge so merciless that they'd be begging for death one day.
The anger, reaching a boiling point, let itself loose in the form of a throat-destroying scream from the young boy, and he used all his strength to send an energy blast down at the bombs in the river, igniting them in the hopes that the explosion would kill his new enemies and cover his tracks as he left. He didn't even flinch as the shockwave hit him, making his ears bleed, and scorching his face with the fiery blast. He was far enough away that it wouldn't leave permanent damage, but he didn't mind the pain. It was a welcome distraction from everything else he was feeling.
Lloyd had been riding in the lead car, eager to set Jamanakai Village alight that day; a sign to all the world that he meant business. The action would spread fear and superstition--exactly the kind of tools he was planning to use during his reign as Ninjago's new emperor, but it looked like that wouldn't be happening anytime soon.
When the cars in the rear of the party started to act funny, Lloyd had taken it upon himself to exit his vehicle and check things out for himself, which ended up saving his life. Moments after he leapt from the passenger seat, the cars started crashing into one another, and then they went over the railing and out of sight.
Curse those idiots! The boys and the knucklehead Skulkens who had brought them to him in the first place! When he got back to the Citadel, they would receive such a beating! But wait... now that he thought about it, those Skulkens were down at the bottom of the ravine, dead. Well, never mind. He'd find someone to beat when he got back. If he got back, now that he thought about it. The only clear path was the road he had just been on, and now it was partially destroyed. Perhaps he shouldn't have caused that explosion after all... But he refused to be sorry for it, no matter how much trouble it caused him, or anyone else. He would just walk back another way.
He started up the road the way he had been traveling before everything fell apart and was suddenly met with the sound of sirens blaring in his direction.
'Whatever,' he thought, and kept walking into the sound. It's not like this would be the first time authorities had tried to stop him.
He looked down at his black armour now, wondering whether or not to keep it on. It was protection, but it was also extra weight. He'd be walking for a while... He decided to keep it on until he was done with the troops pulling up in front of him and then throw it away later.
About a dozen military vehicles in all shapes and sizes braked suddenly in front of him, grateful that they had not run over the small boy. Immediately, they began to pour out onto the asphalt, pointing their taser guns and automatic crossbows at him.
"GET DOWN! ON THE GORUND, NOW!" they barked at him. It was the sort of statement which implied that they weren't going to hesitate to pull the trigger if he didn't comply. They knew who he was. They knew what he was capable of. They weren't playing any games. But neither was he.
Still angry from his defeat, Lloyd continued to walk forward, unfazed. The soldiers opened fire. Their taser guns crackled like lightning, but Lloyd was already too def to hear them. Without putting much thought into the action, he raised his left hand slightly and the purple energy returned in the form of a force field all around him. The action, though second nature, drained a lot of his conscious thought, making him sleep walk toward the soldiers.
The small, silver arrows fired at him turned into rust when it passed through the shield, spraying him with tiny red particles. The blasts of energy from the taser guns rippled through the shield, funnelling toward the ground until they disappeared. They still tried to reach him, though, and small bolts zapped him like nasty static electricity. All the more reason to let the dark energy tune out the rest of the world, he thought.
The soldiers, having been briefed on the child's powers to an extent, knew that continued fire would be pointless, so they relented firing without not lowering their weapons and following Lloyd cautiously as he came closer. They knew that there was nothing they could do as he reached out a hand and laid it on the smooth surface of one of their cars. One man made a move to grab his arm, but stopped when the metal underneath Lloyd's hand began to rust and dissolve just like the arrows they had fired. No one dared to touch him as they watched the once brand new armoured truck fall apart like wet paper.
Lloyd would have smiled and relished in their suffering on any other day, but he didn't feel like having fun right now. He simply moved on, touching every single car in his path, turning them into dust and leaving the soldiers stranded out here. Surely that would be enough to make them leave him alone. Apparently not.
Even though the boy in front of them terrified the burly men, they still had a job to do, so they began to follow Lloyd, weapons still locked in him, waiting for an opening. The prince of darkness, though he talked a big game, didn't have the nerve to actually kill anyone, so he chose not to harm the men all around him, hoping that sooner or later they'd just leave.
