8. Pandemonium's Bastion Awakens
Intertwined with the human dimension lies a place where only few men go, all of which hardly ever return. Entering is not the easiest task, but exiting is even harder, for which you are graveled by obstacles named by death that you may only ever see once, the second before you die. This place is where all darkness goes to despair, where all evil resigns itself after failure. It is a place where Destruction has visited by the hands of Goodness, Goodness that threatened to obliterate Destruction by turning it against evil. Using its own element against it, if you will. And for a time, it seemed to work.
This dimension, so entangled with the human one, lies between the dimensions of Hell and of Humanity, a place slit through space by accident and taken under wing to create a large empire in-the-making. Darkness rids every turn and corner of the place sandwiched between Hell and its polar opposite, a creation by Nature that which opposes them so. This is the exile of all evil things that wish to stay out of Hell but remain with ties to Humanity, wishing to one day they may override the indomitable realm. In this dimension, there is nothing but remains of a castle once larger than anything imaginable, destroyed by Goodness in its works. The residue of annihilation stay as constant reminders of stained glass and white-painted sheetrock that lie in clumps, heaps across the realm. They serve as small homes for evil's smallest inventions to crawl into, to live in. For few years, this place has been nothing but for small rodent manifestations of Darkness to hide in, a place for Shadow Dancers and kage-oni to wander into alongside many others to take shelter. It has been nothing but obliterated ruins of a once-thriving castle that was determined to succeed in world-overtake.
But there is something stirring within this dimension between dimensions. It is a place teeming with Darkness that is ready to take its revenge, ready to take back virtue with pride in evil that should rightfully destruct the human realm. Things are escaping back out into the human world where they do not belong, attacking what has kept them at bay for so long. Things that the human world could never fathom in any place but their minds. Things that should not exist in anything…but nightmares.
Deep into the realm between realms, an ash leftover from explosion still falls. Here, rules of physics do not nearly apply by letting this ash still hover, rise from the ground, and endlessly fall from the nonexistent sky above, which is a place of darkness that looms overhead. The walls of a white castle so mighty are now nothing but heaps depressed from what they once were. This castle was destroyed by an act of Goodness; now watch as Darkness rises from nothing and takes back what rightfully belongs to it.
The rubble has lain here for many Hell and Humanity intervals of time, but here, time is nonexistent, endless. There is nowhere where the clock starts or finishes. It is simply being without a label of time to pressure it. Rock, wall, broken glass, everything piles up on top of what is buried underneath. Things scurry in and out of the debris, unaware of what is happening underneath. A supernatural pulsing, a Power stronger than anything ever created by Nature, is surging in the unseen. It is calling to anything willing to wield it, asking for a hand to clasp it, a claw to pin it, something willing to own it. The pulsing has been going on for what passes as decades in Hell but only a few years in Humanity. And this cry for help has not gone unheard.
Slowly from underneath the wreckages at the very bottom of its wrath, something stirs. It is slight movement that has not occurred in many, many time intervals, but it is slowly regaining consciousness. It knows something. It understands. In so long, it hasn't known how to think, being trapped completely underneath a nightmare for so long. Disfigured, it still lives after everything it's been through. Half its face is distraught by scars, most of its body torched by explosion. What would've killed a human is only in need of a few years of repair for the heartless.
The stirring is not much. The twitch of a finger underneath a heavy, broken wall is all it takes. The supernatural pulsing nearby thickens when it realizes that there is something there, ready for taking it. But time...though it does not exist here…is needed. The creature in which stirs is not yet ready to come back to life yet; the mutilated body of the man falls unconscious once more under the weight of his castle, once so proudly named Pandemonium Bastion. He falls back into a nightmarish sleep of nothing.
But the item in which began the supernatural pulsing knows. It knows that nearby there is something waiting to grasp it, to take in its Power and brandish it in front of the world, and the throbbing of the Power continues stronger than it ever was before. Though the rousing was minor, it proves that even amongst the Destruction and decay, there is still life.
The Shadow Key grows stronger every second it waits for him.
"HE'S ALIVE!"
The youngest Leader burst through the doors of the Elemental Temple after mounting the many steps leading to its glory. Madison did not expect much from the party of the seven greatest Elemental Warriors ever given to this planet by Mother Nature. Deriving from several time periods, each of the leaders was different in their own way, all with unique powers that allowed them to protect humanity from darkness over time—including their own explosive personalities that kept them arguing like baseball fans stuck in hot bleachers. More on that subject later.
