"In the beginning, the only darkness came from the wrong side of the moon."
•Chapter One•
The Prince Regent
Unlike many, I remember my childhood as a happy time. I remember when the sting of a wooden sword against your soft and powdered skin was the worst pain you ever felt. You need not feel anything worse, maybe perhaps the beatings you received for bad behavior. I do admit, my childhood was much more privileged than others.
As the only child and rightful heir to the throne, I was babied and treated as a porcelain dish, easily breakable and usually foreign to a casual setting. I never left the castle before age twelve and when I did, it was because I felt the vibrations of the rocks sent catapulting into my home. Every illusion I had of my perfect safe haven vanished as I watched the people of the village burn with the fire of battle. By the age of fourteen, I was no longer the polished prince I once was, instead a complete stranger to myself and others. A solider, ravaged by war, eyes made empty by the death of thousands, heart made hard by the eyes of the enemy.
Every time the enemy would push forward, I and my Father's knights would go and push them back, every time losing more fighters, more villagers. It was early December, when the first snow began to fall that only I returned to the castle. The king and queen, my mother and father, were beginning to lose hope. And then he came knocking on our door.
I can't believe I was so blind. He simply walked through the army without a fight yet that caused me no suspicion. At first, the man seemed quite resourceful, fashioning a weapon which allowed our castle to stay standing during another battle, but then, his ideas began to change. They began to get darker, more malevolent. His weapons and tactics began to harm what little population we had left and he didn't seem to care. What's worse, was my father began to relish every injury and every death he brought, no matter the side. My mother began to fear him, the darkness showing in his eyes and skin. I alone faced him, only to bring down upon myself the new rage that had formed in him. This man was no longer my father, he was a monster.
The man and my father drove myself, my mother and what was left of my kingdom into the forest, where he attacked us non-stop, until the cold weather eventually forced his new and unprepared army to retreat. The land that had once been my father's kingdom became known as the Overland, ruled by the Overlord, and I, Prince Lloyd of the Kingdom Ninjago, became the prince regent, a title forced upon me by my Father's negligence.
•••
I was supposed to be getting some sleep, but the beds placed into this small, claustrophobic bunker were quickly thrown together, making the straw lumpy and hard in places. That was not the reason for my restlessness, instead the constant thought that my father was going to kill us without remorse. I was jerked roughly out of my empty sleep by a hand on my shoulder, causing me to flinch hard. I must have frightened the young girl who had been given this task, for she let out a small gasp and a loud thunk was auditable through the stone chamber. I sat up and rubbed my eyes, looking over at the girl, who had quickly pulled herself up at my attention. She ran her hands over her skirt, getting whatever dirt caused by her fall to come off it in a smoke-like puff.
"I'm sorry, my lord." The girl squeaked out, chewing on her thumbnail. "I didn't mean to scare you." I smiled at the girl, whose name was Alice, trying to ignore the large bandage that covered the eye that had been violent gorged out during out fight to get here.
"Don't apologize, Alice." I said. "I was the one that frightened you." I threw my legs over onto the floor, pulling on my boots. "And please, call me Lloyd." Alice smiled, proceeding to giggle and hide her mouth behind her hand. I laughed as well, but my smile quickly faded. Alice was beginning to leave, but I called out and stopped her. "How's your eye?" She stopped, the glimmer in her eye vanished.
"It still hurts very badly. The doctor gives me medicine to ease the pain, but he's almost out." She looked down towards the floor. "They're not sure if I can take the pain after that." She sniffed a bit, then looked back up at me. "May I ask you a question?" I smiled again, gently patting the straw next to where I was sitting. She scurried over quickly, crossing her legs as she sat down like a proper lady. I felt my heart rise at this, that even in this time, she still felt the need to be polite.
"What troubles you?" I asked. She signed, wringing her small hands.
"They have my eye in cold storage." She said slowly.
"Yes," I said, "I made sure it was kept there myself." She looked up.
"Do you… do you think there's a chance… they could put it back? The small rise in my mood was quickly stomped out, sinking lower than it had ever been. Of course there was no way to fix her eye, there was a large hole where the iris used to be, and the optic nerve was severed when it was pulled out of the socket. There was no hope, there was almost no hope for anything anymore, but I couldn't let her know that, not now, not when she has already given so much.
"I think…I think there's always hope." Alice looks down.
"But… none for me." She swallowed tightly. "I have to go." She said briskly, standing up and running out of the room before I could call her back. I pressed my face into my hands and groaned.