His walk down the road went on forever. A lot of the soldiers went to check out the site of the explosion, so there was less of a crowd around Lloyd now, but they weren't backing down, and now there was even a helicopter coming closer. Its propellers pushed air down all around him, making his footsteps waver and his hair flap around his face. A man on a speaker phone started yelling at him to stand down, but the words just made Lloyd mad.
He shot a single blast up at the aircraft, and as it began to undo itself, the crew had just enough time to crash land without anyone getting hurt.
Finally, Lloyd had had enough. This was ridiculous. He made a sharp turn toward the steep mountain face to his right side, against the road. The soldiers moved out of the way as he walked toward the mountain, unsure of how to stop him. Lloyd looked at the solid rock in front of him with little interest, then walked on into it with a sigh. Just like everything else, it began to erode and fall away before him, carving out a perfectly sized tunnel for him to walk through.
The men made a move to follow him, but he quickly reached up his right hand and braced for pain. His arm began to glow bright gold—in stark contrast to the ugly purple energy still pulsating around his body. The golden power swirled around the sandy residue on the ground and reforming it back into solid rock, blocking out all light and air and the soldiers.
Instantly his dark energy shield fell and he crumbled to his knees in agony. The pain swelled most in his right hand, but he could feel it everywhere. This is what happened anytime he tried to use this power, making him extremely reluctant to do so.
His breathing came in shaky gasps and he had hardly any strength to move for a little while, but he knew he couldn't stay here long, or else the military guys outside would find a way to bust down the rock. If he just kept walking, he’d reach the surface eventually, and from there he could make it back to the Undead Citadel.
Lloyd got to his feet, wiping away a few insignificant tears which had fallen loose and brought back his energy shield. On and on and on he walked through the dark in whichever direction. He didn't really care. Just so long as it was away from the soldiers.
Small cave-ins rattled behind him every so often, blocking his enemies path.
'Good,' he thought. 'That'll buy me some extra time.'
Adults had always been trying to stop him all his life. They saw him as a problem child. A brat. A bad influence. A threat. A dangerous mutant offspring that should never have existed. That's what his father had called him once... But other than Lord Garmadon himself, and those pesky students of Wu's, no one had been able to stop Lloyd from getting what he wanted. Ever.
As he walked, with hardly anything else to distract or entertain him, he thought about his Uncle Wu and what he was going to do next, which wasn't a very fun train of thought. He didn't necessarily hate his Uncle, he just kinda.... hated him. It was a complicated mush of feelings he had toward the old man, made up of fond childhood memories, and foul recent memories. He would take every opportunity to annoy, and maybe even hurt his Uncle, but he could never do anything too drastic. He did still have a conscious, after all, even if it was being somewhat strangled at the moment.
As far as his next step went, the only thing he could do immediately was to get back to the Citadel, regroup with his remaining men, and try to come up with a new plan for domination. But he'd be hard pressed to come up with anything substantial, now that he thought about it. Half of his men were just wiped out, and what Skulkens he did have wouldn't be nearly enough to launch any meaningful campaign. Those stupid dunderheads! What good was a legion of undead skeleton monsters if they weren't a big enough force to go to war?! Perhaps he could turn his campaign into more of a small, covert terrorist group...?
He looked back at the tunnel now, blocked with several cave-ins. With the added buffers behind him, Lloyd felt that he could take off his armour finally and rest more during his walk. He was sweaty from the heat of the stuffy tunnel, and ditching his armour helped somewhat to relieve the pressure. He got up again, leaving his armour behind, and brought up his dark energy field once again to tunnel his way out of the mountain.
After the first hour or so, Lloyd began to wonder if he had gotten himself lost. But then he reasoned that of course this would take a long time. It was a mountain after all. Besides, he couldn't have navigated his way out even if he wanted to; his grasp of geography was somewhat lacking.
Then, after what felt like hours later, he finally breached the surface. The rocks above him fell away, revealing cold light above him, hurting his eyes, but filling his chest with sweet, fresh air.
Dropping his energy shield and crawling out of the dirt, Lloyd took a moment to look around and get his bearings. He must have accidentally been walking upward this whole time, because he was sure that he was now at the top of a mountain, and a very cold mountain at that. There was snow covering the ground everywhere he looked, and no green vegetation dared disturb the black and white colour scheme.