She found them as she knew they'd be: standing about, arguing with one another—particularly Lucien and Zara, the two oldest Elemental Leaders that figured they were the ones who ran the bunch—as if they were all human politicians cutting at each other's throats. Madison usually left the Temple because she hated the arguing, and would rather spend her time with the Elemental descendants down in the different sections, which right now were dominated by Fire, Earth, Lightning, and Ice. There, Madison was more or less entertained by the Elemental Warriors that had once wielded the same element that was present in current time by one of the four world-saving ninja. Aaaannndddd that might not make sense to you yet. Dang it…I guess I have to explain it to you anyway. And I was hoping to avoid the history lesson for a little while longer.
You see, Mother Nature creates, every passing, seven human beings who turn out to be a little different than most by having supernatural powers that were given to them by Her so that they may keep Darkness at bay. Since the rise of the first humans on earth, Mother Nature has always birthed these seven select people who would protect everyone else—the people that couldn't protect themselves—from any demons or hellions that were created by the Underworld, a realm that wanted to overtake the world Mother Nature had created. These people with supernatural powers, such as the powers to command water at will or the power to use fire by just your fingertips, became victim to the moniker of "Elemental Warriors." New Elemental Warriors were born when the last of the group of the previous seven died. Meaning, all of them had to be dead before the new members of the seven could be born. Just like in this time, there were seven warriors in the human dimension that would fight in the Great Battle.
These warriors were scattered over the face of the earth, sometimes never even meeting each other in their lifetimes or truly learning how to harness their powers. Nature's plan backfired whenever those type of people came around, the ones who didn't know how to control their power, who ended up being dissected in labs or murdered by people valuing them as freaks. They would come from anywhere and everywhere. The seven elemental warriors that exist today are very lucky to have all met one another.
Sometimes, these warriors were looked upon as gifts from God, and other times viewed as Satan's worst. Indians native to Ninjago thought they were Creation. They were not Satanic, which was for certain; Mother Nature created them in order to make sure that Satan's creations were kept at bay. And when these people died…Well, they came here. To the Elemental Realm.
Madison barged into the temple, throwing open the doors with great enthusiasm, but not the good kind. "He's alive!" she screamed, grabbing the hem of her incredibly overdone robes of what Nature thought was fine elegance. She ran into the room, seeing tall Lucien and Zara facing each other but looking to Madison when she entered, annoyed. Oh, their bickering can pause a minute, Madison grumbled in her mind, instead capturing their attention with the frantic waving of her arms. She stopped in front of them—the beady eyed Lucien and tired Zara—with her heart pounding. Her dead heart pounding, mind you. "He's alive!"
"Who, you fool?" Lucien snapped, frowning. Madison looked back at the gaping door of the temple before answering, as if he was following her or something.
Madison panted heavily, evading the question at hand. "I went to the Temple of Light, just to see if there was any disruption in the world outside, to see if there was any Darkness—and there is!" she squealed in upset. She felt like she was going to cry. "There are great amounts of Darkness lurking in the human dimension. It is more powerful than anything I have ever come across in my entire time here. I've never seen things so powerful." She shivered. "I don't know where they came from; they just sprouted up out of nothing! And then when I went to research what could've caused such an outbreak in Darkness, I found—oh, I don't know what to make of it!" She finished in a bare cry.
Lucien rolled his eyes at her childish fears, but Madison was not joking about the Darkness. She could sense it. Zara reached down and placed a comforting hand over her shoulder. "Madison, who did you say is alive?"
Madison shivered. Dainty tears fell over her face. "Him." She buried her face in her hands. "Oh, it was horrible! He still lives—and worse yet, the Shadow Key isn't destroyed! It is calling to the Darkness in the human world! It's begging for recognition, and worse yet, the Darkness is noticing!"
"Would you quit with your incessant babbling and just tell us who is at hand?" snapped Lucien. He sounded angry as usual.
Madison flailed her arms. "It's not him that's doing it, it's the Shadow Key and whatever creature is causing it to react! It is tied somehow to whoever is calling for it, and it's trying to find him as he is trying to find it. And now that they're calling to each other, its causing a huge reaction by the community of Darkness that is also hearing these signals that are giving them Power. Power to become stronger. To destroy. I fear the worst!"
"Who is calling it?" asked Zara gently.
"Oh, I don't know, but—but he's alive!"
"WHOOOOOOO?" bellowed Lucien. "SPIT IT OUT ALREADY!"
"Kaos!" Madison wailed, wrapping her arms around Zara and beginning to sob. "It's Kaos! He's alive! And I fear that he'll be the one to reach the Shadow Key before its Master does!"
