NIGHTMARES FOR A NINJA, BOOK THREE:
THE KINGDOM OF DEATH
Prologue
THE OVERLORD HOVERED over the map with a nasty swirling motion, glaring down without eyes onto the pressed neat paper tacked to the surface of the wooden table. He—or it, it was impossible to tell—breathed irritability into the air as quickly as it pulsed the purple glow it emanated. Bent over the table with his staff poised in hand, the small cupboard of a shed was lit by the lantern setting by the corner of his workbench, its flame dimming with his ragged breathing. Anger pulsed through his tainted green veins beneath the slick scale of his skin. His claws dug angrily into the rotting wood as he exclaimed, "This is impossible!"
"Indeed," hissed the Overlord, floating to the opposite side of Eloquim's shoulder line. It slipped around in vain as it gave angry cries. "The pathway doesn't make sense."
"The Lost City of Ouroboros should be in the desert," snapped Eloquim in solid agreement under the dome of the shed hidden in the enclave of the deep, haunted woods. Under the nape of his cloak was the key, wrapped tightly around his throat. The table beneath the map he'd tacked was stained dimly with the gore of previous guts and blood of his enemies. This could be simply referred to, in mortal terms, as home, where Eloquim had spent millennium hiding away without the interruptions of human life. Intruders to feed him, while he was forced to hide from the sun before Elathan (in Kai's form) had released him from the banishment of the curse of the sun, were splattered dryly throughout the floor. Their rotted carcasses and bones remained, with the whisper of previous lives in their wholly death.
The Overlord fit his voice into a low, fading grumble. "Then why does this map say it is in the center of Ninjago City?" He asked. Eloquim traced the blood red lines beneath the quickly fading hieroglyphics revealing the single message written in the coded tongue of the Shadow Dancers, his ancestors many years before him. This was the same message he'd threatened the Green Ninja to read—a war of which of course he'd won—in the format of a children's rhyme. Its meaning was still unknown to Eloquim, of course, as he'd been poring over all the evidence he had to his own possession, all of which consisted of this old, single slip of paper. He had nothing to go by but the pathway the map drew, which it seemed now was incorrect.
"The Pool of Truth failed," he spat, stepping away from the table in disgust. "This is no direction to the Shadow Key. This is useless!"
The Overlord slipped closer to examine it, illuminating the section he hovered over in a dull purple glow. "I don't see why it would just fail," he murmured. "It is a truthful piece of works. How can it fail if it cannot lie?"
Eloquim glared at a mouse corpse lingering in death at his feet. Its bones were easily definable through the haze of darkness. "I don't know!" he growled. "It doesn't make sense! The map should've led us to Ouroboros. It should've been truthful and led us to where we can find the Key! Why has it failed us?"
He kicked the mouse's remains in bitterness. They flailed in opposite directions from their disconnectedness, sailing through the miniscule movement allowance the abandoned shed offered. They ricocheted off the walls with clinks of deliverance. Frustrated, the otherworldly beast dragged his claws across the wall, peeling away its rotting skin. It curled as it disconnected with the wooden barricade.
"Wait a second," hissed the Overlord. Eloquim paused his tantrum to peer at it. "What if it is telling us the truth? What if all along the rumors were wrong, and the Key isn't hidden in Ouroboros?"
Eloquim straightened. "Go on."
"Perhaps maybe the tomb that your ancestors spoke of isn't a tomb within a much larger tomb as we previously expected. Perhaps the map is leading us to where the tomb is, beneath the city of Ninjago. Was there ever specification that it was truly Ouroboros that hid the secrets of the Key?"
Eloquim thought for a moment. "I suppose not."
"Precisely! It was only stated that there was a city in which it was hidden beneath. Assumptions were made that it was the Lost City of Ouroboros." The Overlord's logic was completely understandable. Eloquim felt like an idiot for not figuring it out himself. With a cry, he gave a happy laugh, holding up his hands in the air. He felt triumphant. For two weeks Eloquim had dawdled over this map with a cluelessness he hated to feel, falling slowly to the bottom of the trap, yet over the course of just two insufferable seconds, he'd risen to the top once more, flourishing. A devilish grin spread across his face.
"Overlord, my ingenious friend," he chuckled happily, holding his head high, tilting his chin so his green eyes could be viewed beneath his hood. The Overlord bobbed neatly in the air, as though bowing. "I think you've graciously outdone yourself today!" He quickly untacked the map, this time pouring out his emotions over it with a better understanding of what he was looking at. He couldn't help the smile that covered his face now, unable to pry it off.
"Thank you, my Master," the Overlord answered.
Eloquim's claw touched the speckle where the blood splatter ended, the true location of the Shadow Key, hidden in the dead center of Ninjago City. Not too far from the abandoned woods they were in now, it wouldn't be difficult to find their way in the directions led by the map's red road. His smile turned into a long, loud laugh of success. He turned to his friend.
"We set out for the city at midnight."
Inspiration for this chapter: Celldweller's "The Seven Sisters."
Book 3 focuses a lot on the number 7. KEEP THAT IN MIND! X)
I hope you enjoyed this, and come back soon for your next bite of the Nightmare for a Ninja series' book 3: "The Kingdom of Death"! PLEASE REVIEW GUYS! And go have an AWESOME day/night, scream at your greens, and laugh today!
(Expect to climb aboard the Bounty 2 for Chapter 1! And I will see you back here tomorrow!)
-Kairi Venomus