He seemed to be in the mouth of a small, dormant volcano. There was an open, white expanse in front of him that went on for quite a while before ending at a sharp cliff face. He was surrounded in a bowl of stone and ice.
Great. Juuuust great. This was exactly where he didn't want to be right now. With his dark energy shield now gone, his emotions returned even more enraged than before. It was going to take him hours to get back down now, not to mention he was freezing! He was supposed to be relishing in his victory right now!
"AAAAAAAHHHH!!!!!" he screamed as he threw a bolt of dark energy at the ground in front of him. It landed with a BSSSHHH sort of sound and snow it landed on evaporated into thin air.
He was supposed to be warm right now!!!
BSSSSHHH! went the snow again as he shot at it for a second time.
His plan was supposed to work!!!
BSSSSHHHH!!!!
This time a very large amount of snow disintegrated in a split second, and Lloyd was about to throw another energy bolt when he suddenly noticed something odd about the stone he had just uncovered with his last blast. It didn't look normal and lumpy, it looked smooth and mostly flat, as if it had been carved.
Hoping that he had stumbled upon something interesting, Lloyd stopped his next attack and moved toward the strange patch of ground. As he got closer, the wind picked up, blowing in a thick fog all around him and making him shiver.
Now he was right on top of whatever it was he was looking at and, slowly, he began to make sense of it. It did, in fact, appear to be a carving. It was flat and very worn, which made it seem super old, and it appeared to be a depiction of a serpent’s face. It was wide, with a crooked grin and odd, swirling eyes. It reminded him of some old Ninjagian art he had seen in school before, except this looked much more plain and simple. One might even say rushed. But what was it? And what was it doing all the way up here? Was it worth anything maybe?
Lloyd backed up a few steps and looked around a bit. Perhaps there was more underneath the snow? Enjoying the distraction of the mystery, he used more dark energy to evaporate the snow around the snake face.
At first there didn’t seem to be anything interesting, just the rim of the carving, nothing more, but then he came to the section just below the face and found a small, stone plaque of sorts. He bent down in a squat to better see the writing there but when he got close enough to see it, he frowned in confusion. At first he thought that maybe it had just been worn away so much that the words were simply unreadable, but as he looked closer, he realised that it wasn’t just the plaque that was old, it was the language as well. Either way, he couldn’t read it, which made it irrelevant.
Well, that was a waste of time, thought Lloyd. What a stupid old piece of junk he had stumbled upon. Probably not worth much even if he could somehow sell it.
He turned with a huff and started stomping back to his tunnel, getting his pants wet in the deep snow, when all of a sudden he tripped and got a face-full of cold, white powder. He tried to get up as quickly as possible to wipe away the snow before it could melt and soak him, when he heard a rather unsettling sound. The mountain started to shake and rumble and a horrible screeching noise made Lloyd cover his ears. It sounded like some sort of machine was moving—a machine that hadn’t been oiled in a hundred years!
Then, it stopped. The mountain didn’t shiver, the screeching had disappeared, and everything seemed back to normal. But then, as Lloyd looked around quickly to find the source of this strange comeuppance, his eyes landed on an odd, small object in the snow by his feet. He stooped low and uncovered it, revealing some sort of curved lever. But if he had pushed the lever, then what had he activated?
As he stood up again and looked out into the snowy expanse, he spotted a gaping, black hole in the ground where the snake carving had once been. Very slowly, he inched closer to it, his curiosity burning with questions.
The hole turned out to be some sort of entrance. An entrance to what, though? Lloyd was down on all fours and leaned over the edge to look down into the blackness. There was a staircase that wrapped around the smooth walls and spiralled down, down, down, out of sight. Like the carving, it looked old and worn out, like it hand’t been touched in forever.
“Hello?” he called out.
“Hello?”
“..hello..?”
“...hello...?”
“....hello....?”
His echo bounced around in the passage and sent a chill riding up his spine. Was there anyone down there? Had he just disturbed them?
In a moment of terror, he felt the stone underneath his left hand start to move, but before he could do anything about it, it broke away from the rest of the ground and his hand fell down, the weight of his torso coming after it. The force of the movement was so sudden that he fell, face first, onto the stone stairs, tumbling downward for a few seconds before he was able to stop himself.