"Shit." I mumbled, letting my hands trail down my face and fall into my lap. "What the hell am I going to do?" I wondered aloud as I stood up and pulled my tunic over my head, feeling the soft purple velvet brush against my chest. As a king, I was supposed to motivate the population, give them blind hope in a time when it was scarce, but so far, I haven't been doing a good job. I wasn't cut out for this. The first half of my life, I was an oblivious child, the second half, a warrior who couldn't afford a conscious.
"Lloyd?" I heard a gentle voice call. "Lloyd? Are you in here?" I sighted, not wanting to talk to anyone, but I had been taught better than that. It was impolite to refuse the queen.
"Yes, Mom. I'm in here." I turned towards the doorway, seeing my mother, still dressed in her royal robes. They were tattered and fading, stained with the blood of the many we lost along the way, but she continued to wear them with her head held high. She gave me a small smile.
"Lloyd, we are very late for the planning meeting. You know they will not start without you." I groaned, leaning my head into my arm, which was leaning my weight against the cool stone wall. I had completely forgot about the war meeting we were having at this hour. The meeting would most likely result in a plan that required another group of our willing and able-bodied men to march off, never to return.
"Then perhaps I just won't go." I heard my mother's small sigh, her footsteps echoing as she walked towards me, laying her small hand on my shoulder.
"I know it's hard, Lloyd," I heard her throat catch, but I elected to ignore it, "but in your father's…absence, you are all these people have as leader." I could just imagine her green eyes glimmering with false encouragement, the same green eyes I saw in the mirror every day, the same I tried to ignore.
"Why? So we can vote to send more people off to their deaths? So I can watch my kingdom fall to ashes by my own hand?" I said, immediately regretting my bitterness.
"Oh, Lloyd. It's not like that." She tried to reason with me, but today, I just wouldn't hear it. I wouldn't here the same speech over again.
"Oh, yes," I said, hearing my voice rise within the chamber walls, "I forgot, it's much easier for you." I spun around, yanking her hand from its perch. "Tell me, Queen Misako," I shouted, "how many soldiers have you sent off to their death for your betterment?" As my purged myself of the anger that had been building up for some time, I noticed the position my mother had taken. She had pressed herself up against the wall, arms raised in front of her face in a defensive position. I felt every bit of rage I had previously felt towards her leave my body, seeing her so small and afraid, as she had been in the last few days with my father. Sometimes, I forget how much I resemble him, before the darkness took over. With quivering legs, I walked over and scooped her up, pressing her shaking body to my chest. After a moment, she began to return the embrace. After endless minute, we eventually released one another. I straightened my tunic. "I apologize, Mother." I said, bowing slightly. "I let my temper get the best of me." She gave me a sad smile, using her fingers to push my blond hair out of my face so that she could lay her hand on my cheek.
"Apologize for nothing. I have forgotten the stress that a new role of leadership brings down on a young man such as yourself." I nearly flinched at how formal she was being, knowing that I hurt her. I cleared my throat, wanting to quickly leave the room, the tension choking me as it had been Alice before.
"Excuse me, I must get to my meeting." I quickly walked around my mother and out the door, nearly running into the quick-moving figure making her way into the room. She stopped and bowed slightly at my presence, waiting for me to say something to her, as I always did. I gave her a small smile. "Good morning, Pixal. How was your sleep?" Pixal looked at me a moment, before nodding and slightly shrugging her shoulders. After a moment of awkward silence, she pointed into the room, towards my mother's back. I quickly moved out of Pixal's way. "My apologizes, you have to get to work, and I have a meeting to attend to." I nodded slightly towards her before continuing on my way towards my meeting.
Pixal once lived in the mountains, with a tribe of ice savages. When my father invaded the area, she was the only one deemed useful, sparing her and her alone. She was brought back to the castle, cleaned up, and appointed as one of my mother's ladies-in-waiting. Unfortunately, as we found out when we brought her back, in the tribe that Pixal had been part of, children were under an oath of silence from age ten until eighteen. When her village was stormed, the shaman was killed, and there was no one to release her from her oath. To this day, she remains silent, the one of the only reminders that she was once a savage, the other being the permanent box-like markings that stained her pale skin.
I regret taking her away from her home. Maybe if my father hadn't have taken the mountains, Pixal could have been safe, with a family of her own, her voice ringing out clear like the cool mountain wind.
•••
I stared around the rounded table at the people surrounding me. My father's original war council was all slaughtered, the hundreds of brains filled with knowledge that could help us in this time of need, all gone. My makeshift council was made up of only six people, including myself.
The old grandmaster I had grown up knowing, a man named Rowan, who had led my Father's troops into successful battle after another, had sadly passed on of old age, only days before the first attack. Fortunately, his son, a man named Dareth, had been training to take his father's place. He was one of the only people to make it out of the castle alive, besides my mother and me.