The world was all blurry for a little while, then Lloyd gathered himself and looked up at the grey sky beyond the entrance to the tunnel. Then he looked down at the darkness below him. He might as well explore a little, he thought.
Ignoring the warm feeling of blood trickling down from his nose, Lloyd stood up and started walking down the stairs. He didn’t think it was possible, but somehow this tunnel was even colder than the air outside. His breath came out in small clouds and he felt his jaw begin to shiver. It was fine, though. He could handle a little cold. He didn’t need to make a coat or anything to keep warm. Not if it meant using his second power. He would be fine.
As he began his third or fourth loop around the stairwell, he thought he could hear something coming from the bottom of the stairs—wherever that was. It was sort of a high-pitched sound and very soft, almost like a whisper. Were there people in here perhaps?
Lloyd stopped where he was and listened for a moment. The sound suddenly died away, and all he could hear was the howling wind up above. Maybe he should turn back? What if these people were dangerous? What if—
‘Shut up!’ he said to himself. ‘You are Lloyd Garmadon! Nothing scares Lloyd Garmadon! Nothing!’ Taking in a deep breath and puffing out his chest a little, he kept going.
After a little while, the whispers started to come back; a little louder with each step. He thought that he could just make out some words, but the more he listened, the more unsure he was that he was hearing voices, because it sounded more like hissing.
It was completely pitch black now. Not even the bright sunlight could reach this far down. Lloyd had one hand touching the wall at all times and he felt for the each step carefully, not wanting another fall. Then, he went to step down again but his foot hit the ground long before it should’ve, and he lost his balance for a second. He had finally reached the bottom, he realised. But where was he? His eyes still hand’t fully adjusted yet, so for a short while he was just looking around and around for any clue as to where the voices were coming from or if there was another tunnel somewhere.
Then he saw something so subtle that he almost missed it. There was a faint, blue glow coming from somewhere up ahead. His footsteps were still slow as to not trip over anything, but little by little he came closer to the light and found another tunnel. Or maybe ‘hallway’ would have been a better word to describe it. It was long and it seemed to curve up ahead, blocking anything interesting from sight.
The hissing voices were much louder now, but Lloyd couldn’t make out what they were saying at all. One thing he could tell, though, was that they were definitely coming from this hallway. Or, that is to say, the end of the hallway.
His steps were more confident now, as he could make out some details of his surroundings in the dim light, but he approached cautiously. The light gradually became brighter, the voices gradually became louder, and the air gradually became colder until he finally reached the bend and all the voices stopped again. Rounding the corner, he saw before him his final destination.
It was an enormous room carved out of stone and covered in a thick sheet of ice. The floor was frozen in most places and there were piles of ice chunks here and there. He looked up and saw that there were large icicles hanging from the ceiling. Some of them were missing he noticed, which would explain the piles of ice on the floor. The blue light was coming from a massive chandelier of misshapen gemstones in the center of the ceiling, casting eerie shadows around the room. But as far as he could tell, there was no one home.
Lloyd walked on carefully, jumping at the slightest sound. He knew what he heard. There was somebody down here... but where? He resisted the urge to call out “hello” again, as he didn’t want to attract too much attention, but the silence was becoming unbearable.
As he was turning around to examine every angle of the empty room—watching the entrance to the hallway with some interest—he bumped into something warm behind him.
“S-s-soooo....”
Lloyd nearly jumped out of his frozen skin at the sound of the strange voice. He jumped back and turned like in a flash to face the man who had managed to sneak up on him, and then his blood turned cold. Standing a few feet away from him was a very tall, and oddly shaped man. His head was wide and flat and his eyes were grotesquely bulbous and bright red. Then Lloyd realised that he didn’t have legs. Instead, a long snake tail lay coiled on the floor. That’s when it all made sense. This... this was a Serpentine. A mythical creature told in bedtime stories and reimagined in tv shows and comic books. He could see now that his head resembled that of a cobra’s, covered in an intricate pattern of scales that glinted in the light. It was unnerving to see the half-man half-snake standing in front of him, glaring at him with his red eyes and fangs. In his right hand he held a golden staff shaped into a cobra head at the top, and resting the golden cobra’s mouth was a blue crystal.
“After all this-s-s time...” said the Serpentine. “What brings-s-s the filthy humans-s-s down to our humble dwelling?” He slithered forward menacingly and leered at Lloyd, sticking out his forked tongue to sniff the air. “Where are the others-s-s?”
“Stay back!” Lloyd yelled, taking a few steps away from the terrifying creature and holding out his left hand, rippling with dark energy. “I’m warning you!” He did his best to sound intimidating, but his shivering jaw was difficult to tame, not to mention the fact that he was very much terrified at the moment.
“One boy?” the snake asked, tilting his head to one side. He flicked out his tongue again and looked past Lloyd, down the hallway. Then he smiled and revealed his fangs again. “One boy?!” Now he was chuckling, and all of Lloyd’s confidence was starting to melt away.
From other hallways and hidden places that Lloyd hadn’t noticed when he came in, hundreds of other Serpentine slithered out into the open light. They were mostly men with teal or blue scales and the same bulbous red eyes. Some were big and burly, others somewhat scrawny, but they all looked like they hand’t had anything to eat in a long time. Because the thought of being eaten alive by a giant snake definitely made him feel more confident.
“Who are you?” Lloyd said, thinking that maybe he could stall. He knew nothing about these guys, so who knew if he could take them all on?
“‘Who are we’?” asked the first snake, who Lloyd guessed was the leader. He was the biggest, after all, and he held the golden staff which made him look important. “WHO ARE WE?!” he asked again, even angrier. The other snakes were getting testy too. “Don’t tell me the s-s-surfac-c-ce dwellers-s-s have forgotten about us-s-s!”
“Well, uh...” Lloyd stuttered, unsure about what to say. He really should have paid closer attention in history class.
“IDIOTS!!! I AM CHEIF SLITHRAA, AND WE ARE THE HYPNOBRAI CLAN OF OF THE SERPENTINE, SCOURG OF NINJAGO AND YOUR DOOM!!!” the leader shouted in a furry. He lunged forward the way that snakes do when they strike at their prey, and in this case his prey was Lloyd. He grabbed the boy by the throat and opened his eyes even wider than Lloyd thought possible. Lloyd’s left hand didn’t even have enough time to do anything before Slithraa had the golden staff pinned to Lloyd’s arm, stopping his hand from touching anything. He choked and clawed at Slithraa’s hands, trying to break free as the serpent chief stared intensely at him, his eyes now pulsating with red light.
After a moment, Lloyd realised that Slithraa wasn’t going to kill him, he just kept staring at him, and it was getting uncomfortable. By now he had stopped trying to break free because he was wholly focused on what the Serpentine was trying to accomplish. Was he just going to keep standing there forever?
“What’s-s-s the matter with you?!” Slithraa cried. “Why aren’t you s-s-succumbing to the hypnosis-s-s!?” The other Hypnobrai had begun to mutter and mumble to one another in a disapproving sort of way, making Chief Slithraa even angrier.
“I dunno, maybe I’m just more powerful than you,” said Lloyd, seizing this opportunity of confusion. He wriggled out of the grasp of the golden staff and grabbed one of Slithraa’s wrists, unleashing a small amount of dark energy, just enough for him to yowl in pain and let go of him. Lloyd staggered on the ground, keeping his eyes on the chief, and righted himself with more confidence. He reached out his left hand again, fully loaded with dark energy. “My name is Lloyd Garmadon.” Then, as he looked around at the sizeable number of Serpentine in the room, and he got a wicked idea. “And I have freed you, you ungrateful maggots!”
There was a visible change in the crowd accompanied by more whispering. Chief Slithraa looked stunned for a good few seconds, but then a another Serpentine came up beside him, a dark expression on his face.
“Wait a minute...” he said, staring at Lloyd’s glowing hand. “Garmadon...? Garmadon! He was-s-s one of them! One of the wretched s-s-surface dwellers-s-s who locked us-s-s away over s-s-six hundred years-s-s ago!”
“What?” Lloyd asked incredulously.
“It’s true! Our ancestral history recounts it!” said one of the other Hypnobrai. All the others nodded their agreement.