Another member was a former knight, now a baron, awarded with many medals for his feats of bravery. He and the baroness, his wife, had both made it here alive. Though I was more comfortable calling him Sir Edward, or Baron Walker, he insisted I call him Ed.
The next was the only female in my council, once the best artillator in the land, now my king, or rather, queen of arms. The daughter of the best blacksmith in the village, Nyata Ignis, or Nya as she preferred to be called, had been up to the title without complaint.
One of my more suspicious members of the council, one who was barely trusted with a sword, was a knight who had traveled from a distant land. Sir Pythor of Ouroboros. Odd name, is it now? I could honestly not say much about him, only that he was sly, a little too friendly for my comfortable liking.
My final member was one of the best artisans in the village, a man who doubled as a medical doctor. Dr. Tinkerer Julien, though we normally only called him Dr. Julien. Though he did not speak much during these meeting, when he did offer his two-cents, it always proved useful.
"Everyone," started Dareth, clapping his hands together to signal the beginning of the meeting, "I would like to call the seventh meeting of the grand council of Regent Prince Lloyd Garmadon to order." He glanced around, seeing if anyone voiced their opposition. When no one did, he placed both hands down of the table, holding down the tattered edged of the map of the kingdom that always sat on the table. "I would like to call the council's attention to Lady Nya, who has requested to start off this meeting." All eyes turned to Nya, who nodded gently in Dareth's direction.
"Thank you, Lord Dareth." She said, before turning her attention, to the map, tracing her thin finger over the boundary lines until she found the point she was looking at. She pressed her fingertip against the point until it turned white. "I have spent many days out on patrol studying the patterns of Overland's patrol." She glanced up, ensuring that we were all paying attention, before falling back towards the map. "This area is one of the points that is the least guarded. Now, I believe that if we were to send a small group of warriors, no more than five, they could slip into the borders unnoticed."
"There is good reason for it being the least guarded," said Dareth, pointing at the land before the point, "you would have to cut through the mountains to even get close to the point. No one could survive that trek."
"I have a plan for that," Nya said, dragging her finger back a ways, "if we were to go a ways back into the forest, the group could cut around the mountain." She drew a half moon around the mountain, ending up back at her original point. The Baron shook his head.
"No. That would require too many unaccountable variables, especially with the warm months coming in soon." The Baron scanned the table, trying to read our expressions.
"Ed is right." I cut in, glad I remembered not to refer to him as the Baron. I turned towards Nya, pressing my palms into the edge of the table. "I appreciate the thought, Nya, but there is absolutely no possible way five warriors could defeat my father, the Overlord, and the army."
"Perhaps," said Pythor in his smooth tone from across the table, "we could send in five men willing to sacrifice themselves. Draw attention so our entire army could sneak in while the guards are distracted."
"No." I said, slamming my fist into the table, causing everyone to look up from the map. "If we can avoid it, I refuse to let anyone else die," I turned towards Pythor, trying not to sneer at the cockiness in his eyes, "especially not in a suicide mission." Just then, a small knock at the large wooden door pulled us all out of focus, as one of the guards opened the door, allowing the young page to slip in. He leaned against the stone wall of the room, patiently waiting to deliver his message to its recipient. We all turned back towards the map.
"Lloyd," said Nya from across the table, using the gentle tone she used when she wanted something, "I know this is hard for you, but as the Prince Regent, you have a duty to your people."
"Yes," Dareth cut in, "if you don't think Nya's plan will work, and you refuse Pythor's plan, what would you suggest we do." I hung my head, trying to hide the fear and shame in my eyes. I felt like I had back when I was a child, with my tutor during my lessons, when I missed an arithmetic problem.
"I don't know." I said quietly, erupting a silence into the room that was almost unbearable.
"Well, I believe that Nya's plan will work." Dr. Julien said from beside me. "All we need is some powerful warriors."
"And what's your definition of 'powerful', Doctor?" Pythor inquired.
"Well," said the doctor, "you were looking for men that welcomed Death, but I believe we should be looking for men far greater." His eyes scanned the table over his spectacles. "I believe we should be looking for men that are not only powerful physically, but also do not fear Death, because they have run into him once before." He traced his wrinkled and withering finger along the mountains. "Men who aren't only willing, but know this mountain well." I shook my head slowly, pressing my hand against my mouth in thought.
"Pardon me, Doctor," I said, "but where would you suggest we find men such as this?"
"Excuse me, my liege?" All eyes snapped over towards the wall, where the young page stood. Every mouth hung open with surprise that they boy had the courage to speak out of turn, to the Prince, no less. He took a deep breath, relishing in the realization that he had not yet been hanged for his crime. His eyes darted around. "But if its powerful warriors you are looking for, you could always seek out the Wolves."
•••