“And that’s how he countered your hypnosis, Slithraa,” said the other Serpentine who slithered up next to the chief.
“You, Lloyd Garmadon, are an enemy of my tribe,” Chief Slithraa snarled, and he started to move forward again.
“Stop right there!” Lloyd said as firmly as he could. He threw a bolt of destruction down in front of the Hypnobrai Chief and he stopped cold, watching the ice on the ground evaporate and the stone melt away to nothing. “I didn’t lock you in here! I’m only twelve years old, you stupid snake! I’m the one whose setting you free! Now, are you gonna be grateful...” he raised his left hand again. “Or are you gonna make me mad?” In truth, Lloyd was on the verge of wetting himself, but he wouldn’t let his fear show. Fear was for the weak. For losers! If he wanted to be Emperor, he needed to show these creatures that he was in charge.
‘Keep it together. Just a little bit longer. Come on stupid snake-man! Back down already!’ Lloyd was yelling in his head.
Slithraa looked from the boy to the scorch mark on the ground and back to the boy again. He didn’t look particularly convinced, but he did seem to register Lloyd as a serious threat. All the other Hypnobrai were watching with baited breath, unsure of what to do.
“Ehh, free you s-s-say?” Chief Slithraa asked. This was it, Lloyd knew. It could go either way now.
“Free,” Lloyd repeated. Then he started walking back into the hallway, turning around to face the Serpentine and yelling, “Come on! The exit’s this way, you bunch of wusses!”
Slithraa seemed to straighten up a little before he cautiously followed Lloyd down the hallway, prompting the other Serpentine to trail behind him.
Lloyd felt like his heart was going to explode. But at least all this nervousness had temporarily made him forget about how cold it was. But being in the dark tunnel with a small army of Serpentine at your back? Talk about a leap of faith! He was sure that at any moment, one of them would sneak up behind him and stab him or something. But what other course of action could he have taken anyway? He always had his powers as a back plan. So far, though, the only sounds he heard were the constant slithering of five dozen tails and his own footsteps.
Then, finally, they reached the stairwell. Lloyd stood right underneath the open exit high above them and, muttering to himself that he hoped he knew what he was doing, he turned around and looked Slithraa in the eye.
“See?” he said, pointing up at the blinding white light shining down on them.
Slithraa and the Serpentine from earlier, who was clinging to the chief’s side an awful lot, looked up to where Lloyd was pointing. Complete shock seemed to be their reaction, although it was difficult to read their snake-like faces. They stared up the stairs for decent while and then turned to each other, whispering in each other’s ears. The two Hypnobrai seemed to be arguing about something, and Lloyd had a sneaking suspicion that it was about him.
“Enough of this-s-s!” Slithraa finally said, loud enough for most everyone to hear.
All the other Serpentine behind them, still stuck in the tunnel, were anxiously trying to see what was going on, and to catch a glimpse of the light they had been deprived of their entire lives.
Chief Slithraa came forward and said, “Lloyd Garmadon... as-s-s s-s-stated in our code of honour... we are now... indebted to you.”
‘Yes! I win!’ said Lloyd in his head. All his stress was finally relieved now, and he managed a small smile.
Then he noticed the other Hypnobrai who Slithraa had been arguing with. His arms were folded and he was glaring at him in a very unsettling way. But as long as the chief was on his side, he felt more or less safe. Speaking of the chief, he was talking again.
“We are honour bound to repay this-s-s debt.”
“So,” Lloyd started, anxious to put his idea into action. “I’m guessing you guys are pretty angry at the people who locked you in here, huh?”
There was a murmur of agreement throughout the crowd, and every face was now watching Lloyd with extreme interest.
“‘Angry’, young human, would be an unders-s-statement,” said the grumpy Hypnobrai behind the chief. He strained the word ‘human’ in a mean sort of way, as if saying it disgusted him.
“Well good, because I don’t much like them either. Not to mention I’ve got a score to settle with some ninja,” Lloyd said with a scowl. This other Serpentine clearly didn’t like him, so he’d need to tread carefully. “If you really wanna pay off that debt, how about we work together?”
The crowd murmured their agreement and Slithraa began to smile. This was the start of a beautiful war campaign.
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